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Mike Perez
15 Jan, 2009

Left 4 Dead patch released

PC News | Numerous gameplay tweaks and enhancements made
Today, Valve released a new patch for the PC version of its popular zombirrific first-person shooter Left 4 Dead. It features a number of bug and exploit fixes, nifty new status indicators for the infected team, as well as modifications designed to improve the usefulness of the smoker. Team swapping has been addressed, and complaints about the unfairness of game-changing events such as random tank spawns will now be a thing of the past, as tanks and witches will now spawn at the same place for both teams.

The full list of changes as described in the patch notes are as follows:

General
  • Fixed Survivors being able to climb surfaces marked for versus infected only
  • Fixed a class of SurvivorBot bugs dealing with rescuing downed players
  • Players can no longer grab ladders while flying through the air after a Tank punch
  • Shooting near a car with an alarm that has already fired the alarm will no longer make chirping noises
  • Improved loading time
  • Fixed mini-gun physics exploit
  • Fixed propane tanks (and other physics objects) causing players to fall through elevators
  • Fixed rare achievement bug issues
  • Fixed several map exploits
  • Fixed various match making issues
  • Fixed NAT traversal issues

Versus Changes
  • Added HUD elements to show status of other infected players
  • Changed color of infected player name in chat to red
  • Fixed exploit where players could spawn infected bots
  • Fixed instance where a Survivor changing to the infected team would be attacked by infected bots
  • Normalized special infected melee damage
  • Made the following client commands cheat protected: "Kill" and "explode"
  • Fixed exploit where infected players could run away and teleport back to gain health
  • Players can only change teams once per map
  • Players can't change teams while other players are still loading
  • Tank spawns at the same % through the map for both teams in versus mode
  • Made the Tank and Witch spawn directly on the escape route
  • Increased chance of getting the Tank or Witch
  • Fixed team swap issue

Hunter
  • Easier to pounce a Survivor who is meleeing
  • Increased Minimum damage a Hunter pounce does

Smoker
  • Fixed Smoker tongue tolerance
  • Smoker now has to be killed or the tongue destroyed for the tongue to break
  • Survivors cannot bash someone off the tongue until the Survivor being pulled is paralyzed or hanging
  • Tongue attacks that fail to paralyze or hang a Survivor will use the shorter ability delay timer
  • Fixed cases where the ability timer was not using the correct time
  • Fixed case where you could point at a Survivor but not register a tongue hit
  • Fixed Smoker tongue not targeting and landing properly through PZ ghosts
  • Smoker tongue does damage every second while dragging paralyzed Survivors

Tank
  • Bashable objects now appear with a red glow
  • Tanks hitting a car with an alarm disables the alarm permanently
  • Tank frustration timer is only reset by hitting Survivors with rocks or fists
  • Reduced autoshotgun damage against Tanks

Witch
  • Witch spawns at the same % through the map for both teams
  • Avoids spawning within a certain % of the tank
  • Fixed an exploit where the Witch could be woken up and tricked into attacking Survivors


The update will be applied automatically via Steam.

Related Left 4 Dead Content

Left 4 Dead DLC coming next month
05 Aug, 2009 Gamers to get a 'Crash Course' in DLC.
The Weekend Steam
01 May, 2009 Brains... More brains...
Left 4 Dead Update released
26 Mar, 2009 Making Hunters a tad more useful.
10 Comments
3 years ago
I'm going to download it now and see if it works yet in my mac. Everything but Left 4 Dead on Steam works on my Macbook Pro.

Very strange
3 years ago
yes, mac book pros are very strange. thats why you dont buy them.

jks icon_razz.gif
3 years ago
I played with the patch last night. It's good! Smoker's are actually of some use now. The new infected UI is also useful, knowing when your teammates will spawn.

