In the latest update for Left 4 Dead, melee has been nerfed. So much for my idea…

I’ve been discussing certain issues I have with Left 4 Dead with some mates, especially issues of closet or corner camping and, mostly pertaining to griefers, the dreaded safe-room camping. The former has established itself as a pretty popular tactic to deal with large hordes, especially during waiting sequences such after calling the elevator in No Mercy part 4. Of course it can be argued that bunching up is a perfectly viable defense strategy, but I would like to contend that the impenetrable “melee-spam shield” created by four survivors clipping into each other and meleeing like mad is a flaw in the game. It’s defies logic, it requires no skill whatsoever and it’s just too damn easy.

This flaw also contributes to a griefer problem that seems to be occurring more and more frequently: two griefers on the survivors side sit in a corner in the safe room, meleeing away. They cannot be vote kicked, hordes can’t reach them, the special infected have a hard time getting to them. I’ve seen servers held up for a quarter of an hour by this behaviour, because the infected team just wasn’t skilled or coordinated enough to bring them both down.

All in all, I came to the conclusion that one of two things must happen in order to fix this: either melee must be nerfed or the infected must be given a way to effectively force the survivors to disperse. Now, nerfing melee may solve that particular problem, but would probably also open up a whole new can of worms when it comes to balancing the game. Essentially it would make the whole game a lot more difficult for the survivors. No, if we want to force the survivors to stop bunching up in corners or cramped places, we need to make corners and cramped places less attractive.

The solution is already in-game and just needs a bit of tweaking: the Smoker. Or, to be more precise, the smoke he produces after dying. Right now this smoke is kind of lame. It obscures vision a bit, but survivors can generally walk through it without suffering much more than a cough so most people don’t even care about it. I think that could be changed.

If the smoke were only a bit more dangerous and caused a lot more discomfort for the survivors, it could become the ultimate area-denial weapon. A survivor standing within the smoke should no longer be able to spam melee. Instead, it should reduce melee speed to once every one or two seconds. Additionally, weapons fire should be much less accurate, as the survivor has no way of aiming properly. To round things off, slightly randomize the survivor’s turn speed while blinded by the smoke - this should add a perfect sense of disorientation.

Now let’s envision a scenario, where all four survivors are camping inside a closet, waiting for the lift to open on No Mercy part 4. Usually they can bottle up in there indefinitely, happily spamming melee and killing anything that comes at them. But now a Smoker moves in front of them and explodes into cloud of smoke. The survivors are suddenly blinded, can’t see what’s coming, can no longer effectively spam melee, can’t shoot straight. The infected are pouring in, hunters are jumping into the fray, the survivors can’t defend themselves or each other properly. Only by moving out of the smoke can they regain their senses and start to fight back effectively. The smoke is not deadly by itself, but it creates a small area that the survivors will definitely try to avoid until it dissipates.

I think this would give the Smoker death smoke a little bit more of a purpose, instead of just being a mild annoyance.

Last night, after playing a couple of long rounds of L4D Versus mode with a friend of mine, I started wondering what the hell some people are smoking before they play the game. The afternoon started off well enough - we played a couple of friends-only rounds with people I had added over the last couple of months, the atmosphere was mostly cordial and we had loads of fun.

When most of the group left after a great round of No Mercy, we decided to open our lobby to the public. At the time there were four of us left so we stuck on the same team, while other team was filled with pubbers (i.e. random people). Two of the first pubbers to join were obviously from some kind of clan, while the other two looked to be random non-clan players. On the whole they worked extremely well together, which was fine, as our team was communicating, setting up effective strategies and pulling them off. All in all we were pretty much on par for the first map.

The problems started when two guys on my team disconnected, thus opening spots for two pubbers. My friend and I were simultaneously using TeamSpeak and in-game voice, allowing us to both comment on the game in private and talk tactics to our new team mates. If only they had talked back, that is. Of all the people who joined and left our team for the rest of the campaign, not a single one spoke, and only one took the time to write something in global chat - complaining, after we had lost a round, that no one had come to rescue him when he split up from the group.

Another guy who was briefly on our team consistently left the safe room without his med pack, ignoring our verbal and textual hints to take it. He also had the habit of either racing ahead or just splitting up from the team, getting himself killed in the process. His successor wasn’t much better. Obviously playing with his sound off, this idiot was completely oblivious to the world around him. Either that or he was intentionally letting the rest of us get raped by hunters while he stood with his back to us, trying to pick off distant zombies with his shotgun. While on the infected side, these people could obviously do less damage to the team as a whole, though they still completely ignored our attempts at strategic teamwork.

The question we kept asking ourselves is: why? Is it really more fun to rush off alone and get yourself killed than to stick together and play as a team? The whole concept of Left 4 Dead is centered around teamwork - even versus mode is nothing but coop with player-controlled enemies (counter-coop?). All in all, I’d say that people playing L4D need to remember a set of 10 simple gameplay guidelines for each side:

Survivors

1. Stick to your team.
2. Be aware of your surroundings, especially listen for certain sounds and musical cues.
3. Help downed survivors in any way possible, as fast as possible.
4. Do not rush ahead. Getting to the safe room first does not make you the winner.
5. Do not lag behind or otherwise slow the team down.
6. Pass pills around to those in need.
7. Use med packs conservatively and never outside of cover.
8. Never run after an infected who is running away from you. It’s a trap!
9. Use molotovs and pipe bombs both convervatively and sensibly.
10. Pick your weapon to suit the environment.

Infected

1. Never attack alone. Not even if you’re the tank.
2. Try to anticipate what your team mates are doing and assist them.
3. Concentrate on keeping downed survivors on the ground, however possible.
4. Watch out for survivors running ahead or otherwise leaving the group. They are easy prey.
5. Do anything to slow the survivors down. Smokers should target stragglers.
6. Injured survivors are primary targets. Try to prevent them from healing.
7. If the survivors bunch up in a closet, stay back and wait for them to come out.
8. Try to lure survivors away from the group and into a trap. Hunters are perfect bait.
9. Use fire to your advantage (burning hunter etc.). Tanks should obviously stay away from it.
10. Listen to your team mates.

And that’s about it.