As said on the tittle I want to post some suggestions/changes I think would be beneficial for the server. Even if my suggestion/reasons might not be clear, hopefully this can start a conversation between different parts of the community about these aspects.
Knockback
With the new server I think it is time to re tune the knockback a bit. Back in the old server the lag/lack of hit registration kinda made up for a large head shot knockback, making things look even and fair when they really weren’t. With the new server we have had a way easier way of beating maps consistently, and even have the popular saying “1 human can defend 10 zombies easily”, which is not far from reality. Many times, both as a zombie and as a human, I have either been stuck in a wall unable to move or made zombies be stuck unable to move, which even in a 1:5 zm:human ratio shouldn’t be possible in my eyes. That stated I would like us to go back to the numbers and mess with the head shot knockback, as they are too rewarding(Body shots seem fine in my opinion but others may add to this).
Spawn
We have had this spawn for a long time, and I respect that it is a unique way of playing the game, but it has major flaws that are inevitable. One of these flaws are that a map is either won at that moment and time, by only having 2-4 zombies, or it is lost, by having 20+ zombies. Also players have to spam nades not to get infected, and when most people aren’t aware that you can have 2 nades this makes nades useless for newcomers and players that don’t have that information. These are the main flaws and I would like to hear what the community has to say. A spawn at start for zombies with 7-10 zombies (tuned for each map) would make the game more consistent and allow players to actually utilize their nades on a productive matter.
Nades
As I’ve pointed out that nades are most of the time used only at spawn for new comers, I would also like to suggest a nerf to both HE grenade and incendiary (maybe even remove incendiary depending on what people think). At the current time HE are only used to stop zombies on their tracks or save people on a panic situation. In my view of the mod HE’s should be used to help a team accomplish a victory but only in minor ways, while the current HE grenades have a lot of impact in the game’s flow. Instead of such a large knockback we could have only a minor knockback or maybe a nade that only slows the zombies by a bit (maybe similar to the other server’s fire nades).
Again these are only my opinions and I only wanted to get the comunity to discuss some of these matters since these are the main ways we can impact the server right not. (Also an update on how things are going with entwatch would be appreciated, just curious).
Hi,
I was actually going to make a very similar post regarding so I am glad I am not the only person with this similar frame of mind.
[Knockback]
As Altek has stated the knockbock is too high. Maps like Santa or Frostdrake should NOT be winnable with 10 people defending, 15 doorhuggers against 35 zombies. This is happening consistently over the last number of weeks since we have gotten the server upgrade. A single bullet should not send a zombie flying 5-10 meters backward. Ideally it should just slow the zombie and have a slight nudge.
[Spawn]
The current spawn system simply does not work from a number of angles. Yes it is more natural and I have seen many arguments in the past that the spawn in the crowd system creates a more natural and unique gameplay. Up until a few weeks ago we had a countdown timer which made the zombie infection “slightly” less predictable. Anyone who can count down from 10-15 seconds depending on the map can simply hold a nade in there hand to circumvent the lack of countdown timer.
Problems with the spawn system:
50/50 lottery on a round: Zombie spawns and either gets launched into the air resulting in one zombie or the zombie infection gets out of control and you end up with 20-40 zombies within 20 seconds of the round starting. The round is either unbelievably easy and the team automatically win as a result of a lack of zombies (look at the aesthetic event for reference) or the round is impossible and people intentionally end up calling to just suicide for a new round.
Intentional/Unintentional Trolling:
Leaving as first zombie: Zombie spawns and gets launched into the air with only one zombie. Player leaves resulting in a new zombie spawning in the middle of the zombie team causing the round to be killed
Zombie Boosting: Zombies get launched into the air at the start of the round. Systematically there has been players purchasing shot guns and intentionally standing behind the team with the intention of shooting the zombies in the air into the CT team
Maps not designed for spawn in the crowd systems. Certain maps like Wanderers, Sandstorm, Mako, Frostdrake, Santaassasination all suffer from the 50/50 lottery system. Recently we spent 9 rounds in a row at the pyramid on sandstorm due to bad spawns,boosting and map not being designed with the spawn in mind.
[Nades]
Molotovs simplify maps making the servers settings considerably easier. Honestly I would remove them. Makes the game too counter terrorist sides.
[Gameplay]
Obviously we don’t want to flood the server with a load of gameplay changes which turns the server from winning every round due to subtle flaws that makes the server significantly easier than other server to losing every map due to people not adapting to the changes. They would need to be drip fed into rotation over time. I would propose that the changes could be made in the following order:
Spawn system
Knockback
Molotovs
I would plead that these changes are not ignored or fall off the map with no update (et la Entwatch). Mapeadores needs some serious positive changes. These changes also nullify too key areas of trolling on the server via the removal of boosting and leaving as first zombie.
