Yep, you guessed it right: the Lightborn discussion.
I've reached the point where I'm genuinely starting to hate playing this game because of Lightborn.
The problem isn't simply that Lightborn is "strong" or that it counters flashlights. The problem is that it completely disables a survivor mechanic for the entire duration of the match.
Lightborn removes flashlight saves from the game from the beginning of the trial to the very end. Once you realize the killer has Lightborn, there is absolutely no reason to attempt a flashlight save again. The entire mechanic is simply gone for that match.
The only real alternative for saving a teammate from a pickup is a pallet save, but in solo queue that is incredibly unreliable. A survivor being chased will often drop the pallet after one loop because they know they won't get another chance, or they'll get hit while dropping it and go down anyway. This happens in a huge portion of my matches. In my experience, in roughly two out of every three matches where I'm relying on pallet saves, the survivor ends up getting downed while trying to drop the pallet.
So when Lightborn removes flashlight saves, what am I actually supposed to do to save my teammates?
The answer I've ended up seeing over and over since 2019 is the same: stop trying to interact with the killer, hold W on generators, finish three generators by yourself while your teammates get killed one after another, then hope the hatch happens to spawn near you and escape through it.
I'm completely sick of winning games that way.
And this is the part about Lightborn that I find fundamentally unfair from a game-design perspective:
Survivors do not have a perk that can completely disable one of the killer's core mechanics for the entire trial.
There is no survivor perk that says:
"This killer mechanic does not work against you for the entire match."
Yet killers have exactly that with Lightborn.
If a killer wants to prevent flashlight saves, they can equip one perk and permanently remove that entire form of survivor counterplay from the trial. There is no cooldown, no Hex totem that survivors can destroy, no temporary immunity window, and no way for survivors to eventually regain access to the mechanic.
It's just permanent immunity for the entire match.
That's a massive difference from normal counterplay. A perk should give you an advantage in dealing with a mechanic, not necessarily erase that mechanic from the opposing side for the entire game.
This is also why the usual argument of "just don't use flashlights against Lightborn" doesn't really work for me. Why should I completely change the way I play because one perk permanently disables a mechanic that I want to use? If I enjoy playing around flashlight saves and trying to rescue teammates with them, telling me to simply use a toolbox and hold M1 on generators isn't counterplay. It's telling me to stop playing the part of the game I actually enjoy.
And this is especially frustrating in solo queue. I haven't played with a SWF in months. I'm not part of a coordinated four-person flashlight squad abusing killer pickups. I'm playing solo queue and trying to create opportunities to save random teammates.
Yet Lightborn can still completely remove that option for the entire team.
I've also started seeing Lightborn users incredibly frequently — roughly three out of every five matches by my recent experience. At this point, when I see Lightborn, I often just leave the match. That gives me a 5-minute matchmaking penalty, and if I do it again, a 15-minute penalty. Eventually I just stop playing for the day.
And that's honestly where I'm at now: I'm not quitting because I lost to the killer. I'm quitting because one perk keeps removing an entire mechanic from the game and forcing me into the exact same solo queue experience every single time.
I really don't understand why Lightborn has been allowed to remain this way for so many years.
Why can't it be changed into a Hex perk, so survivors can destroy the totem and regain access to flashlight saves?
Or why can't it work like an exhaustion-style perk with a cooldown, where it prevents a blind once and then becomes unavailable for a period of time?
Either of those would preserve Lightborn's identity as a strong anti-flashlight perk while still giving survivors counterplay and a way to regain access to their mechanic.
Right now, there is none.
Lightborn doesn't counter flashlight saves. It permanently disables them for the entire trial.
And I genuinely don't understand why killers are allowed to have a perk that completely disables a survivor mechanic from start to finish, while survivors aren't given an equivalent ability to completely disable a killer mechanic.
After years of this, I really think Lightborn needs to be reconsidered from a game-design perspective.
Comments
I think light born is healthy, as survivor it does suck to lose your item but it is really funny saying "I got it this time" to your swf after supposedly missing your fourth flashbang in a row. As killer it helps people who are sensitive to light, or just new players in general not wanting to get bullied by the aforementioned 3-4man swf.
I personally don't mind, it allows for funny moments on both sides. Plus it makes the game harder for killers, as after the first missed save that survivor that usually follows chase for 5 minutes is instead now on gens the whole time.
Also if you are leaving your matches because of lightborn I hate to say this, but you obviously do not like the game and should play something else.
Disliking a specific perk design in a game doesn't mean I don't like the game. My question is this: over the years, other killer or survivor perks that created similar situations have been nerfed and reworked multiple times, with changes specifically aimed at reducing how frequently or effectively those perks are used. So why has this never happened with Lightborn? Why has this issue remained untouched since the perk was introduced, and why does it seem like the development team acts as if this particular problem doesn't exist? That's my question.
