Avs

Ripped from Kotaku. I think this is one day old.

Valve's E3 announcement that Left 4 Dead 2 would hit this year, almost one year to the day after the original, has seen mixed response. Nearly 25,000 fans of the original have pledged not to purchase the sequel. Why?

As outlined in the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott group's manifesto, that group of fans believe that the "stand-alone sequel will split the communities and decrease the quality of multiplayer gaming." Miffed fans believe that the content so far revealed "does not warrant a stand-alone, full-priced sequel and should instead become updates (free or otherwise)" for the original Left 4 Dead.

We asked Valve for a response to those claims.

"Doing a sequel in one year is new for Valve. But providing ongoing support for our titles after the initial launch isn't - it has been part of our philosophy since Half-Life was released ten and half years ago," said Valve president Gabe Newell in a statement to Kotaku. "We see no reason to change that and will continue to support the over three million customers in the L4D community."

"E3 is a trade event where developers and publishers come to announce new games for the coming year. L4D2 — like any new product — requires an appearance at the show," Newell said.

Valve says, it will continue to support the original with continued updates.

"Some in the community are concerned that the announcement of L4D2 implied a change in our plans for L4D1. We aren't changing our plans for L4D1."

Whether that will allay fears that Left 4 Dead will be left behind by some community members remains to be seen, but Valve notes that it hasn't abandoned the original.

"In addition to the recently released Survival Pack, we are releasing authoring tools for Mod makers, community matchmaking, 4x4 matchmaking, and more new content during the coming months for L4D1," Newell says. "We also agree with our customers that there needs to be an interoperability plan for players of L4D1 and L4D2, as multiplayer games are driven by the cohesiveness of their community."

When we first went hands-on with the Steam version of Left 4 Dead 2 at E3, we felt that the title felt awfully similar to the original. Some of that may simply be due to incremental updates already revealed. As Valve's Chet Faliszek told us at the time, there are still plenty of details left to be doled out, including information on new weapons, two new Special Infected types and more.

Faliszek said at E3 that he very much understood the "gut reaction" to the uncharacteristically Valve move to launch such a quick follow-up. But, he said, as people learn more about the game over the next few months, they'll see why "none of the additions [in Left 4 Dead 2] are trivial."

Spyder228

I still don't care. They promised new content for the original right after it was released. What did we get?

More Vs. maps? Awesome, especially for me since I despise the grief fest known as Vs. mode.

Survival mode? Now instead of getting the crap kicked out of me by annoying 13 year olds, they've automated it!

Where are the extra campaigns they promised? Where are the extra weapons? Oh yeah, they're in L4D2.

Still no way I'll pay full price for this.

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Mixa

Just give lower price to the game and I'm fine with original being left behind like zombie bitten friend...

Even if its just for the previous owners of l4d it would be great, they made promises and now they ignore those. This is biggest failure valve has done with their player relationship, well see where this goes...

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peardog

I'm good with a new game... It's not till WINTER 2009 or 2010...and as for me... I'm kinda burnt out on the same VS's maps etc.. Maybe SDK will regenerate excitement for me. Otherwise... bring it on..

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Celestial1

Quoted for IMPORTANCE.

1) Yes. Valve does listen. Good on them. Like to see what they arrange.

2) Two new? Hmm. Like to see the new guy around town.

3) Additions...? Melee weapons are the only 'innovations' I've seen... Maybe I'm passing the big picture though? Or there is more to be revealed.


Last I checked, the two things you listed are 'content'. Whether you like it or not, it's still content. Yeah, I'm disappointed in the lack of campaigns, but maybe that's the way they want it. Maybe they don't want an incoherent storyline. (Granted, the game doesn't really reek of storyline, but it IS there, it's just a little deeper down. The only thing that could really be added to the story is either another failed rescue attempt, a successful rescue attempt, or to beat the dead horse as little as possible: a cutscene that shows the original survivors in a military camp.

Maybe valve is looking to make this as an expansion. Like... Well, I can't really think of an example of this, but like creating parallel storylines within the same 'game' through expansions.

That would be their promised 'new weapons' and 'new campaigns'...

MagnaCentipede

The video I saw showed that one of the new special infected is apparently called the Charger, and it charges at you. Which means it's a Horde member. Whoopty doo.

