Thread: Frustian's Mod

Anyone else heard about this, or had a chance to find a server running it?

It's apparently a mod designed for competitive versus play that takes the existing CEVO cfg and modifies to balance things out a little bit more. Supposedly there are some public servers out there running it, but I'd imagine the only way to consistently play with it would be to go find some teams to scrim with on IRC. Sounds like a lot of fun - a hell of a lot better than vanilla Normal versus, and more balanced than Advanced versus.

Some of the key things it does:

- All medkits are removed except for static spawns; this means you'll never, ever find random medkits. Frustian's comes with a "casual" mode and a "competitive" mode, and I think the medkits in the saferoom are also taken out in the "competitive" mode. It's possible they're gone in "casual" too. The idea is to make chip damage more meaningful, and to prevent ridiculous health bonus scores at the end of each map. Medkits that spawn at the finale activation points and similar places (like the ambulance in NM3) will still be there.

- Tier 2 weapons are almost completely gone. You will have tier 1 weapons from the first map all the way through the fourth. You will get a single Autoshotty and Assault rifle at the beginning of the fifth map, and you'll get another AS and AR at the finale activation point. Hunting rifles are more common and will spawn in areas that T2 would usually spawn because they're not really deemed overpowered... unlike the AS (and to lesser extent, AR.) The idea is that by severely limiting the prevalence of T2, survivors have to work together better in order to make it to the saferoom. Skeeting Hunters with AS is pretty damn easy - just spam the general area. Skeeting a hunter with the pump is a lot harder and requires good aim and good timing. HR is already a pretty skill-based weapon since its accuracy while on the move is pretty lousy and you really need to get headshots to make the most out of it (on SIs, anyway... it's still an instant kill on boomers and CIs.)

- Increased tank spawns. At least one tank every single map - always in the same place for both teams - including before the finale activation point on the fifth map. Tanks can certainly be defeated with T1 weapons... it's just more difficult and requires better coordination.

- Tanks are immune to all damage and can't be set on fire until a player has control for two full seconds. This prevents pre-lighting the tank by predicting where it will spawn and having a molly waiting for it. If you've ever come into control of a brand-new tank to find it already on fire, you know how damned frustrating this is.

- Witch spawns in the same place between rounds. I've never seen random witch placement between rounds, but I'm guessing it's possible (it might just be she faces a slightly different direction or something.) Witches are more common as well.

- The game can be paused if at least one person on both teams agrees to do so. Mostly used for competitive games where someone crashes - since Frustian's more or less removes medkits and makes people rely on pills for health, you don't want that temporary health ticking away while you wait on a teammate to reboot. Also useful in case someone has an emergency or something.

There might be some other things I missed, but that's the jist of it. The idea is to make Versus more competitive by making it more difficult for the Survivors to cheese their way to 8k+ scores (which seem to be pretty common among good teams, judging by videos I've seen.) Removal of medkits alone means that's 160 health bonus gone from your tally at the end (40 points per kit times four players), and it also means chip damage matters more. In your average game of versus, a lot of the time the SIs win, it's because they pulled off a 3-1 grand slam or something like it. With Frustian's running, it's entirely possible one or more Survivors will be black-and-white by the end of the round, even if they don't make very many mistakes. Games become less about trying to pull off a 3-1 grand slam and more about slowly and inexorably chipping away at their health until you win through attrition - no more getting that one guy down to B&W only for them to find a lucky medkit and everything's back on square one.

I'll probably see if I can find some games through IRC this weekend, because it really does sound a lot more fun and intense than regular versus play - but I'm not sure how many pickup games there'd be. Anyone else wanting to form a team to go get our asses kicked in a scrim?

It's designed for use at at least the pickup game level of play and is targeted at competitive-level play, Frag.

Yeah, no T2's (besides HR) until the 5th map would be stupid in your average pub game because you're playing with random people who may not be particularly good at the game. But when you're dealing with players at the competitive level, AS and AR become obviously and absurdly overpowered (especially AS) for much of the campaign... especially when you get them early on.

The rationale is this: You don't get T2 at all on the first map, so clearly they aren't needed. A lot of the time, you don't get them on the second map (or if you do, it's usually later on), so you can survive without them. Ditto third level. You get T2 in the saferoom at fourth level, and most people can agree that makes the fourth map a complete joke. You get two T2 weapons in the saferoom on the fifth level (because that early tank will probably be in a cramped area where it'll be difficult to fight), and the remaining two at the finale point, since they're mostly necessary for the finale to handle the numerous hordes.

Again, this isn't something aimed at pubs... which is why you probably won't see it on very many public servers. It's designed to provide a more intense, more balanced competitive game (which I think everyone can agree vanilla L4D with no modifiers at all is hugely slanted in favor of the Survivors.)

