Left 4 Dead... 2.

L31mr0d

Maximilian wrote: »

Pretty sure they are. The whole point was to stop camping. That's why they brought the Spitter in too for that matter.

Yeah I got to experience that first hand with the team I was on. Just before you trigger the alarm there is this alley you pass through. We heard a horde coming so we all instinctively ran to the alley and got into the 2 crouched, 2 standing position. Zombies proceeded to block both ends of the alley and then the spitter spewed all over us and everywhere in the alley. Cue running back and forth trying to push out past the zombies trying to push in, but to no avail, the whole team died in seconds.

The spitter alone is going to make versus a lot more interesting.

BlitzKrieg

as someone without access (again I'm holding off my purchase until I know which group of friends will be picking it up pc or xbox, and going with the crowd that I will have more fun playing with.) can someone explain what the spitter does?

L31mr0d

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

can someone explain what the spitter does?

It's basically a variant on the boomer, but instead of blinding you and attracting the horde they spit a load of acid onto the ground, which will fairly quickly kill you if you stand in it for too long, so it forces you to move. It also means if you are jammed into a closet being blocked in by Zombies that a spitter could pretty much take out a whole team in one shot.

A tactic I've noticed the AI using is that when a survivor has been downed, a spitter will come along and spit on the survivor, meaning A) the survivor on the ground is going to take more damage from the acid and anyone trying to revive that survivor is either going to have to wait till the acid is gone or risk taking damage off the acid to try and get into range to revive them.

Another area where the spitter will become very useful is the trigger events. In the demo you have to make your way through a winding set of fences to get to the alarm switch. You are constantly being chased by zombies so you have to move forward. On one occasion the AI spitter spat in the path ahead of us, meaning we either A) stop and run the risk of being overwhelmed or run through the acid and take the damage hit. We ran through it.

Like I said though, the spitter is really going to change the tactics in versus mode.

BlitzKrieg

will it be a full on versus character or a special like the tank?

Cause I know there's another two new ones called the jockey and charger, I'm just wondering with 6 versus characters instead of 3 it might make the versus team a bit too random. with L4D at the moment even though who you get dumped at is random, you can easily work it out by looking at what your teammates are. But with six, it'll be a bit more random. Though I guess the jockey and spitter are similar enough to the boomer and hunter.

Dont know about the charger will he be like the tank or a full on special?

5uspect

The new SI should be pretty good in Versus. I had the misfortune of bring raped by a Jockey after I took a shot of adrenaline in the trigger scene described above.

Since adrenaline makes you run faster I decided to shoot up and leg it into the fence maze. (I was playing single player) The jockey jumped me and pulled me right down the path away from the other survivors, much further than I had wanted. The bots eventually caught up. But if any other SI was waiting for me I would have been toast.

The jockey is similar to the smoker for separating survivors. Their mechanic is different but either can incap by dragging a victim through fire, spitter acid or into the path of other SI.

The Charger is pretty weak. If you spot him in time you can take him down. His charge is very very fast. Its difficult to get out of his way once he's begun charging.

Even if infected classes remain random I think there's similar dynamics to the previous game to keep things solid.

Also the AI of the SI is pretty good. I saw a Spitter work with a Smoker in the park last night by laying down some acid to drag a player through.

Maximilian

L31mr0d wrote: »

Yeah I got to experience that first hand with the team I was on. Just before you trigger the alarm there is this alley you pass through. We heard a horde coming so we all instinctively ran to the alley and got into the 2 crouched, 2 standing position. Zombies proceeded to block both ends of the alley and then the spitter spewed all over us and everywhere in the alley. Cue running back and forth trying to push out past the zombies trying to push in, but to no avail, the whole team died in seconds.

The spitter alone is going to make versus a lot more interesting.

Yeah. Can you imagine what a difference having a spitter would make to some of the l4d1 maps. Take the boiler room on No Mercy, where everyone camps under the pipes in the corner.

If the l4d1 content gets integrated with the sequel, it will give a new breath of life to the original maps.

5uspect

Apparently the L4D2 demo shows friends playing L4D1 just as it shows L4D2 players.
Some are taking this as proof of some sort of inclusion (goes looking for linkage).

Modders have compiled TF2 maps in L4D. there's no reason the modding community wouldn't do the same if Valve don't.

grizzly

The spitter is a great addition. I wonder what kind of range she has? and does she need line of sight. I hope she can't act like a mortar – where verses players could attack where you were you can't get to them (eg behind walls)

Atlas_IRL

Its Pretty hard on expert but class, too easy on the other difficulty levels. The SI AI are very clever i think the addition of the armour guys is cool as well as you can get swarmed trying to pick them off first. If you could use the first game maps that would be epic, i doubt it though?

