Played through the first campaign, failed because of a bug where none of my bot allies shot any zombies T_T
I will warn people so far of the game, to do that one run took 3 hours… now the bright side is as soon as you reach a safehouse you can leave the game and continue from there, so that is a plus, but just keep that in mind when you try and play in one sitting XD
Then again, now that I kinda know how the run will go I will probably be able to do it faster.
Wow that is quite the long run - I think the runs were about and hour-ish in L4D. At least you can save at checkpoints.
Consolidated all the B4B posts into here, and made a new general info OP at the top.
Open Beta is this weekend (from tonight at 21:00, if my time zone-fu is okay) and is avaialble on all platforms.
Back 4 Blood: Open Beta on Steam (steampowered.com)
Pre-Purchase & Pre-Order Back 4 Blood - Epic Games Store
Get Back 4 Blood: Open Beta - Microsoft Store en-ZA
Back 4 Blood - PS4 & PS5 Games | PlayStation South Africa
Not 100% certain about the consoles, but for those that played the Early Access Beta on Steam last weekend, shouldn’t need to install anything else. There is a small 570MB update, but otherwise everything else looks like the Open Beta will just be using the same install.
Shweet lets get some games going, I am on steam and discord 99% of the time so please give me a shout when someone wants to play.
Downloading…
I am so amped for this game, really having high hopes for it and from what I’ve seen and heard from GiantBomb and Game Informer it is looking very good.
From the one run I played, it is indeed very fun, been a long time that I could play a game for 3 hours straight and not even notice. So far I actually only had the one bug where the bots stopped shooting which I think is very good. And compared to L4D2 this is a bit slower paced I feel, since as far as I could tell there were no hordes periodically spawning that makes you keep moving, instead it was quite easy to kill the zombies, and then take some time to loot and check the surroundings. However there are times when you trigger something and you have to run like the wind or you will die. NOW, take all this with some salt as I played on the easiest difficulty so it might change with higher difficulties
Is there no option to play it solo or with fill the squad with AI?
Can anyone actually play at the moment? I keep getting Matchmaking failed when trying to Quick Play or Create run. I’m running the Epic version if it makes a difference.
I have a feeling its Epic - we had issues in spacepunks all night
Don’t think it’s just you. Got this message 10 minutes ago when I started the game to check for where the Privacy setting is for Beo…
Tried to start a run and got Matchmaking Errors as well.
I think they’ve disabled solo play in the Beta - presumably to get more testing of the online system and matchmaking done. Which, based on the above, they need. Either that or the AI bots have been disabled for the Open Beta maybe? @TechThief said he did a run with bots (that didn’t shoot anything) so it must have worked last weekend.
I did see mention of a possible workaround to try a force a session with bots by changing your Party Privacy setting from Open to Closed. In the in-game menus, go to Social, then down the bottom left should be an indicator of your current Party Privacy - it’s Open by default. Hit the appropriate button (on PC it’s the P key, on Xbox ??) and you’ll get the options available. There’s 4 I think - set it to Closed, and try a run.
I just did, but it failed for me. First two attempts it gave me Matchmaking failed errors, third try it loaded me into a lobby, but I’m sure with real players, not AI bots. So I honestly don’t know if it’s working at all.
I wonder what would happen if you set Privacy to Friends Only? If there’s only you and no friends (or only one friend) would the game start with just you and your mate and fill the other two spots with AI?
Yeah when I played I had bots, but I think that was because the players I had played with left and were then filled with bots, interestingly when I got to a checkpoint two randoms were actually able to join me since they were also starting there, they then left shortly after as it sounded according to the chat that they were a bunch of hardcore tryhards in an open beta game…
I could not really see an option for bots only, I think I did change my privacy to friends only, but it did not seem to work, as I still got matched up with a random, it might just be an option to stop people from steam randomly joining you from a group or something, could also just be a bug, and as you say, perhaps they disabled the “bots only” option to try and sort out other aspects of the game regarding player matchmaking, or they could be aware of the bug I encountered and they are trying to stop people from playing with bots XD
I have some friends downloading the game as well, so will play tomorrow and see what I encounter with them.
I tried setting my privacy to friends and closed and still, the game attempted to matchmake. I saw the option for the solo campaign and I am hoping that this will be sustainable in the RC version.
I’ll try again perhaps today but I don’t see myself spending much time in the beta otherwise. I might try a game or two with others but if I can’t fill a party with friends, I don’t want to play with randoms.
Strongly recommend, if you are playing this weekend, to maybe hop into the MEW Multiplayer Sessions Discord channel and see if there’s anyone else online who is keen to play with you. Or to go look in the channel to see if there’s anyone waiting there who wants to play. Use the Discord channel to coordinate where to meet, what servers to join, etc. Obviously, you’ll also be able to coordinate any runs you do together a lot better then too.
My shower thought this morning was that if @Beo (for e.g.) has his privacy set to Friends, his list is presumably looking at his Xbox Friends list. If @TechThief or @DarthMol are also online and searching for Friends to play with, they’ll only seeing their online Steam friends. How would either person know the other was online and playing if they’re on completely different platforms?
It seems like it works much like I’ve experienced in Rocket League, where by you have your native Xbox list along with a cross platform list such as Epic.
Yes this is what I saw as well, i tried to see if I could like add friends using the WB account, but I don’t see such an option on their website. Although can some XBOX players test something for me, try adding me on XBOX, with the way windows 10 is, I have the XBOX app, and it should work
Friend added. See what happens.
cool seems to have worked, should now be able to see when each other is online playing back 4 blood
Right, so I played some more today, and bots are definitely bugged, one bot got stuck on the mounted mini-gun and could not leave until one of us forced it off of it, it does not even leave when you reach the safe house, and if it gets left behind at a place where you cannot get back to, it does not leave and you cannot complete the stage, so if anyone is playing be careful of bots, and try your best to play with players.
Lauch day, but PC only at midnight local time.
I see Xboxers are already able to play? Any initial thoughts @Beo?
Yeah, I just happened to be up at midnight so thought I would check out the tutorial section. There isn’t much of a tutorial and the general onboarding isn’t great in telling what to do. I’m still getting to grips with the hub, characters and their abilities, and the card system. I never spent much time with the beta either so it’s pretty much all new to me.
But gameplay-wise, what’s there to say, you can tell this is a spiritual successor to Left4Dead. It’s in the gameplay and the general feel of it all. The cinematics are great in my opinion, it gives it that movie kinda beat to it. But the bots can be a bit dumb and had them occasionally glitching or getting stuck on terrain or environment, sometimes just standing around and not shooting at anything. It’s definitely a game to be played with friends and communication will be essential. From what I could tell, I couldn’t see if friendly fire was enabled. I am however having some issues with the controls, at times the aiming feels slow and other times it feels overly fast, perhaps there needs to be an option for aim acceleration, or perhaps the aim assist is too strong. But these are settings that I can tinker with.
Overall, I haven’t spent enough time with it to tell or give a subjective opinion. I see “reviews” slating the game for its repeated level use and design, but c’mon, that’s what the game is about. REPLAYING! And in saying that, I am looking forward to getting more out of this, be it solo or with my wife perhaps. I am not one to go into public matchmaking and playing with randos.
