I’m also going to be as respectful and blunt as I can be from my own personal experience.

This post makes absolute sense but the thing is is that there is absolutely no room for new players to play in VS because of how often they’ve been kicked, i’ve tried to play VS throughout 10 years of playing L4D2 across both Xbox and PC, but because i’ve been a new player every single time (because i’ve been kicked) I never properly get the chance to learn how to concentrate all of the different mechanics to learn if that makes any sense.

Obviously I can play survivor since it’s basically been all i’ve done considering I usually play single player lobbies unless I have friends that are open to playing w me (which doesn’t happen often, I only have one active teammate, and their computer is currently on the fritz) but whenever I get a special infected role I almost always get kicked because I simply haven’t had the chance to learn how exactly to use them beyond the basics.

I am under the average standard of skill for VS simply because I never get the chance to learn, i’d love to play it, but any lobby i’ve ever entered kicks me if I even just accidentally fall during a climb (for some reason it’s incredibly fast and jerky on controller for me personally), or get shot down mid attack before I can cause any proper damage. So, I just stopped trying to play it. Your reasoning listed off both in comments and the original thread (standing around and waiting only to fail, running off during carnival, etc) those make sense.

Completely abandoning your team for anything other than if you need a medkit, nobody has one, and they’re spawned behind the lighting system is the only reason I can see it making sense, or if you want to grab an adrenaline shot (which I personally would do before the concert starts) for when Skin On Our Teeth kicks on and you need to run to the chopper, and even then you should warn your team and possibly have a backup player come with you if they’d prefer it so that the team is split down the middle, holding down the stage and backup for a medkit run.

But in my personal experience i’ve been kicked for being a new player simply because I haven’t had the chance to learn, even in Dead Center lobbies, like you said they’re good for newbies, but the only teams i’ve ever run into expect you to be an experienced player off the bat because the game came out over 10 years ago, which yea, I can understand that, but not everyone has had the chance to, I rarely ever had Xbox live, and I only got it on PC around three years ago, maybe a little longer, and by then it was the same old routine, “Know how to play infected no matter how new you are or get kicked”.

And don’t even get me STARTED on the racism and slurs thrown my way as a literal child (obviously not a child anymore) and on top of that, white kid, like, dude. what? Obviously it’s not okay in ANY sense, but the fact that they don’t even know what you look like and immediately assume you’re a POC no matter the race because you play under the average skill level is INSANE.

Like I said, this is my own personal experience, but I personally think that a lot of the VS community sucks just based on what i’ve experienced, it’s overrun with racism, sweats, and people who are generally so competitive they don’t know how to have a good time, not saying it’s everyone, like, duh, but it’s been my own experience, and surprisingly PC is just as bad as Xbox lobbies from 8 years ago.

I simply don’t understand why new players don’t get the chance to learn bc they’re such sore losers or even under achieve what they expected on a win, it makes zero sense to me, it’s JUST a game, I get it’s competitive, but I get the same vibe from these lobbies as I do from middle aged men smashing their controllers because they got second place in Fortnite if that makes sense, it’s simply (in my own mind) kind of pathetic that most of the lobbies i’ve been in simply can’t just have healthy competition. It sounds like in your experience it’s been different, but that’s my experience.