Left 4 Dead 2

Left 4 Dead 2

Overrun Mutation Pack
sharktemplar 26 Apr, 2023 @ 8:07pm
Could we get another version of Overrun with specials?
I REALLY love this mutation and use it as my go-to for whenever I play any custom campaigns on singleplayer because it flips the normal gameplay meta for l4d2 on its head. Usually, the game teaches you (through use of the director and random hordes particularly) to run ahead and get through the level as fast as possible before you run out of health or ammo, but this mutation encourages checking every nook and cranny for equipment that can be your crutch through sticky situations like a surprise map-side horde trigger, or a tank, or a gauntlet run. As a result, I move much slower through the maps and thus am more absorbed in the environment around me.

My only complaint is that I wish it still included special infected because of their ability to suddenly make the survivor(s) switch up their strategy on the fly, and it helps to break up the tedium of vanilla common slaying which this mutation dials up to 11, thus making it feel tedious much faster as a result. Obviously, though, the specials would need to be heavily modified to make them fair in a solo or duo co-op scenario.
Here's my recommendations to rebalance them in ways I think would make adding them to Overrun an even better experience without sacrificing the principle of the mutation, which is of course to patiently scavenge, hoard equipment, and take your time.

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All Special infected:
1) spawn VERY infrequently, anywhere between once every 6-11 minutes.
2) have their scratch damage do twice as much versus a common infected on any given difficulty.
3) no longer have their music cues play when spawning in (if possible).
4) will rarely, if ever, spawn in more than one at a time.

Smokers:
1) have a substantially reduced tongue distance (achieved through tongue_range convar).
2) increased tongue fly speed (achieved through tongue_fly_speed convar).
3) no more smoker ai tongue firing delay (achieved through smoker_tongue_delay convar).
4) no more smoker tongue miss cooldown (achieved through tongue_miss_delay convar).
5) have considerably reduced health, and are only about thrice as durable as a common infected (achieved through z_gas_health convar).
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This results in them needing to close much more distance and be within 10-15 feet of a survivor in order to use their ability, prompting a survivor to pick a corner and hold it careful if in close quarters, or try to move out into the open where the smoker is the most vulnerable. As Overrun discourages going out in the open, a smoker pushing a survivor out into the open as the safest tactic available would be a fun switch-up.

Hunters:
1) will never pounce and instead run silently toward targets to scratch them
2) do not turn and leap away after taking damage (achieved through hunter_committed_attack_range convar).
3) have considerably reduced health, and are only about thrice as durable as a common infected (achieved through z_hunter_health convar).
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This results in hunters functioning as dead-silent auto-aggro'd common infected with boosted health, giving them the potential to jumpscare a survivor in close quarters who was patiently checking every room, and thus naturally teaching a survivor to always close doors behind them so a hunter that might be on the way will be forced to make noise before reaching them and doing damage. This means hunters, like smokers, are most dangerous in close quarters, shaking up and challenging the sense of absolute safety that close quarters usually brings in Overrun.

Jockeys:
1) will continually leap toward a survivor at any distance (achieveable via the z_jockey_leap_range 9000 and z_leap_interval 0 convars).
2) have slightly buffed leap power, making their leaps take them farther with each one (achieved through z_leap_power 500 convar).
3) have moderately reduced health, and are only about 4x as durable as a common infected (achieved through z_jockey_health convar).
4) will not use scratch melee on survivors/does heavily reduced scratch damage to survivors, but will still use it to break down doors or breakable objects in the map.
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This results in jockeys essentially being harder to hit due to constantly leaping off the ground over and over, as well as closing distance to a spotted survivor faster than any other special infected. This prompts the survivor to spray and pray in a panic and backpedal at full speed to buy themselves more firing time once the jockey is spotted, making the most effective tactic to deal with jockeys cause the survivor to break out of stealth and fire their weapon wildly. Such a break of stealth can attract many commons if out in the open, or prompt the survivor to hide in a room as they hear the jockey approaching so as to avoid an instant ride-grapple.

