The only reason why zombies stopped being fun to me is how I was trained to only play for grinding. I either grinded for ingame currency or to get some special prize. Back in black ops 2, I didn't need nor care to grind. I played to have fun and get high rounds, but now I feel obligated to play for grinding. Plus it feels the same every year.
I share that feeling 100%. I loved the quiet moments in zombies, it was definitely one of my favorite parts and I agree wholeheartedly that BO3 and BO4 suffered due to the constantttt running. It makes it impossible to look for parts and other tedious ee steps
Honestly it bothered me more with bo3 that they kept trying harder and harder to make the ee found and by revelations it was basically all little things out of map and throwing monkeys in an apthicons stomach
@@jharju2352 The Legendary Jason blundell was the director for zombies at the time, so thus he was in charge, he over saw everything. He gave the green light of the murder of the classic perk machines. HIS idea! Watch his justification interview. Don't get me wrong... he's done hella epicness for zombies,.. a true badass. Some say even "genius."... But allowing the removal of the beloved classic perk system for a new health system and perk system was a HUGEEE mistake.. A disaster for BO4 zombies in many ppl's opinion. I wish he would stay around for BO5 and set things straight again. He knows it was a mistake i bet. He reads comments and gets feed back one way or another. lol His successor will probly bring back JUG, DT, and Speed. No doubt Farewell Jason, we'll always remember what u did for zombies not a lame mistake, everybody makes mistakes.
Blundell's maps- e.g. Mob, Origins, BO3, BO4- the major shift from barriers to unhindered zombies spawns (riser, droppers, barrierless windows) and just a great deal more spawns really stood out to me as artificial inflation. Every Blundell map has a considerable amount less barriers than any Zielinski map, even in locations where there are window entrances, just no barriers on them (Nuketown's lack seemed stylistic, but I think Alpha Omega went that route too as more or less of an homage). BO2 Origins spawned riser zombies that immediately jumped out of the ground. BO3 increased the speed that the zombies tear down the windows, and at launch, decreased the rounds required for the progressive zombie run stages. Granted, there were large areas in maps like Shi No Numa or TranZit, but they were logical and more balanced. Big areas got more spawns, usually risers, where even the risers inside the playable area could be memorized with ease and even had indication sometimes, and the smaller areas got barriers or droppers that would first flail around (e.g. Shangri-La, Moon) before finally dropping. No more were the days of strategically (well, more so) placed zombie entrances that could be considered by the player and held if desired- just spam and filler spawns, always making the player train or run between spawn zones.
BO5 is going to be a nervous welcome, when it comes to zombies (if it even has zombies). I will say, I am excited for the future, but I'm not getting my hopes to high. Although my hopes can only be rendered on last gen, so their highest point is pretty low...
I gave up on bo5 hopes because no matter what they do this bum ass community eill complain because its not bo3 lmfaoo if bo3 is your only go to you arent a true zombies fan
@@kiltedkiller8178 See, there's where things start to go south. If your mindset is "it's garbage, prove me wrong" then you're setting yourself up for failure. By saying "prove me wrong" you have a set of criteria that would "prove you wrong" and make BO5 a good game, correct? But no one has a clue what your criteria are. So the chances they actually make a game that meets any of those standards in your head is slim. Of course there will be big vague ideas you want for the game too that are more likely to be implemented, but those aren't the points that will make you love the game. It's the small details in W@W and BO, that made people fall in love with zombies and kept them hooked ever since. Finally if your mindset is to play BO5 thinking the entire time "this game is garbage" of course it's going to be garbage. I know because I've done that with numerous games including R6S, Division 2, Borderlands 3. A ton of games. And the only reason I don't like them is because I told myself I don't like them, before I gave them a chance.
@@bigbrisk8423 Please, continue speaking the good lords truth. But don't give up on BO5 just yet. Give up instead, on all of the Toxic "fans" who have nothing but hate to say.
This is why I stopped playing a lot. I bought the dlcs and enjoyed them for a couple of short games, but then I ether had to study to become good so I could keep having fun or focus on my IRL study. I think a lot would have been better if most steps of getting ready to play were told to you in game by a radio or the characters themselves, rather then going out of the game and on RUclips. Like in Nazi zombies ww2, but not for the Easter egg, but for everything else.
There's nothing difficult about it, really. Reaching round 50 on Call of the Dead, here's difficulty, because there's no magic solution except : get gud. With Blundell's maps, you look up a tutorial and here you go...
The only map I struggled with not figure something out is tag der untoten. Every other map I figured out how to do most things by myself. I only look things up to make myself more efficient. I think figuring out how to play the map is the fun part.
I've always thought this, but you simply put it perfectly, Reed! There's a difference between something being challenging and something being annoying. More likely to get down =/= more fun, unless it's done fairly and in an engaging challenging way. Having to run up to a puzzle element, only to get 2 seconds before getting swiped from behind, to then run away with the zombie and back again to the puzzle element for another 2 seconds - is simply not fun. At all. They are two gameplay styles that simply doesn't match, and I don't understand how the developers don't see that a survival style where you're always on the move doesn't work with a puzzle gameplay style where you have to stand still.
yeah, zombies stopped being fun for me when you had analyze 100 locations just for a god damn shield and all this stupid equipment, your game should not rely on a third party for you to study and reach out to, to even know what’s going on in your game.
Lazy comedy Boy i get what you mean but bo3 was actually fun, i didn’t exactly enjoy all the collecathons but it was new at the time and i hated zetsubou and revelations, but all of the other maps were solid, and the setup didn’t bother me because i enjoyed the maps, with black ops 4 the maps just weren’t fun and it was all collectathons for me, the only map I liked was 9 and even that had problems
Completely agree with literally every point you made lol - In my custom zombies map im working on i'm making every step as logical as possible that anyone should be able to figure out without watching any videos or looking at any guides provided they have the cleverness to do so. I'm designing them to be puzzles.
@@VerK0 Just watchet it...DUDE your editing was fantastic it had the feels of a Treyarch map trailer for sure! Also the map's design looks very interesting and the lightening outside on the surface looks fantastic!
The worst part is that once you're finally done setting up, there's no point in playing because you're so overpowered that you may as well have god mode. The last map I really played a lot was Shadows of Evil but then after realizing just how OP Widows Wine was and how hard it is to die, the illusion of challenge was gone and so was my desire to keep playing.
I just want to say keep making these videos. I know Zombies is pretty dry right now, but I've been watching you and all of the other youtubers who still upload even though I hardly play Zombies currently. I feel like BO4 as disappointing as it was, it was a necessary step for the community and the mode. You and a lot of the other members of the community have matured a lot over the past couple years and honestly it has made for much more enjoyable content. I have hope for BO5 (if it even has zombies) and I think that with everything the community has learned as well as the new director, this game could spark new life into the mode and bring the hype back. So keep doing what you do. I'd love to see the hype come back for Zombies and I'll be watching as long as you keep posting. Edit: And I know this comment sounds very sappy, but this isn’t the type of comment I write very often. It’s just that this community and game is the one that I have loved being a part of more than any other and I want the mode to succeed. BO5 marketing can’t come soon enough.
Id be excited for bo5 but i already know itll get hyped up then all theese yputubes will poop on it and complain because no remakes or new crew the only thing ive learned over the years from waw to bo4 is no matter what there will always be complaining because the game isnt whT someone specifically wanted from it hence bo4 good maps good game but ppl complaim because new crew and new perks this mode has died because the community is toxic af and super critical about anything that isnt bo3 and bo3 wasnt even the best one
Bigbrisk You’re right about people always finding something to complain about, but BO4 was overwhelmingly criticized compared to things in the past. I tend to agree with most of the criticism. No matter how good the maps could be in BO4, I personally wouldn’t find it it exciting because the core gameplay systems are worse.
