So, it looks like the L4D2 boycott will die

[Pillypill]

I won't get this dlc- just wait for l4d2

 

[Robert632]

the boycott was bullshit to begin with. most of the people would have bought it anyway

 

[Cilliandrew]

Eh, i completely support the boycott. I'm someone who purchased the first Left 4 Dead based on all the pre-release hype it had built up at the various shows it previewed at, along with Valve's history of supporting games like "Counter-Strike".

I was incredibly miffed to find out that they ALREADY had a sequel in development and it was coming down the pipe in under a year.

That completely goes against their established-reputation.

It's not rocket-science to understand where the haters are coming from, guys. Once that sequel hits, the community for the first game will go kaput, because let's face it: they're already producing a sequel because they know the initial product was flawed.

We got burned, as customers.


Now, i WANT to play the new game because it is my hope that with THIS one Valve will revert to their previously established reputation and support the darned thing.


But i have to say that the trust i once had that this would be the case and it was all automatic is gone. Do i really want to fork over another 60 bucks?

 

[HEXYDEZiMAL]

Besides, they added Versus support for the other two campaigns. What more could you ask for?

For Left 4 Dead to be like that out of the box, as I expected it would be? For it to not take a multi-million dollar corporation almost half a year to patch in some climbing points and spawns?

What? The weapons in the game, as is, are incredibly well-balanced, and when you throw in all the stuff you can do with gas cans, there's plenty of ways to kill things. There simply isn't a need for more weapons: the balance of the game as is with regards to guns is spot on.

You're not getting it. Before release, when they stated the number of weapons, they purposely included gas cans, propane tanks, pipebombs, and so on. Their number (something like sixteen, I think it was) was almost purposely deceptive, since there are only six actual weapons you can fire at anything. If I'd have known there were only six, I might not have even bought the first one. In contrast, Zombie Panic Source, a mod for the Source engine that I also play, has something like three times the weapons of L4D, and at least double the amount of firearms.

I have not once encountered a bug in Left 4 Dead. Perhaps you're just unlucky, in which case I'm sorry: but there are always going to be bugs in games, especially games like Left 4 Dead. Online multiplayer games ALWAYS have glitches, bugs, and exploits: but Valve has been diligently patching L4D since release to counteract this.

Instead of complaining about the bugs, why not take your bug report to a forum that will do you some good, like the Steam one? If you tell Valve about the bugs you encounter, they can fix them faster. Just complaining about the fact that there ARE bugs does nobody any good, and if you don't submit a bug report, Valve never knows about the problems you've encountered.

There's simply no way this statement and what you said above about playing at the beginning can both be true. The lobbies alone used to be buggy as hell, and that was unavoidable. You can't possibly have failed to encounter that. Left 4 Dead was a mess of bugs at release.

Let me link this again, you obviously didn't see it:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=751344

Quite a few of these bugs have been reported for a while. Valve isn't fixing them for some odd reason... oh wait, that's because they're already releasing Left 4 Dead 2. They haven't been diligently patching shit, they've been doing enough to make you think they are. A lot of what's on the list has been there for a while, and it's far from being recent. The game still has exploits that have been there for months. You call that diligent?

Again I say, I expect them to fix what's there before Left 4 Dead 2 releases.

If they don't, I'm not purchasing Left 4 Dead 2 -- let alone any other game they make -- ever again.

 

[A Raging Emo]

I'm actually not sure.

Maybe they will still complain at the lack of lots of DLC for Left 4 Dead.

 

[HEXYDEZiMAL]

I still don't see these bugs, they fixed nearly all of them in a few weeks. Even then though online games will always have bugs.

Maybe that's because they had to balance those two maps properly so they wouldn't be entirely broken like early Versus matches?

360 Gamer, so no comment on the SDK.

How will it kill off the L4D1 community? They're trying to make the games compatible with campaigns, which I think is a little much.

Yeah, I accept it because your argument makes no sense.

Read over the above link at your leisure. They have yet to fix any of that, and as stated it was last updated in February of this year.

There are still exploits in-game that people can abuse on you. Valve knows about all of this, and they seem to be hoping that they can coast to L4D2 before too many people get pissed off about it.

