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.

[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