THIS^^^
It's the reason I quit ten+ years ago. It's like HiTech & Co. hate for us to have fun. Irrational love of huge maps entirely disproportionate to the player population is not good for the game, as is evidenced by the crashing player count since.
500 players online? HUGE maps are ok....
100 players online? HUGE maps are straight up fun killers.
Prove me wrong, I dare you!
PS. I'm not coming back, I just check back in occasionally, holding the faint hope stubborn
HiTech admits he was wrong and all the HUGE maps go where they belong, a trash bin. If that day ever comes, I'll re-subscribe along with all my peeps from back in the day.
The majority of the old booming population paid 14.95, hell even 29.95 for the adrenaline packed fights. Those the prime days of the game were mostly on smaller maps too when you think about it. The larger maps were nice with those numbers, as you could get multiple 30 vs 30 type fights over different bases, spread through the whole map.
Now those same maps literally are spreading things so thin, it's really hard to generate something all those people used to pay for.
Let's be honest, competition cut into the player base numbers, but keeping some of these maps is just driving the knife deeper into the wound.
I've been here over 20 years and enjoy the game still to this day. I don't mind flying into crappy odds and seeing how long I can survive. I spent a LARGE amount of time in my teenage years getting pretty competitive at times, so it holds a special place in my heart. But 90% of the time, the P2P interaction and combat just isn't there anymore. That is what people pay for.
Hitech has stuff going on, and this isn't me trying to tell him how to run his business. It's just an observation from someone who has been here from the start to current.
I would love to see it thrive again, but without some changes to game mechanics and subscription model, it just isn't going to happen. I'll still be here either way, for the reasons mentioned earlier.
