http://dbd.game/killswitch
Mission (Im)possible: Object of Obsession
Hello, dear people of the Fog!
Over the holidays I thought about some changes to perks. Some of them were niche from the beginning (like Repressed Alliance) while others fell far from their once powerful or even broken versions (MoM, OoO). In this post I aim to give ideas how to change Object of Obsession to make it a bit better and a bit more vialble. We all hate stale meta, so I always try to think of ways to buff weaker perks to spice things up.
Who am I? I'm a 5.6k hrs experienced veteran who played for over 4 years. I play both sides, although my recent tendencies are on survivor. My goal is to make the game better for everyone, so I don't want to create op perks or reworks and view the changes from both sides. But enough talk. Let's go!
OBJECT OF OBSESSION
Object of Obsession, is a perk originating from Laurie Strode which makes it one of the oldest perks in the game. This was what it did, before it got reworked in patch 4.7.0:
A supernatural bond links you to the Killer.
If you are looking in the Killer's direction while outside of their Terror Radius, your link will reveal your Auras to each other.
- If you are the Killer's Obsession, this effect applies up to a maximum range of 56/64/72 metres.
- If you are not the Killer's Obsession, this effect only applies up to a maximum range of 44/56/64 metres.
Increases the odds of being the Obsession.
The Killer can only be obsessed with one Survivor at a time.
The problem with this was that swf could abuse it and reveal the killer's EXACT position at will without cooldown to their team via chat. It was also quite the hell for trap based killers (Trapper and Hag) as well as killers with a smaller TR or stealth killers (back then Undetectable did not exist until the Stranger Things Chapter). So about half of the killers back then had a disadvantage against this perk. For the freshly reworked Freddy it was a true nightmare to face an Object player since being Oblivious caused the survivor to being able to see you at all times even in close proximity once they fell asleep. The only killers not being affected were Myers as long as he remained in EWI and maybe old Freddy when you were awake.
Today's Object looks like this:
A supernatural bond links you to the Killer.
Whenever the Killer reads your Aura and for the same duration as they do so, Object of Obsession activates:
- The Killer's Aura is revealed to you.
- Increases your Action speeds in Repairing, Healing, and Cleansing by 2/4/6 %.
If you are the Obsession, your Aura is automatically revealed to the Killer for 3 seconds every 30 seconds.
Increases the odds of becoming the Killer's initial Obsession by +100 %.
The Killer can only be obsessed with one Survivor at a time.
This change nerfed the perk significantly but came with a lot of other problems that makes it not woth to use compared to other aura reading perks who reveal the killer (like Alert or even Fogwise). Yes, it could give you any information about any aura reading the killer has, but the downsides are not worth it. It also completely stops working if you use any anti-aura reading perk like Distortion, Shadowstep or OTR, because it only triggers when the KILLER sees you aura. This makes it less compitable with other builds and perks.
- The trigger condition needs to be changed for it to be more viable. -> Everytime YOU see the Killer's aura the Killer can see your aura and vice versa. This makes it usable with Distortion or other similar perks. Please remember, that the perk would still have a 30s cooldown, so even during the time of OTR being active it would only be triggered 2 times.
- It automatically reveals your aura every 30s for 3s. This makes this perk a burden in scenarios when you don't want your aura to be shown (i.e. when you are hiding behind a gen or in a bush). The only way to curently double the cooldown is to hop in a locker right befor it activates, since this resets it for some reason (could be a bug though). Old Object had a minimum trigger range which was the same as the killer's TR to give you opportunities to hide or use it to confuse the killer. While I do not intend to bring those restriction back, I want to do something different: -> rework the perk's activation to be active and not passive. Therefore the user decides when their aura is revealed to the killer, making it not a burden in the scenarios I mentioned above. After that, the perk has it's 30s of cooldown. Yes, you need to be careful with your camera movement, but I think that's worth it if you get back the control over the perk.
- Aura reveals due to killer aura reading need an audio cue, so the user knows it happened even if they look the other way or don't have an eye on their perk icons constantly. Also other perks can overlap with the aura reading of Object like Kindred with BBQ.
- If you are NOT the obsession, be it either because of certain killer perks or that another survivor used DS, this perk becomes very weak or COMPLETELY USELESS if the killer has no aura reading at all. Therefore this perk needs to trigger for non-Obsessions too (like the original version of the perk). -> If you are not the Obsession, the cooldown of Object of Obsession is 60s.
I think these changes would make this perk better and more viable to use. Maybe some numbers need to change, but other this seems ok. Maybe one could argue that points 1 and 2 together are too much but I would like to try it fist and judge later.
Please share your opinion on this.
PS: I will maybe do more posts like this for other perks like MoM or Remember Me.
Edit: made the wording of point 1 a bit clearer.
Comments
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I actually use new OoO a lot. I think the perk is in a good spot and my only personal issue with the perk is your 2nd point about the self reveal being a burden. I do think this is an intentional design, but it's extremely frustrating when the perk single handedly loses you the game in a mass slug, hatch, etc situation
I don't think the perk is strong enough to need the downside in your 1st point, since the self reveal every 30 seconds is very much a double bladed sword. Effects that hide aura reading are rare or situation enough for that to not be an issue and while nether of those apply to distortion. Using distortion with OoO will annihilate your stacks very quicky unless you're somehow not the obsession.
As a little note about your 3rd point about audio cue is that the perk lights up like spine chill when it's active and you get action speed so your bar will turn yellow if you're doing a gen. I'm not against an audio cue at all and i do think it's a nice QOL idea, but it's kinda a non-factor problem.
I forgot to put in my piece in my comment lol. i Honestly would like to just have the self reveal every 30 seconds removed. Now like you said that will make the perk actually have no effect in some matches, but i believe that change will remove both the potentially problematic and frustrating part of the perk.
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So you think the survivor should be able to know where the killer is whenever they want?
No thank you. Not controlling when this extremely powerful effect happens is the mitigating factor of it.
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Not everytime you want. You'd still have 30s cooldown, but it would not automatically trigger. Only if you are looking at the killer. If 30s is not enough with this mechanic, make it 45s. But the perk can kill you in many situations because of the automatic trigger.
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I also use OoO sometimes with different builds to figure out what to change, and yes the main frustration is the auto reveal in situations where you don't want it (basically those you mentioned).
The audio cue was mainly for times when you are not on a gen, but transitioning to other areas, for example to rescue.
Completely removing the self reveal would make the perk worse, because if the killer has no aura reading at all you will never have a chance to use it. Problem with this is, that possible triggers are already used by other perks or would make it fifficult to determine if the killer has a related perk. If you say OoO would automatically trigger when people are unhooked, you could not find out if the killer has Floods of Rage because it would overlap. Another possibility would be to make the trigger point range dependent: Everytime the perk is off cooldown and the killer enters a 32m radius around you, if you look at the killer you reveal your auras to eachother. The perk goes on a 30s (or more) cooldown.
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