Why does everyone keep asking the wrong question when it comes to Spirit?
Its the same thing as Legion. Everyone talked about the old Legion being "overpowered" and people debated it saying he was "underpowered." I feel like people are missing the true reason for complaints against things like old Legion and current Spirit: they're not interactive experiences between both sides.
The whole core gameplay loop (heh) of DBD is the interaction between the Killer and the Survivors, and the Survivors and other Survivors.
The Old Legion, for example, removed that. There was no counterplay. No matter what, you were going to go down (eventually) even if it took a while. At that point, the interactive multiplayer component was removed - you were just basically playing "The Legion Cutscene."
Spirit is some of the same issue, though not as grim. There is no feedback from the Survivor side when going against Spirit. When she's using her power, the Survivor isn't reacting to anything - they're choosing an action and just hoping that was the correct one. That is not an interactive multiplayer experience. That's a single player game. The Survivors might as well be bots that are preprogrammed to choose an action.
And that's why Survivors hate Spirit. Their sense of choice isn't reactionary - its just a random choice they make and they hope they are correct. You cannot react to the Spirit while she's phasing until she is very close to you - at which point you will finally be able to hear her footsteps and bump into her. However, if she's that close to you you're just going to get hit and she can also bump into YOU, so that is irrelevant. That is the only time you can reliably react to what she is doing. No, you can't reliably study her "crystals" that require you to be in her face, not moving, and also requires her to not have a skin that obfuscates them.
Even though Nurse is stronger, she's still less annoying to go against. That's why I hate when people keep boiling down the argument to "Spirit is overpowered, underpowered, etc." That's not what Survivors are complaining about. You can at least see the Nurse blinking at you and react to it with a locker rushed entry, a Dead Hard, etc. While the Nurse still has way more control in the chase, at least you can literally tell what she is doing and make a choice based on that.
Its not even about lack of counterplay. Its just...the complete lack of "play" entirely. When a Spirit starts phasing near you, you can choose an option based on your surroundings and just hope it works. That's not rewarding. Even if you choose "correctly" and waste her power for 10 seconds, you don't feel good about it. You just guessed correctly, and then you'll have to guess again in 10 seconds. Meanwhile, the Spirit can react to your breathing sounds, your injured sounds, your scratch marks, your collision, the grass you shift when walking through it, etc. The Survivor can react to none of that because they can't see or hear any of that until she is so close they're hit anyway.
So how to you fix it?
You have to make her somewhat noticeable while phasing, and then buff the frequency at which she can use her new weaker phase. Whether they returned directional audio to her sound (and tied Prayer Beads to the current non-directional sound), or maybe greatly amplified her footsteps, or made her shuffle grass as she walked through it - anything. Survivors need some even extremely vague indicator of where the Spirit is, and in turn the Spirit needs to be able to use this power far more frequently. It would be a nerf and a buff, cancelling each other out while giving her some semblance of counterplay, even if it is still sided towards the killer as it should be.
Anyway that's all I got.
tl;dr stop discussing whether or not Spirit is overpowered and discuss whether or not both sides can react to each other in this multiplayer game.
Comments
Yeah hes a crybaby complaining that there aint no counter for everthing
Try reading the post first
tRy ReAdInG tHe FiRsT
She's balanced, survivor's just forgot how to play in this game, thay're worse than before
That is not remotely true. Survivors today are infinitely better than on release. People would literally just camp pallets and hide in a bush - that was the pinnacle of gameplay because they didnt have to do anything else due to billions of pallets and infinites. With less resources, survivors have been forced to learn to be better and more efficient.
My changes I'd make? Make collision disabled in phase, Prayer beads and father's glasses flipped in rarity, Give the spirit non directional audio in phase, whilst also giving her passive enviromental interaction (spooking crows, rustling grass etc)
These changes will = occasionally reveal her location in phase, take out prayer beads power as collision is what identifys where someone is on a gen (forcing the spirit to guess if she wants to go for gen grabs) allow survivors to effectively mindgame direction by not allowing the spirit to be so dead on precise, and allowing her less control of a chase.
Spirits power is a bait and mindgame. However she has to many factors that put the cards in her hands whereas survivors have none. There's so little to correctly guess with against a spirit and that's where the difficulty/un fun comes from. Giving survivors effective means of discerning her location/allowing them to bait and respond to her movement in phase better will make the gameplay more akin to a "redlight" mindgame, rather then a dice roll.
So what you are trying to say is,
Nerf Huntress.