As someone who equally plays killer and survivor, I'd rather not see them gut lightborn.
As killer I don't tend to use it myself, (although ngl if I see 3+ flashlights in a lobby I will consider switching it in), because flashlights are easy enough to counter through normal play.
As killer flashlight saves are phenomenally frustrating, and I think lightborn has it's place for helping new to middling killer players have a way to stop bully squads having an easy time messing with them. When I do use it I alsonreally appreciate the ability to fake that I'm trying to avoid flashlights to reel players in for attempted saves to waste their time and get free hits.
I get that it totally locks out the use of flashlights, but they are a fairly minor mechanic. Plus I honestly don't see that many killers using lightborn, if it was an autopick with extensive usage I'd maybe want it looked at. Usually the people I see get aggravated about lightborn usage are people who literally only want to use flashlights. As survivor I couldn't care less about lightborn, if I'm running a torch and the killer has lightborn then I just switch tactics.
There are other ways to get saves, pallet saves if you're team is coordinated, bodyblocking and sabo plays are another visble way to save. And saves aren't even a necessary mechnic, tbh in a lot of my games, survs trying to go for saves more often end up causing a snowball and end up with multiple players on hook and others injured.
It is at the end of the day a crutch perk, and an important one for the newer killer players who've left the baby mmr nursery and start hitting real coordinated high hour swfs. But also a bit of a waste of a perk slot if no one brings a torch or they simply switch tactics once they realise it's in play. For sure it's a strong perk against the right teams and if used smartly, but it has it's place in the game.
Flashlights are pretty unfun to play against for newer or casual players that may not know to face a wall, or to not Insta pick. Again some people have sensitivity to lights, as my brother cannot play without certain accessibility settings that make flashbangs in games completely dark or non existent (ex. Lightborn or the screen going black instead of white.)
Speaking of epilepsy issues. To any dev reading I'm like 80% sure the doctor still has his vfx bugged where it can trigger seizures.
When playing solo queue, we all know that even sabotaging one hook and taking a protection hit from the killer doesn't prevent the killer from reaching the next hook, even if they aren't using Iron Grasp, lmao.
I also agree that Lightborn is a good perk for people who are new to playing killer. But as I said, why not give it an exhaustion-style cooldown mechanic, like the ones used by perks such as Decisive Strike or Dead Hard?
You could even give the three tiers of the perk different cooldowns: 60, 50, and 40 seconds respectively. On top of that, the visual effect of Lightborn could be changed so that the flashlight beam doesn't remain completely stable when Lightborn is active. Instead, the beam could become thinner, as if the killer is actually being blinded, and then "Lightborn" could appear on the right side of the screen.
This way, the perk could still be an extremely strong anti-flashlight perk. However, it would give me an opportunity to attempt a second flashlight save in 40–50 seconds.
From my perspective, that would be a much fairer perk design.
The game already clearly states on the initial loading screen that it may trigger epileptic seizures. If someone with epilepsy chooses to play the game despite reading that warning, and is willing to gamble with their own health, then that's their responsibility.
The main issue I think is that lightborn has no luck of the draw aspect when it comes to it.
Majority of users only equip the perk when the see flashlights in the lobby.
I think hiding lobby information from the killer so lightborn cannot just be quick switched because flashlights are seen in the lobby. it has to be a active decision to use lightborn even tho they may be no beemers.
I think that would make it much more fair to the survivors, while letting people keep the perk as is which seems to be a popular sentiment from replies I got in my own thread about changing lightborn to token based.
Suppose I didn't say it but sabo plays are more for coordinated teams, i have made them work in soloq games using breakout. But i have to gear my whole build to it to make it work, which usually results in me getting tunneled, or in one case forcibly bled out by a ghoul 🤣
Hmm a cooldown is an interesting idea. Not sure how much difference it would make though for saves. The time between hooking a survivor, finding another, then running a full chase would probably string out the full cooldown.
On the other hand depending how it works it may be a bit too easy to abuse and make lightborn useless. It depends on the trigger for the cool down. If the beam making contact with the killer to start a blind triggers cooldown it'd be way to easy to abuse, just flashlight click at them during chase to prevent lightborn qorking for however long. Imo the best way to implement this would be that light born is functional until the survivor would get a successful blind, then this triggers the cooldown.
In the few games I play Killer because I want archivments or I have to play it for quests I don´t use lightborn but I often wished I would have.
As long as "impossible" angles exist where a survivor is capable of blinding me without being in my Pov while staring at a brick wall Lightborn is still a viable choice.
Another benefit is that Lightborn counters cheaters pretty well.
For the argument of cutting a mechanic for survivors. Yes it is true a perk which cuts a mechanic is pretty strong. Thats the reason many players miss distortion because it remove the mechanic of Aura reading from the Killer. You could argue that perks which remove breathing or grunts of pain and perks which remove screaming are cutting "chase" mechanics from the Killer and if we go further you could argue that getting undetectable as Killer is robbing the Survivor information while looping and so on.
