BBQ Suggestion
This is probably going to get a lot of hate, so buckle up, kiddos. If I don't think you read this, I'm not going to take you seriously and you'll be ignored.
BBQ should EITHER let killers see auras when they hook a survivor OR give bonus bloodpoints for hooks, not both. Furthermore, the auras revealed when hooking should be for healthy and injured survivors, not survivors who are dying.
BBQ is probably the most powerful killer perk, judging by how frequently it's used. The information it provides is very valuable, and the bonus points are huge. However, players use it all the time to perpetuate a strategy that is extremely distasteful to survivors, and results in attempts to counter using perks like Unbreakable. When you down two players and leave one slugged, BBQ means there are almost no consequences. You can just hook one survivor, see where the other one crawled while you were hooking, and pick them up for another immediate hook. Hell, if you bait out another survivor trying to heal their slugged teammate, you can slug that one too. You could down the entire team and hook each person individually, and still find the other slugs because of this perk.
Killers seem to find no issue with leaving people lying on the ground for up to four minutes, which is how long it takes a survivor to bleed out. That is four minutes where the player does absolutely nothing. They get no objectives done, they don't help their team, and they earn no points aside from the bare 300 given when you recover. Meanwhile, the killer continues running around, swinging at other survivors, kicking gens, and wandering through the grass looking for the slug. If they get another person down, they get to see the slug's location for free. Woo-hoo, that's two players hooked for minimum effort, and a ton of wasted time for the survivor the killer didn't pick up the first time.
The perk encourages consequence-free slugging. As things stand, the only consequence is the much-reviled Unbreakable letting a slugged survivor and "easy hook" get back up and limp away. If killers leave bodies on the ground, they deserve to lose survivors to Unbreakable and bleed-out. There is no reason they should get extra points for wasting another person's game time and getting greedy for kills.
Killers can also use BBQ to make up for other bad tactics like tunneling and camping. If they camp, their score is almost halved, depending on how dedicated they are to staying at the hook. Slap on BBQ, though, and it is doubled, because you got four hooks, and thus maxed your tokens. Why play a different strategy when you can just stand in front of a hooked survivor and down potential rescuers for the same amount of points that would actually take work? This is what encourages survivors to use Borrowed Time and Decisive Strike. They don't risk taking a teammate off the hook just for both of them to be downed and re-hooked. They suffer through a trade, or the killer gets DS'd because they tunneled off the hook.
If people played like they were interacting with actual humans instead of like the bots weren't letting them win, this wouldn't be an issue. Unfortunately, they don't seem capable. Killers openly advocate slugging for 4ks because there are no consequences if survivors don't have the right perk. When players don't use these perks, they plateau and can't climb any higher, but also can't fall low enough to have reasonable matches based on skill alone. Thus, more give up on playing their own way and learn to get sweaty and go meta.
Tune in next time for my piece about why Insidious and Iron Grasp should be reworked or removed from the game altogether!
Edit: After considering a few reasonable responses, I will suggest that BBQ only show the auras of healthy or injured survivors, not dying survivors. If a killer wants to find slugs, they have a base perk for it already. This way, a killer who chooses to slug for kills risks losing points for survivors bleeding out, being picked up by someone else, or using Unbreakable.
And for those concerned, when I'm slugged and a killer isn't using anything that makes it easier to find me, I crawl to the most covered, hard-to-see spot I can find and bleed out. I figure, if they're fine with me losing points while I'm dying, they'll be fine losing points when they don't get to hook me.
Comments
BBQ is almost in every match. Killers really aren't viable without it. I always hear "it's for the bloodpoints" and yet, they often have some other aura reading perks and add ons. At best it's half true. It's very rare at red ranks to a see a build that doesn't any combination of bbq, nurse's, ruin, undying, infectious fright, and tinkerer. Since they maps some maps smaller, clowns can cover the distance using bbq and tinkerer.
I'm not saying the perk isn't balanced, per se, but I'd be interested to see how much use it would still get by removing the aura reading and bonus at different times.
For real, I run into people using BBQ with Nurse's, Bitter Murmur, and Whispers. That's excessive, and it's definitely for a reason.
Solo Survivor console main here. I don't think BBQ is OP. Only time it really hinders teams is when there are Survivors who are new or unaware of how to handle BBQ. You can easily counter or bait Killers who rely too much on BBQ tracking. Quite fun actually, watching them look around in a spot you baited them to (this also buys Survivors gen time)! Def annoying though when I have teammates who repeatedly get wrecked cus they don't know what's going on, but what can ya do 💁♂️ ...oblivious players are oblivious, they'll learn.
Maybe things are different on console, idk. I turned off cross-play because I wasn't fond of how console players do things. But on PC, killers slugging and using BBQ to find their slugs is common practice. And this isn't among "new survivors," this is in red ranks. Killers with instadown abilities especially like to do this for easy 4Ks.
"You can easily counter or bait Killers who rely too much on BBQ tracking."
From what I've seen it's all of them that use it. The excuse is always "I only use it for bloodpoints". It might be true if they weren't also using Nurse's Calling or other aura reading perks and add ons.