Some changes in the dev team

[MorganKell]

"The reason things are declining is because everyone thinks we MUST go forward at ALL COSTS. Newsflash. WRONG."
If you're happy with the dwindling activity, then I understand why you want conservatism. But other people want more activity (and some new features).

Conservatism? Legit? Since when have I been conservative? Ever? I'll give you a second. May take a couple dozen years, hookers, lines of cocaine, to figure out but don't worry. You'll get it sooner or later. I am talking keeping old things like "OPENING THE SERVER LIMIT TO ALLOW MORE PLAYERS TO PLAY" and the like. I am not talking a return to old game variants i.e. 1.0.4 and such. Competition is based off of pubs. More pubs. More competition. Maybe not competition to the standards so espoused by the randy dandy fraggatrons of current times, but competition based on a will to fight, a will to MAP, oh shit Zarj would suck a nugget right now, and a will to throwdown. Get out of the number counting, hot stuff command hoarding, and let's open yourselves up to the straight "I know how to connect to a wideo wame Mawmma!" newbs.

I don't know. There are changes that have been made over the past so many years that I feel are responsible for the loss of players and while I would like to see them reversed it's unlikely that it would serve any useful purpose mainly because there are so few people still around from back then. The current players are all products of the era we find ourselves stuck in today. If a playerbase is what we want built then we need embrace the fun of AC. To ask new players to connect and immediately face hardened battle-tested veterans is akin to throwing them in a sharktank wearing a meat necklace. There are some bigger, legitimately made, and very nice maps out there that we rarely see played simply because there are not enough players to make it any fun. Even a full 10v10 is barely enough to play some of them. That is why I earnestly want servers opened up to hold more. Someone connects after a long day of work or whatever they do, they don't want to go straight into a highly competitive game. Odds are they'll want to relax and find their groove. It might take them a couple dozens games to trace the smoothness in their SMG and the cradle-rocking of their strafe. Other times they just want to have fun. Sheer, uninhibited fun. People connect to video games for an escape from reality. AC has ridden that fence well but lately it's been tending to much towards realism and competition. Allow big game pubs. 20v20. You will see an increase in players. Not at first, but as word gets out about this really cool game that is not full of freaky alien things, numbers will increase.