Try closing Steam and starting it again. That’s what I had to do.
And yeah, it is a major disappointment. Maybe they’re aiming to release another update within a few weeks with Dead Air/Death Toll vs. mode, as well as the L4D SDK. At least, that’s what I hope.
Rats, now the Witch can’t be tricked into attacking. With the Witch’s power as it is, I didn’t see that as too horrible.
You can’t do that now?!?!! Oh man, what a rip. That was one of the funnest things.
The smoker is leagues better now. After seeing him after the update it almost makes me want* to be him every round!
*At least, I won’t rage like I used to.
Worst. Patch. Ever.
Alistair McCello and I tried to play a game tonight. We weren’t picky. Campaign, versus, anything really would have worked. The matchmaking service won’t let us find each other under “Find game with friends” so we had to do the direct invites in chat.
Then we sat in empty rooms waiting for public players to join. The server browser never sent them our way.
Of the two games that we got started my game just turned off and went straight to desktop as soon as the camera zoomed into the back of the character’s heads. No warning no anything. Just bam, desktop.
Giving it one last shot, I tried to join an in-progress public game. It hung at ‘joining’ for about 30 seconds, said the game was full, and plunked me back to the menu screen.
I’m done with this until they patch it I think. I’d rather have the falling through the elevator bug and weak smokers. At least then I could still play.
Yeah, something’s not right. I tried it earlier with no luck…My hypothesis is that the non-pre-made l4d servers haven’t been updated. My clan leader is currently fixing our servers so I think that’s the main problem for a lot of them. It’s a lot better than before and I can connect to games now.
People need to be patient. Don’t piss yourself if you can’t connect at the blink of an eye, good god.
I’m just saying, it worked yesterday. Valve should be better than this.
Jeez, I’m glad they’re trying to make improvements but I have to agree - 9 p.m. EST? Yeah, I’m sure hardly anyone will be playing then.
And I’m really disappointed we got neither any new maps, nor versus on all existing ones.
I still love the game and will keep playing, but I’m feeling a bit let down.
Oooh! Smoker love! Gotta love it. I actually usually liked being the Smoker and despite its limitations got semi-decent with one. He couldn’t do much, granted, but he was good at messing with and annoying Survivors. In one of our games two nights ago (against SDMBers) I managed to pull people off the train repeatedly (on the last map). Must’ve annoyed the hell outta them. 
Can’t wait to try the new and improved version.
Tonight at 7:45 pm EST we shall test this new, improved smoker! I want to see how much easier ti is to pounce on melee spamming survivors too.
They also said they’ve “normalized” infected claw damage. What the heck does that mean?
Used to be hunters did 10 per melee attack and smokers/boomers did 2. Early report on the forum says hunters do 6 and the others do 4 now.
Not sure how normalized it is, but hunter’s claws can still be fairly lethal if nobody notices.
We had 4 SDMBer’s in a game last night against the pubs, and both teams were about evenly scored. I’m not sure if that’s because the pub team was exceptionally gifted, or if it’s the game being more biased towards infected again. Either way it was a great game, and I’m definitely liking improvements.
That said, I’m not sure what they were talking about with the witch spawning on the escape route. At least two times we had a witch that was easily avoidable. They do seem to pop up with more frequency now, though.
The smoker is a lot more fun to play now, too. Like someone said before, he used to be just a kind of annoyance to a team, with some extreme situations being lethal. Now he’s able to put the hurt on a lot better.
Oh crap, I just thought of something. No Mercy 3’s going to be a huge nightmare now. Especially if you only have the tier 1 weapons.
Well, if we get a good game together tonight it’s going to be a blast. Looking forward to it!
EDIT: SenorBeef: Ahh, 4 damage for Boomers? I guess that makes your kill with Boomer claws last night a little less meaningful, huh? 
I can confirm the 6 damage slashes from the hunter. I’m still trying to confirm that the pounce does more initial damage or not.
I take the witch spawning to mean it’s on a primary path toward the goal instead of off in a out of the way room. Doesn’t mean you can’t go around or avoid it, just that it should spawn somewhere on a direct path. For example, it spawned earlier for me in the NM subway on the right stairway. But we could take the left.
What I am iffy about is that the spawn is almost EXACTLY the same place for both teams. Equal, yes? But I think the 2nd team has an advantage dealing with witches and tanks if they know exactly where they are.
I do think the patch has moved the balance back toward the infected some. It still favors the survivors, but some things are improved. Closet camping is much less successful but still a tough tactic to counter (at least in the 2 games I’ve had where people tried it). The new infected HUD is very useful because it tells you how many seconds until each person spawns, as well as what special they’re using. The Tank can take a LOT more shotgun shells before it dies. I’d guesstimate at about twice as many, give or take. And, if the patch notes are to be believed, there will be fewer team switches before everyone is loaded in.
And there are few things more fun than being an infected and watching teams try to batter down the nm3 door because they don’t realize it’s patched 
Nearly 5 full minutes they sat there. I spawned 4 times before they gave up and went to the lift.
Let’s see you try it!
I forget who was trying to do the split screen thing, but check this out: Steam Community :: Discussions
The split screen was me. I tried following the directions on that thread with no luck. 
I think I like most of the changes. In reality it appears that the smoker damage from the tongue isn’t that much, but it feels good to at least HURT someone once in a while. The balance to the hunter claws diminished the “run in and slash” technique, but I honestly think they intended that as a secondary attack anyway.
I have noticed that the Smoker targeting recticle now lights up when you can actually pull someone, instead of whenever you have partial line of sight. Targeting in general (at least with the Boomer) feels a little off, but maybe that’s just me being over critical looking at the changes. I also think that hordes are a little harder to just melee off than they were, which I think is a good thing all around.