On the first point, we have actually been looking into it. Knockback in Mapeadores is actually, on a per-player and per-weapon basis, substantially lower than in most servers. However, since we use several plugins to allow for more dynamic movement, knock back becomes additive: the forces applied by all players add up and can easily become unbearable. We have been discussing developing a knock back scaling plugin that would balance it with respect to the amount of players in the server, or humans and zombies alive, or both. In doing so, we would ensure the server remains fun when it’s full, when the map is a harder one, but also when the map is easier or there is less population. The problem with it is that it isn’t clear which route to take, so we are trying to outline what we can expect in each case, with pros and cons of each approach, to see how to approach it. We are open to suggestions on how and when to apply the scaling, because the more independent thoughts on it, the better.
On the second point, I think it’s a problem of frame. Mapeadores’ spawn settings were set that way in order to reduce reproducibility—when rounds become the same because you can execute the same strategy over and over, with fixed amounts of zombies and fixed spawn positions, gameplay gets stale. ‘Stale’ might not be apparent now, as CS:GO is still being actively developed and has a very large player base, so people losing interest are washed away by newcomers. However, you have the case of study of CS:S to look at: as gameplay became fixed, people progressively stopped caring. I know I did. The randomness factor in Mapeadores’ spawn in the crowd setting implies that good mother zombies might showcase their skill infecting others, and force mappers to design more robust, interesting layouts for their maps. I think, if anything, that the determinism that’s being seen in maps being won comes mostly from nade usage—and that’s a better discussion, I think—and lazy mapping. We can work out changes for the former and talk with mappers so they address the latter. I think that would be honky dory.
Finally, it is possible that HE nades are too strong. They have received little nerfing over time, unlike molotovs and general knock back. However, before delving into changing things to fit CS:S’ gameplay, I think there are a few things to point out. Most servers are trying to imitate CS:S within CS:GO, by attempting to rebuild a different gameplay feel with settings that ultimately lead to something that can never reach the original. It is not that CS:S is very good, or CS:GO is very bad, but that they are different. When servers remove certain weapons, like molotovs, they reduce the amount of options players have—and do it simply to try to copy a different, more restricted, game. When they try to shoehorn behaviour from a weapon by lacklusterly adding functionality—ignition doesn’t slow you down in CS:GO, so fire nades do it through plugin and often times conflict with map-specific systems—, they alter things beyond what they see.
In that case, I don’t think doing what other servers do—that is, clinging to copy something that doesn’t need copying because you can still play CS:S—is a good idea. I think finely tuning the systems we can take advantage of in CS:GO is wiser, both because they are bound to mix up better and as they will be less error prone. If we follow through, then, the questions should be: How can we better tune HE grenades? What would we need for them to remain useful, but upping the challenge and potentially improving playability as zombies?
I can’t tell you much about EntWatch because we are working out how to better integrate it. Valve introduced game_text again, which gave us hopes for better UI design, but currently it is buggy and clunky, so we can’t use it as it is. Other things and suggestions have been coming up and slowing the pace down, like hiding nearby players, maps being sloppily mapped so their music wasn’t picked up by !stopmusic, contest player models not being selectable, etc. Once certain issues are sorted out and Valve either pushes an update fixing game_text or just ignores it and forces us to use a different system, it will be done.
EDIT: just to argue the points raised by Unorth.
I think the first point is more a reflection on what you—meaning people that think they want to win maps—see the mod as, than a flaw in the spawn system itself. Asking for humans to suicide to get a new round is something that shouldn’t be happening: as long as you can progress, you should. No victory can be rewarding if you’re setting the field to be as fixed as possible, so instead of thinking of ways to survive as a team on the spot you’re just repeating strategies over and over. To argue for bot-like replays is a way to kill spontaneity and, at least in my view, fun.
I agree that first zombies leaving is one big problem with the setup. It is why in certain maps we have been enforcing multiple zombies to spawn, or lower spawn rates. Doing so, mother zombies become more robust to disconnect and trolling, either voluntary or otherwise. There was a thread about it, where I asked for maps in which the same policy could be applied. That should do this some good.
Zombie boosting, aside from being already punishable, is going to happen regardless of the spawn setting. Yes, you can argue that if zombies spawn back it’s harder for them to be sent forward—but you can also argue that if they spawn in the middle of the crowd, the net pushback from the majority of players will defuse most trolling. In the former case, trolling is a black and white issue but you need policing. In the latter, the server polices itself, because by definition players are trying to survive pushing zombies away, and a troll becomes a less effective force when the rest of the server pushes back.
