Zs_Obj_Day_Zero Needs Changes

[Porter2455]

Hello Zombie Survival Players! Welcome to my rant. I hope some people will agree with my points, because the current condition of this map really annoys me. I'm going to tear into obj_day_zero, as I believe the map is incredibly flawed in places.

 

Before I state my points, I need to make this clear. I love objective maps. I could care less about going -300+. they are fun tests of skill and really stress teamwork in making sure that everyone knows what they are doing, as more humans alive means a much better chance of victory. It truly feels like an absolute battle between the two teams. They mix up the mode, offering a nice change in pace. Also, I have much respect for anyone who contributes content to the server, I'm not trying to attack your ability to make maps, as your abilities to product content is infinitely better than mine.

 

After playing through a lot of objective maps, the flow and design of the map is pretty apparent. A basic survival wave, followed by transition pieces with breaks in between for defending against the zombie hoard. The transition parts of the map are typically simple at the start, but become more complicated and difficult. As the map progresses, skill begins to make itself apparent, with players who have played the map surviving longer and learning from the mistakes of the past. These players teach the newer players the maps. This is an important aspect of any objective map, as instructing players becomes integral to surviving longer. Losing humans early quickly ruins any chance of winning, as the zombie team becomes stacked. And losing humans early is rarely caused by zombies, but rather players who have not learned the map well enough yet. The farthest the humans have ever made it into rampage was directly due to every human being on the same page, and zombie population was kept low by the turbine part, a make-it-or-break-it point in the map.

 

Taking all these aspects into account, I believe day_zero fails as a map. In the pieces that we have actually made it to, there are three specific points that break the map. These parts make the map unwinnable with even a smaller population.

 

THE FIRST PART: THE DRAINING WATER:

 

When entering the sewer, the map is fine. Jumping on the props establishes that the water is bad, and to avoid it at all costs. The aegis cading part is fine as well, a standard early stop and defend point. However, It is when the water drains that the map gets insane. Before the water is completely drained, zombies can jump off the ledge and camp the pipe. They cant be seen well, so humans cant shoot them. This creates two options for the humans.

 

On the logical side, it seems like you need to wait for the water to completely drain. However, waiting means you have to fight through a bunch of zombies that are clogging up the exit. With poison zombies already unlocked, there are always quite a few humans claimed by the zombies. Almost no one is left undamaged, and those who are killed are determined by pure luck. This is contradictory to what objective maps are, where skilled players get the farthest and lead the other players.

 

The other choice the humans have is biting the bullet and jumping in the water before its drained, as to avoid the zombies swarming the pipe. However, this requires taking significant damage. Not only that, but it is not apparent that jumping in the water is survivable, as the map has established that going into that part of the water is an instant death. The worst part is that health is needed for the part coming up next, which will be my next point.

 

THE GODDAMN SEWER PARKOUR:

 

Now I can appreciate some parkour. It tests your skill of the map, which is something all obj maps do. However, to say it simply, its way too hard for coming so early in the map. Entering the parkour, it's every man for himself. There is no way to help lead other players, previous knowledge and skill are all any player has. Screwing up is near certain death. While every objective map has these parts, it's way too early for such a part to take hold. Almost everyone is damaged from either the water or the zombies. This leaves extremely little room for error, as even little dips into the water will take chunks out of your health. Having little health makes the jumps even harder, as you are slower and shaky.

 

Taking out all of those factors and looking at that part of the map without any context, almost all the jumps are not that bad. There are a few here or there that are easy to touch the water, but certainly not unfair. However, there are two consecutive jumps that completely shred the human team. I'm talking about this part, shown in the image.

 

 

These freaking jumps make this map a new player's deathtrap. The first part of the jump is deceptively tricky. You have to take it head-on, trying to go from the side can make you easily miss the ledge, and essentially kill you. However, the second jump is just unfair. What you need to do is so unclear. While you can try and make a diagonal jump, the jump that is evident to make, it is a hard jump to execute. The real way to make the jump is to jump into the wall and hook around the edge. HOW THE HELL ARE PEOPLE SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT? Without knowing this trick, the odds of making it are very low. I cannot tell you how many people you can see fall into the water when this part arrives. It effectively ends the map. In a game with 60 people, I have never seen more than 15-20 people make it through the parkour. Playing through the rest of the map in singleplayer, there is still a ton of map to play. There is zero chance the humans will win in the current state of this map. If, by some major miracle, a decent amount of humans make it through, the next part will claim the rest of them.

