Balancing Maps and other ideas for improvement
All and all I think the balance team is doing really well with balancing individual characters. Especially considering there are over 100 variants. I think the new content is amazing too, I still love zombopopolis, just a well designed map and super fun all around. I think the community is great and generally very positive and constructive. However there are a few things I would love to see looked out in the future.
Map balance. I primarily play Turf Takeover. There are two maps that are pretty much impossible.
- Zomburbia - Plants have such a rough time after they cap the first point. The second point is almost impossible to take. The third and fourth points are also very difficult to take as well. (but not as hard as the second). In the last patch I guess something was moved around at the second spawn point with no noticeable difference to difficulty. Lastly the last part of the map was made more difficult to capture. When am on defense on this map and the plants made it this far I never had a problem with the last part being so easy, because if they made it through points 2-4 they deserved to win. I honestly think you went a little overboard on making the last map harder. I also think no effort was given into making the second spawn point any easier. That may sound rude to say, but I honestly believe that. Zomburbia really needs some tweeking.
- Seeds of Time - I think this is the name of the amusement park one. Honestly the first point is very balanced in my opinion. But the second point (the one with the dinos) is almost impossible to cap, I think a pot was moved to "resolve" the issue". This has made no difference and since the changes have been made I can't even tell if the changes made to the end of the map (to favor the defenders) made a difference. I think I've seen the end of this map twice in my life (this was before the last patch) and I thought iof the zombies could get through dino land (and to a lesser extend Zgypt) then they deserved a little break on the last part of the map.
It feels like these two maps really need some tweeking and since character balance is at an all time high (not perfect but getting really good) I think this would be a great time to really address these and other map problems.
Another thing about the game I would like to see is the devs communicate more with the audience. This has become almost a staple in any online competitive game. I'm not saying they have to come on here and answer posts directly. I mean explanations behind changes and why the changes are made. Maybe answer some of the more thought out posts. League of Legends does this all the time with great success. I don't always agree with every change they make but at least I understand what they are trying to do and why they did it. I would love for the devs to stop treating this game like a top secret work in progress and communicate more candidly with it's audience.
Lastly can you guys make the engineers not be unmissing, unkillable gods while on their turret in solo "multiplayer" mode. My fiancee will not stop complaining about it when she plays. She only plays plants (yes she's a plant lover) and she only plays the solo multiplayer component, for the sake of my sanity can you please tone down the engineer when he is on his turrent? Only in the offline part of the game, they do seem to never miss and rotate on that turret way too fast.