I might also point out that the 360 version is updated behind the PC one, so you might be even worse off on things that people can abuse in game. It could be okay for virtue of being a console, and it might not. I haven't seen enough of that version to know.

If you don't understand how a superior product is going to kill off most of the community that supports an inferior one, I don't know how much more I can help you. My argument makes fine sense, and I'm not repeating it all again.

If you want more detail, go back and read the previous posts, because I tire of being a crutch for laziness.

 

[HEXYDEZiMAL]

I'm actually not sure.

Maybe they will still complain at the lack of lots of DLC for Left 4 Dead.

None of this is anything they didn't have already. As stated on page 1, I believe, this was content that didn't make the cut into the game.

It's nothing new. Survival mode was nothing new, either. Valve hasn't put an ounce of effort into seriously supporting Left 4 Dead -- they seem to be getting by with the bare minimum that I would expect from an inferior developer.

To compare, it's taken Valve nine months to come up with two levels that they already had. Killing Floor has been out for about three months, and they've already fixed almost all of the bugs and exploits in the game, they're releasing two new levels (real new levels, not levels they already had), two new weapons, optional skins, and even more rumored content is already to come.

Why people settle for this lazy shit from Valve when a puny little company like Tripwire can do so much more in less time is beyond me.

 

[Unknower]

All I can say is that I disagree. You say it was inevitably going to be a hit? I fundamentally dispute that. No-one can predict the future with that kind of accuracy.

- Zombie mods for Counter-Strike were really popular.
- There isn't any other zombie FPSs out there (that I know of).
- Valve made it.

Left 4 Dead's success was pretty obvious.

The orange box. It's fair to say this is one of the best value-for-money gaming items in recent years - if valve were a bunch of black-hearted fat-cats they would have never made the orange box, all three new releases would have been seperate purchases.

Valve has a track record of making good games. This is the first time major accusations of foul-play have been aimed at them and they have been hotly debated by both sides - as an outsider I am inclined to give valve the benefit of the doubt this time because it is the first time.

Another way of seeing The Orange Box is that it was a rip-off. Valve originally planned to release Black Box, which would have contained only the new games, and Orange Box. That would have been nice, right? That way people who already owned the old games could have bought only the new games and people who didn't have the old games would have had a great deal with The Orange Box. But no. The Black Box was cancelled. The reason for that is obvious = releasing both Orange Box and Black Box would have made less money than releasing only Orange Box.

Then there was Steam's 1$=1? -pricing. Yeah...

You only got "screwed" in the sense that not all of what was promised is being delivered.

But isn't that screwing? Let's say you pay a company to deliver an item to you. They promise you to deliver it to you. You can demand your money back if they fail to do it.

You're not getting it. Before release, when they stated the number of weapons, they purposely included gas cans, propane tanks, pipebombs, and so on. Their number (something like sixteen, I think it was) was almost purposely deceptive, since there are only six actual weapons you can fire at anything. If I'd have known there were only six, I might not have even bought the first one. In contrast, Zombie Panic Source, a mod for the Source engine that I also play, has something like three times the weapons of L4D, and at least double the amount of firearms.

After L4D's demo there was a short ad [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbtMTzPUk3M] for the game. The ad promised "10 new weapons." I assume a normal human being would expect that to mean pistol/dual pistols, shotgun, Uzi, pipebomb, Molotov Cocktail, M16, sniper rifle and auto-shotgun + 10 weapons. However, the full game didn't have any new weapons. The demo had all the guns but the ad still said "10 new weapons."

That's false marketing.

 

[scotth266]

You're not getting it. Before release, when they stated the number of weapons, they purposely included gas cans, propane tanks, pipebombs, and so on. Their number (something like sixteen, I think it was) was almost purposely deceptive, since there are only six actual weapons you can fire at anything. If I'd have known there were only six, I might not have even bought the first one. In contrast, Zombie Panic Source, a mod for the Source engine that I also play, has something like three times the weapons of L4D, and at least double the amount of firearms.

How do pipe bombs and mollies not count as weapons?

And once again: the weapons that are in the game work well, and are incredibly balanced. So there's no NEED for other firearms.

