L4D UPDATE! Options

[MonkeyFiend]

Valve have just updated Left 4 Dead, the changelog is:

January 14, 2009 - Left 4 Dead Update Released


Left 4 Dead has been updated with a host of fixes, tweaks and new features, including enhancements to Versus mode for improved competitive play. The full change list is below. For PC users the update will be applied automatically via Steam. Meanwhile, the update will be made available to Xbox 360 players in the coming weeks.

General

• Fixed Survivors being able to climb surfaces marked for versus infected only
• Fixed a class of SurvivorBot bugs dealing with rescuing downed players
• Players can no longer grab ladders while flying through the air after a Tank punch
• Shooting near a car with an alarm that has already fired the alarm will no longer make chirping noises
• Improved loading time
• Fixed mini-gun physics exploit
• Fixed propane tanks (and other physics objects) causing players to fall through elevators
• Fixed rare achievement bug issues
• Fixed several map exploits
• Fixed various match making issues
• Fixed NAT traversal issues

Versus Changes

• Added HUD elements to show status of other infected players
• Changed color of infected player name in chat to red
• Fixed exploit where players could spawn infected bots
• Fixed instance where a Survivor changing to the infected team would be attacked by infected bots
• Normalized special infected melee damage
• Made the following client commands cheat protected: "Kill" and "explode"
• Fixed exploit where infected players could run away and teleport back to gain health
• Players can only change teams once per map
• Players can't change teams while other players are still loading
• Tank spawns at the same % through the map for both teams in versus mode
• Made the Tank and Witch spawn directly on the escape route
• Increased chance of getting the Tank or Witch
• Fixed team swap issue

Hunter

• Easier to pounce a Survivor who is meleeing
• Increased Minimum damage a Hunter pounce does

Smoker

• Fixed Smoker tongue tolerance
• Smoker now has to be killed or the tongue destroyed for the tongue to break
• Survivor's cannot bash someone off the tongue until the Survivor being pulled is paralyzed or hanging
• Tongue attacks that fail to paralyze or hang a Survivor will use the shorter ability delay timer
• Fixed cases where the ability timer was not using the correct time
• Fixed case where you could point at a Survivor but not register a tongue hit
• Fixed Smoker tongue not targeting and landing properly through PZ ghosts
• Smoker tongue does damage every second while dragging paralyzed Survivors

Tank

• Bashable objects now appear with a red glow
• Tanks hitting a car with an alarm disables the alarm permanently
• Tank frustration timer is only reset by hitting Survivors with rocks or fists
• Reduced autoshotgun damage against Tanks

Witch

• Witch spawns at the same % through the map for both teams
• Avoids spawning within a certain % of the tank
• Fixed an exploit where the Witch could be woken up and tricked into attacking Survivors

[Magik5]

all seem interesting and i wont knock them until i play with the patch, but are there any bug fixes regarding non gameplay?

e.g. lobby bugs, connection issues etc?

[=R6= Raile]

FUCK YES

ok now that I've read thru the list, I'd say there are a lot on there that I'm excited about..

# Tank spawns at the same % through the map for both teams in versus mode

I'm not sure about this one?? doesn't this just mean that the team who goes survivor second, know exactly when the tank will show up? Kind of crap IMO as a tank isn't that hard to take out usually if you know exactly when it will show up.............

and agreed with 5.. where are all the lobby bugs to fix and stuff.. cuz there are a lot......

still very positive tho.. this is a long list atleast..

[MonkeyFiend]

After firing this up last night my main bitch is this: I was hoping melee spamming might have stamina added, but from what I can tell people were still spamming melee.

I'm also going to add a player called the_toy to the ban lists, he was saddened by the fact he can no longer bind change weapon and melee to the same button (which makes you melee spam much faster than normally possible).. noob

Agree with the comment about the tank... the 2nd team get close to the point then clear the area/set up camp and prepare

It does hwoever say fixed various matchmaking issues, so maybe the lobby bugs have been addressed

but mainly....


WHERE'S MY FECKING SDK!

