Some notes concerning the course of AC

[Duh]

Repeated deletion of "unwanted" or "uncomfortable" posts/threads by devs and moderators

- There have been none. If there were, they'd show in the logs and in the pool of "undo delete" posts, which is a tool that can be used.

You did delete parts of Hellspells post.

For the ones that dont know what it was about: After the 40+ servers got banned from the MS, they started a second one for servers on and off the original MS. It is however given that, if you dont want to be on their MS, you can request it to be taken off. Deleted was -as far as i could tell- the link to a "how-to-get-the-new-MS"-guide

A general attitude of acting like a parody of a commercially-oriented company

No sufficient evidence for this, you're just throwing dirt around.

As I cant read through the old forum, I am not sure on how correct my statements are. So please excuse and correct any mistakes that i make. Also this matter is greatly depending on personal opinion so some may say the issues leading to such a conclusion are trivial, while others may understand or even agree with them.

You could get the idea of a commercially-oriented company rather than a user/community commited team due to your decisions on masterserver requirements and the way you enforce those:

Your map rotation must not contain badly constructed, or poor maps.

However who defines poor and bad? Why is the official emphasize on construction issues and not maps that are offensive? As this has been discussed in the 40+ forum (can i link them or will this get me banned?) before, I ll quote part of what i stated there. (Please also consider that those posts were made before the release of the new version, so im not sure whether the cheat/hack issue still applies)

... if i remember correctly the official reasoning has always been the following:
Since Assault Cube is growing and becomes more and more popular the developers want to create certain standards to guarante quality in their game. It is therefore their goal to get rid of racist, sexist, offensive or just badly done maps in the maprot of servers hosted on the masterserver.

Just like all of you I certainly agree with the first 3 points, but when it comes to badly done maps there are several issues coming up (esp. because all maps not in the off. maprot can at any point considered to be bad :D):

- The first and simplest one (So Sir Simpleton says) is that it depends on personal taste. Sure you can have a few guidelines, but if in the end a select group gets to choose what is good and what is bad, there is no way of avoiding personal preferences and maybe even decisions based on sympathy or the opposite.

- The second one is that it takes away mappers chances to experiment and improve. To grow from noobs to pros. No matter what, you start low and the maprot of a server was always encouraging for newbies and actually a goal achievable unlike the offcial map package.

- The third, which i have mentioned several times before, is that Assault Cube has - despite the fact that its free - not much to offer. It is a game designated to have a short life for most players, since the graphics suck, the maps - yes the official ones - lack in variety, certain modes dont have maps that truly support them or at least not many, there is few variety in weapons, there is basically no protection against cheats and hacks. With the new rules even things like server hosting by yourself or your own maprot will vanish and the game loses yet another 2 of its rare pros.

4.th some people like to play on shitty maps :)

Vanish is aiming at server hosting by people new to this game and still might be a little too harsh. I think however it is safe to say, that the number of servers by newbies will decrease.

By the way... for some reason i do love this game :D and i am thankful for the development and have a great deal of respect for that. Even tho great parts of the love are also linked to our communities:

What kept AC from dying are the different communities that have developed over the time. They offered protection via well maintained blacklists, they offered competition via clans, matches, recruitments and even ladders, they offered new variety by adding maps, models, textures and even scripts.

Now some may say - including me - that it seems as if the devs dont realize that this game is built on its community. Why do I/we have that impression?

Because of the way they enforce their rules: With a banhammer and without compromise. Even though some of the points i made further up are quite valid, the developers do not give in an inch on the masterserver issue. But why do you HAVE TO ban a server just, because SOME think the maps are not high quality? Dont you think that there are other ways?

1. Trust people that they are capable of leaving servers with maps they dont like.
2. Mark the server with official maps, put them on top of the masterserver, and let the server with "bad" maps stay at the bottom of the list.
3. Split up the masterserver into official and inofficial servers (kind of like point 2).

Why dont you go for those?
Again a quote from the 40+forum, this time part of an answer to stefs inquiry there.

Sure that would require some work, but not much more than controlling and banning does.
The difference is that these 2 ways offer either a big banhammer for the devs or a happy community. In my opinion - and im not saying im correct - the devs have decided for the former and it wasnt the right decision.

I am sorry that this post got so huge and i thank you for having the patience of reading completely through it. This problem has a wide range and i tried to stick to the most important issues here (rules and enforcement).

Greetz hanze.|Duh| (Not MNCMM :D)

EDIT: Its more of a try to explain than an argument Dreamer. Opinions always differ, buts its better to understand yet disagree instead of just dislike. I am also well aware that the developers decide, which is why communicating with them is even more important :).