Admin's Choice, map forcing.

[captainsnarf]

It's the repetitiveness. I do actually like Minus, Junkyard and Dria. They are long slogs though. By the time we are done with them, the night is over so it ends up being all we ever play.

The maps I don't like are the maps that are both hard to come back from after you lose your primaries, and hard to finish off. It ends up 20 minutes of spawn killing. Maps that come to mind are Nevermore (og version not Pooty's), and Torlan LinkerMadness. Yes Pooty, I realize there have been some comebacks on Torlan LinkerMadness, but it's rare and depends on how quickly you turn it around. After some time, it becomes nearly impossible once the other team is setup and your power vehicle are waiting to respawn. You need the perfect storm of important vehicles all spawning on time, skilled pilots grabbing them, and a lot of teamwork. Usually it's just a one sided fist fight. And to be fair, Torlan was always like that, even the og version.

[FuriousRabbit]

Aside from the need for testing, I'd request that you limit this to two or three times per week and preferably at least choose a second-place option that has significant votes. While you're trying to couch this is terms of providing variety for everyone, I read this as, "I don't want to play with bots so I'm going to hijack everyone else's time and force the map I want". Also, many of use only have time to play two or three games a night. Having one of those forced is annoying. I disagree that just because an admin makes an unpopular map, the community should be forced to play it.

Historically, omni has never been a place of forced maps. It's always been community preference and it is sad to see this changing.

[Enyo]

I'm all for admins forcing maps. The repetition is getting ridiculous to many.

Forcing maps is way better than implementing "map packs". Map packs smacks of "book burning" to me. And reducing choice is EVIL.

Weird analogy... but laissez-faire map voting is not working out well, and sometimes reducing choices is necessary for the good of the whole, i.e. libraries can't carry books with detailed bomb-making instructions.

But, the idea of map packs takes much more effort than admins just forcing a map from time to time. So benevolent dictatorship it is, or oligarchy in this case.

[McLovin]

...
So benevolent dictatorship it is, or oligarchy in this case.

Kind of like Russia? LOL

[captainsnarf]

Aside from the need for testing, I'd request that you limit this to two or three times per week and preferably at least choose a second-place option that has significant votes. While you're trying to couch this is terms of providing variety for everyone, I read this as, "I don't want to play with bots so I'm going to hijack everyone else's time and force the map I want". Also, many of use only have time to play two or three games a night. Having one of those forced is annoying. I disagree that just because an admin makes an unpopular map, the community should be forced to play it.

Historically, omni has never been a place of forced maps. It's always been community preference and it is sad to see this changing.

> "I don't want to play with bots so I'm going to hijack everyone else's time and force the map I want".

That goes both ways though. The same maps get voted over and over, and some of us feel we are being forced to play a map we don't want. Forcing a map, at least once in a while, is to try and appeal to everyone. You say you don't want to play with bots, or I don't, but I end up going to another server to play when omni gets too repetitive. Maybe some players quit or spectate when a DM heavy map is voted. Either way you're losing players.

I do think it should be forced with discretion, and rarely. When we just played ArcticJunkyard, Minus, DesertJunkyard, and the next vote is up and ForestJunkyard is winning, forcing something else might be appropriate.

[pooty]

Otherwise why would Pooty even do the work at all?

Exactly. It takes a fair amount of hours and the editor is kludgy to make everything work... and then no one votes it. I've kind of taken a minimalist approach lately, find a decent map that isn't going to take hours, throw some vehicles at it and see.

I disagree that just because an admin makes an unpopular map, the community should be forced to play it.

I think unpopular is the wrong word. To fine tune a map takes many iterations with human players. Even the vaunted MB wasn't a one and done back in the day, nor was Dria or Minus. Lots of playing, tweaking over the years (not by me). So we get newer maps with potential and they don't get any time because we just want to repeat, repeat. We aren't talking about a whole forced night, its say once a night, as described to break the repetition or maybe early/late. I don't see it happending with a vote that's 12 to 1, but lets say there's five choices, and they are all very close sure nothing wrong with force there.

And maybe the community should be forced to admin, maintain the server, fix bugs, make maps besides the 4 or so of us. The only "pay" we get is the satisfaction of playing a new map or a using a new/updated vehicle.

Torlan LinkerMadness. Yes Pooty, I realize there have been some comebacks on Torlan LinkerMadness, but it's rare and depends on how quickly you turn it around.

Ha! I'll contend its easier on TLM, than it is on any JY Randomizer....

[Enyo]

Ha! I'll contend its easier on TLM, than it is on any JY Randomizer....

It is… because the core vehicles on Djunk suck except the mino and hammerheads. All it takes for a comeback on TLM is for the link tanks to work together at the primary while everyone else shoots the secondaries.

[FuriousRabbit]

So we get newer maps with potential and they don't get any time because we just want to repeat, repeat.

Many newer map miss the nuance of what made Omni great: a field of comparable vehicles with one or two power vehicles of sufficient strength to possibly turn the game play. New maps go to one of two extremes, either DM play (even no vehicles now!) or all power vehicles. Notice how TLM wins frequently; I believe this is because it does have that one power vehicle. The Dria and JY maps still (barely) enable that nuance via the mino and/or nuke tank.

There has also been a trend towards sniping play (Odin, Mech's, etc) which disadvantages the entire crowd that was attracted to Omni because it was *not* all sniper play. I think a lot of people also enjoy sneaking up on an adversary and many newer maps discourage that strategy by forcing traversal of a choke point, where one often succumbs to a sniper.