Boomers:
1) have substantially increased health and can tank roughly half a magazine of bullets from tier-2 rifles
2) have no vomit delay after acquiring a target (achieved through boomer_vomit_delay convar).
3) will immediately seek cover if spotted at a distance (achieved through boomer_exposed_time_tolerance convar).
4) move slightly faster than normal.
5) can vomit repeatedly with no cooldown (achieved with z_vomit_interval convar).
6) recover from a stumble faster than the survivor's bash cooldown, meaning spam-bashing will not prevent the boomer from vomiting unless you 'juggle' bash him with a friend in co-op.
7) will not use scratch melee on survivors/does heavily reduced scratch damage to survivors, but will still use it to break down doors or breakable objects in the map.
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This results in boomers not only having the capacity to summon all the large quantities of idling commons spawned in in the survivor's near region, but since being vomited on shakes your view violently and can ruin your aim while a boomer will repeatedly vomit on you until dead or you move away from/bash it, it can seriously impact your ability to not only deal with the massive horde now closing in, but also your ability to retreat if you're in close quarters so long as the boomer is still alive, forcing a survivor to focus the boomer first and the horde second, wasting valuable retreat time.
This makes boomers extremely effective ambush specials in close quarters that do no direct damage to you, effectively being able to lock you in place until they are killed, making them exceptionally dangerous by maximizing the power of horde summoning, which makes sense since the main gimmick of Overrun is enormous zombie count.

Spitters:
1) have no cooldown for their spit ability (achieved through z_spit_interval convar).
2) move moderately faster than normal (achieved through z_spitter_speed convar).
3) can spit from substantially farther away (achieved through z_spitter_range convar).
4) have faster flying spit that can travel as far as the spitter is able to target a survivor before the spitball drops to the ground (achieved through z_spit_velocity convar).
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This results in spitters essentially acting as long-range area-of-denial that will fulfill their vanilla purpose of flushing a survivor out of a corner or chokepoint but with much greater efficiency and from much farther away. Spitters will now spit anywhere from once to as much as 4 times in a row before retreating for cover so long as line of sight with a survivor goes unbroken. Combine this with their vastly buffed range and faster movement speed and they are virtually guaranteed to always get the first shot off before dying unless the survivor uses a sniper. Overrun spitters shine brightest out in the open where they are hard to aim at while continually pelting you with spit puddles that force you to break stealth and repeatedly move out of each one as it appears, which further stunts your ability to aim precisely at the ranges the spitter is engaging you with.

Chargers:
1) will never use their charge ability (achieved through z_charge_duration 0 convar).
2) have moderately increased health (achieved through z_charger_health 1000 convar).
3) scratch melee attack does 3x the damage of a common infected hit on any given difficulty.
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This results in chargers functioning as miniature tanks that are designed to push a survivor out of an enclosed space because the survivor needs more running distance to stay away from the charger OR push the survivor deeper into close quarters and force them into a room and shut the door so as to have a door between them and the charger upon its arrival. Similar to jockeys but with no auto-capture ability, chargers being spotted/heard will prompt a survivor to break stealth and backpedal to avoid damage, as chargers cannot be bashed like jockeys. Should a charger manage to close all distance with a survivor, then it'll be capable of downing them in only a small handful of hits even on <expert difficulties.
Chargers will thus become the most important special infected to prepare for via equipment choice, and will drastically bolster the value of explosive ammo packs which can cause a charger to stumble with each shot, buying precious time to create distance and do more damage to him.
===

Part 1/2, see first comment below.
Last edited by sharktemplar; 26 Apr, 2023 @ 8:20pm
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Showing 1-1 of 1 comments
sharktemplar 26 Apr, 2023 @ 8:07pm 
Part 2/2

Now, I know witches are already in Overrun, but they need some serious tweaks to compliment Overrun's gameplay loop if you ask me. They are far too easy to bypass or crown, which is a serious shame given the HUGE potential they have to shake up a survivor's strategy with a mutation that has them already moving slowly, scouring every room, and firing their weapon way, way, way more often than vanilla, so hear me out...

Witches:
1) should not be crownable like in vanilla realism
2) should have substantially more health to circumvent autoshotguns being cheesy witch-deletion weapons that basically do the same thing as crowning but with multiple shots at once (z_witch_health 2500)
3) should be able to hear gunshots from much farther away (z_witch_threat_normal_range 1500 ((which is actually the max for the convar, it simply ignores values higher than this in witch ai behavior)) and z_witch_threat_hostile_range 1600 which must always be a higher value than normal_range to avoid buggy witch ai behavior)
4) should anger much slower (z_witch_anger_rate 0.015)
5) should calm down slightly slower (z_witch_relax_rate 0.03)
6) should get angry from repeated gunshots/melee swings happening in her 1500 vicinity substantially faster (z_witch_hostile_at_me_anger 25)
7) should have substantially larger personal space (z_witch_personal_space 400)
8) should get angry toward survivors who are in her personal space substantially faster (already achieved by the z_witch_hostile_at_me_anger convar above)
9) should notice flashlights from twice as far away (z_witch_flashlight_range 800)
10) should get angry from flashlights in her flashlight vicinity substantially faster (already achieved by the z_witch_hostile_at_me_anger convar above)
11) should have a longer attack range to prevent witch swipes occasionally not hitting the survivor due to janky witch navigation or intentional ai manipulation via the environment (z_witch_attack_range 130)
12) should be considerably faster to make up for instances where she is triggered from much farther away thanks to her buffed convars as well as counteract ai navigation cheesing that buys the survivor more time in the chase without them actually running farther away (z_witch_speed 400)
13) should be substantially faster while burning (z_witch_speed_inured 350)
14) should take substantially longer to burn to death (z_witch_burn_time 50)
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Using the above convars, the witch I've meticulously built is designed to discourage any form of kill-based violence (gunfire OR melee swings, bashes don't count) in line of sight of the witch (up to a certain distance until she no longer cares). The range at which she can hear you shooting, spot your flashlight, or notice you looking directly at her are all significantly increased. The more you shoot a gun/look at her/shine a light at her while in her line of sight, the faster she will get angry. This forces a survivor to get careful and creative in how they clear out and then move through that area.

