Thread: VS mode locked to normal

Originally Posted by Kaizoku

Exactly, there' no point at all in locking us to one difficulty.

Well my take on that move was that it was a quick fix to the discouragment players felt when they joined an advanced server. I just hope it doesn't stay that way.

If there was an option to choose the difficulty you wanted then i would have no problem. Im just defending valve on this choice they made because i believe it doesn't impact the game nearly as much as everyone makes it out to be.

It was a choice that 100% removed things people wanted in the game, and did absolutely nothing positive. It really impacts the game for a lot of people that honestly enjoy advanced and expert for a multitude of reasons. I really can't see a reason for such a decision, and since it only took things away, I can't see how it could be a good decision at all.

Originally Posted by liq3

I just said 3 posts ago, WITH A DEV COMMENTARY QUOTE, that it's in favor of infected. IT IS NOT EASIER FOR SURVIVORS.

Let me make this clear.

Valve has said in their commentary, that they designed versus mode so that the survivors would NOT make it to the safe room.

Ok, everyone got that now?

And they said that Duke Nukem forever would come out in 1999....

Well not the valve devs, but the commentary is what was, not what is. Like watching sarah conner last week and they made some fake documentary on a person who was a t-888 in disguise, where they where showing him working side by side African Americans and praising him on it, back in the 1920s.


For a quick history lesson, the 1920s was still very big into segregation and the like, and in this time frame a white guy working with a black guy would be blasphemy.



Besides, you are misquoting anyways.
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Originally Posted by Kaizoku

Look at my dictionary quote in the other thread. To be in favor is to have the edge, you're confusing it. Either way, it's easier to be survivors.

Indeed.

The survivors for one, have guns. Which means they can go bang bang from a distance.

If anyone ever played the zombie mod in garry's mod, They would know that a zombie against a handful of players with guns even if the zombie had several thousand points of life would be at a HUGE disadvantage.

Particularly because the guys with guns can attack at range.



The Hidden was also the same, somewhat. Some players tend to have "Ultravision" which allowed them to see you no matter where you went as the hidden. The hidden is like the hunter, but on ninja steroids.

Again this is mostly cause the enemy team had guns and could attack from a distance. (Course to be fair, a good player playing as the hidden could easily masacure the enemy. But getting to be a good hidden was a challenge when you died the moment you see the enemy..)


What we have is a boomer that has only 50 hp, is loud and noisy and quite visible trying to waddle up to a group of people so he can barf on them and hope they will shoot him up close.

A smoker, who leaves a "Pig stye" like cloud around as he runs back and forth, trying desperately to get his tongue to actually latch on to a survivor.. or freek even launch as he screams his head off alerting the guys with guns.

A Hunter, that is not beating at his one game of melee by really good people, but beating CONSTANTLY by anyone with a two-button mouse and enough fingers to work both.

A Tank, who has to hit the survivor like four times to get them to lay down, then another eight times to get them to stop shooting him, but has only slightly more hp than two fully loaded autoshotties can dole out.


Pitted against four people with more ammo than Chins in China town, and enough explosives to start world war III.

It aint that hard to kill the survivors if you work as a team and plan out attacks as the infected...

Originally Posted by Triskavanski

Indeed.

The survivors for one, have guns. Which means they can go bang bang from a distance.

If anyone ever played the zombie mod in garry's mod, They would know that a zombie against a handful of players with guns even if the zombie had several thousand points of life would be at a HUGE disadvantage.

Particularly because the guys with guns can attack at range.



The Hidden was also the same, somewhat. Some players tend to have "Ultravision" which allowed them to see you no matter where you went as the hidden. The hidden is like the hunter, but on ninja steroids.

Again this is mostly cause the enemy team had guns and could attack from a distance. (Course to be fair, a good player playing as the hidden could easily masacure the enemy. But getting to be a good hidden was a challenge when you died the moment you see the enemy..)


What we have is a boomer that has only 50 hp, is loud and noisy and quite visible trying to waddle up to a group of people so he can barf on them and hope they will shoot him up close.

