What is your opinion on Back 4 Blood? Are you still having fun with the coop shooter? Or are you waiting for Nightmare to become a bit more manageable?
However, solutions are being worked on to fix the spawn bugs. This is currently a high priority for Turtle Rock.
Why is there no quick hotfix? Time and again, players call for an “immediate hotfix” to fix the bugs. It is mentioned that this is not so easy. On the one hand, Turtle Rock is a relatively small development studio. On the other hand, every patch must first undergo certification with Microsoft and Sony, which can take a few days. Since Back 4 Blood relies on crossplay, all platforms must be on the same page.
So it simply takes a long time before even a small patch can be released, even if the developers had already found a solution after a day.
Developers should play “Nightmare” live
From all the criticism, one demand has become increasingly loud: The developers should stream their game and play on the “Nightmare” difficulty themselves. This request has been simmering for weeks and did not subside when it was confirmed in the Turtle Rock Discord that the developers had mastered the game on the hardest difficulty. According to their own statements, they approached it “slowly and carefully and made sure not to exchange unnecessary damage among the players”.
The statement has made many players even more incredulous. Because the small percentage of players who have completed “Nightmare” report that this was only possible through speed-running. Something that is also going to be nerfed in the future.
Who is Nightmare actually for? At the same time, the difficulty of Nightmare was discussed and who it is actually intended for.
The Nightmare difficulty is for players who have spent hundreds of hours [in Back 4 Blood] and then venture in. It is basically our “endgame”. It is really hard and very dynamic. So we will always find things that can be improved.
This means that the Nightmare mode is not for players who may have just completed Veteran. It is supposed to be an “endgame” mode and correspondingly difficult. Nevertheless, bugs that lead to unfair situations – such as the massive spawn of special infected – will be eliminated. There are also issues where burning zombies still cause damage after their death or the “Blighted” zombies cause more damage upon death than intended.
Once these bugs are fixed, Nightmare might feel a little more manageable.
The atmosphere in Back 4 Blood remains tense. Even if the November update brought some sensible changes, some annoying bugs still persist and are likely to be addressed with the next major patch in December.
What is your opinion on Back 4 Blood? Are you still having fun with the coop shooter? Or are you waiting for Nightmare to become a bit more manageable?
The players of Back 4 Blood are angry at the developers. They have explained themselves – and made things even worse.
For just over a month, the cooperative zombie shooter “Back 4 Blood” has been on the market, but there is unrest in the community. The reason is a new patch that nerfed melee combat and made the hardest difficulty even harder.
In a stream, the developers addressed the biggest changes of the patch and explained themselves – but this only led to more criticism and disbelief.
What kind of stream was that? On Twitch, the developers from Turtle Rock took half an hour to answer the most urgent questions from the community and address the biggest hot topics in the game’s subreddit. You can watch the entire stream here if you want to hear all the details:
However, we have summarized the most important points for you here.
Melee was way too strong: The melee cards were significantly nerfed in the last patch, which made many players angry. Melee combat was an important component of successful teams. The developers are aware of this, but still wanted to make changes. A melee fighter with the right cards could completely hold a door on their own – not just against normal zombies, but also against the special zombies, who were permanently stuck in a “stumbling” animation.
Every play style should have a counter, and if melee fighters can just beat up Tallboys endlessly without taking damage, then that is bad for the whole game and needed to be adjusted.
The intent behind Tallboys and other large creatures is that no player should be able to permanently stun them with a few cards and master every challenge in the game alone. It is a cooperative game.
Why are there still bugs? Another major topic was the emergence of bugs in the game, especially the increased spawn rate of special zombies. The fact that these continue to be buggy even after the first major patch bothers many and diminishes the gaming experience.
The developers state that it is simply not possible to test every eventuality in advance. The development team and the test players are only a few people. Compared to the live version of the game, where up to 50,000 matches are played per hour, that is simply too little data. If the developers themselves had to play 50,000 matches to accurately check every eventuality, it would likely take many years.
A large part of the precise analyses can therefore only be done once a patch is live, to also identify smaller problems.
This is illustrated by this short clip in the Back 4 Blood subreddit – the team is essentially annihilated in the saferoom.
Why is this all so bad? Even though the developers say that the spawns generally work well in most cases, and these “special zombie masses” are quite a rare phenomenon, many players remain upset. The problem is, it doesn’t matter in most cases whether the spawn works correctly 99% of the time. If just one wave is buggy and throws 3, 4, or even 5 Tallboys at the players, this likely ends with a death on “Nightmare” and “Veteran” difficulty.
This is particularly frustrating in Back 4 Blood, because there is only one opportunity to continue the run with a “Continue”. A single buggy spawn can ruin the whole run. This is doubly frustrating on Nightmare, where players sometimes have to manage 4 or 5 cards in a row to unlock the next entry point.
However, solutions are being worked on to fix the spawn bugs. This is currently a high priority for Turtle Rock.
Why is there no quick hotfix? Time and again, players call for an “immediate hotfix” to fix the bugs. It is mentioned that this is not so easy. On the one hand, Turtle Rock is a relatively small development studio. On the other hand, every patch must first undergo certification with Microsoft and Sony, which can take a few days. Since Back 4 Blood relies on crossplay, all platforms must be on the same page.
So it simply takes a long time before even a small patch can be released, even if the developers had already found a solution after a day.
Developers should play “Nightmare” live
From all the criticism, one demand has become increasingly loud: The developers should stream their game and play on the “Nightmare” difficulty themselves. This request has been simmering for weeks and did not subside when it was confirmed in the Turtle Rock Discord that the developers had mastered the game on the hardest difficulty. According to their own statements, they approached it “slowly and carefully and made sure not to exchange unnecessary damage among the players”.
The statement has made many players even more incredulous. Because the small percentage of players who have completed “Nightmare” report that this was only possible through speed-running. Something that is also going to be nerfed in the future.
Who is Nightmare actually for? At the same time, the difficulty of Nightmare was discussed and who it is actually intended for.
The Nightmare difficulty is for players who have spent hundreds of hours [in Back 4 Blood] and then venture in. It is basically our “endgame”. It is really hard and very dynamic. So we will always find things that can be improved.
This means that the Nightmare mode is not for players who may have just completed Veteran. It is supposed to be an “endgame” mode and correspondingly difficult. Nevertheless, bugs that lead to unfair situations – such as the massive spawn of special infected – will be eliminated. There are also issues where burning zombies still cause damage after their death or the “Blighted” zombies cause more damage upon death than intended.
Once these bugs are fixed, Nightmare might feel a little more manageable.
The atmosphere in Back 4 Blood remains tense. Even if the November update brought some sensible changes, some annoying bugs still persist and are likely to be addressed with the next major patch in December.
What is your opinion on Back 4 Blood? Are you still having fun with the coop shooter? Or are you waiting for Nightmare to become a bit more manageable?
