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Why is BHVR afraid to make unique killers
Sadako is perhaps the creepiest killer to come out to DBD, yet I find her not living up to her potential. From the movies, you know her as the creepy girl slowly approaching you from a short distance. No matter where you go, she is always there. Why do we have Sadako playing Mario Kart with her Speedy Gonzales movement speed? That does not make sense in the way she is presented in the movies.
DBD needs Killers that are extremely slow but possess powers that would make up for their slow speed. Powers of mind games, teleportation, and illusions. Sadako was perfect for such design, but she ended up being just another rehashed killer borrowing powers from other killers, making her anything but unique.
Sadako would have also deserved a twisted crawling state similar to Kayako from Grudge, making her extra creepy, but I guess that would be too complex for BHVR to do, seeing as all the Killers follow the same formula. Else we would have probably got some kind of spider or hellhound or another type of four/eight-legged killer by now, I guess.
In short, I am disappointed in how one of my favorite horror icons turned out to be. BHVR needs to innovate and come up with killers that bring something completely new to DBD, not just another basic power mimicking old Killers.
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Because BHVR simply cannot handle them.
Freddy used to be the most unique killer in the game, and look at the disgusting state he is currently in.
They know HOW to create an unique killer, but they fail miserably at handling them afterwards.
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Yeah... Look at twins. Probably the most unique power recently, left dead in the water. They don't even give skins for them.
And look at nurse, one of the most unique powers, left with bugs that existed for over 5 years before they even addressed them. Even then, she's currently disabled due to bugs.
Even if they wanted crazy unique power killers, the base system and code the game was designed on simply can't handle it.
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Twins
They just wanna play it safe for ez money.
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Freddy is not so different from Sadako conceptually. So much potential and then they said, "um... But what if they were an M1 with intermittent invisibility and a teleport? Does that count as unique? They can have, um... Outdated household items littered around the map as counterplay for the survivors to completely ignore their core functionality. Yeah... Sounds balanced and fun for all! And let's throw in a visual filter to really show it!"
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They know anything, truly unique, will break the game at this point.
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Unfortunately this
I have been playing for two years so I haven't seen every killer being released but at least in my time of playing, the more unique killers that were released with something extra special about them and their powers (Blight, Twins, Nemesis and Pinhead), only Pinhead seemed to have escaped without being an absolute mess.
Blight now seems much better so I suppose credit where due but at least for me on my console, I still run into issues where he grinds walls instead of bouncing off of them like we were playing Tony Hawk's by Daylight, though I will give them credit that this seems to be more of a me problem than the character once you "get used to them".
Twins is still a giant mess of a killer that BHVR seems to have just determined if they just keep nerfing them that eventually no one will ever use them again and therefore there will be no problems that anyone sees and Nemesis himself is fine but you flip a coin to determine if the special part of his power (the zeds) will actually do something or if they'll just get stuck on a rock again.
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Because unique Killers means new mechanics and new mechanics means survivors need to learn.
Behaviour doesnt want survivors thinking and getting frustrated because a killer mechanic, they want them winning 24/7 and buying skins
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2 reasons. Spirit and Old Legion.
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Personally, I feel you could do both. Making her permanently demanifested by default would make her very interesting, in my opinion, despite the way that they would actually remove an aspect of her already basic kit. But just imagine how different it would be in practice to have full stealth the entire time. It would actually be pretty crazy and I would forgive the fact that her Condemned is mostly just a gimmick that is like, "see, we might have watched the American version, or maybe we didn't, but she kills people!"
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I think you are right. Many of the Killers barely function. Bubba alone is still suffering from an audio bug and just yesterday I encountered a bug upon receiving DS from a survivor that rendered my chainsaw exhausted for the rest of the game. Imagine playing M1 killer with no ability whatsoever.
I can't even dare to play Blight for his slippery ability that does not register collision most of the time, something that has not been fixed even to this date since his introduction.
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Wow, thats pretty harsh, yet I can't find any flaw in this critique. Sadge.
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Well, you know, I just have to accept reality for what it is, perhaps if I was a survivor main, I could pretend they were something more. It will not change much for me, I am so excited for Sadako, just as I was for Freddy when I first joined. I know it will not last forever, but I am definitely going to play a lot of her regardless.
