[POLL] Arena Mode Speculations and Wishes

Ace of Spades
1 
     I know there's currently an unpopular poll currently in effect, but this poll is specifically regarding the fact that there is unrest over the current state of Arena modes. It's April and we still don't have a thread dedicated to and acknowledging the adversities of poor server-autoallocation. Here I will speculate popular arguments and counter arguments to help your decision in the POLL. It'll be in a FAQ style, but it's more like a Frequently Anticipated Qomplaints.

1. “I don’t see anything wrong?”

You probably haven’t even played on a full Top10 or AllMaps arena server. :’( :’(

1a. “I mean I think the overall system is balanced and the ‘unrest’ is blown out off proportion”

I believe that people will have a lot more fun on these maps. Almost everytime it’s trending people are like ‘whoa is this new map?’ and are generally excited for that. There are also ‘fuck i hate this map it is the worst’ but the map rotation is large enough so it’s not repetitive. Top10 NOTES below.

2. “If those servers were more popular people would go on them instead.”
This is a misconception. The way people choose servers is pretty weird and I admit there’s probably someone better who has observed the psychology of this process, but people choose active servers over fun, empty servers. There usually is a couple of brave people to isolate themselves in solitude while waiting for others. Occasionally you’ll find that happen, but it’s been too long with the two popular aloha servers BABEL and CS MAPS as the dominate ones so that’s pretty much what everyone knows where to go. Elaboration on the amelioration is described below in NOTES.

3. “But I like those maps?”
I like some of the CS maps; I kind of have to because that’s the only server I play at least three times a week. Yet I know I can have multitudes of more fun playing new maps. There’s a subconscious mind numbing boredom playing CS Maps, and yes you have or will have it too!

4. "But you can’t just get rid of CS Maps. It’s like you said: People only go to cs maps. Forcing them will just drive them away.
This is a good point and I know Aloha.pk doesn’t really take risks anymore for fear of breaking the thin ice, but there are a few cautionary measures Aloha.pk could take. This will also be in the NOTES below.

5. "But a lot of the maps are too large for Arena and they take ages to finish. Or others are so poorly built that they finish too quickly. The idea was ultimate point of CS Maps were: They are from a popular game and everyone knows them; they are balanced.
This is actually not true for a lot of them. The main problem with Arena maps is it either being too large or good camping spots. CS Maps is a godsend for camping maps, and they take just as long to finish.

"But camping maps aren’t as bad as big maps. CS Maps has them, but there’s also usually good ways to rush to combat them. It’s like a game of chess.

There’s only a handful of people capable of playing it properly. This isn’t really how most of the maps even play out. I acknowledge that this is a good point; there are NOTES more below.

Notes:
I agree that there’s probably not a problem. It’s not like there’s a threat that the maps will die out due to the fact that they are boring; it’s the game’s fault really if anything. But there’s no enthusiasm for CS Maps either, and there’s not much other people can do to change that except just go with the flow of how CS Maps naturally gets chosen. There’s bad and good things about both CS Maps and Allmaps. But the Top10 idea could really bring back some light.

Notion:
There’s good points to be made on both sides. However there’s never been an intelligent compromise for them. Here’s how there can be one:

  1. We leave All Maps as an accessible archived server.
  2. We redesign the map-rotation for Top10.
  3. We allow for a more fluid, dynamic map system for Top10.
  4. After it’s considered improved, we redirect CS Maps server to Top10 (renaming Top10, link editing, etc)
    4b. This deceit is justified by relabeling CS as Collage Server.
  5. We have the CS Maps accessible through a server called “AS maps” for Anti Strike.
  6. Results.

Notion 2:
Submitted by Mr. Porch

  • Keep CS Maps up, but remove some of the lesser liked maps. We could do a 2 week long poll or something on it.
  • Keep All maps up as usual
  • Change Top 10 to “Top maps” and create a slightly bigger rotation to make it a little more diverse and include the most loved maps with a more current poll.
  • Hold three SSOMs (Second Saturday of the Month) over the next three months dedicated to All maps or Top maps to give the servers a nice boost, so the newer generation of players can discover how fun the other arena servers are.
2

For the love of God put in the damn grenade buff

3
4. After it's considered improved, we redirect CS Maps server to Top10 (renaming Top10, link editing, etc) 4b. This deceit is justified by relabeling CS as Collage Server. 5. We have the CS Maps accessible through a server called "AS maps" for Anti Strike.

