Concerns surrounding "The Twins" and BHVR devs
Everyone pretty much knows how much of a disaster the new killer is on PTB. So much so that they are making changes. While i understand that is the point of the PTB to test things and i think it is great. The problem i have is not just with the new killer being "bad". That is to be expected that it isn't necessarily well balanced to start with.
The problems with the killer are pretty numerous, but there are 3 things in particular i want to discuss. Granted all of these problems are going to be fixed in the announcement, i still want to discuss the issue i have with them:
- The fact that the power of Victor to prevent survivors from escaping can't actually be used because as soon as the killer hits them they just crawl through the gate.
- The fact that a locker 100% counters the killer to the point of being completely ridiculous
- The fact that a survivor can just "steal the baby" and the killer just doesn't get to a have a power for the rest of the game.
All of these things are being fixed, although i think the "stealing the baby" thing is still too much and probably needs a timer shorter than 45 seconds.
The point being is not that these things are being fixed. The point is that they even made it to the PTB to begin with. At least the first 2 things would be something you would figure out from literally the first playtest of the killer.
You would immediately see the first problem as soon as it happened, which with this killer and the fact that it is supposed to be part of their power, you would see it in the first game.
You would also be able to figure out the second one very quickly. Just reading the description of how the killer works would be enough, but you would be able to figure it out very quickly as well.
The 3rd thing would be able to quickly be figured out if you had decent survivors playing, as this is a typical strategy against say, legion to never heal, or plague to never cleanse fountains so that they basically just become m1 killers. If i were playtesting, the first question i would probably ask is "what is the penalty of keeping victor on me?" And if there was no time limit or deep wounds or anything, i would immediately try this.
These 3 major problems with the killer should have easily been discovered in the first couple of internal playtests they did. The fact that they either didn't, or that the devs didn't fix these issues before releasing this killer to the PTB, shows me something. It shows me that the devs obviously have a serious problem if they can't figure out basic problems that you would find in a single playtest of your new content. This shows to me, that either the devs just don't playtest their new stuff internally, or the people who are playtesting, don't actually play this game on a regular basis.
So, here are my questions:
- Did you know about these issues before it hit PTB?
- If so, why did it even get to PTB before you fixed them?
- If not, why were you unable to figure out something as basic as a literal feature of the killers power just flat out not working?
- Do you do internal playtests?
- Do you have players who do internal playtests who are good at the game, or at least someone who is rank 1?
Comments
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Victor applies deep wounds, and it does not pause while in the killer's TR. Thats all thats needed to fix victor kidnapping. They are forced to have urgency to remove him, and if the killer is able to recover the distance and start a chase while they still have him on their back, they can still loop and drop pallets, but they sure as hell better lose the killer quickly or buy enough time to throw the little gremlin off their shoulder.
Considering it takes a good chunk of the "throw off back" timer to regain control of and start moving charlotte again, the survivors should have plenty of time to get him off and be able to begin being chased normally by the time she reaches them, assuming they actually prioritize it. Unless they led the chase right in front of her catatonic face for some reason?
Survivors need to fear killer powers. There needs to be some sense of urgency. New survivors are particularly bad vs pig because they don't yet understand how bear traps work in relation to gen completion, either as the one on the gen or the one with a trap. They have all the info they need to nullify the head pop before it remotely becomes a threat, but their fear from ignorance is why it is substantially more effective in lower ranks than higher. once you know how it works, you can keep 99%ing gens across the map knowing that she can't be everywhere at once while also keeping tabs on and chasing people. The twins suffer from that right off the bat because its very well known how useless viktor is, and even with the 45 second (literally the time it takes for 2 people to finish a gen, or 3 people to half finish 3 gens) "grace period" they're getting, it still does nothing to invoke fear. You could legit set a stopwatch once you get tagged and know you have both immunity and zero cross map tracking for that whole duration. There is just no reason to fear it, especially since it doesn't even remove your ability to vault or drop pallets.
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It's one of two things:
- they're not getting good playtesters or the devs that are being listened to the most have little experience with how this game is actually played. And the ones that do actually know how to play aren't being listened to as much.
