Left 4 Dead Hands-on Preview - Survivor Side
REPUTATION
Some of you, and rightfully so, might be concerned with friendly fire. It is no great mystery that there are people in this world that, for whatever reason, like to give other people headaches. In a game like Left 4 Dead, with only 4 people per team, having one moron is far too many. Turtle Rock has implemented a couple game systems to take care of this.
The first and most basic is an integrated voting system. Anyone at any time can bring up the vote menu and start a vote, and everyone else votes yes or no. Some of the options I remembered were setting the next scenario you play, changing the scenario right away, kicking players, and even banning certain players from using grenades! This is a very useful feature, and a godsend that it will be included and running on every Left 4 Dead server.
The real reason you shouldn't have to worry about griefing is the reputation system. The basic premise is simple: for doing certain actions you will get rewarded with a permanent award that will stick with you throughout your time playing Left 4 Dead, and will result in a sort of reputation that others can view. For example, every time you shoot a teammate you get a friendly fire demerit (bad). There are three kinds of awards: Achievements, which include difficult goals like surviving a map without dying; Awards, which are good things you do, such as reviving a teammate, giving away a health kit to someone in need, and saving someone from a zombie about to attack them from behind; and Demerits/Faults, which are bad things which include blowing up a Boomer near teammates, friendly fire, angering the Witch, and jumping in front of someone else's bullets (reckless). There are a ton of these achievements, ranging from being an Expert Headhunter to completing an entire campaign without using the flashlight at all.
The way this system is implemented is really cool - while you're playing, when you do the action that constitutes receiving one, like shooting a teammate, on the UI next to your name everyone can see that you got it. This gives instant feedback to the entire team, so if you do get shot or somebody shoots a Boomer right by you, there's no wondering who did it - you all know who to blame. At the end of each map, while loading at the checkpoint, the scoreboard screen comes up showing each of the survivors and what achievements they received during that section of the map. This serves as a very good way to keep track of how everybody is doing. It's fun and informative to check out what achievements everyone got, and to laugh/get angry at the moron with the friendly fire x7 and the other long list of demerits. Also on this scoreboard you can switch to see achievements earned during the entire current campaign and then the permanent record of each person.
The way this will curb idiotic playing and result in a much more enjoyable experience for everyone is that nobody will want a bad reputation. If you're the type that wants to go out there and kill as many teammates as possible and just be an ass in general, it will show. The next time you join a server, the people playing will be able to view your reputation, and to prevent future headaches they'll just use the integrated voting system and kick you out.
We were told the reputation system is still under heavy development, and that it could change a lot before release. It already performed its function really well and added a lot to gameplay. I can't wait to see how it turns out.
NEXT: Health and Death system >>
