Back 4 Blood has no replay value

[Terotrous]

This probably sounds surprising, but it's true, and probably explains why the player count is falling. B4B is a solid single 60-80 hour playthrough, but after that there's pretty much no reason to continue playing afterwards.

Much of this owes to the game's difficulty. The game is extremely easy on Recruit and extremely hard on Veteran and Nightmare. The exceedingly high level of challenge can be fun, but it's the kind of thing you would only ever play through once. Veteran is so finely tuned to the cusp of what's possible (let alone Nightmare) that you have to play in an extremely optimized way, which essentially kills all replay value, because if you do it again, you just have to do the exact same thing you did the first time. You could maybe try to play it with a different group of players, but the game's matchmaking is poor and there's a lot of trolls so that's not a very appetizing option either.

At least a fair amount of the problem stems from the game's terrible card balance. At least 50-60% of the cards in the game are so undertuned that you would never use them in Veteran or Nightmare. Of what's left, a handful are so powerful that you use them in virtually every deck, and the rest support one of the game's 4 viable builds - Melee, Gunner, Grenadier, and Speedrun. These sound like broad categories that would support a lot of diversity, but they really don't, with so few cards being usable pretty much everyone will be running virtually the same cookie-cutter sets in whichever category they choose. This also kills the game's character diversity because you'll tend to use pretty much exactly the same deck regardless of the character chosen.

Some of the balancing issues also stem from core game mechanics. For example, you'd think "Medic" would be a viable build, but it's really not, because Pain Pills are so strong that they render any kind of dedicated Medic unnecessary. The fact that Pain Pills ignore Trauma, heal a ton of health, are the cheapest to buy and the most common to find, and can be used instantly, drastically outweighs their one downside of having temporary health slowly decay, particularly since the meta generally forces you to play as fast as possible so the health decay barely matters. Perhaps you could make a Medic work if Charitable Soul worked properly, but it doesn't. It doesn't trigger from Doc's special heal, and if you use pain pills on someone, cards like Chemical Courage don't get applied properly (and "damage" is secretly way worse than you'd think since it doesn't affect weakpoint hits), which might otherwise make a medic viable. Similarly, "Shotgunner" would be a viable build if Buckshot Bruiser worked, so I would say these two cards are top priority to fix.

Many of these issues can probably be fixed with patches, but they need to come soon. As it stands, people are just going to finish Veteran and then quit the game, causing its community to slowly die out, which is the death of any multiplayer-focused game.

[Raterix]

I agree with everything except the patches note: Patches cannot fix this issue, we'd need a major update.
For me right now, I enjoy L4D2 more due to the workshop and custom campaigns.

[YMD]

meh im joining veteran pugs and carrying teams with a melee build. most of the time i can solo and kill all the specials alone. its quite fun.

[Eudicots]

PVE games have replay value for those who enjoy it. Some people will only want to clear through once while others will enjoy different variations in each playthrough.

You are also playing medic wrong. Medic has the ability to fully heal a player including all trauma with a med kit if built properly. If you are playing the game without speedrunning then a Mom/Doc is required on Nightmare to make it through any act with a medic focused build. The most important cards for a medic to get at the start of any run is Support Scavenger and Emergency EMT. Emergency EMT increases the Max health of players by 20%, but it will also replace up to 20% trauma once the level ends.

[Eidolon Manes]

Swarm is super fun, assuming people can get past the fact that it isn't a VS Campaign. The "penalty" for bailing on a match isn't enough though, as evidenced by literally seeing someone who bailed before it was "safe" showing up in my next match. Shocker, they bailed again.

[Terotrous]

Originally posted by Eudicots:

PVE games have replay value for those who enjoy it. Some people will only want to clear through once while others will enjoy different variations in each playthrough.

Some PVE games do. I've played like 1000 hours of Starcraft 2 Co-op Commanders, doing the same handful of missions over and over again. A lot of this comes down to that game having better variety and better difficulty balance.

Originally posted by Eudicots:

You are also playing medic wrong. Medic has the ability to fully heal a player including all trauma with a med kit if built properly.

Who cares though? Pain Pills can do the same thing, instantly, without requiring a pricey item that virtually never spawns mid-level. Plus, you don't have to dedicate your build to them.

Pain Pills almost certainly need a nerf, IMO. They're one of the key components leading to the current Speedrun meta.

Originally posted by Eudicots:

If you are playing the game without speedrunning then a Mom/Doc is required on Nightmare to make it through any act with a medic focused build.