This is a really well put together video. Artifical Inflation is really the biggest flaw with most games nowadays, there's no legitimate challenge often times, just a grind
The way I always look at it is this: if I have to look up a guide to know how to turn on the power the first few times I play a map, it's already something I'd rather not play
Absolutely loving the series keep it up, it’s a refreshing critical take on zombies and its nice to see how improvements could be made to benefit the overall enjoyment of zombies going forward.
Great video Reed, As a mostly solo player i absolutely hated most of BO4 zombies because everything felt super tedious just to even play the map for fun. I hate having to jump through hoops just to even PaP like in Dead of The Night. I only ever beat the Easter Eggs on BO4 because i had friends who dedicated themselves to learning all the steps, but even then i wasn't having fun most of the time because while they did all of the long complex EE steps i was just running in a circle keeping an entire round worth of zombies alive. Love the Mainframe series excited to see where it goes in the future!
As someone who has at least 150 hours on DotN and Origins each, Origins is far more complicated and is extremely tedious compared to DotN. There's six parts for silver bullets and three parts for a shield. Folly and Chaos Theory are very simple to get. Meanwhile in Origins you have to enter the crazy place 16 times to do the quest, and 3 times for just one staff.
I'm straight up playing SOE right now and the best parts of the map is when you have some silence and hear the awesome, ambient, immersive music and sounds, and you get to look around at the awesome map! Love your points, thx 4 the video Reed!
I feel like this is one of the biggest reasons I fell out of love with newer zombies. My wife hasn’t liked zombies since BO1. I started to see why with WW2 and BO4. BO3 however is the game that will live with me forever. WaW and BO1-2 stuck with me for how much I loved the maps and playing them with my friends. BO3 is where I started getting into the Reddit and RUclips community and it was a wild ride. From Milo’s breakdowns of the SoE trailer to the subreddit basically tearing itself apart with the whole DF stuff with Rev. I lived for every minute of it. I got burned out on Zombies because of the artificial inflation and slipped out of the communities as everyone started being less active and engaging. Mostly on Reddit, I know the RUclipsrs struggled and I tried to stay in for you guys, but I just found myself doing anything other than anything to do with Zombies. I miss what BO3 brought us. I miss what WaW started. I’m pretty sure those times are over for good. But, at least we’ll always have those memories of what made us love this game mode so damn much. I’m glad so glad you’re still here Reed. Love you man and the rest of the community that helped make some of the best years of my life. [this is not me signing off forever on zombies, just my thoughts at the moment as a whole. I’ll never not go back and relive moments with Der Riese and Der Eisen.]
Absolutely agree. This is why I stopped doing easter eggs after a while, now I just high round, and even then, after round 40 you have to start questioning it.
DE: perfect ZNS: some challenging pests Revelations: ok. There are a almost too much pests Beginning of IWZ: good amount of enemies End of IW zombies: way too many mini bosses and pest WW2 zombies: not that bad. Only 2 types of pests, 1 mini boss a map and a final boss BO4: too many catalysts, pests, and mini bosses
I believe part of the reason it has gotten less fun to play is also the removal of risks in zombies. In bo4 there's no point in even reviving people if there just gonna spawn back in the next round. And the new perk system makes it so there is little penalty for going down. Perks shouldn't be treated like extra bonuses and should have a much bigger impact, on bo1-3 and iw when I go down its a fun challenging rush to try to find my way out of the situation and recover. On bo4 I get back up in basically the same state as when I downed. For me the most fun I have in zombies is when bad situations take place and its a challenge to get through them. Although I love bo4 i feel like the changes they made (especially the points system) hinder these awesome scenarios happening which makes it much harder for me to enjoy the game. I just hope bo5 works on making the game-mode more accessible for newer players as opposed to easier for them. New players should understand the mechanics and want to improve to get further, having 200 hp and no progression throughout the match makes the game-mode feel stale and repetitive very quickly.
@@Radaustin27 Awesome! Sorry about the really long comment I only just relised how bad the grammer was. Anyways I just wanted to add that im super loving this series, keep up the amazing content and good luck with your speedruns :D
I like the term "Artificial Inflation". I guess I've always dubbed this term "Artificial Difficulty" but you nailed all the points I could think of. Excellent video Reed 👌🐻
This is an amazing video Reed. I completely agree with you. I’m a high rounder who also enjoys doing Easter eggs from time to time. I find I spend the majority of my time in bo3/bo4 contemplating what map to load up. I find myself hovering over a map and than remembering all the tedious shit I need to pick up or rng that I need to have a good run. I inevitably am unable to find a map that will not annoy me and switch to a different game. I think there is a fine line between rng, fetch quests, and challenge that is really difficult to balance. I hope bo5 is able to accomplish this!!
Good video, but you neglect to mention that a lot of these problems started in BO3 and BO4 ramped these up to an absurd degree. It's entirely possible that due to BO3's warm reception that Treyarch thought BO4 is the natural evolution and what fans would've wanted.
I might explore that topic in a future episode. Again I have A LOT more to say about this but the length of the video was almost unmanageable with our weekly Friday deadline.
Agree HEAVILY with this. After DE Bo3 for me became pretty bad to play lol. I will also say that Shadows falls in a weird place, I think that it can definitely be lumped in for being to complex for a vanilla map but I love that lmao for how different and visually appealing it is nonetheless.
Thing is you have to do the exact same thing over and over again just to get set up on the new maps. It shouldn’t be a really tedious process just to get the basics of the game like power, pap and perks.
I’m about as cautious of the next treyarch zombies game as I am for the next BioShock. Albeit for completely different reasons, I’m nervous for these haha. Great video as always, Reed!
The perfect example of artificial inflation, in terms of difficulty, is the morse code step if you're doing Blood of the Dead's easter egg solo. Having to focus on beats instead of numbers, while tapping on a button (instead of entering a code that will stay there), while training a zombie in that tiny room, is infuriating. BO3 has these elements too, a la GK and Rev, but they're amplified in BO4's engine. There's a lot of things I can defend in BO4, but this system isn't one of them. Edit: Just saw the Dead of the Night list and I just...it's got a lot in it but it's good! I swear! ༼ つ ಥ_ಥ ༽つ
I remember putting 30 days into black ops 3 zombies mode alone. Shadows and the Der eisen were the maps that my friends and i played on for days bc they never got old. Shadows had wonderful atmosphere and some of the most fun easter egg steps ever. Steps like CTF, lockdowns, and the egg/soul collecting kept the game at a great pace and it felt good to do them bc the payoff felt rewarding. Der eisen felt like more a chill map that anyone could pick up and play bc the bows were easy to make and fun to use, plus the map had a great easter egg and boss fight. i think the devs struggle to find good pacing in the maps nowdays. My friends and I say things like, "Why does it feel punishing to play zombies now?" I left zombies along time ago and it breaks my heart to see such a wonderful mode suffer like this. i still watch videos and content from all the zombie youtubers but i cant play the new games anymore because it just feels like a chore and I cant play the old maps as much bc ive already spent so much time on them. I really think you've hit the nail on the head with this one reed. Love u bro
Zombies In Spaceland from Infinite Warfare had side quests that weren’t „Memorize several dozen part locations that are randomized every game“, they were fun and felt natural to do.
