Making New Content is Pointless Now

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I am always loudly opposing any changes that go too much towards homogenizing and removing liberties from players even at the expense of server owners running something shitty like one map 24/7. Enforcing a rotation would hurt playing custom games and running servers how people want.

MB2 to me has become a celebration of player liberty.

All other games I play are so optimized and the gameplay experiences are all standardized. It's fucking boring. You get the same game every time. Your opponents and teammates are at your level due to matchmaking. Your map will be picked from this small map pool. Everybody's watched the latest vids from esports tournament X and think they know something about the meta, so the strats you see will be the same ol' day in and day out. Your player interaction will be limited to 4 emotes because otherwise you'll possibly call someone's mom gay. The only time you will feel alive is a new patch that fucks up with people's precious meta strats, forcing them to explore and enjoy all the aspects of the game.

Hopping on a Movie Battles server is amazing because of its freedom. Sure, I'll meet people who don't like me and call me an asshole. I'll hate the server I hopped on because it has some shitty !spin event and the admin is riding around the server with a mutant rancor. It's still better than not giving people the tools to have fun. Sometimes fun has to be had the expense of others' enjoyment so other people get the most out of the game. Players get to choose what they want to play.

I believe player liberty is one of the highest values of this game too. It's one of the greatest elements of this mod that have made me stay. I was always astounded at how many strange and unconventional tactics I could find that people weren't expecting, and just how many ways there were to play the different maps and different classes on them. It used to be like this all the time, and I'm betting this is the game you remember too.

However, I don't get to experience this anymore. It's not due to lack of desire, but both lack of opportunity and the comparative cost required to create opportunity. My experience in MB2 has become homogenized already - either I play the same few maps, wait for the stars to align to see other maps and servers being played while I also have time to play them, or try to take part in few-and-far-between events that might only come once or twice in a year, if at all. There's little to no variety ever, and regardless of my desire, the actions I take, or the people I play with, nothing seems to change.

In this case, the spirit of this mod is no longer to celebrate player liberty or to experience any degree of freedom. Rather, the experience I have just about every time I jump in the game is people "playing it safe" by running the same maps on the same servers year in and year out, with no change. This doesn't match either of our ideals of this mod, not in the least bit. I've put in my hours already by joining alternative clans, making new maps and FAs, and populating non-monomap servers. I'm tired of this losing battle. The amount of effort it takes to combat these monomap servers and clans that run them by playing alternatives is simply too much compared to the cost it takes them to remain popular just by existing. I don't feel like I have any choices anymore when I play this game. The spirit of player choice and freedom has died for me thanks to the supremacy of this "play it safe" tactic for running servers edging out all other options.

____

I'd also be careful when conflating clans with players in regards to player freedom. Clans are not atomized individuals, but rather more centralized and organized groups of people who share similar ideas for how the game should be played. Clans are just how these games manage to survive by making communities that act as catalysts for the rest of the playerbase. Ultimately they're a great thing, and one of the only reasons why these games have survived for so long, but clans can also be detrimental if they're influential enough to dictate how the game is played on a larger scale to the community without them having much say in the matter. It's important to remember this.
 

MaceMadunusus

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I am always loudly opposing any changes that go too much towards homogenizing and removing liberties from players even at the expense of server owners running something shitty like one map 24/7. Enforcing a rotation would hurt playing custom games and running servers how people want.

Yeah, it isn't really a restriction to the core game design like some of our other limits which makes it not really a good idea to limit.

I am personally more with what Defiant said. Integrating RTV and making it mandatory. Updating it with proper UI and things like this: https://i.gyazo.com/df1bf2331228a0b088b67184eebb51aa.mp4 that way those playing can decide if they want to change maps or stay. Not reliant on server owners/admins.
 
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Jaikanatar

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I've always found the choice to host one map 24/7 a bit odd, but that strategy seems to be quite successful in this community. CB Jedi Temple saw really good population, usually 16+ daily, compared to CB rotation which gets populated a couple times a week, if that. We like the idea of rotation more so we stuck with it despite the pop difference.

