Moderation advice - how to guarantee a difficult game for the humans?

[LeafStorm]

Hello, HvZ people. I'm a moderator at NC State University, on the Gameplay & Story division, and I need some advice.

See, we have run two weeklong games and a single six-hour in our first year of playing HvZ at State...and the humans have won all 3 handily.

• Fall: We had a mission where zombies could turn into humans. (Yes, I know. I wasn't involved with that one.)
• Spring: We had a gun scare midway through the game that shut us down for two days. This led to a lot of players leaving, and a lack of zombification.
• 6-Hour: We had a bunch of humans joining during the game, and lost half an hour due to an injury. (This one was the most disappointing for G&S, because we had intentionally designed it to kill pretty much all the humans. Notchdarned reinforcements.)

Now, I realize that the Spring and 6-Hour ones were due to externalities that were mostly beyond our control. But these things are going to keep happening, and while there's nothing wrong with humans winning despite facing incredible odds every once in a while, three out of three is too many. It's gotten to the point where one of our lead zombies has decided to move on from the game due to feeling completely powerless to affect anything.

So, two questions. One, what are good ways to keep the humans challenged during the game? So far, we have thought of:

• Ensure that all missions have consequences for human non-completion.
• Don't allow the humans to form a giant ball of death.
• Give the zombies special infected, like Laundry Zombies [invincible to darts] and the TAZ [zombie with a shield].

But you guys have more experience with this, so maybe you have thought of something we haven't.

And two, what's the best way to deal with the inevitable human complaining? We have about 20-30 hardcore players in First Platoon (and if any 1P'ers are reading this, you guys are cool, but you seriously make our jobs way harder) and while most of them are pretty cool, they have a tendency to overstate zombie bias in the game. And a lot of our moderators are 1P. (While there are plenty of zombie complaints about human bias as well, considering historical performance in these games I'd say they're pretty well justified.)

[Dyslexda]

First and foremost, I'm glad you've got the right mentality here. Too many people see the game as a vehicle for human leet-ness, with zombies as just a mechanism to that action, as opposed to equal and opposite sides. Balancing the game so humans have it tough, but aren't immediately wiped out, is certainly the hardest part of moderating.

Personally, I don't like the idea of special infected, as I abide by the "KISS" rule (keep it simple, stupid); asking humans to remember which zeds do what based on arbitrary markings in the middle of combat might be a bitch much at times. As such, all human difficulty has to come from the mission design, rather than buffing zombies directly.

The best missions are those in which humans are split up, or have to complete multiple objectives to win, with dire consequences if they lose. Missions featuring "sit here and hold" are only good later on, when that's all the remaining human tank can be expected to do. My favorite missions are Day Two missions (first real missions), where we have to find a way to split humans up enough such that 20 zombies can be effective against maybe 70 humans. You can do this a multitude of ways, such as asking them to hold seven nodes simultaneously, having a massive scavenger hunt around campus (bring me back 50 of these Easter eggs within the hour), or by purposefully isolating humans (our mission this semester featured humans crossing a chasm into a safe zone, that were then unable to assist the survivors yet to cross; this resulted in ever dwindling numbers of humans fighting the horde). You can give zombies indirect buffs as needed, such as close respawns and short respawn timers.

As for how to respond to the humans, frankly, tell them to suck it the hell up. This is not a computer simulation meant to display how badass they are; it's a game with two equal and opposite sides. If they think it's getting too hard for them, well, they're more than welcome to sit out. In the meantime, you'll be trying to make the game more fun for everyone, not just a few humans convinced the entire horde exists for their entertainment.

[LeafStorm]

First and foremost, I'm glad you've got the right mentality here. Too many people see the game as a vehicle for human leet-ness, with zombies as just a mechanism to that action, as opposed to equal and opposite sides. Balancing the game so humans have it tough, but aren't immediately wiped out, is certainly the hardest part of moderating.

Thanks. A quote from our game coordinator, in reply to one of the complaining humans: ">>Assuming humans are the good guys and zombies are the bad guys"

Personally, I don't like the idea of special infected, as I abide by the "KISS" rule (keep it simple, stupid); asking humans to remember which zeds do what based on arbitrary markings in the middle of combat might be a bitch much at times. As such, all human difficulty has to come from the mission design, rather than buffing zombies directly.

Our game coordinator has set a couple of rules for Special Infected: (a) only one new zed type per game, (b) very distinct appearance, and (c) very simple mechanics. We didn't have any problems with the Laundry Zombies in the 6-Hour (LZ's wear two tube socks tied around their head instead of a headband, so fairly distinctive), and so far everyone likes the TAZ.

The best missions are those in which humans are split up, or have to complete multiple objectives to win, with dire consequences if they lose. Missions featuring "sit here and hold" are only good later on, when that's all the remaining human tank can be expected to do. My favorite missions are Day Two missions (first real missions), where we have to find a way to split humans up enough such that 20 zombies can be effective against maybe 70 humans. You can do this a multitude of ways, such as asking them to hold seven nodes simultaneously, having a massive scavenger hunt around campus (bring me back 50 of these Easter eggs within the hour), or by purposefully isolating humans (our mission this semester featured humans crossing a chasm into a safe zone, that were then unable to assist the survivors yet to cross; this resulted in ever dwindling numbers of humans fighting the horde). You can give zombies indirect buffs as needed, such as close respawns and short respawn timers.

The "split up/complete multiple objectives" type is basically what we've been thinking about so far. The "massive distributed scavenger hunt" idea is also a good one. Can you give a bit more detail on how the "crossing a chasm into a safe zone" mission would work?

(Also, side note: we're dealing with a bit more than 90 players here. Try a few hundred for a weeklong.)

