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[Zzoram]

There are 2 things that turn me away from L4D competitive modes (X360):

1. Playing as the survivors is SOOO boring in comparison, especially because you just anticipate playing as the infected in the next round. There is nothing more fun than bouncing around as a Hunter, or lining up a good charge with the Charger. Then in the next round you're stuck with these boring humans who can't do anything, and you just know the opposing team is having a blast as the infected.

2. Using the lobby system without a party capability makes it hard as hell to get friends together if it's just 2 or 3 or you. So annoying to try and find a room that can take the 3 of you on one side.

The campaigns are great, especially when going for the expert achievements, but I wish I had as much fun with the competitive stuff.

I don't know about the 360 version but on PC, you can create a lobby for Friends Only, and once your friends are all in, switch it to Public so people quickmatching fill in the rest of the spots.

I do agree that in competitive modes everyone just wants to play infected. That's why I was hoping they would create a mode where you only play infected. Hopefully they do for DLC.

 

[notsol337]

No, Fallout, he thinks Twig and I are the same person.

Pro Tip: I am not TheOneGuy. I am not Twig. I'm not even wotwotimarobot.

I'm notso.

 

[Net_Wrecker]

I don't know about the 360 version but on PC, you can create a lobby for Friends Only, and once your friends are all in, switch it to Public so people quickmatching fill in the rest of the spots.

I do agree that in competitive modes everyone just wants to play infected. That's why I was hoping they would create a mode where you only play infected. Hopefully they do for DLC.

I'm pretty sure you can do that on the 360 as well, but there's no guarantee that the room will fill up quickly, and it's more convenient for the game to handle all that stuff. See, I'm one of those people who feel that the Halo/Call Of Duty style matchmaking is >>>>> lobbies.

As for your second point, an Infected vs. Infected gametype would be REALLY fun IMO. Hunter vs. Hunter battles, Smokers trying to choke Spitters, and Jockeys riding friendly Chargers into battle would be a sight to see.

 

[Firestorm]

I've forgotten the details by now, but most of the night involved the rest of the team trying to keep Firestorm from getting himself killed like the chump oblivious individual he is.

 

[Zzoram]

I'm pretty sure you can do that on the 360 as well, but there's no guarantee that the room will fill up quickly, and it's more convenient for the game to handle all that stuff. See, I'm one of those people who feel that the Halo/Call Of Duty style matchmaking is >>>>> lobbies.

As for your second point, an Infected vs. Infected gametype would be REALLY fun IMO. Hunter vs. Hunter battles, Smokers trying to choke Spitters, and Jockeys riding friendly Chargers into battle would be a sight to see.

I was thinking more a mode where 8 survivor bots are travelling through a level and you have to take down as many of them as possible before they reach the safehouse.

 

[notsol337]

I was thinking more a mode where 8 survivor bots are travelling through a level and you have to take down as many of them as possible before they reach the safehouse.

The bots shoot lasers, so that would be kinda hard but I think it'd be super darned fun.

ALSO, Vert. If you even bother reading this, I decided to play survival again. I put in a few more games. It's still not as fun to me as vs, but I was wrong about it being not fun.

 

[Net_Wrecker]

I was thinking more a mode where 8 survivor bots are travelling through a level and you have to take down as many of them as possible before they reach the safehouse.

IDK about that cause the Survivor AI is ridiculously dumb in this game. If they were to actually use their items, and revive/help as quickly as a real person would, that could be a fun mode. Either way, I want a mode where I get to play as the Infected the whole time. using the Survivors in Vs. makes me want to go back to campaign, or just play something else.

 

[notsol337]

IDK about that cause the Survivor AI is ridiculously dumb in this game. If they were to actually use their items, and revive/help as quickly as a real person would, that could be a fun mode. Either way, I want a mode where I get to play as the Infected the whole time. using the Survivors in Vs. makes me want to go back to campaign, or just play something else.

You know what I'd like? Maps that require some skill at movement.

I want hunter racing!