And its worth noting tbh that if you get 3 people to join a server, give it 10 minutes and it will start filling up. Its just about getting those initial 3 people in to start imo.
 

Lessen

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And its worth noting tbh that if you get 3 people to join a server, give it 10 minutes and it will start filling up. Its just about getting those initial 3 people in to start imo.
^ which is why I tend to idle in servers, and why I made a post (at the end of page 2 of this thread) arguing for just getting a bunch of people (forum-goers, clan members...) to boycott 24/7. With enough boycotters we could easily regularly get 4-5 people into a rotation server, and then it'd fill up from there as interested randoms notice it.
 
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We could make new forum threads for Open and Full Authentic game modes where people could post what server they'd like to join.
It would be an invitation for people who are free to join a particular server in order to populate it faster.
 

Lessen

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We could make new forum threads for Open and Full Authentic game modes where people could post what server they'd like to join.
It would be an invitation for people who are free to join a particular server in order to populate it faster.
Using forums for this kind of on-the-spot thing is kind of arduous though. Better to use a Discord. But @everyone is disabled on the official MB2 discord, so you can't just blast everyone with a "anyone wanna come populate ____?" So one plausible route would be to start another Discord server and carefully (un-obnoxiously) collect a bunch of people who'd be generally interested in populating less populated servers, and that Discord would be used basically exclusively for @everyone "wanna populate ____ server" type messages.

The big challenge there being collecting a meaningful amount of people to that server. A forum thread and some other advertising would help. Biggest threat would be if most people just don't give a shit.
 
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I'll be the devil's advocate on this one. 24/7 have something that rotation server does not. 24/7 is more about hanging out, people don't care as much about the objective and it's more about interactions. Since the map is always the same it doesn't play in the equation of the game as much and you can focus on other things gameplay wise.

Also deathstar is a good solid classic map with a fun risky direct path, a safe side path and an underground path that provide some surprise to either side (damn sneaky dekas).

Rotation servers is more about the whole game itself while 24/7 is more about 'chilling' or class/player gameplay/interactions than about the map and winning.

That's just how I see things.
 
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My comment was deleted lol. was merely stating the truth, sorry if it pains you to hear that. If you want my honest opinion I agree with you. Dxun and scariff are good examples of hard work and effort put into creating them and no fucker wants to play them because they'd rather sit on dotf 24/7.
 
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I'll be the devil's advocate on this one. 24/7 have something that rotation server does not. 24/7 is more about hanging out, people don't care as much about the objective and it's more about interactions. Since the map is always the same it doesn't play in the equation of the game as much and you can focus on other things gameplay wise.

Also deathstar is a good solid classic map with a fun risky direct path, a safe side path and an underground path that provide some surprise to either side (damn sneaky dekas).

Rotation servers is more about the whole game itself while 24/7 is more about 'chilling' or class/player gameplay/interactions than about the map and winning.

That's just how I see things.

The best times I had in this mod were "chilling out" on every map under the sun with CoR (an FA only clan) and EW, who liked to do a little bit of everything. Once you learn the other maps well enough, and it only took 2-3 games on a map to get the hang of it, that "chill out" sense becomes natural to every other map as well. That's just the nature of this game I think.
 
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i love FA and i love new content as long its quality made, sadly not many see the greatness that FA can provide for you.
 
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Well this thread is a mess.

My two cents is that I agree with OP. One reason I took a long break from this game is the stale content of the same maps, for people like me who don't like playing deathstar 8 hours a day, we have two choices:

1. Play deathstar on a crowded AOD server where there's 156 nades flying everwhere and 19 snipers, and you get banned for saying anything bad about AOD,
or
2. Play a unique map, on some server hosted by a guy whos halfway across the world and get 400 ping.


also earlier you guys were talking about the playerbase and the influx of players since movie releases, all I have to say is "inb4 everyone plays as han solo"
 

Lessen

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@Blazer Third option: Join an empty, good-ping server with a map rotation you like, and either just wait for more people to join, or recruit people to help you populate it. I've had good results with this, although sometimes (depending on the time of day and what other servers are available and what server I'm trying to populate) it can take a while or be completely ineffective, at least if I don't recruit anyone beforehand to help me inflate the population.
 
