Valve Responds on Left 4 Dead Versus Difficulty

[DigiQ8]

Erik Johnson has responded to the storm over Valve's decision to lock Left 4 Dead Versus difficulty at Normal. He said:

The game was built to play against other people, not fight the horde and fight other real people. Its also nearly impossible for players to know what kind of experience they are going to be getting into.

He also revealed that Valve is currently hosting around 5,000 L4D game servers that are powered by what he described as "mostly quad core CPUs in a blade setup." In other news we're still hosting one PC L4d server.

 

[CyberPitz]

So making the game on Versus too easy?....I've seen all too many times, even with both teams being skilled, the humans get through relatively easy. Sure, they are health packless, and are in the yellow, but they all make it.

Why lock it anyway? Why not just fix it to where when you say you want Normal, you don't join a server with Expert...

 

[NeptuneUK]

L4D on versus at normal is waaay too easy for the human players.
It makes the game less fun.


boooo!

 

[perrkele]

L4D on versus at normal is waaay too easy for the human players.
It makes the game less fun.


boooo!

Agreed. It should be for players to decide which difficulty level they want to use. I got to play versus a few times on advanced/expert and it was much more fun than the average match on normal. It was "who gets further" instead of "who has more health left".

 

[chimpmunk]

On normal, it's pretty easy to win in the green if you rush through the whole level.

 

[Mutley]

5000 Quad Core Servers? Yikes.

 

[herbster]

I'm just pleased that they took the time to respond to all the complaints, even though it doesn't seem to be changing the mood regarding their decision. But with time, I am sure, this move will go the way of the Hydra.

One can only hope.

 

[Eejit]

le sigh

It's only "nearly impossible for players to know what kind of experience they are going to be getting into" because of their matchmaking and lobby system. A bit of tweaking there and there would be no confusion.

 

[Marler]

If they don't want people to change it mid game, then make it possible so that they can't change it once the server is up and running!

 

[Absinthe]

I don't own the game, but this doesn't make much sense to me.

If players are changing the difficulty mid-match, just restrict that. Players don't know what they're getting into? If your lobby and matchmaking system hasn't changed much from the demo, then maybe you can... I don't know... improve upon that...?

Locking Versus down to normal seems like a really nonsense idea.

 

[leib10]

I played Versus as the Infected for the first time last night. It was pretty difficult unless a Tank was spawned. In my opinion the odds could be swung a bit towards the Infected, despite the fact that they have complete knowledge of the battlefield and are able to respawn. They simply die too easily and don't deal very much damage.

 

[Born]

On normal, it's pretty easy to win in the green if you rush through the whole level.

Honestly, I couldn't actually believe this until I witnessed it for myself. Up until now, every server I've played on has a fairly steady, cautious pace with increased/decreased speed throughout different parts of a level. This is the game I hoped it would turn out to be and was absolutely delighted when my wish came true.

Now onto my believed problem. In a full server, I was infected, with the Survivors completely focused on one goal: rush through the whole level. And it worked relatively easy for them. This was on the No Mercy campaign by the way. When the game begins, both Survivors AND Infected spawn in the safehouse. In my game, the Survivors quickly grabbed a health pack/other gun then ran straight out. This all occured very fast, and the Infected were only just about getting into position. The only real chance we had of crushing their momentum was with the Tank. In the Subway level, our Tank successfully killed the whole enemy team (which was incredibly satisfying).

Sure, you can fulfill your job as a Hunter/Smoker/Boomer, but when everyone sticks together while constantly on the move, killing Hunters about 3-5 seconds after they've pounced on someone/quickly meleeing a teammate who has been constricted, it's actually very difficult to slow the rushing Survivors. Also, as a Hunter, it's FAR easier to pounce on a still Survivor. However, when they're rushing about together, it's extremely awkward to achieve a good pounce without simply jumping on someone to find that you've done no damage at all, followed by a swift death.

