I'd like to add a few things to Ramses' little nostalgia memory refresher, since his (and most of the olskoolers' sense of fairplay) is based on how Unreal (not Tournament nor UT2k3/4) was played back in the days.
As far as I can think back, there have always been different opinions as to how the game should be played (any puns or similarities to NVidia's advertisements here are purely coincidental btw...
), there have always been the "fun" and the "pro" players, but it has never been such an extreme difference as there is now.
Indeed when I started playing everything appeared to be more relaxed and basically people just played. The whole "elite vs fun noobs" war escalated when more and more features were ported from the emerging UT titles back to Unreal, because many figured with the features the style should also change.
Smartball and myself were (in part) majorily responsible for that as well, since the 2 of us implemented many of the features we were asked for to port back - however, both of us actively refused most of "hard coding" requests, meaning we always left it server administrators which style he/she wanted on his/her server to be played. We just delivered the tools...
But still, even at the peak-difference time in Unreal, there were certain things that you could rely on nevertheless, for example:
1) Weapon stay was ALWAYS on in teamgames, also in competitive ladders or cups
2) Weapon stay was USUALLY on even in 1 vs 1 servers
3) Amplifier and Invis were RARELY seen anywhere online, regardless if fun or pro server, except on Cooperative servers where you don't use them against each other
The point is, that even at the most extreme point, the 2 groups were never as much apart as now, here, in UT2k4. For some unknown reason or another, the so called "pros" make the rules for the majority of games in UT2k4 nowadays. There is no balancing counter group as there was in Unreal, the few clans like f00k who actively and exclusively play for fun and openly refuse clanbase and their rules are the exception.
TCP, coming from a background that would put us to extreme "fun" end of the line, has already made a lot of sacrifices and adjustments to meet majority and public demand while trying to keep the fun alive by keeping some of the old rules intact.
At some places there have been casualties, bad ones, and if things go on like this there are probably more to come in the future. Just look at "TeamGames"... we've played them in the past, but with the elitist attitude it is being played now in ladders and cups, there is no point in us ever joining in. We don't have the time or motivation to train map/item domination, because the level required to compete there takes out the fun of the game. Besides, we do have lives and more important things todo. This is still a game after all. We can play competitively, sure, but within reasonable limits. I rather go out with friends and eat some Sushi than spending hours memorizing map paths I have to take in order to keep map control with my teammates ffs....
TAM / Freon is a game mode which we are playing since it has some of the attributes that "TeamGames" have lost. As Ramses has pointed out correctly, there are factors that do balance a little, like spawnkilling is impossible etc...
In the future we will not have to decide if we put this or that feature on or off because that is "how it is played". The actual decision we have to make at some point is, how far away from our roots we are willing to go. The current TAM playstyle isn't what us oldskool-TCP players are used to and like. However, it may still be within limits of "ookay...", though not so for some.
I am very much against disabling CM on #1 by default, but enabling a CB equivalent game type votable, so we can have precise match settings
if and when we need them. My reasoning, if you have read all that rambling above, should be obvious.
. 