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zarr
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3711159#Comment_3711159
Only if I do an adept or have a challenge to do so... The point is you should not have to slug for the 4k but because such a stupid random mechanic like hatch exists you are kind of forced to... You can get 3kills at 5 gens and still not get the 4 th guy just because that dumb hatch spawns directly below his feet... But that's a whole different issue.
Obviously most people won't do that, because it is just way too much of an effort but it is quite dumb that it exists to begin with...
15 min is the in general thing when everybody is alive and what not... Like I said before I don't think restricting stealth is necessary in that scenario... As long as they don't do something banable they can play as stealthy as they want...
But that's a whole different issue.
Yeah, again, I'm not sure this is actually an issue. I don't think most people care that the last survivor has a chance for a random escape even in an otherwise badly lost match. Challenges and achievements and whatnot could be adjusted for a reality in which the killer can't slug for the 4k and such, which is what I think is an actual issue in terms of the gameplay experience it yields. But this is a matter of opinion, we seem to simply disagree which of the two is worse.
Like I said before I don't think restricting stealth is necessary in that scenario...
This too is a matter of opinion we seem to disagree on. I despise when the last survivor(s) hide, out of spite, so as to not give me the satisfaction of killing them, because they're hoping for hatch, or whatever else. Even 5 minutes spent searching for survivors in these scenarios can ruin my game experience. I think something to prevent that from happening so frequently would benefit the game, while you don't seem to mind if survivors may just hide indefinitely.
But as I've said in the original post, I don't think my proposed changes are necessary, I just hope they do something to address some of the issues these scenarios yield. And again, if that means giving survivors an option to concede, removing hatch, and revealing their positions if they refuse to progress the game, I for one would take it over the status quo.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3711136#Comment_3711136
The last survivor escaping does not bother me because it is mostly luck... Luck where the hatch spawns luck how close together the gates spawn, what killer I play and so on... If I have barely an impact on that how can it bother me? Ofc it would mean more if it was under my control just like the rest of the match... Basically the reason why people count 3 KS for the win streak because the 4th guy is mostly out of your control.
Survivors can play the hiding game in any state of theatch, be it beginning or end, sure it might be more annoying when you as the killer basically already won, but if we accept it as legitimate gameplay/strategy then I don't see a reason to get rid of it at that point specifically. However... Since it is a reportable offense if you don't progress the game within 15 min as survivor, basically holding it hostage... How about permanent aura reading regardless of perks at that point... They are already committing a reportable offense... So why not make it easier on the killer to deal with that and report them afterwards... I mean it should be somewhat possible to automatically detect that...
Do you slug for the 4k? That's something you can do to play around hatch. Most people fortunately don't because they find it incredibly boring, and rightfully so. I think most people don't really feel awful about the last survivor getting hatch if they do, while still trying to find and close the hatch.
I just think getting rid of undesirable scenarios where survivors hide for ages or where the killer refuses the kill the second-to-last survivor would benefit the game. Removing the hatch and giving survivors a concede option would be one way to go about it, but yes, there would need to be something in place ensuring they won't just keep hiding, and 15 minutes would already be way too much of that. Just reveal them if no gen has been touched for 30 seconds or so, I guess.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3711116#Comment_3711116
You are not always supposed to have a chance, at some point you just need to admit defeat... When 75% of your team died you should not have a realistic chance to still win the game. And hatch is a stupid mechanic exactly for that reason to begin with, not only does it turn teammates against each other in hopes to get hatch it also makes them less productive towards the real goal of getting the gens done...
Which is why I am saying hatch is a stupid mechanic and should not exist... It is a remnant of the past where 4 men key escapes and stuff alike were still possible, just terrible game mechanics that should have gotten rid of years ago.
But the last survivor having a chance to escape is not an issue, is it? The killer has already won. As you said, you don't even care whether they escape. And sure, you personally may not enjoy the hunt for hatch, but others may, as either role. That there is a last moment of tension, the excitement of still having a chance to end the match without dying.
But again, it is of course a fair opinion to say that since the match is basically hopeless in terms of getting gens done, you may as well end it there and then, either by giving up the survivors (killing them automatically or revealing their position) or by giving them an option to give up. I think having more gameplay in these scenarios is preferable, but again, I would not be opposed to a concede option, and suggested being able to surrender when in the dying state. I would just want there to be something in place ensuring survivors won't just still try to hide as much as they can instead of giving up.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3711044#Comment_3711044
So you want to just give them the hope to win by giving them the buff so they continue playing? But why would they in the first place xD For most people at that point, unless there is like 1-2 gens left the game is already over and they probably only half heartily try to not get reported by their teammates or something like that. The game does not become more engaging at all, it is still the same old... You are still not supposed to win anymore.
If there is only 1 guy left, but also several gens then this person is supposed to lose, as the last survivor you still get 2 additional chances on hatch or doors after it got closed, but the killer is supposed to be favored and at that point the survivor cannot win anymore, it is a draw at. Est if he gets out, at least that's what the mmr system makes of it. And as killer or survivor I never feel like it is a win to get the hatch or leave through the gates after it got closed... Like I said if they want to play let them, but I find the race for hatch incredibly boring, which is why I tend to just go afk when there is only 1 guy left... Only coming back when he for some reason did not find hatch within the next few minutes. Other people might still want to get that guy which is fine.
This problem you are mentioning already exists right now... And if they indeed do nothing for a longer amount of time they are just holding the game hostage, which is reportable and otherwise they are just playing stealthy, which, as much as I personally despise that playstyle, as something you can do, so there is no issue here either?
Obviously it is way simpler to just press a button instead of relying on the killer to get you out, which is why that option is such a good idea...
I don't think concede should only be available in that niche scenario, I think it would be better to have it available after a specific amount of match time in addition to the match being heavily in favor of the other side... How to define that is up for debate.
So you want to just give them the hope to win by giving them the buff so they continue playing? But why would they in the first place
Because there is more of a hope that they can actually get gens done and perhaps even outs.
If there is only 1 guy left, but also several gens then this person is supposed to lose
If that guy were supposed to die, hatch wouldn't exist. That guy having more of a chance to escape (or any chance at all, as opposed to how it can be currently in some situations) is not an issue particularly if you don't care whether one person gets an escape.
This problem you are mentioning already exists right now...
Which is why I'm making the suggestions I am making…
Obviously it is way simpler to just press a button instead of relying on the killer to get you out, which is why that option is such a good idea...
Yes, again, a concede option in these situations could be one idea to deal with tedious, hopeless endgame scenarios. Although again, since it is optional, survivors might still opt to just hide indefinitely, which is what I don't want. I would prefer if they simply died on the spot if no gen is getting done for 60 seconds or whatever in a 2v1. And I would prefer over that if they had more of a chance to actually still make something happen.
@Ohyakno said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3711044#Comment_3711044
Dunno how you coach giving survivors 45s gens in 2v1 and giving killers useless info is in any way remotely equivalent, but you do you. Hatch standoffs aren't a thing. Personally I've never seen it. Survivors can just do a gen if the killer is sitting on the hatch.
I don't see how that info is useless, but you do you. I also didn't say these buffs are equivalent or supposed to be, the aim was to give the remaining survivors more of a fighting chance, such that they actually fight.
Just because you haven't seen killers stand on hatch and refuse to close it doesn't mean it isn't a thing. A survivor finishing a gen is giving away their position. It will often be trivial to find them if they do.
Do you actually have a problem with the idea that hatch would close automatically after some time, by the way?
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3710780#Comment_3710780
Imagine any other game for example an rts where you would give the losing side a buff to make it more interesting... That would be ridiculous.
By giving a concede option and removing hatch they could just take the loss and move on without needing to play around for nothing...
I don't think more is needed if you think you lost you concede, just like in Starcraft for example, nobody waits till the last building is destroyed but for some reason that's a thing here and it is just super boring.
It would be quite a bad idea to just kill the last two guys, if they want to play let them, but if not let them concede and move on, really nobody is benefiting from playing those matches out, so why even bother.
The difference is that the match is already lost here and cannot be won anymore no matter the buffs, this is just about the remaining player(s) having more engaging of a time playing the game out. Well, at most they could achieve a draw, but again, even that is incredibly unlikely just because they repair gens faster - if the killer finds one of them the 3k is all but guaranteed, and with the killer instinct, they will find them. Think of the repair buff as compensation for the fact that the killer gets location info on the survivors, if you will. The "basekit Unbreak" thing is not relevant for the "win" in the sense that the killer can just choose to take the 3k and thereby win if they so desire instead of slugging, nullifying this mechanic (although again, a "surrender on ground"/instant Mori" mechanic is an alternative too).
Another significant difference to Starcraft is that there's multiple players here, and just because 2 or 3 died, doesn't mean the remaining player is a building waiting to be destroyed. Playing for an individual escape in a 2v1/1v1 can still yield engaging and exciting gameplay for both roles, there's no need to just end it. It could also be pointed to the fact that it's a different type of game, a survival horror where having a sole survivor even in an overall loss is part of the appeal (besides, the game is not strictly a team game, let alone one with concretely defined, team-based win conditions; a player may not consider a match "won" or "lost" just because their teammates did not escape).
Either way, giving the players the option to concede leads to the precise problem I considered these changes due to to begin with: then the remaining survivor(s) will regularly just hide, either hoping to still somehow make it even without the existence of hatch (and be it by boring the killer into going AFK or disconnecting or whatever), or simply to not give the killer the satisfaction. After all, there currently already exists the option to "concede", in the form of just running into the killer and letting them kill you. But sure, it is possible that without the danger of the killer refusing to kill you, slugging for minutes on end and potentially delaying your death indefinitely by picking you up, survivors in these scenarios would more often simply "concede", if it takes them out of the match instantly.
I would not strictly be opposed to a surrender option in these scenarios, such as the "call upon the Entity to end it" thing when in the dying state in 2v1/1v1s. I just think there are better ways to have endgames conclude, but that's a matter of opinion.
@Ohyakno said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3710799#Comment_3710799
Massive suite of survivor buffs in the end game.
Not the fairest of tl;drs. For one thing, these buffs apply in 2v1 and 1v1 endgames, so they won't allow the overall result to be changed into a survivor side win. For another, there are 2 survivor buffs here and 1 killer buff (killer instinct), and one of the survivor buffs is only relevant if the killer wants to slug for the 4k instead of taking the 3k (while still having the opportunity to get the 4k thereafter).
At least the "hatch closes automatically after some time" change is simply a no-brainer, hatch stand-offs should not exist, it's a design flaw.
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@Archol123 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/412836/2v1-and-1v1-endgame-scenarios
I think the best thing would just be to get a concede mechanic under certain conditions for both sides, so for example only survivors alive or x minutes in the game and only x hooks for killer or so... And in addition just remove hatch altogether, the whole slugging for the 4k stuff and so on is just super boring but required for some stuff and when one side does not reach their goal that is completely fine and there is no reason to give them a bonus to make up for that, as that will always be viewed as a punishment for the other side to be doing well.
I think that would just make the game even more boring. Again, my primary concern here is not that the killer is all but guaranteed to win out in the 2v1 and 1v1 scenarios, it's that because he is, the survivors will stealth around indefinitely because there is nothing to play for. And the ways in which the killer can play around these scenarios yield even less compelling gameplay. There being more hope in these scenarios encourages survivors to actually play, and creates more engaging and exciting gameplay for both sides.
Again, sure, they could just automatically kill the last remaining survivor(s) in these nigh hopeless scenarios, but I for one would not welcome such a "gameplay" design.
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@Starrseed said:
Okey but since we are pretty nice dudes now and try to help the losing side we also implement changes like this to help the killer should all survivors be alive when the gens are done right?
Things like the gate csnt be 99 anymore and ofcourse the more survs are alive the longer the gates need to open stuff like that
I for one would agree. I have long wanted something like NOED (without the movement speed buff) basekit, at least if 3+ survivors remain in endgame because particularly M1 killers are regularly at a major disadvantage here, where a hit can allow a survivor to make a gate even from halfway across the map, let alone if hit tanks come into play.
But this thread is not about that, although it was of course to be expected that people would jump to making it about "sides". I will say that even endgame scenarios with 4 survivors alive are not nearly as much of a "foregone conclusion" for the killer as endgame scenarios with 1 or 2 survivors alive are for the survivors (in the latter the match has literally already been decided). I would also hold that it is much easier for the killer to secure at least 1 kill even in a bad loss than it is for survivors to secure 1 escape in a bad loss, precisely because of the endgame design surrounding hatch and the killer's ability to circumvent it and such. Even in general, again, these changes are intended to better the undesirable gameplay these scenarios regularly yield for both roles. So there's still major differences there, but yes, I for one agree that killers should be more threatening in the endgame with 3+ survivors left alive.
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@Feneroe said:
Why should the killer be punished for winning? Why should survivor get yet another chance when they already lost twice? This isn't a fair design.
Playing killer a lot myself, I for one despise having one or two remaining survivors that just hide. This is meant to improve the endgame playing experience on both roles. And it wouldn't be all too balance-relevant since the match is already all but (2v1) or actually (1v1) won for the killer.
I'm also not sure where the "punishment" is. The killer has already won if they're in either of these scenarios, these changes are aimed at making the culmination more exciting and engaging. Even in the 2v1 scenario this won't regularly change the fact that the killer will end up with at least 3 kills for the match. And again, part of the change would be revealing the survivors' locations to the killer periodically.
I think giving the remaining survivors in 2v1 and 1v1 endgame scenarios more of an actual shot at surviving is fair, although that isn't the primary purpose, it's the quality of the gameplay experience. In either case, surely you would not disagree that the hatch stand-off for example is unfair - the hatch shouldn't exist to begin with if its entire purpose (creating gameplay once the match has been decided) can be undermined. And sure, some people may argue that the last survivor standing should just automatically, instantly be killed because "the killer has won, why should one survivor be able to escape still?", but I think many would agree that more than "winning" in some abstract sense of getting the last kill too, gameplay is more important, and tense situations where you hunt for the hatch or try to open a gate/prevent the survivor from doing so (or yet to outlast the killer/outplay the survivor in a final chase for survival) are thrilling and make playing a game worthwhile, more so than "winning".
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It is absolutely ridiculous that we don't get to see the killer's ping - not only not in the lobby, but not even in the trial. We can't even see our own ping as killer. Yet every survivor ping is shown real-time. Ridiculous.
Solution 1: Show every player's discrete ping in the lobby and trial, including the killer's.
Solution 2: Show the yellow and red ping warning in the lobby on any player that has a ping higher than 80ms (yellow) or 100ms (red). Inlcuding if it's the killer.
Solution 3: Show every player's discrete ping in the trial info overlay. If the killer has a ping above 100ms for a certain time, disable disconnect penalties for survivors in the match.
Solution 4: Prevent any player from connecting to a server more than 100ms away. Players from regions not within <100ms of any server can get put back on P2P, or you can utilize separate servers if there are pools of enough players in such regions.
Solution 5: Let players decide how high a ping is acceptable for matchmaking, so they won't get put into lobbies with players beyond a certain preset (e. g. <50ms, <80ms, <100ms, <150ms). People are trading potentially longer queue times for better quality matches here. If the concern would be that this makes matchmaking harder, well, it's not like MMR isn't already rendered almost entirely useless by the low cap and lax matchmaker algorithm anyway.
Solution 6: Move the hit registration authority to the server, away from the killer clients, so that the killer player does not benefit from any latency present in any connection.
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The Unreal Engine update introduced two new graphics quality options in the GameUserSettings.ini (sg.GlobalIlluminationQuality=0, sg.ReflectionQuality=0) that might not be set to "0" automatically. Make sure they are.
Maybe a GPU driver update could help you if you haven't done so in a while. With the switch to UE5, DbD now runs on DX12 by default (as opposed to DX11), and if you're on an old driver it might not be optimized for that. Alternatively or additionally, clear your DirectX shader cache. You can also try to run the game on DX11 again, by using a "-DX11" launch parameter in the Steam properties of the game.
Other than that, there really isn't anything that should have changed, so it might just be your particular system not handling the implementation of the update well. It could also be that the implementation of the update causes problems for more people, I just personally haven't had any (apart from rare microfreezes, although they have been happenning for a few weeks now, even prior to the update). There are a few basic performance tweaks you could try in this thread. The first thing you should try is to use the fullscreen mode and a reduced resolution.
