YMMV / Back 4 Blood

• Abridged Arena Array: When playing online expect most matches to be playing levels from Act 1 90% of the time. This is mainly due to familiarity with veterans and the availability for newcomers. It is almost uncommon to find matches that play the later acts, and practically rare to find any for the DLCs.
• Bile Fascination: A sizable chunk of the stable part of the playerbase were people who were fascinated with observing just how much B4B struggled with patches and updates - including part of the gaming media. Each bigger patch was followed by instant coverage of the ever-increasing train wreck.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Speedrunning on Nightmare. Given how difficult it is to stand your ground and fight, players would opt instead to make a beeline to the saferoom.
• Complete Monster: The Mother of Worms is the head of the Children of the Worm. Unleashing a horrific plague, she sets the worms into countless innocents, turning them into the zombie "Ridden", which she then directs against any and all survivors. Sending the Ridden out to destroy any safe zones and kill survivors, the Mother of Worms happily plots the entire apocalypse.
• Critical Dissonance: Critics were significantly nicer to the game than general audiences, with the broad professional consensus being that Back 4 Blood is a flawed, but otherwise perfectly enjoyable multiplayer experience and worthy successor to Left 4 Dead in its own right. Contrast this to the far more merciless reception from the public, many of whom criticize the game not just for being inferior to Left 4 Dead, but for several problems of its own, including messy rollout, unbalanced and unfocused game design, and general lack of charm and creativity that a game of its kind would need.
• Demonic Spiders: Retches have a long range vomit attack that can leave puddles of damaging acid on the ground, restricting your movement options. They're especially dangerous in already-cramped areas, and in forests, where they can safely puke at you from the trees.
• Funny Moments: One of the achievements is called "Nemesis", which you can get for... climbing down a ladder without dying. This is a reference to earlier builds of the game, where that specific ladder can incapacitate you.
• Goddamned Bats: Sleepers, which act as wall mines that incapacitate any player that gets within range and usually hidden around corners you're not likely to look at. They can be taken out in a single shot, but the real issue is needing to keep a constant look out for them.
• Memetic Mutation: The infamous racial slur screams.^ExplanationRidden screams are randomly generated from a set of grunts, and initially these would occasionally end up sounding like they are hollering the N-word. They were patched later.
• Obvious Beta: The game was not ready for its premiere, with memory leaks, poor (or lack of) syncing, even poorer optimisation, and a plethora of bigger and smaller bugs and glitches. It suffered for that both in critical reception and sales. It took six months after the premiere to iron out the most glaring technical issues, but the game never really recovered - after a short-lived bump in player count thanks to the April 2022 update, it went back to where it was before. Ultimately, certain things are still not patched out, while Turtle Rock confirmed in February 2023 the cessation of further development and patches, with the final update happening in December 2022, mere 14 months after the game's premiere.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • As listed in the main page under Artificial Stupidity, the bots in this game are considered to be even dumber than the ones from Left 4 Dead, with many complaints in-particular going to their extreme tendency to get in the way of the player's shots. Several players have outright sworn off even trying to complete campaigns with them and several videos have showcased bots going multiple levels without getting a single kill.
  • The Corruption cards are also an extreme annoyance, especially since certain events are much more debilitating than others. The ones that spawn hordes in particular, such as Hunted^note Spawns a horde every 3-5 minutes, can make certain maps feel borderline Unwinnable by Mistake if they appear due to the sheer amount of effort needed to keep up with them.
  • The initial release lacked any sort of Kick option, which made public games a playground for griefers.
  • The only way to remove attachments from a weapon is to swap the attachment with another one of the same slot. This can run into issues if you find a better-quality gun, but the one you have has good attachments. The devs have added a perk card that lets you unequip an attachment from your held weapon, though it costs money to use (about twice the price of buying an attachment from the safehouse) and like any perk card you have to get it through random rolls at the Supply Lines first.
  • More "Scrappy Lack-of-a-Mechanic," but the lack of distinct audio cues for the specials make it difficult to prepare for their attacks during hectic moments. Also, specials that have similar silhouettes but different functions earn for ire for the same reason. The Cleaners looking not much different (contrast to Valve's "characters recognizable by their silhouettes" approach) compared to the others also earn the same ire.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general reception. While it can be fun to play with a full party and has a lot more replayability and customization than Left 4 Dead (although completely lacking in Left 4 Dead's significant mod support), it unfortunately gets bogged down by flaws like braindead bots and meaningless Supply Point exclusions for solo players.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • When the beta dropped in September 2021, a lot of people were less than impressed. Issues included bots that won't save you when pinned, weapon audio that lacked bass, and lack of variation between special infected design. The bots have improved since launch, though not by much.
  • One other aspect of the game that wasn't well-received was the news that it would not be moddable. Since much of the appeal of Left 4 Dead 2 comes from how moddable the game is, the inability to mod Back 4 Blood is seen as a sore point.
• That One Level:
  • Garden Party has a randomized hedge maze that would be pretty easy to solve, if not for the constant hordes and specials. God help you if you roll for dark/fog, a boss, or a combination...
  • T-5. It's one thing to fight off neverending waves of Ridden, it's a whole other thing fighting them off while completing objectives. If they're volatile, say hello to losing a chunk of health every step. It's telling that most strategies for completing T-5 involve going into Act III with a specific deck build made precisely for T-5.
• Tough Act to Follow: The game marketed itself as a Spiritual Successor to the massively popular Left 4 Dead series, due to it being made by some of the team who helped develop those games. As such, expectations were extremely high for Back 4 Blood to be Left 4 Dead 3 in all but name, which led to the game even before release to be constantly compared to its predecessor from major elements like basic gameplay, level design, the personality and design of characters, music, to even the smallest details such as sound cues, gun designs, and even lighting. This constant comparison would ultimately prove to be to Back 4 Blood's detriment, as many potential players found it lacking when compared to not only its inspiration, but even similar games of its type. It's to the point that some have even argued that the game might have done better had it not hyped itself so much as a Spiritual Successor.

---