The Trickster is bland and boring, let's spice him up a bit. Make me want to buy the DLC.
I didn't buy the recent DLC. I would love to buy the DLC if it provided something unique in terms of gameplay.
I'm not really interested in playing what to me seems like a very minor mechanical side grade of the huntress. They can buff the numbers of the new killer to be better (which I'm sure they will do), but it doesn't change the fact that he doesn't offer anything truly unique or exciting. There isn't any in his design that makes me go, "wow that's fun to play/ play against". If anything, he's a one-dimensional tunneler.
So let's all brainstorm ways that he can be wacky, unique, and fun to stand out among what is already becoming a crowded roster.
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I'm surprised that a character named "The Trickster" has no tricks.... There is nothing in his design that screams "I am the king of mindgames." All he does in-game is just run in a straight line at you throwing knives. So lets of give him a slew of tricks up his sleeve to really mess with people's heads.
1). MASTER OF DISGUISE
His backstory is that he is an actor, so lets leverage some of that potential. Imagine if at the start of the match he wore a disguise. When you as the killer spawn in, the brief camera intro might show a different killer (an Oni, a Myers, a Spirit, etc). In this form you can use M1 attacks or press M2 to throw off the disguise permanently in a cloud of smoke to get the ability to throw daggers. This can really screw with SWF teams at the start of a match. Imagine wearing a spirit disguise and watching someone freak out on the other side of a pallet as you stand still. Or imagine being a Myers costume and scaring people off generators with just your gaze. Once you think the survivors have caught on to your bluff, you can throw off your disguise and let the knife throwing gameplay begin.
2). FAKE PERKS
DBD has a tight meta where certain perks are always used. So lets screw with people's heads. Imagine if you stop repairing a generator and see that its instantly regressing.... except that its not actually regressing; it just looks like he has ruin. Imagine if you cleanse a totem and see that you suddenly are exposed, except that you're not actually exposed--its just a fake UI indicator and he didn't really have Hex: Haunted Ground.
Or imagine exiting a locker to see that you're exposed. But haha, you know that he's a trickster; its probably fake. So you keep using lockers, only to get hit later on and realize that he was indeed using Iron Maiden for real. By giving him a lot of fake perk effects that are "just for show" he can get a lot of X-Factor map control as survivors are looking for totem hexes that don't exist, afraid to show themselves while exposed which doesn't exist, and so forth. Furthermore a lot of perks that would otherwise be D-tier or F-tier on him might suddenly have use since they might actually not be a bluff.
3). ADDONS: BIG BAG OF TRICKS
Other than the purple bounce effect, his addons are very uninteresting as well. Just from an aesthetic standpoint, why not have his album and song addons change his terror radius music. K-pop, jazz, or dramatic flair, let his musical talent shine. Speaking of music, a "bard" or "songwriter" type character is a missed opportunity to have special effects applied through music (terror radius).
Going for really whacky mindgame ideas here:
--Imagine a brown "chords" addon that made his terror radius music play skill check sounds. Upon entering and exiting your terror radius (on long cooldown), survivors performing actions will face a skillcheck with no prior sound.
--Imagine a yellow "On Target Single" addon that made his terror radius music play the Insidious perk sound effect (the one where you move after standing still) constantly. In between the beats, the killer makes no sound. While working on a generator, healing, cleansing, or sabotaging inside the terror radius, your camera is stuck facing forward making survivors nervous if they're going to get pulled off from behind.
--Imagine a purple "Cut Thru U Single" addon that made his terror radius play exposed sound effects occasionally. When actually exposed, survivors get no indication that you are exposed. This addon would have great synergy with his Starstruck perk for example.
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Just honest feedback: with DBD being a game that's many years old, we need killers that are more unique and daring in design to keep people interested. I hope we get great things to come in future chapters. Make the trickster actually trick people.
Anyone else have any crazy ideas on how to make Trickster a more interesting killer?
Comments
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I would also add that the Trickster, who takes a while to takedown someone at range like the Plague, would benefit from having the tactical flexibility to give up a chase. Right now, you as the killer face a huge dilemma to keep eating loops or risk losing a lot of hard won laceration stacks. A lot of people call for laceration to be permanent or decay much slower, but from the perspective of a survivor being chased, making that gameplay change would remove a lot of the rewards for successful long-term dodging and counterplay in chases. A repeat of the Legion situation would be undesirable.
If the trickster decides to give up a chase, laceration stacks that decay naturally could have some minor effect (and with 7x duration applied if he does deplete a healthstate). Just something to turn the time invested into time that's not 100% wasted. Could even be part of his addons to give him multiple ways to build his perks.
Post edited by Doomsaki on1 -
After watching a lot of gameplay of people playing him, and playing against occasionally (a bit rare these days), one final thing I have to add on the topic is that I think that Main Event doesn't need to exist as a mechanic in its current form. For example, when a Myers goes into T3, from the perspective of a survivor, there is this real fear moment. If you're a survivor, its not so clear, or visible, or psychologically impactful to see a trickster use main event.
A lot of it boils down to the fact that Main Event just causes the Trickster to do slightly more of the same thing.
Personally I think that they could just make Trickster ramp up his throw speed the longer he holds down his power button (maybe with some other of the frenzy effects too increasing). Then a player has a choice to tap his power button for slower throws or to ramp overtime up for more lethality at the dire risk of running out of ammo.
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Making that change would free things up to make Main Event into something that actually changes up gameplay a bit (bouncing daggers maybe baseline as a buildup effect?) or perhaps give tooltip space to some of the other things I mentioned in the main post.
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I would have preferred if Laceration would have to be permanent, and the Survivors would need to stop and "Mend" in which they have to do a animation to removed each dagger on the Survivor's body! It would be quite interesting way to removed the dagger and waste time! They would have to do a couple of skill checks, to removed it properly!
Plus, it would be kinda cool if the knifes have some random effects, like Scream at random; or they start bleeding out timer if they fail at skill checks and they need to succeed at more skill checks to fixed their bleed out!
Maybe even a slow down in movement speed; by 1% for each dagger; so having 7 dagger on you can make you moved at 93% movement speed!
While makes Survivor's suffer with slow movement speed and some random effects; would help with tricksters chasing potential!
These different buffs, all together will help with his chase potential; as well as his ability to pressure multiple Survivors instead of just one Survivor! (His power forced him to tunnel a Survivor, which make him quite difficult in a 4v1)
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From a thematic/animation perspective, having survivors pull out daggers from themselves could be an interesting place to start for giving the Trickster some split pressure. A huge amount of possible effects and/or debuffs are possible as you said.
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Fake perks should probably just be a perk, perhaps to replace Crowd Control? I mean, the latter's perk name sounds like something for a police killer or something like that
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