Shoulder the Burden is crazy
Ran into my first squad who used the perk and I must say, it's quite strong. I don't think it was the reason why I lost; granted, the map was FORGOTTEN RUINS a.k.a one of the worst maps to play as twins so there were other reasons at play but I think the perk should be looked at.
Since the map does not allow victor to go through the portals and I sensed that the squad was coordinated with some form of healing (I was correct), I had to rely on a mix of hooks and slugs which were effective until I realized that the survivors were using STB on each other even on those who did have it. That's my main concern.
IMO, the perk should NOT work on survivors who already have a stack/STB hook. The "hook count" doesn't change but I don't think its healthy for survivors to be able to spread those hooks in the first place. It should be a high risk high reward perk but the risk isn't there if survivors can easily spread the hook stages.
Of course as twins I could have easily avoided this but once again, the map was forgotten ruins and the squad was coordinated. The Twins aren't as OP as people claim them to be.
Comments
I disagree, that'd just make it less effective against tunnelling, which is its core function.
thats not how its used its used to take pressure away from the killer. every single anti tunnel perk and effect the devs have added has been used aggressively to make the game worse for killer.
its objectivly the strongest survivor perk in the game it completely removes pressure from the killer and of course they make it so the unhooker is exposed so powers can down them and vigil makes the time your exposed shorter. its should have never been added ot the game immagine if killers had a perk that let them just kick repaired generators completely removing there presure thats how broken this perk is that would have to be what the perk on killer could do let you just undo a gen a have it start regressing
Taking a dive into my scenario, Survivor 1 gets hooked. Survivor 2 uses STB on Survivor 1 after realizing that they don't last long with my chases so now Survivor 2 has 1 hook state. After a good chase, survivor 2 gets hooked. Now they have 2 hook states.
Survivor 3 understands that Survivor 2 is close to death so they use STB on Survivor 2 and because I am a generous killer who doesn't stand just outside of the anticamp radius, I don't get to utilize the expose effect nor would it make a difference since I'm likely playing as Victor.
Survivor 1 has 0 hook stages, Survivor 2 has 1 hook stages, Survivor 3 has 1 hook stages, and Survivor 4 has 0. In roughly ~5 minutes, why am I being punished for doing my job? If Survivor 2 wants to make sure that Survivor 1 lasts longer, that's a choice that they made and it should be a risk.
I can definitely see that. I've had many games with just a singular use of the perk and It doesn't do that much damage as long as I already have a few survivors running like headless chickens but having a coordinated group with 3? Yeah the perk needs to have a stricter limit and I play survivor more than I do killer.
I play both sides personally (more killer lately doing a test and the queue times let me put in data while i wait) and genuinly the killer only wins alot because survivors mess up so often because first this game doesnt explain anything well and the amount of people who just give up playing against x kill. i had a game a few weeks ago on dredge where the whole team just gave up after seeing i was playing dredge and said they dont play against dredge a full swf just said no thanks we go next because they didnt like the killer i picked.
You went up against 11 second chance perks too. Yeah it’s ggs. Especially if they’re a swf.
Same happens with twins too. Some will initially try but once I have two survivors on the ground, its an instant DC
It was rough. They were nice at the end but going against those perks is not fun for a majority of the killer roster. The two perks that were riling me up were STB and WGLF.
What about a side grade with your change implemented?
No longer works on others with STB stacks but you are able to use all your stacks rather then just being limited to one. it makes it more high risk as you can take the only two hooks the killer has to try to get him to chase you as gens pop, or if you use to confidently its one down and out as other would not be able too STB you but they could still do others in match.
I think that's a change worth testing!
As long as the user is unable to be STB saved, then that's all I ask for. The perk remains its core identity but another survivor shouldn't be able to remove the pressure if the killer wants to capitalize on the risk of the perk. I'm getting the feeling that the people downvoting everyone are those who have never ran into a squad with multiple STBs
Survivors just shouldnt be able to move hooks states image if killers could just move which gen is completed so they have a stronger 3 gen. You spent all that time as survivor to break a strong 3 gen and the killer just gets it back
well the killers can play macro and kind of force chases into a good gen area and not focus on gens that are too out of the way/ not worth protecting. (most obvious one is no reason for killer to really be patrolling/ protecting the threatre gen in sable map over ones in the middle )
The survivors cant really force the killer to chase someone else, switching the hook stages adds that incentive for the killer to chase someone else, or continue with original target.
