Reviving Versus

I believe that adding some new functions in the buy system for the infected side would be great help for strategies.
i.e: be able to buy with bounty the amount of the same SI spawn simultaneously (3 being the default and could be increased to max 5 or 7 each? i think it should be done some testing to balance) Plus add a feature that you can pick whatever you want each spawn, so if i want to play as boomer/charger 3 times in a row its allowed for the sake of strategies. Would be really useful for some maps that Karma sometimes is the most or even only effective tactic to beat the survivor team.

As stated above, remove that feature that when you buy a tank it goes randomly to someone in your team, if i bought a tank i want to play it myself otherwise i can go afk and pass it to someone else. I believe everyone agrees with that.

And i agree that removing all the special tanks it is somehow "extremism" at this point, so only the paranoia and shaman allowed HOWEVER ofc with a small/random chance to spawn as one just like it was in the older versions, also could be spawned whatever map. Its a nice idea and could help keep the balance between survivors and infected but without need to get rid of all the special tanks.

 

What Mute said above, it is actually really funny that people usually come up here with "Why VS is Dead, WTH happened, PLS bring that darn thing back!!!", but can only point out problems and complain about but no consistent ideas/thoughts about possible solutions and hoping that someday, in a magically way like a miracle everything will solve itself and the server will be popular again. Make good use of your brain if you even have one and share ideas please, even if you think it could be kinda stupid or someone gonna judge for being outrageously wrong that i really dont think its gonna be the case, at least try it to show what you think could be done to be improved.

 

Exactly what i post on my first post
Nevermind , i'm waiting a reaction of honorcode to know if he think can be possible ( and what can be possible ) most of idea and if you need my help

That only 1 example , Which have all OP tank unless those farming during plenty hours or buyght a booster ? that stay pay 2 win , i'm thinking for news players , people didn't play versus during years lost skills too ( it's normal ) and want play only for fun , we can"t forced them to not buyght a stupid tank when server is half emptty and people are here for fun , i give my example too , when we , old players , was unban , we play a little at versus , playing map for bitch and karma slap , shock can"t control himself and buyght a ice tank for 2-3 remaining survivors where was the fun ? we was without buffs and infected team can just look and do nothing . I talk by my LONG experience , this is not a good thing .

 

Glad to hear you thoughts on the infected roles, I think they were a nice idea to give more of a strategy in selecting what buffs to equip on them. I also agree that they need to stay around It's pretty much the reason why I ended up waiting till they came out for me to write up the infected buffs and infected roles guide in the first place. Waiting to write the guide until then, it allowed me to give more explanations as such about these roles and how you could utilize some buffs with them well, I might take a revisit into it at some stage since I haven't really done any updates to it.

I would like to return and get player inviting to versus at some point as well. Given I like the idea you got there about the rank system. Hopefully it allows for a fairer balance in versus to make settling the score that more fun to do. (even if it isn't going to result in a majority of players joining VS and or the joining players staying around for a while).

Looking forward to hearing back from you again and with the changes that will happen soon enough.

 

I think thats is really good stuff and everyone agrees about the infected roles, it is a good idea.

However, about the rushing and score system are things that IMO still gonna be annoying and kinda ruin the game encouraging people to play for points and dont care much about helping each other in the team, since some people dont even like to defib just because for the amount of points that is lost, but in the end of the day they are useless. Are you getting paid for winning x amount of rounds per month? why do you want to play based on that score instead of focus on surviving as much as you can with your team and besides that it would help getting longer and fun rounds like used to be. So i think thats a negative side about that towards teamplay which as mentioned before that what vs is all about and should be focused. And everyone that actually enjoy/understand vs should know better.

Said that i hope you could find a better solution for that instead of kicking/banning the rushers that could ruin the team or even the server. But i still think it should be a strict rule about this to stop encouraging such behavior.
And Thanks for trying to change it for better and possibly reverting the situation.

 

One thing I observe as I play on the coop servers: People are looking for rewards (at least that's what they do, such as "where do you get this and that?"), which was mentioned as well in this thread, something extraordinary, just to keep themselves fueled on playing the mod. How about if we implement that on VS? Those rewards which could satisfy a player (even a new player).

