Tried to take a reasonably accurate tally on recent server attendance based from the MOTD banner.  The times listed there are directly from Steam, for the last 2 weeks.  Outside of Enforcer, Smile, and Wolfpup.... pretty much nobody else listed there has been on the server in the last 2 weeks, much less the last 2 years.  Or 5+ years?   Overall, this MOTD graphic is very outdated and not at all representative of who is currently playing at the server.  Sorry if I got you wrong or misinterpreted the data (not all of you are on my friends list).   It's worth noting that Hyperion had a few admins added in the last couple of years.  Of those, Stuperfox has a respectable 20 hours in the past 2 weeks.  I know Enzo has been around as well.   Otherwise there are lots of times where we need someone to change the map but nobody is around to do it.  Tonight was a good example of this.  The vote got changed to Thundermountain, but it's not a good map to keep the server alive and thus it died. 

Plasma,
Is Hyperion itself the target, or is it the result of collateral damage from someone targeting a higher level entity?

Roughly 2 weeks have passed since the attacks started, which should be enough time to draw some conclusions. 

Perhaps it's time to release more details on what is known at this point.

In any case, thank you for trying to mitigate.

Overall, I think the new autobalance system was an appropriate, if not necessary change to the server.  I think both blue and red share a little blame to how it ended up here.  It's not perfect, but I think this system is a big improvement over the prior situation. 

The main problem was that over time, two distinct factions formed for the red and blue teams.  I don't know the stats, but very clearly the blue team would trounce the red team handily a majority of the time.  This made playing on red unenjoyable, especially if you were trying to do well.

The blue team routinely stacked the better skilled players, and tended be more focused on the game at hand.  The red team tended to be more chatty over the mic towards non-game related topics (i.e. water cooler talk).  While great for catching up with friends, this unfortunately would distract from the game itself a bit.  In other words, red were team stackers too, just in a different way. 

Forcing an autobalance of players has resulted in better games overall.  There are still steamrolls, but at least they aren't entirely predictable.  The team shuffle seems random enough where it feels like a different enough game every time you play.  And you get to play with folks that maybe you wouldn't have normally played with in the stacking era.  One downside though is that you might not get to play on the same team with your friend or group of friends.  Plasma said you can use sm_addbuddy to pair up with a buddy, but I haven't tried it myself.

Problems that have already been mentioned:

-   autoassign based upon skill/ranking/points.  This could be a good thing, but might also be bad.  The teams might become too predictable over time if just using a numerical system to assign teams.

-   reconnecting to swap teams.  This can and does happen currently.  It could grow into a bigger problem, but for now it seems minimal.

-   "no voting in the middle of the map!"  (in my best Vector voice).  Not related to autoassign, but the map vote popup has been one of the biggest nuisances for a long while.  Sure, we've gotten used to it, but problems are:  You can't swap weapons while it's up, and people might just select the first map listed just to make the vote menu go away.  In a perfect world, the map vote would come up after the 2nd round has ended (after one attack/defend per side), the map vote happens during the downtime, and then off to the new map.

I guess Wolfpup was having a bad day, he was even yelling at Hankey before the ban happened (and who ever yells at Hankey?  .... j/k don't answer that question LOL):



I don't have any video of the Vector ban itself unfortunately.  I was on the other team when it happened and heard about it after the fact, so it's hard to form an unbiased opinion. 

That said, from all the comments here and from everything else I heard, it appears Vector was banned out of emotion, and not because he broke any server rules.  (but prove me wrong otherwise, maybe there's something I missed).

We all know Vector can consume the voice channel with high utilization (which a precious resource since there is only 1 channel per team).  And muting is the only option you can if you're in the latter group, but understandably this function is far from perfect and has other consequences.  Anyway, everyone has an opinion on him, love him or hate him. 

There's varying levels of skill and try-hardness on this server as well.  I'm very competitive inside, and want to win most of the time, but no matter what I'm always looking to have fun.  So much so, that I made a youtube channel to post any crazy or funny moment that I witnessed, or was a part of.  I love this community and hope to be part of it for a long time to come.