[Suggestion] Nades, knockback and spawn

Servers CS:GO | Zombie Escape
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Con el sistema de spawn detrás de los humanos lo que consigues es que en muchos mapas no veas a ningún zombie hasta el primer hold o incluso más, y consigues que la gente solo corra, sin mirar atrás. En el CS:S lo teníamos así y la gente se acostumbró a no cubrir, corrían hasta el siguiente HOLD y en el tiempo que tardaba el zombie en llegar, ya se abría la puerta.

No tiene sentido que tengamos que cambiar todo lo que hasta ahora nos ha hecho únicos y visto los resultados, nos ha favorecido. Tan aburrido no será digo yo…

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About this im here only for the spawn there should be some maps that needs a better spawn for the zombies even if its true cs:s before they didnt cover at all but now its cs:go with lot of different stuff. I hope we all come to a solution

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Westersand, Sandstorm (Final level in particular), BP-Infested Prison or Wanderers are all examples of maps that do not play well under the Spawn in the crowd system. Previous arguments against changes have been made specifically with regards to favoring higher skilled players and killing the enjoyment for newer players. Put any of these maps into rotation while a substantially new player base is online without anyone leading (while grabbing there attention) and watch the server empty. The current system makes the game far less open towards new players and acts as a gateway for bringing new players into the community. Spawn in the crowd system favors players who are quick off the mark and bhop quickly to avoid choke points.Should any of the quick players become first zombie the round is over instantly as they are ahead of the “normal” players. If I wanted to highlight changes to make the server harder and less enjoyable for new players I would have suggested removing mollies and reducing knockback only. These settings should ONLY be changed with a change to the spawn system.

The trade off for more difficult settings is less trolling, easier gateway for newer players and more balanced rounds. If you do not see this as an improvement in gameplay then I believe you see this mod differently to a majority of its regular player base.

Zombie Escape has moved on from the CSS days. In fact the community has moved on from the CSS days. The maps currently in development have better hold points and requires mechanically based skill AFTER the first 20 seconds of the spawn which almost certainly reduces down the number of players who will reach the end. If I wear some rose tinted glasses I can see your justification for the spawn in the crowd system creating a “unique” game play experience that “changes” every round. Simple fact of the matter is, it doesn’t. It just artifically inflates the zombie infection and stipulates a variable degree of whether the team has sufficient numbers to proceed with the map. The mentality of the community has been directed towards winning as a counter terrorist as is highlighted by FireStarters post. This would be clearly evident having actually played at peak hours during the “regular” hours of the server. If you consider this “boring” then you have not paid attention to some of the most successful/played maps being produced in the community over the last 2 years (E.g Santaassasination, Rizomata, Gris, Tilex).

The community is obviously passionate about the concept of making improvements to the server based on the sheer number of posts in the last few weeks with regards to the subject. As someone who has played consistently over the last 3 years in the community while leading new and regular players to victory across ZE content I would like to think that opinions on game balance with at least have some weighting.

2 Likes
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A few remarks:

  • Human-centric framing of the gamemode depends on the maps you’re playing and how. Maps like ATIX, Sorrento, NY marathon, blackmesa remix and others have a nonlinear aspect in which ‘winning’ as a human is as rewarding as doing it as a zombie, because the focus is on a different kind of gameplay. If you prefer maps that only make the gamemode fun for humans that’s fine, but forcing that view on all maps means cutting off gameplay options.
  • As I understand it, the main point of discussion here is dynamism (which the spawn system with zombies in the crowd brings) versus repetitiveness (which the spawn system with zombies behind the crowd brings). Notice I only swapped the nouns in FireStarter’s post with something that makes sense with what we have discussed throughout the thread. The takeway, however, is quite different–how likely is it we are just doing that aimlessly?
  • It is a common thread throughout ZE to blame external factors when people don’t want to play maps you like. In this case, you say new players leave when there is no one leading in ‘tryhard’ maps because the spawn makes them too hard. Not liking linear and repetitive maps is another suitable frame, one which would also be consistent with people leaving. They’re both arbitrary.
  • Unorth, you are yet again citing maps that were designed with spawn in the crowd in map, or that work fine with them: Westersand has an open area spawn, BP prison was designed for it in CS:S as far as I’m aware. Considering that most maps are fine tuned throughout the server in all regards (knockback, spawn times, whatever), it’s most likely that they’re missing polish on that ground than anything else.
  • There are no rose tinted glasses regarding the spawning system because Mapeadores in CS:S used spawn in the back. It’s something that was done for CS:GO, at least in the context of Mapeadores, and not with the aim to remake classic CS:S gameplay, but to make ZE on CS:GO a different beast from the tryhard-driven, repetitive ZE the mod became.
  • The complexity on holds has, objectively, decreased with time. Although the amount of playtime on the mod is irrelevant, I’ve been playing ZE since it was nothing but boatescape and trainescape. I am aware of how things have changed, and if anything, everything has gotten more linear than ever in the last 4 years.
  • The mentality of a subset of the community converging to what other communities deem ‘good’ does not equal to the whole set of the community. We have already discussed this: you have to take into account what other players, interested in other kinds of maps and gameplay, think. I’ve seen players go out of their way to convince people NOT to vote the maps for which you want the change, because NOT everybody likes them.

