New infected for Left4Dead

[ParkourMcGhee]

I would say that they would bring out 2 new campaigns for us to try out (and fix that boathouse finale bug with the various rocks), but if it had to be a special infected I would say some sort of underground zombie would cause havoc.

 

[Davey Woo]

Another thing I think they should do is to stop letting Hunter's jump on people that have been constricted by a smoker.
It happens to me all the time, i wait in the darkness on the to of a building, stay just out of sight so the survivors ca't shoot me, I send off my tongue, pull the survivor and begin to hang them, then some bastard point-hungry hunter jumps on them and rips them out of my grasp. And the annoying thing is a smoker can't pull someone out from underneath a Hunter.

I also like the idea of poisonous smoker smoke.

 

[Vanguard_Ex]

I think, for holiday occasions, they should have one called 'The Tickler'. it has 6 arms, and you can hear when it's near cos if its constant giggling. When it gets a hold of you it does less damage than the smoker but is much harder to get off.

 

[anNIALLator]

I think I'd go with zombie animals. I thought the cerberus dogs in Resident Evil were great so something along those lines. Or maybe a zombie that can spit sticky goo that slows down survivors or pins them to a wall, or a variant of the Smoker that can use it's tongue to swing like spiderman then swoop in and grab a survivor.

 

[nathan-dts]

A shape shifter who can morph into any suvivor. It would be able to sabotage the team by stealing things (medpacks, pipe-bombs, molotovs), alerting the horde and forcing a bit of team killing.

 

[sgtshock]

Maybe some type of zombie who crawls on the ground like a hunter, but moves faster, and instead of pouncing on a person, it grabs and gnaws on their leg. The person is immobile while this is happening, and if they don't shoot it off fast enough (1-2 second window) the survivor will have his speed reduced by 50% for a period of time, or until he heals/takes pills.

This would make it harder for some players to speed through a campaign, making the game more tense, and having a crippled teammate would amplify teamwork needed. In versus, the zombie would get points for the (small) amount of damage it does to the survivor, and any zombie that attacks a crippled survivor. Although it might be overpowered in versus; it could be devastating when the enemy team has kept the survivors holed up in one spot, and use it to prevent them from advancing fast enough.

 

[experiment0789]

That would be awesome!

 

[IsoNeko]

The way I see it, the Special Infected evolve from one another. First is the Hunter, who grows Claws. Then they grow one more step, and grow a large tounge and start to mutate, and releases a cloud of "Gas". The next step is large all over mutation, and when killed still releases the Gas, but it's now a pheromone for the Zombies, and can also make the Pheromone a projectile, and finally. The Mutation has hardened the Skin, and the fat has become Muscle. That is the way I see the special zombies, so it would have to be either a mid-stage evolve, or a new mutation form.

I'm thinking something with long stretchy arms/limbs. That can lash out from far away, and doesn't have to get in close to do damage. Somewhere in between the Hunter and Smoker stage, or Boomer and Tank stage.

 

[Bocca]

A escapist zombie. Its calm and isolated but if you shoot it. It will run for you faster than you can ever imagine and of course kill you

 

[AndyFromMonday]

A dog Zombie, who can jump on you and starts attacking you. After 4-5 seconds of being attacked you get infected whit the "zombie disease", giving you 10 minutes until you become an undead. Has a zombie, you become hostile to the other survivors. Not only that, but you can attack one of them, bite them and infect them too.
The only way you could delay the infection would be from injecting yourself whit [insert random name], making you able to continue playing has one of the survivors. Yet when you reach the final stage of the level, 25 seconds before the helicopter arrives you become a zombie.

 

[Jamash]

The Ankle-Biter.

It's a small infected, basically just the upper torso of a human with oversized jaw and teeth (or maybe a Lamprey like mouth) and hook-clawed arms.

Because of their small size they can hide under cars, bed and in other small spaces like cupboards.

They can trip-up a survivor, with a kind of sweep/rugby tackle and latch onto them when they're on the ground, holding them there and gnawing their legs.

Also they ambush a survivor by jumping out of small spaces and dropping down from ceilings about door. With these non-ground/upper body ambush attacks they latch onto the survivor like a hungry backpack and gnaw the back of their neck or chest, partially obscuring their vision and draining health.

