Bi-weekly

[Light]

And if we do it bi-weekly for a short time

I would vote maybe 2 or 3 times a year, to try and make it a bigger thing. You may struggle to get enough people to play every other week. I also would throw a vote towards randomizing teams, rather than having teams of people who are very used to fort and working together. I think it would help get newer players on teams with someone who has an idea of what they're doing, and avoid the same team winning every tournament, discouraging others. Just my 2¢.

[compguygene]

That sounds perfect! What do you think of changing the map and possibly spawns.

[Light]

What do you think of changing the map

Someone else mentioned before, removing some of the dead space on the sides of the fort map. I completely agree. I was never a big fort player, but when I played occasionally, there was sooo much room to just go off on your own on either side. The downside of it not being there though is that one person's tail could go wall-to-wall, being a cheap and easy way to block.

and possibly spawns.

Having not been a big fort player, I don't have much of an opinion here. Moving them in front of the zone would make it easier to start a defense with no holes right off the bat. That's up to you if you think that's good or bad.

[Monkey]

I'm not sure I'd mess around with the standard fortress map or physics willy nilly. Now I'm not saying that fortress is perfect but changing the current width or length of the map would change the gameplay quite a lot. With 6v6 or more people, IIRC, players on both sides of the start grind often seal the wall after the split. A lot of care and thought is needed if making changes.

[compguygene]

I agree wholeheartedly. However, I am looking at a map specifically for 4v4 and noob friendly, if noobs came into a server and the spawns were in front of the zone, the non-grinders would not screw up the game so much for everybody. Also, by making the whole map smaller, especially the lateral direction, perhaps the same length to allow a team a chance to build a good grind, and RIM_WALL_ACCEL enabled so people have another means to reach the other zone quickly, should lead to faster and more interesting and quicker gameplay. Does this sound like an interesting idea for what could be noob attracting fortress games?

[Light]

I say make it and see how it goes. Who cares if the idea fails or you have to tweak it a bit as it goes. Coming up with new ideas is the only thing that keeps this game interesting for me. I do think you will need to advertise in game though and not just forums to get more active players involved.

Whatever you decide to do, let me know if you need any servers hosted.