The Passing is out next week

[YokaI]

It's kind of a weird choice to design a bunch of game types, but only have 1 playable at a given time. Most players won't be checking back EVERY week to play the new game type. Unless they are the hardcore players but valves intention of most free-to-play DLC is to convince those who haven't purchased the game to buy it.

Interesting, but they'd better start out strong with a good gametype the first week or else most of the people who play the game will lose interest. I think that their idea with this is that players will keep coming back to the game because of the way it's distributed weekly. However, I really doubt that all 20 gametypes will be equivalent in terms of how fun they are and how interesting they are. I also don't think it solves the real problem I have playing left 4 dead, which is the insanely retarded amount of rage quitters that fill the servers. Me and my friends will typically spend 40 minutes looking for a good game when we play on our own / in a small group, and when we do it ends up either being a modded server with some ridiculous addons, or we are paired up with less skilled / more skilled individuals.

I think left 4 dead (1/2) could use a few changes.

Firstly, There needs to be a party system similar to both Modern Warfare 2 and Starcraft 2, that addition to those games makes playing with friends extremely easy, and makes looking for servers very easy / no hassle. In most valve games, I have to either give my friend the IP, or in l4d I have to give them the map name / current player #, which is just ridiculous. Sure, steam friends works now adays, but there aught to be an easier way to do all of this within the game itself rather than a third party tool. (Arguable to say whether or not seem is a 3rd party tool really, I guess a better way to put it is that steam should only act as a way from games to reference users to a profile, not to handle match making / other in-game processes)

Secondly, there needs to be something that prevents people from rage quitting. I think the best way to do it is to make it so if you won accumulative points from winning or even losing matches, and you should be able to purchase aesthetic content for characters / some slight buffs to weapons, that way it would promote actually playing the game through even if you lose. Disconnecting, in this scenario, would make you lose half of the points of the total, thus forcing players to stick through a campaign or gametype until the end, even if the first match went poorly. (Because, to be honest, the majority of cases where people do that, they can easily catch back up if they get their shit together. That's what we like to call competition. =P It would be like if I disconnected every time someone got a heavy kick on me in street fighter, it just doesn't happen.)

As for the idea of adding gametypes, I would have preferred to see a few maps added that are specifically designed for the game types they have already. I.E. Scavenger / Survival only maps. It would add a bit of diversity to the other game types because, to be honest, we all get pretty bored with the same aesthetic over and over again even if it's a good design. Having a few maps that look and play differently is all L4D needs to improve the investment hours from players.

I also feel valve needs to work on their competitive play. Sure L4D is pretty competitive for a co-op game and has strategy to it, and the balance between the two teams is actually pretty decent for this type of game (zombie games). However, my biggest problem is the balance between the undead classes / survivor weapons. As of right now, there's just so many things that make it so if you spawn as, say, a jockey, you are just not as useful as the person who spawned a charger or a spitter. I also find it ridiculous how the spitters spit recharges faster than the boomer bile, when the boomer bile does little to no effect to the survivors in l4d2 besides some small vision impairment. (even then, it's still pretty easy to deal with zombies in l4d2 even if you can't see because of melee weapons.)

Just my 2 cents, take it or leave it. L4D2 is fun, I just wish I could actually play it. Sorry, a long post, but I pretty sure I'm being relatively neutral, at least in comparison to other posts I've made...

edit: Oh, and before I forget, one thing good about the alternating game types is that, if valve is smart about it, L4D1 and 2 will both have mutations and will be on a separate schedule, thus there'll be a reason to revisit the old game. Having said that, without melee weapons, it still isn't even worth the time.

[Puscifer]

I dont have any problems joining my friends and getting a good game together, and personnaly i think using the steam overlay is the best thing ive seen that lets you do that.

Also rage quiters will always be a part of a game like this, because it's a coop game.

[Zipfinator]

It's kind of a weird choice to design a bunch of game types, but only have 1 playable at a given time. Most players won't be checking back EVERY week to play the new game type. Unless they are the hardcore players but valves intention of most free-to-play DLC is to convince those who haven't purchased the game to buy it.