- When we play on the PTB we're playing a build of the game that has literally not been tested beforehand by anybody. They just wanted to shove this out there and can just say "it's a PTB guys! It's going to be a little buggy and is subject to change!" in response to the glaringly obvious bugs and features that shouldn't have even made it to the test build.
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I was actually going to make a thread similar to this. This killer's issues are pretty plain to see. Heck, PTB players figured them out within hours. How long as the killer been in the devs hands? Few months, at least? How could they not see the problems? All this does it cement my impression that the devs either A) Don't playtest themselves and/or B) really are lower ranked in terms of skill and don't/can't play at the higher end. So, I agree with ya on that.
Remember the match Cote had against the SWF as Hag, and he was decimated? They sure made changes to Hag after that, as well as flashlights. While it was brutal, I honestly feel the devs that balance, or playtest, should hold matches like that regularly.
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Not to mention how hard they got flamed for saying OoO is fine.
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I like the post OP, but let's be real here - do you honestly expect any developer at BVHR to answer any of your questions? I mean, I don't think any of them are unreasonable, but no answer they could give wouldn't make them look bad one way or another. Instead, they'll choose silence, it's what most companies do in situations where they'll appear massively incompetent.
You put effort into this post, and it's a shame, because I don't think you'll get anything of substance from a developer. If you do, it'll likely be a deflection or some sort of PR response.
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There's always bugs. I have no concerns. I'm excited for the new killer
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They probably wanted to get a killer out to us. The community was really excited and I'm happy with how it is. Besides, if you dont like it, just 0lay the live build until they fix the killer.
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They claim they work on killers as far as a year in advance, but I wonder if they even bother to look at obvious balance issues until after they get all the technical stuff for the bulk of the power sorted, tbh. A lot of the time, it feels like they don't have a QA department at all, but then others, it does. It honestly feels like they're rushing killers out sooner than necessary in order to stick to their content roadmap. I just hope that if this is the case, the engineers, etc, aren't too stressed as it could mean there's plenty of crunching going on in the background that we aren't aware of.
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I understand that there are always bugs, and i addressed that in the OP. In fact, i expect bugs. It isn't that there are bugs, in fact, the concerns i have aren't actually bugs, they are fundamental DESIGN flaws in the killer. The locker situation is not a bug, it is a design flaw. The issue with the exit gates is not a bug, it is a design flaw.
They didn't think to make the debuff for exit gates last a few seconds.
They didn't think that lockers were a problem.
They didn't think that stealing the baby forever was a problem.
These aren't bugs, these are design flaws. And the problem is that they are design flaws that anyone with any experience in this game would figure out in a couple of hours of playing. The PTB showed this, as these were already figured out by the community and streamers within 2-3 games of playing.
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If that's true, then that's good. But I don't trust much of what their suits say given their penchant for outright lying and blatantly going for greed.
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Sure, bugs are just a staple in games. Nobody disputes that. What is questioned, however, is blatant flaws that cripple characters. Obvious things, like locker tech, should have been seen after one or two playtests.
I like the idea of the new killer myself, but she has glaring issues that should have been spotted early on.
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I'm assuming you are a mod since you edited my post somehow.
Why was this thread moved to Feedback for 4.4? This is not addressing feedback specifically about 4.4 or the killer. My question and post is about BHVR as a company and how these sorts of things made it through. I am discussing their playtesting philosophy, not the specific patch itself. I'm not sure if there is a way to contact mods directly but if so i'd be happy to discuss privately if needed.
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"Bugs"? The killer is poorly designed from the ground up. They arent bugs, its an oblivious character design
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Completely agree. It is quite shameful indeed.
Thank god I'll be able to eventually get this killer for free with shards, because I wouldn't even give 1 cent for this pathetic dlc.
Devs, I'm sorry to say this but you really failed this chapter hard.
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Because they don't want this kind of thread to be seen in the main section where a lot of people could see it, so they just move it in lesser and mostly unknown sub sections noone ever bothers to visit.
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