To begin, I’m jkool666. Don’t bother posting if your not going to read my entire post. I also apologize if I act like a “know it all” anywhere, I’m just giving my opinion.
Over the past few years there have been a lot of mistakes made on Zone.
-Removing trials ability to use Guild Tags
This effected both Gold and Trial users, and I’d say this is the first of Zones biggest mistakes. Trials, obviously could no longer participate in Guild Activity, and Gold users could no longer effectively create guilds (on Zone anyway). Guilds were created, but never as successfully as the original ones.
When I think back on those days, there was a LOT of guild activity, 3 large active guilds (Hayashi, Lost Soulds and The Alliance), but I also think that there was NOTHING to do with the guilds. Now we have all these ET commands to manipulate the game but no guilds to do so with.
This also took a blow onto the community as well, which is extremely vital in the success of Zone.
I believe the local guild idea would mend this mistake:
http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...ad.php?t=82657
-The release of to many weapons and non-class-specific weapons
Zone doesn’t need as many weapons as it has, especially ones of such power. When I look back now, its obvious a lot of weapons were introduced with very little thought put into them with hopes that they’d keep players (which they did). But then it got a little ridiculous, how many “Insert Colour/Fancy Name” Rifles do we need?
Secondly, the manner in which they are added onto the player is ridiculous. Why even have classes if you’re going to release all the most powerful weapons to ALL classes? It destroys nearly all strategy in picking different classes. Weapons were originally placed into appropriate classes for a reason, balance.
A lot of people won’t like my idea of mending this issue, but here we go… Make a list of every single weapon, gather all the knowledgeable players you can find, have a discussion on what weapons to completely remove from gameplay.
Weapons that should be removed/altered (in my opinion):
-AssaultPistol (remove)
-Chainsaw (remove)
-Greenrifle (remove)
-HeavyLaser (remove)
-Laserforce (remove)
-MetalicRifle (remove)
-Photon (remove)
-Plasmagun (remove)
-Redrifle (remove)
-ScifiPistol (remove)
-Redpistole (remove)
-Bluepistole (remove)
-Stormrifle (remove)
-Streamer (remove)
-Goopistol (remove)
-Flamepistol (remove)
-Dartgun (remove)
-GravityHammer (remove)
-Silencer (remove, but perhaps the silent feature could be added to another weapon)
-BlueRifle (alter the name, perhaps something to do with a more powerful Plasmarifle?)
-SniperRifle (needs to be modified as it doesn’t fit with any other Zone Weapon)
-Holiday Items (should all be modified so they can only be used during holiday times)
That would balance gameplay, weapon wise anyway. Now finally, there has to NEVER be an instance where a weapon is added to ALL classes again. Remaining classless weapons should be placed fairly taking class speed + how many weapons they currently have in them into consideration.
-Strong Push for Events
For a while there was a hard push for more events, with the introduction of an Events Team Admin especially. This is definitely my fault as well unfortunately, but I was working with the things that were being developed. Zone had become an events based server where the community rely'd on seeing a lot of events hosted off to be content with the gameplay.
Zone shouldn’t have ever been a server where nearly everyone had life-time event weapons. Additionally, it shouldn’t have been a server where events were hosted extremely often, but with a time limit on the weapons. The majority of events on Zone SHOULD be Guild Related in some way, to help build a bonding between the community. Encourage guild creation through events.
Events such as Snowrace, Jumprace, Barrel Wars and LavaEvent shouldn’t be hosted off more then once or twice a day. For prizes no higher then 25 Grenades of some type.
Events such as WeaponSpecific Showdown or Spar Tourney you should only see once every month and a half to two months, no more then that. These events would be for prizes of permanent event weapons (which would also be class specific).
Events that can incorporate guilds and teams should be hosted off a lot during the weekends. Again, encourages guild creation and builds a community. If there’s fun things for guilds to do during the weekends, people will want to create guilds.
So I guess my suggestion to mend this would be host events as I am suggesting.
-The Gelat Shop
Perhaps the worst addition to Zone. Allowing players to pay with IRL currency to obtain weapons was a bad idea. All this did was piss off a lot of paying customers. Sure for a little while it made some money, but look at the end result… Not to mention when someone pays to subscribe for a game, they expect to receive all of what that game offers, not pay X amount more for this and that.
My suggestion, keep the shop with some weapons (again, class specific of course), but only for trials to rent out for X days. Gold players automatically receive all Shop Weapons upon upgrading. This would also give more incentive to upgrade as well.
-Trials
Short and sweet, they shouldn’t be allowed to save their stats. Every 3 months their stats should be reset (but their weapons they have rented out shouldn‘t be removed). Again, more incentive to upgrade to Gold.
-*Insert your idea here*
Finally… A reset... These changes would bring Zone back to what it was, but improved. But unfortunately to implement them a player reset is needed, and yes, this means EVERYTHING except Online hours.
Now ask yourselves:
-How often have you complained about overpowered weapons
-How several weapons on Zone basically do the exact same thing with a speed/look variation
-How often have you wished to play these “team games” with actual organized teams to their full potential
-How often do you currently play Zone now, would losing certain items and statistics really bother you? If you don’t play (which no one really does anymore) I can’t see why they would
A player-reset on a server that has no players doesn't do much harm. Especially if your willing to offer the players your resetting new mixed with old, fun, balanced gameplay.
Additionally to all this, a few new things need to be developed and released all at once, incentive to do something else other then killing sprees, for example. There will need to be a period of time where Zone is closed from the public and re-released of course, but I think the re-release will prove most successful.
Well that’s it, if you’re still reading, thanks! I hope I didn’t miss anything, I had a lot I was thinking about. Please add your ideas/discuss.
07-10-2009, 06:18 AM
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