What player agency is left?
Not to say there is none, but what control does killer have at this point that is not desired/called for by some survivors to be heavily regulated or limited?
Choice of target: some survivor suggest that killers not be capable of repeatedly targeting the weak link or even the most problematic survivor. As it stands, this choice is already being influenced by the endurance status granted by several perks for various situation and (however effective or not) base bt discouraging the killer.
How many killers would continue to play if forced to take what is currently the least beneficial option?
Choice of action: this one is already fairly limited in option and I mean in reference to killing survivors. What are our options; hooks, mori, and bleedout. In most cases the choice comes down to attempting hooks for a stage 3 payoff or counting on poor survivor performance and bad team altruism for bleedouts. The mori was already changed for survivor benefit and many would like to see something similar for bleedouts despite it being an altruism issue.
Is there really any choice between hooks or failed altruism which can be consitantly applied?
Comments
There are always improvements which can be made to both killer and survivor. But often times the things the devs decide to focus on are strange. For instance, why did they nerf Billy into oblivion, but yet Blight's addons have remained OP for so long. I feel instead of adding new features they really need to do quality of life updates.
Making the maps more balanced would go a long way to help. With re-balanced maps they could check back in and get a much better feel for what changes actually need to be made.
Other QoL adjustments could be:
No, I didn't show that at all. I'm talking from my own experience. From my perspective I have no issues getting downs with pig and applying her slowdown. Again, I don't play going into every game thinking I'm going to win so that helps. Also, I didn't say play only blight. I was implying that if someone is having issues with weaker killers, and feel they need to camp/tunnel then camp/tunnel. If they don't want to camp/tunnel then they can play stronger killers or a killer they are maybe better at.
I cannot speak from your experience in the game or anyone else's. From mine, m1 killers arent that weak. Because of that, I don't feel that I need to camp/tunnel to win with weaker killers.
I wouldn't mind better map balance, I'm all for that and even individual killer changes. That's all well and good for me.
Finally I have a question, do you enjoy camping/tunneling for a win? If so that's fine, everyone's version of fun is different. You aren't forced to do it by any means though. If your end goal is a 4k and you choose to do it then that's all well and good. It's the fact that it can be done by any killer that makes it hard to do any other kind of changes. Most changes are just going to make camping/tunneling even more effective. Some killers would do it less I'm sure but not all.
When did I say that I camp and tunnel every game to win?
I don't need to do that every game. I go for as many hooks as possible in my games. I have 2000h on pig and I know when I have to tunnel and camp and when I dont have to. Don't make me some kind of devil that wants to ruin others fun. I'm not.
All I say is that there are situations, mainly the ones where survivors do very little mistakes, that killer have to tunnel and camp to have a chance at winning.
That's it. And I think that's common sense.
Wait, so your point is that camping or tunneling is not required, because we can also just slug everyone?
I feel that's exactly what we'll do if they keep nerfing the hooks.
What?
No, my point is that you never have to facecamp or immediately hard tunnel someone. I think you're conflating two separate parts of the message there, the only time I bring up slugging is in response to this idea that killers are being forced to go for 12 hooks, which is a claim with zero evidence.
Also, what do you mean by nerfing the hooks?
Good examples for nerfing the hooks is removing hook-grabs, allowing self-unhooks under various conditions, or giving an Endurance effect to anyone who goes off a hook.
All of these changes make hooking survivors a less appealing option as opposed to any alternative we have.
Not really? None of those things actually affect the strength of a hook, which is that it immobilises one survivor and requires another survivor to come and save- except for the self-unhook, but that's only when you're camping, which is when you aren't getting proper value from hooks anyway.
It's only less appealing if you want to force someone to progress hook stages without being unhooked, or if you want to put someone back on the hook immediately to chew through hook stages. Neither of those are the main strength of hooks, so the changes aren't actually nerfing them.
So what exactly is the strength of a hook if not that survivors can die on them? Farming bp?
When you get a hook, one survivor is immobilised. -25% generator efficiency while they're there, assuming all survivors are still alive.
If you get into a chase while that first survivor is still hooked, two survivors are occupied. -50% generator efficiency.
Because you aren't by the hook (and so a save is possible), and there's a timer before hook stages progress, a third survivor has to go rescue their hooked teammate. -75% generator efficiency.
