Left 4 Dead has just gotten a big new update - a lobby browser:

The lobby browser (under Play Online) will show you a list of optimal games available for you to join. The browser pares down the thousands of lobbies and games currently being played to show you the best list of games available to you. This list includes official and add-on campaigns, including add-on campaigns you have not yet installed, making it a great way to discover them. You can filter by difficulty, official and/or add-on campaigns and by lobbies and/or games in progress.

Hopefully this'll make it a little bit easier to get into games online, although as always I'm worried about what their definition of "best" means in the context of finding online games that I want to play. There are a few other minor changes; check the full list on the Steam site!

Someone try it and see if it is good, I just uninstalled L4d off my work PC a couple days ago!

Looks interesting.
Although I thought they were going to give us an option to easily match up two 4-player teams looking for a game.

I started up steam to suss it out and it's kind of hung

should i buy l4d or wait for 2?

i dont see no lobby browser

edit: found it. i was expecting it to look like the server browser, but it doesnt.


last edited by ravn0s at 10:39:28 17/Jul/09

Someone at valve must have heard me yelling at the game matching over the last few days.

Hey All,

Just a screenshot of the new lobby browser:

http://img11.imageshack.us/i/36634963.jpg/

Better but it remains to be seen how worthwhile it is.

FYI : 11188 people were playing L4D when the screen was captured.

A more direct link:

http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/5494/36634963.jpg

even better:

http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/5494/36634963.jpg

first impressions are that its still f***ing useless. no f***ing games, useless filters and f***ing hung when I tried to exit. f*** you gabe.

I've got a bit more in there, mostly servers that are playing the same 3rd party maps I've installed.


it'd be nice to see 3rd party maps be added to the vote menu (while ingame). if the server you're on has 'Death Aboard' loaded it'd be great for the player's client to be able to realise that and include it as an option to vote for.


btw if you haven't played 'DA' check it out. It's worthy of being included as a standard L4D map imo.. although it makes the others look a little underdone


last edited by koopz at 14:42:23 17/Jul/09

Death Abord 6.1 is what i have been playing the last few nights, Brilliant design all the way through. except for the car things can go wrong very quickly there :P

yeah it is quite good hey
tank spawning near saferoom on tilt-ship level while survivors are still at container area is fail though. just needs a SI ladder or something to fix it

After 5 minutes I could tell that the lobby browser had no noticeable improvement. Also there's still noobs in all the games.

except for the car things can go wrong very quickly there :P

hehe yeah - what do you do next time eh.


you know a tonne of steel is going to roll out of that crate and onto someone's head, followed by a hoard in a very tight spot. who's going up there first?


decisions, decisions... :P


it'd be nice to see some more moments like that in L4D2

The new lobby browser showed me 1 or 2 games.. never anymore... what makes it decide is a good server? when I know there's hundreds I could join by looking in the server browser...

You don't know what is best for you, Valve does though.

its not picking servers. it showing you lobbies that are waiting for more people to join. they havent started a game on a server yet.

but yer its easier just to join a server with empty spots.

Not as good as the serverbrowser but good for picking up custom games.

I find joining a lobby rather than a server almost always ends up with a better/more balanced game. When you join a game in progress, the free spot is from someone who ragequit because their team sucks or were being dicks.

just played death aboard. bloody awsome map. love the finale. really hard to win that one.

light the 2nd tank, scurry down to the bottom area so you're already down there when it dies and treat the end like any other finale basically

pretty damn good campaign

so you get rescued by a boat? someone said you get rescued by a hot air balloon. thats why we all stayed up the top

The hot air balloon comes to the pier.

Me and my mates just rushed to the bottom before the horde could arrive proper. Easy enough to hold from that loading deck which you can jump up the crates to get to.

kinda silly for a balloon to arrive at the lowest point of the map.

anyway i thought the ship level was very well done. was kinda trippy walking around with everything on a slant. also the car in the container owned me :(

hehe
yeh balloon comes to the very bottom :/