With each monthly update for Back 4 Blood, Turtlerock Studios has aimed to make the game more accommodating to casual players. However, its latest update may have been too successful. With some cards in the game offering near infinite health, ammo, and stamina, many players are wondering where the challenge went.
Since its release in October 2021, Back 4 Blood, the spiritual successor to the Left 4 Dead series, picked up old and new fans alike with its brutal campaign, punishing zombie mutations, and unique deck-building gameplay. Still, even four months after its release, very few players have attempted the game's most challenging Nightmare difficulty. Developers attempted to bring players out of easy and medium difficulties by making major changes to characters, abilities and cards, but some of those changes have players more upset than anything.
Part of the controversy from the latest update stems from drastic changes made to three cards: Amped-up, On Your Marks, and Mandatory PT. With these cards in a player's deck, their character approaches god-mode. Amped-Up gives players 25 temporary health every time a horde is triggered, allowing players to get a free heal from anything in the game that might call in enemies. Car alarms, nest nodes, Reeker bile, startling birds and alarmed doors now all heal players instead of filling them with dread.
Making things worse, the card is stackable and every player in a team can equip it, meaning they can get up to 100 temporary health any time a horde is triggered. Couple that with On Your Marks (which increases max ammo, movement speed, reload and weapon swap with each horde) and players will also have nigh unlimited ammo. If their team is also equipped with Mandatory PT, their stamina regeneration will be so strong they'll almost never run out. A team running these three cards will find the game easy, no matter the difficulty.
Outside of the potentially game-breaking cards, there were also changes not listed in the official patch notes that have players deciding to test their skills elsewhere. Turtlerock released statements about these unforeseen changes -- like the game spawning an extra 20-30 percent more special mutations, or how some cards have changed their effects but not their descriptions -- but it has yet to remedy them. The biggest gripe comes from an obvious mistake on the developer's end where a change to alarm doors intended for the March update somehow found its way into the February update.
It's not as if Back 4 Blood's latest update was a complete failure, however. It removed many of the game's bugs related to matchmaking, achievements and duplicate weapons at the vendor, as well as improving gameplay and respawn issues in Swam mode. It also adds a new feature that allows players to vote to stick together or split up throughout the campaign. Gamers who rely on exploits will find many of their tricks useless now, like bypassing levels by hopping fences that shouldn't be hopped or clipping through doors that should be closed.
While some have abandoned Back 4 Blood, fans are still holding out hope. With March comes a new update that's likely to, if not roll back some of the recent changes, at least balance them out with other features. The developers still plan to release more playable characters and DLC down the road, as well. The next update gives the developers a chance to make up for its mistakes, but in the meantime, B4B players who want to really challenge themselves have started attempting No Card runs on Nightmare to test their skills. Some players have moved away from B4B for now, but they haven't ventured far.