Left 4 Dead 2 Catch All

stupidhaiku wrote:

Yeah, it's us vets that despise you.

*kisses*

Tannhauser wrote:

The bad teams are always the silent ones (hint), so there isn't even a light attitude about things, which can easily redeem a bad match. Nothing but terse "Hunter's got me!" and the like setting a grim air. Between that and the forgone conclusion that the team you are on is going to lose every single round of the match, there isn't simply isn't any fun.

Sorry you had such a bad time, Rebel. I've been on that end of the equation a few times myself, and I can understand how frustrating it can feel. I'm a naturally competitive guy myself, and I HATE losing at anything. After suffering through a few matches like that, and stewing in my own juices about it afterwards, I've taken it upon myself to lighten the mood when I can feel the frustration creep starting up. In fact, in one such game that we were losing, I had 2 of my teammates singing "Build Me Up Buttercup" with me for a portion of the game. (Don't try to deny it, evilseed and Nathanial, you KNOW you were) Or, I've taken to calling for everyone to attack one of the other survivors to make sure that they don't make it to the safehouse, and to make sure and specifically tell that person we are coming for them. Then, on snarespeak, (please come back soon, please please) taunting that person about their upcoming death. You know, stupid stuff like that, and when I started doing that, I started having fun again.

I hope this particular game doesn't turn you off from playing some more versus games with us, they aren't all this bad.

NathanialG wrote:

I like both Lars and Quintin....

I just wanted to save this in case Nathanial decides to remove it later. I KNEW you liked me, you little bastard. I am a sexy beast, after all.

Yeeaaahhh, not that it really matters, but all my achievements disappeared. Happen to anyone else?

I'm afraid I'm turning into the guy. You know the guy who's constantly barking orders to his team in versus to move their asses? Yeah, that guy. I don't mind taking point and moving the team along but when everybody else relies on me for direction, it's annoying, especially when we have to be moving so quickly in versus.

What I'm really trying to say is, play the campaigns in single-player/co-op before versus. Seriously.

FedoraMcQuaid wrote:

What I'm really trying to say is, play the campaigns in single-player/co-op before versus. Seriously.

See nothing sucks the fun out of any game faster then some one barking at me because I have no idea where to go. Limited gaming time for some and VS is more fun then single player so relax on people.
IT IS A GAME

Pro Tip: When you are standing next to me, and I am smoked/pounced/ridden, please press your right mouse button.

Yes, killing the smoker/hunter/jockey is important, but you are getting hammered by 20 infected and your aim SUCKS.

On that note, I think that the normal infected are 10 times worse than LFD1. They are stickier, take more damage to kill, come in larger numbers, and more aim-disrupting than anything before.

Tannhauser wrote:

Well, it's nice to see that horribly imbalanced teams suck all the fun out of Versus just as much in L4D2 as they do in the original.

Amen.

On another note, that game last night was fun. Even though we lost (not by a ton) I had a blast and was laughing my ass off most of the time.

NathanialG wrote:

I like both Lars and Quintin, I will play on a team with them, and the other well know jerk Burnt toast any day. On the other hand ever since Camnipotent called me an asshole in a finale I cant seem to remember I have hated him and will never play in a game with that jerkface again. He can die in a fire. A DA style grease trap fireball fire. So there!!

I appreciate the compliment (I think?) and the feeling's pretty - except that I also always appreciate being on Camnipotent's team. Besides the jerk connection, he was one of the first members of Burnt Toast Character Defense Force.

Come to think of it, Nathanial - you and Camni were founding members. Why the split? Oh no - dissension in the Justice League! Tune in next game, faithful readers, to see the exciting conclusion!

(There are too many others on here to list that I feel privileged to play alongside. Special mention to Demonbox, Wired and Latrine who were very patient with me in my first Scavenger run last night. Fortunately, by the 2nd map I managed to get a bit more in the groove and help turn things around. What an intense speed-run game that mode is!).

