Ideas on how to make Spirit more interactive for the game by a Spirit main
Spirit has been my favorite killer since her release last year and in that time I've racked up hundreds of hours worth of experience just by playing Spirit. Despite Spirit being considered by many as being extremely fun to play as, her lack of feedback to the survivors often makes her an extremely unfun killer to go up against which can often be made worse with addons or specific perks. With all of this out of the way, I've recently came up with some ideas that would ideally allow Spirit to provide more feedback to the survivors with the goal of making her more fun to play against while also providing other changes to allow her to maintain the same level of strength she currently has.
Here are my current ideas for The Spirit's power and a few of her addons ;
- Yamaoka's Haunting allows the Spirit to become intermittent. While she's invisible neither the survivor or killer can see each other, but whenever she reappears both the survivor and killer can see each other. At a base she first reappears at 2 seconds and every 1.2 seconds after that, the duration of each reappearance is 0.5 seconds. (similar to how the old Freddy dream transition worked)
- During Yamaoka's Haunting you have no collision with survivors (already exists in the PTB), you can move grass and sounds created by survivors and the environment are reduced. (edited)
- Spirit produces a visible animation when charging her power.
- In return for the changes above, the base duration of the power is increased by 1 second (6 seconds total), the cooldown of the power is reduced by 3 seconds (12 seconds total) and the return of the current post-phase boost.
With these ideas in mind, here are the addon changes I would like to propose.
- Dried Cherry Blossom grants the ability to force a passive phase at the cost of 33% of your power charge whenever you press the secondary ability button. The current effects of Dried Cherry Blossom which increases the frequency and duration of passive phasing is also kept.
- Juniper Bonsai loses the increased frequency of passive phasing but like Dried Cherry Blossom it grants the ability to force a passive phase at the cost of 33% of your power charge whenever you press the secondary ability button.
- Father's Glasses increases the duration of the reappearance windows by 0.4 seconds (0.9 seconds total).
- Wakizashi Saya moderately decreases the frequency of the reappearances so they occur every 1.7 seconds instead of every 1.2 seconds. Wakizashi Saya additionally decreases the reappearance time by -0.2 seconds.
- Katana Tsuba decreases the reappearance time by -0.2 seconds.
Like I mentioned above, my goal with this post is to propose ideas to help make Spirit more fun to play against without posting a straight up nerf as the way I view the problem with Spirit is not her current level of strength but instead the lack of feedback she provides. Feel free to leave your thoughts or even additional ideas below.
Comments
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I completely agree with everything except for the charge animation. Psychological manipulation is part of the core concept of Spirit and I think it'd be nice to keep at least one element of that. Survivors need to be aware of the limitations of her power and get punished for not paying attention while fighting against her. I also think that if these changes went through, I'd like to keep the current lack of a vault animation for the little extra mindgame potential.
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This is pretty much the same idea I had, except I think the spirit/survivor should only appear to each other twice at base and maybe be breakable with addons.
The reasoning for only once or twice is that too much information on where she is will just kill her power but a glimpse into where she is will make the mind game even stronger because you can fake running in a particular direction.
Something to note though is that her own tracking needs to be lessened, maybe if survivor sounds were 50% more quiet OR scratch marks appear slower (both exclusively while in phase), otherwise it would be a buff to her (she could just phase to where she last saw you and follow the scratchmarks/sounds).
What do you think about these slight tweaks?
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I would agree only if the intermittent Haunting is missable if you blink. So you have to really really pay attention to see her. Though, I feel like if the survivor is close enough to you they shouldn't be able to see you phasing intermittently. Not close enough within TR, but close enough like 12-6 meters or something from the husk. Which would force the survivor to either abandon a loop (If the Spirit is phasing on a loop) or stick around guessing whether or not she is phasing.
Once you're outside the range you'll see an intermittent image of her if she is phasing.
I don't mind the charge animation either, but only if she also does it during her normal idle animation randomly. Like @Skaraok said, psychological manipulation is part of her core concept. So making survivors second guess whether or not it was a real phase is why I wouldn't mind this change, if it is also a part of her normal idle animation.