Maybe killers should stop giving them reasons to add more anti-tunnel, then.
Yes they can force it by looping well and body blocking it have done it many times on survivor to help a death hooked survivor. I run an unhooking build with out shoulder because im sorry its so broken it makes survivor less fun for me.
First off the devs dont even know what tunneling it they consider killing tunneling you canhook everyone and hook the 3 person you hooked 2 times and they consider that tunneling and I knkw this because in the ptb that counted as tunneling the dudes used his 30 second of endurance to body block me so I took him out and the anti hook kicked in because he was my 6th hook. The devs do not know how to read data or extrapolate data and have proven it time and time again. Tunneling isnt a problem its just killers being effective. Should survivors be punished for splitting up to do gens? No because they are playing effectively just like a kilelr tunneling out a survivot when 2 gens pop in under 90 seconds
It's been consistently complained about for 10 years and features as one of the top reasons people quit the game. That absolutely qualifies it as a problem.
Legitimately, the game would be better if survivors splitting up on gens (The safest way to play) were not also simultaneously the most effective way to play.
But that requires you to think beyond what the game is now, which necessarily means you cannot simply accept tunnelling 'because it's just killers playing effective'.
Aww yes let's use a insanly biased survey. I litteraly have an entire paper abiut hwo what choices you put on a survey effects the survey and it being so survivor sided and survivors also calling basicly killing them tunneling which I have been accused of multiple times when I 12 hook and didnt stack any hook states hooking a new person every time as well as yhe devs nkt even knowing what tunneling is and proving it with the ptbs that survey is utterly useless and so biased to only care abiut survivors needs I would get laughed at by my higher ups if I tried to use thay data in a test and probably reprimanded and retained sense I dealt with life and death problem. The devs do not know how to read data and its shown every tome the talk about data.
But it litteraly is and survivors have more time to not do there objectively being around 340 second while killers with 30 second chases habe 600 seconds to do there objectives killers have to use every thing given to them to win unlike survivors who can make multiple mistakes and it not impact the game as much as killers mistakes one bad chase can lose the killer and entire match same cant be said for survivor.
With how badly your sentences run on, that entire paper could be as few as three sentences.
Regardless, you can keep plugging your head in the sand, but regardless of the presence of other options, people would not be answering 'tunnelling' as one of the reasons they quit if they didn't feel tunnelling contributed to them quitting.
You can bicker as much as you like about where tunnelling ranks on the problem list, but the survey does show that tunnelling is, indeed, a problem. Unless you aggressively, specifically bias the survey against it, I don't see a way to change it and somehow have tunnelling not show up as a problem anymore.
People that have left the game have explicitly told BHVR, in not inconsequential numbers: Tunnelling is part of why I left.
That qualifies it as a problem.
Yes, but the point is: Imagine if it wasn't.
That's the point of balance changes. Balance changes are useless if they must maintain the current balance.
If we wanna boil down "loop better"
Killers should learn to do chase better if they really cant just chase the now exposed person with a hook state rather then feeling like its broken because they get less value chasing the same person again. (especially in scenario proposed in my earlier comment where if you used STB you cant be STB by someone else but can use both your hook states)
feeling tunneled and being tunneled are not the same thing. just like killers saying they feel gen rushed when they were not. and again the survey literally asked 0 questions the first time for killers. They literally asked if killer perks were unfun but not if survivor perks were unfun just showing how biased the devs are.
"You can bicker as much as you like about where tunnelling ranks on the problem list, but the survey does show that tunnelling is, indeed, a problem. Unless you aggressively, specifically bias the survey against it, I don't see a way to change it and somehow have tunnelling not show up as a problem anymore."
please look into the "spaghetti sauce study" its shows how giving people limited choices makes them pick things they don't really feel or want. this applies here with a survey that was completely survivor sided and had tunneling be one of the first few options making it more likely to be choses. when you do surveys you 1 dont want the list to be the same for everyone sense you will effect the results with that, second you want a balance of all sides argument and outlooks, so in this case having only a single side cared about will effect the outcome. lastly you need clear definitions that have no real wiggle room if you want to know if someone doesnt like lets use gen-rushing we need to define exactly what it is and stick to that and guess what the devs failed on literally every single one of these
also i was on my phone so sorry i didn't use proper punctuation.
