Zandronum

This post is a follow up to a conversation that Rustking and I had regarding the current CTF maps, and the stagnation thereof. Before I propose the new standard, I'd first like to address some problems I see with the current system.

1. The number of maps makes it unreasonable for the average player to master every single one
2. There are maps which are played in almost every single game of priv/scrim (think 04, 31, etc)
3. The number of maps leads to clans that specialize in beating their opponents on obscure maps that are almost never played

What I hope to do is address the above problems by standardizing the CTF maps that could be used for competitive play. Instead of being able to pick any of the 40 maps in a scrim, a selection of 10 to 16 maps would be picked randomly out of the wad to see play.

Of course then arises the problem of players only playing those same 10-16 maps, which wouldn't really change anything. Rustking proposed (and I agree 100%), that we copy Quake's style of competitive maps and rotate them out each month. Each month, 10-16 new maps (some may stay the same potentially) would be the "official" competitive maps.

Any clan who wished to scrim another clan would be subjugated to those 16 maps. To add a little more variety, I also thought we should introduce specific map bans, similar to how most major competitive games and the ZDDL do it. If we are to assume that there are 16 maps rotated in each month (just throwing a number out there), each clan would be able to take turns and ban 3 maps that they don't want to play. If your clan isn't good on the more popular maps, you could completely eliminate map04, map20 and map31 for instance. This allows for a more even playing ground between both clans as they can't just pick their forte over and over, which is what currently happens.

Please share whether or not you think this is a good idea. How many maps should be made available? How many maps should each team get to ban? Is this a stupid ass idea?

As a note there'd also be a website that picks and shows the map rotation for the current month, to make it easier for players to decide.

I think this idea could be interesting and it does have a few positives overall. However, there are some glaring downsides that should be stated so everyone understands what utilizing such a system will lead to.

Pros:
1. More variety in map exposure
2. A random monthly rotation will ensure no person or collection of people will determine a maplist
3. Map number of the IDL wad would rightfully increase
4. A league experience will be had without an actual league
5. Over time, players will increase their map strength

Cons:
1. 'Official' maplists would undo how priv has been ran since the mid 00s
2. Priv would be subject to the monthly maplist limitations
3. Players may not be able to pick a specific map they want to play on
4. Clans may not be able to play their homefield(s) in scrims
5. A maplist may not entice clans to play thus lowering overall activity

While using a monthly maplist would allow underplayed maps to be given a fair amount of play as well as reduce the occurrence of overplayed maps, the full ability to determine what to play in priv and scrims would be reduced if not down right negated. The overall idea is a good one and works well in other games, but it's difficult for me to see people change what they have been accustomed to for the past several years. Despite this, an small initial change would possibly work better than a full out priv/scrim revamp. For example, perhaps a randomly generated maplist could start out in scrims as an option for clans if they choose to do so. Since clans usually play best of 5 or 7, 10 maps could be drawn and each clan gets 1 ban and a 3rd ban will be randomly chosen. The plus side to this is that the general concept of this idea can be experienced without strings attached.

Tbh, you're probably going to see someone host their own priv that uses the old maps which would likely be more active than the monthly map rotations.

And also... Is the playerbase really big enough for something like this?

Well, recently I've seen a lot of priv's going on but you'll see most of the time the same players (Alien, Crusher, etc.) so it's not like there's a big playerbase to make such things. It's a good idea and I fully support it as it brings new varieties to the current map base (and I really hate the situation on your third point) but I guess we should wait a bit. I would like to see the responses from your active priv player as I am pretty busy with Nerdy World of Tanks.

EDIT: About the number of maps every week, I'd say about 6-8 maps every week because most privs would just play about 7 maps different from each other then it would die out. We could lower the number of banned maps in that case.

Well in fact I like everything Rust and Jen said, but NOT IN PRIV. Scrims only pls. Especially the map elimination thing.

Although I think this will need kind of a hub script since remembering what maps are currently "okay" is ewwwwww. Or put it into MOTD. But putting it into MOTD is boring, hub script sounds funnier.

Also the new players (the bad players, as in completely bad players, like new clans spawning in AOW and coming to scrim here) will be scared away. Probably.

This could work out decently in a scrim environment. Priv would only work with a concentrated and unified group, and even so, like Cata said, it would be easily overthrown by a regular priv server. Do a few test runs, I'd say.