Good game on Steam earlier - I had a minor black out towards the end though.
At one point, I managed to incapacitate two survivors in one swipe as a tank - they were trying to revive someone who was behind a car, and I hit the car, which apparently results in an instant red.
That is mean!
Cheap but funny. 
Sadly broken, though.
The car disappears after what seems like an eternity but is really only like 30 seconds to a minute. (I didn’t time it.)
Had some fun playing with Senior Beef, Cinnamon, and a few others last night. I’m amazed at the people recommending expert mode, this game is pretty challenging for me in normal. I am getting better though, I don’t shoot my team mates as much now 
The voice issue for me is really annoying, as more and more online games are using voice chat. I have 80% hearing loss in one ear and 50% in the other, and it’s really really difficult for me to pick up anything other than the occasional snippet. It’s not the volume, it’s the clarity. The audio on VC is extremely poor quality too, so I can understand about 1 word in 10.
If I’m playing as the infected, I usually just try to follow the other infected and attack when they do.
I’ll have to check again but by the damage standard I think Advanced is slightly more than twice as hard as normal (2 damage normal, 5 damage advanced) and then Expert is twice as hard as Advanced (10 damage per swipe).
Wow, I can only imagine how sucky VC sounds to you. You are right, the clarity sucks. Add in that many people start talking a second before hitting the push to talk button, and it can be total gobbledygook. That’s why when we’re in a lobby I usually just type. I’m just not coordinated enough to move, shoot, and type in quick succession.
As for infected, it sounds like you have the right idea. One nice thing about playing this game (at least on Normal) is that very little chat is necessary.
Last night was a blast. How long did we keep the survivors in the truck lot that one time? It was a riot - up on the roof, into the store room, woops, Smoker sucked someone down, everyone follows to save him; rinse and repeat.
(Edited because verbs can be useful.)
I re-iterate: Valve should optimize those VC codecs! Common valve, teamspeak does a better job and they don’t have billions in the bank or 15 million users!
Yeah, the voice chat sucks inexcusably. It also seems to be done through UDP which is irritating when someone lags a bit and suddenly you’re hearing multiple segments of their voice chat at once and it’s incomprehensible.
We had a great game going last night. I think we’ve had 3 all-sdmb versus games (8 players) going over the last few days. And a few more games that had 4-6 SDMBers. It’s been great.
I’ve been so hooked on versus that I haven’t even been playing campaign… got around to trying expert today and I got my Zombicidal Maniac achievement. It’s pretty challenging.
I have the next 3 days off work. We should get another game going sometime in there.
More fun gaming tonight. SenorBeef got me down to 5 HP before I made it to a Safe Room on one level. Barely dragged my ass in there. 
Is there some sort of Autobalance on the servers? I was playing with SDMBers then poof I was playing for the other team. Sucked too because they really sucked (not that I am great but had some real nimrods on my team). Thing is later was just me and one other guy who was especially bad and there was no autobalance then. Not sure what is up with that.
Also, anyone know how to enable melee fatigue? Getting real tired of some melee spammers such that I can never jump one. Watched one person while waiting to respawn and he/she just ran around spamming melee and only stopped to shoot.
Any tips on how to catch people with a Tank in the open? Was all happy to be a tank and then had a helluva time catching anyone when they were outside and in a fairly open area. Tried throwing things but that is slow and easily dodged by anyone with two brain cells to rub together. Ideally your team should be jumping them and what not but even with that it is dicey at best as again it is simple for them to brush those attacks off and keep going.
People tend to think you’ve got tunnel vision as a tank and if you’re locked onto someone else they can come up right behind you and blast you. Often that’s an effective tactic because the tank indeed has tunnel vision. But you can exploit it by frequently changing your target - chase after one person for a while, look around, and if their friends are close on your sides or rear blasting away, they should be within swiping range.
The tank can destroy a tight cluster and make it possible for the other infected to get a shot. Most of the time, that’s how I play the tank, kind of like a mega-boomer. Against strong players, they’ll still be in the green, health-wise, and the tank cannot catch up to a competent green player. But if you can split the group up by chucking the environment at them, a smoker or hunter’s opportunities have just increased by a factor of four. A tank and two boss infected… someone should be getting hurt bad. Just remember to please not punch a guy that’s been constricted or pounced.
I’ve seen that many times and have so far abided by that general rule but I have wondered about it.
