Perk Suggestion: Distortion

Moundshroud

I think the current form of Distortion is really unworkable. Many people (myself included) have tried to come up with changes, most of them convoluted and code heavy. I would suggest removing the Tokens and making this simply a Survivor version of Insidious. See below:

DISTORTION

This Perk unlocks the stealth ability. Standing still for 4/3/2 seconds will grant you the Undetectable 

 Status Effect until you act or move again.

NickChinchill

I don't think this would work. Most killer perks that enable them to see auras come through Survivors doing specific actions - haste actions, healing, finishing a gen etc. Having to stand still to not be seen when you've already triggering the aura reading just means the killer can assume you're sitting there like a lemon.

If Distortion was to be upgraded/buffed, I'd suggest making it so the tokens had to be earned/recovered by doing certain actions. Work on a gen for a set amount of time, heal another survivor, something like that.

Lexilogo

Undetectable isn't actually applicable to Survivors. It's just "removes aura reading" on their ends.

With that said, this wouldn't work as a Distortion overhaul, it would largely fail for the same reasons Insidious doesn't work: If you're standing still, you're useless.

As loads of people have said, the ability to regain tokens is the most sensible solution. Getting a token back for every gen that's fully repaired, or gaining all your tokens back whenever you're unhooked, or when you unhook other Survivors, really anything.

Moundshroud

I would agree with the previous posters except for a couple of things:

1. No Perk is supposed to be perfect. Being able to stand still when you suspect the Killer might be able to get a read on you, such as when hooking someone for Barbecue & Chili or when a Generator is about to come up for Bitter Murmur, or if you suspect you are facing a Scratch Mirror Myers, can be very useful. Like all Perks it is situational and would (my way) require some proper thought and play.
2. Insidious is not useless for Killers, nor would this version of Distortion be for Survivors. It would get use. Not being able to move for a bit is a small price to pay. Token Distortion is gone within the first minute most of the time, and eve if we did have ways to get back Tokens the control over it would not be in the Survivor's hands. It remains a get lucky Perk.
3. If you truly want an upgrade to a Perk by the DEV you have to look at time and effort. A fancy Token system is code heavy and has lots of chances for unintended consequences. This solution is something that can be done simply and has no unintended code consequences.

I originally argued for Tokens and all that jazz, but in the end I had to be pragmatic. Do you want something you can use and get some value from, or not? Because if you want some fancy Token system, this will not get revisited for years, if ever. :)

REL1_C

@Moundshroud said:

I think the current form of Distortion is really unworkable. Many people (myself included) have tried to come up with changes, most of them convoluted and code heavy. I would suggest removing the Tokens and making this simply a Survivor version of Insidious. See below:

DISTORTION

This Perk unlocks the stealth ability. Standing still for 4/3/2 seconds will grant you the Undetectable 

 Status Effect until you act or move again.

Good idea but I suggest altering it a little bit

1. After standing still for 2 seconds, you stay "Undetectable" for 5 seconds after
2. The perk will have a little cooldown 20/15/10 seconds.

Milo

@Moundshroud said:

I would agree with the previous posters except for a couple of things:

1. No Perk is supposed to be perfect. Being able to stand still when you suspect the Killer might be able to get a read on you, such as when hooking someone for Barbecue & Chili or when a Generator is about to come up for Bitter Murmur, or if you suspect you are facing a Scratch Mirror Myers, can be very useful. Like all Perks it is situational and would (my way) require some proper thought and play.
2. Insidious is not useless for Killers, nor would this version of Distortion be for Survivors. It would get use. Not being able to move for a bit is a small price to pay. Token Distortion is gone within the first minute most of the time, and eve if we did have ways to get back Tokens the control over it would not be in the Survivor's hands. It remains a get lucky Perk.
3. If you truly want an upgrade to a Perk by the DEV you have to look at time and effort. A fancy Token system is code heavy and has lots of chances for unintended consequences. This solution is something that can be done simply and has no unintended code consequences.

I originally argued for Tokens and all that jazz, but in the end I had to be pragmatic. Do you want something you can use and get some value from, or not? Because if you want some fancy Token system, this will not get revisited for years, if ever. :)

this will not get revisited for years, if ever. :)

This logic doesn't make any sense. Because, by that logic, they would pick up your idea and do it tomorrow, wouldn't they?

You can still get value out of current Distortion too btw.