 

THE HALLWAY OF DEATH

 

After the battered humans arise from the sewer, the next part isnt too hard. There is a good bench and aegis to cade the door, and with enough humans, its not that bad. However, once its time for the next part, the map decides to ramp up the difficulty ten-fold again. Within seconds, the zombies have access to inside the hallway all the humans are running in. If you don't have a fair amount of health, which is very easy to not have, you are gonna be picked off easily. Also, its basically suicide to pick up the props in the hallway that are heavily needed for the next part. You don't have enough time to cade the next part, and with the amount of zombies around, its almost always gg at this point. The few times humans have made it to the next building, there are so few left that its impossible.

 

 

With these three pieces of the map, we will never, ever, win day_zero. I really love this map, and the later parts of it would be incredibly fun to play with a large population. However, changes need to be made. What is the point of having so much map left that we will never play? I think that three simple changes could ease up the extreme difficulty that plagues the map so early.

 

1. Allow the humans to safely enter the parkour section of the map, without the threat of zombies. Perhaps just put an invisible wall around the water except for the piece where humans jump into the pipe? I'm sure map makers could think of something better, but it would be a very simple fix.

 

2. Put a platform where the aforementioned jump is. This would make the parkour piece passable, where we would not have at least half the humans die nearly every time.

 

3. Give the humans at least 10 more seconds to get down the hallway so props may be grabbed.

 

These three fixes could allow us to get farther into the map. Now I do not know if this would make the map too easy, but if it would, then this is another balancing issue the map would have. The map should progress difficulty, not have it ramp up at he beginning and then taper off. At the very least, this would make people excited for this map. People have learned that there is literally zero chance we are making it farther than the cade after the hallway, and do not want to blow points on a map that only lasts for 5-10 minutes. I hope some people agree with my points, as it would be fantastic to see this map become winnable (or at least advance further than the first 5 minutes). Good luck zombie killing HG!

 

-Porter2455

[EngineTrap]

lol!

 

 

Ok so, Im actually surprised you took the proper time to carefully analyze the map and point out a lot of stuff in a well organized manner, congratz for that dude, its something I have to appreciate once in a while but apart from that this makes no sense.

 

As a very experienced mapper who personally edited this map I can tell you that from both a gameplay and a mapping perspective this post makes no sense, like at all.

 

You pinpointed a lot of stuff that is related to difficulty and new players getting killed early on but to be honest I cant see the issue there

Lets review your points shall we?

THE FIRST PART: THE DRAINING WATER:

 

This sections makes no sense because zombies cant spawncamp the sewer, like at all. I can tell you this because the map has a magical thing called trigger_hurt in the draining water which deals to be precise an ammount of 200 dmg per .5 seconds, this is enough to instakill a normal zombie in less than 1 second, Unless you are a boss with high hp (pukepus or nightmare) there's literally no chance at all you will survive the slime and even if you are a boss you shouldnt last longer than 10 seconds or even less since humans are sometimes dumb but not retarded, they will shoot the fuck out of the zombies below in the goo, trust me.

 

Lets go into the second point:

THE GODDAMN SEWER PARKOUR:

 

People complain a lot about this part being bullshit and all but all I can really say is "git gud", I would say that some people with bad internet have no chance in this area but thats not the case since my internet is complete garbage and I always make it out of that area untouched, hell I even take the time to pointwhore a bit till the zombies spawn above.

Lets be real, this area is a piece of cake of parkour, its a joke, if it werent for the goo below (which deals 5 dmg per .5 seconds btw, not an instakill) Im sure people wouldnt even die, but then whats the point of having the parkour if it isnt gonna be a challenge?"

You said that we should "give the humans more time to cross" but the map actually does, I didnt even have to edit that part, that feature was originally in the first version of the map, As soon as the goo stops moving, zombies spawn way behind into the map giving the humans more than 30 seconds of a head start.

 

I cant really see the issue with it, if you have so much trouble with this area go practice it in singleplayer, I used to hate the parkour areas in zs_obj_vertigo and after practicing them alone I finally realized how easy it was, now I just sprint through those areas without issue at all, this is more of a mistake of the players for not learning the map properly than a map mistake.