Hopefully could be modded. Cant wait to play as the new SI, although i think it will be very different with that spitter there. There is deffo going to be places on maps where the spitter will own the team. It must have some negatives? On expert it can kill you in seconds

leninbenjamin

I just downloaded and played it there.

It looks and feels great. I haven't seen enough though to suggest gameplay will be much different. The spitter and jockey are cool but don't add a huge amount different to gameplay, and the charger is way too easy to defeat imo.

On the bugs side of things, I did notice some stuttering in the multi-player. And, if you run Nvidia, Steam requests you to update the graphics driver. Unfortunately the newest driver seems a bit unstable, I've had a BSOD and at times the game stopped rendering itself once. Bit of communication there needed between Valve and Nvidia needed.

Overall, I know i'll get my money's worth from it, but i do think Valve are being cheeky by labelling it a new game.

Jumpy

leninbenjamin wrote: »

I just downloaded and played it there.

It looks and feels great. I haven't seen enough though to suggest gameplay will be much different. The spitter and jockey are cool but don't add a huge amount different to gameplay, and the charger is way too easy to defeat imo.

On the bugs side of things, I did notice some stuttering in the multi-player. And, if you run Nvidia, Steam requests you to update the graphics driver. Unfortunately the newest driver seems a bit unstable, I've had a BSOD and at times the game stopped rendering itself once. Bit of communication there needed between Valve and Nvidia needed.

Overall, I know i'll get my money's worth from it, but i do think Valve are being cheeky by labelling it a new game.

Charger will kick ass in Versus. At the moment it doesnt hide, take away the AI and get a real person in one and you will find them annoying as hell.

thebman

leninbenjamin wrote: »

Overall, I know i'll get my money's worth from it, but i do think Valve are being cheeky by labelling it a new game.

Judging from what we are seeing with L4D2, it would seem to me that Valve think the L4D concept was good but that the game design in the first game is flawed so seriously as to require throwing out the original and starting again.

L4D really seems like it was a beta version to find the flaws with the concept but then games like L4D have not been done like this before so they are in new territory IMO. I'd feel much more cheated if I had paid for the first game

L4D gets very boring for me very fast as it always the same thing. It needs to be more dynamic than it is. Campaigns get old fast.

Maximilian

thebman wrote: »

Judging from what we are seeing with L4D2, it would seem to me that Valve think the L4D concept was good but that the game design in the first game is flawed so seriously as to require throwing out the original and starting again.

L4D really seems like it was a beta version to find the flaws with the concept but then games like L4D have not been done like this before so they are in new territory IMO. I'd feel much more cheated if I had paid for the first game

L4D gets very boring for me very fast as it always the same thing. It needs to be more dynamic than it is. Campaigns get old fast.

That's true of all you are playing is co-op. Completely (and I mean utterly) untrue if you're playing versus. I'd guess you didn't really try versus much or it just didn't appeal to you. There's a bunch of us here who have got hundreds of hours of brilliant entertainment from Versus mode.

thebman

Maximilian wrote: »

That's true of all you are playing is co-op. Completely (and I mean utterly) untrue if you're playing versus. I'd guess you didn't really try versus much or it just didn't appeal to you. There's a bunch of us here who have got hundreds of hours of brilliant entertainment from Versus mode.

All I play is versus mode lol. Sometimes its amazing fun but its not a scratch on TF2 where something is always happening and its usually entertaining.

I hate the respawn time for infected in VS
Playing as characters is still the same as co-op mostly except the versus characters are smarter.

It seems to very much depend on who you play with for L4D and you can't just hop on to a public game as it gets old fast there. Its only fun with people you know and I don't that many people who play the game often.

L31mr0d

thebman wrote: »

I hate the respawn time for infected in VS

That's one of the main reasons I gave up on L4D versus after a few weeks, all the waiting around. Also when you are playing on a fairly well oiled team the pubbys become incredibly boring to play against.

Even against experienced players, due to the linearity of the levels and the known pinch points, it all became too formulaic. My main gripe though was always closet and corner camping. It completely brought the game to a standstill, where the survivors wouldn't move and the SI where useless.

I'm really hoping with L4D2 that there are no obvious pinch points and that the survivors are forced to always move. (I hope the spitter is as frequent as a hunter and not rare like a tank)

Maximilian

Funny, respawn time doesn't bother me in the slightest.

