Left 4 Dead - TTLG Forums

sNeaksieGarrett on 6/12/2009 at 02:10

You're being stubborn. Come on, even a shitty player can be better than the bots sometimes. I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but you could play it with me. ( I promise not to be a dick.) You're certainly wrong with your "100%" business. By chance, you seem to keep playing with people you don't find as good teammates, but that doesn't mean good players don't exist.

Oh yeah, and you know, you could actually ask one of these dudes on this very forum.

Renzatic on 6/12/2009 at 02:20

I can think of one thing worse than playing with the bots. Playing with someone who knows way too much about the game.

Ask anyone who played with me during my short run with L4D online. I had a friend join up with me who had already logged in 100+ hours with the game, and he'd tell us about every situation, every incident, every potential surprise attack, and how best to deal with each and every one. Really sucked the fun out of everything.

sNeaksieGarrett on 6/12/2009 at 02:23

Well, then why not tell that friend to not ruin it for you? Or was he being a dick about it intentionally ruining the game? And, you know, you could I suppose play through the campaigns in single player once around, to get your feet wet so to speak and then hop online. Then there wouldn't be anything to ruin.

Renzatic on 6/12/2009 at 02:38

No, he wasn't being a dick about it. Quite the opposite. He did what anyone who played the game for x amount of hours would do with a group of stark newbie friends. He held our hands and explained everything step by step.

I should've known better and played a few games by myself. Thing is, he was the one who ultimately talked me into buying the game, and I would've felt bad if I didn't play a few rounds with him right off the bat.

sNeaksieGarrett on 6/12/2009 at 02:47

Quote Posted by Renzatic

He did what anyone who played the game for x amount of hours would do with a group of stark newbie friends. He held our hands and explained everything step by step.

Yeah, well it's like I said. Of course that's the initial thing that everyone wants to do, but if you specifically didn't want that to happen, there's ways around it. I just don't think people should NOT play online because they have certain issues with certain players online. I mean, heck, if you don't like who you're playing with, switch servers. Or if you have any good friends, ask one of them who would be willing to play.

Shadowcat on 6/12/2009 at 07:49

Spitter: I'm happy to play with friends, but I can't organise that very often, and the bottom line is that I would NOT have bought the game at anything close to the release price if it was a multiplayer-only game (and if the friendly A.I. can't cope, that's almost what it is).

I like single-player. I play very little multiplayer in any game (and none at all for the vast majority), and I'm perfectly happy that way.

I would much rather play the game through in single-player before I start playing online, and in L4D 1 that was an entirely feasible prospect. Hell, I play at 'advanced' difficulty with the bots in the first game, so the fact that the sequel has forced me down to 'easy' has me understandably irked.

I did complete Dark Carnival and then make it through the Swamp campaign the other night on easy without problems, so at least that's something. The annoying thing is that the majority of the time I'd prefer that the difficulty was Normal or maybe even Advanced. It's only particular kinds of gameplay situations that mean I have to dial the entire game down.

(Hmm... Can you by any chance dynamically change the difficulty in the middle of a level?)

smallfry on 6/12/2009 at 09:00

Quote Posted by Shadowcat

(Hmm... Can you by any chance dynamically change the difficulty in the middle of a level?)

Yes! I think it's under "Call a vote"

Shadowcat on 6/12/2009 at 09:38

Thanks, smallfry. That will definitely help.

gunsmoke on 6/12/2009 at 14:11

I believe that function is broken right now. May get patched, but apparently it doesn't work at all right now.

sNeaksieGarrett on 6/12/2009 at 18:26

@gunsmoke: Really? hmm... is that in single and multi? Guess I'll have to go and check

@shadowcat: well, hate to break it to you, but that's pretty much what left 4 dead is - a multiplayer game. Left 4 Dead, (and even left 4 dead 2 unfortunately) was marketed as a co-op game, and was built as a co-op game. So, the single-player experience suffers. It's kind of weird when you think about it, because some games have a great single-player with a tacked on multi-player, but with left 4 dead you get a great multi-player game with a tacked on single-player experience. I love these games , but one thing I can't deny is the single-player experience being somewhat lacking. Just for those reading this thread who don't understand what that means, here are some examples:
Sometimes, the bots will act retarded and not help you up (or take too long) when you're on your "last leg" (happened to me in l4d2.) I was immensely ticked off when playing the first campaign of left 4 dead 2 with bots in the mall level, when they would be too far away from me and I would get overwhelmed. Now if that's not frustrating enough, I died because a smoker had me one time and the bots couldn't get to me. There's a bug in l4d2(it may have been fixed, I don't know so this may be a waste of an argument) in which the AI will not shoot a special and instead take their sweet time coming over and meleeing it. Now keep in mind this was me playing around the time the game came out, but as we know valve, they get patches out for there games quite frequently.

Quote Posted by Shadowcat

I would much rather play the game through in single-player before I start playing online, and in L4D 1 that was an entirely feasible prospect. Hell, I play at 'advanced' difficulty with the bots in the first game, so the fact that the sequel has forced me down to 'easy' has me understandably irked.

Yeah, the second game is decidedly more difficult than the first one for some reason. (And I'm talking about Normal mode.) I mean, there's the obvious fact that there are more special infected types, but the less obvious is the game just feels harder. I don't know, maybe the zombies do more damage to you than the first game?