I’m still undecided about having Tanks/Witches at the same percentage traveled on the map. At least in the 2 matches we had to night, it seems to more heavily favor the second group because, if you’re all still alive, you know pretty much exactly where the tank is going to spawn. That allows you extra time to go and look for supplies because you KNOW you need them to get past it. Witches seem to spawn in slightly differently places, probably because they just appear and stay put, as opposed to tanks who tend to rush you. 
I think I take the care for “dumbest Hunter moment” in our match tonight. We’re sitting up on the roof of Mercy 5 and the survivors through a cocktail up. Fire doesn’t hit anyone, but as I joke I say “I’m a flaming hunter” and, pretty much at the same time, proceed to pounce right into the fire! I died before the survivors
came up, but at least we were all dying from laughter!!!
On the subject of picking teams and balancing, I think the SDMB community is a great bunch. Even tonight, where it seemed to be one-sided at first and we went back to the lobby, everyone was good natured, talked it over, and we kept the same teams. I have to say, I’d rather be on an under-balanced team with SMDB’ers than most pubby games I play in. It’s nice to just play with 8 people who want to have a good time playing and not frantically worrying about the “Best tactic” for everything.
I had a discussion with a friend at work who’s been playing L4D as well. He said he’d gotten like all but 1 or 2 achievements. I was amazed because I’ve got all but about 10 or so and I think I play a lot. I asked him about some of the harder achievements like never being healed, No one takes special damage, etc… and he said “They are easy…just play on easy with people who can survive on expert.” When I heard that, it made me think about whether it’s really an “achievement” if that’s how you get it. I mean, I know I have the one where no one gets damage after the rescue vehicle is called, but I got that on a bug (joined right after the final tank died) but I openly tell everyone how I got it.
What do you guys think about those kind of achievements? I’m beginning to think that many of them should have a “Level acquired” attached to them to distinguish between those how really EARN it and those who just go play on easy.
Lots of other games have level stipulations on them. Call of Duty is good for that (and some pretty fucking impossible ones. Kill the German general with a pistol from across the street? Kill the general, his entire bodyguard detachment and his dog with the rifle from the same spot? Sheesh!)
I just noticed that they beefed up the stats page. Looks like the new stats are as of the patch, which makes sense.
I really love the Infected HUD improvements; that was a great idea.
Do the witch and tank officially spawn in the same spots for both teams? Or is it just that if one team gets a witch or tank, the other team will also get one? So far, it seems the former, which I think hurts the VS experience even more than the previous imbalanced spawning. Sure, it makes things fairer, looking from an absolute scale. After all, knowing that a tank is going to appear right before the elevator in No Mercy 4 doesn’t change the fact that you have to fight it. The foresight isn’t as great of a benefit than no tank spawning at all, but it does take away from the randomness of the game, which is one of its major selling points. Hopefully, they’ll tweak that a little bit in the next patch.
The new stats look cool, but something is amiss.
I’m looking at mine and it says I’ve played 1 game. I’m guessing they were reset with the patch?
Still, the stats seem wrong and incomplete. First off, I LOST the match I played last night, yet the stats say I won. There’s no stats for the shot gun, which si the weapon I used, and it says my average time alive with the smoker was over 5 minutes. No way did I ever last 5 minutes + with a smoker.
Weird.
Yeah…seems a bit broke.
Mine says I have 100% accuracy with the assault rifle and Uzi. I am not shabby with those but no way am I that good. I am also quite sure I have taken more than the 246 shots with an AR than the site says. I go through more than that in half a level fer chrissakes.
Also, I did a GREAT Smoker one time last night and am certain I got way more than 34 points with that hit (guy was boomed so Infected were all over him while I held him for a good, long while).
::shrug::
Last night’s match was a blast! Had some epic moments including a goal line stand in front of the safe room and inexplicably stopping the Survivors. And an amazingly fun one where the Survivors blew themselves up at the gas station and yet managed to pull it back together (thought they were toast for sure). Got them eventually a bit later but was a rollicking good time! Later as a Survivor I learned that Smokers can still get a smoke off while I am shooting them. Everyone jumped out the window while I chased a Smoker and I got, well, smoked. 
We lost overall but I do not care so much about that (I like to win of course but having fun anyway which is more important).
Boomer does seem a bit broke. Saw some booms miss that absolutely and clearly should have hit. Note I saw it happen when it both worked against us and for us (so not sour grapes). No question those should have hit however (Boomer was like 2 feet away and spewed all over someone and I was right there watching it all…nothing).
(This is dark2phoenix on Cinn’s comp).
Now I’ve only played 4 campaigns since the patch, but in each one of them I saw a witch and/or tank spawn in almost exactly the same spot for each team. Witches were pretty close to the same spot (I’m sure it would be different since it’s done by % traveled and not spot on the map) and tank battles occurred in the same spot as well.
I think I must respectfully disagree with you on forewarning not being an issue. The first survivor team has the burden of looking for supplies and such because they MIGHT get a tank. The second team is now GUARANTEED to get a tank in roughly the same spot. Pre-patch you would probably have to fight one, but there was no guarantee where so the second team had to make the same choices about search or run. Now that you know know with almost certainty where you’ll find the tank, you can plan for the tank better as well as ration when you look for supplies vs just running as fast as you can. In 3 of my 4 matches I’ve been on the survivor 1st team and in all of them to varying degrees I saw the second survivor team do things deliberately because they knew the tank would come at a particular spot on the map. As you said earlier, one of the major points of the game was the randomness of the AI director. I think I’d be happy with bringing that back, just randomizing where the encounter may take place. I see they may be going for the “Well, see if you can do any better!” by having everything repeated for both sides, but I think there an element of strategy that is lost on the first team to explore the area.