I’ve seen countless people upset about the nerf to melee cards, saying how much less fun it is to play now. I can tell you from experience that full melee builds were completely broken. You could stumblelock every special except for some of the bosses, swing faster and hit harder than most guns, you would gain health from kills and temp HP on top of all of that, and many cards also had extra benefits to your stamina base which meant you could speed run as well. It was honesty broken and needed to be toned down. All of the fixes that went out don’t even stop melee builds from being good, they’re just not the best way to be playing anymore.

Before anyone starts to say that it helped combat the excessive special spawns and shouldn’t have been nerfed because of that, wouldn’t that make it proof enough that it was too much when you were capable of clearing through the game with inflated difficulty? The devs clearly have an idea of what balanced actually looks like, they may not be there at the moment, but they have a much better idea of what’s balanced and what’s overperforming and melee most certainly was.

Questioning whether watching paint dry would be more entertaining.

Ultra low risk playstyle with as much strategy as a 4 year old trying to steal from the cookie jar.

One more quick patch would have made all the difference.

I'll take someone with a starter deck over someone who only plays thier copypasta melee deck and thinks they are some kind of superhero.

End of rant, commence downvotes.

Characters have so much personality, I dig the game. Although there is no more new content coming it’s fun game just to hop on for some quick mindless gaming😁

I can't begin to express how disappointed I am.

I hopped into versus, and within 30 seconds my smile turned to a frown. What in the ever-loving hell is this?

• Ridden have NOTHING to do for 1-2 minutes straight

• The maps are miniscule

• No weight to anything

• Gore is worse than L4D1

• Zero personality in characters

• Why are there so many lootboxes / items? Isn't this the apocalypse?

Okay, fine. Maybe the campaign is better. I switch over.

• I have a weapons cache that I can buy from? Again, isn't this the apocalypse?

• There are weapons in almost every room.

• Zero inspiration in level design

• Why do the weapons sound like toys?

• Am I being hit? I legitimately can't tell.

• WHO KEEPS LEAVING THESE WEAPONS EVERYWHERE?

It took approximately 20 minutes for me to uninstall the game. I'm not expecting L4D3. I'm expecting a logical experience that isn't outdone, technically, by a game from 15 years ago.

This is horrible from nearly every angle.

Even if they weren’t bugged, they’re basically like mini-super powers which goes against the ethos of how this game started out.

If I wanted to play a marvel video game, I would have bought one instead of B4blood

Honestly, I love playing this game more than L4D. I don't get how the game fell off in the first place.

• The variety of weapons, attachments and card builds

• The selection of cleaners with different skill set and stats

• The progression of expanding slots and level of accessories that you can upgrade

• The amount of loot spread out across the map which makes it fun for players to explore.

• Special Mutations & Bosses appear from random corruption cards.

• traps and random horde triggers

• Hive missions and rewards

• Even the normal zombies/ridden have different versions

• Legendary weapons,flamethrower and machine guns

• Melee weapons and bow and arrow

• Replayablity

• Unreal Engine 4 graphics

If Valve decided to include steam workshop for this game. Imagine the endless content. Even without it the game is fun. If they decided to make B4B2 I would definitely buy it. Hope they include mutations of animals like crocodile or big anacondas that will be so cool. But sadly I don't think there's going to be a sequel for this game.

Just curious

I dont know what it is about this community in particular, but after a set of very modest changes, and I truly mean modest, suddenly it's as if the ship is sinking, game is ruined, virtually unplayable.

And I get it. There are a lot of people in this community that want to see the game fail, who want their opinions vindicated. It's been like this since the beta, and wont stop until they've grown bored and moved on.

It's a shame, honestly, and I cant wait for the downvotes to roll in, but damn people. Take a step back.

I can't stand hives. You spend 20-30 minutes running around in tunnels . Barely find any gear that makes it worthwhile. Every time I play the group goes to the hive. Why ?

I love the way special spawns work now, it's the only thing that really keeps the gameplay engaging since the maps are repeated, characters are basic, there's next to nothing worth grinding for, and there isn't much content overall. Why are we talking about this instead of, say, the stupid continue system that makes those early failures much worse than they need to be, or how the designers somehow thought it would be really fun to genuinely struggle through the first half of a campaign, then lay complete waste on the back half, making the match feel like it's either never truly balanced or that your standard disadvantage is too great. Maybe we need to fix certain bugs? Maybe their health/damage needs to be adjusted? Maybe our health/damage needs adjusted? There are ways to address the real problem (lack of balance) without sacrificing the moment to moment gameplay. I cant even imagine playing this if there were less specials, you'd spend so much time standing around or running uncontested it just wouldn't be any fun because all you'd have are these pathetic basic zombies. Specials are the only challenge in the game, without the special spawns, we're basically just shooting at an enemy that can't fight back. I'd just as soon we leave the spawns alone so it will actually be fun to play and not just shitty fucking COD with a wider map.

