[walloftext]

As far as I know only the very old regulars are complaining a lot about how the server is going down hill. From my experience over the last couple months there have been a consistent number of idiots who break cades, blow bridges before they should, and in general act like douches. They are dealt with easily enough, however.

As far as the server itself goes (playability, etc) I don't notice lag unless someone with overly high ping connects. The server doesn't kick them immediately, and it causes the server to lag briefly. Sometimes there is lag if the server hasn't been restarted in a while (starting around two or three hours before the normal reset time at ~6:00am EST) but other than that the server never really lags too much for me. The only real issue I have is with the change to the higher tickrate. Cades seem to fly apart much more readily than they used to, making certain spots on some maps (like roy the ship) much less viable for cading. However, I've just moved to different spots. The bad thing is when it comes to maps with fewer good spots. Good spots often get crowded. Then again, this happens to some extent on every map.

I can see that map choice is generally limited to a few maps that may be overplayed, but still are fun to play on especially considering the amount of new players. Beach Strike, Desert Fortress, and lila panic are maps that come up quite often. This is to some extent because they are well made and fun maps to cade on, but mainly because there are a lot of maps that suck in the admin map choice list. A few of my favorite maps that are relatively underplayed (at least during my peak hours of play) are places like church of mint and roy the ship. I realize it may be difficult to accomplish but we've got one map designed for us -- maybe we can request more maps from some of the more popular map makers? Fresh maps would be amazing to play on seeing as it would put the veterans and the novices on a more level field as well as spice up the player experience.

So to answer your questions:

1) No, it's not going downhill.
2) Changes won't happen instantly, I don't know many people that have the time or the motivation to put that much effort into a server constantly for very long. Also, you can't please everyone; regulars are great to have but you also have to ensure new players will continue to show up and play. You also want to ensure that new players will turn into regulars. This is generally accomplished by improving game play. In the world of games you do this by trying new things. Sometimes those changes are great and other times not so. In turn, listening to the older players is always a must. Doing everything they say, however, is not.
3) I could support a drop from the current limit of players down to 34. I don't think it would change much in terms of latency, honestly, but some maps are simply awful with 40+ players running around. I'll admit that on some maps it is really fun being one of the few left alive and being surrounded by 30-40 zombies trying to kill you. However, I almost guarantee that if there are 30-40 zombies someone threw a fail nade and broke the cade that 20 of them were in. The tick rate could be tampered with a bit more to find a happy spot. I'm generally cool with where it is now but seeing it lower again to compare would be great.

[/walloftext]