Some Thoughts About Sadako, Condemned, & Other Alternate Kill Conditions
With the latest dev update, people are buzzing about how Sadako may be hurt by the new six-hook threshold for avoiding a penalty. While I think this is premature and kind of disagree with the notion entirely, I do think it's a good springboard for talking about Condemned and how it can maybe be made more of a fair + useful tool than it is right now.
In order to do that, I want to talk about killers with alternate kill conditions. A killer that is capable of killing a survivor without putting them up on a hook for the third time (exempting the mori offering or Devour Hope obviously, looking at the powers here) will typically have that ability balanced in one of two ways.
The first is to have the ability build by being spaced out via hooks anyway, so it reasonably won't affect someone unless they'd die on their next down anyway. This is how Pyramid Head works, and how Myers is being suggested to work in this new update.
The second is to have the ability be completely, 100% avoidable by survivors, in exchange for them willingly slowing down the game to avoid it. This is how Pig is designed, and how I believe Sadako was probably intended to be designed too.
Now, the issue Sadako faces is that the ability to actually get someone fully Condemned is both not really in her hands and not really all that threatening if she isn't right on top of you when it happens. I don't have a fix for the second one, but I might have something in mind for the first one.
I'll frame my suggestion as two bullet points for ease of reading, then talk about it more beneath them.
- Condemned build up is kept slow across the board
- Hooking a survivor locks in three Condemned stacks, regardless of how many that survivor currently has
You can probably already see the shape of what I'm suggesting here, but what I think might be interesting to explore is the idea of shifting Sadako more towards the first camp, while keeping an element of "manage this status effect or you die" for survivors so them flat out ignoring her power is still very deadly.
With three stacks locked on per hook, someone on death hook only needs one full stack to be vulnerable to instant death. The actual mori itself wouldn't be as useful - in the Pyramid Head vein of saving time, rather than outright bypassing anything - but it'd be more of a presence in the game without making it frustrating or unfair.
Similarly, even someone hooked once is at risk if they don't manage Condemned properly. It'd be an opt-in vulnerability like not acting on a Pig trap straight away, but it'd be there; Sadako could still punish poor management of her power by threatening a mori.
With this kind of design philosophy behind Sadako - and to be clear, I am not suggesting just making this change to her current power, it'd be the focus of an update that shuffles everything around to support it - Condemned moves further away from being a way to avoid hooking and becomes instead more of a reward for hooking, while still pushing survivors to manage tapes so they don't get too much build up too early.
This, I think, has her shine as the macro-focused juggling killer she's clearly designed to be. Hooking survivors makes them more vulnerable, keeping them off gens a little longer, leaving you time to keep spreading that vulnerability.
What do we think? On the understanding that her whole power would be retooled to support this, would it be worth exploring?
Comments
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Thank you for such detailed and constructive feedback!
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Appreciate the kind words!
Broadly I really like what's in this dev update, but I do see some potential kinks to iron out- Sadako having a feel-bad moment with early Condemned is a good example.
You can probably expect some future posts about specific killers as I delve into the PTB, haha.-2 -
Your thoughts are interesting but I would have to test this out to see how it would play out. As of right now, I don't know how I feel about this concept you designed here in the thread, respectfully.
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There are threads with dozens of insightful and well thought out comments from insightful and experienced sadako players...... And this is the one you pay attention to? What's the rationale behind that?
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Not against readjusting Sadako's relationship to Condemned, but I personally think her treating Condemned as a full alternate victory condition, rather than it being mostly tied to hooking, is fundamentally part of her playstyle and identity at this point. Any rework that significantly pushes her towards the Pyramid Head school of mini-moris will probably not be popular with her mains, even if the end result is decent or well balanced.
One thing I do like about your suggestion though is revisiting the "locking in" idea, I don't really like that she's currently disincentivised from hooking Survivors before they have Condemn built up. IMO alternate victory condition or no, Killers should generally want to catch and hook Survivors.
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My immediate thought is, unless I'm starting to creep over the 3 condemned threshold, why would I as Survivor care about doing tapes? Its a bit like the previous version of Freddy where he's a mostly bad M1 killer with a teleport, that Survivors have a mostly benign threat that they wander over to deal with as and when they need to.
My second thought is this seems to me to just be an automated Pig timer that is just on automatically on from the start of the trial, but with no actual input or work from Sadako herself. The only agency she could have would be to deny Survivors grabbing tapes and delivering them. Sadakos goal here would be to just keep TVs off at all times, probably using Corrupt Intervention, Deadlock, Grim Embrace for if the opportunity presents itself, and just try to ensure that no one ever gets a tape they can deliver, or if they do, she bats them down and hooks to deny the delivery.
