Hi, wanted to give a feedback of experience that had with zombie mode here and suggestions that could give.
From what experienced the matches are very short, unbalanced and mostly frustrating, there is always some unbeatable (mostly) survivor base or unwinnable (mostly) map for survivors, places accessible only to jetpack pyros stalling and slowing the game and eyelander demos/BFB scouts playing sonic and stalling the game aswell. From when played years ago on different server which doesn't exist anymore so this is not an advert, the server ran zombie mode but there insteed of infecting everyone in 1 hit it would take 2 hits for anyone, no matter demoman, heavy or scout (demoman had third chance if had shield equiped but getting hit was destroying the shield so it was only single time chance), when player was hit they were flashing green, if they were not hit for some time or they were healed by medic/dispenser (to make the process faster) they were regaining that 1 chance after a while, everyone was taking damage with hits + losing that 1 chance, the chance regenerated but the health not so if someone was in open without healthpacks or other sources of health but dodged all attacks to let the infection fade out, they would anyway eventualy die from just damage. Here damage doesn't matter, ppl get infected in 1 hit but sometimes it doesn't work properly and ppl that are not demoman can get hit and still not be infected, not only that, the demoman doesn't take double damage from zombies as the class info says. Anyway, what looking for is suggesting to bring most of the game rules that remember from there here and some own suggestions since the game changed in mechanics a little and some weapons works differently than before.
So, would like to see it here too, the infecting in 2 hits part, demos included. It would be combated by allowing scout have his guilotine, all the balls, drinks, that way, they can snipe any flying or running away ppl, they would also snipe ppl in bases making medics a more important role on survivor part as of right now, stacking heavies, demos, pyros and engis is the best tactic so far with endless defensive capabilities, who needs a medic to heal them if they gonna get infected in 1 hit and there is no mechanism that encourages seeking a medics help, vaccinator and quickfix are useless, stock is mediocre at best and kritzkrieg is the best so far but since games last 2-5 minutes max, there can be max 1-2 ubers used by medic and they have barely any impact unless the zombies are in base and needs clearing with kritz.
Lunchboxes for heavy zombies should be a thing too, why is not?, that's not like eating a sandvich gonna break the game.
Eyelander and BFB speed boosts shouldn't be a thing, they doesn't add anything, all they do is allow demos and scouts run arround the map possibly to the end of match and winning by doing nothing, there's not many big or dodgy maps to allow that but whenever one is played, it happens and not even a pack of charging demoknights will catch a BFB scout that have a brain on map such as for example the desert.
The other thing that would suggest be disabled is jetpack, yes, it allows to fly and attack those scouts, soldiers, engis and other survivor jetpack pyros hidding in almost unreachable places but if it happens and the only class that can reliably reach those places is jetpack pyro then there is a big issue, with addition of previously mentioned ranged scouts this issue would be ultimately resolved, the other reason why jetpack shouldn't be a thing is that, not only it have infinite uses here, that's also a free fast getaway and free way to reach those mentioned hard to reach places, everyone, soldier, demo, atomizer scout or wrangler engis, they all have to trade health to get there making them an easier pray, pyro loses nothing, he doesn't even lose ammo by jumping arround.
Airblast also is a thing here, don't remember how it was on the other server but it would be good as gone or it should consume all the pyros ammo, why?, bcs there are some places where 1 airblasting pyro can shut down an entire horde as long as they have a dispenser and a ledge to push zombies off, before JI the airblast was stunlocking but it didn't push so hard, right now airblast is atleast 2x stronger making having a pyro on some roof just a win condition.
Also survivor spy is broken, they can be seen even when disguised, not even a zombie spy is usefull, their only special ability is using teleporters which can be completly shut down by engi being smart and destroying the teleporter entrance once not needed but even if the spy teleporter, the spy doesn't infect on 1 hit, he deals 40 dmg, backstabbing included so before he even manages to butterknife that engi to death, he gonna have more holes than cheese (not sure about his taunt kill with knives, if it doesn't work, didn't check, it might be good to be enabled for sieging walled survivors as the taunts kill buildings in 1 hit and would allow for a tactical strike of zombies by bodyblocking the bullets from taunting spy and lettin him kill the wall).
