Thread: Interest in Competitive L4D?

Originally Posted by PizzaSHARK!

Except all of those variables are consistent across rounds, so while placement isn't identical between individual games, both teams will have an equal chance. If one team gets a tank right out of the gate, so will the other team. I don't really see how the relative randomnness of pickup placement impacts the gameplay negatively.

The only major issue I have with versus right now is the prevalence of medkits. I'd much rather medkits be extremely rare and pills more common.

There is randomness when one witch gets placed in a corner of a map and is easy to avoid when the other team's witch is right in the middle and easy to pull some survivors to with a smoker.

I'm not big on competitive gaming myself, but I definitely see luck being an important factor in rounds.

There is randomness when one witch gets placed in a corner of a map and is easy to avoid when the other team's witch is right in the middle and easy to pull some survivors to with a smoker.

Witch and tank placement is identical across rounds. It may differ between maps (witch/tank may spawn in a different spot or not spawn at all), but once it spawns, it's there for both rounds. All of the major variables are consistent between rounds.

Horde placement and size does seem to vary, but I'm not sure if that's Boomer hordes or placed hordes.

You are incorrect Pizza. Witch and tank spawns CAN be different between the two rounds of a single map.

The spawns are usually pretty close. But not exact. It was even part of one of the updates a while back that they inserted a bit of variability into the spawns. It's not uncommon on the first map of no mercy, for instance, to see the witch up near the bench where you enter the building with the med cabinet on one round and when it switches, she's in front of the door. One is avoidable, the other is not.

One round in the hospital the tank might spawn long before the elevator, whereas the next round the players might be busting ass to get to the elevator and the tank spawns at the top of the elevator. That happens and those players won't even SEE the tank because you cannot get to the survivors. Once the computer takes over the tank will despawn. That's due to the variable spawn locations.

There's more than a little bit of an argument about the amount of med kit and pill placements between rounds as well. I do NOT believe it's the same for each team. I have a habit of visiting the med cabinets while in free roam between deaths as infected to see what the survivors have ahead of them and I have seen with my own two eyes, items in the cabinets CHANGE before the players get there depending on how they are doing. I've watched one med pack and three pills turn into three med packs and one pill. The director can change anything on the fly and it's not always fairly distributed between teams.

That said... I still think that the better team will win 90% of the time. Only when the director is being a prick and the teams are pretty evenly matched will the different spawns of infected or items become a factor.

Odd. I've never had varied witch/tank spawns, and medkits spawn so damn often it's hard to notice when one changes into pills, anyway

Maybe I just haven't played enough games.

Originally Posted by PizzaSHARK!

There is randomness when one witch gets placed in a corner of a map and is easy to avoid when the other team's witch is right in the middle and easy to pull some survivors to with a smoker.

Witch and tank placement is identical across rounds. It may differ between maps (witch/tank may spawn in a different spot or not spawn at all), but once it spawns, it's there for both rounds. All of the major variables are consistent between rounds.

Horde placement and size does seem to vary, but I'm not sure if that's Boomer hordes or placed hordes.

Tank/witch spawns stopped being identical, oh, say.. about 3 or 4 patches ago when they realized that it gave the second survivor team a huge advantage. After that they began to make them spawn with in a set paramter of % of map.. maybe 5 - 10 percent difference either way, or something like that.. so.. for example.. one team gets it just before the Lift event on No Mercy 3, next team waits and waits and waits to start the event, waiting fort hat tank.. finally they hit the event, making the % completion that much farther.. smack in the middle of the event, the tank spawns.

Meanwhile, for that team, the medkits all spawned way at the beginning.. for the first team it was later, up in the building.. after team 2 survives, they have to BACKTRACK to make use of the medkits... leaving them that much more open to being attacked by the infected.

yeah.. lots of variables that can make a HUGE difference in teh game.

Although.. usually if a tank spawns right out of the saferoom, it happens that way for both teams

The one thing that is exactly the same is where the T2s are

Yeah, if they're still working on L4D (Really, I mean, not just in small little nitpicks, I mean big glitches like the BOOMER VOMIT GLITCH), I would really like to see four things fixed:

1. BOOMER VOMIT GLITCH (I've said this so many goddamn times)
2. The goddamn tank spawn at the top of NM4 elevator. I lost a game because of that bullshit once.
3. Hunter Hit Detection (this might just be me: I've bounced off survivors as a hunter before. Seriously, my hunter literally curved around them)
4. MEDI-KITS. OH MY GOD MEDI-KITS. In the one game I've played in the last week (rather annoying game, considering I'd never worked with dom or flame, and only with Swift once, I believe), each team got 4-5 medi-kits each map. Fucking ridiculous.

Medkits should be replaced with pills or just not spawn at all. I do feel that Versus is a little too easy for the Survivors, though it's still fun with a bunch of friends.

Those tanks right out the gate when everyone still has T1 and no mollies are a hoot.