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I welcome the quality of life improvements and I appreciate that you went back on your PTB design of Twins in response to the community's feedback. But now you of course did not end up really addressing the concerns that made you want to look at Twins to begin with. Namely their propensity to slug and their low pick rate. So with you having said that you may revisit Twins in the future, here are a few suggestions I would have for possible design changes:
First of all, your idea of having Victor latch onto downed survivors is a good way to prevent the ability of Victor to down multiple injured survivors in quick succession. One of the issues with PTB Twins was that Victor would not latch onto injured survivors anymore, hence instead allowing him to injure multiple survivors in quick succession, as well as in quick succession injure and down any one survivor. The solution here is obvious: Simply have Victor latch onto both injured and downed survivors.
While Victor latching onto downed survivors and having to first be crushed by another survivor before they are able to heal them makes it more reliable to actually get to pick up a survivor you downed with Victor, it would still of course constitute a notable nerf, incurring more Victor downtime. To compensate for this, you could reduce the time before Charlotte can recall Victor while latched onto an injured or downed survivor to 20 instead of 30 seconds. This would make it so that overall Victor cooldown goes down if you actually pick up survivors you downed with Victor (because picking them up causes Victor to regrow immediately). Alternatively (or perhaps even additionally), you could give Charlotte that 10% Haste boost again whenever Victor is latched onto a survivor, enabling her to even more reliably pick up survivors Victor downed and making her more interesting and threatening than a barebones M1 killer, as well as adding more weight to the player choice of whether to recall Victor or not, whether to crush or keep him. I would say: If you keep the 30-second recall time, Charlotte should have the 10% Haste indefinitely for as long as Victor is latched onto a survivor; if you reduce the recall time, Charlotte like on the PTB should only retain this Haste buff until she hits a survivor.
I think switching between Victor and Charlotte could be even quicker, I don't see why it couldn't be instant. But regardless, while I feel that the quality of life improvements we have now will already encourage more players to play Twins a bit more, I think one major thing that makes them less popular a pick is the fact that the objectively optimal way to use Victor is to run right up to a survivor and only then pounce on them point-blank. This not only all but guarantees you will get the hit, but it comes without the risk of missing and getting kicked, which feels bad. To make Twins more fun and popular with both sides, I think encouraging medium and long-range pounces is crucial, as they are really fun to pull off and to dodge. There are multiple ways to go about this, here are a few ideas:
- While Victor charges his pounce, he can be kicked. This would make it so that Victor has to try and attack with at least a little space between him and the survivor, while also creating more interaction between them, with the survivor at times trying to get close so as to potentially be able to kick him, and Victor having to let go of the charge if the survivor does get too close, then repositioning and trying again.
- The time before Charlotte can recall Victor while latched onto a survivor could scale with the distance from which Victor pounced on the survivor. Fairly simple: For every 1 meter of distance Victor pounced across before latching on during the successful attack, the recall time is reduced by 1 second. Whether the base recall time then has to remain at 30 seconds would have to be seen.
- The missed pounce cooldown (i. e. the time window within which survivors can kick Victor after a missed pounce) could scale with the pounce distance too, with longer pounces incurring a shorter cooldown. This would make it less likely to get kicked when going for ambitious pounces. If this would unfairly benefit Twins when Victor simply overshoots and gets a short cooldown despite having tried for a close-range hit, you could instead make it so that the regrow time after getting kicked scales with the pounce distance.
- There could be add-ons that further encourage going for ranged pounces. Such as an Iridescent add-on that allows Victor to instantly down survivors when he pounces on them from a certain distance (15 meters, perhaps?).
On a concluding note, I think Victor should be able to snuff Boon totems as well as rekindle destroyed totems for Pentimento. Circle Of Healing and Exponential hurt Twins more than any other killer, and seeing or hearing a Boon close by when you are out and about chasing survivors as Victor just feels awful, as you are not able to do anything about it and know that if you down someone, they will most likely be back up before you can make it there.
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@Batusalen said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3707308#Comment_3707308
I still don't understand this. […] Victor would always be available after 20 seconds if the killer player so chooses, that's the only thing that matters here.
You add 4 seconds every time you recall him, latched or not, which results in bigger cooldowns overall. In fact, as I said and according to the Change log, they already changed the return time when crushed from 6 to 10. So, they already have longer cooldowns, and another reason to not revert the change and / or not make it 36 seconds.
No, what is asinine is trying to make it out as if I said they are equivalent.
You compared them indirectly by using one as an example to argue against the reduction of the other. And you are right, they are not equivalent. That's why what you did there is a false equivalency fallacy.
[…] but that in and of itself is not a difference relevant for the parallel I drew
But it is relevant, that's why the "parallel you drew" isn't valid at any level.
Survivors also cannot prevent Twins from using their power beyond the cooldown.
Yes, they can. From the 18 seconds that would take nowadays to crush Victor while latched and being able to use it again, to 36 (or 40 with the change in return time, something that I still don't know if it also affects the auto return like the Wiki says). It literally lets survivors punish The Twins for injuring them with her power.
The kicking part is not a significant distinction: it simply puts the power on cooldown, it doesn't "take it away" in any more meaningful sense than Spirit's power going on a cooldown after using it.
Except that you can do this on top of punishing her by literally doubling her power's cooldown, whenever you miss with it or not. That's why it is meaningful.
Of course there are differences between these killers, they are far from equivalent.
Then don't make false equivalency comparisons between them.
But the simple idea of them both having powerful abilities that have certain cooldowns that need to be in a balanced ratio to the strength of their power is analogous.
And that "balanced ratio" has to be 36 - 40 seconds without the possibility of recalling it earlier? It can't be having the ability to recall and use him after 20 - 30 seconds with other compensation changes for balance?
Oh right, I forgot about your circular reasoning point: The devs agree with you, so they are right and there is no point in arguing if there is any other way to do it.
Yes, they are indeed not equivalent, and Twins' power is stronger than Spirit's, as it guarantees hits and downs basically every time it is active.
That's totally false, it does not guarantee anything as you can fail your attack with Victor and there are many ways to avoid and get rid of him, including pallets, blinding, and kicking him when he fails or even if he downs another survivor.
Because you make a point of highlighting the distinction that survivors can kick Victor after a successful hit, "punishing" Twins for using their power correctly
No, I said that survivors can punish the Twins by taking Victor hostage and making her cooldown way longer. I never related this to the kicking. Either way, this still doesn't explain where you got that, according to my logic, Spirit should have no cooldown. It doesn't make sense.
And while this is still not relevant to my argument because my argument only pertained the basic idea that halving a power cooldown is significant, I would if anything argue that precisely because you did get the hit the longer cooldown is appropriate, because you know, you got value out of using your ability.
So, killers should be punished (more than they already are) if they play good and use their kit correctly and successfully, including giving survivors the ability to punish them even more. Got it. Sounds reasonable.
And so sure, maybe Spirit would also be a more balanced killer if she had a shorter cooldown on misses but a longer one on hits.
Using your same logic, the devs don't seem to agree with you on this, as the only change they have made to her base cooldown is to lower it:
Patch 2.2.1
- Buff: reduced Yamaoka's Haunting Recharge time from 20 seconds to 15 seconds.
So they are completely right, and there is no point in debate if this decision is the correct one, right?
I can only point again to the fact that I didn't draw equivalence between these killers' powers in any direct way, I highlighted a basic, universal concept by ways of mentioning Spirit as an example.
And for that example and argument to be valid, those two killers should be comparable and assume that Twins cannot be balanced with their cooldown cut in half because Spirit will not. That's why it is a false equivalence and not a valid argument.
[…] and with Victor not only guaranteeing hits
He doesn't guarantee hits.
[…] and being able to chain downs in ways Spirit cannot
That's if he is not latched to a survivor for 36 seconds, kicked, etc. And smart saying "in ways", as there is nothing preventing The Spirit from downing a survivor and using her power to just down the next.
[…] of course a different cooldown approach is sensible
And that "cooldown approach" has to be letting the survivors take your power hostage for 36 seconds by removing her ability to recall him earlier, of course. There is no other "sensible" and well balanced approach.
Again, what you would be suggesting if you actually argued "they shouldn't be punished for using their power correctly" (i. e. hitting survivors), is what we had on the PTB.
No, what I'm suggesting is not letting the survivors literally double her power cooldown by taking it hostage in response to getting hit by it, when it already has a minimum of 18 seconds if they crush it (8 seconds to crush, 10 seconds to return), which is basically the only reason they are now bearable to play in comparison to before.
I'm pointing to the reason as to why I don't want to engage in the argument at all
But you are engaging in the argument. If you really don't have any reason to argue against not reverting the change and making the cooldown as high as before, simply don't debate. You corrected my incorrect data, I argued that the correction only made my point even more valid. End of the discussion.
But what you did and continue to do is use the "the devs agree with me" argument as circular reasoning to "not debate" the point while you are still basically arguing against it, as the devs are right according to you, so 36 seconds of power hostage is the correct thing to do.
You add 4 seconds every time you recall him, latched or not, which results in bigger cooldowns overall.
So you are suggesting the regrow time should always be 10 seconds, even on recalling Victor when he isn't latched onto a survivor? Sure, while that is the first time you bring this up as far as I can tell, that would be a nerf for them that someone could argue might make up for the reduction in time before you can recall. But instances of recalling Victor when he isn't latched onto a survivor are rare and barely relevant, the strong thing is injuring someone, recalling Victor, and attacking again. The important difference is between how Twins are supposed to be (30 seconds to recall on injuries, 6 to regrow) and your suggestion that this should be reduced to 20 (10 to recall, 10 to regrow). I'm not debating you on why the one or other may be appropriate and adequate and balanced or whatever, all I'm saying is that going from 36 to 16 (or 20) is a significant difference.
That's why what you did there is a false equivalency fallacy.
You don't seem to understand what an anology is. Just because someone draws parallels between two things does not mean they are creating an equivalence. I won't spend energy on further explaining this simple fact to you. What it boils down to is this: Do you or do you not think that a more than 50% reduction in power cooldown constitutes a meaningful change?
Yes, they can. From the 18 seconds that would take nowadays to crush Victor while latched and being able to use it again, to 36
The 36 seconds are their intended cooldown that I was referring to and that we have been talking about and contrasting to the current 16 seconds/your 20 seconds all along. Whether the 36 seconds are appropriate or not is again another question, but that is factually their intended cooldown and survivors cannot increase this.
Except that you can do this on top of punishing her by literally doubling her power's cooldown
What does one have to do with the other? All kicking Victor does is put him on a cooldown before he's available again, giving survivors respite, just like Spirit's power goes on cooldown.
And that "balanced ratio" has to be 36 - 40 seconds without the possibility of recalling it earlier? It can't be having the ability to recall and use him after 20 - 30 seconds with other compensation changes for balance?
I never argued any of this. Sure they could reduce the recall time and compensate for that buff with other nerfs, such as endowing Victor with more counterplay opportunities. There could be a thousand changes to Twins in theory various of which could be just as if not more balanced than the 36-second cooldown Twins. My opinion is that Twins as they are now with the 10-second recall time are broken, and that a 30-second recall time is more adequate.
Oh right, I forgot about your circular reasoning point: The devs agree with you, so they are right and there is no point in arguing if there is any other way to do it.
I'm sorry, but you really are being incredibly obtuse. I never said they are objectively right, much less that they are because they agree with me, or that there would be no point for anyone in debating whether they are right. I said I personally don't feel like arguing over this because the only reason I would is to convince the devs, you know, because they decide what happens in the game. And I don't have to convince them of my opinion, they already hold the same opinion. Go and debate with someone else all you want, all I did is point out your mistake in the beginning, you came back at me arguing for whatever your suggestion for Twins is.
That's totally false, it does not guarantee anything
I said "basically" every time. But if you really want to go and argue that Victor totally has counterplay and doesn't basically always converts hits, I won't be the one to argue against this, can't be arsed. The actual point was that Victor is a stronger ability than Spirit's, and as such appropriately has a longer cooldown than her. I hope you understand that that is true. After all, if you could control Victor the entire match and hook people as him and such, surely you don't think that would be weaker than Spirit.
No, I said that survivors can punish the Twins by taking Victor hostage and making her cooldown way longer.
This I suppose is where we had a misunderstanding, because as I pointed out before, the 36 seconds are their actual intended cooldown, just because a survivor could decide to crush Victor earlier doesn't suddenly mean their intended cooldown is 18 seconds. Because, you know, otherwise the ability to hold Victor would not have been implemented.
Either way, this still doesn't explain where you got that, according to my logic, Spirit should have no cooldown. It doesn't make sense.
No cooldown was an exaggeration on the logic behind you saying that killers being "punished" for using their power "correctly" (i. e. hitting people with it) is a bad thing. Disregarding that the hit is literally the reward in itself, from this logic would follow that killers should have reduced cooldowns on successful hits. Because why should they be punished if they used their power correctly with a cooldown just as long as if they had incorrectly used their power (missing)? Although I'll concur that you meant Twins having a longer cooldown on successful hits (on healthy survivors anyway) if the survivor decides not to crush Victor. Which again is a moot point however, since the intended cooldown is the time-to-recall, the ability to crush Victor exists because a survivor that he is latched onto can't do things such as repair gens or heal.
So, killers should be punished (more than they already are) if they play good and use their kit correctly and successfully, including giving survivors the ability to punish them even more. Got it. Sounds reasonable.
Killers are not being "punished" if they use their ability to get a hit, they are rewarded by the effect getting a hit has on the game. The cooldowns and slowdowns and whatnot this incurs are a balancing tool. And yes, a reasonable balancing approach is one that creates an adequate amount of respite for survivors from such abilities. In the example of Spirit, if one were to determine that she needs balance adjustment, both things could potentially be argued for, that she could have an increased cooldown on successful hits or an increased cooldown on missed hits. I think the former approach would be more reasonable, but ultimately both approaches would just boil down to creating downtime.
Using your same logic, the devs don't seem to agree with you on this, as the only change they have made to her base cooldown is to lower it […] So they are completely right, and there is no point in debate if this decision is the correct one, right?
You really don't get it. I never said they are right because they agree with me, and would be wrong if they didn't. The kind of immature reasoning you are showcasing here is beyond my desire to interact with.
With this specifically, I was referring to the idea that it could be argued a longer cooldown on successful hits could be reasonable for Spirit. I didn't say this is the only true and right and best way to go about it, nor did I even say it's a conviction I hold absolutely or do more than make a throwaway remark on that being a possible way to adjust Spirit if one were to consider balancing adjustments to her. Besides, this change by BHVR reduced her cooldown regardless of whether she gets a hit or not, so it isn't even relevant to the matter of whether killers should be "punished"/"rewarded" for using their powers "correctly"/"incorrectly". Regardless, It isn't part of any actual argument I made altogether, this asinine Spirit comparison has long outstayed its purpose, you just don't get that the only thing I off-handedly brought her up for is to highlight how significant slashing a power cooldown in half is.
And for that example and argument to be valid, those two killers should be comparable and assume that Twins cannot be balanced with their cooldown cut in half because Spirit will not. That's why it is a false equivalence and not a valid argument.
But I didn't say that cutting Twins' cooldown in half would not be balanced because it also wouldn't with Spirit. That's an equivalence you made up. I only used Spirit to highlight that cutting a cooldown in half is significant, of course it does not literally have to be 1:1 just as significant for Twins as it would be for Spirit, but it helps to get a feeling for how ridiculous of a change this was.
And smart saying "in ways", as there is nothing preventing The Spirit from downing a survivor and using her power to just down the next.
There is a power cooldown that prevents Spirit from downing multiple survivors in quick succession with her power. But again, there is no use in drawing direct comparisons between these killers, that is asinine. My argument here merely was that Victor is a stronger ability, and thus adequately has a longer cooldown. And I only argued this because you falsely implied I stated that Spirit's cooldown is fine and Twins' isn't, as if that would be some "gotcha" on errors in my thinking. No, their abilities have different power levels and therefore require different cooldowns. Halving their existing cooldowns would still respectively be ridiculous.
And that "cooldown approach" has to be letting the survivors take your power hostage for 36 seconds by removing her ability to recall him earlier, of course. There is no other "sensible" and well balanced approach.
I never said no other approach could ever be sensible. I have various ideas for Twins, some of which would also include reductions in recall time. You are arguing against delusions.
No, what I'm suggesting is not letting the survivors literally double her power cooldown by taking it hostage in response to getting hit by it, when it already has a minimum of 18 seconds if they crush it (8 seconds to crush, 10 seconds to return), which is basically the only reason they are now bearable to play in comparison to before.
It's not doubling the cooldown by deciding not to crush Victor, the intended cooldown is the timer until the killer player can recall. Crushing is in the survivor player's hand to reduce the time they are locked out from various actions for. Regardless, this just goes back to your idea that a 20-second cooldown (10 to recall, 10 to regrow) or let alone the current 16-second one would not only be better, but make them "bearable to play". I disagree with this, as do the devs, but I for one won't debate you on this. Maybe you are right and everybody that's saying the current cooldown is oppressively overpowered is wrong, I personally don't care to prove otherwise.