Ok got it 🤗
At least you admitted that Spirit is more annoying than Nurse. Thank you.
If spirit gets nerfed im just gonna play insidious basement leatherface in form of protest. They take away my fun, i take away theirs. Balanced
Im pretty sure they'll find that more fun than Spirit.
So your enjoyment is more important than survivors enjoyment right? Are you the only one that's allowed to have fun in this game?
People only say its 'unfun' because they havent figured out how to play against her. Of course if you dont know how to beat something, your gonna get frustrated at first. Doesnt mean you cant train yourself to beat it. I play survivor with my friends about 80% of the time and spirit is never a problem for me. Is she challenging? absolutely! But thats the best part about her. I actaully feel scared! in a horror game! go figure lol There are plenty of survivors that wreck me as spirit, and there are plenty of survivors that get wrecked. Just depends on how good you are at the game.
The fact that nurse and spirit are the best options to high skill survivors and are also the main ones people always cry "nerf! nerf!" at is interesting to me.
Why dont we see these kinds of threads for trapper, doctor, LF, Huntress, billy, Demo, or any other killer? you know why? because those killers fall under what i call "loop-till-daylight" category. Where theres a million and one counters to their powers and survivors just have to run in a circle and vault a couple windows to keep them busy while teammates gen rush.
But god forbid the devs bring in a killer that requires you to play a little bit more cautious and skillful. Nah we cant do that...lets make her power all but useless and keep her at 110 movement speed. yeah thats balanced and fun -__- lol
Are you really that naive to think that the combined hundreds of thousands of hours of playtime the community has hasn't revealed a reliable counterplay yet? Really? The game isn't that complex. You winning against bad Spirits doesnt mean you found a counter.
dude.....there are literally hundreds of threads laying out counters to spirit if you bothered to look. You think after a year and a half people have just been falling like flies to spirit with NO COUNTERPLAY?? come on now man be serious. If it helps, ill even send you some links my guy
Would you mind showing me these counters in a KYF? I don't think text is a good enough instruction.
The killer doesn't have to be weak to be enjoyable for both sides. Base kit nurse is one of my favourite killers to go against. Billy is fine, freddy is fine. Are those killers weak? Not at all, they are pretty powerful.
Old legion was garbage, but he was still not enjoyable to go against at all.
So why u Scott will not play Spirit if you think she is so unfair to survivors, if she is so powerful, just play her
oh you right, text wouldnt be good enough. I want you to see with your own eyes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCHW-L7VWQUOh Christ it makes sense now.
Because I value other peoples fun?
Look ladies and gentlemen, what a merciful man.
I hope someone will repay you for it someday.
I want you to prove these counters. I don't want a video. I'm not talking to tru3 I'm talking to you.
I could record myself going against bad spirits and say she is fine. Two videos don't really count as evidence that she is fine but still:
Playing immersed blendette is the counter play? Also that spirit was rank 10 and just bad.
You removed the other video where he died but the spirit played bad in that one as well. Would love to see him go against some of the spirits I face.
Aren't you that same streamer who said they would depip intentionally to get faster lobbies even if it meant stomping on new players?
I think you mean Pig... she hasn't been nerfed enough.
On a serious note though. Spirit is a killer that's really fun to play but really annoying to play against. Most people DC when I play her and I'm often tempted to DC when I go against her, but I refuse to become one of those people that I hate playing with. She's a really strong killer and her power gives her the upperhand in a chase as she gets way more information when phasing than the survivor does. This basically, as Scott says, makes her a guessing game where survivors 80% of the time guess wrong. People say stuff like "Use Iron Will" but most Spirits I go against use Stridor, so that doesn't help much.
I wrote a down a couple suggestions I thought would be a nice way to balance Spirit.
It'll help give survivors a bit more counterplay against her and make her skillcap slightly higher, cause let's be honest, atm she's a strong killer that doesn't require much skill. All of these together might be a bit overkill, but figured I'd just throw them out here as well.
Like a year ago when killer queues were genuinely broken? What does that have to do with anything?
It's just funny to me that someone who values their own stream content more than the enjoyment of new players of the game say, "I value other people's fun" with a straight face. No biggie.
Yes I value having a job more than other peoples fun in Dead by Daylight because I enjoy living in a home. What kind of weak ass attempt at a character jab was this
Not jabbing. Just observing. Gotcha, no problem with ruining other people's fun if your "job" is on the line. Ok, understood. No need to get sensitive about it.
