Sad to see the decline in the playerbase

[Alien]

regarding the integration of akimbo into ac proper

Akimbo is just store for maps as quadropolis. The dependency of the game on "Akimbo service" is not smart for future. The philosophy is to think as developer and not the owner of the game. You need more active small communities around the game while you provide them playground. If the server owner could just upload his map with custom materials to his folder on server and your server would send it to clients itself. What is the point of approving and maintaining foreign maps ?

instead of regular patches that showcase great maps as official, why not just have a rotation of maps that people can look at and play without increasing the default package

Default maps are samples what you can set in maprot.cfg or what you can create in this game. Like programs data/samples in other programs. It is chosen by developer because it is presentation of their work. These maps should present some significant changes/improvements.