There's simply no way this statement and what you said above about playing at the beginning can both be true. The lobbies alone used to be buggy as hell, and that was unavoidable. You can't possibly have failed to encounter that. Left 4 Dead was a mess of bugs at release.

Let me link this again, you obviously didn't see it:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=751344

Quite a few of these bugs have been reported for a while. Valve isn't fixing them for some odd reason... oh wait, that's because they're already releasing Left 4 Dead 2. They haven't been diligently patching shit, they've been doing enough to make you think they are. A lot of what's on the list has been there for a while, and it's far from being recent. The game still has exploits that have been there for months. You call that diligent?

Again I say, I expect them to fix what's there before Left 4 Dead 2 releases.

I bought the game about a half month to a month after it was released. Once again, no bugs on my end.

Still, if you were expecting there to be no bugs on release, you're either crazy or delusional. It's a well-known fact that games, like every other bit of software released, have bugs: hence the reason for patching in the first place. The developers can't catch all the glitches in the game pre-release these days...

I opened up all the patch notes: the number of fixes is incredibly long, and there's been one at least every half-month, regardless of how long the patch notes are... and when the patch notes are short something significant was done. So you can't say Valve hasn't been patching the game.

I'd like to know how many of those bugs are still IN THE GAME, how common they are, and how game-breaking they are. If there's a bug where a Hunter randomly spawns with a Smoker model, but the chances of the bug occurring are one in a million, odds are Valve will be a little more concerned with patching something else, because it rarely happens, and doesn't really affect the gameplay (save in terms of amusement value.)

If they don't, I'm not purchasing Left 4 Dead 2 -- let alone any other game they make -- ever again.

So, your response to Valve releasing a brand-new new IP, one that had never been tried before, is to complain about it because it isn't perfect and say that you'll never buy another product from them again?

Your choice, but you'll only be depriving yourself of some good games.

 

[flare09]

I'm still not buying L4D2.

 

[UnravThreads]

Screw L4D2, I want Ep 3.

I've no idea what this boycott is truly about, but at the end of the day, they're a corporation with lawyers, money and legions of loyal fans. They may give you some DLC they knocked up in five minutes on a lunch break, but L4D2 will be the priority. But mind you, it's coming out damned quick.

 

[YuheJi]

It was well-received for the same reason that the boycott group gets demonized. Biting the hand that feeds you when you are a reviewer for some magazine is not a very smart idea.

That is not how gaming magazines work. Their clients are the customers, not the developers. So they focus on bringing the truth to readers, not pleasing game companies.

 

[Lord_Ascendant]

There will always be people who aren't satisfied with anything

 

[Symp4thy]

The boycott still won't end, people who are boycotting are idiotic bastards who whine and complain that they aren't getting what they want like they used too.

How is boycotting idiotic? These people aren't satisfied with the product or the support for it so they are refusing to buy another. That's called being a smart consumer. They have presented their argument and listed all of the reasons they feel that way. Yes some have been addressed by Valve, but that doesn't change the fact (and main reason for the boycott, IMO) that a sequel is being released only one year after the first. If Valve wasn't satisfied with the first, they should have pushed back it's release, not immediately start working on a "better" version. I admit, I don't know much about programming, but to me, what we've seen so far of L4D2 doesn't look all that different from L4D, other than new weapons, characters, infected and locations.

I've commented numerous other times on this subject in this thread as well as others but it usually goes unnoticed. Personally, I am not a "member" of the boycott, I'll most likely buy L4D2 but wait until I can get it used. However, I can see where the boycotters are coming from. What I don't get is those against the boycotters. I'm sure there are plenty of boycotters who are hating for hate's sake and spew ignorance, but there are also plenty who are making an educated decision. But what I see from the Valve "defenders" is mostly just insults. Even professionals are getting in on the hate. (I don't remember the article, but one was linked here a couple weeks ago from an editor of a popular game magazine responding to a letter where he insulted the writer of the letter for defending the boycott.) I think they are whining even more than the boycotters. Why do they care? The boycotters aren't preventing the game from being released. Those who want it can get it, and the boycotters will continue to play L4D1, or move onto other games.

The real question is why aren't people smart enough to boycott the yearly release of sports games? The only changes from year to year is a few minor additions and an updated roster.

