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The flaws of paper design, or: Why the Trickster sucks

SacrilegeGG
SacrilegeGG Member Posts: 85
in General Discussions

When designing new perks and powers the BHVR design team will think of the best/worst case scenario to see if they could be overly busted.

On paper, Trickster's power sounds amazing, because it can potentially turn a healthy survivor into a downed survivor in about three seconds if every single knife connects.

I'm sure the devs found this pretty scary. So far the only powers that can down that fast are one-shots that either take time to build up (stalking) or require melee range (chainsaws).

BHVR isn't dumb. They know that there are players out there (pros, streamers) who are way, way better than on the dev team, so they know they can't test internally how a killer would play at the highest level.

But that leads to another problem: Testing on paper.

BHVR likely went with the assumption that the best players will easily hit every, or almost every, knife, leading to an oppressive ranged killer who can easily take down survivors.

So they went and added into countermeasures to help prevent that — Slow down. Recoil. Random scattering. Different targets based on which hand is throwing.

The problem is... these all add up to be far too punishing.

Top-tier killers are struggling with Trickster. Average players are having a miserable time. And survivors learned almost immediately that going to any tile, crouching at loops, and heck even running in a straight line will typically ensure they won't get injured by the knives.

I know the devs will say it's too early to make any decisions and that they're waiting on more data to see where tweaks may need. I get it, I have game design and balance experience too.

But please consider some quality of life changes soon.