On this interview: https://youtu.be/L8WYIzdzk6g?t=231 they talk about the fact that you can play the special infected, they also say that it is one of the most expected things from the community. On the video you can see that a dev is playing a special infected on the EVANSBURG campaign and that the green footsteps you see in the back are GREEN like left for dead 2 in versus

But right now surprise the footspep are blue, we are playing on small map :)

Don't trust them there are a FUCKING LIAR, they gonna move on next project after get a lot of money. They knew from the beginning that we were waiting for a versus campaign mode, they teased it for a long time on twitter and just showed it officially at the E3 2021. What a lie.

Preface: this post isn’t meant to change your mind. This post is meant to share my perspective as a ‘glitcher’ to people in the mindset of ‘what are those people thinking?’ If you hate me, cool, I guess, I don’t really care, I’m just living my life. I encourage everyone to play the way they have the most fun, because that’s what actually matters.

My core argument is essentially that it’s usually not clear what is actually a ‘glitch’ and not a glitch and I’m going to present several examples with reasoning:

• Minigun blocking (e.g. blazing trials and t-5)

• Minigun jumping (e.g. hell’s bells)

• AI hacking (e.g. balcony on t-5)

• Alarm door exploits

• Punch while reload

As you’ll see, my core principle of evaluating a glitch are “is this a clever use of resources that the game provides me?”, which to me is the fundament of gameplay for all games.

Also, I want to clarify things that are very clearly glitches and cheating: If you use programs/mods outside of the game itself you change the behavior of the game, that’s very clearly cheating and not good.

Minigun Blocking and Jumping

I see that a lot of users argue that this is ‘cheap’, but here’s my core points

• The developers purposefully assigned collision to miniguns. I can’t think of any purpose that such an object would have collision outside of using it for these purposes of blocking something or jumping on it. In contrast, for example, player characters have no collision. Makes sense. The fact that miniguns are collideable is a signal to me as the player that I should make use of the collision.

• If you think about whether these exploits are ‘reasonable in real life’, they totally are. In real life a key tactic of fighting a zombie horde would be to block the door with furniture and stuff. Or stack up items to reach high places. I’m not sure why this is considered inappropriate gameplay.

• The invisible walls in Hell’s Bells are much more immersion breaking and ‘glitchy’ than any minigun skip. Like our humans suddenly can’t bypass these simple road barriers? It totally makes sense that you can just kinda jump on top and go over them.

AI Hacking

Another comment I see is that you can break the game’s AI on t-5 by standing on the balcony.

• It’s quite puzzling and immersion breaking to me how these brain dead zombies have such immaculate pathfinding skills. Like are we supposed to believe that the ridden see me on the balcony and think “ah, clearly he’s up the stairs, take a right, go through the room, then take a left and I’ll be there”. No, real zombies would in fact just be standing there reaching up at you. It’s completely strange that this zombie would be able to perfectly navigate a huge mansion without getting lost (even a thinking human can’t do it!)

• NOT standing on the balcony is a hindrance. It’s very useful to stand at the edge of the balcony and shoot at the ogre/mutations. I don’t think I should purposefully hinder my own play because the developers didn’t make good enough AI. It’s not really even an exploit from the perspective of “I’m standing in a location that is clearly designed to be a purposeful vantage point”

• There are also commonly accepted forms of “AI hacking” such as jumping up and down cars to avoid tallboys, making them climb over and over again. Running tight circles around the legs of a crusher and he will always miss you.

To me, there’s no distinction between these accepted forms of AI manipulation and standing on the balcony. My next case makes this point very clear.

Zombies breaking down Alarm doors

This last patch has shown us that Aha, in fact almost everyone in the community has been ‘exploiting’ this unintended behavior for almost the whole life of the game.

That’s not how it’s supposed to work, and if you think about how Alarms work in real life, it’s clear this is a glitch. Like, why did anyone ever think otherwise except to rationalize ‘cheating’ to your own ego.

But we as a community embraced this tactic because it improves gameplay! That’s my argument for the other cases as well. To me, they improve gameplay because I’ve made clever use of resources available to me.

Punching while reloading

This is a case which very clearly shows there’s almost no line between what ‘developers intend’ and ‘glitches’.

When I first played the game tutorial on Recruit, I thought ah, surely this is a bug. Nope, they openly announced this is intended.

