As I like to be competitive I was thinking about making a guide on how to be a competitive player on zone. Hope it helps some people and hope you enjoy!

To be a competitive player on zone you first must understand the simple things about zone's weapons and have a general setup for your weapons which are:

• A gun
• A melee
• Grenades

You could literally just go around and view the guns that would fit you but to get a more general aspect on which gun you would want you should look at the Zone Weapon Stats Click Here

Things you should look at in the chart are generally:

• Ammo(The type of ammo it takes Energy or Rifle and it's clip size)
• Bullet Speed(How fast a bullet would go the lower the number the faster the bullet mostly depends in missions)
• Bullet Frequency(Generally known as Rate of Fire 'RoF' shows delay a gun takes to shoot another bullet)
• Bullet Distance( How far a bullet can travel in tiles)
• Recoil ( A push back of the player per shot)
• Attack Radius(Used for melee's gives additional area for attacks)
• Frenzy(Additional attack bonus for guns)

Competitive Gun Selection
- Competitive guns are usually guns that have a Bullet Frequency of .265-.15
- Depending on the player recoil can also be considered since it give the player additional speed it is very handy when evading bullets
-Frenzy is a only used for pk(player killing) so if you are looking to pk you should look into this.

Some guns I would recommend would be:

Green Rifle: Generally because it's a basic gun that would suit mostly anyone.

Photon Cannon: This gun has a nice fire rate with very intimidating bullets which are a good combo.

Plasma Chaingun: One of the fastest guns in zone with a good recoil for evasion.

All these are found in gun shop 2 ^^^

Competitive Melee Selection
-Melees are all usually fast so is basically depends on damage since they all basically feel the same of course a very well recommended melee is the Plasma Sabre it is up to the user.

Plasma Saber: Reflects Energy bullets and does the highest melee damage.

Muramasa: One of the first melees on zone pretty good speed and damage.


Another things you must consider to be a competitive player are classes. There are 4 classes.

• Civilian(Default class usually not used except for clearing your class)
• Medic(A class that increases the user's speed generally used in events can also build a medic bot)
• Commando(A class that increases the users hit-points by 1)
• Defender(A class that decreases damage taken by 1 but slows down the user also allows the user to make a defender bot.)

The most recommended class would be commando but the most competitive classes in order in my opinion would be:

• Commando
• Medic
• Civilian
• Defender

Some would switch Defender with Civilian but I wouldn't want a slow character.



This is part 1 I will separate different portions of being competitive on this thread. FEED BACK


(PART 2: Sparring)

Sparring is one category of competitiveness on Zone

Sparring is basically 1 on 1 gun or melee fight to the death.

There are a lot of things to consider in spar such as:

• Health(50 health points)
• Gun of Choice( One the user feels can keep up to competition)
• Melee of Choice( Good damage )
• Reaction( Fast finger movement)

There current spars are Gun spar and Melee spar . Lets start off with Melee Spar.

This spar's dimensions are 46 tiles by 30 tiles and only allows melee weapons.

The way to Melee spar is to hit your opponent and avoid getting hit yourself. Ofcourse with zone's melee system being different from classic's fighting system you will get hit. So the main purpose is to have faster melee with a decent amount of damage, or to have a high damage melee such as the sabre.

That is pretty much it for melee spar since it really isn't that intriguing in my opinion.

Now lets get to gun spar!

There are 2 gun spars that fall under the competitive category which are :

Small Gun spar: This gun spar's dimensions are 46 tiles by 24 tiles.

Normal Gun spar: This gun spar's dimensions are 46 tiles by 30 tiles.


Sizes matter for gun spar due to one simple thing of bullet distance:
It may not seem big but some people may consider it.

So there are 2 main value currently used in bullet distance. 40 tiles and 30 tiles. What this means is that when a bullet is released from the gun it will last that amount of tiles before it disappears. So for horizontal portion of the spars a bullet can be shot and can disappear for the vertical portion of the tiles a bullet can travel its full distance without disappearing that is useful to know so you won't miss a target by your bullet fading away.


One of the MAIN THINGS OF SPAR IS DODGING dodging is basically avoiding being hit by bullets so that you won't take damage and lose the spar.
The way I look at dodging is by making the spar look like a graph in my head that may not be a good way to explain so let me give you a visual.

Graal uses x and y coordinates so it technically can be a graph. Anyways when bullets are shot they are shot in a straight line except for guns with a gravity of 2.0. other than they are pretty straight.