Interesting, but they'd better start out strong with a good gametype the first week or else most of the people who play the game will lose interest. I think that their idea with this is that players will keep coming back to the game because of the way it's distributed weekly. However, I really doubt that all 20 gametypes will be equivalent in terms of how fun they are and how interesting they are. I also don't think it solves the real problem I have playing left 4 dead, which is the insanely retarded amount of rage quitters that fill the servers. Me and my friends will typically spend 40 minutes looking for a good game when we play on our own / in a small group, and when we do it ends up either being a modded server with some ridiculous addons, or we are paired up with less skilled / more skilled individuals.

I actually agree with this somewhat. I'm not sure that having a new mutation every week is a great idea but I'm not sure if there's a much better way to do it. Giving players the choice of whatever of the 20 mutations they want would most likely lead to only 3 or 4 of the 20 ever being played and choosing a random one would cause people to join/quit servers until they find the one they want to play which defeats the purpose of having 20+ variations. I trust Valve though so hopefully this move will work out.

I think left 4 dead (1/2) could use a few changes.

Firstly, There needs to be a party system similar to both Modern Warfare 2 and Starcraft 2, that addition to those games makes playing with friends extremely easy, and makes looking for servers very easy / no hassle. In most valve games, I have to either give my friend the IP, or in l4d I have to give them the map name / current player #, which is just ridiculous. Sure, steam friends works now adays, but there aught to be an easier way to do all of this within the game itself rather than a third party tool. (Arguable to say whether or not seem is a 3rd party tool really, I guess a better way to put it is that steam should only act as a way from games to reference users to a profile, not to handle match making / other in-game processes)

Are you seriously saying that it's hard to gather your friends into the same lobby/game? L4D2 is honesty one of the easiest games for me to group up with my friends in. The only game that's easier is MW2 or GoW2 on 360, but that's because you can join up in a lobby before searching. You can basically do the same thing by creating a friends only game, inviting in your friends and then changing the permissions from Private to Public.

And please don't say it's still hard to bring up Steam Community to invite your friends... There's an "Invite Friends" button in every L4D2 lobby and when you click it it brings up a list of all your friends. All you have to do when this list comes up is click "Invite" and it will send them an invite. You could also right click on their names in a chat and go to Invite or go into the friends list, right click and invite. Honestly with these choices I don't see why you'd resort to copy/pasting the IP address. Someone who plays Source games as much as you should have known better Yokai.

Also on the Steam as a third party tool. Seriously? Valve created Steam and the friends system is THE best friends system I've seen on a computer game. It consolidates all of your friends into one list instead of having to use a separate list for every game you own which is one of my favorite features of Steam. I'm glad Valve utilizes it in their games instead of using a system like BC2 where you HAVE to use their shitty friends system, even if you bought it on Steam.

Secondly, there needs to be something that prevents people from rage quitting. I think the best way to do it is to make it so if you won accumulative points from winning or even losing matches, and you should be able to purchase aesthetic content for characters / some slight buffs to weapons, that way it would promote actually playing the game through even if you lose. Disconnecting, in this scenario, would make you lose half of the points of the total, thus forcing players to stick through a campaign or gametype until the end, even if the first match went poorly. (Because, to be honest, the majority of cases where people do that, they can easily catch back up if they get their shit together. That's what we like to call competition. =P It would be like if I disconnected every time someone got a heavy kick on me in street fighter, it just doesn't happen.)

A system to prevent rage quitting would be nice. I don't like the idea of forcing players to stay like some Console games do. Having some sort of accumulative points system would be good though where you gain points for every damage point/distance traveled you get in game and lost points for quitting before a game has ended. I'm not sure that an item system with hats/cosmetic items would work for L4D2 though. It's hard to implement things like that without making joke items and that just wouldn't work as well in L4D as it does in TF2. Changing the looks of the players isn't exactly a good decision either since they create each character with extremely unique designs. Distracting from those unique designs with shared or even one character only items would ruin the point of using unique designs like Valve has done.

