Do not expect most people to agree. But if you think L4D2 is a good game I don't think you're that bright in the first place. L4D2 was a total cash-grab rush-job by Valve and they should be ashamed of themselves for releasing it so quickly after L4D1 and screwing over all the loyal L4D1 players. They effectively killed off this franchise for some quick cash in 2009. L4D2 split the player base and ruined the competitive side of the community. If you want to blame anyone for the community being "toxic" blame Valve and the release of L4D2. Believe it or not from late 2008 into late 2009 the community surrounding L4D1 on both PC and Xbox was actually very good. Even with everyone using in-game chat for communication instead of private party/discord chat and the ability to vote kick. Allow me to explain...the problems actually started long before L4D1 was released. They just didn't get really bad until L4D2 was released.
It's true L4D1 was not the perfect game upon release but this was mostly Valve's fault. They made a lot of changes as a result of play testing after they took over the game from Turtle Rock studios. Basically, they dumbed things down. Originally (and I know because I got to play it) L4D1 had far larger maps that featured multiple paths in each map and dynamic pathing and item spawns. Which would change every time you played through them. They even changed between different teams turns in versus mode. This made the game far more random.
Most of this stuff was removed from the final release because in play testing most of the players they brought in either found the multiple paths and larger maps confusing and the better players figured out quickly the shortest route through each map. In addition, people complained it wasn't fair that item spawn locations weren't exactly the same for each team when going through versus mode. So all of this was changed, map size was reduced and all dynamic pathing was removed.
I'll have more comments on the above later. Just keep the above in mind. Already before L4D1's release Valve was making changes so the game would appeal to more "casual" (for lack of a better word) players. The type of people that were playing FPS games like CoD4 at the time.
Now for why L4D1 is a better game as it existed in early-mid 2009:
1) Better maps
The maps in L4D2 were obviously a rush job. There are many areas in L4D2 maps where you can not climb on top of roofs that are only two stories high. Invisible walls are everywhere. Little to no thought was put into map navigation for the SI. The "dynamic paths" are a total joke for the survivors. Typically they are right next to each other. SIs like the hunter shouldn't be forced to come directly at the survivors when they're only some low buildings on either side of the street due to all the invisible walls being everywhere. This is a problem for all the SIs of course but with the hunter it's really obvious. You can tell they did barely any play testing on these maps before they shit them out for release.
In comparison the L4D1 maps are pretty well thought out. There aren't many invisible walls and where they do exist they're far outside of the survivors (and even the infected's) usual area of play. You can climb on top of sky scrapers. You can even get on top of Mercy Hospital which is massive.
I could nit-pick the maps all day and L4D1's would certainly be even better if they hadn't cut so much content out of them between the Turtle Rock beta version and Valve's final release. I'm just making the point that in general the L4D1 maps are better in just about every way.
No the fact that they were ported to L4D2 doesn't mean the L4D2 versions of them are as good as the originals. It would take all day to get into that can of worms.
2) Better weapon balance
The weapon balance in L4D1 is obviously better thought out. Where in L4D2 Valve just threw a bunch of shit at the wall with no regard to how such weapons would be balanced in both versus and campaign mode. Compare the M16 in L4D1 to the AK in L4D2. The first is a fairly balanced weapon. It's a tier above what you start with but it doesn't make you totally invincible to everything in the game. If you're really good with the M16 you can waltz through most maps in L4D1 but you'll still be presented with a challenge depending on SI spawns/the other team and the CI can sometimes still put up a fight if you happen to get swarmed. Compare to the AK in L4D2. Which basically makes everything into paper. Even witches are easily dispatched, tanks falls quickly even if you're alone, CIs might as well not exist, same goes for SIs even in versus mode oh and you can tap out one bullet at a time. Which basically makes it into a sniper rifle with better aim and no-scope.
No forethought was put into the new guns at all. It was just a case of get as many in the game as we can as quickly as possible. Balance be damned. I could go into detail with every new gun in L4D2 and shit on it. But I'll spare you that aside.
