| Left 4 Dead Pro Mod |
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| Written by evol | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sunday, 19 April 2009 01:15 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Last night I was playing a great 4v4 versus game with 7 friends. I really do love Left 4 Dead, but MAN, can we stop with the noobification? They keep "balancing" the game with updates, but what it comes down to is they are trying to level the ground for unskilled players, which means that my skill counts for less in the game. Don't believe me? Here are some of the updates I'm talking about:
Not all of these are bad in their entirety, but in general, the kind of "balancing" that is happening isn't "survivor versus special infected" balancing, it's "noob versus seasoned gamer" balancing, meaning your hard earned FPS skills are no longer paying off. Let's visit the above mentioned updates 1 at a time: Easier to pounce a Survivor who is meleeing What this ACTUALLY means is that when you play as a survivor, and you see a noob hunter pouncing you from head on, your melee counts for nothing. He gets to pounce you anyway, even when your melee swing is perfect. As far as I know, this change was implemented because during events, survivors tend to all group in a closet or a corner, and it's difficult to do any damage. Talking about fixing the wrong problem! Corner and closet camping is a serious problem in this game. The real solution would be to not allow survivors to clip through each other, but make them block one another. That way they can't all get in the same corner. Make them spread out, and risk friendly fire damage. Survivors cannot bash someone off the tongue until the Survivor being pulled is paralyzed or hanging All I have to say about this one is LIES! When someone gets hooked by the smoker's tongue, a single melee on your teammate frees him every time. He doesn't have to be paralyzed or hanging. Besides, he's going to get stuck on the first pebble he comes across anyway. Increased Minimum damage a Hunter pounce does This means that stupid hunters that attack 4 tightly grouped survivors, by themselves, with no collaboration with their team, when no hordes are around, still get a consolation prize. Strategy not required to do damage. Normalized special infected melee damage When the game first came out, smokers and boomers only did 2 damage for their melee hits. That was pretty weak and annoying. But hunters did a whopping 10 damage on their scratches. It was the best way to try and take people down. Their 10 damage has been reduced to 6. 8 I could have lived with, but 6? The point here is that an experienced player knows to watch out for scratching hunters, and knows exactly what the scratch sounds like, so they can either avoid it, or respond quickly to it. Oh but wait, that's too hard. Let's just reduce the damage. Then it's easy for EVERYONE. Awesome. Increased the cone in which a Smoker can grab a target Can't aim? Well we'll just build a few auto-aim hacks into the game for the smoker! Oh, but we won't give you any control over it. So when you try to grab a survivor that is just a few feet away from you with his back turned, the "cone of glory aim hacks" will SKIP him, and pull his teammate that is 25 feet away, on the other side of your screen. Doesn't matter that you were domed right on the closer guys head. Then the guy that's 5 feet away will be alerted to your presence, turn around, and shoot you. Come on. As if the smoker wasn't already completely broken. Now you can't even choose who you're going to smoke. Reduced the damage that burning Hunters do to pounced victims Again, experienced players know how to use this, and know to watch for it. FPS skills should transfer from game to game, but for a game to be unique, there needs to be nuances and tricks that only come with in-game experience. This was one of those tricks. I didn't learn it right away, but when I found out, I kept it like a secret, because it gave me a huge advantage. And you know what? I deserved that advantage. I'd put hundreds of hours into the game. That's called an investment, and I expect it to pay off. Well, tax season came around, and I guess I was in a higher bracket. Now l4d noobs are getting stimulus checks from my hard earned experience, because all the good strategies like this are being removed. Oh and did they say reduced the damage? That's a typo. It should say "removed". Reduced autoshotgun damage against Tanks So inexperienced players would get the tank for the first time ever, and see that all 4 survivors were standing in the same corner, all with auto shotguns. Tank is dead before he even reaches them. While I don't completely disagree with this update, it's still indicative of the trend to balance the game the wrong way. A good infected team doesn't let the tank attack alone. The survivors need to get boomed first, so they have reduced mobility and reduced visibility. The hunters and smokers need to help the tank by impeding the survivors so the tank can get his punches in. Boomer died without getting his vomit on? The player who is the tank should be willing to give up his chance as tank and let it pass to the next player. That's good team work and good strategy. Doing things like reducing the effectiveness of guns or strategies is never the right way to fix a problem. Introduced fatigue to the melee attack in versus mode. You will see a HUD display when your melee swing is cooling down Akin to "Easier to pounce a Survivor who is meleeing", this is the wrong way to fix a more serious problem, the problem being closet and corner camping. The right solution for this is to not let survivors occupy the same position. In every game, during every event, all 4 survivors get in the same corner, hold back, and guess what? They can shoot all day long and not hurt each other. They can only be attacked from the front. By alternating shots and melees, the melee cool down does nothing. Smokers can't pull them off, because a single melee frees the pulled survivor before he leaves the group. Even if they get pounced, a quick melee and subsequent shot kills the hunter, and you've done a max of 6 damage. Doesn't matter if they get boomed, because the hordes aren't doing any damage to them. The door in NM2, the lift in NM3, the elevator in NM4....it's all the same. Get under the pipes, get in the corner by the lift, get behind the hospital bed......no damage. The HARDEST PART OF THE MAP, and the survivors take zero damage. Please please PLEASE stop treating the symptoms, and fix the real problem: CORNER CAMPING. Make the survivors take FF damage when they shoot while occupying the same space, or make them block one another so they CAN'T occupy the same space. I don't like these "noobification" trends in gaming. It's like FPS socialism. I've worked hard to be good at FPS games with my friends. I don't want some noob killing me because Valve decided that everyone, regardless of skill, should have the same chance at winning. Lest any of you think I'm just a complainer, I am happy to announce that I'll be working on a L4D Pro Mod. I got the idea while chatting with a friend today about our games last night, and started working on it right away. 30 minutes later, we were playing a quick versus game, testing the new smoker tongue behavior. Here's what we have so far:
When I figure out how, I plan on making these changes as well:
So what does everyone think? Is Valve being too "socialistic" with the L4D updates? Is it TOO noob friendly, in that your skill counts for less? Would you be interested in a "pro mod"? I anxiously await your comments. In the meantime, I have some more work to do on Pro Mod before I play an awesome versus game with my buddies tonight.
Note: I know the DLC is coming out in 2 days, and certainly other updates will come with up. I'll update this article as needed. Hopefully the DLC doesn't bring even MORE "socialistic balancing" with it. Time will tell...
-EVOL
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| Last Updated on Sunday, 19 April 2009 03:06 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sam has made some initial modifications to vs mode and we have been
