Well, I suppose I can chime in with my thoughts here. I suppose everyone has their reasons for staying, or leaving, or just not being around as much. I myself fall into that third category, as I am sure others do as well.
To put it simply, this is just a bad time of the year for me to play RO (or any computer game) much lately. A combination of factors has really cut into my gaming time. First and foremost is my son, I have had more custody of him (obviously I am divorced) since his mother's shift change at work allows me to see him much more; about five days a week. That is a great thing of course, I see him more but it cuts into gaming time. You see, along with that bonus time with him is all the driving around associated with bouncing him back and forth between houses. Then you add on the high school sports and matches, his other school activities, his Boy Scouts, the karate classes we attend, by the time we get home at night and make dinner, it is already getting late and I am usually either too burned out to play or I hang around with him. Add to that the games on the weekends, the good spring weather where the yard work beckons and just all the other misc things that pop up, and I am finding I have very little gaming time at all. I can't wait for his summer vacation just to calm things down a bit!!!
I am sure other players are busy with real life as well and have their own sorta story like mine. How those who work on the Mods can do what they do is just amazing.
But as far as RO is concerned....it is still my favorite and I wish I got a chance to play a couple of hours a night and on weekends. It is an older game and I can see some players moving on. That is just inevitable. As far as the other things, I can echo my thoughts as to what I see.
- Server browser: I have to spend the first 5 minutes or so of the game individually clicking servers to get an accurate player count or the correct map name that is actually running.
- A vast majority of players in (50 player) servers that are running maps that I have either gotten tired of playing or don't much care for. For the most part, the same 'stock' maps. Are those players there just for those maps, or just the number of players to shoot?
- Arad and the 5 bagillion versions of the same map. One or two version are enough, really. REALLY.
- 24/7 of any map, usually Danzig. I used to be like that with COD (Foy) until I tried a custom map server and then I wondered what the hell I was doing playing Foy all the time...same principle; get those players to try something different and they might like it!
- Lets face it, just about any map is running somewhere on some server, only the server is not occupied. Unfortunately for the reasons initially mentioned above, I don't want to spend all my gaming time trying to (unsuccessfully) seed a server.
- The lack of some good maps, or even just a variety of them running on servers that tend to be occupied. Tractorworks, Kriegstadt, Praizerplatz, or several other great maps are just too hard to find... not to mention that these would be best on the 50 player servers.
- That map voting bug (or whatever it is) that somehow allows individuals to place large numbers of votes for one map...
- I should say that ping doesn't affect my choices much unless it is well over 200. Luckily, I have gotten to be a decent shot with a rifle if I remember to lead my target by taking into account my ping....
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When I look back on the list I wrote, for me it seems the one thing that stands out the most is map VARIETY. I am sure this is the same for lots of others like me out there. When I am not too busy to play, usually my gaming choices at night come down to:
A) The only occupied servers (8 or more players for me...) are running the same old maps again...and again...and again...ugh
B) Wow, there is at least one good map running that I haven't played lately.
A choice of "B" means I play at least a few rounds of RO and have a good time. A choice of "A" means I usually turn off my computer and watch reruns of "Family Guy". More often than I would like, the choice is "A".
Please, give us more map VARIETY on those always occupied servers!!!!