Contrary to the vanilla witch, this type of witch is MORE dangerous out in an open area, not less, as it enables her to utilize her giga-buffed activity detection ranges and lock down a larger region that will stunt your ability to defend yourself if you're too close and have nothing to break her vision with. Given her buffed speed, health, attack range, and uncrownable stat, setting an Overrun witch off without a plan is a guaranteed death sentence for even veteran l4d2 players. This results in the survivor being forced to pick off commons near the witch without upsetting the witch or being anywhere near her, thus limiting which angles they can use and at what distance they can do it.

In the spirit of what VALVe themselves always intended with the witch, there are multiple methods to deal with her but the most ideal is to sneak by and ignore her, so I've gone ahead and made sure that's how this one works as well, but it's no easy feat.

I fine-tuned the witch to just barely be able to be run past in a straight line with unbroken LOS should there really be no better options for you, but you cannot stop or you won't have enough time to clear her insane aggro range, and you cannot look directly at her as having your crosshair near her while you approach her will double her anger rate (which frankly I didn't even know until I built this new witch, so it should be mentioned as a tip for survivors). This extremely not-ideal approach requires that ANY commons that might have otherwise been in your way have already been picked off, and no specials are about to surprise you as you're doing your witch sprint.
For witches that spawn directly in your path and literally must be dealt with, you'll want a molotov and an adrenaline, as fire slows her down, but she will still be able to run much faster than you, meaning you'll need a fair bit of the map to run back through to survive the chase before she burns. Either that, or bring a weapon that can headshot her and stun lock her with bashes (deagle, sniper, etc). Due to Overrun's instant bash cooldown trigger though, this is still a VERY dicey and uncomfortable solution, but it works. If a survivor doesn't know how to headshot stunlock, they're likely not ready to handle a difficulty-boosting mutation like Overrun anyway ;).

Wandering Witches:
1) should have their alert fuse moderately increased (z_witch_wander_personal_time 15)
2) should have their personal space drastically increased (z_witch_wander_personal_space 900)
3) should have their detect-nearby-violence auto-alert radius drastically increased (z_witch_wander_hear_radius 775)
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This results in a wandering witch that can see from much farther away, but will get angry slower, giving you a bit more time to try and figure out where you are being spotted from and break LOS with her. She also acts as a slowly moving LOS-based don't-attack bubble, with her hearing radius being smaller than her overall spotting radius. This causes the witch alert music to play when you enter her spotting radius, but still gives survivors a small and fair window to hear that music and stop firing if they currently were, so as to avoid unfair scenarios where the witch is immediately set off because a survivor didn't realize how close she was from a different direction.
She works similar to the sitting Overrun witch, where the main objective is keeping LOS broken with her, because if LOS with her is held, not only are you on a timer to break it, you cannot fire a weapon/swing a melee even once, or she will go off, which makes her even more dangerous and effective at shutting down a survivor's ability to kill commons than her sitting counterpart depicted above.
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I very much love this mutation and haven't found a better one since, but it always annoys me that it has essentially removed content from the game by erasing specials and, in my opinion, improperly utilizing the bosses for the way the mutation fundamentally alters the gameplay loop.

If you've read this far Overrun author, would you consider updating this mutation to have some sort of 'elite' version that includes the above changes? It'd make the mutation perfect in my eyes, balancing every aspect of all the zombies in a way that stays fair to the survivor(s) without outright removing the threats they pose entirely or falling back into the obnoxious vanilla meta of hurrying up or rushing through areas to avoid getting caught by director-triggered surprises.

Thanks!
Last edited by sharktemplar; 26 Apr, 2023 @ 8:29pm
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