Bloodlust is a better mechanic than you think
Bloodlust gets touted a lot as a band aid fix to map design, and as a byproduct is an unfair effect that helps less skilled Killers catch more skilled survivors. While this was the reason for it's introduction to the game, I feel the follow up assessment of it being unfair as a mechanic is not really accurate when you really think about it... and I want to explore a few points to hopefully convince you that blood lust is actually a much healthier, and a more intelligent mechanic than you think.
Let's recap what does Blood Lust does, and why I hope to explain why it's actually pretty good for game design.
Blood Lust
When in chase for 15/25/35 seconds the killers speed increases by 0.2/0.4/0.6 m/s.
Blood lust build up is reset back to 0 when the killer: -
- Lands a basic attack on a survivor.
- Breaks a pallet.
- Uses their killer power.
So how can this be healthy?
Well the first point I want to bring attention to before we get into it, is that speed is one of the most important strengths of the killer. I want to remind everyone that this is a 1vs4 game.
The speed of the killer relative to a single survivor is in direct competition with the fact that there are 4 survivors; realistiically the killer can only expect to pressure 1, maybe 2 survivors at the same time. This means the killer should almost always be winning the 1vs1 in an equally skilled matchup. This is what an asym is, one stronger player vs. multiple weaker players.
This means you as a survivor need to remember... you are EXPECTED to lose the chase at some point. The question is not "can I juice the killer for 5 gens?", it's "how long can I last before I go down?".
Breaking Pallets
Pallets are a huge strength for survivors, and your main defence against killers by making a tile directly stronger for you vs. weaker for the kille. A "God" pallet is named as such because it makes you basically uncatchable, even with blood lust. By throwing it, you force the killer to break it to now be able to catch you.
The fact blood lust is reset when breaking pallets, means that the longer you can go without throwing it, the more punishing it is to the Killer.... but here's the thing... some killers... don't care about God pallets.... and I'm sure you know who I'm referring to, which feeds into my next point....
Lost on Killer Power
Speed isn't the killers only tool. Their killer power is also a strength that empowers the killer to catch survivors, and this is where the effects of bloodlust start to get clever from a design point of view. When using a Killer power, the effects of bloodlust are immediately lost, regardless of whether that power actually helped the killer or not.
This effect is probably the most important argument for the health of bloodlust. You almost never see bloodlust on Nurse, Blight, Wesker, Spirit, Huntress, Trickster, Deathslinger, Pinhead, Oni, Hillbilly, Plague, Clown, Artist, Xeno, Knight, etc... These are killers that can use their powers in chase, and that is what they SHOULD be doing. If they are using bloodlust, it is actively costing them more time to build it up that it would to use their killer power.
So who do we see with Bloodlust often? Trapper, Shape, Pig, Wraith, Ghost Face.... all killers that lack any kind of inherent anti loop...
This is why Blood Lust, in my opinion, is actually a good mechanic for the game. It makes it so that killers who don't have a good anti loop/chase option still have something to bridge the gap between them and the killers that can use anti loop in their kit.
The inevitable comparison to MFT
Why do Killers complain about MFT so much if we have blood lust?
This is a fundamental design difference between Killer and Survivor. Haste is a less important stat on Killer than survivor, because the Killer being faster than the survivor is a core strength that is in direct competition with the fact there are 4 survivors.
If a survivor gets haste, they are directly reducing the difference in strength between the Killer and Survivor for the 1vs1. However this game isn't 1vs1, it's 1vs4. The 1vs1 is where the killer should be at their strongest... directly buffing the survivors stats for the 1vs1 is having a much bigger effect on the killer than giving a haste buff to killer has against the survivor.
This is why Blood Lust is healthy for the game... and MFT isn't. MFT directly hits the killers that have to rely on Blood Lust to remain effective, while also finding, that vs. the Nurses, Blights, Weskers, etc... it basically doesn't do jack.
Conclusion/TLDR
Blood Lust is not a skill crutch... In an ideal world, all killers would have comparable strength... but in reality they just don't, and likely never will. No matter how much you buff Trapper, he will never match Nurse.
Think about it... can you really call a Pig or Shape that hit BL2 to down you in 40 seconds, less skilled than a Nurse or a Blight who hit then downed you in 15 seconds? Not really... The m1 killers are named as such because they DON'T have a power that allows them to catch up to survivors/down them quickly outside of m1.
Blood lust helps keep those killers relevant.
EDIT: Following discussions with @Archol123, I think it's important to add BL3 is absolutely a skill crutch and should be removed. Reasonable debate for arguing 1 way or the other for BL2.
Comments
OP is absolutely right. Even with my Sadako I'm not gaining bloodlust because I'm using manifest/demanifest to increase my mindgame chances and at times, activate my photograph addon to get aura reading around a loop. That would be one example of an M1 killer that doesn't require bloodlust to get downs.
Bloodlust is there for the killers who need it, and I can't remember the last time I had a chase go into T2/T3 bloodlust even when I play the other killers because chasing that long is too much time for the others to do gens.
The problem I and many others have with Bloodlust is actually something you mentioned. It costs the killer to gain higher levels of Bloodlust to get a down yes, how ever theres no skill in doing it and it just feels awful for the receiving end.
Its sort of like hardcore tunneling. In most cases it is a detriment to the killer, but the Survivor on the receiving end knows their chances are extremely low since theres only so much they can do.