If you really don't have any reason to argue against not reverting the change and making the cooldown as high as before, simply don't debate.
I merely corrected your misunderstanding regarding Twins' power trivia, you started debating me on this, saying your suggestion of a lowered cooldown would still be sensible and the 36 seconds not. I have not once in this exchange started debating you on whether the 36-second cooldown is adequate, gone through the reasons why I think it is, whether it could be different, or whatnot. All I did in that regard is tell you that I am of the same opinion the devs are (36 seconds cooldown is needed, with Twins as they are), and that I don't care to argue or convince you of why I think that.
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@Batusalen said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3707271#Comment_3707271
How would this "reduce the overall time of Victor usage"? It is supposed to be 36 seconds downtime after an injure, with your suggestion it is 20.
By adding 4 seconds everytime Victor has to regrow. Longer cooldown overall, but allowing her to access her power more often. Also, it is 20 seconds minimum with my suggestion, the max being 30 seconds.
Going into a specific comparison of Spirit versus Twins would be asinine
What is asinine is making a false equivalency and trying to still justify it after someone pointed out the flaws of using it as an argument.
The point is that after Spirit uses her power, there is a downtime on it, breathing room for the survivors. This is true even regardless of whether she manages to hit a survivor with it or not.
But if she hits the survivor, she can continue that chase with the survivor injured, and the survivor can't prevent her from using her power beyond her cooldown. Twins can literally be on the other side of the map while Victor is latched, which removes her power for 36 seconds, or kicked, something that you can do whenever she hits somebody or not.
Also, The Spirit's base cooldown is 15 seconds, and it seems fine to you for a "strong power" as you are using it as an example, but for some reason you want a 36 seconds "cooldown" for The Twins.
Following your suggestion would mean that Spirit should get her power back instantly when hitting someone, so as to not be "punished" for using it "correctly", I take it?
That's your assumption. One that I don't know where you get it, as what I said is to give the Twins a minimum of 20 seconds and a maximum of 30 seconds of cooldown.
And my point was that survivors can't force The Spirit to have a bigger cooldown for using her power successfully and hitting them, like they can do with the Twins. Because that's the problem here, survivors punishing The Twins for injuring them with Victor by making her cooldown 36 seconds instead of 14, not letting her use her power for longer than it should.
You can kick and shout or whatever as much as you want for all I care, as long as the devs don't change their opinion I have no reason to engage in these arguments anymore
You are still here arguing about it, but again, you don't want to specifically debate if reverting the ability to recall Victor while latched and maintaining it at 36 seconds is good or not for the killer because the devs agree with you, and as the devs agree with you, there is no point in debating your argument because the devs agree with you.
Say what you want, that's "Arguing with Circular Reasonings 101", while also assuming that the devs are right in this one just because they agree with you, when there is a lot of things they can do to maintain that change and balance it.
By adding 4 seconds everytime Victor has to regrow. Longer cooldown overall, but allowing her to access her power more often.
I still don't understand this. Yes, you would add 4 more seconds regrow time compared to what we have currently, taking it from 16 to 20 seconds, but that is still much less than the 36 we are supposed to have.
Also, it is 20 seconds minimum with my suggestion, the max being 30 seconds.
What do you mean? Victor would always be available after 20 seconds if the killer player so chooses, that's the only thing that matters here.
What is asinine is making a false equivalency and trying to still justify it after someone pointed out the flaws of using it as an argument.
No, what is asinine is trying to make it out as if I said they are equivalent. I used Spirit as an example to highlight a simple concept that is easy to understand: A strong power has a certain cooldown; a change to more than halve this cooldown is significant.
But if she hits the survivor, she can continue that chase with the survivor injured, and the survivor can't prevent her from using her power beyond her cooldown. Twins can literally be on the other side of the map while Victor is latched, which removes her power for 36 seconds, or kicked, something that you can do whenever she hits somebody or not.
Ignoring that we are now going into an asinine direct comparison between these killers instead of leaving it at the simple analogy of "power has cooldown, halving it is significant" I used them for, what you say here doesn't make sense. Twins can continue playing after the survivor is injured by their ability too, and sure the survivor might usually have more distance on Charlotte than they do on Spirit after a hit, but that in and of itself is not a difference relevant for the parallel I drew. Spirit is also 4.4m/s, whereas Charlotte is 4.6m/s and sees where the survivor is, but that's beside the point. Survivors also cannot prevent Twins from using their power beyond the cooldown. If the Twins player decides not to recall Victor despite being able to, that's on them. The kicking part is not a significant distinction: it simply puts the power on cooldown, it doesn't "take it away" in any more meaningful sense than Spirit's power going on a cooldown after using it. Of course there are differences between these killers, they are far from equivalent. But the simple idea of them both having powerful abilities that have certain cooldowns that need to be in a balanced ratio to the strength of their power is analogous.
Also, The Spirit's base cooldown is 15 seconds, and it seems fine to you for a "strong power" as you are using it as an example, but for some reason you want a 36 seconds "cooldown" for The Twins.
Yes, they are indeed not equivalent, and Twins' power is stronger than Spirit's, as it guarantees hits and downs basically every time it is active. I think it should therefore have a longer cooldown. Whether the precise cooldown Spirit does have for her power is appropriate or balanced is another matter that has nothing to do with the topic or analogy at hand, and I didn't say whether I think it is appropriate or balanced. What gives?
That's your assumption. One that I don't know where you get it
Because you make a point of highlighting the distinction that survivors can kick Victor after a successful hit, "punishing" Twins for using their power correctly, neglecting that all kicking Victor does is put the power on a cooldown, just like, for example, Spirit's power goes on cooldown even after successful hits.
And my point was that survivors can't force The Spirit to have a bigger cooldown for using her power successfully and hitting them, like they can do with the Twins. Because that's the problem here, survivors punishing The Twins for injuring them with Victor by making her cooldown 36 seconds instead of 14, not letting her use her power for longer than it should.
I mean, I can definitely see the merit behind this distinction here, that Spirit always has the same cooldown whether she hits a survivor or not. And while this is still not relevant to my argument because my argument only pertained the basic idea that halving a power cooldown is significant, I would if anything argue that precisely because you did get the hit the longer cooldown is appropriate, because you know, you got value out of using your ability. And so sure, maybe Spirit would also be a more balanced killer if she had a shorter cooldown on misses but a longer one on hits. But that's not here nor there, I can only point again to the fact that I didn't draw equivalence between these killers' powers in any direct way, I highlighted a basic, universal concept by ways of mentioning Spirit as an example. Beyond that, of course their powers are different and as such call for different power specifics, and with Victor not only guaranteeing hits and being able to chain downs in ways Spirit cannot, of course a different cooldown approach is sensible. Again, what you would be suggesting if you actually argued "they shouldn't be punished for using their power correctly" (i. e. hitting survivors), is what we had on the PTB.
Say what you want, that's "Arguing with Circular Reasonings 101", while also assuming that the devs are right in this one just because they agree with you.
The only thing going in circles here is me pointing out the same things I have through multiple posts. I am not arguing with you on whether the 10-second recall time is appropriate or not, or whether your suggestion would be (I didn't engage with your suggestion at all to begin with), as such I am not using any circular reasoning or logic in arguing on the matter. I'm pointing to the reason as to why I don't want to engage in the argument at all, which is simply that the only people I would care to convince are the devs, but they already agree with me. Whether we are "right" about this, well, I obviously subjectively think so, but I don't care to convince you or anyone but them of as much.
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@Batusalen said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3707257#Comment_3707257
You falsely construed the difference from pre to post-update Twins to be less significant than it is. It went from 36 to 16 seconds total, a 20-second reduction, more than 50%. That is meaningful. Imagine if Spirit's power cooldown was halved.
Ok… how does this affect my point of having it from 20 to 30 seconds while nerfing the regrow cooldown instead of those forced 36 as that is what makes them more playable right now less valid and not more? Because it will reduce the overall time of Victor usage, which is supposedly the problem with it being 16 seconds only, without granting survivors the chance to forcefully remove your power for 36 seconds everytime you injure any of them.
And you can't literally avoid and kick The Spirit's power to not allow her to use it even further, like you can with the Twins. It doesn't grant survivors the chance to punish her for using her power correctly, either.
Whether the 10-second recall time is something they need or let alone something that makes them "bearable to play" is not something I care to debate. The devs have already confirmed it's a bug and that they too believe the 30 seconds are necessary, so I don't care to convince anyone anymore.
So, as the devs are saying the same as you, they are right, and because they are right, there is no point in debating if you are right or not, because you are.
Circular argument at its finest.
my point of having it from 20 to 30 seconds while nerfing the regrow cooldown instead of those forced 36 as that is what makes them more playable right now less valid and not more? Because it will reduce the overall time of Victor usage
Sorry, I'm not understanding your point here. The only thing I responded to was your misunderstanding of the wiki and the misconstruction of the change's impact based on that. But if I try to understand what you are saying here by looking at your first post:
Why not just make the regrow take 10 seconds instead of 6 and still allow for recalling him after 10 seconds of being latched, making it from 20 to 30 seconds total?
Is this what you are referring to? How would this "reduce the overall time of Victor usage"? It is supposed to be 36 seconds downtime after an injure, with your suggestion it is 20.
And you can't literally avoid and kick The Spirit's power to not allow her to use it even further, like you can with the Twins. It doesn't grant survivors the chance to punish her for using her power correctly, either.
I only brought up Spirit to suggest the simple notion that halving the cooldown on a strong power is significant. Going into a specific comparison of Spirit versus Twins would be asinine. But your contestations don't really hold. The point is that after Spirit uses her power, there is a downtime on it, breathing room for the survivors. This is true even regardless of whether she manages to hit a survivor with it or not. Following your suggestion would mean that Spirit should get her power back instantly when hitting someone, so as to not be "punished" for using it "correctly", I take it?
So, as the devs are saying the same as you, they are right, and because they are right, there is no point in debating if you are right or not, because you are.
I never talked about anyone being "right" in some objective sense. I said the devs agreed with my opinion so I don't care to convince anyone otherwise. That is not a "circular argument", it's simply saying I don't even want to have an argument because I see no purpose in it. You can kick and shout or whatever as much as you want for all I care, as long as the devs don't change their opinion I have no reason to engage in these arguments anymore.
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@CarlAlc7 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3707223#Comment_3707223
The only one dying on a hill is you babe, I literally proved you wrong with the exact same stats you yourself tried to use an argument. And compared to other killers then yeah, mostly just their dedicated mains are playing otherwise they wouldn't have one the lowest if not the lowest pick rate constantly, that's really not rocket science to understand. You literally gone back on stats from 2 years ago to salvage your argument, talk about actually dying on a hill lol.
I literally proved you wrong with the exact same stats you yourself tried to use an argument
Which stats are those? I didn't refer to any specific set of stats, just saying "pub matches". And what exactly did you prove wrong? I said they have high average kill rates in pubs, I didn't say they are top 5 average kill rate or whatever (which they on Nightlight however are, and which isn't a very meaningful distinction anyway because the differences between the top 5 and top 20 can be as little as 2%). Now you may argue 58-60% is not "high" for your terms, but that would be a completely different and mostly meaningless argument.
compared to other killers then yeah, mostly just their dedicated mains are playing
"Mostly" is different from "only". Again, there's millions upon millions of matches of DbD happening every month, all of which is captured in those stats. 1% of that is still tens of thousands of matches. I hope you don't believe only dedicated Twins mains are the ones playing those matches.
You literally gone back on stats from 2 years ago to salvage your argument
"Salvage" what argument? My argument wasn't they had a 60% average kill rate in high MMR brackets last week - they may very well and likely did still have high average kill rates, but we simply didn't have those stats last week -, it was that they have high average kill rates, which whatever stats we have do showcase. The most recent stats on killer-specific high MMR kill rates are from September 2022. Which, just to note, is less than two years ago. More importantly however, again, no changes to the Twins had happened since then, so there is no reason to not use those stats to describe the state of Twins prior to this update.
This argument is completely fruitless and futile. You supposedly don't even believe Twins were in a bad spot strength-wise and needed buffs, and yet you still keep going around these asinine points that would only be relevant if you did believe that. And regardless, the only actual point of my posting was that the 10-second recall time is broken. If you don't contest me on that, I don't care what you take issue with. Go on thinking that you got me good, for all I care.
@Batusalen said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3707223#Comment_3707223
So, instead of being forced to not have your power for 30 seconds total, it was 36? That totally invalidates my point. In no way does this make their apparently final decision to revert it even worse.
But yeah, my mistake. I was never that interested in the Twins to look at their past numbers. They are the only killer that I entirely got to P3 by farming BP from other sources, as a couple of matches was all I needed to simply not want to play this killer again before this patch. And looking at this post, I guess they will get back to my "Not picking them even if I'm paid to do so" again.
You falsely construed the difference from pre to post-update Twins to be less significant than it is. It went from 36 to 16 seconds total, a 20-second reduction, more than 50%. That is meaningful. Imagine if Spirit's power cooldown was halved.
Whether the 10-second recall time is something they need or let alone something that makes them "bearable to play" is not something I care to debate. The devs have already confirmed it's a bug and that they too believe the 30 seconds are necessary, so I don't care to convince anyone anymore.
@Devil_hit11 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3707223#Comment_3707223
the recall when victor is on the survivor is most fun part about the update. if I could keep anything in regards to the twin changes, it would be that singular change. the other changes are ok but unimportant.
Fun for the killer player, if they want easy wins, sure. I for one don't find it fun even when playing as Twins - I have always enjoyed their macro focus and the fact that you have to manage your Victor downtime and get good value out of any time you have him available for. With Victor being nigh-constantly available now, playing them is mindlessly easy. The snowball now builds itself if you are capable of hitting your pounces, which if you just run up to survivors and bite their ankles takes little to no skill and has little to no counterplay.
You can still recall Victor when he's on a survivor's back, it'll just take 30 seconds instead of 10 until you are able to again. If you find that unfun, unlucky. I will say that Twins are not a popular killer for a reason, so I definitely don't disagree that ideally BHVR would do more to make them more fun for more players (on both sides). But the oppressively short Victor cooldown is not it. I had a simple suggestion earlier in the thread for an improvement I would like to see for them, but yeah, it will likely be many months or years before they touch them again, if ever.
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@Devil_hit11 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3706006#Comment_3706006
Killer Update - The Twins
- The Visual Terror Radius accessibility setting will now include Victor’s grunts. (NEW)
- Victor will now glow red whenever he is vulnerable to being crushed and white when he is not. (NEW)
- Charlotte can now recall Victor at any point while he is unbound. (NEW)
- A new icon has been added to indicate the moment when Victor can be recalled. (NEW)
- Decreased the time it takes to switch back to Charlotte to 1.5 seconds. (was 3 seconds)
- Decreased the time it takes to unbind Victor to 0.75 seconds. (was 1 second)
- Decreased the time it takes to charge Victor’s Pounce to 0.85 seconds. (was 1 second)
- Increased the cooldown for Victor to come back after being crushed to 10 seconds. (was 6 seconds)
What do you mean by undocumented. The third sentence is, Charlotte can now recall victor at any point while he is unbound. The key word is at any point. It does not say when Idle. At least according to patch notes, the recall is intended.
I already addressed this point earlier in the thread. "Unbound" means not bound to Charlotte or a survivor. It goes without saying that Victor has to not be bound to Charlotte in order to be able to recall him, so it's obvious the reason "unbound" is specified here is that it pertains Victor not being tied to a survivor. That change had also already been in on the PTB, and yet Victor could not be recalled while latched onto a survivor, further suggesting this is not what is meant here. And finally, if this were intended to also apply when Victor is latched onto a survivor, there would not be a 10-second timer until you can recall, because that is not "at any point". What this patch note refers to is recalling Victor when he is parked around the map, which was not possible in the past.
If that isn't enough to convince you, take it from the devs themselves saying this is an unintended bug, surely then meaning they didn't intend for that note to imply otherwise.
What are these weird hills people are trying to climb up to me from. Even if it were "documented", what does that change about the fact that it's broken? What is your purpose with this?
@CarlAlc7 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3707070#Comment_3707070
No, I just took issue with you saying that they're a top 5 comp tier and had a high kill rate, which I already proven that there were both lies. 20th kill rate isn'f anything to brag when literally only the most dedicated mains are playing them, it proves that even they aren't dominating pubs like you were implying.
