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First off, I really do like the optimism in this post. It shows the dedication the players have towards such a niche gamemode in a nearly 2 decade old game, it's really something you'll never see with triple a games these days. I personally quit playing ZS a long time ago and coming back to this community even if it's for a moment made this old dog happy. That being said, I'll get into what I want to say. The Actual Meat of My Opinion Towards This Effort If you want to know why my opinions have come to this conclusion, underneath will be a few paragraphs of context starting at "Present Context". But to be honest, "Present Context" and onwards can be ignored altogehter because it really was just me going on a tangent. Quite frankly, I don't think this is going to work. This is mainly just because of the amount of people that are currently interested or even know about ZS. Unlike TTT or DarkRP, ZS, although it is one of the biggest gamemodes in Gmod, is nowhere near the amount of its larger contemporaries in terms of active playerbase. Even disregarding that factor, Gmod is steadily declining in popularity and is nowhere near being one of the most popular games comparing to other hot games at the moment like Rust of Among Us. It's unfortunately no longer 2014 where you can just showcase mods or play deathrun in gmod and get thousands of views anymore. Today, the big gmod videos out there are mainly roleplay, TTT or prophunt. That's not to say ZS can't be one of them, but a channel just dedicated to ZS in my eyes, is just not viable in today's YT/Twitch climate. Again, even if we disregard those factors, managerial factors such as quality control, motivation, dedication, teamwork, upload scheduling and the overall entertainment value in the content are all factors that need to be addressed. These are the major things that need to be addressed. Getting to the business side of things, how can it ensured that all parties can stay on track through very little incentive other than pure dedication? What about the finer details of the jobs structure? How will this be organised and executed? How can we get all servers and communities in line? How do we provide an incentive? With all these new players, wouldn't the actual experience in-game as well as for the community greatly change? So on and so forth. All of this may seem unnecessary, but these are just a few of the issues and factors that need to be addressed in order for this to work. I don't want to set you up for failure with extreme optimism, I'm here to provide a more realist approach in this very bold pitch. Although I myself don't have all the solutions to these, I did say I had a few, such as: focusing more on HG's servers and the servers of other communities as a whole rather than just ZS. This way we can also traffic viewers and potential players from other gamemodes and games such as TTT or CSGO. Monetary incentive for other ZS communities via viewership revenue (for general server maintenance). This is only if you are adamant to include all ZS communities and will take some time to achieve. Splitting the revenue for server maintenance will make it a source of revenue for server maintenace, which will get server owners in on the project and make it more than just a community side-project. And that's really all I have at the moment unfortunately. I can't really think of any ways to address the other points I have risen up unfortunately, I just can't really see a way of achieving them at the moment. That being said, I don't dislike this idea, I just find it very difficult to achieve, there's just so many ways it can fail in my eyes, and if the idea can't be fleshed out more thoroughly, the chances of uploading the content let-alone garnering in more players is low. I know your idea is still very young, and you might not have had enough time to properly think it out, I'm here to make you think more on it, so that ultimately, it can work. My Tangents Present Context I'm going to provide a little context onto how I came to this post; here I am, on my computer, checking my emails to see if any important related school stuffs have been sent my way, the newest email today is this and here I am. I'm not sure why I haven't changed the newsletter settings yet but here I am. It's getting close to two years since I last spent most of my day playing ZS and I read this post about wanting to increase the population via uploading content to various popular video-sharing platforms. Being empathetic towards the situation and having viewed the state of the population of the gamemode a few weeks beforehand, as well as wanting to express my own opinions and provide valid but helpful criticism to benefit the effort in the long-run, this has led me to where I am now. To give you guys an insight towards my perspective, I'm going to share my past experiences, as well as my current feelings and opinions towards the games that I have accumulated over the span of a good three and a half years. My Past in HG ZS (For some context) General Information of My Past as Being a Regular at HG ZS (long subheading) The biggest piece of information I should