Requesting teamwork advice for low level players

Hey folks, I'm slowly crawling my way up from the primordial soup (level 58 now) and for the most part, have really enjoyed my times on the points reloaded VS and COOP Chicago servers (good pings -- I'm in the US).

'Cos I'm still low level, I often feel like a minnow in a tiny fishtank filled with sharks. It's hard to feel like I'm contributing as much to the team when I've got a bunch of 200+ level players on each side slugging it out with each other and I keep dying. I've been watching what people do and have been saving up my pennies to buy enhancements and buffs. Oh, and how I love running into those fancy blue toasters! :madgrin:

What I'd like to ask the community is some advice on how I can better assist the team overall, given that I don't have very many high-level enhancements yet. Yes, there's the usual L4D-style teamwork that applies on this server just as any other, but the points-reloaded servers have their own unique attributes that require their own additional challenges. Here are some thing that I've learned thus far but I'd like to hear other suggestions from the folks in the community--especially those who have recently spent a lot of time in-game sharing some good advice (Erik, I'm looking at you, btw).

Please feel free to suggest new ideas or changes to the ones I've got below. I'm interested to hear from the veterans on this server. I'm sure I'll think of some more after I post this. I'll add them to this list as I think of them.

If you've gotten this far reading my post, then I thank you for your indulgence. I know walls of text don't mesh well with short attention spans. LOL!

Infected:

- When you get the tank, pass it on. We're all trying to win and we have the best chance if the tank is in the hands of a high-level expert*. However, don't pass it until you actually spawn into the tank otherwise it becomes a bot! (just learned that last part yesterday). I know it's not a rule or a kickable offense to keep the tank, but you're not going to make folks happy with you if you die right away and the other team uses their tanks to their fullest potential.

* The exception to this would be if we're already pretty much guaranteed to win the level then I'd say to keep the tank and get some practice with it and the buffs/enhancements you've purchased.

- Be sure to buy the Boomer enhancement (is there a spitter one too?) to extinguish a tank when it's on fire. All the survivors are going to be hacking away at the tank so you'll have a chance to rush up and douse the tank with puke (such a lovely image, lol)

- Pay attention to the chatter at the beginning of each level. The high levels will typically tell you which SI to avoid taking (e.g. spitters usually) so the highest level folks can use them to inflict maximum initial damage. Or else, if you do end up with a spitter and want to use it, spit and die right away so someone else can use that SI slot sooner.

- Work to pick off the low-level stragglers and bots rather than attacking the main group at once. At least you've got a chance to help incap the weaker guys who maybe have used their knife (and don't have those darned electrical ones!) Fewer players means fewer guns.

- From LEGEND : "General rule of thumb is don't scratch if its not your catch." If a survivor is pinned, pulled, charged, etc... do NOT scratch them. You might accidentally kill the survivor and "steal the kill" from the infected who did most of the work. That will definitely NOT make you a popular guy on the server. Instead, if there is no other work that you can be doing against other survivors (doubtful, but just in case...) you can hang out nearby and get ready to pounce, pull, charge, etc... the survivor in case they kill the first infected with a knife or something. Just don't stay too nearby because some survivors have the enhancement which causes them to burst in to flame if they're hit by infected. Also, it's better to hang out in the shadows where the survivor can't see you getting ready to attack...


Survivors:

- Unless you've got one of those instant pick-up enhancement combos, don't pick up downed survivors unless you really are the only one around. It takes sooooo long to do and you'll be at the mercy of every drooling SI in the vicinity.

- Pick a group of high levels and stay with them at all times. Sometimes the team will split into 2-3 smaller groups that are separated by a wall or corridor or something. It's best to stay with them at all times because they can peel your sorry ass of the ground quickly. However, they set the pace of how fast your team is advancing.

- Similarly, don't bother using your knife, healthkit or pills early on in the game because the high levels will free you as well as have the "area effect" healing enhancements that will keep you going. When the high level guys wear down you'll definitely need those kits to advance. (Admittedly, if you're on your own you won't advance far...)

- Work to afford those unstoppable enhancements so that you can walk through fire without being hurt. I'm currently saving my moolah to buy my first one right now so I can participate in the casual fire-walking that the rest of my teammates enjoy.

- If you're a low-level main, DON'T FREAKIN' DIE! That means, find the group of high-level guys who are in the lead and stick with them like glue. You're a weak link in the attempt to get points for the team and so you have to do what you can to stay alive as long as possible.



