I loved the one time I pulled of the perfect boomer attack on the survivors. It is crucial to coordinate when playing as the infected. It’s not enough to have a good hiding spot, or even to pull off a great sneak attack. If no one else is there to help out it’s wasted. I’ve gotta keep that in mind next time.
One thing though: I don’t know if it was a latency issue, but it seemed to me that often there was a brief delay between when I peg a zombie and when it dies. I ended up unoading multiple blasts on already dead zombies.
And Valve really needs to optimize the voice over IP codecs they use.
You can’t infer there are an equal number of L4D players because the groups are the same size. There may be plenty, but don’t give the guy false information based on an assumption.
I’d say the numbers are pretty equal, taking into account the interest, who’s been on the Gamertag playing the game, and what not. Ultimately, it comes down to whatever platform you want to play it on. There are Dopers on either.
That’s fine - I was just saying not to infer that there’d be equal player bases because of the group size. I haven’t been on my xbox much in primetime lately but I haven’t seen anyone on the SDMB list playing that game at all when I’ve looked, whereas there are probably 10-12 people per day playing it on the steam group.
I also figured there’d be people like me who are both in the steam group and the xbox group and would buy the game for PC. And since it’s a valve game, I would assume the group based around the valve distribution method would probably show more interest towards the game than random console players.
I just didn’t want to see the guy steered the wrong way based on what seemed to be your only observation.
Yeah…kinda not happy with the massive point boost you get for making it to the safe room. As noted I have been in many matches where the survivors were seriously bloodied and gimped to the point one more attack would almost certainly have ruined them. Then my team gets ambushed in sight of the safe room and die. The score does not reflect well how close some matches can be (of course can work both ways). And then in some pickup matches when you get ambushed one dude just sprints to the safe room leaving everyone else behind and a more certain death.
Last night was a blast. Sadly my team fell apart in spectacular fashion in Blood Harvest right at the corn field (and I blame myself in big part for that too…really big part when I fell into the corn field before saving someone above it from a Hunter and manged to land in front of the tank running around :p). Was kinda funny in retrospect but OUCH!
Dunno if anyone else is interested but I wouldn’t mind a few practice rounds where we are not actually working to win but to test certain aspects. For instance I have a hard time getting a feel for a Boomer’s range. Also have been surprised at what walls you can shoot through (e.g. I’m hiding behind a brick wall and get nailed by a shotgun :rolleyes:). Also would like to try to get the Smoker to shoot around corners. I have seen reference to this and last night I saw a Smoker get someone from around a corner (his tongue was curved right around the doorframe). A few other things would be interesting to test as well.
I believe this might be because there is a small delay when launching the tongue and it hitting the target. If the target moves behind the corner under that delay, the tongue gets curved.
We had our first full versus SDMB game tonight. It was pretty awesome. There were 2 or 3 people waiting to get in, and another few people off playing their own random pub versus game - so there were about 13 people on playing. Ended up with a dramatic finish - the first time I’ve ever made it to the helicopter on a full 4v4 match.
Something I saw on the L4D forums:
For those who don’t know: A Tank takes no damage for being on fire. Instead regardless of how much damage is done to him the Tank will die after a certain amount of time (40 seconds on Expert).
“So after being set on fire, unless the Tank was already near death, there is no point in trying to do any damage to him at all.
This means that the most effective strategy against a Tank is to set him on fire and run away until he dies.”
Huh. That’s counterintuitive. I’d rather see the damage accumulate from both fire and small arms. I guess the best way to handle it is to just light him and run as far as you need to.
Yar, I had tons of fun as well. The teams were a wee bit imbalanced, but I don’t think it took from the fun any. Then again, I was on the winning team, so maybe the other side had a different view.
With the tank, as long as you can out run shoot him, you’re golden. It just sucks when you get stuck with one in a narrow hallway. The strategy of setting him on fire and running worked pretty well too, though.
I really wish we could get a dedicated server set up so we could enable all talk. I hate it in competitive games, because you can’t communicate with your team very well, but when you’re playing with friends, I like being able to talk to everyone.
Well I had fun even though we got creamed. At least two people on our team had never played versus before, so that accounts for it. I liked playing the infected - you know you’re going to get capped, you just try to do as much damage as possible first, so it’s a much different experience.
I for one would love some advice on playing infected. I was often torn between wanting to spawn close in, and keep the pressure up by attacking, attacking, attacking, and wanting to wait a bit to coordinate with Boomer/Horde/Shredding/Strangling.
Definitely coordinate attacks if you can. It is FAR more effective. If you just jump a Hunter on one person to keep the pressure up your Hunter will almost certainly die nearly immediately and before doing any damage. The caveat to this is to pick off stragglers. If someone gets separated from the group by a fair distance pounce on him.
Ideally the Boomer hits first and hopefully gets two more more survivors. Hunters should pounce the guys who are not purple after the survivors start to get swarmed. Reason being is the purple people cannot see well and should be getting mobbed themselves. They will have a hard time discerning a teammate who has been pounced (good teams using voice comms still seem to handle it well but you do what you can) and a hard time fighting the Hunter off while they are mobbed. Hopefully one or two survivors get pounced by Hunters. Add in a Smoker to nab a Purple (puked on) person. This holds them while they get swarmed and does massive damage to the purple guy as he gets hit by 20 zombies.