 

School tiem

THE HALLWAY OF DEATH

 

This area was designed with the purpose of the zombies having a small head start, all you need to do is shoot the incoming zombies ahead and behind you and you're good to go, If a good enough team push is done, no people should die in this area, then again is this a problem of the server population not helping eachother, not the map.

All you need to do to block the fence entrance is put a single prop (in this case a bench) and you're good to go, Combine that with a good defense provided by the human team and you should rush past this area with no problem at all.

The only 2 issues with this area are the fasties which are pretty op not because of the map but because of the recent zombie update and the new difficulty setting which is also part of the zombie update.

I'll look into removing the fasties from that part since they are pretty unbalanced but apart from that the area is completely fine.

 

Difficulty, yay

 

Originally we had a lot of obj maps which were just a camp fest and were won 100% of the time, this was boring and uninteresting. So after a while ATB, me and some other mappers decided to start a new generation of actual hardcore objective maps, which were hard if not almost impossible to win, why? Because its good to have rare wins, the more rare winning an objective map is the more effort humans put into winning it, which is the whole purpose of the difficulty, to increase the player skills.

Rampage does the same, its a hard objective which just like Day Zero has never been won before, this pushes humans to team up, organize, not troll and be general kleiners.

 

If a map is too hard for a new player because they die early on thats fine, new players need to learn how to survive and play objective maps by getting good or else they will grow up in the server thinking that all maps are ez pz when they shouldnt, they should say "Oh fuck its this parkour part again, This time Im really gonna do it!" or else they wont improve their skills

 

Farther into the map?

 

I was constantly reading how you say that "There is too much left of the map for us to play!" and I was just honestly dying of laughter because this just isnt true, After the highschool part there's like 10 more minutes of gameplay, I can literally describe the rest of the map by saying "You cross the houses, you cade c4 defend part, you go grab c4 and bring it to next house, cade there for 60 seconds then leave, checkpoint reached yay, go into van, defend van and use med nades or else you'll die because of bonemesh projecticles, cade final fence part, end of map"

There isnt really much left of the map, and to be honest in my opinion the first half is the better part of the map because its the most original compared to the second part which is just cading and defending in normal places.

 

Its not like we die 24/7 in the hallway part either, 3 out of 4 times we survive the highschool part when Im on the server and we usually die either in the c4 defend part or in the fence part at the END OF THE MAP, So either you have very bad luck and you die early on on you play when there's no good population on and no skilled players to guide the new players in the map.

 

Conclusion:

Just like Rampage and future Objective Maps, Day zero is a hard challenging map which requires a lot of Teamwork, Trial and Error and organization to be won, Im definitely gonna look into some details like the fasties or giving little extra time to cross the hallway since the zombie update made maps harder in general but apart from that the map is gonna stay the same.

 

-NightShade

[Porter2455]

lol!

Ok so, Im actually surprised you took the proper time to carefully analyze the map and point out a lot of stuff in a well organized manner, congratz for that dude, its something I have to appreciate once in a while but apart from that this makes no sense.

As a very experienced mapper who personally edited this map I can tell you that from both a gameplay and a mapping perspective this post makes no sense, like at all.

You pinpointed a lot of stuff that is related to difficulty and new players getting killed early on but to be honest I cant see the issue there

Lets review your points shall we?

This sections makes no sense because zombies cant spawncamp the sewer, like at all. I can tell you this because the map has a magical thing called trigger_hurt in the draining water which deals to be precise an ammount of 200 dmg per .5 seconds, this is enough to instakill a normal zombie in less than 1 second, Unless you are a boss with high hp (pukepus or nightmare) there's literally no chance at all you will survive the slime and even if you are a boss you shouldnt last longer than 10 seconds or even less since humans are sometimes dumb but not retarded, they will shoot the fuck out of the zombies below in the goo, trust me.

Lets go into the second point:

People complain a lot about this part being bullshit and all but all I can really say is "git gud", I would say that some people with bad internet have no chance in this area but thats not the case since my internet is complete garbage and I always make it out of that area untouched, hell I even take the time to pointwhore a bit till the zombies spawn above.

Lets be real, this area is a piece of cake of parkour, its a joke, if it werent for the goo below (which deals 5 dmg per .5 seconds btw, not an instakill) Im sure people wouldnt even die, but then whats the point of having the parkour if it isnt gonna be a challenge?"

