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Are Scourge Hooks a Necessary Limitation? Are They Good Game Design?
Scourge hooks have been in the game for almost a year now, so I think its safe to say that players are used to them and how they function. Im sure you all know but I'll reiterate. Scourge hook perks function as follows:
- Win a chase.
- Hook a survivor
- If hook is a scourge hook, effect triggers.
At first glance this seems to be well done, not needing any changes. Hexes and Boons are both limited by their activation being tied to their location, and those have been seen and well liked by players. Therefore, limiting scourge hooks in a similar way is a logical way to go about it.
However, the problem comes in with the worst thing known to man- Hook RNG.
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There are 4 scourge hooks on a map, no more no less. All of your scourge hook perks will activate upon those specific four. So, complete steps 1-2, and if your near a hook, get value. Being near a hook when a survivor goes down however, isnt something you can really control. A survivor controls the direct of the chase. If they run, you follow.
Once down, hook em and be done with it, go to the next. Hook RNG is typically fine, with a few select examples on certain maps etc. However with scourge hooks, there are only four. In effect, if you want value on every down, you are treating the game as if there are only four hooks AT ALL.
Not a problem, right? Value on every chase isnt really required. You'll get value on some, and not others. Which in itself, is good! A perk slot shouldnt be guaranteed value, you hsould have to earn it.
Except, when we refer back to the steps for value, you find that you indeed do have to earn it via downs. Theres actuallt a secret step in there, though-
Step 1 is actually to hope the RNG blesses you. Hooks will sometimes be on one end of the map, meaning any survivor downed on the other end means no value for you by no fault of your own.
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So essentially, scourge hook rng actually leads to activation being entirely luck based.
Let me explain. Lets say a survivor is hook on a scourge hook, because they went down near it. Great, value. However, that scourge hook is only there because of the random chances it'd spawn there. If the RNG had decided there would be no scourge hook near that survivor, you get no value.
In summary, the true activation condition of scourge hooks is to win a chase (via skill, therefore earning it). However, the RNG of scourge hooks means that its entirely random if you will get value, because its entirely random a scourge hook will spawn where needed.
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There is one final thing I would like to add. How scourge hooks as a mechanic effect survivors. The scourge mechanic itself punishes bad unhooks and trades with perk value. I do like this in concept, as bad survivors should not be able to play badly without repercussions.
However, once again RNG rears its ugly head. This punishment will not happen if the hooks badly spawned, if the would-be unhooking goes down without unhooking, or if basic hook RNG decrees they wiggle off. Which leads back into RNG being too large of a factor in scourge hooks.
What do you guys think? Would making all hooks scourge hooks be overpowered, or is that already possibly from being lucky with RNG? Though about this plenty recently.
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Making all hooks scourge would be too much and thats coming from someone that really enjoys using them in certain builds. Maybe have it so that its guaranteed one to spawn in each quadrant of the map, however that would take some serious work from the devs and im sure they have a huge workload as is. Could buff it to 5 hooks to help, essentially making close to 1/3rd of all hooks scourge but even that faces the same problems. I guess it ain't broke, right?
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I'd rather they be on the stronger side and be harder to activate than be mid and activate on every hook. I don't usually have a problem activating pain res but if you use agitation you definitely shouldn't unless you got super unlucky and they're all clumped in one corner.
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If scourge hook perks worked on every hook, that's basically no different than just deleting the scourge hook mechanic entirely; they'd be the same as other perks that activate on any hook such as Pop or DMS.
A perk working on every hook is fine, but scourge hook perks are designed around that not being the case. If they were to function on every hook, they would have to be nerfed to compensate.
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I think adjusting the spawning logic would suffice.
Make no Scourge Hook spawn with X meters of another. This ensures that there aren't two Scourge Hooks back to back, so Survivors can reasonably counter-play it with Sabo AND ensures you don't get 4 Scourges on one side of the map and none on the other.
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I think one extra scourge hook or betterly spread spawns would be fine ,,there are games where simply i don't have a scourge hook available unless i run agi,, I like running quirky full scourge hook builds and sometimes i instantly regret when i load into the map and see the spawns
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Except there is marginal difference in scourge and usual hook perks, and the fact sh perks aren't even that strong for most part.
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Scourge hooks inconsistency sounds good if the effects were good enough to warrant the bad rng risk. However that’s not the case. All hooks could be scourge hooks and none of those perks would be close to overpowered, even pain resonance. For reference with all hooks being scourge hooks pain resonance would just be nearly equivalent to old Pop in power level and old pop was fine.
It’s currently just an unnecessary limitation on perks that aren’t good enough to warrant the limitation.
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the way they work is interesting and good, it's just when the game decides all your scourge hooks are going to be in some random corner together that it gets lame, they should be more evenly spread out with better spawn logic
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scourge hook perks are probably overpowered perks for dev's, so they add rng to strong killer perks to reduce their effectiveness is my conclusion. Boons and SC were added in the same chapter. Would you trade global boons for global scourge hooks? I would not mind it but I am sure other people would complain.
