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Valve Addresses L4D2 Critics
Valve has responded to a wave of negative feedback following the announcement of Left 4 Dead 2.
Following Left 4 Dead 2’s unveiling on June 1 a community campaign was launched against the title on Steam, Valve’s online games portal. The Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott Group, which has since amassed over 20,000 members, argues that the game “doesn’t warrant a standalone, full-priced sequel and should instead become updates (free or otherwise) for Left 4 Dead."
Responding to criticism surrounding the game, Valve's Chet Faliszek has asked gamers to give the developer "a fair shake" before writing the sequel off.
"We want to wait and weed through the comments, I'm already getting e-mails, and I'm responding to them," Faliszek told Ars Technica. "Read more about it, find out about it, we've already let people play it [at E3]... After that, if you want to vent, post to the forums. We do read them, we read all the forums."
According to Faliszek, Left 4 Dead 2's five new campaigns, new weapons, special infected and zombie dismemberment are too great simply to warrant an update.
"We had some meetings about it, and we all talked about our ideas, and everyone was pretty focused and thoughtful… It just became very clear that this was a cohesive, singular statement we wanted to make, not a more slow update thing... too much stuff was tied together with too many other things.”
Faliszek also promised that the first game would continue to be updated, noting that the Left 4 Dead SDK would be coming out of beta in the next week or so and that all the maps created using it will work on the sequel.
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I am sure if it's up to Valve they will come up with a fair price and hopefully not continue to bundle L4D2 with stuff I already have or do not want; Orange Box Syndrome.
But as far as the 360 Version is concerned, I can see L4D2 becoming a rather expensive expansion. The first one was new, this is more of the same, so L4D2 is not that much of an exciting novelty anymore.
How four friends best find enter and group in one game is still a major problem though.
I guess it better be good then.
I'm in the "meh" camp, though. I haven't played L4D in ages, and that's because the matchmaking straight-up sucks. I can understand why people might think it is too soon for a sequel, but most of the people getting really upset must have had the wrong impression of Valve. Valve is a business and, as such, has a bottom line it wants to fill. Why people are getting surprised about a company wanting to get more money from its customers... it's just unbelievable, isn't it?! What company would ever do that? :rollseyes:
This comment is a bit out of touch, no one's complaining about the gameplay and whether it's quality or not; rather, they are concerned for two key reasons:
1. The original L4D has received rather diminutive support relative to other Valve titles, and in spite of promises of more support to come...L4D was initially criticized for having too little contnet for the price, but critics and consumers alike 'knew' that valve would support it as they do other products. Fans feel betrayed...and it's unlikely L4D will receive any substantial updates now that TurtleRock is working on a sequel instead.
2. The community is going to be divided. Some people will move on and some won't, which effectively makes for less people to play with, less friends sticking around, and then even less people playing......a vicious cycle. It's bizzarely as if Valve is shooting itself in the foot. There is no way L4D2 will sell as well as the original, even if fans weren't so vocal in their backlash.
I still expect Valve to respond with something more than a mere statement, as they are better than that and listen to their fans. The best solution is still to release L4D2 as an expansion -- those who already own L4D can pay a smaller price to update their game, and those who don't will pay the full price and recieve L4D along with L4D2. Make it one game. This isn't a problem of design or technology, as new concepts and weapons don't have to be placed on old maps. Just let us load each campaign from the same client. People will still be miffed about paying again so soon (after all, valve gamers aren't like Madden morons), but this holds the best chance of keeping the community together, customers satisifed and Valve's coffers full.
But seriously -- where the hell is Episode 3?
1. They've already committed to providing more content for the original. Several time. There is no reason to not believe them on this.
2. The 'community split' is true of any sequel. A year and a bit is more than enough to get bored of L4D. I reckon 99% of fans will buy L4D2. The 20000 who are having a hissy fit can sit around playing the original, like the Halo 2 'l33t'.
PS. Actually, yeah, where IS Episode 3!? Though I'm not sure I wouldn't like to see a new IP from Valve, at least one that doesn't recycle the same engine over and over.
99% of fans will buy L4D2? By fans do you mean people that play it regularly or everyone that bought L4D? There's no way L4D2 can outsell L4D. A lot of people bought L4D and had a great time but never picked it up again because friends lost interest and there weren't enough people to play with. It's not as much a game you can just play a round of and quit. It's a campaign you have to coordinate with friends. Do you think people that bought the game intending to play it a lot but never being able to due to friends not being up to it and thus the purchase feeling like it was bit a waste to spend 50 dollars on (especially with the relatively low amount of content for the price and lack of developer support would look at L4D2 and say hmm I'm willing to spend another 50 dollars on this sequel?
If you were disappointed with the lack of support in the first place after the first game's relative lack of content, why would you buy a sequel at full price? I was 100% excited for L4D before it came out and it was a sure purchase for me. Now I'm not even sure I'll pick up L4D2. Maybe if it's good. If the hype is this low for someone like me who buys a lot of games, how will the more casual player that bought L4D feel about it? A lot of them probably won't even care about it. L4D sold well because of the excitement it drew with the hype surrounding it. I'm not so sure the sequel can generate that same kinda of hype. It'd be like if they made a TF3 a year after TF2. It it just won't sell as well.
