Is Treacherous Crows the new worst perk in the game?
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That would be a nice way to change the idea. Invocations result in not being able to be healed for the remainder of the trial. That would be downside enough for the Invocation.
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why in the entities real do they not stack
thats a major flaw
and im glad you are one of the killers that are actually a good person
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To be a fly on the wall of their perk design discussion meetings (if there are any) is something I have oft dreamed of. But not because it would be particularly interesting, more so entertaining…
Because as you (and as I have often before) pointed out, these perks would not even be all that great without many of the restrictions, stipulations and conditions they come riddled with. And this goes for many more perks, Invocations are just the epitome of this issue.
Sitting in basement for 60 (formerly a mindboggling 120) seconds is just bad game design. Even ignoring how incredible both the time investment and risks attached to that are, just sitting around twiddling thumbs is painfully boring. At the very least there could have been some sort of minigame that makes it somewhat engaging and can speed up the process. Instead we just stare at a wall for a minute.
And then there's the no less mindboggling "Broken for the remainder of the trial" thing. Which, by the way, makes being in basement more than a minor risk, if the killer has any semblance of gamesense and is anywhere within proximity to the basement, as someone randomly becoming Broken is a pretty clear telltale sign that that someone is in basement and can make for a free, not seldom game-deciding basement hook.
On top of this, multiple surviors bringing these perks isn't even beneficial, as their effects are not increased by doing so. That means wasted perk slots, wasted time, and another aspect that disproportionally disfavours solos.
While I can see where you are coming from with the "ease of balance/design" argument, I actually think making them stack is the way to go (and I'm honestly perplexed to read that they apparently don't stack). Because another major issue with the design of Invocations is that if they would actually become worth the insane investment and risk, they would feel insane to be on the receiving end of as well. As killer you don't really notice or think about the fact that someone has just spent a minute in basement doing nothing (plus any time taken to go there and back), or any potential "risks" attached to that that may not apply in that specific moment or match - all that killer player will really notice is the crazy effect of the Invocation that somehow made all of that worthwhile. I mean, in the example of Weaving Spiders, I genuinely believe it would need to shave off something like 30% of charges to be actually worth it, and imagine the sheer outcry at that.
By stacking them, survivors would at least be able to up to quadruple the value they get for the same time/risk investment (obviously then needing to invest the additional perk slots however), without the respective effects having to be insane enough to be worth it individually. (Although the individual effects should also still be somewhat better than what they currently are.)
I also think multiple players bringing Invocations shouldn't be as conflicting as it is currently, where it mostly just means all duplicates are wasted. Instead duplicate copies of Invocations should also stack, e. g. meaning Weaving Spiders would be 20-40 charges, Treacherous Crows 4-8 seconds aura reveal. Only of course that all involved survivors become Broken. You also shouldn't have to be there when someone else invokes to use yours - if you do join them the benefit is that you both only spend at most a minute (from when the invocation process was first started) to activate all the perks, but if you do it a later time that should also be possible, in which case you then spend your own entire minute in basement.
Should this become problematic in SWFs (I don't really think it would, given the fact that everyone would be Broken for the entire match), the solution is to restrict SWF loadouts to one copy per perk, which is something I long have thought would benefit the game a lot, nerfing the top SWF performance potential and opening up design space for perks (and items, etc.), which would then also disproportionally benefit solos that still can use multiple copies of them.
I will note that I have also thought about and proposed other ways of balancing Invocations, such as making it so you only become Broken after the next time you are injured or making it so the invocation progress does not reset, such that you can cancel and continue at will. That is feasible even alongside number improvements on the effects side, or with them stacking.
For Treacherous Crows in and of itself, I will at least say that it is harder to classify as a killer perk than Spiders. With the latter it is very easy to quantify the possible impact and see the many grievous issues with it, from a mere time efficiency perspective to risk evaluation to the fact that it gets worse as the trial progresses and even to a "gameplay fun" consideration, where you just sit and stare in basement for a minute and in turn have to spend 10 less seconds on gens, which doesn't yield any new gameplay or enhances/improves on the quality of the existing gameplay. Even doing gens is much more engaging than sitting in basement. Crows on the other hand does not have an easy time investment to benefit evaluation, the value its effect can provide is impossible to quantify in concrete terms, and it also creates a new type of gameplay that even has synergies (e. g. using offerings for specific maps where there are many crows, using Calm Spirit so as to not disturb crows yourself, using Eyes Of Belmont to increase the time you see the killer's aura for). It's also really fun to see the killer's aura in chase.
That said, there are still problems on the effect side of Treacherous Crows too. As others have pointed out, survivors in chase will usually disturb crows before the killer does, and by the time they come back the chase will either long have been taken elsewhere or the survivor might just disturb them first again. This is really something to be seen in action, but logic and intuition both suggest that the most valuable and fun prospect of the perk (seeing the killer's aura in chase) likely is not all that frequent an occurrence.
I think making it 4 seconds would at least be something. Or make it so that any crow being disturbed by a survivor in the killer's terror radius as well as by the killer will reveal the killer's aura, which would create an interesting dynamic where survivors will want to intentionally seek out crows at various points.
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