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[Spluff]

I don't mind dying, a lot of the time it's pretty funny. I beat expert 3 times today, a new record. Killed 4 tanks - running up and down the escalators or using the ticket barriers works quite well.

I think expert is different to the other levels in that you may die an awful lot, but it ends up being so much more rewarding in the end.

[Melodic]

Rule number 1 with Tanks is to run away. Run as far away as you possibly can. Go back through the entire level if you have to but don't stop running and don't stop shooting.

[CarrionMan]

Don't use molotovs. I got killed twice by a flaming tank because my brother lit it on fire.

[PizzaSHARK]

Does it have more health on expert? Or do you just have less?

From what I can tell, player and NPC HP is identical for all skill levels, but NPC damage output increases rapidly.  A regular zombie will do about 3 per hit on Normal, and 20(!) per hit on Expert.

Where possible, my teams have had the most success with the autoshotty.  It takes about 30 rounds or so, and on Expert you're almost guaranteed to lose a couple people, but it's worked well for us... by time we pick up tier wo weapons, we're usually running two autoshotties, an M-16, and a hunting rifle; it's worked very well for us so far.

EDIT:  Witches seem to give a lot of people problems as well, for whatever reason (my group hates Boomers. personally... just finish mashing a horde, round the corner and immediately get puked on and have to fight off ANOTHER damned horde...); assuming we have the time, we like to set up so that our riflemen have a clear line of sight to her from a distance away with our shotgunners protecting them (a bit like how lines of pikemen would protect archers from cavalry charges.)  In particular, it works very well if you can contrive to have her round as corner in an attempt to reach the riflemen; place your shotgunners at the corner and just flatten her when she zips around it.  The Witch can't take the hits like a Tank can, so the best solution is usually to stay somewhat close together and mash her as quickly as possible.  I've heard good things about using a Molotov on her, but my team's had some bad experiences with those damned things

[Spluff]

Don't use molotovs. I got killed twice by a flaming tank because my brother lit it on fire.

If a tank reaches you, your dead, on fire or not. Fire will kill it if you run the whole map - you don't even need to shoot it.

[PizzaSHARK]

Just depends on if you prefer cremation to burial

[Nodaisho]

Maybe I will find it more rewarding when I can run smoothly, I find some elements of the game rewarding, mostly when I manage to get a swarm in a choke-point and take out most of it before it gets to me, but the dying is just annoying because I move so slowly that a lot of hitting is luck when they start running.

Pizza, the boomers have a very noticeable audio cue, we don't usually have too much trouble with them. They will wait at corners a lot, but if you can't see their bellies around the corner, you can sometimes bait them out by moving forward and then back really quick, shoot it as soon as it comes out.

[JD]

Knock the boomer back with the butt your gun. All that weight knocks him back quite a bit.

[Spluff]

Yeah, you can hit him back twice - but the third melee with make him explode.

[Nodaisho]

He doesn't seem to have a very large explosion radius, though. In the subway car, it seems like maybe five seats, if that. They like hiding at that corner of the two train cars. At least the horde gets funneled through that way, you can just crouch and blindly fire at them while your allies shoot over you.

[JD]

He has a large radius for the projectile vomit. Twice I got barfed on when I was in the little air duct part. That sounds confusing, to clarify the boomer is in the subway entrance for the duct, I'm near the other entrance.

[Nodaisho]

Wait... the little tiny duct, right? After the first room after the safe house? Sometimes there are pipe bombs or molotovs by the entrance to it? So you are at the bottom of the first flight of stairs, and he gets you with it from the ducts?

[JD]

Other way round

[Spluff]

Yeah, that happened to me a few times when I first started playing. Which I'm assuming is why nobody goes down the vents anymore, just goes and picks up the bombs that are there (I know that's why I don't).

Also, won expert twice in a row with no restarts. Yay! (To be fair, this did involve abusing the weapon swap / melee bug).

[Nodaisho]

What bug is that? lets you melee really fast? Auto-reloads?

[Spluff]

If you swap your weapon you can melee again with no wait since your last one. So you can melee, swap weapon, melee, etc.

It's pretty handy if you're on the train and they are all charging at you or if you are on top of the train and they are climbing up. Not so handy anywhere else as they can get behind you.

[Melodic]

Update out today. For Valve's track record, all of the updates have sucked. This one gets rid of connect xxx.xxx.xxx console. And Expert is more Expert.

[JD]

Is anyone else having server issues? I have problems connecting

[Dimmukane]

I got really high and played this for 4 hours straight.  I am motherfuckin' floored.  I have never gotten an adrenaline rush that strong from a game, ever.  Wow.

[MadassAlex]

Is anyone else having server issues? I have problems connecting

When I try to play this online, it knocks out my entire home network.

