Minas Tirith Map

I get asked almost daily "why did you take minas out? I loved that map?"

I just got asked again, about 30 seconds ago, so I thought I should make a post about it.

Minas was removed due to map rushing.

Minas gets rushed halfway through the map, and then someone complains, and I have to reply to the complaint. 

Back in 2013 we had a summer campaign to "fix minas" and I encouraged everyone to submit mapscripts that would block the avenues of the rushers.

Only one player submitted a mapscript, and it didn't work anyway. 

I spent maybe eight hours trying to fix a different bug in the map (the one where both the axis and allies spawn inside the building above gate 6) and my fixes were not activated, nothing fixes this random bug.

I wrote to the email address of the mapmaker and never got a reply.

When I was running FBY, we got literally dozens (probably hundreds) of complaints about this map - the third spawn flag gets rushed constantly, gate 5 gets rebuilt and it messes up the spawns, the bots end up spawning down at the bottom and the humans are at the top, spawn 6 gets messed up, and players just panzer jump up to the top and grab the objective and rush the map halfway through it anyway.

Probably two out of three times it gets played, this map gets rushed.

I thought that by switching to silent mod I could alleviate two of these problems - the gate 6 spawn problem (where both teams spawn in the same spot) was thought to be "jaymod related", and by removing the panzer jumping (where you blast yourself up by shooting up the adrenaline, then firing straight down when you jump) I could reduce the map rushing, and the map would not be an endless complaint generator.

I was mistaken.

The map continued to be rushed after the change to Asylum, and the complaints continued, so this was removed.

Here's the thing - FBY and Funboy was sort of a democracy. If people complained enough, I tended to react, or other admins went ahead and changed whatever the issue was, to "make everyone happy". That was our ultimate goal, so to speak - making as many people happy so they would continue playing here, and my server would be popular, and I would have lots of people to play ET with, etc.

Asylum is not a democracy. Democracy is for idiots. 

My goal has shifted profoundly. Making people happy is an idiot's goal - all it does is teach people that they can demand whatever they want, they can behave in atrocious ways, and get away with it, because I'm trying to "make them happy". It reinforces the needy complaints, and perpetuates the dramatic situations that led to the implosion of the FBY clan. It is like trying to get off a hamster treadmill by running faster and faster.

If the server loses players because I removed a bunch of easily-rushed maps that cause problems, that's not something I "want", but it's just a side effect of seeking a greater goal - the elimination of problems in the game. 

There is no map rushing on asylum. If a map gets rushed, it is simply removed, and the problem is instantly solved. No rules or admins required.

No "no rushing" banners, no list of all the people banned last week for rushing, no daily inquisition to catch whoever just rushed the map and got away with it. No more checking server logs to see who completed the objective so we can go ban them. What a total waste of time.

I have noticed the server population has plummeted since I removed minas and all the other rushable maps. While I don't like this at all, the idea of putting all those maps back and having to deal with the rushing on every other map every time all day is more annoying than a dead server.

I would rather have a dead server than have a wall of complaints. People need to understand that. My personal life has greatly improved since I stopped trying to make random people on the internet happy.

Removing Minas has eliminated a lot of rushing, and eliminating rushing eliminates complaints, which makes me happy.

Now, with all that said, you understand my perspective. 

Here's what I am thinking - I am going to make Overkill a "Minas only" server, and if you want to play the Minas map you can go there.

Here's the other part of this idea - Minas will get rushed, repeatedly, and people will scream and cry and look for someone to help them cope. I want these people isolated, not on beginner causing drama.

Overkill has far more brutal settings than Beginner - there is friendly fire, more arty, double damage, etc. There is nothing fair about it anyway.

People who want a more social experience, with playable settings and no rushing, can stay on beginner. So you have a server for both types of players.

I have taken a copy of Overkill and made it just run Minas over and over, with no other maps on the server.

It is "ASYLUM (OVERKILL - MINAS ONLY)" at 74.91.123.182:27963

enjoy...