The boons work as intended
Dear @DesignDad ,
I enjoy reading the posts and clarifications on the particular things, regarding development of the dbd.
On the QnA you have mentioned - as the title say, and nothing further.
Could we get a clarification regarding, why is it intended, that boons can be without any penalty (blessing time excluded) infinitly reblessed, why is it intended to have a multi level AOE, and the risk analysis regarding certain areas, that a boon can be placed into basement or into a tower, which provided incredibly strong AOE. Is it ment for killer countering it ?to ignore it and have an “obsession to tunnel” the one who supposedly blessed it?
Snuffing such totems penalise killer a lot, from getting there, destroying doors, etc; which in near future it will most likely be reblessed.
Im looking forward to try (both sides) nerfed CoH, but I am afraid, as almost everybody in the community, that it is still too strong perk against majority of killers
Comments
-
Woof, came into this thread expecting something else.
Have to mirror what the OP says, though. It feels hard to believe that boons are working as intended, because they seem to be designed with counterplay on the killer side, but realistically that counterplay seems defunct and very rarely worth pursuing - your time in a match against even decent survivors is too thin to go out of your way to look for totems, you'll lose a chase if you stop to snuff one while pursuing anyone or in the very best case scenario give them time to reach another loop, and the boon is going to go right back up as soon as you're clear of the area anyway. Because of all of this, snuffing only feels worth it if you run across a boon after hooking someone or while patrolling generators. And when you play a match against 3-4 CoHs (or Shadow Step, which also has some very oppressive cases), even that much feels pointless because you just can't stop the boons from being everywhere all the time. Your only counterplay is to start tunneling the hell out of people, because trying to keep on top of the totems is like bailing the Titanic with a bucket.
The way it shakes out to me, the killer's time is worth more than the survivors' time because they're the only player on their team and they can't delegate - so even if it takes a survivor 14 seconds to re-bless the boon, if the killer spent more than (14+t)/s seconds to snuff the totem, the survivors won that interaction in terms of time gained (where t is time travelled to the totem and s is number of survivors remaining in the trial.) As a result, boons placed in corners of the maps or in generator/pallet dead zones will not normally be snuffed even if the killer has guessed where they are (because what's the point, they'll lose 30 seconds on several gens snuffing it and it'll go back up anyway) and boons placed on high catwalks or second story structures are downright deleterious to snuff, but cover a wide area of surrounding terrain.
I'm still firmly of the mind that the killer should be able to spend more time performing a break action on a booned totem, but even a cooldown on the perk would be better than this.
3 -
I would argue it's because Circle of Healing isn't the only boon perk in this game. Both Shadowplay and especially Exponential do not seem overpowered in the slightest, in fact I don't see them getting used a lot at all. Nerfing the actual boon mechanics in some way or another, would also nerf those perks.
I do agree that snuffing out totems seems a bit meaningless at times, there is no cooldown as to when survivors can reuse the boon perks, and it only takes 14 seconds to bless a totem. Which is definitely some time wasted, but not a lot. Increasing that by just a few second would already make snuffing out a totem more meaningful.
And of course, I can see how multi level maps in particular can be problematic with boons, as it makes it more often a time waster for killers to snuff out one single boon totem.
However, as I said, it would nerf Shadowplay and Exponential, which seems bad, given how they aren't that strong anyways. So they would need compensation buffs to their effects. I can definitely think of buffs to Shadowplay, but not sure about Exponential.
The problem really is Circle of Healing, and only that perk. So of course it makes more sense for the devs to look at that perk seperately and see how they can nerf that perk, and only that perk.
0 -
Exponential is bad, but that's because Unbreakable isn't a good effect to link to a boon - you have to intentionally go down near the boon to get value (and therefore go down earlier than you normally would, or inevitably clear out the area around the boon and also probably show the killer where it is), hope the killer doesn't notice the boon, and also hope the killer slugs instead of just picking you up. Exponential can only really be a problem when you combine it with unhookable zones and two-story structures (the immediate case being RPD library) or super aggressive SWFs that won't let you pick anyone up (and if they're all harassing you and relighting Exponential, they're not on gens.) Or vs Twins, who nobody plays. So Exponential is going to be bad regardless of boon mechanics and the perk effect itself needs to be looked at in order to be worthwhile.
Don't be too quick to write off Shadowstep, though. On most maps, its effectiveness is pretty mediocre - it can be quite helpful, especially with its meta buddy Iron Will, but LoS ranges from decent to high on most outdoor maps and it's not hard to spot where someone went without scratch marks. It's almost a dead perk on Ormond or Eyrie. On indoor maps, though, it starts turning into a powerhouse. It's very good on Lery's and The Game. It's nasty on Midwich and RCPD, where blood pools aren't very visible and there's tons of doors, hallways, and dark corners to crouch in.
I've gone against a few teams using several Shadowsteps and a map offering and it is brutal. Even worse than CoH. It's a little like Balanced Landing on Haddonfield (as in, average-to-bad perk on most maps, amazing with a map offering), except Balanced Landing gets you to a fresh loop and Shadowstep + IW just flat out makes you lose the chase every time you break a pallet, hit someone, get blinded, or if they just have too much of a head start and turn a corner while you're too far behind. You have to give up the chase to snuff the totem because it makes it stupidly difficult to tell where anyone went and every door is another coin flip, but that's still pointless because a.) there's another one on the other side of the map, which the next person will run to, and b.) the totem with the best map coverage on this side is going to go back up once you leave the area, forcing you to do this again and again until you maybe catch the booner in the act for a fair chase.
Those were the cases I wanted some kind of limit on boons the most, because if I could have just taken a minute and gotten the boons out of those couple of spots that covered half the map, I would have been fine. Would have bought survivors plenty of time, but I'd be fine. Instead, the counterplay is to camp and tunnel the hell out of anyone I catch because trying to chase fresh survivors in those conditions is a Sisyphean task.
And I feel like nerfing the infinite-reuse potential of boons across the board would be better than trying to nerf the effects of a perk that's very situational but has some extremely powerful outlier cases. It's less impactful to Shadowstep itself and allows it to be buffed to be more consistent, it fixes CoH as well, and it solves more problems moving forward with the mechanic (because certain boon spots are always going to be problem cases as long as the killer can't actually deal with them.)
0 -
Ok if nerfing the basic mechanics of Boons would make those two perks bad then what about the COMPLETELY useless Hex of the Artist. No one is breaking totems anymore even when no one has a Boon in thier loadout. That Hex has potential of being a decent Hex that puts a new twist to Hexes but the only people who were able to get it going are Survivors that LET the Killer use it to see how it works.
The changes that most players agree with wouldn't Nerf any Boon more than the other but instead takes out the abusive nature of Boons as a whole. They still will be strong Boon Exo will still be a horrible idea for a Boon and Shadow Step will still be really strong on indoor maps while CoH.....well let's leave that for another discussion.....
0 -
Exponential will never be useful from simple reasons. It cannot replace 2nd meta perk and its much worse then coh.
Slugging perhaps across map is almost impossible without being hooked before.
Blessing once per minute is much more effective (compared to doing gens) then trying to find wounded survivor (soloQ) or arranged meeting with SWF.
0
