1. Lack of aggressive admin oversight: I have seen a ton of leeching, racism ,camping in unreachable spots and general shananagins going on with little to no response from the small group of admins.
Q: Are there any more plans to bring in more ancillary admins into the server? Is the drive to keep the keys to the server under lock and key by not naming more admins hurting the server? Why are players getting away with so much BS?
Players are getting away with unusal amounts of BS because it is a new group of admins and some people are still hesitant to use their powers as they are new. I also was in a rather good mood and prefering to warn people before kicking etc. I basically have been giving everyone a "fresh start" on the servers, and keeping a mental list of repeat offenders, so that is why I did not ban the infamous Goatek instantly for leeching, and actually issued a few warnings first. Now though repeat offenders are pretty much being nailed consistently (at least when I am playing).
As for the lack of Admins, I think they want to make sure that we are reliable before they try and graduate a second batch of admins, hence why we do not have full powers nor yellow official pips yet. The server is still rather new I think.
Also, I highly encourage people to use the
I key more often to inform us when something is going on, as I can not watch everything at the same time.
2. The map rotation is broken and needs fixing: Many of the maps are ok, but I am sure everyone will agree that there are too many large open maps where both sides get lost, and half the round is spent watching some afk player autorun into the map edge. There also seems to be many maps with ridiculous elevation changes, and maps with the spawns much too far away from eachother. Many of the native maps have already been tweaked for balance by the mapping community, but have been reverted to the old broken spawns.
Q: We have a huge and active custom map making community, are there any plans to incorporate the more popular of these maps into the rotation? If not why? Who is in control of the rotation and why have they made little to no effort to engage our mapping community?
This can be blamed fully on the Official NA servers using the EU maps... which shows that they have a strange love interest in massive open maps with lots of villages, and only a handful of maps that break this... I don't know why they like those maps, but I do agree that the majority of NA thinks they get old and pretty fast... I would love to see new maps.
I have mentioned many times using my Pink Text Powers that I encourage anyone to try and make a map, and post it for consideration to be inserted into the map rotation. This offer still stands, though I promise nothing. I would encourage more people to make more maps that are not open flat plains with a random village in the middle, for the NA servers. If it is awesome enough, perhaps it will be incorporated into the map rotation.
All in all I will start cracking down harder on people and bask in the innumerable complaints of "You can't ban me for that I have always done that! yadda yadda yadda, rabble rabble rabble!"
Regardless, I have banned a dozen and a half people in the past week, so I am not sure it can be said that I have been too lax. I was afraid of taking up half the ban list actually...
EDIT:
Here is my stance, give or take:
- Permanent Bans on offensive names will be handed out.
- Racism is handed an initial 1 week ban.
- Leeching is given warnings, a kick, then a 3 day ban.
- TKing is given warnings and then a 3 day ban.
- Griefing is warnings, then a kick, then a couple days depending on what they do.
- Chat abuse (slurs etc) are warnings then a mute. I hand out mutes freely, like it or not. You can still play just fine with a mute. You get a ban if I am tired of having to mute you every time I log on.
- Exploitation is a 5 day ban for small things like camping flag with enemy at siege to leech forever, or longer if you did something truely stupid.
Obviously repeat offenders earn special points for longer bans.
I don't know how this compares to others, but there you go.[/list][/list][/list][/list]