Left 4 Dead Blog Update & Versus Gameplay Update

[Hectic Glenn]

The blog update outlines a few changes being made to Left 4 Dead, and that xbox 360 owners will fortunately be getting all updates to the game alongside the DLC which will be available on April 21st. Matching making will be seeing updates soon too:

With the upcoming release of the SDK, and the community servers already available on the PC, matchmaking is one place where the two platforms will diverge. A future blog post will detail our roadmap for PC matchmaking.

The full blog post can be found here. Also highlighted in the blog is the mention of "the update will contain a...very large, gameplay adjustment....changing to the melee mechanic in Versus", which has now been released tonight. A big change!

• Introduced fatigue to the melee attack in versus mode. You will see a HUD display when your melee swing is cooling down
• Boomer vomit will now pass through common infected
• Addressed some surround sound detection issues
• Fixed a rare crash when exiting Left4Dead on Windows Vista
• Fixed a case where the complete all expert campaigns achievement was not being rewarded

We shall see how this changes Versus mode, since the smoker tongue improvement and the tank multiple target punch addition. I spoke to Chet tonight about these incremental changes to a large gameplay problem...

This isn't the last update, but we want to change things in a way that people can evaluate the change, if we change 50 things at once, we will get zero worthwhile feedback. This is also how we test internally, small changes at a time and then group them so we can understand their impact

Let us know what you think of the changes. Left 4 Dead update news.

 

[Officer Combine]

Wow. The melee thing is a pretty big change.

 

[Reginald]

Brilliant! :E

EDIT: Whenfor update is?

 

[Warped]

melee fatigue sounds brilliant. i love how they're making it more challenging

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Brilliant! :E

EDIT: Whenfor update is?

Surprise! Load up L4D now and you'll already have it. Content delivery of the future, without you even knowing.

 

[Reginald]

Haha, just noticed.

It's awesome.

 

[Fiberawptic]

Wow, that melee idea is one of those things that slaps us all in the face and makes us say to ourselves "im suprised none of us came up with that solution"... Once again, valve demonstrates their brilliance and proves to always be ahead of the curb... bravo

 

[Reginald]

Wow, that melee idea is one of those things that slaps us all in the face and makes us say to ourselves "im suprised none of us came up with that solution"... Once again, valve demonstrates their brilliance and proves to always be ahead of the curb... bravo

I've been suggesting melee cool-down since about the second week.

 

[bbson john]

expert campaign rewarding, finally fixed.

 

[mchammer75040]

I've been suggesting melee cool-down since about the second week.

Im pretty sure he was being sarcastic

Also the update is awesome.:bounce:

 

[Steel.Inferno]

I just finished a No Mercy run (wipe them + 4x survive on map 3 for the victory). The melee cooldown seemed to hamper cowering in a corner in the generator room as we got in a tidy bit of damage from slashing and common hits. Neither team made it to the closet by the elevator in 4 to see if it helped there though.

 

[DoctorWeeTodd]

Hmmm...I swore something was drastically different. The new melee system kills a bunch of strategies for survivors. I thought it was pretty balanced before the update personally.

But it makes playing the Infected all the more fun.

 

[Smigit]

Not nuts on the change to be honest. Playing just then and both teams could still corner camp just fine even if they resorted to using guns a bit more. Especially on final stage where ammo almost ceases to be an issue as theres an unlimited supply I think we'll just see teams doing the same tactic but using ammo instead.

It also seems to me that melee was only really over powering when you could camp corners. Perhaps they would be better off making the smoker a bit more prominent instead of nerfing the melee. If they make it easier to pull survivors out of areas then the melee issue becomes alot less of an issue given both that and a tank will usually get the survivors moving.

I'll have to change my play style anyway. I tend to use a melee then shoot method with a shotgun which for me worked better than just running and gunning. Might be harder to pull off now when mobs are around. Also gives you less option when someone is down and boomered and you have no ammo in your clip.

 

[leib10]

Sounds like a good change. The melee attack is by far the best way to deal with a horde of ordinary Infected IMO, and this will make that strategy a bit less feasible.

 

[Hunter-Killer]

I personally always thought there should have been some cool down effect on the melee attack and I think they have got it just right. Already I have noticed that people aren't sitting in corners as much just spamming the right mouse button and I have also noticed a huge drop in "l33t" players (though that could just be the servers I was on) as people actually have to use thier guns to survive now. Overall I think it has made the game a lot more enjoyable, there are a lot of tits moaning about how it's broken the game but I feel thats just because they have been cradled for far to long with the ablity to spam melee and now feel vunrable.

 

[CyberPitz]

I've been suggesting melee cool-down since about the second week.

I was shocked when it didn't come with the game!

 

[Born]

Wooooooooooooooo

Wooooooooooooo

 

[hool10]

Before this update I never thought I used the melee that much but then when you play the game now you realize just how much you depend upon it. I think Valve has put out the best update for this game, or hell for a long time. I don't play TF2 that much after L4D but stunning ubered people in TF2 was just plain wrong. This entire update is amazing though. I also don't know but in the server I was in there was player and bot controlled Infected. Also the hordes would spawn ten fold more. I asked if somebody was cheating in fact because it seemed like there was way more hordes. Of course I was told by the retarded enemy team to "stfu and quit whining and play the game. It's for pro's now, not some pussy." :|

Then I realized that it was actually fun to die in an epic way because it was so boring to always win and melee spam. In fact I realized the original concept of the game was that I was not supposed to win. So I hope that was part of the update and Versus for me and the game has gone back to the same feeling I had when I played my first ever games. I was scared, grinding my teeth in fear for my life, and generally hoping to make it out alive. Before this patch I just stood in a corner, holding the right-click and waiting for the horde to end.

Of course there is people who don't like what Valve did, mainly comments on steampowered but I like it. I can't wait for the Survivor DLC to come out and even more so, the SDK.

*Oh, like my new avatar?

Thanks Kamikazi from the flamehaus.

 

[Sheepo]

Don't play public matches.

 

[Mutley]

YEY!!! No melee spam!

 

[Reflex]

</strong>[*]Boomer vomit will now pass through common infected

Finally.

 

[hool10]

I just played a Versus match and the other team wasn't playing for fun but rather a clan practice. They were telling us how much we sucked, etc. Well in the finale our first Tank failed. Then I got the Tank and there are very few times in which I don't kill them all. I dodged 2 molotov's and a minigun. I love killing people who are full of themselves with the Tank.