"Yes, but the point is: Imagine if it wasn't.
That's the point of balance changes. Balance changes are useless if they must maintain the current balance."
balance changes should work to make the game more balanced not less. when the devs repeatedly show which side they balance for its a problem that needs addressed, but since most of the player base is survivors and therefore have the larger voice they will have more pull on this weird bad data driven balancing. when the devs can prove first they are not survivor mains with how they address and talk about each side, show they understand how to pull and read data properly and lastly listen to both sides not just the louder side i will start believing the game could be more balanced and not so survivor sided.
STB is a crazy good perk. It's hard to use too and requires really good coordination, so theres that.
That's not relevant here though, is it?
Link it, because so far I'm finding an Ignobel award for an actual spaghetti sauce thing that has nothing to do with surveys, and something about marketing segmentation which also does not mention psychology.
How does it apply here? There was a wide list of options and an 'Other, please specify'. It's a very bold and stretching claim to imply that a large number of people were subconsciously shunted to picking tunnelling as an option when the majority of them felt like tunnelling was not a big deal, especially when a hatred for tunnelling is frequently echoed around the forums and social media too.
Okay. Killers are overpowered by all we know, so tapping them down is fine.
But also, if tunnelling is 'just playing effectively', that implies that it is currently, balance-wise, ahead of its alternatives. Which means it would improve balance to nerf it down.
Which is killers. They've openly stated this, and ever since 6.1, there's been a deluge of buffs for killers.
We are seeing the flat opposite though. Killer complaints have their verbiage copied 1-to-1, whereas the biggest survivor complaint for ten years running is still struggling to be addressed. Hell, look at what happened to fog vials!
Anyone who still claims, post-6.1, that the devs are 'survivor-sided' is just pig-headedly denying reality. It is patently obvious that the killers have a death grip on this game's balancing team. Just because kill rates aren't aimed at 80 instead of 60 doesn't mean they're 'survivor-sided'.
I don't see it often in my killer games. Main time I did was a streamer took a hook state off someone on deathhook. Unfortunately for them they timed it very badly and I had a mori token 🤣
It is an immensely strong perk though. Not sure it should be in the game. A surv with 0 hook states taking a hook off of someone who would be on death hook after the unhook is wildly strong and removes a crazy amount of pressure applies by the killer. But on the pther hand it's an excellent way to reverse a killer hard tunneling. Hard one to call imo.
The it should only work if only one person has hook states if you want to stop "tunneling" (which is such a nebula turm sense apparently according to the devs killing is tunneling)
"That's not relevant here though, is it?"
its insanely relevant when we are talking about how we should balance the game should we punish survivors for doing gens efficiently because killers feel like they are getting gen rushed? ow wait no you wouldnt say we should sense the survey didnt ask that because the first one didnt have any killer problems just survivors because again thats who the devs care about.
'Link it, because so far I'm finding an Ignobel award for an actual spaghetti sauce thing that has nothing to do with surveys, and something about marketing segmentation which also does not mention psychology."
surveys are an insanely huge part of part of marketing its why our data is so valuable and companies sell it to one another a survey is just a more refined version of out data if you can extrapolate its not hard to see how it connects to not having a choice for killers to talk about there problems then same way survivors do its like the different kinds of sauces if you dont give people the choice they wont pick it. Its actialy why i liked the new what IP's you want to see in dbd survey was actually half decent wit ha entire tab asking for you to think about things you would want in the game. the should have randomized the order of list the gave but other then that its was a good asking for ip ideas survey,
"How does it apply here? There was a wide list of options and an 'Other, please specify'. It's a very bold and stretching claim to imply that a large number of people were subconsciously shunted to picking tunnelling as an option when the majority of them felt like tunnelling was not a big deal, especially when a hatred for tunnelling is frequently echoed around the forums and social media too."
one social media curates negativity so you will see more of it i have seen streamers complain about tunneling for 30 minites and they were not even tunneled that whole stream just killed first. second an other choice is not good when put at the end of a survey the biased of the survey will effect what a person will be willing to talk about its why you should place the other on a seperate page where they will not be influenced by the choices the person asking for the survey gave its why i can praise the new IP survey just a small tweak and it would be perfect.
