You don't have to be a mapper to see that a map looks like absolute crap. The first thing a new player sees is exactly that -- what they see. If what they see looks terrible, that bad first impression is already made.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying blitz is bad because it's small. I'm saying it's bad because it's horribly constructed. Compare it to something like the new warehouse map, which is about the same size, but so much better. Or, if you must have the same gameplay style, jakesmistake is practically the same thing, but looks significantly better.
While there are some people who like the crappy maps, hell, maybe even the majority at this point, it's not billions - probably not even hundreds. It's just a small handful. Most people who used to play the game for its strategic elements have up and left, or just idle on IRC and talk about the "good 'ol days." The problem we have here is that servers are constantly running 5-minute-attention-span maps for all the kids with ADD, and everybody else has gotten tired of the repetitive gameplay and moved onto another game.
I mean, face it. When was the last time you refreshed the server list and didn't see blitz or pbcup on? Usually they're on 3 or 4 servers. The same 3 or 4 maps are always up on at least 50% of the servers, and they're bad maps. New players are pretty much guaranteed to see a poorly constructed map the first time they play. It may not bother some, but will drive others away, and the ones it drives away are often the ones we want to keep.
Anyway, I'm ranting.
loial: the reason maps show up on the list for rotation management is because they are created from the list you have on your hard drive. At the moment, there is no way for the GUI to tell what the
server has on
its hard drive (and it wouldn't be very secure if it did). I do need to work out a way to do that, though, so you can see which maps are in the rotation and which maps are on the server that can be added.
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying on that last paragraph. Are you suggesting we kick players who are doing well? It doesn't sound like it works great if it kicks non-cheaters.
Oh, and I'll get those maps uploaded when I get home.
Edit: maps uploaded. I put up spelunker2 instead -- I'm pretty sure it's the same thing except for the lighting (original spelunker has some really dark areas on it making it unfair to people with darker monitors).
