Left 4 Dead 2: Modern Balance. Revision of L4D2. (Rebalanced Difficulty) [L4D2 Blog]

Left 4 Dead 2 came out in 2009. It’s a fairly old, antique, if you will, game that does share a fair bit of nostalgia in the hearts of gamers. Only in the hearts of gamers. That’s because no one in their right mind still plays this game in its vanilla difficulty, because the game itself and its balance are actually pretty outdated and I wouldn’t even mince words and straight up call it garbage, so to say. It’s garbage for many, many reasons, but the community still seems to share a delusion that this game «still got it» which is absolutely untrue. Why is that?

I have to make a slight detour from the main topic and say that the game doesn’t actually have as many players as you have been led to believe. If you aren’t aware, there have been huge scandals, long researches made by the Valve community, where they looked into the player numbers of Valve titles in more detail, trying to pinpoint exactly where are the numbers coming from, because they clearly don’t align with anything realistic. That turned out to be true. Big youtubers, those big names that are popular, but for some reason, no one remembers and doesn’t actually know, they are claiming that most of the Team Fortress 2 players are now banned bots or idlers, just some people actually busy having real life while boosting hours, knowing that they can use this as a safe pass into fantasy of empty flex, with minimal effort, rather than waste their time on a mess with design, art-style that contradicted itself an insane amount over the years, with what is essentially a polluted nonsensical mess full of fantasy riddled garbage… Alright, I drifted off a little bit, but I had to touch that ground. I had to. *coughs*

So you can actually see the real player numbers at teamwork.tf. In Left 4 Dead 2, surprise-surprise, picture is exactly the same. Fake numbers everywhere, fake players, people having families, jobs, wars, real lives and only biggest losers actually left playing those games. So who exactly still plays this game?

So, once upon a time, I’ve created a copypasta. A copypasta that people still copy to this day. Sure they change a word or two to make it look like it’s meant for other games, but it was originally posted on Left 4 Dead 2 Steam discussions. Attention, my copypasta is as follows: *Ahem*

And then, a copypasta was born. In the comment section you could see those wannabes, those who couldn’t come up with anything by themselves, but I was there, at the top, just holding the crown of the biggest mentally incapacitated king of clown fools. I’ve then reached an even bigger depression, but that’s another story…

Anyway, back to the topic. There are other games out there. And yes, that might sound… A bit outlandish to someone so outlandish as Valve community, but… Those games do things that are actually better than things at Left 4 Dead 2. I know, I know, this is a lot to take in, but take a deep breath. *Inhale* *Exhale* This is me… This is… This is me trying to hold myself together, I… I am falling apart, I… Help me….

So what do other games do that’s better than in Left 4 Dead 2. Is it the graphics? Is it that simple? The long answer is, uuuh, noooo. The short answer is: Not at all. The real answer is… What am I still doing here trying to explain to these children who probably wouldn’t read a word I type when I could do something ACTUALLY useful? Oh, dear… Aaah. *sprays the nose*

I… I’m still here, I’m here, I am suffering, I am struggling, I… It’s personal. It is. It’s personal, I…. I’ll try not to let it in my way this time. I’m just… I’m just not alright. I… I… I am legit depressed. I can’t. I’ll try. I have to. I have to.

*clears throat*

Game-design standards have changed a long time ago. Nearly two decades have passed since Left 4 Dead 2. There are people out there with real specialties, those who go into debt at their universities, those who study to then see their education flushed down a toilet, equated to dust, the sand, any metaphorical example you can make! Wait, I’m describing myself. Never mind.

There are people studying every concept, every in and out of every decision, there are game-design standards that if you don’t follow, your game won’t be accessible enough or won’t take place among the big boys. At least that’s what they tell them, but they do have quite a bit of point.

*Points with a pointing stick*

Videogames have to be understandable, accessible, playable, easy enough, hard enough, readable, they have to be many things and only the experience itself that drives the player can speak with treasure or an atrocity that is 2.5k hours at Dota 2. I shouldn’t have went there, but life can be full of ugly surprises. Ugly surprises that make you want to give up on humanity… *looks at the audience* Yeah, don’t look at me like that. How about we get back to the topic?