Edit: I found the thread about the editor from Game Informer responding to a letter. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.126581

 

[HEXYDEZiMAL]

It was well-received for the same reason that the boycott group gets demonized. Biting the hand that feeds you when you are a reviewer for some magazine is not a very smart idea.

That is not how gaming magazines work. Their clients are the customers, not the developers. So they focus on bringing the truth to readers, not pleasing game companies.

I'm sorry, but that isn't at all how it's been working. Many of them have not only inaccurately depicted the boycott, but negatively painted it. There was another one of those just recently in Game Informer. For much of the negative comments, nobody from the boycott has been allowed to speak in return. That's not doing a service to the customers who put this all together because we were unhappy, it's being a corporate shill who's afraid to bite the game developer. Glancing in the group just now, we apparently just got spammed again as well.

 

[Marv21]

There now they made their promises kept and they have no reason to whine anymore, I just came from siding with the boycott to now offically declaring it over!

 

[HEXYDEZiMAL]

I keep seeing these posts like yours Marv21, but not only has what Valve promised not been kept to date (it wasn't just 'any DLC at all' if you read what all of them were saying, it was far more than that), but that single item is not the only point of the boycott. I've also already itemized that Left 4 Dead has an incredible amount of patching that needs to be done, and the tiny little trickles of patches we've seen have only barely put a dent in it. Patching it up is the least I should expect by the time they deliver a second game.

See here for an example of their DLC promises: http://www.videogamer.com/news/valve_details_post_left_4_dead_launch_plans.html

There are more than that from different members of Valve as well, but I don't have the links handy.

They have a long way to go before you should even think about declaring it over.

 

[Crux2]

- Zombie mods for Counter-Strike were really popular.
- There isn't any other zombie FPSs out there (that I know of).
- Valve made it.

Left 4 Dead's success was pretty obvious.

Likely? Yes. Probable? Yes. Obvious? Yeah, sort of.

The only point I was trying to make was that it was not INEVITABLE. It was not certain. It was not 100% guaranteed. There are plenty of games out there from reputable developers that looked promising during development but didnt live up to the hype.

Another way of seeing The Orange Box...

So long as your acknowledging it as another way rather than a definitive way thats fine by me. Episode 2, TF2 and portal are what I paid for with the OB and if I had felt ripped off with them I'd be hard pressed to find any game worth its price tag. I bought HL2 and EP1 prior to the OB comming out, I was in the same boat as many other people and my only reaction to the news they would be included with the new release was "oh, thats pretty neat I guess."

Again, I agree there are genuine issues to be concerned over but I still feel that a lot of the crap (not all, mabey not even the majority, but certainly more than the accusers seem prepared to admit to) being dumped on valves doorstep is at best overstated for effect and at worset is a jumble of vague, unqualifed accustaion.


Stuff gets changed while games are developed. Some stuff is dropped, some stuff is altered. It should be common knowledge that these things happen. I can fully understand why people would rather have valve try to update the first game rather than make a new one but it gets my back up whenever I hear the word 'promise'.

Promise is a word that seems to be thrown around with a little too much abandon to my mind. I'd say that unless someone says "I promise" - or something to that effect - then it isnt a proper promise is it? It's just something they said, something that at the time of publication was the stated intent of the writer/speaker.

To my mind Valve never 'promised' anything, they stated what they intended to do and that got changed. A controvercial change, mabey time will even prove it to be a foolish change - but one that I feel they were within their rights to do as a well known developer with more than a little experince at making successful games.

 

[geldonyetich]

I'll definitely buy L4D2.....after Half Life 2 Episode 3 comes out.

I, too, will buy Half Life 2: Episode 3...

... from the comfort of the distant future embryonic space machine that will be required to sustain my decrepit body by the time they get around to releasing it.

 

[Spike815]

Is anybody boycotting Modern Warfare 2 as well? Complaining that all of the stuff could have just been slapped onto the old game? Because that's exactly what Valve is doing. If people are going to get upset over every sequel not being free, there's going to be a lot of crying.

PS. I have no problem with you not buying a game if you personally feel Valve has shafted you that badly. But when a petition hits the internet and people start trying to get me to convert like some religion, it just becomes annoying and whiny.