Left4Dead

[Lonestar]

This thread hasn't, quite, reached the 2 Week mark so I'm posting in it.

I picked up the game last night and ran through the first 2 singleplayer campaigns. How's Multiplayer? How do they handle playing as the Special infected? Is it goofy, or cool?

[TheFeniX]

I picked up the game last night and ran through the first 2 singleplayer campaigns. How's Multiplayer? How do they handle playing as the Special infected? Is it goofy, or cool?

Multiplayer is either tons of fun or hours of frustration depending on you and your teammates. This isn't Call of Duty or Halo where one badass can carry a mediocre team. On Advanced or Expert, your teamwork had better be 100% (you can afford a few mistakes on Advanced though) or you're going to be reloading safe-room check points a lot. Voice coms are required as there is no time to type out text (in the PC version).

Versus mode (survivors vs infected) is detailed in the OP. It is handled well, but just like survivors: even one idiot on your team can ruin your chances at winning.

Rereading my OP, I left out a bit on the special infected.

Hunters: the special attack is when you crouch and a little meter builds on your reticle, meanwhile your character growls a lot. Then you can pounch/leap. A successful pounce pins a survivor and you slash at them until they or you die. You can be meleed before you hit, so working angles and diversions is paramount. Your basic attack also does decent damage (and like the Boomer and Smoker) is overlooked in favor of the special.

Boomer: This is likely the most important class for infected. You're slow, so working corners or rooftops is paramount. Your primary attack is the vomit which has a decent range, but you cannot move while vomiting. It also take a LONG time to recover from a vomit, so it's best to move in and hope they shoot you when you're close. He is best used in conjunction with a smoker. Survivors tend to focus on one infected at a time. They all want that kill. So, if a smoker grabs one from the front, the boomer can use the confusion to move up from behind.

Smoker: Your primary attack shoots a tongue to grab an infected. By working angles and windows, sometimes you can grab survivors through narrow openings making it very hard to hit you. Since most online players are too stupid to just melee the grabbed survivor, a good grab can do a lot of damage and keep the other survivors busy so a boomer can come up from behind. Rooftops are your best friend as you can get far enough back from the ledge to minimize your exposure.

A missed tongue recovers quickly, but if they break it off, you'll be out of action for a while.

Tank: The primary attack just bashes the shit out of someone. Your secondary rips out a chunk of whatever and tosses it. He can full-fill multiple roles, but just make sure you're doing something constant to keep the pressure on the survivors so you don't lose control.

[Lonestar]

well, finally played online. One of the things I learned? Don't discharge firearms near a gas station.

[Death from the Sea]

I found that the versus play has made me more wary of where the special zombies can attack from because I try to find those perfect setups for ambushing when I play as infected.

It may be deemed a chicken shit tactic, but for and easy win on the rooftop of the No Mercy campaign, after signaling for rescue, take the entire team and duck under the walkway up to the landing pad. There is only one way to get directly to you there, which is easily guarded by all 4 and some Molotov cocktails.

[Oscar Wilde]

Do you get anything special for killing witches?

[Zablorg]

If you're uninterrupted you can kill them fairly easily if you focus all your fire on her before she gets wound up.

[Braedley]

If your team has a hunting rifle and at least one assault rifle, you should have no problem taking out a witch from 30 feet or more. She may be able to tackle one team member, but that's what the auto-shotty is for.

[weemadando]

Just getting into it myself - my favourite classes are by far Boomer and Smoker (yes, Infected are way more fun than Survivors). Had some awesome games so far too - we managed to kill all the Survivors as they stepped out from the safe-room. I was a smoker on the roof and managed to catch and drag one up the wall, A boomer blasted himself in the middle of them just as two hunters pounce some of the survivors. The fourth was just flat out over-whelmed by the horde and went down. All in all it was about 30 seconds from start of the mission to watch them all die.

[2000AD]

It's a lot of fun but right now I think the balance of power lies with the Surivors in Versus mode. You get a team that plays well and the infected are pretty much screwed, even tanks become trivial.
Melee is also overpowered. When a hunter pounces at you from the top of a 3 story building, just waving your arm around shouldn't stop him dead in mid air, let alone force him back.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Yeah, I don't think it was their intention for 3-4 survivors making it to the safe room be the norm. The dev commentary states that the point of versus was to rack up points for getting further in the level than the other team as survivors, implying that actually getting the majority into the safe room at the end would be a rare accomplishment.

