Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott

So, at E3, Valve announced Left 4 Dead 2.

A lot of people are really, really fucking unhappy.

I'm not, I have to say. I'm not one of those people who thought Left 4 Dead was an incomplete game. As far as time spent playing it goes, I've spent over 57 hours playing Left 4 Dead so far. That's considerably more time than I've spent playing Call of Duty 4, Crysis, Dark Athena or any of the other excellent games I've paid full price for. So there's really no question over whether I've gotten my moneys worth out of this game.

Moreover, I think the sequel has some really awesome stuff in it. The melee weapons are okay and the new characters are interesting enough - I'm more excited by the changing levels, AI Director 2 and the new gauntlet runs though.

The big difference is- Left 4 Dead 2 looks like a different game. They appear to have dropped the horror atmosphere entirely which is... a questionable decision but it separates the games fairly nicely. But whatever, I thought I'd go through the criticisms one by one, see if I can come round to the detractors point of view.

I'll use the bullet points as set out by the users on the steam forum.

• Significant content for L4D1 was promised, and never delivered

Well I'm not sure about the word "promised". I bet Valve didn't sign anything. I think people were expecting Valve to support L4D in the way they were supporting TF2... I'm slightly disappointed that this isn't the case myself but on the other hand, supporting TF2 to this extent means I still play both games.

Plus, I think Left 4 Dead had enough content to justify the £25 asking price so this one's down to opinion, I suppose.

• Valve put little faith in L4D1 since they almost certainly started working on L4D2 right after release

That's how games work, guys. You finish one, you start the next one. Even if you think that Valve released Left 4 Dead and thought "you know what, we can do better than that, let's make another game" I'd certainly rather have Left 4 Dead for a year and then have a sequel. It's preferable to having it delayed.

I think this particular complaint assumes that everyone has been playing Left 4 Dead going: "you know what, this is shit. I can't enjoy it until we have two more campaigns."

• The fact that L4D2 is nearly identical to L4D1 will decimate the community for both games

Left 4 Dead has a community? I'm not being facetious, I genuinely have no idea what these people are talking about. You join the game, you play the game, you leave the game. It's not Facebook.

• The announced date is not nearly enough time to polish content or make significant gameplay changes

So when they delay Episode 2 by a year, everyone screams about how Valve need to hire more staff. Now they're releasing a game in a timely manner, and everyone moans about how they're not changing the gameplay. Valve can't win, can they.

• The new character designs seem bland and unappealing so far

I did think this as well when I first saw them but two things struck me.

1) No-one actually knows anything about the characters yet, so let's hold off on judgement there for a while.
2) I thought Francis was going to be the most boring character of all the L4D guys (because he was the most stereotypical), and then he turned out to be one of my favourites. So lets see what Valve do with them before we yell too much, eh?

• L4D2 is too colourful to fit in with L4D1's visual aesthetic

It's a different game, guys, they're allowed to look different. This would be a valid complaint if the levels were DLC but no, they're a completely new product. Hm. Maybe Valve had a reason for releasing it as a different game after all...

• The fiddle-based horde music is extremely disliked, though the differently orchestrated music is otherwise welcome

You know what? This is right on the fucking money, I hate the new music too. What little I've heard of it.

• L4D2's release will result in a drop in quality and frequency for L4D1 content, even compared to before

Right. There are two points there.

1) Drop in quality
Fuck off, this is Valve we're talking about.

2) Drop in frequency
Hm. Hm hm hm hm hm. If you were absolutely set on DLC, I can see how this would be annoying. I take the view that we're getting a completely new game and meh, it'll be £25. Fuck it, I've had my fun playing with L4D. Anything extra we get is a bonus.

• The community has lost faith in Valve's former reputation for commitment to their games post-release

Well, yes, but the "community" are a mob of trolls.

The thing about that is...

What is the function of DLC?

Well, to people like Ubisoft and the guys who make Rock Band, it's a way to make money. This is fine.

For Valve, it seems to be a way to keep people playing games they would otherwise have stopped. This is why they've been releasing stuff for TF2, people started to stop playing it so they were brought back in with unlocks & other fun stuff.

Left 4 Dead, as far as I can tell, is still being rampantly played by loads of people. Shit loads. It's hard to get a handle on how many servers there are but I've never had trouble finding a decent server to play on. From that point of view, it's far more important for us to have DLC in TF2 than it is in L4D.

Getting back to the point, though, the "community" are fickle bastards. They had a hissy fit when the 360 got the survival pack eight hours before the PC did. The community will get the fuck over themselves when L4D 2 is released and it turns out to be great fun.

So yeah, that's what I think. I would like to think this will chivvy Valve along into making some extra content for L4D 1, just to shut people up cos I like extra content as much as the next guy. I won't join in the crucifixion if they don't, though.



EDIT:

I've been having a little run around on the forums and if you know where to look, the sensible users are bitch slapping the moaners in no short order. Doesn't stop the 6k users who signed up to this idiotic boycott making a lot of noise though.

I did find one really good comment, which I shall post here. In a response to a threat blaming the consoles' memory space for the sequel (where the trolls thought it should be free DLC) he said:

"Umm, actually its because the L4D team had so many ideas for L4D, that when it got down to it, it was enough new content to warrant making it a new game. 4 new characters and all of their speech, back stories, interactions, ect, 5 new campaigns, each longer than the ones in L4D, with accompanying versus and survival maps, a new game mode, 3 new SI, and at least one new UCI, 20 new items, including at least 4 melee weapons and incendiary ammo, as well as an updated director which can affect weather and map layout. If you think about it, a lot of this would be unbalanced, awkward, or impossible to put into the original game without a lot of work, and probably causing a lot of issues. Also, its a lot of time and resources spent by Valve, and while they do enjoy giving us stuff for free, they do have families and need to eat as well. Also, this provides even more of a chance to pull more people into the game. That's the real reason, but sure, this could have been a factor as well."


Since you put it like that...

:)