Chapter 18 Changes - Full Critique

Semimatic

This is not a hate forum or anything. I know people are upset about the changes, but I'm going to give an unbiased critique on the Chapter 18 changes that were announced and how some of them weren't needed or lacking.

I'm especially going after this:

Again, we want to reiterate that these changes are tentative. The exact details and times for these changes may vary from the list above. We hope these changes address any concerns you may have had, and we can’t wait for you to get your hands on Chapter 18!

I feel people are giving genuine criticism but they aren't trying to introduce numbers into play here. I want to make a forum that addresses these general issues people have with numbers that we would be content with. Let's begin.

I will be skimming over adequate changes and directly focusing on negatively received changes.

THE TWINS

Summary (of issues with the changes): Though at first glance seems like a resolution, the Victor hostage scenario and lockers are not fixed overall. Even with release, with the same remaining numbers and all, the Victor hostage is not fixed. The lockers will eventually be fixed, however, the fact that they won't be upon release is insanity to be quite honest.

For those unaware, here are the changes they made:

1.

Victor will be able to interact with lockers and hold a Survivor inside for a short amount of time. If Charlotte interacts with the locker in time, she will grab the Survivor. If the Survivor is not grabbed out of the locker in time, they will break free, killing Victor in the process.

This will take some animation work, however, so this will not be ready for the initial release.

And additionally,

2.

After being attached to a Survivor for 45 seconds, Charlotte will see Victor’s aura and be able to recall him.

PROBLEMS WITH 1:

Alone this change is good if anything, but the fact that it won't be available on release kills any hopes for people to buy this DLC when it comes out and when the fix comes the hype will have already generally died. The fact that the entire killer power can be countered with no counterplay from the killer side already is screwed up, but additionally that this will still be in affect for the first few weeks or even month after the chapter is released.

Solution: Delay the chapter if possible to finish the locker animations or else the killer power will literally be unusable.

PROBLEMS WITH 2:

This doesn't really fix the hostage situation. It lessens its severity, but it doesn't actually fix it. You are still able to go a full 45 seconds with Victor on your back and leave Charlotte powerless for that long. Even with seeing Victor's location, there's issues with this:

1) There's no actual use of this when you can call Victor back. You can see their location, sure, but in order to achieve this you have to go powerless for a full 45 seconds. Even with the aura revealed, you still have to waste time going to that specific survivor that can be across the map to get them, so you might as well just recall Victor.

2) Survivors still have control over the killer's power, and if we've learned from early Plague (etc.), we know that this really kills the fun for killers.

3) 45 seconds is way too long. For context, if two survivors are working on a generator, it gets finished in ~42 seconds. You can pretty much become a basic M1 killer with no way to use a power to interrupt generators by the time two survivors complete one. In SWF with coordinated teams, this would be a literal nightmare.

4) There is still no actual incentive to remove Victor. For 45 seconds, you literally can just hijack Victor which can allow one-two generators go by when Charlotte actually gets her power back with no way to actually keep them off of generators without her power. Restricting a single survivor from doing generators (amongst other minor actions) is not a large restriction at all, especially for chase-oriented survivors and SWFs. The following would provide better incentives, whether many of these are afflicted, only one, etc:

• Your movement speed is lowered to an effective degree.
• Once Victor latches, your aura will be revealed immediately or after a short duration if you don't immediately try to take him off.
• You could possibly enter the Dying state if you do not take Victor off in time unless if you're in a chase. Essentially a Deep Wound where you have to only remove Victor which counts as the mending.

5) There's no reason to actually keep Victor on either. If he literally provides practically no incentive for a survivor to take them off, that means he's not even a burden on them in the first place. Let's say there is no hostage situation, why would you even want to manually recall him? Shouldn't it just naturally happen, because there is no actual reason to keep him on them.

Solution: Victor's effects need to be more drastic to provide an actual incentive for survivors to remove him, an incentive that can universally affect any survivor despite their playstyle (i.e. some survivors won't even care about generators and leave them to teammates, making Victor have no actual detriment to them).

You should be able to call back Victor much more frequently, I'd suggest at minimum a 10-15 second wait time to recall Victor after latching onto him. However, if Victor provides more downsides to survivors if latched on, it would also provide more strategy for if a killer wants to intentionally keep Victor on a survivor for as long as possible without immediately recalling him.

COUP DE GRACE:

Coup De Grace was a perk of The Twins that increased the distance of your lunge that can be activated per the amount of generators completed.

In all honesty, this was an extremely uncalled for perk change. Coup De Grace was already situational and generally ineffective, because the lung increase never even affected the lunge speed, making it so a survivor could still easily make certain vaults. Not only that, but the perk could only activate 5 times maximum per match, with on average it would probably just take up a perk slot in slower games, key games, etc.

Here is the nerf for those unaware:

Coup de Grace: Reduced the lunge increase from 60/80/100% to 40/50/60%.

This is less of a change that's game breaking or changing, but it's unintentional because it takes a bad perk that people would generally not use and made it so nobody would use. It's now so ineffective because the lunge speed hasn't even been adjusted either. It makes you wonder where BHVR's priorities are.

The normal lunge animation has a killer reach 6.9 m/s for 0.3 seconds, that means Coup De Grace (at tier III) made it go from 0.3 to 0.6 (I assume at least) which honestly on paper seems extremely effective, but the 6.9 m/s stays the same. I could see how BHVR after looking at the numbers thought it was extreme, but in an actual game, the 6.9 m/s stays the same so there's nothing that's actually too effective with this.

With Tier III Coup De Grace with the now changes (again, assuming it's affecting the duration of the lunge for more distance), it would go from 0.3 to 0.48. On paper, this even seems pathetic.

GOOD CHANGES:

Exit Gate Change:

This is honestly fine. It's just a really simple change that fixes an issue, so it's nothing to really write home about. Thanks I guess, but please fix the other issues.

Pounce Change:

This wasn't really too much of an issue but I'm on board with it because it seems to increase the Slice of Life while playing Victor and fixes issues such as having to endlessly circle an object without being able to pounce.

ELODIE

Well, survivors don't have their own abilities and such, but I will be going over her perk change. Also, just saying, they're really making survivors look great now so props to them. She looks really classy imo and bada** (don't know if the forums will censor this, wait, if this is a Mature rated game, why is censoring for basic swear-)

• Appraisal: The speed bonus no longer applies to unlocking a chest, only rummaging.
• Appraisal: Each chest can only be rummaged once per Survivor.

Honestly, I totally understand this change, but it wasn't really needed and takes a lot of fun out of the perk in my opinion. It's not really a bad change or an incredible and downright unfair nerf, but it just makes the perk go from fun to meh in my opinion.

VERDICT

2 / 5 GENERATORS

The developers at least recognize what issues exist but their ways of handling the most major issues are extremely flawed.

Tell me your thoughts!

HealsBadMan

The only change I would add is that the speed bonus removal from Appraisal was unnecessary. The only rationale for it was so Pharmacy (an already bad+niche perk) wasn't made completely useless. It makes more sense for Appraisal to have the speed bonus, since its more focused on chests than Pharmacy. They should revert this change and rework Pharmacy (and everything else about Quentin, but this perk is the issue rn). Other than that, good analysis!

gibblywibblywoo

I'm still pretty disappointed how poorly thought it this killer seems to be. A shame because I love the concept and find Victor hilarious.

It boggles my mind though. We know they have a QA team. Most of these issues should have been apparent long before public testing.