jesterkind
jesterkind
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@TheArbiter said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3668170#Comment_3668170
They are changing her slowdown though they have nerfed the RBT if the PTB changes go to live, I do see how entirely removing the roar could be bad however
The PTB changes don't affect the slowdown the RBTs give, they just give survivors more leeway to take suboptimal pathing or complete a heal before going for their searches. They still have to search the same amount of boxes, those searches still take the same amount of time, the boxes aren't any closer together, and they still don't get to do generators safely before searching. Nothing about the slowdown has changed.
Still, buffing her antiloop and stealth slightly more than the PTB could be workable, if you're careful. In my experience the antiloop changes are more impactful than some would give them credit for, but in fairness, they're still not ideal.
Rather than removing the roar, I'd look at letting her move faster while she's crouched. I don't understand why the Pig has to move slower than a running survivor at all while she's crouched, considering she has to either stand up and lose distance or charge her Ambush and lose distance if she wants to actually attack.
Letting her move faster would let her get into position for a stealth play a little sooner, that'd be nice.
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BHVR have no interest in changing her slowdown.
That said, I don't like the idea of removing the roar, it's a fairly inoffensive part of her kit. It gives the survivor a head's up, sure, but the survivors do deserve some kind of feedback to react to most of the time when it comes to killer powers. Maybe pushing it further back, as someone else said... but even then, it means the fun meme stuff becomes less funny.
I don't think it really needs any changes.
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I like this map, it's my favourite of the Coldwind maps to play on for either side. Definitely feels balanced, there's enough resources that are usually spread out pretty evenly, and the main structure is useful without being obnoxious.
Also one of the few genuinely good breakable walls in the game, imo.
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Literature published online counts, right?
I'm picking the Parahumans series, specifically its first novel Worm.
My pick for the killer is Taylor Hebert, AKA Skitter, Weaver, and Khepri. I'd be pulling largely from the climax of the book for her appearance (so Khepri over Skitter or Weaver), and her power would involve utilising swarms of insects as tracking and harassment tools. She'd make a great killer, especially in terms of aesthetic and animations. Plus, I'm pretty sure she'd be the first instance of the killer being the protagonist of their source material...
There's not really a good pick for survivor. Maybe Lisa, AKA Tattletale? Most of the important characters have superpowers that would break the suspension of disbelief, imo. Some skins for established characters based on their costumes could easily work though.
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The framing of this post is way off, that title is basically clickbait.
This isn't survivors being OP, this is map spawns being bad. This example of map spawns being bad benefited survivor, but other examples would benefit killer, because both sides meet in the middle; map design is a third element alongside survivor tools and killer tools.
Even if you were wanting to make an argument about survivors being OP for some other reason, I gotta say, "I won this match but imagine if I didn't" isn't particularly compelling.
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I think it's safe to say the killer role is in the healthiest spot it's ever been in.
Some specific killers still struggle, some perhaps even moreso than other points in the past, but the role as a whole is definitely doing really well. I get the occasional annoying match, of course, and I do have a bad habit of playing late at night when the matchmaker loves giving me literal comp players, but overall I enjoy killer just as much if not more than any time in the past.
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DMS doesn't need a nerf, it needs to be reworked.
Currently, it only has the one obnoxious combo, with Ultimate Weapon. But even if we fix that, it's constantly teetering on the edge of another obnoxious, unfair combo, and I just don't think that design is healthy. Ground-up rework it to do something else and change the name if you have to, it's just not healthy.
As for the other two, I wouldn't mind nerfing them as I'd love for the community to move away from worshipping regression perks as god-kings you need in every match, but I also do think that we're in a spot where just nerfing regression as a whole would be unfair. If the devs decided to tackle both toolboxes and the top regression perks in the same patch, I'd be on board for that, but I do think progression needs to be hit at the same time as regression at the moment.
We're not in a position where individual perks are problematic enough to be tackled solo, like in patch 6.7.0.
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@WolfyWood said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3666186#Comment_3666186
The top players of this game frequently interact with laymen though, there are tons of solo-queue experience that they have, granted, their attitudes and overall play-style is abhorrent. Which is why I don't like the CC's of this game, but I still respect their knowledge and ability. They also makes tons of content for casuals and above, so its pretty clear that they have a deep understanding of how the game works at all levels.
DBD isn't similar to Overwatch because Overwatch has a ranked mode and Blizzard's MMR is probably leagues and miles above BHVR's coding.
The problem is that optimization is inherent to something being good. Perks do not exist in a vacuum, so no matter what its ability to perform will always include how it compares to other perks, and things like Lucky Star are terrible even within the niche of terrible perks because they simply do not provide enough benefit to outweigh their conditions. Niche perks would be okay if the game was more casual, but DBD is not casual and by running these perks you are hindering your team, even if player skill typically can close that gap.
The reason people are dissatisfied with survivor perks recently is because all that is being granted are niche perks, which is seriously killing perk variety. This is not a community problem. The pool of meta perks should always be abundant so there's an efficient perk load-out for most playstyles.
Funny enough the problem that people claim is happening on the killer side, where they state that only four killers are viable due to the rest falling to the wayside in higher MMR brackets, is more true for survivor perks than anything.
Couple things wrong here;
So, first, I am not comparing DBD to Overwatch. You're pulling a "DBD is like hockey" on me here; the point is that the concept I'm talking about is present in most games that have some kind of pro scene, and I used Overwatch as an example because I had personal experience with it. In most games where there's a pro scene, that pro scene's gameplay is going to look very different to a regular match.
The pros can have good insight, I was a little too broad with my first statement, but they are not objectively correct by default. By all means pay attention to them if you want, but they are not giving us the word of god on how strong a perk is.
Second, optimisation is NOT inherent to whether something is good. There's really no gentle way for me to say that, it's just flat out wrong. Optimisation is the best of the best, and this is not a binary. It's not "this is the best around" and "this is bad" with no other options, there is a very, very broad middle ground and most perks - including new ones - fall in that middle ground.
Third, are the perks we're getting recently niche, though? Some of them are, but certainly not all of them. Take our most recent survivor, Alan Wake. Three perks, how many of them are niche? Illumination is and would be if it were buffed properly, yes, but is Deadline? No, not really. If it were buffed properly (IE, removing one of the downsides) it'd be a very broad perk. Is Champion of Light? Again, no, it has very broad application in something most players want to do.
Even setting aside that we are just getting generally good perks, the fact of the matter is we're 137 perks deep on just the survivor side. Most of the general and broad perks already exist, without power-creep causing insanely broken perks the devs are going to have to start looking at more niche perks eventually.
Fourth, this might be a semantic nitpick, but there's never going to be a large and broad pool of meta perks, that's antithetical to what a meta is. What there should be is a large and broad pool of viable perks that may not be the absolute best of the best but are absolutely worth running... and we're pretty damn close to that right now.
Both sides claim their pool of viable options is very small. Both sides are wrong.
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@WolfyWood said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3666170#Comment_3666170
Killers aren't comparable to perks so that is the first thing.
Secondly this is a PVP game, consistency and efficiency are and should be the determining factors in what makes something good.
Perks that are inconsistent and require wasting efficiency are not good, what is not clicking?
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3666168#Comment_3666168
If you do not care what top tier players do then there is no way to give your opinion much weight because you lack credibility. This is not a personal dig at all, but why should one believe that people are just ignorant/stubborn when the people who research and compete in this game for a large part of their living disagree with what you are saying?
There are two reasons why I don't care about the opinions of pros, or more accurately, why I don't consider their opinions correct by default.
The first is that the pro scene in most games tends to be radically different to the experience of actually playing a match yourself. The expectations and context for a lot of decisions and actions are wildly different because they're built on the way people at the top play, which cannot be guaranteed to be how things work in regular games. This was a problem I had back when I played Overwatch, too; watching the pros only did so much when all their decisions were based around being in a team of players they know and trust with top tier communication.
The second is that even disregarding the top point, pros tend to optimise. I don't care about only bringing the absolute best and whether something is considered viable within that context, I care about if it's good, on its own merits, not compared to the most efficient and optimised meta build available. That's not a fun, engaging, or helpful way to approach the game, in my opinion.
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@Ayodam said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3666140#Comment_3666140
Jesterkind, the perks you’ve named are either full of drawbacks, require awkward gameplay that borderline throws the game, or are wildly outclassed by other perks. Better perks.
So here’s a thought experiment: let’s assume they are strong perks.
