Left 4 Dead Update Next Week

Valve has been nothing short of amazing when talking about giving their fanbase what they want. CS Rocks, CS:S Rocks, Portal Rocks, Half Life 1 and 2 Rock, TF2 Rocks, L4D ROCKS and ALL of these games have had free support of one kind or another.... VALVE ROCKS!!!!

I will have no problem paying full price for whatever their next game is... Even a sequel to a game that I have something like 150 hours in =)

Many people see things very differently than myself and the rest of the enthusiasts who seem to have an issue with L4D2. I think its that casual view, I payed for some content, enjoyed that content and I should be willing to pay for more content, don't be cheap they say.

But that's not looking at the big picture. First, I'm not arguing that this content is not worth my money. I just don't want another game, another exe to launch. It breaks up the community and limits mod development. It really seems to be the most inefficient way at improving the gameplay experience for everyone invested in the game and just another yearly cash grab like Call of Duty or Madden football.

A lot of people including myself bought L4D not for what it was, but what it could be. What a company like Valve could mold it into with a couple years of steady updates akin to TF2 which they had promised to do. This propelled me to buy 2 copies of L4D and recommend to everyone I know to buy the game as well. A game sparser in content than TF2 but which sold for more than twice its price. But this is Valve and content will obviously be coming, so we put our doubts aside and bought it anyways.

The fact that L4D was released in a somewhat unfinished state does not help their case as well. The only content released so far just updated the game to where it should have been on release day. I also doubt a full set of modding tools will ever be released because if they did, modders would just take the L4D2 campaigns and bring them to L4D free for all.

I think another reason many pc gaming enthusiasts were so upset is because of console gaming slowly eroding what we loved about our hobby. L4D from the beginning was obviously made with consoles in mind. The console version just gets in the way of gameplay improving updates. What few seem to realize is that it can be profitable (at least on the PC) to build a single game, release that game and keep working on improving that game. The more players you keep coming back, the more they will encourage their friends to buy the game, the more they will promote the game for you and the bigger the community will grow. Its not rocket science to know that making your customers happy will increase revenue over the long term.

Valve needs to just continue to work on L4D. They should bring all the updates, new special infected, new weapons, improved AI, and updated gameplay mode to the first 4 campaigns free of charge. Than charge $25 for the 5 new campaigns and the new survivors that go with them. For anyone new to L4D just sell them all the content for $50.

Almost everyone on my Steam list has L4D, but rarely does anyone still play it. If released and sold for another $50 I doubt half will buy it. But if they release all these updates, improvements and gameplay tweaks for free it may get them back into the game. At this point they may not have paid for any more campaigns but some of their friends may have. They can still play their friends on the original 4 campaigns but not the new ones and this will encourage them to buy the new content.

Releasing the content this way will result in much larger numbers of the community making the leap to the new content. This will re-ignite the community and give the enthusiasts something good to say about the game. If they did this I would whole heartily encourage anyone who doesn't have L4D to get it and anyone who has original content to upgrade.

I'm glad their still working on L4D but they seem to be leaving us to make new content for ourselves as they are too busy with L4D2. I hope some new user made campaigns come soon because I'm so bored of the 4 campaigns in the game.

I have been waiting SO long for custom maps/campaigns on this game! I'm glad to see they finally did it

If you want to know why PC developers have a hard time giving away free content and sticking with the PC platform just look at the comments here. Somehow the PC fanbase inevitably develops a ridiculous sense of entitlement and will turn on you at the drop of a hat. Epic says 'hi Valve'. Even though most people bought this game at well below full price, put in tons of hours, and still got free updates, just not enough free stuff apparently.

Once you're ready to go, the new matchmaking system will automatically try to find any dedicated servers nearby that have the custom add-on campaign installed, or you can make your own local server.

Wait, wait, wait, wait... hold on a second.

You will still not be able to pick out a server for the lobby to join from a server list or IP address? What the fuck Valve?

Somebody, please, go slap some sense into whoever is responsible for the lobby system.

Spoiled by TF2 or are we getting ripped off (those of us who bought L4D at full price)?

Too little, too late.

No dice, Valve.

I hope mod makers do not abandon this game in anger about the sequel's announcement. There were some campaigns I was looking forward to which looked pretty advanced already.

This game lives from the mod community IMO, there is no way people will continue playing the same 4 1-2 hour campaigns forever.

The reason L4D relies on a matchmaking service is because playing a game with such small servers through a traditional server browser is very very annoying. You would either have to join an empty server and sit around waiting for people to find it and join, or join a game that's most likely already in progress. Matchmaking is far better for finding 4/8 people quickly and starting. I agree they should make the support for joining specific servers more intuitive, but it is there.

Also, best part about this update will be team matchmaking, assuming it goes in as planned. Now if you've got 3 friends and you want to play Versus, you don't have to pubstomp, you can play against another team of 4 doing the same thing. Everybody's happier.

I don't care much about custom maps(standalone maps usually suck in most games, let alone full campaigns), but hopefully it'll be possible to pack gameplay mods into the .vpk as well, so people can have new game modes or total conversions using this interface.

Look we're throwing you a bone! I mean we're rolling what should have been a content update into a new game. But hey, now we're giving you an update that will make it easier for those of you wanting make custom campaign's. It should have been put in long ago but we we're busy dicking you over with L4D2 instead of implementing the promised content to the original game. So hey congrats on the crappy update :D

Have they mentioned anything about making, you know, some stuff themselves?

Damn.. about time. Maybe they can fix all the other f'ed up games on the source engine they have been neglecting for over a year now.

All I'm hearing is BS. The SDK was supposed to be out 2 weeks after lunch (According to Gabe Newell).
... Uh .. nm. What I'm trying to say is this: I am a L4D modder. K? Kay, and the team I've been working with has been working their asses (excuse my French) off to get their content available to the public. It's been over 6 months now and my former team has moved on, unfortunately.

"Gabe owes you SHIT" .. that may be true. BUT, this over oversized gargantuan of a man also lives by the philosophy set by the likes of Tim Sweeney and Blizzard that a great game will sell for many years as long as there is support.

FREE STUFF? OH HELL NO.

I fell out of L4D pretty sharply after I reinstalled Fallout 3. Are there any good maps or mods for this game yet?

its a repetitive zombie spawner with 4 maps. How many times can a person play it without their eyes glazing over?

See, they hate the fans and just care about money. The hundred-or-so free campaigns other people make and constantly tweak based on fan feedback and that'll have just as much polish as the actual game won't make up for the lack of one more hastily-made DLC pack. Shame on Valve.

like an ex-gf wanting to get back together again

The L4D mod someone needs to make is a burned out Viagra factory. Remove the pants from all the zombies and give them physics schlongs.

Is this not a top mod idea or what?

The update will also allow content creators to use a new framework that will package their campaign content into a single .VPK file. These can then be installed by double clicking on them, or dropping them into Left 4 Dead's new 'addons' folder.

That is fantastic news for everyone.

As soon as I have a new mouse, I'm going to play some L4D again! And I do plan on buying L4D2, I have faith that Valve will deliver a good product!