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Messages - Reshy

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1
Zombie Hell / Re: Reworked Team Prefs / Selection
« on: September 26, 2015, 07:49:03 pm »
If possible can the mod be setup to auto-assign your team preference based on what team you choose to join?  Eg.  If you just start a game and you choose survivors (even during a current round) your preference is set to survivors.  If are a survivor and you switch to zombie you are set to auto-pref to zombie.

There has been issues with players setting preference to Survivors and then switching to zombie during the setup phase or other times, skewing team balance.  I would recommend (if possible) that if you attempt to change team off survivor as a survivor that it doesn't let you, instead setting your preference to zombies. 

2
Zombie Hell / [Suggestion] Perk Ideas, Rebalances, and Merges
« on: September 22, 2015, 12:32:34 am »
Just a quick list of ideas I have for tweaking or altering existing feats, and possible entirely new ones.  What their quality would be I have no idea but I can only estimate.  The numbers are just spitballed and if ever implemented would likely need to be tested extensively.


Battle-Born:  The battle-born is a person born and bred for war and long-protracted engagements.  Whenever a Battle-Born kills a zombie they gain +2% attack bonus (Max +160%), and +1% defense bonus (Max 80%), and they gain +20hp on kill.  These bonuses are retained so long as the Battle-Born has killed or assist-killed a zombie within a special timer.  The timer begins on their first kill, having 20 seconds as the maximum before losing their battle-born fury.  Each kill adds 2 seconds and each successful hit with a weapon adds 1 second.  If the timer reaches zero the Battle-Born loses 4% attack and 2% defense till they return to the normal values.
Replaces: Stir-Crazy & Wise


Leadership:  Leadership now instead grants minor bonuses continuously to allies within 1000/hu.  It increases attack damage by 20% and defense by 15% to all allies.  This stacks with other bonuses (up to their normal cap), but not with other Leadership bonuses.  The Leadership player gains the ability to drop supply crates like Supplier currently does, but it also gives health to the user and the Leader can use their own crates after a short delay.
Replaces:  Leadership and Supplier


Valorous:  Valorous grants a constant 15% defense and attack bonus to the user.  Once every 30 seconds, the player may activate a heroic charge, granting them a Battallion's Backup and Kritzkrieg effect to themselves, in addition to existing bonuses.  This boost lasts for 2 seconds for every zombie the player has slain since the last usage of the ability and plus 1 seconds for every assist.  After this heroic charge ends the Valorous player loses their attack bonus, and their defense is debuffed by -35% (So -20% in total, before other modifiers) and their speed drops by 50.  When severely outnumbered (5 to 1 ratio for zombies/survivors) the Valorous player gains continuous Minicrits for the rest of the round until death.


Juggernaut:  Juggernaut once again grants it's +25% damage bonus, +50% defense bonus, and -100 speed penalty and blocks damage from self-inflicted blast damage.  In addition all of their attacks contain more oomph, adding a small amount of additional knockback to all of their attacks.
Replaces:  Juggernaut and Nonlethal


Defender:  The defender can place dispensers in front of them when crouching, they block the defender and zombies but not allies; and in addition whenever a dispenser is destroyed it explodes dealing 100 damage and igniting zombies within 250/hu.  This ability may be used once every 15 seconds.  The Defender has a continuous 33% defense bonus, and regains 25hp any time a zombie breaks a dispenser or dies to a dispenser.
Replaces:  Trapper, Carpenter


Favored:  The favored is surrounded by an aura of holy power.  A favored continuously regenerates 10 hp per second.  When they crouch they share this healing with allies, restoring 5 hit points per second to any allies within 1000/hu.  Furthermore, they gain a steady increase to their critical chance at the rate of 4%/sec (up to 200%), which drops by 20% whenever they attack (or by 2% for every bullet from a pistol, smg, flamethrower or syringe gun).  Any zombie that strikes the Favored is ignited.  Finally, their activated ability (usable once every 60 seconds) deals 100 damage to all zombies in a 500/hu explosion and ignites them.
Replaces:  Holy, Zenlike


Engineer:  The engineer is now his own perk, replacing your perk when selecting the engineer class.  They gain access to a functional dispenser and teleporter (up to level 3), and a 100% functional 1st level sentry or minisentry (The only change being that reloading a sentry still has a down-time like normal).  However, there may only be one engineer per 3 other starting survivors. 




More to come as I think of them.

3
Zombie Hell / Re: Invincible Spies
« on: September 16, 2015, 08:20:40 pm »
If the 5 seconds are a little too much on some maps where spawns could be next to where survivors may camp, this is something worth tweaking. Another option is to change the god mode to be a form where you cannot take damage but are still affected by physics force (explosions, etc).

