With the first open beta underway, Turtle Rock Studios is testing out its return-to-form zombie co-op shooter among fans for the next week or so. Back 4 Blood is a new franchise by the same development studio behind the original Left 4 Dead game. Featuring both PvE and PvP modes, Turtle Rock wishes to appeal to existing Left 4 Dead fans, as well as appeal to those who may not necessarily be familiar with co-op survival games as a whole. Back 4 Blood's open beta is live from now until August 16, and players will get a chance to test out PvE and the new Swarm PvP mode. Throughout the beta, Back 4 Blood's executive producer hopes that "it fits" for all potential fans.
In an interview with Game Rant, Back 4 Blood Executive Producer Lianne Papp discussed the progress of Back 4 Blood since its initial test back in December of last year. Since the "Swarm" PvP mode is the biggest addition to the game's second test, Papp discussed why PvP is unique and how it's balanced separately from the co-op PvE experience. Papp also discussed the biggest changes to Back 4 Blood since its initial test in December 2019, compared to the open beta in August. Papp also recognized and discussed what makes Back 4 Blood different from Left 4 Dead, considering this new franchise is bound to receive similar comparisons from fans.
GR: In terms of the decision to make PvP not just campaign missions but there's also an enemy team, but it's kind of more like a stand-off mode; Was the decision there to make it different compared to the campaign? Or was there a different motivation for that?
LP: With everything that we do with the game, we always are trying to make sure it's as fun as it can be. With PvP in particular, I think we were looking for an experience that was a little bit more digestible, and not quite such a big time commitment. For example, we want to make sure that it's balanced as well. So you have that opportunity to play as both sides [Cleaners vs. Ridden], but there's kind of a bit of a timer that you're working against. You're trying to make it as long as possible so that hopefully you last longer than when you switch sides.
Really, where it comes from is we wanted to make something that was, and I'm stealing this term from someone else in the industry that I've heard, is "snackable." We want you to be able to jump in, play for a little bit, and then step back and take a break. You know, you got those sweaty palms, you want to drink a glass of water. You can take a break, and then if you want to keep going, you can. I think especially in today's age, a one-to-two hour commitment for something like a PvP match is a lot. So, we wanted something that was fun and digestible. That you can just jump in, and you kind of just get it. And if you didn't, then you learned by trying, and then you can go back in and keep doing it as much as you want.
GR: How much of that factored into balancing out the experience, in terms of how powerful are the Cleaners in a specific case, compared to how powerful the Ridden are in that specific case? What were the design decisions in terms of balancing everything?
LP: When it comes to balancing things at Turtle Rock, we actually look at two major things. One of them is telemetry, which is all of the data that comes out of it, right? So we're looking at how long did matches last? How much damage were you doing? And then, the other thing that we actually look at is what was your experience? How did that make you feel? Because, there are times where I think you can play a game... and I'll go to our lead designer and I'll say "Brandon , this was not fair. They stomped us, and I did not have fun." He'll look at the data, and he'll be like "Actually, you were pretty evenly matched, but why did you feel that way?"
And so, we try to tackle both of those things, and that was one of the reasons we decided to actually separate PvE and PvP card decks. So, there were certain cards that maybe didn't feel very fair on the Cleaner side, and then there were also some that were actually kind of useless in a PvP scenario. We thought it made more sense to have a separate set of cards that you're selecting from, and some of them are common between the two and work in both modes, but some of them are just PvE or just PvP. That I think unlocked a lot.
The other thing that we looked at is the Ridden abilities. Something that we adjusted a lot was the cooldown of an ability. How often are you able to smash your arm as a Tallboy? That would lend itself towards striking the careful balance between "I'm the Cleaner and I'm getting hit by this, and I don't want this to happen too much," but also, "I'm the Ridden, and it feels really bad that there's 30 seconds between my ability use," so we stayed away from long cooldowns like that. It's a bit of a minefield that you're trying to traverse when it comes to balancing things. We definitely cared about more than the data, we also cared about how [the player] feels.
Lastly, we do playtest a lot within the studio. Earlier in the project we were doing just two to three playtests a week, and there were a lot of different reasons for that. Now, as we're leading up towards launch and finalization, we are playtesting every day, and so we're listening to that feedback from people. The design team is just constantly balancing and adjusting, because to us, it's so important that we within the studio have fun playing the game. If we don't, why would you?
GR: Have there been any standout aspects of Back 4 Blood that either worked really well, or didn't work well? Is the team focusing on something right now to get balanced right away? Or are you jumping between several miniscule things that all come together?