Mom and Doc's primary power both comes from their team abilities, not being a medic. You can run them as a gunner or melee character just as well.

Originally posted by Eudicots:

The most important cards for a medic to get at the start of any run is Support Scavenger and Emergency EMT. Emergency EMT increases the Max health of players by 20%, but it will also replace up to 20% trauma once the level ends.

Any character can take those cards just fine, you don't need to load up on a bunch of medic cards, just toss one of those into another build.

Also, the Scavenger cards are all mostly worthless. They simply have too little effect, it's vastly better to just focus on powering up the items instead (for example, as a Grenadier, never take Offensive Scavenger, it'll contribute one grenade per level at the absolute most, take something like Bomb Squad instead). I do think these cards are potentially very interesting, they just need a buff.

[Yippo the Clown]

- If you find >recruit difficulties too hard, that's your cue to get better. My team and I have been playing it virtually since release and enjoying it. I'm not trying to be insulting here - I'm saying that the knee-jerk reaction to something being hard should be 'I need to improve', not 'omg nerf plz'.

- Medic works fine because pills are essentially garbage unless you're trying to speedrun. One of my team runs medic and has been extremely useful to us, though we've had to work to fine-tune the cards he runs.

- Shotgunner is a viable build, it just doesn't use Buckshot Bruiser. It uses Face Your Fears instead, and it's ludicrously powerful for holding fixed points and deleting Specials. If they ever fix Buckshot Bruiser, all it'll do is make an extremely powerful build even stronger.

- The thing that's going to kill the community harder and faster than anything else is the non-stop barrage of threads whining about the game. Hell, I enjoy the game a lot and the endless ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and moaning is getting ME down on it. So how's a new player - or indeed, potential buyer - going to feel looking at a thread full of entitled brats vocally complaining about how much of a betrayal it is that a developer didn't meet their wholly imagined expectations?

- You do have a point, to an extent, about a lot of the cards being basically garbage. However, that's true of virtually every game with an upgrade system of some kind or other - there is always an optimal route for what you're trying to achieve. I do think the cards could use a bit of re-tuning to allow for a bit more versatility - in particular, we really don't need like four cards dedicated to bullet penetration - but it's really not a particularly big deal.

[Terotrous]

Originally posted by Yippo the Clown:

- If you find >recruit difficulties too hard, that's your cue to get better. My team and I have been playing it virtually since release and enjoying it. I'm not trying to be insulting here - I'm saying that the knee-jerk reaction to something being hard should be 'I need to improve', not 'omg nerf plz'.

I've beaten Veteran. It was actually kind of fun, but there's no reason to do it again, because I'd basically just run the exact same deck on another character. Buffing bad cards so more decks could be run would help enormously in this regard.

Originally posted by Yippo the Clown:

- Medic works fine because pills are essentially garbage unless you're trying to speedrun. One of my team runs medic and has been extremely useful to us, though we've had to work to fine-tune the cards he runs.

Pills are nowhere near garbage even when not speedrunning. They give a massive amount of health that isn't impeded by Trauma and you can use them instantly. When you have temporary health, you also take less / no trauma damage. There are also a ton of cards that synergize well with them.

Originally posted by Yippo the Clown:

- Shotgunner is a viable build, it just doesn't use Buckshot Bruiser. It uses Face Your Fears instead, and it's ludicrously powerful for holding fixed points and deleting Specials. If they ever fix Buckshot Bruiser, all it'll do is make an extremely powerful build even stronger.

Melee does the same thing but way better because it also gets battle lust, has more range / AOE, and doesn't have to reload. Shotguns are also pretty bad against specials, as you have to get so close that you'll take a lot of damage, and they aren't as tanky or powerful as Melee, which is why they really need Buckshot Bruiser to work. I spent a lot of time trying to make Shotguns work on a Mom deck, but they simply aren't good at the moment.

Originally posted by Yippo the Clown:

- The thing that's going to kill the community harder and faster than anything else is the non-stop barrage of threads whining about the game.

If a ton of people are whining about a game, it's probably because it has issues.

The fact that people care enough to complain shows that there's potential here, but it needs a lot of work.

Originally posted by Yippo the Clown:

- You do have a point, to an extent, about a lot of the cards being basically garbage. However, that's true of virtually every game with an upgrade system of some kind or other - there is always an optimal route for what you're trying to achieve. I do think the cards could use a bit of re-tuning to allow for a bit more versatility - in particular, we really don't need like four cards dedicated to bullet penetration - but it's really not a particularly big deal.