Is there a way to make it so that zombies are invulnerable while within their spawn zone (only) for 5 seconds?  So if they step out of it they immediately lose it?  Some maps have very close zombie spawns so they can start attacking while still invulnerable.  This is especially true when using scouts or speed-boosting perks like Leap, Swarming, and Rage.

4
Zombie Hell / Re: Balance issues
« on: September 16, 2015, 06:03:58 pm »
I sadly doubt this would change anything or bring more fun to the server. While i agree with some of the ideas, ZF is just too broken a mod to really make work without having a team of Coders who knew the mod inside and out.

What we have here on ZF Hell and Saxton Hell in general, is essentially a one-man coder in college life.  He can't be relied or asked upon to make it all work, and the fact that ZF Maps are so skewed makes this fact all the much worse. Wide scale changes will break some maps, or make others completely garbage for one side or the other.

Look at ZF_Yard, that is my favorite map, as well as my testing grounds for newer weapons and all. Its about as balanced as current ZF gets for either side on a really good day. If something doesn't work there, then its unlikely to work elsewhere unless the planets align.

tl;dr: These changes are unlikely to be implemented, although I do agree with you on some subjects. And all one can hope for is that ZF overall someday gets the overhaul it needs by a much larger scale team with their own server that can serve as an example to others. In the meantime, let's enjoy the one populated ZF server TF2 has left practically.


Proper quality control of the poorer maps might help, there are dozens of maps on the server and quite a far bit of them are incredibly low quality.

5
Zombie Hell / Re: Map Rotation / Map Suggestions
« on: September 15, 2015, 02:18:41 pm »
ZF_Compound allows zombies to escape spawn before the setup ends, I think this version is different from the previous one.  It contains several edits that weren't in existence before and seems more messy than it once was on older versions.  Maybe someone else took over editing of it, but currently it's broken due to zombies being able to escape spawn early.  If an earlier version with the functional spawn doors can be found I would recommend using that.




I may not post here often, but let me give you the lowdown on each.


zf_warhead_mesa's door shouldn't be broken, as far as i've known the map has not ever been updated, and the door works by a survivor standing in the marked area in front, at which point it will slowly open. If there's any problem, my only recommendation is to have the Admin update the map with a different version. Until that happens, should the door be 'jammed' persay, just don't use pyros unless you have supplier and a medic. Otherwise, rely on explosive jumping, sentry wrangling, or other such tactics to skirt the wall.

zf_issac cannot be fixed, the particle effects for the polaroid are simply missing or unusable. The only thing one can do is inform everyone on server of the problem and pray nobody picks it up, it's primary spawn location is in the Depths section of the map behind a breakable wall, usually on a pedestal or floating. The map itself overall is fine, its just that these missing particle effects break the cathedral.

zf_logfort is more of a teamwork driven map. Although I am personally not its largest fan, the problem is remedied by survivors using the lower sections as cover from hunters, and a good team with at least 1 medic of holy-user, and a supplier, makes for a simple victory if one closes themselves in, but not so much as to be affected by sick or tar.

zf_harbor is a map where really the teamwork portion needs to come into play. Don't bullrush over to the first two points unless you know you can put up a good defense. In any case, don't spread yourselves thin, or it'll just be hunters. For the matter, bring along a supplier or two if the ammo becomes a problem. Basic ZF survival rules also apply, but if you find yourselves unable to win. Attempt to hold the last control point instead. It's easily defendable even if no one stands on it due to the open ended nature of it. I've beaten the map plenty of times myself as both sides, and most of the time the RED team wins by a good dose of Teamwork. Sadly, that seems to be lacking these days in alot of teams.


ZF_Warhead_Mesa's door wouldn't open when we did that, so we got killed like that twice before the map was RTV'd.

If ZF_Isaac the map is broken, why have it on the server?  Did the map developer just drop it?  I know it looks pretty, but if the map isn't winnable that's not... good.

ZF_Logfort is a fairly bad map, let's just call it like it is.  If the survivors use the lower sections the hunters will just move down their spawn markers, which solves nothing.  I played that map at least three times now (multiple rounds per session) and it's nigh unwinnable even with a coordinated team.  At least, with what players there were at the time.

ZF_Harbor is also fairly bad, it lacks pickups and cover, the control points are too small so you have to sit directly on it; and the final point is basically indefensible.  That's not good design.  I've tried tackling this with my friends before, and yet that big fat 0 still hangs over the red's winnings.  If you can manage to win it then kudos to you, but if it happens then it's rare.  I myself, nor have my friends (all of which are at least competent at stock tf2) have been able to manage it.

