Things to keep from birthday week

[Pig]

Huutii and loodie are spitting, I think thats the right call.

[KoopaCape]

Keep Orange, Wacky Races and Lazytown for the weekend rotation. I don't have strong feelings towards Minepit, but keep it for the weekend as well if enough folks want it.

On the subject of 32 players, at least on the weekends.. Do we really have 8 people consistently waiting in queue to justify 32 players?

[mjaded]

Lastly for maps, I tend to agree that minepit doesn't fit a tf2 aesthetic and might be considered too weird for regular weekends. After all, as we've learned with balloon race, the more we play a map the more we figure out a "meta" for it and I fear that would happen with minepit.

what about the tf2-ified version of it that was discussed previously? even if the main gimmick of the map is being a Minecraft World i think the layout alone is good for payload gameplay.

[random]

what about the tf2-ified version of it that was discussed previously? even if the main gimmick of the map is being a Minecraft World i think the layout alone is good for payload gameplay.

It's not like we are really hurting for more payload maps so there's no rush to add it in, I think it's better to just leave it alone only for events

[banifatsiy04]

It's not like we are really hurting for more payload maps

I remember you talked about "map bloat". I think that it mostly applies to weekend rotation. pl_minepit is a playable map, but without the minecraft thing, it would probably be the most boring payload map out of the ones we have on the server due to how short it is. As such, it mostly relies on a gimmick - and such a gimmick may not be worth exploiting too much outside of events due to artstyle. I am against using the TF2-ified version, but am also against adding this map to weekend rotation due to relying nearly solely on a gimmick, while map bloat is already an issue. Map is fun tho, but not the TF2-ified version which looses all the charm

[SomethingSomethingSomething]

For reverts, I'm still partial to putting the sandwich back to the one Carl desperately wants, and I don't know if I like the blanket lunchbox revert idea. I didn't get to play enough to really use it over the birthday week but intuitively it sounds like the chocolate then becomes sort of like how we have the sandwich now if you eat it then throw it for a double heal (assuming that we have the infinite eat chocolate version). To me, the infinite eat on the sandwich still just seems really pointless and you won't actually encounter scenarios where you need to eat the sandwich twice in a row before the cooldown runs out. I wanted to make a demo parser so I could programmatically check every time someone actually benefitted from the zero cooldown eat but that's a big project I will do at some future date.

For other reverts I think the only one of note would maybe be the darwins, we've gone over it before but I think it just changes his strengths and weaknesses more in an interesting way that isn't just "prevent you from being scorch shot spammed." If this is still a generally disliked revert we don't have to worry about it, just thought I'd bring it up if more people got a chance to try it.

I know you know being able to go 10% Faster as Pyro with the Flamethrower out in exchange for a bullet vulnerability was Robin Walkers Vision. It's not a real revert server until all the weak item set bonuses are returned. Everybody knows that using the Powerjack with the Degreaser is an awkward combination of items which is why their were set bonuses, Arguably the most meta impactful bonus, the Milkman, is already in the game. The meme caber stickies jump loadout is already exists, I just want my meme item set bonuses.
I'm the only one pushing it because other people don't care whether they stay or go because it doesn't really impact anything, I just want the game to feel like how it was in 2012-2013.

[Suspicious Carl]

Regarding 32 player servers, I think to start off with that's not part of the original vision of the server. I don't mind doing it for events but I don't like it as a regular thing, it should not be part of a normal server state. In addition to that, at least with my current server reboot method, swapping the maxplayer count of the server requires me to do a manual reboot. Anything that is a "regular" occurrence on some sort of schedule has to be automated or I'm not doing it. Special events that happen once a year of course are exempt from this.

I don't like the idea of weekends being "wacky" or anything. While we do run extra maps, it's also a time period that some people only get to play on, and denying them the ability to just play the normal game simply due to the time of week they joined sounds bad to me. At least if it's something like a balloon race match it's only one match and you can get right back into regular stuff right after. This is also the reason I'm strictly against having randomizer as a regular thing.

32 players does change the game, any map becomes much more of a meat grinder. Personally it doesn't bother me much but I know a lot of people do care about having the game be as envisioned and increasing to 32 players goes against that. It would be better if we had va2 fill in addition, but I suspect we'd need something like triple the number of regulars to pull that off without both servers just ending up in a half filled state so that's far off. In any event, 32 changes the ruleset from what we're promising people so I am not doing it as a regular thing.

The only idea I'd have with filling va2 is to have some people be dedicated to only playing on va2 during peak hours, but that's a lot to ask and they would need to value increasing our player count over enjoying the game for themselves which is a hard sell.

For reverts, I'm still partial to putting the sandwich back to the one Carl desperately wants, and I don't know if I like the blanket lunchbox revert idea. I didn't get to play enough to really use it over the birthday week but intuitively it sounds like the chocolate then becomes sort of like how we have the sandwich now if you eat it then throw it for a double heal (assuming that we have the infinite eat chocolate version). To me, the infinite eat on the sandwich still just seems really pointless and you won't actually encounter scenarios where you need to eat the sandwich twice in a row before the cooldown runs out. I wanted to make a demo parser so I could programmatically check every time someone actually benefitted from the zero cooldown eat but that's a big project I will do at some future date.

For other reverts I think the only one of note would maybe be the darwins, we've gone over it before but I think it just changes his strengths and weaknesses more in an interesting way that isn't just "prevent you from being scorch shot spammed." If this is still a generally disliked revert we don't have to worry about it, just thought I'd bring it up if more people got a chance to try it.

I agree that quake sounds should be kept event only, removes the novelty if it's year round.

Lastly for maps, I tend to agree that minepit doesn't fit a tf2 aesthetic and might be considered too weird for regular weekends. After all, as we've learned with balloon race, the more we play a map the more we figure out a "meta" for it and I fear that would happen with minepit. While I also would like to change out balloon race for wacky races I wonder to what extent this would happen with that map as well.

-i agree that 32 players shouldn't be kept on

-the blanket lunchbox revert as i said before is a pretty out there change so i understand the hesitation towards adding it

-sammy must return (return but i replace the U with a V so you know im serious!)

-i agree darwyns should be added

-lazytown and wacky races should be put into weekend rotation though

-i think dead ringer, equalizer, and short circuit should be dropped in aswell, as i always say i see no harm in dropping things in en masse on a dime because the worst case scenario is people dont like it and it gets turned off
yes some of these were used in birthday week but i think its kind of a fucked up enviroment for that yknow? i want to see how these operate in the context or normal castaway, not with a bunch of insane op weapons with randomizer on custom maps

[random]

Going to make the following changes

For maps, I am going to add Lazytown to the weekend, and replace balloon race with wacky races for the time being to see if it's more well liked

For reverts, I am changing these

• Short circuit - primary fire destroys projectiles (costs 5 metal + 15 per projectile destroyed)

• Dead Ringer - the version we use now, but with the added bonus of taking damage doesn't reduce your damage reduction

• Sandvich - Back to the infinite eat

• Battalions/Tank Buster - Unreverted, if you felt strongly about the revert try the vanilla again and see if your opinion changes. Preferably if you actually like using the banner itself and not just to have it as a +20hp passive

Player count will remain at 24, and Quake sounds will remain event only