So, I was just about to hop onto L4D for a friendly match with a few Dtoiders when Steam went down for maintenance. Again. Pissed that my attempts at playing were once again thwarted (last night saw an epic 45-minute-long series of matchmaking disasters involving third-party servers), I suddenly saw an email in my inbox letting me know that it was down because they were rolling out the L4D patch.
It’s a pretty big list of fixes, but most notable are that they’re fixing various matchmaking issues, fixing all the exploits, and they seem to be taking care of most of the major glitches that people have been running into. Of the gameplay changes, I think my favorite is that the Smoker now has to be killed, or the tongue has to be physically broken for your hold to drop; that should make him a bit more useful in Versus.
I was only able to poke around for a couple minutes, and sadly, it didn’t look like they had put in a server browser yet. I’m hoping though that their “matchmaking fixes” include things like not throwing you onto a server set for Versus when you’re trying to play campaign, sticking you in a server where low gravity is enabled, or giving you a server where everyone has awful ping. Just give me an official Valve server, damnit!
360 owners are still out of luck, but Valve says the patch will be available for you guys sometime in the “coming weeks.” Hit the jump for the full list of fixes.
General
– Fixed Survivors being able to climb surfaces marked for versus infected only.
– Fixed a class of SurvivorBot bugs dealing with rescuing downed players.
– Players can no longer grab ladders while flying through the air after a Tank punch.
– Shooting near a car with an alarm that has already fired the alarm will no longer make chirping noises.
– Improved loading time.
– Fixed mini-gun physics exploit.
– Fixed propane tanks (and other physics objects) causing players to fall through elevators.
– Fixed rare achievement bug issues.
– Fixed several map exploits.
– Fixed various match making issues.
– Fixed NAT traversal issues.
Versus Changes
– Added HUD elements to show status of other infected players.
– Changed color of infected player name in chat to red.
– Fixed exploit where players could spawn infected bots
– Fixed instance where a Survivor changing to the infected team would be attacked by infected bots.
– Normalized special infected melee damage.
– Made the following client commands cheat protected: “Kill” and “explode”.
– Fixed exploit where infected players could run away and teleport back to gain health.
– Players can only change teams once per map.
– Players can’t change teams while other players are still loading.
– Tank spawns at the same % through the map for both teams in versus mode.
– Made the Tank and Witch spawn directly on the escape route.
– Increased chance of getting the Tank or Witch. – Fixed team swap issue.
Hunter
– Easier to pounce a Survivor who is meleeing.
– Increased Minimum damage a Hunter pounce does.
Smoker
– Fixed Smoker tongue tolerance.
– Smoker now has to be killed or the tongue destroyed for the tongue to break.
– Survivor’s cannot bash someone off the tongue until the Survivor being pulled is paralyzed or hanging
– Tongue attacks that fail to paralyze or hang a Survivor will use the shorter ability delay timer.
– Fixed cases where the ability timer was not using the correct time.
– Fixed case where you could point at a Survivor but not register a tongue hit
– Fixed Smoker tongue not targeting and landing properly through PZ ghosts.
– Smoker tongue does damage every second while dragging paralyzed Survivors.
Tank
– Bashable objects now appear with a red glow.
– Tanks hitting a car with an alarm disables the alarm permanently.
– Tank frustration timer is only reset by hitting Survivors with rocks or fists. – Reduced autoshotgun damage against Tanks.
Witch
– Witch spawns at the same % through the map for both teams. – Avoids spawning within a certain % of the tank.
– Fixed an exploit where the Witch could be woken up and tricked into attacking Survivors.
