Object of Obsession Rework Suggestion
So, I've recently came back from a week break from Dead by Daylight and the first couple of games I play I go up against Object of Obsession users (Most of them were SWF). It's fair to say that I was frustrated and I felt like I needed a longer break.
But I digress, I decide to just turn my frustration into something more productive. I don't know how often the devs read the Feedback section of the forums but I'd like to add my two-cents regarding the Object of Obession perk.
As it stands now, this is what Object of Obsession does:
A supernatural bond links you to the Killer.
If you are looking in the Killer's direction, your link will reveal your Auras to each other.
This effect applies only if you are outside of the Killer's Terror Radius.
As the Killer's Obsession, this effect applies to a maximum range of 56/64/72 metres. Otherwise, it applies to a maximum range of 44/56/64 metres.
Increases your chances of being the Obsession.
The Killer can only be obsessed with one Survivor at a time.
However, I feel like that should be changed.
As most of you are probably aware, OoO is a high risk, high reward perk that gives you information on the killer's location but also gives the location of yourself to the killer. This would normally be very high risk, high reward in a solo play scenario.
Unfortunately, that's not at all how it works if the user is great at looping and is playing with friends. (And no, I'm not going to discourage anyone from playing with friends)
When someone who plays with friends uses Object of Obsession and they're amazing at looper, the killer's whole movements and actions are basically on full display to everyone in the team. I think that should not at all be the case. One of the advantages killers have is the element of surprise during the start of the match. Killers like Trapper, Hag and Freddy can place traps at unassuming locations and catch survivors who happens to walk into their territory.
Killers like Demogorgon sometimes relies on his portal network and that requires him to hide it in clever spots so survivors don't immediately find it after he teleports to them to activate it.
Even Stealth Killers are unsafe from Object of Obsession, because while they do hide the aura. The perk will light up if the survivor is looking at the direction of the killer. Effectively rendering their stealth completely moot.
So I suggest a change to Object of Obsession to make it still be a high risk, high reward perk even when playing with friends.
A supernatural bond links you to the Killer.
If you are looking in the Killer's direction, your link will reveal your Auras to each other.
This effect applies only if you are outside of the Killer's Terror Radius. (Remove this requirement, it makes killers with small to no terror radius completely vulnerable.)
As the Killer's Obsession, this effect applies to a maximum range of 44/56/64 metres. Otherwise, the perk will remain inactive.
The perk will give a noise notification every 30/20/10 seconds if the Killer's aura cannot be read or if you are unable to read the auras of others (Blindness/Oblivious/Undetectable Effect)
Increases your chances of being the Obsession.
The Killer can only be obsessed with one Survivor at a time.
Of course this may seem like a nerf, but this way the perk retains some of it's high risk and high reward usage for both Solo and people playing with friends. With how much of a detriment it is for the killer, it should also be risky for the survivors to bring.
If the person who brought OoO is not the obsession, he needs to find a way to become the obsession to get it's full potential. Become the obsession through Decisive Strike, hope the killer has Furtive Chase/Nemesis. Basically make it a high risk to bring the perk in the first place for the amount of reward it brings to the trial.
Object of Obsession is no doubt one of the strongest perks in the game if used correctly, and I feel like it's gone rather unnoticed as it is fairly rare to see people use it outside of high ranks.
With this change, I hope this perk would see more wider use but still becomes a risk to bring it.
Any further thoughts and opinions are appreciated, however I do ask for it to be civil as I am aware that some people think Object of Obsession is fine where it is. I personally disagree, but that's why I ask for people to stay civil with this discussion.
Comments
I agree that some sort of nerf to OoO is necessary to make it less broken for SWF, and I think the changes to its range are good, although I think there should still be a minimum range (maybe 20-30 metres) as well as a maximum.
I was curious about one thing - what is the point of the noise notification feature?
Also, I wonder how much of an impact this would really have in terms of the perk's viability for use with SWF. I feel like it doesn't address the main issue there, that being that if the perk is active and working correctly, the user can still feed their team huge amounts of information on the killer's position and activities with few repercussions. This scenario may be less likely with the suggested changes, but in my opinion the fact that it can happen at all is still something of a problem.
My main point with this change is to keep Object of Obsession as a strong high risk and high reward perk. It isn't a perfect change which is why I very much appreciate your suggestions.
For one, I didn't really think of adding a minimum range to the perk. That would solve the problem of stealth killers or perks like Nemesis which gives the survivor the Oblivious effect to be safe from aura reading around a loop or a pallet. 20-30 meters does seem fair, however I wouldn't want it to be extreme either.