The problem is primarily coordinated groups of survivors who know best how to exploit the system - all four get in a corner and just spam melee every time a bunch of zombies attacks. This works against every type of infected except Tank, where they can just toss a molotov and point-blank auto-shotty it to death. I once spawned as a tank and died before getting even one hit off - the survivors had just holed up in a closet, threw a molotov at me as I turned the corner, and the whole group just volley-fired their shotguns. Bam, dead.

[Acidburns]

I used to find the tank to be best in enclosed spaces, but now that most survivors who know what they are doing always keep a molotov for the tank, and the aforementioned auto-shotty death it can be quite difficult. If you can hit them with a boomer at the same time as a tank you can still wipe out even the best teams. I get the most success now in open spaces where there is a car or tree that can be used as a missile. If they group up you can take them all out in a single swing that way.

[weemadando]

SUrvivors also have the advantage of speed - if you get a good team of them who know that hte best thing to do is to start running and don't stop, then you can often make it to the next safe-room before the 2nd or 3rd respawn for infected occurs.

[Acidburns]

Yeah, I've seen some serious speed runs. I think it's more of the problem in the 4th campaign than the first.

[Zablorg]

Good news everyone! I have an official serious business email in my inbox that says a patch is being planned for this week that "should help with some of the exploits/glitches.", in context to the melee screwyness specifically.

[TheFeniX]

I'll preface this by saying I've only played the 360 version of L4Dead. The lack of refined control could be why I don't run into some of the problems my PC buddies do with the game.

Survivors just hauling ass through a level is generally a bad idea. We've tested it a few times and even with 1-2 decent (not even that skilled) infected on the opposing team, we just got picked off one by one. The guy at the rear goes first, then the next, and so on. A hit from and regular infected (or even just pushing your way through them) slows you down enough that you'll be left in the dust in no time. And when you haul ass, the infected tend to mass around the poor bastard still in their view after the lead guy runs past them.

The problem still seems to be that most people who play infected have no concept of working as a team. Hunters move in solo, do maybe 10 damage, then die. So, there's a minimum of 20 seconds you're down a man. Boomers don't think to drop down or flank from a side that, even if you're push, you have no place to stumble back to before you pop. I enjoy picking out the "smart" survivors on a team, and jumping down right in front of them, but in between the less experienced ones. The smart one melees me, and the other guy panics and blasts me, covering most of the team.

As for exploits, for every door the survivors can melee open, there's a spot where a smart smoker can setup and drag one survivors to an immediate death. If he can get a boomer to hit them first, this death is almost guaranteed.

I do think the melee is overpowered though. You should really only be staggered (or have the stagger time shorted drastically) as Hunter if you're crouched and ready to pounce. I actually prefer to move up behind surrounded survivors and claw them a few times, then run off. The damage is much more substantial and people just don't expect it. But chances are better than not, some guy just rotating in a circle is going to stagger me before even one claw connects.

[chitoryu12]

Do you get anything special for killing witches?

No, other than having your name on the list at the end-of-level stats screen for "Most Damage Done to the Witch".

In all fairness, I actually like having the witches in most games. If you end up with a total idiot kid on your team that keeps screwing up, straying from the group, and just making it harder to win, they're more likely to shoot the Witch on sight instead of skirting around her, and since the Witch takes off after killing whoever startled her, that's one less idiot.

[weemadando]

The main thing about rushing the level is that you can quite often make it past the enemies before they go into an active/pursuit state. No Mercy is easy as hell to rush through and survive, and No.2 (Toll thingy) has some similarly nice levels in which to do it.

The simple fact is that a good Survivor team, if they can fight their way through the initial ambush by the Infected and take off at a sprint, then by the time the Infected can next re-spawn they'll either be at a set-piece or most of the way through - often meaning that the infected will struggle to keep up/find a good spawn location before the Survivors move on.

And with even the most marginal amount of teamwork and spatial awareness you can easily backpedal and shoot when required to cover each other in your headlong rush.

[Stark]

Yeah, I don't think it was their intention for 3-4 survivors making it to the safe room be the norm. The dev commentary states that the point of versus was to rack up points for getting further in the level than the other team as survivors, implying that actually getting the majority into the safe room at the end would be a rare accomplishment.