 

[RocketDarkness]

i could use something like that ^

Here ya go. Just stick this in autoexec.cfg. Feel free to replace the keys as desired. I don't think you have to unbind your other chat button, either.

// toggle voicechat
alias togglevoice "+voicerecord; bind MWHEELDOWN notogglevoice; unbind MWHEELUP"
alias notogglevoice "-voicerecord; bind MWHEELUP togglevoice; unbind MWHEELDOWN"
bind MWHEELUP togglevoice

 

[Slavik81]

I do agree that in competitive modes everyone just wants to play infected. That's why I was hoping they would create a mode where you only play infected. Hopefully they do for DLC.

I've been waiting a long time for that... Originally, I'd expected Vs. to be like The Crossing, where you'd basically have campaign mode with humans occasionally dropping in to play as special infected. For the survivors, it would basically be extra-hard mode. For the infected, it would be a chance to play infected for long periods of time.

I really can't stand Vs. as it is now. It's hard to get into the groove when you are constantly changing teams and maps.

 

[vazel]

where you'd basically have campaign mode with humans occasionally dropping in to play as special infected. .

That's what I thought it was too for L4D1.

 

[MutFox]

Matchmaking in this game is terrible.
There needs to be a "Lobby List"

Battle.net did stuff like this over a decade ago.

 

[Sibylus]

I have to agree with the Versus sentiments. The pacing is just way too different, you're either rushing through parts that are more fun explored, and you're bunkering down through parts that should be intense and on the move.

I'm liking Scavenge a lot more for 4v4 action, the objectives are interesting, there's less frustration (even when losing), and you can finish matches in short periods of time. Overall, it seems Coop does Human play better than Versus and Scavenge does both Human and Infected play better than Versus.

I think I would really dig a "Versus Realism" mode, where it's still normal difficulty but has all the Realism settings. So that would mean:

- Tougher common infected
- No survivor glows
- Item glows have reduced range
- No closets (no change)
- Witches kill in one hit

In addition to all of those, both human teams would not get a blank slate at the start of every chapter. Make health from previous maps carry over. Really challenging for survivors, makes the Infected team's attacks more persistent, and makes the whole experience less disjointed.

 

[Tempy]

Eh, versus ftw. Then again I always play with at least 7 other people we know, instead of randoms. As survivor it's just way more intense since you've got a coordinated team of special infected hitting you constantly. And the campaigns offer way more variety than just collecting canisters.

 

[notsol337]

Eh, versus ftw. Then again I always play with at least 7 other people we know, instead of randoms. As survivor it's just way more intense since you've got a coordinated team of special infected hitting you constantly. And the campaigns offer way more variety than just collecting canisters.

That's exactly why I prefer versus. However, if you don't wanna spend 2-3 hours on a match, scavenge is pretty awesome.

 

[MNC]

Shit. Twiggie, do you have that program to play old demos? There was some good shit I had before the update broke it

Plz plz

 

[RocketDarkness]

This elevator's out...this elevator works! :lol

 

[Twig]

Plz plz

I already PM'd you but I'll post it here anyway in case someone else can figure out how to get it to work. It doesn't support L4D2 yet, but

http://code.google.com/p/coldemoplayer/

It broke every time I tried playing L4D1 demos. ):

 

[1-D_FTW]

Okay I've figured out what the problem is!

Matchmaking is not on a centralised server basis, but is based on your Steam settings download region ONLY, and that is where the matchmaking pool comes from.
Local games will not show up if you're not in the same region.


So when I reinstalled Steam with Windows 7 I chose New Zealand as my download region, however there's two issues:

1) There's no actual download server for Steam games in NZ, all the traffic is routed through to the Australian servers. Which also means we can't use any free national traffic, but will be charged against our international quotas >:|
Because of this our Steam region actually defaults to Aus- NSW. Which means if I set it to NZ, then I'm trying to matchmake from a pool of NZ gamers who have manually changed their region to NZ. Which is as far as I can tell, no one.