So this is what I'd like to propose: an event that works similarly to SMT's lucky minute- or can work in different way. An ideal trigger for the event is when the survivors made it into the SR or when the infected has successfully neutralised the survivors. Winning team will obviously have better chance to get high tier rewards. Rewards can be former event buffs or very rare buffs, bonus $/XP/bounties for the next round (debatable), or boosters/crafting items. To enhance the new players' experience, they should be given the higher chance to obtain very good rewards, but it's still randomised just to be fair. Just a note for the rare items, it'd be better if they are not obtainable in Coop hehe. Tl;dr: lottery.

I know the proposal is sort of stupid or funny, but I think that should somehow contribute to the fun of VS when most players are in that current state of mind, unless let them be brainwashed and think of sharpening their skills or find PvP more enjoyable than shooting dull zombies controlled by the director and drop easy squeaky rewards.

As for the current meta of rushing, i'd like to suggest that along the increased damage of SIs against lonely survivors, the CCs' strength should also be increased such as insane decrease in movement speed by spitters, full control and faster movement speed to drag the survivors to somewhere very dangerous by jockeys, farther slaps (ideal is slap back into the group of survivor if possibles; somehow forgiving) by boomer, cannot use escape equipment when pinned down by hunters/smokers, fully disabled (similarly to stun; includes blindness) by chargers, and instant incapacitate by tanks (might be exaggerated). Even when an SI doesn't have the respective CC ability, it should be given a chance, at least once, to obtain the strength to teach the arrogant survivor a lesson!

 

I hope we can all get together to test the new update once it is released, and I'm very happy to hear it could be as early as next weekend. This communication and discussion will be vital to the experience of Versus and I truly cannot wait to be back at it playing the insanely long games like old times.

I have a big problem reading long walls of text in English so I am quite anxious about figuring out how the roles work and remembering what each class does, it's probably the only thing that will stay in the system that will be an issue for me but hopefully in time it will become a natural part of the game.

Thanks for taking this feedback positively and hope to see more people involved and interested both now and after the changes take place.

 

As some people have already mentioned, communication has always been the biggest issue when it comes to versus. All those years ago we were constantly telling people to post their thoughts on the forums but most of them thought it was more convenient to complain about things ingame than actually voicing their opinions. Now, I hope we can keep this discussion alive. It was a great idea to start the thread.

Also, thank you HonorCode for replying here. I also think that the classes should stay and keep being improved upon. As for the other things you mentioned, I'm really happy to hear about them as well, it will really give back the old versus feeling.

Balancing teams was always one of the most difficult things to do. There just isn't one perfect system in the entire world to match people up correctly. However, I'm really curious about the ranking system and it sounds good. The best people in my opinion are those who stay with their team and keep an eye on the lower level players. It makes me miss Liem who kept going back to defib people all the time, may he rest in peace.

Rushers were less of a problem back when I was still playing because most people realized it was more fun to go back for others, defib them and keep the game going. Also, because those who were frequent rushers knew people didn't like them for that so they were always the target if they were on the enemy team. It was pretty easy to teach them a lesson just by doing that. Although, I don't think you can call just anyone a rusher. As I mentioned in my first post, we used to split up in two teams when we were survivors, one team who stayed in the back and one team who pushed forward in the front. When you take those kind of things into account, it's very difficult to determine what actually constitutes as rushing. That's why I don't think it would help with temporary solutions like punishing players for being a specific amount of distance away from the others and such. Every situation is different. It just has to be more rewarding to go back for people than being a lone wolf, that's for sure.

Anyway, I made a list of survivor buffs that I think should be changed to be more balanced or that shouldn't be in versus in the first place. I got them from timkit's buff guide and keep in mind, this is my subjective opinion.

First, those that I think shouldn't be in versus: (Q) Piercing Bullets, Tank Slayer, Regeneration Outage, (E) Focused, (E) Weak Point Spotter, (E) Ex-infected Mourn, Ranged Expert, (E) Fentanyl Injector, (E) Tank Duelist (just the damage reduction part), (E) Zombie Eradicator, (E) Berserk, (E) Healing Pipe Bombs, and (E) Knife Recycle.

Those that should be changed somehow:
(E) Tank Party Crasher: if 2 normal tanks becomes the norm again, this one isn't needed. 40% extra damage is just too much for versus. Unless the normal tanks get their old hp and regeneration back.
(E) Tank Duelist: defense should be reduced to 10-15%
Witch Hunter: I don't remember how many witches you can buy at the moment, so this one I'm not sure about. Maybe 5% extra damage per witch instead?
(E) Super Moustachio Bless: should be limited to 3 times or less per round
(E) Testament: should only work once per round
(E) It wasn't that high: should be removed unless the bitch slap power is back to what is used to be. There's already the Counter Slap buff for this. I do think the max value for counter slap should be reduced to 20% though.