Well ran through the first campaign with some buddies of mine on 360 and man it took us a while to get the finale done... I really don't think the game likes me, all my buddies I was playing with had finished the finally. Because of Call "Crack" of Duty I hadn't had the chance to really sit and play L4D 2 so last night I ween myself of MW2 and played with my buddies ran the the first 3 parts just fine but by the time we got to the finale the Director AI decided to just rape us. Eventually after 5 tries we beat it but the thing that pisses me off to the point where i turned of my 360 was that [/i]I never got my achievement for completing the campaign even though I ran through the whole thing.

BadMojo wrote:

On that note, I think that the normal infected are 10 times worse than LFD1. They are stickier, take more damage to kill, come in larger numbers, and more aim-disrupting than anything before.

Yes, which is great - they actually seem like a threat now rather than an annoyance.

Oh, and while we're on the topic of ordering people around, sorry Dan for yelling like a maniac to pick up the gas can and forget about me at the end. It was late and I was getting a bit punchy... tiredeness + adrenaline = douchery.

I love that close matches are actually close now. The score reflects how close the game actually was. No more "it was a close match, but the scoreboard reads blowout"

Pretty much every change to L4D2 is amazing, actually. Good show, Valve.

WiredAsylum wrote:
FedoraMcQuaid wrote:

What I'm really trying to say is, play the campaigns in single-player/co-op before versus. Seriously.

See nothing sucks the fun out of any game faster then some one barking at me because I have no idea where to go. Limited gaming time for some and VS is more fun then single player so relax on people.
IT IS A GAME

No the problem is if you stand around on versus you're going to die very quickly, you really have to keep moving. If people don't really know where they are going and they aren't following the guy who does know where he's going and then yell at the guy who knows where he's going for being to far ahead, that's annoying.

Even just a quick run through to learn the map. I know it's just a game but it's also a game that's a lot less fun when you're just dieing all the time.

The maps are so well done, why would you want to get introduced into them in versus anyway? It's so brutal you don't get to even really explore or see much.

Finally finished it last night. Sort of. I didn't quite survive the finale of The Parish (only made it about half way before I was sacrificed to the tank), but I'm glad Latrine made it. Again. Maybe some day I'll get to see what that's like, too.

When they announced Left 4 Dead 2 so early, we all wondered how they could make a game that was so much bigger than the first in so little time. I think I've found the answer.

Every house is totally empty abandoned, even the one with the freaking "tag sale" out front; compare any of the houses in Hard Rain to the apartment you drop down into in No Mercy 1. I've already complained about how empty (and clean) the mall looks. Swamp Fever begins with no sign of what happened after the end of Dark Carnival except for some heavy-handed exposition. There is VERY little graffiti and none of it is on par with that of the first game. While each part of each map has a feel to it, there seem to be fewer "set pieces." Just lots of streets and clusters of buildings. Some of the settings look really good and there are some nice touches (I love the F/A-18 flyovers, for instance), and there are some parts that are quite well done (like the finale of The Parish) but for the most part, these feel like very smart, high-quality fan maps. They just don't have that level of detail and polish I'd come to expect from Valve.

I cannot believe they spent anywhere near as much time on each L4D2 map as they did on the L4D1 maps, and the entire feel of the game suffers for it. That isn't to say they're BAD maps. They just lack a lot of the character that made L4D1 so great. I hope someone figures out a way to import the maps from the first game or retrofit the new weapons and Infected to L4D1. As sick as I am of those maps, they just feel more immersive to me.

Had a good versus match (kee-rist that's brutal) last night, followed by a fun co-op round.

Fun until the very end, where things fell apart a bit. After crossing the bridge, taer missed a jump and we couldn't get back to him through the horde. As we ran (or limped, in my case) to the helicopter, this was the dialogue:

me (as my two surviving teammates run past): "hey, some cover fire would be great"
me: blam "hey guys - zombies are" blamblam "getting awfully close"
me: "hey a tank. thanks for the covering fire, fellas - enjoy your flight"

Pretty sure we could have gotten three folks on that chopper, without much risk (the zombies were almost all behind me). No hard feelings - let's just say I'm looking forward to my next versus match

You can tell the people who played a bunch of L4D1 because they still hoard health in Vs mode.