Other thing are maps, played most of them in last few days, they literaly are all horrible, either favorizing survivors with unreachable roofs or tight corridors or zombies by small map, rooms and lack of places to hide, from experience found only 3 places where sentry gun could be placed to block entry, rest could be jumped on which caber demos would abuse and just infect entire room of survivors if their jump over + charge succeded, some of those places can be secured by dispenser as dispenser is higher but also can't be wrangled and dies to 1 caber explosion, so having 1 demo sacrifice themselves to allow those 10 zombies behind enter is just eh, by all means, not discouraging caber but it means walling without using wrangled sentry pointless as that's the only thing capable of surviving a caber, not sure even why sentry is replaced by mini-sentry. Definitely would suggest replacing maps with actual zombie maps that are not just camping roofs or long coridors (using hammer is realy not that hard, the maps mostly doesn't seem be though out for zombie mode and were just adjusted with plugins for this and no map changes at all), as the game is mostly frustrating for the zombie team, all survivors can lose is just being infected and also the lack of satisfaction that something worked as the maps either favour survivors and that's just rancho relaxing or favour zombies and that's just better to join undead than waste time of everyone and hide on top of trees or run arround.
A new thing that could encourage maps with better defensive positions which can be blocked by just sentry but without long tight corridors and also return of normal sentry would be fear meter, in gmod zombie mod (not sure how is now but years ago it was that way), zombies gained damage resistance based on how many were packed close, every zombie produced 2-3% on fear meter up to 50% and every 1% of fear meter meant 1% of damage reduction, it would encourage cooperation, striking the weaker survivor colonies first to gather undead forces and to think tacticaly to strike all together to give eachother buff and allow for atleast 1 zombie to get into that infested with 5 heavies shooting into doorway room. (by the way, if we are about heavies, natasha also should be restricted, when crouching, the knockback of any minigun is already enough to push any zombie out that is not a charging demoknight, having a natasha heavy on a team in a corridor base is almost as good as having airblast pyro on roofs.)
Lastly, the props on some maps, it realy shows that some maps were not checked before including them into map rotation, all props are undestructible meaning that on some maps ppl can just push props like vending machines into doorways, block it off by surrounding it with dispensers and whatever and done, rancho relaxo inside the room on survivor part and a dancing party outside by zombies, either just use hammer to remove those props, make them static props or perhaps keep them movable but make them able to die if they took too much damage so constant pushing it into doorway would weaken/break it and even then survivors would still have to defend their prop which otherwise would be destroyed by zombies.
From what experienced the matches are very short, unbalanced and mostly frustrating, there is always some unbeatable (mostly) survivor base or unwinnable (mostly) map for survivors, places accessible only to jetpack pyros stalling and slowing the game and eyelander demos/BFB scouts playing sonic and stalling the game aswell. From when played years ago on different server which doesn't exist anymore so this is not an advert, the server ran zombie mode but there insteed of infecting everyone in 1 hit it would take 2 hits for anyone, no matter demoman, heavy or scout (demoman had third chance if had shield equiped but getting hit was destroying the shield so it was only single time chance), when player was hit they were flashing green, if they were not hit for some time or they were healed by medic/dispenser (to make the process faster) they were regaining that 1 chance after a while, everyone was taking damage with hits + losing that 1 chance, the chance regenerated but the health not so if someone was in open without healthpacks or other sources of health but dodged all attacks to let the infection fade out, they would anyway eventualy die from just damage. Here damage doesn't matter, ppl get infected in 1 hit but sometimes it doesn't work properly and ppl that are not demoman can get hit and still not be infected, not only that, the demoman doesn't take double damage from zombies as the class info says. Anyway, what looking for is suggesting to bring most of the game rules that remember from there here and some own suggestions since the game changed in mechanics a little and some weapons works differently than before.
So, would like to see it here too, the infecting in 2 hits part, demos included. It would be combated by allowing scout have his guilotine, all the balls, drinks, that way, they can snipe any flying or running away ppl, they would also snipe ppl in bases making medics a more important role on survivor part as of right now, stacking heavies, demos, pyros and engis is the best tactic so far with endless defensive capabilities, who needs a medic to heal them if they gonna get infected in 1 hit and there is no mechanism that encourages seeking a medics help, vaccinator and quickfix are useless, stock is mediocre at best and kritzkrieg is the best so far but since games last 2-5 minutes max, there can be max 1-2 ubers used by medic and they have barely any impact unless the zombies are in base and needs clearing with kritz.
Lunchboxes for heavy zombies should be a thing too, why is not?, that's not like eating a sandvich gonna break the game.