"Okay. Killers are overpowered by all we know, so tapping them down is fine.
But also, if tunnelling is 'just playing effectively', that implies that it is currently, balance-wise, ahead of its alternatives. Which means it would improve balance to nerf it down."
its the most effective way and always will be the most effective way because a 3v1 is objectively better to deal with as the 1 then a 4v1. its simple math just like spitting up and doing 3 gens at once is better then 2 people on a single gen its simple math yet again. tunneling is used because survivor is so strong, if survivor wasnt as strong killer wouldn't need to tunnel. even in comp the tunnel every single match even on s tiers. the problem is the devs want to hand hold bad survivors which good survivors weaponize, like with the better bt base kit. is constantly weaponized and is one of the many reasons i stopped hooking and just slug because survivors get more from hooking them i do as killer but also why i run an unhook build sense i get so much from unhooking might as well make it even better like with babysitter self pres and will make it letting me reset survivors off hook insanely fast in a safe spot and even if i mess up my teammate will usually use there off hook bt aggressively letting me live.
"Which is killers. They've openly stated this, and ever since 6.1, there's been a deluge of buffs for killers."
they can balance for survivor while still throwing small buffs to killers and lets not forget the massive nerf all killers got with base kit bt being increased and still working in end game and the pallet density update making some killers go from mid b tier to low c tier because they just turn into beavers eating wood most of the match. the devs also shown it this year with nerfing jason off rip yet leaving a broken survivor perk in cross exam unchanged from ptb even tho survivor main creators were saying its broken. we can also look at how they use kill switch's when the infinite item glitch was unkill switched and the devs told players how to do it.
"We are seeing the flat opposite though. Killer complaints have their verbiage copied 1-to-1, whereas the biggest survivor complaint for ten years running is still struggling to be addressed. Hell, look at what happened to fog vials!
Anyone who still claims, post-6.1, that the devs are 'survivor-sided' is just pig-headedly denying reality. It is patently obvious that the killers have a death grip on this game's balancing team. Just because kill rates aren't aimed at 80 instead of 60 doesn't mean they're 'survivor-sided'."
how are we seeing flat opposite killer queue times are around 2 minites or even under a minite thats showing we have way more survivor players again math basicy math we need 4 survivors for every killer so if we have 30 killers for every 100 players 14 of the killers will have to wait for a match and before jason i had the bp bonus on the killer side meaning we had under 20% of the players as killer on my server.
also agins with the math 60% kill rate is a 50% win rate for killer because again its a 1v4 games the killer has 5 possible out comes 3 being negative 2 positive meaning you need a 60% kill rate to have a neutral experience on killer but no killer breaks 60% kill rate on night light because im sorry till the devs make all stats public im not trusting there strats they have shown they don't understand stats multiple times. not to mention the problem of survivors giving up under hook making survivor stats inflated. i play dredge as my main killer and about 1 in 4 games i have someone give up under hook after first chase or even before first chase because they dont want to play into dredge a mid c tier killer.
I had someone use Shoulder the Burden to save a friend the other day and coz I could see the hook counter I just went for them instead, the unhooker gets the hook state without activating any anti tunnel perks? I thought hooking was too powerful… Shoulder the burden is gaining a hook count on someone without any of the "downsides" killers usually complain about.
That means the people in this game weren't able to use second chance until the final chase, so… why didn't you go for the unhooker?
I literally just did!
To quote: "Legitimately, the game would be better if survivors splitting up on gens (The safest way to play) were not also simultaneously the most effective way to play."
If the current balance of the game leads to gameplay that people find frustrating, then that's reason to look at changing the current balance. Not to mention that BHVR has already taken a step in that direction, too: Spawn rules were changed specifically to make splitting up on gens less effective.
Yes, but what you're talking about is the domain of psychology, and that one wasn't mentioned. There was no mention about surveys being constructed to specifically make people give false answers.
Which is what you're banking on with your deflection of the survey result.
Why would you do that if you want to get an accurate answer? Why would you specifically first try and put them through a wringer with limited answer options to then rug-pull them and show them that, actually, you can answer as you wish?
Because that sounds, to me, like you're actually trying to create the problem you are complaining about.
