From a 4 year devoted Mikey main
I am both very happy and a little apprehensive that Bhvr after so many years of giving no attention at all to our favorite boogeyman are FINALLY doing a pass on Mikey's add ons. He has a lot of add ons that are pretty meh or useless that could do with changes - Jewelry box, tacky earrings, vanity mirror etc.
Please do not ruin his good add ons like J. Myers memorial, hair bow, dead rabbit, and of course the ultimate fun add on Scratched Mirror. These add ons are all fine and enhance his gameplay. I know tombstone piece is likely top of the list for the chopping block as its one of the most controversial killer add ons in the game. Tombstone itself is probably not going anywhere as its a necessity for the Evil Incarnate achievement.
Lastly since you guys are finally giving Mikey some attention, could you give him a few little buffs too please. He does not need a full on rework. He just needs the Wraith treatment where a few little tweaks would put him in a comfortable spot.
- Let him start with his tier 1 at 99%. That way Mikey has the option to stay in the tier 1 oblivious status for as long as he wants and maybe get a spicy gen grab or something (I've gotten many when in tier 1), or he can just tap into tier 2 the moment he spots a survivor if he prefers.
- Remove the stalk cap on survivors, or at the very least DRAMATICALLY increase it. Bubba and Billy are not limited on how many times they can chainsaw down someone. Oni is not limited on how much blood he can collect per match. Extend Mikey the same courtesy with his stalk.
- When in tier 3 give him faster pallet breaking speed to compliment the extended lunge and the fast vault speed. Tier 3 is Mikey at his most powerful so make him a total beast and have him chew through pallets quicker, too.
That's all he needs. Don't need to reinvent the wheel with him. Just those handful of little tweaks. Its coming up to October. Give the boogeyman a treat in his favorite season.
Comments
They can’t change his tombstone addons cause evil incarnate will be impossible to do without those addons
I expect a nerf to Tombstone Piece and a buff to a lot of his addons. Those speed while stalking and aura addons (except for Scratched) are really bad.
You only need one of those. The Tombstone itself is alright, because of the Downsides. The Tombstone Piece can easily be nerfed.
They can change tombstone piece. Which is the most controversial of his add ons. But yeah tombstone needs to stay for the achievement. Unless they change the achievement which is not likely.
Wait where did you hear this from?
They can still nerf the addon but they can’t give it a new affect cause the achievement would be impossible
Latest Developer update.
Oh ok I see I missed that lol that's so cool
To set expectations realistically, I just want to note that this is not a full add-on pass. As amazing as it would be to do a pass on so many Killer's add-ons all at once, that would end up being years of work squeezed into a single update.
More accurately, it's a pass on some of the underpowered, overpowered, or unused add-ons for a bunch of different Killers (rather than a bunch of add-ons for a single Killer like we usually do).
Sadge. That's disappointing.
Not to be that guy but is that really YEARS of work?
They're allowed to change the achievement if it's impossible to complete, I'm pretty sure.
Kind of. It takes a lot of time to do anything in game development. Every single addon needs to be thought out, coded, stress tested, implemented, bug tested, and then finally shipped. They likely have to do that with every single addon they change. It would take a very long time to do that for every single addon on a huge swathe of killers.
"years of work squeezed into a single update"
"YEARS"
Yeah but in the case of Evil Incarnate it is possible to do even without tombstone piece.
From what I understand, it is impossible to do the achievement without the Tombstone add-ons. If both Tombstone add-ons get changed to not let Myers insta-Mori, the achievement becomes impossible.
For some companies it is.
It does take quite a while to change so much. Add-ons are pretty small and easy to overlook in the game, but there's a bunch of work behind the scenes that goes into updating them. I'll greatly simplify things, but you'd need to:
Multiply that by up to 20 for each Killer, then multiply it by the number of Killers getting changes, and it quickly adds up to be a lot of work. Some simpler changes (like number tweaks) can be pretty quick and skip some steps, but some larger add-on changes can end up taking just as much time as a perk.
Though the real catch here is the scoping bit: Setting aside time for add-ons means taking time away from other features & balance changes that you'd probably want. Going absolutely wild on add-ons balancing would end up with less perk/Killer balancing, so it's important to strike a balance (no pun intended).
TL;DR: Simple on the surface, loads of work in practice.
Can u reveal about how u choose what should be changed? Is it killer win rates, survivors escape rates or are there any statistics on what perks/addons players use?
People really be thinking that they just crack their knuckles, smash a keyboard for 5 minutes and that they flawlessly made a dozen changes while spending the rest of the time drinking coffee
I also don't mean to be that guy, but I feel like the players do those first two steps all the time. Everyone from the forums to Reddit to YouTube are constantly giving good ideas for balance changes.
In short, yes and no.
We've got detailed statistics, but ultimately it always comes down to a mix of stats and feedback. Stats typically show us where to look, not so much what should be done/whether it's a problem. For that, we turn to feedback & gameplay.
For example, say there's two really popular add-ons on a Killer, but they're not actually that powerful (kill rates relatively unchanged). That might suggest that it's not overpowered, but rather that people feel they're a huge QOL improvement, so we'd look into it and see if that's the case. (And if that's the case, that might be a good time to take part of the add-on and integrate it into the basekit so people don't feel they need to rely on those specific add-ons as much, for instance.) Alternatively, those two add-ons might just be wicked fun to play with, which is why it's important to do further research and look at feedback & gameplay.
So to summarize, we've got stats, but that's not all we base decisions on.
I really hope that's the case with Mikey. That you guys have incorporated something useful from his add ons into his base kit.
They do, and it's wonderful and I love to see it and hope they keep at it. Sometimes those changes even make it into the game. Giving The Trapper two traps by default is one that we've seen a lot of, even.
Though on the other hand, people will often have varying opinions on things. You don't have to look far- even on the forums- to find people disagreeing about a suggestion or balance. The design team needs to take everyone's opinions into account and make a decision which is as unbiased as possible. So while there's plenty of people happy to share their two cents (and we're also happy to read them), we still need to sit down and think things through before we slap 'em into the game haphazardly and hope they work out.
Am I the only one who really dislikes the 'all or nothing' approach to balance BHVR takes?
Nothing ever gets adjusted, it's a full rework or it's untouched.
So many other games do balance so much better, things are overperforming? Maybe a value gets lowered by 5%. Something isn't getting used? Maybe try bumping it up a little and see if it works better.
Instead we get "this perk is being used too much, here's an entirely new perk with the same name, maybe it'll do better?" Like Corrupt seems to be in every single match these days, is the solution to change how it works, or maybe fiddle with the numbers and make it a little shorter and see if it loses a little popularity. Borrowed Time is on every other survivor. Does it need it's 50th mechanical rework in when it triggers, and how the debuff works, or would 1-2 seconds less of endurance encourage people to use it more safely or consider not bringing it?
Look at Freddy, he was overperforming, that's certain, but rather than dropping some numbers on some add ons, or just slowing him when he places traps, every add on that didn't have a basically laughable effect was deleted.
That's why going over add ons is "years" of work.
*fingers crossed for GF*
Do you have any idea of when we'll see part 2 of the Developer update?