The Problem is if you start "cutting/nerfing" perks just because they go explicit against one part of the game you can bring arguemtens against nearly everything.
I enter every lobby with a toolbox or medkit, and right before the final 5-second countdown starts, when there is no longer any possibility of changing your loadout, I switch to the flashlight I prepared beforehand with its add-ons and start the match.
In fact, if I see someone else bringing a flashlight in the lobby, I simply dodge that lobby altogether. But as I said, the people using Lightborn aren't necessarily equipping it based on how many flashlights they see in the lobby in the first place. That's why I don't think hiding survivor item information from the killer would actually change anything.
Have you tried not saving your teammates and do gens, getting a flashlight safe is really annoying and unfun for the killer like tunneling/slugging is for you probably, you can still safe using pallets. Like why killers aren't allowed to disable the insanely annoying mechanic which is not very important like perks and you still can replace it by opening a chest.
You can remove scratch marks with survivor perks so they can remove core killer mechanic (a very important one which is more important than an item that can be replaced).
Also vigil makes negative effects basically useless, like a lot of perks, add-ons (I think every killer has an add-on that gives an effect) and essential powers are countered by vigil, like on Freddy applying hindered will lose distance and it's hard to know if the survivor has vigil or on clown or even Skull merchant.
In fact, if I see someone else bringing a flashlight in the lobby, I simply dodge that lobby altogether.I think thats another issue with lightborn it encourages lobby dodging with how current lobbies work, lobby dodging is bad and system needs to be changed if its encouraging people to do so.
But I think majority do switch based on beemers in lobby at least in my lobbies, Light born is a rarer perk to see in my lobbies but when I do see it its because multiple people have beemers in the lobby.
If 3 or more beemer it feels like the chances you are going to see lightborn go up so much more vs if they see no beemers.
It lets people with photosensitivity play the game without issue so for that reason at least idm it doing what it does.
Hating the game becuase of low tier perk is wild not gonna lie.
Just drop flashlight its not lightsaber and another thing not many people run it only those that fear 4 flashlight lobby or are newer and have less experience in how to deal with flashlights.
Thats like me hating the game because boon: exponential exist lol.
Who with lightborn would actualy doge 3-4 flashlights in lobby??????????????????
A mad man because thats where that perk only and actualy gets value becuase chances survivors will wanna waste time to get saves will be over the roof.
The ones that dont wanna deal with that or use lightborn or fear will probably doge but thats problem of items being seen in lobby since 2016 (in my opinion they shouldnt because they arent so op like last op things items lost were medkit two best addons nerf).
I more fear 4 BNP toolbox lobbyes then 4 flashy star wars cosplayers that most likely suck and waste time (unless its super open map like farm maps). Faster gens have only few counters like kill them faster with tunnel or slug them all but thats not so easy if they arent bad and your killer has some limitations like springtrap compare to ghoul, plus you can be good and still loose easily to gens being done super fast because they play safe and dont give you downs while others rush even top killer players like momoth are forced to slug 4 man on 1 gen or endgame sometimes.
Is this a serious post? You are complaining how lightborn removes the interactivity between you and the killer forcing you to... do gens instead of trying to get a flashie save? One guy gets chased, the rest gets on the gens. That's how DbD works, you save the match by being efficent on gens, bringing team related perks, dying far away from teammates and allowing them to stay on hook for more than 3s. When was the last time you brought Shoulder? Or Reassurance? Or Kindred?
If you are geniuenly quitting over this, then good riddance. I cannot stand flashie users wasting 29 years of gen progress to try and get a flashie save, to then just fail and in the worst case getting themselves killed as well
No im saying it encouges surviours who have flashlight equipped dodge other flashlight users, like how comment i was repling to says they are dodging people who have flashlights.
End of my comment is refer to how likley for surviour to see lightborn 3-4 flashlight makes it more common to see lightborn. Vs if you there is no flashlight in lobby its rare to see lightborn in my exprenice.
Hence surviour players dodging lobbies with too many flashlight users when they also want to use one.
Another thing why Lightborn is used as much lately are flashbangs.
I still remember the flying Flashbanks under hooks which were undodgeball if you didn´t moonwalk to a hook.
I just want to point something out - there are several perks in this game that "disable" certain aspects of playing Killer or Killer abilities. I shall list them:
The main reason why Killer players don't really complain about any of these perks at the moment is because they are either bad perks or they only get used by like one or maybe two survivors on a team. If Self Preservation was used by all 4 survivors constantly like other meta staples, people would 100% complain about it as it would be obnoxious.
Lightborn ok. But what do you do when the killer faces a wall during pick-up?