One other thing I might add is maybe instead of making her duration longer by 1 second, you make it faster by like 5-10%. Duration addons aren't all that useful if I have to be honest, so giving Spirit more duration doesn't sound like that much of a payoff. But hey, if a duration increase is for the better I'm not going to argue with that.
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To me, the core concept of the Spirit is being able to turn invisible and move really fast, in any direction she chooses, and able to change directions as much as she wants. The whole "psychological manipulation" aspect of it really doesn't work in practice.
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Being invisible is part of that "psychological manipulation"
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Sure, but I really have to disagree with people when they say that Spirit would be over-nerfed if she actually had some clear warnings attached to her power. Her power lets her turn invisible and move at a ridiculous speed in any direction she wants, to the point where the only way to escape it is to trick her into moving in the wrong direction (Which is obviously unreliable against a decent Spirit with headphones). If she had warnings attached to her Phase Walk, she'd still be a very fast and very powerful killer.
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Her speed is limited to a low duration time. And a long recharge time. Other than that she is a 110% killer.
She won't be as powerful if her phasing has clear tells. As a survivor can just choose the most obviously safe option. By walking towards the husk if they knew the Spirit is phasing. It should be hard to notice and requires you to pay attention
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No, it really shouldn't. Spirit already has all of the makings of a top-tier Killer; high mobility to traverse the map quickly, and a power that drastically reduces chase times.
Literally every other killer has clear auditory and visual warnings when they use their power. Spirit should not be an exception to the rule, especially considering how powerful her base kit is.
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Considering she goes blind with a slight muffled sound (the vacuum sound she makes can make things confusing). She shouldn't have something clear.
Consistency is not how you make killers that are unique in how they play and play against. That's why people disliked Myers' Undetectable Change. Immunity to Spine Chill/Premonition was what made T1 Myers scary to go up against.
I know I may be in the minority here but whenever I go up against a Spirit, even in an SWF where everyone else is groaning, I am probably the only one who gets excited. Though that is mainly because I want survivor to be much harder than it is right now. And Spirit is that kind of difficulty that is also fair in my opinion, if you've played her and learned her for a while.
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Every Killer's power has drawbacks to it. Trapper and Hag have to stop moving in order to place down a trap. Does that mean that Trapper and Hag should have no auditory or visual warnings attached to their power? No.
Never confuse "interesting" or "unique" with "fun". A killer that can instantly mori you the moment they see you would be unique, but certainly not fun.
And yes, you are in the minority. Spirit is an easy killer to learn, who is very obnoxious to play against. You shouldn't have to dedicate a huge amount of time to learning how to play against one specific killer. If you have good Survivor fundamentals and understand how the killer's power works, you should be able to win against them. And considering that even the best Survivor players often struggle against Spirit, I'd hardly call her difficulty "fair".
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Yes and Spirit's drawback is not being able to see any survivors. That's a pretty huge drawback.
I guess I shouldn't say fun, because fun is subjective. But I do find her to be fun to go up against. Having a killer that keeps you on your toes, makes you feel like you're actually in danger, makes every moment you work on a gen a relief. That's the kind of killers I want to see in this game. Killers that are powerful and require extensive knowledge to go up against.
But again, that's why I say I am in the minority. I don't want to win games easily. I want to work for it. To get moments of great teamwork in as a survivor or moments where I feel like I am snowballing to victory as a killer. Being able to "gg ez" my way through the game is not how I like to play games. Games are just not fun when they aren't challenging or difficult, when luck isn't involved much.
It's one of the reasons why I think the they should just buff killers more than nerfing them, make them an actual threat. But I digress, we're going way off topic with the original post. Which is about suggesting changes to Spirit to make her seem more fair.
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It would be a huge drawback... if the Spirit player was deaf. The Nurse has a power which makes it near-impossible to loop her, and forces you to rely only on stealth, jukes and Exhaustion perks to avoid getting hit. It also gives her several seconds of fatigue every time she uses it, and has limited charges so she can't spam it, and reduces her base movement speed to a crawl, AND has clear auditory and visual warnings attached to it. And yet she's still one of the best killers.
