Re-Add The Original Gernade Launcher

[Porter2455]

(Long post, sorry. I wanted to make the argument as clear as possible.)

 

Zs has seen some pretty big updates as of late, and I think they are great additions. The card system and supply crate changed the entire game, and many ways for the good. Howvever, it has made earning profit harder than ever.

 

Going for honorable mentions forces you to either play zombie and try hard the whole game, or stay human and go negative in an effort to get some of the other mentions. Once you get the cards, you have to sink 1000s of points to upgrade; points you were spending like crazy to get the mentions to get the decks in the first place. The supply crate items are great, but the items to buy per game also went up by over 1000 points. If you take one for the team and buy an item from the supply, you will not make profit back. This dog pile of additions have made making profit tediously annoying. Either play zombie and try hard, or play hyper conservative. However, you can argue it’s always been that way, and you have a fair point. Going with big guns has always been difficult to make it back even before the big updates. The one exception to this would be solocading.

 

The most dissapointing thing I have found with this current zs is that outside of double points, solocading is completely dead. With the exception of like 3 god tier maps, a cade with few enough people for tier 6 will not last even close enough for a single person to get within like -600. While the general power creep the card system creates and the multiplier a destroyed supply crate adds don’t help, I feel they simply dog pile on the real problem:

 

The Current Gernade Launcher does not have the firepower to hold off a hoard of card-boosted, supply destroyed enchaned Zombies. Only having one stock compounds said issue even more.

 

Regardless of how you feel about tier 6, you can’t deny how important it was to making solocading a practical high-risk, high-reward strategy. It takes skill, pre-planning, map-knowledge, and a little luck to pull off a successful solocade. Last year, when you got everything to work, the reward was very worthwhile. Even without double points, multiple people could potentially make profit off only a wave or 2 of shooting. The centerpiece to this success was having 2 stocks of the og gernade launcher, an absolute beast that was very powerful, but fair, once the knockback was removed. What made old solocades work is that the 6 shots in its clip allowed a fire rate to actually kill things while providing support for your teammates to kill things faster. They still couldn’t win, as the hoard was just too much to keep away, making sure population didn’t fall due to boredom.

 

The current launcher just takes too long to kill a hoard of zombies at your cade. The other high tier weapons can’t handle the strain that this puts on them, allowing the zombies to just decimate a cade in like a minute. On the few solocades I even see anymore, most last less than a wave due to the lack of firepower.

 

In a time where making points is more important than ever with the cards system, I find it immensely frustrating that solocading just isn’t worth the time or effort anymore. I think it’s time to give solocading the ability to profit like it did in the past. Now, I can see somes issues people might have with this. First, one might argue this strat was unfair in the past. Well, could it have not been balanced any better than the card system powering up zombies in general? Also, by the time a solocade is attacked, a supply crate is almost certainly destroyed. This gives zombies a 1.14 difficulty multiplier, boosting power even more. These 2 changes are major balances from the past that should quell some worries of opness. Secondly, While both gernade launchers play largely the same on objectives, I can agree that a stock of 1 is fair. So why not set the stock to 1 on objectives? This keeps tier 6 largely unchanged on objectives, while giving it the power it really needs on survival.

 

tl;dr(I’d still suggest reading): Solocading is dead, add 2 stock of old nade launcher on survival. Keep it one stock on objective.

 

Thanks for reading, and hopefully people agree with my argument. Make solocading great again!

[Grim Raper]

I agree completely on this one.

[Porter2455]

I agree completely on this one.

 

Ty, spread the word on the server to come vote. It’s the best way to get a change implemented. Have a mod hyperink this post so people will come vote more.

[Fume Knight]

Gonna have to agree with this, feel like solocading is dying, I don't like sitting in the main cade for 5 straight maps, sorta sucks the fun outa ZS sometimes. Bring back old GL

[a human being]

yes PLEASE do this i beg yall, this will bring life back to solocading

[ForrestMarkX]

The old one can't be restored so don't waste your time with it

[Porter2455]

The old one can't be restored so don't waste your time with it

 

Is there anyway to balance the current one to mirror the old one without having to add any animations? If you can’t bring the old model back then make the new model just mirror the stats, who cares if it doesn’t make sense to have a China have 6 shots. Im damn willing to learn lua to make this happen.

[ForrestMarkX]

Is there anyway to balance the current one to mirror the old one without having to add any animations? If you can’t bring the old model back then make the new model just mirror the stats, who cares if it doesn’t make sense to have a China have 6 shots. Im damn willing to learn lua to make this happen.

