"VNN got me kicked out of TLS dev team..." Talk w Nightly/Archangel about The Last Stand update disaster.

[וווBatty]

[PROOF] FULL CONVERSATION HERE: https://imgur.com/a/NDxPyJQ
I highly suggest reading the whole thing.

Disappointed and attempting to find out what really had happened in development, regarding the broken update we received, I reached out to Archangel (aka Nightly), an ex-dev of TLS team and a well-known modder and custom mapper in the workshop community.

This is what he had to say on the matter, working under the supervision of Rayman1103 and JAiZ from Left4DeadNation:

"I was in charge mostly of the navigation bug fixing and improvement on survival maps. Sometimes, I worked several days in a row tackling down everything that needed improving. Rayman was always busy with something not project related, we never new what, exactly, so JAiZ, who handled Scavenging, Survival and PR for the team, took over the role of director of the project, and his demands were ludicrous."

"I felt early on that the update was gonna have issues.
From the start I had feelings that it wasn't gonna go down well.
I was told by JAiZ that this was a TOP SECRET project and that I wasn't allowed to share the details with anyone."

He goes on about the early days of the project:

"It lasted for about 11 months... It started small in the beginning, with a group of less than 10 people. We were tackling too many things by the end, even when we had around 25 people by that point. The Last Stand map wasn't even a thing until about half way through development. Not only that, but we didn't know what the other guys in the team were working on. I got kicked a short while after, because they thought I was gonna leak info on the update"

Afterwards, he shared how hard it was while working under JAiZ's direction.

"Everything felt disconnected, like we were working towards an invisible goal, and we couldn't plan ahead. It was very stressful... and we weren't allowed to talk to anyone about it, which is odd because we NEVER signed a Non-disclosure agreement, or were getting paid for working on the update. This was a work of love and passion by the community, so I was okay with it. I only could playtest once a week on Survival maps, for about 30 min... that's very little testing being done for a project this size."

"...None of us knew what the other guys in the team were actually doing. A lot of people don't understand, everything I would fix would be undone by the other guy's changes, due to a lack of communication... one step forward and two steps back. Organization was a mess, we lacked direction, a deadline and a clear goal."

"I told my friends about the update and how development was like and they all said that it sounded like HELL, and they suggested I try talk to VNN to shine light on those issues.
Before I got booted I actually lost access to most the Update Discord due to my role being removed. Hence why I tried to contact (Valve News Network), with no intent about leaking content rather just development, because I felt like I wasn't gonna be credited in any way. But Tyler McVicker [from VNN] sold me out as I tried to contact HIM specfically."

Nightly says he got kicked out of the dev team a month before release.
Most of the work he did on the project ended up being removed, while very little of the bugs he had fixed and shared with his teammates go uncredited.

He also shares how disappointed he is on the final product.

"The fact we couldn't even talk to people about it and see what they thought hurt us honestly. You can't get critcism if you never show your work, you can't improve on it."

When asked about the disregard for other Players and Gametypes, he said"

"JAiZ gave no ♥♥♥♥♥ for VS play. Unless you play Scavenge or Survival, it's kind of a [crappy] update, tbh. And playing it now, it's all still very broken, even moreso than before."

He remarks:

"It's literally what THE TEAM wanted, not what THE COMMUNITY wanted. JAiZ nor Rayman sought any feedback from actual everyday players, under a basis that it was all secret, but none of us were under a contract."

"When it came to what could have been handled better? Maybe not just toss [stuff] into Google Drive Documents that I had trouble even going through.
I wish I was joking but I'm not. All the [stuff] when I joined was in Google Docs, inside a normal text document, not spread sheets or anything. It made everything very diffcult at first, and it got worse as more stuff was added to the list."

"I love Left 4 Dead, It was my childhood... and it hurts me to see what happened, I played L4D1 and 2 since release [...] I was still very young when they came out. So L4D has been a big deal in my life.

I hate to say it, but the update kinda made the game dead for me..."