One of the biggest problems here is that cards always come in sets of 3. One that has no drawback, but is weak, a medium-power one with a small drawback, and a high-power one with a big drawback.

Generally speaking, the weakest of the cards is always worthless. It simply doesn't do enough to be worth a slot. The medium card is almost always top tier, as the drawback is virtually always trivial. The strongest one varies based on the card, some (like Hyper-Focused and Silver Bullets for example) are amazing, while others have a drawback that's too severe to be worth it.

[Eudicots]

You clearly haven't run with support/offensive scavenger cards since they are insanely useful on grenader and medic builds. They also stack allowing for there to be a massive surplus of support and offense items. These two are a most have for these builds and should be the first pick (except if you are using bomber to farm Worms Part !). Any medic build for nightmare will place Support scavenger as their first pic since the available heals are completely night and day without it.
The other scavenger cards are completely useless though and definitely need a buff.

[Terotrous]

Originally posted by Eudicots:

You clearly haven't run with support/offensive scavenger cards since they are insanely useful on grenader and medic builds.

I've run both. I've tried almost every build possible in our struggle to get through Veteran. We quickly realized that any card that does not get massive, immediate, consistent value simply can't really be used. If you play something like Offensive Scavenger first mission and it only spawns 2 molotovs, that's essentially a wasted card slot, which you can never afford.

Originally posted by Eudicots:

They also stack allowing for there to be a massive surplus of support and offense items. These two are a most have for these builds and should be the first pick (except if you are using bomber to farm Worms Part !). Any medic build for nightmare will place Support scavenger as their first pic since the available heals are completely night and day without it.
The other scavenger cards are completely useless though and definitely need a buff.

In all of my experience with support scavenger, it tends to spawn a couple extra pills and bandages per stage and that's about it. Bandages are nearly worthless due to their inability to heal trauma, and while pills are good, they're also very cheap and common, you might as well just play Box O' Bags instead so everyone can buy an extra pills.

Similarly, with Offensive Scavenger, you might get a single extra flashbang and frag grenade or maybe a Pipe Bomb if you're crazily lucky. If you're playing a grenadier, you're probably running a stack of frags, so finding any offensive item that isn't a frag is worthless to you, if anything it's maybe a bit of a buff to your teammates on early stages when they don't have enough money to buy grenades, but it's also a fairly low power card so I'd usually rather have something else. This could probably be improved by allowing you to carry multiple types of items from a different category, but that's a discussion for another topic.

[Yippo the Clown]

Originally posted by Terotrous:

I've beaten Veteran. It was actually kind of fun, but there's no reason to do it again, because I'd basically just run the exact same deck on another character. Buffing bad cards so more decks could be run would help enormously in this regard.

I mean, the reason to do it again is exactly the same as the reason to do (for e.g.) L4D2 campaigns again. For the fun of playing through with your friends. That being said, honestly if you're not replaying a game you've already pumped 60-80 hours into, that's fine in my books. That's about retail price value, give or take.

Originally posted by Yippo the Clown:

Pills are nowhere near garbage even when not speedrunning. They give a massive amount of health that isn't impeded by Trauma and you can use them instantly. When you have temporary health, you also take less / no trauma damage. There are also a ton of cards that synergize well with them.

The cards synergising with pills are extremely short duration and generally kinda trashy, much like the pills themselves. Sure, they're nice for all of a minute or so, then the temp health wears off and you're left with nothing. By contrast, my Medic teammate runs a single card with Doc and can full heal (minus trauma) with a single bandage - lasting benefits, single card investment. Whether you think pills are great or not, I don't think you can reasonably say that a single card investment to be able to full heal off an extremely common item is non-viable.

Originally posted by Yippo the Clown:

Melee does the same thing but way better because it also gets battle lust, has more range / AOE, and doesn't have to reload. Shotguns are also pretty bad against specials, as you have to get so close that you'll take a lot of damage, and they aren't as tanky or powerful as Melee, which is why they really need Buckshot Bruiser to work. I spent a lot of time trying to make Shotguns work on a Mom deck, but they simply aren't good at the moment.

I'mma be honest, if you think shotguns are bad then I have no idea what you're doing with them. On Veteran or even Nightmare, a properly built deck with an AA12 will wipe a Tallboy with zero damage taken simply by unloading into its face. More range is a question mark. Width of swing is debatable because if you're running a wide swing you're doing substantially less damage to Specials, which will in turn get damage (or more relevantly, trauma) onto you - and regardless, an AA12 can put out three shells in the time it takes you to swing.