Just a good recent example of why the default settings for Versus are absolute, complete horseshit:

It's DA3, and we get a tank spawn pretty early in the round. The entire enemy team immediately runs to the saferoom, and we park the tank twice to try and wait them out. Being little pussies (probably used to campaign or something), they continue to camp in there and eventually the tank goes AI and rushes them. We back up the tank with our SIs and they burn three medkits. They proceed into the construction site, we ambush them, and they run away again to the saferoom and burn their last medkit - they haven't even started the event. They get back to the construction site and find TWO pills, which keeps them going. They survive the event with two people in red, and find a medkit around the corner. About ten feet along, they find ANOTHER medkit. They continue along the path and find TWO MORE medkits, another pills, and they've been getting an obscene amount of grenades (I swear they used at least 12 pipes and 6 mollies and probably left at least as many behind) the entire time. They played like shit and still finish because Valve apparently felt that poor play should still be rewarded, instead of having them lose and have to figure out why.

It's horseshit. Medkits are entirely too strong for versus outside of finales, simply because if you're any good, you really won't be taking a ton of damage... especially not with autoshotty spam (which they got a little before the halfway point.) CIs don't do any real damage, and once you have T2, SIs are horrendously outclassed... which is why 3-1 grand slams are about the only way to beat survivors assuming both teams are competent. When the survivors get T2, their abilities improve - the Infected don't. Hunters don't start doing 10 dmg per .55s instead of 5. Boomers don't summon bigger hordes, smokers don't get longer tongues. The game is very well-balanced with T1 (with exception of finales, where the sheer number of CIs demands the oomph of autoshotties), and horribly balanced with T2.

Also, medkits are complete, and total bullshit. Hence why I want to see how this game plays when it's actually balanced.

Originally Posted by Ewok

I agree with the sentiments behind the mod, although maybe not the exact way it implements it.

I think my biggest single frustration with l4d 1 is the scoring. Essentially, because of how medkits are scored, you either get really large scores or small scores, which is basically "did you make it to the end or not". There needs to be a middle ground. One wipe and your team is basically out, unless you can make the other team wipe too, which when playing with TTPers is a very difficult thing.

By removing medkits, now the exact position of your health bar matters for the score, and you'll see a wider range of scores, which I think will lead to funner games. None of this "42 vs 1642" even though the first team was able to almost make the second team wipe. Now it'll be "42 vs 543", which seems like you can catchup with on the next round. It's a huge morale boost.

My second biggest complaint, which this mod is also trying to solve, is that it's too easy for the survivors. Maybe the lack of medkits solves this and that's the only change needed. In fact now that I'm thinking about it, maybe everything else can stay the same, because with chip-damage meaning something with this mod, it's more possible to take down a team than it was before.


I don't necessarily agree with the tank per level without T2s, but I do like the tank immunity until the player has control.

As mentioned, it's designed for competition moreso than pickup games or especially pubs. A tank every level would be excessive for pubbing, but it's damn near necessary for competition, given how good some of those players are. A tank forces them to slow down (usually) and gives the infected team more chances at at least knocking some health away if nothing else - I'm pretty sure why early tanks are in CEVO's cfg.

As for using it at TTP? Shit, I never even play on our servers so it probably wouldn't make a lot of difference to me... but we'd need to play with it first, anyway. Hence the point of this thread :P

I don't like it. Don't like the idea of it. And I disagree with the idea that it's for good players mostly.

Good players against good players... it doesn't matter what the final score is. Whether it's 1000 or 8000. Who cares? It's about who's ahead when the last ass is on the escape vehicle or the last ass is being eaten like carrion. And most CERTAINLY, good players vs good players, this mod overbalances it INCREDIBLY for the infected. If the intent is to make sure the survivors die most of the time then I guess it's great. But frankly. I don't much care for dying all the time.

I agree that there are a few too many "extras" sometimes (especially since the crash course update for some reason), but so what? Both teams get the exact same spawns now. So both teams get the same benefits and detriments. Even if you can't take the survivors out, you have to keep whittling away at them to make sure that health bonus is as low as possible.

Taking away the health kits and tier 2 weapons ensures that a good infected team will kill the survivors almost every time. Got doubts? Get soldier, smoken, ira, and texan together with your best survivors... Now take a run through death toll without using any health kits, pills, or tier 2s. I'll bet your score is under 1000 no matter how many times you try it. And that's probably being generous as it implies that you might make it once or twice.

The LAST thing I want to see is the craptastic things like CSS has in L4D... AWP vote? baloney. If this goes to a vote to add it to TTP I'll vote no as strongly as I possibly can.