I'm gonna say the people saying it's okay are conditioned to think something like this is fine, similliar to how "Nurse is fine", or "blight was fine" etc.
It's not incredibly overpowered but it's really unhealthy for the game, if Vigil has that slapped on it for denying killers their mechanics, then Lightborn should be looked at also.
And for those parroting "I hate being blinded" add a dark mode which makes the screen go darker, problem solved. Lightborn will still be effective it just needs reverted to slowing it down
I would suggest a Breakout / Sabotage build if you want to save teammates reliably. It's very risky and sometimes the hook density is insane and if they brought Carry perks, good luck!
Light born is too strong. It should have tokens that you either gain through the match or lose during the match. It should not be a fail safe permanent counter.
The killer is using an entire perk slot just to counter an item that may or may not come into play especially when killers can just face the wall they don't actually need the perk. This thread however is the perfect example of why I still tell people to use lightborn. In practice no the perk isn't that great but the amount of psychic damage it does to survivors gives you such a mental edge that it's still useful because no other perk tilts survivors this hard. The day survivors stop caring about lightborn and instead go "okay time to stick on gens and play safer" when they see it will be the day the perk actually becomes bad.
The difference is that Vigil isn't JUST an insurance perk, its also incredibly good on its own due to enabling some of the stronger survivor perks we have available. Lightborn relies on survivors bringing flashlights/bangs to get any value, which can be annoying yes, but it doesn't also enable regression perks on top of it or something. There aren't a slate of strong killer perks that blind the killer as a downside.
Also, who the heck is saying nurse or blight are fine? Blight is STILL overpowered even after the nerfs, and even a lot of killer-focused players are annoyed at BHVR just giving those two the mandate of heaven for their entire lifespan (excepting PTB blight).
See that's the issue, Lightborn needs a single perk to be useful, Vigil generally to most people requires an exhaustion also. Vigil didn't outright DENY killer debuffs, it just shortened them. I don't think arguing it's unhealthy is a reach at all. If you removed the Exhaustion component no one would use it.
The comparison is the line has been made, let's follow that logic instead of cherrypicking, we want more survivors playing right? Playing more altruistically, lightborn reverted could help with that, much like how people wanted vigil tuned down to make status effect builds more enticing.
Also this isn't me saying Lightborn is OP, I think it's just had it's time in the sun, it being nerfed would make Lightborn and rampage more enticing. It could even have synergy with them coz of the shorter blind.
Also just because you say Nurse and Blight aren't okay doesn't speak for others, I've seen it a few times on here where people defend them.
I mean, I won't disbelieve you, its just kind of wild anyone would go out of their way to defend Mr. and Mrs. Perpetual S Tier given how long they've sat well above even the rest of the powerful end of the roster. Thank god BHVR at least had the sense to knock spirit down a peg from back when she was in the running as well, and haven't had any other candidates (looking at you, release ghoul) last longer than a month.
Lightborn is fine because:
When Background Player dropped and used to be +200% haste I ran Lightborn every game for about 3 years. Now Forever Entwined takes its slot.
lightborn is not a problem. and you should not feel entitled to be able to blinfd killers over and over again. just as getting slugged over and over isnt fun, getting blinded over and over again isnt fun and right now there is a massive flashlight meta in my servers where its extremnely common right now to have 3 surv flashlights in a lobby and their entire focus is just to try and blind over and over. i do not find that enjoyable as well as it is uncomfotrable to my eyes. Now i rarely use LB as i have preferred perk builds and i have played the game for a long time so i can manage ok with them but flashlights are not a CORE part of the game. they are completely optional and the game runs fine without them. core mechanics are things like pallets and hooks and scratch marks and suchm those are core mechanics of the game.
I think its wild to feel you should just be guaranteed to make not slugging survivors as annoying as possible because thats what excessive flashlights do, they just encourage slugging.
So if you have some games where you have to play the game beyond follow another surv being chased all game so you can try and blind and not actually have spent your time progressing a gen instead, youll have another one where you can blind the killer as much as you like
I know theres no many things that make it feel totaly hopeless like sable with flashlight that cant even pull save and runs around killer the whole time (doesnt need to be sable but you get the idea what I mean here). I get why people doge them because these people usualy go or theres high chance they will go for the saves only and wont do gens which people that want normal game can find annoying.
For the fact some killers equip lightborn to counter flashy squads and teams thats reasoneable but mostly because killers can still see items in lobby.
Yeah the og background player where one survivor pulled save from half of the map far away because killer picked survivor up, pinicle of that time.
If the killer is allowed to see what items the survivors are bringing, Lightborn needs to be reworked to not prevent blind functionality. It's that simple.
If you disagree with that, then you should agree with letting survivors see what killer(and ping) they're against in the lobby so they can equip loadouts that counter the killer's power or dodge too.