Why are they so rare to see in gameplay? Why aren’t players consistently running them? Are the perks so good they’re seldom used because people just don’t understand how good they are? People like Otzdarva (this forum’s favorite, right?), Ayrun, Team Eternal, Team Oracle, and other amazing survivor players with thousands of hours in the game? These are the crème of the crop when it comes to survivor players, but are they too dimwitted to recognize just, in your words, how “strong” those perks are?
The answer cannot be yes and no.
What makes a perk strong boils down to three things: what it does, how often situations that require its benefit occur, and how consistently it does what it does. Perks that provide a situational advantage or come in clutch when the stars align aren’t strong; they’re situationally useful. That still makes them weak when measured against perks with broader applications. Strong perks transcend situational value, which is why they become META-relevant.
This thread is about Windows of Opportunity, the number one most picked perk. Is it therefore the strongest perk in the game? No, that's laughable. It barely does anything at all.
Pickrate does not always correlate with strength. People pick perks based on a number of factors that includes strength, but isn't limited entirely to it. Take Windows again: Why do people run Windows? Because it's nice. It's nice to know for sure you are avoiding deadzones, and it's nice to see what your options are. You can get almost all of this information just from keeping an eye out, and what little you can't get that way can come from stronger perks, but Windows is the most convenient, accessible, and passive of those. That's why it's picked, not because it's strong.
I don't know or care why top tier players don't run these perks. I don't consider them the gold standard models for the only things you should or could ever do in this game, so I don't particularly care to look into it either.
So, why are they so rare? I could be reductive here, and I wouldn't be wrong to do so. I could just say "because people incorrectly think they're bad", and that wouldn't be inaccurate, it'd just be unhelpful.
There are factors that go into it beyond just community perception; for one, some of them are strong in areas people don't care about. For example, Light-Footed is a really good perk for denying the killer info and breaking chases, but breaking chases tends to be less popular than extending chases, in my experience.
Some of them require playstyles or actions people don't want to go out of their way for. An older example, but Overzealous is a good pick to showcase what I mean here; that perk is quite strong when paired with a boon build and a little careful planning, but most players don't want that, they want passive value from things that just function in the background or require very little extra thought from them. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it also doesn't make the perks they discount for this reason bad either.
Some of them, yes, have some randomness to them, but that's often conflated with the above point in my experience. Something like Chemical Trap is crazy good if put on the right pallet, but some players don't like gambling on being in the right position to use it, even if it's not all that uncommon. People have a bad habit of assuming they have no control over a perk's consistency, though, and that's not always true. Some perks you absolutely can make consistent.
Some of them, it must be said, come from survivors with a bad reputation. An older example again, but Overcome is one of the stronger Exhaustion perks and among the strongest perks period... but pretty much everyone clowns on Jonah, so how many people even have this perk to use it, let alone pay attention to it? I'd argue this is what's happening when you see people immediately discount Cut Loose, even though it's basically just Quick & Quiet with one extra step. Tools of Torment and its associated survivors have a bad enough reputation that people just dismiss all the perks, only Background Player gets to escape this because of how absurdly strong it is in areas people actually care about.
Also, they're new, so fewer survivors even have them, let alone have put in any thought to figuring out the best use case for them yet. That is a factor that can't be ignored, how many players HAVE the perk is going to affect how many players bring that perk into their trials. Sometimes they're new, sometimes they're gated behind real money, and sometimes it's both.
And then, finally, yeah, there is a tendency to just discount new perks entirely if they aren't game-breakingly strong. Again, people in this thread and you specifically are discounting Champion of Light, a genuinely strong new perk. I do sincerely believe this is 100% a perception and attitude problem, that stacks with the above points.
Notice that only one of the above points actually runs foul of your breakdown of a strong perk. The perks I'm talking about largely do something worth doing, the situations they do it in are under your control, and their consistency in those situations is under your control too. There are just other factors that lead to people choosing other perks.
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No, I'm being serious. What are you talking about? There have been good perks. Even being as aggressively selective as possible, there's no way of interpreting Champion of Light as a bad perk.
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@Ayodam said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3665695#Comment_3665695
This has to be a joke. A wretched, cruel joke.
???
Plot Twist, Light-Footed, and Champion of Light are all just flat out strong perks. The others might be more arguable (and I would argue some of the remaining perks are decently good, just not all of them), but those ones aren't. Where's the joke supposed to be?
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@xltechno said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3665397#Comment_3665397
If a survivor steps into the dead zone even though they are injured, isn't that an act equivalent to suicide by suicide? Hooked Survivors can look around and see where other Survivors are and where they are on the map. In the first place, being tunneled means that other survivors are not wasting pallets, which can greatly extend the chase time with the killer.
Each one may seem useless, but by stacking them together Survivors can significantly counter the tunnel, but no one wants to do it.
What I'm referring to is typically that resources would've been used during the previous chase, especially if you've already been tunnelled after your first unhook and you had to use more resources to make up for the fact that the chase is stacked against you.
Also, they don't have a choice as to whether they're injured or not. They're being tunnelled, they're going to be injured.
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Really tough choices, honestly, the original characters in this game are all really good.
For survivor... four-way tie. I can't possibly choose between Claudette, Meg, Mikaela, and Sable. Even then, there's honourable mentions! Jane's an excellent character, I can appreciate Feng even if I think she's a little overhyped, Haddie's cool as hell...
For killer, I'd say my favourite original female killer is probably Skull Merchant, but shoutout to the Nurse's original lore. Not a fan of her tome at all, but her base lore is pretty compelling. Oh, and Susie too!
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@Pulsar said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3665476#Comment_3665476
I think he's a General, iirc.
The real issue, I think, is that she's just campy (in more ways than one lmao). If you take it like that, then yeah, I could see how it's fine. She's goofy, she's a little silly and maybe that's alright for some people. Like Army of Darkness-lite. Still horror but just silly horror.
Yeah, basically.
I think the manga stuff is just a little campy flair to an otherwise fairly grounded story, at least as far as any story about murderous psychopaths in service to an eldritch being can be grounded. The rest of her story is pretty straightforward, like I said earlier she's basically a CEO version of the antagonist in The Most Dangerous Game.
It's just hard to see the campy appeal when you're approaching with the knowledge of how obnoxious her gameplay was at launch. The well was poisoned, so to speak.
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@Pulsar said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3665463#Comment_3665463
I'm genuinely curious on how someone could think of it as good. Mid? Maybe, I could be swayed to that, yeah.
Unless you can relate to it, which I hope nobody can relate to a CEO serial killer, then I don't see any draw to it.
If you do want to have a conversation, then yeah, I'll follow suit.
Basically, the problem is that people only went to go nitpick her lore because they already didn't like her. It doesn't help that BHVR decided to go for a slightly campy route, which is something I find people have a hard time recognising and appreciating even when they aren't already mad, but it's mostly the first thing.
The lore's just fine. It has some fun ideas, it executes on them fine, and it has the BHVR-typical poor pacing and lack of focus. It does spend too much time on her early life compared to later, and I separately also have an issue with it not going into the origin of her drones at all, but those are two fairly small problems in the grand scheme of things.
The whole obsession with her father's manga thing is overblown as bad writing, in my opinion. It's just kind of campy, there's nothing really wrong with it - and since learning about how Brazil has a massive manga scene, I can appreciate BHVR writing that into her story. I think it does aid in her vibe a little bit - she's basically the Colonel (? it's a military rank don't @ me it's been so long since I read this) from The Most Dangerous Game, and that character's also meant to be a larger-than-life kind of figure. Characters like her should have some kind of flair, I'd argue. What she has is fine.
I'm not gonna come out here and say it's a masterpiece. BHVR do have some really good writing, but most of it's exactly the same level of quality as Skull Merchant: It's fine. Fun ideas, decent enough execution, I've never really liked the voice they're written in and I've always thought they had poor pacing. SM's isn't unique, people were just already mad and didn't take to the slightly goofy element very well because of it.
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@Pulsar said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3665451#Comment_3665451
Uh huh.
Care to enlighten us all about how her lore is some outstanding piece of literature? A modern classic perhaps?
It spends over half the entry talking about her father and extremely little time talking about her as this "dark Brazilian manga" character that she decided to cosplay.
The whole premise and justification of the idea is absolutely ridiculous, it's horrible writing which has been the unfortunate norm for a while.
The actual premise is fairly interesting, which really makes it worse. A CEO that uses their wealth and technology to hunt down rival company's for a competitive edge? That's not bad, it's like a evil Batman, in a sense. Add everything else in though? It creates a mess.