share is that I haven't spent a massive amount of time on the game for almost two years now, as mentioned before. To put into context how many hours I mean by "a massive amount of time", I mean around 50-80 hours at average per week, and this only went on for possibly a month at most beginning from January 2019 - Feburary 2019 (I can't exactly remember). For many people, this might not sound like a lot, for me, especially now, this is a lot of time spent on a game in such a short amount of time, I could never think of doing that again. But to provide even more context as to why I did this, around a year prior (~Jan 2018), the laptop I used to play ZS on broke because of water damage, the replacement laptop couldn't handle HG ZS with 80+ players even at the lowest settings (keep in mind the avg player count in HG ZS at this time was almost at max no matter what time of the day) and so I couldn't play HG ZS on a regular basis until I got a new laptop at around Dec 2018. The new laptop allowed me to play HG ZS once again at an acceptable framerate at high with all the players and so I did the one thing I have been wanting to do for a year - play ZS. Now the last two things I should mention here would be the most obvious thing I haven't yet talked about and a bit of a TL;DR - I started playing on HG ZS around mid 2017 and I consciously quit playing at around early 2019, with a one year gap of nothingness at around early 2018 - early 2019. Past Experiences If you understandably don't care about what has been mentioned, that's fine. All it is is some general information such as dates, as well as how much time I spent playing the game before I decided to quit almost two years ago. My past experiences with the game are important to understand why I feel the way about ZS as a whole as you may already know, so this will be rather short. When I played the game, I was a pretty big tryhard and asshole when I played the game. I was very insensitive, and I would complain and act like a little shit like every single regular that plays HG ZS is. I was only 13 when I first played the game, and I was only 14 turning 15 when I played again for the second time. Even though it's only been a short amount of time and I'm only just turning 17 in a few months soon, I have grown up since then (at least I like to think). My taste and personal thoughts towards video games as a whole since then has changed drastically, and now I only play with friends I know irl. From what I remember, the main reason why I played for as long as I did was because of the community (the people in vc as well as in text), and I wanted to listen as well as interact with the community. I really enjoyed the funny remarks by people in vc and I personally took a liking to a lot of them like Corgi, Precariusa, xKatn1ss, eXfro and many more I can't remember anymore. That being said, the main take-away here is that I really only played the game for the community, as well as to point-whore but who didn't at the time :P. Possibly My Last Ever Experience With ZS When I lately played at around christmas time 2020 to suck up the nostalgia and just to see how the server was going, I was welcomed by a constant player-base of around 40-50 at any time. The last time I hoped in I was welcomed by around 20 bots and barely 10 human players for 2 hours until the server started to get some more human players only to be even more disappointed because of the current playstyle and the community. Even if it was for around an hour I was met by constant complaining in the vc, trash-talking other players (which has always been normal) but the thing that really got me the most was just the state of the current gameplay of ZS. With the introduction of ricocheting concentrated laser beam guns since I last left as well as even more ridiculous laser guns and melee weapons and just a wider selection of everything makes me feel like I'm trying to choose what flavour soup I'm getting at the supermarket. It also really ruins the immersion for me, and ultimately the gameplay feels more shallowed due to there just being extremely OP weapons making zombie pushing impossible (thank god I'm no longer a Zmain anymore). And this really made me think about the whole gamemode as a whole. Current Feelings + Opinions (Towards ZS) Looking back at ZS, the gamemode at a whole is very unrefined and repetitive, the main premise is to build a barricade in a room and shoot through little opening in the cade every now and then until you win or die, and with the large amount of people that played at the time, it didn't even matter if you were doing anything gameplay wise unless you wanted to grind points in HG. What I don't like more are the boring, uncreative maps that always get chosen all the time like farmhouse, where the rounds always play the same way and there's only two viable spots. The maps should really be in a random rotation to allow more obscure maps to be played but even then, at the core, the gameplay will always be the same, disregarding the other modes such as OBJ or ZE. For me personally, it really was just about the community of ZS, which is why I've focused on that aspect a lot in why I had a drive to play ZS.

