SYSTEM
- Make crosshair show accuracy with a second layer of crosshair, so that there will be space at the point of aim for the sake of visibility when at 100% accuracy.
- Ditto, make crosshair unaffected by accuracy while using/holding a melee weapon.
- Make common stats like move speed, reload speed, stamina, accuracy, etc, summed and placed together, so players can check their stats in a glimpse without having to keep track of how much potency per stack per card.
- Make everyone's healing efficiency visible above their head when holding a healing item. And display healer's healing efficiency as well as receiver's received healing rate next to the progress bar.
- *received healing: There will be cards that increase or reduce received healing, e.g. the Charitable Soul (in part 2) and the Corrosive Skin (part 3).
- Display sprinting stamina efficiency next to the stam bar while sprinting.
- The hand sway from movement and the recoil animation could be more intense to reflect the hipfire bloom, since it's very odd to see bullet tracers going way off despite the gun pointing straight ahead.
- Add alternative use to Propane Tanks and Gas Canisters that plants the object firmly on the ground bypassing physics, so they won't roll on a slope.
GENERAL
- Make 25/50% of the Sleeper spots on Recruit/Veteran to spawn Sleeper bed without a Sleeper in them to help players learn the sleeper spots on these difficulties.
- Police vehicles should have high chance to contain at least a bulk of ammo of random type.
- Grant police vehicles a small chance to contain smaller weapons e.g. pistols.
- Similarly, there should be SWAT trucks as the weaponry counterpart to ambulances that could contain medical items.
TRAUMA
“Trauma in B4B is interesting for setting up a rule that basically says players cannot simply use healing to nullify the mistake they made, while also making health related resource to be broadly relevant without leaving too much healing laying around - in order to cater a gameplay structure that formats after head-on attacks where both parties trade health in some sort of tug-of-war fashion, compared to how the game's predecessor - Left 4 Dead - emphasized on coordinated ambush with the widespread capabilities on the special infected to suppress human players, especially on certain key points on the map.
However, the game could oftentimes inflict too much trauma, especially on the higher difficulties where the trauma of specific instances are scaled up when the typical damage output against human players are already increased along the way, resulting more trauma. To ameliorate this, and to also make the extra life attribute more viable, I think these changes can be made: ”
- Rework how trauma works to that it inflicts 50% the trauma value immediately and the other 50% gradually, and the gradual trauma can be stopped via normal health healing.
- All instances of gradual trauma will be added together, turning into real trauma at the rate of 0.1 per 0.4s.
- Incapacitation (getting downed) by default should inflict little to no trauma, down to 2/4/6/8 across different difficulties.
- Dying (downing without life remaining) still inflicts noticeable amount of trauma: 8/10/12/16 plus the trauma from the damage that caused it.
- Instead of fully negating trauma damage as long as there is 1 temp health, trauma can be dealt through the temp health but is 50% resisted (plus any additional trauma resistance) when it meets temp health.
- Cleaners have built-in trauma resistances:
- +20/15/10/5% while current health is ≥80/75/65/60/% of the max.
- There is a notch in the health bar indicating the threshold where the build-in trauma resistance is at its max.
- +10% while at full health (e.g. at 80/80 health while having 100 max health and 20 trauma).
TEMP HEALTH
- Increase temp health decay delay to 5s after applying, and reduce temp health decay rate to 1 temp health per 2s.
- New sub-type of health: Bolstered temp health.
- This is any temp health inside the bolstered health capacity.
- Taking damage with bolstered temp health will not inflict trauma, which works on a point-by-point basis.
- It doesn't matter it was temp health being bumped into bolstered health capacity or it is bolstering temp health.
- *bolstering temp health: Just like temp health except it simultaneously grants bolstered health capacity, which is temporary and will fade away as the corresponding bolstering temp health decays or depletes.
- Receive 5 bolstering temp health while having full health with 100 max health and 20 trauma (at 80/80 health lacking 20) doesn't give you 80/80 normal health plus 5 bolstered temp health, but +5 (flat value) bolstered health capacity and brings your health to 80/80 plus 5 temp health.
- Overheal works the same: +10% overheal means 100 normal health healing that'd otherwise be wasted will become 10 temp health, which is capable of temporarily cover up trauma and fill into bolstered health capacity.
TEMP DAMAGE
- Temp damage will begin to turn back into normal health or temp health depending on the type of health that sustained the damage - at the default rate of 0.1 health per 0.1s after 20s since the damage dealt.
- Unlike all instances temp health ticking together, each instance of temp damage will be ticking separately.
- *each instance will be ticking separately: For example, taking 1 instance of 5 temp damage and 1 instance of 10 temp damage at the same time means that after the recovery delay, you will be recovering 0.2 temp damage per 0.1s for 5s and then recover 0.1 temp damage for 5s, while sustaining further temp damage will not interfere with the existing recovery.
- Temp damage will not inflict trauma.
ELEMENTAL DAMAGE
- Elemental damage types are: explosive, fire, acid, cyro, electro, toxic, bleed, and psychic.
- Elemental damage types are only half resisted by generic/global damage resistance as if they reduces this non-specific resistance by 0.5x.
- Ditto, the psychic type is resisted even less by generic damage resistance, only 0.25x, as if there is a 0.75x reduction.
HEALING ITEMS
- Pain Med:
- Temp health from 35/45/55/65 to 30/45/60/75.
- Also apply a Pain Med buff that gives +10/15/20/25% trauma resistance, lasting 15s.