So the community votes against those maps. I don't think forcing it is the right solution. You guys just talk yourself into these "solutions" with the endless bitching about the "stains", who are actually our community, here in the forums.

[Pegasus]

[...]Forcing maps is way better than implementing "map packs". Map packs smacks of "book burning" to me. And reducing choice is EVIL.

Wow.

I've been involved in playtesting, debugging, evaluating/assessing, (re)making and optimizing all kinds of ONS-related content, accumulating knowledge as well as having tutored others thereon, and been a server staffer focused on coming up with a cohesive theoretical foundation and developing attendant methodologies/practices for content and roster management to achieve a consistendly good gameplay quality and overall online experience, involving most of the aforementioned disciplines, on a few servers for almost 15 years now. This is easily the most unproductive, toxic, sensationalist, and at best thoughtless or, at worst, manipulative stance I've come across during that entire time. By a country mile, and an astronomical unit to boot.

There's no justifiable reason why someone would seek to derail attempts at improving a server's roster, those typically involving the identification of problematic trends in the roster and subsequent adjustments by way of judicious addition or removal of flawed maps/mods/etc., through the deliberate & repeated use of (c)overt Godwin-esque argumentation, short of presumably liking things and wishing for them to stay exactly the way they are, by way of critical analysis-arresting implied accusations that one's fellow admins are being literal nazis simply for fulfilling their content management role.

I'd hope this were obvious enough to not warrant explaining to seasoned members, but it seems necessary at this point, so here goes: UT servers are NOT libraries and removing any map from your server's roster to improve ingame experience is NOT the equivalent of burning books or rendering any kind of work unavailable for the rest of the UT community, never mind permanently destroying it. Those maps can, and do, exist in any number of other places, like dedicated archives or individual players' cache folders, and anyone can retrieve 'em from there with minimal effort to reuse or remix as they wish. The UT equivalent to libraries are the various repositories one can visit to find n' get most maps or mods from, like, say, UT-Files.com or UnrealArchive.org, and those should indeed continue making the best effort to stave off data loss or service termination as that could actually be a disaster for the community should proper backing up of data not take place prior to such events.
From the perspective of content offered, servers are far more like museums, book clubs or restaurants where a group of people, or at least one person, is in charge of curating the offerings by way of frequent changes to the exhibits or otherwise offered subject matter, for the purposes of maintaining novelty, quality, desirability, topicality, and/or any other attribute understood to align with such establishments' mission statement while also appealing to all those said houses wish to attract and retain as their visitors. A book being taken off your shelf doesn't mean it disappears from anyone else's. More to the point, a server that doesn't change becomes stale. Stale servers don't survive long. A server that only has an on-ramp for presumed good content but never an off-ramp for concluded bad content will invariably drown in a sea of dross and turn most of its regulars off.

There are no holy cows in UT/ONS server management, content-wise. Question everything periodically, prune often, improve where and when you can as best as your evolving theoretical understanding of ONS' design allows you to, work with others where it makes sense to do so, and try to have some fun in between all that with other still active fellow players is as close as I've ever managed to come to a server-running philosophy that'll prevent (or at least substantially delay) burning out and leaving. Hope that helps.


PS: And yes, you could stand to de-randomize and de-duplicate your roster a bit, Omni, if only to make a bit more room for your alternative offerings to shine .

[pooty]

Furious, thanks for the feedback, and I'd love to hear more details but,

The Dria and JY maps still (barely) enable that nuance via the mino and/or nuke tank.

There has also been a trend towards sniping play (Odin, Mech's, etc) which disadvantages the entire crowd that was attracted to Omni because it was *not* all sniper play. I think a lot of people also enjoy sneaking up on an adversary and many newer maps discourage that strategy by forcing traversal of a choke point, where one often succumbs to a sniper.

1. If you don't think the nuke tank still owns DJY your team isn't using it right...
2. AJY yes is much harder because of the wide variety of vehicles
3. Trend toward sniping play? There's a ton of non-sniping vehicles, and Mechs especially Bio, Flak, Link, Rocket mechs aren't snipers (eg. hit scan).
4. Newer maps: Sure there's been a few DM style ones lately, mostly because the Tank based ones are all there....a ton we don't play that don't have that. Many, if not nearly all don't have a single choke point. I avoid/change maps that do because they end up a boring stalemate fighting in one spot/one node, so I agree with you on that one. Every map should have at least 2 routes to the cores, with larger maps having at least one cutoff.

PS: And yes, you could stand to de-randomize and de-duplicate your roster a bit, Omni, if only to make a bit more room for your alternative offerings to shine .

Yes, except most of the randomizers, especially the super popular ones are just that super popular. I've also been leaning away from the "KitchenSink" randomizer approach, even the more thoughtful randomizers to more standard maps. We also have Random factories so that a map can have a few "random" spawns without turning into a complete dice roll. For example, ChainsIsle has this on the flyer spawn at the primary, you might get a Wraith, Cicada or Draco, so you have to adjust your strategy a bit, but it doesn't "break" the map.

For all, I am happy to adjust maps, map library, all I ask is some good play testing and variety.

So Furious, you clearly have some ideas on some maps please share and lets discuss.... I feel like there's plenty of fun maps we just don't play (mine or otherwise), but hard to improve them without human play testing.

So my philosophy,
1. Maps should have sufficient core strength that with teamwork comebacks are possible
2. Multiple routes to cores, so no single choke point.
3. No one vehicle/weapon (eg. see Teleporter gun on Grit) should "run the map". Every power vehicle should have a counter, better more than one (think Mino on Minus, each team has one, Nukes, Bio goo / boards good counters).