NV-Maps

[laboRHEinz]

Hey all,

recently, from my perception, the server became more and more like a TDM server. We simply had too many NV-maps:

Rail
Stonewall
Colossus
Stairs of Doom
Bridge of Fate
Maelstrom-NV
Pandemonium
VK's Playground
SpankJox
Grendelkeep
Foundry
Katharos-NV

And I'm not counting in the "close-to-DM-maps" like Dreamus & BitchSlap ...

Sometimes, 4 out of 5 maps played were NV ones. Hell, it's still an ONS-server! Some ONS-players use to leave when too many NV-maps get voted.

I know those maps are popular and all of them are really nice, no doubt. But still, we have to keep it an ONS-server!

So I decided to not have more than 5 NV-maps available at the same time. I can not choose which one to ditch permanently because all of them are nice maps. Hence I'll keep rotating them. One day we'll have Rail, the other day Stonewall and so on. But not more than 5 NV-maps in total.

Sorry for all DM-lovers.

[lilalurl]

It might also be a good idea to sort them into 2 (or more) categories based on the number of players it requires to be decently played.
This way, in your rotation you can try to always have a least one map for when there is a large number of players and one map for when there are few players.

Ofc, various factors, like which players compose a team, can have an influence, but I believe the following maps need a rather large number of players (10? maybe even 16?) to be fun/interesting:

Clossus
Maelstrom
Bridge of Fate
Katharos

Not played it often, but I think Vk's Playground is also in that category.

[SpaceEngineer]

I support you laboRHEinz. I personally don't like NV maps and never vote for them. However, them are popular. I only may suggest move them to another server, called say CEONSS-NV. Is it possible to run second dedicated server?

By off-topic, I want suggest open a VCTF server. VCTF is a fun gametype and uses the same vehicles as ONS. I even would like to vote for gametype on the single server (like this done on tykitaki.ru) - choose gametype, ONS or VCTF, then choose the map.

[RottenToTheCore]

And I'm not counting in the "close-to-DM-maps" like Dreamus & BitchSlap ...

Sorry for all DM-lovers.

OMG it was just like "i dodged a bullet". Good that you wrote that^^.
As i have nearly no time for UT anymore ATM, it would be bitter, if all fast small maps would be taken out of the list when i spend the little time i got on the server.

I would say that the "leaving" argument goes in both directions: Many players who play more frequently on the server ARE dm-oriented and LIKE these maps. They join for these maps. Like many here on the forums. These people leave after the third slow (and in my opinion st boring) huge map.

And there is the same extreme with the massive-amount-of-tanks-maps: ONS is WITH vehicles, could be the argument, but IMO there don't have to be tons of them so that you don't have the chance to walk some meters without being killed.

Whatever, i vote for (because they are REALLY popular and attract as many people as on other days leave because of them):

Stonewall
Bridge of Fate
VK's Playground
Grendelkeep
Foundry

Especially Grendel is really really popular as many ceonss-joiners already know this map from DM.

Not Rail, because the Performance sucks so hard at many computers.
I would miss Maelstrom-NV, but we still got a Maelstrom with vehicles. And i would miss SpankJox, but if we need to decide...

Greetings from Rotten

PS: I would say the best vehicle map on the server is tyrant. Are there some similar maps we could think about?

[laboRHEinz]

Look at this:

NV-Maps.jpg (107.82 KiB) Viewed 16325 times

See what I mean? Almost 4 hours with almost 60% NV-Maps. Sorry, this is not Onslaught, it's TDM. As I pointed out, personally, I do like all those NV-maps very much, too. But it's simply too much.

Point is, the more NV-maps played, the more classic-ONS-players leave, the higher the probability of another NV-map, the lesser ONS-players join.

NV-maps should stay some refreshing diversification, but certainly not the main server focus.

If there'd be another idea how to have NV-maps being played for let's say 10% without capping the total amount available, I'd be happy to follow it. But ATM I don't see another handy solution but limiting & rotating them.

@SpaceEngineer: We already had an almost NV-maps-ONS-server, the MatchServer. Well, it was empty all the time. Technically, it wouldn't be a problem, since the server hardware is a quad-core and one UT-server can't use more than one core. Thus currently, three cores are actually idling. However, I want the main ONS-server as lag-free as possible. Further servers would have to share the same network resources and most likely would affect the main servers gameplay somehow. Other communities do run several servers on one rig. And they have to deal with lag & complaints - coincidence? Sorry, I don't want to take the risk of the main server being affected by some more servers.