Even if you disregard everything else I've posted, please take this as absolute read - the AA12 is the single best gun in the game right now bar none. If you can't make it work, that's on you and I urge you to try again.

Originally posted by Yippo the Clown:

If a ton of people are whining about a game, it's probably because it has issues.

The fact that people care enough to complain shows that there's potential here, but it needs a lot of work.

...Be...cause... people on the internet are usually reasonable and well-balanced individuals? I would love to live on your planet. The number of people whining is nothing to do with the game's issues - I fully agree the game has some issues, and most of them aren't even touched on by the various whine-threads we get on here.

The fact that people care enough to complain is wholly tied to their insistence on complaining like the entitled little ♥♥♥♥♥ they are. Hell, as evidence I point you towards one particular idiot who's created at least half a dozen threads over the past few weeks whining about the game *having admitted he never even bought it, just played the beta*. That's the kind of thing we get around here.

Originally posted by Yippo the Clown:

One of the biggest problems here is that cards always come in sets of 3. One that has no drawback, but is weak, a medium-power one with a small drawback, and a high-power one with a big drawback.

Generally speaking, the weakest of the cards is always worthless. It simply doesn't do enough to be worth a slot. The medium card is almost always top tier, as the drawback is virtually always trivial. The strongest one varies based on the card, some (like Hyper-Focused and Silver Bullets for example) are amazing, while others have a drawback that's too severe to be worth it.

I can largely agree with that. Some exceptions - Silver Bullets is kinda bad unless it's a very late card in your deck simply because it's outclassed by at least four others for dealing damage and bullet penetration is trash tier - but mostly, yeah, you're correct. The devs took a little too much inspiration from CCGs when designing the cards, I suspect, and included some trash just as pack filler.

[lockwoodx]

When they said no steam workshop or campaign vs. I had a feeling it was going to be a cash grab. Sad to hear there's little replay value.

[Eudicots]

Originally posted by Terotrous:

I've run both. I've tried almost every build possible in our struggle to get through Veteran. We quickly realized that any card that does not get massive, immediate, consistent value simply can't really be used. If you play something like Offensive Scavenger first mission and it only spawns 2 molotovs, that's essentially a wasted card slot, which you can never afford.

So you only finished veteran so far that explains this view point. Try nightmare with and without these scavenger cards on these two builds. Then comeback to me with your experience. I thought these cards were worthless till I started Nightmare.

Your view on pills will most likely also change since pills are better for your teammates to carry in case of emergency, but it cannot replace a medkit/bandage on the team medic.

Also AA12 is the single best gun in game atm. It can wipe out birds and specials solo.

[Terotrous]

Originally posted by Yippo the Clown:

I mean, the reason to do it again is exactly the same as the reason to do (for e.g.) L4D2 campaigns again. For the fun of playing through with your friends. That being said, honestly if you're not replaying a game you've already pumped 60-80 hours into, that's fine in my books. That's about retail price value, give or take.

I somewhat agree, personally I don't feel I got bad value out of the game, but at the same time, I know some people won't. I have some friends who are kind of on the fence about the game and will probably wait for a sale, but I also know they would be unwilling to slog through Veteran, and I can't recommend the game in good conscience to anyone who's only going to play Recruit.

Playing with Randoms on Veteran might work better if something could be done about the high number of trolls and leavers.

Originally posted by Yippo the Clown:

The cards synergising with pills are extremely short duration and generally kinda trashy, much like the pills themselves. Sure, they're nice for all of a minute or so, then the temp health wears off and you're left with nothing.

I still think people are really underestimating pills. Combat in this game tends to come in waves, so even if your heal lasts only a minute, that's probably enough to get you through whatever wave / bossfight / whatever is at risk of wiping your squad. Afterwards, when the threat level isn't so high, you can probably find a First Aid Cab or bandages to heal up.

Originally posted by Yippo the Clown:

By contrast, my Medic teammate runs a single card with Doc and can full heal (minus trauma) with a single bandage - lasting benefits, single card investment. Whether you think pills are great or not, I don't think you can reasonably say that a single card investment to be able to full heal off an extremely common item is non-viable.

Which card? I would assume it's the +60% heal -50% use speed one? That card is powerful but that use speed drawback is more significant than it looks, that makes for pretty slow revives and heals.

