Thread: Versus is still bullshit

Whew, I actually read all that.

Pizzashark still complains about everything

I dunno, in my experience they all seem to work out fine... Jockey seems to be the most effective but a missed spawn opportunity to catch some straggler can really screw you over... and I've missed a lot of spawns...

If I was better at the game I bet I could say there is no problem, so until then I'll tolerate the complaining.

I do agree that T2s are very OP. The Combat Shotgun just rips through hordes like no ones business.

For some reason I read all that without having spent a minute playing either L4D...

I completely disagree with the basic foundations of that rant... If anything, the game is now favored towards the Infected team.

Originally Posted by PizzaSHARK!

Survivors are still too strong once they get T2's... or maybe Infected are still too weak once they do. The director still shits out health everywhere (especially damned medkits), and the changes to the scoring system don't treat teams very fairly, especially if there's a large difference in each team's skill/ability to work together. I played a game before work tonight, and it was a pretty good example of what I'm talking about.

The game is now geared towards "Can you finish?" Rather then "How hard can you RAPE that other team!" All those health kits are needed by the survivors against a decent infected team.

Originally Posted by PizzaSHARK!

My team, to put it bluntly, wasn't nearly as good as the enemy team. We worked together well (all of us except a clanwhore who swapped teams as soon as he could were using mics) and were communicating, but the other team was clearly doing that and doing it better, so it's not a surprise they were winning. The issue was by how little they were winning by. TP2, both teams made it to the safe room with all four survivors still standing - but they did it with two medkits and a pills to spare, while we limped in with no health items and everyone at red health (we actually even had to revive someone with a defib after the retard clanwhore decided he'd rather try to sabotage us to help his clan buddy on the other team by killing someone who was B&W.) We both get full completion points, and the damage tally comes up our ~430 damage to their 2200... and they only get 25 points for it. They clearly kicked our asses that round... but still only get a miniscule lead for it. We shouldn't even have made it to the safe room, and we wouldn't have, if T2's didn't obliterate CIs so quickly and the director didn't shit health everywhere.

Your perception in score is off. Its no longer possible to get ludicrous final scores like, 100 to 10000 or some such. The game is, as I said before, about survival, and how far you can get. In the end what were the scores? The enemy team still won didn't they? And with a decent score advantage?

Originally Posted by PizzaSHARK!

I still think that T2's are an issue. With T1's (which is all melee except the chainsaw, uzi/mac10/mp5, pump/chrome shotty, and hunting rifle), CIs are still easy to kill in small groups, but are still an issue in large numbers... which makes a huge difference in the effectiveness of a boom, or how well you can utilize an area filled with CIs. With T2's (which is all assault rifles, autoshotties, sniper rifle, grenade launcher, and chainsaw), CIs are a hell of a lot easier to handle, which means your SIs won't have as much cover to work with, and won't be able to use them as a distraction so easily. With the AI changes, I really think it's the CIs, and not the SIs, that win games a lot of the time - how many times have you gotten that last swing you needed to incap someone as a hunter or charger because their savior was busy getting mobbed by CIs as he stagger-stepped towards his buddy? How many times have you done a ton of damage as a spitter because the SVs were busy getting mobbed by CIs? With the new AI changes that let them spawn from many directions and encourage them to zig-zag (they DO zig-zag a lot now - watch them sometime) and flank the SVs, the CIs are honestly what I'd consider to be the biggest threat to the SV team, especially in large numbers.

Which is why T2s are necessary. Those commons need to go down or they'll take off a painful amount of health before the survivors can wipe them out. The T2s are also necessary for getting sheer amounts of powerful rounds out, or precise rounds out on smokers, spitters, chargers after they've taken a survivor for a ride a hundred feet away from the group, or a jockey as hes yanking someone away during a horde, or a tank, or an xyz. With T1s I often find that survivors get incapped before their team can even start killing the offending SI.

Originally Posted by PizzaSHARK!