2) Matchmaking WILL NOT choose from local servers outside of your region! So if I change my region to US - LA, I will only get servers in LA and none from Australia let alone Chicago or w/e.

So where I would be usually playing TF2 on a NZ or AUS server with Aussies all with a ping of <40, L4D2 will not even ping these same local servers.
So NZ will not talk to NSW which will not talk to QLD etc., despite the ping difference being negligible.

So for gamers in sparsely populated territories playing L4D2 through matchmaking, you're fucked.

Furthermore, due to Steam regions for NZers defaulting to Aus, if a NZer with L4D2 wants to play their uncut game, they'll have client-side gore, but none of the uncut content like the special infected. Because they're unwittingly locked to Aus servers through the regioned matchmaking.

All this also explains why there's so many "custom" NZ & Aus servers running bog standard content, because without the use of serverbrowser, there won't be any local non-regioned connections. Again making the pool stupidly low, and explaining why it is seriously fucking IMPOSSIBLE to find a dedicated server through macthmaking.



tl;dr Matchmaking is BROKEN for everyone D:

Wow. That solves part of that mystery. It doesn't account for all of it, but it solves some of it. That is seriously retarded. Even if a person isn't in your situation, it's still idiotic. I've got a number of cities that all have comparable pings (if I don't limit myself to Miami), yet I can only choose one. That explains so much. How freaking hard would it have been to have organized this by ping?

EDIT: I like the theory in concept because it means when I'm not playing with friends, I should get a good ping in games I choose. But this could have been doing by querying servers based on pings and not arbitrarily locking it to regions.

 

[PillowKnight]

Ok, so how do I activate the console and the server browser? The key under ESC won't work for me (and I enabled it into options)

The default is ` on the upper left side of your keyboard.

 

[UpperCaseN]

Dammit. I was just playing the Swamp level with some XBL randoms. We were a pretty cohesive unit, but at the end when the boat arrived I chose to heal real quick before running to it. This left me behind to get killed by the onslaught that arrives when you're running to the boat, I died.

 

[Visualante]

Fucking hell grow up. Bitching about whether scavenge is better than versus.

 

[Chinner]

Fucking hell grow up. Bitching about whether scavenge is better than versus.

how dare these people have opinions on things

 

[Jeff Stephen]

Dammit. I was just playing the Swamp level with some XBL randoms. We were a pretty cohesive unit, but at the end when the boat arrived I chose to heal real quick before running to it. This left me behind to get killed by the onslaught that arrives when you're running to the boat, I died.

360v is unforgiving when it comes to finales. I've had SI spawn right behind me in Swamp Fever.

 

[A Human Becoming]

I either suck more than usual or this game is incredibly fucking hard; from campaign on normal to Versus mode a massive number of deaths occur. >.>

 

[Visualante]

Scavenge shits all over L4D2 vs.

Scavenge is shit, I think is what you meant to say. I've never once enjoyed it.

how dare these people have opinions on things

Someone on the internet is wrong.gif

 

[Seagoon]

Okay I've figured out what the problem is!

Matchmaking is not on a centralised server basis, but is based on your Steam settings download region ONLY, and that is where the matchmaking pool comes from.
Local games will not show up if you're not in the same region.

Thanks for posting this, I was wondering why matchmaking only seemed to have 1 (on a good day 2) games showing up.

On a different note, had a string of bad verus games this weekend. One game I spawned as a survivor who was incapped, into a team who was generally unhelpful. My health was so low that I hobbled behind my team waiting for a point in which I could heal. I was vote kicked before I could however...

The other game had a player that sounded like a 12 year old, who attempted to vote kick me because between rounds I somehow ended up playing as Coach.

 

[123rl]

What's everyone's record for most rage quits in one Versus match? We played The Parish last night - two opponents left on the first level, some more joined, three left on the next round, who were quickly replaced...and left themselves. This carried on throughout the game and I bet we went through 20 different opponents. By the end of the game it was us two vs four humans. We killed all of them on stage four with an incredible unimprovised, spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment attack. I was so happy. Then on the bridge levels let's just say: my Spitter>three injured people stood around healing one injured player

 

[Nabs]

haven't kept track in l4d2. in l41 we had 45-48 in one game. the server had a rage counter :lol

 

[Zzoram]

Why is the game bumping up to Expert randomly? I started a Normal game last night and it was set to Expert when we got into the server.