Individually they could be weak, but they make up for it with stealth, surprise ambushes and tenacity, i.e. they are quite difficult to remove once they've latched onto a survivor (the victim can only use their hands) and difficult to shoot off without hitting the victim.

 

[IsoNeko]

Theres a problem with that. The Survivors are Immune.

 

[Caliostro]

Assumption much?
Why can't it be the other way around? Maybe the respawn system only spawns 1 smoker because the team would be far too weak with 2.

Yeah, and maybe you only get 1 tank because he's too weak... You're starting to sound like a beginner richard... If the team had 2 smokers it would be ridiculously broken. One guy pulls a survivor to the left, the other to the right... Woops.

And that's why you don't pounce until:

1) You know you're going to do damage from your leap.
2) A boomer barfed on the survivors.

A hunter's pounce, at most, does 25 damage. That's not that much and those require quite a bit of timing and aim, you won't pull them all the time.

And if you really knew how to use a hunter you'd know a good strategy is also to pounce someone who is about to rescue someone else, even if there's a guy behind them, you buy the other infected a few seconds of extra damage. Or pounce someone off a ledge, although the hunter is probably the hardest to use to throw people off ledges.

Except they don't.

You always have 1-2 seconds before you start getting dragged by the smoker tongue. In this time, you can EASILY headshot a smoker with a sniper rifle or a m16, which usually means death for them. I've killed thousands of smokers that way.

If you grab someone head on when they have a clear shot, you DESERVE to be die. As a smoker you never grab someone in their face, you always grab them from behind, above, or if they're biled. And yeah, unless they changed the "delay", if you grab them from behind they have no chance to get you.

And you can also grab them from cover. I do that a lot.

A hunter needs to get close and personal, but they usually do at least 1 hit when they pounce. Against a good team the smoker is basically useless, because everyone knows where the melee button is. You just need to punch the person getting dragged and voila. End of the smoking extravaganza.
And before your tongue is recharged, the opportunity already passed by.

Dude, you do know that a simple melee hit stops a hunter cold mid-pounce right? Even if it is a HUGE 25 damage pounce, a simple right click knocks you away and stuns you long enough for a follow up headshot. It stuns you longer than a smoker is stunned when the survivor is released.

"But cali, you can pounce them from behind!", and you can also grab them from behind with a smoker, which is still faster, has more range, allows you to use cover and pulls the immobilized survivor away.

You must be shitting me right?
A team of good players IMMEDIATELY hears that person who's getting tongued, scream. In the case of Zoey it's even laughable, she says "NOOOO". If you miss that you're deaf.

I'm assuming you're talking about a smoker trying to solo without a team to bother the other survivors... In which case, who the fuck can't hear the huge "RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH-YAK!". You can listen to that shit from ACROSS THE MAP, not to mention all characters shout when they're being pounced.

When you hear that scream, you simply turn around and melee the person. The fact that when you drag someone you're doing it slower than the survivors moving speed doesn't help as well.

Again, assuming nobody else is there to help you yeah. In which case the hunter is just there, you don't even need to move.

Except he doesn't. -_-
Didn't you never notice how I usually get rid of smokers that way? You always have a short time space before you start getting dragged. If I have a M16 and if I'm lucky, I'll headshot the smoker.

The bad ones you do. The good ones that grab you from behind, or between a small hole, I have to run back to shoot them in the face and get you loose.

A trench is usually a bunch of players in a corner right? Well those players will probably see their comrade turning orange and simply melee them. There goes that theory. Oh and good luck in trying to pull one of them TROUGH A HORDE. Your tongue doesn't bypass normal infected and that's a huge handicap.

It can fire between them though, I do it all the time. And again, you have to know which one to pick and when to pick them. Always pick the one further from the rest, always pick the one the others aren't looking at.

A hunter can just pounce up and bypass the "melee barrier". And when he pounces someone the other 3 will break because of the stun. I consider that to be a lot more effective then just trying to pull someone who will get melee'd.

And you'd be wrong. Generally they walk straight into a bash, are stunned and die. When they don't they gain a second, and then they die because they're just there.

A hunter can't do the same?