 

Instead of wasting time finding a new model just make the reload animation on the current faster and make the grenade do more damage

[Destroy]

#bringbackptrs lel

[Porter2455]

 

 

Instead of wasting time finding a new model just make the reload animation on the current faster and make the grenade do more damage

 

Orrrrr the reverse. Could make clip size 6, slow reload animation accordingly so it loads all the bullets in one go, and balance damage accordingly? The issue is the single shot. What use is the extra damage if you can’t get the bullets out before everyone is dead. Or is there a significant issue with increasing the clip size I’m not seeing?

[ForrestMarkX]

Orrrrr the reverse. Could make clip size 6, slow reload animation accordingly so it loads all the bullets in one go, and balance damage accordingly? The issue is the single shot. What use is the extra damage if you can’t get the bullets out before everyone is dead. Or is there a significant issue with increasing the clip size I’m not seeing?

 

Consistency and quality

[Porter2455]

Consistency and quality

 

Ok, fair point, and I can certainly see the issues. Could I suggest a balance for the other way then? It's been awhile since I checked official stats, so sorry if the numbers are off slightly, but I believe current damage is 225 and reload is 2.05 seconds, assuming level 0. Would a 5-10% damage buff, 20-25% reload decrease, and upping the stock back to 2 be reasonable? I'm just throwing numbers out there to try and get a resolution in place.

[Northground]

Sorry for the late response regarding the critique of the system in place. I have thought a bit about the things said here and will try my best to explain my thought on these matters. You start of my saying the following statement.

Howvever, it has made earning profit harder than ever. Going for honorable mentions forces you to either play zombie and try hard the whole game, or stay human and go negative in an effort to get some of the other mentions. Once you get the cards, you have to sink 1000s of points to upgrade; points you were spending like crazy to get the mentions to get the decks in the first place.

The amount of profit you make when we are talking about killing or damaging zombies is only calculated by the amount of damage you deal with your weapon, you getting the last hit and being seen as the person that killed the zombie does not matter what so ever. Why am i bringing this up? Because this show us that the amount of points that you are able to earn has only gone up over time, this due to a power creep effect. Let me explain a bit more thoroughly on what this is and what consequences it leads to. Power creep is something that emerges when you start adding new content to a game which is better compared to the old content, in our case this would be the weapons of the humans. As more and more weapons that are better get added to the game, the oposite side will seem underpowered, now this might not seem obvious at first but can happen gradually over a very long period of time. The way we fix this is to now buff the zombie side to compensate for the unbalance that is currently in the game. The consequences of this will be quite a few. The first which isnt really related to this topic but in every way as important, old weapons of the human team will ofcource be heavily underbalanced. The second is that a higher health pool of the zombie team combined with a higher damage output of the human team will raise the amount of points earned quite a bit, and this is quite easy to see since the points gained is calculated not by the kills but by the damage dealt. Now, this isnt what you are arguing about but it can be good to understand that how much profit the humans make has not gone down but rather up. If i continue to comment on your reason why humans are making less profit. As i understand it, you argue that since humans chose to go for the honorable mentions and that this in turn makes people sink a lot of points into it. The only thing i agree with you here is that its quite stupid that the honorable mentions which will grant you cards often is granted to the ones that not just spend most points but the ones that go negative the most. When i think about it this in turn makes it highly more likely for already rich people to get the honorable mentions, which in turn makes them get the better weapons in terms of more upgrades, which in turn just makes it more likely for them to get the honorable mentions again. If there were any good solutions to this problem i would be all for it. One idea would maybe be to find a good middleground in honorable mentions that is a combination between the damage/zombie killed and the amount of profit made. You also argue that the points spent to upgrade weapons is something bad and takes away peoples points too fast which only contributes to the problem. I could actually not disagree more. The card system was not only implemented to give players more incentive to actually play but also make something usefull of the points that they have hoarded up for years. Upgrading cards is something that shouldnt be too easy and actually take a very long time to complete and make worth of peoples points. You should also remember that upgrading cards isnt something that you need to do, for you can also save it if you would like. Another point which i also have said in another post regarding cards and trading which also makes a point here is that making cards more accessible whether is is decreasing the amount of points it takes to upgrade cards or the amount of points human makes, is that it would decrease the amount of time it takes to make a gap in power between old and new players in terms of how strong their weapons are, also maybe the biggest negative aspect of the card system.

Now, your next argument is regarding the supply crate items. These are items that can strongly help the humans win if used in the right way, which according to some is the purpose of the game. So if a person choses, as you say "take one for the team" to increase the humans chances of survival there is no reason that they shouldnt go negative due to this item. If we would make these items profitable, i would once again point to the power creep effect i talked about before. Adding more items for the humans that wouldnt have any or a small chance of not making profit and at the same time increasing their risk for survival, would also make a lot more people buying them, which in turn buffs the human team, which in turn makes us have to buff the zombies etc etc. If we move on to your next set of statements which say.

