Onyro's Balancing Dilemma
Onyro is in a really tough position.
While people typically point towards Blight or Nurse being in the "tough to balance area", I would disagree since Onyro seems to have taken the cake in terms of being tough to balance, and while a lot of people like to state how "simple" changes to "simply fix" her, I feel as if a lot of people get lost seeing the bigger picture.
Onyro is NOT simple to balance, and I dont blame BHVR for struggling as much as they have been since regardless of how they approach it people will simply not be satisfied with the results... To put it bluntly, Onyro will always lie into two categories: "Onyro is OP" or "Onyro is too weak," but never in between.
When analyzing this, you must look at how Onyro works on a fundamental level.
While Survivors are repairing Generators, Onyro can force Condemned onto them which acts as a secondary objective to slow down the game. Failing to do said secondary objective can lead to the Survivor dying regardless of their hook progress.
Some might compared this to Pig's Reverse Bear Traps and to an extent you are right but Pig's power acts moreso as a sudden burst of slowdown with their secondary objective meanwhile Sadako's Condemned will constantly pressure Survivors throughout a match (but take longer to active it's more fatal effect as a result).
Secondary objectives, when done right, can be a positive thing but for many Survivors, especially new or less experienced players, it can often feel overwhelming since they feel as if they are not actually progressing the match and/or not progressing the secondary objective at an appropriate pace, as a result it can often lead to them being absolutely demolished by the Killer.
Meanwhile, on the other end of things, more experienced players can easily handle and balance the secondary and main objectives without much concern. Their time has netted them the ability to multi-manage effectively and often results in the Killer wasting their time trying to use their power.
From these two sides, you can pull the two conclusions: "Onyro is OP" or "Onyro is too weak".
And here is the thing. Neither are right or wrong in their own respective ways.
Sadako, at their core, will always stomp lower MMR brackets, that is just a fundamental fact when you consider how complicated their power is to new or less experienced players. Combine this with the large amount of maps, tilesets, etc. that players have the memorize and learn it can be incredibly overwhelming.
It's a difficult area to balance for BHVR since they cant make things too difficult for new players since they dont want to drive them away from the game. New players are incredibly important to the health of the game.
Likewise, she will always be considered generally weak by more experienced players. They will know the tactics and tools at their disposal to deal with Sadako, and on top of all of that, they will still be able to push through and complete the main objective. Sadako will be a cakewalk since her chase, the only aspect that provides a fundamental threat is incredibly weak to begin with (and by design).
It's still difficult for BHVR to balance this aspect of Sadako since making things harder for more experienced players makes things more frustrating for new or less experienced players.
With all of this, I have a lot of empathy for BHVR since balancing Onyro is very difficult. At least they have been trying new things to see what works and what doesnt work but ultimately I feel that a portion of the community will never be satisfied with her position.
Comments
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This is a fair statement. Although I don't know why Nurse or Blight are considered hard to balance. BHVR just doesn't want to touch their basekit, which in turn means their nerfs don't really impact them that hard.
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I think Nurse is considered hard to balance since messing with blink distance and movement speed, etc can easily result in Nurse not gaining enough distance to actually keep up with Survivors.
As for Blight... I kind of just slipped it in since it seems like BHVR is really struggling to balance his Iridescent addons. I see what they are going for with it but they are just really struggling with it. Basekit, he is fine.
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At least things are somewhat better now. I don't miss Starstruck Nurse.
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This is what I dislike about her new version. She either stomps everyone or has no chances.
I hope they return her back to her OG version, which hadn‘t the focus on condemned only. Most people played her for the mobility, which wasn‘t hindered back then, because nobody touched her tapes. My idea was to make condemned based around the proximity to the one Tv you teleported to (24-16m 0,5stacks; 16-8m 1stack; 8-0m 2 stacks) and keep all the buffs she got in her reworks
I also liked that condmning someone was rare back then and not the common way to kill someone. It took skill, which now is just tp spamming and hoping they don‘t turn off the TVs in time.
I hope they remove Tv auras, which give your position away every time and make everyone prerun. For tapes I hope they return a weak passive condemned, so that her counterplay is not just hold tape->win.
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I think blight was fine before his addon changes.
For nurse they should just test around with longer cooldowns until they find a good middle ground. There is no real downside for missing as nurse.
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how about changing tape insert time from 1 second to 15 seconds? I don't want a slowdown mechanic as onryo. I want my condemn mechanic to be actual threat vs best players like it was pre-rework.
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My biggest argument to balance her, or really any killer, is for BHVR to add a better system for learning the game, killer powers, addons, etc in an organized compendium for players to look at when they get stumped over a killer or perk, maybe even have it give out an alert when something is updated like how the shop has a constant (!) when there's a new item. Add it to the main menu or loadout screen before finding a match even. Could be something to read over while waiting for a match too.
Figuring out how a killer works is usually the biggest reason survivors die to them constantly, as far as I've been told. Some survivors still think SM drones are the same as before.
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Exactly this.
The recent killer stats demonstrate the issue quite well I believe for balance... the majority of players are low to mid tier, and the high skilled players are rare.
Tactical killers that invoke time management for survivors perform far better against low to mid survivors, but poorly against high tier survivors who know what they're doing. Low level killers can still get value from their power in the the low ro mid tiers, because mechanical skill isn't where these killers get their strength. Pig, Sadako, Freddy, Pinhead, Skull Merchant (even if her KR is inflated by toddlers) all of them include a side quest that the survivors have to deal with... and the low-mid tier survivors can't handle it effectively... but in high tier all these killers struggle mightily to do anything...