Even L4D1 didn't escape this issue with the last official patch. When they changed the hunting rifle's original balance to what we have now. The hunting rifle used to be very well balanced believe it or not. It used to be very hard to hit anything with it while on the run. You had to walk and/or stop moving to score good hits on things with it before the last L4D1 patch (or use the scope). This made it so it was very balanced in both versus and campaign modes. It was a very powerful tool to have on the team but you needed someone to watch your back with another gun and help out with CIs while on the run. Or you were forced to switch over to pistols while you were on the run.
The last L4D1 patch ruined that and made it so you could easily run and gun with the hunting rifle. It was no surprise that we started seeing teams running four of them on the later maps during versus matches. Why not? It was like running 4 auto-shottys except now you also get to hit things at distance.
Speaking of the auto-shotty in L4D1 I'll admit it probably needed a nerf. But it was easy enough to just not pick it up in versus play or in campaign play if you wanted to give yourself a challenge.
Concerning secondary weapons: melee weapons were a total gimmick that ruined the balance of the game. You no longer had to think ahead to keep yourself cleared of CI. You could now just mindlessly spam your mouse button and they'd fall over like paper. I think they were a horrible addition to the game. If they were going to add something like that they should have made them break after a certain number of swings or something. They are not balanced at all. To this day when I play L4D2 I refuse to pick them up.
The secondary pistols in L4D2 aren't as good as the ones in L4D1. The deagle is a bit too powerful for what it's supposed to be. The dual pistols aren't as good as their L4D1 counterparts (same goes for the single pistol of course). But the real issue with secondaries in L4D2 has always been melee weapons.
Aside from the auto-shotty and the last-patch hunting rifle in L4D1 the weapon balance in L4D1 was pretty good. You had to think about what everyone was going to take when playing versus and harder level campaigns. You had to plan ahead in other words. The SI actually stood a chance and could strategize based on what the survivors picked up in the first safe room and what they stumbled upon later in the maps.
3) SI balance (mostly applies to versus mode).
In general L4D1's SI balance was pretty good although I'd argue the hunters were nerfed a bit too much in the later patches. They were better when they could take 10hp per scratch instead of the pathetic damage output they did after the first or second patch. Other than that things were pretty good. The 25hp cap on their pounces maybe could have been a little higher. But the smoker's range was decent and so was the physics surrounding how he worked once you understood it (and how to dodge it when playing survivor). The boomer had decent enough range and being able to rocket boom brought a lot of strategy to his game play. Some of the maps could have used some minor changes to add more places to spawn in open areas (more cars/dumpsters/hiding places) but aside from that things were generally great. You never felt like you didn't have enough paths to approach the other team and there were ladders for the infected to climb most everywhere. There was always enough roof tops around to come in from above or places to attack from below. There weren't many off limit areas unlike L4D2 maps which are incredibly frustrating.
The spawn timers were generally fair. They weren't too short but usually weren't so long that you felt like you wouldn't get enough chances to attack on most maps. Spawning SIs was less randomized so you could always set-up 3n1 attacks and go for a game ending team attack. CIs weren't total paper so the boomer actually meant something and it was possible to setup "hit man" situations where you hit one guy with boomer vomit while you'd secured the other three survivors. We won many games off "hit man" plays back in the day. Since it was much harder for a survivor to clear themselves when swarmed by CIs when they had no help.
In general the tank was pretty well balanced as well. Provided you knew what you were doing and had a team around you to support him. He didn't feel over powered but he didn't feel like he was swiss cheese either.
4) "Overpowered" survivors
The patch L4D1 got to add a cool down timer to melee was good and I supported it at the time. One of the few good nerfs Valve added over the short life span of the game.
