Left 4 Dead VS

[nonamermcgee]

Anyone playing this regularly? I play pretty often with a small group of Shackers. The VS mode has really grown on me quite a bit actually, it makes a big difference playing with people you know I think.

Anyhow, http://steamcommunity.com/id/timaste is my ID if you want to friend me.

I'm putting off the DOW2 Beta because I'm afraid it'll kill my work motivation.

[Chris]

I would like to play this more regularly than I do (which is irregularly). After all these months, versus mode is finally starting to click with me, and it's becoming way more fun.

My Steam thing is this:

http://steamcommunity.com/id/chrisremo/

[nonamermcgee]

When do you get off work? I usually start around 5:30-6:00 to wind down the work day.

[n0wak]

I've been on the fence about getting this for months. If there's a regular group of people I could play with (ala GTAIV), it'd easily push me over.

[miffy495]

I have it, but rarely play it. I'd be up for the occasional game with a few thumbs.

[toblix]

Yeah, me too.

Oh, wait, now my computer will probably crash.

[James]

If anyone has it on 360, I definitely want to play it more. If I get a new PC at some point, I'll definitely get the PC version.

[nonamermcgee]

Well anyhow M-F after 5:30 til about 8 works for me. Can't do this week though, heading out of town heading up to Washington tonight and won't be back til Monday.

[Scrobbs]

Valve locking the difficulty to normal on versus kind of killed it for me and my friends. I had two servers and everything.

[nonamermcgee]

I found something interesting out yesterday! Apparently, the original mode for L4D was Versus. The normal Coop was an afterthought post Valve buying Turtlerock actually.

The other two campaigns have all the monster hookups (zombie climbing spots, etc). You can play them on servers that have the hacked vs maps enabled. It makes a lot more sense now why they have those hookups. Actually smalltown_vs is pretty good, not terribly unbalanced feeling except for a part here or there.

Also it would be cool if you could bump up the difficulty in friends only games.

[Chris]

  timaste said:

I found something interesting out yesterday! Apparently, the original mode for L4D was Versus. The normal Coop was an afterthought post Valve buying Turtlerock actually.

It must have been started before Valve bought Turtle Rock, because I played an entire co-op campaign at Valve's offices before Valve bought Turtle Rock.

[Wurtsi]

I am so in for this if the time difference allows me to actually be online at the same time as you guys.

My SteamID is http://steamcommunity.com/id/wurtsi/

[nonamermcgee]

  Chris said:

It must have been started before Valve bought Turtle Rock, because I played an entire co-op campaign at Valve's offices before Valve bought Turtle Rock.

Fuck I am misinformed!

[Garple]

If anybody is into the 360 version, that's coming to me from Gamefly soon. I've yet to game with any thumbots.

[Scratch]

I am always up for some L4D. Either versus or suvival.

My steam thing is this:

http://steamcommunity.com/id/skratche/

[Wrestlevania]

Having not really enjoyed the demo on 360 very much - and having never tried the demo on my PC at all - I've taken a punt and bought L4D via Steam just now.

Here's hoping it runs on my shonky old PC...

Scratch that--it's unplayable.

Edited February 16, 2009 by Wrestlevania

[gdf]

Yeah, I got this for the 50% off, probably wouldn't have bothered at anything more than £15 otherwise.

If anyone's up for a game: http://steamcommunity.com/id/akumax/

[n0wak]

Same. But I haven't installed it and likely won't for a while. Too busy, and the freetime I do have is devoted to the five movies I rented.

[Noyb]

Picked it up way back on Amazon's Black Friday sale, but only played through a few single player campaigns while I wrangled some driver issues that caused the game to recoverably freeze every so often. Haven't tried multiplayer yet, but it looks really fun.

Funniest AI moment: Herding my teammates into the boathouse you defend in the climax of the second campaign, and watching helplessly as the college girl methodically broke down and climbed in through a heavily barricaded window next to the open door.

http://steamcommunity.com/id/realnoyb

[DanJW]

Nick, Spaff, B0b and I finished playing through the campaigns last night. We played on advanced (we reckon Normal is too easy) and the finalés were all really tough, but incredibly fun. So many times were all got brought down right in front of the escape vehicle. One time a tank even followed Nick into the escape vehicle, which was a hilariously unfair Game Over.

In any case, I'm now ready to give Vs a shot. I had one go at it and was terrible, so go easy on me.

[David]

Heh, I played with Spaff, Nick, and...a bonus friend I don't remember (sorry) on Expert last night. It was already impossibly difficult, but contained the added bonus of people crashing out of Steam.

Great fun though, and made me want to play this game semi-regularly again.

I am Superparty.

[DanJW]

Been playing a bit of random Vs mode today, and it seems like there's some holes in the gameplay.

It's very easy for the survivors to just run for it, and it's very difficult for the infected to keep up with them if they do. There's not enough generic horde about to slow them down enough, and since the key to playing as infected seems to be patience, this is a problem.

Secondly, I remember hearing about Valve tweaking the melee ability because it was too good. Well... it still seems too good. There are teams of survivors that all spam melee and it creates a buffer zone around them that is impossible to penetrate - especially so if you spawn as a hunter or a boomer.

So yeah, random public versus-mode games are rarely fun - about 1 game in 10 is enjoyable and balanced.

I have higher hopes for playing with Thumbs friends though.

[David]

  DanJW said:

Been playing a bit of random Vs mode today, and it seems like there's some holes in the gameplay.

It's very easy for the survivors to just run for it, and it's very difficult for the infected to keep up with them if they do. There's not enough generic horde about to slow them down enough, and since the key to playing as infected seems to be patience, this is a problem.

Get better.

No, only kidding! If you're playing Infected like a shooter, you're doing it wrong, though. It's not just patience, but really getting the hang of each infected...'s strengths. Timing is probably a better watchword when it comes to playing as the zombie team. But TreesusJesus, you've gotta talk to your teammates, too. Synchronize your team's de-ghostification, and play off each others' attacks.

To address that specific case, if the survivors seem determined to run for it, a Smoker should be able to pull a the guy at the end back and distract the team. If you have a hard time catching them, time your next big attack for the next big horde alert, i.e. when they flip some switch to open a gate/raise a platform/etc.

Usually, though, you'll want the Boomer to run up ahead of the survivors in ghost mode to slow their pace from the front, with a Smoker hanging back behind the group to gobble up stragglers, and Hunters--assuming you have more than one at a time--pouncing once the survivors are otherwise distracted (barf, horde).

The last few versus matches I've played, it seemed to be a back-and-forth of gruesome victories for the infected shortly after the start of each level, so maybe it just depends on who you're playing with/against.

[Scrobbs]

Have they unlocked the difficulty for Versus mode yet?

[DanJW]

No, still locked to Normal.

Metallus, all that makes sense to me and is petty much what I'd figured out. But it almost never seems to work in practice.

Whilst discussing this with Nick, he also pointed out that 50% of servers seem to be a close-nit team of four mates, trouncing an opposing team of randoms. Even with good communication, four randoms can't beat a team that have completed the game on expert together.

The lack of a favourites bar for servers also means you can't easily go back someplace where you liked the settings and clientèle.

edit: oh and another thing. As it stands the infected have to work really hard in order to win, but the entire tone of the game suggests that it should be the other way round and it should be the survivors that have to work hard - just liek it is in the co-op campaigns.

Edited February 18, 2009 by DanJW