Back 4 Blood Catch All

I really enjoyed the Alpha. Day One purchase for me.

World War Z had fantastic horde mechanics, but was otherwise fairly pedestrian and got old quickly for me. I'm tentatively interested in this after I watched jackfrags do a couple hours of gameplay - looks pretty solid for the current state and definitely can come up with some variety.

Watching more Youtube videos on gameplay and the card mechanics, this game looks like a day 1 purchase for me, unless something comes out that makes it terrible.

Wonder if we'll have some of the L4D and L4D2 veterans on board.

<-prepurchased the priciest one (based on time spent on L4D1 and 2 and thinking I honestly owe them for it). Haven’t done that since....Spore?

You can't buy this game as a 4 pack! What nonsense!

Delayed til October 2021

sad but not shocking.

came to post the co-optimus delay, didn't realize they were so far behind pcgamesn.

Better to release it when it's ready though.

New video that goes into deck building and customization.

Is it October yet?

Looking very good! Between this and Darktide, this genre will appease us fans.

News:

PRE-ORDER & GET
OPEN BETA
EARLY ACCESS
BEGINS AUGUST 5TH
EARLY ACCESS OPEN BETA: AUGUST 5-9
OPEN BETA: AUGUST 12-16
(Full schedule to be announced at a later date)

Sign-up and register for a chance to participate in the Early Access portion of the Open Beta.

Pre-ordering guarantees entry into Early Access.*

Registration is required for access to the Open Beta but does not guarantee entry into the Early Access portion as codes are limited. Players must have or create a WB Games Account in order to redeem their Open Beta code.**

https://back4blood.com/en-us/beta

Also, but not great:

Yea, PvP/versus details coming June 13

Edit: replaced dead video link with the new one.

Apparently coming to Game Pass day one. Glad to hear that.

Ugh, they just did their “E3 PvP Showcase” and all they showed was a “Swarm” mode that essentially is L4D’s Versus Survival mode: teams take turns hiding out in a small map and win in a best-of-three competition swapping humans vs. ridden sides for longest survival time. There were thankfully many people in chat telling them this is a travesty compared to the awesome full-campaign versus from L4D.

The one bit of good news is that there are nine playable ridden forms, although it’s three body types with pallette-swap bodies and distinct abilities:

What would be so hard about copying the main L4D versus modes? The only fix I want is team/friend matchmaking instead of having to choose between lobbies with friends or quickmatching by myself. I am likely to end up cancelling my preorder after the open betas if they can’t fix this.

I feel like replicating a game over 10 years old and not even having as many VS features is a hard NO for me.

VS mode is what made L4D fun with Goodjers every night.

Don’t get me started. There’s too much to say.…

I’ve been hanging out in their discord constantly the last few days. Suffice it to say they know people are vocal all across social media about versus and other things but frankly they’re confident in how things look from gaming-media coverage being positive, the alpha feedback, and their preorder situation.

To us who complain about features (apparently offline mode and split screening are still wanted by some people, crazy), they constantly point out that the best way for the game to move where we want is for them to have the metrics to get it there, that we should participate in the betas (one open, one closed, preorders accesses both) in August and provide detailed feedback, that the alpha questionnaire did and their beta questionnaire will have lots of room for open-need answers.

I’m willing to bet that if a good swath of beta feedback is “fun, but won’t buy without real versus” and then they see a bunch of preorders dry up, they’ll make some quick announcements about the first post-launch content packs. (In the meantime they assure us there are a lot of campaign and “swarm” aka versus survival maps and things already being built.) It also costs nothing to: preorder now, play and provide beta feedback, and then cancel preorder in the two months between beta completing and launch day. I honestly think this is a great system, as we used to many many years ago used to have demos available before release day and this is basically that.

On the unquestionably good side, at least, they realize how their stupid 2K-mandated post-launch nickeling and diming of players killed Evolve. For B4B they have made clear that any paid content that a lobby leader has is usable by everyone in the lobby. Likewise, all PvP cards are available to all players at all time, different than the PvE cards that need to be unlocked through play.

I’ll try not to come in here too often and dump everything that’s going on. Will follow closely though, so ask if you want to know.

//// lastly, to disclose my background re: Left 4 Dead and Evolve….

Left 4 Dead 2 is my favorite game of all time. I calculated out that I really, honestly spent about 10,000 hours on it and Left 4 Dead 1, 2008-2013. Xbox 360 doesn’t keep and show those stats, unfortunately. I had much free time then from returning from a deployment flush with cash, so spent months doing L4D 10-20 hrs per day. Most of that was versus mode, and much of that was competitive / ranked ladders and tournaments. I enjoyed casual versus like GWJ nights, too, and occasionally did some campaign coop, but it’s a and THE versus game to me. Eventually I moved over to PC but have never had the opportunity since then to put in as much serious time with it.

I skipped Evolve; 4v1 just was too alien sounding. Learning about it recently, I would have played the crap out of it predominantly playing monster.