Day one p3, represent.
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I gave up on bhvr making fun killers when nemesis was released, literally every game with different heroes like overwatch and smash bros have way cooler abilities that look real fun but dbd killers powers are weak. I feel bad for all the horror mascot they milked for the money and bragging rights. Hopefully the companies will take them away just like with strangers things.
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Also this game is balanced for solo q survivors, the same people who dc in the beginning of the game because the killer chasing them first, or people who hide all game while your dying on the hook, or the people who spam loud vault and intentionally miss skill checks just to grief you. Yeah no solo survivors will still be broken even if their was no killer lol
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Because those types of powers are hard to "balance". Nurse, Twins, Old Legion are prime examples of this.
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Part of me says they have Bethesda code where if they did something different the engine can't handle it.
Another part says because someone might ######### about something and just make them garbage like sadako is now.
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the twins are the most unique killer and they have the lowest pick rate and most survivors say they don't like playing against them, they released very buggy and still feel extremely sluggish to play as, such as having to wait 7 seconds to switch to Charlotte after you down someone and victor exploding even when you are not on top of a object
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I think Sadako is unique enough, she just might need a buff on her ability to build up Condemned stacks to make that part of the kit more threatening. Just because her kit is built using some bits and pieces of mechanics doesn’t make the combination not a unique one. I don’t think you’d be doing yourself a favor playing her exactly like Wraith for instance, even thought they both use their Power button to phase for Stealth.
Is there design space for new mechanics? Sure! I’d love to see a Medusa style killer for instance that when survivors can see the killer they get increasingly severe Conditions on themselves. It would be a killer that you actively try to avoid seeing when you’re doing gens or in a chase. But that doesn’t make Sadako disappointing to me, I like the various aspects of her current kit even if they could maybe stand a buff.
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I think this is the biggest flaw in the twins design. Their concept is sorta "playing catch between two killers", but you can hardly do that if you have an aweful 7s long delay between your switches, which should be lightning fast, like Hags teleports.
Sadly many killers have this problem, ie cool power and idea in concept, but then the actuall usage of said power is clunky and feels like moving through molasses, probably to render it just uneffective enough that not too many survivors will complain about the power being "too strong and plain unfun to verse".
And the end result is that many killers are just M1 variations with a slight difference, and all this M1 killers fall by the roadside in higher MMR, because they ain't viable, so you mostly encounter the big 3. But calling for a nerf of them won't make the others suddenly better at fielding vs good survivors, it might just cut off a big chunk of killer players who don't see anything left in the game worth playing.
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Multiple reasons. 1. They are hesitant to give killers anything extremely strong. They prefer to err on the side of caution and make things weak and then buff them later. This was pretty much what happened with blood favor, where they said they made it bad because they were worried it would be strong. Instead it was garbage and still isn't used much at all. 2. This has a strong chance of creating a design failure of a character that they are now stuck with in the game, but everyone despises and wants gone, or a character that just doesn't function right. Twins was a unique killer. They're also a mess who gets screwed over worse and worse with each patch, and is despised by the survivor main playerbase.
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It's probably because it's difficult to come up with. Because what could they possibly make that isn't already in the game in one way?
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I'd say it's more about players not being able to handle them. For every truly unique killer you release, that's another skill a player has to pick up. The vast majority of players genuinely can't grasp running a good Nurse or a Blight that knows how to hug. A killer's skill on a unique killer will usually outpace the survivor playerbase's skill to deal with them. There are player with thousands of hours in the game who still can't go more than 20-30 seconds against a high level Nurse, and a lot of that has to do with seeing one every month or so and not having any transferrable chase skills to carry over from other killers.
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how is Sadako unique? Her design is least unique design that we have had in modern DBD.
Sadako stealth/undetectable mechanic is copy-paste of wraith's cloak and uncloak mechanic.
Sadako TV are copy paste of Freddy's generator teleporting. They just changed targeting from gen to TV. I would not be surprised if TV are copy-paste of Freddy clock locations that have been reskinned to be TVs.
Sadako flicking is also copy-paste of both freddy's and spirit's passive phasing.
