Visit the Kill Switch Master List for more information on these and other current known issues: https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/kb/articles/299-kill-switch-master-list
We encourage you to be as honest as possible in letting us know how you feel about the game. The information and answers provided are anonymous, not shared with any third-party, and will not be used for purposes other than survey analysis.
Access the survey HERE!
Spirit's hearing should NOT be directional.
As a previously spirit main for the duration of 3 chapters (Shattered-Demise), I played spirit as a killer main and I played her exclusively. Let me say one thing, this nerf she had a while ago? It was a step in the right direction!
But the main issue lies in her ability to detect survivors with hardly any skill.
When I first played her, I was confused by her power a little, but I caught on. And very quickly. I felt happy with my accomplishment, but it soon faded as every game I played became an easy 4K, against any group of survivors. Now when I play her, I bring the worst possible perks (Monstrous, Cruel Limits, etc.) and she remains far too easy. The problem isn't a meta build or anything, it's her hearing. Her power becomes a bore. She can find survivors extremely easily, exit phase walk, and instantly hit them.
Now, as killer that may be cool to some! I thought it was for a while when she came out, but after a while it got very boring. But as survivor? You are quite possibly the most helpless when facing a Spirit that has any OK sense of hearing. She gives hardly any hints of where she is going, footsteps being the biggest, and if you're injured? Well, good luck, Charlie. You're a dead man walking, most often.
Now, I'm done complaining and giving my experience. Here I bring my possible solutions:
Solution 1:
Make her no longer multi-directional. It's far too powerful. In doing this, she can still detect survivors by hearing, but she cannot tell where they are, making her use a bit of trial and error to track them down efficiently and use scratch marks more.
If this is too drastic, I reckon a shortened period of entering phase walk could be applied and tested.
Solution 2:
Deafen her during phase walk, BUT grant her the ability to, in bursts that consume 25% of her power, force herself to produce a passive-phase-like effect. In this, she would teleport side to side, and become invisible for longer frequencies.
Alongside this, if she is deafened, I should think it would be okay for her phase walk to be faster and/or longer, to make it more reliant as a map pressuring ability.
All of this said, I absolutely love The Spirit. Her lore, aesthetic, and sounds (minus voice, sorry devs) are fantastic. But her power makes her such a pain to see in game. I just hope this gets revisited sometime soon.
Anyways, thank you for coming to my TEDTalk
Comments
-
Solution 2 is definitely the more interesting option out of those.
1 -
It could potentially make her a more fun, interactive killer IMO.
1 -
Yeah. Phase is faster but harder to use or she has the invisibility flicker when she starts to lunge or something.
0 -
Hearing survivors is Spirit's primary mode of finding them. Making her not function like other killers in this regard just makes no sense, and "make this killer not strong" is not a great position, because we need strong killers. They already took away her collision during phasing, which has made a huge difference, at least in my own Spirit play.
You say it takes "hardly any skill" to track survivors via hearing, but I would suggest the opposite. You have been playing Spirit exclusively for three chapters, which is a significant nine-month period of time. You have honed your abilities to play well with her, and to consistently find survivors while you cannot see them. To you, perhaps this is easy kid's stuff now, because you have gotten so good at it over this stretch -- but most people don't achieve that level of game sense without working at it. Their reward for putting the time in is that this comes more easily to them.
Our brains are biased toward assuming that the things we're good at are easy for everyone, or should be common knowledge. I know a lot about PC hardware and tech, learned over a lifetime. My family comes to me for tech support, over issues that I would consider extraordinarily basic and "stupid" or "easy." To me, it's the kind of stuff anyone ought to know, and what I'm doing is nothing special. But to them, it seems like a superpower. I try to maintain some perspective on this as best I can. And I know I am comparing this to a narrow skill in a video game about an invisible ghost woman who stabs the Burn Notice guy with a big dumb sword, but hopefully I am getting my point across.
You shouldn't scoff at this for being "easy," you should be happy with yourself for the skill that you have developed with effort.
0 -
You're not interpreting his correctly. She will remain strong, but she will not have this inane ability to track survivors down to a precise point.
Your arguments sound like you did not read this correctly.
1) In the first solution, which is my primary concept, she still has the ability to hunt down via hearing.
2) No, it really doesn't take skill. You have to have headphones, semi-working ears, and you're good to go. I picked up on her in the first week of playing her. It's insane how easy she is.