They probably don’t matter, though.

EDIT: Also, Westersand isn’t even on rotation yet–how do you know it doesn’t work? If a map with several spanning paths from spawn isn’t suited for spawn in the crowd I’ll be damned. That probably doesn’t matter either, though.

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Human-centric framing of the gamemode depends on the maps you’re playing and how. Maps like ATIX, Sorrento, NY marathon, blackmesa remix and others have a nonlinear aspect in which ‘winning’ as a human is as rewarding as doing it as a zombie, because the focus is on a different kind of gameplay. If you prefer maps that only make the gamemode fun for humans that’s fine, but forcing that view on all maps means cutting off gameplay options.

Human-centric framing of the game mod is primarily defined by the gameplay designed by the mapper themselves. As you have stated you have seen the evolution of ZE from boatescape, trainescape, lilla panic, atix to the maps being delivered today. The mentality of the community is defined by the map pool rotation. The direction of gameplay away from the “classic” ze maps has been dictated by the Zombie Escape community as a whole (Not just Mapeadores). At no point have I forced the “human centric” frame of mind on other maps in rotation which have not bought into the 20 min multi boss fight & multiple human/zombie item design. By suggesting a subset of maps it is implicit that I see this change being brought into to cater for specific maps where by the spawn in the crowd design does not fit and previous attempts at fine tuning the spawn timers & zombie numbers has failed.

The complexity on holds has, objectively, decreased with time. I am aware of how things have changed, and if anything, everything has gotten more linear than ever in the last 4 years.

Yes, emphasis in the mod surrounding defense points has diminished a good bit in recent years. However the emphasis on individual mechanical skill has bloomed with developers swooning towards boss fights, traps & lasers.

The mentality of a subset of the community converging to what other communities deem ‘good’ does not equal to the whole set of the community. We have already discussed this: you have to take into account what other players, interested in other kinds of maps and gameplay, think. I’ve seen players go out of their way to convince people NOT to vote the maps for which you want the change, because NOT everybody likes them.

  • I have factored into account new players with a majority of my suggestions. Creating balanced gameplay means making it inclusive for new players along with maintaining enough diversity to retain the attention of your regular clients. I see the conversion rate of return players and see there development from first time players into seasoned regulars on a daily basis.

  • If you’ve seen people go out of their way to convince people to NOT vote for maps we wish to change, perhaps have you considered the reason they do not want to play these maps is partly to do with the game settings or the map pool? People play the game for different reasons. As a community we should look to make changes which will have the most positive outcome in catering for both styles of play in the game.

  • The current spawn system impacts gameplay which is counteractive towards the retention of players new players regardless of whether its categorically a try hard map or a casual map. There is nothing more demoralizing for a new/lesser experienced player to be culled every round due to a lack of understanding of how to navigate the buy menu quickly to get out of spawn before the path ahead of them is blocked by zombies. Will allowing a new player the opportunity to see more than 20 seconds of a map as a counter terrorist motivate them to return to the server again? The answer to this is unknown. As these players are hypothetical. The main facts we do have to go off is that the active admins on the server answer new players questions on an hourly basis and try to help them get to grips with !zmarket or how to survive a map. The amount of people asking how to buy weapons who die to zombies a few min later and subsequently leave is unprecedented. Is there something that can be done to retain these players? Yes.