The only thing I don't like is the predictability of the Tank and Witch. Knowing exactly where they are kind of takes the edge off (especially the Witch since she doesn't move).
3 years ago
So no new content? How lame. I can't understand how people can be so hungus on games and actually need a lot of this stuff changed. 'Can't grab ladder while flying through air after being punched by a tank'....no really how many times has this happened to you that you lost a game over it? And how many lost games did you lose sleep over?! Yea exactly.....**** this polishing to a sheen rubbish, gimme some more content! Any retard that needs stuff to be polished this hard needs a life or some more games to play.
3 years ago
ugh the boot wrote
Any retard that needs stuff to be polished this hard needs a life or some more games to play.
Have you played L4D Versus though? There's some balancing issues that this will address, so bring it on I say.

And since when was polishing an already fantastic game a bad thing?!

Yes we'd all like more content for L4D, but your 'need a life or more games' logic seems to be the only thing that's retarded here... icon_wink.gif
3 years ago
The only issue with this patch is the "tank (and witch) spawns at the same % through the map for both teams."

Which gives the second team a big advantage, because they know when the tank is coming, and can heal up and prepare before it spawns.
3 years ago
^
yeah that is pretty silly, as long as they both appear on that level for both teams i don't really see the problem as the score for distance travelled isnt very high.

Perhaps they would have been better giving you 2 or 3 tank tokens that you can use anywhere in the campaign or something like that, make it a bit strategic, but once you run out thats it. (apart from the last level)
3 years ago
Cobla wrote
Have you played L4D Versus though? There's some balancing issues that this will address, so bring it on I say.

And since when was polishing an already fantastic game a bad thing?!

Yes we'd all like more content for L4D, but your 'need a life or more games' logic seems to be the only thing that's retarded here... icon_wink.gif
No you're a potato head.

Since the full game has about as much content as a good demo/shareware game, so priority imo would be to add some more content first and foremost. These polishing balancing issues are just way too many nowadays anyways, most of these fixes should've been done before the game was even out because they don't relate to different connections setups and what not, most of it seems like it was because there was not enough playtesting "reduced autoshotgun damage on tank" really....they needed 3 months to figure that one out?
3 years ago
ugh, balancing an online game without a huge user base and extended length of time is very difficult! Valve take pride in their games and balance - on a similar level to Blizzard IMHO - which isn't a bad thing.

The extra content is coming, they've said as much. Just give them time, they've just come back from Xmas holidays the same as everyone else.
3 years ago
grim-one wrote
ugh, balancing an online game without a huge user base and extended length of time is very difficult! Valve take pride in their games and balance - on a similar level to Blizzard IMHO - which isn't a bad thing.

The extra content is coming, they've said as much. Just give them time, they've just come back from Xmas holidays the same as everyone else.
It's good they're as perfectionist as Blizzard, but at the same time, Blizzard pretty much need to patch their games and fix problems because they're an entirely different genre which is based a LOT on number crunching, and usually when I see so many fixes for an FPS game, I try to steer away icon_wink.gif

That being said a lot of these are definitely worth fixing, particularly the exploit where people respawned infinite amounts of things, which was f**king annoying, yet still they played like balls against us hawk-eye survivors.

That and the melee has been nerfed against Hunters. No more of that silly closet exploit - anyone who did that I instantly deemed a noob icon_razz.gif

Still waiting on my katana Valve icon_wink.gif (and don't give me the whole "BUT THE GAME NEEDS BALANCING" treatment. Katana's are awesome and I can dream.)
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Australian Release Date:
  20/11/2008 (Confirmed)
Publisher:
  Electronic Arts
Genre:
  Shooter
Year Made:
  2008
System Requirements:
Minimum:
Supported OS: Microsoft Windows XP / Vista / Vista64
Processor: Pentium 4 3.0GHz
Memory: 1 GB
Graphics: 128 MB, Shader model 2.0, ATI 9600, NVidia 6600 or better
Hard Drive: At least 7.5 GB of free space
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
Recommended:
Supported OS: Microsoft Windows XP / Vista / Vista64
Processor: Intel core 2 duo 2.4GHz
Memory: 1 GB
Graphics: Shader model 3.0, NVidia 7600, ATI X1600 or better

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