Back 4 Blood

November 2021 Update Stream Recap & More.

We hear your concerns about the game's difficulty across all platforms following the November 2021 Update and we’d like to address them directly.

Sometimes a bit of difficulty can add a lot of replayability, but as of right now there are issues and bugs we’ve encountered in development that are making it far more difficult than intended.

Difficulty needs to be our “baby bear” in Back 4 Blood’s Goldilocks story. It needs to be “just right.” We want it tense. We want it challenging. We want you barely squeaking into the saferoom with a horde hot on your heels and you feeling that rush. We do not want it unmanageable. We do not want it to be unfair. That is our mission. Players must have agency. They must win and lose, prevail or perish, by their own actions. Skill, planning, and teamwork should carry the day. That’s the goal. Part of reaching that goal is finding the right balance -- just right -- through constant adjustment to the various card systems, spawning systems, AI director, and other facets that affect gameplay.

With that in mind, let's go over our main focuses and priorities together (some of which have already been resolved):

• The rate at which the Ridden Mutations spawn is high. We believed the recent fix for Specials frequently duplicating their spawn cards fully addressed the increased difficulty and... we spoke too soon. Throughout the process, we identified another major cause of the unintended increased difficulty and we are actively working on a solution. We will nail this and continue crafting a game that improves over time.
  
  
• Trauma damage was being dealt out way too quickly. After we saw several Reddit posts regarding this issue, as well as conversations within our Turtle Rock Studios Discord server, we immediately began an internal investigation. We were able to quickly identify this issue, verify the bug fix, and deploy a server-side patch. Players did not need to update the game to get this fix, but please note if you are playing offline in Training, then you will still encounter this issue as the fix was only applied to our servers. This fix will be implemented for offline play in our next downloadable patch.
  
  
• We want to support a variety of playstyles in Back 4 Blood; however, it’s apparent that speedrunning seems to currently be the most viable method for higher difficulties. We understand the frustrations that come with queuing into a team where a teammate is using a speedrun deck and leaves the rest of the team behind. We don’t want that to happen. We’re working towards addressing this in future patches.
  
  
• Changes made to melee cards in the November 2021 Update were intended to bring melee builds in-line with other viable builds. Sometimes we inadvertently make abilities, weapons, cards or combinations too OP. Sometimes we have to address it. And sometimes nerfs gotta happen. We know how it feels to have something you enjoy in-game be nerfed. But we believe these balance changes better the game. We intend on continually making adjustments that will further smooth out gameplay and nothing is ever set in stone. Game development is fluid and we are 100% committed to constantly balancing and rebalancing the experience. We would also like to include future card changes as part of larger updates in order to provide the team with adequate time to thoroughly test how individual card changes can impact deck builds as a whole.

We hope that this post and today’s livestream[www.twitch.tv] help answer some of the questions and address some of the comments you have in regard to the November 2021 Update, and we totally understand if these materials lead to more questions and comments. Ask ‘em! Post ‘em! We love you bunches and love hearing from you. We’ll set aside time in next week’s livestream to go through any we can.

At this point we may sound like a broken record calling the horde down to the bar, but we really do appreciate your patience and support and we really do -- no, really -- encourage you to keep filling out bug reports and letting us know how you feel. Please continue to send over your inquiries and feedback to the Customer Support Site![wbgamessupport.wbgames.com] Our team actively monitors and reviews submissions to the site, and we thoroughly read through all constructive feedback. Other resources we can offer at this time include our TRS Discord[discord.com] as well as our Trello Board,[trello.com] but note that information we share on these platforms are not by any means exhaustive.

Thanks so much.

Keep on slayin’.

- TRS Development Team