Hooks aren't just the way you achieve your overall win condition, they're also your basekit slowdown. It's temporary, but your goal as killer is to repeat it as often as possible, and that requires not camping and not tunnelling by default. None of the changes we've received to hooks have changed this, and in fact they've been largely aimed at the ways people try to circumvent using hooks this way in favour of tactics that require less effort - by standing directly in front of a hooked survivor, and/or trying to immediately down them as soon as they're unhooked.
Yes, but you also have to see that the killer's goal is killing survivors.
There are multiple ways to achieve this: putting them on X number of hooks, bleeding them out, using specific killer powers or perks that instantly kill, or preventing them to leave in time during egc. As these methods are not equally easy to perform, any change regarding their mechanisms also changes their relative strengths.
Since gamers tend to have an unexplainable urge to win in their games, we often find that when the relative strengths of their methods for achieving their goals change, they adapt.
In this specific case, we happen to have a great set of perks that aid the bleeding out, or the keeping gates closed in endgame method. I wouldn't be surprised if their popularity will skyrocket if killers will find that it takes more and more chases to eliminate survivors the conventional way, while the time it takes for their opponents to complete their goal isn't changing.
I apologize I didn't mean to make it sound like you do it all the time. There are situations where it is the better option especially in endgame. I may have overreacted a little with what I said. I don't think anyone has to do it every game. There are people who do but that's probably just more because they either don't know how to play better yet or they want to ruin someone's game.
Yes, which is why I just explained that the strongest and most efficient method of killing survivors is to not facecamp or try and tunnel someone out immediately.
The things that have been touched so far - camping and tunnelling - are easier. They are not stronger, and they weren't stronger before these changes were rolled out either.
You may not be wrong that people are going to try and do bleed-out or endgame builds more frequently now that they can't stand by the hook and leverage survivor player's general desire not to be bored out of their skulls for a match, but that doesn't mean hooks were nerfed. It means the path of least resistance suddenly started looking a little more hostile, and the unexplainable urge gamers actually have is to try and find as many shortcuts as possible to a win.
If necessary, those methods can be nerfed too. Eventually, players will realise that the strongest path was there all along and just required a little more effort... or they won't and the tools they try and use aren't free value anymore. Either way, the game improves.
It's interesting that you say 'not tunneling out someone immediately' isn't the most efficient method. Are you suggesting that tunneling someone out later in the game is more efficient?
I'm failing to see how eliminating a survivor after three chases is less efficient than doing so after (for example) five. In both approaches, the number of survivors being in chase / on hook is the same. The only difference is that one less survivor is doing gens during two of the chases if the first sacrifice happens on the third hook.
"Why do people act like there's a hard binary between immediately facecamping and/or tunnelling someone out as quickly as possible, and going for twelve evenly spread hooks on sequential survivors?"
Everyone understands both can be used in order to win a trial, but perhaps some people don't want to receive complaints when choosing the former rather than the latter.
But that is within a player's control. If you turn the chat off, there are no complaints anymore.
When I say immediately, I mean more in the sense of that being your only goal. It's where the term comes from- tunnel vision. If you ignore macro play entirely in favour of trying to tunnel someone out immediately, and those chases aren't exceedingly fast, all you've done is gift the survivor team a lot of uncontested generator time. It's at best a gamble with a razor's edge, because if you do it poorly, you practically lose by default.
This obviously goes quadruple for facecamping, but you aren't arguing in favour of that here so I won't belabour that point.
What I'm getting at is that macro play is very important and the actual strength of hooks is a big part of why. You don't need to eliminate someone in three chases if the way you're playing occupies multiple survivors at once to drag them off generators.
Indeed. I have nothing to argue here. Tunneling is not the "I win" tactic (as some like to paint it), but a gamble. And facecamping is almost all the time a sure way to fail.
Sadly the upcoming change in it's current form often makes it more difficult to secure bonus hook-states originating from survivor mistakes (arriving late to unhook), or capitalizing on opportunities when facecamping -is- the optimal play - like when you can hook multiple survivors close to each other, or even at the very same spot - for example in basement.
I have the feeling that many killers will resort to other less enjoyable methods of securing kills instead of optimal macro play, regardless of if their reason is their lack of skill, or just their preference of characters who's kit is not optimal for tracking multiple targets while quickly traversing the map. I feel that will further widen the gap between killers with high mobility and the others - and players tend to agree that the latter group is already not at a very good spot.
I absolutely agree. Tunneling and camping are NOT always the best option a killer has to win the game, but they are sometimes the necessary evil to turn the tides around.