[supersheep]

OH MY GOD SO GOOD!

Seriously. At times this is reduced to a slideshow, due to the crappiness of my graphics card properly. (Speaking of which, any tips on how to drop the graphics quality lower than Low?) Still I am playing on!
Just got pinned, and then saved at pretty much the final possible point and I got to shoot a Hunter off another team mate as I lay dying. AWESOME.

[KvP]

We are going to get it on once this game comes out, which is... 23 hours from now.

We ought to set something up.

[Dimmukane]

Just reminiscing from yesterday....HOLY CRAP GET IT OFF ME

[Scandanavian War Machine]

tomorrow's the big day!

anyone else getting it for 360 or am i alone?

[Melodic]

Depending on which way Valve swings, Steam Groups might be the best in for private servers. If anyone is so incline, joining the Pfriends group will net you the three servers we'll be running on launch.

[ackblom12]

Assuming Amazon ships it on time, I'll be getting it Wed or Thursday. They've been good lately! Fable II and Fallout 3 both got here on time!

It's totally not getting here on time is it.

[Dimmukane]

tomorrow's the big day!

anyone else getting it for 360 or am i alone?

Me, but my CAT5 cable doesn't work with my 360 unless I hold it in.  If I had a spare cable, I might be able to wrangle something else to work...

[JD]

What I would like is if people who have the demo could play with the people who have the game.I'm getting my hopes up again, I gotta stop that Don't get me wrong, I'm getting the game, just not immediately.

[est]

I downloaded the demo last night.  If all goes well I may check it out tonight or tomorrow.

[Nodaisho]

tomorrow's the big day!

anyone else getting it for 360 or am i alone?

Me, but my CAT5 cable doesn't work with my 360 unless I hold it in.  If I had a spare cable, I might be able to wrangle something else to work...

Got duct tape?

Est, I am pretty sure the online part shuts down very very soon, play quickly.

[PizzaSHARK]

OH MY GOD SO GOOD!

Seriously. At times this is reduced to a slideshow, due to the crappiness of my graphics card properly. (Speaking of which, any tips on how to drop the graphics quality lower than Low?) Still I am playing on!
Just got pinned, and then saved at pretty much the final possible point and I got to shoot a Hunter off another team mate as I lay dying. AWESOME.

Most Source games will allow you to force DX8 instead of normal DX9... it'll look ugly, but it might be more playable for you.  It usually involves an extra command in the shortcut to the executable; if L4D will let you do this, the command should be in a readme or somewhere on the official Steam boards.

[OneoftheLost]

Awww..


So after a two hour download, I found myself the proud owner of the L4D demo (via steam) Being the patient and strategic fellow that I am, I immediatly joined an online server. (The quickmatch thing ROCKS.) Standing on a roof top, I found myself with three other survivors and what looked to be a stash of ammo and weapons. Taking a step.... I noticed it was rather choppy. After about ten minutes of play I had to quit. Settings yielded my solution. (Hello, "Low") Re-joining a different server, I then played for roughly forty minutes.

Intense is the only word I can use to describe this game. To say the co-op is top notch is an understatement. I havn't had this much fun since TF2. Sure my comp can't handle the higher end graphics settings, but who cares? The game HAS to run smoothly.

Sadly, steam chose to kick me off of the demo when the main game was released. So now I'm forced to wait until my next paycheck to pick up this gem...... ah well. Hope everybody else is having fun! Oh, and let me know how the full version is? I'm currently trying to decide if I should spend the remainder of my paycheck on Flight Simulator X (Yeah... I do love me some flyin') or L4D. Mainly, a map count would be nice, sure the enemies are randomized, but the maps all seem rather short. I'd hate to spend $49 on a few maps when I could spend $30 on a much bigger, and more established game.

[Nodaisho]

I am not certain, but I think that there are four campaigns, with five maps each. The comparison is made of how in online games, you usually only play a few maps anyway, but I don't think that is accurate. In CS, for instance, each map has a lot of different ways to go about it, where as there are only a few little ways you can change how you go about L4D (at least, in the demo, hopefully I am proved wrong for the full game).

[Dimmukane]

Dude, I played through the same two levels 10 times in a row and didn't want to stop for sleep.  Each iteration was terrifyingly different.  If you don't think 20 levels is enough, maybe you should hold off until they release a new campaign or two.  But I could play the demo for weeks on end as is.

Also, Nodaisho; it's a bit more complicated than that.  I use the same CAT5 for my 360 and PC, switching between the two.  It works fine on my PC.  If I duct-taped it to my 360 (which I take with me often), it would only be reapplied twice a week, costing me money for lots of duct tape.  I tried putting it in a router so I wouldn't have to switch back and forth, but alas, that didn't work....although if I tape it to the router....hmm.  Maybe tomorrow.