Here’s the thing. I’m tired of avoiding having to say this, but… Modern games are better than Left 4 Dead 2 in many ways. Let’s not forget from my copypasta that the reason people still play this game is because of weak computers or because they have nothing else left to finish. There, I said it. Of course, not everyone, but playing vanilla game with empty maps, little to no loot and almost no action, it is in no way fun for a modern player. In fact, a modern player would consider the game boring. Problem with the game is, the game, for the most part, is a walking simulator. It is indeed true.

The game is so boring, in fact, that another main reason it is still being played is because of “funny” voice lines written by some junkie, with so-called “vocalizer” modifications where you could just play lines you want out of context and spam them. While funny to some, it is actually a severe problem with the game and random players you encounter. It is unacceptable on official servers, that’s why you are not seeing the same thing in other games. Why? Because in other games, the ones that aren’t walking simulators, players have to actually pay attention to the game, rather than being distracted and spamming complete nonsense. There is shooting involved, which, in L4D2 is pretty rare for a zombie-slasher action. When your game is being played to spam voice lines, rather than investing yourself into the gameplay process and when the game is considered “bad” and “unfun” without a vocalizer, the game completely crumbles as a time-proof experience. The game is so boring, in fact, that nowadays it is filled with teamkillers. The game is just not fun and doesn’t hold itself well long-term. The game’s popularity is a myth held by imaginations and fantasies of those, who still believe in fake numbers. Is it still being played? Sure. Because it is a good low-spec cooperative title by Valve, the same company that owns Steam. Of course it is still being played, as not every developer has the most popular gaming distributive in their legal possession and not every game company can sell their games dirt cheap.

The game was made in 2009, back when the computers were severely weak. The current balance you are seeing in Left 4 Dead 2 is the way it is primarily because they were trying to use the game’s A.I director not only to calibrate certain situations, but it is also a secret optimization tool that gradually spawns or removes enemies from the map. The problem is, the game is not next-gen enough to push more enemies into the mix, as the game was made with extremely strict optimization choices. Both game’s difficulty and overall “feel” grow old as the times go on. Flaws of the game become more obvious.

Valve had to find a way to “fuse” optimization choices of keeping as little zombies as possible on the screen to conserve system resources with making harder difficulties feel harder. The way they’ve done that is extremely old-fashioned and plain lazy. They’ve made higher difficulties harder by increasing damage taken from zombies, increasing enemy health, paired with fewer director tweaks, rather than rebuilding the entire difficulty with a different director in mind. Instead, you have an exact same thing, but increased damage/enemy health and nothing else. If that doesn’t sound like a lame approach to handling difficulties, then I don’t know what is.

Why is that a bad thing again? Because it is an outdated way to balancing and contradicts the point of Left 4 Dead itself. Back in the day, developers understood difficulties by “increasing damage taken” and “increasing enemy health”. Everything else, for the most part, was never considered. This is where a game called “Anacrusis” comes into the play, a game directed by L4D’s “writer” himself. Funny.

While Anacrusis is bad and failed, it had a good point and a design concept. Everything else, however, sucked, as it wasn’t developed by the right people or professionals, fresh students rather. It also had a wannabe “genius” Chet Faliszek who pretended to know a thing or two about the director and balancing, before ultimately accepting many failures at his part. Chet, by taking all the credit and pretending to be a director mastermind, had “some” points, but they were all ultimately failed by weak developers or poor planning. The real mastermind behind L4D’s director – Mike Booth, had long left Valve or anything L4D related.

Regardless, in Anacrusis, for higher difficulties, there was no reason for the developers to make the game more annoying or unpleasant by increasing damage of enemies. Their approach to difficulty is by making the game more “intense”, tweaking the director settings without necessarily touching the game’s core aspect of intended damage. This is a fairly good choice at balancing the game and while the idea is good, balance itself was still executed poorly. The game was still too easy, as it was made by 5-year olds and directed by an old fairytale man. Doesn’t mean there weren’t good points. The game doesn’t have to be insanely hard and fun should always be a priority.

What’s important is the gameplay process itself, what’s happening in the game, rather than how hard it is. In a PVE game it shouldn’t be about proving your skill or playing the game just for the sake of “difficulty”, it is the experience, events and situations that player is seeing. Something that wouldn’t make you drop the game, while still keeping the player invested for hundreds of hours. A hard game would be extremely annoying, tiring and would be even less time-proof than L4D. This is, actually, a serious problem with many modern games, but nothing is perfect. But what did I mean by Left 4 Dead’s difficulty contradicting the game’s goal itself?