As for the idea of adding gametypes, I would have preferred to see a few maps added that are specifically designed for the game types they have already. I.E. Scavenger / Survival only maps. It would add a bit of diversity to the other game types because, to be honest, we all get pretty bored with the same aesthetic over and over again even if it's a good design. Having a few maps that look and play differently is all L4D needs to improve the investment hours from players.

I agree with this. Although they are probably creating Survival/Scavenge maps out of the new The Passing assets, it would be nice to have some fresh designs that aren't overused and give some more content for the community to create maps with. Maybe they could try adding in stellar community maps like TF2 has done (cp_Egypt is a good example).

I also feel valve needs to work on their competitive play. Sure L4D is pretty competitive for a co-op game and has strategy to it, and the balance between the two teams is actually pretty decent for this type of game (zombie games). However, my biggest problem is the balance between the undead classes / survivor weapons. As of right now, there's just so many things that make it so if you spawn as, say, a jockey, you are just not as useful as the person who spawned a charger or a spitter. I also find it ridiculous how the spitters spit recharges faster than the boomer bile, when the boomer bile does little to no effect to the survivors in l4d2 besides some small vision impairment. (even then, it's still pretty easy to deal with zombies in l4d2 even if you can't see because of melee weapons.)

I somewhat agree with certain classes not being that useful alone, but Valve didn't mean them to be. You HAVE to work together with your teammates to do good amounts of damage with your SI (Special Infected) class. Each SI class have very useful/specific purposes for team attacks. For example, After a Boomer throws up on 2 or more survivors, a fair amount of common infected will come. While the survivors are being slowed by these common infected, Spitters can spit on the thrown up players, Jockeys can pull away someone who is not being swarmed and others will have a hard time saving him and smokers can pull someone while groups of Common Infected are attacking him. Those are just a few of the MANY group tactics for Special Infected teams to use.

Special Infected are also very very useful at certain spots while alone. Chargers can charge survivors off of ledges to their deaths, Jockeys can pull survivors off ledges to hang, Smokers can pull people off of high places to make them have to retrace their steps to continue through the level, Spitters can spit in hallways/doorways that survivors have to travel through or small confined areas such as elevators (Hard Rain) and a good Boomer can throw up on all survivors when they get to a saferoom/reach a panic event causing them to have more trouble.

Every special infected has roles in both team and singular tactics (Although singular tactics are heavily reliant on unique level design IE ledges, docks, elevators ETC). If you're honestly having as much trouble playing Special Infected as you make it seem you are either awful at playing Infected or you're not taking advantage of team tactics/map unique choke points.

Just my 2 cents, take it or leave it. L4D2 is fun, I just wish I could actually play it. Sorry, a long post, but I pretty sure I'm being relatively neutral, at least in comparison to other posts I've made...

Was an interesting post to read and respond to.

edit: Oh, and before I forget, one thing good about the alternating game types is that, if valve is smart about it, L4D1 and 2 will both have mutations and will be on a separate schedule, thus there'll be a reason to revisit the old game. Having said that, without melee weapons, it still isn't even worth the time.

I don't think that Valve will be adding Mutations to L4D1. This is strictly a L4D2 update if I'm correct. Valve has said that they are working on a new campaign for L4D1 showing how the Survivors got from where they were to The Passing's location.

[YokaI]

I dont have any problems joining my friends and getting a good game together, and personnaly i think using the steam overlay is the best thing ive seen that lets you do that.

Also rage quiters will always be a part of a game like this, because it's a coop game.

Steam overlay is ok, but not good enough to make it so that joining a game is not a hassle. It works excellently for playing modern warfare 2, but not so much l4d2. I think it's the lack of the "party" format. Starcraft 2s works brilliantly so far though, I think if there were something to follow, I'd follow that in terms of "party" systems. Also, keep in mind I'm not talking about private matches, joining friends through that is very very easy. The problem is if you want to join a game with 3 of your friends to fill up a 4/8 versus map, it's nearly impossible to ensure that everyone connects at the same time before 1 extra slot if filled up, that's the issue. It means that playing the game online isn't as possible as it should be for a game that's based on that type of gameplay. And while some of you say "just have 8 friends play with you and there's not a problem", I would if more of my friends were actually into video games and not fashion, anime, films... Most of them don't even have a computer that's even proper enough to play l4d2 ironically enough. So with the friends I do have similar interests with, I would like to fill the rest with pugs and still have an enjoyable experience!

