Fools day

[Azarael]

Serious suggestion:

Why don't you just permanently revert to OLDZ if you all love it so much? Since the idea of making race actually flow is obviously not interesting to people playing on the sandpit server these days, why not just give them what they want?

[iZumo]

Why are you so bothered about what people like in RACE and suggest "revert all"? Haven't you not noticed that a portion of OLDZ was removed in favour of changing RACE?

[iRobot]

Why don't you just permanently enable both? Why does it have to be one or the other? Different portions of the player base obviously enjoy playing each.

People can vote for what they want to play. After a month, you can look at the games played of each type and judge it.

[Azarael]

Agreed with iRobot. Izumo, I honestly think at this point that OLDZ is preferred over RACE.

[iRobot]

The winning formula probably lies somewhere in-between Nitro Vehicles and Attack/Defend based gameplay.

[Azarael]

Translation: Full oldz (for basecamp + twin beam knockback) with nitro boosting only.

[iZumo]

Hmm, I don't think that Attack / Defend is somehow relevant. People wanting to camp will just camp - nobody mentioned smth like that during megafun race (few people only came here to wonder about what happened with OLDZ HB maps). People have fun with the mega knockback, that's all, nothing more - that's why it was loved.

Sure, we can enable megafun RACE alongside normal RACE (not against that).

[iRobot]

Hmm, I don't think that Attack / Defend is somehow relevant. People wanting to camp will just camp - nobody mentioned smth like that during megafun race (few people only came here to wonder about what happened with OLDZ HB maps). People have fun with the mega knockback, that's all, nothing more - that's why it was loved.

Sure, we can enable megafun RACE alongside normal RACE (not against that).

Att/Def is a huge part of it. RACE is just mindlessly driving to the end of the road without huge interaction from the other team. Shields also go to completely negate any of the obstacles faced in OLDZ such as ramps/jumps.

You can sum it up by saying RACE promotes avoiding people, where as OLDZ promotes killing people.

[bOnO]

Yes... RACE was made to avoid the long and often boring defending phase because it means camping for defenders and a long track to race again and again for attackers, once knocked 5 meters away from the objective. Now if people prefer camping and shoot, there's no more point in removing the def phase. I'm not against a try.

[Azarael]

Well as I was the instigator of the RACE mode, here's the defense of it:

a) Racing. Race to the end. You just happen to have guns and if you can make use of them, great. For years OLDZ-type gameplay was not race at all - it was merely the idiocy of camping the base and shooting cars going over a ramp, and to this day I have absolutely no idea (well, apart from the most cynical ones which I won't mention) as to how it ever became popular.
b) Defense is overpowered. With standard knockback and base camping, maps were never finished. Without any incentive for a team to advance into the map, both teams get locked in a battle at the spawn. Unless the map is explicitly designed around a balanced defense (see: SkyRace and pretty much nothing else), you are simply not going to win.
c) As an extension of b), this means race maps are going to go back to taking 40 minutes for a no-score win. This is why I was always against the return of OLDZ - it would be popular, it would gain traction and it would eventually displace the improvements which made the game actually flow and actually be about race.

Do note that the above is merely a defense; since we now have other populated servers, I'm nowhere near as personally passionate about affairs on the AS/Race server as I perhaps once was, because I don't have to deal with it on a daily basis and because I've long since realised what the majority want is going to win - and that will never match up with deep and interesting gameplay.

If OLDZ is going to be reinstated as a votable gametype, I request that the attackers should have some compensation that the defenders lack (f.ex shields), the TWB should remain to prevent basecamp scum and the updated versions of maps should be used.