[OneoftheLost]

I wish I COULD play the demo for that long. Stupid steam. I'll probably tell myself that I'm NOT going to buy it, and then... buy it anyway. I mean.... sure, all the little features are kewl. (Dualies, Ai director, the minibosses, the way each map is random. etc. etc.) but at the end of the day I was sold at "Zombies."

Ah well. Such is life.

On a related note... I was playing the demo (before steam locked it.) and going through the subway, it was on Expert or somesuch. Can the game have more then one Witch per level? I thought you could only have one? (I ask because my teamates kept swearing there was another up ahead.... there wasn't.)

[Nodaisho]

If that doesn't work, I bet that you could use velcro, stick a patch around the socket of each, cut a hole for the socket, attach the other side of the velcro to the cable, with a hole for the cable, and it would be held in by velcro. Or you could just get a new cat5 cable. How much are they, anyway?

I found it a bit boring, but I think that is in part due to my not playing online (low framerate, don't want to hold others back), and in part due to always having the time to plan stuff out, since the game got slowed down, not just the framerate.

[CamusCanDo]

I want to play this game so bad. So bad.

Fuck the 21st

[Melodic]

After having finally sat down for 4 hours with the full game, I can only say that Valve has succeeded in making a game better than Half-Life 2. It's even better than the demo, and not just because of more stuff.

Versus is executed flawlessly. It's extremely entertaining playing the zombies, and it makes playing the humans more interesting.

The game is much harder. Insanely harder, actually. Expert is actually turning out to be Halo Legendary-esque.

100% top-notch.

[PizzaSHARK]

I am not certain, but I think that there are four campaigns, with five maps each. The comparison is made of how in online games, you usually only play a few maps anyway, but I don't think that is accurate. In CS, for instance, each map has a lot of different ways to go about it, where as there are only a few little ways you can change how you go about L4D (at least, in the demo, hopefully I am proved wrong for the full game).

20 maps at least comprising four campaigns of five maps each.

I'm looking forward to seeing what the modding and mapping communities will do with L4D.  How long till we see (quality) Resident Evil-themed maps?  Raccoon City and the RCPD precinct should be relatively easy to do.  How about maps that operate on a day/night cycle?  New or modified weapons seems like a no-brainer (personally I'd like something like a LAW, that takes your primary weapons slot and can't be reloaded but kills pretty much anything but a Tank in one shot.)

Vanilla HL2+ep1+ep2 has yielded Goldeneye: Source, MINERVA: Metastasis, Garry's Mod, and a whole host of other high quality mods.  Should be interesting to see what people can do with L4D, particularly where the Director AI is concerned... or how about a human Director?  L4D meets AD&D's Dungeon Master?

I remember doing co-op Halo Legendary with a friend... if Expert really will be on that level now, this game is gonna own my soul.

[Nodaisho]

The main thing with a human director would be making sure that it wasn't meant to be competition, or if it was, the director would be limited, otherwise you get a tank zerg rush and that is no fun for any of the humans.

I'm not buying it for a while, money is not on my size right now.

[PizzaSHARK]

Just have the human Director operate under the same limits as an AI Director.  Maybe allow him to communicate with human Infected as well, like a commander communicating with his squad leaders in Battlefield.

I won't be able to buy it for a couple months at least... gonna be getting a new car at the end of the month (and I can't expect to get much from the sale of the junker I'm driving around now), then Christmas in December.  Having to wait sucks!

[supersheep]

Hmm, so the demo is now locked. Not so good. No way am I dropping $50 on a game if I can't tell if it'll run or not on my pc. I guess I'll have to wait a wee while before I can try it.

[Dimmukane]

@Nodaisho: Again, another issue; the cable I use is 25 feet long and is going through the walls of the house.  I'd have to buy a new one (~25 bucks), pull out the other one, and re-push it back up there.  Or I could crimp it and put a new head on there...right now I'm not sure what I'll do.

[ackblom12]

Crimping it is pretty simple. I'd highly suggest it since you'd have to fish otherwise.

[Melodic]

No way will we see a human Director anytime soon: the AI is hard-coded into the system.

[est]

Guys, I played the very first little room bit this morning after leaving it to download overnight and I have some concerns and a few questions!

Ok, so I started on the roof, opened the door and saw a few people/zombies shuffling about.  I didn't know if they were zombies or people so I shot the fuck out of them straight up.  I figure this is the right thing to do.  If there are other survivors I give less of a shit about them than I do about my teammates and I surviving.

I went down the stairs and shot the shit out of a handful of zombies in the kitchen there.  Ok, so far so good.  I cleared what looked to be some kind of loungeroom while staying in the kitchen because there looked to be a t-intersection out there and fuck walking into that when there's already things around.