The game’s main factor is the A.I director that keeps the difficulty artificial and entertaining. It isn’t, however, properly configured for a modern player. The game is addictive enough because it keeps the player wanting for more by giving him less and on top of that, plays with his psyche by removing zombies when he is doing poorly, delaying a horde, throwing a low horde of 10 zombies at player when he is low health even during some of the “holdout” scenarios, all to convince any weak player that he is good enough, by artificially manipulating the situations in favor of the player. The game isn’t entirely rng, it looks into the factors the player is in.

To anyone playing the expert difficulty, it becomes clear that the main strategy involves picking right spots, standing at right places, especially during crescendo events. (Holdout events requiring players to either wait or rush to the safehouse while killing hordes.) There are other things that are important, skills that players acquire gradually, such as shoving specials at the right time to stun them, reaction based situations, as well as conserving the boomer bile specifically. Its inclusion could be to blame certain questionable aspects described later in this blog.

Left 4 Dead has an invisible “scoring slider” called the “director intensity” which by reaching the maximum level will switch the phase to “relax” to help the game’s pace, helping the game be less chaotic, more intuitive, less tiring and “fair” to any player. The problem is, the game isn’t actually all fair. The invisible handholding such as A.I Director is supposed to help the player who is struggling, which is exactly what it’s doing, but there is a heavy dissonance that someone in the development team allowed. Valve never strived to make difficult games, all of their games are casual-friendly even on high difficulties, L4D included. It is a very easy game because of this reason. Even if we were to look back at Half-Life 2, artificial mechanics existed even there, such as enemies becoming inaccurate if the player is low health.

1. The first issue is infinite hordes during events where you have to run. This is a disaster for a player on expert who didn’t bring a boomer bile, has low health or is simply the last standing player in the team. Because zombies in such events are infinite, certain parts of the map become unnecessary to visit, rescuing players in the closets in such areas (such as Dead Air terminal) becomes an unnecessary risk and overall it becomes unfair because it stops utilizing Director mechanics. This is the problem Left 4 Dead 1 didn’t have, as hordes in such events weren’t infinite and you could actually explore those places, it was also more fair and up to par with the game’s design goal. Forcing the player to conserve certain items while removing Director mechanics is a severe mistake and makes those events quite outdated. The reason why you are still seeing this left unchanged is because the Director balance was never revisited by Valve after 2009. What was configured a certain way in the past, was never touched afterwards. Does it make the game hard, however? Not really, the game is pathetically easy and that’s the point. The game being extremely easy and “fair” even on expert all the way up to the point of a questionable decision certainly doesn’t make it look less well balanced and ruins its variety aspect.

2. Zombies making high damage is outdated and fits the survival horror games rather than an action-packed shooter. The reason why it was made so, is to justify harder difficulty, while also justifying low amounts of zombies in the game itself. (including earlier optimization point I’ve described)

Common Infected making high damage forces players to use only “specific” spots where it is easier to take care of them. It is not necessarily a good thing, as it meddles with “variety” (by making players prioritize only specific spots) and makes the gameplay too punishing. If player isn’t able to pick any spot he wants to fight off zombies, wherever he is comfortable, (concert stage at Dark Carnival being an area where it is criminally difficult to defeat zombies, forcing players to move to the ladders) that makes players pick only one certain spot. We can already see that happening in the game. It’s less about reaction or skill, but more about a “right spot” strategy where you either cannot be touched or it’s just more convenient. High damage by zombies also creates less margin of error, but it doesn’t quite matter because of artificial difficulty, it only makes it more annoying.

Zombies making high damage may irritate the player not only because of that fact, but because of the next point.

3. The tickrate on official servers is too low and creates a high illusion of difficulty. In a game where the player has to utilize melee weapons not only is it silly to have inaccurate hitboxes (which already plagues the game since its release by playing the sound without detecting a hit) and in a game where the reaction is necessary on expert difficulty, shoving specials and commons at the right time, low tickrate becomes problematic. It creates difficult situations “out of thin air” and the main cause of failures is specifically tickrate. If tickrate was higher, the game would feel a lot easier and most of the illusion is gone.

