Agreed. Taking away all progression (other than player rank XP... and who cares about that?) makes spending a ton of time making something a complete waste of time. We were baited and switched. People spent a bunch of time making something cool that they though people would enjoy, but now no one will even play it because what they need most is to unlock things. It completely kills portal.
Even worse, there are a bunch of potential verified modes missing. So, if you want to make a deathmatch server, it is custom (don't have any other option) and even if you have no botting or farming mechanics, it gets no progression and no one plays it. But, on the other hand, a "verified" breakthrough map with bots without guns gets full unlock progression. It's just dumb. Just put all the vanilla defaults that all the official servers use as an option for verified servers in portal (not ONLY rush, conquest, and breakthrough). Don't MAKE people "use" custom scripts even if they are empty. Instead, moderate the farming based on if servers are ACTUALLY using custom scripts and if servers are ACTUALLY making bot farms by making bots dumb, unable to do stuff, or unarmed.
EA is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and then completely ignoring the problem that still remains. How does that saying go?
