So the original intent was pure Vs, no switching of the teams, just infected trying to get the survivors? Interesting, but I can’t imagine that being as fun as current vs mode though.
Right, but I don’t necessarily find that very balancing.
Maybe players could only be the Infected…?
Nah. Hm.
Ah no, I misremembered what he said. I think he meant the teams didn’t switch roles in versus originally. I’ll have to listen to the commentary myself sometime.
From IMs:
“dev commentary
don’t feel bad about not winning maps as survivors sir
they mention that they specifically switched from only a VS mode game to a coop/VS double thing because they couldn’t figure out how to balance the survivors super well in VS mode
apparently they couldn’t make it easy for the survivors to reach the end of the map
so they just outright admitted that survivors have a harder time on VS mode
and did the whole “how far did you get” scoring thing as a result”
Well, the main unbalanced component is that the AI will give different teams different challenges at different times. But otherwise, I think it’s pretty balanced - each team has the same chance to succeed and to stop the other team.
Meh. I’m not a huge fan. I’ll play it if someone wants me to, but it’s all about co-op mode for me.
Not sure how good or bad you are at Versus but there is definitely a learning curve. The first few times out were pretty unspectacular for me till I got in the swing of things. Further, if you are using an XBox not sure how that impacts the experience. I am a keyboard/mouse guy despite having a game pad and much prefer the precision I get over a gamepad.
I have been doing so much Versus I have totally ignored Co-Op. Versus, with two decent teams, is a blast. Personally I have more fun as infected even though I am not overly adept with them (I have my moments both brilliant and utterly stupid…more stupid than not but so it goes). It is fun as Survivors too though and has that rarity in games of moments of, “can’t believe that just happened!”. Great fun.
On balance I’d say give Versus a solid go before making up your mind and do your best to find a good team to play with (makes a big difference). Also try to play on “normal” and “advanced” to see if that makes a difference for you (“expert” is just freaking impossible albeit fun because it tends to be fast as Survivors go down quick). Of course just may not be your cup of tea no matter what and no biggie.
My only real complaint with Versus is it is limited to the two sequences. Not sure why they excluded the other maps (maybe they are unbalanced…I could see the last Act at the Airport to possibly be too easy for Survivors).
I think they’re planning on patching the other campaigns in. I guess maybe they need to go over it and tweak it for versus, like where to put paths that infected can climb up, what to change in maps (like how the hospital rooftop radio room is different in versus and campaign), etc.
I really hope they do it soon. As I coop through the other 2 campaigns I come across parts where I think how awesome they’d be as versus. Especially all the rooftop stuff for the 2nd campaign.
I’m decent, but I’m still not in love with it. It’s not the controller, either.
I played the most unbalanced versus game last night. Our side got a tank and a witch on every board of Blood Harvest, but their team didn’t get a tank or a witch on the first two. They must have been swearing profusely. Fortunately, they were amazing players, and the score was close enough, even with the weird penalty. We hypothesized that the tank might have been time-triggered rather than position-triggered, as we were quick movers and they were taking their time.
I’m not sure I can figure out which one I like more. Versus is just… insane. The Blood Harvest finale strategy I mentioned above is pretty foolproof. I’ve been involved with it three more times as survivors v AI, survivors v human infected, and as human infected v survivors.
If I play against a team that knows it again, and I become the tank, I’m going to try to experiment with staying far, far away and chucking rocks from random places, hoping they don’t shoot me which would start the health countdown. This should keep control and not start losing health, letting boomers et al wear the survivors down. But I dunno how far the control/health mechanic can be pushed.
But, yeah, versus is great. I almost feel like they’re two different games. I’m so methodical and cautious on co-op and I’m a melee-using madman on versus. I expect versus play to get me farther on expert, where I’m currently stuck on the third board in No Mercy.
Oh hey who was that mrc guy? I thought he was gambit’s friend, which is why when gambit asked me to kick him I did. But maybe he was someone else’s friend. If so, sorry for kicking him.
That probably won’t work well. Throwing slows you down, and isn’t very accurate. Chances are once they figure out what you’re trying to do they’ll just keep their distance and autoshotty you to death. If you do try it, let us know how it works though. I’ve been known to be wrong on many occasions.
The death countdown is only for when you get set on fire. Regular damage is just accumulative.
He’s our friend. He seemed pretty cool when we were campaigning, but maybe he’s new to versus or doesn’t respond well to having a “team leader.” I for one (and for the moment) like having someone tell me what to do, but some people don’t play like that.
Man, I wish there was a way to practice infected on your own. My performance with the Boomer might be climbing as high as 30%. 
It’s a bitch when you do something wrong, learn your lesson . . . and don’t spawn as a Boomer for the rest of the map. It makes the learning curve for Boomer, Smoker, and especially Tank painfully slow.