  • Do people avoid maps due to constantly dying with Fall Damage? Yes, yes they do, however fall damage is a different discussion that I dont think is even warranted. The fact of the matter is, players dislike maps that they have zero chance of surviving on and will opt to not play those maps. Is this a problem with the game settings? Yes and no. The argument behind a player hitting 50 hours for VIP to then participate in maps like Frostdrake is an entirely different aspect of gameplay & game balance. The fact of the matter is that the settings we choose to utilize has a massive impact on how the server plays and why people continue to play on it.

  • Take Mako Reactor for example. A change was introduced in the P8 version of Mako which removes the teleport on the ladder. Unless you are incredibly quick down that ladder you will get culled by the looming zombie threat behind you. When 7-14 people out of 60 are capable of making it to the end each time as a result is it no surprise that players who are not quick do not want to play the map? This is a self imposed result of Mapeadores changing the map itself. The only people being punished in this situation is the lesser experienced players.

Notice how none of my above points have been directed towards my obvious “biasness” towards try hard maps and a subset of the community?

Mapeadores success at retaining #2/3 in the GameTracker is indicative that there is no problems with the game settings or game balance. At face value you can dismiss community driven suggestions till the cows come home stating that Mapeadores on CSS had this plugin, these settings and as a management team you have learned from the past and will stick to the settings you feel is best. However, after the 4th or 5th thread in the space of 3 weeks asking for changes not just from myself, but from across players representative of different categories of players I would have to argue that what you think is best might not be best for the growth and expansion of the community which currently resides on your server. You can only shut down the communities suggestions and say they have bad suggestions before they move to a service that actually listens to its consumers. A famous example of what is occurring in the community is akin to principal skinner from the television show the Simpsons questioning whether it is he that is out of touch or the kids.

I am not going to argue any more. Ive exhausted every angle to try and help the Mapeadores community through daily hard work and grit to create an attractive environment for people to enjoy themselves on the server. If the servers management believes that current setup is the healthiest option for Mapeadores, very well. Peace.

3 Likes
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  • The first remark you quote was about FireStarter’s post.
  • I don’t know what ‘individual mechanical skill’ is supposed to mean. If it’s about beating bosses and jumping over the same lasers copypasted from mako ad infinitum, I don’t think any server setting is going to affect that much–humans are basically playing a course map with a breakable. Traps have always been an staple of ZE, even though level-based maps made them fade awawy for a while, and they tend to require player memorization over anything else.
  • Imagine a situation in which two people are arguing. One insists the reason for something is X, the other says it may not be X, but Y or some other factor. The second person is not saying what is or what isn’t, but rather than the first person may be seeing X because they WANT to see X.
  • Yes, I’ve also seen players that become regulars. I’m not sure about seasoned. Some like some maps. Some like some other maps. Some join when people start shilling for longer maps. Some join earlier, because the longer maps bore them. Others join sparsely, play short bursts of whatever map and have no preferences one way or another.
  • There are several groups of people liking different map styles. Each group shills for the maps they like, and that at times–noob hour, tryhard time or some other pejorative–other players force them to play other stuff they don’t like. These several groups, with different preferences, have done this forever, in a sort of equilibrium. That equilibrium works, because in the end, each group gets enough of what they want to enjoy. It’s hard to see the bias, as if you are in either group you play with people that agree with you, so you think most people agree with you, even if that is not the case.
  • A person taking too long to buy would have problems with zombies spawning in the back or in the crowd, because in either case the zombies teleport to where they are or are ahead.
  • Fall damage has not been brought once in this thread. We already discussed about having damage scales instead of full flat no fall damage, and it would probably open up more avenues for gameplay, which is good. I don’t think it has much to do with spawn settings, knockback or nades, though.
  • Mako p8 was released more than 2 years ago. I don’t know what the problem is now, 2 years later, on the same version, or how it relates to all of this, but Syoudous has told you for a long while that you can talk with him for map-related issues (stripper configs and the likes).

Humans are bad at noticing their own biases. I know this because I’m pretty bad at it. We’re also bad at taking into account the points which trigger cognitive disonance in us, like knowing in advance that a map won’t work because reasons.

The arguments have not been about Mapeadores having a certain plugin in CS:S. If anything, it has been the opposite: all servers in CS:S had a plugin, which CS:GO servers are trying to mimic instead of focusing on making CS:GO’s ZE new and engaging. Most of the times CS:S is brought up, is as an example of how NOT to do things, because ZE got stale there already and the idea is to avoid that.