But T2's go through CIs like a scythe through wheat. Chainsaws and autoshotties plow through entire groups of CIs in seconds, assault rifles handle them almost as well, and we won't even mention the grenade launcher (and its total lack of significant friendly fire damage in VS.) Suddenly that distraction you needed is gone, or at least rendered much less effective. Suddenly those CIs aren't going to be able to box someone in as well, or slow someone down enough as they try to rescue a buddy.

As I said before, its necessary.

And this doesn't even go over the numerous nerfs (for those that don't know the term, "nerf" in the gaming context means something along the lines of "completely gutted this thing/ability/etc") that the original SIs have taken. I still think that, rather than remove T2's (which, while balanced, isn't nearly as fun... I love my SCAR more than I like my uzi), the SIs should simply gain some new benefits or more damage or some other kind of improvement whenever anyone on the SV team is carrying a T2.

Originally Posted by PizzaSHARK!

Hunters haven't changed much, but the game they're in has changed a great deal. They originally had increased stagger time for people near your victim, but that was taken away (and admittedly, it was a little ridiculous.) A Charger can round a corner, immediately knock someone into a wall, get off a slam before their buddies recover, and have done as much damage as your maximum pounce could do in half the time and with much less setup (impact damage is 10, and slam damage is 15 every 1.5 seconds.) True, the Charger does slightly less damage per second (15 damage every 1.5 seconds versus 5 damage every 0.55 seconds), but he can't be punched to stop the charge, and he can't be punched to stop the pin once he's got someone. I'd suggest that the Hunter be inherently immune to punches while pouncing (that is, you can no longer pounce a Hunter mid-pounce to stop the pounce; you'd still be able to punch them while they're running around or while they're pinning someone), and when the SVs get T2's, the multiplier for pounce damage improves, requiring less distance/velocity to increase damage. The Hunter seems to fill the "stealthy" niche role now that the Charger's in, since they're utterly silent until crouched, and their pounce damage is done immediately (albeit with setup time required to get the height/distance needed.)

Where to start where to start... Remove the ability to stop a hunter pounce with a melee swing? Sure lets remove one of the defensive moves a survivor has against a hunter, much more so the hardest one to pull off. Decrease the distances hunters need to pounce for damage once survivors have T2s? Sure, lets encourage people that spawn as hunters to just jump off whatever house they can see for an easy 10, 15, 20, 25 damage pounce that doesn't require any real thought, or in flight control. Hit the same survivor over and over, make them into a weak link because they have -Nothing- to fight off the relentless pouncing, then just down them and rape the weakened survivors. That sounds like a great idea, very coordination friendly- wait...

Originally Posted by PizzaSHARK!

Smokers also haven't changed much - his range was reduced somewhat, but other than that he seems to be the same old Smoker we all love/hate. He's still very useful when used right, still useless when used wrong, and doesn't need too much in the way of changes. I'd just suggest the tongue can no longer be punched off and its ability to take damage be increased somewhat once SVs get their T2's, and maybe a little extra health (up to 300 or 325 from the base 250?) The range reduction is probably a good thing (if it extended another ten feet, I could immediately think of a few dozen "lol you lose" spots) and so doesn't need to be changed.

Force survivors to fight through XYZ and kill the smoker in order to break loose a snared survivor... Mid Horde? When punches through off your aim, and you can't move for shit? By the time you're free that survivors incapped, just because you couldn't get a shot on the tongue or a punch on the survivor. What if they smoker uses a very small hole to shoot his tongue through and you can't blast through the wall? Its going to take extra time to fire into that hole and nail the smoker dead on. And in that time, SIs are going to be making every what confusion to slow, or prevent the smoker from being killed.

Originally Posted by PizzaSHARK!

Boomers have changed the most out of the original SIs, mostly due to the fact that puke can no longer go through CIs and SVs, which makes it a fair bit more difficult to paint all four SVs with puke... though it also often seems like the boom itself (the explosion, not the puke) is less consistent now, since I've blasted people that were 20 feet away and missed people that were almost right next to me. With the improved CI AI, I don't think the puke needs to clip through actors anymore, because even getting one or two people puked on can cause problems... until they get T2's and can obliterate your entire horde in a couple of seconds. The Boomer, of all the SIs, probably is the one in least need of help once the SVs get their T2's, aside from the fact that his hordes become less effective. I'd think increased health (maybe up to 100, equal to Spitter health) and faster movement speed would be plenty.

