Week 16

August 6, 2010 - L4D Team

Week 16: Gib Fest! If you only had one thing? If you don’t play a mutation, why?

Gib Fest
Blast the infected to shreds with M60s.

Swords can slice up some fun. Chainsaws can tear apart the infected. But you need to get close for both and well… chainsaws are really loud! Time to go with the ultimate gun, you and three friends armed with M60s and unlimited ammo. This is going to get messy.

If you only had one thing?
Last weeks question was - Ignore the game for a minute. This is real world zombie apocalypse. You fought your way to a boat and boarded. You are unbitten. You are heading towards an Island in the Keys you hope is deserted but you have no idea. If you only had one thing you could wish to be on the boat with you heading towards that Island - what would it be?

Since the numbers are similar on both platforms we combined them:
56% Zoey
22% Shotgun
13% Ellis
7% Health Kit
2% Defibrillator

While we would have taken Ellis over the shotgun ourselves, this voting makes sense. Almost. I have to ask the 2% who voted for the defib. If it was for you, who was going to use it on you? If it was for someone else, were you really going to walk around looking for a random dead immune Survivor to resurrect? Either way, you scare us.

If you don’t play a mutation why? We did an update to our web blog this week about Mutations. While we go into more detail there, we are curious. If you don't normally play Mutations, what is the main reason why?

Next Week’s Mutation: Iron Man

Mutation Breakdown

August 5, 2010 - Charlie Burgin

With the first dozen Mutations out we wanted to take a minute and talk about the Mutations.

Overall the Mutations and weekly polls have been a great success and an amazing way for us to get feedback from the community. Don’t worry we still have more Mutations coming and we will also be tweaking and bringing back some of our favorites.

The idea behind the Mutations was simple. Left 4 Dead 2 is played by many different players and types of players. Some players have 300+ hours played in almost daily games and some players only play in weekly casual games with friends. We wanted to create weekly events that mixed up the game rules to experiment with gameplay and made people look at the game in new ways.

Before Mutations, what got played the most? It really depended on the day. Versus and Co-op Campaign were tied neck and neck each with around 40% (80-85% total) of the players on any given day. The other 15-20% was split between Survival, Realism and Scavenge.

Some of the constraints we decided on when creating Mutations: It was okay if it wasn’t something that you wanted to play enough to replace an existing game mode as long as it was fun for a short period. Not every Mutation was going to appeal to everyone. Some Mutations would be directly aimed at smaller demographics inside the larger player base.

The decision to make Realism Versus permanent was easy. 41% of the players that week tried it. It grabbed an impressive 22% of the player minutes the week it was featured. That compares to the similar but different Survival Versus which was tried by only 25% of the players and was played for 4% of the player minutes the week it was featured.

Chainsaw Massacre was the most tried Mutation with over 52% of the players that week giving it a try and it was played for almost 14% of the player minutes that week. The voting pattern for encore weeks became obvious; the most played Mutation of the four received the most votes. The results of those polls were often a surprise for the forums but with a sample size for some polls reaching almost half-a-million votes these responses, by statistical necessity, reflect a more stable measurement of player sentiment.

The top 3 Mutations based on percentage of players who tried it at least once:
52% Chainsaw Massacre
45% Last Man On Earth
41% Realism Versus

The top 3 Mutations based on percentage of players minutes during featured week:
22% Realism Versus
14% Chainsaw Massacre
12% Last Gnome on Earth

The “You should have tried it because you would have loved it “ honorable mention goes to Hard Eight which was only tried by 26% of the players but hit 12% of the player minutes that week.

Hard Eight leads us to our last point. Not sure about a Mutation? Try it. Too often we see people dismiss a Mutation before they play it only to play it and then request it be made permanent. The only way you can be sure if running scared from multiple Special Infected is fun or not is to give it a try.

Week 15

July 30, 2010 - L4D Team

Week 15: Split Vote! If you only had one thing? TANK!

We split in this week’s vote. PC users went with Survival Versus and Xbox 360 users went with Four Swordsmen of the Apocalypse.

Four Swordsmen of the Apocalypse
Four Swords against plenty of apocalypse!

Armed with only swords the survivors face near continuous streams of Special Infected ready to be sliced and diced.