Reed I'd love to see a video on the WW2 zombies system and how it succeeded compared to BO4's boring system that "borrowed" all the wrong parts of it. TFR is a masterpiece
I loved how you brought up the final reich easter egg as an example not many people would put a ww2 map or easter egg as an example for a specific topic.
I think an example of good artificial inflation is the lightning bow steps on DE. The zombies on your tail makes firing the bow a little bit harder to line up the shot while still being fun and rewarding.
I find this very interesting since I am working on a game and do not want to make these mistakes. I agree with you on most of points. However, this subject is so nuanced and depends on what the player sees as the identity of the game. Originally at least, the idea of cod zombies was to get to the highest round possible. To a player who loads up the game for the first time, this identity is still communicated in every map. What I would argue, is that the easter eggs themselves were introduced to artificially inflate the game for "zombie veterans", which are now the majority of players. Remember Nacht der Untoten? I played it again recently and realized the map is all about atmosphere and gameplay. There is no tedious setting up like there is in newer maps. When you say you find it tedius or that it only requires patience to "kill zombies while poop fertilizes" or to "get to round 100 (or whatever) to trigger an easter egg", does that not mean that the core of the game (killing zombies and getting to high rounds) is now tedious because it is the same thing since Nacht der Untoten? Alternative 1 (requires some creativity): Step 1. Incentivize the act of killing zombies and getting to high rounds and make it a worthwhile experience. Step 2. Throw out all of the easter eggs (by that I mean non-obvious gameplay elements, parts count as well unless they are made obvious) until step 1 is solid. Considering that the community has accepted the trend of having an easter egg in every map as the main goal rather than high rounds, this alternative is likely to be unpopular. However, I am convinced it would be a case of sunk cost fallacy not to go back to the basics and modernize them, and I hope to prove that point with the game I am working on. Alternative 2: Communicate to the player more clearly that this game revolves around some story and the main goal is acting in that story in a certain way while zombies bother you (NOT RECOMMENDED).
Before watching, Treyarch legit just needs to look at BO1-BO3 and create maps that feel more refined and fluid, rather than oversaturate or innovate in places that diminish the previous great features. Also that background is sweet.
Shadows is beloved and DotN is hated. Why? Because its complicated. Is Origins hated? No. After BO3 the fanbase lost like 20 IQ points and became Kino casuals apparently
I agree with zombies becoming too tedious (looking at you BOTD Morse code and a million spawns for the ghost seagull, and the 30some part spawn locations in DOTN). Also can’t we just solve the puzzle and then go to the “machine” or whatever and hit square or X. The character knows the solution so they should input it. Similar to building the shield, you find the parts then hit square/X you don’t have to sit there and try to put the shield together, the character knows how to do it. I think the best newer EE’s are DE, GK, Ancient Evil, Shadows, and Alpha Omega. Biggest reason is because I’m a solo player so I don’t have the luxury of “Hey hold a zombie for me.” Like I said in yesterday’s stream, I’m loving these Mainframe videos, I think you are right on the money with them. Hopefully some of the devs are watching.
Finally someone who understands, but i thought ww2 was a lot more balanced than black ops. This is why less people play zombies. It’s so fucking tedious. This is the perfect video.
Hello mr Reed. Just wanna say thanks to u for making good videos.u hafe helped me a lot the past yers through some hard times becose of Health problems. Just want to thank u and wish u and jhon the best inn the future. God bless
I genuinely think the biggest issue was the push to near-require Quest advancement in order to stand a chance of survival. The quests were always little obscure things that encouraged usage of mechanics, but by no means were required. Sure, the Launcher on Die Rise both makes the game more fun _and_ is required for the Easter Egg... but these things bear no correlation to each other. You don’t need to memorize 4 symbols in one of 30 possible locations in order to get it.
Any map easter egg that requires me to stop and listen closely to Morse Code while having Zombies constantly chasing me and screaming in my ear instantly makes me not want to try the easter egg again.
This is exactly why I couldn't even enjoy myself doing the EEs for BO4. It's a shame I tried staying optimistic through the whole life cycle but it just never turned around for me throughout the dlc season.
To be fair MANY of the inflation things are TECHNICALLY optional like the shield. And yes some maps are insane to do without the build ables. And the idea of having need for guides is also due to people usually wanting it explained for them instead of discovering it for themselves imo and all the challenges of ees basically being KILL THEM all about 20 times is due to our collective adhd of not many being good at keeping their attention to like things like audio logs on Mob. But I agree generally with you here reed
All I’m saying is if bo5 or whatever it’s called doesn’t blow our minds that’s the end of zombies like nothing will bring it back, I mean now that Blundell is gone and things are kinda getting hot again I feel like this is the only time to come back
COD also needs to mix up their formula. Lots might say they have by ADDING in features such as Elixers/Gobble Gum. But those are great additions but after you buy them and use them it really doesn’t change the game. The change in Easter Eggs making it feel like a real story with cutscenes is a good example of real change. instead of being forced just to do a bunch of random tasks for an achievement. You can receive a feeling of completion, now there being final boss and end cut scenes. You feel as though you accomplished something rather than just setting a goal for a high round, you can now set a LOW round goal to complete the map as fast as possible. My issue is there only being 4 new maps that pertain to the story, and the base maps move the story to only create more mystery you will uncover during the DLC. I always thought there should be survival mode and story mode for zombies. Easter Eggs in story mode can be different, more like a campaign. Depending on your character, you have tasks specifically for you. This would still have a sort of down and respawn system, but the goal is not to survive but complete the mission. This would split the community between those who play for survival and those who play for the EE
They should put pro perks in zombies. Three different challenges for each, once the perk is pro the name gets a 2.0 added to it, on your screen the perk logo is now a star instead of its current shape, the logo itself changes a little bit, and not to mention the perk itself would become more powerful in some way. Also to make it so you don’t get the perk pro in one game, one of the challenges should be to drink the perk X amount of times. Also, let’s take dead shot for example, the number of headshots required for the pro version should be so high the chances of you getting it pro in one game is not very likely.
The biggest problem I have is that additional gameplay in the mode was tied to tedious tasks where you was running around NOT killing zombies. The mode strayed away from who can survive, who is the best and turned into a where's Waldo challenge. Gauntlet mode for example was hugely disappointing for this exact reason. There was no way you was completing it without going on RUclips. Far too many rounds were just about finding certain items. Rather than doing something actually gameplay related.
Great video reed, but I've never really understood some of these opinions.. - "just let me play zombies, I don't want to set up." are you asking for a map that drops you in at round 20 with a ww and packed ar? Then what, run in circles for 2 hours? To me most of the fun is in setting up.. - "I have to sit through too many guides before I can play the game." the artists and designers at 3arc almost always give hints to what to do in regards with basic set up, pap etc. Imagine looking up a guide to do pap on der riese or Kino, it takes away from the design of the game that su consciously moves you through a space toward a trigger. In DotN, vases glow, shooting the vase seems second nature; glowing crystal? It could be a soul ox. Oh the crystal made a noise let's look into it. Oh the zues perk, I guess I have to go find that then; its not difficult. Hope this doesn't come across as too harsh.
