Well... It's a very ambitious sledgehammer...
I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with shifting power away from slugging and tunneling. Killers getting buffs to a non tunneling playstyle as well as nerfs to tunneling I think that's a good approach... but these changes as a whole feel for killer like being given a slightly stale but mostly fine cupcake but then having a gun put to your head and told "you've got a cupcake, but don't you dare ######### touch the coffee and walnut cake over there".
Not all of these changes are bad... some are quite good in fact... but when you take it as a whole? It's hard not to feel like Killers are being pretty heavily railroaded... and as a majority Survivor player, I want to fight a human being, I want to fear the killer at all times... not have a set of shackles placed on him where I know for a fact I can poke the bear with impunity knowing he can't touch me.
So what would I keep? Well a lot of this is way too strong to my mind... but I realise I can't gut it, so I will aim to compromise.
Slugging keep:
- If a Survivor is left in the Dying State for a total of 90 seconds during a match, they gain the ability to pick themselves up after fully recovering. I am a Tenacity enjoyer... this is too good imo. I would make this only apply if this player reaches another dying Survivor, or all other Survivors are dead/dying...
- Gradually increases crawling speed for Survivors who are left in the Dying State. This is the proper Slugging solution, Survivors should be able to get away from their slug location to get picked up in relative safety.
Tunneling keep:
- Unhooked Survivors gain Haste, Endurance, and Elusive status effects. Elusive is a great change, it makes coming back to tunnel a gamble, where even if you are a mobile killer, you can easily guess wrong and waste your time. Survivors have perks like Lucky Star and Quick & Quiet that become better here.
- Unhooked Survivors have no collision with other players (both Killer and Survivor). Simply a fantastic change. Any exploit concerns with clipping are massively dwarfed by the benefits for both sides.
- Unhooked Survivors gain immunity to Killer Instinct and sees the Killer’s aura nearby. I'm not so keen on Killer Instinct, the immediate thought is this is a key point of Freddy's design... but aura blocking, sure.
- These Unhooked effects are lost when the affected Survivor perform a Conspicuous Action. Naturally, you do stuff, that is on you.
- All unhook effects (except Haste and Endurance) are disabled once all generators are completed. Evasive might be fine, and I'm also on the fence for clipping, as the killer does obviously need a way to stop you... so yeah... OK sure.
- Added a unique effect to the Killer hook state UI that indicates the last Survivor they hooked. This is nice for the unique hook mechanic and just in general for easier tracking of hook states both from serious and chill Killers.
- After completing a “unique hook” (the same Survivor is not hooked consecutively), Killers get bonus damage for the next generator kick. Mini Pop seems a good incentive to not tunnel, and makes gen kick perks inherently better.
- After completing a “unique hook”, Killers get a temporary Haste status effect. I would hope this is exclusively when not in chase? Charging in with a prestacked bloodlust seems a little unfair... but for map traversal, sure.
- Temporarily reveals Survivors (think basekit BBQ & Chili) that have less or equal hook states to the hooked Survivor. Eeeeh... I don't really like this, cause it feels a little basekit WoO/Kindred-y where the game points me exactly where to go. I as killer have good perks to choose from for this if I want it in FttE, Alien Instinct, BBQ, etc... not sure I want this... but it does help against rats, and I will relent for the greater good.
- Unique hook effects are slightly lessened for The Blight, The Dark Lord, The Ghoul, The Hillbilly, and The Nurse. Could we get a new killer stat maybe? Vision or Wrath or something? One that gives another balance avenue to help lower level killers? That would be cool.
- Unique hook effects are disabled once all generators are completed. Makes sense.
Slugging Remove
- Added the ability for Survivors to recover while crawling. Recovery now occurs passively with no need to hold a button. This is one of the main appeals of my favourite perk Tenacity, and the decision to recover/crawl is a meaningful one especially since we're giving crawl speed over time. Don't make Tenacity irrelevant pl0x.
Tunneling Remove
- When a Survivor is hooked, their hook status is hidden from the Killer. When they’re unhooked, there is no notification and their hook status isn’t revealed immediately. This is disabled once all generators are completed. I dislike this cause it actively hides info from the Killer even when not tunneling, and makes maintaining a mental state of the trial in your head even harder. I think this change will do more to encourage proxying than it does stop tunneling. It also stops Killers going after unhookers when they have no other info... and rats will be lockerin yo...
- If a Survivor dies before 6 total hook states, all remaining Survivors gain a repair speed bonus for the rest of the Trial. Nerfs Pig and Sadako, and creates so many scenarios where Killers have to deliberately ignore legitimate death hook survivors being silly... the killer must always be a threat... I as Survivor shouldn't have a hall pass to say I can do whatever I want cause the killer is punished for catching me.... the killer must always be a threat.
- If the Survivor that was last hooked is Sacrificed or Killed, generators cannot be regressed or blocked. Same point as above... Why not use the unique hook mechanic to give Survivors a longer hook timer and a temporary repair boost to the rest of the team or something? Something a little less bullet to the head?
If the killer is hooking players and at worst having to leave players slugged to try and tinnel a player out, it opens windows for Survivors to do something about it, like WGLF... Making things like tunneling and slugging less convenient and in turn giving more incentives to spread pressure is good and something I'll support...
However it's not so good if you also have Killers given the goal of killing the survivors... but also have a gun to their head saying "be nice or else".
That's how I see it being a somewhat more palletable set of changes. Feel free to roast me, but I feel this is a reasonable set of compromises to achieve the goal without throwing player agency completely out the well. As I say, I want to fight humans, not a blind and gagged NPC.