Lies? You really love your death on this hill. I said they were considered top 5 comp (past tense), which they absolutely had been, and no changes had happened to them since then. I did not specify they were considered top 5 up until the very day the update dropped, but again, the primary reason why they may not have been is simply that they don't see regular play in comp anymore and are not considered much at all. That is not mutually exclusive, I hope you can understand that. You also only brought up one event to support your point. Again, Outrun The Fog for instance has Twins in their second-highest tier. The Arkade has them more heavily restricted than half the killers.
"20th kill rate" is disingenuous. Again, the difference between the top 10 cut-off and Twins is 2%. If you bracket the killers by kill rate, Twins would be on 8th place, and that's a very strict bracketing by 1% integers. And regardless, I said high kill rate, which 58-60% absolutely is (60% in the high MMR bracket in Sep. 2022). Top 3 kill rate on Nightlight in the last month, top 9 and top 4 respectively in the two months prior to that. Saying only the most dedicated mains are playing them is also disingenuous, or just showcasing your lack of understanding that even a pick rate of 1% correlates with a huge number when looking at millions upon millions of matches throughout a month.
But yes, let's say you got me good, I heinously lied about Twins' standing in comp and performance potential in pub matches, to serve my sinister plot to get this 10-second recall time reverted that they absolutely need to be able to compete.
______________________________
@Batusalen You are mistakenly quoting parts of the wiki that describe how Twins functioned on the PTB. You can tell this is the case by taking note of them also pointing to the 10% Haste effect for Charlotte in the same section. The 20-second auto-recall and 10-second regrow time thereafter pertained Victor when latched onto a downed survivor. The time before you could recall Victor when latched onto a survivor in the past was 30 seconds. The regrow time on that being 6.
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@CarlAlc7 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3706809#Comment_3706809
In the most recent released stats Twins had the 20th kill rate while literally having the lowest pick rate out of all the killers in the game, so even when they're not getting dragged down by new players and essentially only have their most dedicated mains playing them they're still mediocre in kill rates. At this point you're literally just living in a past where Twins were a top 5 comp killer and had a high kill rate cause this is clearly not the case today.
"20th kill rate" (or 58%) is within 2% of the top 10. They also had 60% in high MMR brackets (top 5, among other killers), as well as 60% on Nightlight right now (3rd deadliest killer there over the recent month of stats). What do you mean "living in a past", nothing about Twins changed in those years, and if anything the one thing that could regularly make them tangibly, consistently less potent if in play (Circle) has been nerfed substantially and sees little to no use.
At this point you just seem to be intent on dying on some tangential hill. Do you genuinely not believe that Twins were a strong killer prior to this update and direly needed buffs? Moreover, do you take issue with me suggesting the 10-second recall time is broken, and think they are fine with it? Because otherwise I can't see why you would hold up this argument. I even welcomed most of the improvements to them in the update, even if they went back on addressing one of their primary reasons to touch Twins to begin with, namely their propensity to slug.
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@CarlAlc7 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3706809#Comment_3706809
Then what even was the point of bringing up comp play in the first place as an argument when they make special conditions and restrictions for even the weaker killers to be able 4k coordinated teams ? You literally just shot yourself in the foot with that entire argument.
The point was showing that even some of the best players in the game with top tier coordination struggle against Twins, i. e. that they were a strong killer before these buffs. That they do well in pubs where there are no restrictions is something I also pointed to, with their high average kill rate and the existence of long winstreaks.
As a general point and a bit of a tangent, people really overrate or misconstrue what restrictions do in comp play. First of all, it instantly changes the entire narrative from "survivors too strong" to "well, if all survivors have these stacked loadouts, then they can be too strong". Comp balancing doesn't change the basic game, most of it is just perk, item and add-on bans and restrictions. It goes to show that top killers are able to compete perfectly well with top survivors, and even outperform them. That already is something most people don't really seem think about, the fact that if you were to invoke comp for balance arguments, it would be most of all about perks, items and add-ons, because comp proves that it isn't gen times, most maps, vault speeds, movement speeds or any other base game aspect that creates a major imbalance (and again, if anything shows the game to be killer-favoured, with more than two kills per match on average).
The next thing is that the level of stacked skill and experience of the individual players in comp teams as well as their level of coordination and communication is something you will basically never see outside of comp. I would not hesitate to bet that those teams on their restricted loadouts will outperform most of any pub juker SWF armed to the teeth with everything they desire. And of course, not only are full SWFs with voice comms rare enough to encounter to begin with, but for them to then to also have stacked and coordinated builds and practiced communications and such is just non-existently rare. So really what we are comparing these highly skilled and coordinated comp teams against in an average pub match is worlds apart, which is solos and duos most of the time, of mediocre-at-best players, without any communication or coordination. An average random pub group like this will be less competitive even if they were able to use 8 perks per player than a top-level comp team with restricted loadouts.
The restrictions also not only go both ways (killers having a plethora of add-on and perk bans and restrictions too), they aren't as restrictive as is sometimes thought. Survivors can still use perfectly viable perks, that they get great value out of not least because they can coordinate their uses very well. Just take a perk like Camaraderie, something that is little more than a bad joke in most pub matches, but can be incredibly impactful in this environment where all players coordinate to make perfect use of it, with the player having it intentionally taking up aggressive roles (such as pressuring risky gens, contesting hooks, etc.) to be the one ending up on hook, only one player leaving to activate their Cama, with the rest sticking to gens for its duration. That already would be unthinkable in most of any pub match.
Comp-restricted DbD is still just DbD for the most part, it's still survivors against killers with all of their basic mechanics (well, the anti-facecamp mechanic has been negated, something I for one wouldn't do). If in that environment with full teams of highly skilled and coordinated survivors with practiced communications killers can still compete, it's no wonder they outperform in the pub environment where even just having a 4-player SWF is incredibly rare, let alone them then being highly skilled and experienced, having voice comms, team cohesion, coordination, stacked loadouts, and whatnot.
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@CarlAlc7 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3706239#Comment_3706239
Oh, so now Twins went from "were generally considered a top 5 comp killer" to "haven't seen comp play in years", how convenient 🤣.
Also they gave explanations for each one of the tiers and the tier Twins was placed in was for killers with either a weak chase power or with an old power that good survivors can easily counter, so that explanation you gave about comp tiers not correlating to killers' strenght is not flying I'm afraid.
Yes, in the past when they were played in tournaments regularly, they were considered top 5, with 4ks being common results. Nothing about Twins had changed since then. The point I made was to highlight their strength, it wasn't about the comp scene, this isn't the gotcha you may think it is. I don't know why they don't see much of any comp play anymore these days, I guess teams just don't enjoy them (it isn't strength-related because a plethora of low-tier killers still of course do see play).
I also don't know why DbD League had them in tier 4 for the winter circuit, but again, not only do other tournaments still have them in higher tiers, but it may simply be balancing-specific. The explanation you are referring to was given by the thread creator, I'm not sure whether that was the officially given explanation from DbDL at the time. But even if it was, that doesn't mean there can't be outliers, and Twins might have simply ended up in that tier due to its balancing being more fitting for them. After all, the lowest tier is also not the "weakest", it's just the stealth balancing tier, with indoor maps and some exotic restrictions. But those killers actually 4k regularly on that balancing; Ghostface, Dredge and Myers on indoors are strong and that even against these highly coordinated teams with precise calls for those maps.
In either case, here's an example from DbDL itself of back-to-back Twins 4ks in a match between Eternal and Trauma (the best teams at that time):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcWPATyLaQQ -
@Xernoton said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3706536#Comment_3706536
I'm sorry, but if you not only don't see how broken Twins are with Victor being nigh constantly available, but also genuinely think it's best to play for Charlotte M1s and only then unleash Victor, I can't tell you anything but that you lack game understanding.
"If you disagree, then you're bad." Great argument.
It was nice talking to you but if this is the best you got, then we'll have to agree to disagree.
Not saying you are "bad" in some general sense, just that you don't understand or know enough about Twins gameplay if you genuinely hold those beliefs.
I sincerely hope that the community will "prove you right" by not being up in arms about this change, because the only way I can see that happen is if still nobody plays Twins. And it's unfortunate that I have to hope for that now because I for one have always enjoyed playing against Twins. And as Twins for that matter, which will also be less engaging now, because of how mindless it is.
@Mandy said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3706006#Comment_3706006
That's actually a bug, hopeful of a fix in an upcoming hotfix
Also if Victor is not triggering the antifacecamp feature that might also be a bug, as I think he's supposed to.
I am relieved to hear that, thank you for coming in to clarify.
Another Twins change you might not be aware of and that might be unintended: Victor now moves faster after a successful hit, making him harder to kick. He also appears with a white outline during this time, suggesting that he cannot be kicked (which he however can), which to me makes it seem even more likely that his movement speed during this time is a bug.
To use this comment for something productive, here is my suggestion for a Twins balance adjustment: Make it so that Victor again latches onto downed survivors as well as injured survivors. This stops the slugging machine and provides survivors more downtime, while enabling Charlotte to more reliably pick up a survivor Victor downed. To compensate for this nerf, you could then reduce the time-to-recall (when latched onto an injured or downed survivor) from what used to be 30 seconds to 20 or 15, since you'll then have double the downtime. Alternatively, instead of the reduction in recall time, you could compensate for the nerf by giving Charlotte that 10% Haste buff whenever Victor is latched on again, making her more of a threat than just a barebones M1 killer.
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@Xernoton said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3706182#Comment_3706182
The 10 seconds to unleash is only if Victor got crushed, not recalled.
Sorry, it's 6 seconds, if he is one someone's back. That brings the time from my previous post down all the way to 46 seconds. That's not much of a difference. It's still a lot faster to first do the M1 and then send out Victor. Which is the way the Twins were played before. The "silly numbers game" was done by using very optimistic numbers that ultimately favor you and still we get a result that's not great.
I don't see why you would need 3 people in a SWF to beat the Twins. It is true that one possible way to counter them was to group up and kick Victor after a down (which is still possible) but solo survivors have managed to defeat much stronger killers and they could deal with Twins even when they didn't hold Victor hostage.
Win streaks are no indicator for how strong a killer is. A killer that is played rarely will naturally perform pretty well in public games because the average survivor has no clue how to beat something they don't know. This used to be one of Twins biggest strengths. Now their pick rate will probably go up a bit, which means people will be more familiar with how to deal with Victor.
I'm sorry, but if you not only don't see how broken Twins are with Victor being nigh constantly available, but also genuinely think it's best to play for Charlotte M1s and only then unleash Victor, I can't tell you anything but that you lack game understanding. The very first thing you should do when you load in as Twins is unleash Victor, and you want to be controlling Victor any second of a match you possibly can. That's the very basics of playing this killer.
Coordination is essential to do anything against Victor, because otherwise he will snowball fast. You have to group up/find teammates to be able to kick Victor after downs (which is also much more difficult now, as he moves faster in hit cooldown - another notable, undocumented buff), or to take Victor if you're healthy and prevent a down on an injured survivor. You have to constantly heal each other. Be there for pallet saves (and die under pallets to begin with, with the knowledge that someone will be there). You have to decide when to hold Victor hostage and when not to (obviously not a thing anymore now). To communicate where Charlotte is in order to decide whether a locker play against Victor has any hope of working out or is otherwise beneficial (e. g. stopping the slugging train, or allowing another survivor to rotate to take a hit). And you have to do everything DbD normally requires of you to begin with, such as coordinate unhooks, know which gens to pressure when, where to lead chases, when to help which teammates and when to play for gen progress, and so on, all of which is extra difficult against a killer that is essentially at two places at once, and can also be around a hook or slug as stealth Charlotte or Victor, or both. A good Twins player does not lose to a team that has no communication and coordination, i. e. a non-SWF group. That was true before the update and it's brokenly true now.
The public games environment is the only relevant measure of a killer's strength in terms of game balance because that's the actual matches actually being played by 99.9% of the playerbase. In that environment, Twins have always been one of the very strongest killers, with multiple high winstreaks on good players, and high kill rates on average. The reason for that precisely being that there is nothing to be learned on how to deal with Victor. Even the best of players can't prevent Victor hits. You either coordinate constantly or you die, making Twins potentially problematic in 90+% of matches by default because they consist of solos and duos at most. And right now, even a coordinated, good SWF team I don't think stands a chance against a good Twins player, unless they arm themselves to the teeth with builds specifically designed to combat them (Unbreakable, Plot Twist, Power Struggle + Flip-Flop, Circle, Exponential, We'll Make It, WGLF, Buckle Up, …).
I guarantee that within the next weeks the community will become painfully aware of the fact that Twins are not acceptable in this state, with the 10-seconds-to-recall change (which I still hope is a bug or oversight, not an intended, undocumented buff). And the only reason why this might not become as widely opposed as the state of PTB Twins is that still only few people may play them. Which I at this point truly hope.
Again, Twins already were a strong killer, most experienced players knew this perfectly well. And now cooldowns are shorter, Victor charges pounce faster at base, is faster during hit cooldown and can be recalled at will when deployed around the map. The changes make them tangibly better already, and do nothing to alleviate the concerns players and BHVR themselves stated they wanted to address, namely their propensity and power to down and slug multiple survivors in quick succession. And yet, here is this nuclear buff on top that makes it so there's never really breathing room; Victor is oppressive whenever out and now will be oppressively present.
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@CarlAlc7 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3706036#Comment_3706036
Twins being a top 5 comp killer is clearly something you took right out of your ass cause in a comp tier list posted 2 months ago they were literally placed on the second lowest tier of killers:
Twins just haven't been part of the competitive circuit or at least not seen much of any regular play in it for years now. When they were, they were considered top 5, with 4ks being common. They are still in top tier balancing on tournaments now, such as Outrun. I'm surprised League's winter circuit had them that low, but it has to be noted that "tiers" here don't merely denote strength, but mostly what kind of balancing they call for. Twins usually have all healing stuff banned, so that might be why they had them in that low a tier.
@Blueberry said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3706182#Comment_3706182
"If he gets crushed, he's ready to be unleashed 10 seconds later."
Ignoring the fact that he has to be resummoned all the way back at Charlotte and cross the map again.
"If he hits someone, he is ready to be recalled and unleashed 10 seconds later."
A 10 second wait before recalling, then another delay before resummoning, then you have to recross the map again. There's more to the time than just the cooldown.
" It is true that tournaments restrict healing items and perks, which
makes Twins stronger, but tournament teams are infinitely more
coordinated than any pub group anyone ever meets, and coordination was
their biggest weakness"I'd argue just really good swf's on coms are stronger than comp teams when you factor in them being allowed to stack all the meta perks and 4 syringes or styptics. I think you're downplaying how very signficantly they are nerfed in comp, it's substantial. Also, in comp they are always playing on maps that are significantly easier for killer. There are many, many more maps in DBD that are way more survivor sided that they completely avoid in comp that we are facing against those just really good swf on coms. Factoring in maps + no item or perk restrictions is substantial.
The delay before unleashing is negligible if you recall. And you don't always have to cross the map (which however doesn't take a lot of time with Victor either) - if Charlotte unleashed Victor when she was on you the hit will happen quickly and won't allow you to make much distance, and she will be right on you and unleash again. It isn't even about the "10 seconds and he's on the map again" thing strictly though. It's that Victor has no counterplay, he guarantees hits and downs, and that already made them a very strong killer when survivors had the ability to frequently keep Victor out for the count for 30 seconds at a time. That being reduced to 10 seconds is ridiculous.
You are right about them being much more threatening in comp due to the restrictions on means of healing, but I still hold that highly coordinated teams of some the very best players in the game are worlds better than some pub SWF stacking healing perks. And actually meeting a full SWF that brings stuff like We'll Make It, Botany, Circle, 4 med-kits and whatnot is vanishingly rare to begin with.
This is not something I for one think is worth even having an argument over. Just play as or against Twins, or watch streamers do so. It'll be obvious soon enough.
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@Xernoton said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3706036#Comment_3706036
10 seconds until Victor can be called back. 10 seconds until Victor is ready again. About 6-8 seconds per hit with Victor (including the switch, position and charge times). Another 5 seconds (optimistic) to catch up with Victor. That adds up 37-41 seconds. After that you still need to switch back to Charlotte and get to that survivor before you pick them up. This puts at about 50 seconds.
It's much faster to get a M1 hit before you switch to Victor.
The 10 seconds to unleash is only if Victor got crushed, not recalled. Victor used to be attached for 45/30 seconds, and Twins were still an incredibly strong killer that went on winstreaks of hundreds of matches, 4k'd routinely in tournaments and were generally said to require a coordinated team of at least 3 SWF survivors to beat with any consistency if the Twins player is any good. Now it is 10 seconds. And that's on top of all the other baseline improvements. I won't go into a silly numbers game here, if you don't understand how oppressive Twins without the ability to create Victor downtime are, that's you.
