Who Is This Game For? A Back 4 Blood Deep Dive
Back 4 Blood falls into a strange position for me: it’s a game that I have spent a little under 200 hours playing that I have had some of my greatest frustrations with. I’ve really rallied for the game and developer Turtle Rock Studios as I believe there’s no other game like it. Or rather, no other game with potential like it.
On a macro level view of the game’s design, it combines the RNG of rogue-like loot progression, the strategy of deck building, and the fast paced blitz that tests a team’s coordination which is key for co-op shooters. The result is a game that can provide great replayability with testing builds and finding new ways to fill your niche in the team.
Unfortunately, after almost a full year of playing the game on and off, I’m left wondering if I’m the target audience for it. It’s okay if I’m not, I can just move on and play something else. But I’m not sure and that’s the problem. There’s hope and confusion, a taxing combination.
The game has seen a number of changes to its system which have been hard to comprehend from the limited feedback developers have provided on their choices.
Patches Speak Louder Than Words
I had to know that I wasn’t crazy. That this belief the game was moving in a good direction wasn’t unfounded. So I went through every patch note Turtle Rock has published with special attention given to the Developer Notes sprinkled within. (For the sake of brevity, I’ve excluded Hotfixes that strictly addressed bugs.)
November 21, 2021
The devs said they had found the cause of the special spawn rates being a matter of the A.I. director duplicating their cards and that they had rolled out a fix that should address most instances of it. I remember for my group, the issues somehow only got worse.
We also received some balance changes to cards, most of which were aimed at reducing the efficiency of melee builds.
December 16, 2021
This was a big one. The dev notes indicated that based on player feedback, slow and steady combat felt underperforming and speedrunning needed to be reigned in. Changes were made to corruption cards so that bosses wouldn’t spawn as early because Turtle Rock wanted the difficulty to ramp up as an Act went on. They also wanted to reduce the difficulty spike between difficulties, a long known issue with the game. They even made special ridden less effective, easier to dodge, and less damaging when they landed a hit.
This was a solid update for my group. We felt like the point of actually playing the game, rather than cheesing and rushing past it, was being prioritized.
February 9, 2022
Turtle Rock continues to make improvements to the game, including adjusting their card design to limit drawbacks that “don’t meaningfully add to the gameplay.”
A lot of attention was put into increasing the viability of slow and steady approaches to levels. Another solid patch for my group.
April 12, 2022
Tunnels of Terror launches. It’s a cool expansion and the tunnels add nice replayability and variety.
A new difficulty had been teased up to this point and the hopes for my group were that it’d be between Veteran and Nightmare. They added No Hope. For a game where so few people have beaten it on Veteran difficulty, a mode was added that would be harder than anything yet. The last thing I’ll note with this patch is it brought legendary items which were fun but could not have weapon mods attached. I understand the balance reason but it kind of negates a subsystem of the game which strikes me as odd, i.e. scavenging for weapon mods.
June 7, 2022
This patch fundamentally changed the game for the better. We got full deck draw, massively improving the difficulty hump of early levels when we were running with so few cards.
They added cool features like being able to use toolkits on first aid cabinets, providing more use to these utility items. They also updated Holly, giving her abilities that made her suited for a wider variety of playstyles.
August 30, 2022
While I went into this patch with excitement, it quickly proved to be lackluster. New legendary items were added but their spawn rates were low and they were rarely seen. The bow is cool, but you can’t reliably build a deck around it.
New unlockables were achievable through Duffel Bags which upped the grind required to play the newest cards. A lot of the new items felt underwhelming and players, like my group, experienced bear traps spawning under them. Not to mention the first Act is a go go go level with little time for breathing.
The Dissonance
Notes from the developers seem to indicate a desire for a variety of playstyles all built around a team’s coordination and role fulfillment. When it was perceived that melee and speed decks were outperforming, they were brought in line. Other playstyles were buffed with the removal of drawbacks to cards and stronger effects.
This is great! But the game remains frustrating and I think there’s a clear culprit in the matter.
A Loss of Agency
My greatest complaint with the game is the A.I. Director, starting with how it will pair Corruption Cards. It has been stated that the intent behind them is to change the way a team approaches a level. But what tools are we given to change our approach?
If you have a healer, their deck is irrelevant when you draw Break Time, Festering Ridden, or Pure Chaos. Someone running a scavenger deck? Cost of Avarice negates that for the level. Is your team trying to play slow and methodical? Onslaught keeps the horde coming and Toxic Spill means you better keep killing ridden or you’ll burn out on health.
With no side decks to draw from and change our approach on the fly, some players suddenly become useless because the A.I. Director decided so.
The A.I. Director Is A Hostile DM
Then there’s the matter of how the A.I. Director controls the Ridden. Common zig and zag, going for the flank and making it hard to mow them down effectively. Compare this to the Infected in Turtle Rock’s previous entries who always make a beeline for the players and it’s a huge upgrade in challenge.
The common already present a sizable threat, (especially with Corruption Cards like Festering and Sprinting Ridden active), and then you’re also up against the mutated variants. Issues with their spawning aside (which has fluctuated since launch), they play with a lethality that feels cruel and unforgiving.
The tallboys spin around in an instant, pulverizing you. The Reeker mutations will wait till you're near a ledge to send you to your immediate death or puke out of the back of their heads and quickly sprint to safety before attempting another retch.
These mutations are given access to PvP style abilities that include knockup, knockback, and other crowd controlling effects with the precision of an A.I. wielding them. In the case of players using these abilities, you understand the acceptability of them as skill expression will play a large part in their efficacy. Giving the same tools to a lethal A.I. that seems hellbent on killing the players as quickly as possible rather than presenting a great challenge is just frustrating.
A State of Decay
I saw a post the other day on the Back4Blood subreddit claiming it was unfair to give Secondary Objectives of setting off no alarms and then setting alarmed doors on critical pathways in a level.
The most upvoted comments were basically “get good”. They were told to buy more toolkits for this possibility, to which they said they were playing solo and could not afford to buy numerous toolkits that early in the run (the character A.I. will not use theirs, an issue that has been on the Trello for some time).
Every response of theirs was downvoted. Every response telling them to get over it and deal with the loss was upvoted. Many players suggested summoning a horde and letting a sleeper hit them to cheese it.
As with the speedrunning days, there seem to be a lot of solutions to challenges in the game that rely on cheesing rather than tried and true cooperation. I think it’s also worth noting that a majority of players proclaiming their Nightmare and No Hope victories do so from Solo play. A majority of videos for the game, including videos of runs and tips, are for Solo.
For those of us trying to run with a dedicated team, there’s a lot less content to work with.
Questions Unanswered
This blog was inspired by countless hours with friends venting our frustration with a game we see potential in. Our deepest frustration stems from the questions we repeatedly ask after another frustrating attempt to play the game:
If we are meant to specialize in our builds, why do corruption cards negate builds?
If we are meant to scavenge, why throw endless hordes our way?
Why is the A.I. Director given such lethal tools that take us out of play?
Why are cards balanced to a degree where some outperform others by leaps and bounds?
Why do we need to rely on burn cards to adjust around corruption cards?
Are we playing wrong?
If so, what’s the right way to play?
Who is this game for?