The condemn mechanic is unique part of Sadako kit. it is so awful to the point that you are more likely to mori someone in live game by using ebony mori offering than you are to mori someone with condemn. It ends up being least relevant mechanic in her arsenal.
The funny part is that they managed to weaken every copy-pasted aspect of her kit.
Sadako stealth does not have windstorm element of wraith's kit and it is far easier to detect her from distance compare wraith.
Her TV teleporting has more counter-play by removing the tapes from TV than freddy does and it has no ability to be faked/canceled. It has directional audio cue warning survivors in far advance when TV are used by Sadako. Since condemn mechanic is so easy remove and so hard for her to build in any meaningful way, survivors have zero risk and almost no slowdown attached for completely shutting her power TP. The tapes do not take item slots unlike say pinhead cube or nemesis vial so the survivor is free carry both tapes and their item/med kit at the same time. Sadako condemn mechanic has zero urgency and almost no game delay for the killer
The passive flicking could be Sadako only saving grace in a chase. Unfortunately, It is bog down by classic bvhr drawbacks. The movement slowdown from 4.6->3.68(98%) manifesting -> de-manifesting hurt her at loops for a killer that already has little to no tools in the chase. The funny aspect is that Spirit's phasing is automatic and If Spirit passive phasing was updated to show the killer when they were phasing out like Sadako and Spirits movement speed was changed to be 115%. Spirit would be a better Sadako in chase than Sadako herself based off passive alone. With spirit negative changes on her active ability, it is worth wondering if spirit is 110% m/s worthy in current iteration.
Sadako is far from unique. Far from effective.
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I don't think you know what "copy/paste" means. Her stealth isn't mechanically identical to Wraith, and her teleport isn't identical to Freddy, and her Invisibility isn't identical to Spirit, and her slow down isn't identical to Pigs.
- Wraith moves 6 m/s when cloaked, slows down to a crawling 1.6 m/s when decloaking, then gets an extended lunge immediately after decloaking. Sadako's movement speed is mostly constant - 4.6 most of the time and 3.68 when Manifesting. She also gets an extended speed boost after teleporting. Also, when Wraith is cloaked he's difficult to see regardless of distance and totally invisible when stationary. Sadako is totally invisible at long range and alternatingly invisible/visible at short range. Almost the only thing they have in common is they use the Power button to go in and out of stealth.
- Freddy and Sadako both teleport to objects, and they both take 3 seconds to teleport. That's the extent of the similarity. Freddy has a 45 second cool down on his ability and he can cancel his teleport mid-charge but it takes 10 seconds to recover. Sadako can cancel her teleport with only a 0.5 second cooldown afterward, and has no cooldown after teleporting but turns that specific television off for 100 seconds. And she gets a 1.5 second speed boost after a teleport, Freddy doesn't.
- Spirit and Sadako both has passive visual effects that disguise where they are. Spirit is always visible but her actual location is randomly shifted by her ability. Sadako alternates between being visible and invisible.
- And obviously Condemned and Pig's traps have very little in common other than being something that can potentially allow a survivor to die if they're not paying attention.
Also, on a tangent, if you think Sadako's hit and run is weaker than Wraith's go watch Dowsey's matches with her, he's been putting on a clinic with her hit and run. She's weak if you try and play her like Wraith but better if you actually take advantage of her teleport and the fact that she can manifest and demanifest more easily than Wraith in a chase.
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Artist? Blight? Pinhead? Twins? Idk what your problem is, its always easy and cover your eyes and pretend something is bad even though you have exactly those things you are asking for right infront of you.
I agree that some adaptions of movie Killers where abit dissapotining like Nemesis aswell but doesnt mean ALL new killers are trash.
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Unique killers are very tough to balance, especially now after 5+ years of perks. Nurse is the best killer in the game because she completely ignores the rules to surviving in dbd.
You need a killer who can down survivors, hook them and sacrifice them. If you don't need most of the perks on both sides are useless. Unfortunately giant spiders can't do that. Plus it takes too long creating new killers like that on a consistent basis since they need to create completely new models.
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Speedy Gonzales movement speed
She is just a normal 115% movement speed killer like most of the rest. The only time she gets a speed boost is when she first crawls out of a TV. She actually slows down when she manifests.