More guns? If anything we need fewer guns, or to be more precise, more weapons but only a few appear in each round. Make players choose their arsenel carefully, and force them to work with what they have. Every time players get a bigger gun, the zombies lose power, and what's the point of playing if the zombies aren't a threat?

More characters aren't needed. Since the character you play doesn't affect the game, there isn't any point to having more/different ones. The only use for more characters is to let people choose an avatar, and if you are doing that, then people must be able to pick freely from a wide pool of characters.


The big mistake Valve made wasn't that it's too soon, or even too similar. Over-all, Valve's customer base is barely satisfied with L4D. It's just not addictive, catchy, or groundbreaking like TF2, HL2, or Portal are. We tolerate that once in a while, they can't all be earth shattering, but for Valve to say outright, come buy another barely satisfying plz lol, has made the natives restless.

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Spyder228

Well said.

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Avs

Its really interesting to watch the L4D Boycott group grow. Right now its at 30,000 members, and I see 20 TG people in it.

Rakkasan21

So what if they don't buy it...I'll still have fun playing it

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peardog

First of to say L4D is not Satisfying is just an opinion...My Daughter thinks I kill Zombies for a Living at over 200+ hours in game.. So to each his own.. What Valve is going to be forced to do is Release the SDK and hold off on L4D2 till end 2010 now to say they "WAITED"... Geez.. If they released it tomorrow they would sell a Million copies and probably more then half of the 30K who signed the "Protest" petition would preorder...

What I don't understand, or even agree with, is that people bought the game based on Future promises of the makers... "Future Content" etc. You buy the game and get what you get. This "I want it Free and I want it now" mentality will result in crap gaming.

IF Valve gets the full SDK out there..Gamers will get all the Free Content they can eat.. and Valve can get to work on Half Life 3... Quit bugging them..

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Exploding_Silver

what valve got wrong with their business model was being slow with the SDK, if that had come out 3 months ago, there would be new content made by the general public and a full priced sequel would have been more palatable

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Skylark

Yeah, I pretty much agree. I like coop better. That usually means I have to go to a pub group or play solo since few TGs ever seem to want to play coop. Oh well.

But I also agree with Silver - if the SDK had come out quicker, it wouldn't have been such a let down.

As it is, it seems like
OK, here - we've uh released some survival things we had set up anyway to test the engine and uh... we've "fixed" the other two maps for vs. OK ... uh... NEW GAME! That's how it comes across to ME. But I'm a lemming (spelling?) and I'll probably buy the new game, if enough TGers are. I'm probably going to buy killing floor after I get back from vacation. ARGH!!

Hi. My name is Skylark and I'm a computer game addict. And uh... I can quit anytime I want.

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draeh

Fixed that for ya'.

I have to agree with Spyder & Skylark. I prefer the COOP more than versus and I was hoping for more campaigns by now. With that said, I will probably buy L4D2 if/when TG hosts it. I don't like that it will be full price, but I too like the genre and am an addict.

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Avs

Hmm, so basically if versus matchmaking was actually fixed and easy to "jump" into, then it wouldn't have been such a chore to setup games is what I'm hearing from those last two posts. I see that the group on steam continues to grow steadily as well, though I also want to say it is too early to tell. Who knows what might happen before L4D2.

What a cute daughter! But behind this, is what I think a lot of people have invested...many many hours to L4D. Which begs the question, if a game is played more than 80 hours (or even 20, which is more than most singleplayer FPS: Fear 2 was 6 hours, COD:WAW was 8 for example), is it worth the money and time? Are we comparing it to the same kinds of games or are we putting L4D in its own special Valve category?

I think if the game was compared to other AAA titles released, it would probably be pretty solid if fairly compared. So I guess what it really came down to is whether people felt they got what they wanted out of the game (and if they tried or just expected it to happen, there is a difference) weighted by how much Valve's promises factored into that enjoyment.

Lyramion

I´m a sheep. Not making any illusions. I´ll get L4D2. I´ll play it. I´ll enjoy it.

.... and I bet half of this boykott group will, too.



The only thing I want for L4D1 is the 4 on 4 matchmaking they promised us this month. That will give me a lot of reason to gather 4 people more often and beat up 4 others - that aren´t that likely to ragequit.

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