3) Yes I understand your point, but Spirit does not take long to get used to. Her power doesn't have a high skillcap, because you don't need skill to play her well. She literally only requires you listen well. Beyond that, you only have a few disadvantages.
Let's look at her pros and cons of phasing:
Pros:
- Increased speed during phase.
- She can hear directionally.
- She has no cooldown on lunging after phasing.
- She retains a speed boost after exiting phase walk
Cons:
- Can't see survivors
- Enter phase walk period
Those are just very basic, well-known bits to her mechanics. The pros heavily outweigh the cons. It isn't balanced.
And I wouldn't scoff at this for being easy if she required the same skill to counter!
I try and try again to counter her, but most of her counters require perks, which is not how a killer should have to be countered.
Her hearing is a completely overpowered mechanic during phase walk. Making her hearing no longer directional only makes it skillful to find survivors. Right now, you have 2 pieces of input that give you information while listening:
- Direction
- Volume
These both can, to any good player, tell the whereabouts of any survivor. Injured or not.
Survivors, on the other hand, have no directional feedback except for extremely quiet footsteps.
It's simply not fair. I don't know what ranks you play at, but you clearly have yet to learn Spirit has a HUGE advantage compared to most other killers.
This is not about making The Spirit weak, this is about making her fair. I don't think that having a directional sound emitted while phasing is the answer, I remember that from the PTB. But I don't think she should such a large amount of information while the survivors get nearly none.
2 -
Am I the only one who can't track via sound in this game? Is it a PS4 thing or a not-having-a-$500-headset thing or is it just me? I don't get it. No matter what killer I play, if I can hear the injured survivor I just end up walking in circles trying to locate them.
I can track with sound in other games. I could track via sound in this game for a couple weeks last year when the audio was balanced differently (god it was so nice). But right now? Sound basically functions like "there's someone in this area... somewhere... maybe... are you sure you heard something?" It's more confusing than helpful.
I'm so jealous of anyone who says they can locate survivors by sound. I feel like I'm chasing ghosts when I play as Spirit. I can only use her power for distance and hopeful surprise attacks at gens.
1 -
Hmm interesting. For me, I can track with my studio monitors (speakers) just as well as my headphones, so may just be a thing I get from writing music all day. But, this definitely is an issue. That's weird you can't track v well with audio. But hey, this fix would level the playing field ig.
0 -
I mean, this is all subjective, but it's not as easy for everyone. Anecdotally, if I take a break and then come back, of my three mains (Nightmare/Doctor/Spirit), Spirit is the one that takes the most work for me to get back into the saddle with. Yeah, she's super-powerful if you have a good headset (which itself is a possible barrier to entry) and can intuit sounds accurately, but not everyone is great at that. The people who are great at it should dominate with it. There need to be killers that dominate when played well.
I do not agree that Spirit's skill floor is as low as you think it is, and I don't think "Tiger-proofing" her, as it were, is a great solution.
0 -
Play with the sound both in the ps4 settings and the game settings. I don't have an expensive headset and when I play killer or survivor I rely heavily on sound. It's saved me a bunch hearing stealth killers breathing or footsteps and given me kills when I hear survivors breathing or moving in grass.
0 -
Like someone said you find spirit easy because you put the effort in her but take me for example i probably play spirit less then 20 time and when they nerf her i got hit hard wity that nerf to the point i dont do her quest anymore because i suck with her and having her lvl 40 with meta perk dont change anything if i cant hit a survivor when i exit the phasing stage i should just play huntress whitout trowing any hatchette the result will be the same
0 -
I think the biggest issue with Spirit is that she doesn't have a reliable tell when she is using (or about to use) her power. She is the poster-child for "faking your power to maximum effect", even over Deathslinger, Hillbilly, and Demogorgon. I know of at least one or two examples online of players who went entire matches without actually using her power (just faking it over and over) and still winning the match, if just because the survivors had no information to work with. Spirit also has an absurd level of control over her ability when she actually is using it.
It should be much more obvious when she actually is phasewalking. However, rather than the "whoosh" sound playing at any distance like it used to, I would instead suggest that her "Husk" simply disappears when she enters Phasewalk (but her terror radius would remain where it was like normal). She would still have control over mindgaming where she would exit from the "Spirit World", but could no longer mindgame the actual use of her power if a survivor saw her enter it. In fact, this would mean she could adopt some elements from Wraith: Phasing behind walls to hide her Husk's disappearance.