Really? Because if all survivors got a 10-second stun DS for free, I'd wager that tunnelling becomes pretty inconvenient.
Or if every survivor death gave the rest of the survivors +60% repair speed.
Extreme examples, obviously, but it's to illustrate that you're either incapable or unwilling to think of a solution, not that there necessarily can be no solution.
And we know that that's not true, because 6.1 hiked all kill rates AND saw an increase in tunnelling. And as many have noted on the forums, too, the more powerful the killer is, the more likely they are to tunnel. Pigs, Wraiths, Doctors, Clowns, etc. appear to be less likely to tunnel than Blights, Nurses, Ghouls and the like.
We've heard this argument plenty, but it never bore out to anything. Almost like tunnelling killers are just using it as a beatstick to threaten the balancing team with in order to get some more survivor nerfs out. (After which they will resume tunnelling because why not?)
I thought you said tunnelling was -always- going to be the most effective way?
Except they aren't balancing 'for survivor' and the buffs thrown at killers aren't small.
You mean the tunnelling killers. Basekit BT ain't changing much in games where killers don't proc it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Cross Exam not even make it off PTB before being slated for a crippling nerf?
Because queue times are not a single-factor indicator. As I've already mentioned, the devs have openly stated to balance in favour of killers. Look at how fog-vials ended up, look at what happened to the anti-tunnel PTB, look at the power creep in intel perks, look at what happened to Distortion in response to that, look at them copying the verbiage from killer complaints on the forums…
The devs are constantly trying to do right by the killer community, and every attempt just shifts the goalposts and makes them more irate. Just because your demands are ever-growing doesn't mean the dev team isn't bending over backwards trying to satisfy them.
Oh, not this again…
No, you're assuming perfect distribution of outcomes and everyone knows that DBD leans heavily towards the extreme ends. 2Ks are exceptionally rare in comparison to the other outcomes, and there's a ton of factors involved with said distribution of outcomes.
Anyone who tries to claim that any kind of killrate 'is' any kind of winrate is going to be flat-out wrong. It's a fool's errand to try and distill that equation. It's not even the same for every individual killer.
You're not coming off stellar yourself, here.
Firstly, while BHVR may not be good at interpreting stats, there is no reason to assume that the stat releases they do are tainted by that as they're simply stat releases. They're not interpretations. They don't 'interpret' a killer to have a certain kill-rate. That killer HAS that kill-rate.
The only thing you can argue about is about their habit of disqualifying matches with a disconnect, but given that the disconnect penalty mostly leans on the survivor side and there's more likely to be a disconnect in a match the survivors are losing, this would imply the actual killrates are higher than what BHVR shows, since the majority of matches that are thrown out are matches the killer was likely winning.
But for someone who's taking a fine-toothed comb through a survey to try to ascribe all kinds of psychological manipulations to it, the fact that you are more willing to take NIGHTLIGHT's stats over BHVR's is especially hypocritical. Ever heard of self-selection bias?
Think about it, the matches recorded to Nightlight have been recorded by a participant. Do you think players are more, or less likely to record matches that they lose?
And then consider which there will be more of: Survivor players, or killer players.
Because its easier to ask for challenges to get removed than get better.
Just don't let a survivor ask for something similar or the waterworks will begin.
Honestly rn I just want the problematic stuff removed to play against as survivor:
-High Latency
-Nurse/Ghoul/Jason
-Extreme Slugging
I won't disagree on that but the risk and difficulty of the perk goes out the window when a coordinated group uses it. Though this isnt exclusive to STB ofc since theres evidence in the past.
In one of my replies above, I actually broke down what had happened in the match to answer your question.
Even when I try to punish the unhooker, another survivor can use STB to remove that pressure. In just a couple minutes, the risk of the perk can be easily minimized. I don't think the perk is broken on its own but on a coordinated group, it can be dangerous.
The perk is definitely on the stronger side esp in a group. My main concern with the perk is how it can also punish killers who don't tunnel at all and my match was proof of that. My only request is that a survivor who uses it can NOT be affected by another STB. The perk will still help with tunneling but the user needs to be more cautious with their decision.
What is the purpose of your 2nd sentence there? It has nothing to do with the topic and is purely to stir up “us vs them” divisiveness.
The exposed effect is making coordination hard, at least against M1s with good anti-loop like slinger or portia.