Since this thread has been resurrected a bit, I've muddled over some of my initial considerations about a server rotation script. Curious what others might think of this. Totally speculative here, but fun to think about.
I'm assuming most people did not see this on the T
F2 World project site, so I will summarize: Given a 36 map rotation, I came up with a way to cycle them without too much repetition, represented graphically like this:
In case it isn't obvious to you, the red nodes would be RED defend maps, the blue nodes BLU defend maps, and the gray nodes are neutral maps (like 5CP, PLR, KOTH). Each node has two entrances and two exits, and the shortest repeating cycle is 8 maps long, requiring one team to win 7 times in a row.
Perhaps interesting in itself, there are some obvious problems with a simple script like this. First, do people stay on a server long enough to care about their team's victories? Second, what's to prevent people from just switching to the winning team or team stacking? Third, what about maps that swap the teams at round's end? Those are all legitimate concerns, but some of them, I think, can be answered, perhaps bordering on the need for a mod.
Using a tool like HLstats, it would be possible to track the performance of players on the server, generating some aggregate rating of their skill to balance their team association to RED or BLU. The team selection could then take place only once each time a player connected to the server (or automatically switched by the server) based on their skill. This way, as maps changed, teams stay constant and, hopefully, balanced.
This could also be taken a step further, locking players to a particular team on that server for some amount of time, perhaps until RED or BLU wins the super-round and controls the entire world map (or the teams become too unbalanced and a player is moved automatically). In this way, even if a player only wishes to play for a map or two, they can return later to pick up the fight for their side. This should be possible by querying the player's server-side team association (after their initial choice on first connect) and then passing this variable immediately during team selection thereafter. If adjustments for balance are not made too frequently, I think this could be fun.
In fact, as I write this, it occurs to me that you could represent a player's performance skill in $. Rather than switching players automatically, If RED or BLU starts to get too far ahead in skill points (which is then also to say in $), there could be a screen pop-up where the administrator or Ms. Pauling shows up to offer players with high skill ratings a $ bonus (or an unlock?) to switch sides.
Disabling team swaps (and having to repeat defensive victories) ought to be a pretty simple fix. This will shorten the time on some maps; however, I don't think most players would mind this. It may even make the defensive victory more satisfying, or could lend itself to an attack/defend/counter-attack kind of map design. For example, say RED defends its base in the first round (of a three round A/D), there could be a kind of bonus round where they turn around and attempt to sabotage the outpost BLU launched its original attack from.
Putting all of this together into a mod, with things like a loading screen to show the status of world territories controlled and a leader-board for each team, would be quite the awesome package, I think. Not a replacement for the excellence that Team Fortress 2 normally is, but an alternative way to deepen the experience a bit.
Whew! Sorry for the long post. Thanks for bearing with me.