4. The variety that Director is responsible for is simply not good enough. Certain situations in the Campaign may never happen, even the ones anyone would typically imagine. That is because of how the director is configured and because of map/area specific bans. Certain situations like both the Witch and Tank being next to one another to attack at the same time never quite happens because the distance between two such bosses is too high. You would never get an inconvenient horde during a Tank, because it artificially blocks it from spawning, unless one of the players rushes too far in the flow travel. It also won’t spawn any special infected for balancing purposes (around Valve’s decisions) to make it more fair. However, it is only fair around other decisions that Valve took, not ultimately if they are changed.

The tank will not spawn on certain maps no matter what or even in certain areas. (very beginning of Crash Course except original Left 4 Dead 1) Tank also won’t spawn during events where you have to run, but strangely enough, not all of them. Those are subjective decisions by Valve that don’t equalize all campaigns. While it is understandable, keep in mind, it is only fair because of decisions that Valve took in correlation to other decisions, decisions that might not be as satisfying or interesting in the modern sense.

The game is not adrenaline-pumping enough and is quite repetitive due to this reason alone.

5. There are not enough zombies. The reason for low amounts of zombies was already described, it’s not just a design and balance decision, it is also an optimization reason. How do we know that it is the optimization reason? The server wouldn’t handle a lot of zombies on low tickrate servers and they are low tickrate specifically due to optimization. This is the reason why you are seeing certain custom campaigns lag when they abuse spam infected.

The “rushing” in Left 4 Dead 2 is possible not because you are a good player, but because the game isn’t working correctly. Low common infected limit prevents zombies from spawning further away in the map if those zombies aren’t killed. It simply cannot spawn any more zombies, thus the map becomes completely empty and easy to rush. It may spawn either a Tank or a Witch, but a Witch is a weak challenge for someone who’s rushing, while you can simply avoid the Tank. The best example is the Left 4 Dead 1’s sewer map of No Mercy, where if you solo rush, the game looks broken. That’s because it’s outdated. You have been playing an outdated game all along.

The “rushing” is also possible because the initial spawn timing of specials is set too high. You are able to solo rush first map of Dead Air to the safehouse faster than specials come into the play. That makes the balance pretty outdated.

Ceda hazmat suit infected carrying boomer bile was a silly decision, since by throwing a bile, then picking up another bile and spamming it again, you are able to run across an entire map where it becomes empty of common infected. You don’t have to pick another bile, one is enough.

6. There is only one tank on the map.

In Left 4 Dead 1, there is a chance for two tanks spawning, one anywhere in non-prohibited areas, another is near a safehouse. It was an alright decision. However, in Left 4 Dead 2, only one Tank having a chance to spawn on a map is unnatural. It is done to make the game less tedious and challenging, while also keeping the contextual drama of Tank being a rare mutant. Doesn’t however mean that he should spawn only once on long maps.

7. The game clears an area too far during “relax” stage. That stage is reached after the maximum intensity peak of the Director. Nearly half of a map can become empty if you start rushing after someone gets incapacitated and if Tank was already killed, it will literally be empty, except for specials that are easy enough to counter.

8. After understanding the Director and all the timings, it becomes too repetitive and doesn’t offer new challenge. A new challenge in the way of custom servers is usually pretty crappy.
9. Lasers spawn too rarely.

10. Weapons aren’t random enough and spawn mostly at specific areas that you can remember. You are also able to pick up the same gun infinite amount of times which skips the reload and replenishes ammo infinitely.

11. Upgrade packs are admitted to be implemented in a non-satisfactory way by Chet Faliszek. They are too rare and once you use them in one magazine, they are done. They aren’t overpowered either, so there had to be other ways of implementation to explore.

12. Witches cannot follow you into the saferoom, even if the door is open.

13. Tons of map-specific prohibits make the game too “conditioned” and repetitive.

14. The game is too forgiving for how much damage the zombies make. There is nothing wrong with a forgiving game, but not when it pretends to be difficult to that extent.

15. The player during an incapped stage dies too slow. Not only you are able to get incapacitated 2 times, but it also takes a long time to die even when you are being mauled by tens of common infected and are bleeding out.

16. Being shot to death by a teammate only to get defibbed with 50 health and completely fine is a mistake on Valve’s part.

17. In a game where there are defibrillators, one minute respawn even in expert is too low, since if the game is in relax stage, the game becomes nothing but a waiting game near a closet on top of an already outdated walking simulator.

18. Director settings haven’t been changed by Valve for expert difficulty, except for 3-5 non-critical values. Valve’s outdated difficulty understanding was only about increasing damage taken and health of enemies, but the game’s director is not good enough.