As you can see, most of the buffs I mentioned are event buffs. In versus, everyone should be as equal as the game allows. The only difference between players that make sense are the classes, nothing else.

PS: I would really like to be able to buy my own tank again.

Thanks for reading!

 

Just wanted to add more info about the last post i did regarding rushing.

Ok, so if im infected im able to kill people that are rushing much easier (nice as infected) but what about if im in the survivor team and two or three are rushers in my team, the infected gonna kill them and they will farm a lot of points, buying tanks, witches etc.
So whats the point about rushing? is that the score points? in my point of view they are just being useless as a team mate, dying and giving the infected team points, since the chances of surviving to reach the saferoom is way higher if the surv team stick together untill the end.. if theres a tank spawning, the survivor should go to the safer place available in that map and not in stupid places (definitely not too close of cars, dumpsters, forklift etc.) and dying because of that and then complaining about scramble etc when sometimes its just a lack of communication between the team.

There are some few occasions that i think its acceptable to rush, i.e, all of your team mates are dead and dont have any points left for a defib, since in this server you can revive a lot of people if they are close to each other, if you have enough points and you think could defib a lot of people together you should definitely do it since the chances to survive would increase a lot to keep going the round. Besides that, you can heal a lot of people with your medkit if people are close to you. So the server changes a lot of mechanics compared to a pure vanilla server and that helps a lot the teamplay, but whats the point if people insist in rushing sometimes alone in the front for nothing or no good reason? or is he spawn blocking? so yeah spawn blocking it is somehow a kind of rushing but not necessarily is, instead it is a important tactic for survivors. But if theres no mains or even non-mains spawn blocking ahead theres no need to rush and its a stupid move that gonna get you easily killed.

What Angel said about split up in two teams as surv, are you saying the team that is pushing forward is spawn blocking? just trying to understand.

I really wanna know the point of view from rushers and i dare you to post here and explain what is so good about to rush alone forward to reach the saferoom first (????????) and why you shouldnt be kicked/banned for actually help the infected team farming easy points, which should be considered griefing hahaha

 

The team that is pushing forward is making sure that pressure from the back is removed. Most of the time the mains and the toughest players were in the front and tried to get most of the SI to spawn near them. Tanks also tend to move towards the front, so those who struggled in the back would have an easier time catching up with the others if pressure was relieved off of them. Once the team was all together in an area where the survivors had the advantage (away from ledges, in large and open areas), it was time to fight back to the fullest. A lot of times, those in the front even managed to take down all the tanks on their own so it was relatively quiet once everyone was back together again. Of course, those of us who were in the front went back for the others if they needed help or were getting overwhelmed, then we were quickly back on track again. It explains why we had such long games, because pushing forward and trying to keep the entire team alive at the same time took a lot of time.

 

So there was a reason behind to do that after all and as you said, if they needed help you guys would help them. But tbh i dont see anymore (if ever) this kind of team play, since the people that i see rushing now they dont care about their team mates, they never go back to help anyone, since their goal is to reach the safe room first (????), not sure. i dont know, tell me if im wrong, because its ok, even if after all my posts about it and i decide to join a game again after the new updates and see that is totally bs just like the last few times i joined, im gonna just quit the game and probably uninstall lol, after 3k hours im really sick to deal with some stuff that really bothers me, most of the time not just because server balance issues but the behavior of some regular players.

 

I like your post honorcode personaly ( like regular stats) , i'm no care of stats , for myself , my menbers or a future recruit but it's that can give some revive to versus ... i'm too old for this shit

I don't even know if i'm going play a lot at versus or take seriousely , i already do what i need to do on past on versus , let see how kid can play now

via Imgflip Meme Generator

 

Hello again i haven't been playing l4d2 becuase I was playing the Dota battle pass, but it will finish this weekend so I will be around more often.

I guess I could talk about buffs and skills but I think HC already decided about those changes. However, I would like to mention a couple of things:

• I do like a lot the role system he implemented since it allows us to use more buffs and not having to be limited to a couple of SI like before and you can make it fit to your play style but at the same time you are limited by the role and you can't pick all the OP buffs.

• I like that the extinguisher bile is now a skill (makes things easier on new players). As for the event buffs I don't think event rewards (buffs/skills or buff slots) should be part of the versus servers, it would be better for everyone if no OP element is added there to unbalance things.

