Plague Rework. Why and a Suggestion.

DenVosReinaert

I want to preface this with saying that this post is entirely considering The Plague's power as is, as well as survivor's abilities WITHOUT any specified tactics and use of perks. Every killer has perks and tactics that work well (or maybe not) on or against it. This is a post that purely looks at the objective effects of The Plague's power on playstyles (mainly that of survivors).



Plague's power is a relic of the past. It no longer offers players the adaptability that any other killer's power and existing perk variety offer. At present, Plague's power invalidates 2 entire playstyles for survivors: Healing/altruism (not all but at least half of possible altruistic actions), and hiding. Additionally, her power is almost always active and can never be countered. The only interaction survivors have to do anything about her power is to cleanse themselves, which still leaves anything that is infected, still infected. Additionally it makes the Plague more powerful by making her puke damaging WHILE infected things stay infected.

A player is not able to try to heal and support their teammates that way because everyone is always infected and therefore broken. Players are unable hide because they are frequently, consistently and loudly puking, regardless of any perks they may have brought, alerting the Plague to their position at all times.

Every other killer power in the game allows players to play how they want. Sure one playstyle is more effective than the other depending on the killer, but the player is still able to employ those playstyles should they wish to do so. That is not the case for Plague. When playing against a Plague the player is forced to either play permanently injured and loudly revealing themselves through grunts of pain and puking (if infected), Or taking forever to slowly and painfully play through the game avoiding any infection, which also puts them at risk of accruing AFK Crows due to the newly implemented AFK system adjustments (which also need adjusting because you can still gain AFK Crows despite playing the game and doing objectives, but that is a subject for a different post).

To compare the Plague's infection to that of Nemesis for example:

• Nemesis:
  • Is only ever able to apply his infection through a single instant interaction, be that through a hit from his tentacle or hit from his zombies
  • His infection is a medium for which to increase the range of his attack. His infection does not directly affect a survivor's playstyle.
  • The infection does not spread when interacting with something/someone. It is only ever relevant to the survivor it has been applied to.
  • Nemesis's infection makes survivors occasionally puke, revealing their location to the killer if they happen to hear it.
  • Removing the infection stops any and all risk attached to it until infected again.
  • Nemesis's tentacle (primary application factor for his infection) attacks in a straight line and shortly persists only for the duration of the attack.

• Plague:
  • Is able to apply infection to: Survivors, Pallets, Windows, Lockers, Generators, Chests and Totems. Additionally, her infection can be carried over from survivor to everything else in a 1:many relationship. Survivors also rapidly increase their infection by running around.
  • Plague's infection makes survivors frequently and consistently cough and puke when infected, regardless of the infection's level (fully infected and broken, or only barely touched), practically permanently revealing themselves to the killer whenever they are nearby.
  • Plague's infection makes survivors permanently broken (until cleansed) when fully infected. Not only that, but survivors their infection is carried over when interacting with another infected survivor. Invalidating any potential healing that the survivor may have wanted to do regardless of their performance, and also highly discouraging altruistic behaviour such as unhooking a survivor if the hooked survivor is infected but they are not.
  • Survivors curing themselves from plague's infection only do so temporarily, until they are forced to touch something else infected (which they have to, for the sake of progression of the match, and potentially when being chased), are infected by the Plague themsevles, or are touched by another infected survivor.
  • Curing themselves from Plague's infection also provides more danger to survivors, which in itself is not a bad thing for a killer power, however it can be active at the same time as her existing passive infection allowing her to have survivors essentially permanently exposed (potentially even worse as they also reveal their locations to the killer with coughing/puking), as well as being able to hit them at great range with a (longer than Nemesis's duration) persisting ranged attack whose trajectory can be changed during the attack.

On the killer side of things there is something that should also change. Almost all other killers have interactions that allow the survivors to interact with the killer's power, and for the killer to regain the effectiveness of their power. Plague's power can be held hostage by survivors in a sense. If survivors do not cleanse at all, then you have one use of your power with the damaging puke and that's it. Yes everyone would be broken then and can be taken down with a single hit, however you will be stuck pressing M1 all game, and any survivor team that has the coordination to actively not cleanse has the altruistic capacity to make sure you will never get a survivor on the hook even if you down someone. (this latter part is admittedly more of a personal gripe with the situation then objective feedback).


Alright, with all that said and done. Suggestions!

