Unknown power adjustment suggestions.
Hi all, like many of you I've played the PTB with spring trap and I love him, but I see a strong overlap between him and unknown. They do play differently and unknown is unique, but I feel unknown is somewhat supplanted by him. So I thought id write out some suggestions for unknown.
(Hi all, for context, UVX marks a survivor and if you keep looking at the unknown for about 10 seconds constantly, UVX disapears. UVX does not directly damage you unless you are hit by it when already marked, and only 1 shot of UVX can be shot at you during that 10 second time if the killer does not break your line of sight for about 1.7 seconds, which means the unknown has to stop and hide often around objects and take indirect a pathing to catch up to you, leading to longer chases if the Unknown can not land it's shots, as you will likely become unmarked if it misses once. I hope this context helps with this post)
AOE = Area of Effect
@First: UVX range power. (Includes: QOL: BUFFS: Skill Expression.)
Personally I feel this could do with a skill ceiling raise for old players, and lower for new players. So my suggestion is a mini AOE on first landing (about half size of the normal UVX), this would make general marking easier for new killers going against new survivors, but be more avoidable then the primary large AOE for survivors overall. It would also highly punish tightly looping survivors around objects, allowing for a small chance with accurate shots to get double hits of UVX which encourages survivors to use less tight looping as counter play. It would also give the chance for high skill players to land both the mini AOE and main AOE to instantly remove a health state. Overall making unknown more learnable, forgiving but also having a greater degree of skill be rewarded.
This continues with his shot needing to have a small boost to its AOE, (E.g 0.1m to 0.25m) increase, along with a faster time of flight speed to allow for more distant shots. This again does reduce the skill floor, but also rewards old players with greater range for more difficult shots. However, It would mean survivors need to move further away from loops to counter.
The last few parts to pull this together would be a slight reduction to the AOE delay for the explosion (e.g. 0.05-0.1 seconds), reducing the damages of poor latency affecting shot timing. And a slight increase to the ready and stow speed of the unknowns M2. As well as reducing the charge time of UVX so it can be ready about 1-2 second sooner, giving more time for lining up shots in chase, and allowing for maintaining current optimal down times with other changes, either this or the UVX line of site buffer being reduced to around 0.9-1.1 seconds. or both.
Finally increasing the angle in which Unknown can fire upwards, allowing for more interesting shots on ceilings and walls in tall structures like Eyrie of Crows, where an unknown player could take advantage of more indirect shots up the tower in specific situations and other areas on other maps. This is to fall in line with what many mains want, a crawl mode. However, where a crawl mode would be great in chase for hiding direction and for undetectable builds, its hard to implement and animate, yeah we saw him crawl tons in artwork and trailers, and would be really unique which id personally love, but it would fall in line with a rework and Behaviour already have a lot of those to do. (skull merchant).
@Second: Movement (Includes: Debuff: Changes: Rewarding players)
Unknown needs to be 4.4, not the current 4.6 movement speed, if these changes were to take place. It would allow for the higher projectile movement speed while giving survivors a better chance at counter play, rather then just flat-out making shots easier to land while still keeping up. It also would reduce players ability to clutch onto M1, rather play him with his power, making him distinct. This would make him a bit less forgiving for new players then other killers, but we have huntress as an example for that being fine, however it would make landing UVX more important and higher skill players would be rewarded for using his ability better.
The reduce movement speed would also make the slightly increase AOE of UVX less difficult to counter for survivors around loops like walls, but keep it being punishing around larger but short objects. Allowing unknown to continue being an anti loop that is strongest with indirect fire, unlike Spring Trap.
Teleportation to clones needs some minor changes too, if Unknowns speed is reduced then map pressure will be lower, so making the clones take longer to dispel is important, however part of his counter play in loops is survivors in teams removing the clones to support teammates around larger loops like kill shack. There are two ways to solve this then, make it take 1.5x-2x the time to remove a clone, or have it so any survivor that removes a clone gains UVX making them in more danger if they can not remove it before unknown next finds them.
The problem with increasing dispelling time is well, that's boring for survivors honestly and making the clones more static makes unknown more predicable which isn't fun again honestly, part of his creepy factor is not knowing what direction they might come from next. But would be a simple solution that wouldn't really change how they currently play, but also is a half solution and a good team could still without punishment remove the clones and thus removing half of Unknowns power entirely. It also could take away from gen time for survivors too much while not increasing the pace of the game, which really chases are much more fun then being stuck on and off gens.
So instead making it so a survivor that dispels a clone gain UVX would provide a real cost benefit to it, they would become vulnerable to UVX shots, and some what tell unknown that someone is in that area and likely working. This turns his counter play into a duel-edged sword for survivors but again a good team could remove all of them and sneak to remove the UVX, taking up some time but not preventing them from pressuring gens. It wouldn't be overly complicated for new players either as it stays within the current killers power. Combining this with a base speed reduction to the time it takes to spawn a clone of about 10 seconds would make unknown more flexible for old players, a bit more forgiving for new players struggling to land shots, and make survivors less sure of where unknown will come from next.
However I know it seems to get rid of the punishment for removing a clone at the wrong time which currently gives UVX if you don't finish the dispelling, but as counter to this if a survivor is doing this to support another survivor mid chase or mid loop, they're likely in M1 range and thus could be the one getting downed instead with a quick follow up M2, making dispelling mid loop even more punishing if poorly timed, if the survivor doesn't get to cover.
Final thoughts:
Overall this I feel would reduce the minimum skill level to play and learn unknown in a satisfying way, reducing his 0k rate slightly, but also raise the maximum skill ceiling of the killer as a whole to stay in line and be a unique and engaging challenge for unknown mains to learn, rewarding high skill play. It should also make it easier for lower skill survivors to counter lower skill killers, while making unknown slightly more difficult in high MMR lobbies for survivors to counter. Improving unknowns ability to snowball and encouraging a survivor game-play that requires them to sometimes sneak around to find and watch the unknown, increasing the likelihood of chases naturally and reducing gen camp or gen start chases.
So I hope some people like this idea and can tell me what you think. I hope I've kept survivors and killers in mind and tried to push unknown to stay as a unique character distinct from the game-play of similar teleporting anti-loops such as spring trap and alien, keeping to their style and distinct creepy "unknown" factor. haha.
Have a nice day all, and thank you Behaviour for developing this game, its fun and personally I love seeing what you all come up with next.
Comments
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I'd love like either a slightly longer debuff, or a slightly faster CD, like a second at most, that's like my dream QoL for them but otherwise I'm not sure. Maybe slightly larger Blast radius?
I love running unknown device on them for stealth builds with human greed + hoarder + BBQ + Lethal for fun aura reading for getting good shots off.
Really hope they get a slight QoL.1 -
Yeah the CD or AOE is the main thing really, but I've also read and heard a lot from unknown mains so I thought id put it all together in something that follows a theme and works all together in a thought out manor.
as for one of my favorite builds, trail of torment, machine learning, pop goes, thrilling tremors/floods of rage/painres. Depending on how I'm feeling.0