I really only go poison hc because that's where the points are

I'm greedy because I like to pointwhore

I have unsubscribed all of my addons, deleted the actual files and I have uninstalled and reinstalled gmod a few times, although I haven't deleted my downloads folder, I'll do that right now. Edit: I waited 10 minutes to load in, still didn't work. Thanks for the recommendation, although I don't think I need to replace my ssd at this moment in time, I'll consider getting this down the road.

Perhaps, It's just that everything was fine until 5 days ago. I loaded in when everybody else did. keep in mind I started playing gmod hg zs back in the 11-13th of this January and everything until a couple of days ago was fine, I can join every other zs server but not hg.

Just to make sure, are there any addons that I have to be subscribed to (that's on the worskshop) before I get on? And to clear some things, I've done the thread suggestion and I still can't get on. I've also ran a speedtest to check if my ssd is running as intended, which it is.

I found out that I have 2 windows updates that I haven't installed yet. Gonna install them and see if that fixes anything. Probably won't. Edit: I actually have quite a few things to update. Gonna update everything then go check. Edit: still nope.

I like the type of bonemeshes that just stand there while I unload my entire clip right into their faces without flinching.

I'm not sure if this should be in suggestion/bugs or not, but I'll put it here anyways. For a couple days now, I haven't been able to get on the hg zs server, just this server. I went on a few other servers to make sure it wasn't because of connection issues. Anyways, the problem is that whenever I try to load into the server, it stops at "sending client info". I have restarted my modem, uninstalled all of my addons, and also uninstalled and reinstalled the game numerous times. Until today I had no idea what was the problem, until today (at least I think). I tried to connect to the server, still stuck on "sending client info". I give up about 2-3 minutes later and then decided to check my console, I got quite a few errors (see screenshots). I'm wondering if there is anyway to fix these errors, I'm not 100% that this is the problem, but I should still get these errors fixed regardless. I apologise if the screenshots are too blurry.

As someone who personally loves pushing out by himself, I would say that this should indeed be buffed by at least 30 dmg. It's already easy to dodge just by strafing, we should give the humans something to fear for.

welcome to the club. I'll also change it to "taking" instead of "stealing" since it doesn't really fit in now that I think about it