19. Some players don’t know Director even exists. It’s not because it’s seamlessly implemented, but because of how useless it is. If you were to rip the relax stage, entirely or increase relax intensity threshold to whatever super-high random value, the game would barely change in terms of balance.

20. Most of the Director related things you see in L4D is a gimmick and it is a shame that it wasn’t revisited by Valve and wasn’t explored by other developers. Its potential, at the time of writing is still not fully revealed.

I am unwilling to continue describing its problems because you can do it forever. But the main problem is that the game is not action-packed enough, which is why it is considered a walking simulator by some people. My balance “build” changes most of the things, but first I need to explain the aim of this balance “build”.

Many decisions have been made and thought through to minimize “tiring” gameplay while pushing the numbers of enemies higher. This balance requires more involvement from the player, increases variety of the situations, keeping the gameplay more unpredictable. It is engaging and requires “tight” formation of teammates to face enemies, rather than enabling them to run around recklessly anywhere. That means when one decision was made to change something, other have been examined to prevent conflicts that would arise in pacing, difficulty and canons of Left 4 Dead to be an easy enough and fair game. This balance is not aiming to make the game definitively harder, but is rather a revision of the vanilla to increase action, variety, encourage more exploration, making players complete maps slowly and naturally, rather than skipping areas by running just because they’ve already seen them. So what was changed to reach that formula while making every decision work in conjunction with everything else? (It was all stitched out of plugins and self-configured modifications by other users that were tackled to reach this specific take on balance.)

1. There can be multiple tanks per map, their speed, health and damage, however, is lower. Spawning of at least one tank is not forced. There are many reasons for this change:

1) If there is a chance for multiple tanks and if the goal is not to necessarily make the balance significantly harder, rather different, then other options have to be observed to balance out the gameplay and make it less difficult and tiring. Modern cooperative games tend to add more than one high health boss on a map, (Brute from Anacrusis) plus Left 4 Dead 1 had a chance for two tanks, not just one like it is in vanilla Left 4 Dead 2.

2) It would take too long to kill tanks and since they aren’t prohibited from anywhere except first map of Dead Center before the elevator where players have no guns, certain spots and maps would still be uncomfortable to fight tanks in.

3) Now that hordes are able to spawn during active Tank a lot quicker and can casually appear during combat with him, players would need enough ammo to take down both horde and a Tank, it may also create tense situations where players would need to run away from a slow Tank (that now gives them a chance to run away a bit easier) while pushing away a horde of common infected from behind. Specials may also attack during that time and they aren’t prohibited from spawning during an active Tank, unlike in vanilla, where they would only spawn during an active Tank if one of the players is rushing.

4) Slow speed, lower damage and health of a Tank all apply to a previous factor, as Tank is now a more casually spawning enemy type. With a slower Tank, player would able to surpass the Tank by simply running faster than him even while being targeted, which is useful during events where Tank can now spawn.

5) Player with low health and has no health resources is still able to run away from a Tank and wouldn’t get stuck in a near unavoidable situation.

6) Such decisions for multiple tanks per map make Tank less annoying to fight and keep it closer to canons of Left 4 Dead on being casual and easy enough.

2. Common Infected are making lower damage, but their hits aren’t throttled. CI are now making less damage individually, even in Expert, but are able to kill a surrounded player in the matter of seconds if he is being attacked by a big horde. Individual incapacitated player, if not being helped in time, would get killed fast. Individual hit that might happen from one infected is not as punishing and requires less care and focus, making players able to sustain more difficult and unpredictable situations that might come along, while also increasing a bar for action-packed situations and keeping the balance within casual spectrum. This is a more modern approach to balancing common infected. There are also more common infected and the hordes contain more of them, but it never feels like there are too many of them, unless during a max horde. There are enough common infected to challenge the player.

3. There are more common infected and special infected. Special Infected are not being spammed 24/7 and there are other decisions to helping the difficulty regarding SI. While there are more zombies of any type, period, it still isn’t that much harder than vanilla, but it still creates more challenge and there is more threat to deal with. There may be two dominator special infected of the same type at the same time except Charger and Jockey and more Spitters, especially Boomers. Timings have been adjusted to delay special infected spawn longer than in vanilla and the canon of generic combat, where players are just battling common infected for a certain amount of time is still preserved. It is not always a fight, but there is enough combat to strive the game away from a walking simulator.

