The reason I am in support of the boycott and a member is because L4d is in such a stupid position, with almost no attempts to fix it.
The main reason that I will not buy l4d2 is because I fail to see how valve will balance all the weapons and attacks, when they cant even balance the 3 weapons in l4d.
The autoshotgun is overpowered, it has been from day 1 and still is. The majority of games involve little more than grabbing that weapon and clicking in a direction, while running. The range on it is ridiculus, the amount of damage it does is well beyond the other guns, it has the same pierce as the m16, you can easily shoot infected off yourself, and it kills horde like no other.
How is a weapon that is best against horde, the tank, the witch (crowning is fucking piss easy), and pretty much all special infected balanced.
If you look at the statistics alot of people have 85% or more auto shotgun usage. They literally dont need another weapon. Every weapon should have a disadvantage.
I am sure you have all seen it, No Mercy 4, Blood Harvest 2 and 4, Dead Air 4, Death Toll 4, the team just grabs a shotgun and spam fires while running, and often wins with 175 hp bonus +, there is literally nothing the special infected team can do.
I also hate that valve has obviously stopped balancing the game. When it first came out people used to play the finale of No Mercy underneath the ramp from the Helipad, a spot that was little more than melee in a corner. Valve patched it and put crates their so you cannot do that anymore. That is when they used to care. Now every game is melee in the same dam corners, and it never gets patched. Under the pipes in No Mercy 2, in the corner by the wall in Blood Harvest Finale, I could keep naming them. Anyone who has played the game for more than ten minutes knows these spots and NOTHING gets changed.
You could fix it in 10 minutes! Make meleeing do friendly fire damage! Make stacking up not possible! ANYTHING!
Scripts are now a rampent occurance, and I havent seen anything done. I love being killed as a special infected by a double pistol script from 100feet away by a gun that is supposed to be a fucking SIDE ARM and instead is used as an unlimited ammo sniper rifle. Oh we got horded? Well let me pull out my double pistols and script fire, I would hate to have to use my primary gun, it uses ammo.
I think alot of the problems may come down to the piss poor community that plays this game. There are griefers everywhere (try playing any public expert campaign). I mean it is pretty much accepted that if you play survivors first for a finale you wont be playing infected as the other team is just going to leave. Vote kicking people for little to no reason (I have been vote kicked for refusing to use the shotgun). People using 'exploits' all over (knocking objects in the way is a new one, you only have to wait for the fucking source engine to despawn them).
I hear the same arguments coming back to me all the time, "Valve hasnt changed it so its obviously working as intended". And I will not buy another game from a company I used to trust if they are leaving this game in this condition. They either see no problems, or dont care and neither is a good excuse.
P.S. I was just thinking of the patches they did and they have been fucking stupid also.
Remember when they fixed the smoker tongue?
How about the patch that made it harder to melee hunters in mid air?
Shotguns doing less damage toward the tank?