As for how to respond to the humans, frankly, tell them to suck it the hell up. This is not a computer simulation meant to display how badass they are; it's a game with two equal and opposite sides. If they think it's getting too hard for them, well, they're more than welcome to sit out. In the meantime, you'll be trying to make the game more fun for everyone, not just a few humans convinced the entire horde exists for their entertainment.

Pretty much what I was expecting. Quite frankly, I think that once they're through with the whole thing they'll actually enjoy the challenge.

[Mr. Three]

First and foremost, I'm glad you've got the right mentality here. Too many people see the game as a vehicle for human leet-ness, with zombies as just a mechanism to that action, as opposed to equal and opposite sides. Balancing the game so humans have it tough, but aren't immediately wiped out, is certainly the hardest part of moderating.

Personally, I don't like the idea of special infected, as I abide by the "KISS" rule (keep it simple, stupid); asking humans to remember which zeds do what based on arbitrary markings in the middle of combat might be a bitch much at times. As such, all human difficulty has to come from the mission design, rather than buffing zombies directly.

The best missions are those in which humans are split up, or have to complete multiple objectives to win, with dire consequences if they lose. Missions featuring "sit here and hold" are only good later on, when that's all the remaining human tank can be expected to do. My favorite missions are Day Two missions (first real missions), where we have to find a way to split humans up enough such that 20 zombies can be effective against maybe 70 humans. You can do this a multitude of ways, such as asking them to hold seven nodes simultaneously, having a massive scavenger hunt around campus (bring me back 50 of these Easter eggs within the hour), or by purposefully isolating humans (our mission this semester featured humans crossing a chasm into a safe zone, that were then unable to assist the survivors yet to cross; this resulted in ever dwindling numbers of humans fighting the horde). You can give zombies indirect buffs as needed, such as close respawns and short respawn timers.

As for how to respond to the humans, frankly, tell them to suck it the hell up. This is not a computer simulation meant to display how badass they are; it's a game with two equal and opposite sides. If they think it's getting too hard for them, well, they're more than welcome to sit out. In the meantime, you'll be trying to make the game more fun for everyone, not just a few humans convinced the entire horde exists for their entertainment.

Dyslexda nailed it so I feel like I have nothing to add with one exception.

Our campus really digs special Zombies so if you use them, make sure that they aren't only visually marked, but that what marks them is a part of their special game mechanic. We use Reapers (noodle-wielding Zombies) and their large pool noodles make identification and form immediately intuitive. We also have an Angler class that makes tags with a large, pink-taped/red sock on a string. Our last class is not so intuitively special-rule linked with its marking; our Plaguespreader class wears an extra green bandana but ALL of its special rules are relevant to already-successful tags so there are no extra combat concerns for living Humans regarding it.

Okay two exceptions, I think that instead of encouraging bitching Humans to sit out, you should encourage them to rise to the challenge the Zombie Apocalypse presents. We (controversially, lol) eliminated the restun rule and Zombie starves for our most recent game and pre-game the hardcore Humans bitched about it. We explained the rule changes and in non-sexist language told them to "man up" with pretty good results. The game itself was successful, and Zombies won it in the second half of the last [Day 5] mission but the Humans put up a decent fight the whole game (except for 5.2 mission).

EDIT: derp, replied after a reply had been made without looking and got a lil' redundant.

[Dyslexda]

words

By no means am I railing against special infected in general; I know some schools have had great success with them. It's simply my personal game philosophy that doesn't like the idea, not saying it can't work.

As far as the 90 players thing, our games generally run from 250-400 players; however, for whatever reason, mission attendances are relatively low, usually comprising a bit under 50% of the playerbase. We quickly learned to stop designing missions for 200+ players, and instead design for ~100. We actually had an explosive mission attendance a couple semesters back, out of nowhere, that completely messed the mission up.

About the "crossing the chasm" mission:
Remember those team building exercises you've had to do at various camps and whatnot? Imagine that, while being attacked by zombies. We split humans into two groups and asked them to cross a ~30ft width on the grass, using only two 12ft 2x4s (originally they were supposed to be 6ft or 8ft...). Humans that touched the chasm had to return to the starting area, which was not a safe zone. Humans that made it safely across were in a safe zone, but were unable to leave the safe zone or otherwise assist their comrades that hadn't yet crossed. Initially they held charges with no problem; maybe 30 zombies showed, which is no match for the maybe 30-40 humans in each group. However, humans transported ~8-10 across each trip, steadily decreasing the amount left to hold the beachhead. This effectively isolated the humans in very small groups, while forcing them to make wonderfully devious tactical decisions (who do we send across when? The veteran players that need to survive, or the newbies that can't fight?). The only reason the remaining humans weren't wiped was 'cause the zombies derped and severely misunderstood the mission.

Okay two exceptions, I think that instead of encouraging bitching Humans to sit out, you should encourage them to rise to the challenge the Zombie Apocalypse presents. We (controversially, lol) eliminated the restun rule and Zombie starves for our most recent game and pre-game the hardcore Humans bitched about it. We explained the rule changes and in non-sexist language told them to "man up" with pretty good results. The game itself was successful, and Zombies won it in the second half of the last [Day 5] mission but the Humans put up a decent fight the whole game (except for 5.2 mission).

Ultimately, yes, you should appeal to their sense of pride before telling them to GTFO. However, that has been a notoriously difficult option here; when we ask players to enjoy the challenge, we receive accusations of favoring the zombies, of planning a zombie-centric game, of purposefully trying to kill humans. I mean, at the end of the day, that's exactly what my mentality is (what's a game of HvZ without humans dying? As a mod, my job is to make sure humans die; certain humans get pissed when they are the ones dying, not the newbies, though). At the end of the day, though, you just have to tell them, "Tough shit." Deal with it, or go home.