[Magik5]

with this sdk can we set up our own randomness of tank/witch spawnings and limit melee spamming etc?

[=R6= Raile]

i am truely f-ed off by this tank business

[MonkeyFiend]

I've seen comments along these lines on various forums citing a balance: 1st round - neither team prepared, 2nd round - both teams prepare a set peice, ergo balance.

However this is flawed as:

1. This assumes that prepared infected = prepared survivors. I suspect even the most co-ordinated infected still can't match co-ordinated survivors, therefore the team playing survivors in the 2nd round have an advantage

2. On the 2nd round the event is triggered by the suvivors. This means they camp just before the tank point and wait for the infected to spawn, kill them, then trigger the tank. They basically control when the tank appears.. also allows them to be cocks and not trigger the tank until they clear the other infected or spent a little more time before the tank event scavenging for explosives.


I'd prefer it both teams got the same amount of tanks and the nominated tank, at the beginning of the round, was able to pick a position to spawn in at a later point in the game when the survivors got near to that point.

This would allow tanks to spawn in a strong location and for survivors aware of this to prepare while also allowing some randomness e.g. a tank may choose a weaker spawn point, in order to catch survivors off-guard

[=R6= Raile]

I completely agree with you

I don't understand why people think the second round would still be balanced. It matters very slightly if the infected know when they are getting the tank. The survivors however, it matters hugely for. Making sure they are full health, making sure they have molotovs, and making sure they hit it at the right time with other infected dead. It's totally unbalanced IMO. I think part of the problem is that currently there are way more people who don't know how to play this game as a team yet, then there are who do, and therefore most people don't see this as a problem. Most are usually not going to be coordinated enough on the survivor side of things to realize how powerful it is, whereas people like us are already playing with a lot of teamwork.

I wouldn't have such a huge problem with this if the infected had more control over the situation. I don't know about letting the infected choose where to spawn, as I'm not sure how it would work.. since how does the whole team choose? One person would have to be designated to choose or something. At what time would they choose aswell? I'm not sure about it, but the idea of giving them more control I think is the right one. Even if you just made the Tank's aggression bar go down more slowly, or, once hit says "you are becoming the tank", you actually got to choose where you spawned, just like other infected (although with a certain time limit so as to not give COMPLETE control to the tank as to where and when it spawns), I think this would become much more balanced. It would become more on the side of the infected being good playerrs, and knowing where to use the tank, as opposed to a team getting luck, or unlucky, as to where their tank spawns.

[MonkeyFiend]

The idea in my previous post was at the beggining of the round (maybe add a 20 second delay), an infected is randomly picked who will play the tank.. (just like traditionally a random infected is thrown into the role of a tank)

they could then cheese around the map and select a point to spawn (obviously not at the very beggining/end safe room) - the moment they pick the tank spawn point they'd go back to regular infected with the rest of their team and play through the game as normal infected.

Once the survivors get near to the point previously selected for the tank spawn, the original player would become the tank.

This would allow infected to place tanks in strong positions and allow preparation, it would also mean that survivors (knowing where the strong places and therefore likely locations for tank spawns are) could prepare where they think a tank will be. As for randomness, it also means infected could gamble and pick a less strong spawn point to try and maximise the advantage of surprise.

So the options for infected would be to

A: maximise the strongest locations for a tank (but risk the survivors preparing for it)
B: use a weaker starting location and maximise the element of surprise

I also forgot another point, as it stands you don't always get a tank on a level, so if one doesn't come for the first team, then the 2nd team know they are not going to get a tank and can prepare accordingly e.g. picking pipe bombs over molotovs

[=R6= Raile]

i like it, but one problem that would have to be worked out..
running around the map at the beginning of the level means you aren't playing while everyone else is. if you have to run to the end of the level, that could take a LONG time (especially on the elevator bit of NM4!)

[Magik5]

instead of choosing at beginning, have a magic button like n or sumthin so you can spawn your tank whenever you choose throughout the level

[=R6= Raile]

i'd have to say isn't that getting too complicated? and I think its taking a bit too much of the randomness out of the game..