6
Zombie Hell / Re: Balance issues
« on: September 15, 2015, 01:40:18 pm »
Addendum:

I have noticed an issue where sometimes red players will purposely select Survivors as their favored team and then will immediately switch to blue to skew the numbers.  Any solution for this?  Maybe if someone switches off red to blue automatically set their preference to zombies?

7
Zombie Hell / Re: Balance issues
« on: September 15, 2015, 01:08:32 pm »
Continued:

Survivor Perks
Survivor perks are bloated by fairly useless perks that don't really grant much in the way of tangible benefit.  Holy, Carpenter, Charitable, Nonlethal, Selfless, Stash, Trapper, Tantrum, and of course Traitor.  Oh my god why is 'Traitor' a thing, is griefing really encouraged in zombie fortress? 

Holy:  Holy is basically zenlike, but it also heals allies.  But at the same time it doesn't grant the scaling critical-hit chance.  If I were to do anything I'd probably merge it with Zenlike and give the perk an activated ability that ignites nearby zombies for mini-crit damage for a few seconds.  That way you heal yourself fairly quickly, you get your "god given crits", you can act as a stand-in medic, and you can sometimes just kill a bunch of zombies.  With fire!  Also may be worth considering letting it overheal players like a medic can.

Carpenter:  This perk I don't really know what it's purpose is.  It creates obnoxious barricades that your teammates cannot get through and lets you potentionally grief them by blocking hallways they're trying to travel down.  Were I to do anything I'd make it so you can place dispensers like you can using RTD's dispenser placement, so you can create walls that your teammates can pass through, but not zombies.  Perhaps merging it with Trapper or Supplier might help.

Charitable:  This is a weird perk because it requires you getting kills, but your allies taking the benefits.  It doesn't really synergize too well with anything in it's current state.  My idea is that it should be a reversed stash, or a system that gives bonuses to allies (and yourself) that assist you or you assist them (thus being useful to take as a medic).  Kind of like friend, but less discriminating.

Nonlethal:  Take a damage penalty with all weapons to have silly bouncy bullets with your weapons!  Wait.  Bullets only?  This kind of ruins the purpose of this perk entirely because you cannot bounce people around with melee weapons, explosives, or fire.  Which would be hilarious and probably useful.  My only idea would be to either make it apply to all weapons (thus being useful to classes other than engineer, who really have better things to do with their perk than gimmicks) or to merge it into Juggernaut, so that all of their attacks have that knock-back effect.

Selfless:  This is basically the trolling perk of zombie-fortress.  You take this perk, walk into the zombie spawn and explode and get a lot of players to roll their eyes at you while absolutely not contributing to the survivors in any way, shape, or form.  I believe this effect might be best suited as part of Heroic, you know the part where the hero blows himself up to save his friends sort of thing.  As is this is the Selfish perk.

Stash:  This is another Selfish perk, and does not encourage teamwork.  I would rather see this perk removed entirely.

Traitor:  This is the quintessential griefing feat.  While the other two above are merely selfish, this one is actively detrimental to the survivors and only serves the sole purpose to grief the team.  This feat should most definitely be removed in it's entirety.

Tantrum:  This is another one of those feats that I haven't quite understood the use of.  It's decent in some cases, but fairly limited.  Again this along with Selfless I believe should either be added into Heroic or Leadership.  Perhaps changing leadership to have the last man standing benefits, and heroic to have the tantrum and explode on death abilities to make them suitably heroic as they can make heroic charges and if killed they try to take the zombies with them.

Trapper:  This is one of those perks that I cannot remember the last time someone used it.  I honestly cannot recall what this even does exactly.  All I can say is that it's obviously not useful if no one's (ab)using it.  Might be worth merging into one of the other perks, wherever it'd make the most sense or the perk is lacking.

Juggernaut:  Now you may find this a weird inclusion, but it's true.  Juggernaut no longer did it's original goal, in fact it kind of doesn't have a purpose besides for demoknights to annoy players with.  The original perk used to block self-inflicted blast damage, added kncokback to melee, double yoru health (due to 50% defense), and grant you +25% extra damage, at the cost of -100 speed.  The original perk was great at what it did, it was slightly weak in some places but overall it was good at doing it's job.  However people whine (as they always do) that it was overpowered, so now it's kind of in this weird limbo state where it accomplishes none of it's original leaving it fairly useless.

