I read through all nine pages of this. Woh.
Anyway, seems like a good amount of this topic was spent discussing how TDMs work in terrains vs slate variants, and less on if blockland has lost its value. TDMs are only a small percentage of servers on blockland nowadays, and should not be the standard for distinguishing the advantages of terrain vs slate variants. If you want to actually be brown townytical about this issue, an brown townysis should be set up, where categories should include fluidity (ability to move around and play the games), physics, community, servers, graphics, build quality, build quantity (both scale of build and number of builds), etc. Not based on genres of gameplay, or specifics like "terrain bricks are too edgy for me" (though imo this is sometimes true).
I loved terrain, but when GSF released his terrain bricks, I switched over and started using them because they were easier for me to handle than making a map. Terrains and their brick counterparts definitely both have pros and cons, neither is better, neither is worse. Those are, again, just a small portion of blockland, and, again, should not be the deciding factor on how Blockland is now versus how it was before V21. Yes, I+T and S+S were the only mentionable updates to the games, but the rippling effects of their addition caused a good amount of change throughout the game, such that we need to look at those consequential changes, not the original update's changes.
To be completely candid, I personally like the removal of I+T because it shed a layer of users that made all of the popular servers and made all of our add-ons. When V21 came around, many of then left, an new people stepped up to fill their places. Filipe I think is a good example. He was making addons, if I remember right, before the update, but wasn't all too prevalent. Now, he is the car maker for the forums, much like Phyd used to be. T+T was the main weapon system used for a long time, but the influx of new addon makers has given rise to new weapon packs.
Now my opinion.
I never did see a visually good build ever made on terrain, ever. I played a hell of a lot of brilliant servers on terrain, like all of heed's servers, jorgur's, etc. Those were fun, and well enough built to be playable. But when V21 rolled around, people who accelled at building took off, and built fabulous things with terrain bricks because they could create any environment they wanted to. People focused more on build quality, instead of just going at it and making a random, half-assed build on low-quality terrain. Terrain bricks have their issues - textures on terrain bricks always look terrible, can't coexist well with water and zone bricks, but I guess that's why the 4x are bricks and not zone-like bricks. I like the image of a default-style build on a low-quality grassy hill because it brings back wonderful nostalgic memories, but I like the new look I've been able to apply to my builds - blank terrain, well placed and coordinated bricks that give rise to a better-quality looking blockland.
As far as quality goes, the best builds are better than before V21.
Fluidity, not so much - bricks are good and all, but terrain was easy to traverse.
Quantity of builds, definitely increased. So many more options now.
Quantity in builds, seems like it's shrunk, though my current project encompasses the largest GSF landscape island I've ever seen.
Servers, absolutely terrible game-play wise, but good for quantity- and quality-wise. Only a few playable, well made servers are hosted. The rest are RPs, completely empty with a well-made build by someone, or are freebuilds (which can just be done in single player).