Another consideration would be tweaking her Phasewalk to work in a similar vein to Oni and Hillbilly, where she would automatically move forward while phasing, but would retain full control over her turning in exchange for not being able to cover nearly as much total distance as those other two. This might be somewhat in line with what you were thinking of with your "Solution 1". I'd also say she should have some kind of brief fatigue-style stun penalty if she attacks out of Phasewalk, but doesn't land a successful hit.
Regardless, I don't think removing Spirit's audio in Phasewalk would be a good step forward. ALL killers have to develop and use the skill of tracking through sound, Spirit just currently relies more on it and gains more from it than other killers. I won't deny that she could use some adjustments, but I feel that this specific change would be equivalent to the rework they did to Nurse's base power; it would make this killer much more frustrating to learn and less fun to play. Spirit mainly just needs to provide the survivors with more information so that they can make actual decisions when playing against her (not just a series of lucky guesses).
*Minor alternate note: I still want them to adjust Spirit's vaulting animation to make it appear as though she is straight-up walking through the vault. Same speed as normal, but it would be a fun visual effect uniquely applicable to this character.
1 -
Thank you for the genuine feedback! I like your ideas, although I'm still slightly confused on what you mean by the Oni/Billy ability?I think I understand, but I don't understand it with phasing very well.
Also, I think that would be a great aesthetic piece to spirit, vaulting windows like so. I wish she had more grudge-like effects. Also, I wish the actual voice actor played her in game voice, not not_queen
1 -
Whoever thought it would be a great idea to create a killer that made every chase just a guessing game loaded in killer's favor...I just have no words. I hate spirits with a passion. Every game with them is a tedious bore, I may as well just flip a coin, at least that would be more interactive.
1 -
THIS is what I'm saying! Seems like some people aren't comprehending it, though. But thank you! You put it into a quick phrase. It really is a guessing game, but honestly, it's really a guess for one side most of the time. That being survivor.
0 -
For clarification with the Oni & Billy comparison, both move forward automatically when using elements of their powers (Demon Dash and Chainsaw Sprint, respectively). One of my suggestions is that Spirit's Phasewalk would do the same, but still leave her with excellent control over her actual turning (where Oni and Billy have theirs reduced during these speed bursts) to make up for the lack of distance she can cover. I assumed it was similar to what you meant by "make her no longer multi-directional" (as in she can only walk forward, not sideways or backwards, while phasing) in one of your suggestions.
Keeping Spirit fun to play while making her more enjoyable to play against is definitely the challenging task ahead though.
1 -
Spirit's fine. like rydog said you played this killer for 9 months. Not surprised you can destroy every group but speak for yourself. Spirit is not easy for learners and average players, especially after the nerf. Besides, iron will exists, and stridor is not the greatest counter to it.
0 -
hmmn a killer calling for a killer nerf i smell bs probably just another survivor trying to nerf a strong killer that already got an unjustified nerf.
0 -
The wooshing sound on her end used to be much louder on her PTB, I think this should be brought back and then some, just make it a bit harder to use and track with sounds. Complete deafening might be brutal for her, but I have been phasing without a headset lately on a low tv and it's not so bad if you actually phase mostly based on predictions anyways.
Omni-directional sounds good too, but I feel in practice it might make it more confusing to track and just create unnecessary problems for The Spirit. Still something I really want to test though, I could be completely wrong.
The ability to be able to activate the passive phasing would be cool, not so much passive anymore though.
I mean when you even click the phase button currently, it'll set back your power bar a little bit, and that would be the perfect way to activate it. While looping, just a quick click (they might have to adjust it though so it doesn't stop you for a split second) and mindgame with the passive phase. More dynamic to her power you can actually utilize and more fun :D
Absolutely love The Spirit otherwise, my #1 main for sure.
1 -
Oh I see! With what I meant, I was talking about her hearing. So then she couldn't tell which direction you're in.
0 -
If you think Spirit got an unjust nerf, you are not a good killer main.
0 -
Yeah I like her whooshing as is now, during PTB it definitely gave her away too easily, but I see what you mean. And yeah, the 2 solutions are just concepts lol.
And same, I love The Spirit so much but playing against her is just a guessing game rooted in killer's favor, making it very not fun.
1 -
I suggest giving her a short animation when she starts phasing so she can't ''mindgame'' survivors, and instead of giving her a speedboost post-phase, make her slow down.
0
