Blindness Buff
Blindness is kind of a useless status that doesn't really do too much other than sometimes screw over Solos for not having comms. So to fix that here is what I propose Blindness does:
Blindness disables most UI elements. The specific elements removed are:
* Status effect indicators
* Progress bars
* Non-Survivor Auras and notifications (ex: the exit gates or the Killer). This includes audio based notifications such as the Myers tier up/down jingle.
* Perks
* The Red Stain
A progress bar will still be shown if the action is a coop or altruistic action with/on a non-blind ally.
Hidden status effects will also hide any associated visual or sound effects such as the exposed effects from Ghostface or Myers. Or the sound effects from perks such as premonition or spine chill.
Survivor portraits will also not update with status effects other than broken while Blind, but otherwise they will remain unaffected. Additionally allies will not see status effect changes on your portrait either.
Killer specific auras are given special immunity to this. Specifically Jigsaw boxes, Plague Fountains and Demogorgon portals.
Note that you can still see allied auras.
This should also differentiate Third Seal from Knock out while simultaneously justifying it's hex status.
Comments
I like this idea at first glance. One issue is that SWF would mostly not care about this except for maybe losing the Red Stain.
I've specifically designed it to minimize that.
For Solos the progress bars being shown when another Survivor would see it anyways and allied aura vision reduces the effectiveness.
For SWF denying status effect vision of allies that can't see their own status effect prevents an obvious method of bypassing the effect. Denying perk based notifications has no SWF workarounds.
No red stain is also guaranteed utility in a chase.
Additionally if you manage to apply the effect on all 4 Survivors via 3rd seal then SWF will provide almost no benefit in mitigating it's effect.
Because Blindness is such a useless status effect, especially where SWF is concerned, there has been Another idea that has been going around the forums for buffing blindness: Restricting survivors FoV.
What it does is not only shut off all aura reading, but also surround the survivors screens with the "Black Fog" effect that stealth killers have while Undetectable. How much of the screen gets obscured by this effect is up to what you used to give the survivors Blindness, and it would fall under the current measurement standards of, Slightly (15-20), Moderately(25-35%), Considerably (40-60%), Tremendously (65-80%). For example, Huntresses Amanita Toxin Common add-on would only apply the effect Slightly, Clowns Kerosene can and Pigs Face mask uncommon add-on's would apply the effect moderately, Third Seal at rank 3 would apply it Considerably, and Knock Out would be updated to apply it Tremendously.
Think of the black fog as moving in from the edges towards the center and blacking out everything that is not in the center of the screen. By cutting down/restricting the survivors FoV like that they have to be more cautious, and pivot their 3rd person camera more in order to see the killer. During the Player Test Build of the Plague there was a bug that caused the Green infection effect on the edges of the screen to turn opaque black and the amount would've been similar to the proposed blindness effect at the Considerable range as it practically cut their FoV in half. Being that all blindness effects except for Third Seal have miserably low effect times maxing out at 60 seconds, this change would validate the current timers and help make Blindness into a useful and strategic advantage for killers.
Would be a completely different approach but would still satisfy the core objective of a Blindness buff.
I like it!