As for the rest they are limited in how they can create killers due to the limitations of the game design. We already have a slow killer that can teleport (Nurse). There is no mind-game that can make up for being slow, illusions either. We already have normal speed characters with illusions, and all killers can mind-game. That simply can't beat holding W and outrunning you. For killers the game is about patrolling gens and chasing survivors. There is really no place for slow killers. They would have to redesign the game to make killer designs in the way you would like them. As things are, they have to make the killers to work with the game as it is.
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They do make unique killers, Twins.. but they hate twins. they never want to see twins agains. whos twins
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my guess is its harder to balance unique powers
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I mean, what do Twins need anyway?
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How?
Everything after huntress that has any kind of projectile is a huntress clone
Everything after Wraith is a wraith that cloaks is a wraith clone
Everything after billy that uses a saw or just goes fast is a billy clone
All that is left to be unique is flying or turning into a survivor.
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The purpose of Wraith's ability is to gain undetectable status and to be less visible towards survivors.
The purpose of Sadako ability is to.... go undetectable and be less visible towards survivors.
The purpose of Freddy teleport is to go from point A to point B with destination being on a generator.
The purpose of Sadako is to from point A to point B with destination being a TV. TV spawn near generators.
Mechanically, they are almost the same and the purpose of these two ability is near identical. I personally do not see how these two mechanics are not near identical copies of previously existing killer powers.
The unique mechanic for her is condemn, but as I stated in my previous post. it is not very impactful towards gameplay. Dowsey success on hit & run is based off new killer novelty. Survivors have not learned yet to counter her abilities but her abilities as I will explain are not difficult to counter.
TV teleporting is ineffective for hit & run because Sadako makes global directional audio cues when she teleports to a TV when you are next to a TV. You always know when she is coming out from TV. Her stealth is ineffective because survivors can see her from distance on open generators and generators that are not open are next to a loop.
Countering condemn is the just matter of taking the tape and putting the tape inside television. you gain 1 bar for picking up tape, but 4 bars removed for total 3 bars per tape. Her other method of spreading condemn is through a green add-on called Ring drawing. This add-on spreads condemn when other survivors heal each other. The problem is that survivors can use a perk called Boon: Circle of healing which unlocks ability to self-care yourself. This means that survivor never need to heal each other and can self-heal without the need of a teammate. As a result, Ring drawing will not be able to spread condemn stacks as the perk Boon: Circle of healing completely counters it.
Countering her flickering is simple. If the pallet loop is safe and long, you can play loops the same way you do against other m1 killers. If the loop is short and unsafe, than you can put pallet down early so that she cannot stand on the pallet and de-manifest to utilize invisibility flicker. Moral of the story is that she is m1 at loops. M1 killers are easy to loop for experienced survivors.
When survivors learn to counter-play her ability, Dowsey and all other players that play Sadako will not be effective. Sadako is unoriginal killer with weak mechanics across the board. If you have points of disagreement, than list realistic counter-play options that the Sadako player can incorporate in her gameplay to counter-play TV, Condemn & flicking survivor counter-play that survivors will utilize against her once they become familiar with her ability.
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I think they want it so a noob can learn to play 1 killer, they know how to play them all.
Which is why I think old freddy was so changed
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Amateur devs lol
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Counter Point: Most solo Q teams are garbage and you can beat them perkless, addonless, and going AFK for 30 seconds first. Even post MMR.
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Killer mains don't play unique killers, they prefer camping bubba and throwing aircraft carrier hitbox hatchets as huntress
Old Freddy had low pickrate, Twins has lowest pickrate
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I imagine some regions are less competitive than others and as Patrick stated in Q&A, he said that killer/survivors that leave the queue are backfilled with any MMR. I do agree that survivors that play novice/play poorly are easy to beat with any killer.
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I just think she will end up being add-on reliant, but that's nothing new. Hit and run with a global map presence is pretty new. People were on here saying Twins were garbage when they first came out and they were solid A tier. People said slinger was garbage, people said pinhead was garbage, etc etc.
It's too early to make those calls. People are so hung up over condemnation actually killing people when in reality it's just there as a slowdown. People gotta run across the entire map to dump off their tape, and that's time they are not on gens.
