I Hate Mountains Forums

error126

Member

Registered: 2010-06-08

Personal opinion combined with some thoughts about manor and sawmill

First of all, thank you for this awesome campaign, guys... I really enjoyed playing though I had to reinstall L4D1 for it as many of us I guess ;o)

In addition to that I'd like to request a "donation" button somewhere on your page, where people who really enjoyed your great work can donate some bucks for your work, maybe via PayPal since it's the easiest for donating money without giving away private finance data. I'm sure I won't be the only one who would donate a few euros, since I'm familiar with spending money for DLC for other games and hell, your campaign is definitely worth it. If you can buy a new graphics card or whatever which supports you on further projects, the whole community has something out of it
Though I also understand you didn't do all the work to earn money with it, but it's only a "donation" anyway ;o)

Yeah well, now to the critics...

I really appreciated the well designed and different style of your campaign, multiple paths to choose from and the atmosphere in general.

However, the most complaints seem to be related with map 2 (manor) and some minor complaints with map 4 (sawmill).

I'd like to spend a few words on map 2 (manor) first...

I really like the big manor with it's architecture and and the idea of the crescendo event, but in my opinion this map is by farest the easiest crescendo I've ever played. Many people wrote different opinions about this and think it's too hard, but let's face two important things... You campaign has clearly a large value of replayin it, for me it's like the fifth campaign for L4D1 (Crash Course doesn't count, it's really a piece of crap designed without any inspiration and designers don't seem to have put any heart blood into it). After playing it for the first time, I knew where our team had to go and what we had to do, and the way back is really easy, since every player has a pipe and T2 weapons equipped. You just have to go down the "tower" part and can jump twice through the hole in the ceiling and you're already out of the manor (notice: you don't even need to throw a pipe yet), so I don't get the point of all those people complaining about how hard this crescendo event is. The way out of the house is a no-brainer, and who's team doesn't manage to reach the safe room from the helipad with 4 pipes equipped should consider playing another game.

The above mentioned points are only valid for a second playthrough, though...

I understand the critics if they're aiming for the first playthrough, which is for me not counting, really, because I definitely get more fun of a campaign with a clear replay value instead of a boring non-challenging one where I understand the gameplay mechanics for that map right from the start. To prevent some major errands on this map it's an idea maybe to put a corpse with one of those signalling rockets inside the courtyard, so that you see this corpse if you look out of the window; this should prevent people from jumping out of the window.

The other major errand on this map for people playing it for the first time is the well-lit fence with the sign "no passing here" or similar wording, don't know the exact wording out of my mind now; people tend to search here for a way to continue their path, even after the helicopter crashed. Now they will get stuck on the debris, but this will be fixed anyway, I think. An idea which might be worth thinking of is that the helicopter crash causes a powerline to fall to the ground, so that the previous describes lightened spot with the sign will now be dark and some sparks of the powerline might now lighten the place where you're supposed to cross the fence and head to the saferoom.

Some ideas to increase difficulty in a moderate way on this map:

- You've got this very huge manor with all it's rooms and corners, please make use of it and scatter ammo and pipes / molotovs across all rooms instead of placing them that obviously, create random spawns (should be possible to let the director choose whether to spawn an ammo pile / pipe on a predefined spot or not, isn't it?). That gives the players the choice whether to head straight to the tower and trigger the event without searching the house for supporting ammo and pipes / tovs and less possibility to get attacked by SI's and commons or search carefully and risk it and get overrun

- place T2 weapons next to the window where the helicopter is called so that all players have to get up to the room, not just one person which triggers the crescendo

- close holes in the ceiling inside the manor, this is an insanely fast way out of the manor to the helipad

About map 4 (sawmill) the most complaints, as far as I read, were all about people who don't know exactly where to go now. I for myself wouldn't consider that as a large problem, because as I said above, the campaign comes clearly with the intention of replaying it and people will find out their ways which work best for them pretty soon.