Also, her power is still bad, please make it healthy and strong.
No? Why on earth would I talk to you, specifically, about this?
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@Pulsar said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3665211#Comment_3665211
No, her lore is actually horrible, I don't know if any Tomes have made it better, but her release lore is something I could do better.
She needs more attention, preferably having her current ability nuked and giving her a better and healthier power.
Excellent example of the exact kind of thing I was talking about.
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@zarr said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3665336#Comment_3665336
The only thing you listed that the drones actually do just as soon as the button is pressed is stealth. The other things only happen as people get scanned, and some of them only once they've been scanned over three times.
I think you are calling back to an earlier point about her getting all these effects "just for pressing M2". Obviously that's a bit of a hyperbole (although it is pretty much the extent of her gameplay on the killer player side of things), but that's not what we're talking about here. Again, in a 3-gen scenario survivors will inevitably get scanned as they scramble from Merchant approaching their gen. This happens incessantly, 3 scans build quickly and reliably, and it isn't only 1 drone they have to worry about either.
Leading on from that point, I really don't know how you can say avoiding beams as you approach gens wastes a lot of time. What time does it even waste? Maybe like a second if you have to stop and let the beam cross over you? After that, you're at the gen and you can just keep repairing with zero risk until she comes to harass you off.
You have to cautiously approach as Merchant can still be around. You have to worry about multiple drones and beams. And yes, as being chased away from gens and having to go back is something that happens numerous times, the seconds spent not being able to run when approaching gens will add up significantly. Stealth mode drones can be even more time-consuming to approach, and harder to avoid the beams of.
One, her power has to build up before it does anything more than a slight Haste boost and some Undetectable, where other killers can immediately threaten you straight away.
That's not a concern in and of itself, defending a gen cluster yields drawn-out games, her gradually building a power (that then very much is threatening) if anything is an argument as to why it's such a good strat on her as opposed to not doing it. Undetectable is also threatening from the get-go, it leads to survivors being caught out around her gens, realizing too late she is approaching.
Two, when she does build up, what she gets is a worse Clown bottle on an injured survivor. If she's not committing to that down, at which point she's breaking away from her 3-gen, she's not getting all that much. All she has going for her before she builds up scans is some Undetectable, and while that's okay in some 3-gen scenarios, it's not outpacing the fact that she can't keep defending those gens and therefore the progress keeps ticking up-- and it's definitely not better than what other killers can provide.
Survivors will constantly be injured, regularly suffer from Deep Wound, Broken, Hindered, while she has Haste, Undetectable and can track their positions. This is much scarier than a Clown around a 3-gen, who has to get M1s to injure people, from which they can also heal much more quickly and reliably, who doesn't innately have any capacity to get the jump on people, find reset locations. These things allow her to reliably get hits in ways Clown never would, precisely making it so that she can often "break away" from her 3-gen because the time investment is so little to get a down on a survivor that got caught by surprise, is injured, hindered. Not seldomly not even having to break away but getting downs within her setup.
As for playing her and finding out, what would that prove? Whenever I try and play Skull Merchant at all, people give up and go next quite frequently. Obviously I'll have an easier time doing anything when I'm in a 3v1 early. Also, I don't like 3-genning? It's boring.
I wager it would prove to you that 3-genning on Merchant is a very potent and very easy strategy to employ. Cruise control 4ks whenever I or the people I know and watch tried it. Tangibly more so than on many or most other killers. You'd obviously ignore any match in which people give up prematurely or the like. You could also get some friends to play against your 3-gen Merchant and 3-gen Myers or Clown in custom matches.
I don't like being told "maybe play against Merchant and perhaps you would understand her better" (which you didn't do), not least because I have played my share as and against her and usually only go next once it becomes clear that other people don't want to play or that she just wants to hold a 3-gen. But if you really don't think 3-genning is a particular problem with her despite it being one of the foremost complaints about her, I think you'd do well to find out for yourself by actually seeing and experiencing it in play.
Her inevitable fourth rework is going to be a damning reflection on the state of the community, not the killer itself. I know I won't be able to prevent people from feeling validated instead of shamed whenever that fourth rework happens, but still, I'm going to keep acknowledging it.
I'm not sure it is damning or all that grim an outlook even if it were the case that there is nothing rational justifying people's feelings against this character (anymore). She absolutely is an exceptional outlier in this game's 8-years-spanning history, not even original Legion came close to garnering this type of response (Legion by the way being a story that goes to show collective perception on killers can change with reworks), so I wouldn't worry about this type of reaction being something common that will affect the game's development in years to come. Sure, it's unlucky for the people that do enjoy Merchant in her current state (although again, those players still stand to benefit from her being changed such that there aren't as many people disconnecting and suiciding against her), but it's only a game and only one of dozens of characters in it, I'm sure not even the staunchest of defenders are too married to the idea of what Merchant is right now to consider it a great tragedy should that change (fingers crossed).
To tackle those points in order:
1: But which is it? It can't be that they're only getting scanned when they leave the gen and that it happens quickly and reliably. If she's pushing people away from three generators, those scans will build quite slowly because they aren't even guaranteed to happen every time they're pushed away, let alone factoring in that she's pushing people away from multiple generators at once. If she's only focusing the one generator, sure, those scans build quicker, but she's also not defending her 3-gen if she's doing that. She has to choose, does she push to build stacks or does she patrol the 3-gen.
This is also where I'll note that disabling the drones matters here, because if you force her to come back and replace it, she's doing that INSTEAD OF getting scans on you as you leave. Don't do it every time you approach, obviously, but it does matter and does make a difference.
2: Approaching cautiously in this context just means stopping once for a brief second if the beam happens to cross over you, though. Even adding up, that's very little extra downtime compared to just running back to the gen normally. The power isn't an AOE anymore, it isn't just a big circle affecting you no matter what.
3: In a drawn out game versus a killer whose power doesn't need to build up, the effect is even more potent. There's no lull, the power is just already affecting you. That is an argument for why Merchant is weaker at this compared to other killers defending 3-gens; we aren't looking at her doing it vs her not doing it, we're looking at her doing it vs other killers doing it.
4: The point is that she only gets a worse Clown slow if she's built up to that point, and building up to that point takes time if we assume the survivors aren't just recklessly getting themselves scanned out of chase. She might be more threatening in a 3-gen scenario than Clown once she's built up to that point... but she has to build up to that point, where other killers don't, and she's still weaker than those other killers at doing it once she does.
5: If I voided every game where people gave up, I'd have way too small of a sample size to mean anything, that's more what I meant. You can't do experiments like this with Skull Merchant because all the data is irreversibly tainted. People giving up on top of all the massive misconceptions about her power on top of people randomly getting themselves scanned for no reason out of chase... it's just a mess, you can't glean anything from it.
6: It would be extremely damning, because it's only happening due to baseless outrage. Still, if they can manage to fix her without fundamentally altering her from the ground up - and "fix" in this context means appeasing those who have it out for her, so I doubt that's possible - I wouldn't be too annoyed. I would, however, be annoyed if her entire concept gets scrapped because people can't step back and realise it's not as big of a deal as they think it is.
I do like her. I've already lost parts of her that I liked, and that's fine, I'll accept losing those things to make her healthier for the game. Thing is, that's done. She is healthier, she only has minor problems... and she's still on her way to getting another round of big changes, over killers that actually deserve it, because of complete nonsense. I have every right to be annoyed at that - though it is just a game, it's only a minor annoyance - and I do think it's relatively important for the state of discourse that someone try and make sure this is remembered the way it actually happened. Can you imagine how obnoxious people will be if this gets remembered as "Skull Merchant was so badly designed they had to rework her four times before they gave up and scrapped her"?
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@Rage_In_The_Cage said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3664601#Comment_3664601
The survivor being tunneled runs the killer as long as they can. The punishment comes from the other survivors doing gens and getting out. I don’t care about what survivors find fun or what killers find fun. I could just as easily say is it fun for a Trapper to have gens fly by while they try to play nice and 12 hook.
The amount of effort required is equally pointless. Survivor is a much easier role requiring not much effort. Some killers are so strong they require much less effort than others.
Im not sure why you’re expecting balance in a strategy that can easily throw the game for the killer. And it’s also a strategy that is present in virtually every 4v1 type game.
Again, it’s on the survivors to play well.
They run the killer for as long as they can, when the killer is explicitly targeting them when they're injured, out of position, and very likely to be in a deadzone?