What did you expect him to do? Stop streaming or something? Would be a super fun stream, waiting for a lobby for 30 minutes.
off topic: survivor's just can't take it when someone is better than him, fresh ss; legacy 2 meg just dc when I down her, rly??? u have legacy, so close to 7k hrs and salty dc damn, she's no worthy to wearing this clothes
Apparently going from Rank 1 to Rank 6 in order to play the video game is ruining other people's fun.
Either way, its clear you don't like me and are spouting nonsense so let's get back on topic please.
I think my eyes just rolled so hard they bought plane tickets to Ibiza.
Sure, please do. Again, just thought it was funny. No ill will - don't really know anything about you except what you wrote a year ago.
Every killer in DbD is viable against SWF.
so then this is a never ending argument. If you show a game where the killer does poorly, one could argue "shes fine, she has counters" but if you show a game where the survivors die "shes op" "nerf nerf"
what platform are you on? im on console
How are you not getting this? You are making this argument, therefore I am arguing with you. I want you to prove this. You posting other people's footage isn't proof. I am not talking to them. I am talking to you.
No wonder you think she can be countered. Console is a completely different game with vastly limited movement options that make Spirit significantly worse, not to mention a lot of Console players just use their TVs audio which again nerfs her location detection.
A few videos can't be shown as evidence against a killer being fine,weak or op. Your "evidence" is pretty poor anyways since the spirit didn't even find him the entire video.
LMAO this whole argument about "fun" is so ??? As a killer why I should care about survivors fun? Let's be real, they're want to survive at the end of the match. Not only one but the whole squad. They don't care about killers at all. It's EZI when I get free kills with a boring and unfun killer using my expensive headphones but it's also more ezi when I got my whole team with the privilege of communication 4x1, offerings of broken maps, gens being done in 30 seconds or less and telling that M1 killers should gIt GuD aT tHE GAmE or the classic juSt PrEsS GeNs 4HEAd
You guys acts like everything is fine in this game except Spirit and that's something that I'll never understand. Honestly, I really want that she gets a huge nerf in the future because I'm curious to see who is going to be the new target. I can't wait to see every killer turning loopable which powers are still controlled by survivors. How fun
When did everyone act like the only problem is spirit?
Also, assuming all survivors are toxic is a part of why this community is so bad.
You don't have to care about other people's fun, as selfish as that is. You're right, you bought the game, you can do whatever you want.
Don't be surprised when people don't like you though, don't pretend you're outplaying people when you kill people with Spirit, and don't be surprised if people refuse to play against you because they want to actually have interactions with the killer.
What exactly would qualify as proof then?
While you could use a specific analysis of the video to discredit it, the actual person who made the video is completely irrelevant and saying "tru3 made it thus invalid" is a blatant example of the ad hominem fallacy.
Video's can be used to prove that counterplay to something exists.
While that isn't quite enough to prove balance (since something can have counterplay but still be OP) and never proves if something is fun or not (since that cannot be proven ever) in this case the request was just proof of counterplay.
Yes, if there were a magical video of 100 games of data between known exceptional players going against an exceptional Spirit that could be used as evidence.
That doesn't exist, so to prove it to me, I need to see it in-game, first hand.
How does seeing it in person change anything?
Something being real time and pre-recorded is identical in terms of validity when used as proof assuming deliberate tampering is off the table.
Yes, I assume that with 0 problems. You know what is bad? I used to play and having fun with Spirit but now I'm afraid to used her because every match, not matter what I do, not matter what green/yellow add-on I'm using... people are constantly telling that I should kill myself for using her. Not to mention the sacarsm behind the messages OmG yOu hAvE sO MucH SkIlLs!! At least I'm enjoying Ghostface, Plague and Freddy with passion but you think they're done? I got verbal harassment everyday. And yes, everyone seems to talk more about her besides the other inconsistencies in the game. I'm 100% with the nerfs if they fix the maps. That's all I want. But at the moment Spirit is just paired with how stupidly good survivors can be in this game, since this game give them so many tools.
Because I can verify my own skill level and I can't verify the skill level of random killers from YouTube videos. Pretty simple stuff man.
Specifically. All of those 100 videos are individually also evidence.
Any of the individual plays are proofs that such plays exist, otherwise they couldn't happen.
Basically anything that happens is possible. So if I show you an example of someone using counterplay against the Spirit, then that is proof that it is possible to use counterplay against the Spirit.
While you can deny that something qualifies as proper counterplay for one reason or another, you cannot rationally deny that an example of counterplay is not also proof of that counterplay.