My thoughts on L4D2 Options

[MonkeyFiend]

Having now played a fair bit of L4D2, I thought I'd stick down my impressions so far:

To be honest I think they lost something from L4D1, the balance has changed. The technology and levels in l4D2 are indeed impressive, but I don't think they seem quite as well thought out as L4D1.

Playing L4D was an enjoyable way to spend a cheap weekend evening, but L4D2 seems to just be frustrating game after frustrating game... even when you're on the winning team. The increased damage of infected is countered by increased survivors medkits/pills etc., but this means the gradual wearing down of survivors by a string of attacks doesn't work anymore, instead the game requires devastating set piece attacks. (sewers on parish as an example)

The problem with this is that it's possible to take a battering if the other team are skilled/lucky without any means of getting clear e.g. a good boomer, followed by a spitter once the survivors are pinned. L4D relied on teamwork, whereas L4D2 is more affected by stronger or weaker players.

The next gripe I have with it is the length of the levels. For those of you in this clan who remember the BF2 days, you could literally hide in a bush (or despawn yourself) and take a 5 minute break without affecting the game too much.

L4D/L4D2 requires that all 4 players be present; you essentially start a game and coutesy dictates you play till the end. Personally I'm not keen on hour after hour of solid L4D, but then leaving can seriously screw your team. This annoyed me somewhat in L4D, I'd hoped with the guff that was crashcourse that valve had realised some people wanted some shorter games, however L4D2 is much longer than L4D hence compounding my original issues. They don't even give you the option of picking specific levels which would have been nice.

The problem is that while there are other game modes like coop, survival, scavenge etc., I've never been interested in them; for me the games are about versus and my opinion is that overall L4D2 just isn't as much fun as L4D1.

[Magik5]

Totally agree on all counts - I don't think l4d2 has much life left in it - at least for me

Even spoke briefly to fox last night about getting bf2 back on the go - can u get 1.41 on one of our servers?

[MonkeyFiend]

I can indeed get 1.41 on (at least I know how to setup the fekking bf2 server on linux as opposed to these buggy tempremental L4D ones) however we don't have a ranked licence meaning we can only install bf2 unranked. Am fairly sure I can get my mitts on a variety of versions though 1.41/1.5 and could probably dig up 1.12 for some c4 lobbing dolphin divining funzies. (Do I remember correctly that in the 1.12 days you could stick C4 to people?)

The only other point is that by paying for a by-slot option we'd have to temporarily bring down l4d servers to bring up bf2 servers, so depends who/how many are online (this doesn't include the old servers which we don't have access to install any other games on)

[Edit: have created a bf2 profile in the server configs page. Essentially click on "server configs" on the front of the SM site, login with the username/password in the members section. Click on an L4D server, stop the server, go back to the control panel, click the BF2 server and start it up.]

[Magik5]

ah so we cant set aside one from the l4d servers and keep the rest running... i dont mind about it being non ranked - though it probably wont fill up at all.

if enough people are willing to give it ago, im game - otherwise will have to go on public servers with 1.5 :/

[HYPOBOXER]

Holy Crap,

I havent even managed to play 10 games of L4D2 yet and everyone is bugging out. I think ill stick with it. BF2 is a good game but I got to the same stage with that as you lot are getting with l4d2.

[Magik6]

I think if anything it was worse with bf2 when we decided to leave, it wasn't as much the game so much as all the cheats. At least by now they'll have all moved on to the various COD's. Anyway I'm game for a little blast on Karkand once my pc is back up and running. Get your paddles out

[MonkeyFiend]

@Hypo: don't think everyone's bugging out. I think a lot of people had high hopes for l4d2 that just haven't been reached. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty I like about it and will still be playing. But suspect in coming weeks I'll probably be playing L4D1 a bit more now that the l4d2 novelty has worn off .

@5: there's ways of doing l4d/bf2 together but based on what we're paying it would probably cripple all the games on the server to run them at the same time (using slots as a calculation). For testing I've temporarily brought down L4D#2 and replaced it with an 8 slot BF2 server. To increase this to 32 would mean bringing down the other l4d servers or upgrading the virtual resources on the server to cope with 64 slots (to cope with 32slots of l4d + 32 slots of BF2 which would cost an additional £19-£24 per month).

As it stands am happy to bring down L4D servers to play other games like bf2/tf2 temporarily (e.g. bring down 2 servers for a 1x16 slot bf2 leaving an 2x8 slot l4d/l4d2 servers) but to be sensible any more than the odd game from time to time would essentially mean a change of paid-for server use (which would be more clan vote related) or to buy additional servers (which again is clan vote related, plus I have no money for that )

Remembering the old days of BF2, it took the clan a good 6 months before the servers were filling up with regulars

NB: http://www.battlefield-browser.de/index.ph...9900&pg=spy

[Magik5]

ah i see what you mean by the slot based thing now, gotcha.

well it was just a thought, the main reason was to avoid 1.5

and i may go back to giving l4d1 a go again, i agree that the 'novelty' has worn off

[MonkeyFiend]

ok, will leave the configs in there for BF2. It's got 1.5 latest build installed, if you need older version let me know what and I'll upload it (or, feel free to upload it yourself by FTP if you have a copy (just make sure you've makefiled for the right version)

Switching the server back to L4D now

[ConTenDeR^]

L4D2 is indeed harder and longer and seems more ideal for the serious gamer. But not sure I could go back to not being able to twat a zombie over the head with baseball bat.

[fido77]

i'm still havin fun on l4d1. will play bf2 anytime you want i play bf2 some nights and don't really see much change since the 1.5.

[Atty]

I kinda agree with you, monkey.

Left 4 Dead 1 was admittedly a little light on content, but what it had was incredibly polished and balanced; no unnecessary flab to worry about. L4D2 has some cool new stuff, but somehow it makes it all a bit too fiddly - suddenly there are more weapons than the game really needs (especially the two types of pump and auto shotguns that are about 95% identical and the friendly fire-tastic grenade launcher), a couple of the new infected seem to overlap roles a bit too much (the jockey in particular), and you now rarely get 2 hunters at a time, which makes coordinated survivor takedowns quite a bit harder.

I've noticed the same thing with Team Fortress 2 - what was once a wonderfully polished and streamlined experience has become increasingly bogged down with all the new unlockable content and now matches frequently degenerate into clumsy, confusing clusterfarks.

The worst thing is, everyone seems to be having super happy gay fun times with Borderlands atm and I don't got it

[K.]

err can i throw this into the can of worms

i bought my bf2 over steam, i'm thinking am i able to join a bf2 game that isnt the latest version ? or am i gonna have to get a cd version from somewhere? (i dont even have a cd/dvd drive on my pc) i took it out 6 months ago and never had the need to install it again........

[Magik5]

You can only join games that have the same patch as you. I guess you have the 1.5 patch (where everything got ruined)

Though tbh we've said many times lately we would dig out bf2 again but haven't actually done it.

But I guess I would be up for some 1.5 action if its only for a few games here and there...