Trust me your comment isn’t even close to harsh compared to other feedback I receive. Thank you for the reasonable criticism. 1- I think that hits on the spectrum of fun point. Some people will prefer grinding while others can’t stand it. With that point made, your example is part of the “lack of fun” in BO4. You start with a specialist weapon, a mog decked out, wraith fires, and solid common elixirs. What is there to do? Open pack and you are set. Setting up isn’t “give me everything” it’s better expressed as “make the tower defense process more fun.” Never in world at war do you spend 20-30 minutes to get a spork that needs to be upgraded again for proper use. It’s the difference between tedious tasks and rewarding ones. Most side quests are to keep you busy not to make you better off. -For players that have been with zombies forever it may not seem like a problem but even my best friend who started in world at war didn’t like BO4 because it was work. Who wants to come home form a 9 hour work day and spend hours learning guides? The in game hints might help you with a step or two but be honest figuring out everything in your own would take months. 40 locations for the bird? 20 different places to look to get a shield and silver bullets? That’s not fun. Finding pack in other games was a much different proposition then it is today. It isn’t about difficulty as you point out. It’s about making playing a do things for the sake of doing them when trying to use the most basic features of the game. It’s hard to erase what we already had from our memory. It’s like the idea once a product is free consumers will almost never pay for it.
I remember Zombies being about a conspiracy type story involving the Nazis and had actual horror elements (mainly WaW). But after Moon the game went to a whole different direction and ended up being a generic PG-13 zombies game.
The starter gun for bo4 sucks ass and u can't even get it out the box or a wall buy plus one of the hardest guns to get all those damn head shots especially wen u pack it
They should pay attention to the tropy/achievement systems. If for example they have a million players and 6 months later the Trophy/achievement is at 1% 0r less, that means only 10K of of 1 million players even completed the EE. You think this would tell them somthing.
Code input can be done well though, i think the Simon says in DE and how you get the safe code was extremely creative and not too difficult on solo. Personally I think that’s an Easter egg that in general can be considered perfect
I agree that was a great implementation compared to others. I would steer away from perfect because you will never please everyone. It is an excellent Easter egg over all.
RADAUSTIN27 that’s a good point I agree with that, I flipped between the phrase near perfect and perfect but I think my personal bias kicked in a little with just how much I love that map lol. Great video though and would love to see a video where you rank each Easter egg best to worst now that we’re looking back on zombies as a whole!
What comes to mind when I think of artificial inflation is that damn seagull in Blood of The Dead. JUST FUCKING TOMAHAWK THE FUCKING BIRD FROM THE BEGINNING! I'm serious. If you only had to interact with it once then you'd know it exists for when it saves you from Brutus later in the easter egg and it wouldn't feel like inflation.
i know i'm over a year late, but the BIGGEST example of making an EE step long for no reason for me has to be Attack of the Radio Active thing. That map was HORRIBLE. Why am i expected to do maths while holding a zombie on solo?!?!?!? i did the EEs for IW before that map but i didn't bother after 2 attempts on that map and Beast from Beyond was awful from round 1.
Rad, what is your opinion on the steps of Gorod Krovi(I might get hate but) I personally don’t like them, I feel that they depend a lot on gobble gums, and if you don’t have specific ones you might not get the steps. The boos fights are great but I feel like some of the steps are just there just to make the game longer and maybe even feel tedious.
personally with Black Ops 4, I definitely feel the inflation, but on maps that I adore like Tag or Classified (to get PaP and the shield, or even to then get a free Freeze Gun) I don't mind it, but for some maps like Dead of the Night, even though I have Alistars gun and then the gems and all the gem answers remembered, I still hate doing it... I guess my answer is the inflation feels worse, the more annoying the map gets... like the Chaos story is great being a giant History nerd I love the lore, but having special Zombies run at me, while Vamps and Werewolfs are bullet sponges or artificial red screening, I just can't stand going through all those part locations... and to your example on the Final Reich, although I agree with the annoyance of training a zombie around a the hand of god to input the code, I still find it a decent break in the action, you can "relax" being down with the wave, and are allowed enough rest to get ready for the boss fight, while not completely removing you from the action (though if you still have a wussler around when inputting the codes and trying to keep the zombie alive then can be beyond painful)
@@dontsubscribe7175 your point? the question was about artificial inflation, and sure, the two I listed are the easiest maps in the game, doesn't change the fact that they still act in the same way that playing Kino or Ascension would with more stuff to do without just box spam...
super sprinters in b04 start in round 50 or so but sprinters are everywhere and its annoying,. I also want to offer my opinion. I am a player that doesnt care about memorising many locations and sitting through guides. But that i just me, for me it feels like i am maximizing the map and it makes me feel good when i finally complete a task . But that is just me and i completley understand why people dont like to do this and i get that. artifical inflation was through the roof in bo4 and aside from the bugs this is what made most people leave the game. Btw love the vids!
I've always thought Easier Eggs were way better with a team. I feel like I get more satisfaction out of me and three others putting our heads together and solving it than trying to do it alone and have to worry about the zombie on my ass all the time.
In general I prefer all Easter eggs to be done with teams. It’s a lot more enjoyable for the most part, unless you are the person stuck training the zombie.
Likes for the like button god!
Ok
The only reason why zombies stopped being fun to me is how I was trained to only play for grinding. I either grinded for ingame currency or to get some special prize. Back in black ops 2, I didn't need nor care to grind. I played to have fun and get high rounds, but now I feel obligated to play for grinding.
Plus it feels the same every year.
Have the exact same problem as soon as I get prestige master I lose all motivation to go near the game
I share that feeling 100%. I loved the quiet moments in zombies, it was definitely one of my favorite parts and I agree wholeheartedly that BO3 and BO4 suffered due to the constantttt running. It makes it impossible to look for parts and other tedious ee steps
Honestly it bothered me more with bo3 that they kept trying harder and harder to make the ee found and by revelations it was basically all little things out of map and throwing monkeys in an apthicons stomach
Zombies became less fun when Blundell stopped being a sucker for medieval castles.
@@dontsubscribe7175, more like fog rolling out.
Blundell ruined zombies by calling our favorite perks "crutch perks" and then removing them. smh
Community ruined zombies unable to accept change and complain till they get remakes and dont want new stories
@@nelsonmuntz9317 Blundell wasn't the only person behind BO4's design choices.
@@jharju2352 The Legendary Jason blundell was the director for zombies at the time, so thus he was in charge, he over saw everything.
He gave the green light of the murder of the classic perk machines. HIS idea! Watch his justification interview.
Don't get me wrong... he's done hella epicness for zombies,.. a true badass.
Some say even "genius."...
But allowing the removal of the beloved classic perk system for a new health system and perk system was a HUGEEE mistake.. A disaster for BO4 zombies in many ppl's opinion.
I wish he would stay around for BO5 and set things straight again. He knows it was a mistake i bet. He reads comments and gets feed back one way or another. lol
His successor will probly bring back JUG, DT, and Speed. No doubt
Farewell Jason, we'll always remember what u did for zombies not a lame mistake, everybody makes mistakes.
Blundell's maps- e.g. Mob, Origins, BO3, BO4- the major shift from barriers to unhindered zombies spawns (riser, droppers, barrierless windows) and just a great deal more spawns really stood out to me as artificial inflation. Every Blundell map has a considerable amount less barriers than any Zielinski map, even in locations where there are window entrances, just no barriers on them (Nuketown's lack seemed stylistic, but I think Alpha Omega went that route too as more or less of an homage). BO2 Origins spawned riser zombies that immediately jumped out of the ground. BO3 increased the speed that the zombies tear down the windows, and at launch, decreased the rounds required for the progressive zombie run stages.
Granted, there were large areas in maps like Shi No Numa or TranZit, but they were logical and more balanced. Big areas got more spawns, usually risers, where even the risers inside the playable area could be memorized with ease and even had indication sometimes, and the smaller areas got barriers or droppers that would first flail around (e.g. Shangri-La, Moon) before finally dropping.
No more were the days of strategically (well, more so) placed zombie entrances that could be considered by the player and held if desired- just spam and filler spawns, always making the player train or run between spawn zones.