I posted this on the L4D forums:

to clarify with an example:

AI puts tank in at a random % of the map in round 1, let's say 38%.
One of round 1's infected takes control in the spectating/ghost mode (whatever you call it), and has time to spawn the tank in, where they choose. Just like if someone spawned in as a boomer/etc.

Round 2 starts, and at 38%, one of round 2's infected takes control of the tank, in "ghost" mode, and chooses where THEY want to spawn in.

Both infected teams get the tank at the same time on both rounds, but get to individually choose where they spawn.

This gives:
- Still having randomness, but in control of the players. If one team chooses to spawn the tank in a bad spot, it's their fault.
- Survivors still surprised.
- neither team gets a tank sooner then the other team

This however wouldn't eliminate the fact that the second team would know there wouldn't be a tank before 38% of the map complete, but atleast this would be a step in the right direction...

[Magik5]

whats complicated about pressing n

[=R6= Raile]

well mostly because it could potentially change the way the game plays quite a bit..
atleast in my opinion, my idea works more along the ways the game has already been created.. making the tank spawn in more like the rest of the infected..

i didnt mean it like your idea was bad, just thought mine would play a bit better...

also i really dont like the idea of COMPLETE control over where and when the tank spawns..

[Magik5]

i just wanted to make it sound like you had 0 clue on how to press the n button, because i felt it was necessary to do at that point in time.


although i dont like the sound of a few changes, im going to reserve my comments until ive played with/got used to the patch, because i may be pleasantly surprised

[Foxx_in_Socks]

played the update today,
on my first game, the first lvl of no mercy - we got a tank spawn in the house, which of course with so little room, shit weapons and no molotovs killed us all.
the next teams turn to be survivor just didnt jump down the hole to the ground floor, leaving it impossible for the tank to get them - they threw a molotov and all was over as fast as you can say whatafuckingtwatingidea.

[=R6= Raile]

yeah fox that is exactly what i expect was going to happen..

the tank has very little tactics it can use.. the survivors really only have tactics to defeat it... so as soon as you give the survivors complete control of the situation, they are going to win most times..

@ magik, dont get me wrong dude i think the patch is awesome.. this one thing is the only thing that i dont like.. im just hoping that it isnt such a huge deal that it ruins all the other good things. im very worried that going second as survivors is going to be everything...

[MonkeyFiend]

i like it, but one problem that would have to be worked out..
running around the map at the beginning of the level means you aren't playing while everyone else is. if you have to run to the end of the level, that could take a LONG time (especially on the elevator bit of NM4!)

nah, not running - flying round spectate style in fast speed, just like you do when you pick an infected. Also a 20 sec delay should give that player enough time to fly round, pick a decent location and be back in time for a cup of tea and the start of the game

[=R6= Raile]

that's true

I still like the randomness of the game tho and that steals it a bit too much for my liking, but it would definitely work better then what it is now!

[MonkeyFiend]

Also in other patch updates I've reduced the randomness of players so that Raile always get Zoey

(joking.. although technically possible )

[Magik5]

is it possible to randomise the infected your given, because sometimes its annoying when your a smoker or boomer or whatever 3 times in a row

[=R6= Raile]

dude its all about timing..

you come in as a smoker 3 times in a row, because everytime you get to the point of spawning in, your other 3 infected are already a boomer and 2 hunters..
because generally you all spawn in and die at the same speed...
eventually someone lives longer then the norm or dies faster, and the pattern is broken..

if you want to be something else just spawn in and hang out for a bit in a closet.....

[Magik5]

yeh i get that...

i meant that could it check what infected you were last then choose another for you instead of having to wait around whilst the survivors get away.

although this has its cons as well because it could give u a boomer instead of a hunter/smoker when theres a last man standing and you need him capacitated

but nvm, how are you finding the patch now youve played it?

[MonkeyFiend]

I believe that would only be possible with sv_cheats cvar on; as raile says theres a pattern to the spawns, the game will always spawn a smoker, a boomer then the rest hunters (with a small chance of a 3 hunter setup) - to adjust this would effecitvely mean altering the ratio of infected - which would allow, for example, 4 smokers. While comedy, the game wouldn't allow this setup without cheats turned on

[fido77]

sounds like this game is going to get old quick.