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@Blazer Third option: Join an empty, good-ping server with a map rotation you like, and either just wait for more people to join, or recruit people to help you populate it. I've had good results with this, although sometimes (depending on the time of day and what other servers are available and what server I'm trying to populate) it can take a while or be completely ineffective, at least if I don't recruit anyone beforehand to help me inflate the population.

This has been the go-to method for years, but through-and-through it's never ended the true supremacy of the one-map server tactic - it's only stolen scraps from the people who host them. It was the same way years ago, even when there were multiple big clans around which made alliances and agreements to play on each others servers weekly and boycott these monomap 24/7 servers. From experience, the amount of effort it took to organize and attract populations for these variety/rotation servers was always disproportionately higher than the effort it took for monomap 24/7 servers to maintain their enormous popularity just by existing. It's an unfair fight that rotation server owners were never able to win, and more unfair now that there are even fewer people playing the game now compared to years ago.

It all comes down to the nature of these competing strategies for maintaining population. Monomap 24/7 is a passive strategy that takes little effort on the part of the server owners and admins, and only a mild investment from the clan members to show up sporadically. Rotation/variety servers require a proactive strategy that takes great effort on the part of the server owners and admins, and a large investment from its clan members to agree to play on certain times and on specific servers. Inherently, monomap 24/7 will always win, since you cannot apply a proactive strategy all the time, whereas a passive strategy is in effect all the time. The inherent passive effectiveness of this one-map strategy edges out variety and choice by a considerable margin every time. It's impossible to compete and win against these servers by the current rigged rule set, and this has been borne out time and time again. You have a good sentiment, though.
 
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Lessen

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While working on something, I just went and idled in an empty server, and then forgot I had the game up. When I came back, there were 4 other people there. Pretty good for taking almost no effort. :p

That being said, I have no idea why I wasn't auto-kicked by the server for idling. I know Ginkobum seems to do the same thing sometimes, of just idling his game in a server to make the population look bigger.

Edit: Now it's up to a 3v3, and they're playing mb2_theed, cuz it's CB Rotation so there's no RTV.
Update 2: ok now everyone left, but it's 1:41AM on a Wednesday, so that's understandable.

This reminds me, there's a particular subset of the US population I see help try to populate these servers. Ginkobum is foremost in my mind, along with JohnFromSteam, after that I can't recall specific names but I feel like I see the same people. Meanwhile, I know there's people on duel servers who I'll almost never meet cuz I never go to duel servers, and I know there's people like JamesHarden, who seemingly literally only plays Pandemonium.

We gotta increase the size of the "will populate small servers" population. Anyone on the fence, please fall off the fence in this direction. Arigatou gozaimasu.
 
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While working on something, I just went and idled in an empty server, and then forgot I had the game up. When I came back, there were 4 other people there. Pretty good for taking almost no effort. :p

That being said, I have no idea why I wasn't auto-kicked by the server for idling. I know Ginkobum seems to do the same thing sometimes, of just idling his game in a server to make the population look bigger.

Edit: Now it's up to a 3v3, and they're playing mb2_theed, cuz it's CB Rotation so there's no RTV.
Update 2: ok now everyone left, but it's 1:41AM on a Wednesday, so that's understandable.

This reminds me, there's a particular subset of the US population I see help try to populate these servers. Ginkobum is foremost in my mind, along with JohnFromSteam, after that I can't recall specific names but I feel like I see the same people. Meanwhile, I know there's people on duel servers who I'll almost never meet cuz I never go to duel servers, and I know there's people like JamesHarden, who seemingly literally only plays Pandemonium.