Other good ones are after the Survivors have climbed a ladder (or whatever to get to an inaccessible place) is to have a Smoker pull one back down. Generally one person or maybe two will jump down to save their guy. Have Hunters pounce the guys coming to save the guy who is down. This can really break up the survivors well.
Survivors who stay close together and works as a team are hard to beat. Split them up whenever you can. This is one reason I hate Pub games. Always one or two guys who just go it alone and it really ruins it for the rest. Tanks are great at separating Survivors. Generally people scatter all over. Ideally both Hunters should wait to spawn then attack individuals nearly at the same time. Smoker grabs a third and watch them go down.
Done right (and I’ve seen it happen a few times by luck or design) a coordinated Infected attack can be devastating.
Also, do your level best to kill at least one Survivor. If someone is Red then do whatever you can to kill them. Puking on a downed Survivor still calls in the swarm on them and can ruin their day fast. Once the Survivors lose just one person their chances for survival go down noticeably and the rest generally fall in short order (not always…seen teams of three move forward pretty well but it is a lot harder on them).
The score was lopsided because we ended up surviving the last map and getting massive points, but you guys actually won 2 of the 5 maps.
After the first round when we stopped you guys at around 60%, I said “after this round if we beat you guys by a lot we can go back to the lobby and change teams up” and you guys ended up stopping us at like 45% through, beating us.
But yeah, I’m definitely up for balancing teams - close matches are a lot more fun. What we can do is vote to return to the lobby after the first round, switch teams up, and then restart the campaign at map 2. That way we don’t have to redo the same map every time we change teams.
Whack-a-mole gave good tips. Lots of people are impatient and just jump at the survivors at first sight (I admit I do this sometimes), but it’s much more damaging to them to strike when they’re distracted.
Most of the time a boomer should start the attack - that creates an environment where attacks by others are more likely to succeed.
Oh - and about the tank - never try to kill anyone with the tank (except by knocking them off roofs and such) - once someone is down, they get that temporary 300 hp, and tank hits only take 30 hp from you. That means (with the hp ticking down slowly on its own) you’d have to sit there with the tank and hit them 8-9 times before they actually died, meanwhile their friends are dumping ammo into you and you’re dead.
It’s much more effective to knock several members of the team down, and have your teammates actually pounce on them and finish them off - or even just knock down all 4 yourself and you win.
I have seen Hunters starting to use a circle-strafe on Survivors. They do not pounce but run around you in circles making them damn hard to hit all the while they smack you and cause a fair bit of damage. VERY annoying!
Teams that suicide once they win and do not let you play Infected. If they are winning the map they just kill themselves jumping off a high spot. There should be a huge point penalty for crap like that methinks.
Getting knocked off a building when you are nowhere near the edge. I was at the central point with the min-gun on Mercy Hospital. Tank comes up there, smacks me and off the building (not even to the “short” side but sideways where there is plenty of building to fall too). Then our tank is smacking two people who are right at the edge and they do not go over at all but just fall down. Lame…
Eh? I’ve never experienced this - can you clarify?
As for the strategies, yeah boomers generally should attack first. The only exception I’ve seen work very well is at the beginning of a level, when a smoker or hunter can attack from behind, and then the boomer attack while everyone’s distracted trying to get them off. This usually works in keeping them pushed back to the safe room while everyone respawns, and lets you do a second wave of attacks. This works really well at the beginning of the hospital in No Mercy, where there’s a little nook for hunters or smokers to spawn. Also, at the top of the stairs at the beginning of the finale.
Other than that, wait for the boomer to spawn, unless the team is moving really fast, in which case you may want to try to slow them down with a pounce or two.
And if you’re a survivor, and decide to knock the hunter off your teammate rather than shooting it, remember to shoot it right afterward rather than letting it pounce again. In a game last night (not the SDMB game), I actually managed to get about five pounces in one life because they weren’t actually shooting me, just knocking me off.
In the final level of Mercy the Opposing team were Survivors second. So they had stopped us and had more points than us (we could not win). Rather than playing through they all jumped down the elevator shaft to their deaths to end the game.
If you get it right you can avoid the friendly fire damage. And on normal, FF doesn’t do too much anyway. If you’re right on top of them - yeah, melee - but if you’re a second or two away, you’ll probably do less damage with FF than the hunter will do by remaining on target that extra second or two.
Anyway, I’ll be hosting some games over the next few hours. Feel free to drop by if there’s a slot open.
I agree with this. On expert you can seriously hurt your teammates. On normal not much at all. Also, if you take careful aim and not using the shotgun you can pick off the hunter with little to no damage to your teammate.
That said melée should be used when possible. Gets the Hunter off sooner and freezes him a few moments to be shot free and clear.
Hmm, according to this website, friendly fire damage is turned off for people pinned by hunters and smokers. So yeah, if you’re too far away to melee, it’s probably better to shoot the hunter off than waste time going to punt him off. If you DO melee him off though, hold down your primary fire button and keep the gun aimed at him, and your gun will fire as soon as it can. Or, if you really want to rub it in their face, just keep punching until they’re dead. I once did this while holding a medkit. Honestly, I wish I’d taken a screenshot.