I don’t think I’ve ever been in on the ground floor of a new multiplayer game before so it is interesting to see how Left 4 Dead‘s Versus mode has changed and evolved since its release.
One of the most noticeable areas has been in regards to the witch. When the game first came out we all generally took Eminem’s Not Safe For Work advice and don’t “mess” with the witch. Now people just go right up to her and shooter he with the automatic shotgun and killer without getting hurt at all.
Similarly, people used to just run from the tank and hope to survive. Then people figured out that molotovs would take the tank out. Now the cool think seems to be for everyone to hit it with the automatic shotgun and sniper rifle (maybe the automatic shotgun needs some tweaking?)
The latest tactic I’ve seen is that someone realized that in some cases the hunters do more damage by swiping at the survivors rather than pouncing. The logic behind this is that if you pounce you don’t always do damage and might get knocked off before you start doing damage. If you swipe someone you are much quieter, can almost always get one hit in, and can perhaps get in more without having to wait to recharge the pounce.
Right now there’s a lot of debate over exploits within the game. One that pretty much everyone agrees is an exploit is the minigun jump
I’ve only seen people use this in Versus mode once and it is pretty much a jerk thing to do.
Another exploit that is definitely wrong and a real jerk thing is the spectator glitch in which you can spawn tons of hunters.
I’ve seen a couple people do this and one named Ghost something who I’ve ran into a couple times (of course he spells Ghost all l33t and stuff to show how much he roxors).
The final exploit is more controversial in my opinion. It involves breaking down the door and avoiding the crescendo event on the 3rd (I think it is the 3rd) level.
There are more exploits like hitting things into exits so survivors can’t go past but that has been fixed and only works on the Xbox360 so that doesn’t really count. There’s also hiding under the ramp in the finale which I’ve seen some people do but doesn’t happen all that often and there’s jumping off the side of the building in the beginning but that causes a lot of damage so I haven’t seen anyone do it.
Anyway, I’m not trying to document all the exploits and glitches in the game. It is just interesting to note which tactics stick, which don’t, and how they spread.