A different perspective on CoH
I believe CoH and the boon totem mechanic was not created for survivors but was actually created by the developers in response to killers asking for gen speeds to be slowed down.
Killers have asked for a secondary objective for survivors to slow down gen speeds since the inception of this game. However, for a secondary objective to slow down gens, it has to be valuable enough to survivors for them to split their time between doing gens and doing the secondary objective. If it isn't, then survivors will just not do the secondary objective.
Let's take a look back at chests and keys, pre-nerf and unintended consequences. Pre-nerf keys allowed individual survivors escape trials at a very miniscule percentage, I calculated it one time and if I remember right it was less that 1%. However, survivors saw keys, flashlights, medkits and toolboxes as being valuable enough to split their time between doing chests primary objectives. Gen speeds were slower because survivors weren't focused completely on gens. Later, BHVR nerfed keys and suddenly chests and chest perks became defunct. Survivor no longer view chests as import, so gen speeds increased as survivors stopped doing chests and focused completely on chest. The unintended consequences of the key nerf was increased gen speeds and caused survivors to stop wasting perk slots on chest perks. My guess is that survivor escape rates actually increased after the key-nerf because keys were a very selfish play style that sacrificed the good of the team for the good of the individual. Now, without keys, survivors work better as a group, have become completely focused on gens and escape rates have probably increased.
I'm not asking for keys to be buffed back to where they were. But what I am saying is that chests and chest perks became defunct secondary objectives when survivors no long saw them as valuable.
CoH/boons are the current developers attempt to slow down gen speeds by introducing secondary objectives to survivors. For CoH to be useful for splitting survivors time between gens and blessing boons, survivors have to see it as valuable. Now remember, survivors don't need CoH, they can go back to the adrenaline, resilience, spine chill meta and run green medkits which means much faster gen speeds.
CoH/boons are right now on the cusp of being another defunct secondary objective. I say this because I see them every other game. The other boons are worthless, so really it's on CoH that has any value to survivors.
I guess I wanted to present a different view-point on why boons were introduced. I'm not calling for them to be buffed or nerfed, just explaining what I"m seeing.
Comments
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I'm ngl if this secondary objective ejects the majority of killers from being usable it's a bad secondary objective.
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Not really the point of your post, but I don't think shadow step and dark theory are useless at all
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Bad way to go about making a second objective.
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Woohoo, a secondary objective that wastes only like 20 seconds of a survivors time because they spawn on totems and gens anyways
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Intended or not boon coh has only become a second objective for killers. The amount of killer time and pressure lost to this perk coupled with it's team wide utility more than makes up for the setup.
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Umm, it's usually more than once that they have to spend time booning. It takes one second for the killer to snuff it. It's just another thing players are complaining about because they're only looking at how it affects their game play. There is time spent that survivors are wasting booning and healing as well.
I'd rather play a longer game with booners than a gen pushing group. All day everyday.
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It's only one survivor who needs it, the rest can gen rush, not much time saved imo
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Think about this outside of boon totems. Again, I'm not calling for nerfs or buffs to boons, I'm presenting this as a thought experiement.
Can you have a secondary objective for survivors that does not also affect killers. Remember, these secondary objectives need to be valuable enough to survivors for them to consider it helpful for winning the game, so any secondary objective has to also affect killers winning the game.
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I agree with you, only bad survivors run that junk and it doesn't help in the long run anyway you're just stalling the game out because totems and gens spawn close to each other most of the time and any killer that plays normally at an average level will eventually see the totem checking gens and snuff it so lets say it has to be relit twice in a game and survivors are constantly healing instead of doing gens because they can't run the killer well and need that extra hit, I mean right there you've probably tacked at least five minutes on to the match because of the relighting, healing and traversing the map everytime to go heal in the boon area and if the killer has any sort of gen regression on and survivors play like that it's at least a 15 minute match if they all dont die first , rushing gens with adrenaline will always be stronger than circle of healing.
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Not true.
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This
Whatever their original intentions were (at least assuming their intentions wasn't to make an overpowered perk that flat out cancelled a few of the killers in the game while greatly reducing the effectiveness of 3/4 the killers in the game), it's clear that it failed.
It would just be nice if BHVR realized it as they seem perfectly content with it based on their lack of action
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My biggest gripe with Boons is that they're a bandaid fix that can be completely ignored.
Boons were added to act as a secondary objective. That's fine and all but Survivor can just... not equip a Boon Perk and still have no secondary objective, and for them to be used, they need to be better than the current meta, which only CoH is.
The devs would need to add a mandatory secondary objective if they want Survivors off gens, unless they're ok with releasing a Boon Perk on the level of CoH every few months
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i dont think people have an issue with the Boon mechanic in itself.
what we have an issue with is how utterly overpowered some Boon Perks are (like Circle of Healing) and how poorly inplemented this mechanic was (e.g. there is no risk involved with booning something, getting rid of boons takes the Killer a lot more time / ressources than it takes Survivors (as a whole team) to set them up, there is no way to reliably get rid of them, etc.).
honestly, properly nerf CoH and make it so Boons take longer to set up the more they got snuffed out (similar to Freddys wake up mechanic) and i dont think we would see many complaints over them anymore.