The whole point of choosing to tunnel a survivor is that they're starting that chase on an extreme back foot. All the killer has to do is start the chase, but the survivor has to both get lucky enough to have a resource near enough to get to before their BT runs out and then play substantially better than their opponent to make up for the fact that the chase is heavily stacked against them.
I absolutely agree that countering tunnelling should be on the survivors to play well. It is then therefore unavoidably a requirement for them playing well to actually reliably counter the tactic, which it currently does not. They have to play far better than their opponent to overcome the fact that they're being targeted when they haven't had a chance to make smart decisions. Playing well isn't just about how well you can loop, and expecting survivors to be on Team Eternal's level just to counter a cheese tactic from the killer is not balanced.
For example: If the basekit BT wasn't Endurance but just blocked a hit (like Mettle Of Man), they could then chain their anti-tunnel into it, as well as using other forms of Endurance like Dead Hard. Then they'd be able to smartly chain tiles together because they actually had the equivalent of starting a normal chase with the killer, and how much time they waste is up to them. This would help them while being tunnelled, but not otherwise, because anti-tunnel disables on Conspicuous Actions.
As it stands, though, trying to use something like OTR gets you hit straight away, trying to use DS just gets you downed again very quickly in most scenarios, and that's it when it comes to personal anti-tunnel. Even if you wanted to stack a full build of anti-tunnel perks, you can't, there's only two you can bring yourself and they aren't actually very good + have anti-synergy with the basekit mechanic. Even when branching out into other tools that could help in that scenario, the question arises: is it fair for you to have to run all of these perks to counter something the killer needs no perks and no effort to do? The answer is no, I'm not leaving it open-ended. That's not a fair outcome, you shouldn't be given a loss just because you wanted variety in your perk builds.
Tunnelling has already been lessened, as a problem. It's impossible now for the killer to hit you as soon as your feet touch the ground, and that was a great start. It's still not balanced, though, and nine times out of ten imbalances should be fixed.
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@zarr said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3665252#Comment_3665252
I disagree that Merchant is not notable in that regard. How you can think that when drones can injure people for her, force them to mend, render them unable to heal, slow them down, speed her up, give her stealth and tracking, is beyond me. As you patrol gens, survivors will be forced off them over and over again, regularly unable to avoid beams, they will quickly build up scans and inevitably become clawtrapped. If they avoid drones on their approach to gens, they are spending a lot of time doing so. If they hack them, you recall and reset them. Contesting hooks within the droned gen cluster makes avoiding them extra difficult. She will also regularly be Undetectable and get the jump on survivors on her 3-gen. Add-ons additionally play into things, such as the ones affecting skill checks. I legitimately don't understand your stance that her ability is not noteworthily suited to 3-genning, or noteworthy in its potency for that strat. Another notable problem again being the "ease of use" of it on this killer.
I invite you as I did in that post to just put it to the test. Play a couple of 3-gen Merchant matches and then try it with infinite Myers or whatever. See who you have an easier time demolishing most opponents with just strolling around your gens.
What I'd also consider is that people simply 3-gen on Merchant more frequently than on other killers, and be that because of her past, reputation or because it simply makes sense to set up drones in an area surrounding gens. And so even if she wouldn't be particularly, disproportionately problematic in terms of her 3-gen prowess, it could still be a problem that she disproportionately promotes this gameplay. I think when looking into her stats, the incidence of matches that are won at 1 gen left would be comparably as (if not more) notable than that of hook suicides and disconnects.
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3665254#Comment_3665254
I don't think you need "good drone placement" or zone people in order to accumulate scans on them. You set up a drone on any tile in chase or around a 3-gen patrol and that's it. Unless you majorly mess up the placement I don't see that there is too much to think about. M1 skills are naturally still beneficial, but they are not as needed as they are on killers that don't get all of these effects, downing most survivors is fairly trivial once Deep Wound, Undetectable, Haste and Hindered are in play.
I must have been thinking about being fully scanned once already injured, in which case I'm pretty sure you don't get a hit sprint. In the matches that I do stick around and play against Merchant I tend to make her M1 me if I'm healthy and at risk of getting scanned for the third time, for obvious reasons, so I suppose I just haven't had too many healthy-to-locked-on instances to remember that there is a hit sprint.
I don't hate everything about her, I did say I don't think she is irredeemable, that would be silly, she's just a bundle of design choices that could be reconsidered on, mechanics that could be altered. I have made various suggestions in the past regarding things that could make her more engaging to face.
What staunch defenders of this killer character will have to acknowledge is that much as you may think or feel she is completely fine and any hate unwarranted, the fact that there is hate is a problem from a game dev perspective regardless. A 70% killrate (excluding matches with disconnects, at that) as well as a fairly resounding dislike of this piece of gameplay design among the playerbase to an extent where people will often "go next" simply are an issue if the devs care about creating gameplay experiences people enjoy. I'm not sure whether you enjoy people killing themselves or disconnecting in your Merchant matches, but on the wager that you don't, you would also want them to do something that changes things. Forum posts will not change people's minds on this, not least because the vast majority of people never read these posts or even visit these forums - not wanting to play against Merchant is their natural reaction and inclination based upon their playing experiences. So even if you genuinely believe there is nothing wrong with her design and swathes of people are holding the opinions, feelings and reactions they do regarding her irrationally, that still doesn't mean some redesigning isn't reasonable.
The only thing you listed that the drones actually do just as soon as the button is pressed is stealth. The other things only happen as people get scanned, and some of them only once they've been scanned over three times.
Leading on from that point, I really don't know how you can say avoiding beams as you approach gens wastes a lot of time. What time does it even waste? Maybe like a second if you have to stop and let the beam cross over you? After that, you're at the gen and you can just keep repairing with zero risk until she comes to harass you off.
My stance comes from two factors. One, her power has to build up before it does anything more than a slight Haste boost and some Undetectable, where other killers can immediately threaten you straight away. Two, when she does build up, what she gets is a worse Clown bottle on an injured survivor. If she's not committing to that down, at which point she's breaking away from her 3-gen, she's not getting all that much. All she has going for her before she builds up scans is some Undetectable, and while that's okay in some 3-gen scenarios, it's not outpacing the fact that she can't keep defending those gens and therefore the progress keeps ticking up-- and it's definitely not better than what other killers can provide.
As for playing her and finding out, what would that prove? Whenever I try and play Skull Merchant at all, people give up and go next quite frequently. Obviously I'll have an easier time doing anything when I'm in a 3v1 early. Also, I don't like 3-genning? It's boring.
To the point about her inevitably getting changed in your other response there: Yeah, that's going to happen. We just need to acknowledge why, and it's not because of anything to do with her actual power. It's because people are still refusing to engage with the killer in good faith and are just immediately giving up. People were spoiled by the fact that they had a reason to give up before, and its led them to believe that they're justified in giving up against a killer that they just don't like whenever they face her now, after her problems were fixed.
Her inevitable fourth rework is going to be a damning reflection on the state of the community, not the killer itself. I know I won't be able to prevent people from feeling validated instead of shamed whenever that fourth rework happens, but still, I'm going to keep acknowledging it.
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@zarr said:
Good on you if you actually refrain from 3-genning (which, frankly, I doubt you do, sorry, I haven't seen a Merchant player that doesn't 3-gen), but pretending 3-genning is not her most potent strategy anymore or let alone "physically impossible" is nothing but Merchant player propaganda. Sure she doesn't excel at holding matches hostage for an hour anymore, but instead now she just actually kills people around her 3-gen with ease. You still get 24 regression events across those 3 gens, which is more than enough to close out the vast majority of matches, and that's ignoring that you can capitalize on and benefit from protecting a gen cluster entirely without regression too. It's also ignoring things like Ruin, Dead Man's Switch + Ultimate Weapon, Grim Embrace, Overcharge, all of which can incur regression and stalling much beyond the already more than sufficient limit. And the idea that "drones don't do anything to survivors sitting on gens so they can't be used to 3-gen anymore" is nonsense. Survivors need to move to get to and away from gens.
