A big update for Left 4 Dead has just landed; as always bounce your Steam to get the new stuff. There's quite a few changes; here's the list of Versus changes:

- Tank melee attack can now hit multiple Survivors in one swing
- Fixed Tank punch being able to hit targets behind walls
- Fixes to 'Tank parking'. The Tank will now run back and attack the Survivors if he becomes AI due to two players expiring the frustration meter
- Fixed a case where a Tank frustration meter could run out right as he was in his death animation and he would come back to life
- Fixed a case where the Tank was moving too slowly while crouching and being shot
- Tanks now have the possibility of spawning in a slightly different position for the first and second teams
- The order that the teams play as Survivors is now determined by which team has the higher overall score. The winning team will play as Survivors first
- The Smoker tongue can now target and grab victims through common infected
- Increased the cone in which a Smoker can grab a target
- The Witch no longer cuts Smoker tongues in a radius around her
- Boomers that explode in mid-air will now hit Survivors directly below them with Bile
- Reduced the damage that burning Hunters do to pounced victims
- Adjusted the time at which players take over from bots to avoid 5 seconds of the bot standing idle while the player finishes connecting.
- Fixed some cases where versus score was not being recalculated properly. It is no longer beneficial to pass pills between players at the end of the round or heal other players and then shoot them
- Fixed a case where it was possible to spectate an AI infected and hit +use to take them over

There's a couple of other miscellaneous changes as well - you can see the full list in the comments here!

Full List:

[-]March 11, 2009 - Left 4 Dead Update Released

Updates to Left 4 Dead have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:

-- Versus Mode Changes
* Tank melee attack can now hit multiple Survivors in one swing
* Fixed Tank punch being able to hit targets behind walls
* Fixes to 'Tank parking'. The Tank will now run back and attack the Survivors if he becomes AI due to two players expiring the frustration meter
* Fixed a case where a Tank frustration meter could run out right as he was in his death animation and he would come back to life
* Fixed a case where the Tank was moving too slowly while crouching and being shot
* Tanks now have the possibility of spawning in a slightly different position for the first and second teams
* The order that the teams play as Survivors is now determined by which team has the higher overall score. The winning team will play as Survivors first
* The Smoker tongue can now target and grab victims through common infected
* Increased the cone in which a Smoker can grab a target
* The Witch no longer cuts Smoker tongues in a radius around her
* Boomers that explode in mid-air will now hit Survivors directly below them with Bile
* Reduced the damage that burning Hunters do to pounced victims
* Adjusted the time at which players take over from bots to avoid 5 seconds of the bot standing idle while the player finishes connecting.
* Fixed some cases where versus score was not being recalculated properly. It is no longer beneficial to pass pills between players at the end of the round or heal other players and then shoot them
* Fixed a case where it was possible to spectate an AI infected and hit +use to take them over

-- Server Changes
* Added convar sv_gametype that allows server operators to limit the types of games that will start on their server. Default value is 'coop,versus'. Can be changed to just 'coop' or just 'versus' to limit to those game types

-- General changes
* Fixed a case where players would join as a dead Survivor when a living Survivor was still available
* Fixed a case where restarting a level due to the team dying would give more than the max primary ammo on restart
* Fixed the speaking icon showing up on the local player during level transition if voice_vox was set to 1
* The scoreboard now shows the numeric value of a player's ping

-- GameUI
* Quick match will now try to match to any campaign. Removed the preference to match to games according to the player progressing through all campaigns
* Games in a finale are now joinable via the Friends and Steam Group games list

Some really good stuff in here. Going to change tank battles for sure... no more grouping together with shotties to take out the tank. Smoker change has potential too in my opinion... imagine smoking some dude who's boomed with zombies all around him... he goes instantly melee-less and all those zombies want some of his braaaiiins...


last edited by blahnana at 12:26:10 12/Mar/09

most of those changes sound really good, still so many unmentioned that need fixing tho

f***ing awesome. I love playing smoker when it actually works, which isn't very often. Should be heaps better now.

Looking on the Steam forums, apparently the tank hitting multiple survivors in one strike doesn't work.

I sure hope this is on Xbox live :3

Boomers that explode in mid-air will now hit Survivors directly below them with Bile

that will be awesome

last edited by scuzzy at 12:45:55 12/Mar/09

awesome!! some sweet changes!

I can't wait to send 4 people flying off the roof of mercy hospital with one punch!

Bet the alternating teams bit cuts down on rage-quits in vs mode too.

Awesome. That list is sounding very good. Hopefully it all works as they say though..

yeah I might fire it up again... I suppose.

I just played at lunch. The Smoker seems like it's pretty much fixed. Every time the reticule went red, it attached and pulled no worries. Hitting multiple with the tank is definitely buggy/non-existent. I had 3 people in front of me, huddled together, punch only hit one survivor.

Other than that though, a huge improvement.

yeah smoker feels closer to what it used to be prior to the last big patch, thank f***. melee still needs fixed, it's still retardedly overpowered against special infected, hunters in particular

When is the new content due?