• I always disliked the idea of special tanks in versus too, even though I was the first one who got the shaman tank I always maintained that it disrupts the normal gameplay, I used the buff mostly to give the new players in versus the chance to kill me for the reward same as most of the others who had shaman back then, but it was lame to use it in normal versus games.

• I think we should go back to the 3 tanks system (max 2 simultaneous) + 1 extra and no random event tanks other than the finale ones. How about 1 + 1 if the number of players is less than 10-12 at the moment the round starts? idk if it's easy to do or not, but it's an idea. Also the tank should go to the one who bought it or maybe if it is possible add an option to decide who's going to get it, that way I could give it to a low lvl if things are going good and we don't need mean tank, or maybe pass it to someone who can do a good job if we are all high lvl players and I don't feel like playing the tank.

There is another thing to consider about the old MG, we had codes and we were leading the new guys to become good players (for example not getting tanks against new players, leave the low lvl for the last... things like that). I think those elements has been lost, players rush in versus because the veterans never took the time to teach them how to play, and don't take this the wrong way but the guild leaders are to blame too for poor leadership. I saw 2 or 3 guys during the event hiding from the tanks, refusing to leave the garage to pick me up, refusing to shoot, just leeching from the others and laughing about it (and I think their clan leader was there too and didn't say anything). I just mention this because if we really want to "make MG great again" we need to work with the players too, it's not just about buffs and skills, if the guys join to rush all the way to the SR as if it was a f$%@#$ marathon game then we have a problem. If they join just to stay afk and lvl up for free while occupying a slot we have a problem. I'm not looking to point fingers at anyone, but I do think many of these issues are product of poor leadership and could easily be fixed if we (the most experienced ones) lead them to become better players. This is silly but it's worth to mention, the reason why I loved MG when I first joined was the attitude of the veteran players back then, I started versus as lvl 1 and played all night in Chicago versus, those guys were always coming back for me, buying dfibs and medkits and covering me so I could get to the safe too, and I learned from that example and did the same for others, that's what I think it was lost in the past years.

As for the rushing in versus the only thing we can do is to show the new players that there are other ways to play the game, as a team, kinda like the guy in lost said "live together or die alone". I don't support penalties in game for the rushers because there are maps that require a tactical rushing to trigger the event, usually 2 good players go in front and do it and then they go back to the team, this is a "must do" in some maps and I can explain in detail if anyone needs or wants to know. Also rushing is a risky thing to do, as HC said, there are buffs that can get you killed pretty fast if you rush alone

The other problem is that many players care more about the stats than to improve as a player. Having millions of points doesn't mean that a player is better than the rest or even a good player, but many guys, including several veterans pay too much attention to this. The problem is that it affects versus really really bad, because these guys will play infected normally, tho trying to get always the tanks to gain more incaps for the stats and as survivors they will let themselves get killed right away (even with knife and medkit) to avoid losing 25 points or so, by doing this they obviously screw their teammates and some might even insult you if you dfib them to keep going. In the same order of lame attitudes some guys will DC before you kill them to avoid giving you a kill. In coop these type of guys will never get near to pick you up in a fight and will always stay away from the tanks hiding because they are afraid to get incap. In my opinion that is lame, maybe the solution would be to remove the -25 for incaps versus and just get (-) when they kill you, maybe increase to -250 to balance the system... I really don't know if that would make them change their minds, personally I think clan leaders should give the first step about it and ask their friends/clan members to change that crappy attitude.

Coop players were always intimidated by versus, even if they have a high level. Back in my days I used to invite my coop friends to an empty versus server and help them pick the buffs and try the infected, and them maybe noob around with some other friendly guys so they would feel comfortable to join us in versus again. I'm not saying that everyone should take the time to do that, but if you all want more people to play versus you will have to invest some time to get new people from time to time, mostly to teach them the basic mechanics and to protect them from the classic toxic players -> "don't pick me up you noob", "give me spitter noob", "pass the tank noob"..

Years ago I suggested that new players in versus should start with some basic buffs and skills (as if they were lvl 50-60 at least, with crawl and similarly basic useful buffs and skills) to make things easier and reduce that giant breach between them and the high lvl players, I heard that the same one who deleted my suggestions posted that as his own a year later, I don't care about that but I would like to know if that suggestion was accepted since it would help with the newcomers tho as we all know it's an old game and sadly there are not many of those anymore.

simple versus events with small rewards (1 moth donor or x2 booster) could be an idea to start over with versus, karma slap weekend, karma change weekend, kill Duncan weekend (I know omega would love that one )...