- Bandage:
- Normal health heal from 25/30/35/40 to 30/40/50/60.
- Trauma heal from 0/0/0/0 to 4/8/12/16.
- Re-use chance from 0/10/15/20% to 0/0/0/0%.
- Vendor price is still 150c.
- First Aid:
- Use time from 3s to 6s.
- Normal health heal from 50/75/100/125 to 60/90/120/150.
- Trauma heal from 0/5/10/15 to 10/20/30/40.
- Vendor price from 300c to 400c.
- Defibrillator:
- Revived health on dead teammate from 40/60/80/100% to 30/45/60/75% (still at 40/60/80/100% for reviving incapped teammate).
- Also applies a debuff that gives -25% stamina regen and -20% stamina efficiency for 20s/10s on dead/incap teammate.
- Overall, more trauma will be dealt, but trauma recovery and trauma heal will also become more available, too. It depends on how well players play the game as well as how well health resources are utilized. The key difference is in trauma will no will be something that can be completely cheesed with temp health.
FRIENDLY FIRE
“While Back 4 Blood could still cater slow, methodical approaches, its action aspect oftentimes gets so intense that the Friendly Fire mechanic becomes more so a hinderance instead of adding to the experience.
To improve the gameplay experience where it meets Friendly Fire, the lowest difficulty should still have a tiny degree of FF in order to educate players its presence and prepare them for the higher difficulties, while a portion of FF damage could be temporary - to improve the unhealthy dependence between it and Down In Front.”
- Recruit:
- FF percentage from none to 10%.
- Friendly Fire cannot incapacitate/down teammates
- 50% of the FF damage dealt will turn to temp damage. Temp damage will not inflict trauma even if it's not FF.
- Veteran:
- FF percentage from 35% to 20%.
- 50% of the FF damage dealt will turn to temp damage.
- Nightmare:
- FF percentage from 60% to 30%.
- 50% of the FF damage dealt will turn to temp damage.
- No Hope:
- FF percentage change to 30%
- 0% of the FF damage dealt will turn to temp damage.
REVIVE SPEED
- Revive speed is only half affected by generic/global use speed as if it gets reduced by 0.5x.
MOVE SPEED AND SPRINT SPEED
- Change sprinting to increase movement speed with a 1.5x multiplier, and will provide +20% slow resistance while sprinting.
- Change the sprint speed to based on the move speed.
- Sprint speed example 1: If base move speed is 450, then having +20% sprint speed means (450 *1.5) +90.
- Sprint speed example 2: If base move speed is 450, then having -10%/20% move/sprint speed means ([450 -45] *1.5) -81.
IN-GAME ECONOMY
“Having an in-game economy aspect is really fun as it allows players manage and strategize with a versatile currency that they will be able to invest, make use, and think about, while getting a good idea on the wind condition they're facing, and I hope these changes will be able to push B4B's economy a bit deeper. ”
- Increase the primary objective copper amount to 150/100/100/100 base plus 150/125/100/100 times the alive count.
- Each Cleaner's default primary and secondary weapons will always be listed in the Vendor for the corresponding Cleaner.
- Instead of Vendor offering randomized discount, each cleaner will automatically enjoy 20% discount on their default items.
- Vendor will highlight (recommend) certain item in certain level, such as:
- Tool Kit in "Resurgence"
- Firecracker and Pipe Bomb in "Cabins by the Lake".
- Secondary mission "Blood Sample (find special container)" only tracks the person that carries the package.
VENDOR TRAITS
- Each cleaner will be designated with various vendor traits that's similar to scavenger card types: offense, support, quick item, weapon, ammo, and copper, for providing teamwide discount in the Vendor.
- Offense: 5% discount to this type of item in the Vendor.
- Support: 5% discount to this type of item in the Vendor.
- Quick Item: 5% discount to this type of item in the Vendor.
- Weapon: 10% discount to this type of item in the Vendor.
- This affects weapon attachments on a higher, 15% ratio.
- Ammo: Refills 25% all ammo at the start of each level.
- Any excess will be dropped to the ground automatically.
- Copper: Gain 200 copper per level (self only).
- Vendor trait distribution:
- Evangelo = Copper and offense.
- Holly = Copper and support.
- Walker = Ammo and weapon, plus offense.
- Mom = Support and quick item.
- Doc = Support and support (stacks).
- Hoffman = Offense and offense.
- Jim = Weapon and ammo.
- Karlee = Copper and copper.
- Sharice = Support and quick item.
- Heng = Quick item and ammo.
- "Prophet" = None and copper.
- Tala = None and copper.
- ======
- "Jade" = Ammo and ammo.
- Lt. Volkova = Quick item and weapon.
- Andreas = Weapon and weapon.
- "Seraphen" = None and none.
- "Yakuza" = None and copper, plus ammo.
- "Techie" = None and copper, plus copper.
- "Zerker" = None and copper.
- "Banker" = Copper and copper, plus copper.
- "Raider" = Offense and quick item.
- The first listed vendor trait will be doubly effective.
- Vendor Trait effectiveness example:
- Doc = Both vendor traits are support = 15% discount to all support accessories in the vendor and another 20% on the ones that she starts with (Bandage will be 35% cheaper from these discounts).
- Walker = Ammo and weapon, plus offense = Refills 50% ammo at the start of each level, 10% discount to weapons, 15% discount to attachments, plus 5% discount to offense accessories.
- Karlee = Copper and copper = Gain 400+200 copper at the start of each level.