It was fun pummeling the people in the helicopter though. Sometimes having no clue means you discover something interesting!
Yeah, ouch on that one; you incapped me. I’ve never spent so much time waiting on the rescue vehicle; I didn’t expect the game to start throwing tanks at us non-stop. The next time I’m in a situation like that, I think I’m going to stop worrying about friendly fire. If a living teammate is keeping the vehicle from leaving, they should be rescued if possible, incapped if not. The longer they stay on their feet, the longer the other monsters have to kill the survivors who have already made it to the vehicle.
That, or a designated player should grab a pipe bomb and hold it until the end, only using it if someone gets surrounded by zombies on the way to the vehicle.
Yeah I mean staying way back from the house. If they leave the house then it is worth attacking. The point is that if they stay in that room, the tank gets at best two swings before death. (This is referencing a specific survivor strategy.)
Oh! How obvious when you say it, but I never thought about it. Thanks.
There is! I just discovered it.
Load up the single player campaign of your choice. In the dev. console type in:
sb_all_bot_team 1
Close the console and press “M” to switch teams.
The level will look a little strange, because it’s the campaign version, so there’s no arrows or anything telling you where to climb, but you can still climb there. I’ve tried loading the versus levels in single player, but it always kicks me back to the main menu for some reason.
If you want to practice any particular infected, while in spawn mode type in:
z_spawn (hunter|boomer|smoker|tank)
And if you’re just practicing leaping from building to building as a hunter and don’t want any of those pesky survivors in the way, sb_stop 1 will pretty much freeze the whole game except for you. I played around with this the other night. Just remember: just because something works on the AI doesn’t mean it will work on real humans.
If I figure out how to load the versus levels in single player I’ll fill you guys in, though.
For XBox, the best way to manage this is start up in dual-screen, make a private versus lobby, one infected and one survivor, and have at it.
I still can’t manage hunter jump tricks, I think I need to up my vertical sensitivity, but my distance/height pounce is improving. 23 damage from a pounce alone is my record.
Yay! You are awesome! I can’t wait to experiment with vomit range and practice leaping about.
So what you’re saying is, good against remotes is one thing, good against the living, that’s something else?
hmm, it’s not working for me. I get sb_all_bot_team set to 1, but then I push M and nothing happens
Ahh, I forgot the “director_no_human_zombies 0” command. So the command sequence should be:
director_no_human_zombies 0
sv_cheats 1
sb_all_bot_team 1
Then press M to change teams.
(If you don’t enable all_bot_team then you’ll automatically win when you switch teams.)
Yeah, and hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side. Or, auto-shotgun as the case may be.
Random advice. The biggest mistakes I see people making on the infected side are with the boomer.
People often spawn well ahead of when they need to, and further from the survivors than they need to, or somethines far behind the survivors.
The boomer is loud and everyone’s listening for him, next to the tank he’s the biggest threat. So when you spawn like 200 feet in front of the survivors on the other side of the door, they’re gonna figure it out and shoot you through the wall.
Similarly, if you come running around a corner out of puke range, or try to sneak up behind you, you’re going to die a lot.
The boomer is allowed to spawn closer to the survivors than any other infected by a decent margin. The biggest factor actually is not being within line of sight of the survivors when you spawn, rather than the distance.
So the tactics you need to focus on are spawning as close as you can to the survivors so they have as little chance as possible to react to you. Around corners where they have to go, but aren’t within line of sight, are good places to strike - the corner blocks the line of sight, allowing you to spawn very close, and you know they’ll have to come to you. You should be barfing on them within 1 or 2 seconds of spawning if you do it right. Above them is a good bet too - either on roofs, or on top of things like train cars where you can take a step or two back and break line of sight, spawn, then jump right down.
Good boomer play more than anything is the key to an infected team’s success.
I didn’t realize that spawn distances were class-specific. Knowing that helps quite a bit.
More random advice:
If you have 45 HP and two of your teammates are red, please please please don’t heal yourself and ignore them.
I don’t know if it’s been said in this thread, but the same goes for hunters: It only takes about a second to charge the leap. You don’t make nearly as much noise when you’re not crouching, so probably don’t crouch until you’re just about ready to leap, unless you’re far enough away that it probably won’t make a difference.
On an unrelated note:
I’ve been hearing a lot of people talk about adding more weapons, specifically a flamethrower. Am I the only one that things this is a bad idea? There’s already a big enough problem with friendly fire as it is. I’d prefer to keep the term only semi-literal (except in the case of molotovs and gas-cans). I really can’t see it being a viable weapon at all. It would be close-range, which means that when you ignite it, you now have a flaming zombie coming after you with a slightly shorter lifespan. The only thing I could see it being useful for is running up behind a tank and setting it a blaze. But still, in the L4D universe, anything that could be done with a flamethrower can be done much better with a molotov.