She is a stealth killer, she is going to have weak maps.
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The last time they tried to make a unique killer it was Legion who had an entirely new chase mechanic.
That caused them months of headaches until they just removed their power so they didn't have to think about it any more.
Since then they haven't gone for anything game-changing.
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A lot of people think they want a unique killer, but they really don't. Every time a killer tries to be different, the whinging begins.
Plus I think to make a truly unique killer, they'd have to alter the game fundamentally in a way that would probably be a ton of work, or break the game.
I have heard it said that DBD was not initially intended to be a long terms thing, and that to make any substantial changes they would have to rewrite most or all of the code; essentially build from the ground up. If there is any truth to this, I think they should. Hire people and/or assemble a team dedicated to building a new more friendly base code, and have them work on it separately from the current build until it is ready.
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Cause they can't handle it without recoding the game
And cause of Survivor feedback... The whole X Killer is boring being a thing
They broke the rules by adding in Nurse and you can see how that ended up
And they are running out of Killer licenses (if they stay the same)
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The only way I could see her working if she was very slow would be to have her teleport kinda like the Nurse. Then that doesn't really make her unique.
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“The purpose of Pig crouching is to gain Undetectable and be less visible and allows her to do a special ability. The purpose of Sadako Demanifesting is to be less visible and allow her to use a special ability. Therefore their stealth is mechanically the same ability.”
Obviously that argument doesn’t work. Just because things serve a similar general purpose doesn’t make them the same ability. Huntress throws hatchets that can injure people. Trickster throws dagger that can injure people. They serve the same purpose. But they’re not the same thing.
I think one thing you might be overlooking in part is that numbers matter. Yeah, she can teleport and Freddy can teleport but their teleports feel different because she has no cooldown on it. She can teleport multiple times in succession, Freddy can’t, plus she gets the movement speed boost afterward. They don’t feel like the same ability because they’re not, the parameters are unique.
And if you try Cloaking and Uncloaking in the middle of chases with Wraith it doesn’t work. He can catch up to people in stealth but then the decloak slows him down to a crawl and he won’t be able to just get an hit right away after decloaking. But Sadako moves at 98% survivor speed while Demanifesting, so when she catches up to someone midchase she can demanifest and still be right in range to get a hit pretty much the moment she tap the attack button. (The survivor only gains something like 0.08 meters distance in that time.) So she plays very differently in a chase from Wraith since she actually can cloak and uncloak in the middle of it repeatedly.
Finally note that I’m not arguing how powerful she is overall or whether she needs a buff. I suspect they probably will want to buff her, maybe by reducing her TV refresh rate so she can teleport more reliably and also thereby push out stacks of Condemned more frequently. She is currently a bit better in a chase than Wraith since being able to go in and out of invisibility without slowing down helps with mindgames, but she’s not as good in a chase as killers that have a full blown anti-loop ability. So if she can’t rely of the teleports frequently she’ll probably be weak overall.
And as a side note, yes, safe unmindgamable pallets are safe. Duh. Her ability helps at gameable loops where the survivor loses site of her.
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It is not really about the problem of something being too complex or time-consuming to make, but rather money. BHVR already has a strong pipeline for their DLC releases and they are far too comfortable to change it and try new things. But they will see that old players will grow tired of seeing the same old stuff year after year while the core issues existing in the game with no fix in sight. Eventually this will lead to a major drop in player base due to lack of innovation and ability to stay relevant in modern video game market that will offer new and better choices for 4vs1 horror survival
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Wraith could uncloak and cloak during the chase. Yes wraith has slowdown when uncloaking but he gains speed boost to cover up his loss of distance. He can still do this but he gains no total distance gained for doing so. The dev in october 5.3.0 weakened speed out of cloak with comment of Wee bit overpowered wraith.
Sadako does not gain a speed boost when going out of cloak. She actively loses distance for using her ability in the loop itself. This is why the strategy to avoid de-manifestation slowdown is to use it at mid-point on non-dropped pallet. I am lazy to draw loops in paint so I am just going take screenshot of a loop and use the image to explain the flicking mindgame.