Common Infected despite making lower damage, are a bigger obstacle since they are now spawning further in the map, meaning that rushing solo is now less effective, as the Director does not prevent them from spawning. That way maps are more populated and the dead world feels more alive.

4. Because there are more common infected, they now die faster and have less health on top of it. After a lot of testing, it was an important decision to help the game feel less tiring and yet it’s still quite challenging. Since hordes are now bigger, player is able to kill multiple enemies at the same time with individual shots a lot qucker and pulls players out of uncertain situations. Charger and Jockey have less health, preserving players’ ammo and making those enemy types easier to fight during hordes. CI and SI are now both easier to fight during climax situations where everything is thrown at the players at the same time.

5. Witches have less health, but there are more of them. They are now able to hide behind common infected and unlike in vanilla, area around them is not cleared. It is now a lot easier to shoot a Witch than normal by accidentally hitting her while shooting a gathering of multiple common infected.

6. Respawn times get longer depending on difficulty. Easy starting from 1 minute and Expert ending with 4. It is a lot longer than in vanilla and while still seemingly small at first glance, it becomes and extremely long wait in the actual game, thus making defibrillators more useful.

7. While defibrillators are more useful, they do not respawn a player with full health. That player would need a first aid kit. It also battles artificial killing of teammates with an intent to cheat a game mechanic.

8. With all the changes keeping gameplay casual, it is still now a lot harder to rush solo and less effective. A few values have been changed to make solo rushing ineffective, while still keeping gameplay casual.

Initial spawn of special infected is lower, meaning they may now get thrown into a fight seconds after leaving a safehouse, depending on a choice made by the Director algorithm. They are not necessarily spawning seconds after leaving a safehouse, but they may. Such timing also helps utilize locations around a safehouse exit that usually never have specials spawn if the players are too fast.

Multiple tanks can spawn at the same time and after testing, it may spawn two or three tanks simultaneously during a push.

9. Mostly hordes are relatively small, but the initial horde or a horde that was delayed for too long after reaching a probable spawn timing may contain more common infected. The goal was to let the possibility of at least one big horde happen and push the numbers.

10. Increased common infected with an increased horde is possible due to an increased tickrate. Higher tickrate is crucial for a server that has more common infected than usual or otherwise it would cause choke and meddle with players’ latency. Tickrate is intentionally kept at 67 (default plugin value) and it is not advised to increase it, as it may cause too unnaturally easy to hit enemies, performance problems, engine and A.I issues while making it too demanding and unpleasant to shoot. The game is not meant to be played at values too high.

11. Intensity level of the survivors increases slower. That threshold is higher because the game increases intensity with damage taken and frags the player makes. But because damage player takes is smaller and the infected are weaker, as well as there are more of them, certain Director settings had to be touched and timed well enough for it to be a more well-paced experience. Slower intensity gain allows for longer combat and forces players to actually take enough damage before it culls common infected. Culling is still active because it is an important mechanic that helps against tedious gameplay and helps weaker players.

12. The Director relax stage minimum value is lower and max value is higher. It was done to pull the relax mode quick enough when it’s necessary while still giving players enough reaction time to events that led to the relax stage, while the maximum value is increased to give players enough time if they are not rushing or fighting a tank for too long. If this wouldn’t happen, players would get overwhelmed by a horde or special infected during uncomfortable situations when one or more players are incapacitated and wouldn’t have enough chill time when it is needed.

13. If one of the players is incapacitated or if one of the players reaches maximum intensity level then the game is culling the common infected and switches to relax stage. However, in vanilla it clears areas too far, resulting in a near empty map. To keep the action going, now it clears less distance than usual, giving players more combat, as things have been changed for players to handle more combat.

However, in Expert it takes a lot longer than in vanilla for wandering common infected to spawn during a relax stage, as players wouldn’t need zombies when they are exploring after a situation that led to the maximum intensity level that early with such high numbers of commons.
Intensity level decays longer than in vanilla to account for the possible momentum of pressure by frequent combat of the player and to account for a slower intensity level gain.

14. The only way idle glitch was fixed is by pulling the manual idling out entirely. Manual idle state has too many advantages and glitches involved. In order to idle, player would need to step away for 35 seconds, which is shorter than in vanilla to account for removal of manual idle state. It isn’t lower to not irritate the player if he is actually near a keyboard and is just idling.

