First of all, there are too many unused servers on FE and SE. When I check for games, I see a list of empty servers with 42 slots. It's much wiser to close at least half of all these servers.
The settings are wrong for a FPS Arena. Infinite ammo is a stupid setting, because the first n00b who takes a grenade launcher (in Hole or Fortress, for example) will start spamming 30-40 grenades (at minimum) to kill an opponent because he is too dumb to keep a weapon on his hands. A grenade, on its own, is already overpowered (-175 hp per grenade, at Normal difficulty.. later we will talk about difficulty), so you need 1, maybe 2 grenades to kill your opponent because in a game like SS you have to aim (or predict) very well. This is not a game for spammers. The same is for rockets (rockets: -150 hp per rocket) and for tommygun abusers (especially in FE; or minigun abusers in Yodel, SE) who need to shoot thousands of bullets to kill their opponents, even hitting the walls (lol). A tommygun/minigun removes 10 hp (9 hp if you equip an armor) per bullet, so how many bullets does a player need to frag? Thousands and thousands? I don't think so.
The difficulty. Please, remove that bullsh1t of Serious difficulty! It isn't possible that a player has to one-shot the opponent with overpowered weapons (double shotgun but also rockets and grenades too). If somebody wants to kill easily, oneshotting other players, it's better for him to go play CoD Ghosts or BF4. I have noticed that on Serious difficulty, weapon damages are duplicated! So, if I have 100H/100A, the first dumb 10 years old can frag me with a grenade. That's unbalanced. I repeat: -175 hp per grenade are a lot. At Serious difficulty, they increase to -350 hp! So, if I have 200H/200A, he can one-shot me if he takes SD.
The secondary fact is that in Serious difficulty ammo are duplicated (and if the admins add infinite ammo = unplayable game).
I think Normal difficulty is more balanced, for damages and ammo. I know on SE there is a PRO Multimap Server, but it isn't enough. Why don't on FE, for example? Why only default maps?
The camping and the cannon. This point has to be included on the previous. But let me explane. Especially on maps like Fortress, Hole and Red Station, there are some players who take the cannon (already overpowered and unbalanced anyway, even in Normal difficulty) and they use map bugs to hide themselves and start waiting for the first unlucky player, who pass in there, to one-shot him with the cannon. The greatest horror is that the cannon has infinite ammo! On normal settings (I'm talking about settings now, not difficulty), it has got only one cannonball. So, it's a special weapon to use temporally in a deathmatch. If you want to carry on using it, set at least a longer respawn time (180-210 seconds could be fine; I suggest the same for sniper and SD) and set at least 2 minutes before its first spawn on the map. Translated: when game starts, no cannon in the map for the first 2 minutes of the game. I suggest also to place the cannon in the most difficult map zone to pick it up (under the lava, in Hole, is NOT difficult), so only the most skilled players can take it with tricks or stuff like that. But it would be better if cannon was substituted by lasergun.
About camping, set a script to warn players if they freeze themselves for over 2 seconds. When I played SoF2, I discovered a server with an anti-camper script: if a player stopped himself for camping, it appeared on screen a countdown until 5 to resume moving. If that player didn't move, he got banned. This is different from "Sleep at Work Not Here" (however, I told it in another topic: that script is useful; or are you really so nerd, guys, to wait 10, 20, 30 minutes/1 hour for players???). The anti-camper script is useful to ban all of those players who hide themselves behind a wall (or behind the Yodel roofs), and wait for their opponent, to one-shot him with double shotgun, rockets, grenades or cannon. If someone does it, after 2 seconds he has to see a message on his screen to resume moving and a countdown from 3 to 1. I suggest this text: "Anti-Camper script; Move or you get kicked". To pervent a camper who wants to troll the script, it's useful to set a 10 seconds time after the warn on screen. It means: for 10 seconds, a warned camper cannot freeze himself again but he has to move. If he stops before 10 seconds passed, the warning message with countdown will appear again on his screen without the 2 seconds of tolerance. After the 10 seconds, instead, the script will reset (so, 2 seconds of tolerance again, as the first time). It will be also useful to stop boring and annoying chatrooms ingame. I know it's a bit difficult, but a programmer can do that, and I ask here because those servers are technologics and they have a lot of scripts. A FPS Arena is a movement game, not stuff for campers or chatroom.
