New killer design trend and power creep.
I've noticed that all of the new killers being released are following a certain trend and it's powercreeping most of the older killers out of being effective. Namely that their kit consists of whatever gimic power they get plus traversal. And these traversal powers are getting stronger, more flexible and much shorter cooldowns which is causing a huge imbalance in killer effectiveness. Omnipresent evil, upside down traversal for henry, headlong rush for krasue, bat mode for dracula etc. Pretty much every new killer released in the last few years
A lot of older killers that don't have traversal are really starting to suffer with this new meta, trapper, ghostface and pig being major examples having to trudge across the map to keep pressure up and losing too much time by doing so. Looking at most tier lists the killers at the bottom tend to have one thing in common, no form of traversal power. And the older killers that still see use and are considered effective like billy, guess what? They have a traversal power.
So if bhvr ever ends up reworking some of these neglected killers then perhaps traversal would be a good place to start
Comments
The question becomes, what kind of traversal do they get that isn't just another station-based one like Springtrap or Xeno?
I can hardly picture Trapper constructing a trebuchet with his tinkering skills and launching himself across the map. I also appreciate the fact that traversal is part of some killers' identities but not others.
Rather than give every killer traversal, making the gameplay loop of all killers close in on a single point, I'd rather variable genspeeds or another killer 'stat' that gives breathing room to the slower guys and increases pressure on the killers that can be anywhere at once. Tweakable over time if a killer gets too strong/weak with this change.
It’s the only way they can get people to buy new killers. Why would anyone buy a new killer that is a worse version of existing killers? The winning formula is 1) release busted killer that combines better versions of multiple powers that other existing killers have, then 2) nerf into the ground later after enough money has been made.
I'm not going to pretend I have some in depth ideas about how to buff some of the older killers. I am going to say that the fact that every recent killer has just been 3-4 other killers rolled into one, and therefore more oppressive and awful to play against than all of the previous ones, has made it so that as a survivor player, I'm not excited about new killer releases anymore.
I wanted to be excited about Jason—and I was until the third game when I realised he was just Spirit, Animatronic, Dark Lord rolled into one powercrept annoying killer.
It's boring, oppressive and usually makes games sort of miserable. The most older killers are more fun to play as and against because they actually specialise in something, which means there's actual counter play for survivors, and there's actual skill required if you want to be really good at them.
Jason is close to being a fun killer to play against tbf, he just needs some nerfs in his more obnoxious areas like Omnipresent Evil.
I do enjoy playing against him otherwise when he isn't being played to draw a game out as long as possible
Interesting how the "power creep" never seems to be on the Survivors side.
Any time we have a powerful perk, it gets nerfed into oblivion.
Dead Hard, Fast Track, Distortion, Self Care, Circle of Healing, etc.
Often we get Perks that sound interesting until you realise you will waste half the match trying to get value from it and it's just a meme...
Killer's are flying around the map with overstuffed kits and Survivors are told to. "Stay on gens".
Also the Diminishing Returns mechanic disportionately affects Survivor builds, like Haste, Healing and Gen speeds stacking. While Killers perks often activate at different times and one at a time so the "stacking" effect was never much of an issue for them to begin with.
It's a slightly different issue with survs. An individual survivor can't really be power crept because they are all just reskins of slightly different sizes and the perks can be shared between them all.
Bhvr have to be careful with survivor perks. Too powerful and they can have a really detrimental effect on the game. For a start if it's truely powerful you can potentially have all 4 survs running the same perk. I remember when made for this was first released with gabriel soma. I was seeing dull teams 4 stacking that perk to keep chases going longer.
They have a certain amount of leeway with new killers because killers are supposed to be the power role. So they can get away with broken killers for a period of time after release.
Yeah trapper is a funny one. Keeping it on theme would be very important.
Haste would be useful for him, i think giving certain killers a passive haste boost when not within a certain range of survs would be an option. Though i suppose that would act like basekit whispers.
Or perhaps he could have a way of remote way of setting/ moving traps around, like a small machine or a projection power where he goes dormant and can lay traps. I'm thinking a bit like omnipresent evil to lay traps then reverts to his body when deactivated
It could work! Again I do like the idea of some killers being permanently present and milling about, but accept that it's a tough way to be on certain maps against a very gen-efficient team. Still, I hesitate on making modernisation of simpler killers simply giving them some kind of equivalent of a more mobile killer's traversal… It just feels like it takes away from the nice, clean, simple low-tiers we have now, if that makes sense? I did once wonder whether remote trap setting would be useful. Maybe with a 10s opening delay so you can't use it in chase to easily cut a survivor off without planning far ahead.
I've also seen a thread previously about a 'patrol mode' that non-mobile killers get. Kinda like Portia's tracking. After being out of chase for x amount of seconds, you gain a significant speed boost until you interact with something, use a power or enter chase with a survivor. I'd like to see something like that playtested to hell and back before implementation though.
