Spine Chill rework suggestion
As it is now, Spine Chill provides too much information with not enough draw backs, as I don't know many survivors who have a hard time hitting a skill check with a 10% reduction. Personally, I like that it makes skill checks occur more often; they aren't difficult to hit, and if I get a great one, it provides a boost to repair times. On top of that, it increases all different kinds of speeds.
Although, I think the most broken part of it, is how hard it counters stealth killers, and my suggestion is going to revolve mostly around that. It's just insane that it activates multiple times, and can clearly indicate when a killer is approaching from THIRTY-SIX meters away. Most survivors hide when the perk icon remains lit for 2-3 seconds, meaning they have a good 5 seconds to get somewhere.
My suggestion for Spine Chill retains these benefits:
- Get notified when the Killer is looking directly in your direction and standing within a range of 36 metres.
- Any time spine chill is active, your Repair, Healing, Sabotage, Unhooking, Vaulting, Cleansing, Exit Gate Opening, and Chest Searching speeds are increased by 2/4/6 %.
But, instead of activating and deactivating repeatedly, spine chill does this:
- While the killer looks in your direction, fear wells up inside of you until you can no longer take it. Once Spine Chill has been activated by the killer for 3 seconds in total, you are overcome with fear, and Spine Chill remains active for the next 10 seconds. During this time the icon remains lit and active, giving you no indication of whether the killer has turned away or not.
- While you are overcome with fear, you have tunnel vision, shrouding your FOV by 10 degrees and your breathing is strained, becoming 50% louder.
- After the 15 seconds have passed, Spine Chill resets until the killer activates it again.
Comments
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As someone who runs spine chill a lot, I like some of your suggestions, but I feel like some of the things you changed are a bit overkill, I think the blinking should stay the same, mainly because a killer who expects spinechill likely just knows just to not look directly at where you're heading.
The other drawbacks you came up with are pretty good though.
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Thanks. I agree, the blinking is nice as a survivor, and does a good job of preventing killers from stalking. Maybe the 'overcome with fear' thing could be less than 10 seconds. My reasoning was that, a spine chill is supposed to be a gut feeling of fear, and gut feelings don't come and go quite that fast. So, I thought the fear could linger for a bit - making things really scary.
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I have a feeling Spine Chill's usage would go down... Like super down.
It no longer is an anti-stealth perk and it would be annoying during chases (i doubt that 6%/15% if resilence vault would be worth having tunnel vision with louder breathing)
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Maybe just decrease the detection range? So it isn't as bad against stealth Killers, something around 18 meters could be fine I think.
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I barely use spine chill as is, but adding these straight up nerfs which limit your field of vision? Yeahhh no thanks. I'd never touch it if that was a thing. You're taking away one of the survivors advantage over the killers being vision. Survivors aren't going to equip a perk that effectively blinds them. It's also a perk that makes you afraid and breath lourder so the killer can find you easier? You'd be giving the killer a free stridor, and God it'd be OP if the killer is actually running Stridor.
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Yes make another perk uselessness I continue to run my meta heavy build!
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Spine chill is fine as it is. If you've issues with it, keep the gen at the edge of your field of view when walking up to it. Spine chill won't trigger.
As for stalking, if survivors have half a brain, you won't be able to do it from close up without them noticing you, regardless of spine chill.
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As it is, it's one of the most powerful perks for survivors with almost no downsides, and I think you guys are overreacting a bit. The effects are pretty minor. These values aren't set in stone, and the effects would only be active for 10 seconds at a time.
The tunnel vision would be a vignette of 5-10 degrees, maybe half of what deep wound obscures on the screen. I'm not suggesting it to be like what some killers experience, like the nurse or legion, where the effect is disorienting and makes playing the game more challenging - those kinds of debuffs are reserved for killers. At worst you would have a little shaded area around your screen, requiring you to pan more to get a clear idea of what was coming your way.
The breathing effect only lasts for 10 seconds, too. They could even add a cooldown to the 'overwhelmed with fear' effect. Say, the debuffs are active for 5 seconds, but spine chill remains active for a total of ten seconds after being activated. So the impact is only 5 seconds... the length of a DS stun. Only it doesn't stun you, it only prevents you from being clairevoyant for 10 seconds, and you breathe a little louder and see marginally less well for a few seconds.
I mean, thematically it makes sense! No one just gets multiple chills up their spine that come and go like the perk functions now. If you really experienced what a spine chill is supposed to be, you would be overcome with fear at some point.
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Spine Chill is a perk, perks are upgrades and not sidegrades.
Also Spine Chill can be countered: (two screenshots, the claudette moves outwards from the centre of view and stops once spine chill turns off)
Normal Killer Fov you avoid having your target within the middle two thirds of your screen roughly
Shadowborn Fov you avoid having them in the middle half of your screen
So if you suspect someone's got Spine Chill. Boom, now you know.
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@soshidow Can you differentiate upgrade and sidegrade for me in this context?
I'm not really concerned about it's ability to be countered, I'm aware of it, but thanks for sharing that.
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an upgrade as in: it is better to have, than not to have.
