Almost a month after its release, Back 4 Blood is adorned with a first major update, bringing its share of balances and fixes.
A revamped solo mode, a rebalancing of maps or infected in campaign mode as well as in multiplayer mode… This November update deployed one day after the roadmap for future content is particularly rich.
Rebalancing at all levels
What will mainly interest veterans of the cooperative FPS from Turtle Rock Studios are above all the rebalancing brought by this important update. For the sake of clarity, we will break this part into different sections to better highlight the different changes.
Campaign updates
In addition to some improvements or changes to the behavior of bots or characters as a whole, this part is particularly interested in a significant rebalancing of cards and certain special infected.
This will drastically reduce the effectiveness of many cards favored by melee players. Reduction of melee damage, endurance efficiency or even healing received while fighting in melee are thus on the program, which may force to opt for other builds if the nerf is too salty.
Another important part of this update deals with special infected during the campaign. If you thought that it appeared too often during your games, know that it was a bug that should now be partially corrected. The Destroyer and Ogre bosses should also be much more formidable to face and more difficult to kill than before.
Multiplayer Updates
Although the campaign is easily the most popular game mode, Turtle Rock Studios has not forgotten the multiplayer mode. In particular, the studio has taken care of the problems related to quitting rage by granting a 10% damage bonus to Cleaners per missing team member. Survivors also naturally receive a 25% bonus to speed when aiming or changing weapons. Map rebalances in campaign mode are also applied to those in multiplayer mode, with some new entries.
On the Infected side, significant rebalancing is also made to improve their offensive capacities, in return for their resistance to damage. Attacks from Special Infected will significantly reduce the effectiveness of healing for Cleaners compared to common Infected, making them more formidable.
Weapon rebalancing: melee nerfed with the axe?
This part of the update applies to both campaign mode and multiplayer, specifically melee weapons. The ax and the hatchet, the two most powerful melee weapons in the game, have their damage reduced in favor of a better attack speed.
The balance mainly impacts their ability to stun infected, whose effectiveness has been reduced by half. The bat and the machete are also seen slightly improved in order to be at the level of the two other weapons.
Updates for controllers and accessibility
Players with controllers should now enjoy Back 4 Blood better: the aim assist has been tweaked and the settings are more precise, especially for the dead zones of the analog sticks.
The game should also be more readable for color blind people thanks to adapted colors. Finally, it will be possible to activate or not the sounds of heavy breathing when our character runs out of stamina (avoid this happening if you want to survive).
Quality of life even during a zombie apocalypse
In addition to these numerous rebalances, this update focuses on quality of life changes and brings a substantial list of fixes. All Cleaners will be unlocked from the start of the game, so it will no longer be imperative to finish the first act in co-op. Then the controversial single-player mode was renamed “Training”. In December, it will receive an update allowing it to be played offline.
The fixes, in the campaign and multiplayer modes, mainly concern problems related to scripts not triggering properly, or even display problems.
For more details on the elements of this update, you can consult the notes of the latter (in English), accessible via the source cited below.