BO5 is going to be a nervous welcome, when it comes to zombies (if it even has zombies). I will say, I am excited for the future, but I'm not getting my hopes to high. Although my hopes can only be rendered on last gen, so their highest point is pretty low...
I actually buried my a.s.s inside BO5 before I left the company.
Also, Reed can't read.
Bo5 will be garbage. Not looking forward to it. I’ll gladly be proven wrong though!
I gave up on bo5 hopes because no matter what they do this bum ass community eill complain because its not bo3 lmfaoo if bo3 is your only go to you arent a true zombies fan
@@kiltedkiller8178 See, there's where things start to go south. If your mindset is "it's garbage, prove me wrong" then you're setting yourself up for failure. By saying "prove me wrong" you have a set of criteria that would "prove you wrong" and make BO5 a good game, correct? But no one has a clue what your criteria are. So the chances they actually make a game that meets any of those standards in your head is slim. Of course there will be big vague ideas you want for the game too that are more likely to be implemented, but those aren't the points that will make you love the game. It's the small details in W@W and BO, that made people fall in love with zombies and kept them hooked ever since. Finally if your mindset is to play BO5 thinking the entire time "this game is garbage" of course it's going to be garbage. I know because I've done that with numerous games including R6S, Division 2, Borderlands 3. A ton of games. And the only reason I don't like them is because I told myself I don't like them, before I gave them a chance.
@@bigbrisk8423 Please, continue speaking the good lords truth. But don't give up on BO5 just yet. Give up instead, on all of the Toxic "fans" who have nothing but hate to say.
I'm gonna be honest Nazi Zombies from
WW2 was actually a breath of fresh air to me. It was extremely unique and fun. But also challenging as hell.
Yes my comrade you speak the truth 🙏
I still play it, I just can't get into bo4 zombies
Winging Eye You're missing out my man
Ww2 zombies were so boring and way to easy
Brad Frink it was easy though
This is why I stopped playing a lot. I bought the dlcs and enjoyed them for a couple of short games, but then I ether had to study to become good so I could keep having fun or focus on my IRL study.
I think a lot would have been better if most steps of getting ready to play were told to you in game by a radio or the characters themselves, rather then going out of the game and on RUclips.
Like in Nazi zombies ww2, but not for the Easter egg, but for everything else.
It started to become less fun when Jason blundell made maps where you had to look up a RUclips video just to do anything to progress.
Yeah, if you have to look up how to do something, something is wrong
Yeah everything after origins is difficult
There's nothing difficult about it, really. Reaching round 50 on Call of the Dead, here's difficulty, because there's no magic solution except : get gud. With Blundell's maps, you look up a tutorial and here you go...
The only map I struggled with not figure something out is tag der untoten. Every other map I figured out how to do most things by myself. I only look things up to make myself more efficient. I think figuring out how to play the map is the fun part.
Basically Origins
The transition from Der Riese to Shi No Numa to Shangri-La just...
That was satisfying
Chroma killed that!
That transition was so smooth. God damn...
I've always thought this, but you simply put it perfectly, Reed! There's a difference between something being challenging and something being annoying. More likely to get down =/= more fun, unless it's done fairly and in an engaging challenging way. Having to run up to a puzzle element, only to get 2 seconds before getting swiped from behind, to then run away with the zombie and back again to the puzzle element for another 2 seconds - is simply not fun. At all. They are two gameplay styles that simply doesn't match, and I don't understand how the developers don't see that a survival style where you're always on the move doesn't work with a puzzle gameplay style where you have to stand still.
Artificial inflation can be a series on it's own.
You said 40 zombies experiences and I went woah I remember when I could count the amount of zombies maps on one or 2 hands
Wow
Jason blundell it's you
yeah, zombies stopped being fun for me when you had analyze 100 locations just for a god damn shield and all this stupid equipment, your game should not rely on a third party for you to study and reach out to, to even know what’s going on in your game.
would u say the same for bo3?
Lazy comedy Boy i get what you mean but bo3 was actually fun, i didn’t exactly enjoy all the collecathons but it was new at the time and i hated zetsubou and revelations, but all of the other maps were solid, and the setup didn’t bother me because i enjoyed the maps, with black ops 4 the maps just weren’t fun and it was all collectathons for me, the only map I liked was 9 and even that had problems
@@Cryptati0n do u have bo3 on ps4
Lazy comedy Boy yeah add me Cryptation
I have a bo3 on ps4 as well. Add me at DarkLaw316 and just send me a message along with the friend request telling me if its you.
Completely agree with literally every point you made lol - In my custom zombies map im working on i'm making every step as logical as possible that anyone should be able to figure out without watching any videos or looking at any guides provided they have the cleverness to do so. I'm designing them to be puzzles.
Thats awesome man! What's your map gunna be? Would love to play it with you and/or my friends, steam ID rapidz_za
@@S3bbby It's called "47 Berkerly Lane", I just released a teaser for it a couple days ago.
@@VerK0 Just watchet it...DUDE your editing was fantastic it had the feels of a Treyarch map trailer for sure! Also the map's design looks very interesting and the lightening outside on the surface looks fantastic!
@@S3bbby Thanks :)
The worst part is that once you're finally done setting up, there's no point in playing because you're so overpowered that you may as well have god mode. The last map I really played a lot was Shadows of Evil but then after realizing just how OP Widows Wine was and how hard it is to die, the illusion of challenge was gone and so was my desire to keep playing.
I just want to say keep making these videos. I know Zombies is pretty dry right now, but I've been watching you and all of the other youtubers who still upload even though I hardly play Zombies currently. I feel like BO4 as disappointing as it was, it was a necessary step for the community and the mode. You and a lot of the other members of the community have matured a lot over the past couple years and honestly it has made for much more enjoyable content. I have hope for BO5 (if it even has zombies) and I think that with everything the community has learned as well as the new director, this game could spark new life into the mode and bring the hype back. So keep doing what you do. I'd love to see the hype come back for Zombies and I'll be watching as long as you keep posting.
Edit: And I know this comment sounds very sappy, but this isn’t the type of comment I write very often. It’s just that this community and game is the one that I have loved being a part of more than any other and I want the mode to succeed. BO5 marketing can’t come soon enough.
Id be excited for bo5 but i already know itll get hyped up then all theese yputubes will poop on it and complain because no remakes or new crew the only thing ive learned over the years from waw to bo4 is no matter what there will always be complaining because the game isnt whT someone specifically wanted from it hence bo4 good maps good game but ppl complaim because new crew and new perks this mode has died because the community is toxic af and super critical about anything that isnt bo3 and bo3 wasnt even the best one
Bigbrisk You’re right about people always finding something to complain about, but BO4 was overwhelmingly criticized compared to things in the past. I tend to agree with most of the criticism. No matter how good the maps could be in BO4, I personally wouldn’t find it it exciting because the core gameplay systems are worse.
This is a really well put together video. Artifical Inflation is really the biggest flaw with most games nowadays, there's no legitimate challenge often times, just a grind
Hearing you describe World at War's atmosphere fills me with emotions.
Let's go back to atmosphere over action.
The way I always look at it is this: if I have to look up a guide to know how to turn on the power the first few times I play a map, it's already something I'd rather not play
Only Blundell map where that is present is Zetsubou
Absolutely loving the series keep it up, it’s a refreshing critical take on zombies and its nice to see how improvements could be made to benefit the overall enjoyment of zombies going forward.