------
UPDATE:
Oh another thing I wanna point out, with my first chat with Batty I wasn't entirely professional, that was just me expression my own feelings all out. I didn't expect this much attention and I wanna keep it professional. -Archangel

UPDATE #2
JAiZ and his team have been confronted publicly @L4DNation discord.
After evading the issue and even resorting to blaming Kerry from Valve breaking their version of the game, they ended the thread and blocked our communication. I will upload the conversation ASAP.
JAiZ stated that he needs rest from fixing all the bugs and will give a PSA when the time is right, so we can all hear his side of the story.\

UPDATE #3
(this is now halted as many l4dnation supporters have been harassing me and threatening on the subject of "doctoring the evidence", so everyone interested can join the discord and witness what happened for youselves. I am unwilling bust my ass presenting evidence for people who I don't care for.)

UPDATE #4
I, too, want to say, I have respect for the modding talent of each of the individuals in the team, not for the dev team itself. The team and update should never have been given that chance to mess with the game this deeply, especially without consulting rest of the community at any point.
They are inexperienced leaders and inexperienced group workers at this scale. This is not acceptable for a project this big.

UPDATE #5

Interesting conversation detailing more of JAiZ's "healthy and loving care for the community":

https://imgur.com/a/hdZEDkD

I will keep pushing for a ROLLBACK and a PUBLIC BETA BRANCH. I don't speak for Archangel's thoughts on the matter.

[Rylanor the Unyielding]

inb4 lock.
No but seriously, thank you for sharing, it's very insightful and I was curious what happened behind closed doors. I really don't think they should of kicked a talented modder out of the team, I have my grievances with this update, a lot actually but I'm smart enough to know a weaker dev team doesn't help the situation.

[Maximum Underdrive]

Oh look, yet another project to update a Valve title screwed over due to both lack of direction and Tyler being a total egocentric sociopath.
Also this confirms that the mod really was a multiplayer only bump until they felt like they had to add a campaign.

[76561198310744023]

thank you for sharing, i knew something was going wrong behind the update and the dev team, but this confirms my suspicions

[TM Clerical]

interesting read, you'd be amazed how common this kind of thing is in development though, it's a very familiar story

update needs time for them to fix all the issues, atleast they're actively listening to feedback so have high hopes for future even with all the drama that followed.

Now it's not a secret they'll hopefully be more transparent, i'm hoping to see beta releases aswell so they can get proper feedback during their updates

-edit-
You'd be amazed how common it is for people to get removed from teams due to leaks no matter how small, although the fact they removed his work is a shock unless he asked for it to be removed personally, As regards to testing once a week, if it was all the way through then that's a shock, i've had to wait weeks between builds before, but we still continued to test previous builds.

[Rylanor the Unyielding]

Originally posted by TM Clerical:

interesting read, you'd be amazed how common this kind of thing is in development though, it's a very familiar story

update needs time for them to fix all the issues, atleast they're actively listening to feedback so have high hopes for future even with all the drama that followed.

Now it's not a secret they'll hopefully be more transparent, i'm hoping to see beta releases aswell so they can get proper feedback during their updates

Yeah that's unfortunate but true. I have to say though, it was one thing to kick him but I think it was egregious that they removed his contributions from the update and gave him no credit to the work he put in, that really felt as though it was done out of spite and to me there is no justification to do that to someone.

Nightly was right too, content wise the update really was disappointing for a lot of us, I don't play survival, like at all.

[master cheefn]

Thank you for taking your time to get to the bottom of this, man. This game held such a special place in my heart, and I know me along with many others were wondering what the hell happened.

I hope they take accountability for doing Archangel dirty and for putting a bad taste in everyone's mouth when it comes to L4D2.

[Lil Baby]

holllyyyy shxittt bro, no wonder this update felt so random and so unorganized.. the dev team was exactly that

[J E T T]

mods gonna get malding reading this thread, be careful man

[TM Clerical]

Originally posted by Forsaken:

Originally posted by TM Clerical:

interesting read, you'd be amazed how common this kind of thing is in development though, it's a very familiar story

update needs time for them to fix all the issues, atleast they're actively listening to feedback so have high hopes for future even with all the drama that followed.