Don't get me wrong, I love this game, but I wish that Valve could address this rushing issue. Because L4D is so complicated, I can't really offer many possible solutions myself. However, one solution I would DEFINETLY propose is that Valve reduces the rate of melee. When spectating the rushing Survivors I noticed that while running through corridors in the Mercy Hospital level, nearly everyone was simply shoving every zombie in their path aside. When a boomer vomited on somebody, they would simply leg it as fast as possible, without other teammates that victim. If you're surrounded by zombies, you should rely on your teammates to shoot them off of you while shoving them away, not become a superhero and frantically bash mouse2 in a focused direction to clear a path. Ever since the early gameplay trailers I was worried about the continuous, fast melee rate.

Another suggestion is to increase the AI Director's 'aggression' when the Survivors are moving very fast through the level. Increase zombie horde frequency/ numbers, for example. Next time, if I find a game like this again, I think I'll quit out, since I don't think rushing levels is the way the game is supposed to be played. Anyone else feel the same way about all of this? :x

 

[hool10]

Normal on Versus is a good thing. It promotes teamwork for the Infected rather than the horde easily killing the Survivors on Expert. That's another thing is that Expert mode is just too hard. The game often time cheats and in general, is just too hard.

 

[Eejit]

You realise there's a difficulty between Expert and Normal, right?

Advanced was the best for Versus. Best of both worlds.

 

[Kinslayer]

Normal difficulty is fine.

You guys are forgetting that infected teamwork is necessary, as is survivor teamwork. Have a boomer get in a good hit, grab 3 of them (1 smoker, 2 hunter), and leave the one who's getting beat down by the horde. It's a lot harder when they have T2 weapons, but you can pull this off with an organized team, against an organized team with a good chance of success. Add that to the respawns and the tank, and the survivors aren't getting to the safehouse.

Keep in mind they can't run when being hit by a zombie.

I won a friends-only game 6300 - 430 using this strat. The only reason they got to 400 is because of the bugged scoring when you get a really small distance. They weren't bad players at all; we, as the infected, just exploited every opportunity we got, and it paid off. Attacking alone just hurts your team; we all waited until we could all spawn, and then put the hurt on them.

And advanced difficulty is ridiculous as well. The real scoring is survivor vs survivor; therefore, all you're trying to do is knock their health down enough and kill 1 - 2 so they don't get the big multiplier at the end. The avg. distance traveled is the smallest thing out of all of them. If you manage to kill them before they get to the end, great; you just got a reward by knocking about 400+ points off their score.

And if more servers would make the melee cooldown standard (like the Valve servers are), there wouldn't be as much of a problem with closet-bashing. The only thing Valve could do to fix that would be to lock it, but then that'd incite even more whining.

 

[Absinthe]

Normal on Versus is a good thing. It promotes teamwork for the Infected rather than the horde easily killing the Survivors on Expert. That's another thing is that Expert mode is just too hard. The game often time cheats and in general, is just too hard.

Why not leave it up to the players?

Normal may be good for you. It can less satisfying or even boring for others.

 

[hool10]

Why not leave it up to the players?

Normal may be good for you. It can less satisfying or even boring for others.

One hit from the horde on Expert brings a guy down to 80 and on Advanced it's less. IMO it should be Normal or Advanced.

 

[Krynn72]

5000 Quad Core Servers? Yikes.

Thats 5000 servers on quad core machines. Not 5000 quad core machines each hosting one server..

 

[diluted]

Just make it so that the difficulty can't be changed in-game, only in the lobby, and add a 'filter by difficulty' option when finding a server. So then players WILL know what they are 'getting into' because they won't get connected to a server with a different difficulty level than the one they specified. This is a no-brainer, I don't really know what Valve's thinking here..

Advanced Versus Mode was a lot of fun, normal is pretty boring.

 

[highlander]

thatsa lotta serversa!

 

[Neutrino]

The game was built to play against other people, not fight the horde and fight other real people.

That makes very little sense as the only viable way to damage survivors as a boomer is through the horde. On a larger scale it doesn't make sense either as the horde is almost always essential to bringing down the humans (aside from the tank).

