Why is Xeno not played more?
I can't remember last time I saw Xeno/Alien. And when I checked community stats he is like bottom top 10 least played, which is intersting. His power is also good in terms of raw power… and most survivors don't even know how to place turrets.
Comments
I think its because of 3 issues:
Number 1: turrets the flame turrets arent an issue when facing soloQ but when you face any team with above 1 IQ the turrets wil take you out of your power making you lost not only lots of distance but also time.
Number 2 tunnel spawns. the tunnels are coded to spawn AFTER chests this creates an issue where the turrets might spawn in a completely wrong area (not near gens) or on the wrong floor for multiple leveled maps.
Number 3 fov i think some killer players might be put off from using xeno due to the drastic fov changes as you really have to get used to the cam height when you for example played nemesis before playing xeno.
Because he has a really boring concept of a killer
He is just a press m2 and attack further killer, the turrets are harder to counter when survivors know where to place them and that's it, nothing is interesting about him honestly, it's impossible to be a good alien when your power is just walk W to get your power and press m2 to attack a little further away
I mean, he is in a good spot of being good, but like I said, he is not interesting
The tail is hard to aim on console and sometimes it'll prioritize hitting the environment even though you clearly were on point (auto aim). It's not fun constantly getting stunned out of your power. Sometimes you get tunnels that are nowhere near objectives similar to Dredge have no lockers near gens.
She's difficult to play, has quite strong counterplay from even moderately organised Survivors and is hard countered by some maps and offerings. A lot of her addons are also quite mediocre.
I find the flame turrets to be tedious and annoying to deal with. It's a really repetitive mechanic when you're playing Xeno for multiple games. I get Rule Of Cool and all, but the turrets get old really fast.
No one wants to see her anyway. She has one of the most boring kits in the game
Complete waste of a licence.
Where's the stealth, the speed, the acid and climbing on ceilings on indoor maps.
On console the tail is atrocious and the turrets should not be 360. No sneaking around them.
Basically a m1 killer on console.
Xeno got balanced around people not placing turrets which ends up just not being fun to play when people do utilize them.
So many other players hate the turrets. I love them.
This is it. I hate using the tale because the aim is so off. You can look like a direct hit but it misses it's really frustrating. I also feel that going up against PC players while being on console there's a huge difference as well. They can be right on front of you and you will still miss. The Dark one is the same way if you don't aim down to hit you will miss and hit above them.
and yet , whenever i play her , i can be sure of at least 1 give up if not 2 on 1st hook
Boring kit that plays itself.
Hello, long post coming, responding primarly to you and to the things that never cease to pop when Alien is involved in the forums.
The Alien in dbd suffers from being in dbd, no claustrophobia to make it's stealth shine, it can't be too lethal which is why it's scary in games like Isolation plus several other limitations like the ovomorphs/wall climb. Games are also too fast to properly install the horror of Alien.
But,
The design philosophy is almost a carbon copy of Alien: Isolation which is the most praised Alien game ever.
Alien roams in vents very fast (in dbd it is stealthy on top of it which it isn't in Isolation + you can track it very accurately with MT), it detects you with sounds (footsteps detection + breathing sound/generators sound), it emerges (control station) and then it chase you (tail is extremely lethal, just like a chase in Isolation is almost guarranted death. People wanted the Alien to be very lethal but survivors have flamethrowers, devs did it and people complains). The only way to defend yourself against such a monster is with a flamethrower and a motion tracker (surprise, it's there too). Seems like the kit is almost identical, Isolation must be very unfaithful to Alien then, how can it can't spit acid, climbs on wall, place eggs that hatchs washed up Facehuggers ???
Ovomorphs and Facehuggers are in Isolation for a very short time and are a gimmick instakill (not a good idea for dbd) and there is no wallcrawling AT ALL.
Now, what is actually wrong in Alien design imo as an Alien fan that has played the Xenomorph almost exclusivly since it's release and had it leveled up to P100 ?
TLDR; Alien is very accurate to it's source material, it just can't have anything in it's kit and it also suffers from being in a game like DBD.
I don't know what is up with the community (especially the one that says they are Alien fans), but you can't say in good faith that it's kit isn't representative of the IP, it is totally limited by the game's core, but what it bringed to the table is faithfull. Having unimaginable expectations for Alien while having Wesker not even getting an Uroboros that acts like the Uroboros is funny in so many ways. Almost every IP killers in the game are heavily limited and with half their "true" kit, see Pinhead, Wesker, Nemesis, Pyramid head (which is pure invention on the devs part) and so on.
I can understand finding the kit boring, but saying it's boring because it isn't faithful or matches your unimaginable expectations of having everyhting in it's kit is not on the devs, it's on you. Imagine if Dracula, Wesker, Nemesis, Sadako or Vecna had everything, would also be funny.
The subject of stealth is interesting because while i would love for BHVR to implement way more stealth aspect into the Alien's kit, the MT is perfectly adapted to the IP, it's almost as iconic as the Alien itself. Everyone would complain if it wasn't here. The most important thing to do is to give bigger advantages to the tunnels, more of them for the mobility and lethality, lingering stealth out of it to get a quick ambush and back in, general MT to create some confusion/stealth and boom, absolute perfection !
The community is unfair to the Alien chapter and im starting to think people saying that the Alien was a bad idea for dbd and should never come to the game were right. With how people are, there is no universe where this chapter would have worked.
With that said, im also gratefull that BHVR did the chapter since im an Alien fan and i have P100 the Xenomorph with absolute pleasure, best killer ever and best IP ever, i'll die in this vent.
Everything everyone is saying in here is why.
This is why tierlists are dumb: they never account for how fun the Killer is to play in practice. Yes Xeno is strong in the right hands, but why would I waste time playing Xeno which has all these issues and is less fun than playing the weaker Nemesis, who has a similar whip secondary attack, no turrets to worry about, and just WORKS?
It's the same argument for other Killers: Why would I play Myers, who is technically stronger after his buffs but whose gameplay loop is less fun, than the more nuanced and silly and slightly more engaging Ghostface who has to worry about getting caught and is generally thought to be weaker? Why would I play Chucky who is strong but has all these new nerfs and bump logic issues and is 110%, when I can just play the more fun and engaging Pig and get the same dash with BETTER STEALTH FOR LONGER, free slowdown, and movement at 115% speed?
Strength means absolutely nothing unless all you want to do is winstreak the game all the time, and we all know how cringe winstreaks are. Nobody likes the Winstreaker Blights period. It's time to discard tierlists from our community entirely - they don't do anything useful in a game where the goal is so clearly fun over wins.