EDIT: repeated myself a bit and took a part out in response
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My opinion would be that a secondary objective needs to be useful enough to winning the game that players will want to perform that secondary objective. However, it can't be required or it becomes a primary objective.
From a game design perspective, I feel like chests tended to be better secondary objectives for survivors, if the developers were wanting to slow down gen speeds. It seemed like killers complained about chests less but survivors were still willing to do them. However, if you throw in the complaints about keys, maybe it wasn't.
I have realized something, if boons were added as "time wasters" for survivors, does that mean that "scourge hooks" were added as time wasters for killers?
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Then you are the facing the bad Survivors.
No one in their right mind would bless a Totem next to an unfinished Generator, unless they want to lose the game. The Survivors that know how strong CoH bless a Totem on the outskirts of the map, guaranteeing that snuffing the Boon Totem would be a net los for the Killer.
Combine CoH with Dead Hard on good Survivors and you got yourself and almost unwinnable game with any Killer other than Nurse and Blight
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Actually, COH makes gens go faster.
I don't think it was created to slow down gens. I view them as an attempt to buff solo survivor.
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Then rework Boons from the ground up and make them useful while having counterplay. With how Boons currently work, you either get something on the level of CoH or something like Dark Theory.
They need a rework to be reliably strong and counterable.
Scourge Hooks were probably intended to be 'time wasters' for the Killer, as their spawns are random and aren't guaranteed to be the closest possible Hook or even nearby.
They're better as a secondary objective than Boons because they are 'strong' with most of them doing something 'impactful', while working exactly like normal Hooks and having the same counters with a few special ones, like unreliable spawns, sabotaging and breaking for the remainder of the Trial once a Survivor is sacrificed upon a Scourge Hook
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The one problem I'm seeing with boons and scourge hooks is that you can only put one powerful ability on either. So it really limits boons and scourge hooks to 1 strong effect and a whole host of useless effects.
I think that's another reason chests feels like a better secondary objective. They don't have stacking effects.
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If the intent was to add a secondary objective to slow down gens then it failed miserably. COH makes healing quick and readily available if the survivor uses it correctly and doesn’t bless a totem right in front of the killer. You get to heal yourself while a teammate does a gen rather than your teammate taking the time to heal you. The time gained from this once is basically offset by the time required to bless the totem, but pretty much any additional healing value you get out of it beyond that is just a net time gain.
Boons right now are in a bad spot. COH is beyond busted and the rest are all too situational to be very good (with the exception of SS being alright). Yet technically none of them have valid counterplay especially if the survivor is smart about where to place it. Totems like the ones on 2nd floor of ironworks are just straight up BS, regardless of what boon it is.
Boons need a rework from the ground up, otherwise they will never really be fair unless they are so weak that it doesn’t matter. You can nuke COH and make it selfcare speed and technically it’d still have no counterplay, but it wouldn’t be a big deal because nobody would use the perk. So leaving it at that would, as you said, just leave the entire mechanic defunct pretty much.
I agree with your reasoning surrounding chests - the nerf to keys, while justified, reduced the value of chests especially with loot-goblin builds as looting a key now is no longer as valuable.
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Well I main as nurse so maybe that's why I don't see an issue, for me if COH is in play it's a gg I know I'm gonna win the match because I can apply the pressure faster than they can gather up to reset, by all means I don't think every group I face is a god squad but I know theyre competent at the game, I run into coconut , rapid main , and cope like once every few weeks so I mean telling me I get bad players obviously isn't the answer but now that you know that you should understand why I would rather have a gen rushing adrenaline build than a COH squad thats more focused on staying healthy than doing the objectives, if you have weak links against good killers than you're going to lose all it takes is for them to realize one survivor can't stay up in a chase and you're going to be in a 3 v 1 situation quick
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Gens can't go faster with circle of healing that's mathematically impossible because survivors who focus gens will always end the game before those who use circle of healing consistently it's only better for survivors who can't run injured because they go down fast basically circle of healing makes bad survivors slightly better but does nothing for a good survivor who is more concerned with escaping unless they're using it to save someone endgame and reset the whole team, I guess at the end of the day though it all depends on how you use it I won't deny in certain situations COH can be very strong but overall I think it's a mediocre perk for survivors who aren't good at running killers
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But there is Inner Healing (or whatever it's called now)
Cleansing a Totem allows you (if injured) to heal once you get into a locker for X seconds
There are many perks that make Totems the secondary objective
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Add up healing and gen speeds and then rethink what you're saying the math doesn't add up because someone who focuses gens will always get done faster and good survivors can stay injured and still run the killer well , sure you can keep resetting but meanwhile someone else is carrying the load while you're doing that if you'd just split on gens instead of heal you could pop 2-3 gens for each chase and the killer only ends the game with 1-3 hooks instead of resetting every time, but like I said in certain situations it can be strong but it will never make the gens faster it only helps for people who go down quick in chases to stay up longer for gens to pop but for a good survivor they're giving the killer the run anyway injured or not
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See the problem is a second objective is itt should be risk reward. Boons are no risk and all reward.
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