PS: Trapper in OE dropping traps off is conjuring images of doubling a gen and some mysterious wind drops a beartrap nearby. Making me chuckle.
I enjoy ultra mobility. Others dont. It's good that trap based and area control killers exist.
But yeah anti-loop + map traversal has been the design patter for years.
I do somewhat agree. There is a very fine balance to Survivor Perks. But if we are going to be consistently Power Creeped, something has to give.
It is an interesting one to look at. I find when most killers come out, survs usually have something in the perk toolbox to pull out, it's certainly deep enough. Take jason for example, since crouchwalking was so necessary against him you saw a lot of people running urban evasion for those first couple of weeks while his pickrate was through the roof.
When henry came out you saw a lot more people running sprint burst to counter his undergate attack.
I find new killers tend to go through that stage where people learn how to counter them, first with perks and then once they've had a bit of practice it turns to muscle memory.
i think its just the artificial need to make things bigger and badder and to top what came before. The problem is that the older stuff just never gets looked at by BHVR to compensate so things seem lopsided. The most recent example being Huntress-Springtrap-Jason. A natural evolution of powercreep, where one is replaced by the new hotness that makes money and the old stuff now seems unreliable and not worth spending dev time updating, and thats why Huntress besides getting a new skin wont ever get any major change because the new hotness Springtrap came out and then the cycle repeats with Jason.
I actually tried changing my build on him JUST to avoid patrolling around indefinitely with OE, which leads to alot faster paced playstyle. Sleeping bag add can be good for finding your next chase, as well as Spies from the shadows and surge. Ends up resulting in me using his OE for no more than 10 seconds at a time, often times using it JUST to change floors.
You are correct, Urban Evasion has been pretty handy. I build each Survivor with as many of their teachable Perks that are usable. This keeps each Survivor kind of unique and each build fresh so they feel like less of a skin. Been playing Nea a lot lately.
Yeah i try to do similar with my survs and make builds that fit their vibes. Altruistic builds for steve, healing builds for rebecca etc
I went full aura read and always announce myself with a lethal pursuer cross map attempt (map allowing for it). I pretty much never stay in OE for very long, its really not necessary to if you have an idea where the survivors are likely to be or saw them on bbq. I assume sleeping bag would proc on hooking (if you don't already have a spike) and could replace bbq in my build. I haven't tried that one out too much, been running two nails and aluminum.
I think this kind of perfectly showcases the problem with Jason though, he is incredibly good at keeping pressure up regardless of what he runs and so many just default to the strongest possible perks and add-ons because of it. His OE getting a nerf would be a huge incentive to go to that next chase rather than patrol endlessly and wouldn't really hurt these more aggressive styles. The aggressive playstyles are also a lot more fun to play against than the patrollers that won't come out unless they know exactly where the survivors are.
Sleeping bag shows locations of survivors who are near hooks if you grab a hook spike while in OE. Typically ill chuck the free spike after hooking so I can grab a new one after entering OE. Resulted in this epic accident last night...
https://youtu.be/-QhD9xpTT88?is=JoMr8A6GMZCYLIN8Amazing shot. Seems my brain skipped right past the "while in OE" part, would still fit the purpose just can't aim for someone right after hooking for a cross map, just for happy accidents.
That gen was in shack too... only downside is the bot it hit cant appreciate the hit.
That's not how it works, lol.
That is exactly how it works.
New killers get released that are stronger than older killers → players gravitate towards the newer killers at least partially because they are stronger → stronger killers means higher kill rates → survivor gets buffed to compensate and ensure they still have a chance of escaping against the stronger killers and to bring kill rates back down → old killer hasn't been changed and can't keep up as well anymore.
I wouldn't say they are weak but they do require more skill, knowledge and looping practice. The power creep on newer killers are giving you Ranged abilities, Tracking, Traversal, etc. with almost nothing hold them back.
Ghostface can be okay, if you are good. It only takes one other survivor to knock you out of power with a lengthy cooldown. Jason has 12 seconds that he can't fly in Stealth across the entire map for as long as he likes. These punishments are not even comparable.
I think the general problem philosphy wise is that mobility is king. It's an easy power to create, implement and most importantly, balance around. When you're fast you can get around to the objectives faster, it's easier for survivors to understand and play against. Dbd's problem for a while now is that things have shifted increasingly towards the chase aspect which is fine, I get that because the chase is the most exciting part. But when you focus on that killers who don't have great or even mediocre mobility suffer. Of course there's the alternative, killers who promote more macro-oriented play like Pig, sadako, Pinhead, etc. I want to see more of those but unforatunely survivors typically kind of hate going against killers that require to do something outside the dynamic of "gen/heal > chase > gen/heal > chase" etc, etc.
Unfortunately it's just kind of a self-fufilling prophecy.