Does that happen on the 360 version too, or only the PC? If it also happens on the 360 version, maybe that's why that guy from GWJ who died a dozen times on Easy was having so much trouble, maybe the server bumped him to Advanced/Expert without him realizing it.

 

[Volcynika]

Why is the game bumping up to Expert randomly? I started a Normal game last night and it was set to Expert when we got into the server.

Does that happen on the 360 version too, or only the PC? If it also happens on the 360 version, maybe that's why that guy from GWJ who died a dozen times on Easy was having so much trouble, maybe the server bumped him to Advanced/Expert without him realizing it.

Some servers are autoset to certain difficulties. Annoying since to play you gotta change the difficulty every map, so I just usually find a new server.

 

[Seagoon]

What's everyone's record for most rage quits in one Versus match? We played The Parish last night - two opponents left on the first level, some more joined, three left on the next round, who were quickly replaced...and left themselves. This carried on throughout the game and I bet we went through 20 different opponents. By the end of the game it was us two vs four humans. We killed all of them on stage four with an incredible unimprovised, spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment attack. I was so happy. Then on the bridge levels let's just say: my Spitter>three injured people stood around healing one injured player

Oh that reminds me of another bad versus experience I had over the weekend, 3 players on my team ragequit when we were playing as survivors after a series of well co-ordinated attacks from the infected, needless to say I didn't last very long.

Actually with all these bad experiences I'm having in LFD2, I'm the only constant thing :lol

 

[vertopci]

Fucking hell grow up. Bitching about whether scavenge is better than versus.

Fucking hell grow up. Bitching about people bitching about parts of a game on a video game message board.

haven't kept track in l4d2. in l41 we had 45-48 in one game. the server had a rage counter :lol

Dear god, that game of L4D1 was glorious. I liked the pubbies who raged and then choose quick play and were thrown in our game again :lol They would see us and re-rage within a few seconds :lol

 

[123rl]

Rage counter should be an option on every lobby That's ace!

I don't mind people rage quitting as someone else comes along within a few minutes. I take it as a compliment

The thing that annoyed me was we had to cancel a game as the server shut down. We attacked all four simultaneously and all four of them quit. The game paused and went back to the lobby because there was nobody left on their team. What the game needs is a patch to let people switch teams if there is an uneven amount of players

 

[Flynn]

haven't kept track in l4d2. in l41 we had 45-48 in one game. the server had a rage counter :lol

That's an amazing idea.

 

[Zzoram]

Rage counter should be an option on every lobby That's ace!

I don't mind people rage quitting as someone else comes along within a few minutes. I take it as a compliment

The thing that annoyed me was we had to cancel a game as the server shut down. We attacked all four simultaneously and all four of them quit. The game paused and went back to the lobby because there was nobody left on their team. What the game needs is a patch to let people switch teams if there is an uneven amount of players

That is annoying. Survivors all rage quitting is fairly common too.

 

[vertopci]

I don't mind people rage quitting as someone else comes along within a few minutes. I take it as a compliment

The thing that annoyed me was we had to cancel a game as the server shut down. We attacked all four simultaneously and all four of them quit. The game paused and went back to the lobby because there was nobody left on their team. What the game needs is a patch to let people switch teams if there is an uneven amount of players

Yea, the server shutting down crap is annoying in L4D2. It really should be patched. Either let the game continue so people can join or have some kind of pause function if one team wishes to wait for people to join.

 

[Keylime]

This elevator's out...this elevator works! :lol

Awesome... :lol

 

[Twig]

I already PM'd you but I'll post it here anyway in case someone else can figure out how to get it to work. It doesn't support L4D2 yet, but

http://code.google.com/p/coldemoplayer/

It broke every time I tried playing L4D1 demos. ):

I found a way that works for NOW but there's no guarantee it will work in the future.