Lexilogo

@Moundshroud said:

I would agree with the previous posters except for a couple of things:

1. No Perk is supposed to be perfect. Being able to stand still when you suspect the Killer might be able to get a read on you, such as when hooking someone for Barbecue & Chili or when a Generator is about to come up for Bitter Murmur, or if you suspect you are facing a Scratch Mirror Myers, can be very useful. Like all Perks it is situational and would (my way) require some proper thought and play.
2. Insidious is not useless for Killers, nor would this version of Distortion be for Survivors. It would get use. Not being able to move for a bit is a small price to pay. Token Distortion is gone within the first minute most of the time, and eve if we did have ways to get back Tokens the control over it would not be in the Survivor's hands. It remains a get lucky Perk.
3. If you truly want an upgrade to a Perk by the DEV you have to look at time and effort. A fancy Token system is code heavy and has lots of chances for unintended consequences. This solution is something that can be done simply and has no unintended code consequences.

I originally argued for Tokens and all that jazz, but in the end I had to be pragmatic. Do you want something you can use and get some value from, or not? Because if you want some fancy Token system, this will not get revisited for years, if ever. :)

1. I agree no Perk should be perfect, but I don't think any Distortion rework is going for a Perk that's going to be part of the meta. And yes, I understand this version of Distortion would have its uses, but it'd be useless against Nurse's, I'm All Ears, Undying, any aura reveal that will be interacting with either you moving around, or you taking an action, is no longer countered by Distortion, narrowing the uses of an already niche Perk. On top of this, it removes one of the neat purposes of current Distortion, the fact that you can use it to narrow down what aura reveal Perks (if any) the Killer is using. Your suggested version would allow players to guess Bitter Murmur, BBQ etc are in play and try to avoid them... If they aren't already using lockers for that, if at all? (also blah blah blah lockers inflict blindness for a reason)
2. I'll concede that Insidious isn't useless for Killers but, excluding facecamping, I'd rank it something like a 2/10 Perk. Standing still and waiting for a Survivor to come your way will fail half the time, and for the other half you probably could've accomplished the same thing by just chasing like normal.
3. Developer effort should be taken into account when redesigning Perks, but I don't think anyone's suggestions here are developmentally unreasonable. A Tokens system is not "fancy", it's just a variable that you increment and decrement under specific circumstances. I would actually argue that your rework would be more potentially bug/effort prone than the idea of Tokens incrementing, as determining "player is not moving or taking any actions" has more potential for oversight, but I don't think it's so complex that it really counts against the idea either.

Moundshroud

@Lexilogo said:

https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/1946987#Comment_1946987

1. I agree no Perk should be perfect, but I don't think any Distortion rework is going for a Perk that's going to be part of the meta. And yes, I understand this version of Distortion would have its uses, but it'd be useless against Nurse's, I'm All Ears, Undying, any aura reveal that will be interacting with either you moving around, or you taking an action, is no longer countered by Distortion, narrowing the uses of an already niche Perk. On top of this, it removes one of the neat purposes of current Distortion, the fact that you can use it to narrow down what aura reveal Perks (if any) the Killer is using. Your suggested version would allow players to guess Bitter Murmur, BBQ etc are in play and try to avoid them... If they aren't already using lockers for that, if at all? (also blah blah blah lockers inflict blindness for a reason)
2. I'll concede that Insidious isn't useless for Killers but, excluding facecamping, I'd rank it something like a 2/10 Perk. Standing still and waiting for a Survivor to come your way will fail half the time, and for the other half you probably could've accomplished the same thing by just chasing like normal.
3. Developer effort should be taken into account when redesigning Perks, but I don't think anyone's suggestions here are developmentally unreasonable. A Tokens system is not "fancy", it's just a variable that you increment and decrement under specific circumstances. I would actually argue that your rework would be more potentially bug/effort prone than the idea of Tokens incrementing, as determining "player is not moving or taking any actions" has more potential for oversight, but I don't think it's so complex that it really counts against the idea either.

Except that just redoing some maps apparently altered hits being in synch. The code is very messy and convoluted. A token system touches a lot of things, and I hate to say it, is much more complex than you think.

Lexilogo

@Moundshroud said:

https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/1947024#Comment_1947024

Except that just redoing some maps apparently altered hits being in synch. The code is very messy and convoluted. A token system touches a lot of things, and I hate to say it, is much more complex than you think.

Look, I appreciate spaghetti code is spaghetti, but, and I don't mean to Dunning-Kreuger myself here, but if you gave me Dead By Daylight opened up in UE4's editor, I could absolutely implement it myself. It's JUST a ++ to a variable that already exists, that triggers when something happens (and there's already loads of perks that trigger on unhook, on heal, on gen repair etc that could have their triggers reliably copied).

And the mid-chapter patch changed a LOT more than "just redoing some maps", it completely replaced things like Survivor animations, had loads of miscellaneous bugfixes and tweaks, etc.