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The new Dredge skin (Mycelium Nightmare) has a few objective problems.
When I first saw the new Dredge skin on the rift pass trailer, I loved it. Then I checked the details more carefully in-game and I loved the design even more, it had the potential of being my favorite Dredge skin, which is saying something, because pretty much every skin this killer has is great! But then I noticed a few things… a few problems in the skin, and one of them can affect gameplay while other simply doesn't meet a quality standard skins tend to have in this game.
The first one: the arm (not the weapon one, the other, the cosmetic piece literally called "arm" on Dredge) is a bit of a Pay to Lose cosmetic. Because it's a little bigger than the arms of other skins, this translates to the killer's POV and it actually occupies a bigger portion of the screen than other Dredge cosmetics. Maybe this usually doesn't make a "huge" difference, but it's still noticeable and it can eventually make a difference between spotting a hiding survivor in a corner or not. Or even worse: it can make tracking spinning survivors harder. On the other hand (literally), the weapon is smaller than usual and occupies less space on screen. It seems the idea was to shift the screen space occupied by the weapon to the arm's side and still end up with a similar total (in other words, smaller weapon + bigger arm = same total space). The problem is that, if you want to mix and match different cosmetic pieces, using that arm with any other weapon will hinder your vision to an extent.
I'm posting here a few screenshots from the Dredge's POV that show how much space the new skin's arm occupies vs how much the Dredge's prestige arm occupies (because it's the same as the base one). In all cases I tried taking the screenshot at the point of the animation when the arm is at its highest, so we all have a notion of the biggest space each cosmetic can occupy on screen during each animation.
While standing.
While walking.
While lunging.
While lunging and turning left (look at how ridiculous it gets, this can make a difference when trying to hit a survivor spinning to the left or trying to juke you in a corner).
The second (and arguably worst) one: there are mushrooms at the top of the body that CLIP through the head very noticiably, ALL THE TIME. And the head is part of the body's cosmetic piece so, yeah, we have a cosmetic piece that clips through itself, and to a much bigger and more noticeable extent than any other Dredge skin (some Dredge body cosmetics have a little bit of clipping that are barely visible and only happen during specific animations. No other skin has such an ugly and frequent clipping like this one). The base of the neck also gets completely flattened and clips through the red mushroom near it to the point the red cap can be partially seen from the other side. This clipping issue happens during the standing animation in lobby, but also the walking animation ( I noticed it on the endgame screen).
It's good to remember that the devs once stated that one of the reasons for many skins to be linked sets is because they would clip through other cosmetics. But now we have a cosmetic piece that clips a lot through itself AND it is the final reward for the premium track of a rift pass, with FOUR variants! So a cosmetic clipping through other pieces a big enough of a problem to make it part of a linked set, but a skin that clips through itself is good enough to receive four variants with the same problem to be rewarded on a premium track?
And finally, there's a third problem that I THINK it's smaller because, AS FAR AS I KNOW, only happens in lobby, but I haven't been able to confirm if it happens during gameplay too: there's at least one animation that makes the arm stretch in a really weird-looking way. As far as I know, no other Dredge arm does that during this animation, at least not visibly.
Comments
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I remember Otzdarva even made a video about the Wraith's Meet your Maker weapon when it released. During the wiping animation, it covered pretty much the whole screen. Don't know if it's still like that, tho, I don't use that cosmetic.
Honestly, certain kinds of Pay to Lose cosmetics are becoming way too common. I get that some of them are kind of unavoidable (like, if you want to get creative with skins and make some with cool unique visual effects, some of them are going to make you much easier to spot from afar or even behind objects. I'd even say the current rift made a good job of making such visual effects more subtle, like the Dredge's fungus spores and the survivors' flying petals), but there is so much now, including skins that are too noisy and some that even make the killer a little taller (which can make them easier to track in certain loops), that's way too many skins that come with some kind of disavantage.
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BHVR literally doesn't care if Dredge cosmetics block large portions of the screen, because Crab Dredge and the Unwanted Toy cosmetics, are still blocking way too much of the screen.
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Wow, when it comes to space occupied horrizontally, this one is even worse! Even though it's not clear which skin has the worst arm (since one is taller and the other is wider), this one has a really big weapon too! This is awful!
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Ouch. Dredge already loses quite a bit of the screen thanks to his other arm. This is kind of over the line, though.
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Yeah, the shop having cosmetics with this problem and not even allowing you to see it in the store is really bad. Specially in a game with no refund system. So you can spend money (or iri shards obtained after a LOT of time playing) and only then realize you payed to make your gameplay experience worse.
Pay to Win cosmetics that give less information to survivors are even worse than Pay to Lose. The Were-Elk is… not as bad now as it was before, but the lullaby is still a bit harder to listen to, and I'm pretty sure Naughty Bear still doesn't have a breathing sound like Trapper normally does.
Smaller weapons are not as big of a problem because weapons in general shouldn't occupy screen space that hinders your vision to begin with, but it's quite baffling that they have such a big difference from other cosmetics, that only emphasizes how much difference a cosmetic can make, specially when comparing the biggest ones to the smaller ones. Since we are talking about the Dredge, I believe Decaying Misery (the one with antlers) has the smallest arm among all Dredge skins. So matching Decaying Misery's arm + Mycelum Nightmare's weapon would make for the smallest screen coverage possible.
Another killer that really suffers from Pay to Lose cosmetics is Deathslinger. I don't have many skins for him, but I've seen at least one youtuber once playing with different Slinger skins and showing how their guns have less accurate sights, because they are is distorted or obstructed by some altered shape at the top of the weapon (some of the design changes for the sights are a bit distracting as well). Imagine a skin that literally makes the character's power harder to aim with.2 -
Technically, a more horizontal block is better, due to the fact that survivors are usually located on the lower half of the screen, and the top half of the screen is very often just the sky, and survivors aren't ever floating in mid-air.
This means that with a more horizontal block, the Dredge player could awkwardly angle their camera much lower than usual, so all the survivors are located in the top half of the screen.
But with a more vertical block, there really isn't a good workaround, as the Dredge player is forced to rapidly move their camera left/right/left/right to compensate for the cosmetic blocking the screen.
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