Ninja:  Ninja was created for the classes who wanted to rocket jump without rocket jumping.  However it's often been called out as a "stalling" perk and has been nerfed repeatedly since (but never really addressing any of the issues).  If I were to do a rework, it would be that when you select Ninja you get the Grapple Hook from Mannpower, you can use it once every 2-3 seconds.  The longer you remain grappled to something (past say 3 seconds?) the larger defense penalty you get, once your defense penalty hits -50% you ungrapple and lose it for 10 seconds while your defense recovers at the rate of 5%/sec  You also gain a +50 speed bonus.  This replaces the weird and quirky jumping mechanic with something more ninja-like and something probably easier to balance overall. However I am just throwing numbers out here.

Wise:  Survivor's Vindictive, it's no-longer really that useful anymore due to the near constant stream of nerfs to it that have rendered it all but moot at this point in time.  I don't understand why people hate this perk so much, probably because if pulled off right it's nearly unstoppable.  Of course, this is the one out of the several dozen guys that actually use the perk that you killed without even noticing.  I believe it should be re-buffed to it's previous state, but that it my opinion.  Wise is basically that one heavy that regularly pub-stomps other bad players and cause them to complain on the forum about how OP the heavy is even though other tactics are more effective/more valid overall.


Survivor Mechanics
Some of the survivor mechanics just don't work as planned.

Setup Times:  Setup times are not uniform for most maps, they ought to be.  If it were me I'd make all maps grant a 30-60 second setup (whichever is more balanced) so red can find where they want to go and setup shop before they get immediately swarmed.  To ensure this happens on maps without proper spawn protections (Such as ZF_Yard) all blue zombies have a -1000 speed penalty till those 30-60 seconds is up.  During this time red will have ample time to pick their right class, find their buddies, find a place to hole out the zombie Apocalypse and setup any buildings they need. 

Changing Classes:  I find that (especially on some more poorly designed maps) red players often suicide trying to change classes, either because the respawn room visualizer is not setup properly, or the map just lacks one entirely.  To fix this I think two things should happen.  First off Red should have instant respawn during the setup (and 'zombification' should never occur during the setup).  Second, there should be a "preferred survivor class" option so you don't constantly spawn as a random class whenever the round stats and possibly get stuck with it.

Sentries:  Playing on Zombie Hell I found that sentries are somehow even weaker than they used to be, possessing next to no ammo capacity in addition to being restricted to level 1.  I mean they've always been weakened a bit, but I feel that they are almost appaulingly weak currently, no one really seems to play engineer anymore unless they're intending to be soley the barricade junkie (and that's boring).  Part of me would like to see you able to upgrade sentries if you've got the metal which will make engineers a bit better.  The reload mechanic is fairly interesting, but would be better if sentries weren't given super low ammo to begin with.  Were I to throw around numbers I would say 30-50 bullets for a level 1; 60-100 bullets for a level 2; and 80-100 bullets and 5-100 rockets for a level 3.  This gives engineers something to look forward to, and makes sentries slightly more combat capable.  Perhaps balance this by having a class restriction for full sentries (extras become minis) or having Engineer be a perk in and of itself.

Dispensers:  Currently they're little more than barricades, part of me is wishes that there was a perk that made them fully-functional dispensers, if that could be balanced somehow.  On the other hand, even if they're never allowed that functionality I believe they should be able to be upgraded at the very least if engineers got the spare metal.

Overheal:  Currently medics have half the overheal that they normally do, but overheal lasts forever.  I don't know if that's balanced or not, but I will say that zombies have an abundance of perks that increase their damage output (vindictive, horrifying, alpha, rage, etc.) so I don't really know if lowering the overheal cap really is necessary.

Dominations:  Often times most blue players feel bad because the game reminds them that this guy killed them three times in a row.  This makes them mad and more likely to whine on the forums about how zombies "don't win enough" because they cannot kill all of red team without dying more than three times.  So if it is possible this mechanic should be hidden or removed if at all possible.  This will help put Blue and Red in the right mindset for the game, I feel.

Reduced Ammo Capacity:  The black box, the flamethrowers, and some other weapons for some reason have incredibly low ammo capacities and I don't really understand why.  Most of the existing maps already have too little ammo as is so I don't really understand why these are further reduced.  My guess is again, more complaining.  You get a single good pyro or good blackbox soldier and everyone's whining about how overpowered it is (It's not, the blackbox got nerfed recently in fact; no longer granting HP or multi-target hits) and I feel that these are really quite unjustified.  The Blackbox grants you a maximum of 20 HP per rocket, that means a full clip heals you about one heavy punch or two scout bat hits.  That's not a lot.  The plog also takes forever to charge up (which is more fine) but lasts shorter (less fine) and no longer gives protection when activating (even less fine) which while still decent it's really quite de-fanged of what it could be.  The Phlog was already nerfed in regular tf2 to provide only 75% damage reduction instead of 90% like it used to, so I don't see why this nerf for the phlog needs to stay in place either.


