The difficulty level has increased ten-fold, although I feel the last patch had it nearly balanced. This is not only due to the scaling bot waves but also the multiple spawn points that sometimes surround the team immediately. If we were defending entire castles with a 100 player server, this may be justified. I know you've spent a lot of time trying to fix the "tunnel" that a lot of people complained about, but now it seems we've gone in the direction of an over-correction. (Porridge too hot, porridge too cold scenario)
I haven't spent a lot of time in DTV since the newest patch, but the instant map change is quite unfair. The three-loss change seemed fair enough, allowing strategies to be formed without overplaying a map to make it stale.
My personal suggestions to Fips and da Crew:
- Bring the map change limit back to three losses, for reasons stated above.
- Keep the bot scaling, but reduce the numbers a bit. It does bring a dynamic factor, but at the moment I feel like we're Spartans facing a certain death every map.
- Stick to the maps that are more "village" like. This will not only satisfy the "old and faithful" DTV players, but allow newer players to get a small taste of Strategus village defense (with much less yelling).
- Adjust multiple spawn points to be in closer vicinity. Bots may spawn in one location, but with the open village maps they won't be restricted to a narrow funnel.
- Take everything we nerds say with a grain of salt. You spend a lot of your free time listening to our gripes, and do your best to appease everyone. You play the game too, and not everyone keeps that in mind when they capslock flame at you.
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