Thoughts on Blindness?
Let's discuss about this effect in general, what problems it has and what can make it fixed.
For me, it's pretty useless against SWF teams while stomping solo teams.
So this reason makes this effect pretty weak and unhealthy same time. I am rarely seeing killers are using blindness perks and add-ons. Except Ultimate Weapon ofcourse but who is using this perk for Blindness anyway.
I actually have idea for fix problem and make it worth to get:
- Blindness is no longer blocks survivor auras. This effect was useless against SWF teams and it only hurt solo teams.
- Blindness is still blocking loop auras, this effect is works for all survivors. There is no reason to change it.
- It still blocks gen, chest etc auras as before. No reason to change.
- New effect: Survivor vault speeds reduced by x%. Now this makes sense since blindness makes survivors hard to see by lore wise. If your view is not clear, you can't jump effectively. Ofcourse this will be strong effect, so some add-ons and perks can get rework or time reducation nerfs. Except Third Seal because it's hex perk. It supposed to be strong.
Comments
Blindness is the worst, yet most overpowered status effect in the game. It does very little and I personally have little trouble being blind the whole match as a survivor (as killer I'd eventually have trouble finding hooks). At least as long as I don't run Bond + Open Handed. That's pretty sad when it happens.
Anyway, Blindness does something that no other status effect does. It directly counters WoO. For everyone who hasn't done it, I suggest you try any build focused on Blindness and see what happens. You will notice that some players run around like headless ckicken, when they can't follow the simple rule of running towards yellow. This is one of the reasons I don't like WoO in its current state.
I think your suggestion is quite interesting. I'm not sure, if reducing vault speed in general is a good idea, but I'd be very interested in testing it out on a PTB. Vault speed as well as movement speed is finicky and somehow just works the way it is. Modifying it would have consequences on overall loop safety (remember Spine Chill + Resilience?), so this would need to be carefully tested and adjusted.
That's why put x instead of number. We can test on PTB and figure out if it would work or not. And number can be safe since one effect should not be game changer but it should help killer
Mindbreaker and Septic Touch
Mostly. Combine it with a Blindness addon and see how it works out. You can also use Knockout for extra salt but that is completely up to you. Alternatively, you can create a build purely around Third Seal. This works pretty well on Doctor, especially on smaller maps.
I would say blocking additional auras is fine (yellow and pink ones), but basekit survivor auras (red ones for hooked / dying state) should never be blocked. If additional survivor auras would not be blocked (e.g. bond / kindred), Blindness would only prevent auras from pallets, walls, killer and additional objectives (totem & chest). I feel that would be too less to run any blindess perk or addon.
I'm also not so fond of the vault speed reduction, for me thats not really related. And it might not even be strong enough at all (depending on the value, ofc). But if we want to stick with the vault altering aspect, removing fast vaults alltogether would be more meaningful. Although that may be too strong then. But otherwise, blindness is the weakest effect, so an additional effect should be powerful to make blindness addons / perks worth running.
Another suggestion I (and others) have is blindness applying actual visual impairment. I'm thinking about the visual restrictions during Nightfall from Dredge. This can really throw you off, since you cannot see past 10 or 15 meters. Such an effect would be very fitting, and it is powerful, since the killer would see you normally, but you wouldn't see past x meters, so even non-stealth killers could sneak up on you, esp in combination with obliviousness (e.g. Third Seal + Plaything). If you ever tried to find the exit gate while in Nightfall with the EGC timer about to run out, you know how devastating this reduced vision can be ^^.
(Small detour about Third Seal: Third seal should be changed to work similar to plaything, creating a totem for the affected survivor. Plaything would then be put on top of this hex. So when the totem is cleansed/blessed, it would deactivate both effects.)
Third Seal could not work like Plaything. Plaything is showing totem's aura to affected survivor whenever they are so close. Third Seal is blocking auras.
But isn't it the same on live, with Third Seal being a separate hex totem? I though third seal prevents Plaything aura, since its a pink one, not a white. So it wouldn't really be any different. Third seal would help avoid detecting the plaything totem, like it's doing now. But it wouldn't be possible to remove it with a single cleanse like now, but has to be removed on a per-person basis. Would make it a little stronger, imo (Blindness being reworked is part of the deal here).
The problem with Third Seal is, in 80% of games it is cleansed before it had any meaningful effect. Plaything only activates when it has an effect on the survivor, and I feel Third Seal should work the same, being a personal effect just like Plaything.
