Guys, maps have been gone for nearly 2 years. At the time they were removed, over 80% of servers used some form of slate. Got that? 80% of servers did not use maps at all. Most of the remaining 20% just used bedroom because it was first on the list.
The natural course of a game is for the userbase to grow to a peak and then decrease over time. If you want to keep the active user count up, you have to attract new users. And guess what? New users aren't going to play a game that looks like it's from 2001. They're not even going to try it. They're going to look at the screenshots and leave.
2 years. The maps were removed 2 years ago. The userbase did not implode. In fact, it didn't decrease at all. Not even a blip. It's pretty much held steady, fighting the natural life-cycle of a game.
In my expert opinion, if maps had not been removed in favor of improved graphics, the game would already be dead.
Fair enough, but I used bedroom because I genuinely liked it, not because it was the default map. Most of my best game experiences happened on a non-Slate map; I adored and regularly used Ikea House, all of Pandan's race maps, Backyard, Kitchen, Amade Isles... and who can say they never had a loving blast skiing down The Slopes? And while most users probably didn't stop playing the game after maps were gone... I did.
I don't disagree with you about making the game look better so new players will buy it, not at all. I'm all for better graphics... if they're actually a significant improvement. I don't know if/what you're planning, but we don't even have water reflections, let alone bloom, HDR, motion blur, bokeh, AO, crespular rays, or other advanced effects.
I guess what I'm getting at is, in my personal opinion, the reward doesn't make up for the sacrifice. The new shading is nice, but I never even use the ground shadows/dynamic lighting -- which I'm guessing is mostly the cause of all the nastiness -- because they're too blocky looking and too inefficient.
What I would've tried to do is keep the terrain support in, load it only when necessary (ie when the server admin chooses a non-slate map), and disable dynamic lighting if you play on a map or at least give the user a performance warning if they try to use the dynamic shadows. Then, make the vanilla Slate into what we have now (the heavily customizable environment) and remove Skylands, Destruct, etc. Of course, there's still the issue of the vehicle collision, but I honestly enjoyed some of the silliness that happened from that when I was younger (and probably still would).
Of course, you may have tried this yourself at first, only to be met with an absurd amount of issues in the end, but those are my two-cents.