You said that we should "give the humans more time to cross" but the map actually does, I didnt even have to edit that part, that feature was originally in the first version of the map, As soon as the goo stops moving, zombies spawn way behind into the map giving the humans more than 30 seconds of a head start.

I cant really see the issue with it, if you have so much trouble with this area go practice it in singleplayer, I used to hate the parkour areas in zs_obj_vertigo and after practicing them alone I finally realized how easy it was, now I just sprint through those areas without issue at all, this is more of a mistake of the players for not learning the map properly than a map mistake.

School tiem

This area was designed with the purpose of the zombies having a small head start, all you need to do is shoot the incoming zombies ahead and behind you and you're good to go, If a good enough team push is done, no people should die in this area, then again is this a problem of the server population not helping eachother, not the map.

All you need to do to block the fence entrance is put a single prop (in this case a bench) and you're good to go, Combine that with a good defense provided by the human team and you should rush past this area with no problem at all.

The only 2 issues with this area are the fasties which are pretty op not because of the map but because of the recent zombie update and the new difficulty setting which is also part of the zombie update.

I'll look into removing the fasties from that part since they are pretty unbalanced but apart from that the area is completely fine.

Difficulty, yay

Originally we had a lot of obj maps which were just a camp fest and were won 100% of the time, this was boring and uninteresting. So after a while ATB, me and some other mappers decided to start a new generation of actual hardcore objective maps, which were hard if not almost impossible to win, why? Because its good to have rare wins, the more rare winning an objective map is the more effort humans put into winning it, which is the whole purpose of the difficulty, to increase the player skills.

Rampage does the same, its a hard objective which just like Day Zero has never been won before, this pushes humans to team up, organize, not troll and be general kleiners.

If a map is too hard for a new player because they die early on thats fine, new players need to learn how to survive and play objective maps by getting good or else they will grow up in the server thinking that all maps are ez pz when they shouldnt, they should say "Oh fuck its this parkour part again, This time Im really gonna do it!" or else they wont improve their skills

Farther into the map?

I was constantly reading how you say that "There is too much left of the map for us to play!" and I was just honestly dying of laughter because this just isnt true, After the highschool part there's like 10 more minutes of gameplay, I can literally describe the rest of the map by saying "You cross the houses, you cade c4 defend part, you go grab c4 and bring it to next house, cade there for 60 seconds then leave, checkpoint reached yay, go into van, defend van and use med nades or else you'll die because of bonemesh projecticles, cade final fence part, end of map"

There isnt really much left of the map, and to be honest in my opinion the first half is the better part of the map because its the most original compared to the second part which is just cading and defending in normal places.

Its not like we die 24/7 in the hallway part either, 3 out of 4 times we survive the highschool part when Im on the server and we usually die either in the c4 defend part or in the fence part at the END OF THE MAP, So either you have very bad luck and you die early on on you play when there's no good population on and no skilled players to guide the new players in the map.

Conclusion:

Just like Rampage and future Objective Maps, Day zero is a hard challenging map which requires a lot of Teamwork, Trial and Error and organization to be won, Im definitely gonna look into some details like the fasties or giving little extra time to cross the hallway since the zombie update made maps harder in general but apart from that the map is gonna stay the same.

-NightShade

 

Thanks for responding nightshade, it's good to hear from someone who made the map. While I disagree with you on it, I can totally respect the idea of the map design, as there are objective maps that are too easy. Rampage is certainly an example of this being pulled off very well, as it's challenging as hell, but fair.

 

I don't get what you are saying about the trigger hurt part, because as the water is draining, trigger hurt is disabled at some point. This allows zombies to jump in the water and swarm the tunnel. I know before it does drain it has trigger hurt. Almost everytime I have played the map we get shit on by zombies the moment the water is drained. If you have played it recently, you know exactly what I'm saying.

 

Your response to the sewer parkour is fair, as you guys designed the map to weed out the scrubs early. I don't struggle on that part, as I have practiced. I just feel like it compounds so hard on players. If you take into account the low health of players from the zombies(I know you think that zombies can't attack the humans at that part, but they do) along with newer players who don't know how to make the jump, there's a reason that over half the humans die everytime.