Not like that was actually a functional strategy in the last game, either, but the scoring system confused people into believing it was worth risking your all-important multiplier for another 20 pts of health score. Glad it changed to make it obvious to people not to cheese it for score.

Wow, Lobster, I had pretty much the opposite reaction as you did. I'm with you on the mall consisting largely of empty shelves and boarded up doors where I would have liked to see some shops, but I think the houses in the other levels are way more detailed than they were in the first game. There are places in The Parish where you go and immediately get the sense that someone had tried to hold up there and failed, and places like the Motel in Dark Carnival or the houses in Hard Rain and Swamp Fever seem way more populated to me than any of the environments did before. The first game felt very square and industrial, and very sparse in comparison to this one.

The Midnight Riders site has been updated. Check the right-hand column.

NSMike wrote:

The Midnight Riders site has been updated. Check the right-hand column.

One Bad Man freaking rocks.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Certis called me a c*cksucker. :cry:

IMAGE(http://i457.photobucket.com/albums/qq298/juanpablo_m/nelson_haha.jpg)

For me, its not the score that encourages me to use the pills/medkits. Its the new special infected. If you limp along in the red, you are really asking for an incap. The jockey, charger and spitter will do a surprising amount of damage if they get it right, its not like a hunter pounce where you can just casually melee him off and your teammate suffers a scratch or two. And if you get two people incapped beside each other, that's a lot of pain coming your way when the spitter pops around the corner.

I will admit to hoarding the adrenaline, since its such a huge boost but really only useful in a few cases.

I'm not sure if its just the increased firepower of the survivors, but boomer hordes seem weaker to me. Fewer zombies. And the puke doesn't seem to last as long as it did in L4D.

NSMike wrote:

The Midnight Riders site has been updated. Check the right-hand column.

Tour shirts

IMAGE(http://store.valvesoftware.com/productshowcase/img.productshowcase/L4D2-MidnightRiders/Product_L4D2-MidnightRiders.jpg)

LtWarhound wrote:

I'm not sure if its just the increased firepower of the survivors, but boomer hordes seem weaker to me. Fewer zombies. And the puke doesn't seem to last as long as it did in L4D.

The boomer is way more dangerous, though. It now also removes all the borders and text above your teammate's heads, so it's a lot harder to see while you're hit. So hard that some people might decide to corner up and wait it out even though the entire rest of their team is pounced, chargered and jockeyed and dying fast. Not that I'm bitter.

You know, I was looking at the Midnight Riders stuff and just got bit tweaked out. I saw the T-shirt, and then saw the "best pyrotechnics show" tagline and then thought of the Station nightclub fire which happened down the road, and got a bit sad.

Then I noticed the comments on the youtube video and got a bit uneasy that many of us geeks seem to so lovingly embrace a fantasy about a horrifying biological apocalypse.

I'm sure I'll go back to happily shooting zombies in the face by tonight, but it sure is a disquieting sensation.

Dimmerswitch wrote:

Pretty sure we could have gotten three folks on that chopper, without much risk (the zombies were almost all behind me). No hard feelings - let's just say I'm looking forward to my next versus match :P

Totally my fault. I had used my adrenaline to make it down to the chopper, and because I wasn't slowed down by the common infected, I got way too far ahead of the group. Then when I turned around to reassess how we were doing, you were (very politely!) being mauled to death.

Sorry

Switchbreak wrote:
LtWarhound wrote:

I'm not sure if its just the increased firepower of the survivors, but boomer hordes seem weaker to me. Fewer zombies. And the puke doesn't seem to last as long as it did in L4D.

