For whatever reason, I’ve been playing more ZM this week than I ever have, and I see some flaws. It’s no secret that it’s too easy, but I noticed superfluous features that make the mode devoid of player punishment, so much so that I find random players in pub games frequently ignore medic circles with no consequence. I have a few ideas that can help with this.
NOTE: I’m aware the next map coming out is intended to be the hardest, but that’s for just for one map and won’t have any bearing on the mode as a whole.
- Get rid of being able to respawn without someone touching your grave. (sans solo)
Touching someone’s grave to respawn is completely pointless because they will just come back in 5 second if they have extra lives. If by some crazy odds, every player in the game is dead at the same time, it means nothing. If one dies on the other side of the map, then there is zero punishment for the person who got themselves killed, and there is zero reason for the survivors to fight their way over to them because they’re just going respawn themselves once the timer is up.
- Make not reviving players have big consequences
To follow the previous bullet, you may ask yourself “What’s to stop dickish players from just abandoning the dead player the whole round?” I’ll tell you: make it so if dead players aren’t touched and revived within a time limit then something bad happens. Maybe the dead player becomes an even bigger badder zombie than when they run out of lives. Maybe all zombies will become frenzied, Maybe players special abilities shut off. Maybe you lose the round. Something that will motivate players to support each other and treat someone dying like the emergency it should be.
- Get rid of being able to spawn after losing all your lives.
Currently, players can get back in the game after losing all of their lives if another player takes out their zombie form. I don’t think this is necessary. It’s not like killing a player zombie is particularly difficult. It’s already extremely easy to make it through any level on any round without losing your two lives, and the number of lives you have can be upgraded! It’s silly. I don’t think there needs to be a third safety net here. Once you’re out, you’re out. Little Crusaders, Ball Race, and in extreme cases, Minigolf, all have mechancs where you have to sit out until the next round. I don’t see why ZM should be any different.
Again, the idea isn’t necessarily to make ZM hard, but to make it not completely braindead easy without disrupting the pace of mowing down tons of bad guys. It’d contribute to creating just a little bit of tension, which any zombie game needs.