Special weapons and powerups. So, I usually play Quake Live and in its deathmatches powerups are allowed (remember: deathmatch is NOT duel). The most used are battle suit (it doesn't exist on Sam and it isn't invulnerability), haste (on Quake III it was called "boost"), invisibility and Quad Damage. I think on SS SE they could be allowed (invisibility, Serious speed and Serious Damage), only for deathmatch maps (obviously). But my idea is to leave the only SD, as on "SS:TSE HD", set 2 miutes before its first spawn on the map and set 180-210 seconds (3 minutes or 3 minutes and a half) for its respawn and place it in the highest map zone possible (or in the most difficult map zone to arrive), to take it with a jumper or a rocket jump. Because the SD is very overpowered (4x damage; on Sam HD it's decreased at 2.5x) and I think it's not good for the game if the first dumb n00b, who never played Sam, catches it and kills easily players more expert who play better than him. Don't tell me why admins removed powerups, because there is a reason if game developers put them into the maps, and it's a paradox they don't want powerups but they set Serious difficulty and infinite ammo (I'm talking to the admins here) at the same time... And, second: the Sam patchers and modders could fix the SD power, decreasing it (maybe it would be also useful to decrease weapons damage) at acceptable levels (2x or 2.5x). That will mean a new patch for Sam, but it will be better. Powerups are made for a temporary usage and an expert player has to be good in timing the item's respawn and good to take it with a trick or with a right bounce on the jumper.
For sniper rifle, that's the same I explaned for cannon and SD: place it in a difficult map zone, set 2 minutes before first spawn and 180-210 seconds for item respawn. For sniper and cannon, only a ammo pack (+5 sniper bullets and +4 cannonballs) is needed because they are special temporary weapons and they are not made for abusing.
The +100 Health and +200 Armor. I don't understand why can't I collect them, lol. On FE, you need skill to collect them (on SE also, of course), because this is another FPS Arena concept. The same I have already explained for special weapons and powerups. Removing that, you are removing skill. Just set 2 minutes before first spawn and set 2 minutes for respawn (not possible on the first Serious Editor, I noticed).
Map bugs. This is one of the most annoying and frustrating things. On Little Trouble, for example, lam3rs can jump out of map to hit an opponent from the back. Are they afraid to fight in front of another player? On Yodel and Sun Palace, there is the possibility to go out of map with rocket jumps. I suggest to correct all those bugs (I can't use Serious Editor, cause I never learnt) because the arena is made for fighting IN it and NOT OUT of it. I suggest also to re-design some maps, too. In Desert Temple (FE) tommygun is too unbalanced, cause it's a fast weapon that makes totally useless to pick up a minigun. Especially on Serious difficulty with infinite ammo. So, my hint is to put rocket launcher (too easy to pick up) and minugun on those flagpoles (where there are the red and green flags, not the obelisks), but increasing their heights so a skilled player can pick them up only jumping from the jumper at the opposite side of the map. The columns are always used by the campers, so I suggest to remove them and make the corridors (where there are 50H & 50A and where there is the jumper at the center of the map) wider as the main room in order to avoid camping. So, remove the tommygun and leave only one double shotgun (that is also a special weapon for DT in FE), the others will be normal shotguns. This because of the limits of the map and the game too.
Fix that servers! These days, when I enter PRO Multimap or some other servers, I have frame-rate drops and it lags for 1-2 seconds every 3-5 minutes. On FE, there is at least 1 server where this happens. I'm unable to move or to aim my opponents in these conditions. In other servers, instead, I didn't notice that. So, I think it's a server fault. I know I haven't a good internet connection, but I experience this kind of troubles only here. And I think I'm not alone.
Absurd rules. On FE, please remove the rule of ng. A FPS Arena is made for map control. It isn't UEFA soccer or other sport, so the fair play of allowing an opponent to pick a weapon up doesn't exist. It's competition: you need to prevent the opponent to pick a weapon up, cause he becomes a threat for your map control and then for your victory. Ng is also absurd because if you have a tommygun on your hands (but you collected also rocket launcher and double shotgun too) and your spawned opponent is near to a single shotgun (but away from you), when you allow him to pick the weapon up, you can shoot and frag him easily. There is no equality, because it would be more coherent to allow him to collect the same number and kind of weapons you have on your pocket before start fight. So, ng is a pseudo-fair rule.
I know the standard answer: this game is for fun.
I don't believe that's a fun system. SS was not made for this kind of settings. I don't believe in 2001-2007 Sam was only infinite ammo servers on Serious difficulty. I don't believe it's fun to have the entire map infested by grenades. I don't believe it's fun to be killed from the back by a knifer or a backstabber with double shotgun who is behind you cause he used map bugs to go out of the map. I don't believe it's fun to camp behind a wall with an infinite cannon.
Maybe the same unfair players are tired of this game, cause there is no more challenge or fun going on like this.
I think Sam will be always fun even changing the settings, and fixing/balancing the game, I properly bet it will be more fun than now.