As for the second statement, I believe it's a game designers job to work around things such as "because it's this type of game, this will always happen." It's kind of like saying "oh because this is an RPG, there'll be way too much grinding." As a game company, like valve who constantly revolutionizes ideas, wouldn't it be best to come up with ways to prevent things that are a "norm" in a genre that is generally detested?

edit:

The only game that's easier is MW2 or GoW2 on 360, but that's because you can join up in a lobby before searching.

That's basically all I want really, something in l4d2 that manages a "party" in which you can do both "quick join" and "find match" as an option and still have everyone connected. I may have not made that clear enough. Steam community actually works great and I wish more games on steam would use it (Damn street fighter 4 + windows live, it's a fucking joke), but "pugging" with a group of friends could be a LOT easier if they just had a buffer party before joining an online match / finding an online match.

[Zipfinator]

Read my response and you'll find a way to get all 4 of your friends into the same lobby easily with no possible way of someone else joining, Yokai.

[YokaI]

Read my response and you'll find a way to get all 4 of your friends into the same lobby easily with no possible way of someone else joining, Yokai.

My point is that the invite a friend / set match to private is tedious, and that it also doesn't work for quick match, which is something I wish to utilize more anyway. A simple party system added to the main l4d2 lobby would be a simple addition. You said it yourself, the only game easier is MW2, even on the PC it's easier and it ALSO uses steam community, and the reason for this is the party system that's in place.

D:< If I make the match, it's really easy to get my friends in, which is what I mentioned in my post as well. Even if it's 1 friend or 2, it's also easy, but it would be nice to be able to join other peoples lobbies and such with 4 people in a "party."

The third party application thing isn't intended to be slanderous to steam community, it works really well and is the best program I have on my PC that is game related. Though, I've seen OTHER games use it much better. Specifically MW2. All I meant by it being a third party app is that many games that use it now adays aren't technically valves own games... I kinda knew that would cause me trouble calling it that, I should have just erased it while I had the chance.

Basically, all I am saying is, MW2's lobby system at the moment is superior to l4ds. I would like to see l4d use that system, but if they don't want to that's also fine with me. Just like in MW2, you can get a friend to "join" you or invite a friend, but it's an extra step that could be avoided if you invite FIRST, and then join a game, which isn't currently possible in l4d2...

Maybe I'm not wording this correctly, it's kind of hard to explain what I'm trying to say. L4D2s system WORKs, just inefficiently in comparison to MW2.


AND DON'T GET ME STARTED WITH BC2 THAT SHIT IS TRASH. Honestly, the EA friends system is atrocious. Half the time people send me "invites" I can hardly tell they invited me, and sometimes I get no notification at all until I add them to friends personally. I guess L4D isn't the worst, but I'm just saying 1 thing that would make it BETTER than it is right now and as good as MW2s system.

[Zipfinator]

I understand what you mean about the lobby system and how it could be improved upon. I honestly could care less though when there are ways to get all of your friends into the same game, even if it is a bit more tedious. I never use Quick Play though but I'm sure if I did I would want a lobby system like MW2's. I'd rather have Valve focus on the gameplay than lobby systems though. L4D's gameplay is much more polished than MW2's and because of that I can live without the tiny things like the lobby system MW2 and other games have.

[vcool]

GUYS

PASSING PARTY PHUN

ALL TOGETHER

when it's released.

[YokaI]

GUYS

PASSING PARTY PHUN

ALL TOGETHER

when it's released.

I'm down....

Maybe...

Starcraft 2 editor AND Super Street Fighter 4 may be eating up my time, plus japanese mid-term. )=

[Smurftyours]

It is supposed to come out tomorrow, correct? If so then I will be too busy to really play it to late that night.

