Cards seem to be modifiers. Less damage taken, more damage given, etc.
You’re given three choices, and you must select one from the three, then you’re rolled another three to pick from, until you have selected three (from nine total random cards).
Cards selected are added to your ‘active’ cards, which always starts with your character’s card. Obviously holds all the cards that your person has on them during this campaign. No way to switch characters? Extra space for cards, so ways to save cards between campaigns, or add cards during campaigns?
At the top is “Corruption Cards”, showing ridden and special ridden. Not sure if selectable by players. Difficulty modifiers? Used by Versus (not revealed yet?), negative modifiers maybe? Used by the system to determine what ridden are in the campaign (like a mutation, maybe?). Your guess is as good as mine.
Your cards don’t seem to be shown to other players, just your character, name.
You may ready up once you’ve decided on cards.
You load into the starting area as soon as you ready.
Opening Pause/Escape Menu seems to be bound to... [S]? Why you do that?
You leave the lobby and load in immediately after you ready, even if other players have not . Starting area can’t be left without everyone ready/loaded in.
This character started with 169 health?
Character started with an AK, pistol, and a medkit.
TAB lets you see your card again.
There’s a loot crate in the safe area that lets you buy items for (in game) money (copper). This character loaded in with 250 copper; there did also seem to be cards that could increase your findings. Objects for sale included most of the standard items (no weapons) you’re familiar with, but there’s a few notes:
No pipebomb; instead there’s a frag grenade. Firecrackers are entirely new; not sure how they work. In addition to pain pills and medkits, there are bandages. There’s no adrenaline shot. Also for purchase, are defibrillators and ammo packs, and something called a ‘tool kit’. Medkits are the most expensive item.
Items are on nice little rows, so that the throwing items are one one row, the healing items are one a row, and the last row has defibrillator, tool kit and ammo pack.
Loot crate has a section for attachments, which seems mostly for sights/scopes for guns? Since in this game you can ADS (aim down sights), better zoom/less movement penalties while doing so is probably what these are for. Player skips over them, so difficult to assess what they do, or if there’s more than sights.
Loot crate lets you buy ammo, which is now separated by gun type (eg, shotgun). Ammo types seem general enough, there’s only a few different ones.
Finally, loot crate seems to let you buy improvements to your weapons; I’m guessing they apply either broadly to all of your guns or to a specific gun type (see ammo), and not a specific gun.
For a reason I haven’t quite figured out, the player (and presumably all the players) gain a perk “Team Health”, that raises this particular player’s health from previously stated 169 to 182. My conclusion is that one of the remaining players still picking cards has chosen this card park.
General conversation about the map/situation starts once the last player/character loads in, like one might expect.
This starting area is in fact a checkpoint/safe area, so there’s a door at the top of some stairs leading out. The players only find it shortly after the last player loads.
Similar to lobby, you’re given another random three cards, and you must choose one of them. Unlike at lobby, though, it only happens once, so you only add one perk.
Of course, you can see all of the cards you have currently on this screen, which may include some that your teammates have collectively given the whole team.
You have four minutes this time. I’m guessing this also is to account for load times/connection issues.
Once you decide, you can immediately go into the safe room. The door will not allow you to open it, saying that it is waiting for players, as suspected.
Also as expected, there’s another vendor crate here. There doesn’t immediately appear to be any items just around for pickup.
Upper-left; connection icons. For this particular play-through, there’s a clock with a “warning” symbol on it throughout the duration. I’d guess something like high ping, since it’s a four day beta and servers would be strained. That said, I don’t notice anything particularly odd during the play-through. So all this icon really tells me is.. that’s where these icons would go.
Mid-left: Funds. Pretty easy, tells you your copper amounts. Do I need to know that during zombie fights? Not sure.
Lower-left: Survivor HUD. If you’re familiar with that other game, you know what to expect here. Pretty much everything is the same. Portrait of the character on the right along with a new “strikes” indicator, items on the top right, player name in the enter, health on the bottom.
Bottom-left: Your survivor health. Placed under teammate survivors and a bit bigger, your version features just the basics; portrait and health meter, but you do get to see your health numerically in the center. Your items are shown on a different HUD, and your name is not shown at all.
Lower-right: Items and weapons: The other big HUD. First things first. On the very right edge of the screen it shows the buttons for quick-switching to that slot; 1 is primary, 2 is secondary, 3 is throwable, 4 is small health?, F is big health?
Weapons have a bunch of extra HUD elements, most of which are faded when they don’t apply (eg, the weapon doesn’t have it). Things like: muzzle attachment, clip attachment, sight/scope, stock attachment.
