10-04-2012, 02:08 PM
I'd like to think these observations of a Chaos Zone diehard with a shamefully high amount of playtime under his belt will bring up some discussion about the state of the zone and whether or not changes should be made, but I'm throwing them out there regardless:
A slick addition. Added new stats for goal-oriented players, especially significant because it rewards those choosing to fight rather than run and encourages players to keep their high bounty in play.
There are just way too many of them floating around and the fact remains that prizes such as repels and bursts became repulsively easy to collect in a zone that already starts you off with a well-stocked ship. It's not uncommon for a target to use four or more repels in just a minute's time, among other defensive measures, which can grow incredibly frustrating when targets are constantly running on a map I'm sure many will agree is too large for the low population it houses. Greening used to be a neccessity once upon a time, requiring players to pick them up as often as possible, adding a layer of depth to the gameplay that's now practically nonexistent due not only to the green and ship settings, but also bonuses and flagging rewards. I miss playing with/against ships of varying speeds, recharge rates, etc.
Bonus points are either too easy to obtain or cost of bonuses too low, take your pick. It should not be this easy for players to prize themselves multiple sets of toys in a zone where they're already extremely easy to come by via greening, flagging, playing the weekly trivia game or being showered with free greens just because a zone staffer feels like it. It's been mentioned before by SuG, but these bonuses provide absolutely no downside to their use other than depleting your bonus point total and adding one, such as warping you to a random location with depleted energy after each use would cause players to think twice before abusing the feature.
Let's face it, what should have been one of many game styles offered wound up actually hijacking the entire zone. If you're interested in flagging or not, chances are some or all of your targets are and you will have to deal with the consequences whether that means being hunted by a 4-5 man freq at low bounty because your name just turned red or struggling to find targets because the flag carriers choose to play it safe by removing themselves from the action. More often than not the flag game tends to contribute to the culture of cowardice that I've noticed to be unfortunately predominant in the zone since my return last May. "Keep away" became a common strategy, grabbing a flag and flying around the quiet edges of the map, avoiding conflict at all costs in a zone originally designed to bring players together. It's had a significant impact on the zone in a number of different areas such as the aforementioned cowardly style as well as increasing the number of high bounty kills and sheer volume of toys in play. Increasing the flag timer from 3 to 12 minutes has improved the game somewhat, but the bottomline remains the same: I loathe that a kill or be killed zone has become a flagging zone.
I still love this map, even after all the minor changes it has undergone over the years, aside from the reset/MoC winners rectangle eating up precious real estate in the center of the map, but I can't help thinking the flow of the game can be significantly improved with just a few minor bottlenecks being opened up, such as the O12 intersection possibly allowing access to/from all sides of the tunnel. The population numbers being what they are, we should be finding ways to imptove the flow of the game rather than slowing it down - it's already easy enough for a coward to run all day long without giving them endless tunnels to mine/brick, too.
We recently had a 12 hour safe timer implemented for a reset and I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say most opinions about the setting were negative. There was/is absolutely no reasonable argument to be made for it, just as I don't understand why the 15 minute timer of old was replaced with a 45 minute timer. The 15 minute timer not only served as a more than adequate way for people to run AFK for bathroom breaks, phone calls, etc without losing their bounty, but it added a safe camping option that no longer exists: turf wars would sometimes erupt when hunters chased targets into a safe zone knowing they had to poke their head out to reset their 15 minute timer or lose their ship/streak. Safe to say that increasing the timer to 45 mins made camping those safe zones an absolute waste of time. As an added bonus, reverting back to 15 mins could serve to remove the burden of having the bot remove/reprize anti-warp and reset kill streaks.
If stat winners are allowed to employ virtually any means neccessary to achieve their goals, such as abusing ship changing and Esc Q to win ratio, there's no integrity and without integrity they're nothing more than personal goals - no need to dedicate a precious chunk of the map to glamorize them. There was the one incident in recent months of Ethylene being disqualified from a reset, but questions regarding that case have gone unanswered.
In short, I think too much has been done to "dumb down" the zone to make the game more accessible for newer players when the fact of the matter is there is virtually no retention of those new players. Best to keep the zone as true to its roots as possible, catering instead to the oldschool vets we know log in everyday rather than the rare newbie that likely won't change his decision to stay or leave based on these settings anyway.
