What makes Spies From The Shadows bad perk?

Grossman

Hello. In my opinion, SFTS was perfectly buffed. The thing that makes him bad is a lack of crows on the map. There are so many places where should be crows, but they are usually in the corner or even better on the hook which is very confusing when somebody is hooked. In general, I think that crows are badly done. Devs could have put more effort into the crows.

SweetTerror

It needs a much bigger radius. On bigger maps like the wreckage yard, you'll be lucky to see more than a few notifications.

SpookyStabby

@SweetTerror said:

It needs a much bigger radius. On bigger maps like the wreckage yard, you'll be lucky to see more than a few notifications.

While I agree with this in a general sense, I'm inclined to believe it was intended as a pursuit perk, as it once was for my Legion.

TWiXT

2 things make it a bad perk:

1. As OP stated, a large number of maps have a low amount of crows or only limit them to the outskirts of the map (seriously, Rotten Fields has 0 crows anywhere in the corn despite the lack of any scarecrows, wtaf is up with that?). So a lot of maps need an update to add more crows to make the perk more viable.
2. The loud explosion sound alerting you every time crows are disturbed by survivors gets confusing/annoying. Its the same soundbite used whenever a survivor fails a skillcheck on a gen, healing, when they vault/enter a locker loudly, or drop a pallet. As a killer, that information becomes crucial to how you locate survivors who mess up and capitalize on it, but with Spies, that sound is going off practically non-stop in some maps, and in the torrent of explosions it's easy to mistake a genuine screw up from survivors as just another crow notification, which can be a costly mistake.

This reminds me of why I think they should rework Spies from the Shadows to this:

Spies from the Shadows: The Crows no longer respond to your presence, you see the auras of all crows within 36 meters of you, and the crows cawing sound when disturbed is 100% louder to you within that range.

This gets rid of the confusing explosion sound notifications that get so annoying, you get no false signals since they no longer respond to you, and they basically become little signal flares to tell you where survivors are. If this change were to happen, Spies would become a better tracking tool as it would be easier on the eyes and ears as well as far less annoying/confusing. If they also went through and added a few more crows to the maps that need them, that would also help it become a valuable tool, but not totally OP since Calm Spirit and Urban Evasion still defeat it.

gunslingers_potatoe

@Grossman said:

Hello. In my opinion, SFTS was perfectly buffed. The thing that makes him bad is a lack of crows on the map. There are so many places where should be crows, but they are usually in the corner or even better on the hook which is very confusing when somebody is hooked. In general, I think that crows are badly done. Devs could have put more effort into the crows.

It's not necessarily that this perk is bad but there are other perks that work better, and synergize together. SFTS is more of a perk that works by itself and usually people choose perks that, when paired together, have a bigger impact on the game.

SweetTerror

@SpookyStabby said:

https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/1355687#Comment_1355687

While I agree with this in a general sense, I'm inclined to believe it was intended as a pursuit perk, as it once was for my Legion.

I think it was intended as a chase perk too, but you'd have to be pretty oblivious not to notice scratch marks or blood trails in the midst of a chase.

It's just a bummer because as survivors we run past birds all the time, but the killer will never know it unless we're practically within their terror radius making it a useless perk for killers.

SpookyStabby

@SweetTerror said:

https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/1355711#Comment_1355711

I think it was intended as a chase perk too, but you'd have to be pretty oblivious not to notice scratch marks or blood trails in the midst of a chase.

It's just a bummer because as survivors we run past birds all the time, but the killer will never know it unless we're practically within their terror radius making it a useless perk for killers.

Sometimes marks are obscured by foliage; corn, bamboo, etc. Plus, there are times when they aren't available for the killer, hence my previous usage for Spies.

Crowman

It's just not reliable unless you get a map that has a good spread of crows throughout the map like Hawkins.

SweetTerror

@TWiXT said:

2 things make it a bad perk:

1. As OP stated, a large number of maps have a low amount of crows or only limit them to the outskirts of the map (seriously, Rotten Fields has 0 crows anywhere in the corn despite the lack of any scarecrows, wtaf is up with that?). So a lot of maps need an update to add more crows to make the perk more viable.
2. The loud explosion sound alerting you every time crows are disturbed by survivors gets confusing/annoying. Its the same soundbite used whenever a survivor fails a skillcheck on a gen, healing, when they vault/enter a locker loudly, or drop a pallet. As a killer, that information becomes crucial to how you locate survivors who mess up and capitalize on it, but with Spies, that sound is going off practically non-stop in some maps, and in the torrent of explosions it's easy to mistake a genuine screw up from survivors as just another crow notification, which can be a costly mistake.

This reminds me of why I think they should rework Spies from the Shadows to this:

Spies from the Shadows: The Crows no longer respond to your presence, you see the auras of all crows within 36 meters of you, and the crows cawing sound when disturbed is 100% louder to you within that range.

This gets rid of the confusing explosion sound notifications that get so annoying, you get no false signals since they no longer respond to you, and they basically become little signal flares to tell you where survivors are. If this change were to happen, Spies would become a better tracking tool as it would be easier on the eyes and ears as well as far less annoying/confusing. If they also went through and added a few more crows to the maps that need them, that would also help it become a valuable tool, but not totally OP since Calm Spirit and Urban Evasion still defeat it.

I agree completely that the notification sound should be changed to the bird sound. I know it shows a bird shape, but having almost every single notification in the game be a loud explosion is really annoying.

Marcus

Another reason would be that the perk's range also got unnecessarily reduced from 48 to 36 meters.

aregularplayer

lack of crows on a lot of maps

FFirebrandd

Some maps have a lack of crows, some maps have way too many and the perk gets super annoying.

It'd be nice if it would reveal the survivor's aura for ~2s. But for now, I pretty much only use it on Nurse to make reacquiring my target after the blink fatigue easier if they run into a crow.