It's Multiplayer Game Design 101: You always have to consider how fun a mechanic is to play against, not just how fun it is to use. And an essential part of creating a good character in a multiplayer game is attaching warnings and telegraphs to their abilities, so the other player can properly react to it.
I have zero issue with strong killers. You don't see me complaining about Hillbilly or Huntress; in fact, I hold them up as an excellent example of strong, well-designed killers. Because their powers have clear auditory and visual warnings before they come out, and there's always room to react to them and play around them.
I strongly disagree with the idea that we need to buff killers, especially killers that are already performing so well. Every killer in the game already gets more than two kills on average, even in the red ranks. Changes to Killers should be focused around making them more fun to play with and play against, not just around making them more powerful.
If we want to make Spirit seem more fair, then her power should have a clear auditory and visual warning when she uses it. It's a simple change, but it would accomplish that goal quite well.
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I get the feeling that the only reason they got rid of the mindgame vault animation is because it can negate the killer shack pallet. But, then again, I've gone against survivors who don't fall for the spirits mind games at all. So, knowing this, I have to say that a lot of what makes the spirit powerful with mindgaming is the 'cognitive complexity' or wits of the survivor.
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Sorry for the late response. I wasn't exactly too sure how many times I wanted the phase to allow her to flicker in and out. You do give a good point, but it's hard to say without any real method of testing this. I do however agree with doing something about the sounds, but rather than decrease the volume I believe her whooshing sounds should be louder.
I thought increasing her speed rather than her duration and the reason why I went for duration instead is because it allows her to cover more distance especially with the fact that both parties would be able to see the position of each other, allowing for more time to confuse the other player or to further assist with mobility. With 10% extra speed you only cover 37.2 meters, with 1 second of extra duration you cover 42.24 meters and it's slightly easier to react to considering that she isn't moving as quickly. Either option could work though.
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Can we don't nerf her again thanks.
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Spirit is not a stealth killer. Spirit is a killer who ######### with everything that survivors consider "normal" about a killer. This is exemplified by her lack of a power animation, her confusing TR, her omnidirectional whoosh, her lack of a vault anim, etc etc. That doesn't mean that she's unbeatable by any means. The strongest counter to Spirit is the thing that counters every single other killer in the game: doing your objective. If you dick around against a semi-decent Spirit and try to loop her like you're playing against Trapper, you will inevitably die.
Sorry you don't have fun against her. I love her power, I think she's an amazing killer who's fun to play against and requires more brain cells than an average survivor game can muster up. Have to agree with DelsKibara, I want all killers in this game to be strong in their own right - I don't want to play a game where I just fight against M1 killers every game and ROFLstomp every single one of them.
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The only reason I'm an advocate of lower survivor sounds is because as things stand right now all she has to do is phase to the last place she saw the survivor and she either
1) Sees scratches and can follow them till she hears the survivor.
2) Doesn't see scratches thus meaning the survivor is close and she can search she area till she hears them
3) If there is a vault nearby and you can neither hear or see the survivor then just leave phase to see where they are and get your power back in approximately 5 or so seconds.
The problem with louder whooshing sounds is that if the survivor is injured its still gg unless you have iron will, and it also means that stridor would still make it very easy to triangulate the survivors position.
People say she's fun and unique but coming from someone who has put a fair amount of time into her it's just process of elimination to figure out where the survivor is, which is not a guess for her as people seem to think it is (or if so its an educated guess).
I definitely disagree with her having increased movement speed or longer duration though as I feel she is plenty fast as it is, unless the intermittent blink happens fairly frequently (in which case would be too much of a nerf for her in my opinion). Also, if you made her faster/phase last longer you would be buffing her because irrespective of the survivor knowing roughly where she is, there is still very little you can do about it with her being so much faster than you.
Very interesting thread so far though, I would also agree that I don't want her to be gutted and I want her to remain as a top 3 killer, but just to give survivors a little more of a chance, (particularly when injured)
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I don't exactly see where the goal of my post is to nerf her. There are some aspects of her that would be changed but everything is met with changes to compensate for it such as the lower cooldown and higher duration.
Fair point on the sounds then, I'm fine with decreased volume while phasing so I'll add that to the post.
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