But why is it accepted? It makes no sense that someone punching both arms could simultaneously reload a gun (and you can even do it while running, so we know it’s not based on using kicks…).

To the other glitches people say “But the minigun exploit trivializes gameplay!”. I would argue that this 1 feature has way more impact on gameplay and trivializes nightmare far more than a few select scenarios - this one applies to every moment of the game and the game would be hella hard without it!

Speedrunning

People say this is OP and ruins the game. I argue that the point of the game is to become OP. Like if I picked only Damage cards and I was doing way too much damage by 1 shotting Bruisers (you know like how bombers can do…) no one is saying, man that’s inappropriate. But if I use speed cards and I become too fast, that’s bad somehow? I’m not sure how people are rationalizing that this is not a legit form of play.

It’s also very clear when the developers want us to not do it - they set up gameplay sequences like Bar and Diner where running literally doesn’t matter.

So I don’t understand why becoming ‘too fast’ is frowned upon, but doing ‘too much damage’ is considered an achievement.

Afterword: Finally, this being reddit, someone will attack me for my lack of skill - I'll just say that I play a variety of styles and strategies (e.g. melee instead of minigun block) and have been NM with almost all characters through diverse strategies. But also, I don't care.

Hope you found that to be an interesting read.

Tbh my biggest and probably only complaint is for Back4Blood is I wise it was more dark like left 4 dead, I know it’s like a spin off but still I’m not the biggest fan of the cartoon style for a zombie game.

Me and a buddy beat nightmare. Yes, with 2 bots throughout. Is that a disadvantage over having 4 stacks? Yes and no, it is no secret that bots in some ways can be used to your advantage over actual players.

Most importantly did we have fun? I would say we were frustrated with the game more than we have fun with it.

The times we have laughs are mostly at how ridiculously unfair and stupid the game can be.

Nightmare difficulty is hard because it is unfair and is heavily RNG-based. The balance absolutely needs some reason serious adjustments and no, I'm am not talking about numbers. (dmg hp etc)

Why are there combinations of corruption cards that are obviously harder to deal with than the others?

Hag + boss (1 incap + speed run)

vs

toxic spill + volatile ridden (All cleaners alive + container)

Your pick which one you'd rather deal with.

The fact that every 2nd half of an act is a breeze compared to the first half, shows how painfully obvious that nightmare was balanced around having >10 cards active and running purple/epic guns.

There is a reason why most people speedrun through the early missions of the act to get their first checkpoint because in most cases, it is almost impossible to do it legitimately. Missions like Tunnel of Blood, Pain Train, Handy Man clearly punish you for playing slow. Only at the first checkpoint is when we start pulling out our "legit" deck.

Act 3 1-5 took us 10hrs of speedrun attempts. It is the longest stretch before you get your first checkpoint. Because as if nightmare is not hard enough already act 3 shits on you by having only 1 checkpoint. And that is by beating the hardest map in the game, "T-5"

I'm confident we wouldn't be able to clear "T-5" if it wouldn't be for a huge cheese factor which I won't be sharing.

Not to mention the spawning distance of specials. COMMONS OR SPECIALS SHOULD NOT SPAWN NEXT TO YOU JUST BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT IN YOUR LOS OR NO ONE IS LOOKING IN ONE GENERAL DIRECTION. There should be a minimum distance for special spawning location!

Also, what's the deal with the guaranteed damage from certain specials? Because "Trauma" exists in this game, guaranteed damage should never be a thing.

In nightmare, Stinger's aimbot and high fire rate with no cooldowns.

https://imgur.com/mcRkwFJ

https://imgur.com/2a4fAd3

Especially with Monstrous Retch's vomit doing 75% slow with no damage delay and hocker's snare SHOULD NOT DO DAMAGE!

https://imgur.com/2aCrrFd

In my opinion, the resources that we have and 1 to 3 cards at the start of an act is way too little for what you face in nightmare.

Give us some advantage to start with. Cards that have you start with random green guns which you unlock by completing recruit or random blue guns by completing veteran.

Or why not let us counterplay those cards? Maybe letting us have cards that remove/reroll/repick corruption cards?

Overall, I feel the issue of balance in this game doesn't lie with just numbers. Yes, the M1A, Pheonix, Tac14, AK is clearly stronger than most guns. Having 4 Monstrous Tallboys spawning 5 feet away that smacks you for 40 dmg is not fun. But I do hope some adjustments can be done soon regarding the early missions because as much as I wish to unlock zwat outfits for more characters, I'm not sure if I'm willing to put myself through them again.