Since guns have a fire rate and shoot in straight lines there bullets shot will often be parallel and there for be a way for a player to dodge by simply going through gaps that the parallel bullets leave. The best way to show this situation is a 'Technique' called "Walling". Not very favored technique and is frowned upon in most cases here is what it looks like.

Walling is basically when the player move up and down vertically while holding the firing button which allows a wall of spam to released. Even though this technique is not really effective it does help as a finisher also it help explain the gaps that in between parallel shots.

Another thing you may be thinking is "Bleck the bullets are way to big to dodge" and for that specific gun the photon rifle, has intimidating bullets the hitbox of the bullet is actually smaller as for other lasers as well. The hitbox is the red tail of the bullet and not the purple.

One thing that can help dodging in some cases is recoil which gives players a boost in the opposite direction they are shooting in so when bullets come in your direction and you have a gun with recoil you best shoot it to get the extra boost to get away a perfect example is the plasma chaingun which has a very effective recoil.

The second MAIN THING OF SPAR IS HITTING this is where a player must get a better understanding of zone's 360 shooting. One thing that is directly proportional to the shooting system is the bullet spread. When bullets are shot they aren't measured in degrees they are measured in radian. Which is a different unit. When you tap a position on the firing button. It gathers the angle you pressed it at and adds randomness to it so it isn't really where you aimed but the randomness isn't that far off so you won't be shooting to kingdom come or something like that but, shooting really relys on the players feel of it.

(PART 3: Basing)

Basing is a really competitive portion of zone. Basing is basically when a squad captures a base and a base gives time to the squad which is recorded and eventual if a squad is serious about basing can be rewarded, but to base you will need a few things first you will need a competitive gun and a MELEE that is competitive. Melees are very useful since they fast and can cause great amounts of damage then a gun would in shorter time. A recommended melee would be the saber since it is fast and can deflect enemy bullets while hitting a base.

These are the rewards:
1,000 Hours- A squad hat(Made by a pixel artist which is then uploaded and given to the selective few chosen by the squad's leader)

5,000 Hours- A squad robot(Made by a pixel artist which is then uploaded and given to the selective few chosen by the squad's leader)

10,000 Hours- A gun skin which is not a replacing gun skin it is added to your inventory(Made by a pixel artist which is then uploaded and given to the selective few chosen by the squad's leader)

The hat list is 1 Leader, 1 Hat Maker, 15 Squad Members which totals up to 17 members.

Lets talk about the bases. So in zone there are multiple bases but the first ones that anyone would be familiar are:



Iricia - A 5 base containing planet that give a certain amount of time per minute. It is a snow based planet and one of the first released with the objective to capture as many bases as possible.

Base 1 - Per Minute
Base 2,3,4,5 - Per Minute


Choros - A grass themed iricia with 5 bases that gives a certain amount of time per minute and one of the first released with the objective to capture as many bases as possible.

Base 1 - Per Minute
Base 2,3,4,5 - Per Minute


Conquest - A planet that only has 1 base where squads fight to protect it or take it. It is one of the most competitive planets.

Base 1 - 1 minute per minute


http://gyazo.com/185dc86ea407ff6ab20fd0426fdbf37b (Unsupported image host)

Spring - First side scroller planet with and the objective is to obtain all the bases to win it. It uses a different system then the other planets and gives time while the squad is not defending the base. Now I will go over some tactics and items you may need for spring.

For spring it is preferable that you have a weapon with a bullet frequency between .15-.2 since it is a side scroller and dodging isn't very possible so you will need all the fire power you can get some guns recommended would be the:

Streamer: It is one of the fastest guns on zone and also has a frenzy mode which increases speed and damage so it makes a good weapon to have in spring.

AP-Ripper 45s- Third fastest gun on zone and good damage to help supress the enemy.



Showdown is a free-for-all planet where competitors face each other for the title of showdown winner. Ofcourse that title last only for 5 minutes considering thats how ong the timer is. It is basically pking in that planet and it also gives your squad, squad time for the five minutes aswell or for however long you hold the planet.

Gives 1 minute per minute





Skybases are recently added bases that were implemented for outside exploring players. There are 3 skybases and they are all pretty much the same look.

Gives 40 seconds per minute  

Awesome guide.  

I feel as though there really isn't much competitiveness to Zone, honestly. You need more diverse weaponry that fill niche roles before you can actually go all out. Otherwise it's just spamming the same 2 weapons that are damn-near identical.  

Updated  

Update #2  

Nice guide  

Nice  

i went into zone the other day and it was actually fun(except when i got attacked by the super spam guns) so this guide might be helpful when i get a chance to put some hrs in zone.