[YokaI]

http://kotaku.com/5521667/left-4-deads- ... -that-well

It's kinda bad that Valve's faceposer is still the best face animation tools out there. I mean seriously, are we all that fucking slow that such an old engine can continue to be the best at something that should be so much more advanced since the days of HL2's creation?

Trailer was ok but... I hate the passing.

[vcool]

I think the problem is that no one really tried to make anything better. It will require extra time and costs, and the only people satisfied will be the small percentage of conscious gamers or game artists.

[[JFG]Propaganda]

It's kind of a weird choice to design a bunch of game types, but only have 1 playable at a given time. Most players won't be checking back EVERY week to play the new game type. Unless they are the hardcore players but valves intention of most free-to-play DLC is to convince those who haven't purchased the game to buy it.

Interesting, but they'd better start out strong with a good gametype the first week or else most of the people who play the game will lose interest. I think that their idea with this is that players will keep coming back to the game because of the way it's distributed weekly. However, I really doubt that all 20 gametypes will be equivalent in terms of how fun they are and how interesting they are. I also don't think it solves the real problem I have playing left 4 dead, which is the insanely retarded amount of rage quitters that fill the servers. Me and my friends will typically spend 40 minutes looking for a good game when we play on our own / in a small group, and when we do it ends up either being a modded server with some ridiculous addons, or we are paired up with less skilled / more skilled individuals.

I actually agree with this somewhat. I'm not sure that having a new mutation every week is a great idea but I'm not sure if there's a much better way to do it. Giving players the choice of whatever of the 20 mutations they want would most likely lead to only 3 or 4 of the 20 ever being played and choosing a random one would cause people to join/quit servers until they find the one they want to play which defeats the purpose of having 20+ variations. I trust Valve though so hopefully this move will work out.

I think left 4 dead (1/2) could use a few changes.

Firstly, There needs to be a party system similar to both Modern Warfare 2 and Starcraft 2, that addition to those games makes playing with friends extremely easy, and makes looking for servers very easy / no hassle. In most valve games, I have to either give my friend the IP, or in l4d I have to give them the map name / current player #, which is just ridiculous. Sure, steam friends works now adays, but there aught to be an easier way to do all of this within the game itself rather than a third party tool. (Arguable to say whether or not seem is a 3rd party tool really, I guess a better way to put it is that steam should only act as a way from games to reference users to a profile, not to handle match making / other in-game processes)

Are you seriously saying that it's hard to gather your friends into the same lobby/game? L4D2 is honesty one of the easiest games for me to group up with my friends in. The only game that's easier is MW2 or GoW2 on 360, but that's because you can join up in a lobby before searching. You can basically do the same thing by creating a friends only game, inviting in your friends and then changing the permissions from Private to Public.

And please don't say it's still hard to bring up Steam Community to invite your friends... There's an "Invite Friends" button in every L4D2 lobby and when you click it it brings up a list of all your friends. All you have to do when this list comes up is click "Invite" and it will send them an invite. You could also right click on their names in a chat and go to Invite or go into the friends list, right click and invite. Honestly with these choices I don't see why you'd resort to copy/pasting the IP address. Someone who plays Source games as much as you should have known better Yokai.

Also on the Steam as a third party tool. Seriously? Valve created Steam and the friends system is THE best friends system I've seen on a computer game. It consolidates all of your friends into one list instead of having to use a separate list for every game you own which is one of my favorite features of Steam. I'm glad Valve utilizes it in their games instead of using a system like BC2 where you HAVE to use their shitty friends system, even if you bought it on Steam.

Secondly, there needs to be something that prevents people from rage quitting. I think the best way to do it is to make it so if you won accumulative points from winning or even losing matches, and you should be able to purchase aesthetic content for characters / some slight buffs to weapons, that way it would promote actually playing the game through even if you lose. Disconnecting, in this scenario, would make you lose half of the points of the total, thus forcing players to stick through a campaign or gametype until the end, even if the first match went poorly. (Because, to be honest, the majority of cases where people do that, they can easily catch back up if they get their shit together. That's what we like to call competition. =P It would be like if I disconnected every time someone got a heavy kick on me in street fighter, it just doesn't happen.)

