I also can't get over that three patches later we still have to redo our mutator lists and game settings every single time we start the game up. It has really caused me to play the game a lot less and we can see that others are really not into as much either (Insite, UP, and Nalicity all gone and other sites are looking pretty pathetic). I just think that folks are correct and that Epic has really just abandoned this game ...
I recently tried giving UT3 instant action another chance. I gave up on it before because of the issues you are talking about. Then I saw a couple muts and mods in the MSUC I thought looked interesting, so I thought I'd fire it up again and just deal with the work and toil now required to set up matches. Maybe I was being too rash in dismissing it out of hand earlier?
It was kind of fun at first, but after a couple games, I have to say that, as before, I don't feel like its worth all the trouble to set up a game, especially with that UI that you have to use to do it. Also, the way you have to "trick" the game into giving you the bot team setup you want is a pain.
So, sadly, I probably won't even be downloading this patch. I'm hoping that sometime in the future these things will be fixed in another patch, or by a 3rd party, and I can discover some gaming pleasures that I missed while the half-baked UI kept me away.
I don't think any love is comming to us offliners at all, not from Epic, even though i think you are correct in saying this UT has more offline players than online, i seriously doubt we'll see any significant improvements to this part of the game, a few minor tweaks to the bots perhabs, if we're lucky they will fix the menu's saving, but thats it.
That's very disappointing to hear. Didn't they tell us that they found that half the previous UT playerbase was offline only? It's so tragic that they looked at that statistic, and then decided that the "campaign" was what those offline folks wanted. Ha, or maybe they decided they didn't want people playing offline anymore.