Multiple Platforms The Great L4D2 Boycott!

[The Illusive Man]

As some of you may or may not be aware, at the recent E3 event, Valve unveiled a preview trailer of the currently in development Left 4 Dead 2, however across the entire steam community this has caused quite a stir and frayed tempers have begun to overspill, as people finally show just how fed up they are of broken promises and corporate greed!

For months now Valve has been promising fixes to all members of the steam community to make the L4d experienced, balanced...working and above all....enjoyable, however they have yet to deliver on that promise and many diehard fans among the steam community see the unveiling of L4D2 at the E3 as a clear slap in the face to them, and have decided to do something about it.

There is currently a group known as Boycott L4D2 forming on the Steam community, which is quickly expanding in number and is making it known to the Valve developers "They can release it, but every member of the Boycott group has no intention of buying it"

This has actually achieved quite an effect on the boys at Valve as there Lead director of the L4D Gabe, has made a podcast in an attempt to appease the rampaging masses of "annoyed fans" by promising them fixes for L4D before L4D2 sees the light of day.....

Many people however, including myself see this as nothing more than a fob-off....another bunch of empty promises being made by a company who's reputation is becoming every bit as bad as Electronic "Lets release 6 expansion packs a year" Arts, whom are just trying to sweet-talk people around into buying L4D2...

To those of you that play L4D, I would urge you to join the ranks of the protesters and boycotters against Valve and the corporate greed, show them the consumer will not tollerate Half assed games with nothing but broken promises and no intention to ever make good of there word...

As the saying goes..."A stone may make a small ripple in the water, but one day that ripple will become a wave"....hopefully by unifying against valve, the gamers of the world will show the developers....

"We Have had enough of your half-assed products, start releasing proper games or shut shop and dont bother making them at all"

Thanks for reading

 

[Scrutator]

Has Valve said anywhere that they're dumping support for L4D anywhere because unless that is happening then I don't have a huge issue with it.

L4D2 from the sounds of it is bringing a different way of playing the game in keys areas like the Gauntlet Events along with the new boss infected, melee weapons, different ammo types etc so if there is sufficient new material on top of that then I think it could warrant release as a new game since adding some of the above could interfere with any balance that the original game does have.

I've already played 60+ hours of L4D so I feel that I have gotten my moneys worth and I do trust Valve with shit like this in the past like with TF2, if this could have been put in the current game I believe they would have done so. The only thing I'd imagine that have made them go along this route is because they need a way to bring this content to consoles and MS just doesn't want all that content released as DLC. I'm not sure of all the facts and I ain't going on the Steam Forums of all things to check up on this, going on that place makes my head hurt.

In the end if there's enough in the new game to justify it for me then I will get it, if there's not then I won't bother and just will get it on one of their 50% off days or something which happens quick regularly anyway. I'm not going to damn Valve at this early stage in any case, they aren't EA after all.

 

[The Illusive Man]

One of my major beefs with Valve as with many others, is not the fact that they have released content in some form (the new modes are quite interesting and indeed to some degree fun to play, the maps that got added should have been in at release so thats something that was overdue) It's the fact that they have not done enough to solve the "Competitive" aspect issues of left 4 dead.

Orginally they made the odds terrible as an Infected Team, due to an abuseable glitch everyone came to know as "Shiva Stacking" (so known because of it being similar to the many arms of the hindu goddess shiva) where a survivor team would pile into a corner during a horde attack and just hold down the melee key, forming an virtually impregnable hail of melee swings....

The next thing they did was attempt to fix the smoker issues...by actually LOWERING the effective snag distance....but added a very low dmg tick to dragging.

They then claimed that smokers tongues could no longer be broke by meleeing an entangled survivor....lo and behold...its still very much breakable in this manner.

They also heavily nerfed the hunters claw damage (which was the only effective way of putting a stop to Shiva stacking other than a Tank spawn) making the hunter a very much pounce spam class and removed the option for hit and run.

Orginally we were led to all believe that L4d would be highly supported for clan vs class and ladder play, but several broken promises and failed patching attempts later.....things havent changed and competitive play is still very much a no-go area.

 

[Scrutator]

To be fair even with those bugs and exploits fixed L4D ain't exactly a competitive game with the randomness brought on with the Director AI. Well imo anyway, I've never looked at it on a competitive level myself so I ain't an expert on that.

But yeah I see your point with a few of those issues since I have been victim of the Shiva Stacking, turtling in the corners during panic events and just general fucking exploiting in many cases. It's one of the reasons that I don't play the game that much unless I'm doing so with mostly people I know since a lot of people are dicks in this game.

The new game is supposed to incorporate elements to help limit some of that BS, the Survivors are at their weakest when they're on the move and from the sounds of it Valve are making it so that they have to keep on the move which means less turtling/Shiva Stacking and hopefully that means a more level playing field.

Now they won't be able to change the current maps to go with this new way of playing so they'll have to make new campaigns to go with it and if they're adding a tonne of other stuff in with it (Survival, Versus etc) then it could be classified as a new game I suppose.

I can't say anything for Infected weaknesses and other bugs. Sometimes I get rolled over by them sometimes I have no problem. That generally depends on the players/teams I'm with. But if Valve continue to give support for the game when it comes to buffing/nerfing certain things like this then it should be ok. As I've said new content I can accept to an extent to pay for, not giving continued support to a game not even a year old would be when I'd consider it unacceptable.

As I said I'll wait til I hear more about what's in the new game as well as how they're going to support the current one before I make a final judgement on it and whether its worth my money. It's a tough one to call since I do agree with you that this is a pretty dickish move to make at this point in the games lifetime.