Ok so, at this point I was being hyper-vigilant.  I was creeping around a corner and a Hunter just appeared on top of me.  Like, I did not see this thing.  Everything around me was clear and it's like this thing bamfed on top of me.  A bot killed it for me and I got up then everything was quiet.  I crept forward a little bit and all of a sudden a wall of zombies warped into view.  Like, they literally reminded me of a spaceship coming out of warp.  After we cleared them this happened again a couple of times in different places.

So my question is, are the zombies really this fucking fast all the goddamned time or is there something seriously wrong with my game?  This is ridiculously stupid.  The first wave of zombies warped into my vision out of an empty room with no entrances other than the one I was outside of.  Later on my team-mates kept killing Smokers behind us and that was a cleared section with no entrances/exits.  Do zombies respawn or get back up or appear out of nowhere or something?  I hope there is something I am missing here, because instead of making the game seem "tense" or whatever this "zombies just appearing as if by magic" shit will get old very fast.

[KvP]

Never happened to me.

I'm sure Valve QA would love to hear about that, you should let them know.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

well, i think zombies can burst through certain sections of wall/climb out of vents/hide in closets/etc. but it sounds like you just had some serious glitching.

[KvP]

Hippity tips!

=================

Since we're discussing about Left 4 Dead gameplay, here's some teamwork tips that will tremendously improve your team's survival rate in expert:

-With every room you leave, make sure you close the door behind you. The zombies aren't capable of opening the door which they can only destroy it. Use the advantage to shoot through the door.

-Make sure there is one player always to be receptive to the group's rear flank. Never know when will one special enemy boss lurk behind or a horde even.

-Common sense: When a player is shooting at zombies in front of you, don't try to outrun him to compete for zombie kills. You will only get yourself shot by him accidentally. Also, NEVER EVER STRAFE SHOOT ZOMBIES when you are in close proximity with your team mates. Sure you will encircle them, but that includes your comrades which will result in mass friendly fire. Hold your position and retreat backwards if its too much to take while at the same time meleeing them. Make sure you know where your team members were position on the fly to avoid getting friendly fired by them. Its just like basketball.

-Walk button. Use it to engage enemies if you want to push forward or circle an enemy. This makes your movement much more coordinated and your team members will recognise your movement in their sight which they will unlikely shoot you. You have no idea how fast players move when in green health, which is super fast.

-When you can, always reload your weapons before they are empty. They reload much faster. Apparently there is a bug for all weapons except the shotguns in which that the submachine guns and rifles do not perform the extra animation of pulling the blowback when the magazine is empty.

-Pipe bombs are your best friends. These are decoys that kills and could save your group's life during horde moments. Molotovs are much trickier to use but they can effectively set an area of denial against the horde. But it can also unintentionally stir chaos to your group if you do not throw it properly.

-All weapons can penetrate with each respective weapons having their own penetration power. Sniper rifles could pierce almost everything while uzi could only pierce through wood.

-Learn to share your health packs and pills. One crippling team member handicaps the group's strength since he is slowed. One dead team member would mean one flank less covered.

-Never stay at one place for long. Sure you may feel safe being near an unlimited ammo or weapon cache, but your life is still limited and may be at the point of being in temporary health. More time wasted, more health is diminished. Keep moving forward unless your dead team members spawns close by at the timely moment.

-Saving friends from hunters or smokers. Unless you have precision weapons like uzi, do not attempt to use shotgun since you will also hit your team member you are trying to save. Instead, for hunters, melee the hunter to free it from your team mate and blast it freely at point blank. As for smoker, you could melee your friend to free him from the tentacle if the smoker is beyond your sight, or shoot the tongue itself to free your friend.

-Last, most important and common sense of all: DON'T PANIC when hell goes loose. If a team member is incapcitated, do not panic. He has enough health to keep himself safe unless a hunter got to him. First make sure that all zombies that are targetting you are downed. Next, shoot at the zombies, not at your downed friend. Do this by aiming at the zombie's chest to head level area. Common sense right? I see stupid players doing that every single time which kills the poor guy instead of saving him since all weapons penetrate.


-Helping your friend when he is surrounded by zombies. Shoot your targets perpendicular to the friendly, not at the centre of the friendly itself that results in friendly fire. Its just like peeling an apple. This is common sense, something alot of new players do not have which is aggravating.

[Nodaisho]

Well, I haven't had them spawn someplace that there were no entrances after I had checked, but sometimes there will be a group of them hiding in a closet. Smokers get about on the roofs, like hunters do, so I figure they just came through the same path you did. I never saw zombies spawn in in a manner that made it obvious that they weren't there to begin with, except for when I saw someone play as a boomer, he vomited on a survivor, and a few seconds later, a swarm spawned in within his sight, but out of sight of survivors.
Ninja'ed twice.