Finally, more than half of the maps you’ve mentioned are set up for spawn in the crowd. In fact, I don’t think any map can’t be any more set up for it than Frostdrake (multiple spawns, which can meet up, converging into several different paths, so players can easily isolate the infection and distribute themselves) or Mako (which was designed for whole train parts to get infected). I think you might be blaming spawn for the second-order consequence of HE nades or trolling, but those are separate issues.
For Nades we can maybe disable rebuying more so it lets players choose wisely when to use such as using it for mother zombie spawn, saving themselves, using it at the end. Its ridiculous how we can buy so many nades, 2 grenades and 3 mollys. We should reduce bizon and other popular weapon knockback multiplier down by .1?
I actually agree with that, I’ve never liked the fact that you can rebuy restricted stuff in !zmarket—feels sloppy. I don’t know how much we will need to modify Z:R—which Mapeadores has already heavily modified—, but that seems like a very reasonable approach to me.
The problem with knock back is that it’s not actually easy to see how ‘high’ it is. As I said, we have a relatively low knock back that adds up due to our movement system. Finding good parameters for it becomes complicated because it’s hard to simulate gameplay in the server with different populations, map types, etc. We can still give it a shot, though—we have been tweaking knock back for years to keep it smooth, bit by bit, in mostly unnoticeable ways.
No quiero repetir lo que ya se ha dicho, pero algunos de los puntos de los que habláis son complementarios entre ellos, es decir, creéis que el spawn está mal porque es una lotería y que la gente usa la granada solo en el spawn, y a la vez decís que la granada está demasiado fuerte. Si cambiamos las dos cosas, el spawn se hace aburrido y las granadas inútiles. El retroceso puede ser moldeado teniendo en cuenta que el servidor va mejor y es lógico que se pueda incrementar más la dificultad, pero quizás no el problema no es que sea demasiado fácil, sino que ahora es más fácil defenderse de los zombies.
Las granadas no es que sean muy fuertes, sino que tienen un rango más alto de explosión. Pero a diferencia de otros servidores, para que al tirar una granada el zombie no salte dentro de la zona de barricada, la explosión empuja hacia arriba.
I’ve checked and linking !zmarket and buy zone weapon purchases together so they add up into the same limit should be easy. Since it makes some pretty good sense, we will look at that as soon as possible.
KnockbackAgree, knockback can be nerfedSpawnPersonally, I like the random factor, gives variation.
More zombies would feel good though, if the starting zombies can’t infect anyone, it’s ridicilous.
Doesn’t have to be alot moreNadesPersonally I like nades, as they feel more tactical.
A nade has a big impact, instead of just mindlessly shooting 24/7.
But the amount could be reduces, or remove Molotovs.
Or compensate this buff with another nerf.
It also depends on the spawn, if the spawn remains lottery, you are practically forced to use a HE grenade at start. It could be a hard choice, but some maps really depend on nade game play (frostdrake, ladders part). So I would remain with 2 HE grenades at least in that case.
Another thing I have thought off is, the power of nades strongly depends on the people using them. Sometimes people never use them. If you are the only one using nades, you’ll be thankful for multiple nades.
Maybe a system that could reduce explosion range, etc… according to the amount of nades used? With a small timer that regens a bit of the power lost (faster if power is low?)
You gotta keep regular teams in mind as well a bit
You just described the idea Morell has been chewing on for a while. The problem is seeing how to scale it—though I think it’s also a good approach. With it, mother zombies at spawn wouldn’t be sent to the stratosphere, as nades wouldn’t stack up in knock back as much. If you guys agree, this should also be a simple implementation.
This, paired with the Z:R modification to intertwine buy zone and !zmarket purchases, should change gameplay enough to make an impact.
On the subject of nades and maintaining the current spawn system, would it be possible to keep the knockback (nerfed ofc) while the zm’s spawn but later in the round have the he only slow the zombies/stop their momentum (with the way cs go has the tagging I think this could work, and we wouldn’t need to resort to the fire nades that slow like other servers, but nerfing the impact of nades later on the map). Another thing about the current spawn is that if a person is behind the current mother zombie they would have no other choice but shoot the mother zombie forward, not as a troll but as you said a way to survive, this being another major flaw I forgot to add. Maybe we could have the mother zombie spawn higher up (same x and y but higher up in the z axis), making it so they won’t be able to instantly zombie train the humans on some maps (wanderers door level) and the nades would still be useful to help save people that were behind the zombies. I tried to make all the changes I suggested work together (nade change and zm spawn).