General:

Regarding teamwork, all of the original L4D rules about teamwork are still in play even though Points Reloaded seems a lot more chaotic. From LEGEND : "If you're new I recommend you play 4vs4 and learn teamwork. Play 4vs4 and you'll know what teamwork is." From HighVolt@ge : "Playing on the VI servers might help players develop their teamworking skills. VI survivors dont have the luxury of playing rambo style an repeatedly buying medkits to save their ass when they go down... Playing as a unit by staying close, covering spawns, and always trying to push forward TOGETHER(as survivors),, IMO are the way to go"



Oh, and for those players (a minority, thankfully) who have called for the low levels to be kicked during a game and/or cuss us out in game for our very existence, I say unto you, you can kiss my little fuzzy butt.:lips::massmoon: I'm not going anywhere because I like these servers and their game play style too much. Some folks need to relax a little bit more, I think.

 

Nice guide

If someone started votekick against you just because you are low level-report him(or her,girls are so rude nowadays),It's not allowed

 

In the next version of PR, I have added a method of passing the tank using !pass. If you feel that there is someone else on the team who would fare better with the tank, you are free to pass the tank with !pass (this command is not live yet). This would start a vote amongst the infected team, in which your team can vote for a new player to control the tank.

Players are not allowed to votekick a player for being a low level. That behavior is not acceptable under any circumstance; just let one of the admins know and they will do something about it.

Nice tutorial Enjoy the servers and let us know if you need help.

 

awsome work

 

Thanks for the notes, everyone.

If I get any grief beyond text spamming, I'll be sure to drop someone here a note. Most of the unfriendly vibe comes from grumpy folks whose team isn't doing as well as they would like. No worries there.

Just thought of a question that I should ask someone here about.

What's the deal with scratching a smoked/charged survivor? When is it safe to do so and when is it not? Obviously, if you're risking damaging the infected or freeing the survivor, then that's bad. I figure it's good to do if the survivor isn't incapped yet. Once he's incapped you can probably move on. I've been occasionally swiping pinned survivors but I usually never bother beyond incapping because at that point it seems that there's better things that I could be doing with my time. I've never accidentally killed the SI doing the pinning so I just assumed it was okay. However, after reading a few posts about it on this forum, it's not clear to me what the right thing to do actually is now.

 

No try not to scratch survivors. Especially if they are not your survivors.

What if the smoked survivors were on their last HP and you come in with a hunter and scratch them and the survivors die by your scratch? That counts as kill stealing which will cause endless amounts of fuss. General rule of thumb is don't scratch if its not your catch.

You can always ask the player if your allowed to pin or pounce the survivor which means teamwork.

Something to add to your list Coyote for new players:

If you're new I recommend you play 4vs4 and learn teamwork. Play 4vs4 and you'll know what teamwork is. Half of the people on here are too fussy about what happened there, who kicked who, who slapped this and so on. It just becomes a mass of people basically squalling for points and too competitive to play fairly.
Also, always be on a server when roots are on perhaps you'll see why.

 

Only 1 root really plays L4D2 nowadays I believe, and is mostly on COOP lol, so no VS

 

Mr davzee shows his ass sometimes

 

dav isn't a root though

 

Playing on the VI servers might help players develop their teamworking skills. VI survivors dont have the luxury of playing rambo style an repeatedly buying medkits to save their ass when they go down... Playing as a unit by staying close, covering spawns, and always trying to push forward TOGETHER(as survivors),, IMO are the way to go

 

Awesome! Thanks LEGEND and HighVolt@ge. I've updated my list to include your excellent suggestions. Thanks also for the update on "scratching". The same thing applies to tanking, of course. Some folks, when the get the tanks, don't give a rats arse about any nearby SI -- even if they've pinned a survivor. They just want to beat everything up regardless of the consequences and who they kill on their own team.

On a high note, I just hit level 60 and finally saved up enough money to buy the unstoppable survivor enhancement. Now walking through fire is just a walk in the park.

 

If you ask me, scratching survivors, incapped or not, is completely fine. However, you need to make sure that your aiming entity is the survivor (that is, the thing you are aiming at is not an infected body part).

 

Some technical "scratching" advice:

Yeah I think scratching is fine too. If you witness the moment the survivor becomes incapped, just keep scratching for a bit until your judgement tells you the survivor may die soon to avoid a potential kill steal.

If you know the survivor is a high level (eg. 203+) and may have an electrified knife, try to keep a distance just before the survivor becomes incapped or just before the survivor dies... because he/she could use his/her knife at these moments and kill you too. Fireball explosion is also a general possibility at anytime from even low level survivors.