The most dissapointing thing I have found with this current zs is that outside of double points, solocading is completely dead. With the exception of like 3 god tier maps, a cade with few enough people for tier 6 will not last even close enough for a single person to get within like -600. While the general power creep the card system creates and the multiplier a destroyed supply crate adds don’t help, I feel they simply dog pile on the real problem:

While you conclude that the problem lies within tier 6 and surviving the later waves long enough to make profit, it is easier for me to see, like you said, that zombies getting buffed when a supply crate is destroyed does add to the problem. In my opinion it doesnt make sense to have this system as it is, buffing zombies when the biggest cade with the most humans is gone and only smaller cades remain, which are already underpowered. You also state that the card system creates a power creep which in theory it doesnt unless i have missed something. It can however create problems if the upgrades arent adjusted correct towards each other which there could be a high risk of, and i will personally look over their stats shortly to see what needs to be changed. Another point which hasnt been brought up that does effect solocading is the resistance system in place right now. The resistance system works by calculating how close humans are to eachother/how close zombies are to eachother. The closer humans are, the more resistance zombies get. The closer zombies are, the more resistance zombies get. 1 zombie has the deafult of 1 resistance. If 2 zombies stack ontop of eachother they get 2 resitance. This system is capped at 25% with only zombies stacking. It works the same way with humans but with a 45% cap. Both systems working together still has a 45% cap. Again this system also creates an unfair davantage for solocaders/runners since zombies get more resistance the more of them are in the same place, and in turn makes it very easy for people going solo to be at a disadvantage. My suggestion for this is removing the zombie stack system since i see no real purpose for it. The human stack system is fine and could be kept at 45% or even higher. If we jump forward to what you credit the biggest problem as.

The Current Gernade Launcher does not have the firepower to hold off a hoard of card-boosted, supply destroyed enchaned Zombies. Only having one stock compounds said issue even more.

I dont disagree with you here that it cant hold off the whole zombie team in most situations. I do believe however that it can do this during times when the population is very small and buffing it or adding more stock i would create a big issue during these times. Its simply not possible to say that doing this will fix most balance issues without creating even more in other areas.

Regardless of how you feel about tier 6, you can’t deny how important it was to making solocading a practical high-risk, high-reward strategy. It takes skill, pre-planning, map-knowledge, and a little luck to pull off a successful solocade. Last year, when you got everything to work, the reward was very worthwhile. Even without double points, multiple people could potentially make profit off only a wave or 2 of shooting. The centerpiece to this success was having 2 stocks of the og gernade launcher, an absolute beast that was very powerful, but fair, once the knockback was removed. What made old solocades work is that the 6 shots in its clip allowed a fire rate to actually kill things while providing support for your teammates to kill things faster. They still couldn’t win, as the hoard was just too much to keep away, making sure population didn’t fall due to boredom.

As you yourself say here, tier 6 does make solocadeing a high-risk high-reward strategy, but this is only if you want to play high-risk high-reward yourself. However, you also say that solocading being profitable was due to having 2 stock of the original grenade launcher. I myself find this to be very wrong due to the fact that solocading was profitable long before tier 6 arrived and that it only strengthens my other arguments on why solocading is harder now. Although, this doenst mean i dissmiss the idea totally that grenade launcher might need a small rebalance, just that i think other gameplay elements play a much bigger part in not just the likelihood of the last solocade surviving but towards solocades in general that dont have tier 6.

Well, could it have not been balanced any better than the card system powering up zombies in general? Also, by the time a solocade is attacked, a supply crate is almost certainly destroyed. This gives zombies a 1.14 difficulty multiplier, boosting power even more. These 2 changes are major balances from the past that should quell some worries of opness.

There could for sure have been alternate ways to create a better system but i guess the biggest problem is that if we were to change it up, is that it would be highly disliked by players who dont see what problems this one causes and who have put down lots of time into it. I guess as a conclusion to your critique is that while i think the grenade launcher might play a small part in it, that it could be worthwile to look into some other solutions and problems that has made solocading more or less die, like you said about the 1.14 zombie buff or the resistance system i talked about. One idea would also be to find some kind of trait or disposable that would benefit people being low in number.

So why not set the stock to 1 on objectives? This keeps tier 6 largely unchanged on objectives, while giving it the power it really needs on survival.

I already see quite a bit of problems on obj where people seem to lose interest in playing when they cant get the tier 6 they want. Buffing the gun and setting it to one stock would for sure only increase this behaviour in people.