Now it's not a secret they'll hopefully be more transparent, i'm hoping to see beta releases aswell so they can get proper feedback during their updates

Yeah that's unfortunate but true. I have to say though, it was one thing to kick him but I think it was egregious that they removed his contributions from the update and gave him no credit to the work he put in, that really felt as though it was done out of spite and to me there is no justification to do that to someone.

Nightly was right too, content wise the update really was disappointing for a lot of us, I don't play survival, like at all.

yeah pretty sure that stats would say campaign/versus are the most popular game types, it's true we're set on survival content but when you release so many levels at once it saturates it and means you've limited yourself on adding more in the future without people thinking "oh another one..."
Probably be a cleaner update schedule to do 1 campaign 4-5 survival and the obvious fixes then update more often.

I'm okay with this content aslong as there is more to follow, if each update is this size and a year between then ooof, depends on time between updates.

But as far as OP goes, he knows the project was secret and kept talking about it, so he would of gone in any of the places i've worked, but removing the work done is nuts, i've worked on a few projects and only seen that when the content creator has issues with it or the devs want to try to separate them from the project in any way.

[וווBatty]

Originally posted by J Σ T T:

mods gonna get malding reading this thread, be careful man

I know, it's a risk I'm willing to take, L4D2 is the only game I play and I want it back to what it was.
VS play is so unbalanced and broken, it's not even funny.

In no way am I threatening or bullying anyone, so you know if they delete this thread, it's an act of CENSORSHIP.

[TM Clerical]

Honestly guys this is normal in the development world, especially for new/smaller teams, does not change the end result though.

numbers wise the update did what valve wanted so hopefully we'll get more, as more time passes the team will become more organised (hopefully)

[וווBatty]

Originally posted by TM Clerical:

Originally posted by Forsaken:

Yeah that's unfortunate but true. I have to say though, it was one thing to kick him but I think it was egregious that they removed his contributions from the update and gave him no credit to the work he put in, that really felt as though it was done out of spite and to me there is no justification to do that to someone.

Nightly was right too, content wise the update really was disappointing for a lot of us, I don't play survival, like at all.

yeah pretty sure that stats would say campaign/versus are the most popular game types, it's true we're set on survival content but when you release so many levels at once it saturates it and means you've limited yourself on adding more in the future without people thinking "oh another one..."
Probably be a cleaner update schedule to do 1 campaign 4-5 survival and the obvious fixes then update more often.

I'm okay with this content aslong as there is more to follow, if each update is this size and a year between then ooof, depends on time between updates.

But as far as OP goes, he knows the project was secret and kept talking about it, so he would of gone in any of the places i've worked, but removing the work done is nuts, i've worked on a few projects and only seen that when the content creator has issues with it or the devs want to try to separate them from the project in any way.

He was told it was a secret project, but without having signed anything or being under a contract, honestly he can tell anyone he wants about it.

[וווBatty]

Originally posted by TM Clerical:

Honestly guys this is normal in the development world, especially for new/smaller teams, does not change the end result though.

numbers wise the update did what valve wanted so hopefully we'll get more, as more time passes the team will become more organised (hopefully)

I seriously doubt Valve wanted to downgrade to an unbootable and unbalanced mess.

[TM Clerical]

Originally posted by Batty:

Originally posted by J Σ T T:

mods gonna get malding reading this thread, be careful man

I know, it's a risk I'm willing to take, L4D2 is the only game I play and I want it back to what it was.
VS play is so unbalanced and broken, it's not even funny.

In no way am I threatening or bullying anyone, so you know if they delete this thread, it's an act of CENSORSHIP.

the post is technically name and shame as you specify another user, so not censorship if you break the rules XD

Although i personally think it should stay as it's a interesting read, even without any names.

[angel]

interesting read lol wild