The Afterpiece Antidote

undeadcookie

Hi,

After being a Clown main up until Descend Beyond (the bonky boi was too fun not to main), I figured I'd give my feedback after playing the reworked Clown for a few days. This is still all only based on the three days he's been out, but I feel like there are already a few things regarding The Clown's new kit that warrant feedback.

I mainly want to cover the actual effects of the Afterpiece Antidote and it's placement in The Clown's kit. When the Antidote was first revealed, it was mentioned that it's intention was to offer an intriguing struggle for survivors, debating whether they would want to go to the nearest pallet for safety in a chase or risk entering the Antidote gas for a potential speed boost mid-chase. While this is a genuinely intriguing idea in theory, I don't believe it's translated well to the game itself. The Clown's original ammo type, the Afterpiece Tonic has already established The Clown as an anti-loop Killer for most of the experienced playerbase, meaning that the predominant style of counterplay against him is dropping pallets early at a tile and then either continuing to loop it or pushing onto the next one. As such, this sort of negates the idea of the Afterpiece Antidote being used as a method of luring Survivors away from pallets. Dropping a pallet early is already considered the safest strategy against The Clown; most survivor won't sacrifice that near-guaranteed safety for a potential speed boost that may not even affect the chase at all.

The discussion of a potential speed boost leads me into my second topic: the effects of the Antidote itself. A 10% speed boost is something that, again, seems efficient on paper, but has been near negligible in practice, especially given the delay before the Antidote activates. There is almost 0 reason to use the Antidote at any loop, as the activation window gives a Survivor ample time to decide if the tile (which, again, will likely already have the pallet dropped and be in its safest form due to the presence of the Afterpiece Tonic) is worth looping around or if it would be more beneficial to move to the next tile (which is admittedly situational, but the situation itself isn't uncommon). I would propose that the Antidote be updated to not have a delay before activation and make it so that the Invigorated status effect boosts action speed in addition to the 10% speed boost for both Killers and Survivors. This way, the Antidote would have a use both outside of chase for the Killer (map traversal, breaking walls, damaging generators, etc.) and in chase for both Killers and Survivors (vaulting windows, vaulting pallets, breaking pallets, etc.) and still provide an interesting struggle between both sides trying to take advantage of its effects.

Finally, I want to discuss the amount of bottles The Clown is allowed to carry. In its current state, the effects of the Afterpiece Antidote do not warrant the idea of juggling between two ammo types sharing a single ammo pool. Even with the decreased reload speed, the time gained by using Antidote bottles will more often than not be lost by the slowdown that occurs when reloading. As such, I would propose that The Clown's base amount of bottles be increased to 5 bottles and that the Cheap Gin Bottle add-on be reworked to have a different effect. I believe the Sticky Soda Bottle add-on would be fine, as having 6 bottles would warrant an add-on slot without being utterly broken, but 7 bottles may be one too many given how little a proficient player would need to reload.

While I admit this release has had its issues, I am still enjoying the game and am overjoyed to see BHVR finally being open in its communication with the Dead By Daylight playerbase. I believe that studio-to-player communication has been one of the largest issues with Dead By Daylight throughout its lifespan, and I hope to see it continually improve as it seems to be now <3

TL;DR:

• The intended use of the Afterpiece Antidote (at least how it was described in the debut Dev Tapes stream) contradicts how experienced players tend to play against The Clown and has resulted in the Antidote having very little use.
• The delay before activation for the Afterpiece Antidote should be removed and the Antidote should increase action speeds (such as vaulting, damaging objects, etc.) for both Killers and Survivors to encourage its use mid-chase and provide the exciting struggle between the two sides that it seemed to have been intended to.
• The Clown should be allowed to carry 5 bottles basekit, as the effects of the Antidote are simply not enough to justify juggling between 2 separate ammo types for only 4 bottles. The Cheap Gin Bottle add-on should be given a different effect as having 7 bottles may be too much given how little a proficient Clown player would have to reload.

P.S: Off-topic, but I absolutely adored the idea given in the previous Q&A stream of proposing changes to perks to the community itself before beginning to work on implementing these changes into the game. As I stated earlier, I believe BHVR needs to vastly improve its studio-to-player communication, and this is a fantastic step in the right direction.