State of the Zombie MOD Server Union Address
Am I the only one that thinks this is a terrible idea? ZERO, I'm going to be blunt.. I feel like you need to consult your players (read: the experienced ones, not the mic-spamming children you hear when you enter the server) before you make major changes like this that kill a lot of gameplay and cause a lot of headaches for everyone. Hell, you can consult me, I'll give you an honest opinion about the server from having playered in the servers for over a year or so (and briefly admin'd). Regardless, if anything, this should have been put to a vote and had a thread dedicated to it.Originally Posted by ZERO
The solution to the annoyance of changing class between map types is not to re-enable fast zombies for ZE.. fast zombies were disabled for ZE waaaaaaaay back when in the first place because they were too fast and ruin gameplay due to overwhelming the humans too easily. ZE is now mostly unbalanced in favor of zombies due to the fast zombies: they penetrate human choke points too easily in such maps as deathstar, mines of moria, and predator, and others. Perfectly good escape maps are now being RTV'd prematurely because of player frustration (among other things). I can't spell this out any more clearly.
The solution is just to enable the zcookie settings by default, the one that says something like "buy same zombie class".
Follow my train of thought here: all zombies are present in typical ZM, so humans will select the special Fast/Poison/Deformed classes due to their special features. When the map switches to ZE, if they were anything but those three special classes, with zcookie enabled they'll retain their class and go on their happy way. If they were Fast/Poison/Deformed on ZM, they'll be classic on ZE, which is fine: it gives players an advantage. But here's the kicker: when they change their class during ZE to, say, Predator, and the map switches back to ZM, their ZE-choice class will carry over. What does this mean? It means that a good number of players won't change their class back to Fast/Poison/Deformed after the switch to ZM. The result: less overwhelming of the players in ZM (for a time), and more importantly, less overwhelming of the players in ZE.
You might be thinking, "But Ness, you're just delaying the inevitable in ZM: of course players will switch their class back!" but you should be aware that there are quite a number of noobs (read: 8-year-olds) playing in the server that would probably not think to switch back. And anyway, if the player wants to switch to another class once back in ZM, they can.
Everyone wins.
And now, here are some real, legitimate problems that need addressing, ZERO:
- NO ONE LIKES BEING SET ON FIRE FOR >20 SECONDS. NO ONE.
Its a terrible feature, >20 seconds gives humans an unfair advantage, and should be capped at 20 seconds max. Think about all the advantages humans have as-is: high zombie knockback, lowered zombie speed, long fire grenade effect.. why not just freezebomb the zombies while you're at it? Zombies are players too; if they're frustrated, they'll leave the server.
- Alltalk should be enabled automatically. It always just ends up being one more thing for the admins to waste time putting up votes for/enabling. People want to talk and be heard, not have to keep asking IS ALLTALK ON GUYS? CAN ANYONE HEAR ME?
- When the server is reset and you don't enable the zcookie settings, your class is reverted to Classic. This completely sucks.. zcookie settings should just be enabled by default.
- Admins have to reset the server on a regular 3-4 hour basis due to srcds problems. Why not just have the server auto-reset every 3-4 hours with a script so no-one has to worry about bad voice communication/server performance?
- It takes too many players to carry out a voteban/votekick, to the point that the function is useless. Right now an ENTIRE SERVER-1 has to be convinced to ban/kick a player, which just isn't feasible, and should be (ENTIRE SERVER-1)/2 rounded up.
- Add the option of votemute, which requires far fewer votes than ban/kick. Not sure if its already there or not.
- Map vote text is wrong: should not say "map vote failed", gives players the wrong idea, raises player complaints. Text should say something like "top X maps selected, revote in progress", and tell the players in chat when a map was picked randomly due to ties. No one likes one map being mysteriously picked over another map when a tie occurs if they're not aware the pick occurred randomly.
- Fix noblock for ZE/ZM. Every now and then we play a map that has improper settings. There's really no excuse for this still being a problem.. maps with ze_ or escape in the title have noblock enabled, otherwise its disabled. I know for a fact a script exists that handles noblock exactly like this. Side-effect: one less headache for admins.
- Fix the zombie spawn settings for ZE maps. Would be nice if zombies spawned a little further into the map, teleported back to spawn, etc. A little vague, but I'm trying to convey that this needs work.
- Disable RTV for the first 2 or 3 rounds of the map. There are a bunch of idiot players that will work their damnedest (spamming chat, spamming mic, occasionally griefing) to convince the server to RTV!!!! because things didn't go their way the first round, or because the map wasn't what they voted for at the end of the last map. And they're terrible.
- Re-add zm_ninja_beta to the map rotation. It was a fine map, lots of people loved playing it, and it was only removed because of Blade. Why not consult more players about this sort of thing?
- Re-add the new updated version of ze_jurassicpark. Its been ranked one of (if not THE) best ZE maps ever made, and the original author recently fixed all of the map issues (!!) and posted a new version: http://www.gamebanana.com/maps/159198
Sincerely,
Ness
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