How do you select servers?

But a game that drags out too long is just repetitive. Btw, removing hazards, all of them, makes it hard for certain teams to come back from being constantly killed and grieved. With the annihilator, it's possible to keep away large groups of bots and allow the team to breathe so they can destroy the other pros. However, if that team is good enough, they can keep their advantage. The annihilator punishes teams who don't press their advantage and destroy their enemy's base. Ejectors make supports stay on their toes, because one ejector destroys their firebase, releasing the lane of the support's control.

In an hourlong without all of those, the game becomes a deathmatch more than an MNC match. Money becomes way more important to gather in order to win the match, since that decides who wins and who loses in case the moneyballs aren't damaged. In pubs, that is most likely going to be the case with those settings.

But it doesn't matter. I'm not going to play on the hourlong because of the random nature of pubs. It just doesn't work for me at all.

I'd consistently play on a stock server if it had auto-team balance and no team select. I actually play with friends pretty frequently now and it's not all that often we choose the same team. When we do it's to counter other people who ARE stacking. I have as much fun playing against friends as I do with them, and honestly speaking I'd kill for a couple servers like that if I had a decent ping on them.

Not likely to happen with my internet still a little crippled, but still.

Ejectors and the annihilator\juice buying platform are important to strategy as they punish teams who play sim city and reward teams who are assertive and can hold control of midfield.

Removing them is kind of like removing the team from soccer, and making it goalie vs goalie.

I kind of agree on the ejectors, and it would be nice if you could have them active, and not the annihilator, but, i think the annihilator completely ruins the core idea behind MNC, as pushing lanes more or less becomes an invalid strategy, and you are much better of fighting DM style to control the annihilator control button, and as far as DM gameplay goes, there are much better alternatives than MNC.

Being able to control the price of the annihilator might convince me to activate it again, as the price is ridiculously low as is.

Wow. You seriously can't have thought that one through.

If you are are in control of the midfield, whose bots are over those ejectors and most benefitial to get killed with the annihilator? If you are in that situation you have little reason to use them and if you are in the opposite its a one button way out of trouble.
Being in control of the midfield already gives you the advantage you need.

A team playing sim city with their turrets are already losing. Turrets are simply too easy to take down for that to be a winning strategy.

There is simply not enough players on each team or distance to those points and players move too fast, to establish dominance over those triggers. So while the use of them is not random, you cannot effectively prohibit it unless you divert your entire team to preventing access.

To reuse your analogy, they are the equivalent of having an attack stopped and the ball given to the other team, because one of the others guys managed to run into the center circle without being touched, while you were attacking.

At best they slightly enhance what should be the core objective: pushing bots. At worst they completely negate a succesful attempt at it.

And only for that reason are they an important strategic element. But it makes for lousy game design.

Taking them out leaves much more room for good teamplay to be rewarded. And not having that reward being yanked away by a measly 50$/250$.

My server-picking criteria, listed from most to least important:

1. Ping under 80 absolutely necessary
2. Make sure no extras are disabled with a couple exceptions
3. Class limits no stricter than 2 per class
4. Time limit over >=25 is preferred, no greater than 40-45 minutes.

Anything that fits those four requirements are typically the server I choose over any other. The first 3 are practically required, but if I have to join an hourlong or 15 minute server because it's the only one with acceptable ping that's fine by me.

As far as #2 goes, I honestly couldn't care if juice buying and autobalance are disabled. Auto Balance is just frustrating since ragequitters on a losing team factor into getting teambalanced far more than anything else, which sucks because you instantly lose your $1,000 bonus and any potential protags you would've gotten if you hadn't gotten swapped for 2 more minutes. Juice buying just leads to people hoarding their cash for juice spam, when they COULD spend it on turrets. While some classes have a harder time building juice than others, more often than not it just leads to pain because one guy on a streak gets the cash to juice 5 times in a row because newbies on your team are streak feeding. Said person then proceeds to constantly eliminate all turrets and resistance leading to an unstoppable juice chain of pain. Disabling it makes juice escalate in value to the point where stopping someone's juice rampage by any means is a major success.