I do want this perk to be useful for both solo and SWF players. As gutting it would just mean less people using it and defeating the purpose of balancing it.
The point of the noise notification (like Premonition) is to give the Obsession (like I mentioned in my original post, only the obsession gets to have Aura Reading as the name implies that they are an Object of Obsession) an advantage against Stealth killers. It's basically a stronger Premonition because you also get aura reading out of it, however Premonition triggers despite you not being the obsession.
My suggestion requires you to be the obsession for the perk to even work at all. Which plays into the high risk part of the perk.
I don't necessarily think that this will give SWF teams a lot of information as SWF teams with OoO tend to also run Decisive Strike. And getting Decisived is almost guaranteed, rendering the OoO user useless without aura reading. It would make Decisive a counter to Object of Obsession, if that makes sense.
I really appreciate you giving feedback and I hope to see more people adding to this idea and maybe get the attention of BHVR.
This feels like it would be even MORE disproportionately useful for SWF.
Remember, SWF can just agree to only have the OoO user bring DS.
Solo's cannot.
That would mean that out of 4 possible DS users, there's only one person who uses DS. It's still useful in that way, effectively eliminating SWF groups to use a full DS loadout.
Even then, the killer can just use Nemesis if it's a part of their build and force the obsession to constantly be changing.
The main reason I suggested a 20-30 metre range is because it's around or just under the average terror radius for most killers, so it maintains the spirit of the original perk without making stealth killers vulnerable.
The noise notification makes sense, although I still feel that the perk is too powerful in some ways. I had a couple of ideas, but they seem problematic. I'll chuck them out there anyway for criticism.
One idea I had was that the perk could reveal the auras of everyone on the team, making it higher risk, even for SWF, and in some ways giving it better synergy with Sole Survivor if you want to be really selfish. It would also make the perk user less of a target. The obvious problem here is that the other survivors aren't in control of their own visibility, which doesn't seem fun or fair to them.
My second idea was that in order to make it a riskier perk to carry in terms of being a target, not just in terms of the risk of having a useless perk in one's loadout, it could apply a status effect like exposed or hindered to the user whenever they activate the perk, which persists for a certain number of seconds after the perk deactivates. The problem with this is I'm not sure how dangerous this would actually be in practice, and it's possible that this could backfire and make it even more of a meme perk by making the user an even more attractive (but still equally untouchable) target for the killer.
Yeah neither of those seem like they could work. Have any other ideas?
Honestly I'd be fine with just a complete rework rather than just a sidegrade/nerf
So would I. Even with a rework though, I would want it to maintain the spirit of the original - that is, it should still have to do with being the object of the killer's obsession, thematically - and ideally to have some synergy with Laurie's other perks.
Those two were just random ideas off the top of my head, but if I have any better ones I'll come back and post them here.
What if OoO is less about Aura Reading and more that it gives the user advantages in exchange for a heavy downside.
Like for example, the Obsession has 10/20/30% more repair speed and has 10/20/30% more healing speed.
Basically be the "Final Girl" of the group in exchange for having a permanent Exposed effect.
Hm, could work. I'd still like to see it have something to do with being the obsession, since that's kinda Laurie's thing. Perhaps if you are the obsession, you'd get a bigger boost, and/or the killer would be able to see your aura from a certain (long) distance away? That way there's still synergy with her other perks, like Sole Survivor in particular. (As you can probably tell, I'm a big fan of characters having unique perks that work well as a set.)
How about the bonuses I mentioned and reduced aura reading?
Instead of 44/56/64, it's 32/44/56 with a larger minimum range of around 20-25 meters.
That way it can still synergize with Sole Survivor and gives the perk more use without it being too broken.
You might need to expand on the aura reading idea a bit more. Reduced aura reading of what exactly, and for whom?
Well, the aura reading and bonuses would obviously only be given to the obsession. If you ahve the perk and you're not the obsession you wouldn't get either.
And maybe the aura reading is a bit too narrow.
I want there to be an inherent risk just bringing a perk that gives a lot of bonuses with the risk of not being the obsession and wasting a perk slot. Which is why I think these bonuses should only be given to the obsession.
Sorry, I should have been clearer. What I meant was, does the obsession get aura reading, or the killer, or both? And what are they reading the aura of? Each other? I know I could make educated guesses here, I just want to make sure we're on the same page.
It would be the same as the original OoO, just with a nerfed aura reading and more bonuses to repair speed or healing.
And exposed?
Probably exposed as it would severely cut down anyone trying to use OoO as an information perk for the whole team.