In an open area a Hunter pounce or Smoker will disable the guy long enough for the tank to catch up. Then the tank can with four swipes put the guy down and in the red (particularly if the tank is careful to knock the Survivor into a nearby object so they do not fly so far the Tank can’t get to them before they get up).
Seems that would cause more damage since most decent players can shoot off a Hunter or Smoker from very far away. Even when they are running from the Tank I have found it rare to get more than a few solid Hunter swipes in before someone knocks me off. Of course on occasion someone leaves themselves isolated and too far from the group and then a Hunter/Smoker can get some decent time on them but even then players tend to run to the rescue pretty quickly (cannot count the number of times I thought I had a player isolated and pounced on them only to have them rescued in all too short a time by players running back to them…Survivors can cover a lot of ground pretty quickly).
To me the primary motivation is that you are killing the hunter, leaving a respawn time on a boss infected that would otherwise be harassing the team, or making a smoker wait for the tongue attack, both of which are usually quite long. A pounced or constricted survivor is a gun that can’t shoot you or another boss infected. I feel like: it’s the survivors’ job to rescue themselves, not the tank’s. 
But you’re right. If you can anticipate that a hunter is going to get swiped, coming to get that guy isn’t bad, but on the other hand, at least some survivors are after you, and then you’ll be leading them straight to the pounced survivor, making a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
A friend of mine wrote a program called VoiceChatter; he’s also told me that he could provide us with a dedicated server. If enough of the PC SMDB group is interested, I’d be happy to set that up with him.
Show of hands?
I played Blood Harvest the other day with some TF2 buddies on versus, and we came up with a strategy for the final stage that I still cannot figure how to counter as an infected.
All four survivors stand in the room with the radio/ammo and auto shotguns. During the zombie/boss infected portion, two people in one corner and two in another, the inside corners parallel to the staircase. In each corner one crouches and one stands. Smokers cannot pull these survivors out, as they can be released very quickly with a melee. Hunters have to come around corners and are very vulnerable. Boomers only get half the team at best before going down. Usually the front crouching survivors are pushing the horde away but everyone is shooting when possible. When the tank comes, the two that were standing run to the two empty corners. The tank will come in and go after one survivor. No one runs around, no one leaves, etc. The other three run up to it and empty the shotguns in the tank’s back. It falls quick. Then regroup in the corners as before and repeat.
This strategy worked so well I am fully convinced it is a viable strategy even on Expert.
In the Dead Air finale there’s a closet at about 8 o’clock of the gun (if you’re standing behind and looking at it). It’s a roomy closet, two positions wide, and I am convinced a good team can hold it from the horde. I tried last night with some friends but they’re still in frag mode and simply do not understand how to sit down and hold a position. The problem with this closet is the distance to the health supplies if anyone does get hurt. Running to get health and the time to heal if yellow or red is simply too much. Also, this closet is relatively far from the rescue plane. On advanced we just hold the gun mount, one on the gun, one on the ground, two on top of the fuel truck, but if this stage ever gets to versus this is a failing strategy for sure and something more needs to be done.
Missed the edit window for that last post. Has it always been five minutes? I could have sworn it used to be ten or fifteen.
The versus game last night was a lot of fun. I was playing as jungleboof, but I’ve since changed my Steam profile to oft wears hats. I’m all for versus matches, but I wouldn’t mind tackling some campaigns on Expert (Or Advanced; I’ve piecewise finished all campaigns on Advanced except for the finales for Dead Air and Blood Harvest).
If we’re going to use a third party program, ventrilo is the the most common and it works well.
It’d only work for full SDMB teams, though - it’d be unreasonable to get pub players on our server in a timely manner.
Oooh…here’s a thought I think might be worth testing out.
If the tank comes at the Survivors in an open area where they can easily run about have a Hunter jump on one once they are scattered. Then have the Tank block the angles of fire to the Hunter. Essentially acting as a meat shield. Hopefully no one can get a sight on the Hunter and the Hunter can pound the Survivor to death. If they do shoot the Hunter off the Tank is right there to smack whoever the Hunter was on.
Often these open area Tanks come early on in a mission and while he smashes some about the Survivors can heal and almost invariably make it to another health stash. As such just taking one person out completely is worthwhile. It gets a lot harder for three Survivors to fend off the Infected (since two Hunters and a Smoker can tie them up all by themselves if they coordinate).
Just an idea…