Weapons also have a star rating, which are represented by pink stars lit up in their HUD. Seems to go from a basic 1 star to a 4 star. Upgradable via the merchant crate maybe?
Obviously Weapons also show an icon of their profile view.
At the left end of their HUD, weapons show ammo loaded and in reserves and an icon of their ammo type.
Lower-center: Subtitles. Nothing super fancy here. Fully working subtitles from what I can see. Even though they very clearly could have chosen not to include them, I did notice that they had special infected noises show up in subtitles, even though most games of late reserve this exclusively for intelligible speech (and also considering how helpful/decisive it was in L4D specifically). More difficult to read in my opinion if only because each line is center-aligned, rather than right-aligned. They’re also a bit high on the screen, sometimes.
Lower-Lower-center: Stamina bar. Seems like running lowers this. Your normal speed in this game is walking, so pressing [Shift] (I’m guessing) makes you sprint. Not sure what happens when you run out.
Center: Cross-hair! ...not a lot to say about this. It’s white by default, which seems to work pretty well, at least in this campaign, since it’s pretty moody. It blooms to show accuracy as you probably expect. Doesn’t seem to bloom when sprinting, so either that doesn’t effect accuracy or maybe you can’t shoot at all.
No flashlight. Although the maps can get dark at times, there’s always just enough light to see by edge lighting. F has been repurposed for using heathkit.
Alarmed doors seem like they’re not just a map-specific feature anymore, but more akin to alarmed cars. They are locked, so they cannot be opened by normal means; they must be broken through, which trips the alarm, causing a horde. I do not know currently if it’s possible and/or intended to take paths around them, like you can with alarmed cars.
Temporary health doesn’t seem to be a thing. Instead, health-giving items have been adjusted.
Applying things like painpills takes time, and you no longer give them to the recipient to hold, it seems.
You can aim down sights with your weapon, which presumably increases accuracy greatly, but slows down your character’s ability to move as you do it.
Guns can be modified with scopes/sights, grips, muzzles, etc.
You now have a form of currency that you may spend at vendor crates for throwables, healing items, upgrades.
Initial lobby card system allows you to play your character with different modifiers each time.
Guns fall under one of a few different types, and those types need a specific ammo. So thus, you can’t use pistol ammo in a shotgun or shotgun ammo in a rifle. Gone are the days where ammo is just “ammo”.
Stamina. Stemina is used by using melee and shoving. And, in contrast to L4D, you actually walk by default and can choose to sprint; but doing so uses up a stamina gauge. It also seems currently like you may be required to stop sprinting in order to shot or take other actions. If your stamina runs out your character starts panting and you cannot sprint, although it looks like you do not need to wait for it to refil, and it seems you can continue to bash?
Shoving doesn’t animation cancel a reload. (it does in L4D)
The infamous Screamer is back! In the L4D beta, the Screamer was a special that would call a horde, then hide. In Back 4 Blood, the Snitch does this instead.
Birds have also possibly become another regular level feature. They’re easily startled by the player, and activate a horde. Zombies don’t seem to bother them, of course.
Pistols do not have unlimited ammo, they have an ammo type and you carry ammo for them, just like all other guns.
Melee still seems to be a one-shot kill on commons.
Hitmarkers. These hitmarkers seem to work off the basis of killing shot or not, and NOT area hit. That is, if your shot hit and did damage, the hit marker is white. If it hit and it killed, then the hitmarker is red. It does NOT seem to matter the area hit (eg, headshot/weakspot) or not.
Doors may be locked but not alarmed; tool kits can open these without having to destroy the door. This does take a short amount of time.
You seem to get revived from incap with about half of your health, and keep in mind, there’s no temp health, so that’s all real health. Beta thing?
Survivors can now vault over low walls and through windows, which makes navigation a bit less clumsy.
Director hints now point out who is marked ‘it’ when splattered on.
Didn’t see any way to trigger voice lines (like thank you, ready?, wait), but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one or won’t be one.
You can pick up and set up minigun turrets instead of them being pre-placed. Their effective angle is shown while you hold them. You can still bash while you do this (bug, beta?)
If a character dies because they were incapped and they never got revived, their death is attributed to “Bleed Out”. (Unintended, bug, beta, intended?)
Your incap “strikes” are visually shown now, on your hud next to your character’s portrait.
You can melee while down, although it might have a longer cooldown.
When incapped, you can choose to not be revived by pressing [X].
It seems like healing items and so forth can be applied while both parties are moving – as long as they stay within a very short range.
If attempting to interact with a character that cannot accept your item/help/whatever at the time, the game will say “CANNOT USE ITEM” (bug/beta/improvement).
Dragon Soul Studios