LP: Yeah, it's a little bit of all of that, because the entire team is focusing on finalization. So a lot of that is bug fixing and balance changes. One of our big focuses is making sure that the different difficulties do feel good. With the way that we formed the game, we do expect you to fail the first few times that you play a mission and have to get better cards and improve your deck and try again. So it's trying to find that careful balance there, where it either doesn't feel too easy, or too hard. We are tremendously excited for the next two weekends of open beta, because we're just going to get so much data that you just can't get early in development.
We're really excited to see what stood out to people, because sometimes in development, you think there's a piece that is extremely critical and everyone's going to notice and we have to fix it. But maybe nobody noticed it, and they actually noticed this other thing that we hadn't considered. So, we're just so excited to see what the feedback is, and to dive into all that data because it's going to be a lot.
GR: Are there any general changes between the previous test last December coming to this most recent open beta? Were there any wide-sweeping or specific changes that marked a transformation in Back 4 Blood between then and now?
LP: One of the really big things that actually changed was with deck creation and how [the game] draws from your deck. In the closed alpha, you created your deck, and we truly randomly picked from it, for the hand you play when you first start in every safe room. That was something that we talked about a lot internally, and we got a lot of feedback. People actually wanted a greater degree of control there, so one big change that is in the open beta is the order of the cards you place in your deck matters.
So, you know that what's at the top of your deck is what you are going to get in those first rooms. If you decide that there is a card that you cannot live without; Like for myself it's the unlimited secondary ammo, unless I'm doing a melee build, that is a game-changer. So I want to get that really early on so I'm not scavenging for ammo quite as much. That's definitely the biggest change that's actually introducing a little bit of player control into this random chaos that we have.
Otherwise, it was actually noticing what people didn't notice or didn't quite understand, and trying to work on better legibility or understanding in those areas. That might be that we add, we call it a game coach, it's this little helper that comes up and tells you who set off an alarmed car, or those are birds and don't disturb them. So we ended up adding a lot of those, because we got a lot of feedback that was like "I didn't understand what this was, or why I did this thing." So I'd say two of the bigger ones.
GR: I did want to ask because Back 4 Blood is going to run into the Left 4 Dead comparisons at some point with this game: In terms of balancing the game from a fan perspective, are you looking towards appealing to Left 4 Dead veterans and trying to get them to a familiar pace? Or do you want it more geared towards getting new players into this style of game, rather than appeal to the people who played Left 4 Dead? What was the balance there?
LP: I would say that anybody coming into a zombie shooter definitely has certain expectations, right? Our focus really was how do we make this a fun, intuitive experience that people enjoy and want to invite their friends to. That's really what we focused on. The development team has a diverse background with the games that we've played, where we come from, and we're also all gamers, and we play lots of different games. We drew on all of those experiences. There definitely are conversations like "Hey, gamers are going to expect 'X'" or when I jump into this kind of game, I expect to be able to do this or that.
We definitely factor those things in, but we always refocus on how do we make it, and how is it 'Back 4 Blood'? How is it the vision that we have for this game? We have three tenets that we were pushing towards. We wanted to make sure that there was that cooperative gameplay, because that's what you're looking for out of a zombie shooter. There's four of you, you want co-op elements. We wanted that replayability, which is where the card system actually was massive, as well as the game's Director [AI system]. And then we have this of idea accessibility, and I'll explain what I mean by that.
When you play certain other games that have progression in them, you can play for two or three hundred hours, and you get an item level, a gear level, and you get access to different areas. If I come to play with you and I'm like 'Hey, let's team up,' you'll go 'Well did you do these 10 things that you have to do before you're at my level?' and I'll be like 'Oh OK, no I didn't.' And that kind of sucks. So, one of the things we wanted to make sure was that Back 4 Blood was something that you could have a new friend jump in and immediately play with you.
So every decision that we made as we were implementing new features, deciding what to keep, deciding what to change, we asked ourselves: Does it help push us towards these three tenets for the title?
GR: Is there anything in particular you would want to share or want to get out there about Back 4 Blood before launch?
LP: I think that when people hear the term "card system," or something like that, especially in regards to a zombie shooter, it makes question marks go off in their heads, and it maybe feels a little bit weird. But I'm hoping that this was your experience when you played it, in that it just fits, and it works, and it feels good. I would encourage people to check it out, especially if you have [Xbox] Game Pass, it doesn't cost you anything and it's going to be available day one.
You can jump in and try it out, and maybe you'll discover a new genre of game that you otherwise wouldn't have enjoyed. You can have a lot of fun with it, there's a lot of different things you can do. Even the PvP, I think, is a bit of a surprise hit. At least internally, we're like "wow this is a lot of fun, let's keep doing it." Definitely don't be shied away by the card system, it's actually kind of awesome.
Back 4 Blood releases on October 12, 2021, for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.