15. Ammo of M60 was increased. It is now a more viable weapon and there is a chance for more of them spawning. I didn’t add ammo refill for either M60 or Grenade Launcher to still make those weapons situational and force players to use other weapons, rather than permanently prioritizing those. Grenade Launcher has less ammo, though it spawns more frequently.

16. Grenade launcher is able to stun tanks because Tanks are now able to spawn nearly anywhere, even in first maps. Since hordes are now spawning more frequently when the Tank is active, Grenade Launcher is useful to keep the Tank away in situations that are hard to deal with.

17. Tanks in first maps of Left 4 Dead 1 have less health than normal (still lower than in vanilla) to account for tighter and more difficult locations the Tank may spawn in. It would be extremely difficult otherwise.

It does not apply to maps only, but to certain locations both from Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 campaigns, locations where it is uncomfortable to kill a Tank and where players may still have Tier 1 weapons. As soon as a player passes that location on a map, beyond that location Tanks will have normal health. (Normal not as in vanilla, but my intended Tank health.)

18. Maximum horde in certain locations may be lower than it is usual to account for the location where survivors may get too easily overwhelmed.

19. There are many hundreds of invisible triggers on the maps that activate unused ambience from the in-game files, some are hidden away from the actual folders. The right ambiences, animal sounds and even music were picked for the locations that fit them, at least where I deemed they would work.

The only long soundtrack that plays is on the second map of The Passing campaign – “Save Me Some Sugar” composed specifically for the campaign itself. Matching the dizzy, clubby nature of that campaign and its neon littered streets, as well as post-processing helping with the youthful and musical atmosphere of said campaign. This soundtrack accompanies players through those areas and is timed to mostly end near the Jazz Club entrance that leads into the underground tour. This trigger is removable if subjectively grows too irritating.

Ambience from an initial release version of The Last Stand update that was later removed is preserved and plays in Left 4 Dead 1 campaigns. (There was an intended ambience that is now missing from the campaign in vanilla.) It intentionally plays due to a more action-packed gameplay.

20. There are hundreds of potential laser spawns in summary, but only one laser kit can spawn on one map in a random manually placed by me spot. All maps contain 32 potential spawn points and they only spawn once on one map. (Out of manually non-Valve selected spots) There are exceptions where it is a lot less.

21. There are hundreds of potential weapon crate spawns that all contain either a random weapon or an item. Only few of them can spawn on one map and the exploration is necessary to find better weapons. It may range from obvious to somewhat obscure rooms and locations. Exploration and search for better weapons is now increased and more useful due to more challenges that players face.

22. It is easier to hit teammates and it is now more important to shoot carefully as the friendly fire forgiveness mechanic is turned off in Expert. It is turned on in lower difficulties. On Easy, friendly fire is increased because friendly fire forgiveness mechanic is disabled in Expert.

23. Invincibility frames have been disabled. There is a mechanic in Left 4 Dead where if you are pounced by an infected and are currently under Spitter’s spit, you are not taking a damage. That was removed along with same damage throttles from Tank after getting pounced on and Jockey.

24. This balance is pushing more inconvenient and unpredictable situations, thus horde and SI spawns are allowed during an active Tank.

25. Vocalizer is turned off, but can get enabled by removing a plugin responsible for that.

26. Ammo is spawned at manually static places where player may potentially run out of ammo. Those spawns are static to be easy to find and to follow No Mercy campaign resource-friendly formula.

27. Fall damage is increased to prevent players from intentionally jumping from great heights to skip certain sequences.

28. It is now not necessary to conserve a bile or a pipe bomb for events where you have to run. Zombies are spawning periodically in small enough numbers and players are encouraged to kill small hordes while slowly moving through those areas. Tank is allowed to spawn in those areas.

29. Certain exploits are fixed.

30. There are several areas with new objects placed by me, to prevent rushing creatively, sometimes by changing an entire theme of a location. For example, small Dark Carnival spot that allows for rushing is now fixed by going far extra ways, rather than artificially spawning some barricade.

Crashed airplane blocking a small spot, but also affects gameplay in that specific area.

End area of the second map in the Parish campaign is not cluttered and forces players to take a different path.

31. After first finale horde is over, there is only one Tank, but after the second, two spawn.

32. Ceda hazmat infected aren’t carrying boomer biles for reasons described earlier in this guide.

33. By holding LMB, player is able to autoshoot stock shotguns and all sniper rifles, as well as
Grenade Launcher when the reload is over. Pistols are disabled, as they don’t seem to work correctly.