Also, unless you're personally taking Body Armor, you're probably going to build up too much trauma damage for Bandages to remain usable for long, and if you are, that's now a 2-card investment.

Originally posted by Yippo the Clown:

I'mma be honest, if you think shotguns are bad then I have no idea what you're doing with them. On Veteran or even Nightmare, a properly built deck with an AA12 will wipe a Tallboy with zero damage taken simply by unloading into its face.

The AA12 is decent, but it has its own set of problems. For starters, it's not one of the starting guns, so you have to find it first. This also means you have to find upgraded ones later, which can be an issue. Secondly, it's probably the least ammo-efficient weapon in the game. Running out of ammo is actually a real issue with this weapon, even though shotgun ammo is usually plentiful because no one else wants it. You'll probably need to run this alongside something else, likely a pistol, and I'm not a big fan of the pistols. Using it with Admin Reload / Two is One is a decent option, probably the best way to use shotguns, but I still feel that Melee does this pretty much just as well when paired with an LMG to shoot the specials.

Originally posted by Yippo the Clown:

...Be...cause... people on the internet are usually reasonable and well-balanced individuals? I would love to live on your planet. The number of people whining is nothing to do with the game's issues

I actually don't really think this is true. If you look at the pre-launch complaining, it was mostly about the card system and people fearing the game would be filled with MT. That has completely vanished. Most of the complaints now are about the difficulty, which is legitimately extremely high for a game of this type (even if you enjoy it, I don't think it's debatable that it's much harder than most similar games), or trolls, or things like the game balance.

Originally posted by Yippo the Clown:

I can largely agree with that. Some exceptions - Silver Bullets is kinda bad unless it's a very late card in your deck simply because it's outclassed by at least four others for dealing damage and bullet penetration is trash tier

No it isn't! I thought the same thing for a long time too, but Silver Bullets is secretly way better than it looks, due to an oddity in the game's damage formula. Basically, any card that adds "damage" only contributes to the non-weakpoint portion of your damage. However, cards that add "melee damage" and "bullet damage" contribute to both non-weakpoint and weakpoint damage. As such, Silver Bullets + Hyper Focused actually adds vastly more total damage than Glass Cannon + Hyper Focused.

It's incredibly unintuitive and it probably needs to be fixed in a patch, but that's how it works right now.

[TheSpecial_K]

Originally posted by Terotrous:

The game is extremely easy on Recruit and extremely hard on Veteran and Nightmare.

This. There needs to be a moderately challenging difficulty, and right now there isn't. I'm working through veteran with a group, and we're not having too much trouble. But dropping into a lobby of randos? Playing casually and still having a good time? Forget about it.

Recruit is boring, Veteran is unforgiving, and Nightmare is ridiculous. That's fine, and I like that there's challenge provided, but there needs to be a difficulty between recruit and veteran. I'd like to be moderately challenged, and the game doesn't offer a 'normal' difficulty. It's either easy, hard, or very hard. As it is, after I clear Nightmare once, I don't see myself playing this game again.

This game will die if there isn't a middle-ground difficulty. It hurts replayability so, so so much. It's a bummer cause I like the game a lot. The cards (corruption & deck-building) add a lot. The maps are a little less charming than L4D but not bad. And the variety/situational item applications make a lot of different strategies viable. It has a so much potential replayability but it's either boring or it's kind of a pain.

[Terotrous]

Originally posted by Eudicots:

So you only finished veteran so far that explains this view point. Try nightmare with and without these scavenger cards on these two builds. Then comeback to me with your experience. I thought these cards were worthless till I started Nightmare.

That doesn't really make any sense. Nothing about Nightmare would shift the value of Scavenger Cards vs cards that increase your carrying capacity or accessory damage. Every strategy that works on Nightmare will also work on the lower difficulty levels, it's just that some strategies that work on the lower levels don't work on Nightmare.

What you might be able to point out is that I played Veteran in a 2-stack, which does somewhat reduce the value of team support cards because the bots can't use them. Maybe with a 4 stack Offensive Scavenger could just barely be worth it since your teammates might be able to use the extra molotovs or what not. I still don't think I'd take it near the start though.

Originally posted by Eudicots:

Also AA12 is the single best gun in game atm. It can wipe out birds and specials solo.

I think AA12 is like top 5. I would say the #1 best gun in the game is the Barrett, its damage output drastically outpaces everything else, and it's also a very ammo-efficient weapon.