If you’re like me and really enjoy ZM, you might have noticed that it feels a little too easy. While it might be just my opinion, I feel like other players agree with me. Here are a couple things that I think could improve the gameplay and make it more difficult and interesting, but not too harsh.
One: Increase the quantity of zombies
A big part of the ease of this gameworld is that there just aren’t enough zombies to slow you down, even as the days progress or as you get more players. There just needs to be more of them. I also want to clarify that they should NOT have more health- they feel like they have the perfect amount right now.
Two: Disable automatic revives and zombie revives
If you have any lives left, and bite the dust, your character turns into a gravestone. In GMT, you would have to be “tagged” by a surviving player to come back to life. This meant that the remaining players could make their way to your grave and give you and your party another chance at survival. In TU’s ZM, players will automatically revive with full health in 5 seconds, regardless of other players. This feels way too easy and forgiving, almost making it not matter when you die. Requiring players to tag your grave would make the experience a little more challenging and a lot more exciting, watching to see if those left alive can get you back on your feet.
When you run out of lives, you turn into a zombie that must be killed for you to revive. I think this is kinda neat, but it revokes the punishment of you getting yourself killed so much. I think that instead, maybe a Medic would have to bring you back from the dead instead- not only would this give a much needed added perk of playing this underused class, but it would mean that your revival isn’t just another matter of time.
Three: Make the starter weapon upgrade more expensive
This is a little smaller, but this upgrade is way too powerful. Once you get to the Uzi you barely need to pick up weapons, and some weapons feel like downgrades. This upgrade has to be more expensive, making players either save up for it since it’s so powerful, or prioritize help in the short term.
What do you think? Please vote for this suggestion if you agree, and use this poll to show which specific points you agree with!
If auto revives are removed then that opens up the possibility of trolling by not reviving specific people or anybody at all. Vote kicking is an option but you aren’t always able to if their friends are in the server. One thing that could be done is increase the timer for a self-revive so tagging other player’s gravestones would be more viable than waiting
I suppose, but there are ways around this. Like you said, votekicking is a good idea.
Maybe if the revive timer were greatly extended to about 30s, making it way better to pick someone up?
In my experience vote kick has only ever been abused (this varies from person to person) so gameworlds should not have game mechanics be based around people playing fair/ethically or not
Agree with most of this, but the revive system is definitely a bit more complicated to fix. Disabling revival automatically or via killing player zombies has a few issues.
Relying on other players to revive you is troubling, considering how many people ignore the very obvious “HELP!” indicator, this would only make that more frustrating (Plus what Umbra said)
Obviously it wouldn’t be very compatible in solo play
Being unable to play the game after losing all your lives might feel really frustrating to some players, obviously you have to wait after dying or finishing in other games, but this is a lot less fast paced, and might be a stretch too far
I agree it probably needs to be changed, but there’s a lot of variables. To add to the above replies, extending the timer works well, but is a bit of an annoying pace killer nonetheless, and an exception would have to be made for single-player.
If it was a more serious game then I can see team work being more prevalent but since it’s an arcade top down shooter I think having limited solo revives works best.
Here’s an idea: Maybe have it so that if another player revives you, your lives don’t go down(?)
Wow, I must really suck at ZM. I’ve always found it difficult to the point of frustration on Medium and Hard stages. I;be never thought of the gameworld as too easy lol.
The meta (or at least what works best for me) is to play as survivor and buy movement speed/ammo. I never buy increased ability time because then it would take longer to get another combo due to the bubble staying up longer, plus the short burst of speed is always good to have as often as you can
I like these ideas, I understand the new map (zm_village) is meant to be the hardest one yet but I feel like it’d be good if we could play the other 3 maps with a challenge. I always felt like difficulty would make a better additional setting as opposed to being tied to the map. So you could do any map on Easy/Medium/Hard as opposed to just playing the same map over and over again for the challenge.
Right now even the hardest map is pretty easy (for me personally), I’ve gone through it on every class solo and when farming Zombies XP I have set myself additional challenges to try and make it artificially more difficult for myself.
I agree with all three suggestions here, Uzi is insanely strong and you can get it really early on, you never feel too overwhelmed by the zombies and on multiplayer it’s super easy to just pick up fellow players.
Addressing the idea that players could purposely avoid rezing teammates, my idea would be to make something bad happen if survivors don’t actively revive the fallen in a timely manner. Lose power ups or weapons (making it hard to hog kills), or even possibly lose the round (thematically makes more sense).
All of my thoughts come from a player who’s almost exclusively played ZM solo, so keep that in mind.
This would make the game harder but also easier in a way - since more zombies = more points and more points = more upgrades. I don’t think this is the way to go. With how strong certain abilities are, quantity doesn’t really matter. If you have a few players I assume there’s not too much downtime between abilities, although in solo the downtime between them can be difficult.
Also, more kills = more units, and ZM is already the best game for that. Smaller problem, but imo worth noting.
IMO, just swapping the Uzi and Sawed Off would be a good start. The Uzi is significantly more powerful, and honestly, the Sawed Off is just kind of trash.
I do think we should wait for the new map before we get too carried away, it may very well be hard enough to satisfy us
