I moved this to a new topic.
@Campo , I get what you are saying, and that is why we will be including a Vanilla game mode which would be 1.1 vanilla game play ported (with a ton of non-game play related improvements) For Tremulous players that would want to play that game play. However, we should remain open minded in the design of the Swirl game mode with the requirements that game play changes in Swirl should add to the game play and make it more fun to play.
Even though at the moment, there is only one game server (GrangerPub) that is active close to 24/7, and that game server happens to have 1.1 vanilla game play, that doesn’t mean it is the best (or close to the best) possible game play for Trem. It was estimated that Tremulous had 100,000 active players, and now there are only several hundred (that is less than 1%), so it can’t be said that 1.1 vanilla game play is very successful at maintaining the playerbase.
Additionally, mainstream Tremulous was very different from 1.1 vanilla game play for many years before 1.1 vanilla gradually came into existence. Take a look at Darklegion development’s concept documentation for Tremulous back in 2001 (they didn’t even have aliens back then, but “droids”): Tremulous concept documentation .
Servers with modded game play have been very popular historically, one such example was the X mod, which, as I have heard, had a huge number of servers full to capacity around the clock for awhile. Part of what has made Tremulous so great is that there isn’t just one version of it, and there isn’t just one kind of Tremulous player with the same tastes in game play at all times. Back when gpp was still very active with many servers, sometimes I felt like playing some matches on a vanilla gpp server, and other times I felt like playing on a modded server.
Various aspects of 1.1 vanilla game play that 1.1 vanilla game play players in general might believe to be essential, are found to be annoying and/or unfun by other players. Then there are some aspects that everyone can agree are disadvantageous (like excessive camping, or game play falling completley apart with a very low number of players), but that can’t be addressed without major changes.
Variety will be important in regrowing the Tremulous community, and this is why GrangerHub’s initial release of 1.3 will include 3 game modes right out of the gate (2 out of the three being more conservative). I know that I am a bit biased in saying that this, but Swirl will probably be my most favorite Tremulous game play so far when it is done, however, I am looking forward to playing whatever fun new mods happen to pop up as well, and actively developed mods will continue to play an essential role in Tremulous. Remember that Tremulous itself was originally a mod of a game (Quake III arena).