Additionaly I didn’t intend to sound like I was “demanding” for an instant revamp but instead that these factors of gameplay deserve another look after we got the new server, so trying to get the community as well as the managers point on view on the matter.
What I thought was over the course of the map like, you start at 100% power, every nade -5 % (of remaining total%), every 30 seconds you get X% back (X scales up as you have lower total%).
AND decrease nade power when used massively in a short time. (this comes after calculating the nade power)
Just suggestions these, sounds awesome if its worked on.
Generally, I don’t think having the mechanics of a gameplay element change mid-game is a good idea. It’s better to have things do one thing right, so I think it would be better to tweak them. Also, tagging doesn’t have enough effect to have that much of an impact—and even then, our movement system has it disabled to ensure zombies can move as freely as possible. I think other alternatives, like what Rokon suggests about HE knock back not stacking up as much or at all, would make more sense. It’s not settled, though, so other suggestions will help.
I feel you’re using the wrong frame for when zombie spawns in front of you. Most of the time, unless the map is as narrow as only allowing to have one long line of players, you will see players moving to the sides and shooting. In doing so, they can shoot the zombie, even if forward, while advancing normally. We have all seen instances when a team successfully push zombies ahead into a corner, pass them by and then zombies follow the tail of the human group. That’s a win in my book, because it adds an extra optionality depth to gameplay. Of course, if players are not in the state of flow that lets them redirect the situation, they fail—as it should happen, I think.
As to spawning the mother zombie higher, I’m not sure that would help. First, it has the obvious technical difficulty of ‘higher’ potentially being ‘inside a wall’. Then, it would probably worsen the potential to send zombies ahead—often times, when you wanna troll, you shoot a zombie in the head while you crouch so the resulting direction is slightly upwards and, thus, further away from the lack of friction. If instead of raising the player it was pushed upwards, it would be akin to automatically nading the zombie, which would probably make it harder for zombies. I am not too sold on this take, because it looks like an instance of an XY problem, sort of.
EDIT: whoops, misunderstood Rokon.
I don’t think that changing how a mechanic works throughout the same round is sane, and even less to do it based on round time. Imagine a round in which there are 20 zombies from the beginning and it’s pretty tense: the scaling would eventually make it very hard for humans, even if they were doing exceptionally well. Likewise, imagine the complementary situation: for nades to let the few zombies do anything, they’d have to wait into the round, incentivising NOT playing. I misunderstood as scaling on-air (or when thrown multiple nades) because that is both more situational and constant across gameplay. In that case, a good team will need to appropriately time their nades, as otherwise their joined effects will be lower than the effect of each of them on their own.
I may be repeating what rokon said but nades could only make a zombie move away from the friction point and not make them go higher, adding up to the tactical aspect. For example: instead of using 10 nades and make them go have a talk with god by the clouds, only the zombies that are currently on the ground get affected by the push up, making it only give the zombies already airborn a slight nudge (obviously on the ground will also have to count for max jump height as to counter bhopers), so instead of spamming nades, using them 1 by 1 tactically would be better.
EDIT(forgot to mention the spawn):I didn’t intend on it being a big raise but only a minor one so that infection didn’t start right away. Obviously this wouldn’t work on every map (ex mako trains) but for something as linear as say wanderers in most cases (having also a large z axis dimension) this could work out even though I don’t think it is the best solution, but was just adding it to the suggestion pile.
But that could be a nice way to do it as well, would add more timing to it, making it more tactical instead of blindly throwing nades, you’ll be punished for just spamming nades.
It’s kind off hard, the current spawn system relies on zombies being able to infect in the beginning.
If you make it even harder for the zombie, you’ll only have the mother zombies in the beginning.
Maybe combined with increase in zombie in spawn?
You’ll have the same effect as other servers in this way, if people act accordingly.
Summary:
Make it harder for zombiemother to instantly chain infect (maybe use zombie knock up effect)
Increase zombie spawn to compensate.
Have same amount of zombies ± spawning as other servers, making it easier for zombies. But all of it will depend on how the people react (skill bound to human players).
Yeah, I think that HE changes would be sensible. It should be relatively feasible too, so we could try that alongside with knock back changes and the zmarket/buyzone tweaks and see how stuff develops.
EDIT: updated to reflect Rokon’s edit.
I think the HE tweaks might already balance out the amount of zombie trains that can happen. Adding extra stuff to artificially get to a goal usually means building very brittle solutions that don’t work that well. Seeing how the changes interact with each other and keeping things minimalistic—so it’s easier to understand ingame flow—will probably lead to better outcomes.