I got 20 000 points the other day as zombies w0ot

nice one

Oh yeah, there seems to be some cock-up with the achievements with this patch. For some reason, when I was playing today, everyone on my team achieved "Outbreak" (which all of us already had), and we also all got "Lamb 2 Slaughter" which we didn't already have, and we got while playing as survivors. I have no idea why this happened.

For some reason, when I was playing today, everyone on my team achieved "Outbreak" (which all of us already had), and we also all got "Lamb 2 Slaughter" which we didn't already have, and we got while playing as survivors. I have no idea why this happened.

In TF2 there was a patch one time that caused this to happen on purpose; previously you had won the achievement but the game didn't actually register you doing so (but recorded the metrics needed to realise you had one), and the patch just checked if you had won it and then gave it to you, so it may have been that (or not!).

As for smoker, I still get annoyed playing him every now and then. You should be able to side-step for a split second (as in to get out of view) while your tongue is in transit so you can hide :)

Oh also, Valve said on the steam forums that they realised the tank *isnt* actually hitting all survivors in one swing (like the patch notes said it should), and that they are working on a fix, so I'd expect another update sometime soon.

most of those changes sound awesome, except:

- The order that the teams play as Survivors is now determined by which team has the higher overall score. The winning team will play as Survivors first

i'm not quite sure about this, i like the variety of alternating and not having to play either side too long. i guess its meant to be an anti rage quit measure

i'm not quite sure about this, i like the variety of alternating and not having to play either side too long. i guess its meant to be an anti rage quit measure

I think it's a fantastic idea. It gives the losing team a chance.

It is also a pretty big bonus knowing when and where the Tank is going to spawn if you are always going second as survivors.

And it makes sure they don't just throw a bitch fit and leave.

Also, I once glitched untouchables whilst hanging off of the side of mercy hospital after being mauled by the tank and was left behind, so the achievement glitch doesn't surprise me

excellent update but i hope they fix bile in the next one. bile sometimes doesnt hit people that are incapped etc. they also need to get rid of bile cancelling in midair if you get killed while vomiting.

yeh one of my regular bitches =]

Oh also, Valve said on the steam forums that they realised the tank *isnt* actually hitting all survivors in one swing (like the patch notes said it should), and that they are working on a fix, so I'd expect another update sometime soon.

Don't these f***ers test there updates before releasing them? How can something work in a test environment and not in the actual game. Logically impossible.

The achievements have always been bugged, when you get a free one it's great but when it keeps denying what you should get it's bloody annoying.

It's not so much the achievements that are bugged, it's that the game doesn't count you as having played the whole campaign if you didn't see the opening movie/pan/thing. If you don't see that when you start, none of the achievements that require you to do something through a whole campaign will work.

It's not so much the achievements that are bugged, it's that the game doesn't count you as having played the whole campaign if you didn't see the opening movie/pan/thing. If you don't see that when you start, none of the achievements that require you to do something through a whole campaign will work.

hmmm from my experience i only needed to join during the first map. eg. i joined death toll just as they were walking into the safe room in the first map. i finished the campaign and got akimbo assassin.

last edited by ravn0s at 21:04:17 12/Mar/09

Phew. I got some achievements today that I'd already got and I thought I must have lost them all. Just checked and they're all still there. Definitely agree that they need to fix the boomer bile from disappearing if you're killed mid spew. Also hate when I spew on 3 or 4 survivors and NO zombies come or it does not a single point of damage. That s***s me

Whenever I play lately I only seem to get on the same two maps.. they need to fix that bug LOL.

Also the down syndrome team mates bug I often get.

Achievements are useless and I have no idea why people even bother.

These updates are great especially the losing team being infected first, it can really be an advantage. But this update comes at the worst time, start of uni :(.

Another update:

# Fixed sv_search_key appearing in server browser
# Fixed issue where changing the sv_search_key did not update the master correctly
# Fixed master server issue with Linux fork mode that affected availability of Valve dedicated servers
# Tank melee attack can now hit multiple Survivors in one swing
# Missed from the previous list changes: Fixed acheivements to match stats. Past achievements not previously awarded will be shown in the game UI

heh just played expert versus on 3fl. not even the best team in the world could complete each map as survivors.

looks like server search is now 100% broken instead of just 75%

well, you all forgot to mention the MELEE ATTACK NOW HAS A RECHARGE HUD.... thats right, after you melee, you have to wait about 2 seconds or so to be able to melee again...was this neccasary?
i know i hear a lot of people complain about "i cant pounce when the other team melees", but was it really ok to change the whole feel of the game and not to mention the ALL old strategys are worthless.

I really enjoyed the ORIGINAL VERSION of this game, being able to block the survivors with environmental debris....like forklifts, was awesome....then a whole crowd of people who werent smart enough to get past them declared it "cheating" or glithing, or whatever....it seems to me that VALVE is just trying to apease all the whiners who blog on thier website.....Ive never had any trouble playing this game.... i thought the first round of updates was bad enough......BUT THIS IS NO LONGER THE SAME GAME I PURCHASED.

it seems that you my friend are a whigning noob that can't beat the game without meleeing frantically...

Imo it has made the game more interesting and challenging and opens up new tactics...

awesome first post, put ya flame suit on.

This is an old thread; please direct comments to the new L4D threads!@#