Map Mechanics
Many maps in Zombie Fortress are just bad, poorly designed or far-far-far-FAR too skewed towards zombies winning.


Red Defense:  Having red on defense makes sense and can work when done right.  However most maps are still in the "TF2" style of design here the point is a small square of land and not a large enough of an area for red really to have any option but to have people standing directly on the capture point.  It's also worth noting that in arena-based games nobody likes people who like winning by cap.

Red Offense:  Having red on offense almost never works, zombies have too many advantages and maps that run like this often contain instant death pits to kill survivors for some inane reason.  This means survivors never win these maps unless the zombies all let them (Via conga party or what not).  Furthermore, on many maps the capture point is very small (same problem with Red defending) and/or blue can block it.  This means that if there's more zombies than survivors and you cannot kill them fast enough, zombies will just win because red cannot cap and will eventually run out of time even if they don't outright die.  This obviously isn't good design.  So if anything I'd see if there isn't a way to prevent zombies from blocking captures, since often times capture points take ages to capture anyway (This being the last reason why red offense never works).

Holdout:  This is the mode that the game was built for, having red hold out until the timer expires and they win.  This is where the game really matters, the other game modes don't really function as well in this respect or recreate the zombie-feel too much.  However, the problem with holdout is mainly that a lot of maps are fairly small and crowded, making snipers useless and removing many of the penalties for certain zombie types due to being able to close in without penalty. I'm generally of the opinion that defense penalties only really matter till you get next to a red player, because you're going to die very quickly anyway.   I don't know any real way to address this problem besides for making it easier for red to roam around or for red to snipe (Removing the Showdown taunt helps with this as no windowed room is immediately lethal anymore).




Closing thoughts:  Now I do not have the perk numbers in front of me so I cannot give precise numbers for what I am thinking of, furthermore I cannot tell what the result of making all of these changes simultaneously would be.  But I believe that at least some of these changes if implemented will put the mod in a good direction.

Thank you all for reading.

8
Zombie Hell / Balance issues
« on: September 15, 2015, 01:08:04 pm »
Okay, so I've been a long time Zombie Fortress player and I recently started playing again and I realized why I stopped playing.

The game hates survivors

Now you may be wondering why I say that, I mean survivors get guns.  Well this is immediately balanced out by blue having infinite respawns and red having an arena-like no respawn system, right?  Wrong.  When red dies they also become blue, which makes the game harder for any remaining red players.  Okay, now you have to remember that there is a perk system which allows players to change what benefits they get at a moment's notice.  Just one thing, they only apply when you respawn so guess who can change perks on demand?  The 'zombies' of course.  This means if the zombies are doing poorly because someone's selected a perk that gives them an advantage in a particular manner that you can just immediately on the fly change to a perk that perfectly counters it.  Example?  Take a Demoknight that has a full melee loadout, they're rather hard to approach because they can do a lot of damage, but if you use Tarred then they're slowed to a crawl and cannot properly defend themselves and can then just be kited to death.  Engineers?  No problem we removed the effort in this game with "Magnetic" a perk specially designed specifically for killing engineers.  Pyros and explosives got you down?  Try out this new combustible perk that requires little more than running in a straight line to get kills.  Still not working?  Just resort to good ol' Toxic, unavoidable damage that can be stacked with you and your friends to create a kill-field the size of a sports arena.  And how do you get this magical killing field of unavoidable damage?  By doing absolutely nothing at all!  I mean who expects there to be effort required on the part of the 'zombie' team?!


Obviously this isn't balanced at all, so how can you fix it?  Well the obvious answer is to reduce the "Hard Counter" perks that zombies have access too, these means Magnetic, Combustible, Toxic, Thieving, Marked, and Hunter.  Why these perks?  All of them counter a certain class or play-style of survivors.  Hard.  So what to do?  These perks don't necessarily need to be removed, but should be altered to make them less advantageous against players who cannot possibly adapt to them.

Let's start off slow:


Zombie Perks
Marked:  This perk lets you deal extra damage to a single person that is randomly selected.  However, the problem comes in when there's only 2-4 survivors left so the actual requirement of who you gotta pick out of a crowd basically becomes nil.  My suggested balance fix for this would scale the damage based off how many survivors are left.  This means selecting it to kill the last 1-2 guys is no longer just free damage against survivors without penalty but instead becomes less effective as the game goes on.


