FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, CLEANSE THE DAMN DULL TOTEMS!!!

Hahaha no, I prefer to beg the developers to nerf it and i cry every day on the forums.

I had to forego my usual totem sweep when I discovered some bones that were inaccessible and uncleansible next to a hay baler. Not doing bones in this case at least leaves a chance of NOED going to one of the others. Fortunately, the killer wasn’t using hexes this time.

Survivors who cleanse totems are more likely to die against better killers since better killers capitalize extremely off of survivors ignoring gens or saves or dying teammates to go for totems.

What you are saying assumes that you're always going to face an average or good killer, which is not always true.

Furthermore, "punishment" by introducing more and more mechanics to have survivors break dull totems is a terrible way to design things since that's not conducive to human learning behavior. The bp change was more likely to have encouraged players to break dull totems than anything like Undying.

Your post fails in that it doesn't even begin to address the underlying issues behind why survivors don't cleanse dull totems, and you instead pose a very one-sided view without much of the nuance of the issue to be had.

this is not punishment. don't do totems if you don't want to but if there is noed, undying/ruin then don't ######### complain because you didn't do totems. the game has a secondary objective for the killer AND for the survivor. killer has to defend gens and hooks (though their secondary objective is REALLY a primary one but we'll call either one the secondary. survivor has to power gens and has a secondary objective to do totems. you don't like ruin in play? or undying? then CLEANSE THE DAMN TOTEMS! if you don't give a damn and don't complain when there are hex perks in play who the ######### cares then, just keep going on about your business. I have met many a good killer and I've cleansed totems. I've seen RED RANKED survivors cleansing totems for various reasons, and you know what? they DONT COMPLAIN about noed other than to say "damn it we didn't catch a totem!" and they are not crying that noed, ruin/undying are unfair, they know to CLEANSE the totems in the red ranks and they escape as well!

lets look at noed: Killers have 4 perks to play with and they can choose freely what to put there, if they choose noed they run with 3 perks because noed won't come into play until after the gens are done. if the survivors cleanse the totems then he never gets that perk active and lost out. if the survivors don't they get smacked with NOED and then they are scrambling to abandon the match by dc or escape through exit or hatch with no care in the world as to what the other survivors are doing. I've seen someone that I never hooked, saw or even hit DC at the end of the match because I downed someone with noed with the gate open right next to a hook (bw was NOT in my arsenal but they thought it could be). So instead of looking for the totem or trying to get out they abandoned about 20K worth of base points not to mention I put up a BPS and one other did as well. I didn't give a damn if anyone got out, I was just playing with what I had that was good.

lets look at undying/ruin: so two totems are already lit, and if you come across one you have a 50/50 chance of getting undying first and causing ruin to not move if cleansed next. but if you remove one to three other dull totems you can nail ruin and not care in the world! and I use YOU as the collective you not the individual.

two simple situations where the survivors come out on top by doing totems. I say again, if you don't cleanse totems as your own rule, that's fine but the next time you claim that noed isn't fair, or ruin/undying is unfair I'll say well you should have been cleansing totems as you went along because well... it happens and your complaints are invalid! lol.

I think there needs to be more of an incentive tbh

The "punishment" was from a developer standpoint, not from a player's. They want people to interact with that aspect of their game, so they are enforcing negative effects on the survivor's main objective if they don't all while making it harder for survivors to do so slowly and/or stealthily. They are also sending mixed signals that it's both good to break totems and bad, inevitably making it worthless for survivors to plan at all for the outcomes of unknown totems. It's a mess.

You seem to hold animosity toward me, though? I'm not one to complain about totems not being broken particularly since I've seen the brunt of too many haunted grounds and since I get out more frequently when I don't do totems.

Totems aren't really a "second objective" tho, and this is the source of a lot of the problems around totems. They exist as an optional objective--a prop that a killer can use to his/her advantage if the survivors underestimate it / don't give it due pause. That's what totems were designed to be. What they are becoming is another story. Due to the understanding that only having generators to do is not enough for competent survivors, the devs have thrown the brunt of what should be given to a new mechanic onto totems. And that's bad because now totems are overburdened.

You seem to basically understand that point, however. "[D]on't complain when there are hex perks in play who the [BAD WORD] cares then, just keep going on about your business," is what you say, and yes, that philosophy is exactly the kind of thing totems are. Devour Hope works just like that: if you want to continue doing gens without being a totem detective, that's okay. If you want to continue doing gens and saving people when the killer can least pressure the hook? That's going to be a lot harder.