[MonkeyFiend]

nah... most of the appeal of L4D is the pure teamwork, which to be honest people still haven't sorted out - players will be getting better the more they work as a team and tactics will change

[=R6= Raile]

it would be cool, 5, if as you are about to spawn in, if multiple of your mates are dead and havn't been assigned an infected to spawn in as yet, that you could choose. as in lets say two infected are alive, as a boomer and a hunter, and you and one of your mates are dead.. that when its your turn to spawn in, it would give you an infected to spawn in as, lets say it gives you hunter, but you could then press a button, similar to changing teams, where it would list what was left available, and you could choose. in this case you could pick a hunter or a smoker..

that would help in those cases where the survivors are almost to the safe house, and everyone is dead but you are the only one left to spawn in, and it puts you in as something useless, like a boomer, when you really need a smoker...

[=R6= Raile]

to answer your question about the patch, i havn't found anything i dont like.. with the exception of the same tank/witch thing which i think is borderline going to ruin the game and they better do something quick.. last nights games i was in, only one tank came throughout 2 campaigns. no joke. but that one tank that came, for the first round, it rocked the survivors, for the second round, we smoked it without much fuss. i'm expecting it to only get worse as people figure out more ways to exploit the knowledge they have of where the tank will spawn. people who are saying that the infected get the equal knowledge, are wrong IMO. while sure you know your tank is going to come in at a certain area, you have no control when the survivors cross that mark, and the guy who takes control of it usually doesn't even take control of it till its already half way run to the survivors. last night some dude took control of it after we already had it at half health. i dont see how that knowledge for the infected helps them much at all.

the smoker isn't as powerful as people were making it sound. the tongue seems to be knocked off just as easily as before, which is annoying.. however, the fact that it does damage now while its dragging you back, as opposed to only doing damage once it gets you to a point where you aren't moving any more, really makes the smoker start to be as powerful as the other infected.. all in all the smoker is better.

adjusting the melee of the hunters down is great. it was almost so powerful before that pouncing on a guy wasn't worth it unless it was a kill shot. now, the pounce and the melee are similarily damaging so they both are good in their own right

[Magik5]

nice to read, though i was hoping the smokers tongue would be more resilient.

as for the normalising of meleeing, have the lowerd the amount of dmage a hunter does or have they raised the damage amount the others can dish out? guess ill find out tonight heh

[=R6= Raile]

in case you havn't already answered your own melee question..

before the melee was as follows:

hunter 10 damage
smoker 2
boomer 2

now the damage is:

hunter 6 damage
smoker 4
boomer 4

so much more balanced. i think its a good thing. no more of getting boomered, and realizing after 10 seconds that of all those zombies, one was a hunter meleeing you, and took you from full health to nothing

[Magik5]

but isnt that part of the fun?

if you look closely enough you can still distinguish between zombies and hunters, apart from the exception of when your covered in bile (but tbh all people do at that point is melee whore anyway so that counteracts most melee attacks from any infected anyway)

i was hoping boomer/smoker melee damage would have been higher then hunters because they are much less agile and one melee attack from a survivor pretty much means the end of your life as that current infected, because you stumble and cant melee for the next 2/3 seconds which is plently of time for the survivors to destroy you.

id kinda like it if a melee attack from an infected would cause the survivor to stumble (even for a split second) because atm imo the melee side of things is incredibly unbalanced.

just a few thoughts...

[=R6= Raile]

i see what you are saying about making the hunter do less damage. it's interesting but i wonder how it would play out balance wise. woul d have to see it in action. it makes sense tho

and yeah i know usually you should know there is a hunter on you meleeing you, but once in a while you dont notice him on you right away, and before, it would only take a few swipes and you lost all your health.. now atleast you have a bit more time before you lose everything

[MonkeyFiend]

I like the huntard change - melee is reduced and although the pounce damage is reduced it's frequency is increaced - meaning you take more damage if teammates leave you getting smacked, but less damage if they rscue you quickly.