@Blueberry said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3706036#Comment_3706036
"You don't have time to out-heal Twins, Victor is on the map every 10 seconds ready to injure and down survivors."
You can. She also isn't out every 10 seconds, that's exaggerating a bit and disregarding the delay on Victor manual returns as well as any missed hits.
"Twins were already an incredibly strong killer before this update that
were generally considered top 5 in tournament play and 4k'd even highly
coordinated teams. I welcome the quality-of-life improvements to them,
but this specific change is uncalled for and breaks the killer."They were not. Tournaments are also a very bad example with all the rule sets they add artificially.
If he gets crushed, he's ready to be unleashed 10 seconds later. If he hits someone, he is ready to be recalled and unleashed 10 seconds later.
I don't mind to leave it at disagreeing on whether Twins were an incredibly strong killer even before this update. It is true that tournaments restrict healing items and perks, which makes Twins stronger, but tournament teams are infinitely more coordinated than any pub group anyone ever meets, and coordination was their biggest weakness. And yet they still routinely 4k'd.
Twins in this state are broken.
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@Xernoton said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3706006#Comment_3706006
That was not undocumented. There was a line that said that Victor could be recalled at any time. Which is exactly what this is. It's strong but nowhere near the horror we've seen on the PTB.
You are referring to "Charlotte can now recall Victor at any point while he is unbound.", which isn't what this is. First of all, "unbound" would mean not bound to Charlotte or a survivor. Secondly, this change was already in the PTB, and yet Victor could not be recalled while latched onto a survivor. And finally, if this were also applying when latched on, you would be able to instantly recall him, instead of having to wait 10 seconds. They simply reduced the time before you can recall Victor while latched on to 10 seconds, undocumentedly.
And while it isn't quite as horrendously broken as Twins were on PTB, you will still lose every time to an even just decent Twins unless you are a 4-SWF on comms abusing Power Struggle. And even then you will still lose if the Twins player is more than just decent. Victor will be out constantly, there is no respite, no time to reset, he'll be injuring and downing someone without counterplay every 20 seconds, and of course again be able to slug everyone in quick succession once they are injured.
@Blueberry said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3706006#Comment_3706006
As someone else said, it's not undocumented, it's intended.
Also they are very beatable and have lots of counter play. The counter play is healing and grouping. Essentially the complete opposite of what most groups want to do, which is stay injured, split up, and spread out. The heals deny her snowball slug potential and group denies chain hits since she gets kicked after every down or miss. Oh and locker jumps as well, she actually has very little time to reach the locker.
You don't have time to out-heal Twins, Victor is on the map every 10 seconds ready to injure and down survivors.
Twins were already an incredibly strong killer before this update that were generally considered top 5 in tournament play and 4k'd even highly coordinated teams. I welcome the quality-of-life improvements to them, but this specific change is uncalled for and breaks the killer.
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There is an undocumented change that makes Twins almost as broken as they were on PTB: Victor can now be recalled some 10 seconds after latching onto a survivor. That means there is next to no downtime from Victor, he will always be out injuring and downing people without counterplay.
Twins are unbeatable right now. I hope that shadow buff is not there to stay.
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Absolutely not, Unknown is a strong, comfortably A-tier killer that good players can demolish 99.9% of the pub lobbies they get with and that even 4k'd some of the best teams in tournaments. Huge skill expression potential due to bounce behaviour, wallshots, manipulating Hallucination placement, managing line of sight. Oppressively strong in chase and teleports/dispels affording it good map/macro pressure too. Various decent add-ons, albeit none that really push it into S-tier strength (yet also none that are blatantly busted).
Without going into issues and possible adjustments, I will say that the UVX is if not "inconsistent" or "unpredictable", at least far from intuitive. Similar to Xeno's tail attack, I think most of the perceived "difficulty" mostly stems from lack of proper visual feedback. You would have to go into custom games and just practice tons of alignments and how the projectile interacts with various different textures. I think there should be an add-on (or even basekit adjustment) that visualizes the trajectory of the UVX, including its bounce path.
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While it is of course very disappointing that the devs even came up with and spent time on these ideas to begin with (all the more so after having had years to think about and work on them) and that they are now reverting most of all of them, leaving the update rather underwhelming, I do have to say that I for one am positively surprised and appreciate that despite putting this work in, BHVR swallowed any pride and just really went back on all of it, valuing the community's general opinion that the changes are not good.
The DS buff and Blight and Ultimate Weapon nerfs will still have tangible, significant effects on the game, so the update is far from inconsequential. I will say that I would have preferred for Blight's flick to be limited instead of his ability to slide off textures removed. Flicking is pretty BS, hugging enables creative and cool plays. But it won't break Blight either, I think given how good his add-ons are he will still be S-tier. I think the Ultimate Weapon adjustment is perfectly adequate, although it's just a little lame now perhaps. I think reducing its active window to 15 seconds and its cooldown to 45 would have sufficed. But I'm not really complaining, the perk just made the game a little too easy.
For Twins, I think they should have kept the part where Victor also latches onto downed survivors, and Charlotte gains 10% Haste whenever Victor is attached to a survivor. This would prevent Victor from being able to go on a slugging spree, but enable Charlotte to not only more reliably pick up survivors Victor downed but also be more of a threat herself. But regardless, I welcome the QoL improvements to a killer I personally have always enjoyed immensely to play as and against.
I will have to play on the new Haddonfield more to be able to tell just how it plays for both roles. It seemed a bit too killer-leaning on the PTB, but I didn't play much and the sheer brokenness of PTB Twins of course tinged that entire experience in a bad light.
I'm still looking forward to the new store as well as any possible improvements to come with the engine update, although I don't suspect there really will be any. Well, at least the game will run on DX12 by default, which can be an improvement for people that weren't already aware of how to enable it.
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Multiple things.
Despite crouch tech being an if anything shockingly reliable counter-mechanic to Billy's chainsaw, good Billy players have no issues going on winstreaks of hundreds of matches, or 4k-ing even in tournaments where their opponents are not only keenly aware of crouch techs, but generally great players united in highly coordinated teams. Simply put, Billy is so strong now that the existence of crouch tech if anything is a balancing factor. This is especially true because his cooldowns are so short that even if you do dodge a chainsaw with a crouch, you might still get hit or sawed a few moments later anyway.
Blight not only is even stronger than Billy still, but crouch techs are from from reliable against Blight, nor will they often prevent the follow-up M1 even if they do work out to dodge a rush hit. They are somewhat more reliable at pallets, but there they are even more guaranteed to mostly only delay the inevitable hit by a couple of seconds. With Blight's hug-teching set to be removed, crouch-teching will only become even less relevant against him, because Blights will rely on bump logic much more. And since busted stuff like Adren Vial still exists, I doubt Blight will even fall out of S-tier viability. Pallets will be more reliable of a tool against him, but Brutal Strength or Dissolution solve that problem perfectly well, and Blight having to use at least one chase perk instead of being able to carelessly stack 4 slowdowns won't hurt too much.
Demo is the one killer where I agree crouch tech is pretty bullshit. Demo isn't a bad chaser at all, but he is also not Billy or Blight, and his map traversal isn't as good as it may sound, his macro game potential not stellar. His missed shred cooldown (especially if eating a collision) is also rather punishing, regularly allowing the survivor to make it into safety. Considering all of this, the fact that crouch-teching works so reliably against him is just a crime to the poor thing. That said, I for one think rather than try to remove crouch techs against Demo specifically, they should significantly buff Demo in other respects, such that the existence of crouch tech won't hurt so much anymore. Mind you, most people don't know about crouch techs or aren't good at utilizing them, but Demo deserves buffs regardless. I just think using crouches to dodge these attacks is thrilling and fun.
Finally, it has to be noted that there is counterplay. Survivors have to crouch preemptively if they anticipate the killer unleashing their respective attack. The killer can predict this and adjust their attack direction such that it will still connect, or abuse this by holding their attack and getting a hit due to the survivor not making the distance they otherwise would have. Of course the survivor in turn can anticipate that the killer will adjust or fake their attack and just keep running, so this at times is a bit of a gamble or mindgame on both sides if you will, but stuff like that creates higher-level interactions between good players.
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The 2v1 and 1v1 endgame scenarios are definitely two major game design issues still, that have never been properly addressed. If only two survivors remain and there is even just one more gen to do, or let alone more than that, the game is regularly a foregone conclusion and the survivor players will be reluctant to touch gens or otherwise risk being found, as that puts them into a certain death position. That the killer can then slug one of them once they have finally found them in order to try and find the other, and even pick them up and let them wiggle, indefinitely prolonging the match just to try and kill both survivors adds to the flawed state and the undesirable gameplay experience these game scenarios can and often do yield. And then in the 1v1 scenario the hatch standoff still exists: if the killer finds the hatch first, they can simply stand on it and refuse to close it, so as to not risk allowing the survivor to open a gate or escape via a key, instead waiting to spot the survivor first; while the survivor will of course refuse to show themselves. And even if they do close it, the gate spawns can regularly be such that the survivor has no chance of opening one, and various killer abilities can also render it all but impossible regardless of gate spawns.
BHVR will hopefully at some point address these scenarios, such that things aren't as hopeless for survivors and not as tiresome or choresome for killers in them. A few quick, rough ideas: In the 2v1-with-gens-remaining scenario, the survivors could gain a significant increase in repair speed, as well as the ability to recover from the dying state. In turn, they would have their locations exposed by killer instict periodically. Instead of the ability to recover from the dying state, you could alternatively give them one to give up in the dying state and be swallowed by the entity, such that they can trigger the 1v1 endgame. For the 1v1 endgame, at the very least the hatch should automatically close after some time, maybe a minute, powering the gates. Gates should always spawn on opposite sides of the map. Not necessarily as far apart as they possibly can be, but with a certain minimum distance. The red light indicators on the gates could also activate later into the interaction - 50%, 75% and 95% seems apt. This would allow the sole surviving player to more reliably still play for an escape. For a crazier idea, trigger a sudden death scenario in the 1v1 after the hatch is closed or automatically closes, putting the players into a chase where if the survivor can survive for more than a minute, hatch spawns at their feet and they escape automatically, whereas if the killer downs them before that time elapses, they automatically mori them on the spot. I know this would be far from equal for all killers, but I for one would welcome this whacky twist at the end, and I mean, the game is already won for the killer anyway, this is just for the fun of it.
Whatever they would come up with, I hope some day they address these flaws. Again, the fact that even the hatch standoff still exists in this day and age and despite BHVR having had proclaimed to have fixed it years ago is just a tad ridiculous.
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Above all, the state of survivor items (in some senses the equivalent to killer powers) is already grim enough, with no new items having been introduced in more than 6 years and existing items not only not having been improved but actively made less and less appealing, most unfortunately the case of flashlights (the most fun and interactive item), having been robbed of unique interactions for no good reason. The last thing we need is to rid flashbangs (glorified firecrackers) of their unique utility. If you would only ever be able to get blinds and saves with them in ways a flashlight could also enable you to, they would just be strictly worse, one-time-use flashlights. Attempting flashbang/cracker saves requires (apart from the perk/item slot) a serious time investment that may not even pay off, is not easy to pull off, and has attached to it various risks, such as getting hit or downed before, during or after the attempt.
Now a few things. You shouldn't be able to phase through a killer on pick-up, there's no real reason to disable collision during this time I don't think. That would already make getting flashbang/cracker saves more difficult if the killer is facing a wall. The real culprit here is Background Player, which too reliably allows to make these rescues happen, and with a much reduced risk. It should be toned down a notch. And instances where you can somehow get blinded by flashbangs/crackers despite looking up albeit rare have to be remedied.
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It first and foremost uses kills and escapes (the stuff people overwhelmingly actually care about and play for) as metrics and that is perfectly fine and sensible. In chess or really any functioning Elo/MMR system you look at who won to determine Elo, not how they played. Keep in mind however that Elo/matchmaking rating is an ever-changing value that by definition has to be understood in the context of many matches, just because any one match may not work out all too well doesn't invalidate the entire system.
The primary issue the matchmaking system has in terms of accuracy is that there is a cap in place that is entirely too low and captures and matches among one another a wild range of players with completely different win/loss ratios and ratings. As well as a matchmaking algorithm that heavily prioritizes short queue times over accurate rating matches, even at the extreme ends. These things can and have often been tinkered with, it's just that BHVR errs much too decidedly on the side of leniency and casualness. And they may have good reasons for that, although at the very least at the more extreme rating ranges I really can't see a justification for this approach. Winstreaks of hundreds and thousands of matches just aren't an acceptable state of affairs.
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@crogers271 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3701365#Comment_3701365
I always enjoy a good massive length zarr post.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDSdD_RPCCk), which is that tunnelling is not really a problem and in his opinion not even a particularly good strategy. The former is debatable, the latter is outright untrue.So I watched that video when it came out and I didn't think his opinion was that its not a particularly good strategy. I just rewatched the video and still don't think that is what he is saying.
You say in your post:
And finally and most crucially, he neglects here the entire part of what's so good about tunnelling to begin with: you create a 3v1 scenario that is skewed heavily in the killer's favour.And he agrees with this. At the end of the video he highlights how tunneling is the strongest strategy if it presents itself. I don't think he or really anyone denies that eliminating a survivor is the strongest thing that can happen for a killer.
And that's why I think your first main criticism of his video is a little off because I don't think you and he actually disagree. If you can eliminate a survivor while still maintaining pressure on the others, great, but a single minded approach to targeting one survivor and getting them out as quickly as possible is not the best strategy (more broadly, his points seems to be that killer's need to adjust their strategy over the course of the game).
but yeah, nobody said tunnelling means tunnelling the very first survivor you find.I'd say that is what tunneling is, but we're all just making up words to describe behaviors.
To me tunneling is trying to eliminate one survivor as quickly as possible, basically ignoring everything else in the game. What you are describing seems like just normal gameplay.
"Tunnelling is so prevalent in comp because anti-tunnel perks are limited"- While that is certainly true, it precisely goes to show that tunnelling is the best strategy and that only changes if non-basekit things are in play to change this.But if X is strong unless Y occurs, and Y does occur, then X is no longer strong.
That's pretty much the whole game, certain strategies are or are not strong depending on what the other side does (meta). As an example: if the meta strategy was to run prove thyself and triple up on gens, the value of pop and pain res would drop substantially.
Summary: I think you're defining tunneling differently than he does, and so broadly that it just melds into general gameplay. I agree with the last paragraph about issues with tunneling.
Cheers, thanks for reading and engaging with one of my entirely-too-wordy posts yet again.
And that's why I think your first main criticism of his video is a little off because I don't think you and he actually disagree.
I believe Scott has a much more limited idea as to when tunnelling is good, and isn't convinced that it is a great strategy in general. I'm not saying he is trying to suggest tunnelling is a bad strategy per se, but the rhetoric certainly seems to be that he would not recommend it. Me personally, if someone is struggling to get kills, the first thing I will tell them is to try tunnelling and see how much different the game instantly becomes. Even "dumb" tunnelling will make mediocre killer players succeed against average pub lobbies, and decent killer players dominate.
My primary concern with responding in the way that I did to the videos (and responding at all) is that I think even if I weren't convinced tunnelling is the best strategy, I would still hold it is powerful and problematic enough that if we need anything, it's content creators exaggerating its need to be addressed, not downplay it the way he speaks of it can.
At any rate, I think even if he were to agree that tunnelling is a particularly good strategy (or even the best strategy), most of my criticisms against the arguments made in the video hold. Even if we were to say tunnelling reduces the match to a micro battle against the tunnelled survivor and that is detrimental (neither of which I agree with), it is done with the express purpose of creating a scenario in which your macro skills will have an exponentially greater impact. Even if he knows how much of a foregone conclusion the 3v1 can be (which he does), he still neglects to really point to this and other strengths of tunnelling, even in the section literally entitled "pros and cons". The video is called "Is Tunneling The Best Killer Strategy?", but it fails to really deliver a discussion on this, mostly just one-sidedly highlighting his opinion that tunnelling is a bit overrated.
I obviously agree with the general argument about "smart tunnelling" being more optimal, I just think his particular portrayal of it is too limited and strays too far from the idea that if you want to win as consistently as possible you should try to tunnel as hard as you can because it's the best thing you could possibly do - unless things happen that change this. I. e. it's not that you should only go for a tunnel if so opportune or tunnel situations present themselves, you should proactively tunnel as hard as you can and only stray from this course if situations or conditions arise that make it less optimal, and only stray as far as those situations and condtions call for (e. g. if another survivor is bodyblocking for the tunnelled survivor, you should try to ignore them to the best of your ability and down the tunnel target instead of taking what may falsely be construed as a "free hit" on the bodyblocker - unless the bodyblocker shows themselves to be too much of a nuisance to ignore, meaning too good at blocking not to have to spend an unreasonable amount of time trying to get around them; and then after that, you should regularly still continue chasing after the tunnel target, not swap off, even if you think you may be able to down the bodyblocker (nor pick them up if they went down to bodyblock in the first place, for that matter)). Of course there are a million different situations all of which could call for slightly or significantly different decisions and routes of action, some more tunnelly others less, but fundamentally I think the orientation should be to get a survivor out of the match as quickly as possible, that's objectively optimal if you want to kill as many survivors as possible as consistently as possible.