Merchant simply is much too easy to play when compared to the difficulty of playing against her (both in chase and in contesting her 3-gen), and she gets a boatload of strong effects for next to no investment. Injuring without hit sprint, Deep Wound, Broken, Hindered, Haste, Undetectable, tracking. All for pressing M2. Add-ons exacerbating things. Drones can be recalled and reset at will, including hacked drones. Any group that isn't coordinated (i. e. full SWF) will lose against a 3-genning Merchant most of every time, even if the Merchant player is generally much worse at the game than them. And I don't understand why there is this mystery and discussion about this. Just do it, the "play" button is right there. Use some mix of Surge, Eruption, Weasel, Overcharge, NTH, STBFL, Sloppy, pick 3 reasonably close-together gens and keep droning and patrolling them. See how often you don't effortlessly win doing so, getting free downs left and right.
Also, even regardless of her strength, she simply isn't engaging or interactive to play against. And not only because of her propensity to patrol 3 generators, but because the level of interaction with her power is literally "stand still". And in chase you can't really do much of anything about it, you can try to avoid the odd beam but you will sooner rather than later inevitably get clawtrapped, losing a health state and thereby half the chase, without a hit sprint, then also having to deal with Hindered, Haste and Undetectable. It's not like her chase strength is S-tier in and of itself, but it's easily the strongest when compared to how mindless it is for the killer player. All you have to do is press M2, you will injure the survivor, hinder them, become faster, and lose your terorr radius and red stain with which survivors could read your movements. You just press M2 at every loop the survivor may make it to and hold W and most chases will be over under a minute just doing that, little to no mindgaming or thinking necessary, let alone anything mechanically demanding.
I also dislike her visual and audio design, from her model to her animations, her terror radius, chase music and voice. That is subjective to certain extents of course, but it is something rather common among people I know, talk to and watch.
Just a bad design that regularly makes for gameplay that is tiresome and boring at best, or frustrating and obnoxious at worst. Doesn't help that there seems to be a not miniscule amount of players playing her that know perfectly well that people don't like facing her and enjoy precisely that, being happy to BM, keeping people in the match when they clearly want to get out, refusing to kill them, slugging them for minutes, then picking them up before they bleed out, refusing to kill the players left over when others have killed themselves or disconnected. Those kinds of things are much more common with Merchants in my experience.
She isn't this irredeemable evil that some may make her out to be, but she just isn't a good design, with an ability that innately lends itself to area control, is incredibly easy to use while being difficult to play against, and doesn't promote any really exciting or engaging interaction.
The problem with what you're describing is that any killer with a halfway threatening power can do this, and most of them can do it better than Skull Merchant.
3-genning does, to a degree, still exist and is still powerful as a tactic if your goal is to actually close out the match. Any killer whose power actually threatens survivors more directly than a drone maybe scanning them once as they leave the gen (and only doing anything once three scans are hit) will be able to leverage that tight space to gain pressure. Skull Merchant is no longer a noteworthy figure in this regard.
There is, genuinely, no reason to highlight her anymore. If anything, doing this with her is weaker than doing it with, say, Blight, or even a more direct-threat power like infinite tier 3 Myers.
(Also, you DO get a post-hit speed boost when you're claw trapped, she doesn't deny that hit-sprint)
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In my opinion, it's a combination of two factors.
The first is the most important: Inertia. There used to be a valid reason to hate her, and even back then people would spin their hate out into irrational and uncomfortable avenues. Remember how people decided her lore was worth hating her over, even though it was obviously fine and not related to the single thing wrong with her? That's still ongoing, but hopefully it should be in the dying-down phase as the fuel's been cut out of the fire.
The second is the reason the inertia gets to carry forward: Her design isn't one of the damaging-dash ones that have the broadest appeal, so a lot of people who currently hate her are probably never going to really like playing against her, they'll just get to a point where she's one of the less-fun killers to them. There's nothing about her substantially worse than any other killer, you could make similar complaints to the ones you see about Skull Merchant about a lot of killers - and for them, most might even be accurate!
Whatever the real cause, it's really annoying. At this point it's just distracting from the killers and mechanics that do need attention.
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@HamsterEnjoyer said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3664449#Comment_3664449
"SHES SO OP SHE GETS A MILLION STATUS EFFECTS!" She gets 3. Broken, haste, hindered in very small increments and its very self explanatory. If you're slower shes quicker and if you have a claw trap you're broken wow so difficult to get.
This status effect argument has to be the worst one against SM yet and is just something thrown out there
I'm not saying it's a good argument, but she does get more than three.
The status effects her basekit give her are: Broken, Haste, Hindered, Deep Wounds, and Undetectable. Also Killer Instinct if that counts as a status effect?
A better argument would be to point out that her power is almost exclusively status effects, whereas other killers get comparable outcomes without relying on a status effect icon popping up on screen.
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@Rage_In_The_Cage said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3662239#Comment_3662239
How do they prevent what? Tunneling? You can’t prevent a killer from tunneling. All you can do is punish them for it.
It’s not unbalanced because you can punish the killer for it 👍
Again. How.
How does the survivor being tunnelled punish the killer for it? Their tools for doing so are very weak, if those tools were strong enough to reliably punish killers we wouldn't see nearly as much tunnelling.
How do the other survivors punish the killer for tunnelling? By rushing the gens and getting out? I think we have to acknowledge that nobody really enjoys games where one player is targeted out ASAP and the others have nothing to do but hold M1. That's even assuming they can rush the gens, considering the survivor being tunnelled needs outside help to stand much of a chance unless they get very lucky or they're exceptionally skilled.
And after those two questions, I once again bring you to the core question, and I do want an answer: Is it fair and balanced for one side to put in very little effort or thought, and force the other side to put in ten times as much effort and thought to maybe counter them? Is that an acceptable level of balance?
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@Aven_Fallen said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3664439#Comment_3664439
Man, you really seem to just write to disagree.
But I will bite:
That there is no direct interaction between Killer and Survivor should be pretty clear, if you dont TRY to not understand it. As Skull Merchant, outside of standard M1-Killer gameplay, you dont interact with the Survivors AT ALL, you only interact with the Drones. And as Survivor, you also dont interact with the Skull Merchant (again, outside of standard M1-Killer gameplay), but only with her Drones.
Meanwhile, when you face other Killers which are even stronger than her like Billy, Wesker or Blight, you actually have to interact with their power and the Killer also can use the Power to directly interact with the Survivor. Juking a Billy/Wesker/Blight is fun and actual skill expression. Getting hits with Chainsaws, Bounds or Rushes is also actual skill expression. Placing a Drone on a Loop while just chasing the Survivor is not.
My point regarding only interacting with Drones while they are next to Gens - those are the most common places of Drones. Next to Gens and in Loops during the chase. And you cannot sabotage a Drone while in chase, this is just impossible and you know that.
I understand where the lack of interaction comes from, I was asking you why that's a problem and why it doesn't apply to other killers.
Not every killer has a damaging dash you have to juke, and not every killer should, that would be boring as hell. Other killers that you don't interact with directly beyond M1 gameplay (which... is interaction, you can't just completely discount it as a point of interaction) would include Trapper, Sadako, Hag, Pig (though that is about to change), Singularity...
Hell, even some killers that have some direct-dodge ability are primarily based around indirect interaction. Think Pinhead, Plague, Xenomorph, Pig post-changes... This is also where Skull Merchant sits, since there is some dodge-based element to playing against her.
It's not enough to just say that the drones are an object rather than a dash. You have to make the case for that being a problem, both on its own and comparative to the other killers that work this way.
As to the last point-- but the drones stay there, and a lot of Skull Merchants (especially the ones playing well) will put drones up ahead of time too. You go hack them then, or you hack them when they're close to gens, that's still direct interaction with the power and it's still direct counterplay.
It's also worth mentioning: While you can't hack a drone in chase, it's not as though there's no in-chase counterplay at all.
I don't write purely to disagree, I disagree with you for actual reasons.
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@Aven_Fallen said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3664399#Comment_3664399
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3664400#Comment_3664400
The problem I have personally with her is that she is insanely boring and a Killer which just boils down to "Leave the Loop or get Hit". And while there are several of those Killers, they are not even close to Skull Merchant. She just gets so much status effects which are built-in into her Kit, it is not even funny anymore.
She has Haste, Oblivious, Undetectable, Hindered, Deep Wound and Broken. Other Killers have to use Add Ons to have SOME of those status effects.
Plus, her Drones are also not really fun for either side. They also dont really give any interaction between Killer and Survivor, since both Killer and Survivor interact with the Drones, but not with each other directly.
Sabotaging Drones does not really do much, because you can only sabotage them if they are next to Gens, which directly gives information to her and lets her recall them.
And dont get me started on the fact that I can play perfectly against her and one of my teammates can give her Haste by getting a Clawtrap, which will make my Chase against her worse, even if I did not do any mistake or whatsoever.
