I've been here consistently since December 2006 and during that time I've witnessed the rise and fall of the populace. Many positive changes have been made to this site, along with a few bad ones, one of which being the castration of freestyle. I understand the reasons why it was done, to stop blatant farming of new recruits and I applaud that aspect of it. However between consenting experienced players the old style freestyle was a blast. One setting that was particularly popular for this game type was multi player speed games. [player]Demonfork[/player] published some interesting stats that showed the impact on this setting after Freestyle was changed, I'm sure he wont mind me using them here.
From 2008-2009 there were 40,000 (8) player Freestyle speed games played
From 2009-2010 there were 28,000 (8) player Freestyle speed games played (20,400 played before changes, 7700 after)
From 2010-2011 there were 15,800 (8) player Freestyle speed games played
From 2011-2012 there were 13,900 (8) player Freestyle speed games played
From 2012-2013 there were 3900 (8) player Freestyle speed games played
From 2013-2014 there were 1000 (8) player Freestyle speed games played
I believe that this setting could be returned without impacting on the current Freestyle game settings. It would mean creating a new play order setting, which I would like to see called 'Hardcore'. This play order setting could be restricted to just multi-player speeders which would prevent the vast majority of new players stumbling across it and being farmed.
I'm sure that this would be a very popular game type that may encourage the return of players who left after the changes to Freestyle were made. Hey we could even have a shiny new medal made just for this !!!!!!!