Great video Reed, As a mostly solo player i absolutely hated most of BO4 zombies because everything felt super tedious just to even play the map for fun. I hate having to jump through hoops just to even PaP like in Dead of The Night. I only ever beat the Easter Eggs on BO4 because i had friends who dedicated themselves to learning all the steps, but even then i wasn't having fun most of the time because while they did all of the long complex EE steps i was just running in a circle keeping an entire round worth of zombies alive. Love the Mainframe series excited to see where it goes in the future!
As someone who has at least 150 hours on DotN and Origins each, Origins is far more complicated and is extremely tedious compared to DotN. There's six parts for silver bullets and three parts for a shield. Folly and Chaos Theory are very simple to get. Meanwhile in Origins you have to enter the crazy place 16 times to do the quest, and 3 times for just one staff.
I'm straight up playing SOE right now and the best parts of the map is when you have some silence and hear the awesome, ambient, immersive music and sounds, and you get to look around at the awesome map! Love your points, thx 4 the video Reed!
I feel like this is one of the biggest reasons I fell out of love with newer zombies. My wife hasn’t liked zombies since BO1. I started to see why with WW2 and BO4. BO3 however is the game that will live with me forever. WaW and BO1-2 stuck with me for how much I loved the maps and playing them with my friends. BO3 is where I started getting into the Reddit and RUclips community and it was a wild ride. From Milo’s breakdowns of the SoE trailer to the subreddit basically tearing itself apart with the whole DF stuff with Rev. I lived for every minute of it.
I got burned out on Zombies because of the artificial inflation and slipped out of the communities as everyone started being less active and engaging. Mostly on Reddit, I know the RUclipsrs struggled and I tried to stay in for you guys, but I just found myself doing anything other than anything to do with Zombies. I miss what BO3 brought us. I miss what WaW started. I’m pretty sure those times are over for good. But, at least we’ll always have those memories of what made us love this game mode so damn much. I’m glad so glad you’re still here Reed. Love you man and the rest of the community that helped make some of the best years of my life.
[this is not me signing off forever on zombies, just my thoughts at the moment as a whole. I’ll never not go back and relive moments with Der Riese and Der Eisen.]
Absolutely agree. This is why I stopped doing easter eggs after a while, now I just high round, and even then, after round 40 you have to start questioning it.
DE: perfect
ZNS: some challenging pests
Revelations: ok. There are a almost too much pests
Beginning of IWZ: good amount of enemies
End of IW zombies: way too many mini bosses and pest
WW2 zombies: not that bad. Only 2 types of pests, 1 mini boss a map and a final boss
BO4: too many catalysts, pests, and mini bosses
JRockz133T where’s GK?
@@bungiesblueflames you're right. Chaotic. Way too many pests and mini bosses
Rad is the goat. Man has been always grinding ever since I’ve gotten into zombies. I respect his work and grind so much
Honestly the last time i had legit fun was spaceland in IW zombies.
And that game got a lot of hate one of my favorite zombies map and game
Honestly same. Zombies in Spaceland was the last good map.
I believe part of the reason it has gotten less fun to play is also the removal of risks in zombies. In bo4 there's no point in even reviving people if there just gonna spawn back in the next round. And the new perk system makes it so there is little penalty for going down. Perks shouldn't be treated like extra bonuses and should have a much bigger impact, on bo1-3 and iw when I go down its a fun challenging rush to try to find my way out of the situation and recover. On bo4 I get back up in basically the same state as when I downed. For me the most fun I have in zombies is when bad situations take place and its a challenge to get through them. Although I love bo4 i feel like the changes they made (especially the points system) hinder these awesome scenarios happening which makes it much harder for me to enjoy the game. I just hope bo5 works on making the game-mode more accessible for newer players as opposed to easier for them. New players should understand the mechanics and want to improve to get further, having 200 hp and no progression throughout the match makes the game-mode feel stale and repetitive very quickly.
Oh that sounds like a great future episode analysis! Evaluating the risk reward evolution in zombies
@@Radaustin27 Awesome! Sorry about the really long comment I only just relised how bad the grammer was. Anyways I just wanted to add that im super loving this series, keep up the amazing content and good luck with your speedruns :D
In addition to what you said, the forced revives in solo play really grind my gears. Back in BO3, I liked having that extra bit of danger as a choice.
The quality has gone up a lot nice work to everyone behind these vids
I like the term "Artificial Inflation". I guess I've always dubbed this term "Artificial Difficulty" but you nailed all the points I could think of. Excellent video Reed 👌🐻
I was wondering if you saw this
Reed! You gotta keep this show going! It's great and its a great way to keep doing zombies content but keeping it fresh.
Man ur channel is underrated, i wish people knew how well made your content is!
Before the video I liked. HONESTLY RAD KEEP GOING! You're great at this
he needs more fidelized viewers like us, looks at the view/like ratio by now hahaha
Thank you! But a lot of the credit needs to go to both my editors. They make the videos way better
@@Radaustin27 yeah they are great! I dont know who they are unfortunately but big shout out to them!
This is such a good video, I love this game mode but eliminating the filler content would make this game mode so much more fun again.
intro song has me jamming 🎶 Another great video reed 👌
-hunster55
This is such an interesting time capsule. Amazing stuff. It's really interesting to see how cold war alleviated much of these things.
Love these vids reed keep it up.
This is an amazing video Reed. I completely agree with you. I’m a high rounder who also enjoys doing Easter eggs from time to time. I find I spend the majority of my time in bo3/bo4 contemplating what map to load up. I find myself hovering over a map and than remembering all the tedious shit I need to pick up or rng that I need to have a good run. I inevitably am unable to find a map that will not annoy me and switch to a different game. I think there is a fine line between rng, fetch quests, and challenge that is really difficult to balance. I hope bo5 is able to accomplish this!!
Good video, but you neglect to mention that a lot of these problems started in BO3 and BO4 ramped these up to an absurd degree. It's entirely possible that due to BO3's warm reception that Treyarch thought BO4 is the natural evolution and what fans would've wanted.
I might explore that topic in a future episode. Again I have A LOT more to say about this but the length of the video was almost unmanageable with our weekly Friday deadline.
Agree HEAVILY with this. After DE Bo3 for me became pretty bad to play lol. I will also say that Shadows falls in a weird place, I think that it can definitely be lumped in for being to complex for a vanilla map but I love that lmao for how different and visually appealing it is nonetheless.
Thing is you have to do the exact same thing over and over again just to get set up on the new maps. It shouldn’t be a really tedious process just to get the basics of the game like power, pap and perks.
Love this series Reed. Keep it up!
I’m about as cautious of the next treyarch zombies game as I am for the next BioShock. Albeit for completely different reasons, I’m nervous for these haha. Great video as always, Reed!
The perfect example of artificial inflation, in terms of difficulty, is the morse code step if you're doing Blood of the Dead's easter egg solo. Having to focus on beats instead of numbers, while tapping on a button (instead of entering a code that will stay there), while training a zombie in that tiny room, is infuriating. BO3 has these elements too, a la GK and Rev, but they're amplified in BO4's engine. There's a lot of things I can defend in BO4, but this system isn't one of them.
Edit: Just saw the Dead of the Night list and I just...it's got a lot in it but it's good! I swear! ༼ つ ಥ_ಥ ༽つ
Completely agree. More easter egg steps should involve shooting things rather than pressing the action button.
I actually love these mainframe videos! I hope you keep making them for Bo5 too:)
This is the best example of why zombies has gone bad. To tedious and just can’t admire the maps because your constantly running.
Love these mainframe videos Reed, keep up the good work man.
At least the skulls in IX are all in the same room. Should have made them all in the middle tho
Finally, someone puts what I've been feeling into words!