It’s not about an imaginary us either, thinking certain settings are what univocally should be, because if that were the case there would have been no changes whatsoever throughout the last months. If the suggestions are to be taken as ‘my way or the highway’, they seem less so. If the problem is that the suggestions that are agreed upon are not implemented instantly, that’s a different thing–namely, that doing things is never instantaneous.

Finally, the fun part about that scene from The Simpsons is that it’s possible to have multiple Skinners at the same time, all of them out of touch, but thinking it’s just the others who are. Skinners might even realize this, and know that there may be many Skinners; everybody might be one, in fact. But they are still oblivious to the fact that they are out of touch. Framing things in us vs. them through and through makes the conversations those Skinners have very unproductive, because for every word that is being said, a whole point is being ignored.

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Starting off I started this post so the community (all different player types) could discuss on their point of view of these aspects.

Now while I agree that humans aren’t particularly good at noticing their own bias, I’d argue that Unorth is biased (theoretically speaking) in favor of spawn in crowd. Let’s put things into perspective. Unorth has been playing for a fair number of years and as a known leader he has both the knowledge and mobility to take a team to victory, so with this in mind it would be better for him to have spawn in crowd since he can easily be with those at the front in the spawn phase. Considering a server of 60, with spawn in crowd we will have 5 zombies (1/12 chance) and with spawn behind we would have 10 zombies (1/6), so Unorth should favor spawn in crowd since there is a bigger chance he will stay a human after the infection and infection train since he has good mobility and can escape the starting zone fast and easily. This said I don’t think the “Maybe you don’t see the cons because you support it” sort of thing is nullified.

Now the only reason we can “change” the way we react to this spawn system is because we have plugins that affect how knockback work, making it possible to “shoot a zombie into a wall”, and when (because I think it is a must) reduce the impact of knockback this could no longer be the case.

The spawn as said by Unorth hurts newcomers since they would likely spawn in front of these, so I don’t think I need to support this case too much.

Now with morell’s post it gave me an idea. Pardon my bad translation but somewhere on the response I read “Many times people would just run to the first hold point not worrying about zombies until than”, which can be a con of the spawn behind system, BUT what if we make it so they spawn 3 seconds after the round start, therefore fast players can bhop those 3 seconds and afterwards help defend the newcomers, and making it so the round doesn’t spiral out of control the first 5 seconds of gameplay.

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I think that you can safely come to any zombie escape server (including Mapeadores) at any time to see how big is the subset of the community, who likes it when there’s a big zombie infection at the start of a round and is excited about new opportunities to defend against zombies (and/or to attack humans) in the beginning of the map that it creates. I’m sure that this is something that is going to be spoken loud and clear both in voice and text chat. :slight_smile:

This experiment can demonstrate, players with what type of mentality this game mode attracts and what type of mentality it fosters among the existing players.

I’m sure that you know that you cannot make someone happy by doing to him things that are against his own inner convictions, even if you are doing this out of the best intentions.

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I prefer spawn in the crowd system, as said I think it gives more diversity each round and forces players to defend since the begining of the round.

Enviado desde mi iPhone utilizando Tapatalk

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Yes on the crowd it is good but if u have 1 zombie everytime on some maps they just killing the zombie and calling admin everytime is getting boring and if there are no admins u get bored fast. Server needs a update asap some maps should be updated so we can play new content and make the community like how it was before im pretty sure everyone is waiting for it (endwatch; are we gonne be the last server having this? We gotta think about the future of mapeadores and go forward we lacking for now.

1 Like
31

Según lo que habéis dicho, ( no se si he entendido la mitad…) pero yo creo que todo esta bien como esta, el spawn es mucho mas divertido así tanto por los humanos que por los zombis, si salen desde el principio tardan mucho mas tiempo para llegar y ya ha pasado medio mapa sin defender. Por otro lado las granadas se podría hablar pero igualmente en el estilo de este server así están mejor, del otro modo en el source había muchas tragedias por culpa de las granadas, los lanzaba para delante, saltaban barricadas, etc.
No juego ni he jugado a muchos otros servers, pero solo quería decir esto porque creo que estas cosas son la gracia de este server.