The problem is that she should have gotten a complete Rework instead of trying to keep her with Drones. Because she was obviously planned as an Area Control-Killer, this was her initial concept. Yet, she was just horrible to verse and IMO also really boring to play (because, again, no direct interaction between Survivor and Killer outside of M1-gameplay). And because they decided to keep her Drones, they decided that she should get so much value out of them to drive the Killer away from using the power only as an Area Control, yet she can still do that AND has so much stuff overblown in her Basekit.
If I would rework her, I would have no idea what to do, but I would 100% remove Drones from her Kit and try to make something interesting. They should have done that from the start and just offer a Refund-Option for people who dislike her new power.
See, this is what I mean. We've got a big dose of unclear, a big dose of inaccurate, and a pretty hefty dose of subjective to go along with it.
Things like saying she's boring, that there's no direct interaction between killer and survivor, and that she has a lot of status effects, this is not clear and constructive criticism. What makes her boring? What kind of direct interaction are you even looking for that other killers don't also lack? Why is it a problem that she has these status effects? Which would you remove, and would you replace them with anything? This isn't feedback any dev team could do much with on its own, at best they'd be taking a wild stab in the dark for what the problem even is, let alone the best solution for it.
Then we get to things like saying she boils down to just "leave a loop or get hit" and that she's the best at doing that, or saying that you can only hack drones if they're next to gens (...??), which are the things that are just wrong. She does more than just force survivors to leave loops, she's actually the worst at it since the threat is so delayed compared to the other killers that do it, and you can absolutely meaningfully hack drones that aren't next to gens, idk what that point actually means.
I would also personally say that Skull Merchant being considered an extremely powerful area-denial killer is also kind of a misconception, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it wrong. She's got some area denial, but she can't actually force you away from any area that she isn't also in, and even when she is there her power isn't an AOE blocking off whole loops anymore.
Sure, teammates feeding her power boosts is annoying. I would personally argue it's way more annoying when it happens against, say, Myers or Oni, but it is annoying. Not really "fully rework her from the ground up" annoying, though.
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@Aven_Fallen said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3664108#Comment_3664108
"The ones who dc are conditioned to do so cause they think the game will be too hard."
Incorrect. And once again someone does not understand the difference between "fun" and "difficulty". You dont see as many DCs against Nurse or Blight compared to Skull Merchant. And she is certainly weaker than those two.
If you make a survey and ask people if they think Nurse or Skull Merchant are stronger, the result would be clear. And if you make another Survey, which Killer is more fun to verse, people would say Nurse. (Even if she is such a broken Killer who should not exist in this game anymore like this)
And even IF her high Killrate is partially due to people giving up against her (even without that she would not have a low Killrate, because Skull Merchant is not a weak Killer overall), this should also be a sign that she needs changes.
But without something concrete to point to, what kind of changes would you even make?
The only thing you could do is gut her to the point where nobody wants to use her and she's only slightly more than an M1 killer, which wouldn't be ideal for anyone.
There needs to be a clear, accurate consensus on what the problem is before anyone could expect the devs to act on it. Most feedback we see is either unclear, inaccurate, or both.
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She doesn't need a rework, she just needs some slight tweaks.
People don't DC and hook suicide against her because there's actually a problem, it's inertia from when there was a reason to hate her. Now she's fixed, but her design is still the kind of thing people generally have less interest in + the complaints about her before snowballed out into complaining about things without any basis like her lore, so the fire keeps burning even after its fuel source was cut out.
What needs to happen is to wait. Make tweaks, sure, but like with Legion some time will be necessary for more reasonable players to catch on that there isn't actually a problem anymore and it's just a power they find a little less fun to verse on a personal level. Can't stop everyone from being a little baby, but hey, that does happen against every killer sometimes.
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@Marioneo said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3653641#Comment_3653641
Then whats the point of Pigs Timer reducing addons? These were part to change pigs playstyle now there even more worthless then before
An addon existing doesn't mean it's helpful, well designed, or healthy.
Tombstone Piece exists and has existed for years, but it's terribly designed and unhealthy. While Pig's timer-reducing addons aren't that bad, they're in a similar boat.
There's also only one that actually matters, the Tampered Timer. The other one, Jigsaw's Annotated Plan, is both unhealthy and extremely bad- the extra RBT is nice, but the effects that actually involve the timer are so weak they're not even noticeable.
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I get how the Pig buffs are contentious (even if they shouldn't be) and I can see what you could choose to overreact to in the Clown changes, but how on earth do you get to the Doctor changes not being buffs?
They're just flat improvements, in two areas where there was consistent agreement he needed improvement. How are those not buffs?
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@UndeddJester said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3663093#Comment_3663093
Ah OK. I do disagree with you, I think the length timer does make a big difference, however now your assertion does make more sense, so thanks for taking the time to explain and clear that up.
My experience is these add-ons make playing nasty much easier, and I have seen a few games with the more recent updates using these add-ons that have made head pops very nasty while still exerting control on the map...
I don't like doing it, so haven't got many games where I tried it, but it did feel dirty to me. I have never asked for a nerf, cause obviously Pig hasn't been particularly strong anyway... but at least with my experience, these addons can be quite ugly.
That's honestly why I'm of the opinion that the Tampered Timer is an unhealthy design, too. The only times it does anything is when it can be leveraged to force head-pops more reliably, and that's unhealthy, the Pig shouldn't be able to reliably force a survivor into their fail state without them actually failing at anything.
There is a middle ground where it's threatening without being too reliable, but I feel like this addon just swings from one end to the other. I'd really like to see it reworked, it's safer than trying to hit that shifting bullseye with whack-a-mole updates every time it goes too far in one direction.
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@UndeddJester said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3663015#Comment_3663015
You've said this before, and I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to say you're wrong.
Why exactly do her RBTs need to have the 30s timer nerf? If this apparently is a really good nerf that solves her problematic playstyle, how can an add-on that gives 20s in the other direction be 'not good' to your mind? How is 30s so good, but 20s so weak? How is 150s problematic to the point of requiring a nerf, 180s is fine, but 130s is not considered strong by you?
If these 2 nerfs are considered strong enough to neuter a supposedly overpowered and unfair playstyle, that are apparently required for her basekit even when people aren't running add-ons affecting RBTs, how are the addons making this playstyle stronger not powerful? Your logic doesn't make sense.
While Otzdarva is not an authority on add-ons, could you please explain why he is wrong in every one of these instances from 3:02:16?
https://youtu.be/tX-4lk-EWPk?si=aC5VL4VhomA1V5h7
Lastly, can you explain why, if supposedly these add-ons are so bad you are not asking for them to be buffed? That would be sensible for a weak add-on no? Especially now that basekit changes have made these worse.
Not gonna watch a video here, sorry, got other stuff going.
Beyond that, there's a couple of things wrong here. First, I think I've said this before but I'll repeat it just so we're all on the same page: I don't actually think the 30s extra on the timer is really going to achieve much. I think I know what it's meant to do, and what it's meant to do is definitely something that is worth doing so I've definitely defended that, but the fact of the matter is that the length of the timer has to change by a lot before it matters.
So yeah, thirty seconds extra doesn't do much and twenty seconds less doesn't do much. The Tampered Timer is not an atrocious addon, it has some effect, but I am of the opinion it's not one of her better ones because... well, like I said, the length of the timer isn't really that important. In my experience the TT doesn't actually make head-pops more common, and it definitely shouldn't do that, so at that point what am I even bringing it for? Survivors already have to do their traps ASAP if they don't want to play risky.
I think some wires got crossed in previous discussions, and that's perfectly reasonable, it happens. When I defend the nerfs from the specific complaint that her RBTs are being gutted, that doesn't mean I think the nerfs are actually going to achieve much. I've seen that big feedback thread and I think those changes are better than the extra time on the timer, but everyone always makes two statements at once: "These nerfs won't fix the problem" AND "These nerfs affect every other player very noticeably". The first statement is true, the second statement isn't.
I do think hiding the auras of the boxes is a more impactful change when it comes to preventing unhealthy stuff, though. That one I'm fine with.
As for your last question: There's a lot of things I'm not saying here, and that's because they're not relevant. I would love to see an addon overhaul for Pig, but I don't think I need to say that every single time I mention that she has some kinda bad addons, especially since she's not even close to the worst in the game in that regard.
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Definitely one of the more balanced maps.