Considerably harder for 2 reasons: 1 - A hunter has to charge the leap, which makes him growl loudly, and 2 - the smoker's considerably faster grabbing someone at any distance than the hunter is leaping, specially at long distances, you can just wait till everyone jumps down, and as the last one jumps, grab him midair. You have to jump a lot sooner with the hunter, generally soon enough that the other guy is still there or that they're both down the holes... And then you'll die.

Now, traits where the smoker is handicapped/underpowered:
...
In a competitive environment the hunter is a lot better then the smoker in almost every situation.

Learn to use him, that's all I'm saying.

 

[experiment0789]

Infected who dance to thriller and the monster mash. the music cuts off chat and all other sound, if you get too close to them, you start dancing and taking damage, the only way to stop them is to kill the Michael Jackson infected who leads them. Or maybe Mr.T infected, he throes you hella far so you suffer falling damage. Also Chuck Norris infected, in life he was Chuck Norris, in death he is, Chuck Norris. Or maybe Bruce Lee infected who is immune to melee attacks because he is a martial arts master. The game would need better weapons for the survivors to keep it balanced if all these guys showed up so maybe a Chainsaw, flamethrower, rocket launcher and Light saber.

As interesting as these ideas are,I don't think they would fit in with the game.
At least your thinking out of the box.

 

[AndyFromMonday]

Theres a problem with that. The Survivors are Immune.

Ahhh ofcourse, I should had known that in any zombie movie/game, the survivors are always Immune.

 

[IsoNeko]

Well they wouldn't be survivors if they weren't immune. Thats what they call Zombies

 

[Trivun]

This thread has startled the Witch!

Seriously though, I'd go for Infected animals. That's easily explained as whatever virus caused the Infected to mutate could have evolved to infect animals as well, it's fresh and different (since you don't get many games with animal zombies, Resident Evil zombie dogs being one of the few exceptions), and it adds a bit of a challenge. Otherwise, how about Tarot Infected? New Boss Infected based on the 22 cards of the Major Arcana, similar to the various bosses in the House of the Dead series. For example, the Lovers card could be shown as a pair of Witch-type (but slightly larger and more powerful) creatures that can actually move like the other Infected, and so on.

 

[Peetah1218]

]

If you could design another infected for Left4Dead what would it be? Bear in mind that the game mechanics will probably alter dramatically whatever you do and that you have to keep the current infected, you can't replace any of them with your new design. This isn't to say I don't think the game works as it is, it does, I'm just curious about people's ideas.

Thinking about game mechanics I think I'd like to see a child zombie who's cry can deafen you, rendering in-game speech and your awareness of on-coming infected temporarily disabled.

They already had an idea for a special infected like that, called the screamer. It was going to be like the witch, non-playable. Anyways, they replaced it w/ the smoker's smoke ability to cut off team chat.

from listening to the developer commentary, they said that the screamer was replaced by the boomer. originally the screamer would shriek and summon the horde which was replaced by the boomer's vomit

 

[Optimus Hagrid]

After much thinkings, I have come up with the spitter, who crawls up walls and across ceilings. Dark coloured and quite small, he is quite hard to notice. He is absolutely silent, but travels relatively slowly. His tactic is to hide up in the corners of rooms and up at the top of complicated architecture, say piping or the pillars in the No Mercy subway, and wait for survivors.

When a survivor come into range, however, you can press right trigger and he will let out a large, audible hiss, baring a large, pink mouth and bright white fangs, meaning he is very easy to notice. If he is not shot down, he will shoot a stream of poison that will blind the survivor?s screen in the general direction he is spitting from.

As the spitter sprays acid on the survivor, he will take small damage. Being sprayed on for a few seconds will cause the survivor to fall to the ground in rashy pain. HOWEVER? if the survivor looks at the spitter as he is sprayed, it gets in his eyes, and he falls to the ground blind and taking damage at the rate of your average household smoker or hunter.

Due to the spitter?s wimpiness, he is incredibly weak however, and will comically flop to the ground after a few shots.

I'm sure this idea could be refined for balncing issues, but I'm proud of him anyway.


As for that whole evolution malarky, he could be the link between Smoker and Boomer, sneaky tongue replaced with sneaky bodily fluid.