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I'd say no.
Nearly every Scourge perk appears to be balanced with the assumption that you always have a Scourge Hook in range. Which simply isn't true. And losing a perk because the survivor happened to go down in a certain spot sucks.
Especially if that perk is one of the more limited ones like Gift of Pain or Floods of Rage, which only work twice per survivor instead of three times, and you need to be careful not to kill a survivor on your limited Scourge hooks.
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Honestly, with hook spacing in this game, one additional Scourge hook could make the world of difference, and might make it so there IS a Scourge hook within range roughly 90% of the time, instead of the 50-60% of the time currently.
Also Five suits the game better than Four no? Five players, five totems, five Scourge hooks?
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Hook RNG needs to be addressed, mostly. You shouldn't have all four scourge hooks spawn in one area, or standing at the fringes of the swamp constantly.
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We should remove the Scourge Hook mechanics and instead have all the Scourge Hook perks apply to any hook.
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Also losing a scourge hook every time you sacrifice a survivor on it. Have to keep track of who has and hasn't been hooked.
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No, they'd absolutely be broken if they weren't scourge hook perks. Even Monstrous Shrine, of all perks, would be OP if it was just -any- hook. Pain Res especially would be broken. And even Gift of Pain would be way too heavy, basically rolling an unconditional Thana AND Sloppy butcher into one.
Scourge Hooks should absolutely stay Scourge Hooks, but one idea I liked that was mentioned was that the positions of these hooks should shift over time. The example mentioned was specifically intended to make camping a Pain Res hook less punishing for survivors. After all, if someone tries to stretch the game out by going for a trade, the killer would be rewarded for hard-camping by just hooking on the same hook again.
But just moving a scourge hook on getting a scourge hook wouldn't fix the issue of all scourge hooks spawning in one corner of the map and then none of the survivors actually going there. So I would suggest that any time the killer gets -any- hook, one, two, or all scourge hooks are reassigned.
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Gift of Pain is trash to where even on killers that barely m1 they still get more value out of Sloppy and run that instead, that’s how bad it is. Even on the killers that are non m1’s that it’s made for they don’t run it.
Pain would not be overpowered at all. You’re getting 15% instead of old Pops 25% to account for the time wasted of walking to kick the gen. They would be nearly equivalent with every hook being scourge.
Monstrous Shrine would only be giving that effect when leaving every single hook to give free unhooks. That’s literally rewarding the killers for playing extremely fair, aka exactly the type of healthy perk we want.
You also downplay the fact that each of these hooks still requires a down and hook to even get the effect which is big on its own with how fast gens go. Look at the average amount of hooks most players are getting by the time the last gen Pops and tell me that many procs of a scourge hook is overpowered.
Are games you get a PR hook on each down overwhelming for the survivors? No, not remotely. They had to be misplaying a lot in the first place if you’re getting that many downs.
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Yes, it is necessary
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Killer killing a survivor off is punishing for them lmao
thats a first
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No to making all hooks scourges. I would be ok with having the 4 scourge hooks highlighted in yellow auras for the first 10 or so seconds of a match though.
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Idk then, maybe just run Agi if it happens that often to you. Map rng is part of the game and Sabo plays make for a fair counter to source hooks.
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You are killing survivors and winning son, no need to worry about a single hook
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I think hook RNG is the safer way to go as that need a full look at anyway. Sabo squads can either be very good on certain maps or useless on certain maps. Indoor map hook rng can be hell and create massive dead-zones.
I think adding even just one other scourge can go the same way as hook spawns can go for survivors, having two hooks right next to each other now feels bad for survivors and when its white hooks it feels bad for killer. I think you'd only increase the chances of that happening by adding more hooks. However it also feels bad when say you're playing garden of joy and you have a white hook on the roof, basically useless. RNG must be touched first before more hooks were to be added IF they had to be added after punching up the RNG.
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Realistically speaking, countering SH with sabo is generally just a waste of time.
None of those perks worth to go out of your way (which is generator for 99% of times) just to prevent activation of it, it's not like the life of survivor which turns game around 180, it's just a slight regression/aura/slowdown which can be applied with any other perks.
So yeah changing every hooks to SH doesn't make it that much better, I don't even think it will increase their pick rate.
And time it takes to scourge hooks are also mostly negligible too, if it's not negligible you can just hook it on normal hooks.
I'd say it's pretty much QoL buff even though it IS a buff.
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there are two key points that you're missing in this post. though without them your argument is pretty solid. so whether or not you intentionally or unintentionally left them out - it does help your argument to avoid them.
those two key points are:
- basement hooks are also considered scourge hooks
- you don't have to down a survivor at first opportunity.
i believe that by including these two facts into your formula one can create a viable strategy that actually makes scourge hooks viable.