We gotta increase the size of the "will populate small servers" population. Anyone on the fence, please fall off the fence in this direction. Arigatou gozaimasu.

It's still worth trying if only for the symbolic effort, but we've long past the point of no return. Regular methods aren't going to work. It was the collective choice of the US region nearly a decade ago to let these servers become popular, and now that we're nearly a decade into it, it's no longer a matter of choice; they've become like a physiological need perpetuated by the cycle I described at the start of this thread. I'm telling you this out of experience. I was part of several clans over the years that tried to help the US side of MBII by consistently populating rotation/diverse servers with friends (namely Green Clones, EW, and Ðivine/AE), was part of weekly events, and even made maps and FAs. You're just going to beat your head against the wall wishing for a better solution, come back to these forums trying to bring this to people's attention, and become sorely disappointed when people tell you "just play on other servers" like you haven't tried that for years already, or even worse be told by people that this one-map 24/7 tactic isn't a problem but something to be celebrated by the community as the triumph of freedom of choice.
 

k4far

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It seems like the situation in NA region is pretty sad. EU, on the other hand, doesn't have a single popular mono-map server.

It isn't so bad in EU. It used to be much worse in the past there was even Dotf 24/7 that was insanely popular.
On the side note: @Langerd was probably referring to [tR] Deathstar (bad ping and always on the same map).
 
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My comment was deleted lol. was merely stating the truth, sorry if it pains you to hear that. If you want my honest opinion I agree with you. Dxun and scariff are good examples of hard work and effort put into creating them and no fucker wants to play them because they'd rather sit on dotf 24/7.
Especially Scarif not being played more is a shame, it's such a great and unique map, and the tall bushes bring a sneaky element that no other maps have. (Well, except the Jurassic Park map, but it's pretty much practically a FA only map)
 

GoodOl'Ben

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You're just going to beat your head against the wall wishing for a better solution, come back to these forums trying to bring this to people's attention, and become sorely disappointed when people tell you "just play on other servers" like you haven't tried that for years already, or even worse be told by people that this one-map 24/7 tactic isn't a problem but something to be celebrated by the community as the triumph of freedom of choice.
Playing on other servers/hosting our own servers worked in Europe quite well. I spent much of 2007-2009 era hopping on DOTF24/7 servers saying "hey, let's go play on BG or DG server!" and a couple of broskis would tag along after the leap. The server would fill up in about a half an hour.

There'd be nothing super wrong with forcing RTV if it requires the players to activate it by voting, but it does have some flaws.

RTV would be fairly horrible for any event organizer running a special event on a custom map. Players suddenly voting to RTV could essentially cause a hassle to the event organizer. Any map change could also be avoided by simply having an admin run a command that voids any vote by moving back to the previous map, but it would result in a pretty awful double map load for players. This can most likely even be automated with smart server scripting.

It does of course beg the question: would this be desired as it would make 24/7 servers less attractive? Alternatively it will just result in people giving up with RTV due to the script preventing map change and never bothering to use the chance to vote and nothing will change.

At best we can give a gentle nudge towards map rotation in the US, but at the end of the day some scummy admin can circumvent anything we do unless we prevent admins from changing maps.
 
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Playing on other servers/hosting our own servers worked in Europe quite well. I spent much of 2007-2009 era hopping on DOTF24/7 servers saying "hey, let's go play on BG or DG server!" and a couple of broskis would tag along after the leap. The server would fill up in about a half an hour.

You're lucky to have nipped in the bud so early. We waited too long to fix it in the US and now it's become a systemic issue.

There'd be nothing super wrong with forcing RTV if it requires the players to activate it by voting, but it does have some flaws.