A sidegrade as in: having it is not better or worse, only different.
For almost every perk in the game it's safe to say that it is better to have the perk, than to have no perk.
What I'm saying is Spine Chill does provide a lot of information, you're correct; it is a clear advantage to equip it. However, almost every perk has a clear advantage to equip with no downside.
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How does that relate to the changes I'm suggesting for Spine Chill? The perk still has a clear advantage to equip. Also, are you including killer perks in this?
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Yes I am, almost every perk in the game has a clear advantage to equip.
Consider Whispers, you're guaranteed 100% undeniable knowledge that 1 or more survivors are within 32m of you and you can with absolute certainty know when no survivor is within 32m of you. It's information is more ambiguous than Spine Chill but is absolutely uncounterable and has a clear advantage to equip.
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What do you mean by almost every perk?
From my perspective, the downside of whispers is exactly what you mentioned, when multiple people are within it's activation range it becomes a potentially misleading perk. Like, when someone is hooked, if you can't maintain a constant awareness for what 32m is,
meaning thatyou can be misled by whispers to think you found someone, when really it's the person on the hook. I've found the perk to really only be useful in the beginning, the very end of the trial, and any time no one is hooked - it has potential to be useful when someone is hooked, but it's more burdensome to use than anything at that point.Spine chill does have disadvantages, too. The size of the skillcheck success area are smaller. From how I understood your initial point, you were suggesting that the negative effects for the perk that I listed were considered lateral changes, and that because they weren't vertical changes, they weren't any good? Assuming that's what you meant, I was trying to apply weights to the negative effects, and currently the negative effects on spine chill aren't very negative at all, considering that skill checks are really easy to hit. So, I thought new negative effects could be thematically different, and actually impactful.
Edit: Oh also, that the icon blinking so rapidly doesn't make much sense to me. I know it's more of an aesthetic thing, but I think that having it highlight for a given time without going dark again for a bit provides some balance to the insight that it provides about where the killer is looking, and what they're doing. With some adjustments to the way that the timing works, it could function like a downside that we experience with whispers, except some replaced negative effects. Maybe those extra effects are useless...
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I feel like the people who are experienced are the ones who make these perks "op"
Spine chill clicking on and whispers clicking on give you relatively the same amount of information. Knowing how to use that information is what makes the difference. A rank 20 survivor is going to react differently than a rank 1 survivor.
Also adding a penalty to a perk is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. At that point just say remove spine chill lol.
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Hardly. There's one killer, and four survivors. Due to that fact alone, there are times where whispers is completely useless, but spine chill is never useless - it's one of the most powerful perks in the game.
There are plenty of perks with penalties, spine chill is one of them.
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Do you have eyes in your back ?😀
Seriously, do that and I'll be curious to know how many survivors you missed ! Again, you talk about BASIC survivors, not teams... the teams spot you without Spine chill, imagine with Spine chill !
Make us a video, I want laughing !
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Dam i have played over 1.8k hours. But i have never seen someone cry about spine chill. But what can i expect with a user name like that? Can i suggest you try and play solo survivor for a few hundred hours and then come back with how you'll buff some perks and not try and destroy an already under used perk
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You're not even saying anything...
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Im saying youre crying like someone who only plays one side. Try playing both then maybe you won't make ridiculous suggestions for a weaker perk
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To be honest, it just needs a delay before it lights up and a delay before it goes away.
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Right, you don't know what I play or how I play, so what you're saying doesn't matter. You're just trying to pick a fight.
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I'd love that, I agree 100%
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Mmm, nah.
Spine Chill is fine. Obviously it's annoying (if you couldn't tell from how Jill10230 keeps posting around everywhere on the forum about how badly they want the perk nerfed) but it is fairly easily counterable.
Survivors already have a limited pool of actually meta/useful perks to use- I don't at all support anything that would encourage that list of good perks to become smaller tbh
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I don't think there's an issue countering it, but it provides a bit too much info for a single perk. Like, if the killer doesn't know you're around, but they're being diligent to sneak up on unsuspecting survivors, regardless of how diligent they are, they will never sneak up on someone using spine chill. With generators, and people healing after a save, you can use the counter to get close. But, otherwise the survivors can figure out what a killer is up to, without even being on the same floor as them.
I agree, that there are a limited number of useful perks, and the last thing I want is for the game to be less fun for survivors (I use this perk a lot, myself). But, even with a change, this perk would still be really good.
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Again I think experience is what makes the difference. I've seen baby survivors run away when spine chill clicks on even though the killer is clearly not coming to the gen or is in a chase when someone else. Spine chill is just a better heartbeat lol the only thing that makes it really good is the fact you get a bit of speed even if the killer is just scanning around and not actually trying to look at you. Whispers imo is wayyyy more powerful than spinechill. And again it comes with experience and knowing how to use whispers. Yes when there are multiple survivors around it's less useful but not useless and then as you start to kill off survivors it becomes the strongest tracking perk in the game. Being able to patrol gens or gates and knowing they are not on a given one just by getting within 30m? yeah kinda strong.
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