It goes without saying however that that doesn't mean I think tunnelling is necessary to win, nor that there aren't other great strategies. In most pub matches, you can even just chase whoever you find, "hook it and book it" and still succeed more often than not; if you are good in chase you don't even have to really strategically think too much and make too many decisions macro-wise, just bring Pain Res and Grim Embrace and you will win most of the time if you are skilled at chasing. I myself tend to go out of my way not to tunnel because it makes matches too easy and I want more of a challenge, as well as provide an overall more engaging match. That is also something I can appreciate about Scott's desire to want to leverage his macro skills specifically in a 4v1 scenario as opposed to a 3v1, because in a 4v1 it is much more difficult to establish and maintain pressure on survivors, it is much more challenging and requires more skills and smarts, it's a welcome challenge if you aren't obsessed with "winning" as hard as possible.
To me tunneling is trying to eliminate one survivor as quickly as possible, basically ignoring everything else in the game. What you are describing seems like just normal gameplay.
The differences in definitions is of course a fair point, but I don't think this distinction really lends itself well to the argument he is trying to make. Not committing to a tunnel attempt on a survivor that is running circles around you from the get-go and instead trying to find an easier tunnel target is "common sense tunnelling" more so than "smart tunnelling". Plus it's still captured by the "trying to eliminate one survivor as quickly as possible" definition, insofar a survivor that is worse in chase can be expected to be tunnelled out more quickly, even if the first survivor you happen to find might not be a good tunnel target and it therefore requiring you to swap off. Tunnelling doesn't really necessitate rolling the dice here.
My definition of basic tunnelling by the way would be going for the survivor you hooked first, not found first.
But if X is strong unless Y occurs, and Y does occur, then X is no longer strong.
Well, multiple things. First of all, these tournament players he talked to may say that tunnelling would go way down without restrictions because everyone would be on anti-tunnelling perks, but whether that is actually true would remain to be seen. We have seen tournaments with low or no restrictions and everyone being on anti-tunnelling perks, and yet tunnelling was still completely common. Tunnelling is just so powerful and consistent that even tunnelling good players through anti-tunnel perks can be worth it, particularly of course on killers such as Nurse, Blight and Spirit. Next, his own argument can be used against him (even if I don't agree entirely with this argument), namely that the tournament environment is so completely different from the live environment that arguments that may hold in one don't translate well or at all to the other, and for the sake of the people he is mostly addressing and 99+% of players in general, that means if tunnelling is the best strategy in pubs, it's the best strategy for all intents and purposes. In tournaments, you have teams of 4 good survivor players you are going up against, that can not only hold their own in a chase and will lead chases away from active gens and so on, but also have the coordination to support a tunnelled (and camped, which often go hand-in-hand) survivor if so deemed beneficial. And you have coordinated builds, with as many anti-tunnelling (and anti-camping) tools in play as permitted, as well as the coordinated usage thereof. In pub matches, you are going against random groups of bad to mediocre-at-best players the vast majority of the time that not only die in 30 seconds in chase to a competent killer but regularly also lack coordination and have no real chance or clue how to efficiently play around a camp and tunnel, regularly throwing themselves at the killer, wasting tons of their time and throwing away health states, resources and lives in the process. And anti-tunnelling perks are still rather rare, even seeing 2-3 of them in a match is already a surprise. Not to mention that tunnelling these players through anti-tunnelling perks doesn't regularly pose much of a problem. And finally, as Scott himself points to, at most the optimal strategy without restrictions in tournaments would then shift to the next best thing, half-jokingly referred to as "tunnelling 2 survivors", meaning juggling hooks between them to still accumulate stages towards an early sacrifice but doing so in trying to circumvent anti-tunnel perks.
Above all I think that even definition differences and arguments about just how strong tunnelling is and whether it's the best strategy aside, we (and he) would agree that there are problems with it and that addressing and rebalancing it to one degree or another is called-for and would be good for the game, and as such that highlighting its strengths and problems is more beneficial than to say "I don't even think it's that good", or "it's not even that common". And we would perhaps still debate the "degree" part of that proposition, but there are a few things I'm sure most would agree with. For one thing that at the very least, if we're already relying on perks as band-aids for game design, they should be better at that than they currently are. That's not to say OTR and DS are bad, far from, but they are evidently not good enough. I think making unhook Endurance unhook invincibility instead would go a long way to improve OTR (as well as other hook perks, such as Dead Hard, Second Wind and Resurgence), as getting hit right off hook wouldn't render it nigh-useless anymore. It could also hide pools of blood. DS hopefully is getting a stun duration buff next patch, but I would even go further and say it could also activate up to two times, not only once. As a trade-off, collision could be removed from the survivor for as long as OTR/DS are active, so that they can't be weaponized quite as much. They could even make it so that they deactivate if the survivor is healthy, gets into a locker, rescues another survivor with a pallet or blind. But in turn make it so that they stay active indefinitely until the survivor engages in a conspicuous action. Likewise, killer perks could be buffed to make non-tunnelling gameplay more potent, but in a way that actively discourages tunnelling. Imagine if Pain Resonance would be 50% of a gen - but the perk deactivates once a survivor is sacrificed. Or that Barbecue would show the auras of all survivors that haven't been hooked yet, and gain a token for every fresh hook, granting 1.25% Haste per token, but you lose a token whenever a survivor is hooked for the second time. Grim Embrace could block gens for 10 seconds for every gen left to complete at the time of its respective activation, incentivizing killers to go for fresh hooks as early as possible. Weasel could grant 40% regression on fresh hooks, 20% on second hooks, 0% on third hooks. In general I think the idea behind Ruin automatically deactivating itself once a survivor is sacrificed was good and something they could be implementing for many more perks, only of course while at the same time making sure those perks are actually powerful. Ruin specifically could go back to 200% base regression per second, but disable itself again on sacrifice. Obviously base game adjustments would be more welcome, but better perk design could already go a long way to make other strategies more attractive and tunnelling less no-brainer optimal as I for one think it is.
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"Competitive" i. e. tournament DbD already is a thing and has been for years, and it works well and attracts thousands of viewers. It has in fact only been notably growing and improving in recent years, in terms of viewership, organization and viewing quality, level of competition, prize money, and more. That doesn't mean there aren't problems left, but we don't need to have a debate on whether it can work, it already factually does. And to note, the biggest problem it has is that BHVR - despite past assertions to the contrary - does next to nothing to improve or promote this sphere of their game. Not even the very essentials such as better spectating features are being implemented, not only neglecting to improve anything about it for years and years but constantly introducing new spectator bugs that can at times make it downright impossible to follow a match, and then taking ages to fix them, if they ever do.
Without going into the competitive viability of DbD much (I have done so plenty in the past, and most of the words would be wasted here anyway; it suffices to say that there is an impressive consistency with which certain players and teams excel and succeed in the competition and tournament scene of this game which proves that the people who proclaim that the game is too RNG and luck-based have no real clue what they're talking about), I will echo a simple truth that @Neaxolotl has brought up earlier in this thread and that is one of the most blatant things people tend to gloss over: both teams play both sides, this establishes an inherent competitive balance and symmetry in the format, the game does not have to be symmetrical or balanced in terms of the "sides" because both teams equally benefit and suffer from any such potential imbalances. The primary reason why tournaments tend to ban and restrict so many things on both sides is that they want to promote certain more engaging gameplay, that is more compelling to play and watch. Of course some things are banned because they would increase the luck factor of the game (attempting to unhook yourself, for instance), and others because they could hamper the competitive viability (either because they are so oppressive that they would be expected to yield a lot of tied matches (e. g. Background Player, Power Struggle and Flip-Flop for survivors, which can too reliably deny hooks), or because they don't promote skilled gameplay (e. g. Ultimate Weapon on killers, which replaces 50% or more of the need for "game sense", among other issues)). I will say that I don't agree with all bans and restrictions we have in popular tournaments (annulling the anti-facecamp mechanic, for instance), and it can be pointed out that the competitive scene is still a pretty insular community, with a really rather small club of "comp royalty" that have too much of a sway on how things are handled, which is also in some senses holding back the scene. But that's to be expected because the people playing in the scene are also literally the ones creating it, as there is no support from the developers.
I think tournament DbD is at a turning point or threshold now where it has garnered a critical mass of people interested in both playing and watching, as well as attracted more and more content creators as notice has been taken that some of the stand-out tournament players have been able to grow their streams significantly off the back of their reputation in the scene. Big streamers like Otz, Hens and Tofu have also been driving forces behind the growth. I think if ever there was a time for BHVR to try and light a fire under this development (or to provide sparks that can ignite explosive developments), it would be now. Hens is currently organizing a tournament with a lot of hype behind it, as recent shuffles in the top teams have created a really exciting field where while there are one or two clear favourites (Eternal being the #1 favourite), there are at least 5 teams all of which can realistically take it home. The prize pool is also around $4000 or so. Imagine if BHVR had matched the prize pool provided by the community, as well as promoted the tournament on its social media and maybe hosted its twitch stream from theirs. All of this would have been easy and effortless for them, and yet it could have been a monumental occurrence for the tournament scene. They wouldn't even have to be associated with or responsible for anything to do with these tournaments and as such not risk any brand damage as they might have with that Space eSports tournament, they would just act in a promoting fashion, highlighting the community's efforts.
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I will more or less agree on the prevalence of tunnelling, insofar that it doesn't appear to be as problematically common as it is sometimes being made out to. At least "hard" tunnelling is fairly rare, where the killer will go out of their way and do everything in their power to get the first 3 stages on a singular survivor. And I'm playing in the EU region, said to be one of the sweatiest, from which most top tournament players hail (true EU at that, not UK, two remarkably distinct player pools that Scott has before falsely conflated). It does happen, with a frequency of I'd say maybe 10-20% (with an increased incidence in matches where I play with randoms, i. e. where there's quite regularly weak links that make for tasty tunnel-out targets), but it isn't ubiquitous. I do have to note that I almost always play in SWFs where there rarely is a weak link, but still, even in cases where the killer gets an early down and by all accounts should feel inclined to camp and/or tunnel that player, it happens surprisingly rarely.
But I will counter the general narrative he seems to try to build with both this and even more so a previous video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDSdD_RPCCk), which is that tunnelling is not really a problem and in his opinion not even a particularly good strategy. The former is debatable, the latter is outright untrue.
Now first of all, I won't say tunnelling is the worst issue in the game. Ever since the 10-second unhook Endurance was introduced, I haven't been too vocal about it because as it is now impossible to be "farmed off hook" without there being anything you can do about it, the survivor regularly gets into a fair chase scenario if they're being tunnelled, and good players want, enjoy and excel in that scenario. But it does become a real issue against certain killers, in matches with a lower skill level, and in solo matches. Some of the reasons for this I have outlined in this comment on another thread regarding one of his videos on tunnelling. Some things have changed for the better since then (first and foremost the introduction of the 10-second unhook Endurance as well as the removal of hook grabs), but some of the points still hold, such as certain killers being particularly oppressive in tunnel scenarios, uncoordinated (i. e. non-4-SWF) groups having limited means of combatting this strong strategy, it exacerbating the issue weak links can pose, and just the fact that it can make for an undesirable game experience to have a killer essentially ignore to the best of their ability any but one player. I will say that tunnelling would already be much less of an issue if people were to more regularly actually use anti-tunnelling perks, be that OTR and DS or even stuff like Second Wind or Lucky Break/Plot Twist that you can use to try and hide after an unhook. But the game experience and balance shouldn't stand or fall with the usage of perks.
My concern with this post however is more so to address the idea that tunnelling isn't even all that great a strategy. I think it's objectively the most optimal strategy. Responding to specific points made in the video:
"I find tunnelling to be detrimental to my (macro skills') impact on the match" - First of all, it really isn't that you're exclusively engaged in a micro battle against the survivor you're tunnelling. Not only can you do a fair few things mid-chase that affect other survivors (such as zoning the survivor you're chasing into them or pressuring the other survivors with your presence and abilities), but once you down that survivor you can hook them in places where you can then apply macro pressure, and continue doing so during that hook time. Knowing where to hook, how to pressure other survivors during hook time, when and how to camp, these are all macro decisions and skills. There is also the aspect of playing around the other survivors' potential attempts to support or rescue the tunnelled survivor, which can be a bit of both micro and macro play. And then even regardless of that, micromechanical skill differences can be huge in this game, leveraging them can be very gratifying and rewarding, especially on killers with high-skill-expression chase abilities. Sure an even just decent survivor can run trapless Trapper for 2-3 minutes on a good map (although you'd perhaps be surprised how big the differences even there can still be), but once you play killers with actual chase abilities, the outplay potential shoots up, and as does the ability to win games by leveraging chase skills.
Next, it's not like the survivor you're tunnelling actually has "the whole map". If they take the chase to areas gens are being worked on, the killer can pressure those gens while still pursuing their tunnel. Worse still, they risk going down next to those gens, then getting hooked there and giving the killer tons of pressure being able to defend both the hook and progressed gens. He also argues the survivor you are tunnelling as opposed to the other survivors knows which resources on the map have been used and thus where to run, but even if we ignore that average players aren't regularly good enough to actually have that map knowledge and presence of mind in a tense chase scenario to both lead and plan the chase with that in mind (as well as ignore the killer's ability to zone them into deadzones (and the popularity of Windows Of Opportunity, which shows other survivors where (not) to run)), something he doesn't consider is that the tunnelled survivor will regularly be hooked in places where they went down, i. e. where they used up resources. And the killer can of course also intentionally carry them into those deadzones. The survivor will often have no choice in the matter.
And finally and most crucially, he neglects here the entire part of what's so good about tunnelling to begin with: you create a 3v1 scenario that is skewed heavily in the killer's favour. You can leverage your killer macro skills in a 3v1 much more reliably and to much more impact. Once in that 3v1, you can stop tunnelling as hard and spread out the pressure much more efficiently, effectively and consistently. This is true to an extent where even in tournament matches tunnelling and camping a survivor out is seen as optimal even if it may take 4 gens to do so. If a survivor gets taken out before all gens are through, the winning chances of the killer skyrocket. Juggling 3 survivors is just such a completely different dynamic from trying to do so with 4. Any hook in a 3v1 can spiral into a won game then and there, because if you interrupt and down the would-be unhooker, now you only have one survivor left standing, instantly creating a match-endingly precarious situation. And that's just one obvious example.
"Rolling the dice on the first person you're chasing" - Here he is neglecting the fact that you can swap off a survivor. I guess this would extend into the notion of "smart tunnelling" which he touches on later, but yeah, nobody said tunnelling means tunnelling the very first survivor you find. If they show themselves to be a decent or good looper or simply just better than you, you can identify that relatively quickly and swap off in the hopes of finding an easier target. The same goes for "rolling the dice" on whether they have anti-tunnel perks or not: if they have Off The Record, you can tell that they do and swap off before you overcommit to a potentially too costly attempt of tunnelling - and simply try the same with the next person. Although it's not like tunnelling through anti-tunnel perks is a big issue either, not against the average survivor you'll meet, and not on a good chunk of the killer cast.
"Tunnelling is so prevalent in comp because anti-tunnel perks are limited" - While that is certainly true, it precisely goes to show that tunnelling is the best strategy and that only changes if non-basekit things are in play to change this. And to keep in mind again, this is only true because in a tournament setting you have 4 survivors all of which can hold their own in a chase, so if they are using anti-tunnelling perks on top of that, a tunnel attempt can get to be too costly, but this has no bearing on the average match with this game's matchmaking, where tunnelling someone out even through OTR, DS and DH can and will most of the time still happen long before all gens are through.
I do agree that if all survivors have to be expected to be on anti-tunnel perks, trying to alternate hook stages between two survivors is likely more optimal, but again, the fact that even the best of teams are expected to stack anti-tunnelling perks if so permitted highlights nothing but the fact that tunnelling is the strongest strategy that the best survivor players will always spend most of their perk slots combatting, despite being good in chase and having the team coordination to try and help the tunnelled survivor. I also think that OTR and DS don't do enough against some of the killers to deter a killer from tunnelling even in a tournament setting where all survivors can be expected to be good, because they can regularly just slap the survivor off hook to get rid of OTR Endurance and eat the DS and down the survivor again quickly thereafter because they are Nurse or Blight or Spirit or Wesker or Billy or Huntress or Artist or Unknown, … Buffed DS will change a bit about this again (if it actually will be buffed, it's arguably nerfed on the PTB), but it won't make tunnelling much less powerful either, certainly not in the average match with the matchmaking we have.