I remember putting 30 days into black ops 3 zombies mode alone. Shadows and the Der eisen were the maps that my friends and i played on for days bc they never got old. Shadows had wonderful atmosphere and some of the most fun easter egg steps ever. Steps like CTF, lockdowns, and the egg/soul collecting kept the game at a great pace and it felt good to do them bc the payoff felt rewarding. Der eisen felt like more a chill map that anyone could pick up and play bc the bows were easy to make and fun to use, plus the map had a great easter egg and boss fight. i think the devs struggle to find good pacing in the maps nowdays. My friends and I say things like, "Why does it feel punishing to play zombies now?" I left zombies along time ago and it breaks my heart to see such a wonderful mode suffer like this. i still watch videos and content from all the zombie youtubers but i cant play the new games anymore because it just feels like a chore and I cant play the old maps as much bc ive already spent so much time on them. I really think you've hit the nail on the head with this one reed. Love u bro
Keep making videos like this dude! These are a serious smash hit 👍🏻
7:46 literally made me load waw der riese up
Killer edit by chroma!
Loving these new mainframe videos! Great job reed!
Great video, informative breakdown, thank you
Aye, artificial inflation isn't what broke it for me, but I can certainly agree to an extent. I mostly just burnt myself out by playing nonstop.
Zombies In Spaceland from Infinite Warfare had side quests that weren’t „Memorize several dozen part locations that are randomized every game“, they were fun and felt natural to do.
I like that Cobra Commander is in charge of micro transactions.
Reed I'd love to see a video on the WW2 zombies system and how it succeeded compared to BO4's boring system that "borrowed" all the wrong parts of it. TFR is a masterpiece
I loved how you brought up the final reich easter egg as an example not many people would put a ww2 map or easter egg as an example for a specific topic.
I think an example of good artificial inflation is the lightning bow steps on DE. The zombies on your tail makes firing the bow a little bit harder to line up the shot while still being fun and rewarding.
I find this very interesting since I am working on a game and do not want to make these mistakes. I agree with you on most of points. However, this subject is so nuanced and depends on what the player sees as the identity of the game. Originally at least, the idea of cod zombies was to get to the highest round possible. To a player who loads up the game for the first time, this identity is still communicated in every map. What I would argue, is that the easter eggs themselves were introduced to artificially inflate the game for "zombie veterans", which are now the majority of players. Remember Nacht der Untoten? I played it again recently and realized the map is all about atmosphere and gameplay. There is no tedious setting up like there is in newer maps. When you say you find it tedius or that it only requires patience to "kill zombies while poop fertilizes" or to "get to round 100 (or whatever) to trigger an easter egg", does that not mean that the core of the game (killing zombies and getting to high rounds) is now tedious because it is the same thing since Nacht der Untoten?
Alternative 1 (requires some creativity):
Step 1. Incentivize the act of killing zombies and getting to high rounds and make it a worthwhile experience.
Step 2. Throw out all of the easter eggs (by that I mean non-obvious gameplay elements, parts count as well unless they are made obvious) until step 1 is solid.
Considering that the community has accepted the trend of having an easter egg in every map as the main goal rather than high rounds, this alternative is likely to be unpopular.
However, I am convinced it would be a case of sunk cost fallacy not to go back to the basics and modernize them, and I hope to prove that point with the game I am working on.
Alternative 2:
Communicate to the player more clearly that this game revolves around some story and the main goal is acting in that story in a certain way while zombies bother you (NOT RECOMMENDED).
The intro music is gold.
Is there a place to listen to more of it?
Before watching, Treyarch legit just needs to look at BO1-BO3 and create maps that feel more refined and fluid, rather than oversaturate or innovate in places that diminish the previous great features. Also that background is sweet.
Shadows is beloved and DotN is hated. Why? Because its complicated. Is Origins hated? No. After BO3 the fanbase lost like 20 IQ points and became Kino casuals apparently
Love that Sub 30 mainframe speedrun Reed
I agree with zombies becoming too tedious (looking at you BOTD Morse code and a million spawns for the ghost seagull, and the 30some part spawn locations in DOTN). Also can’t we just solve the puzzle and then go to the “machine” or whatever and hit square or X. The character knows the solution so they should input it. Similar to building the shield, you find the parts then hit square/X you don’t have to sit there and try to put the shield together, the character knows how to do it. I think the best newer EE’s are DE, GK, Ancient Evil, Shadows, and Alpha Omega. Biggest reason is because I’m a solo player so I don’t have the luxury of “Hey hold a zombie for me.” Like I said in yesterday’s stream, I’m loving these Mainframe videos, I think you are right on the money with them. Hopefully some of the devs are watching.
That's such a funny comparison! I never thought of comparing the EEs to shield building in the context of tediousness. Excellent point!
Finally someone who understands, but i thought ww2 was a lot more balanced than black ops. This is why less people play zombies. It’s so fucking tedious. This is the perfect video.
Hello mr Reed. Just wanna say thanks to u for making good videos.u hafe helped me a lot the past yers through some hard times becose of Health problems. Just want to thank u and wish u and jhon the best inn the future. God bless
Atleast we have Glitch
I genuinely think the biggest issue was the push to near-require Quest advancement in order to stand a chance of survival.
The quests were always little obscure things that encouraged usage of mechanics, but by no means were required.
Sure, the Launcher on Die Rise both makes the game more fun _and_ is required for the Easter Egg... but these things bear no correlation to each other. You don’t need to memorize 4 symbols in one of 30 possible locations in order to get it.
Getting Ken Levine vibes from reed in this video
Any map easter egg that requires me to stop and listen closely to Morse Code while having Zombies constantly chasing me and screaming in my ear instantly makes me not want to try the easter egg again.
Me too
I know buried inside out due to the fact Leroy could hold a crawler, I would spend hours just walking around and immersing myslef into the game
This is exactly why I couldn't even enjoy myself doing the EEs for BO4. It's a shame I tried staying optimistic through the whole life cycle but it just never turned around for me throughout the dlc season.
My new favorite series
Easter eggs in BO4 be looking like real life Jimbothy Easter egg steps.
To be fair MANY of the inflation things are TECHNICALLY optional like the shield. And yes some maps are insane to do without the build ables. And the idea of having need for guides is also due to people usually wanting it explained for them instead of discovering it for themselves imo and all the challenges of ees basically being KILL THEM all about 20 times is due to our collective adhd of not many being good at keeping their attention to like things like audio logs on Mob. But I agree generally with you here reed
thank you reed. wish i could donate. you're the best
All I’m saying is if bo5 or whatever it’s called doesn’t blow our minds that’s the end of zombies like nothing will bring it back, I mean now that Blundell is gone and things are kinda getting hot again I feel like this is the only time to come back
Never thought about something like this, no wonder remasters never feel the same...
Great video man
COD also needs to mix up their formula. Lots might say they have by ADDING in features such as Elixers/Gobble Gum. But those are great additions but after you buy them and use them it really doesn’t change the game.
The change in Easter Eggs making it feel like a real story with cutscenes is a good example of real change. instead of being forced just to do a bunch of random tasks for an achievement. You can receive a feeling of completion, now there being final boss and end cut scenes. You feel as though you accomplished something rather than just setting a goal for a high round, you can now set a LOW round goal to complete the map as fast as possible.
My issue is there only being 4 new maps that pertain to the story, and the base maps move the story to only create more mystery you will uncover during the DLC. I always thought there should be survival mode and story mode for zombies.
Easter Eggs in story mode can be different, more like a campaign.