The problem is primarily coordinated groups of survivors who know best how to exploit the system - all four get in a corner and just spam melee every time a bunch of zombies attacks. This works against every type of infected except Tank, where they can just toss a molotov and point-blank auto-shotty it to death. I once spawned as a tank and died before getting even one hit off - the survivors had just holed up in a closet, threw a molotov at me as I turned the corner, and the whole group just volley-fired their shotguns. Bam, dead.

Turns out the game is broken? Difficulty/balance was always going to be hard on a game of this nature, and accomodating the clanner-communication guys AND the milling-helplessly crowd was always going to suck.

[chitoryu12]

The main thing about rushing the level is that you can quite often make it past the enemies before they go into an active/pursuit state. No Mercy is easy as hell to rush through and survive, and No.2 (Toll thingy) has some similarly nice levels in which to do it.

The simple fact is that a good Survivor team, if they can fight their way through the initial ambush by the Infected and take off at a sprint, then by the time the Infected can next re-spawn they'll either be at a set-piece or most of the way through - often meaning that the infected will struggle to keep up/find a good spawn location before the Survivors move on.

And with even the most marginal amount of teamwork and spatial awareness you can easily backpedal and shoot when required to cover each other in your headlong rush.

Absolutely. When I played with some more experienced players, they always encouraged us to move as fast as we could as the Survivors, and we did better every time. One of the most irritating things to an Infected player is a Survivor team that keeps moving. It's hard as hell to find a good spot because of the spawning restrictions.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Too many people only consider the detriments to certain tactics and strategies in a vacuum. Yes, if you keep moving and do not stop unless absolutely forced to, then yeah you don't have a lot of time to get your bearings, heal up, find goodies, and just generally orient yourself... but I guarantee it's giving the Infected a lot more of a headache.

Likewise, a lot of people discount the disorientation factor when playing against the Survivors. Even if you personally don't deal a lot of damage or incapacitate one, you can very well bring the Survivors to their doom if they've just been staggered several times in a row, barfed on, and are surrounded by zombies while That Guy on their team is screaming into VOIP about how a hunter is killing him and you guys suck.

[Zablorg]

I think a lot of the problem stems from the fact that the game was not built up with versus mode in mind, but was added later in developement by request of the various play-testers. Thus I think it's going to take a few patches before it gets its bearings as an independant play mode.

[Acidburns]

Left 4 Dead has been patched, and it looks like a pretty good set of changes. It says hunters are less affected by melee when pouncing, but how effective it will be I suppose will depend on the actual mechanics. I have always thought that the Smoker was on of the weakest infected for dealing direct damage, but the ability to drag players when at key locations meant it was still very useful if you were tactical about it. Now it looks like it'll be real nasty. Melee attacks no longer work on the tongue, doing damage the moment you start dragging and quicker cooldown if you don't complete the drag.

It says they've fixed several exploits, which I hope include the survivor's ability to melee down important doors.

Link to patch changes....here.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Excellent changes. Those are all spot on the money. I don't know why other developers have such a problem with this, Valve just made it look easy.

[Acidburns]

I'd like to see hunters gain a resistance / immunity to pushing after they are shoved off a player, it's too easy to permanently disable them, which is quite frustrating.

[Zablorg]

I pretty much agree with Bro-cap's sentiments completely.

One thing that I'm pretty confused about though is why the melee didn't get touched at all. It was the most requested thing in the whole damn forum, if I recall correctly, and instead they scurry around fixing just about everything else wrong with the game. I'm confident that it will be fixed in the future of course, but sometimes Valve's priorities befuddle me.

The Smoker seems to have been buffed the most, but in retrospect he was a fairly useless person to begin with, and a vaguely watchful team could smack your captor away from you before you dragged him three feet. I really appreciate how your ability timer charges faster when your last attempt did nothing, as well, that really used to bug me. His new abilities could (in theory) also compromise wall-camping to a degree, because you're going to either whip out your gun to get past the horde and save your friend or punch the whole lot out of your way which could take a while too long.

Some odd people on the Steam forums have been complaining that having the Tank and Witch spawn at similar locations per round is dumb and removes a lot of the suprise to it, and while it certainly isn't a perfect compromise it's the most obvious way to balance those unforgiving "right out of the safe-room OOPS TANK" fuck-ups. I certainly can't think of a better way to go about it, at least.