The skillful mobile killers on the other hand are much better in skilled hands vs. High level survivors, because they can keep up and actually apply pressure. Nurse, Spirit, Blight, Wesker, they all have the ability to catch high skilled survivors at loops effectively. However in low to mid tiers, the players playing these killers don't have the basic levels of skill to apply their strength properly... so they fall behind... and since that's the bulk of the playerbase, the top tier killers perform poorly in majority of games.
This means that tactical killers that exert slowdown sit at a comfortable 60% killrate, because they don't take much as much skill, and the survivors they face aren't good enough to beat them...
The mobile, dash killers sit below in the 55%-range, because the killers playing them aren't good enough to fully exploit their strengths. The killers lack the skill to play effectively, so their survivors outplay them more often.
So the issue is because the bulk of the playerbase is low to mid skill, the low skill requirement killers score well against low skill survivors, while higher skill requirement killers are scoring poorly... despite the fact objective the higher skill killers are better.
Edit: I suppose there is an argument to say, the killers you tend to go against is a natural grading system...
Post edited by UndeddJester on1 -
Pre-rework was fine! If the players are too lazy to read about the killers power they deserve to die lol.
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It’s been 1 weekish since Onyro has been updated. Unfortunately people are catching on very quickly. She’s becoming so easy to counter it isn’t even funny.
when I go up against her with two or three of my friends, they work on generators while I go around the entire map, just shutting her TVs off. 🤷🏼♂️ there isn’t much she can do about it and I have a good idea of course when they’re gonna come back online the time I make my rounds again.
We gained very little condemned from this, why? Because it’s that simple, I press one button, and there’s no consequence for me to turn the TV off, the time I turn off several TVs and cleanse I am perfectly OK.
When I play as her, the same issue happens, someone spends the entire time just turning the televisions off. I don’t get an opportunity to teleport, I don’t get an opportunity to condemn slow down my opponent.
It’s become more apparent than ever that the counter for survivors to shut down sadako is entirely too easy.
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I do agree with you completely on this post. I will say I am very happy for the direction that the behavior team went. I do understand that it is difficult to make things balanced, and some characters are more challenging than others.
I appreciate their continued efforts and making this happen, I personally still feel she needs a few more tweaks. It’s entirely way too easy for a survivors to counter her right now, especially the different I’ve seen between now and when she first released with her new improvements.
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It‘s really frustrating, when survivors do that and you can‘t do anything against it. I really hope they fix it and don‘t stop now.
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that's in dev mind a slowdown mechanic. 1 person shutting off TV's means that killer has 3vs1. my main issue is when entire team does that because there is no negative when entire team does that. if i go to gens that have tv turned off and push survivor off, the survivor just goes to another gen with tv on and turns it off. If i commit to chase then i am m1 killer where all gens become finished.
your not getting sufficient game-delay to win but your condemn mechanic is ineffective.
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I would agree, and in most cases, I generally have multiple survivors turning off my televisions. Rare occasions, it’s just the one person going around, shutting off TVs, that I can handle but when it’s multiple people turning everything off, it’s terrible.
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It does not really matter whether they run around or not. If everyone sits on one gen and turns that one TV near them off. 4 of 7 are offline for 70s and if they turn on, just eat that one stack.
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is for BHVR to add a better system for learning the game, killer powers, addons, etc in an organized compendium for players to look at when they get stumped over a killer or perk
They actually have a decent and detailed guide, but it is tucked away in the menus where no one really looks. They should have it on the new main menu option list where no one can miss it, instead of hidden behind the tutorial page under a submenu.
They should also make it a bit bit more digestible. It has a lot of good information but for new players it is hard to understand what is important or what it all means.
For example, it is critical for players to understand status effects, but it is 50% of the way down on a long list of page options, which are a sub-options, within a sub-menu, within a easily missed sub-tab. It is just not new player friendly at all which are the players who need access to this information the most.
Also it would be great if the guide gave the full screen width to read it rather than 50% of the screen. It is just tedious to look at or use because of this.
The Game Manual is just horribly unfriendly to use and easily missed.
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BHVR really needs to address how easy it is for survivors to just deny her power by shutting off all her TVs, which has little downside to survivors and is assisted by TV auras. It is very easy for survivors to do but deeply negatives Onryos ability to use their power effectively.
It would be great if BHVR would consider one of the following:
- A: Survivors turning off additional TVs when carrying a tape gives 2 stacks of condemn (was 1).
- B: Survivors can no longer see TV auras when in chase or carrying a tape.
Either of these would help solve the issue.
A: Survivors would either have to risk getting high amounts of condemn to deny more of her power if they don't do a tape run first. This would make them actually have to consider whether they want to commit to additional counterplay instead of going with the obvious choice of just disabling her power essentially for free.
B: It would limit the ability of survivors to quickly find TVs and disable them when they are already holding a tape. This is no unreasonable given there are already existing visual and audio effects that survivors can use to locate powered TVs. They really do not need the TV auras outside of seeing them to find the first tape and to highlight the drop off TV.
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Dev just consider statistical balance.
Sometimes survivor don't know the mechanism then 4k.
Sometimes survivor know the mechanism then 0-1k as a pure M1 killer.
Then they think it is good balance.😂
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