For global hexes like Ruin or Huntress Lullaby, such a "personal hex" approach does not work, obviously. They should be changed to reveal themselve / create the hex totem only when applying their effect for the first time. Would not change much for ruin, but would help Huntress Lullaby alot, it being cleansable only after someone being hooked or missing a skill check.
I think it's especially cruel to hide the aura of hooked Survivors. I try to pay attention to where any Survivor is hooked, but those notification bubbles are not always 100% reliable. I've been in plenty of Survivor games that end early because one or more Survivors died on hook due to blindness.
I think it's one of those status effects that Killers know is a misery to play against, so they'll bring perks and add-ons that apply it just to so they can ruin your game. There shouldn't be any perks that apply blindness indefinitely imho.
You can use Third Seal for protect other totems ofcourse but i still don't think Third Seal could work like Plaything.
First Plaything is personal hex because affected survivor is seeing totem's aura. That's how this perk balanced. Unless you bring something to protect your totems, survivor most likely will find and cleanse totem.
Now if we are gonna make Third Seal personal hex, it also need to show totem's aura to affected survivor by balance wise. But this could not work because Third Seal is blocking auras. It would create some balance issues.
And there is another issue, you can't use both perks together if they change Third Seal. You know each hex perk needs their own dull totem. They are not working like Boons. But we only have 5 dull totems, so both perks could not work together as well. Like let's say you already affected 2 survivors with Third Seal and Plaything, this means 4 dull totems already used. Next time you hook survivor, which perk will affect them Third Seal or Plaything. Because only one dull totem left.
Question
does blindness status counter bond cause I barely use the perk but if it does then I think the devs need to look over at this effect with bond
Yes
That's why i am asking to blocking survivor auras should not happen. Because who is using survivor aura perks? Solo survivors. You are punishing people for playing solo and SWF is free to whatever perk they want because they can just talk. So they don't even need to use aura perk and blindness is doing nothing to them.
My rework idea is making blindness different type perk and affecting all survivors equally.
I would use blindness perks if they hide the killer objects or just lower the radius by a x amount of meters.
Now that part needs to be looked at
and idk bout WOO but I think the bond counter thing needs to be removed from blindness status effect
There is some killers which would make survivor die if they hide killer objects.
Sadako, Pig
And some would create serious issues
Wesker, Pinhead
So i disagree. Even if BHVR rework blindness, it should never ever hide killer objects.
Most SWFs aren't groups of 4 people, that are all on voice comms, that are all making competitive callouts with their voice comms.
Blindness is still useful against most SWFs. Also, blindness should be in the game, so that survivors can know how bad it feels to have auras blocked. As long as perks like distortion exist, which hides auras from killers, there should absolutely be perks that hide auras from survivors.
Blindness is misunderstood for just how much it can actually do. Anyone can take a look and guess some things it does, but i'll include a list of just some other ways you probably haven't thought about and how to get value from blindness.
Blindness is only somewhat effective against SoloQ. Decent SoloQ players though? Blindness is rendered useless. SWF you know it won't work.
I don‘t think it would be very problematic, because many blindness perks aren‘t effecting you for long.
Third seal is boon, thisway it would be fine.
And ultimate weapon is maybe a bit too strong then, but I don‘t want to get in this UW discussion now.
"Personal hexes need to show their aura to the affected player"
Why? Plaything has this stipulation, but that does not mean that other personal hexes need to have it.
Personal hexes work on a player-basis, so there's some trigger that applies the hex to the player, but only them. In order to do so and to keep track who is hexed, a totem ignites for each affected player.
That's how I would define personal hexes. The aura is part of Plaything, and not required for other hexes.
"You can't use both together"
That's why I said it would need to be changed to place all personal hex effects on the same totem.
So you get hit, one random totem ignites and applies Third seal to it. Then you get hooked, plaything ALSO applies to the that hex totem. When the totem gets found and cleansed, both the Hexes go away. But only for you.
Would like to see the status blur out the hud info as well. As is there are much better alternatives for status effects.
It is one of the worst status effects if not the worst.
It would be better if survivors didn't get the visual cue when hooking someone instead of just hidding the aura. Also the only "decent" perk related to blindness is Third Seal which is a Hex.
It's not bad vs soloq when it's applied to everyone. If people arent paying attention they wont know where someone is hooked and hard to find slugs. And there's some killers who think WOO is op (laughs) it would counter this too.