RTV would be fairly horrible for any event organizer running a special event on a custom map. Players suddenly voting to RTV could essentially cause a hassle to the event organizer

There's a potentially easy solution to this I think. If people are running special events, they're usually run on private servers. When a server is set on private, it should have RTV automatically shut off and admin privileges fully functional as they are now. Also, to see private servers the player ought to require checking off a specific "private only" filter in the server browser. If you wanted to be very harsh about this, perhaps private servers should be hidden from the masterlist whenever the server owner flags them as private, to reinforce the idea that this server isn't supposed to be open for the public.

Of course, there is the potential problem that a 24/7 server could still be run on a private server with the IP and password advertised on their other servers or in the server name, and people can still favorite these servers to keep them in their lists, but that's too much hassle for the average player who's just going where the population already is. It would also dis-incentivize clans from filling up these servers only, since they largely wouldn't be seen by the average player and their other servers would lose some popularity to other clans.

Any map change could also be avoided by simply having an admin run a command that voids any vote by moving back to the previous map, but it would result in a pretty awful double map load for players. This can most likely even be automated with smart server scripting.

It does of course beg the question: would this be desired as it would make 24/7 servers less attractive? Alternatively it will just result in people giving up with RTV due to the script preventing map change and never bothering to use the chance to vote and nothing will change.

At best we can give a gentle nudge towards map rotation in the US, but at the end of the day some scummy admin can circumvent anything we do unless we prevent admins from changing maps.

It's absolutely true that server owners and admins can actively take measures to ignore the wishes of their playerbase. This has been a big part of the problem all along. I'm glad you're the one saying this.

In the democratic spirit of voting, the ideal is to ensure the playerbase can fairly pick what maps they'd like to play. However, I also believe this shouldn't be done solely in expense of the server owner. There is a way to balance power here.

To make RTV work, you'd have to introduce some additional rules to system to ensure it functions as intended, without overstepping boundaries too far on limiting what a server owner can do.

Firstly, you'd need to put in a failsafe ensure the server owners upload at least all the base MBII maps, otherwise RTV would be pointless when only 1 map is uploaded.

Secondly, admin privileges like changing the map would have to be more limited than they are now, but still more potent than the average individual's powers - as the idea is to uphold democratic voting as the primary means for map change. It would also still need to be potent enough to effectively troubleshoot one's own servers. One way of doing this would be to make for example the SMOD and RCON map commands turn into a special "admin votes" with unique properties compared to normal RTV, rather than having them instantly change the map. Ideas for how that might work:

-1) Admin votes could be called up regardless of whether or not an RTV vote is already running, and they would postpone normal RTV votes until the admin vote is finished.
-2) Admin votes automatically succeed in the case of ties or insufficient votes.
-3) If there are only approximately 8 people or less on a server (the numbers can be raised or lowered to a degree), admin voting is bypassed and the map is immediately changed as normal (to allow troubleshooting and server maintenance).
-4) If an admin vote fails, then all admins must wait a certain amount of time to call up another special vote, as the democratic process mustn't be circumvented by browbeating server-goers until they vote "correctly" or get tired. It's generally good practice as an admin not to spam map switches or votes for them every round anyway.

Note that with this proposition the server owner should still be able to restart the server, kick, ban, and change the gamemode at any time as normal, just not change the map so easily against the playerbase's wishes on publicly available servers. However, if admins were to abuse these powers to influence votes or forcibly restart the server to get the "correct" map, it would lead to these servers having bad reputations, which is very unwise for maintaining their playerbase

It's also important to remember that if a clan is the owner of a server, clanmates are going to popularize that server by playing on it frequently. Clans can take unilateral action to vote on specific map changes in consensus as determined by their internal politics, and their centralized and focused votes will often times beat out the decentralized and disorganized votes of the general population. In addition to administrators having special voting powers that are automatically in their favor and which postpone normal RTV voting, if a clan can consistently agree to vote in a certain map, they will still largely dictate what maps are played.

To me, this effectively makes map choosing a community based affair, but one that the server owners and clan members still have a large degree of control and advantage over, rather than a one-sided clans and server owners against the people type of deal.
 
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