I fail to see what's wrong with giving people a choice.

 

[63]

Dial down the amount of placed health packs, problem solved duuuurr.

 

[bigdeezy23]

The fact of the matter is, Valve pissed off customers, unnecessarily. There's a news post here at hl2.net just a few entries below this one that has Gabe Newell talking about DRM and how it's stupid to decrease value of your product when you should be increasing value. Apply that to this situation and it's the same thing. They've given a player less options because the mandated feature is only reaching out to the lowest common denominator of gamers. Why not let more advanced players who WANT to get their shit ruined by expert zombies have their game mode too? It's stupid.

They need to fix their match-making system anyway. I want to be able to join a No Mercy server playing the Finale level and on Expert difficulty that's not on Friends-Only. Why do I have to bind one of my keys to the buggy "openserverbrowser"? 60% of those matches won't connect because some gibberish mentioned in the console. The only way is to set it to the No Mercy campaign on Expert and join a game in progress, and hope I'm in the level I wanted. Ridiculous.

For this Versus mode, why couldn't they make it so that the players can start at whatever they want and call it to a vote if they wanna change it, unless the admin wants the difficulty locked or something? Or that players can join a locked server ahead of time so they know what they're getting into?

 

[PriNcE oF SpAcE]

Just make it so that the difficulty can't be changed in-game, only in the lobby, and add a 'filter by difficulty' option when finding a server. So then players WILL know what they are 'getting into' because they won't get connected to a server with a different difficulty level than the one they specified. This is a no-brainer, I don't really know what Valve's thinking here..

Advanced Versus Mode was a lot of fun, normal is pretty boring.

^^ this.

hope Valve are still listening and will implement it in the future...they already have the code there for campaign mode so it shouldn't be too hard..

 

[Hunter-Killer]

The fact of the matter is, Valve pissed off customers, unnecessarily. There's a news post here at hl2.net just a few entries below this one that has Gabe Newell talking about DRM and how it's stupid to decrease value of your product when you should be increasing value. Apply that to this situation and it's the same thing. They've given a player less options because the mandated feature is only reaching out to the lowest common denominator of gamers. Why not let more advanced players who WANT to get their shit ruined by expert zombies have their game mode too? It's stupid.

They need to fix their match-making system anyway. I want to be able to join a No Mercy server playing the Finale level and on Expert difficulty that's not on Friends-Only. Why do I have to bind one of my keys to the buggy "openserverbrowser"? 60% of those matches won't connect because some gibberish mentioned in the console. The only way is to set it to the No Mercy campaign on Expert and join a game in progress, and hope I'm in the level I wanted. Ridiculous.

For this Versus mode, why couldn't they make it so that the players can start at whatever they want and call it to a vote if they wanna change it, unless the admin wants the difficulty locked or something? Or that players can join a locked server ahead of time so they know what they're getting into?

Agreed. The servers are still absolute balls, I mean 5000 servers where 90% of them are unplayedable. If I ever want to play this game I have to get some of my friends together for a game because I've given up searching for a game as its either laggy as Hell or you don't even get into the game. The "openserverbrowser" is a joke and if I remember correctly back during the "demo" someone said on here that they were going to put in the "Find Server Option" well... where is it? Also, the very idea that they are locking the Versus mode to Normal is insane, not allowing people simple choice. I personally thought it was already too hard for the Infected to win and now they've made it even tougher. There is no real logic in stopping people from having the choice and their reasoning of saying "it's because your meant to be fighting the human players" is just stupid. I do sometimes wonder where Valve get their ideas...

 

[Kyorisu]

The server browser works perfectly for every server I've tried. Then again we have dedicated server networks run by ISPs, so shit just works at good pings.

 

[fri][ish]

First of all, you have to understand that it is NOT survivors vs. infected. It's your team's survivor score, vs. the other teams survivor score. The Infected don't "win", they just try to hold down the survivor teams score.