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4

It’s counter measures against the possible backlash of real CS maps fans. Also as a test to see if people actually like CS Maps or just go there because it’s has a cycling population.

5

I’m gonna preface this by saying I don’t like cs maps either and would also kind of prefer more people to play on AAM, but you can’t just force people to change and expect them to accept it

Why would they be populated if people didn’t enjoy them in the first place? I for one won’t be joining random Russian CTF servers just because they’re populated

haha yeah let’s trick half our remaining playerbase into playing something that they didn’t expect, that’ll help

Every time I join CS I see people getting excited about the rounds and even some maps

6

You probably wouldn’t join it because it’s Russian and you have better alternatives. I mentioned multiple places (or at least provided something to make a connection) why this happens.

I’m saying here that pretty much whenever someone goes to look for a arena server CS maps is the only one they can go on to have fun, in most cases. The rate at which it fills up is faster too because of this. Some of us or players in general might look for new modes but no one ever comes because no one looks at the nearly empty // empty servers.

“I’ve seen people excited for stale meat because it’s the only thing they’ve had.” ← subjectivity warning sorry
They’re excited for the maps if anything; there’s a good reason the three main CS maps are on Top 10. I don’t call for eradication of the maps (except de_dust1, assault), just getting rid of the barrier of csmaps not having nearly as good as maps as others.

That part about switching the servers to redirect them was partially a joke, but it was also addressing the fears of what would happen with getting rid of a populated server. You see that CounterStrike maps were also kept online to see if it’s really the case people wanted to go there.

7

If they keep cs maps they need to take out the bad maps and leave the good ones, here’s an example of a good rotation it could be: De_Dust2, Cs Italy, Cs Office, De_Aztec

8

Perhaps ArenaCS’s maximum players should be decreased so when arena players see that CS maps is full, they will go to other arena servers and make it active. Most people like Arena Top10 and AAM rather than ArenaCS. They, however, prefer the populated servers as it is more fun to play with. When ArenaCS’s max players will be decreased,chances are other players will join the other arena servers and eventually will make it active. Therefore there will be more active servers and players will have a choice on which server they prefer.

9

Quietly remove assault (both of em), de_dust, and replace with prisonbreak, avsmallfort, nuketown, planeassault, minideckarena. Maybe also add deepspace and abordage.

10

You’re too evil :c

11

Eh, wouldn’t mind that assault was removed, blue tended to get the upper hand. I find it sad that the most popular server is based off of an another game.

12

What ever arena server is active, that’s what most arena players play on. A lot of people prefer AAM and AT10

13

Those of us that have been here since before the Arena gamemode was even made know that even back when All maps and Top maps were popular they still suffered in players sometimes as they do now. All maps had a problem where it would get a few boring maps right after the other and most of the server would leave. Top maps would crash quite often and empty the server or people would get bored of playing the same maps over and over again.

I think a more reasonable way to move forward with the Arena servers would be as following:

  • Keep CS Maps up, but remove some of the lesser liked maps. We could do a 2 week long poll or something on it.

  • Keep All maps up as usual

  • Change Top 10 to “Top maps” and create a slightly bigger rotation to make it a little more diverse and include the most loved maps with a more current poll.

  • Hold three SSOMs (Second Saturday of the Month) over the next three months dedicated to All maps or Top maps to give the servers a nice boost, so the newer generation of players can discover how fun the other arena servers are.

  • Possibly create a /votemap command for either All maps, Top maps, or both where players on the server can vote once per map on what the next map should be. You could do /votelist to see the top 5 maps with the most votes. If there is a tie for highest voted map then the server would pick between them randomly. You could also use the votes as data to automatically update/refresh the rotation for the “Top maps” server. Due to changing player bases it might be useful to delete this data and refresh every 3 months or so so that a few maps that were loved 3 months ago don’t continue to dominate in the future. The last rotation could be loaded in the meantime while the new vote database is generated again.

Also a /votemapskip command would be awesome for every server including Babel for when there is a map no one wants to play on.

14

I actually agree with everything you said Torch, great ideas!

15

I agree with all of this. I don’t think testing out some other arena maps on cs would hurt anything but getting rid of the majority of the current list would be great.

16

Exactly. People won’t leave because they aren’t playing counterstrikes maps on a CS maps server. It’s a great way to introduce better maps to players who have no idea about them or other servers.