Survivor Issues: Why I Don't Enjoy The Role
So I've been thinking about this recently. I've been trying to play more survivor, primarily to improve my killer game (I'm at that awkward intermediate position where it feels like I'm plateauing a bit) and...man, it really does get tedious (and at times quite...gross) rather fast.
The major issues are:
- Far too many survivor perks are really, really dull. It's not that they are weak - far from it. It's that most of them amount to 'you do x faster', 'you have wallhacks', 'you have a second life' etc. Very passive and don't really involve all that much decision making, risk/reward or interactivity. There are a few exceptions, but that feels like the trend.
- Certain perks that are just so powerful that it feels like not using them is playing the game wrong. CoH, Dead Hard and Iron Will are the first ones that come to mind. I've been complained at in postgame for not running these, and it feels like it artificially restricts build variety.
- Other survivors are just...nasty. Not so much to each other (although there is a fair amount of sandbagging and general mean-spiritedness in postgame) but the behavior towards the killer...it makes me feel icky by proxy, to the extent where I often give a pity kill. Honestly, this is going to be something that is going to come back and bite the developers eventually - their stance of 'being a jerk in any way short of slurs or actual threats is not only acceptable, but an important part of online gaming' is a decade out of date.
- Killer variety, even at my likely intermediate MMR (I escape more than I don't, but not by that much) is appalling. If it's not Blight, it's Huntress. Sometimes Nurse, Bubba or Nemesis. I don't mind playing against most of these, but it gets old after a while. I miss seeing Wraiths, Ghostfaces, Slingers, Cenobites, Myers etc. Even the run of Artists seems to have completely dried up.
- There are a handful of maps that feel fair and balanced (Yamaoka and Midwich are my favorites on both sides) but a lot feel like they either play themselves or are just nightmarishly RNG.
- DCs...it really shouldn't be the case where at least 2 in every 5 games have someone DCing. It's even more annoying as survivor, as it means that were probably going to lose by dint of someone having a sulk.
- A handful of addons are just unfun to play against. Tombstone, Video and Ring are the ones that immediately come to mind. I'd love to see these nerfed, and Myers/Pig at least buffed elsewhere to compensate.
- Sometimes I can go an entire game and barely see the killer, then win. I'm not sure if there is anything that can be done there, but it's pretty meh.
Overall, killer is frustrating, but the survivor role also has it's problems.
Comments
We can thank MMR for reducing survivor experience to verse same 4 killers over and over.
At this point I am just happy to see any unusual killer, even if I dont escape
Hmm.
What about Videotape do you find frustrating?
I feel like i must be the only survivor ever to have never used Dead Hard or Circle Of Healing.
Only meta perk i use is Borrowed Time and that isnt even all the time.
I started playing survivor a lot more around 3 months ago and your right it gets real stale quick. Cant tell you how many matches were my solo squad steamroll the killer with him having 4 hooks or less. Rare exceptions are a loaded blight or nurse but they have got rolled as well. Sb burst is more than enough to get to any safe zone, DH just deletes a mistake prolonging the chase, slugging is a horrible idea right now.
Making survivors have to at least go search for a gen instead of spawning on top if them would help some as spawning seperate should never happen.
The biggest problem with playing survivor is that it's so boring and easy
Variety is definitely a huge one. I usually only play survivor with my friend. No comms duo unless you count typing in discord midmatch. We estimate half of our matches over the last month have been facecamping Bubbas. I'm talking hard facecamp first survivor type.
I don't know if it's a function of MMR or what. Obviously can't tell our MMR, but we escape at least 70% of our games.
In solo-que, it's a nightmare. At least one person will DC the second they realize it's in play, and everyone else attempts to reenact a Three Stooges bit all trying to use the same box while the killer looks on.
Honestly, I don't really think it's MMR. My MMR is probably not all that high, and I still see far too little of a lot of killers.
It's more the meta being a bit stale, killers feeling a lot of pressure to win - simply to avoid getting teabagged and gloated at and CoH making a lot of killers really frustrating.
I find almost the exact same problems when I went from killer to survivor. I feel like the overall survivor skill ceiling is lower then killer. I feel like you get to that point where the game feels stale faster because you get good at survivor quicker.
I've noticed survivors actually have a lot of really good perks they just don't hold a candle to the meta.
I think playing a whe match and barely seen the killer when your coming from playing the killer and been in every interaction and chase is one of the biggest reasons going from killer to survivor kind of feels boring.
I get frustrated as Killer sometimes, but damn.. a Survivor day like today made me play Killer for the rest of the day.
Having rough Survivor games and 2 IQ teammates will just force me to play Killer all day, and I find it more fun tbh.
Started today as Survivor, first match someon dc's, 2nd match 2 people down and 1 on hook while I try to do a gen... Survivor just grinds my gears.
I've been playing a lot of solo queue survivor games recently to get the iri rank 1 survivor achievement. I did get much better. I can relate to many things you've said in this post.
My main issue was that like every 4th game someone dc's or gives up on the first hook for no apparent reason (unless the reason is that they've made a mistake).
Some add-ons are indeed dumb. Tombstone is incredibly stupid. I wish they'd nerf it, but then Myers is not the strongest, so... yeah. Alchemist's ring, no comment. I think videotape is completely okay, though. Not sure why you didn't like it.
In terms of killer variety, I've seen a lot. I think my MMR is probably between low and mid, since I've just now started to actually be able to loop for a long time. The issue on this MMR was facecamping. Don't get me wrong, I am not against strategic facecamping (or facecamping out of some misery, like getting rid of a toxic player, cause why not). But it was literally a useless trend. Usually Wraiths, Freddies and Bubbas did it, and god.. it happened often. I always asked the killers in the endgame chat about the reasons. Some of them said "I want to have a chance to win (even though it was clearly a bad move in that specific situation). Some of them were just very toxic in the endgame chat. Was very boring and annoying
Your teammates being toxic towards the killer for no apparent reason just made me sad every time.
And the maps... Ohhhh gosh. When I play killer 40% of the maps feels ######### the moment you load into them. Another 40% is just bad.
As survivor, it's the opposite. 80% of the time I'm happy I've loaded into the map. Makes me sad. Interestingly, I like the maps that are more balanced, because there is more chance to interact with the killer and less reason for the killer to camp. Basically the games are just more interesting on those maps (like Midwich).
Survivor can be hard, especially Solo queue. :(
I think the interesting part is arriving at Midwich being fair and balanced... when it's also one of the most annoyingly dull ones. Just getting anywhere on the indoor two floor maps is so annoying if you're on the bottom floor for any reason.
Sure, survivor is frustrating as well. The "fun" part is that I as a Killer find survivor frustrating too: I dislike seeing the same perks over and over again. This is no fun for me even if it is just about the Exhaustion perk. I only see Dead Hard and Sprint Burst and this is boring: You do not have Sprint Burst? Then it must be Dead Hard.
There is nothing exciting here as a Killer. I like seeing good Lithe Play or good Balance Landing plays. This is fun, I see that the survivor planed to go that way and I lost because I played to their game. Next time I can try to play around this.
Same for the other Perks: Borrow Time, Iron Will, DS, UnbreakaBill...same idea every game with Borrow Time being the only one I like because it is quit mandatory to escape camping Killers.
It comes to the point where I really like it to see Shadow Step, am surpriced about Calm Spirit and enjoy getting outplayed by Repressed Alliance.
There are quit some good perks out there and they are not so dull. The problem is that most of them are so situational that people do not dare to run them and this sucks. I am not even asking for nerfes to solve this and this is why the new PTB changes are quit needed. This is the right direction even if some Killers are crying.