The boomer is way more dangerous, though. It now also removes all the borders and text above your teammate's heads, so it's a lot harder to see while you're hit. So hard that some people might decide to corner up and wait it out even though the entire rest of their team is pounced, chargered and jockeyed and dying fast. Not that I'm bitter. :drink:

Okay, I hadn't noticed that, but that explains a lot. Last night I was boomered, fending off a horde, and it wasn't until afterwards that I noticed the smoker victim just out of arms reach. Now I understand how I missed him, when in L4D I would have had no real problem spotting him and getting over to free him even with the horde pounding on me.

Regarding the ending, anyone else find it a bit dark?

Spoiler:

Throughout The Parish campaign, if you read the walls you learn about "carriers," which don't show any symptoms but still carry the disease. When you call the military at the bridge they also seem very concerned about whether you're immune and whether you've had any contact with the zombies. Also note how little luck the survivors have with aircraft. Their pilots keep turning into zombies! The implication seems to be that they didn't turn because they were exposed to other zombies, but because they were exposed to the survivors. That's pretty dark, and I can't really imagine what awaits either group at the end of each game, once they're safely in the hands of the military. If they're contagious, it's not like they're just going to rejoin society.

I'm with Lobster on the new maps, while I like them overall I agree that a lot of those little touches and miscellanea are gone, and it is a bit jarring. Someone (probably Lobster actually) was complaining that the cabins in Swamp Fever were so ugly and empty, I joked that I was sorry that the Katrina survivors didn't have more possessions for him to look at, but really I agree with him. In all of those shacks it is justified, though they probably would have had a handful of possession on them, they would have been able to take almost everything with them when they fled. Towards the end though you start getting to real houses, and finally the Plantation itself.

The people in those houses should have had more belongings than they could run off with in their backpack, also there was wood everywhere, we should have seen more homemade tables, chairs, things like that. Once we got to the Plantation itself there should definitely have been more things there, there were some sleeping bags and things that showed people had held up there in the last week, but no sign whatsoever of people living there a month ago.

FedoraMcQuaid wrote:

I'm afraid I'm turning into the guy. You know the guy who's constantly barking orders to his team in versus to move their asses? Yeah, that guy. I don't mind taking point and moving the team along but when everybody else relies on me for direction, it's annoying, especially when we have to be moving so quickly in versus.

What I'm really trying to say is, play the campaigns in single-player/co-op before versus. Seriously.

I did. And as you've experienced in map 5 yourself, sometimes people forget, hypocrite. And quit trying to be the guy. That's my job.

Tannhauser wrote:
EriktheRed wrote:

How unbalanced could they be? We are all pretty new at the game. It only came out on Tuesday.

Incredibly unbalanced. There are teams that just don't work, which get absolutely smashed when facing a team that can actually play as a team.

The bad teams are always the silent ones (hint), so there isn't even a light attitude about things, which can easily redeem a bad match. Nothing but terse "Hunter's got me!" and the like setting a grim air. Between that and the forgone conclusion that the team you are on is going to lose every single round of the match, there isn't simply isn't any fun.

So only a couple people on your team had mics? Maybe we should try to be more conscious of who has mics and who doesn't before we start a game of vs. to make things more balanced. Other than that though, I am not sure what we can do to balance things.

Well, there is one thing. I've given this a great deal of thought and their are two ways to achieve perfectly balanced L4D teams.

The first one is to ban Switchbreak from playing. But I like Switchbreak, if he were to have an accident, it would sadden me.

The other possibility is to clone Switchbreak, The rest of us will be as children playing Cowboys and Indians, suddenly finding themselves among Custer and his troops. We will scamper below the real fight, having minor scuffles amongst ourselves, but mainly trying to avoid being crushed between the two struggling titans that battle above us.

Prozac wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Certis called me a c*cksucker. :cry:

Certis has proved to me that he is a man of Impeccable taste and discernment. :D

Well see, after Rabbit and Certis abandoned me and Pigpen during the finale, they got incapped at the boat while I was helping Pigpen up. So which guy do I help up first? Certis, who's closer on the dock, or Rabbit, who was actually on the boat? Naturally I helped up the guy on the boat first.

To be fair, Certis did apologize when I helped him up and we all escaped.