As for them committing to adding new content to L4D. Sure you can assume they will because they said so. I'm sure they will support it. But to what extent? Can you play L4D maps on L4D2? Probably not. But how will new maps work? Can either group of survivors do the same scenarios? Can you mix and match? How much dialogue interactions would have to be done to facilitate that? I'm just going to assume that the new content will be per game rather than cover both. That is assuming Valve actually makes new maps with new voice acting for the map events. Also why should we be calm about the eventual committed content for L4D rather than be annoyed that they are working on a sequel than actually making new content right now. I should be annoyed that I expected them to make new content right away but they went off and made a sequel instead so I have to wait longer to play new stuff long after my friends lost interest in the game. It really seems like a betrayal for the sake of the dollar. I can see their point of view but it really comes off as a shit on the fans that committed to the first game, especially people that actually went and bought servers for the first game.
I'm also a bit suprised at the uproar against L4D2. It seems like a lot of gamers underestimate the complexities of level and weapon design. Adding something as seeminly trival as some melee weapons requires dozens of other feature tweaks and loads more playtesting. You gotta figure out weapon placement, how they feel, how strong they are, how the AI Director adjusts to players having them, among a slew of other factors, not to mention creating all the new art and sound assets. And this is just the melee weapons.
Free update? Seems a bit far-fetched. Valve is not a studio on the brink of financial ruin and they are known for their community/customer-centered focus but they are also a business first & foremost.
There's also the reality of all those other franchises out there that are sequel-ized every year yet that is accepted by everyone as a given.
I played through the entire show demo and it's definitely cool and fun (of course), but it really should be released as an expansion. They should release it for $30 separately or full-priced with the original game included; no reason not to.
you supposedly played a demo that represents a fraction of an unfinished game and you think you've played enough to make that kind of corporate decision?
do you listen to yourself?
do you mean to say you've watched footage of others playing the demo through websites like IGN or Gametrailers.com? yea, we've all seen them too.
i agree with him. The game should be discounted drastically and released as an expansion. I have not played it.... and I don't care. Unless everything in L4D is integrated into L4D2... i don't want it. Maybe we as gamers have become spoiled because of games like Rock Band 2 letting us import all the songs from Rock Band. I can't justify this purchase though. It has nothing to do with the amount of time or the fact that it's coming out "too soon". It's that I don't feel like L4D was worth 50-60 dollars in the first place and coming out with a sequel that is only marginally bigger is insulting. I know the new weather effects and all that are cool, but it's 50 to 60 dollars for essentially the same game again with a new coat of paint... if that. After about 15 or 20 minutes, and the glee of using a chainsaw wears off, it's going to feel like the same game with minor updates.
This is just more evidence of the Entitlement Generation who has determined that they don't want to pay for anything. Valve has been VERY generous in continuing to support their games with free updates and expansions and now people want to bitch because they are "forcing" you to pop another $50 to L4D2 a year later? Hey, if you think they are ripping you off, just continue to play L4D.
Here's some good advice for the complainers: Never get too comfortable with anything that's free.
I don't want it to be free. i don't think an entirely new game is justified.
(I don't have L4D or even a machine that can run it, so see me here as an indifferent bystander)
Their arguments aren't just that they're "entitled" to free updates -- the sequel will chop the community in half, since some will be playing 1, some will be playing 2. Why do that? If it was a smaller game, it'd matter a lot more, since splitting, say, the PS3 TF2 community in half (there's scarcely a hundred of us online at our lowest) would mean finding games of 16 people would be rare. But it's a huge game of 4 players, so it doesn't make that much of a difference for matchmaking.
As well as that, well, they're annoyed that they weren't going to get what they were promised, at least it didn't look like it. Still, just the existence of a sequel means that more than half the L4D team is now making L4D2 and its future updates, rather than L4D updates. It all just seems unnecessary at this point. When we learn more about the game maybe that'll change.
People keep saying it might chop the community in half, but if they just released it as a download expansion, or made individual levels, then that would do the same thing and it also would take up hefty hard drive space for 360 users that they might not have. To me this seems better because everyone has the exact same amount of content, instead of what usually happens with these games where some people bought certain map packs and others didn't.
Also, saying you're thinking about doing something doesn't mean you "promised" it. As usual, the kneejerk community feels they're entitled like. I've seen this growing rage and spoiled attitude where the PC gaming community starts boycotting and ruining Amazon reviews for the most trivial and speculative concerns and spamming reports of "horrible ports" on message boards for games if they encounter one single crash on their dangerously overclocked system with unofficial drivers. Now even Valve and Blizzard recieve massive amounts of vitriol beased on pure speculation and for merely operating like a profitable company. No wonder so many "hardcore" gaming developers left the PC. The QA and open platform make it much more expensive, it sells far less copies, and the crowd seems far less satisfied with the product no matter what you do. It seems like way too much effort to bother as far as I can see.
As for boycotts, I never understood the point of them. Aside from making a Steam group to "boycott" it is just the usual slacktivism you see nowadays, I don't see a need to vocally take a side. (Due to the online distribution system, I hope someone does the research to see how many people who signed up for this "boycott" end up with the game on their Steam purchase list anyways. That might be interesting.) If a publisher or developer starts making crappy games, or sucks franchises dry or is basically performing shady business practices, I tend to just naturally become less interested in their product line anyways.
anet's jeff strain wrote an article about pc gamers comunity and mmo's ,I think people need to read it.
http://www.guildwars.com/events/tradeshows/gc2007/gcspeech.php
I couldn't agree more. I've looked at the many arguments coming out of this 'boycott' and they ALL seem totally unreasonable and just plain irrational.
2nd that....
Why all the hubub? I'm sure there'll be a demo, & reviews. If it's rushed, & it doesn't warrant $60, don't buy it. I think they'll get the message.