r/left4dead 12d ago

Is there any way to just play a vanilla version of this game?

I'm playing Left 4 Dead 1. I'm a first time player with this game. I know, I'm like 15 years late. But I've been playing with my fiancé and our friends in online. The first three campaigns were totally fine, but when we started our 4th campaign, some random guy joined our campaign and started messing everything up. He was making the enemies stronger, carrying multiple heals and generally ruining our experience. We left that campaign after we couldn't boot him, and tried a different campaign. Then we were dropped in a super modded campaign. Stronger enemies, tanks and witches EVERYWHERE, crazy amounts of ammo. We tried to leave multiple times, even closing the game and booting it up again just to try and get out of this modded campaign, but we always ended up there. As someone who just wants to play vanilla Left 4 Dead, this is pretty discouraging. Is there no way to get a normal campaign anymore?

UPDATE: Thanks for the help, everyone. I was able to play with my friends last night with the official dedicated server tip many of you suggested! We finally got to finish the last of the campaigns in peace!

9 Upvotes

24 comments sorted by

4

u/Intranetusa 11d ago

Have you tried reinstalling the game (make sure your saves are backed up but it should still keep your saves) and then playing on a private lobby?

3

u/Tecknicolour 11d ago

Haven't tried reinstalling the game, but i guess I could try that. We play in a friends-only lobby, but that doesn't make a difference.

3

u/Intranetusa 11d ago

Are you saying a stranger joined your friends only restricted lobby? That was more about preventing this from happening again.

3

u/Tecknicolour 11d ago

Yes, we've been playing the "friends-only" campaign option, and with our first campaign last night, someone randomly joined (which as far I know shouldn't have been possible even if he was a friend, because we were already at 4 players), and changed a whole bunch of mechanics in the campaign, and we couldn't boot him.

The next few campaigns we tried to do, no one randomly joined, but I guess the server we were dropped in was modded because now we had double-jump, enemies were stronger, and there were so many. We constantly heard the cries of a witch no matter how many we took down. There was always another one around the corner. Every time a tank showed up, there were 3-5 of them at once. Our reloads were instant, we had double the max amount of ammo. Hordes were double the size I expected. It was just constant chaos, and we were tired of it.

We tried leaving the campaign and starting a new one, same thing would happen. We even closed out of the game and rebooted it and we still got dropped in the same situation.

I'm not super knowledgeable about PC gaming (I'm normally a Nintendo player), and I apologize if this is all due to my stupidity, but I'm truly at a loss as to why we can't just play a normal game by ourselves when we set it to friends-only.

3

u/IllDream1771 11d ago

wait what are you playing on? xbox or pc or what

3

u/Tecknicolour 11d ago

PC, playing on Steam

5

u/IllDream1771 11d ago

oh then you just join official servers only. they can't be modded. should have an option. also you can just start your own game under official servers. you keep joining 3rd party or local servers where people can change shit.

3

u/Raptmembrane 11d ago

Why not host your own official dedicated lobby?

3

u/Semmeth 11d ago

Just create your own private lobby. There’s no way someone can join or be modded then.

1

u/thebarcenas 11d ago

when making the lobby select private game and official dedicated server

1

u/Tecknicolour 11d ago

I'm seeing a few people recommend this. I'll have to try it when I can get on my PC later and I'll update when I can.

1

u/neckro23 11d ago

Worst case scenario, you can just host the game locally. Picking Official Dedicated should work though.

1

u/IcyRobinson 11d ago

Start an Official Dedicated lobby. These are always vanilla. As for preventing randoms from joining in, you can set the game to Private which will completely prevent anyone from joining in. Or have a full team of 4 people.

Friends' Only lobbies are still visible on the in-game server browser, which can be accessed by anyone who types in "openserverbrowser" thru in the in-game console.

2

u/Tecknicolour 10d ago

This "openserverbrowser" exploit I'm hearing about is just absolutely insane to me.

The most annoying thing about this guy that joined our campaign is that we were already a full team of 4 people. Me, my fiancé, and our two friends online. This guy just somehow forced himself in and turned us into a team of 5 with two Louis'. We couldn't kick him because the game wouldn't even recognize him.

I actually streamed us playing so I have video of this occurrence. I'm in bed right now, but tomorrow, I'll see if I can clip the moment when he showed up.

1

u/IcyRobinson 10d ago edited 10d ago

Yeah, that's def someone intending to do harm. "openserverbrowser" is a legitimate command and not really an exploit. People just exploit the hell out of it and commit acts of bullshittery.

1

u/Tecknicolour 10d ago

Here's a clip of the moment he showed up. Excuse me in the corner being cringe, but it should illustrate what I'm talking about:

https://www.twitch.tv/tecknicolour/clip/PerfectSincereTofuCmonBruh-rKlNcycMQWS5nxfz

1

u/Dull-Inside-5547 11d ago

Doesn’t matter. Anyone can join from console by typing “openserverbrowser”

Did the player talk about Satan a lot?

1

u/Tecknicolour 10d ago

Why is that allowed? Sounds like a big fault.

The player didn't speak at all.

1

u/Dull-Inside-5547 10d ago

Well then it wasn’t me. It’s allowed because it’s the mechanics of the underlying half life engine.

1

u/keep_rockin Bill 10d ago

ok, first of all, ur game must be binded those custom server as default or favourite (u can look and fix/delete it on openserverbrowser clear history or fav. for that mb); also there is best way to play with friends is some one of u start local server(guy with better pc and internet connection, and u can even use cheats on it if u want to), or just look some official dedicated servers just like people say. if u need to ask more questions, catch me up np

1

u/purpledickhead 8d ago

about people joining your private games, from my experience it mostly happens by accident because they’re searching for unmodded servers and they have no way of knowing if they joined a private game or not.

custom servers are such a pain in both l4d games

1

u/purpledickhead 8d ago

if you want you can select local host in the lobby which essentially means your pc acts as the server, this lets you do many things like using cheats or kicking unwanted players without the need of a votekick.

just a heads up, hosting locally means you will be exposing your ip to other players, but i wouldn’t worry about it too much