Back 4 Blood – How is the ‘Left 4 Dead’ successor doing 1 year after launch

Back 4 Blood is one year old. How is the zombie shooter that many have considered to be “The Legacy of Left 4 Dead” doing?

It has been almost a year since Back 4 Blood was released – in October 2021. The game came with considerable hype and promised to refine and enhance the popular “Left 4 Dead” formula to offer a solid zombie splatter experience.

However, shortly after the launch, there was a lot of criticism. Especially the “Versus” mode fell out of favor and was not well received by many players. Old veterans from L4D wished for a “Campaign Versus,” which the developers ultimately denied.

Other launch problems, such as unreliable difficulty, minor and major bugs, and a complex card system that newcomers found hard to navigate, created further issues.

How is Back 4 Blood doing now? How has the game evolved since the launch, what do the player numbers say, and how does the gameplay feel nowadays?

What has changed in Back 4 Blood since launch?

Since Back 4 Blood was released, a lot has changed in the game. Here’s a quick overview of some of the biggest and most important innovations:

• 2 DLCs have been released, each expanding the campaign.
• The “card-drawing system” is gone from the campaign.
• There are new maps for both players and enemy AI.
• There are “brand cards” that can only be used once.
• There is a new, extremely hard difficulty level called “No Hope”.
• There is now a solo mode.
• Numerous new enemy types.
• Many new weapons.

At its core, what Back 4 Blood aims to be has changed little: A cooperative zombie shooter where you can massively customize your character and where each run of the campaign is supposed to offer a new experience. However, a few important changes have influenced the player experience since launch.

The deck system has been completely overhauled

Even though this sentence is used way too often in gaming: Back 4 Blood has become a different game a year after its launch. And this is mainly due to a change that the developers implemented a few months ago.

You probably still remember the “deck-building” mechanic. You created a deck before the match, drew a few cards in the first map of a campaign, and then drew another in each map.

The system is gone completely. Instead, you now create a deck of 15 cards and draw it entirely on the first map. You build a character with skills, strengths, and traits and play this character throughout the entire campaign at full strength.

The removal of this mechanic has made the game feel much more rounded. On one hand, you no longer have to think about which cards to draw at the beginning of a match, on the other hand, it has eliminated some odd occurrences. Often the case was that the first maps of a campaign were particularly hard because you didn’t have many cards yet – the later maps were then significantly easier.

This is now history. The difficulty now has a nice curve and becomes increasingly harder (with some peaks) as you progress through the campaign.

During a campaign, you can still find cards and buy them for copper. However, you have to explore the maps a bit and consider whether the copper might be better suited for a weapon in the next safe room.

Overall, the entire deck mechanic feels much more rounded and meaningful now.

DLC brought cool “risk and reward” mechanics

Even the first DLC “Tunnels of Terror” has integrated very well into the gameplay. Because the “Tunnels of Terror” were not a separate act of the campaign, but an expansion for all previously existing maps. On each map of the campaign, there is a chance that you will find a tunnel entrance. The access is optional and does not have to be utilized.

If the team decides to go for it (the decision must be unanimous), you skip the rest of the current campaign map and instead enter one of several underground maps. Here, zombies swarm and there are peculiar effects.

If you search particularly attentively, you can also find skeleton totems in the tunnels, which can later be exchanged in the shop for special cards or cosmetic items.

The tunnels can be exited at several exit points, but they are always found in different locations. A “quick detour” into the tunnel can easily turn into a 20-minute survival battle.

Entering the underground vaults is therefore always a matter of weighing pros and cons. Because on one hand, lucrative rewards such as legendary weapons, totems, and extra copper may await, on the other hand, the tunnels are often littered with traps and can also mean the end of the campaign if you don’t find an exit quickly.

More of everything with DLC 2

The second DLC “Children of the Worm” has also improved the entire game. There is a new act, which has relatively few maps, but they feel quite challenging and fit well into the story. However, the most interesting aspect is the new enemy types, the “Children of the Worm” – a mix of zombie and human who have formed a strange cult.

Although the new enemy types actually only belong to the final act, they also appear in all other maps at higher difficulty levels, which significantly increases the variety.

The third DLC is still pending and is expected to be released in the coming months. However, there are no reliable details yet.

What do the player numbers say?

It is difficult to make concrete statements about the current player numbers, as the player base of Back 4 Blood spans several platforms. Back 4 Blood is not only available on Steam but also on Xbox Game Pass, in the Epic Games Launcher, and on consoles, which are connected with crossplay.

As a rough guide, you can take the Steam player numbers – keep in mind, however, that this is only a fraction of the total amount.

Player numbers on Steam have shrunk by almost 90% in the months following the release. From the initial 65,000 concurrent players at the peak of the day, there are now just under 7,000 left.

On average, between 2,500 and 3,000 players are active in Back 4 Blood at the same time over Steam.

When waiting for new players in co-op mode, it usually takes 2-3 minutes – if you play at very unusual times (like early in the morning), it can take a bit longer.

Overall, however, Back 4 Blood still feels alive, waiting times are quite short, and through “Quick Match,” you typically enter a game with only a few seconds of waiting.

What is your opinion on Back 4 Blood? Have you checked in during the past weeks and months?