This is the way I see it. Valve is trying to balance the difficulty between the two teams. If you put it to Advanced, then it's now harder for the Survivors, yet Easier for the Infected. If you go to Expert, then it's insanely easy for the Infected team, and ridiculously hard for the survivor team. Conversely, if you go to Easy, then it's now insanely easy for the Survivor team, and ridiculously hard for the Infected team.

What Valve is saying, imo, is that since you don't choose what team you get dumped onto, you have no idea when joining a server of a specific difficulty, if you're going to be bored by the ease (Expert Infected, or Easy Survivors), or frustrated by the difficulty (Expert Survivors, Easy Infected). This will cause people to leave, instead of stick it out.

Now I think a lot of this is some inherent problems with the VS mode itself, and I think Valve need to work on that specifically. But for now, I agree with them that to balance the difficulty across both teams is the best option, and Normal seems to do that, with some advantage to the Survivors, as it probably should be. What's the point in playing a 30 second round as Survivors when you get ambushed right out of the gate?

I think that the solution should be a unique "difficulty" level, specifically for VS mode. Something where the AI Director maybe can adjust the difficulty based on the teams balance, to try and even the experience for both teams. That would be my vote.

 

[Eejit]

What Valve is saying, imo, is that since you don't choose what team you get dumped onto, you have no idea when joining a server of a specific difficulty, if you're going to be bored by the ease (Expert Infected, or Easy Survivors), or frustrated by the difficulty (Expert Survivors, Easy Infected). This will cause people to leave, instead of stick it out.

Now I think a lot of this is some inherent problems with the VS mode itself, and I think Valve need to work on that specifically. But for now, I agree with them that to balance the difficulty across both teams is the best option, and Normal seems to do that, with some advantage to the Survivors, as it probably should be. What's the point in playing a 30 second round as Survivors when you get ambushed right out of the gate?

Or they could just improve matchmaking...

 

[Pesmerga]

After much consideration, I have concluded that Advanced is a more appropriate difficulty setting for Versus, although tweaking various damage balances should be considered by Valve.

 

[chimpmunk]

Honestly, I couldn't actually believe this until I witnessed it for myself.

I think it's because on normal, with a moderatly good team, you can afford to rush through the level (I wouldn't see people doing that in expert!) and you're even rewarded for it

 

[sammitch]

This is a pretty lame answer. Though I understand where they are coming from, the ability to play on Expert Versus Mode at all is just absurd. To block it out on their servers is one thing, but to be running your own server on your own dedicated box is another. To disable the feature for the masses that want to play on Expert only is really not a good path to take.

I don't mind joining and random pub and playing on normal, but we play organized 4v4 team members only L4D on our OWN server, I don't see why we should be punished for no reason.

 

[ShadowJustice]

the game will be moddable. then you'll have the ability of running exper vs as a mod.

Leaving expert vs in standard l4d would have only meant the impossibility of playing the original, vanilla game. If everybody could have choosen the type of vs they wanted to play, finding a normal vs server would have been very, very hard

 

[sammitch]

the game will be moddable. then you'll have the ability of running exper vs as a mod.

Leaving expert vs in standard l4d would have only meant the impossibility of playing the original, vanilla game. If everybody could have choosen the type of vs they wanted to play, finding a normal vs server would have been very, very hard

Leaving normal on their servers is fine, I am 100% for that, as they have plenty of servers up. The fact of the matter is if you have a server that you're using for private play (which we do most of the time because playing with 4 teammates versus 4 random people is very boring and easy), you shouldn't be blocked from using expert.

Having it modded is fine and dandy, but in the mean time we're stuck with only the ability to play normal. Again, why should we be punished for wanting to play a more difficult game. Normal mode is super easy and boring.

Just want to say again that it's just silly to block it out completely.

 

[Hunter-Killer]

Normal mode is super easy and boring.

Yup, you can pretty much just run through levels now. There is still a lot of fun to be had in Versus mode, it just doesn't make sence to not allow people more of a challange if they want it.