Eyelander and BFB speed boosts shouldn't be a thing, they doesn't add anything, all they do is allow demos and scouts run arround the map possibly to the end of match and winning by doing nothing, there's not many big or dodgy maps to allow that but whenever one is played, it happens and not even a pack of charging demoknights will catch a BFB scout that have a brain on map such as for example the desert.
The other thing that would suggest be disabled is jetpack, yes, it allows to fly and attack those scouts, soldiers, engis and other survivor jetpack pyros hidding in almost unreachable places but if it happens and the only class that can reliably reach those places is jetpack pyro then there is a big issue, with addition of previously mentioned ranged scouts this issue would be ultimately resolved, the other reason why jetpack shouldn't be a thing is that, not only it have infinite uses here, that's also a free fast getaway and free way to reach those mentioned hard to reach places, everyone, soldier, demo, atomizer scout or wrangler engis, they all have to trade health to get there making them an easier pray, pyro loses nothing, he doesn't even lose ammo by jumping arround.
Airblast also is a thing here, don't remember how it was on the other server but it would be good as gone or it should consume all the pyros ammo, why?, bcs there are some places where 1 airblasting pyro can shut down an entire horde as long as they have a dispenser and a ledge to push zombies off, before JI the airblast was stunlocking but it didn't push so hard, right now airblast is atleast 2x stronger making having a pyro on some roof just a win condition.
Also survivor spy is broken, they can be seen even when disguised, not even a zombie spy is usefull, their only special ability is using teleporters which can be completly shut down by engi being smart and destroying the teleporter entrance once not needed but even if the spy teleporter, the spy doesn't infect on 1 hit, he deals 40 dmg, backstabbing included so before he even manages to butterknife that engi to death, he gonna have more holes than cheese (not sure about his taunt kill with knives, if it doesn't work, didn't check, it might be good to be enabled for sieging walled survivors as the taunts kill buildings in 1 hit and would allow for a tactical strike of zombies by bodyblocking the bullets from taunting spy and lettin him kill the wall).
Other thing are maps, played most of them in last few days, they literaly are all horrible, either favorizing survivors with unreachable roofs or tight corridors or zombies by small map, rooms and lack of places to hide, from experience found only 3 places where sentry gun could be placed to block entry, rest could be jumped on which caber demos would abuse and just infect entire room of survivors if their jump over + charge succeded, some of those places can be secured by dispenser as dispenser is higher but also can't be wrangled and dies to 1 caber explosion, so having 1 demo sacrifice themselves to allow those 10 zombies behind enter is just eh, by all means, not discouraging caber but it means walling without using wrangled sentry pointless as that's the only thing capable of surviving a caber, not sure even why sentry is replaced by mini-sentry. Definitely would suggest replacing maps with actual zombie maps that are not just camping roofs or long coridors (using hammer is realy not that hard, the maps mostly doesn't seem be though out for zombie mode and were just adjusted with plugins for this and no map changes at all), as the game is mostly frustrating for the zombie team, all survivors can lose is just being infected and also the lack of satisfaction that something worked as the maps either favour survivors and that's just rancho relaxing or favour zombies and that's just better to join undead than waste time of everyone and hide on top of trees or run arround.
A new thing that could encourage maps with better defensive positions which can be blocked by just sentry but without long tight corridors and also return of normal sentry would be fear meter, in gmod zombie mod (not sure how is now but years ago it was that way), zombies gained damage resistance based on how many were packed close, every zombie produced 2-3% on fear meter up to 50% and every 1% of fear meter meant 1% of damage reduction, it would encourage cooperation, striking the weaker survivor colonies first to gather undead forces and to think tacticaly to strike all together to give eachother buff and allow for atleast 1 zombie to get into that infested with 5 heavies shooting into doorway room. (by the way, if we are about heavies, natasha also should be restricted, when crouching, the knockback of any minigun is already enough to push any zombie out that is not a charging demoknight, having a natasha heavy on a team in a corridor base is almost as good as having airblast pyro on roofs.)
Lastly, the props on some maps, it realy shows that some maps were not checked before including them into map rotation, all props are undestructible meaning that on some maps ppl can just push props like vending machines into doorways, block it off by surrounding it with dispensers and whatever and done, rancho relaxo inside the room on survivor part and a dancing party outside by zombies, either just use hammer to remove those props, make them static props or perhaps keep them movable but make them able to die if they took too much damage so constant pushing it into doorway would weaken/break it and even then survivors would still have to defend their prop which otherwise would be destroyed by zombies.