It's the right size, I don't know why people keep acting like it's one of the bigger maps. Iirc its size is about in the middle for maps in this game, and I'd go so far as to say it's the biggest a map should really be, I think maps bigger than this are where we get problems from the size.
I've never personally had issues with its loop spawns on either side, but some reduction of outright deadzones is usually good thing as long as what replaces them isn't too broken.
My only major problem with the map, historically, has been how easy it is to use unhookable builds there. I haven't had someone try that since a hook was added to the main building though, that might've fixed it.
Atmosphere's great, too. Love the snow.
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@BlackRose89 said:
Completely agree and it's annoying that people are not talking about how most of her add-on are getting nerfed as well with her RBT nerfs. Like most of her add-ons involves making her RBT harder to get off and make them little more lethal but if the traps are being reduced to "just for slowdown" then all these add-ons become completely useless. She is being left with maybe four good add-ons and one of those 4 is hurting your so call slowdown. Personally if these nerfs go through I like Amanda's letter changed so it doesn't take your RBT away and just give you wall hacks when crouching.
I don't know about anyone else but I hate when a killer only has few good add-ons and the rest is trash. It's the reason I don't like Freddy or PH because my builds with them will always be the same. Why run anything else other than range on PH? When not just run paint brush all the time on Freddy? Now pig joins them with "Why run any other addon other than chase on Pig?"
As for content creators I'm getting so annoyed with everyone who uses them to show if a killer is good or not especially when it comes to the PTB. Most streamers (esp the ones I watch) don't even do public matches on the PTB since queue times are so long. They play with their viewers or mods and that is not a good way imo to judge a killers strength since A) we don't know the survivors level of skill, and B) we don't know if the survivors are actually trying to win or they just there to help their fav streamer. Take Scott for example, I watched his game play of pig from the PTB and yeah he made her chase look strong but why should I take his word on this? He playing with his viewers so all I know they are either playing not to win bc it's against Scott and as far I know Scott never plays Pig. I believe any pig mains on here before I believe any content creator about how good Pig is. At least I know most of y'all most likely played in public matches.
Either way I got off topic a bit there. I just sad that Pig addon situation is being boiled down to having to run two of the few chase add-ons she has. Not really fun to not have options to pick from. These buffs were supposed to make it feel where you don't have to always run chase add-ons on her to have a decent chase but it doing the opposite.
To be fair, what's changed regarding her addons?
Half of them are bad right now, regardless of any changes, and most of the bad ones are the ones that affect RBTs. After the changes, you're still gonna have the same number of consistently useful addons-- maybe minus one if you consider Tampered Timer to be a good/useful addon right now, but I don't, so I wouldn't count it myself.
You still have all the chase ones, those ones only got better. You still have the two Gears addons, those haven't changed and they're still good. Both addons that give you an extra RBT are good, though their other effects are meh. Amanda's Letter should be getting a little better due to her stealth/ambush being buffed...
Which addons are actually getting worse? The Mangled one, I guess? It wasn't exactly a good one to begin with, though.
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To be fair, it doesn't stack with PR (anymore) or GE. The other two, though, those are more on the money.
I've said this before, but I think DMS just needs to be reworked. Otherwise we're gonna keep seeing perks that synergise with it and make it miserable to go against. It just needs a whole new effect.
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@Rage_In_The_Cage said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3661506#Comment_3661506
it’s only a “massive advantage” if the survivors make it a massive advantage. If a killer has one or two gens left to defend after tunneling someone out of the game then there is no massive advantage.
How do you propose the survivors prevent it?
The only real variable is how long the first chase lasts. The entire point of tunnelling is that every subsequent chase is significantly easier due to the survivor being injured, close to you, and more than likely in an area where resources have already been used. Dedicated anti-tunnel perks tend to be too weak to do their job or otherwise have some quirk preventing them from working properly, and even perks that aren't anti-tunnel tend to be fairly inconsistent in this context. Sure, sometimes you can give a tunnelling killer the slip if you get lucky, but that's luck, not repeatable skill.
Plus, I do have to ask the question again: Why should one player have to put in massive effort and tons of thought/preparation to counter something that requires extremely little effort and zero preparation from their opponent? Isn't that inherently unbalanced?
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@xEa said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3661643#Comment_3661643
Yes, i assume that everyone who thinks survivor right now is the easiest ever is either lying or completly clueless. Do we really need to prove that survior became more and more difficult over the years?
This is a small taste of what old DBD looked like, just for the sake of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1fkX3H84SE
What is there really to discuss?
Healthy is a totally different topic, and since the topics is stating unmistakeably "easiest", the TE clearly does not mean healthiest. That is maybe an interpretation for yourself you can make of course.
I think you maybe misunderstood me a little.
Yeah, the original topic says easiest... but all the responses are making the distinction. This isn't a thread of people maliciously lying about how survivor is the easiest it's ever been... it's a thread of people actually talking about the topic and disagreeing with the framing, at least when it comes to people who want to speak positively about solo queue at the moment.
It's not an interpretation I can make myself, it's the distinction that multiple people are making.
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@xEa said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3661622#Comment_3661622
As always, i respect your opinion (and i might be a little bit tilted on this subject) but please do the same when i say that i highly question that advocates of "solo survivor have easy time compared to the past" are legit. I am fully aware, that the forum population is and was always leaning towards killer players and the recent outry of survivors due to the upcoming changes might feel a little overwhelming for some. And i understand that killer feel threatened that survivors will complain so much that their long fought for gameplay improvement is in danger, which might be true or not. But again, asking a question that way has only one purpose, and i explained it already why that is. It is dead obvious, that 2016-2022 survivor, no matter if solo or not was of course more easy then it is now.
Again, you're assuming that anyone in this thread is purposefully lying with an ulterior motive, and that's a hell of a claim considering the other explanation - some people honestly hold an opinion you disagree with - is far, far more likely. Hell, isn't it far more likely that some people could honestly hold an opinion that's just flat out wrong?
Besides, if you read the responses, most people here who would argue in favour of solo queue right now have been making a distinction between "easiest" and "healthiest". Myself and a few others have said we don't think it's easier now, but it is healthier now, and given reasons for why we think that.
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@xEa said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3661562#Comment_3661562
I dont want to be over dramatic here, but this is topic is close to outrageous. Trying to cheer on a non existing opinion that is so far off reality just to downplay or neutralize an actual issue is the oldest trick in history. Every politician does it, can we at least leave this out of the DBD forum? I mean, what else is the purpose of this rediculous question? Everybody knows for a definitic fact, that solo survivor is really really bad right now, arguably the worst it has ever been. We dont need to ask if it is the greatest of all time to hopefully create a counter opinion, secretly led by entiteled players that hate loosing less then 60%.
Apparently everyone knows it for a definitive fact, yet there seems to be dissenting opinions here.
It's a little silly to assume that everyone who disagrees with you is lying on purpose for an ulterior motive. It could just as easily be that your opinion isn't as universal as you thought.
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@xEa said:
Funny Thread. Killer mains discussing if Solo Queue is the easiest it has ever been. 🤣
Yes, solo queue has received great improvment with HUD, but survivor in general is by far the hardest it has ever been - and solo players obviously have it the most difficult.
If it is so easy now for survivor and killer have such a hard time, why not simply reverse back to... i dont know... 2016?
Who here has been complaining about killers having a hard time...?
I've mostly been seeing people talking about their experience with solo queue, which makes sense since that's the thread topic.
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@Rage_In_The_Cage said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3661065#Comment_3661065
and what would that system be? Because the one presented is not any good. Obviously survivors who body block off the hook and then complain about tunneling are in the wrong but the point is lots of survivors have that mentality.
those perks help against tunneling because they provide distance and lots of information. Also how is knocking out gens not an ideal solution to tunneling? A tunneling killer getting 15k points max and at most two kills is a great way to make them pay for camping and tunneling.
survivors need to play better.
It's not an ideal solution because nothing actually changes?
The killer still gets to leverage this unbalanced tactic to gain a massive advantage without much effort, the survivor being tunnelled still gets targeted out of the game with very little agency in reacting to it, and the rest of the survivor team are still put in a massively disadvantageous 3v1 for the rest of the game.
"Play better" is absolutely a fair thing to say in some situations, but not here. Why should the survivor players have to put in ten times the effort to try and punish tunnelling, compared to how much effort the killer has to put in to tunnel someone out? Even when they do sweat their butts off trying, they're not even guaranteed to achieve anything, since they're running uphill against an unbalanced gap in the game's mechanics.
