Left 4 Dead stats indicate players favoring Survivors, big surprise

Today Valve released a bunch of achievement statistics collected via Steam for their latest shooter, Left 4 Dead. They’re interesting to look at, especially at the surface level where you’ll notice that the most popular unlocks are mainly on the human side of the equation. Below is a bit of a sample of the discrepancy:

• Drag and Drop (Rescue a Survivor from a Smoker’s tongue before he takes damage) 76.3%
• My Bodyguard (Protect any Survivor from an attacking Infected 50 times) 66.8%
• Double Jump (Pounce two different Survivors on one life as a Hunter) 37.3%
• Chain Smoker (Constrict two Survivors on one life as a Smoker) 29%

One of the loudest criticisms about L4D is the balance of the Versus mode. Specifically, players feel as though the Special Infected are too poorly equipped to take out the Survivors. Do these statistics reflect that such is the case, or is this just the result of unbalanced achievements? I’m of the mind that it reflects both of these issues, but neither greater than the other.

Regardless, these are just the stats from the first week of play and probably indicate nothing significant. Valve tossed these up for all of us to see and added in the note that they’ll be using it to further enhance or tweak the game if needed. Those guys at Valve sure are swell.

[via MTV Multiplayer]