This “build” also contains slight mechanical changes, also the plugins that you would typically need for that type of game, such as an ability to share throwables or other kind of items with teammates, something you would typically expect from a “build” like this.

There are many more small changes that will not be documented. There may also be minor issues.

Despite all the nerfs, this balance is still generally harder than vanilla. It focuses on intense situations rather than increased damage and health of enemies.

It requires many replays to see different variations of what can happen and it requires a different approach to playing. Campaigns have to be replayed multiple times to figure out the reasoning behind the decisions, as well as learning to play the efficient way.

This “build” is best played at a dedicated server, not local. It is more performance friendly to run on a dedicated server and it is also important to have a good enough PC to be able to host it. Otherwise, during framerate dips of a host, it may cause lags for other players.

It is advised not to change or edit anything balance related, damage or health related, as every single thing was done intentionally as is and has to be exactly like that. If you were to change health or other balance values, not only would it conflict with the pacing and feel of the game, but it would also conflict with certain hidden triggers, as well as separate files that are responsible for keeping the balance this specific. Other things would need to be manually edited.

Antivirus might cause a false positive to sourcepawn dll file. This file has to be allowed if the antivirus automatically blocks it. Black Mesa had the same issue with its updates.

If at a certain point in time it stops working, then you should download newer sourcemod and metamod versions by replacing older ones. It is necessary after updates L4D2 might receive to update sourcemod and metamod. Download link may not always be updated, at some point it might stop getting updated.

You are able to preview the files in dropbox.

Download link: (Copy the link manually or else you will encounter a 404 error.) https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/l5qyjzizvvwaftinta4l3/L4D2.rar?rlkey=afkhk7cjqnxkvz2pghrfx0176&st=w5jwt7m4&dl=0

(It might require an existing registered account in dropbox.)

Installation instruction must be followed thoroughly if you never installed plugins or handled either a dedicated or a local server before.

This is just a “build” that needs to be pasted into the right folder, depending on whether you are preferring to host a local or a dedicated server.

Installation instruction for a dedicated server (not local):

1) If you never hosted a server before, it is best to follow other guides that teach port-forwarding and server hosting through srcds.exe. (which is only possible with open ports (27015, etc)) Attempt to host a simple dedicated server and if it works, follow the next step.

2) Download, extract archive files by following this folder path: Left 4 Dead 2 Dedicated Server/left4dead2 and place “cfg” and “addons” folders inside. Overwrite files if necessary. If the server.cfg contains other important variables or values that do not conflict with tickrate 67 or other net variables, it is best to merge everything into one server.cfg.

A note:

Unrelated to files themselves, if you are hosting from the same computer you are playing on by running srcds.exe rather than hosting it from another program such as SteamCMD, then the server shouldn’t be secured by VAC, should only be hosted through srcds.exe in the Left 4 Dead 2 Dedicated Server folder. It shouldn’t be launched through Steam in that instance, but separately through srcds.exe. The reason for that is because launching both Left 4 Dead 2 Dedicated Server and Left 4 Dead 2 from the same computer isn’t possible unless you start srcds.exe from the folder itself. Left 4 Dead 2 itself in that instance should also be started through the folder “Left 4 Dead 2”. Neither the server or the game are started through steam library, both are started from their folders. That way, however, the server won’t be protected by VAC and starting the game through the folder won’t let you into the VAC servers either until you start the game from the library and are trying to play on other servers.

In order for sourcemod to recognize the player as an admin of that server, a config file for that must be edited. Extra instructions on how to become an admin of your own servers are online.
Installation instruction for a local server:

Note: This wasn’t tested on local servers and no testing was made to test if it works the right way and if everything is working as it should.

1) –insecure launch option must be used to disable VAC for plugins to work. On local servers, plugins, sourcemod and metamod only work on such local servers that aren’t protected by VAC. However, since VAC is useless either way and players usually don’t cheat in campaigns, it shouldn’t matter.

2) Download, extract archive files by following this folder path: Left 4 Dead 2 Dedicated Server/left4dead2 and place “cfg” and “addons” folder inside. Overwrite files if necessary.

This concludes it. If you failed at installation or couldn’t find a way to make it work, then you probably won’t be able to finish this to begin with.