[ZS] Developer Update - May 24th Challenge Helper Bonus Fix

Today we closed a "hole" in the game with challenge help that could be abused and was being abused under certain circumstances, we were notified through support channels by some concerned players and after taking a closer look we had to take action to impose limits on the bonuses as we do in every other help feature in the game. This was overlooked by the developer responsible for this feature.

Players will now receive maximum bonus for the first 25 challenge helps in a 24-hr period and will receive 1 XP for all helps after.

What is the harm of not having any limits? Well, people potentially could create automation to aggregate help links from all their friends, suck down all that free XP and level without actually really playing the game. Having players high in the game without actually playing the game is something that I think everyone can agree we want to avoid.

That being said, those players that are upset with this change that was not abusing it, there are still plenty of areas to get bonus XP from outbreak help, boss help, world boss help and challenge help.

Today we also released bonus XP for repeat attacks on the World Boss which will hopefully offset the players that were not abusing this feature to make up any losses.

We thank you for your understanding while trying to keep Zombie Slayer a fun, fair, balanced and competitive game.

If you have constructive input we would like to hear it, but going back to unlimited help is not an option since it has been opened up to abuse.


***** UPDATE *****
- first 50 Helps in a 24-hr period will reward maximum XP bonus
- helps from 51 to 75 will degrade linearly to 1 XP
- helps beyond 75 in a 24-hr period will reward 1 XP

I hope players see this as a fair compromise to the original change and with the potential abuse that could happen without imposing a limit.

 

ok .. what about after the 25 it gradually decreases down for the 24 hour period .. cause come on, really 1 xp .. thats kinda like a slap in the face .. might as well just deny the help .. i have never heard of any just levelin on shooter/deals .. lol .. i think i have tried .. thats a whole lot of folks you would need in yer squad and a really borin player who none would have to worry about, for all they would be doin is searchin the feeds for new shooter/deal help .. i do understand that you do yer best to keep this game as fair as possible .. as one who has put money into the game to level i do feel the ones that do not really need the shooter/deal help, cause honestly not everyone can afford to do so

 

We haven't heard of any issues or seen it in our data until recently, which goes to show you if a hole is left long enough it will start to be abused to the max eventually. We will take that into consideration but would need to work out a degradation formula. Right now bonus XP is pretty generous across all the features combined Outbreak Help, Boss Help, World Boss Help and Challenge Help.

 

hey bud .. another thing that just came to my attention .. you need x amount of players to help you with yer death/shooter for the bonus chip/rockets .. with only gettin 1 xp kinda is not all that of an incentive to help yer fellow slayers .. not sayin that we are mean and greedy but folks are not goin to go outta their way to look for them .. maybe .. just a thought

 

I agree with you. I do them all day and it does help, not a lot, but 1xp?

Is this across all the platforms? 1 XP and I might as well just do something else.

I think this is just going to make people help a select few, and probably care less about everyone else. At least, that's what I'm going to do. Keep the 25 (if this is in fact on MySpace too) for the people that I think deserve it the most. Which sucks for everyone else cause I have over 800 people in my squad and I probably do 30-50 DD/shooter helps a day.

 

Perhaps u can constrict it to a percentage of the lvl achieved Ie up to lvl 100 do 25 then ad one additional to every 20 lvls up to a limit of 50....that is managable and for those who have played as long as I have, reasonable ~!!

 

If you truly wanted to keep people from abusing this with thousands of squad members then how about preventing the thousands of alts that are in the game to this day.

How about you fix those problems instead of taking away something that some people actually need to advance in the game? Not because it's all they do to advance, but something they do after they have exhausted all other means of gaining xp.

Also, to speak of the outbreak help as a good source of xp is an insult. At best it's a very small amount of xp gained and just a drop in the bucket when it comes to anyone over a certain level, say 200-250. Uschi Ownz on the other post concerning this topic had a very good idea to have the xp for fights, bosses, outbreaks and other things scale in amount in the same way that the xp lost for deaths scale with your level. You're so concerned with balance and fairness. Where is the balance between the xp lost at higher levels and the xp gained from the same tasks? How is it fair that a level 590 can lose 2059 xp when killed and get the same xp for an outbreak as a level 100, who loses far less xp when killed?

Here's another idea. How about allowing all 40 attacks that you can make on another player in a day give xp? What about allowing more than 5 of those attacks grant top xp? Maybe have the xp drop every 10 attacks or so. Maybe not have the xp drop at all. It's not like it gets easier to beat that person in a fight after the 5th attack.

I see some of the highest level players in the game ride the hitlist for hours. One, because they are bored with nothing at all to do. And two, because they need rivals just to be able to spend their stamina for a minimal amount of xp from much lower level players.

The way I see it there needs to be a lot more thought put into the xp system instead of a faction war system that is nothing more than lipstick on a monkey meant to keep the vast boredom off of players minds. After a few weeks the lipstick will wear off and people will be right back to seeing a plain, boring monkey.

 

Really? This is what you are focusing on???

This just seems ridiculous. there are such bigger concerns in the game, why not address the fact that i have to keep doing the same job over and over because you put level requirements in nigeria in increments of 5?? how about that there really has been nothing new in the game in months? Who really cares if someone helps more than 25 people, not everyone takes the time to go through the feed and help. If you limit it you might as well just remove that feature all together, because now no-one will. What a waste of energy on the part of the devs. ugh.