Hunter:  Hunter is a troubled little perk, it is basically Swarming+++.  What do you get?  Well you can appear anywhere (thus negating commute time), you have nearly instant respawn (just like swarming), and on top of that you get a not insubstantial damage bonus (70% in fact!) when you initially spawn.  Right now this basically has rendered the actual perk 'Swarming' basically irrelevant. 

My suggested fix for this would be to merge it in with Marked.  How would this work?  Well, strip out the quickened respawn time, bonus damage on spawn, and make the spawn marker a destructible prop (either by weapons or by touch).  This works in well with the Marked's "Stalking of their prey" description which would make sense for them to spawn closer to their mark.


Toxic:  Toxic right now is the perk you use when you've given up because the survivors are winning and want to kill them through damage over time while the 5 hunters on your team stand outside the door ready to pounce on them when they go to clear the toxic zombies.  While 3 damage a second isn't a lot, this damage stacks with other toxic zombies, so if you have 6 toxic zombies you're dealing 15 damage a second to all survivors in a 600/HU radius.  That's massive.  The problem is also the fact that to get this advantage the toxic zombie need not do anything.  In fact, if they do try to do something they lose this damage radius.  So what should the solution be?  I think it would be best if it were merged with Sick (for the damage-over-time poison), or changing the radius to be run on explosive logic (this being negated by walls and cover) but function at all times, even when the player is moving or attacking.  Lastly, the damage-over-time mechanic needs to apply less poison for scout attacks since they get more of them.


Magnetic:  Magnetic is one of those perks that I just don't know if you can fix it without completely altering it or just flat-out removing it.  It's sole purpose is to kill engineers, they serve no other purpose.  However, they also shut-down sentries for other zombies in a constant radius much like Toxic does.  If I were to do anything besides just removing it or completely reworking it I would make the magnetic radius Explosive logic as well, requiring you to stick your head out for the benefit because you cannot hide behind walls to suppress sentries.


Thieving:  Thieving is one of those perks that only complete assholes use.  What does it do?  Well it steals your ammo very quickly on hit (very fast for scouts).  If all your ammo is taken they get a gun (somehow, despite them being 'zombies') and you're permanently out your primary weapon for the rest of the round.  This is obviously not good.  The way I would fix this weapon would be to make it sap ammo solely, no silly nonsensical gun for heavies or scouts, and no permanent crippling of a player.  Now you might be saying "Well if they see a thieving zombies they should just switch to their secondary/melee" well there's a couple of problems with that.   First off Thieving Zombies are indistinguishable from other zombies, they have no distinct skin color.  Second, this is a team-based game, you know that whole teamfortress thing the game has going on?  So often you will be with teammates who will naturally more effective to kill with primary weapons so people will often use this.  That's a perfectly valid tactic.  However the last bit is of course it's permanent removal of your primary weapon.  With the exception of the Demoman and the Medic the primary weapons are pretty damn important, often if you lose your weapon you're pretty much screwed for the round.  It's neither fair or fun, so I would like to see this aspect of thieving go out the door.

Lastly, they also drain 33% of a medic's Medigun charge, which is way too much; this number should probably be 5% for scouts, 8% for heavies, and 10% for spies.  As spies have the slowest swing speed and least damage, they get the most benefit out of smacking someone;  as scouts have the highest movement speed and fastest attacks they should steal the least.  This should also apply for general ammo consumption.   In addition, there is a bug which they automatically steal the cowmangler in one hit always when it is held out, despite it having "infinite" ammo and thus should be immune to 'theft'.


Combustible:  Combustible is another perk like Toxic that basically punishes players for killing you.  It requires no effort or activation on your part, you just run in; die; and rack up easy kills.  The only way this doesn't happen currently is by hitting it with melee weapons.  Now unless you are a demoknight you will probably be using your much more effective primary and secondary weapons (Plus who would use combustible against a demoknight???).  This means you will cause them to explode, dealing a not minute amount of damage to you and any friends you have with you.  Sure you die quicker, but you don't select this perk if there's a demoknight or sniper shooting you from far away.  No you pick it when the survivors are holed up and using guns, explosives, and fire.  So what would be my proposed fix?  Well I would say that Combustible as is should probably be made into an active ability.  In order to gain this "explosion" you should have to ready it somehow. 