So yes, you can say I certainly quite invested in finding L4D3 or another place to call home. B4B was supposed to be it! …..maybe it will be, eventually. Or maybe it’ll disappear like Evolve, and the studio with it.

Everything about this game reminds me of being a SOCOM fan and trying to love SOCOM: Confrontation.

You know, an indirect follow-up where it *seems* to have the elements of that game you loved so much, but everything is slightly off, and there's an "it" factor from the original that's missing.

Again, as a Turtle Rock fan that loved (and paid full price for) Evolve, I hope I'm wrong. But this game from the beginning has felt to me like it's made of heartbreak.

Ugh, reminds me of the ME3 multiplayer exclusion from the recent remake. Like mentioned above, have to be vocal so there is a chance for it to be added.

Vermintide 2 is working on a versus mode so hopefully that will whet appetites for the time being...whenever it's released

Keithustus, if you're into LFD, have you tried World War Z? It's a pretty decent clone.

Very limited PvP modes, from the bit I’ve scouted about it in reviews and articles. What, just two that has you play as nonhumans? One of those is was-boring-in-the-1990s team deathmatch, and the other is a zone-control kind of thing. Doesn’t sound inherently terrible, but it’s hard to move on from the scale and dare I say epic teamwork and strategy required for a L4D versus campaign, especially when doing some of the more refined mutations or mods.

Keithustus wrote:

I’ll try not to come in here too often and dump everything that’s going on. Will follow closely though, so ask if you want to know.

If there's news, please post it here, unless you're talking multiple updates per day! This forum thread is going to be a strong indicator of whether I stay interested, though mostly a factor the closer we get to launch. I'll miss news on it sometimes through my regular gaming feeds.

I came from the other side of things. I played a ton of coop campaigns with friends who happened to be goodjers, and reluctantly started playing nightly gwj casual pvp. I enjoyed that a lot, as it still had a lot of coop elements in the 4v4. That lasted a lot longer than the campaigns. Eventually both petered out the same time I discovered Vermintide, which is the team coop I enjoy. The Vermintide 2 community is a bit small but still hanging in there, so I'm definitely looking forward to the next game, whether it's Darktide, Back 4 Blood, or Redfall. Is there a redfall thread yet?

*Legion* wrote:

Again, as a Turtle Rock fan that loved (and paid full price for) Evolve, I hope I'm wrong. But this game from the beginning has felt to me like it's made of heartbreak.

I'm still hoping it comes together the closer we get to a release date. I was eagerly looking forward to Evolve, until the open beta made it feel like I was piloting a giant mech than anything responsive. Might have been my frame rate or something.

Also, the 1v4 aspect was a big turnoff, as there's no coop if you're monster.

Emmes wrote:

Also, the 1v4 aspect was a big turnoff, as there's no coop if you're monster.

This ultimately is what killed Evolve for me.

The worst part was, players who grouped up would never be matchmade into the monster role. So if you played solo, the odds of being monster weren't 1-in-5, but *significantly* higher. You were basically in The Monster Queue, filling out the vacant monster spots for all the game lobbies of grouped-up parties.

I would rather have played against an AI monster. The game tried to force me into the monster role EVERY. SINGLE. TIME., and I would just tell the game to F itself and quit.

(There was even options for matchmaking preferences, putting your role choices in order from 1st to 5th. I had monster dead last, and still that was all I would get.)

Asymmetric 1v4 is cool, but not if the game is forcing people into the roles they don't want to play and keeping the part they like away from them.

And of course, other decisions torpedoed the game before things like that could be resolved.

But for a while there, in the beta period and very early release period, there were enough people interested in playing monster to avoid the imbalance, and I could play the game I liked.

I pre-ordered Evolve and enjoyed it for a while. I agree with everything said here about how the 4v1 turned out and I spent most of my games as the monster when I wanted to be trying the various character abilities. It's a game mechanic I wish received more iteration in different forms.

As for B4B it needs to come to the table with more than L4D or be VERY different. It's just not doing either of those things.

Emmes wrote:

If there's news, please post it here, unless you're talking multiple updates per day!

I’m quite glad to hear that, actually. It’s also refreshing to see some other discussion in here. For a while I felt as if I was the only GWJer wanting to track this one firmly.

What I’ve learned the last few days:

- Game Pass for both Xbox (S? XS? One? I literally don’t follow XB stuff now so please look it up if you need) and PC will have access on launch day October 8 but Game Pass doesn’t give access to betas.

- absolutely complete crossplay and crossgen. If it plays B4B, you can play with your friends. All one big ecosystem. That means a Steam player, a PS5 player, an XB One player, and an Epic player can walk into a bar as a team.

- the above though comes at a cost: no modding, no Steam workshop, no custom servers.

- devs confirm that there yes is a lot more Swarm (“PvP” “versus survival”) maps, coop campaigns, weapons, and cleaners (humans with unique perks) being worked on. Some will be added for launch, and some is still being charted out to be ready later. It’s a bit odd to me to see an FPS be programmed out like a MOBA but maybe that what the industry demands now to keep Game Pass people hooked.