Momo's Blight streak loss which Scott brings up I think if anything happened due to him giving up on the tunnel. He had Ace edge map at 5 gens but noticed he had OTR so he gave up on tunnelling, instead opting to venture out into the map where he then spent time searching for and chasing someone else. I really don't think tunnelling through OTR and potential DS and DH as Blight is all that daunting a prospect, at 5 gens he should have simply tried that and I feel like he very well could have won doing so. It was actually later in the game where he then ate anti-tunnelling perks that costed him, which is precisely not what he should have tried to do. You have to tunnel as early as possible, at least against competent survivors and/or if you expect anti-tunnel perks to be in play.
In the pros and cons section he is again neglecting to speak to the pros of tunnelling. I think even when ignoring the (incredibly compelling) 3v1 argument, there are very obvious pros to tunnelling. A survivor off hook is injured, that already makes them a much easier chase target than healthy survivors by default. You know where a unhooked survivor is, you don't have to search for them like you do other survivors (if you weren't across the map at the time of the unhook anyway, but even then, again, being injured they're easier to find (or just use Ultimate Weapon, haha)). You might already know some of the chase perks that survivor is using and can try to play around them better, as opposed to having to figure that out for another survivor instead. In general there are a plethora of perks (and items) tunnelling can nullify: he brings up how not tunnelling can make anti-tunnelling perks useless (although they can still be used offensively, so this is only partly true), but what about things like generator perks and items (Deja Vu, Prove Thyself, toolboxes, Hyperfocus, etc.), hook perks (Deliverance, Borrowed Time, Babysitter, We'll Make It, Reassurance, Resurgence, etc.), healing perks and items (Self-Care, med-kits, Inner Strength, etc.), Background Player, Boons, Unbreakable, even DH or Second Wind if you get slapped into Deep Wound, Overcome, Dramaturgy, … - there is no end of perks that can be rendered essentially entirely useless on a player that is being tunnelled.
Any hook stage you get will only ever be that one hook stage, and any survivor you chase will only ever be that one survivor being chased - concentrating the stages on a singular survivor objectively progresses your win condition more than spreading them out on multiple survivors, and since in either case you are only occupying 1 survivor's time, you aren't really forgoing anything for it. Obviously there is stuff like healing and rotations and such, the game can slow down more if you spread the pressure (but only if you can do so reliably and keep up that pressure), but it can also be noted that almost every time in a typical match, other survivors will try to support someone that is being tunnelled, often going as far as literally throwing themselves at the killer and doing all kinds of things that waste a huge amount of time and create pressure for free, "pressuring" themselves so to speak. This is a major reason why camping and tunnelling are so problematic particularly in an average match scenario, where other players out of a lack of information, coordination, experience, knowledge, intelligence or even just out of sheer boredom or frustration with the gameplay dynamics of these strategies as well as out of empathy, solidarity or a sense of obligation or whatnot for the player on the receiving end will try to engage as much as they can, sitting and running around the chase and hook.
All of this is not to say tunnelling is amazing and everyone should tunnel. If you want to win as consistently as possible you probably should tunnel, keeping in mind however the things Scott also points out about knowing when and who and how to tunnel, doing it in smart ways and capitalizing on tunnel opportunities when they present themselves. What this is to say is that tunnelling is a game balance and experience issue because it is too strong in the average match and uncoordinated (non-SWF) groups tend to fall apart against it while also not seldomly having an undesirable experience in the process. And it should be rebalanced on a base-game level, not worked around with band-aid perks, let alone ones locked behind paid DLC. I do welcome a DS buff and I know it would create a more tangible baseline "threat" with its mere existence again that will deter tunnelling more, as well as actually punish it more whenever DS does come into play. I also believe adjusting strong killer perks to more strictly discourage tunnelling would go a long way to improve things (such as buffing Pain Res, Barbecue, Grim Embrace, Weasel and so on in scenarios where the killer is spreading stages across survivors, nerfing them if they are getting stages on the same survivor or killing them). But more than that the game would benefit from better base adjustments to make tunnelling less powerful. That can range from making the tunnel-out more difficult or costly, to making the 3v1 be less skewed in the killer's favour. Of course compensatory buffs especially for the lower half of the killer roster would ideally go along with this, but we should first see what the live balance settles on if tunnelling isn't as objectively optimal anymore. And the fact that it isn't a ubiquitously abused strategy in the live environment if anything adds to the merit of the argument, given that rebalancing it wouldn't upset the live balance so much as a result.
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The innate counterplay is obvious: Look at the Unknown as much as possible when you are Weakened, dispel Hallucinations whenever you see one if at all possible. If the add-on that applies Weakened on finishing a generator is in play (a strong add-on that is of merely green rarity), let go of gens before they pop if you are with someone else so that only one of you will get Weakened. If someone is already Weakened, they should be the ones to finish the gen, of course. General counterplay is abusing distance whenever you can and abusing close proximity if you can't. The latter means getting close to the Unknown behind pallets or windows, because your average Unknown player will have trouble making the UVX connect up close.
That said, Unknown is definitely oppressive in chase, and the teleports afford it good potential outside of chase as well. Unknown is much stronger than the average forum populace will make it out to be, it's another case of a somewhat more demanding killer with high potential that an average player will find too difficult to do well with and consider to be bad and the game imbalanced after not doing well in a handful of matches. If you watch good players play him, you'll see them demolish (such as Knightlight, who is on a 50-or-so winstreak with Unknown as of now if I'm not mistaken, usually winning at 3+ gens left standing - some examples of as much here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2088698595There's also this example of a 1v1 event:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2101196737The average and median chase here lasted 50 seconds, only a handful of people going above 1 minute in over 40 attempts. And keep in mind, most of all of the players participating here are already much better in chase than your average pub survivor, as they are not only experienced players but specifically experienced in 1v1 pure chase gameplay, and follow that scene enough to watch and compete. Also notable that they have the entire map and its resources, two health states and two chase perks at their disposal, as well as no previously-spawned Hallucinations around the map, all luxuries a survivor in many scenarios in a normal match would not have. And yet still they on average die in under a minute. It can also be argued that there is more to learn playing as Unknown than there is to in playing against it, the pragmatic skill ceiling is definitely higher on the killer side because they can make crazy shots happen; it stands to be expected that with time, players will disproportionally get better at playing Unknown than they will playing against it (particularly of course in a pub environment, where the survivors maybe face Unknown once in a blue moon while the killer player may even main it). So the fact that Unknown is relatively new only makes this even more impressive.
I think what's particularly problematic in chases is the fact that Unknown can hold and cancel the UVX at will. The zoning and faking potential this affords them makes it nigh-impossible to reliably play around, as dodging may just simply end up netting you an axe in the face. I had various suggestions in my PTB feedback, but BHVR unfortunately deletes that. Simple suggestions were to reduce the time you have to look at Unknown to lose Weakened or to have other means of losing it to do with the Hallucinations, as well as just changes on cooldowns, movement speeds while and after using the ability and so on, while a cooler suggestion was to make it so Unknown can't hold the UVX but that once the player taps M2, they have to commit to the shot, making it much more reliable to play around. Of course there should be some compensatory buffs as well, simple ones being the ability to break pallets with the UVX, a more ambitious idea that of being able to detonate the UVX at-will at any point of its flight.
But I doubt BHVR will do much of anything, and to be fair, I don't think Unknown is in a terrible spot. Fairly oppressive and at times just actually impossible to play around, but not more than solidly A-tier either, with good add-ons yet none that are really busted (not to my knowledge at this time anyway). I do think some slight rebalancing would be in order, but there are much more pressing issues in the game.
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I would agree with getting rid of various ways in which anti-tunnel perks can be used aggressively, if they were to also make it so these perks are much more reliably good in case the survivor is actually getting tunnelled.
Removing collision for the 10 seconds of unhook Endurance would help prevent survivors from using it to bodyblock for other survivors. But those 10 seconds should in turn become unhook invincibility, meaning that if you get hit during this time, you aren't inflicted with Deep Wound. This would help make perks such as Off The Record, Dead Hard and Second Wind much more reliable anti-tunnelling tools as the killer can't simply slap the survivor off hook to render all of them more or less useless. Collision could also be removed for as long as Off The Record and DS are active. Pallet and flashlight saves could be treated as conspicuous actions, disabling DS and ending Endurance. Entering a locker could also disable DS. In turn, DS' timer could stop if you enter the dying state, then being active indefinitely until either picked up by the killer or healed up by any means. DS could also activate up to two times, instead of only once.
That said, it can generally be pointed out that "weaponizing anti-tunnelling tools" while not being a non-issue is a bit of an overblown issue. If a recently-unhooked survivor is in your face, you can just tunnel them. They are serving themselves up on a silver platter, not only not sitting on gens but instead of hiding also giving you the down for free while occupying at least two survivors' time. Wait out unhook Endurance, or, if they have OTR, just slap them and then chase them. If you suspect they have DS, slug them for free pressure/slowdown, wait out the timer if enough time has already passed for it to be feasible, or simply eat the Strike and tunnel them through it. And while not real counterplay, keep in mind that survivors can also miss the skill check. That happens rarely for experienced survivors, but it does happen, and the more people use it and the more often you pick them up instead of trying to wait out the timer or being afraid of it, the more often it will happen that people miss.
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While I think that this is the strongest Undetectable perk in the game and can be pretty BS on killers like Leatherface, I agree with what @squbax has pointed out regarding both the fact that you have to spend a precious perk slot on this as opposed to one of the powerful slowdown perks, and that "stealth" killer perks are cool and something that we should have good options of. Ever since Tinkerer more or less died after having had been the one Undetectable perk to be meta-relevant (and I still think it got overnerfed - with the Ruin and Undying nerf Tinkerer didn't need quite as harsh a nerf itself, it at the very least should still be able to activate up to two times per gen, but even an indefinite amount wouldn't be overpowered I don't think) we really haven't had good Undetectable perks that create this threat that a Bubba or the like can just pop up on you. Trail Of Torment was collaterally improved with the regression changes, but Unforeseen is a different beast still, as it not only doesn't announce itself across the map with the gen aura, but can even confuse SWF survivors as the lingering heartbeat doesn't make it as obvious what's happening. And it doesn't have the counterplay of stopping the regression either, you get the 30 seconds guaranteed. (It also has some interesting interactions with perks/abilities that apply in the terror radius, then of course applying around the affected gen.)
So yeah, I much welcome the introduction of this perk. And I don't really enjoy playing many of the stealth killers anyway, and those that I do enjoy have engaging abilities that still set them apart from others (Wraith, Chucky).
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Background Player is a severe case of "great for solo, horrible for SWF" design. Intentionally dying under pallets and having fellow SWF members around for the pallet save (or simply to threaten it until Flip-Flop + Power Struggle do the trick) has always been something that is problematic, but in the past the killer at least still knew the potential rescuer has to be in the immediate vicinity, and could relatively reliably chase them out of range or even get free hits and downs by finding them around the pallet or baiting the pick-up. With Background Player however, unless you are Blight or Nurse, there just isn't really a way to chase someone out of range or secure the perimeter. In solo queue on the other hand, not only do other players not know someone else might have Background Player, but intentionally dying under pallets isn't something people commonly do to begin with, as they can never know if another survivor is around or let alone whether they will even attempt to pallet save even if they are, not least because that other survivor might not realize they are under a pallet. Background Player makes opportunistic pallet saves more reliably possible in solo scenarios, and it also makes it more "efficiently" possible, in the sense that the survivor attempting to get a pallet save doesn't have to constantly run after chases just on the off-chance that a survivor will die under a pallet.
While they could nerf Background Player itself and probably should tone it down a bit regardless, it is far from the only perk that is problematic if a full SWF abuses it in a coordinated way. The real solution is to limit SWFs to only be able to use 1 instance of any perk between them. They can still use Background Player, but it will only be 1 player that has it, not only allowing for the possiblity that the Background Player player will be the one going down themselves, but also rendering this tactic much less reliable seeing as how not everyone can be on the perk, nor Flip-Flop + Power Struggle.
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I generally agree that 3 seconds were sufficient against quite a few of the killers, and that it was really only Nurse, Spirit and Blight who needed adjustments (such as stuns causing their abilities to have to recharge).
I would sign off on your idea that it simply puts abilities on cooldown for some time (the cooldown time starting after the stun has played out).
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The reason he latches onto the survivor on downs is that it will prevent Twins from using Victor to just keep downing people. It is a change made such that Victor can secure downs (with little to no meaningful counterplay, at that), but that Charlotte then actually has to pick up after him, and not play to slug everyone. If Victor would not latch onto downed survivors despite survivors not being able to kick him (or if Charlotte could recall him while latched onto someone on the floor, which I sure hope won't be the case), you could just use Victor to injure and down everyone over and over again.
For the record: I for one enjoyed Twins, both to play as and against. Save for a few Quality-of-Life adjustments, I wouldn't functionally have changed anything about them. And the new Victor will feel quite ridiculous. You just inevitably go down. The counterplay will still require a coordinated group, because you just have to try and make so much distance that someone can heal you up before Charlotte shows up. Or to use a far-away locker I suppose.
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...Or they could simply make Buckle Up not proc on For The People, just like they retroactively changed Made For This not to do so either. BU and FTP individually are perfectly fine perks that sit somewhere around B-tier viability and could if anything do with buffs.
Why they are not addressing this combo beats me. I will say that spending two out of four slots on perks that individually aren't amazing and even together not as strong as people make it out to be isn't really ideal. As much fun as it can be to instantly pick up a fallen fellow survivor, it is quite often the case that instead of doing that, you could have simply taken a hit for them, with not only the same outcome (two survivors injured instead of one survivor downed and another healthy), but you would regularly even get more distance from the killer doing so, as well as not suffer from Broken. In general it can also be said that altruistic plays like this are not all that optimal all that often to begin with, and people would be surprised how often matches would go better were they to simply stick to gens and let people get downed and hooked. FTP + BU encouraging overly altruistic play can absolutely backfire, from an overarching match perspective and of course in the individual situations themselves, where it's possible to get hit or downed before you can FTP, or where one of you may simply die again 10 seconds later.
I do still think the combo is problematic however, considering how it can basically nullify downs earned through instadown abilities/add-ons/perks, make taking hits for others difficult or impossible to play around (you either take the hit or in failing that use FTP), and all but guarantee escapes in the endgame. I think simply removing their synergy and compensating for that with slight respective buffs would be the way to go. Buffs could be things like increasing the Endurance time on BU and decreasing the Broken time on FPT.
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Not only do I not care much at all for BP, I actively dislike getting them because spending them is a chore even with the auto-complete feature we have these days. There should be an option to spend a million BP at a time instantly, and if they can't code it to finish actual bloodwebs that fast, just give us a mix of things based on their bloodweb appearance likeliness.
I had hoped the "Bloodweb Improvements" that they made a point of putting on the roadmap even months beforehand would be more than making it so we get the auto-complete feature on non-prestiged characters now too. That's something that can be implemented within a day and should have been there to begin with, not sure why this was worthy of its own point on the roadmap months in advance.
In general I think longtime players are often being left behind in this game. Bloodpoints don't mean much for players that already have all perks on the characters they play, there are no new base gameplay mechanics added ever (breakable walls are years old by now and a flop that never got revamped; at least we got a new interactable on the Nostromo map - why never more of that on other maps? Why not make the slot machines on the new map actually give us something, for instance?), not even the "events" usually significantly change up the gameplay, new killer abilities are often derivative of already-existing ones, no new items are being introduced nor existing ones improved, perks don't usually add new gameplay either nor are they regularly worth using at all, the most-used perks being 6+ years old on average, the matchmaking makes it so veteran players only meet equal players once in a blue moon, let alone groups of equal players, Devotion doesn't do anything, Prestige 100 has no real reward, ...
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For longtime players, the BP bonus isn't all that (or at all) interesting. So even if the event would be "the best time of the year to get BP", it wouldn't be exciting for me.