My idea would basically be once you press E you stop moving entirely (-1000 speed, -100% defense) and explode around you after 2-3 seconds if not killed.  This gives survivors a chance to kill you before you explode, or vacate the area.  This makes the perk require some actual thought, time, and effort to pull off instead of being the W+M1 scout's favorite perk.  The base penalty would of course be an attack penalty because you're there for 'sploding not fighting.

As is I believe the perk is fundamentally flawed, unless fixed it basically removes the only advantage survivors have (guns) which isn't good for balance.  This perk is obviously less effective in wide open maps like Volcano, but in those cases no one uses it.


Zombie Weapons
A lot of the zombie weapons are more or less straight upgrades when you consider that things like health penalties don't really matter when it's a slight amount and you get unlimited respawns and your opponents to not.  So let's look at some of the weapons that are most often (ab)used by zombies.  It is worth remembering that when it comes to melee weapons, most are just straight upgrades and this is well known in the tf2 meta.

Sandman:  The sandman is an amazing weapon, it's a fairly good one and it's only penalty is that a point blank rocket may kill you instantly.  That doesn't matter that much since the soldier has to take damage to do that and that you respawn and they do not.  Second, it throws a stun-ball which can stun a player for ages in a video game.  Since survivors are usually holed up in a small place, aiming them requires little effort.  Second, your entire team can be using it, and can easily keep players stun locked to death which is not very fun for the survivors at all.  Were it me, I'd probably change it away from a stun to some kind of other penalty (maybe marked for death like in MVM), and increase the sandman penalties somehow (either less damage or less health).

Cleaver:  The cleaver combos perfectly with the sandman, which means that nearly any scout not using the Boston Basher will be using that weapon instead.  What does it do?  It inflicts bleed at distance, deals a fair amount of damage (even with it's existing penalty) but most importantly, if you hit someone stunned by the sandman it crits; which is a pretty much guaranteed kill if you can pull it off between the crit-damage and the bleed.  And you probably can pull it off, you or your other 8 sandcleaver-scout teammates.

Boston Basher:  The three-rune blade and the boston basher are effectively straight upgrades to the stock bat.  Why?  They inflict bleed with no penalty.  Now you might be thinking "Well if they miss they hit themselves right?"  Well kind of.  They only deal 18 damage (half) to themselves plus bleed.  But you must remember that scouts will not be swinging this till they get into melee, and death has no penalty for them which negates it's real disadvantages.  They also have health regeneration which negates some of the bleed, and of course you only swing when near survivors anyway so it's not like you will often be killing yourself with the weapon.  The advantages are of course obvious, +40 damage in the form of bleed.  Absolutely painful. 

Crit-a-Cola:  This weapon is just plain problematic.  It's received a buff recently that removes the minicrits you receive for using it.  This means the paltry amount of extra damage you take (10%) is massively understated by the extra +35% damage you deal.  If you happen to be using the boston basher, there's no reason to not use it since the cleaver doesn't provide any synergy with the basher.  This reduces the amount of hits to normally kill with a weapon by one or two swings; add into it the bleed for 60 (or more damage, because minicrits) you're able to do way more damage than even the heavy can do.  The normal swing deals 35+40 damage, so you have 75 after one hit.  That's a lot for a single hit.  Add in minicrits and you're dealing 47+50 which is nearly a one-hit kill on light classes, and a guaranteed two hit kill if they don't have a medic or health kit handy.  This is all by yourself by the way.   Oh yeah, did I mention this makes you move faster too???

Buffalo Steak Sandvich:  This weapon has the same issue as the crit-a-cola, it was buffed recently negating it's only real downside in zombie fortress (being restricted to melee).  In exchange you can deal an extra 35% damage with your weapon, letting you two-shot most classes; for taking slightly more damage from attacks (25%).  Oh and what's even better is you get a speed boost while using it, negating the only real downside of another problematic weapon:  The Fists of Steel.  Remember that these damage bonuses players get on you still apply fall-off (unlike minicrits) so there's no real penalty for using it.  If you die you die, oh well; you got another two dozen clones in the freezer able to repeat the tactic ad nauseum till it works.  You can of course combine this with perks to deal extra damage with that perk, such as Combustible (minicrit exploisons!).

Fists of Steel:  This weapon is another (like the combustible perk) that exists soley to negate the only advantage survivors have:  guns.  It forces you into melee with them, lest you waste your limited ammo (because most maps lack proper ammo kits).  So what if you take double damage, you both have equal chance to hit one another (except for demoknights, because they have longer reach) so overall this is a win for you.  When mixed with the buffalo-steak-sandvich the penalties of both are outweighed by the benefits, giving massive synergy. 

