The problem with ZM the 800lb gorilla.

[Andrew_Pavlik]

You hear it all the time, ZM is full of retards, admins from ZM are abuse happy and just plain bad, I stopped playing ZM a year ago.. etc etc..

I've been thinking about writing this for awhile now and I'm sure I'm going to say some things all of you have been saying all along. But after playing on the server close to 2 years and just recently a new admin Id like to discuss what I see whats wrong and perhaps how to fix it.

The problems:

First is the obvious, the server is just to big. Even if you could fill it with 35 good people there would just be to many people with relation to cade spots. But the bigger problem is the server usually has 5 good people and 30, well 30 others. And then what happens is the 30 good people see where the 5 good people cade the round before and now you have a clusterfuck of people trying to get one spot, this causes blocking, cade breaking, bad cades being built or if a zombie turns and isn't 1 of the 20 that went to that one spot, essentially the round is over right there with 1-5 clueless zombies running around. Also a problem with the mass/popular spot is that even if a good number of zombies do turn they are usually occupied with trying to tag people in that spot therefor thats where the kills are and it just brings more people to that spot, is a vicious and boring cycle.


Second is admins, I will admit flat out that 90% of the admins that come from ZM are bad. What happens is you have admins who noclip, play with item restrictions, slap people for fun, set people on fire, make people fire bombs, change maps, put up constant votes, make people invisible or just do things like kick/ban people who cade with them etc etc.... Now sure sometimes these are necessary and in moderation are fine. But what ends up happening is 1-2 admins abuse this, 4 players think, hey we can buy admin and make the server our own personal playground like these 2, and now you have 6 bad admins and so the trend continues. There are even cases when I log on and its so frustrating to play just the way admin(s) are acting I log off or go to WCS and I'm an admin myself! A lot of people blame server population will go down when a certain admin is on, I think what happens is people get fed up and just leave based on actions or heck even map choices the admin makes. Rezel said it best is that you arn't an admin on the server for your own personal gains, you are there for the 30 other players on the server.

Third are the rules. There is no 'rule' section on ZM and heck there are about a dozen official illegal cad spot threads on ZM its no wonder why admins constantly conflict each other and players have no idea whats going on. For example we all know cade breaking is illegal? But how do you handle it? Do you handle it differently if it was on accident or someone being a douchebag? Also there is this whole cading crouch spots issue and 2 per tube? Also what if people disconnect or go into spec to miss being tagged from a zombie? There are some real rules that need to be mad official so maybe admins might now how to handle certain situations.

Fourth is ZE maps. Now I'm not a huge fan of ZE maps to begin with but a lot of people like to play them for whatever reason. The problem is that zombies are too 'nerfed' on them. I know I can personally kite any type of zombie and kill him on a ZE map, because unless its a fast zombie its no faster then me and there HPs are super low. This makes MOST(not all) ZE maps super one sided and it seems the only reason why zombies might win a ZE map now is that so many people buy scouts its hard to defend certain spots. (I know, players faults not the map or settings)

Holy hand gernade. I believe that this is a little over powered. I mean set on fire for 30secs? If you are in a vent it makes moving forward impossible and Ive seen it plenty of times where zombies will just run off and hide till the fire goes off, is that probably the purpose of it? Sure and I get it but if you have 4-5 zombies not doing anything for 20-30secs, it kind of makes it boring. I know I personally play and cade to kill zombies, not to hide in a vending machine for 5mins.

Voting. This is also an old and obvious problem. When the vote comes up 1-2 get spammed way to much which causes a lot of unwanted map extension which I believe also causes a poor population or just people getting frustrated.

Solutions:

1. Shrink the server size. However we all know this wont happen so perhaps to make things a little more challenging to help against the '20 people make a cade' mentality, perhaps spawn 2-3 zombies at the beginning? This will also help on Human sided maps which seems to be a lot these days.

2. Make people be a member of the website for like a week or 2 and perhaps they will see all the admin abuse threads and see how to not act as an admin? Also perhaps clan members should personally msg certain admins be like hey, if you don't knock it off that 11 dollars is going to waste and there is a chance you'll be perma banned from all the servers. Or even a 'rules' section that says if an admin is caught doing X that will be considered abuse.

3. Simple, create an official ZM rules post. And as for illegal cading spots I think a lot of you are 'kidding' yourself about getting into certain area's with 10 people shooting at you with shotguns and para's. So why not make it simple, all crouch spots with 1 entrance can not be caded. No cading with a money crate. Who cares how many people per tube? You can't shoot through people so the more people you have the more of a disadvantage you are at. Rule concerning blocking of both humans and zombies. I would also like to add that its the objective for zombies to tag people, if a zombie is refuses to try and tag anyone thats bannable/kickable(of course under the right circumstances, if they have 3 health thats one thing) To many times 1 zombie spawns and he just lets himself be killed.

4. Either give zombies full health or regular speed. And spawn more then 1 too. give ZE map a challenge and not totally one sided.

5. Shorting the time on fire? Add more damage of initial blast?

6. Add an option to revote or make it easier to 'rtv'.

If you read this ALL, I thank you.