And the gameplay of the event is pretty lame as so often. Especially as survivor you have no real reason to ever activate blood circles - blood disappearing more quickly and having a 50% reduction in injured noises is not at all worth giving the killer twice the lunge range. Especially since you only "benefit" if you are injured. 100% noise reduction would at least be decent and actually allow for some non-standard gameplay, but at 50% it doesn't mean the killer can't hear you, just that they can't hear you as well, meaning they have to increase their volume a little or listen a little more attentively. And these effects are just boring anyway, you barely even notice them. Highly forgettable "event". If they at least replaced the skyboxes on the maps with the one from the lobby and maybe even had it rain blood or the like it would at least feel like an event. The bloody vines on hooks and gens look entirely unremarkable and don't do anything for me to make the game feel differently. So much for the "trials will be drenched in blood" from the recent stream.
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"without a doubt the skull merchant of perks" made me chuckle.
You are right in your assessment of course, the perk's a nightmare, but I will say one thing: With BHVR having decided to create a new "type" for this perk, it stands to be expected that there will be more of the same type in the future. Now that isn't necessarily true because "Teamwork" perks had (fortunately, given how awful they are...) also been one-offs, but a crucial difference here is that BHVR created an entirely new interaction complete with animations and HUD icons for Invocations. If you know anything about BHVR, you'll be aware that they usually go the route of least effort, reusing animations and mechanics all the time, almost never introducing new interactions, taking ages implementing much of anything. For them to have done all of these things for a perk (that is also objectively awful in so many respects) is crazy to think. It might take another year or whatever, but I'm convinced there will be more Invocation perks, it's as good as guaranteed that they didn't put in all of this "hard work" for a one-off instance that will also have 0.X% usage rates.
So, what does that mean. In the future, it could be possible that with multiple Invocations equipped, players could be spending the same time they are now for stacked rewards. There could come a point when the absurd time investment and risk may actually be worth the benefits garnered. If we for a second put on tinfoil hats and allow ourselves to be a little silly, it might even be speculated that BHVR specifically released a comically bad perk as an introduction to Invocations to get ahead of the incessant complaints of killer players that led to the death of, among others, Boon perks (being silly because ultimately it is of course on BHVR for not creating good perks and overnerfing the one perk that carried Boons to relevance). If they create this air of ridiculousness surrounding Invocations, the community may take better to future releases and adjustments that may actually make it a worthwhile game mechanic.
...That said, there's still a plethora of issues even if this were true. Sitting in basement staring at the floor for two minutes will never be compelling gameplay design no matter what. Future Invocations would also be expected to come with their own "sacrifices", so now you'd not only be Broken but also Hindered, Blinded or the like. The fact would remain that any benefits that are actually worth the absurd investment would likely feel absurd for the killer to be on the receiving end of. It can also be argued that these perks would never be more than the sum of their parts, meaning that if no singular Invocation perk is worth the investment in and of itself, using multiple also won't truly remedy the situation. Simply because while you may still be spending the same amount of time for then additional benefits, you are also spending additional perk slots that individually aren't worth it. This is the same reason why Boons "died" with the death of Circle Of Healing - if no singular Boon perk is truly worth blessing a totem for, equipping any of them is a waste of perk slots (relative of course to using other perks in those slots instead). When Circle was still a really impactful perk, other Boons were often used alongside it because blessing totems was already worth it for Circle alone, so getting additional value from doing so by bringing other Boon perks was more sensible, forgoing other perks for that didn't hurt as much. Of course, if all Boon perks were better individually, using them alongside one another would also become more attractive, but I do believe that they have to at least be decent individually to ever be used, and that you need some really impactful ones if you are to ever convince serious players to replace other perks they could be using instead. So given how awful the risk + investment to reward ratio is for Weaving Spiders, you'd have to have pretty ridiculously impactful Invocation perks to make it ever worth the consideration alongside them. ...Which would probably lead to people often using only those good Invocation perks and killers complaining a lot about them, just like "Boons OP" was a common complaint when it was exclusively Circle that was at all strong enough to be worth the slot outright.
So yeah, I don't know, even with future Invocations I struggle to see one in which Weaving Spiders will ever be worth using. I guess we can hope that BHVR intentionally were very conservative and cautious with the release version of Spiders to be able to then gradually buff it in the future. But I doubt it, they after all went from 15 to 10 charges from PTB to live, so it really doesn't seem like "powercreeping" the perk is on their agenda.
It's just mindboggling this ever got released. I really wonder what goes on in their design meetings and rooms, for them to come up and out with this. It's already always been perplexing that they release perks the majority of which are so lackluster they barely break the 1-digit percentage mark in usage rates, that they seemingly don't mind that most of the 20 most used perks 6+ years old. But this perk is a new level, it's downright shocking, especially because they spent such an untypical amount of work on its implementation.
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I mean, by this metric empty perk slots are some of the best loadout choices you can make... There is much more that goes into pickrate than the objective strength of the choices. After all, the strongest killers do not have the highest global pickrates, either. For one big thing, relative strength is usually a much more important variable in these global stats, specifically meaning the difficulty of using something as compared to its strength. Things that are easy to use and yet still strong are much more favoured and perform much better on average than things that may be objectively stronger but harder to use, because the average player is not very skilled or smart at the game.
Even ignoring whether Nightlight is an accurate source for this kind of thing (their perk usage rates usually have at least been more accurate than their kill rates, but there are still notable discrepancies and they still don't use killer-submitted data for this either), pickrate is not a great measure of strength. Self-Care, Deja, Windows, Distortion, BBQ, Surge, Brutal Strength, Enduring, they're all top picks statistically but they're just decent perks at best, they're not strong or let alone problematically strong. Likewise, some of the strongest most-used perks are not necessarily in need of adjustments either, pickrate is even less of a measure of how "problematic" the strength of a perk is. Yet from your reasoning that pickrate determines whether a perk is fine or not, surely you must think the top 5 perks are all problematic and need changes?
Ultimate Weapon specifically is a fairly recent licensed perk from a chapter that is also more expensive than the average licensed chapter. There are also killers that do not benefit from it as much due to having small or no terror radii. It is also not easy for newer and intermediate players to use because where auras tell them precisely where a survivor is and what they are doing and can allow them to get the jump and easy hits on them, the scream ping requires the killer player to still do a bit more of their own thinking and tracking. Not only that, but since the survivor knows they have been revealed, the dynamic is different from aura perks that are more insidious. Good killer players however don't care if the survivor knows they have been revealed: they outplay the survivor in chase, they don't need to get surprise hits. I would also assume that a lot of players (and again especially newer/intermediate players) gravitate toward perks like BBQ and Nowhere To Hide because they happen naturally as they do things they would otherwise be doing too, such as hooking survivors and kicking gens. Opening lockers does not come naturally to most, it is not part of the normal gameplay loop.
UW is absolutely problematically strong in the hands of a competent player. Game sense is such an important skill, and UW replaces a good portion of it. You don't need to know survivor spawns or the patterns of how survivors behave in the early game, you can just open a locker. You don't need to know which gens would be opportune to contest or defend and spend time going to them to check whether someone's repairing them, open a locker. You don't have to know about hiding spots and evaluate whether checking them is worth the time investment in a specific scenario, just locker. You don't need to have an insight into where sensible reset locations could be, locker does it. You don't need to consider various things to decide whether and how hard to proxi-camp, locker tells you. You don't need to anticipate the movements and hiding spots of a recently-unhooked survivor to tunnel them out, locker guides you. You don't have to weigh the risks of committing to a chase or snuffing out reset locations in a 3-gen scenario, the locker knows it.
Apart from it being "game sense" in perk slot form, other problems include the fact that its interaction interruption synergizes with various other perks and abilities in powerful ways, such as Dead Man's Switch, Hex perks, RBTs, that stealth which this perk all but does away with is integrally important to newer and intermediate survivor players that can't lead chases, and integrally important at any level against killers that nobody can reliably lead chases against (primarily of course Nurse, Blight and Spirit), and that its Blindness hampers the already low level of coordination particularly in solo groups, where not seeing the auras of slugged and hooked survivors as well as not having the help of things like Bond and Kindred can be game-deciding. It can also be said that UW encourages and supports camping and tunnelling because it literally screams at its user "there are people here, don't go away", or "the injured survivor is right there". As well as slugging for the 4k, an unfortunate gameplay aspect that long should have been rebalanced that many players however fortunately don't regularly employ because it's boring for everyone involved, spending minutes on the floor/hiding/searching - with UW on the other hand, you can fairly reliably find the last survivor standing, so if someone has the perk equipped it is much more likely they will slug for the 4k. It also makes the 1V1 endgame scenario that is likewise an unfortunate gameplay design aspect that should long have been improved be tilted even more in the killer's favour, where with UW in play escape is essentially impossible unless hatch basically spawns next to the survivor.
Luckily we don't have to debate whether UW is in need of attention, BHVR has already included it on the roadmap. It's actually comically obvious from that fact that BHVR knows it is problematic and intended for it to be, putting it on the roadmap right after release but giving it a few months for people to buy the chapter. It's the Made For This-equivalent, having a pointedly too powerful effect for next to no investment, and then another strong effect and ridiculous synergies on top just to make sure it really is over-the-top powerful.
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Maybe watch a good player play him sometime and reconsider how "unreliable" his power is: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2088698595
KnightLight here is on a 30 or so winstreak with him, usually winning at 3-4 gens left standing I think. Coincidentally, he's also of the opinion Singularity is borderline S-tier, and that certainly a good Singularity player will basically never lose in pubs. In fact, I'm pretty sure he's never lost a Singularity match even in tournaments.
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@Quizzy said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3676639#Comment_3676639
This should not come as a surprised. The same applies when a killer uses pain res and the blocked gen does not regress at all. This is why it's not wise to have pain res and perks like deadlock in your build. You will waste a token if pain res hit a deadlocked gen because it will not lose 25%. This also happens with repressed alliance which I've seen some survivors use to counter pain res. It will not regress the highest progressed gen at all.
Again, increasing or decreasing the amount of charges of progress on a generator is different from increasing or decreasing the amount of charges required to complete a generator.
Also, just as a by the way, while what you lined out was true for some time a few patches ago, it is no longer true now. If a gen is blocked, Pain Res will ignore it and apply to the next most-progressed gen. If all gens with progress are blocked, Pain Res will simply not activate, retaining its token.
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@Mandy said:
If a Gen is blocked it cannot be progressed or regressed - so yes, this is not a bug but by design of the perk.
Not that I think Spiders wouldn't still be the worst perk ever released even if blocked gens weren't exempt from its effect, but its effect does not "progress" gens, it doesn't add any charges to them, it reduces the amount of charges required to complete them. It is entirely without precedent that gens being blocked would interfere with this in any way.
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Some preliminary feedback and suggestions ("preliminary" meaning I entertain the possibility that my impressions are overly premature and that more practice as and against the killer can change them):
For the good stuff: Visual and audio design are great. I like the voice, the terror and chase music, and while I thought the killer would mostly feel and look silly in trials, it does actually make for a fairly unsettling design. It strikes that midpoint between goofy and eerie, which is a sweet spot for an alien creature. It is reminiscent to me of Killer Klowns from Outer Space, where the combination of silly antics and gratuitous violence seems similarly unsettling. I would actually not be surprised if that movie specifically was some sort of inspiration in the designing process - we know from Dredge for instance that BHVR likes to reference/pay homage to/copy from more obscure horror movies (1985's House, in that case), and the UVX being a pink projectile with those silly sound effects that also leaves survivors pink (like the cotton candy in Killer Klowns) seems just a bit too uncanny of a resemblance. That is on top of course of the Unknown itself already being reminiscent of the Killer Klowns - an alien in a distorted, grotesque humanoid housing, big sinister smile and all. Anyway, while the in-trial animations don't make it appear merely silly (like Demo for example), it is a bit disappointing that none of the weird, twitchy, jerky, bendy animations we can see in the lobby really made it into the trial animation loop. Or the crawling, for that matter. Would make it more pointedly "alien".
The ranged projectile hit and teleportation abilities are nothing at all groundbreaking and don't add anything really new or uniquely engaging to the game. The bouncing of the projectile could be something novel but mechanically it really doesn't change much, it would have to be more pronounced and controlled to really constitute part of the power's mechanics. As it is, it's basically just a normal projectile "with an extra step", that is also generally more of a hindrance than it enables the killer to make interesting shots work. The instant teleportation definitely feels great, although we have plenty teleporting killers in the game already, and with Dredge and Hag (and I suppose Spirit's and Nurse's "return to original position" add-ons) even some that do so instantly as well. The "look at the killer" counterplay does add something uniquely engaging however, and it's something I've been wanting in the game for a long time. Obviously there's Ghostface, but apart from its implementation in that case being very clunky (sometimes you can't break him out of Shroud even when you're both right out in the open, sometimes you break him out while not being able to see him at all), it isn't really something that happens fluidly and continually in chases. With the Unknown, we now have that interesting and engaging dynamic of needing to look at the killer as much as possible while in a chase, and it seems fairly consistent to me so far.
There is however a bit too large a disparity in my opinion between the time it generally takes a survivor to lose Weakened and the time it takes UVX to recharge. On paper, it is 10 seconds for the former and 7 for the latter, but since line-of-sight is regularly broken and since UVX can hit through walls, it is much more typical that it takes upwards of twice the base time to lose Weakened, allowing for around 3 attempts to hit the survivor after applying Weakened. If they get hit, the Weakened state is even prolonged by another 6 seconds (although I'm not sure whether this is added on top of any remaining Weakened amount or simply sets it to 6 seconds). In either case, I feel this (along with the large hitzone and object-penetrating aspect) makes the ability a tad too oppressive, and the 6 seconds of Weakened incurred by consecutive hits if anything shows that it is plenty to still be able to follow up with a shot on. This leads me to multiple possible adjustments that could alleviate the oppressiveness of the UVX, any or a mix of which could be adequate.
The first suggestion is simple: Reduce the time to lose Weakened to 7 seconds. This means the killer will generally get 1 guaranteed follow-up shot, but only more if they can keep out of the survivor's sight enough, with the survivor having the opportunity to prevent further follow-ups with good camera control and movement and risky pathing. You will have stats on this, but I suspect it will still on average result in the possibility of two follow-up shots on a Weakened survivor, which seems fine as opposed to the average of 3 I suspect it is currently.
Another suggestion is that looking at and/or dispelling Hallucinations also drains Weakened from survivors.
Something else could be the possibility that the amount of Weakened a survivor has determines within which radius of the blast zone they suffer damage, outside of which they merely suffer Hindered (the strength and/or duration of which could also scale with the amount of Weakened at the time of impact).
Or simply removing the part where a survivor injured by an UVX suffers another 6 seconds of Weakened.
A more ambitious adjustment would be to the mechanics of the projectile itself. Instead of being able to ready and hold the shot, pressing M2 would automatically charge and shoot the projectile wherever the killer is aiming after it has finished charging. This would make it more difficult to hit survivors/enable survivors to dodge more proactively and it would also remove the - likewise fairly oppressive - ability of the Unknown to zone survivors with the threat of the shot, not least due the possibility of simply cancelling it. It would also remedy another thing that may be considered an issue, namely the ability to hold and then cancel the shot in order to place Hallucinations in locations of one's choosing. In turn, you should then add a trajectory indicator for the UVX projectile, that shows both the point of impact and the bounce trajectory. You could even make it so that the killer can manually detonate the projectile at will at any point within its flight. This would add unique and engaging mechanics that are also fun to use, while balancing the UVX a bit.
For the teleportation part of the power, the only adjustment I would like to see (apart maybe from automatically dispelling any priorly-placed Hallucination upon hooking a survivor within 12m of that hook) is that the killer cannot teleport to a Hallucination that is currently being dispelled, if the dispelling survivor is in chase state. This would add a semblance of counterplay to teleports in chase. I also think survivors should be able to look around while dispelling, but that is a secondary concern.
Alternatively, the animations and sound cues for teleporting could give more of a warning that it is about to happen, enabling survivors to react a bit better without having to essentially gamble on a coinflip.
There are also other things that can be tinkered with to try and tone down the oppressiveness of Unknown's chase of course, such as movement speeds while readying a shot, shooting, and after having done so or having cancelled the shot.
There could also be buffs in other respects to compensate, such as the ability to break pallets and walls with the UVX. Direct hits on survivors could also be a little more impactful, interrupting interactions, afflicting a greater Hindered effect, reducing the UVX recharge time for the next shot, or the like.
Unbound and Unforeseen are pretty decent perks, but Undone needs to have a different activation stipulation than survivors missing skill checks, over which the killer has next to no agency. I think it gaining tokens whenever an Exhaustion perk is triggered would make for an interesting condition.
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Heal tech is pretty BS. I agree (and have before suggested) that killers should have the authority to pick up survivors that are being healed, forcing other survivors off. Likewise to kick gens that are being worked on.
"Survivors should not be allowed to perform conspicuous actions a few seconds after being struck" is something else entirely though. That would mean they cannot unhook after being hit, for just one thing that would change the entire game.