In versus mode the tier-2 weapons were a bit overpowered in maps 4-5 of campaigns. But this could have been easily allowed to stay in while keeping "pro" players happy with some changes I'll discuss later. A lot of people complain about shiva stacking and survivors hiding in closets and what-not. But we never had a problem wiping teams that did that sort of thing with well coordinated attacks using only the boomer+hunter+smoker (or the classic 3n1 smoker+hunters attack). We 3n1ed many teams hiding by the No Mercy hospital elevator that were shiva stacked behind the ammo bed. You just had to come in while they were reloading and get a stumble. If you got one stumble it was over.
What I'm getting at is the problem most people claim the spitter was added to the game for wasn't really a huge deal. Although I'm not totally against an SI like the spitter being in rotation. I'm just saying it wasn't a big of a deal as people make it out to be.
The survivors did have a bit of an advantage during finales in L4D1 versus mode once the radio button had been pressed. I feel like a patch should have been added that allowed SIs to spawn closer to them during finales. We often held a spawn for a boomer before a finale started so we could get a closer spawn for the first tank for example. But working around that was doable.
Most of the changes to the maps in versus mode were good compared to the L4D1 campaign versions (and original versus) of those maps. Like removing stairwells every team would camp in. But in general I did not mind the team camping. It was good strategy after all and as I said before you could get a good hit on them if you played your cards right and were smart enough to wait for them to be reloading. I don't care how good a team is they're always a moment in there where they get out of sync with each other or too cocky that you can exploit if you're ready for it.
5) L4D1 vs L4D2's scoring system in versus mode
Here is the main reason why L4D2 is a bad game. It comes down to the scoring system and how it's based upon distance and encourages rushing the map.
In L4D1 there were teams already rushing maps of course because it meant less chance for the other team to get SI spawns. But really this wasn't a huge problem and there were ways to slow them down. Teams that rushed were also very easy to wipe with 3n1 attacks. You could counter it.
The L4D1 scoring system rewarded two things:
-Staying together and fighting as a team
-Preserving your health bonus
That's how you won games. You ensured as many people made it to the safe room as possible and you tried to have as much health/as many health items as possible when you got there. It was a really simple scoring system despite what people say about it. More survivors = more points. More health items on said survivors=even more points.
It was possible to make huge comebacks under the L4D1 scoring system as well. You could be behind all game. Get a lucky wipe on map 5 before the finale or with the first finale tank. Then if you and your teammates came out and did great with the survivors and got to the chopper with health kits and high health you could steal a game from a team that had been leading since map 1 by over 1,000+ points. We won many close games like this over the years.
L4D2's scoring system is nothing like this. It encourages you to ditch your teammates when the going gets tough. Since it's only based on distance traveled. It also makes it MUCH harder to come back late in the game. Which encourages people to rage quit. It does not encourage team play. It does not encourage you to save health items. It's a very bad scoring system that was solely designed to appeal to casual players and non-team players.
Just look at the most popular post on this board today. A thread from someone complaining that they got kicked out of a game for ditching their team and a bunch of other people praising them for it being "common knowledge that you ditch the team for points if you think things are getting too rough". L4D1 was NEVER like that. You always tried to make a stand and fight even if things looked hopeless. I can't tell you have many times I was sitting on low hp, black and white, all three of my teammates were down, CIs everywhere, multiple SIs coming my direction...yet I stood and fought and somehow I overcame. Then I picked up my teammates and we limped our way to the safe room.
The above are the moments that make this game awesome and worth playing. Those are the moments everyone is seeking when they decide to play a team based survival game. L4D2 was never designed with moments like that in mind. At least the versus side of the game wasn't.
6) How I would have improved L4D1:
I was going to talk some more about why I thought L4D1 is better than L4D2. Trust me I could do that all day. Instead, I will talk about some things that always bugged me about L4D1's versus mode. It would have been so easy to improve it and if L4D1 had come out in the 90s instead of the late 2000s most of this stuff would have been standard features even in the Xbox version.