A smoker, who leaves a "Pig stye" like cloud around as he runs back and forth, trying desperately to get his tongue to actually latch on to a survivor.. or freek even launch as he screams his head off alerting the guys with guns.

A Hunter, that is not beating at his one game of melee by really good people, but beating CONSTANTLY by anyone with a two-button mouse and enough fingers to work both.

A Tank, who has to hit the survivor like four times to get them to lay down, then another eight times to get them to stop shooting him, but has only slightly more hp than two fully loaded autoshotties can dole out.


Pitted against four people with more ammo than Chins in China town, and enough explosives to start world war III.

All you did was mention how each special infected is standing alone. This isn't meant to be a lone wolf kind of game, you have to work together. Yes, it's true that alone, the infected are weak, but when they work together a well placed ambush will kill any team of survivors.

Your being biased by saying the infected suck because of this and that, you fail to mention how their abilities compliment eachother. Which is why teamwork is so important.

Yes, the boomer does have shit health and is easy to spot and hear. He isn't meant to stay alive long, hes kind of like a suicide bomber, but with an effect that blinds the enemy team for around 5 seconds. If he does his job, you can disable another 2 in less than 3 seconds if you have a smoker and hunter waiting close by. That leaves 1 person to fight a horde and defend 3 teammates. By the time he's done with the horde, the boomer can re spawn and finish him off if he re spawns as a hunter or smoker. Even if he isn;t finished off, his other team mates have taken so much damage that you can finish them off with just 1 more ambush.

I don't understand why it's so hard for people to see that it is balanced. People make it seem like the survivors have such a great advantage that there is no way the infected can win. I have played this game for more than 3 weeks now and i can say that it is well balanced. I had the luck to play before the patch and after and honestly there isn't that great a difference.

Now im not saying people can't have their preferences. I don't mind normal, other people hate it and want advanced. That's not what im arguing against. Im only defending the fact that even after the patch, the game is still balanced.

About being able to change the difficulties, yes i agree the vote system should have been kept in place. Taking that away only leaves the player base with less options which means less fun in the end. However, to anyone who says it's unbalanced, you are wrong.

I've been playing for 3 weeks also, and my experiences are different. Me and my friends can see through the boomer bile "blindness" pretty easily, and we always move in a tight group so the instant a hunter lands on someone or a smoker grasps someone they get bashed off. The hunters get bashed to death 100% of the time, even with boomer bile on us, and a good 80% of the time we kill the smoker or other hunter before the bile wears off. Even if we slip up for pull this off slowly, the infected have to get pretty lucky to even incapacitate someone with this situation. A hunter without an initial damage leap takes well over 15-20 seconds to incapacitate someone at 80hp, longer for a smoker, and even longer for a group of common infected beating on someone, which doesn't happen because we can all keep a group of zombies bashed in 360 degrees. We can deflect/kill an attack of four infected in about 7-12 seconds, finishing off the common infected from boomers in about 15 seconds after the initial attack if they don't get stuck somewhere. Spawn timers for infected range from 10-20+ seconds, so really only the first infected to die has a chance to spawn and stack on to the first attack, but by then they have no back up and we're all free, so it's a really bad idea. Out of a full four infected attack, we take anywhere from 0-20 dmg spread across the whole group, so usually we each only take about 5 dmg from a full, well co-ordinated attack. This is also assuming be boomer hit *all* of us, which very rarely happens, the smoker doesn't miss or get's insta-bashed off, which is very common, the hunter doesn't get mid air bashed, also very common since we begin chain bashing the second someone gets bile on them.

So even with things going very well, assuming they get 5 full attacks on us that go about as well as we let them that map, we each take 25-50 damage, which we heal through on the run, making it to the safe room with 60-80+hp almost every game. I can't stress enough that skilled people in this game *do not* take much if any damage from normal infected. You have to make a really big mistake to get incapacitated by common infected, like getting pulled off way by yourself by a smoker after being puked on, or downed by a hunter after getting puked on.