The crescendo on sawmill is unfortunately also pretty easy, people will most likely just wait inside the room where the crane was triggered, this is room is pretty easy to defend (even a weapon stash is inside that room!), all 4 people take the autoshotgun and nothing will enter the room.I think it's quite an advantage if that room would be more open and in addition to that the weapons should be removed from it, so that you may have to run for extra ammo as a small challenge.

Some minor thoughts about all in general:

This is quite an awesome campaign, I like the dark setting and if you tweak the lighting a little bit as promised, it's almost perfect. I'd also like to see much less ammo piles and throwable stuff, or at least wider scattered across the map with random spawn chances because the way it is currently it's not a challenge. I understand your point for map 1 to start with an easy map, but difficulty should increase and you have set up such great locations and different pathing and there's much more room to actually make use of it if the players have to research more of the maps to actually collect those items, not always finding them on the main paths. This also increases replayabilty and forces you to take different routes.

Is it on purpose that you always offer all 3 T2 weapons? A random chance that one or even two of the three are missing lets people actually play with different combos than always those 2 assault rifles and 2 auto shottie combos.

I'm looking forward for your changes and keep up with the great work, guys! My mates and I really appreciated it...

- error126

PS: apologies if i caught up with some things Zsu already mentioned in his posting, but I'm not able to speak French and Google didn't provide me a sufficient translation to understand Zsu's posting 100%, not to speak of NykO's answer.

Last edited by error126 (2010-06-10 13:40:58)

error126

Member

Registered: 2010-06-08

Re: Personal opinion combined with some thoughts about manor and sawmill

no comment? what a pity... =/

NykO18

Administrator

From: Montréal, QC

Registered: 2010-05-13

Website

Re: Personal opinion combined with some thoughts about manor and sawmill

Excuse us for not being robots, we do what we can.
It's even written on our disclaimer page before you access these forums:
http://www.ihatemountains.com/forums/

error126

Member

Registered: 2010-06-08

Re: Personal opinion combined with some thoughts about manor and sawmill

sorry, didn't mean to force you... That's not the way I intend to give you feedback. Prepare your thoughts carefully and answer, if there's time, I can wait, I was just a bit too enthusiastic
I perfectly understand you, even now that the world cup has begun ;o)
i was only wondering why you answered some of the posts and some not, but I guess that were only the small ones and not that wall of text I just build up )

NykO18

Administrator

From: Montréal, QC

Registered: 2010-05-13

Website

Re: Personal opinion combined with some thoughts about manor and sawmill

We read everything but we can't be there all day long anymore like during the release weekend. We have to get back to work both in our lives and on the campaign. The more time we use to reply here and at e-mails, the less time we can devote to the campaign, which isn't a large amount of time from the start.

llod

Member

Registered: 2010-06-08

Re: Personal opinion combined with some thoughts about manor and sawmill

I'd like to spend a few words on map 2 (manor) first...

After playing it for the first time, I knew where our team had to go and what we had to do, and the way back is really easy, since every player has a pipe and T2 weapons equipped. You just have to go down the "tower" part and can jump twice through the hole in the ceiling and you're already out of the manor (notice: you don't even need to throw a pipe yet), so I don't get the point of all those people complaining about how hard this crescendo event is.

Yeah getting out of the manor really is quite easy once you know the layout. It's such a lovely mansion to explore it would be good I think if you couldn't actually just drop down the levels but rather fight your way out via that ladder in the attic (the door only unlocks once the event starts). Blocking those holes in the floor and making it impossible to just drop off the roof form where you come into the attic to stop the quick escape would be great.

Last edited by llod (2010-06-18 18:16:12)

NykO18

Administrator

From: Montréal, QC

Registered: 2010-05-13

Website

Re: Personal opinion combined with some thoughts about manor and sawmill

Blocking those holes in the floor and making it impossible to just drop off the roof form where you come into the attic to stop the quick escape would be great.

It would be great, but it would be hard, probably too hard for most people.

llod

Member

Registered: 2010-06-08

Re: Personal opinion combined with some thoughts about manor and sawmill

Possibly, but atleast it's not as though you have had to fight you way through a massive level to get to that point.. now that would be dispiriting!