Since the zombie will still be pushed upwards, just stay up less time (as the nades don’t stack up as much), it should be the same as it is now—but with the zombie having a chance to infect, so it improves the overall amount of zombies in an average round. I’m not sure zombie-trains are as much an issue of the spawn system or the nades as it is an issue of people trying to live by static strategies. If we noticed it was a problem, we could then get some extra alternatives thrown in.
As far as I understand, the main point of discussion here is variety (which the spawn system with zombies in the crowd brings) vs. balance (which the spawn system with zombies behind the crowd brings).
While it’s obvious that spawning zombies in the crowd brings more varied gameplay at the start of the round, I think that it doesn’t necessarily result in players having more varied gameplay experience all in all; and the variety that this spawn system brings does not necessarily feel fun. The game mod has a couple of innate qualities, that make me feel this way.
First of all, players can make progress through a map only as long as there are some humans alive. Making progress not only feels like an achievement, but most importantly it enables playing in other parts of the map, which gives more unique and varied experience than anything else. As a side effect, this also creates progression oriented mindset.
Secondly, each map has an endgame objective, that can only be completed by humans by making it to the end of the map. While zombies can win a battle against humans, they can never win the war (a map). This creates (human) victory oriented mindset. Moreover, in multilevel maps human victory is a necessary condition to progress to the next level (so humans are even more eager to achieve it).
Zombie spawn system in the crowd doesn’t actually affect the progression/victory oriented mindset. In order to change the mindset you would need to:
– make it unnecessary to make progress (move) through the map (but this would turn zombie escape into zombie mod);
– make it unnecessary to complete an objective at the end of the round or make the completion of the objective possible by either humans or zombies (but that would be a different game, not the zombie escape that we all currently play).
I think that no amount of words can change the mindset either, because every single day, every single map and every single round fosters the progression/victory oriented mindset (whether you as a player want it or not, even if you acknowledge it and try to resist it).
From my experience, this is how zombie spawn system in the crowd works in practice:
– If there is an average number of zombies in the beginning of the map (after the initial infections), the round is not much different than with the zombie spawn behind humans.
– If there are so many zombies in the beginning of the round, that humans lose hope to make noticeable progress (compared to the previous attempts), they feel discouraged from continuing playing the round. Zombies are also not necessarily excited about it; if it is one of the several attempts to beat the level of the map, they may actually prefer to progress further even as a zombie, than to repeat the same part of the map over and over. In this situation some humans often start to ask others to commit a suicide (to not waste their time pointlessly and time available to finish the map) and do it themselves, the remaining humans cannot resist zombies at all and either die pretty quickly or hide around the map. In the latter scenario it drags out longer: some zombies may need to go forward to trigger the next teleport, so that other zombies could finish off the remaining humans when they get teleported to the same spot. In either case, players do have to repeat the beginning of the map more times than they may find it interesting (the beginning of each map is played more often than further parts anyways). It is not rare that repeated failed tries lead to players abandoning the map (by rocking the vote, for example), thus missing the chance to experience further parts of it. Players become even more inclined to abandon a map, if they feel that there might be not enough time to finish all levels of it.
– If there are very few zombies, players can progress to further parts of the map easily. But due to lack of resistance, the first part of the map goes for humans as stale and repetitive as it’s only possible. Zombies don’t feel engaged at the first part of the map either, because they can’t realistically put any noticeable pressure on humans.
The point is that when variety goes to extremes, it does not bring fun with it.
This is especially true when the variety is a lot random based and the fate of the whole round is decided at the very start of it. An example of semi-random, semi-skill related event that brings variety to the gameplay without the negative effects, is a boss fight near the end of the level, with the final stand against zombies after it. But zombie spawn in the crowd is a lot random based and happens at the very start of the round, so the first few moments of possible intense fighting, when you try to avoid zombie infection, are not worth the consequences (in my opinion).
As to zombie spawn behind humans, it’s not like it doesn’t offer any variety of gameplay at all. While the number of zombies may be standard (as far as I understand it still depends on the total number of players on the server), the chances of certain zombies acting actively or passively are random (it depends on the current attitude of the players who have become zombies), as well as the number of AFK/late reacting humans. Maps often add some random factors as well, when they have a few spawn locations and a few routes (that humans/zombies can choose).
I think that zombie spawn behind humans provides enough variety of gameplay, as much as it is possible without going to extremes (which happens with zombie spawn in the crowd). So for zombie escape I prefer the system when zombies are spawn behind humans and have to chase them.