I do genuinely believe reducing the map pool could be smart, although you should probably add carceris to the maps you listed (based on popularity). A lot of maps that people pick for the hell of it, realise is awful, and if thy can't rtv it half the server will just leave.

Could be a double-edge sword even with popular maps (razor, lego) would get boring and gets too repetitive and people would start to leave since they want to either go on a new map they haven’t tried (if they don’t like it oh well) or is bored of the same map (if the map pool was set to that)

Yeah I think you've got a fair point. Not saying the mentioned pool of maps has to be final, but I definitely feel there are several pages of maps that could be cut without many people noticing it even happened. Just need to keep any map on there that is played to a reasonable extent.

Good idea. But not so good idea to split our population. We already have a low population as it is (meaning just about ten to twenty players low) if we could keep a steady population of thirty to sixty four people (our max) then yea creating two servers, one intended for popular maps (or 24/7 razor) the other for say "exploring maps", would be a great idea. Unfortunately we don't have that anymore, maybe summers population with pop to the thirties or forties.

In my opinion (without, to be fair, explicit data to support it) the server population will more often die when an unpopular map gets through a vote. Maybe a majority of the players will play a couple rounds on the map, and then realise they're not that into it. Personally, I genuinely believe the core (most popularly played) maps overall bring up the server population compared to the more unpopular maps. Furthermore, I would assume more players that haven't really played on EgN's servers are more likely to start playing on the server if, when they open the server menu, find the server playing on one of the maps whose names they may remember.

Then again, I also personally believe a server population of approximately 15-20 is optimal for most maps anyways.

I've been seeing other maps getting their fair share of playtime more recently than what we used to have. So, honestly, at this point I'm not so sure this is even needed.

However, I'll say what me and others have been saying for the past 5 years, which is to make sure that maps can only be extended 2-3 times before there 'has' to be a map change. That way, we can actually use the cool maps in our rotation and not worry too much about people constantly extending the map. Then again, I haven't really been seeing razor or other maps get extended too many times either, meaning that this problem is actually starting to go away, believe it or not.

Beep boop.