blindness mostly only works for soloq and I think it's a bad design
SWF players can still coordinates even without auras mostly fine, but solo q players can't deal with it, especially when it is used for slugging.
I think those effect should be changed to something that's not so ineffective against SWF and extremely oppressive against SoloQ.
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Imagine if blindness removed the red stain and actually obscured the survivor's vision.
that would be impactful.
Probably why they won't do that, gotta let survivors get their free wins.
Uh I mean, most meta killer builds doesn't even have any blindness in it.
that's because the status is not considered impactful.
A lot of addon/perks do.
it would be nice to have options.
because slugging is a waste of time. It is not really viable and only few select killers do it because of how their power is constructed. Oni, Twins, condemn sadako. Twins is very unpopular. Oni fell to the survivor changes and overshadowed by blight. Sadako is weak and is gimmick killer that only crazy people play. I agree that blindness is unfair for soloq. its bad enough that soloq lacks information at base-kit. it is even worse when you make a status effect to make the problem worse.
This specifically is why I REALLY hate all blindness perks and other perks like knockout. They explicitly exist only to screw over solo survivors and beginners/the extremely casual, and are always used as such.
At the same time, what do you realistically do with blindness that couldn't be considered oppressive, without being completely useless? Blindness is a hard, hard counter to bond/empathy/kindred, which realistically somewhat bridges the gap of information , but if those get removed blindness, it becomes entirely useless.
And then on the other hand, if we go with the theme of blindness and doing something with vision, it's effects need needs to be considered based on every killer and their power balance-wise, on top of accessibility things too (like my mind jumped to how doctor used to have things flash on screen that they removed for reasons, or like how clicky clicky got removed too).
I just sort of don't know what to do with it, but I'm also not smart enough to think of things nor am I creative enough to think of alternatives. Big shrugs.
I mean, guaranteed "free wins" isn't a thing right now either, so. But that being said, I'd be more inclined to think this would be a neat idea in some ways... but only if the three s-tier killers didn't exist. And even then I think it may be too strong with more than just those either, especially for babies to the game (which I'd consider like, the first 600 hours).
My beloved Piggy has an add-on that causes Blindness to the headgear. She already has an unfortunate rep for tunneling the trapped survs, and that change would facilitate such tunneling significantly.
What kind of obscurity effect we talking about here? That darkening mending nonsense is terrible on console, which has precious few graphic settings & no ability to use filters.
Under all due respect, I'll disregard the tunneling concern you brought up and here's why:
Every times we try to buff killer in a problematic survivor-biased meta, folks show up and make dubious claims that it will break the game as killers will use it to tunnel or face camp "even more"... but these are not prohibited strats per the rules of the game and we are in this situation in the first place because survivors abuses the freebie they get to counter those killers playstyles... or other crazy new perks/addons changes.
In regards to pig, she is weak as hell, I don't want to hear a complaint about that killer of all killers... that is honestly silly.
But in regard to a good question you asked, "what kind of obscurity?"
I think a good template for it would be a somewhat toned down version of nightfall from the dredge.
Blindness SHOULD be a status effects that helps stealth killers be better at stealth while potentially hurting aura reading as well.
Combined with oblivious... it would make for some fun jumpscares/ambush and both sides should have fun with it.
People on coms could still relay info... but with the targeted survivor having an actual handicap... it would be much more fair for the killer... without really being any different/more oppressive on soloQ
Hope this clarifies well.
I think it's ok that it counters perk related aura reading, gives killers some type of counter to things like Windows of Opportunity and other aura perks.
I think the real problem(s) comes in when it starts blocking base kit aura reading like slugs and that's what really hits solo q hard.
Main exception to that being Kindred, which in some form should be base kit but without the killer aura imo.
So my recommendation is to make it not block base kit aura reading but keep perks aura reading blocked; similar to how killer related object auras stay visible.
My concern about Pig was taking all survs in mind, not just good to great ones. She is already regarded as a noob stomper, just as Pinhead is, but like you mentioned gets weaker as the quality of the survs rises greatly. The average surv won't do things like 99ing gens when hats are active, and the rooks can't even conceive strats yet anyway.
However they've repeatedly shown they do not balance nor make changes based around the most efficient gameplay, but with the middle grouping in mind, and a thought or two for rookies. So that mythical high MMR level is largely not considered.
That's why I bring up the tunneling aspect of Pig here. I'm thinking of the entire playerbase, how the average surv reacts to her & the average Pig is played.
Your idea for the Dredge-lite effect definitely has possibilities, especially with Blindness already countering WoO, which is commonly run. There are occasional complaints about Nightfall being too dark, to which the typical response is "run Windows then" and this change may squash that counter. It all depends on how dark, across all platforms. Worth testing.
I agree balancing around new and/or unskilled players is not ideal, but they tend to do just that. So I try to keep that in mind when considering changes myself. I imagine part of their reasoning is the harsh new player experience this game has, and the brutal learning curve.
It's easy to forget that when ya have thousands of hours on this game. 😜
Blindness is caused by exactly four perks. Third seal, which is a hex so automatically bad with the caveat you have to hit everyone for it to be fully active.
Fearmonger, which lasts for five seconds.
Knock out, you're on the ground so it mostly doesn't matter anyway.
Septic touch. Be honest: have you ever seen septic touch?
There's killer add-ons that cause blindness, but those are all contingent on interacting with the killer. Mostly blindness counters Windows. It's the weakest status effect in the game.