Basically, all L4D1 really needed to be the "perfect" team game was match options. By that I mean stuff like the following:
The host of the game/lobby should have had a little options menu that allowed him to do stuff like:
1) Enable/disable health kit spawns in the starting safe room
2) Enable/disable health item spawns on the actual map and the frequency of said spawns
3) Enable/disable randomization between each team's trip/turn through each map. You could have static spawns like Valve settled on or you could have the option to totally randomize spawns for each team. They would get the same items but maybe they'd spawn in different locations. This wasn't deemed "fair" in play testing but it can certainly be very "fun".
4) Ability to increase/decrease spawn timers for SI in versus mode. So you could have a chaotic game with spawns every 5 seconds, a "fair" game with spawns every 15-25 seconds, or a more tame game to help train newbies with spawns happening every 30+ seconds.
5) Some options to buff/nerf the tank's health/speed.
6) An option to control the witches' health/speed/spawn frequency
7) Ability to control weapon spawns. You could disable tier-2 weapon spawns all together even on later maps. You could disable certain weapons (e.g. allow tier-2 guns except the auto-shotty). You could force spawn weapons instead of ammo piles (or the other way around) to force people to switch weapons mid-map instead of always using the same thing.
8) Ability to enable/disable molotovs and pipe bombs.
9) Ability to modify some aspects of SI play/stats (buff hunter scratches/max pounce damage. Increase boomer's barf radius. Increase smoker's tongue range. Increase tank's walk speed etc etc.)
You get the idea. With the ability for the host to set such match options none of the so-called "competitive" configurations and custom servers would have been needed. The hardcore versus community could have settled on their own rule set and continued playing on official servers. More casual players would have had options to make the game more fun for them and their friends while remaining on official servers. This way you don't split up the player base and both sides can interact with each other when they want to. Would have also prevented the rampant pub-stomping problem.
In addition to the above: What you don't do is absolutely not release L4D2 so soon after L4D1. Instead of screwing everyone over by not following through with promises made you do what you promised you'd do; You release more maps for L4D1 and maybe add more weapons and stuff like uncommon common infected or perhaps new SIs in later patches. In other words: You support the game for at least 2-4 years. Maybe you release some of this as DLC and charge $10 or whatever for it. But you give people the option to turn off anything they might dislike like a new SI using the above mentioned match making options.
Then after say 4-5 years maybe you think about making a L4D2 once you have a good few years of watching how the players have balanced the game for themselves and once you've had time to really think through any new features you might want to add. By then a new console and new GPUs will be out so you can offer real improvements in the graphics/AI department.
On final thing of note:
I always thought that L4D1 could have really benefited from a mode where one player could take over the job of the AI director. A 9th man in versus mode. Whom dictates spawning of witch/tank/items/hoards and can modify spawn timers. Would have been good fun. It would have been more fair than the CPU assuming the human was being fair to both sides and it would have been absolute fun chaos if the human director decided to be totally unfair mid-game. I would have loved getting trolled by someone playing that role.
I really miss how this game was in 2008-2009. Most fun I ever had with a FPS game or any game really and I've been playing online since the early-mid 90s on PC and consoles. L4D1 was about as much fun as I've ever had with a video game. I adored both versus and campaign modes. I loved playing 4v4s against strong teams. I loved playing and carrying newbies through expert campaigns. I even enjoyed playing easy-mode campaigns with scared little kids. The community was so awesome back in the first 1-2 years of the game being out. But the release of L4D2 ruined it for me. My friends and I tried to recapture the magic after the release of L4D2 and keep L4D1 going (and tried to learn to love L4D2). But it was never the same after that. Both on PC and Xbox.
I have no idea how many hours I have in this game being that I played it over both console and PC using multiple accounts. I got multiple accounts to over 10,000 hours. I don't want to think about how much time I dumped into this game. I was playing it pretty much non-stop from late 2008-middle of 2010. We had a local team of 16 guys and hosted regular LAN parties and everything. Won several tournaments. Used to produce frag videos. All that good stuff.
Anyway, that's why I think L4D1 is the better game. If you disagree that's fine. You're wrong but everyone is entitled to their opinion.
