It’s the AI Director that made the game worse to play with Versus. If there’s going to be any kind of competitive gaming here with Left 4 Dead, it’s because the AI Director works predictably and evenly for both sides. Then people are going to dislike it for its other flaws.
I definitely see that if the goal of both sides is to compete directly with each other than the changes that Valve has made make that much more even and predictable. I guess I’m just used to playing for the fun of playing with (and against) friends. The score is interesting but is not related to how much enjoyment I get from the game. I still like being surprised and playing in an unpredictable environment (made doubly so by playing against other players).
Maybe a simple solution would be for Valve to just make it a versus game parameter of Random vs Competition mode. Random mode would work the way it did at game launch and Competition mode would work they way it does now. Pretty easy to do (I think) and allow both sides to be happy.
Here’s an idea for alleviating some of the advantage - have teams switch who goes first. So Team A is survivors first and infected second for map 1, then infected first and survivors second for map 2…
For the invidual maps, there’d still be an advantage to the second team, but at least both teams would get a slot at being the second team.
Yep. I agree. That is pretty much how I think it’ll go as well. Also, there’s going to be a buffer zone, where until the survivors pass that zone, the Tank will not spawn.
Beef, that’s a decent idea as well. Maybe a coin flip?
That would also probably alleviate some of the problems with getting a pub group together. Most of the time waiting in a pub lobby is spent waiting on players to actually hang around once they realize they can’t be infected first. If the lobby only allowed for “these people will be on this team” and then, like LOUNE suggested, a virtual coin toss decided who’d play survivors first, everyone would be happy.
I just have to wonder how hard that would be to implement.
Overall, the matchmaking system will probably require a major overhaul eventually, though.
Eh - if someone is so stupid and/or impatient that they won’t play because they don’t get to be infected first then it’s good that they leave the game.
Although now they might leave because infected has an advantage rather than because AWWW I WANTED TO BE INFECTED BUT NOW I HAVE TO WAIT 7 MINUTES.
In my eyes, there should be four hoppers. One in which the AI Director has full control, meaning anything can spawn anywhere, one in which one in which things are scripted and controlled, one in which the pairings are completely random in which the AI Director has full control, and completely random nerfed AI Director.
It’ll probably get whittled down to three, with the last one withering and dying on the vine, though.
Less random number generators is better.
Wha?
Count me as one who agrees that the tank appearing in the same spot both unbalances the game in favor of the second team but also removes an element of surprise and suspense that I think makes the game as good as it is.
How about the first Tank spawns the way they do now, and the second run through the level a Tank spawns the way other Infected spawn. Meaning they can choose their spot instead of just getting dumped into the tank’s body at Spot X?
-Joe
Yeah, I’m not liking the tank spawning at the same time. As much as I disliked it previously where one team might get one way later or not at all, I would have preferred it to stay that way. Or they could have at least done something to make sure that both teams got an equal amount of tanks in the game, just on different levels.
Have you guys noticed an increase in the amount of early tanks? I’m talking like ten feet from the spawn when the team is all fresh, green, and fully stocked. It seems like it to me and it’s getting kind of annoying.
That is an interesting idea. The second survivor team would still have the advantage of knowing where the tank spawns, but the second infected team gets the advantage of spawning the tank strategically.
I’ve been having a blast playing with the SDMB group of players. I’ve been telling some people at work about the game and they seem interested so they asked if there was a demo. I said sure there’s a demo… and I can’t find it.
I bought the game on the stregth of the reviews and some recomendations, I never had the demo in the first place. I can’t believe they would pull the demo two months after the game was released. Okay, I can believe it, it just doesn’t make much sense.
Where in the world can I find the demo?
Sadly, they pulled the demo on the day of release. They wanted to save all the server bandwidth for the full game.
Had something fairly weird happen today. Set up a campaign game playing Dead Air and started it on a dedicated server. We played through the first level and right before we got to the safe house noticed that no special infected had shown up at all. Once in the safe house it started counting up our score and then we spawned as infected. I left the game and checked my friends’ status and it told me that they were in a game limited to four players.
They didn’t add in the other two versus maps without me noticing, did they?
Someone probably either accidentally or purposefully toggled the no human zombies cvar in the console. It doesn’t allow for true Vs. mode, though since I think that’s still determined by the map name.
Possibly my finest hour as an infected.
Close game, my team is behind by about 300 points on blood harvest 4. They’re passing the train station and someone gets just close enough for me, as a smoker, to pull them onto a car. As they came to save their friend someone shot it.
They were pretty beat up, but they’d survived that crescendo… they were pulling their last incapacitated survivor off the ground as I came around the corner as a boomer, covered all 4 in bile - and then I ran up to someone with low health and meleed them. Got them down. Then I turned to the guy who was just rescued. And I melee him down. Regular infected finished off the other 2. Rare enough that you get an incap with a boomer hit, but 2…
Nice! I gotta play with you guys some time.
L4D has finally leaked into my dreams. A few nights ago the boyfriend awoke to me whacking him on the chest, calling his name over and over.
Boyfriend: What? What?
Me: What? Ung…I must have been dreaming about playing L4D with you. Teammate.
I don’t remember any of this, though. Next time he says that he’s going to yell things like “You have startled the witch!” or “Zoey, heal!” 
Dude, seriously, if you do the medkit dance in your sleep, tell your boyfriend to get a video.