- But anyone can register for open beta, and there’s also a closed beta. Both in August. They both have dumb, confusing names. There’s a decent FAQ on their site though for it. Quick version: “ So basically how it'll work is.. the 5-9 for those who either pre-ordered, got a code for registering.. or were in the alpha phase, then the 12-16 phase is for everyone regardless” (summarized by someone on discord)

- Deck construction. Only the cleaners use cards. For coop PvE you earn cards and then build your deck. It sounds like it might take a while to earn a bunch of them. I asked whether they expected it to be closer to 20 hours or closer to 200 hours to unlock them all but they aren’t ready to discuss that openly yet. For PvP, all players get all the cards: no P2W, no hours2win. For the beta only, there will be no versus deck construction; you pick a prebuilt deck themed such as “assault” or “medic” and that’s your deck. Full deck construction at launch.

- Ridden “deck” for versus: some ambiguity here. There are NO Ridden cards. Ridden earn XP. Unlike L4D, your ridden class (there are 9 playable) is not RNG—you choose it. It’s inferred you can change anytime you’re dead. You use the XP points to unlock upgrades for your ridden’s class’s abilities. They’ve all but confirmed that if you change classes you get the points back to respec into the new class. Separate from all this, they’ve also said the ridden team can spend points or somehow influence the AI Director such as to control huge swarms (hence “Swarm” being the “Versus” mode) and spawn in the three (?) boss ridden that…..are not playable. Smh

Expect them to have some materials coming out eventually that will introduce the various ridden classes and probably the cleaners too. Everyone may remember what a boomer is and a smoker and whatnot, but it’s hard to get excited about playing nine new classes that honestly aren’t that distinctive and intuitive.

Hope that wets the appetite. There’s probably more but this has been the focus of teasing out details from their drip of news feeds, videos, interviews, and then circling back with questions to the devs and mods.

High-point: they are incredibly involved and willing to discuss things in discord. They have a full compliment of staff who cycle in and out of discord throughout the day. That said, as you can expect, also a significant amount of discussion in the discord is people new to the server coming in, screaming about feature X being missing, and that they’ll never buy unless it’s part of the game. It’s worrying, honestly, that as much as Turtle Rock seems to have learned from Evolve’s history, I don’t think they have a way to even estimate how many L4D and Evolve fans would be easy, easy sells but who are just not going to give the game a chance bc it’s not the game we really want. Maybe that means losing 1% of their intended audience, or maybe 40%. Hard to predict.

Small correction: launch day October 12, not 8.

Keithustus wrote:

To us who complain about features (apparently offline mode and split screening are still wanted by some people, crazy)

Basically to this day, split screen halo at the office (8 players, two giant monitors, one conference room, lots of screenlooking) is the only xbox I've played since the 360. I definitely get the appeal.

Pure offline isn't really a thing in 2021, but bandwidth caps are, if that's what they mean by offline mode.

Keithustus wrote:

//// lastly, to disclose my background re: Left 4 Dead and Evolve….

Left 4 Dead 2 is my favorite game of all time. I calculated out that I really, honestly spent about 10,000 hours on it and Left 4 Dead 1, 2008-2013. Xbox 360 doesn’t keep and show those stats, unfortunately.

Checking... yep, I certainly have a type. I never played l4d1, so I'm going to declare that the Vermintides have dethroned l4d2, but it's a distant third to payday 2. I loved payday 2, but could never get comfortable enough with the premise to feel comfortable shooting so many cops.
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/m5Fdm5El.png)
(The next game is superhot VR, which I accidentally left running for 10 days via virtual desktop and doesn't count, PvZ, and then a large number of <100 hour games.)

234 on L4D2 after 175 on the first.

Still nothing compared to 968 on TF2, mostly with people here. And 1171 on Marvel Heroes, which I also played from beta before it was ever available on Steam, so definitely have more. And of course Rocket League at 1600 hours. That one probably has dozens of hours of idle time though between matches.

Just a reminder that:

1. the codes are starting to be distributed for the early-access beta that runs August 5-9th. If you played the alpha (on PC) you’re good to go. If you want to swap platforms from playing alpha on PC to a console for betas, contact WB support. If you want to access the early-access beta, preorder or register for a random key on the game’s website.

2. the open beta will run August 12-16th. For that you just need to register on the game’s website. (Or have received access to the alpha or early-access beta as described above).

[The beta periods will have] five different Cleaners to play as, along with a variety of weapons to check out, cards to build decks with, and Ridden to slay. Two co-op PvE missions and two PvP maps will be available, as well as the ability to explore Fort Hope [the central player hub].

They haven’t provided the total map counts for release. At release there will only be coop mode and Swarm pvp, which is like L4D’s Survival Versus but with cards, upgradable ridden classes (within each match), and a battle-royale-like circle of death for the cleaners to remain within.

Game Pass members will have full access to the game for both PC and Xbox beginning at launch but not through Game Pass to the beta periods or the early-release a few days before launch.

Alienware is giving away PC codes to the early-access beta that starts August 5. You just need to create or use an account on their site: https://na.alienwarearena.com/ucf/sh....