Remove or Adjust zs_palace_v1

[Snowyamur]

I'm not one to usually suggest removing or adjusting current ZS maps on rotation, but after playing this map earlier today and losing the first round on Wave 1, and the second late into Wave 2, this one is by far bad on different accounts:

 

The size isn't the problem; but it's a maze

The fact that zs_palace_v1 is huge is not the issue, but navigating it is a problem. New time and veteran players of our server that play on this map will usually struggle finding out where the cading spots are, and most of the time, we all just end up dying because either there's no good place to cade, or there is a good place to cade, but players can't find it. Eventually, many players end up dying around the start of Wave 1, and even if there's a cade, we usually don't survive any longer than Wave 2, rarely longer than Wave 3.

 

Prop variety isn't good in many locations

Suppose there are a few good cading spots. While that's great, the props in these locations aren't necessarily good. Most of the time, it's just crates and chairs; not much can be done with them. On some occasions, there are bookshelves and tables, which work well, but these are few in number. There are virtually little to no barrels, and the list goes on. This map needs more prop variety for humans to make decent cades, or this map is basically unfair for them.

 

Zombie spawns can be absurd for new players

I'm sure many who've played this map a few times know that zombies spawn in a location that only has one exit, but even the exit isn't noticeable. Players that go zombie and are new to zs_palace_v1 will spend time struggling trying to get out of their spawn location, sometimes typing "kill" in console to die to hopefully respawn in a new area, but that doesn't usually happen. If their patience becomes tested, they will likely quit, and that isn't a good thing. This isn't such a huge issue for people that have played this map many times, but is still nonetheless an issue.

 

Too many close corners, small walkways, and narrow hallways

For the humans, this is bad because if zombies show up, they won't escape easily. For the zombies, should the humans have a cade, their cade could be at the end of a hallway, and zombies would be killed before they could even reach the cade. To simply put: both teams are at a disadvantage when either is trying to kill or survive on this map.

 

Too many dead ends

zs_palace_v1 has an absurd amount of dead ends, leaving less options for the humans running away, and making navigation even more confusing. Dead ends on maps are fine, but when there are too many dead ends, that's when it starts to become bad because this results in poor map control by humans to controlling a certain area from the zombies, and it results in human players usually, and easily, being cornered.

 

These are just a few of my takes with zs_palace_v1. We need to seriously cut-down on bad maps like this, either remove them or adjust them. I like to think of removing a map from map rotation as the last resort option, thus I much prefer if someone can update and adjust this map over taking it out of the picture altogether.

[EngineTrap]

ok first off the current version is v2, not v1 , unless it was rolled back to v1 after i left in which case. why lol

secondly the map was specifically meant to  be as easy to navigate as possible so i dont get what you mean by dead ends since practically every floor does a loop around itself and leads into the other floors with the only exception being the elevator shaft

third i dont see how the spawns are "absurd  and hard for new players" while also saying the map gets instantly lost at the same time, it can only be one or the other, there's no in between, also the spawn has two entrances, not one

 

im not even fond of this map, i made it ages ago and it has quite a lot of optimization issues among other things i struggled with back in the day, i wouldnt really care if it got removed as long as there was a proper argument for it but this aint it. 

 

 

 

Edited February 10, 2019 by EngineTrap

[Snowyamur]

@EngineTrap

Currently, we're using v1 for some reason, and if you said there's a v2, then I don't know why we're using v1 of this map.

Also, I'm just trying to make new players that happen to hop on our server while this map's on to not immediately dislike it because of this one map. To be honest, most of the times we play this map, about 40% of the humans die because they don't know where they're going.

[EngineTrap]

that's on hg then. no clue what's the point of rolling back a better version of a map for an older worse version but ok lol.