 

You're going to say I repeated the same argument, and you're right. I guess my purpose of this argument is that I feel like veterans forget that the game isn't only meant for them. Most people on at any given moment are not hardened expets who have 1,000+ hours on the server. Most people are not content creators who know the map inside and out. When players want to play on an objective map, they want to get far and feel like they accomplished something, veteran or newer. Good objective maps do this. And you can say that the objectives that do this are the easy ones that needed to go, but maps like rampage and pretty noob friendly and still retain its challenge. Rampage encourages team work, as their are very few trap spots that someone with a mic can't avert the players not to do. Day_zero does not encourage teamwork; the map is Everyman for himself up to the Cade after the hallway, and almost everyone is dead at that point. I feel like the people who say "omg the parkour is so easy just don't suck at gmod" are the same people who scream jump into the fire on evac and then laugh when some person who hasn't played the map does it and people call them autistic :/.

 

Well our lord atb liked your reply, so I'm officially s.o.l on the map changing. That's fine, day_zero is tough as nails, and being in the last group of humans is always an accomplishment players want to strive for. I just hope that future maps are designed off the challenge of rampage, and not day_zero. Thank you for replying nightshade, I'm not trying to take shots at your map design whatsoever. As I mentioned, I have a lot of respect for content creators. Without you guys, we would have nothing.

 

 

[EngineTrap]

Thanks for responding nightshade, it's good to hear from someone who made the map. While I disagree with you on it, I can totally respect the idea of the map design, as there are objective maps that are too easy. Rampage is certainly an example of this being pulled off very well, as it's challenging as hell, but fair.

 

I don't get what you are saying about the trigger hurt part, because as the water is draining, trigger hurt is disabled at some point. This allows zombies to jump in the water and swarm the tunnel. I know before it does drain it has trigger hurt. Almost everytime I have played the map we get shit on by zombies the moment the water is drained. If you have played it recently, you know exactly what I'm saying.

 

Your response to the sewer parkour is fair, as you guys designed the map to weed out the scrubs early. I don't struggle on that part, as I have practiced. I just feel like it compounds so hard on players. If you take into account the low health of players from the zombies(I know you think that zombies can't attack the humans at that part, but they do) along with newer players who don't know how to make the jump, there's a reason that over half the humans die everytime.

 

You're going to say I repeated the same argument, and you're right. I guess my purpose of this argument is that I feel like veterans forget that the game isn't only meant for them. Most people on at any given moment are not hardened expets who have 1,000+ hours on the server. Most people are not content creators who know the map inside and out. When players want to play on an objective map, they want to get far and feel like they accomplished something, veteran or newer. Good objective maps do this. And you can say that the objectives that do this are the easy ones that needed to go, but maps like rampage and pretty noob friendly and still retain its challenge. Rampage encourages team work, as their are very few trap spots that someone with a mic can't avert the players not to do. Day_zero does not encourage teamwork; the map is Everyman for himself up to the Cade after the hallway, and almost everyone is dead at that point. I feel like the people who say "omg the parkour is so easy just don't suck at gmod" are the same people who scream jump into the fire on evac and then laugh when some person who hasn't played the map does it and people call them autistic :/.

 

Well our lord atb liked your reply, so I'm officially s.o.l on the map changing. That's fine, day_zero is tough as nails, and being in the last group of humans is always an accomplishment players want to strive for. I just hope that future maps are designed off the challenge of rampage, and not day_zero. Thank you for replying nightshade, I'm not trying to take shots at your map design whatsoever. As I mentioned, I have a lot of respect for content creators. Without you guys, we would have nothing.

 

Thanks for your appreciation of the content the developters try to bring into the server, its really hard to make content, specially new maps and it doesnt help that most people just say "THIS MAP IS SHIT" without giving a proper explanation so it really brings me hope to see people like you having a civilized argument, thanks.

 

I'll take into serious consideration your points for my next Objective Map which will release soon as I want to bring the best experience for everybody this Christmas.

Im also gonna go and try to make some slight edits to the map so that humans can push a little further without so much effort to compensate for the zombie update.

 

 

-NightShade

[Porter2455]

Thanks for your appreciation of the content the developters try to bring into the server, its really hard to make content, specially new maps and it doesnt help that most people just say "THIS MAP IS SHIT" without giving a proper explanation so it really brings me hope to see people like you having a civilized argument, thanks.

 

I'll take into serious consideration your points for my next Objective Map which will release soon as I want to bring the best experience for everybody this Christmas.

Im also gonna go and try to make some slight edits to the map so that humans can push a little further without so much effort to compensate for the zombie update.

 

 

-NightShade

 

Sounds great, can't wait to try it out!