Frustian's Mod

[mrdj204]

Am I the only one who thinks Frustian's mod should be picked up for this tournament?
It removes/fixes most of the current problems with competitive L4D. I can't see any real reason why it hasn't/shouldn't been/be picked up.

Discuss.

[ness33]

While I know i'm probably one of the better experienced ppl with this mod, i am not sure the current setting is ready for tourney play (we still have a few things to iron out).

I might suggest pills only with T2's though. Glad to see this coming up here BEFORE the tournament starts to see if we can push it on here.

[leogeo2]

Frustian himself brought this up to me the other day. It's up for consideration.

[mrdj204]

A small idea I had was making it optional. So the new teams dont get overwhelmed, but the experienced ones can play with hard mode on ^_^

[leogeo2]

Would rather make it a final decision rather than optional. I don't want the games being different.

[Xanath]

ANYTHING that makes the game more difficult is A++ in my book.

Yes, teams that were already struggling will now be absolutely embarrassed when facing a superior opponent. However, I see nothing wrong with that. Frustian's mod is an excellent means of choking teams' breathing room and limiting the ability of top teams (particularly against other top teams) to power through maps almost regardless of incaps, with medkits in hand, earning a guaranteed 185+ health bonus. Removing autoshotties and rifles but leaving hunting rifles was pure genius and, once again, anything that makes the game more difficult additionally makes it more entertaining. I hope I'll have the chance to start casting matches where the finale is more than watching autoshotties mow down doorways until the tank comes out.

The changes to pre-molly go without saying; now, a tank can no longer be essentially trivialized by Valve's tremendous failure, ensuring both teams will always start on equal footing so far as tank goes (which hasn't been the case since pre-mollies became the standard long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away).

[leogeo2]

(which hasn't been the case since pre-mollies became the standard long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away).

Frustian's Mod

[AgentIcarus]

On balance I think I'm favour of using Frustian's Mod for this tourney, but I've got no experience of it first hand (I run CEVO on my server and for the group I play with, this mod would be overkill!).  From reading the page on alliedmods I think I'd want to be sure that bugs with (pre-) lit tanks were ironed out before suggesting it for competitive play.

[ness33]

The only 'bug' so to speak that we have with the tank right now is when it goes AI, he will stand still for about 5 seconds before actually moving in, and the tank meter disappearing if he's extinguished from a pre-moli... But everything else I believe has worked okay.

And that is the one thing I actually like about this mod, that even the best of teams struggle through it, making the match waay more intense and (if I may so say) waaay more interesting to watch (since every dmg counts).

So, like i said before, I really like this mod, and I enjoy playing it, but Xan (not xanath) brought up a good point in the CommL4D forums that this will definitely discourage many new teams from playing because it is just waay too difficult to adapt to this mod (if you pub all day).

[Frustian]

On balance I think I'm favour of using Frustian's Mod for this tourney, but I've got no experience of it first hand (I run CEVO on my server and for the group I play with, this mod would be overkill!).  From reading the page on alliedmods I think I'd want to be sure that bugs with (pre-) lit tanks were ironed out before suggesting it for competitive play.

I have a few features I have been trying to implement with no success thus far, including restoring the rage meter.  As far as refusing to use the plugin because of it, I would be hard pressed to find somebody who would prefer being on fire to losing the rage meter and being fine otherwise.  It's definitely something I would love fixed, but I don't know if it is even possible with a plugin at this point so I am prioritizing other features to the plugin.

Generally the plugin is in a bit of a beta stage still, but I have been impressed with it's current gameplay stability.  I have only had one reported bug (mind you it's more of valve's bug I have to fix :S) with the current version.

[ViruS]

As I've stated before on L4Dnao and to several people on my friends list, this mod is awesome. It really puts the 'dead' back into L4D making even good survivor teams struggle to survive, and devastating chip damage attacks actually effect the health bonus properly. I know that many people in the competitive community would throw their support this mod if it was to be chosen for the Pwnage.tv tournament, and would make the casts ALOT more interesting, as survivors often have to fight for their lives as one or more go black and white without a kit to save them.

[Xanath]

If you think about it, a team that pubstomps all day is going to lose to an organized tournament-based team regardless; in this mod, it'll just happen in a much swifter and more painful fashion. I really don't think that kind of separation between skill levels is any more dramatic than what happens when you pit a CEVO-P 1.6 team against a freshly-formed CEVO-A team.

Lower-level teams would still have good games against other lower-level teams, but call me a maniac for saying this, I think the game should actually be harder for people coming into a tournament when they aren't as good as everyone else.

[ness33]

Well the thing is that a pubstomp team won't get ripped as hard under the CEVO mod as they would in Frus's. They still have plenty of pills, and they still have T2's. When you take away their Medpacks and their T2's... its a MAJOR change, and they will get completely destroyed. When you lose by a little, you think of ways to improve... when you get completely RAPED, you wanna jus quit... lol... and as much as ppl my try to be sports and say "oh no.. i wouldn't do that"... u know damn well everyone gets discouraged when getting completely manhandled.

And again.. dont get me wrong.. i am all for the mod... but I will have to agree with Xan in the point that it might discourage newcomers to stick around because its such a huge change from the regular game.

[mrdj204]

An idea, if this will be set up like other tournaments, you could have the round robin group play w/o frustians, and then have the actual bracket play w/ frustians.

By then all the bad teams are weeded out, and any of the good ones have already proven to themselfs that they can get somewhere and wont get devastated if they get wrecked.

That would be a win/win for everyone imho.

[Xanath]

I see where you're coming from Ness, and I like the idea of going Frus post-bracket. We'd just have to work on seedings to ensure the teams that deserve to be bracketed aren't knocking one another out Alienware-style.