Or in Fox's case, you die as she skips off to the safe room to 'save herself' for the 50th time

[=R6= Raile]

i don't think fox has the "back 2 help" achievement yet

agreed on the damage tho for hunter. i think its much more balanced now. before it seemed pouncing on a guy wasnt worth it over melee unless he was on his own and you knew you'd be on him for a while

[Magik5]

pouce does 0 damage on first contact, so if u get knocked off/killd straight away its a waste
if u go in meleeing and u land a hit thats 6 points

6>0

(however, 5>6)


meleeings still the better option if you know ur not gna last long because thyre all sticking together

[MonkeyFiend]

yeah, but it's not all about your 6 points.. don't forget decent height/distance pounces = big point/damage.. plus you may want to pounce to slow down, separate, confuse, push off a ledge or teporarily reduce the firepower of the survivors.

[Magik5]

yeh, which is why meleeing is very unbalanced in comparison to pouncing as theres no option for getting extra damage in by jumping from up high etc - and that goes for all infected i guess.

[=R6= Raile]

i disagree that it's unbalanced. i really don't think the melee attack is meant to be a primary attack. i think theres a time and place for the melee attack, and as the points stand now it seems even to me.

i mean, the melee attack used to do 10 points!!! thats 10% damage in one swipe... its just way too easy to run up and swipe a guy.... thats why we were using it all the time!
kinda pointless to have a secondary attack be so good that you rarely ever use the primary one

[Magik5]

fair enough :] there are times when melee is the better option over primary though, im sure youll agree

as i said above, i still feel that the boomer/smoker melee should cause more damage then a hunter because they are less agile and you rarely ever get more then one swipe in with them before u get killed...

[=R6= Raile]

yeah absolutely.. i'm just saying i think its more balanced now. pounce has much more upside... but if someone gets you off the victim right away then it doesn't do much... whereas melee is fairly straight forward
i think its a good balance. upsides to both

and i agree you make a good point about the smoker and boomer. i'm not sure why they dont do more damage

[Magik5]

yeh when i saw the changelog state "meleeing normalised" you assume theyve all been made to cause same amount of damage


have to say though, i dont hate the tank positioning as much as i thought, although id still prefer the randomness back.
i think it has its benefits and downfalls, much like most other aspects of the game

[=R6= Raile]

well i'll completely disagre with you on the tank one if you don't mind

[Magik5]

group 1: ah sweet, a moly, best keep this incase we get a tank
group 2: ah sweet a moly, best keep this for when its time for the tank

both groups still have a moly, and have to fight them on the same area/terrain

[MonkeyFiend]

waaat? Firstly the moly/pipebomb placing do not match between rounds...

1st team, not wishing to dilly-dally picked up a molotov and 2 pipebombs - these were just available on the way.. a tank came, kicked some ass and avoided getting lit..

The 2nd team knowing they were about to ge a tank scoured the place for molotovs (which they packed several of), cleared the surrounding area first and the moment the tank popped it's head out was lit-up 'apocalypse now' style

Likewise when levels came with no tank, the 2nd team used this knowledge to get stocked up on pipebombs instead of molys, since these were of more use :S

I think it would be nice to allow 2 modes of play - competetive and random.

Random: like the old days, random weapons, random tanks, random witches
Competetive: both teams get same weapons, tanks in the same place etc., to make it more balanced for clan matches and tournaments.

[=R6= Raile]

i agree sometimes it happens like that, but that isn't the case all the time.

over the past few days there have only been a few times where that happened for me. usually, atleast on my team, we come up with a gameplan for who does when when fighting the tank. sometimes you come up with a plan and it doesn't work, but a few times it has worked perfectly and we were barely hit.
sure sometimes before the patch you'd have 10-20 seconds from when you heard the tank to when it hit, to come up with a plan and try to force the tank to fight you where you wanted, but also sometimes he'd surprise the hell out of you and completely screw you. now that never happens.

lets just say i hate it

[=R6= Raile]

wrote mine before reading monkey's post..