- Streaks/Sprees
A slick addition. Added new stats for goal-oriented players, especially significant because it rewards those choosing to fight rather than run and encourages players to keep their high bounty in play.
- Green Settings
There are just way too many of them floating around and the fact remains that prizes such as repels and bursts became repulsively easy to collect in a zone that already starts you off with a well-stocked ship. It's not uncommon for a target to use four or more repels in just a minute's time, among other defensive measures, which can grow incredibly frustrating when targets are constantly running on a map I'm sure many will agree is too large for the low population it houses. Greening used to be a neccessity once upon a time, requiring players to pick them up as often as possible, adding a layer of depth to the gameplay that's now practically nonexistent due not only to the green and ship settings, but also bonuses and flagging rewards. I miss playing with/against ships of varying speeds, recharge rates, etc.
- Bonuses
Bonus points are either too easy to obtain or cost of bonuses too low, take your pick. It should not be this easy for players to prize themselves multiple sets of toys in a zone where they're already extremely easy to come by via greening, flagging, playing the weekly trivia game or being showered with free greens just because a zone staffer feels like it. It's been mentioned before by SuG, but these bonuses provide absolutely no downside to their use other than depleting your bonus point total and adding one, such as warping you to a random location with depleted energy after each use would cause players to think twice before abusing the feature.
- Flagging
Let's face it, what should have been one of many game styles offered wound up actually hijacking the entire zone. If you're interested in flagging or not, chances are some or all of your targets are and you will have to deal with the consequences whether that means being hunted by a 4-5 man freq at low bounty because your name just turned red or struggling to find targets because the flag carriers choose to play it safe by removing themselves from the action. More often than not the flag game tends to contribute to the culture of cowardice that I've noticed to be unfortunately predominant in the zone since my return last May. "Keep away" became a common strategy, grabbing a flag and flying around the quiet edges of the map, avoiding conflict at all costs in a zone originally designed to bring players together. It's had a significant impact on the zone in a number of different areas such as the aforementioned cowardly style as well as increasing the number of high bounty kills and sheer volume of toys in play. Increasing the flag timer from 3 to 12 minutes has improved the game somewhat, but the bottomline remains the same: I loathe that a kill or be killed zone has become a flagging zone.
- Map Bottlenecks
I still love this map, even after all the minor changes it has undergone over the years, aside from the reset/MoC winners rectangle eating up precious real estate in the center of the map, but I can't help thinking the flow of the game can be significantly improved with just a few minor bottlenecks being opened up, such as the O12 intersection possibly allowing access to/from all sides of the tunnel. The population numbers being what they are, we should be finding ways to imptove the flow of the game rather than slowing it down - it's already easy enough for a coward to run all day long without giving them endless tunnels to mine/brick, too.
- Safe Timer
We recently had a 12 hour safe timer implemented for a reset and I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say most opinions about the setting were negative. There was/is absolutely no reasonable argument to be made for it, just as I don't understand why the 15 minute timer of old was replaced with a 45 minute timer. The 15 minute timer not only served as a more than adequate way for people to run AFK for bathroom breaks, phone calls, etc without losing their bounty, but it added a safe camping option that no longer exists: turf wars would sometimes erupt when hunters chased targets into a safe zone knowing they had to poke their head out to reset their 15 minute timer or lose their ship/streak. Safe to say that increasing the timer to 45 mins made camping those safe zones an absolute waste of time. As an added bonus, reverting back to 15 mins could serve to remove the burden of having the bot remove/reprize anti-warp and reset kill streaks.
- Reset Winners
If stat winners are allowed to employ virtually any means neccessary to achieve their goals, such as abusing ship changing and Esc Q to win ratio, there's no integrity and without integrity they're nothing more than personal goals - no need to dedicate a precious chunk of the map to glamorize them. There was the one incident in recent months of Ethylene being disqualified from a reset, but questions regarding that case have gone unanswered.
In short, I think too much has been done to "dumb down" the zone to make the game more accessible for newer players when the fact of the matter is there is virtually no retention of those new players. Best to keep the zone as true to its roots as possible, catering instead to the oldschool vets we know log in everyday rather than the rare newbie that likely won't change his decision to stay or leave based on these settings anyway.