Warning: if a Charger is pummeling a survivor, only boomer vomit and spitter goo can help inflict damage to the survivor. If you try to scratch the pumelled survivor, only the Charger will actually take damage! Generally only high level Chargers can withstand this constant team-damage.

Aiding a hunter, smoker, and jockey by scratching is alright though. Always try to make sure your crosshair is aiming at the survivor of course.

Bitch-slap risk: If you're a boomer, only aid a jockey or smoker by whacking if you have literally just bitch-slapped another survivor.* And don't do more than maybe 4 or 5 whacks, because a bitch-slap could come next which would kill the jockey/break the smoker's pull. If the jockey is a high level player, he/she should withstand the bitch-slap but it is still a risk.

*only applies if have the bitch-slap skill of course.

 

Actually, don't scratch a jockey's survivor at all (no matter what infected you are). I've been killed several times as a jockey by some dumbass who decided to scratch me as I was jockey-jumping with the survivor, which ended by having me killed instantly. As for the smoker, don't scratch his survivor either just to make sure you don't slap him away as a boomer, unless the survivor is incapped. Then you may feel free to scratch him.

 

i do not like scratching, i had an MG(he will not b named) take 2 kills of mine on 2 really high level players, everybody saw it, he kept doin' it.

anyway, your level 60 now, keep fightin your way up the ladder. a lot don't stick with it when they die at the saferoom 30 sec. into the game. your past that point, kinda.
just keep to the advice givin' to u and keep playing. high levels will help u out along the way too!!!!!

 

I haven't seen good team work lately, just way too many people are rushing and all ..

anyway if you're a low level work on your Survivor skills and upgrades first to make sure you survive longer without much hassle to your team - Crawl, knife, speed are priority

 

Great discussion about scratching, folks!!! I think the "noob" summary is that you should leave the scratching to the experts who know what they're doing as there are too many exceptions and possibilities to screw it up!

And yes, I'm focusing right now on getting $$$ for my survivor skills. I was first buying all the SI enhancements I could find when I first started playing because they looked cool. However, since you only get one life as a survivor, it's more important to get all of those goodies first! I need to work on my speed though. I've got the crawl and knife at least.

Oh, and regarding teamwork, I think I agree. The high-powered abilities kind of turn this into a bit of a free-for-all when compared to other servers. It's also difficult to succeed if you're playing on a nearly empty server and leave all of the bots to die at the beginning! A couple of days ago I couldn't get into any PR servers 'cos they were full (nice problem to have, right?) and so I played on some other high-player-count L4D2 servers which didn't have ANY perks of any sort. Boy, did THAT remind me just how important teamwork was! That's something I hope to translate to the PR servers here.

 

Some of the issues mentioned in this thread are just fundamental problems with the PR game dynamic itself. Points Reloaded VS just doesn't encourage teamwork as much as it should. For example, the frequent and erratic team scrambling means there is no attachment to your actual team performance, and the whole problem of "kill stealing" is drawn from individual points-earning motivation--not teamwork. It really should be the opposite: people wanting other people to fast-kill whomever is incapped in order to reduce the number of points earned by the other team, especially in that sad situation where some level 24 player with a hunter happens to capture that last level 210 player who has no more knives.

I don't know what the solution is, because this is a problem with all leveling systems. Maybe some synergistic point earning system involving lower-level people and points would help. I'd just like to see PR VS orient itself more towards teamwork rather than individual motivation.

As for starting out in VS when you can't spend any more money on survivor skills because of your level: the one SI I maxed out early was the Smoker, and it's relatively cheap to do so. Then you can repeatedly grab people and become a huge nuisance for them to the point that they'll often use a (electrified) knife to escape. Think of any knife usage as an incap. Also, if you time your pulls right, you can survive a very long time and earn quite a bit of bounty, and often kill people. For the second SI to improve, improve your boomer. Run in, explode and vomit on people and you're good to go. Alternate between the two and you can do quite well in VS at low levels.

 

Oh....here we go again.

If you're so mad about low levels taking over tanks and not listening, if you're so mad about low levels picking you up, if you're so mad that a low level kicked you off the server, if you're so mad about a low level taking over spitter.

Then go cry somewhere else

http://gotvirtual.net/community/attachments/24o6mnttq4-gif.6020/

 

:ymmeme: Bi*** please, mine are far more superior than yours. http://mgftw.com/showthread.php/5833-Guide-To-Victory-In-Extreme-Co-op!?highlight=Guide+victory

http://mgftw.com/showthread.php/5932-Guide-To-Victory-In-Versus!?highlight=Guide+victory