Holiday Punch:  This weapon is just the regular fists, but a nearly guaranteed kill if you strike them from behind.  Even if you die the guy's stuck laughing for 4-5 seconds which leaves plenty of time for them to get killed.  They really should have some kind of penalty associated with their use, because as is there is no reason to use them over the fists.

Bonk:  So this weapon allows zombies to become temporarily invulnerable at the cost of being able to attack.  This is not only bad mechanically but exploitable with the nature of some perks (such as Magnetic) where it allows you to get a passive benefit while invulnerable.  Not to mention that this item lets you close in on survivors with impunity, negating their only advantage (ranged combat).



Zombie Mechanics
Backstabs:  Backstabs have always been a balancing problem in zombie-fortress.  Most of the perks simply allow you to backstab easier and since it always does x6 their health in damage it always killed unless you had a 85% damage penalty or more.  In the Zombie Hell server this is slightly less of an issue, but still a fairly big issue as backstabs now just leave you at pitifully low health for ages.  This is mainly a three-fold problem.  First backstab hit detection has always been dodgy, when you mix in things like innate speed boosts and the like they happen more often.  Second, the penalty does not scale down if you have a damage penalty.  Backstabbing your mark has the same effect as backstabbing when you're Swarming.  Third, the penalty is higher on classes with more hit points as it takes longer to refill and they're out their tanking ability. 

My solution would be that whenever a player is backstabbed, their maximum health decreases by 50 but deals no damage otherwise.  Engineers and Snipers backstabbed would have 75, then 25, then 0 (dead).  Medics go from 150, to 100, to 50, to dead.  Pyros and Demomen go from 175 to 125, to 75, to 25, to dead.  Soldiers go from 200, to 150, to 100, to 50, to dead.  So each stab basically reduces the amount of hits needed to kill them by other zombies by 1 for the duration, more or less.  The characters that are struck with this penalty regain hit points at a steady rate, instead of all at once.  They'd regain 10 maximum HP every 5 seconds until they reach their normal maximum again.  However, it wouldn't be all doom and gloom for spies, each time they make a successful backstab they regain all their hit points and clear any conditions they have on them (afterburn, bleed, jarate, etc) and have an overheal like the Kunai, letting them possibly backstab again.


Showdown Taunt:  This is another problematic issue with the game.  Mainly that it's effectively a large unstoppable ranged weapon that the zombies can used if they stand still for a second or two.  It stuns for 8 seconds and deals 100 damage.  That's massive.  Normally it's just an instant kill, but right now it's ever so slightly more merciful.  However, personally speaking here I just don't like what it does or what it entails.  First off it means the zombies stop acting like zombies and start playing cowboys and Indians (why?), which does not really make sense for the game mode.  Second it's just plain too effective for what it does.  Most survivor games involve survivors huddling in a small cramped room while zombies swarm them from the outside.  That's fine, and that's how it's supposed to be.  But instead of actually having to break down their barricades players often resort to the tactic of spamming the taunt in hopes of getting cheap, nearly effortless kills by shooting at fish in a barrel.  It just doesn't seem to fit well with the experience the game is supposed to be producing.

Health and Ammo Kits;  Currently as-is zombies can pick up health and ammo kits, which doesn't really make sense since they already have a base-line regeneration and of course the fact they're supposed to be zombies (thus what is life-preserving medicine going to do to help them?).  I think it'd be better if zombies couldn't pick up those resources, many maps already put too few as is, and zombies should be zombies and not running back to get health kits like they have self-preservation or something.

9
Zombie Hell / Re: Map Rotation / Map Suggestions
« on: September 15, 2015, 08:53:51 am »
zf_warhead seems to have a broken door that locks the survivors in the spawning area without any health or ammo kits.

zf_isaac is unwinnable for survivors if they pick up the Polaroid either intentionally or by accident.

zf_logfort has an exploit where zombies can leave hunter marks on unreachable roofs above survivors, letting them attack survivors immediately with impunity and is generally poorly balanced, lacking in supply kits and cover.  I actually went and counted and there are only 3 health and ammo kits, all of which are small and very spread out. 

zf_harbor is a poorly balanced attack/defense map where the zombies have spawns within 10ft of the first two caps, there is a complete lack of cover in the map, and nearly no health or ammo kits.  The control points are all in wide-open spaces without any real cover for them.  This basically allows (again) hunters to place spawn markers behind their spawn locations and get in and kill players with impunity.  The map also has a distressing lack of pick-ups (a single medium ammo kit and small health kit for A and a small health and ammo kit for B).  Overall the result is that survivors have yet to win any rounds in the times I have played it.  Not even once.

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