Without a boomer, the sustained zombie mob that lasted for 2-3 minutes was incredibly fun. We had a huge difficulty getting through the section where you take the lift up to the roof. IвЂ™ve been through all the levels 2x and nothing is as memorable as the first time through No Mercy the night it came out - it was completely and utterly chaotic. It was in the developer commentary вЂ¦ and from personal experience, advanced can vary greatly. I vaguely remember something from an early interview about the Director autoscaling the difficulty level based on player performance, or was that feature taken out? ItвЂ™s almost like I wish I could play levels 1-4 on Expert and level 5 on вЂ¦ Advanced minus.

This sort of comes out of #1 and #2, but by the time you scale the difficulty so the final level (5) isnвЂ™t a tedious, repetitive grind, levels 1-4 become boring cakewalks.

Even if they spawned 3 Normal-hitpoint-level tanks instead of 1 Expert-hitpoint-level-tanks, even that would be more interesting. Maybe if they had some other exploitable weakness, or became harder in a more meaningful way than just hitpoints. They just get another (x) umpteen million hitpoints, and the scaling factor of those hitpoints seems way off to me. (Hunters on Normal are hilarious, theyвЂ™re like retarded grasshoppers, hopping around the level with barely any accuracy at all.)Д«ut Tanks donвЂ™t get smarter in any way. The Smokers and Hunters are manageable on Advanced and Expert they get smarter and more effective at grabbing and downing your teammates. The tanks, I think, are the core of the problem.

I realize that the end level has to be challenging to be interesting, but there has to be a better way to balance the final levels than the current вЂњAdvancedвЂќ and вЂњExpertвЂќ techniques. There should be a difficulty level between вЂњNormalвЂќ (stupidly easy throughout) and вЂњAdvancedвЂќ (challenging, but with way hard endings). The final level is so absurdly difficult most people wonвЂ™t even want to try, because they donвЂ™t see any possibility of succeeding. You thought Tanks were hard to kill, and the Smokers and Hunters were being extra cheesy on Advanced? Oh man, just wait until you get to Expert level 5. But on the final levels itвЂ™s like hitting a goddamn brick wall. Playing on this level makes levels 1-4 fun and challenging, truly dangerous. Finishing level 5 seems possible, at least, but it sort of stops being fun and starts being a min-max grind to get everything exactly right.Д®xpert is a paradox. Similarly, a decent pickup team barely finished the Dead Air level until we cheesed out and holed up by the gate entry point.

IвЂ™ve played several pickup games where we got to the end of Blood Harvest and gave up after 5 or so attempts. I feel like one or two bad вЂњAI directorвЂќ dicerolls robs your team of any reasonable chance of success. ThereвЂ™s also an element of randomness to the game that emerges here which is discomforting. But on a few of the missions the final level seems a bit too difficult in particular, tanks take ridiculous amounts of firepower to take down. This is all good, part of the promise of the design. You have to use solid teamwork and cover each other to succeed. It must be for grandmas and people who just learned to use a mouse.ДЄdvanced is reasonably difficult. The difficulty level below this, I canвЂ™t even imagine. Tanks go down in no time, you barely take any damage, and unless at least two of your teammates are total gibbering idiots, the odds of your team failing are basically nil. I think Valve kind of screwed up on the difficulty levels in Left 4 Dead co-op.

Left 4 dead 2 local co op