 

agreed its ridiculous

 

I have one character in this game, I play without bots and other cheating, and now I will be punished for others cheating. Capping the high payout on on shooter help will not stop the issues with cheating in this game. I'm coming up on my one year make playing this game , I believe my squad has helped get me to where I am in this game. Posting for help shooter has leveled me, helped me recover from being hit-listed, and keeps me playing the game even when I'm low on stamina. Capping shooter help is a terrible idea and terribly unfair to honest players. Perhaps a harder hand on those cheaters you catch cheating or a simple test to keep such bots from working.
I deserve better than to be treated like a cheat, I have been honest, and I'm offended.

 

simplest way to say this you have ruined the game ... it is imposable for anyone to level off strictly death deals and shooters. if that all you did then you take even longer to level then using your stam and energy like i said before you did nothing but make a way for higher levels to constantlly beat on a lower level player and give them the ability to never regain the lost xp in turn never being able to level if there is anyone of the kano staff that does play zombies then i would like your in game link and you play for a week with this ohh so needed rule and lets see how much you can level or if i even let you level at all

 

I have a mixed opinion on this.

1) I agree it is a viable way to stop power-levelling from adding EVERY fricken slayer. There are too many people doing this and not playing properly.

2) I think it will be a good way to weed out the frienders and people who can't balance thier stats. If they only invest 1 SP in defence they deserve to not level. Its almost a realism factor. And also those who don't invest in stamina or energy will struggle to level. OR BUY MORE UN!!!!!!
so... item 2 i can only say is a good point about this update.

3) I'm not happy that i will now lose alot of XP for only getting 25 shooters at full XP. maybe raise the limit to 50 or 100 or a % of current level.
I will need to look into this world boss compensation factor to comment on that as a replacement for shooters help.

4) People will now start desquadding so there will be more ingame action!

 

Agreed with most of Boris' post. About his point 3, I'll need to see how the World Boss helps on XP now, but about points 1, 2 and 4, yeah, I completely agree, even though I am one of "those who don't invest in stamina or energy" and will very likely have to make a few tweaks to my build now.

 

well said!!

 

About what could help to compensate with this, I've got a few suggestions:

1) Adding Stamina Boosts, maybe of 20% like in LCN, maybe higher, that I don't care much, but they should come.

2) Modifying Job Help XP and people who you can help from 10 to 25, I thought of a possibility that higher level people get a higher % of the Job XP (If I'm not mistaken, right now you get a random number from 7 to 15% of the Job XP) Maybe increasing 1% each 25 levels or crap like that. That way, Job Help would become a lot more useful, I barely help people since I get at most 1000 XP in a day, which is a half of what I lose when I die.

3) Making World Bosses a constant, with this I mean, once one dies, the next one immediately comes out.

4) Reducing the fight XP penalty, instead of decreasing each 5 attacks, making it decrease each 10 attacks, so you don't get to 0 XP which kind of discourages to keep attacking someone.

 

This game just turned into farmville. No way am I healing or doing anything unless fully recharged on stamina and energy. I'm not healing for world bosses either. Over 2000 xp per death and only 353 stamina. No way am I hitlisting and risking booby traps.
With challenge helps unlimited it was stupid to spend very much on stamina since at the higher levels there's very few to fight or do and the xp payouts are pitiful compared to getting over 500 xp per help. Not to mention xp's for helps goes up with your level while xp for fighting stays the same. People spend a year crafting their slayers stats to this set up just got thrown under the bus.
It was already an apartheid system between paying and not paying. Now that gap has turned into the grand canyon. I could level twice a day before, now 3 times a week by my calculations. I've been playing for 247 days level 604. Someone who shall remain nameless, playing for 81 days and is level 633. I fail to see why I should keep playing unless I want to be cannon fodder for people who pay.

 

This might teach people

To be honest it might teach some over-confident players who say "Well if that person lists me then all i need is 3 deathdeal help" naturally they wont save up death deals, so when u list people ur either taking away exp for the long run or almost wasting there death deal count but this will show people that this game is harder than it actually was

 

Agree on ALL points...Ace....
In the other apps...the amount of exp you get from a fight, does not drop....and you can keep attacking....

You have to compensate the exp loss from challenges somewhere...
Or else what is the point of keeping playing???
If I can't level, I can't build my character...
..... etc etc etc

ETA...why not offer more EXP for helping on Challenges... if you are reducing the amount we can help with??

 

small correction

for the other 3 the exp does drop a little bit after a certain amount

can attack 5000 times and then your cut off


but yes i will also agree with ace

 

it helps KANO relax to work on improvements and features rather than churning out new countries because everyone finishes them within 2 days, then moans at kano to have more stuff to do.
Thanks to this update they WILL have more to do. Desquadding and fighting for a start so the game is PvP for sure not Players Joining Players.

I personally can make these comments because i have built my character decently well and balanced. I have no strong stats meaning my over-all performance is consistently average and able to level enough to continue building yet at the same time not be too weak or too strong. (my attack is not high FYI so i get better fight XP and i am high enough level that i can pick on wee people a decent defence stops me)