[RottenToTheCore]

Okay Heinz,

but this is only an excerpt from one(!) day. On some days i (who likes NV) join the server with 1 to 1.5 hours time. First map is a Tank Map, second is Barracks, third is Kingdom or so. When finally Bridge is voted it is over after 5 Mins for each round. Then there are days with Bridge, Slap, Spank, Foundry in a row.

So it's kinda random on some days.

In the end many players have voted ifor a map that is played! It's a majority vote system. In your example MORE players joined the server over the time.

I really got your point BUT when people have fun, why not let them play these maps? There are really also many people who leave after Tankmap, Barracks, Kingdom.

Greetings from Rotten.

PS: The Map list with only Foundry taken out (yesterday) is okay for me. But i really think this isn't necessary. Means more work for you when you rotate.

[VK!*]

Sad that u have decided to erase those NV maps, it was the only way for me to onslaught these days.
I like the classic ons maps with vehicles, but why need the nv maps to be removed? It is still the node building that matters here.
If i want to play all those classic maps i can choose any server online. Its the variety that makes it great here.

Btw,
I hope some players had fun with my maps from the last 2 years.

Best wishes,
Kenny

[laboRHEinz]

Hi Kenny,
you should read my posts a bit more carefully: Those NV-maps are not erased but limited at a total amount of 5, being rotated (almost) every day. I saw in the chatlogs that you were missing Playground; well, it's available again since yesterday evening. It will be online one day but the other day replaced by another NV-map. Same goes for other NV-maps.

I can't stress it enough again: playing 4 NV-maps in a row is not Onslaught, it's TDM. I watched it very carefully during the past several months: every time a NV-map gets voted, there are several players leaving the server, obviously because it's a DM-like map. Especially our friends from the US, which a) are not used to playing DM on Onslaught servers and b) are simply not able to play DM with their 150+ ping. Nevertheless, with 5 NV maps, we're still having more NVs than both big US-ONS-servers together.

As for your other maps: I'm presuming to speak for most of us when telling you that we're very, very grateful that you spent a lot of your time creating them. A huge & herewith official Thanks-A-Lot from me and certainly many others! However, I already PMed you weeks ago of redirect problems appearing on SpaceCargo and Sektor8. Those 2 maps used some default packages which I couldn't persuade to be loaded from the redirect server - and I have no clue why; happened only with SC and S8. So I had to remove them. Can't expect of players to wait 10 minutes while downloading 1MB. I'd be happy to re-add especially S8, so you might want to take a look into this problem? About Sektor9: Really sorry, we had plenty of complaints for being too spammy and laggy. I somehow have to listen to the majority's will.

@Rotten: which tank maps were you talking about? The one and only tank map currently available is MinusTMU-Nightwolf - which I re-added after you claimed you'd have to play so many tank maps before getting to NV ones. Don't get me wrong, I didn't re-add it because you mentioned that, but in spite of ;-) . It's just because MTMU and other tank maps like TanksALot were off for several weeks now and we didn't have one single tank map.

[SpaceEngineer]

Playground is not a NV map - it have a Mantas ;-)

BTW, laboRHEinz, I like to hear all reasons why you don't like tank maps (maybe start a new thread?).

[laboRHEinz]

Well, why do you assume I don't like tank maps? I don't dislike them in general. Agreed, I personally don't like any version of Minus-TMU, but other tank maps, well, it depends. Nevertheless Minus-TMU-Nightwolf is available.

Which says something about the maps policy here: I do not put on maps exclusively according to my personal liking. I just care about having a nicely balanced map roster to have a broad range of map types. Means, not too many NV-maps and not too many tanks only maps. The most important reason for having a specific map or not is simply the players feedback. Too many complaints and I'll shelve it, too many players leaving when a map gets voted and it soon will be off as well. This, and another point, which certainly is my personal taste: Way too spammy maps won't have a chance. The intention of running ceonss was and is, to have a majority of somehow skill-demanding maps - at least for a bit. Hence this many NV-maps - and I still consider 5 NV-maps as "many".

Anyway , I think it's about time for publically announcing the maps policy. So I'll sum that up soon, hopefully next week.