Thanks to the huge amount of new players coming in and almost crashing the servers, map voting was turned off. It has however been said that it'll return soon.
Ive been thinking recently, having played without map voting for a few days: Do I want it to come back?
No. Not really. (I'll elaborate below.)
Guns of Icarus has succeeded in one thing quite well for a game of its type, that being the fact that the maps have a large impact to the feel and gameplay of the match. This is a great thing. However, combined with mapvoting it does create a strange dynamic. For example, me and my crew have taken a liking to a "Sniper" type galleon, with a mercury and 2 flak cannons on the left side. I create a game and choose the desert map, which gives good opportunity to use said longdistance guns. When the match ends, the map is suddenly changed into a foggy, maze like canyon where speed and manoverability are the key, and my current setup is at a distinct disadvantage.
Isn't it a bit silly, that if we wish to continue using our loadout effectively we need to leave a game I created just one match ago? Or worse yet, the gamemode changes into something we don't like, like resource race for example.
I do understand the perks of mapvoting however. It allows for the map to be changed without everyone leaving the lobby and rejoining and much more importantly, in games that have small playerbases, it ensures that the game doesn't devolve into just a couple servers running the 2 most popular maps, instead making sure other gamemodes/maps are played aswell. (You could also argue that mapvoting forces one to adapt to different maps, but one refusing to do so generally would just leave and find another server anyways.)
However, since the playerbase has more than doubled since the voting was taken out as a emergency procedure, I urge the devs to consider if voting is still necessary to uphold gameplay variety. (My belief is that it probably doesn't need to.)
So my suggestion is, that before you put voting back, implement a way that it can be toggled on or off during game creation. Preferably in a way that shows on the game list. Which would also get rid of the sillyness of joining a game in hopes of a certain map (the one on the list), only to have it voted off immidiately after you get into the lobby.
TL:DR: Yo Devs, I dig yo maps. It'd be swanky if they didn't keep votin ma favorit' out of da games I host. Put a toggle on that shizz. Peace.