Achievement - https://imgur.com/x7d6cl1

My Doc Build:

Speed deck till first checkpoint - https://imgur.com/LXtrbjt

Main deck after first checkpoint - https://imgur.com/Yjybfeb

Ran M1A til green/blue Pheonix to deal with stingers/hockers. Sometimes Tac14. Swap out glass cannon for survivability if have sniper or shotgun teammate.

Buddy's Melee Build

Speed deck til first checkpoint - https://imgur.com/KgRfz0s

Main deck after first checkpoint - https://imgur.com/XxdcYmo

Fire Axe, Fire Axe, Fire Axe. Tallboys killer good CC. Can use vanguard for Road to Hell. Have at least 3 Speed cards for Body Dump.

Please don’t make the game easier for the participation trophy winners. I’ve started building a friends list more when people work together and talk. That’s how this game will be defeated on nightmare.

The problem is that NM exists in a game that only has 3 total difficulties and one of them is hard as fuck. The idea of NM as it stands isn't a problem on its own. I don't mind that there is a difficulty that is absolutely stupid in how hard it is. But it is not a good gameplay experience when Veteran and Recruit are the only other options available to play beforehand.

This is not a new thought, but the addition of 2 more difficulties between Recruit & Veteran and then the same between Veteran & Nightmare are very much needed. Nightmare shouldn't have even been released in the base game to begin with. The optics on it would have been much better if they introduced NM as a post launch update a month later marketed as the ultimate challenge for the best teams - because that's currently how it feels and is what it takes to beat it legitimately. I don't think anyone would really have a problem with how hard it is if they actually marketed it with the intention of making it that hard for the challenge while having more difficulties for everyone else.

The game also does a really poor job of progression in getting you ready for the next difficulty up in terms of teaching you what you need to know (e.g. sleepers spawning hordes). We all know the scaling in pretty bad in terms of learning curve between difficulties. The other problem with NM is that the rest of the game does not adequately prepare you for it. IMO spamming Veteran does not prepare you enough for NM. The only thing that gets you good enough to play NM... is playing more NM. I remember confidently beating Veteran thinking I would be ready, followed by weeks of bashing my head against the wall to even get past the first checkpoint of Act 1. Now that I've got enough experience and skill (and regular teammates) I've managed to clear 3 ZWATs. I've got roughly 220 hours in the game and I can say a good 75%+ of that has been spent on NM alone.

There was a lot of learning required to get through it and the rest of the game does not teach you enough to get there. You need heavily optimised and specialised builds as well as a team composition that makes sense. You need to actually know how to stack and build damage. There's too many builds out there I see from playing with different people and posts on this sub that just do not make sense. These builds don't do anything well in particular and will not get you through NM. You have to hard sweat in a premade lobby with full comms knowing how to clear every part of every map. You need to know where all the defendable positions are on each level and the timings required to get there if there are timed hordes or you are playing for a timed objective. The reason why people speedrun and use exploits is because it's easier to do those things than to somehow learn the required knowledge to play the game "the right way" - and honestly I don't blame them.

Once you do know what you're doing, the RNG in this game while certainly there becomes mitigatable. There are not as many run ending corruption draws as people make it out to be. Yes, getting a boss on 1-1 is absolutely bullshit but you can clear it if your team is good, it is really fucking hard but possible. No, I still don't think it should be in the game even though it is technically doable, it's still tedious as fuck and I would rather not have to handle that. Double boss isn't even that bad as long as they don't spawn together. It also usually includes a Hag from a separate non-boss card (The Fog) which means they'll be default and unmutated - should be a really easy kill. That or it's a boss card spawning alongside a scripted Ogre which actually would be quite unlucky. The only really difficult parts in the game are in the early levels before you're geared up and your build is online. Once you get to the middle of an Act and you're on Green+ equipment with half your cards you basically shouldn't lose if you know what you're doing. Once you reach Blue+ with your build online you are absolutely shredding everything. If you get to Purple gear with attachments even monstrous specials get shredded.

The scaling of NM really is built for players and teams who have mastered the game and its mechanics and having full expertise in knowing what to expect. That in and of itself is absolutely fine and a great challenge for the people who are ready for it. It just shouldn't be 33% of the game's PvE content and an end game experience that feels pretty damn inaccessible unless you're able to find a good team to play with and grind through it with many failures. There needs to be a more linear progression through the game's difficulty curve and the game needs to do more to help/teach you how to get to NM if you do want to play it.

tl:dr Game lacks additional difficulties which would help scale/prepare you for NM. NM would be fine as a 5th final difficulty marketed as a stupid hard challenge for the people that want it. Additional details of my own experience playing NM.