Why Survivors can't have in-built Totem Counter?

Why should they have that information for free? A side objective is not a good excuse for knowing exactly how many totems have been cleansed without a perk.

Generators make a lot of noise when they're repaired, so it makes sense that you keep track of them. Totems are quietly cleansed, without a notification, so it makes sense that you need something more to keep track of how many have been cleansed.

Alternatively, you could have all totems make a loud noise upon being cleansed. I'd certainly support the idea to make the counter built-in.

I usually cleanse totems, its fun for me. But when I play killer its very risky to use hex perks because not only good survivors already know totem spawns on every map, but sometimes the totem spawns right in the open like a lighthouse to be cleansed.

Extra time off gens for cleansing is good, but not at the cost of me losing perk slot in less than 2 minutes into the match.

I know, many people don't think its fun but it is for me. I like being chased, heal others, going for saves and cleanse totems. Basically anything that doesn't make me spent 80% doing gens entire match.

And yes, hex perks should be high risk high reward, but I am saying they are already high risk as it is, without totem counter as basekit for survivors

The only way SWF could know how many totems have been cleansed is if solo survivors never cleansed any totems.

I give you a better question:

Why can't killers see the wiggle progress bar? It's directly bound to the killers objective and several perks affect the progress.

Yet there is no visual indication on how much progress the survivor has left, before he breaks free.

Just be grateful that survivors get priority when it's about information related stuff and take small game if you want to know the exact amount.

Maybe it's a language thing, but I don't lack empathy for the other side. That's why I asked the wiggle progress thing. Oh and I play more survivor than killer.

I agree to an extent.

However we need to make solos and all SWFs less than 4man up to the standards of 4man SWFs so that killers can be balanced around an even playing field.

A totem counter is one way of doing this, though also having a noise notification would work too. Because right now a coordinated 4man gets the effects of aftercare, alert, bond, empathy, kindred, parts of object and small game, without needing to use a perk. Solos have to use these perks, alongside about 13 other ones, just to get the same information that a 4man has base kit.

You know why nobody cleanses totems in solo? Because it's a waste of time. The initial 14 seconds is not, no, however every other survivor who searches for totems will waste time if they search in that area. But they don't know if the totem in that area has been found and cleansed or not unless they use Detective's while a 4man would just say "Oh hey I cleansed Shack totem".

So give an indication for totems, either in the form of a counter or a notification or something, at base kit. Why? Because solos shouldn't have to use perks, items, or add-ons to get the same information SWF get for free. And once they have this information, killers and their mechanics can be buffed accordingly, such as Blindness receiving a total overhaul and totem spawns being superbuffed.

Hello son, the information overload is the wrong direction. Because it also buffs SWF.

A better approach would be to give the game inbuilt voice chat and balance around it.

You know if your cursed

Just for context, we're talking essentially about dull totems, because hexes give a mapwide notification anyway when cleansed.

And if we're talking about dulls, we're talking basically about NOED and tangentially about stuff like Undying or Thrill.

Now, the power of NOED is twofold. There's the obvious snowball potential in the endgame. But it's also a slowdown perk in disguise, in the sense that it takes survivors off gens as a preemptive counter. This slowdown effect is exponentially stronger against solos, who don't only know how many totems are left, but they're also susceptible to duplicate efforts when searching areas that have already been checked. Basically, massive inefficiency.

As it stands now, totems as a side objective for a solo mean running around as a headless chicken wasting massive amounts of time. Free pressure. Or using a perk slot, with no guarantee that someone else uses it as well (solos don't know their teammates perks) and even then, they'll still check areas that have already been cleared.

A basekit counter would at least make it so that solos stopped looking for totems once they're all gone and maybe push them off gens if they see they're falling back on cleansing. The latter would even benefit the killer. They would still be massively inefficient in searching and nowhere near SWF level. For these reasons, I'd label a basekit totem counter as a small buff, more for QoL purposes.

Why don't we have that then? Because the reality is that if you use NOED, you don't want it pre-cleansed. You want survivors to run around aimlessly wasting as much time as possible and then you want NOED to always proc when push comes to shove. Which will happen if you miss even one totem. So, then you can just say "do bones". Which kinda sounds like "just apply pressure to gens" to my ears. But I digress.

Maybe we can ask @Almo as head of the balance team and a fervid NOED user why a totem counter was added to a perk instead of the new Hud, essentially neglecting all solos once again. What do the numbers tell us?

There were great idea for remanining totems counter as a basement shrine with 5 candles, one lit for every totem remaining in game. Would it be free information? Not really, every time survivor wants to know how many totems there are, he would have to waste time to get to the basement.