"to anyone who says it's unbalanced, you are wrong."

Not only have my group of friends done these things, but many of the teams we play have also been able to do all these things fairly commonly. We play with skilled people probably every day, and I've logged 108 hours in the past two weeks. I have to stress that I think my experiences are just as valid as yours, and that I probably play with more organized people. There are times when me and four of my friends, all sitting in one room playing the infected, can't beat a group of random public joiners. Yeah, you're already thinking "Its because you obviously suck as infected", well no, we don't, the randoms just happen to know that right click spam in a tight group is better than anything we can do other than throw a tank at them. I've actually had a smoker attack fail 5 times in a row because it got instantly bashed off or shot off, which really isn't hard if the group isn't panicing when things go bad. Yes, we're all attacking at the same time, usually boomer first, then hunter(s) then smokers in rapid succession, with really good co-ordination. Even when it works well, we can barely incapacitate one team member that happens to be dumb enough to be too far away from the group.

If you rush when the infected are down, and know what you're doing when they aren't, it's not hard at all to make it to the safe room with 80hp before they can get more than 4-5 group attacks off, and if they try to attack with less than 4, it's pretty much futile. Tanks are paper after you get the second set of weapons, which takes care of usually 50% of tanks in the game. The others just get lit on fire and kited, we're always smart enough to pull them to open areas, and the worst that happens is one person gets incapacitated, picked up, and healed.

Smoker grabbing one while you are stunned (what happens when a hunter pounces near you) will split your nice little group up.

This opens up the possibility of a hunter sneaking in and secondary hitting someone a bit.

P.S. If all you are doing is sitting back-back melee spamming, a hunter could easily just walk up to you (assuming you are biled) and secondary hit you. Sure, it'll get melee'd, but it takes 4 quick melee hits to kill it, so it won't die. It'll get at least 4-5 hits in if all you do is melee spam. That's 40-50 damage.

P.S.S I still want to play you Kaizoku.

P.S.S.S Assuming you live in Australia/NZ (otherwise we'll get shit ping).

Kaizoku, I like how you presented that. Another angle to look at balance is to ask what is the minimum level of coordination required for all 4 survivors to make it to the safe house. Valve seems to have designed the game to allow for a lower minimum.

In this game, the lowest common denominator rules random teams. The weakest player on your random team determines how your team does. My argument is that the punishment for a poor player and/or poor coordination is not severe enough, as in a game about cooperation either too little cooperation or only a base kind of cooperation is required for the survivors to do well. The other side of the fence is that the game would be hard to enjoy if there wasn't some leniency for new players, as new players would be vote kicked/hated on/discriminated against for random teams.

Playing on random teams and playing on teams with friends/clans are two different games, and I think some of the disparity in this thread reflects that. liq3 seems to be championing the friends-as-infected-against-random-scrubs side of things, while Kaizoku seems to be championing the friends-vs-a-different-group-of-friends side of things. I think the random-on-random side of things has problems without even getting into the level of playing with friends. I think random teams don't communicate more because it isn't necessary in most random-on-random games. You force people to communicate by making it necessary to do so. I want it to be necessary to communicate at a higher level in random-on-random games than "stick together" "Hunter on me" "Smoker on me" "Boomer" which the game says for you anyway. Unfortunately forcing communication makes the game harder. Maybe because of the lowest common denominator that might be too much to ask, or just a different idea on how the game should be. It seems that a game like this has to be balanced in favor of random teams or in favor of friends teams, and balancing in favor of random teams grabs the most audience. The problem is it grabs the most audience for a short period. Balancing in favor of friends teams supports competitive play and maintains a smaller audience for a longer period. Two sides of a coin, weather it landed heads or tails with the lock to normal is subjective.

At least there is agreement that we should be able to turn the coin over. Then - gasp - the maximum number of players will be satisfied. There is a reason why games like WoW offer different kinds of servers, a reason shown by derogatory language like "hardcore" and "carebears".

We'll just have to wait and see what Valve does.