Third Seal works similarly. You can avoid it to begin with and then play with it still active, but it could impair your ability to use your objective-locating perks and your ability to save others. Neither Third Seal nor Devour Hope directly affect generators, and neither hex causes (significant) effects if the survivor hasn't first entered into an avoidable action (chase, unhooking, etc.) with another player.

Ruin works differently. So does Undying. Both perks are an issue because they aren't the kind of "optional objective" totems were meant to be. They force survivors to either interact with them because they can't finish the game's effective timer (gens) or ignore them because paying attention to them would mean losing further gen time. They are a lose-lose situation that the survivors have no control over than to "genrush" that the killer gets for free (other than the cost of moving from gen to gen and chasing survivors, both of which are done in the typical course of action for a decent killer).

NOED

but yes, let's talk about NOED. It's not really high on my list for "fix now, devs", but that doesn't mean it's a non-issue.

Case 1: Survivors cleanse all totems before finishing gens. The killer doesn't have NOED. The survivors waste enough time so that the killer can kill everyone. The killer, by not bringing the perk, wins.

Case 2: Survivors don't cleanse all totems before gens. The killer doesn't have NOED. The survivors have wasted some time (cleansed only 2) and barely scrape by to a victory for a few.

Case 3: Survivors don't cleanse all totems before gens. The killer has NOED. The survivors wasted some time (cleansed only 2) and still die because of NOED.

Case 4: Survivors cleanse all totems before gens. The killer has NOED. The survivors scrape by to a victory (wasted enough time but the killer lost his/her ace in the hole).

1. Case 2 happens most frequently. Then (in order of decreasing frequency) it's: 1,3,4. The moral? It's more likely that a survivor will survive by not cleansing dull totems bc NOED than cleansing them. You are more likely to hurt yourself by cleansing totems than benefitting, and that kind of lottery/gambling for all games on account of one perk not brought all that often is bad design. Forcing people to be cautious is fine design, but forcing people into a set of specific, time-consuming processes for potentially no gain (and no worthwhile experience) is not.

Personally, if I see more than one dull totem, I will cleanse until there is only one left (unless I know where all the totems are). It's better if I can go check to see if NOED spawned where I thought it might than have it for sure spawn on a totem I haven't found.

Undying

I see a dull totem and a hex totem. I cleanse the hex totem. The dull totem lights up. I should probably leave that totem since I know where it is and go find the other lit totem especially if the totem broken was Haunted Grounds. I see another dull totem. I know that there is now potentially only one other hex perk (or dull totem out there). I don't do gens and let my teammates all get downed and hook as I run around trying to find Undying. I find a hex totem (idk where the last dull is), but by that point, everyone else is slugged or hooked, and only one gen has been done. Was it really worth my time to not go help save or do gens to find that perk? On the other hand, was there really any significant gen progress that could get done if the other survivors were all getting downed before finishing their gens? There's no situation other than just sitting on gens where the hex's effects are avoided. This is bad design.

TL;DR

you don't really touch on either the practical aspect or the theoretical aspect....you don't substantiate your claim or give any valid reasons for thinking the way you do. I'm not sure how what you say is super accurate to the reality of the DbD experience for many.

you also seem to think I haven't been a red ranked survivor, and you speak as if you aren't one yourself...

I had a match on Badham, I was solo and everyone was red rank. At beginning of match a teammate was hooked, another teammate nearby was being chased, I was on my way to unhook teammate, and during this time the 4th teammate completed gen that's in the basement of a house. Rest of match I cleansed 4 totems between working on gens, chases, and saves. Last gen gets completed and NOED activates, teammate that completed that first gen gets downed and camped in the basement - this was her first hook all match. I go looking for 5th totem. As hooked teammate hits 2nd stage I find the totem, right next to the generator she finished at start of the match in the basement of the house. By time I cleanse it I don't have time to make it to her across the map so I start opening the nearby exit, other teammates show up at door as her time runs out. She died on first hook at end of match because she ignored the dull totem that was right next to her.

I always find it funny that killer mains will post screenshots of dull totems out in the open and how bad the spawn is. I can't help but laugh because most survivors will ignore that totem only to run by it multiple times in a match showing the killer their aura with Undying or it will be the NOED totem that screws them over later on. 😂

14 seconds for easy 1000 BP and goes towards getting rid of killer perk. To me it's a no brainer to cleanse any I come across, especially since I know if I'm 1-hit at the end 99% of the time the randoms will leave instead of looking for the totem and saving me. Totems are ridiculously easy to find too if you've played the game enough, definitely by time you've reached devotion 1 - there's only a handful of spawn points on each map and they're all pretty predictable.