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1- Basement hooks are not scourge hooks.
Only one perk, which was retroactively made a scourge perk, turns basement hooks into scourge hooks, which is Scourge: Monstrous Shrine. This perk is virtually useless to use on it's own, and spending an entire perk slot just to make basements hooks Scourge hooks isn't all that worthwhile.
2- Are you sure? Does it benefit any killer in any possible situation to not down a survivor???
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the fact remains that you can increase your number of scourge hooks by using said perk.
yes actually. several killers benefit from delaying downs. in fact all killers do when faced with a deadhard user. outside of survivor perks - meyers and billy both benefit. nurse benefits. trapper benefits. bubba benefits. hag benefits. oni benefits. plague benefits. pig benefits.
all killers benefit in regards to delaying an attack that might down or injure a player.
unhooks that add endurance can be avoided. deadhard. prioritizing specific hooks or locations on the map. ability and perk mechanics. i can go on and on.
part of being a decent killer is knowing when to down a survivor and when to continue the chase in order to steer a player where you want them to go. or when to disengage from a chase to avoid wasting time.
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Because you move at 4.6 and 4.4 movement speed or in the case of nurse can teleport you have the agency (in most cases) when it comes to a chase. Survivors run from block to block looking for pallets and vaults or long walls. There’s a sort of order of operations that a killer can almost see a survivor mentally struggle through - especially more experienced players. At low skill levels this issue is irrelevant as those players will probably trap themselves without much input from the killer.
When you arrive at a pallet there are three interactions that can happen. You go through and get stunned, you go through and don’t get stunned, or you stop and don’t get stunned. When the pallet is finally thrown you as the killer can either break the pallet then and there - which will pressure the survivor to continue running from the side that is opposite of your current position. If the killer desires they can also just loop once more and now the pressure with be towards the reverse end of the pallet.
if a survivor walks in a straight path they will be caught eventually. So survivors have to head for loops. If you as the killer chase relative to the next loop section rather than directly at the survivor you can herd the survivor left or right. If the survivor cuts the same way you’re going the distance will be drastically shorter than if the survivor cuts the alternative. In which case the angle of the survivor in relation to world orientation will change and the distance will slightly increase. This is called the path of intercept I believe and is a simple physics problem. Certain creatures use it when engaging in flight to flight predatory assaults. It’s also used in football for tackling strategies and is often referred to as “flowing towards the ball”
here are some examples of when you’d use it:
denying a down hit against a boiled over player, a successful application of enduring against a dead hard player, all three of meyer’s obsession perks, instant interrupt grabs from vaulters or locker hiders to decrease the likelihood of a stun by shortening the animation, preventing an adrenaline proc by timing after the generator pops, safe hook rescue manipulation, loop disruption, perk conservation, pallet stun baiting (where you force a wasteful use of the pallet, but still get the down), night shroud conservation when engaging with a marked player as ghostface, herding as billy or cannibal or any killer with a situational exposed or lethal hit ability like huntress, challenge completion (doc, purge, nightmare), baiting into executioner’s trail for a last rites execution rather than a sacrifice on hook, following the player to find other players or the hatch if you intend to engage them outside of a chase, but don’t want to lose the current survivor, jolt procs on more generators, rancor execution proc, allowing a survivor to cleanse the haunted grounds totem, waiting for a hook pull against a rescuer for a free down, using franklin’s demise after the survivor picks their item back up, faking a decloak as wraith to cause a panic vault or pallet stun attempt, doctor mind games with the red stain and to make the phantoms more impactful, noed secrecy, knight hubris bait, body blocker avoidance in group formations, trapper trap baiting for instant downs, nurse blink strike set up, pallet stun on pickup avoidance, breakable wall/drop shortcut awareness options, coordinated tactics suppression (basically if you’re chasing someone and someone else is trying to body block or take a protection hit you can waste time as you’ve pulled a person from a generator that might otherwise be helping with gens and by baiting them you might get a double down.), unbreakable waste baiting, perk identification, huntress bloodlust perk, hag trap baiting for totem cleanser or generator free down (faking a chase to make players feel comfortable doing other thing then stealth mint ragging them.), legion 5x progressing strike attempt on a recently mended player, artist 2 for 1 bird trapping, nemesis mutation growth, wesker 2 for 1 injury, sadako execute against tape holder, reverse bear trap manipulation as pig, strategic trickster perk applications, dredge nightfall addon mechanics, clown bullying and blood collecting as oni for a few examples.
basically and i mean this in the nicest way possible you’re entirely incorrect in your opinion that killer direction and survivor direction in a chase are independent. Killers are the steering wheels behind a chase - similar to a forklift.
Personally, i think all scourge hooks should apply to the basement hooks, but that’s just me. More basement play would be a welcomed addition.
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