Boomers aren't meant to take hits... A health increase would just be pointless. Likewise on health, hes a spawn-ambusher, not a charge in and hit; unless shits already going down, in which case his speed is fine.

Originally Posted by PizzaSHARK!

Chargers are probably the only SI I can think of that's still more or less just as effective against T2's as T1's - 600 health is enough to take a few shots from even the autoshotties, the charge itself has a relatively brief cooldown, and the charge ability itself is potentially the most ridiculously powerful ability the SIs get (instant kills near windows or ledges, or the ability to punt someone off a roof and make the SVs spend two minutes backtracking to save their buddy.) If they just made the hit detection for the ability a little more consistent (how many times have you literally hit a survivor and not picked them up?), he'd be pretty much fine as is.

Yeah, and with all the power he has, how can a SI team not utilize him? Throwing a survivor several hundred feet back, pull another survivor forward, all the while hitting them with a boom and a jockey/hunter/spitter? Thats game unless the survivors can coordinate it quick.

Originally Posted by PizzaSHARK!

Spitters don't need a lot of help, given that their spit can do up to 81 damage if you can keep someone in it for the full duration - with CIs being less effective after T2's, that can be harder, but there are still ways of doing it. The size of the spit pool and death pool could be increased a little, but not much else needs to be done.

I'm almost tempted to say the spit pool is too large. If you get hit by it in the middle of a horde, you're pretty much fucked unless you have adrenaline, pills, etc. The death pool though could indeed be larger.

Originally Posted by PizzaSHARK!

Jockeys are probably the hardest to use of the new SIs, and definitely start feeling weaker after the SVs get T2's - assault rifles and sniper rifles can easily pick you off from a distance, and autoshotties can blow through the CIs you're using as escape cover in seconds. His hit detection also seems a little wonky (again, I've literally been TOUCHING someone before, leaped, and inexplicably missed; I've also been touching one SV, leaped, and somehow managed to start riding the survivor standing six feet to my left), but that's a game thing and not a balance thing. In terms of balance, simply reducing the victim's ability to resist and increasing swipe/pin damage would probably be plenty - he already has enough health, and he moves pretty fast.

I've never had problems with survivors resisting my rides. A little more damage wouldn't be bad, but I don't feel its necessary. Damage isn't his job, its further splitting up groups.

Originally Posted by PizzaSHARK!

Tanks have changed a hell of a lot since L4D, especially given how many options SVs have now. Adrenaline allows someone with even just 1 health to easily outrun you, bile bombs blind you and slow you, grenades and explosive rounds stagger you, and mollies are still as effective as ever (though you're actually able to stop them with water now.) Adding to that, the tank is slower than he used to be - a little bit slower than an injured (yellow) survivor - and tanks aren't nearly the threat they once were. But then again, tanks are still damned scary if you get them in a good position (alleyways with dumpsters, large open spaces with lots of cars, etc), and still do heaps of damage if you get close enough, so it's a tricky thing. Honestly, the only things I could think of to help tanks against T2's would be to make the tank move faster when he's on fire... like he does in campaign. I'd also suggest that the tank be completely invulnerable until a player has had the chance to take control, because no one likes coming into control of a tank that's already on fire, been boomed on, or is otherwise in a shitty situation before they've even had a chance to do anything - I can't think of many times where I've seen the tank even reach the survivors before a player is given control, anyway.

Its all about how you use the tank. You can literally 'tank' the survivors, and camp positions while the SI whittle away or create a big enough distraction for you to make your move, you can use yourself to provide a distraction for a heavy SI hit, or you can delay for spawns, or xyz. Tanks are far from being useless, or weak despite some situations.

In the lower echelons of dumb joe blow pubbers your concepts of hideous imbalance may be true, but it thats true of most games. When skills, knowledge of the game, and teamplay are low, balanced is horribly skewed. In the upper echelons of skill and teamplay, things become balanced, challenging, and fun beyond reckoning.