L4D League

[Atari]

Hey all,

Been pretty inactive around these parts for a while as everything that can be said about L4D has pretty much been discussed to death. I started a thread a while back to discuss the clan play side of L4D which didn't really get as far as I'd hoped.

I've been playing with the idea of starting a league once L4D is released (and I'm sure 411 is too), and the whole clan/league side of L4D still intrigues me as no-one knows if it'll work due to the nature of the AI director and long map times. I think it's a fair bet that core concept of L4D won't be changing (AI director/4 vs 4 + AI) so there's no real harm in discussing things now.

So - hypothetically speaking, if L4D has been released and a league is about to start – how would you see the league rules and structure working?

To the best of my knowledge, there are no co-op type leagues around and definitely none that are suited to the features and characteristics of L4D, so I think a new league system /rule-set is required.

I've given this a lil bit of thought and I'd appreciate hearing your ideas/opinions – even if you think they're complete crap or you maybe you have a better system/ideas. Whatever.

(See post below)

[Atari]

General

• All teams must have at least 4 players with valid steam IDs
• All players participating in the league agree that each game is different (due to the AI director). This could result in one team having an easier time than the other which could obviously swing in your favour or against you.


League Structure

• The league will be split in to three divisions; easy, medium and hard. These divisions will correspond with the server's difficulty settings.
• The season will be broken up in to game weeks, at the start of each season teams will be given a rota detailing the opposing team for each week. In each week, teams must play each other twice, once as survivors and once as infected.
• The two games must be played within the allocated game week.
• At the start of each season, a pool of maps will be chosen that will be played throughout the season. Each game week will then be allocated a map which cannot be changed by either team.


Games

• It is the responsibility of the two teams in each game week to organise the two games. If a team is unable to field their 4 players for a game, they default a loss.
• A time limit will be set for each round, for example 45 minutes.
• If a side's team falls below 4 during the game, the match continues as normal.
• A stand-by/reserve player (5th) is recommended but cannot reside on the server as a spectator during game.
• If a player drops out during a game for whatever reason, the previous empty slot can filled immediately either by the same player or the team's reserve player.


Scoring

Completing the scenario with one of more players remaining
Survivors: 3 points
Infected: 1 point

All survivors dead at one time
Survivors: 1 point
Infected: 3 points

Map time limit reached
Survivors: 2 points
Infected: 2 points

Survivors do not have 4 players on server & ready at the agreed start time
Survivors: 0 points
Infected: 3 points

Infected do not have 4 players on server & ready at the agreed start time
Survivors: 3 points
Infected: 0 points

All results must be confirmed by both teams.

[Puscifer]

Sounds like a good idea to me, a lot of ppl out of my community (Born2Frag http://b2fclan.net/home.htm ) are exited about Left 4 Dead now, i will post in the l4d thread and see what they all think about it.

We mainly play CSS and TF2, we have some real good players.

[Chronos]

Obviously you have put a lot of thought into this, and while I didn't think it would be viable at first, you clearly know what you're talking about/doing and it could work. Obviously everything's in flux, but a very good outline of rules.

[Skeetles]

My server is gonna be set to the hardest setting in preparation for this :0

[engagequadlaser]

It'll be interesting to see if a competition-oriented system can be brought about. The general impression I've gotten from developer quotes is that the game isn't meant to be fair - it's heavily stacked in favor of the infected, being that the developers themselves admittedly only survive a campaigns half the time (or less? don't recall the exact figure), and that was on normal difficulty.

[globalenjoi]

It'll be interesting to see if a competition-oriented system can be brought about. The general impression I've gotten from developer quotes is that the game isn't meant to be fair - it's heavily stacked in favor of the infected, being that the developers themselves admittedly only survive a campaigns half the time (or less? don't recall the exact figure), and that was on normal difficulty.


This is the main reason I don't think we'll see much competitive play. The game is built around the idea of the survivors struggling as a team to survive, while the infected are just there to fuck them over. Hard. In terms of team vs. team, its not very balanced for competitive play, and it's not meant to be. It's supposed to be an uphill struggle for the survivors.

Good ideas, I just don't think it'll work without a heavily modded version of the game =\

[Atari]

I don't really think it needs to be balanced to be competitive, the points system could be edited to compensate for this (E.G Less points for winning as infected, or extra points for winning as survivors).

Maybe those that have played L4D can help with this one: Are there points awarded to either side during the game? If so, you could simply accumulate the points at the end of the map.

[squerl]

I really like the idea of points being awarded instead of the normal plain "win or loss". I know things like CAL for CS:S weigh the wins and losses with other things like your opponents record, how many rounds you won vs how many they won, etc., so when you crush your opponent and they have a good record it's worth a lot more than getting in a near tie with a bad team.

I think a system would be able to be worked out. With a points system given for different outcomes (like you said, more points the more survivors that make it, the more points the further into the scenario you get).

And it would be somewhat possible to weigh the points to the difficulty that you encountered. The game actually breaks down each Survivor's kills into normal infected kills, Hunter kills, Boomer kills, etc. You could weigh the points so that the more normal infected that your team has killed, the points are worth a little more. You could even work in boss kills, but that might make it so the boss zombies stop attacking as much so the other team doesn't get higher points.

The only thing we'd have to hope for (and suggest gets implemented) is a log from every map of the scenario, that details which Survivors were alive at the end of every map (all 5), how many total normal infected were killed, and what time (in minutes:seconds) each Survivor death took place.

If we had a log of all that, we could give more points to the boss infected for Survivor deaths near the beginning of every map (when they're supposed to be fully healed and everything), and less points for a kill at the very end when they're probably very weak.

I'm not exactly sure about a time limit on the entire scenario, because we'd want to encourage both types of playing, being slow and methodical and rush through guns blazing.

[Atari]

The reason I put a time limit in there was to prevent games taking too long (45mins just being an example). If I was scheduled to play a league game and I had plans for that evening, I'd want some way to judge the latest time I could make it to the pub :p

[Rawah]

kan man dedicata servrar på l4d?

[Nemesis_vs_Leon]

How about for each of their two matches, the teams competing must use the same difficulty even when they switch sides.