I agree entirely with the premise of OP's statement here. Though the problem I see is, as Massquwatt pointed out above, mobility is king in the current meta. It provides spread pressure, helps to counter hold w builds, and allows faster patrol and location of survivors.
My concern at this point is less that all future killers will have mobility of this nature: quite the opposite actually.
Imagine BHVR releases Art the Clown tomorrow for some magical nonsense reasons suitable to argument.
In order for Art to be competitive enough to be worth people buying (the entire point of an IP release), he is going to have to be of comparable power to the highest pick-rate killers on the boards. Let's say Jason, Ghoul, Nurse, Dracula, and Blight are all topping the board that week. Now, BHVR (in this example) says 'We can't just keep giving them all mobility, let's do something different.' THIS is where the problem kicks in.
What could you give Art the Clown that would level him out in comparable power to Jason, Ghoul, etc, without giving him mobility? Given how incredibly powerful mobility is, that means if you don't give him mobility you have to give him something incredibly powerful. You have to deliberately power-creep your own meta. This would, in this example, result in Art getting something like basekit exposed whenever he has bloodlust, or something of that nature.
The problem to me isn't the mobility, so much as recognizing that eventually they will have to break away from the constant mobility releases and the moment they do they are going to have to do some seriously questionable )#*%$ in order to keep the killer competitive with the mobility ones, due to the sheer power of mobility.
On that PS, all i think of is
"Must've been the wind"
Yeah basically what ashes said. They arent weak per se, but relatively speaking the other killers in the game are stronger than them. They are usually bottom in most tier lists, because beyond a bit of stealh shenanigans, they have to simply run chases and m1. And neither have any type of traversal.
Ironically i actually do quite well with ghostie in pub matches, stealthy plays are my jam.
As noble as the idea of this post is (helping lower tiers out), it's never a good idea to fight power creep with power creep. I've seen multiple games break entirely by trying that.
It's good that not all killers follow the same blueprint. That being:
The solution is not to make the unique ones part of the problem. Just look at what happened to Myers. He was unique before.
No. We need the dev team to step up their creativity and come up with better ideas than just copying other killer's powers. I know that's not an easy thing with how many characters we got already. However, I see it as the only way if they want to keep this game alive for a bit longer. Cause copy and paste, just stronger, gets seriously boring.
This is probably asking the stupid question due to it being somewhat an obvious solution but why not tweak something similar to the portals from the banquet, killer only or not? Set up obvious "doors" around the map so killers know where to go and survivors can keep an eye on. While mobility killers still get an edge by being able to "search" while moving across or cut through the middle man as choice, killers who would need to get to one end in a hurry can use them. The main negative thought of (for all of 10 seconds but still) off-hand is making Springtrap less unique. Theres been past talk of a "killer tunnel" in the basement and the like of having something to get killers from end to end. This would somewhat solve the mobility problem?
I don't think every single aspect of the game should be sped up.
If BHVR DOES do something, then I would recommend stopping with the constant slew of traversal abilities.
Auara reveal + Traversal forces the Survivors to play complete Gen Rush or lose. And this is what the game has largely boiled down to. You add in Regression in the hands of a decent Killer player and now you need a God tier Looper on your team or it's cooked.
I understand that it keeps the Killer engaged and effective but it also forces Gen Rush. There must be a hundred Survivor perks for Chests, Totems, even Pallet resets that are a complete waste of time for very little value.
With the constant Power Creep on the newer Killer Kits and mobility, the Meta's are boiled down so much that the diversity in the game is all but lost and I think we've reached a stale Meta.
I don't see an easy way out of this without giving Survivors some serious perks to counter the insane pace of the newer Killer Kits and that would leave many older Killers kicking rocks.
Tough situation BHVR has developed it's way into.
It is a good idea. Implementation would be interesting.
Would it only be for chosen killers who need the help or across the board as a new base mechanic? Would these portals be accessible by survivors too? How would this affect overall game balance, like other portal ish killers like demo and springtrap?
Wed say: Across the bord, survivors no, unknown effects but would definatly shake it, most portalish killers either already have/can set up near important locations (sadako, demo, xeno, unknown, freddy) and some already get bonuses when they use their teleport so these would have no sort of bonus aside from going from A -B (springtrap gets stealth, sadako spreads condemed, xeno and jason can potentially find survivors, etc)…but thats just our thoughts. Let the forum go rabid thinking.
See my thinking would be to add it as a mechanic across the several killers with no traversal power. Namely: trapper, pig, doctor, skull merchant, myers and bubba. Mayybe deathslinger, pyramid head and huntress too, but they have ranged attacks and need it less.
To each their own. Without doing an individual basis there's less chance for the devs to break something, or if they break something to quickly get their **** together due to it being a general thing and less headaches thinking about each individual. But that's our reasoning.