[Credge]

Lets use some logic here.

Popular servers consist of: o-t, AE, and one or two others - I haven't checked recently because I've been busy and don't want to play on a rule restricted server (no cursing, etc... in this case it means I'm playing completely different games due to terribad rules on servers that are played on) when I do get the chance to blow off some steam. The word popular simply means that players play on it, and in reality we should be using populated because popular and FF do not go hand in hand, sadly.

If a player that, for one reason or another, was banned years ago from a TFC o-t server, that person is banned on the FF server as well. So, lets say this chap was banned in an o-t TFC server for BunnyHopping, a mechanic built into FF. This chap has come back from inactivity due to TFC being dull to him, real life, whatever. He sees that there is a new fangled game called Fortress Forever from the cats, or ModDB, or wherever. Maybe he heard about it from a TF2 server. Doesn't matter.

He downloads the game and looks at the list of populated servers. He sees that only one server has played playing (like usual) and it's the o-t server. He joins. He is banned.

What incentive does this person have for sticking around? He has two choices. He can join any random server with 1-2 players on it but he doesn't know if they are bots or not... and why would he want to join a server with no people? The person doesn't know that the community usually joins servers once people join them, he's new.

The argument that "I like that the o-t server is like that, it gives my servers more players" is bad. What if the o-t server wasn't like that, wouldn't you get more players by proxy? When somebody sees that there is only one server filled with people and he's banned from that one server he's not going to want to stick around.

Remove the bans for people who b-hopped, camped, or did insignificant things like cursing or insulting an admin. It's ridiculous that when I glance through the ban list I see a ratio of 20:1 permanent:timed.

The biggest reason why people don't play this game isn't because it's bad, it's because of the community. People tend to forget that servers are the biggest glue to a community and yes, while you do get players going through the o-t server, you're denying potentially every single one of these people (most with minor things that are unrelated to FF and are years old) from playing.

However, I think the it's too late for FF. Even with the advertisement stuff on Steam most of the people that will care about it are probably banned and those that have already tried it lost interest when they found out they were banned from a server on a game they've never even played.

Bad logic is bad.

I mean, I go through the o-t FF ban list and I see tons of names I recognize from players that are/were a core part of the community and I wonder why they are perma banned compared to somebody else who isn't.

Why on Earth do I see more FF bans than TF2 bans? How is this even a possibility?