A system to prevent rage quitting would be nice. I don't like the idea of forcing players to stay like some Console games do. Having some sort of accumulative points system would be good though where you gain points for every damage point/distance traveled you get in game and lost points for quitting before a game has ended. I'm not sure that an item system with hats/cosmetic items would work for L4D2 though. It's hard to implement things like that without making joke items and that just wouldn't work as well in L4D as it does in TF2. Changing the looks of the players isn't exactly a good decision either since they create each character with extremely unique designs. Distracting from those unique designs with shared or even one character only items would ruin the point of using unique designs like Valve has done.

As for the idea of adding gametypes, I would have preferred to see a few maps added that are specifically designed for the game types they have already. I.E. Scavenger / Survival only maps. It would add a bit of diversity to the other game types because, to be honest, we all get pretty bored with the same aesthetic over and over again even if it's a good design. Having a few maps that look and play differently is all L4D needs to improve the investment hours from players.

I agree with this. Although they are probably creating Survival/Scavenge maps out of the new The Passing assets, it would be nice to have some fresh designs that aren't overused and give some more content for the community to create maps with. Maybe they could try adding in stellar community maps like TF2 has done (cp_Egypt is a good example).

I also feel valve needs to work on their competitive play. Sure L4D is pretty competitive for a co-op game and has strategy to it, and the balance between the two teams is actually pretty decent for this type of game (zombie games). However, my biggest problem is the balance between the undead classes / survivor weapons. As of right now, there's just so many things that make it so if you spawn as, say, a jockey, you are just not as useful as the person who spawned a charger or a spitter. I also find it ridiculous how the spitters spit recharges faster than the boomer bile, when the boomer bile does little to no effect to the survivors in l4d2 besides some small vision impairment. (even then, it's still pretty easy to deal with zombies in l4d2 even if you can't see because of melee weapons.)

I somewhat agree with certain classes not being that useful alone, but Valve didn't mean them to be. You HAVE to work together with your teammates to do good amounts of damage with your SI (Special Infected) class. Each SI class have very useful/specific purposes for team attacks. For example, After a Boomer throws up on 2 or more survivors, a fair amount of common infected will come. While the survivors are being slowed by these common infected, Spitters can spit on the thrown up players, Jockeys can pull away someone who is not being swarmed and others will have a hard time saving him and smokers can pull someone while groups of Common Infected are attacking him. Those are just a few of the MANY group tactics for Special Infected teams to use.

Special Infected are also very very useful at certain spots while alone. Chargers can charge survivors off of ledges to their deaths, Jockeys can pull survivors off ledges to hang, Smokers can pull people off of high places to make them have to retrace their steps to continue through the level, Spitters can spit in hallways/doorways that survivors have to travel through or small confined areas such as elevators (Hard Rain) and a good Boomer can throw up on all survivors when they get to a saferoom/reach a panic event causing them to have more trouble.

Every special infected has roles in both team and singular tactics (Although singular tactics are heavily reliant on unique level design IE ledges, docks, elevators ETC). If you're honestly having as much trouble playing Special Infected as you make it seem you are either awful at playing Infected or you're not taking advantage of team tactics/map unique choke points.

Just my 2 cents, take it or leave it. L4D2 is fun, I just wish I could actually play it. Sorry, a long post, but I pretty sure I'm being relatively neutral, at least in comparison to other posts I've made...

Was an interesting post to read and respond to.

edit: Oh, and before I forget, one thing good about the alternating game types is that, if valve is smart about it, L4D1 and 2 will both have mutations and will be on a separate schedule, thus there'll be a reason to revisit the old game. Having said that, without melee weapons, it still isn't even worth the time.

I don't think that Valve will be adding Mutations to L4D1. This is strictly a L4D2 update if I'm correct. Valve has said that they are working on a new campaign for L4D1 showing how the Survivors got from where they were to The Passing's location.

I have a big belly.

[MNM]

"The Passing will be out later today on both Xbox 360 and PC. It'll be 560MSP on Microsoft's console, while PC owners can enjoy it for $0.00." silly xbox players

[no00dylan]