It's not fair to tell killers "play better" against things like old Dead Hard, or current For the People + Buckle Up, or flat out genrushing with stacked toolboxes and dedicated builds. Those things are (or were) actually unbalanced. Tunnelling is the same way.
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@TatsuiChiyo said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3661231#Comment_3661231
Probably. I am a certified idiot
Easy mistake to make, to be fair. Both iconic sci fi ships staring with "No" lmao
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@TatsuiChiyo said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3661212#Comment_3661212
The generator on the Normandy from the Alien map. The one every Survivors loves to loop the Killer around the big table
Nostromo.
The ship from Mass Effect is called the Normandy, that might be what you're thinking of?
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The grind is only bad for survivor, and only bad due to bloodpoint gain.
With the average killer-role bloodpoint gain per match and more realistic goals than "everything unlocked on everyone" in the short term, the grind basically doesn't exist as a problem anymore. Getting characters up in prestige isn't too difficult, and people get far too hung up on this idea of how long it takes to unlock EVERYTHING, especially from the perspective of new players.
You don't need everything unlocked to start customising. If you're lacking something you think would be interesting to experiment with, you can just target that.
Besides, not everything is actually interesting or useful for every player. People tend to exaggerate how many bad perks there are for either side, but a perk being perfectly good and viable doesn't mean it's going to be interesting to everyone and there are some actually bad perks nobody has much use for.
So, something to help survivors gain more BP on average (both adjusting some score events and encouraging survivors to actually go interact with some others) would eliminate this problem entirely. The grind barely exists for new players (because they don't even have every character to grind out, and wouldn't want to if they did) and basically vanishes for older players.
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@Rage_In_The_Cage said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3648989#Comment_3648989
What do gen perks have to do with tunneling? If a killer is utilizing numerous gen perks, they probably aren't tunneling. Also, gens still don't take long to complete. A decent runner should be able to run a killer long enough for a couple of gens to pop. As for the things they have added to combat tunneling, you have perks like Borrowed Time, D strike, Second Wind, Dead Hard, Windows, Sprint Burst, Off the Record, among others. They've also added in a built in Borrowed Time type mechanic, hook camping gauge, among others.
Now, this is a game full of RNG, so sometimes the killer you are facing or the map you are on or the layout of the map makes it hard or impossible to run the killer as long as you'd like. But that goes both ways, the killer can be equally handcuffed by the map or the layout randomly generated on a map.
Any system where a survivor is immune until another survivor is hooked is not going to work because they will abuse it. You can add qualifiers to it or gameplay elements that disable it but again, just look at what they already do. You can have a survivor run to a hook and unhook someone and that rescued survivor will body block you because they know they are invincible. And then if you down them they'll complain that you tunneled.
It all comes back to survivors playing the game well. It's incredibly easy to punish a camping tunneling killer. But too many survivors would rather swarm the hook and try to entice the killer to chase. You aren't going to be able to prevent a killer from tunneling if the killer is set on doing it. All you can do is punish by rushing through gens.
I've never really understood the argument about survivors who bodyblock complaining if you down and hook them. Who cares? They're in the wrong in this scenario, if the hypothetical system we devise doesn't allow survivors to abuse it because they become vulnerable again... good, that means it's working, it doesn't matter if that player complains about it.
Also, may I ask, why are perks like Windows, Dead Hard, Second Wind, and Sprint Burst on your list of perks there? Those aren't anti-tunnel perks, they're just perks you might also be able to use while you're being tunnelled to varying effect. Even the others aren't that convincing; Decisive Strike is too weak to do its job, Borrowed Time is something you have to rely on your teammates bringing, and OTR is okay but doesn't really work nearly as well if the killer hits you right away... which if they want to tunnel, they will, after hearing you aren't making injured noises.
The fact is, tunnelling is very easy to do and very difficult to react to beyond just rushing gens and getting out, which is pretty obviously not an ideal situation in the least. Trying to come up with a way of addressing it and fixing the balance without too much collateral damage is totally fair game, there's good reason to try.
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@Raccoon said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3661042#Comment_3661042
The tome challenges aren't too bad....currently :P
Have the tome challenges ever really been that bad? People make that point a lot but they've always seemed fine to me.
I also meant more, any kind of challenge. Adepts, gimmick builds, daily rituals, tome challenges, etcetera. I don't tend to play either role without some kind of idea in mind in that regard, so I'll swap to survivor if there's an incentive and see what I feel like doing.
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I don't think necessarily easiest, since I'd say the game was easier for survivor regardless of whether you're in a SWF back when there was more of the game's broken nonsense to abuse. The game did, strictly speaking, get harder for survivors after each of those big things were removed, the same way it did for killers each time their broken stuff got removed.
However, I do think solo queue is the healthiest it's ever been. Barring specific annoyances that happen in every team game where you get dumb teammates who do dumb things, a lot of this game's solo queue holes have been patched up over time, and a lot of fun things were added that spice up survivor gameplay from either direction.
Anecdotally, I play a lot more survivor these days than I used to. Sure, it's not as much as killer still, but I used to avoid the role outright because I felt it was kinda miserable. Now, though, I'm happy to spend some time doing survivor challenges and such.
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It seemed okay to me? It's pretty big and it has a lot of pallets, but most of those pallets are pretty unsafe and playable for the killer. Not many windows, either.
Main building looked like it could be nasty or could be one of those main buildings where, as killer, you learn a trick and it's fine. That'll have to wait and see.
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I think it can be too fast, but it's very rare for that to be the survivor's fault and more common for it to be the killer's fault- which I say as gently and non-judgementally as I can, I'm not bashing anyone here.
To start, we'll tackle the survivors. It is possible for random chance or outright survivor intent to make the game too fast. Everyone spawning on different generators and getting on them immediately is a huge boost to the game's speed, proper genrushing builds with a stacked toolbox is a massive boost to the game's speed, and the two together are legitimately unbalanced. It happens, I'm not denying that, it just doesn't happen that frequently.
Next, killers. I don't like to leap straight to "skill issue" when it comes to talking about issues like this, but there's a degree to which I have to comment on gameplay + tactics, and if certain gameplay choices or tactics lead to the issue being discussed... there's gonna be an undercurrent of "skill issue" that I can't shake off, unfortunately. Just know I'm more interested in fostering improvement than snidely condescending here.
So, what can the killer do that causes the game to go too quickly? Generally speaking, it comes from a lack of pressure, and anecdotally I've had a lot of conversations on here with players who don't seem to have a great grasp of what that pressure actually looks like. If you don't want the generators to fly (and the survivors don't all have stacked toolboxes with complementary builds, etc etc etc), then your goal is to occupy as many of them as you can at once, because the more of them you're forcing to react with something other than generator repair, the slower the generators go.
It would be tempting for me to snidely say "You know what doesn't occupy multiple survivors? Tunnelling", and while I believe that, I'm trying to be diplomatic and constructive here so I'll just... reference it in passing and move on. The tradeoff for tunnelling, abstracted out into game analysis, is pretty simple: Leave three survivors to do what they want (minus deducting one temporarily, for when they go to save) in exchange for a massive boost in objective progress once you're done. Most of the time, unless you get your first + subsequent downs very very quickly, that's going to speed the game up. Why wouldn't it? You're explicitly not slowing any gen progress down because you're only chasing the one guy.
If, after getting a hook, you let the one guy peel off to get the save while you go chase a third survivor, that slows down gen progress a lot more because only one survivor is on generators compared to the two to three that are on generators while you're tunnelling. It's harder, there's more room for survivors to react and outplay you, but... y'know, it's a game, that's supposed to be true.
There's a misconception that in order to win "at high MMR", you need to stack three or four slowdown perks then tunnel the first guy out as quickly as possible. This shoots you in the foot. Those four slowdown perks aren't activating that often if you aren't spreading your pressure, since all of them tend to activate on down or hook - sometimes first hook! - these days, and you're not stopping the rest of the team from pumping gens to their heart's content while tunnelling out one of them.
If you bring fewer slowdown perks, craft a build that actually complements a playstyle/power, and spread your pressure, the match tends to go a lot slower unless you're massively outplayed- and that does just happen either way, sometimes you have to take the L and move on.
TL;DR, slowing down the game is one of the killer fundamentals when it comes to skill expression... but the game has no way of teaching you that and conventional wisdom for how to play well runs completely opposite to how you'd do it, so some players get faster games they could absolutely avoid.