I think we can all agree that we are still here because we care, and we want it to be a nice place to have fun like we had before, but as I said before, it won't be enough with changing buffs and skills, it will requite some commitment from the veterans and the clan leaders to help change the attitude of some players regarding rushing and refusing to fight. Or at least if you don't feel like talking to the players just lead them by being a good example for them.

Sry it was too long, it could have been much more tho, but every time I think of a suggestion I remember that I wrote it years ago and someone deleted it to prevent HC to read it and I get pissed all over again

btw, the XP from versus is good enough to lvl up, but maybe you guys can add some extra rewards to the tanks like the ones from the tanks on coop, a couple of gems would be ok since you get lots in coop but none in versus. Also the rank system was my very last deleted suggestion here long ago, don't get me wrong I'm not complaining or anything like that is just someone mentioned the issue of communication and I think we could have work with many of these ideas long ago if it wasn't for the "delete everything I disagree" policy that "he" applied. Anyway, I would like to have something like that in versus, I always thought it would be the best solution to balance the teams with many high lvls that have different versus skills and will prevent the constant cry for scramble and add more stability to the teams for the duration of the campaign since it would be more likely that the players finish the game in the same team they started and not having to play 1 round on each team. What I'm trying to say is that it would give meaning to the team score again.

 

the super mustachio bless should be completly removed from the versus gameplay. For those who dont know it basically makes you immune to everything (maybe only exception are insta kills if you fall but i guess that slap doesnt work either). So you cannot be charged / smoked / ridden or pounced. Which itself alone is already very strong for versus but also gives rushers another tool to just run away instead of playing as team. Knife Recycle on the other hand has a chance in versus and works only once per map. So even you knife a smoker there is a chance that your knife is still going to be used.

Honestly the special tanks are one thing that makes versus fun as infected. Especially if you play as paranoia on the 4th map on no mercy campaign or shaman in general. I mean the normal tanks feel not really worth the bounty as they dont have any special ability apart from exploding acid rocks but so does the shaman tank who can also teleport and disable any upgrade / skill / buff for like 20 seconds or so.

About the rushing maybe forcing a minimum distance to score points to the team ? Like lets say 3000 units flow distance. Note that flow distance is different that actual distance between players but HC should know what i mean Also this would still allow people to block spawns in the front while still allowing the team to close up to the ppl blocking spawns.

 

i'd be glad to join

 

For who? just for people that is controlling them, but what about the other team? if the other team is actually really stacked and theres a lot of good players, then yeah, i maybe would use that too but most of the time thats not the scenario, its just make it unfair and lame, not just shaman with all those special abilities (a lot of them is lame in terms of balance in vs and if you dont agree with that, sorry, you are lame as well) but the other special tanks (drainer, ice, etc) too. The normal tank is all about balance imo, requires a good player to use it (especially to hit dumpster, cars etc with precision) and its basically based on the skill of the player and im sure he should and will get buffed and tweaks in the next updates.

You see? its not just the rushing attitude the ruins the server, its because some regular players here they cant control themselves (which i call them tryharding nerds) and they need to overkill the other team somehow, otherwise they cant just have fun being aware of what is being fair to other people and dont be jerkoffs just to win the rounds and maybe just for points/stats? really? smh.. As i mentioned in another post, You are not being paid in cash per month for earning x amount of points/stats. Stop being such toxic try harding nerd and work that fair actions towards your team (always helping them if they need help, especially new players/low lvl) and the enemy team (not trying to find a way to overkill them every time, it makes people ragequit and possibly never come back playing here again). So, if most of the special tanks got removed, its certainly for good sportsmanship and balance, which imo is the key for vs.

Said that, be fair to everyone so we can get a good atmosphere here again and have lots of fun.

 

Personally i want remove ice tank , etc , shaman and para was all part of versus on past ( more para he didn't have the buyght system )but need spawn with a few chance not now with some bounty .

May be i'm a wrong but you forget about knife recycle one of most OP new buff , if we have that in versus , no one going take a smoker ( for reminder you use a knife for free when your take by a smoker ) , didn't remember if it's for coop only just post about it ( just wake up without my cofee )
Problem seem we need remove a lot of buff for survivors .

 

To not be confused about the Knife Recycle Buff.

"Knives used to release from smokers will be kept
<Works only once in versus>"

Hope that helped