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. Demonfork 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 !!!!!!!