It strikes me as an autopilot slow down mechanic that removes all agency from Sadako, where her game plan is just to try and stall until Survivors get automatically condemned.
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Hi, Sadako main here. Yes there are many, many posts regarding all her bugs, issues and such.
What’s happening here is that now that they pushing this failure of a patch, that effectively kills any freedom to play with different styles, they will have to visit every single killer that’s not Blight and Nurse and adjust them, sad part it’s that they all will become similar, since there’s no room to play how players want and more like survivors want killers to play.
Personally I would just love to see her fixed, give her some buffs and in general, allow players to queue without these changes in public matches. If the patch comes out as it is, the game will die.
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I know you are addressing how BHVR generally balances alternate win conditions and not your personal solution, but I feel the need to talk about them in case BHVR thinks this would be good for Onryo.
The first is to have the ability build by being spaced out via hooks anyway, so it reasonably won't affect someone unless they'd die on their next down anyway. This is how Pyramid Head works, and how Myers is being suggested to work in this new update.
This would completely remove the unique playstyle from the game and make her a much worse Pig. Survivors would just ignore condemn unless they are on deathhook. This would leave her as a m1 killer with the worst anti-loop in the game, it would be miserable. BHVR better not think to do this with her condemn mechanic just because some survivors hate anything that isn't the standard gameplay loop and complain about condemn.
What BHVR is likely planning to do to Myers for example just because some survivors complain about Tombstone is a sin. Survivors can easily just get in a locker or stay on a generator to force a grab, (if he is in T3 anyways they would be instant downed so its not like the outcome is any different anyways).Survivors not engaging with Onryo's condemn mechanic when the counterplay is so easy should NOT be grounds to gut her playstyle from the game.
The second is to have the ability be completely, 100% avoidable by survivors, in exchange for them willingly slowing down the game to avoid it. This is how Pig is designed, and how I believe Sadako was probably intended to be designed too.
Sadako/Onryo can be played for hooks. But the way Sadako is really meant to be played is for condemn. The condemn mechanic overrides the hooking mechanic.
Instead of survivors looping the killer for at least 3 chases in order to avoid getting hooked 3 times, Onryo changes the game so instead survivors now have to strategically manage condemn and tapes. If a survivor fails to manage condemn properly, then they'll have 1 very important high stakes chase to determine if they live or die.
In my opinion condemn Sadako is completely fair and condemn shouldn't be treated as a gimmick slowdown mechanic, but a real threat and victory condition. Survivors have very easy counterplay to avoid it, (just grab tapes when you see the TV aura), and even if a survivor is fully condemned, they still have a second chance of doing a tape run, (which is not that difficult if full hp as they can just insert the tape in the killers face).
Sadako's condemn should not be designed as a general slowdown mechanic, but instead a real threat.
With this kind of design philosophy behind Sadako - and to be clear, I am not suggesting just making this change to her current power, it'd be the focus of an update that shuffles everything around to support it - Condemned moves further away from being a way to avoid hooking and becomes instead more of a reward for hooking, while still pushing survivors to manage tapes so they don't get too much build up too early.
This, I think, has her shine as the macro-focused juggling killer she's clearly designed to be. Hooking survivors makes them more vulnerable, keeping them off gens a little longer, leaving you time to keep spreading that vulnerability.I agree, her macro-focused playstyle is what makes her so fun and unique for me. If BHVR takes that away from her, then they are basically killing what I like about her.
Locking in 3 stacks per hook state I don't think would make anyone want to hook more than normal though. We already have to spam teleport to turn off TVs near survivors at the start, because if they all grab tapes at the start you lose pretty much all pressure for the rest of the match. And if Onryo does well with condemn early game, then the person Onryo hooked likely already has 3 stacks so she doesn't benefit for your suggested change.
If survivors do grab tapes early though, then it would help you be able to focus condemn on that survivors. So while I don't think your change would make survivors want to go for hooks more than normal (aside from hookless or slugging Onryos), I do think it would help her.
However, this would likely make survivors that dislike Sadako hate her even more, because now they would see themselves getting punished regardless for doing the counterplay properly. BHVR needs to be careful when balance condemn because of how strong removing a survivor from the game can be.
TLDR:
I don't think your specific change about getting 3 stacks of condemn for the first hook would be bad or unhealthy. I think it would make her more viable, but again I think survivors would complain more as a result.
I personally would rather have BHVR address Sadako by fixing her broken/useless add-ons and make the counterplay a bit harder for experienced survivors by hiding TV auras when holding a tape (other than the target TV), and also change back the TV interaction speed for survivors to something like 1.5 seconds to 2 seconds.
Such changes wouldn't hurt newer/casual players where she currently stomps but would provide a tangible benefit against skill teams that currently know they can just grab and hold onto tapes at the start and avoid most risk from condemn.
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