I'm just nitpicking.

Will iZone have the old CTF?

I wish zone would have allot of players i'd have allot of fun there

Well, as an old player, i can say MY reason to quit Zone was the hackers / lack of moderation; but before that, people started to quit because gold members and those who spent a lot of gelats on weapons became overpowered, it was really painful to see a Third Class newb being arrogant because he killed you with Sniper Rifle and ran with a Jetpack when you were close enough to kill him...

No everyone wants to pay real money for virtual stuff, that's understandable for many games, there should be of course a benefit for those who pay, but in this case, it was just ridiculous for a trial (even when he was pro at spar) to fight an OP newb, like, the main reason you play (become a good player) was worthless; so, if being a good player was useless, then there was no reason to play; all you need to do is pay, but it was a temporal benefit, so people didn't value their items as much at the end; it's not like a normal game where you work hard to get good items, here you pay; if you're lucky enough you win events and get items, temporal items (when they used to be permanent, we had a good playercount). That's the main reason people started to quit i guess.

Smalls things keep getting changed on Zone. Now, all of those small things have turned me away from Zone.

New guns are lame.
Map changes are stupid.
New maps aren't fun.
Old maps keep getting removed. (Zone Wars, Bunker, and CTF)
Anti-laming measures are breaking game play features older players enjoyed. (Cake doesn't splash anymore, weapons were nurfed, no boxes on stairs or doorways, players warped away from HQ on Iricia if enemies are near, proxies mines are no longer invisible)
Some stuff break in v6.
Lag.

lol that new CTF map was so ****ty when it first got released. I remember there being tents with no inside levels. Almost like they were just there to decorate the scenery. Leading factor to me leaving was probably because our staff couldn't release at least decent content. For a few month's it felt as if all the other servers were having a boom in new content while Zone was left in the dust...where it seems to fit perfectly in.

Zone... lol

is zone still dead?

The only playercount Zone has is the NPC server, lol.

shame, not suprised though.

no even shawn mraise idling on his own?

Shawns a boss, but I haven't seen him on for a while

Yes not even me idling alone.

Reasons I left Zone:

-Unbelievable trial restrictions
-Punishing Classic accounts by treating them as trials (before we had Friday,Saturday, Sunday and holidays to play with the same privileges as golds)
-Lack of general content, the only real content being pushed out was content that required you to open your wallet and bend over and _______
-Lack of decent staff, nothing like finding hackers all over the place and the lack of staff to handle the situation.
-No real reason to continue to play after you obtain Elite
-Idiotic development decisions, such as trashing the decent worlds for "new worlds" that would just be full of epic fail.
-Lack of faith in the development team
-Lack of interest in the holidays (pretty sure stuff is still being recycled)


I was told some of the above complaints have been resolved since i quit Zone but ya...Zone can still be an awesome playerworld, just a couple people need to swallow their pride and egos and get out of the way.

Best doubleshot player , best pistol player 2012.

This is Stefan's decision, in all of his infinite wisdom. Unfortunately, even if I wanted to, I cannot remove Stefan's restrictions, even as an administrator of the server. He his the owner of the game, after all. The point of having a trial program is to encourage players to buy the game. Right now, it has the exact opposite effect. Trials should have full Gold access (minus a few features such as events for example), but have the trial accounts deactivated after a certain period of time. This allows the trials to actually experience playing the game instead of just watching other people play it.

I don't exactly understand this argument, as I have not experienced the issue myself. Care to elaborate?

Unfortunately, previous managers did not have any large projects that would have encouraged players to actually play the server. Zone has not changed too much since I started playing a few years ago. When they introduced the Gelat shop, I was appalled by the lack of judgement exhibited by implementing such a game-killing feature. I hesitate to even call it a feature. This ability to purchase over-powered weapons from the Gelat shop is an immense game balance problem.

The lack of decent staff was caused by previous managers instating under qualified staff (and by under qualified, I mean completely batsh*t stupid). That is the precise reason why I nixed the entire staff when I started my analysis and command of Zone. Unfortunately, the damage was irrevocable.

This falls under the "lack of general content" argument. A good game should be perpetually appealing. It should not lose its excitement just because you are the highest rank.

These decisions were made by previous managers, whom I will not name. Several of these decisions are attributed to Zone's downfall, namely the Gelat shop, the trial restrictions, and the limited world options. However, upon analysis, I see that the worlds are still there, just hidden by ETs/Managers. Why they were hidden is beyond my comprehension.

The lack of faith, especially for me, was caused by Stefan's decision to slate Zone to deletion in favor of iZone. Unfortunately, with my understanding of the conversation I held with Stefan, it also appears that Zone will be placed as a sort of "minigame" under iEra. As you may perfectly well understand, I am not going to waste time and effort into a project that is merely going to be erased.

Holiday content is actually being recycled, indeed. Some of the content is a very poor edit of previous year content. Holiday events / content are meant to be unique to the year, in such a way that you don't expect most of the events being held.

Well, that's what happened. The previous manager resigned, and the current (Tenchry) recruited me to work on the server. However, several issues prevent me from working actively on it :(

Right now, I think the one who needs to swallow his pride is Stefan. His actions on Zone are now causing its demise. So, here I go:

Stefan,
From a fellow game developer to you, I highly recommend removing two aspects of your game. These are the trial restrictions and the Gelat shop. Trial restrictions are far too severe to attract a playerbase. These restrictions on trivial things such as heads is absurd. Even more so is the observer mode. I recommend a simple solution: A trial mode where players may try a full subscription account (minus events, custom housing, markets in servers, etc), but for a limited time, say 2 weeks. You know, like it used to be? Second is the Gelat Shop, primarially on Zone. The Gelat shop, although you see it to be a fantastic way to make a profit, is also a deterrent for other players. I would be happy with a more balanced Gelat shop were weapon upgrades may be purchased. For example, a stronger bullet at the expense of a slower speed. However, you should not be able to purchase a BFG (ironically also the name of a gun in Zone!) that can instantly annihilate any player in Zone. This deters the other players, which in turn causes the initial player to quit. Boom. You just lost several potential customers. Do you not see the futility of such a system?

So please, for the sake of Zone, work with us to resolve this issue and bring Zone back into the spotlight.

Is it a permission thing or are the limitations hard-coded into the server? I imagine you could do the following without regard for "Managements" opinion and probably get away with it. It's not like they're logging into the server and checking.

1. Scripted Limitations could be completely removed.
2. You could 'hack' up the shop and change the items for sale, except the prices or flat out disable it.
3. Weapon re-balancing would be feasible as well.
4. Old worlds could be re-instated.

I can see how Zone being converted to a "minigame" could completely destroy your development drive to put work into the server though.

I think you would have at least a year before they would actually have iZone ready enough to take over the PC version.