EDIT: Another great example is actually The Knight. There are 2 ways that people play him, firstly you have drop a guard at a loop Knight which most people do, and then you have the people who actually play into the strengths of the guards to not only zone but to slowdown the game and pressure multiple Survivors at once. The former feels much worst to go against mainly because theres no skill in pressing M2 twice in quick succession compared to carefully using your guards to get into a cycle and a good flow.
Bloodlust is a crutch for bad map design
Those aren’t infinites.
yes they are
I've always been surprised by the argument that people dislike bloodlust. Seems such a necessary component of the game. It might be a band aid, but its a really good band aid. Many killers would need to be overhauled without it and I think maps would be so sanitized for balance sake that they'd lose their uniqueness.
Imagine that thing in a strategy game, where you are loosing so hard that suddenly your units get a buff or something, that would be ridiculous, so why exactly are we discussing something like this?This does exist in strategy games. In Civ or Total War getting out to a huge early lead is offset by some other mechanic (i.e. happiness) meant to prevent a steamroll.
But also, DbD isn't a strategy games, its an asymmetrical online PVP. Everything about the game is arbitrary - the killer is outnumbered, but moves faster than the survivor, but survivors can vault faster, have pallets to play, and 3rd person view. Bloodlust is just as fair an element as the higher movement speed or that pallets don't replenish.
no they arent
theyre strong loops dont get me wrong, but infinites have been gone a loooooong time
What in your mind is an infinite loop?
I don't think it is a good band aid, besides the before mentioned points it somewhat prevents skill development, because the killer can basically be stubborn about something that is not supposed to work and it somewhat works out...
I was more thinking about in fights, my example would have been sc2, sure games like civ or total war have long campaigns, but the battles themselves don't have such a mechanic do they? It can make sense to have a such a thing when the game lasts several hours like a campaign, but not when it is only one fight like in rts... And even in total war, only played medieval 2, the fights themselves don't have such a thing, if you get steamrolled your moral goes to hell and you do even worse or your commander dies and so on...
I was more thinking about in fights, my example would have been sc2There are 3 differences between RTS games like Starcraft and DbD in this context.
1: Most RTS are generally decided by one big event (a battle, base attack, etc.). Skirmishes/intel gathering during the game are meant to sway the odds when the big battle comes. DbD doesn't have one big event, instead it has lots of chases over the course of the game. The killer winning the chase doesn't win them the game, they have to win quite a few.
2: DbD is asymmetrical as a 4 v 1. The killer has to be stronger than survivor in chase to differentiate between the team sizes. How much stronger is a balance issue. Instead of bloodlust maybe they could increase the base killer speed to compensate, but I think that would be way too powerful.
3: As the game progresses things tilt in the killers favor. Pallets are lost, fewer gens to defend, items disappear, etc. Bloostlust and windows blocking are a similar concept that reflect killers getting more powerful as things progress. It both works as a gameplay mechanism, creating situations were the killer has to decide between breaking a pallet or running around it, a balance issue, as well as being thematically appropriate, the longer a chase goes in a horror movie the stronger the killer tends to become.
Sure some games get decided by a big battle, but what exactly does that change? The work that is put in before to weaken the enemy or get a better position counts as well... And in no scenario do we have this sort of looser bonus, why even.
Nothing new on the asymmetrical part, the point stays that it is a mechanic that rewards you for playing bad/stubborn, to make you feel better about your lousy chase or the poor balance of the game, does that make it a good mechanic? I don't think so... Imagine having something similar on the survivor side... When you get hit too often in a short amount of time you get increased movementspeed... Sounds just as ridiculous...
The window blocking is not really part of that... It was introduced so you cannot vault a super strong window infinite amount of times... It has nothing to do with the "the killer gets stronger the longer the game goes" theme... That is more about ressources being limited the effective map size being reduced with gens getting done and so on. Bloodlust also does not fit in this theme, because to aquire bloodlust you have to do so poorly in chase that you're not getting any progress out of it... You're not destroying pallets, you're not getting hits on people and so on... So how exactly does it fit in the theme?
This is not about something thematically fitting or not... You can have the most fitting thing ever, and in the game it might still be terrible... Think about the first Alien chase music, it was probably really thematic, but it was terrible to listen to... The gameplay is the most important thing about a game, if the gameplay sucks, why on earth would you continue playing it? If you're interested in the story just watch a let's play or something like that...
Imagine any other game, and your opponent just gets a bonus because he is bad... Do you think that is a good concept? Like in general?
You're not wrong, but I'd rather all killers be strong enough in chase so that they don't need to rely on Bloodlust. This will likely never happen but bloodlusting isn't particularly fun for either side. Yet it is sometimes necessary. Because how else do you expect many killers to get hits around main structures?
Many M1 killers will automatically build up Bloodlust tier 1 just by trying to catch up to survivors. Then they have to break a pallet and everything starts from the beginning. Great. Meanwhile we have killers like Blight and Nurse, who have the potential to realistically end a 2-hit chase in about 15 seconds.
But thinking about it, they have released a lot of killers lately, who don't rely on Bloodlust. Nemesis, Pinhead, Artist, Dredge, Wesker, Skull Merchant, Knight, Singularity and the Xenomorph don't really rely on Bloodlust. Sadako does because she has nothing to help her in chase (immunity to stuns while demanifested doesn't count). Now I'm kind of curious about the Freddy rework because it seems that BHVR have found a way around this conundrum.