It's a much better experience when you are playing with good teammates though. I probably would have given up on it a long time ago if I just played with randomers.

L31mr0d

Maximilian wrote: »

I probably would have given up on it a long time ago if I just played with randomers.

Well I was actually only playing with people in my friends list. It was either we where destroying everyone on the public servers. Or sitting around waiting for the experienced teams to get out of closets and move on.

Between waiting to spawn, and waiting for the survivors to move there was just a whole lot of waiting around.

Tbh, the spawn time didn't bother me so much as I had time to get into a good position ahead of the survivors, and then on the comms we could talk about setting the trap. But my main gripe was the fact the survivors could camp and there was nothing the SI could do about it.

Jumpy

L31mr0d wrote: »

But my main gripe was the fact the survivors could camp and there was nothing the SI could do about it.

Well in that Valve have definitely listened.

A charge into the camp or a spit into the closet and they are screwed

5uspect

Might be interesting if the Smoker's smoke could do damage.
That way you could use his in close quarters too to fume the survivors out.

Antar Bolaeisk

Jumpy wrote: »

Well in that Valve have definitely listened.

A charge into the camp or a spit into the closet and they are screwed

I agree, on expert there the other day it wasn't even funny how quickly the spitter acid could eat health.

Roll on November 17!

thebman

5uspect wrote: »

Might be interesting if the Smoker's smoke could do damage.
That way you could use his in close quarters too to fume the survivors out.

Always thought this, they need to update the first game to do this.

First time I saw a smoker explode, I assume it would hurt me and ran away lol.

Antar Bolaeisk

thebman wrote: »

Always thought this, they need to update the first game to do this.

First time I saw a smoker explode, I assume it would hurt me and ran away lol.

There are plugins for this on the first game and it does quite effectively reduce camping. It can also be quite evil if you blow up over an incapped survivor.

thebman

Antar Bolaeisk wrote: »

There are plugins for this on the first game and it does quite effectively reduce camping. It can also be quite evil if you blow up over an incapped survivor.

Yeah but Valve said they would support the game, it should be on all servers.

Nothing wrong with punishing an incapped survivor. They shouldn't have gotten incapacitated in the first place :pac:

leninbenjamin

Heh, gave it a run with the AI on expert mode there. Did the first level using the machete only. It's far too over powered.

Have to say, the AI are sh*t. Took me a few times to get to the ambulance bit. Primarily because a hunter or smoker would have me, and even though the AI was right beside me they just stood in a crowd looking on a doing nothing.

When i did get to the ambulance and triggered the alarm, Ellis wouldn't leave it and eventually got smokered, prompting the other two two run back and get huntered. Yet I was able to run the maze bit on my own and get to the safehouse again using only the machete.

Valve have a wee bit of work do methinks before this gets completed. No way I should have been able to do that entire section on my own.

thebman

leninbenjamin wrote: »

Heh, gave it a run with the AI on expert mode there. Did the first level using the machete only. It's far too over powered.

Have to say, the AI are sh*t. Took me a few times to get to the ambulance bit. Primarily because a hunter or smoker would have me, and even though the AI was right beside me they just stood in a crowd looking on a doing nothing.mpleted. No way I should have been able to do that entire section on my own.

But the AI was controlling both the infected an survivors in this case no?

So the survivor AI needs work not the infected :P

Dcully

Meh its just more of the same, i got bored of L4D pretty quick.
Doubt ill bother with L4D2.

Burgo

Dcully wrote: »

Meh its just more of the same, i got bored of L4D pretty quick.
Doubt ill bother with L4D2.

same as myself,tried L4D again a few weeks ago but just didn't enjoy it.

ragg

A lot of people saying this should be DLC. My question is would the cost be any different?

5 full campaigns have been confirmed
crash course was about €8 and that was half the length of a normal campaign.
So if each of the new campaigns was €10, that would cost the same as a full release - on top of that you get a new game mode, new characters, potentially be able to play the old maps, better graphics, new weapons & new special infected that will turn the game on its head. Also you have the New AI director that will make the SI far more intelligent & the maps will have mazes that will constantly change.

This is going to be great value for money for anyone who loves the original. The original was ground breaking, this seems like its going to take it to the next level

5uspect

The people calling for the DLC are PC gamers. We get all the lovely DLC for free.

koneko

Met Chet Faliszek a bunch of times at the EG Expo for little chats, nicest guy ever. Name dropped me during the developer session too
Look Ma, I'm famous. We're having a rematch in L4D2 when it's out.

Scavenger mode and the new Infected rooooock. So much fun.