It doesn't use the above program.

Go to your L4D2 folder like C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\left 4 dead 2\left4dead2

Open steam.inf

Edit the engine version number to the one that you recorded the demo with. (When you try to play back old demos it will tell you what number it needs.)

I think since there haven't been any major engine updates yet, this should work for all demos, but if something big changes, who knows what might happen. I read that it worked for a long time in L4D1, but then some update caused errors every time a boomer spawned, or something. Or barfed, I'm not sure.

So, there's your temp fix, MNC!

 

[dem]

people who play this game are wackjobs

You make a mistake and its an instavote to kick you

 

[Red Scarlet]

Hey Twig and Vert: stop.

 

[vehn]

Hey Twig and Vert: stop.

what are they doing?

 

[Twig]

i was just defending my friend ):

 

[Redd]

Really wish there was a way you could get penalized if you rage quit. Like having to wait 10 minutes before you could jump into another game. I don't mind if you bring up a vote to return to lobby if you're getting your butt kicked though.

 

[Volcynika]

Really wish there was a way you could get penalized if you rage quit. Like having to wait 10 minutes before you could jump into another game. I don't mind if you bring up a vote to return to lobby if you're getting your butt kicked though.

How would a system separate rage quits from actual reasons to leave? Having to go somewhere, something came up, internet went out, etc. It's damn near impossible unless you actually tap into the user's brain or spy on why they quit.

 

[Redd]

How would a system separate rage quits from actual reasons to leave? Having to go somewhere, something came up, internet went out, etc. It's damn near impossible unless you actually tap into the user's brain or spy on why they quit.

If you had to go somewhere then there no problem.

 

[Volcynika]

If you had to go somewhere then there no problem.

Well I'm just saying someone quitting when they're losing it'd be hard to tell. I wouldn't tell the people I don't know "OH GOTTA GO HELP OUT MY RELATIVES WITH ____". While it'd be nice to have some kind of thing to stop people from quitting due to losing/rage/etc., it's only a dream of being actually possible.

 

[Redd]

All I'm saying from experience is that it irks me when you're having a good game and you watch some players on the other team leave. You wait a few minutes seeing if they come back, they don't so you look them up on the list and they've already jumped into the middle of another game. Funny I rarely see people quit never to return when our team has to play catch up. All this are in Team Versus games too.

 

[AHappyPanda]

Lookin for folks to go through Dark Carnival, Hard Rain and the Parish. On now.

GT: Panda Owning Em

Also, sorry if this has been addressed in the thread already, this is my first time looking in here, is there a known glitch regarding the achievements?

It's telling me I'm only 3/4 done with the "CRASS MENAGERIE" achievement, which I know is not true at all. I've killed every single type of uncommon infected.

It's also telling me I've only 3/8 done with the "CLUB DEAD" achievement, which is also false. I've used the katana, chainsaw, frying pan, guitar, crowbar, cricket bat and baseball bat to kill uncommon infected.

I have the same issues with the CHAIN OF COMMAND, AND BURNING SENSATION achievements, all the numbers are that the game is showing me are far far less than I what I know I have done in the game.

 

[MNC]

I found a way that works for NOW but there's no guarantee it will work in the future.

It doesn't use the above program.

Go to your L4D2 folder like C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\left 4 dead 2\left4dead2

Open steam.inf

Edit the engine version number to the one that you recorded the demo with. (When you try to play back old demos it will tell you what number it needs.)

I think since there haven't been any major engine updates yet, this should work for all demos, but if something big changes, who knows what might happen. I read that it worked for a long time in L4D1, but then some update caused errors every time a boomer spawned, or something. Or barfed, I'm not sure.

So, there's your temp fix, MNC!

That's awesome! Thank youuu! I was lucky already, since I play L4D2 on 2 computers, and one hadn't updated yet so I unplugged that from the net and compiled demos there Still, this one is gonna help me in the future I hope!