Depending on your character, you have tasks specifically for you. This would still have a sort of down and respawn system, but the goal is not to survive but complete the mission.
This would split the community between those who play for survival and those who play for the EE
zombies became less fun when they started bringing in aliens and dragons and robots
They should put pro perks in zombies. Three different challenges for each, once the perk is pro the name gets a 2.0 added to it, on your screen the perk logo is now a star instead of its current shape, the logo itself changes a little bit, and not to mention the perk itself would become more powerful in some way. Also to make it so you don’t get the perk pro in one game, one of the challenges should be to drink the perk X amount of times. Also, let’s take dead shot for example, the number of headshots required for the pro version should be so high the chances of you getting it pro in one game is not very likely.
The biggest problem I have is that additional gameplay in the mode was tied to tedious tasks where you was running around NOT killing zombies. The mode strayed away from who can survive, who is the best and turned into a where's Waldo challenge. Gauntlet mode for example was hugely disappointing for this exact reason. There was no way you was completing it without going on RUclips. Far too many rounds were just about finding certain items. Rather than doing something actually gameplay related.
Zombies in Spaceland was the last good zombies map imo. Never thought I’d say that.
Love this series
Great video reed, but I've never really understood some of these opinions..
- "just let me play zombies, I don't want to set up." are you asking for a map that drops you in at round 20 with a ww and packed ar? Then what, run in circles for 2 hours?
To me most of the fun is in setting up..
- "I have to sit through too many guides before I can play the game." the artists and designers at 3arc almost always give hints to what to do in regards with basic set up, pap etc. Imagine looking up a guide to do pap on der riese or Kino, it takes away from the design of the game that su consciously moves you through a space toward a trigger. In DotN, vases glow, shooting the vase seems second nature; glowing crystal? It could be a soul ox. Oh the crystal made a noise let's look into it. Oh the zues perk, I guess I have to go find that then; its not difficult.
Hope this doesn't come across as too harsh.
Trust me your comment isn’t even close to harsh compared to other feedback I receive. Thank you for the reasonable criticism.
1- I think that hits on the spectrum of fun point. Some people will prefer grinding while others can’t stand it. With that point made, your example is part of the “lack of fun” in BO4. You start with a specialist weapon, a mog decked out, wraith fires, and solid common elixirs. What is there to do? Open pack and you are set. Setting up isn’t “give me everything” it’s better expressed as “make the tower defense process more fun.” Never in world at war do you spend 20-30 minutes to get a spork that needs to be upgraded again for proper use. It’s the difference between tedious tasks and rewarding ones. Most side quests are to keep you busy not to make you better off.
-For players that have been with zombies forever it may not seem like a problem but even my best friend who started in world at war didn’t like BO4 because it was work. Who wants to come home form a 9 hour work day and spend hours learning guides? The in game hints might help you with a step or two but be honest figuring out everything in your own would take months. 40 locations for the bird? 20 different places to look to get a shield and silver bullets? That’s not fun. Finding pack in other games was a much different proposition then it is today. It isn’t about difficulty as you point out. It’s about making playing a do things for the sake of doing them when trying to use the most basic features of the game. It’s hard to erase what we already had from our memory. It’s like the idea once a product is free consumers will almost never pay for it.
Anyone remember when the only collectables only got you a song or piece of lore instead of needing to find 12 items just to plat
There's too much to do and don't like that they made the zombies spawn behind you.
I remember Zombies being about a conspiracy type story involving the Nazis and had actual horror elements (mainly WaW). But after Moon the game went to a whole different direction and ended up being a generic PG-13 zombies game.
At this point I just hope Zombies just eats the starter gun, an never return. Too many disappointments ✌🏻
The starter gun for bo4 sucks ass and u can't even get it out the box or a wall buy plus one of the hardest guns to get all those damn head shots especially wen u pack it
@@lavon65beamon It's really jarring. Freefire, Killjoy and Alchemical are fitting elixirs for the task but nothing makes it bearable.
They should pay attention to the tropy/achievement systems. If for example they have a million players and 6 months later the
Trophy/achievement is at 1% 0r less, that means only 10K of of 1 million players even completed the EE. You think this would tell them somthing.
Code input can be done well though, i think the Simon says in DE and how you get the safe code was extremely creative and not too difficult on solo. Personally I think that’s an Easter egg that in general can be considered perfect
I agree that was a great implementation compared to others. I would steer away from perfect because you will never please everyone. It is an excellent Easter egg over all.
RADAUSTIN27 that’s a good point I agree with that, I flipped between the phrase near perfect and perfect but I think my personal bias kicked in a little with just how much I love that map lol. Great video though and would love to see a video where you rank each Easter egg best to worst now that we’re looking back on zombies as a whole!
What comes to mind when I think of artificial inflation is that damn seagull in Blood of The Dead.
JUST FUCKING TOMAHAWK THE FUCKING BIRD FROM THE BEGINNING!
I'm serious. If you only had to interact with it once then you'd know it exists for when it saves you from Brutus later in the easter egg and it wouldn't feel like inflation.
i know i'm over a year late, but the BIGGEST example of making an EE step long for no reason for me has to be Attack of the Radio Active thing. That map was HORRIBLE. Why am i expected to do maths while holding a zombie on solo?!?!?!? i did the EEs for IW before that map but i didn't bother after 2 attempts on that map and Beast from Beyond was awful from round 1.
Rad, what is your opinion on the steps of Gorod Krovi(I might get hate but) I personally don’t like them, I feel that they depend a lot on gobble gums, and if you don’t have specific ones you might not get the steps. The boos fights are great but I feel like some of the steps are just there just to make the game longer and maybe even feel tedious.
personally with Black Ops 4, I definitely feel the inflation, but on maps that I adore like Tag or Classified (to get PaP and the shield, or even to then get a free Freeze Gun) I don't mind it, but for some maps like Dead of the Night, even though I have Alistars gun and then the gems and all the gem answers remembered, I still hate doing it... I guess my answer is the inflation feels worse, the more annoying the map gets... like the Chaos story is great being a giant History nerd I love the lore, but having special Zombies run at me, while Vamps and Werewolfs are bullet sponges or artificial red screening, I just can't stand going through all those part locations... and to your example on the Final Reich, although I agree with the annoyance of training a zombie around a the hand of god to input the code, I still find it a decent break in the action, you can "relax" being down with the wave, and are allowed enough rest to get ready for the boss fight, while not completely removing you from the action (though if you still have a wussler around when inputting the codes and trying to keep the zombie alive then can be beyond painful)
@@dontsubscribe7175 your point? the question was about artificial inflation, and sure, the two I listed are the easiest maps in the game, doesn't change the fact that they still act in the same way that playing Kino or Ascension would with more stuff to do without just box spam...
super sprinters in b04 start in round 50 or so but sprinters are everywhere and its annoying,. I also want to offer my opinion. I am a player that doesnt care about memorising many locations and sitting through guides. But that i just me, for me it feels like i am maximizing the map and it makes me feel good when i finally complete a task . But that is just me and i completley understand why people dont like to do this and i get that. artifical inflation was through the roof in bo4 and aside from the bugs this is what made most people leave the game. Btw love the vids!
I've always thought Easier Eggs were way better with a team. I feel like I get more satisfaction out of me and three others putting our heads together and solving it than trying to do it alone and have to worry about the zombie on my ass all the time.
In general I prefer all Easter eggs to be done with teams. It’s a lot more enjoyable for the most part, unless you are the person stuck training the zombie.
Zombies was great in WaW, peaked at BO1, was okay after BO2, was awful after BO3.