Everything Monkey wrote has happened to me, and I completely agree with the bit about two modes. why the hell not anyways? more options is easy and has never been a bad thing.
still like my idea about doing something with giving control of the tank spawn to the players..

auto-spawn is the stupidest thing ever and i just dont get it

[Magik5]

greed, autospawn = fail.

monkey u gaylord go make a mod =]

[MonkeyFiend]

ok, I've made some code to turn tank spawns back to the old way

Will test it later tonight


Posting some bumpf here to remind me:

"director_tank_bypass_max_flow_travel" = "1500"
game cheat
"versus_boss_flow_max_intro" = "0.75"
game cheat
- Max fraction of map flow for tank/witch spawn location within the first map of a campaign
"versus_tank_chance_finale" = "0.1"
game cheat
- Chance of a tank spawning within the finale map of a campaign
"versus_tank_chance" = "0.75"
game cheat
- Chance of a tank spawning within a regular versus map
"versus_boss_spawning" = "1"
game cheat
- Enable alternative spawning logic for tanks and witches in versus mode
"versus_boss_flow_max_finale" = "0.6"
game cheat
- Max fraction of map flow for tank/witch spawn location within the finale map of a campaign
"versus_boss_flow_max" = "0.9"
game cheat
- Max fraction of map flow for tank/witch spawn location
"director_ai_tanks" = "0"
game cheat
"versus_boss_flow_min_intro" = "0.5"
game cheat
"versus_boss_flow_min" = "0.1"
game cheat
- Min fraction of map flow for tank/witch spawn location
"versus_boss_padding_max" = "0.3"
game cheat
- How far apart the tank/witch have to be along the flow
"versus_boss_flow_min_finale" = "0.25"
game cheat
- Min fraction of map flow for tank/witch spawn location within the finale map of a campaign
"versus_boss_padding_min" = "0.1"
game cheat
- How far apart the tank/witch have to be along the flow
"versus_tank_chance_intro" = "0.3"
game cheat
- Chance of a tank spawning within the first map of a campaign

setting it so that both teams get a tank, but the point from which you can get the tank on the map is up to 100% the distance of the map means that the 2nd team will get the tank anywhere on the map, hence random again

Autospawns will probably be harder... I'll take a look

[Magik5]

thats quick o0

pr0!

would be nice if you could avoid getting a tank as soon as you open the safe room door though lol =]

[=R6= Raile]

I was going to say, maybe 100% isn't good? Play testing is the way forward tho..

And yeah, all that auto-spawn BS on finale's.... fuckin hell. like auto-spawn me in as a boomer in front of the mini-gun on NM5. 3 times in a row the other night. I was not impressed.

[MonkeyFiend]

eesh, may have to look for another way - the 100% is map variance as in if team 1 gets a tank in the middle of the map, with 100% set team 2 could get a tank at any point in the map. Setting it to 75% is 75% of the map distance away from the first tank, not from the beginning of the map.

As in if team 1 gets a tank 15% through the map, setting the tank to 75% would still mean you could get a tank at the beginning and anything up to 90% through the map. It's either all or nothing

[=R6= Raile]

if that's the case, I'd be interested to see what setting it to 50% would do? or even 20%? even that would atleast vary it up enough for the survivors to not know EXACTLY where it comes. 20% of the map too would make the tank possibly come in a whole different area of the map then the other team had.. and then after some playtesting could always adjust it higher.

[Magik5]

i guess this means the server wont be ranked if these settings are applied?

[=R6= Raile]

servers are ranked?

[Magik5]

as in, you wont be able to get achievements etc

[=R6= Raile]

ahhhh

[fido77]

what kind of stuff do u get the more u play? is there anything to work towards like the badges in bf2?

[Magik5]

it works off achievements, which you get for completing certain tasks like completing a whole campaign without healing once etc

theres 50 in total to get, and ive got 40 so far, but theres some i dont think ill ever get

[fido77]

so, it doesn't take long to get all them?

[Magik5]

majority no... but some require alot of skill... hence why i cant get them

[Magik6]

I have 42 6>5

[Magik5]

i want that no healing one next...