Condemnation: Why Killer Perks/Powers That Lack Mechanical Feedback are Less Exciting to Use
Hello!
I wanted to provide some feedback about (mechanical) feedback and how the absence of it can bias the player population against the perceived efficacy of a given power or perk. Sadako's condemnation power is a great example for this - because the killer only gets to see whether a survivor...
* Has 0 Condemned stacks
* Has a non-lethal amount of Condemned stacks
* Has max Condemned stacks
* Is carrying a video-tape
There's a crucial gap in knowledge on the killer's part where exiting a TV and placing the first condemnation stack on a nearby survivor tells the killer a couple key things
* There is a survivor nearby
* The power had an impact on the game
From that point onward, every subsequent successful condemnation stack until the cap gives Sadako less knowledge than before. Where Sadako might be made aware that a particular survivor is nearby when going from 0 to 1 or from 6 to 7 stacks, the intermediary 'information safe zone' gives the survivors a slight advantage in the form of information masking.
Continuing on the topic of information-is-power, Sadako players will rarely, if ever, know when they're in a situation where three of four survivors have 5 condemned stacks each, which would be a significant amount of passive pressure on the survivors to stop doing gens and go courier some cursed tapes - but if Sadako doesn't know that, she can't capitalize on it, and the pressure is for the most part not a layer of the game that exists for the killer to interact with. The issue here isn't necessarily that the killer must have that info for the sake of making her more powerful, it's that the decisive bulk of her power is something that she personally does not experience, which is just the tangible absence of something that would make the killer more interesting to play.
This lesson can be carried over onto a number of killer perks as well - this is more anecdote, but if a killer perk is experienced exclusively on the survivor's screen, I usually won't run it. I'm not very interested in bringing perks for the survivors to play with. They're my perks, they should talk to me! Coulrophobia, for example: how often will I know it's providing me value? Compare that to Coup de Grace where if I take a big ambitious swing and land a hit I otherwise wouldn't, I have a very clear opportunity to thank my funky little falcon punch perk for its diligent service. That's just personal, but there's a clear line between the perks I pick and how frequently I get to know when they provided me value.
I understand the tempering factor is that, because information is power, it would empower the killer to give them more information of any kind - but ultimately, while reducing information is an important way to keep the scales in balance, forgetting it entirely risks making a power or perk feel uninteractive and thus uninteresting and less worth bringing into a match.
Comments
To help illustrate the point: Mad Grit + Agitation + Iron Grasp is a recognizable meme build because it's exciting, allows the killer to do something they otherwise can't do, and it's overall a pretty silly way to spend your time inverting a moment where the killer is somewhat vulnerable into one where they're deceptively dangerous.
Compare that to a build like Unnerving Presence + Distressing + Coulrophobia which is still a comical stacking of synergizing perks to produce a relatively unique effect - but the killer doesn't actually get to experience the bounty of these perks functioning first-hand, so even within the highly motivated subset of meme killers, you won't see it nearly as often.