Points. I know you want 'em. How do you get them? It's simple, ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶o̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶z̶o̶m̶b̶i̶e̶s̶, ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶b̶u̶i̶l̶d̶ ̶c̶a̶d̶e̶s̶ and lastly you leech off the poor human team's back. Yes you heard me, we're gonna be complete and utter pieces of shits just to make some virtual non-existent points. Now you may be wondering "I don't know man, I think the other players won't like it if I'm in it for self gain." Well to answer your question I will have to say that NOBODY CARES HUN, just like nobody cares about this guide. Now before we start this guide, you have to understand that this stuff is some elite pointwhoring, only scumbags like me will be fine doing this. Ok enough chit-chat, I'll explain how we'll organise this guide. The first team we'll be discussing is the Human team and next is Zombie team. I'll then recommend some profitable guns, items, traits, etc. In this guide we won't be delving too deep into traits and stuff because it make this guide a lot more confusing than it already is. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that this guide is clearly just for satirical purposes, and don't blame me that all the players are all pointwhoring losers now K thx bye :3 Human Team The human team has a variety of ways to pointwhore, like repairing, which we'll be discussing first. Repairing is very cost-effective and helpful for the human team. It helps keep the cade healthy and ready for the human team, and believe it or not, barely any does this. Well, sometimes. Repairing is extremely simple, like if you don't know how to do this you actually suck at the game ( ̶S̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶a̶p̶p̶l̶i̶e̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶m̶e̶). But, if you literally don't know how to repair a freaking prop, I'll tell you. 1. Get a hammer 2. Find a prop that has been nailed down and needs repairing 3. Hold left click and there we have it, this is how we repair a cade. Now I know you may be asking "pls help, instructions unclear, dick stuck in toaster", well too bad, we're moving on. Monopolising with an arsenal crate or resupply crate can get you a lot of points. This is more of a side pointwhore - you should be doing something other than just staring at your crate and begging people to buy from your crate. You should repairing, shooting, whatever you want while monopolising for maximum profit. Healing is a very poo-poo way to pointwhore but it's pretty goo-goo when x1.5 or dp is on. It's probably one of the least efficient in terms of pointwhoring, but it really helps the human team. By that I mean it keeps the goo-goo ga-gas from whining. Unfortunately, this method can get really costly since 50 med power costs 20 each, and you'll probably only get around 10 points return (that's if 5 medpower = 1 point). This is why healing is really only good if there's dp or something like that. Now of course, you can waste even more points by getting the surgeon trait but I digress, and I also think I'm wrong BUT needless to say, healing is really good if you're also doing other things like shooting or repairing, like me. You can also buy more medpower at the starting pointshop (but who would honestly waste the starting points for medpower). All in all, in terms of pointwhoring, healing isn't really profitable, I usually LOSE points instead of gain, but to be honest, I can compromise, healing is very important in zs. But unfortunately, I wish I could say that to the next one. "Taking" is the most greedy thing to do in the game, and when I mean "taking" I mean grabbing dropped goods, like ammo or guns. The most doucheist thing to do is to just wait for someone to die while you are literally holding a medkit, but in terms of pointwhoring this does not matter. Stealing someone's stuff is the most profitable when someone dies with a t3 - t6 gun, but other tiers are still as profitable as long as you have the ammo for the said gun, so make sure to take the ammo as well. This one varies, as it depends on what loot you get. But still, this one still deserves to be on the list. Unfortunately, I might not say the same with the next. Solo-cading varies on how well and long you survive. Grabbing a tier 6 is the most profitable but most dangerous since you might not last long enough to use up all of your ammo. Getting some explosives as well can really boost the profiting and that's about it. I can't really say much about this one other than it's a pain to break through for us zmainers, and you should just stop. Just like the next one. Jug, just, jug. I think we all know what this one is about. The pinnacle of frustration and vast disappointment. Of course, being jug is fun, but Jug kinda sucks now (and I can't describe how), like how you'll probably only gain 300-400 as jug, which obviously varies from person to person, but this is about the average for a human. All in all jug is just a frustration for us zmainers to handle. ZE (Zombie Escape) are the series of maps where you purchase a gun for 10 - 25 and you escape from the zombie (nuh duh) that have a couple thousand hp in them. Luckily for you, you can deal a good amount of damage yourself and you can slow them down when hit, remember the slowing down part. You also get a free incendiary grenade (type !he for more) which can boost your points by 20-100 depending on how much zombies you hit. Now, let's get back to your gun. You have the gun for a reason - shoot. Depleting a zombies entire health yourself can earn you up to 30 points per zombie. Depleting an entire mag is about 5 - 10 points return, this obviously varies from gun to gun. Did I forget to mention that your ammo is infinite? So yeah, make sure to help defend your zombies, you can easily make 100 - 200+ points if you do. Zombie Team The definition of profit. There is no way to lose points other than upgrading cards. So let's dig in shall we? Destroying nailed props is not a very practical way of pointwhoring as zombie, but this one should still be discussed. It's simple really, just find a nailed prop that's within the vicinity of the human team (if you aren't close to the humans you won't gain points) and damage the props. You'll probably only get 50 - 80 points as zombie doing this, but profit's still profit, amiright? Hitting humans is the most profitable thing to do, period. I'm not kidding, you can get about 30 points if you kill a single human on your own, and you can make about 10 points (I would say) per hit as a normal zombie. This isn't 100% accurate of course, but I think it's about right. Going in as bloated or poison headcrab can REALLY boost your profit, and I mean REALLY. going in as any poison zombie would be the way to go for MAXIMUM POINTWHORE, and luckily for us pointwhoring zmains we get the beautiful Bullsquid, a sexy creature. Moving forward, this is genuinely the most profitable thing to do in the game, I'm not lying. I usually get around 200-300 points per map as zombie by doing this (and of course destroying cades would contribute to this as well). This is one of the easiest ways to pointwhore, as it is the one of the main things you should do as zombie, like destroying cades. Being a zombie is just the two methods above this. Sorry :/ ZE would also be very profitable for the zombie team. Just make sure you are not behind and most importantly hit the humans, I wish I could say that for obj. If you are having trouble catching up to the humans, I would suggest getting better at ze. This'll get you up to 400 points if you are a skilled enough zombie player. Profitable Stuffs This manly applies to humans, but I'll also add in zombie traits to this. If you also have other profitable guns, etc that aren't on the list, please leave a comment suggesting that weapon or trait. T1 ricochet revolver glock T2 Sprayer uzi Akbar assault rifle Ender shotgun T3 Tiny slug rifle Reaper ump Doom shotgun T4 Majester Adonis Rejuvenator T5 Raygun Destructor shotgun Evil long double barrel shotgun T6 Hurricane Grenade launcher Other Katana Mega masher Sawhack (double or single) Zweihander Claymore Det - pack Suicide bomb Slam trip mine Grenade Arsenal pack Resupply crate Zombie traits extended claws fury rush Conclusion Pointwhoring is a very important aspect in zombie survival. It is also the definitive definition of HG ZS. So next time someone asks what HG ZS is reply with "pointwhoring", they will definitely understand, trust me. I hope to see you pointwhoring soon, fellow pointwhores. Writer's note I would like to take this moment to tell you guys that I am probably incorrect with some of the facts, and therefore I would like to ask you guys to help me correct them by messaging me, replying, whatever. This is my first time making something like this so I would like it if you guys go easy for me, I'm not forcing you to, just asking. I would also like to remind you that this is for satirical purposes, but you may feel free to follow this guide if you want. I'll also be updating this guide from time to time, adjusting each of them, adding some more, etc. So don't forget to check guide every now and then. *Unrelated image of a bullsquid*

A WEAPON TO SURPASS METAL GEAR