New killers problem of risk/reward
So, why are killers like the knight and Skull so hated by both killers and survivors. It suddenly came to my mind what the problem might be.
They are, what i will call, NO RISK/ NO REWARD killers.
What does this mean, this means the killer has a power with the following traits:
- Little self slowdown
- Short or no cooldowns
- No real way to be played around by survivors with the power itself
- Very hard to get no value or be in a worst situation
- The only way to deal with the power is to not deal with power (hold w or being injured)
- Very little lethality
- Very easy to not have to deal with the power itself
While knight and skull aren't the only killers like this, i think that because they were release back to back makes this much clearer.
Their power doesn't have ways for survivors to do stuff against them, you can't really deal with the power, you have to avoid the power. They don't have counter play to them. On the other end, their powers are really weak to make sure they are ok. Their powers are very easy to make irrelevant and hard to actually get caught by them.
So what are the changes this characters receive by the devs, they remove even more of the risks:
Knight:
- Shorter time for guards to initiate a hunt, making them harder to run away from a knight placing them
- Small haste effects that compensate for distance loss
- Ways to end a bad use of power earlier to get to use them again faster
- Longer time for a flag to spawn making harder for survivors to finish a hunt by looping a guard
Skull:
- Less slowdown
- Removed or reduced cooldowns
- More unhackable time
- More exposed time to give more chance of getting value
So what actually changes here, they have less risks, less weaknesses or less room to play around them. But they are all buffs that are irrelevant, because the reward is the same. Survivors just have less ways to counter play you or the killer has less ways to self sabotage themselves.
For someone that really didn't like these two killers, i love these fake buffs and understand why they do them. They are really easy to do, makes bad killers feel less bad because they don't self sabotage their gameplay and survivors can do the same thing they do because the power can still be made irrelevant, because in the end you are just killing yourself if you want to face their powers. And then i can be an ######### and say " The devs listened and they buffed the character, yay, great job, can we move on pls". I legit shouldn't be happy that they are buffing this killers, but i always see the buffs and go " Oh, this is fine. Nothing actually changed, good!"
Killers like Wesker and Billy are high risk/ high reward in concept. If they f* up, survivors can make them pay, hard. But they can destroy survivors also. Strengths and weaknesses, interaction and counter play. Regardless of the strength of the character right now, the concept and philosophy is there.
Also, i am not saying they are bad because they follow this design. Quick examples of bad High risk/ High reward killers and OP no risk/ no reward killers, by my definition.
Wraith, weakness to flashlights, longer stun duration and no entity block on vaults because no chase. High reward, speed and possibilities for easy first hits. Is he good, hell no, he is below average or average if you are feeling nice to him
Pre nerf Freddy, no risk and no reward. There is not really ways to play around with Freddy, he is and was very simple. Just busted values on traps and passive slowdown from add-ons, he was top tier.
How do you fix Knight and Skull for them to be enjoyed by killers and survivors. IDK, bhvr also doesn't seem to know.
I just want to call them No Risk/ No reward killers from now on. And how that model just makes a majority of the player base hate them.
Comments
I think skull merchant changes will be net-nerf because 1 person can just disable all drones near generators. they gave skull merchant a tracker but you will only be able to track 1 survivor. their single negative change outweighs all their positive changes.
I don't think most survivors will be wasting time disabling all her drones like you do trapper, just disabling the ones they need and leave the others light up an area or something. I don't think it will be that big of a deal.
I think they made that change because of the higher battery life buff, to ensure she can't lock out 3 gens with drones, especially if its a 3v1 by that time