Versus Survival
Can you survive against your friends?

The first Survivor team sets the time. The second team tries to beat it. Then the first team tries to beat the second team's time. Then the second team tries to beat the first team's time. And then the... you get the idea. Rounds keep switching until someone fails to beat the previous time. We have added a start time limit.

How did the voting break down?
On the PC it was:
32% Versus Survival
26% Four Swordsmen
22% Hard Eight
20% Healthpackalypse

On the Xbox 360:
38% Four Swordsmen
28% Versus Survival
17% Hard Eight
17% Healthpackalypse

Similar numbers for the bottom two and a flip for the top two. Can anyone hazard a guess why we are seeing the split?

If you only had one thing…

Ignore the game for a minute. This is real world zombie apocalypse. You fought your way to a boat and boarded. You are unbitten. You are heading towards an Island in the Keys you hope is deserted but you have no idea. If you only had one thing you could wish to be on the boat with you heading towards that Island - what would it be?

Next Week’s Mutation: Gib Fest!

TANK!
The Tank statue over at the IP Factory is available for pre-order now! This is a very limited run so hurry up and click here.

The Invisible Tank

July 28, 2010 - L4D Team

The image above is from our friends at the IP Factory. This Friday they are releasing their Left 4 Dead 2 range of strictly limited high end collectibles. First up is the Tank. Pre-orders go live Friday July 30th.

Today’s update covers quite a few subjects so we thought we should touch on a few of them.

When we did our blog poll on rage quitting we mentioned we would be working on some of the underlying issues. Left 4 Dead 2 doesn’t have a more rage or less rage button – well not directly…

We checked some stats, did some testing, checked more stats, and did more testing. We have many more changes we are working on, some ideas failed, some were exploitable, and some were just bad ideas. What we are releasing today is not the sum of our answer to the problem but simply some of the updates that are ready to ship. More are coming.

While we were testing other changes with the Charger, we were bothered that doing the right thing did not give you the best score. New players were often confused by this lack of feedback, so we fixed that.

• Charger now receives 300 points for any Survivor that is insta-killed.
• Charger now receives 100 points for any Survivor that is insta-incapped by a charge.
• Any infected that causes a Survivor to stumble into a "ledge hang" situation will receive 50 points.

Friendly fire is never fun, especially when it really isn’t friendly fire. So in both Versus and Co-op we wanted to remove those times when you receive a friendly fire warning for shooting through an infected.

• Bullets that first pass through an infected character before striking a Survivor are now ignored as friendly fire.

Failing at the Tank is miserable experience. We all know the feeling when you are trying to explain to your team - but he was already on fire! So we did some work there.

• Tanks go into a stasis when they spawn and leave stasis when the human player takes over.
• Tanks do not attack when they are in stasis.
• Tanks in stasis are invisible but still show a glow to the infected team.
• Tanks in stasis cannot be set on fire.

The updates aren't over and you should expect to see some more shortly. As for the blog, besides the regular Friday update, next week we will be going into details on the Mutations, why Realism Versus was made permanent and other Mutations have not been. Plus what gets played more - Versus, Co-op, Survival, Single Player, or Scavenge?

WEEK 14

July 23, 2010 - L4D Team

Mutation Week 14: Healthpackalypse!, What else are you playing?, Pick Your Mutation, extra updates.

Healthpackalypse!
No health in this versus game.

Grind down the Survivors and don’t worry about them bouncing back. With no Health kits in Versus, their permanent health is on a one way ride to zero.

What else are you playing?
Last week we asked, what else are you playing? On the Left 4 Dead 2 team, our own poll winners are Modern Warfare 2 and Team Fortress 2. Red Dead Redemption would have won a few weeks ago.

With None of these Winning the PC poll and coming in second on the Xbox, what else are you playing? Let us know in the forums or on Facebook.

Here are your votes by platform.

Pick Your Mutation?
It's time to pick your favorite Mutation! Vote for next week's Encore Mutation.
To vote enter the game, view the in-game blog, and click to vote.

Extra Updates
PC players will also be getting some Versus updates this coming week. We have more updates coming so don’t think this is all we are going to do. These changes will show up on the Xbox 360 in a later update.

Next week's Mutation: ????