When your at the pallet as killer, the survivor is waiting to go left or right to make it back to the pallet based off which direction you go as killer. Sadako can channel her de-manifestation stationary and than she can time her flicker invisibility by going left or right indicated by the Dotted blue lines. The survivor will have to make an unfavorable guess for which direction Sadako is going. The easy way to counter this is to just drop pallet and than her chasing power becomes ineffective from de-manifestation slowdown. By the way, Wraith could also do this mindgame before they weakened his wee-bit op wraith speed.
This pallet is unsafe so you do not need her ability to get hits as 115% but many other pallets are safe where this ability does not do much.
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Her TV makes directional audio cue when used by her. The survivor can just shift-W long before she comes out of the TV. The speed boost does not matter when the survivor is very far away. This also prevents it from being useful in a chase. Survivors can also take the tape out of the TV next to the generator and this will shutdown TV so she cannot teleport to the TV itself. There are 7 TV equal to 7 generators so there will always be a TV that she can TP, but survivors can limit her teleporting options if they wish at the cost of a little condemn.
Hypothetically, her gameplay loop is suppose to be hit & run with TVs. She is suppose to go invisible, hit someone with undetectable, Teleport, Hit someone again, TP to another TV, hit someone again. As you teleport between TVs and gain hits, The survivor is supposed to build-up condemn meter and eventually get mori at 7 stacks of condemn. Unfortunately, Her gameplay execution does not work and the 7 stacks of condemn is pipe dream that will never occur in practical gameplay.
I do not think she is good at anything. I do not expect to see get much play after a week. She would need a long list of changes to be remotely effective.
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Every genuinely "unique" killer like Twins and old Freddy are always balance nightmares and usually don't work within the confines of the game. It's much easier to make a stealth killer or a mid-range anti-loop/zoning killer. They work and take minimal effort. Their only uniqueness comes from whatever gimmick they bring.
Killers who powers had a lot of potential to be interesting/unique usually don't get much. See Nemesis for example. Could've been a crazy fun killer but instead he just has a mid-range attack and 2 mildly annoying npcs. Uniqueness and fun is consistently being traded for simple killers who can perform well. And in turn that's made the game stale. Just releasing killers who have strong 1v1 and bad 1v4 is very unhealthy for the game. Killers feel like no matter what they do they'll lose because they don't have any map pressure and survivors hate playing against a power that's ridiculously lethal.
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I never said Sadako gains speed when she Demanifests, I said the distance she loses when she Demanifests is small. Basically she moves 3.68 m/s while Demanifesting for 2.5 seconds. So over 2.5 seconds the survivor gains a net 0.8 meters distance. I think basic attacks (not lunges) have a 1 meter range, so if she is next to the survivor when she starts Demanifesting then she will still be in attack range when it finishes for instance. And if she was out of reach at the time, 0.8 meters is 1.3 seconds extra time in the chase to reach them.
Now let's compare Wraith. When Wraith decloaks he moves an incredibly slow 1.6 m/s for 3 seconds. In that time the survivor will gain a whopping 7.2 meters! That's 9 times as much distance as they gain against Sadako. After he finishes, he does get to move 6.9 meters per second for 1 second. But that only catches him up 3.9 total meters in that second, he's still got 3.8 meters left to catch up.
So no, Wraith can't do the same thing Sadako does in a chase in regards to decloaking midchase, he needs to do a different strategy than her. For example a common tactic is usually try and run in front of a survivor while cloaked to body block them to confuse them and hope they pause momentarily before running away so they gain a little less distance.
Anyway, all this is tangential to the original thing which was me saying when talking about "uniqueness" it's the combination of Sadako effects that make her unique, and none of the individual effects are identical to the originals either. She's not Wraith, she doesn't chase like Wraith, and she's not Freddy, she doesn't teleport like him.
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Idk.
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DBD needs Killers that are extremely slow but possess powers that would make up for their slow speed.
The point of that type of horror is the dread of inevitability. No matter what you do, the killer -will- get you. And that is directly at odds with a PvP experience, since it'd remove skill as a factor on both sides of the equation, which is why it isn't getting replicated in DbD.
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Agreed. I would add many more killers to the list (like Nurse, Doctor, Spirit, Old Freddy)
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