• Incense based power
  • Fitting with her bio, Large Censers are placed around the map (in place of her fountains). Survivors can retrieve a purifying censer from there. The purifying censer is a secondary item with a charge bar (much like that of a flashlight). The purifying censer can be used to cleanse themselves, other survivors, or any infected objectives from their infection. The grabbing of a purifying censer is a timed interaction. Any survivor that has a censer on them, will drop it (and it will be destroyed like Singularity's EMP under the guise of 'spilling it's contents') if injured/downed by any means
  • Plague still produces her vomit. The vomit, when used on a survivor, partially infects them. The infection has to be manually built up by the killer vomitting on them, or while survivors are interacting with an infected objective (this includes other infected survivors, it is a plague after all). Plague's vomit can still infect objectives (generators, chests and totems) for a duration.
  • Partially infected survivors will cough intermittently as a reminder to any players that they are infected. The higher the infection rate, the higher the frequency. (still not nearly as frequent coughing/puking as there is now, but it can be little more frequent than with Nemesis)
  • When a survivor reaches full infection, a timer starts (presented on their portrait in the bottom left). When that timer reaches full, the infected survivor becomes injured and the timer resets, when the timer completes when a survivor is already injured, then they are downed. However, even if an injured survivor is healed, so long as they are fully infected, the timer will persist. Additionally, fully infected survivors also transmit a greater amount of infection to any survivor interacting with them.
  • Survivors who are partially infected can be cleansed faster than survivors who are fully infected (cleanse rates would obviously have to be tested but I'm willing to propose double the time for fully infected survivors.).
    • The reasoning behind this is that it is still fairly easy for survivors to become infected and spread the infection between them. Whereas survivors who have been fully infected are punished for having procrastinated on removing a literal plague from their bodies.
      
  • Survivors who are fully infected leave a puke pool behind when they puke (timings are the same as a blood pool, however since this is due to the infection it can also occur while healthy).
  • Plague can vomit on the large censers that are placed around the map to disable them temporarily (the purifyin insence in the censer will dissipate the plagued vomit over time), there is a cooldown between these interactions for The Plague.
    
    I feel like these adjustments would also lend well to some of her own perks. Survivors can go down on their own if they dont pay attention to their infection status, allowing for the trigger of Infectious Fright to happen a little more regularly. Dark Devotion would trigger with about the same consistency as it already did due to the infection still making the Obsession Injured.
    
    
• Addons (I'm not going over each and every one, but more some general ideas)
  • Since every killer has them pretty much; Whenever a survivor is injured due to their infection, they gain Mangled and Hemmorage for 30s.
    • 30 rather than something like 60 or 80 because it can happen more than once if the survivor is healed while they are infected.
  • Objectives are infected for an additional 5/10 seconds
  • When a generator is completed, if it was infected, it spreads that infection to the 3 closest generators (Visceral)
  • Survivors who are fully infected spread a little bit of their infection to survivors within 5 meters of them everytime they puke (Visceral)
  • All Large Censers start infected for 60s
  • Increased duration on vomit
  • Increased range on vomit
  • Persisting Plague vomit on the ground for 2 or so seconds (Visceral)

Now, with all this in mind, I do appreciate the amount of work that has gone into making Plague the way that she is. It took a lot of work to get her here, I know that, and I thank the devs for their effort.

It is time for her to change.

Elan

https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/452165/plague-rework-why-and-a-suggestion

Hmm, it's mixed. I defienetly think that there are not much to do against Plague. But, at the same point she has really simple power. People understand that being broken means:

→ chases are way shorter

→ you cannot bodyblock

→ it's way easier to tunnel someone out as they don't really want to cleanse

→ you cannot engage chase out of safe area

But at the same time, playing against her doesn't really change and is kinda stale. As people won't cleanse to boost her, but she always has at least one fountain ready. Plague is not very fun to play against as she's identity is forever gens with thana and other slowdowns which are 90 % of games against her. I don't really enjoy playing her either as she doesn't really offer much. You either have people one shot entire game or they cleanse and now has to face corrupt puke. Not even saying that she has some of most busted iri add ons. But I don't really think she should get changes as she's somewhat ok no and a valid pick if you want to negate entire game mechanic, which is healing.

SoGo

So... you want to completely remove the corrupt purge, and replace it with a completely passive mechanic that Plague cannot influence.

Do I get that right?