Left 4 Dead Patched: Dedicated Server Searching, Difficulty Settings Addressed

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Valve has just released a minor patch to Left 4 Dead, which addresses frustrations some users have reported with both the Versus mode and co-op difficulty settings. In response to the nearly-impossible task of completing a stage on Expert difficulty in Versus mode, the difficulty has now been locked to Normal altogether. In co-op mode, the server will now switch to whatever difficulty the party has selected.

The full changes are copied below:

  • Finding a dedicated server when starting the game from a lobby is now faster and more reliable
  • Versus mode is now locked to Normal difficulty
  • Difficulty on a server is now locked to the one set by the lobby reservation
  • Fixed lagouts/spikes after level transition
  • Fixed directory issue with spray logs in some cases
  • Fixed video settings not saving after closing video options dialog
  • Corrected a boomer suicide exploit
  • Several minor localization fixes
  • Fixed disabling cheats incorrectly resetting data
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From The Chatty
  • reply
    December 4, 2008 6:23 PM

    Does "locked to... the lobby reservation" mean we can no longer vote to change the difficulty of a campaign? If so, wtf.

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      December 4, 2008 6:28 PM

      I dunno. They should explain some of these. This one reads strangely, too: "Fixed disabling cheats incorrectly resetting data" Huh?

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        December 4, 2008 6:33 PM

        If the admin manually entered sv_cheats 0 in the console, respawn distances for infected, among other things, got fucked up.

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      December 4, 2008 6:29 PM

      "In co-op mode, the server will now thankfully switch to whatever difficulty the party has selected" -- I guess that answers your question?

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        December 4, 2008 6:35 PM

        I guess, but then what's changed? Why lock anything at all? The server shouldn't randomly reset as I think it sometimes did, but neither should our options be limited. If we want to play expert versus, let us.

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      December 4, 2008 6:33 PM

      I think in versus mode you can only play at "Normal" difficulty, since most of the challenge should come from the human controlled zombies?

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        December 4, 2008 6:36 PM

        But if versus is locked on normal, then what lobby reservation setting are they referring to? Strange.

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          December 4, 2008 6:38 PM

          if you choose xpert. alot of times when the map changes it would reset to advanced.... it was a weird bug.

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      December 4, 2008 6:43 PM

      if someone hosted a local server, they could change the difficulty in the middle of rounds, this is what they now locked. voting still works.

      i'm not sure but i could swear we were still able to make a hard versus run still by setting it in console in the lobby...

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      December 4, 2008 6:55 PM

      I think it means that if the server you are playing on has a default difficulty, then the server won't override the lobby's desire to play a certain difficulty.

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      December 4, 2008 7:12 PM

      You can still vote to change it. I think there was a bug where your difficulty would change when the next level loads. It happened to me only once. Wwe were flying through the first few levels on advanced then the next level we had a hell of a time (only 2 human players), we check and it somehow switched to expert.

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        December 4, 2008 8:59 PM

        I had the opposite problem....we would start on advanced then it would drop to normal :(

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        December 4, 2008 10:48 PM

        This happened to me all the time, and I'm glad they fixed it because it was annoying to find you were suddenly on Expert I chose Advanced in the lobby.

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      December 4, 2008 7:58 PM

      I"m hoping that it fixes the bug where when you enter a game lobby that says it has one difficulty (like expert) and then you start the game and you go into the call vote and change difficulty section and it says another difficulty (like normal) and even if you vote to change it the difficulty will revert back to the wrong setting every level. I had it happen about 1 out of 5 times when I join a game that was supposed to be on expert.

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