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.
