The Ghost Face Problem
It should come to literally no one's surprise that Ghostface is an absolute mess. While he can still be pretty fun to play(imo), his flaws can make him pretty unfun for both sides. To start off, I'd like to address what I consider his three major flaws.
- Addons
- Power Recovery Rate
- Reveal Mechanic
These three mechanics are what hinder Ghostface's fun factor and potential. I'd like to suggest changes they could possibly make to fix these glaring flaws.
- Anyone who has spent enough time on Ghostie will realize that all but 3 of his addons are extremely lackluster. The three addons exempt from this the power recovery addons, which we'll get to in a minute. All of his other addons basically range from crouching speed and stalk speed when leaning. These are kinda useless for two reasons. No good Ghostface is going to crouching around half the time like they're playing Pig and stalking speed when leaning is already stupid fast, there isn't a reason to make it faster. My suggestion for addons outside of recovery time is do something more with them that isn't as basic as crouching speed. Get creative with them. Look at other killers with interesting addons and work off of that.
- The recovery rate for Night Shroud is pretty unrewarding. Whether you get revealed or land a hit, you're always going to have a 30 second cooldown. While addons can bring this down to 20 secs, it still feels unrewarding when you use his power correctly and get punished. Did you get a hit while in stealth mode? Good job, 30 second cooldown. I feel as though you should be more rewarded for playing stealthy. I think what should happen is when landing a hit with Night Shroud active, the ability cooldown should be cut in half. Additionally, downing a survivor who is marked could even instantly recover Night Shroud. That one may be a bit much, but I still feel like a reward for actually stalking someone would be nice, instead of being given a hefty cooldown.
- No matter what side you're playing the Reveal Mechanic is janky as hell. Survivors will be looking right at Ghostface and nothing will happen. On the other hand, Ghostface won't even get a notification sometimes from a survivor revealing him. Survivors can also reveal ghostie from some pretty weird angles as well. First off, I think the area on the camera where Ghostface can be revealed should be larger, as the small area may have an affect on the reveal. Additionally, Killer Instinct should proc a bit earlier before the reveal, as the arrows can be heavily misleading when being revealed.
These are the changes I think would be best for Ghostface. I really enjoy playing him but his flaws can be a real pain in the ass. I kinda thought of these changes on a whim so they might have some tweaking needed or are just bad all together. Let me know what you guys think.
Comments
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I think they made the recovery so long because otherwise revealing GF would be pointless for survivors, and there’d be no reason to play with any awareness of your positioning for killer. If you could just dip in and out of stealth with very little cooldown, there’d be no reason for survivors to do it and no punishment for killers just running around in stealth and getting revealed left and right.
That said, I think they went overboard and I agree that 30 seconds is too long. 30 seconds is an eternity in DBD, it’s way too long to be a killer with no power. They should reduce it and then nerf the add ons a bit, IMO.
I also think fixing how janky his and Myers’ powers are on dedicated servers would be a big help. I honestly think that’s a big part of the issue with being revealed and it’s a huge issue when stalking.
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I find it funny that if Ghostface is revealed you have to wait 30 seconds to go stealth again but if Victor is crushed you can use him again in 6 seconds.
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I do agree that the cooldown gives an incentive for the survivors to reveal him, I just think that the 30 second cooldown applying to everything is a bit much
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Wait, you want to make him easier to reveal and compensate with... slightly earlier information? Disgusting. This idea is not to my liking.
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I'm not a tech expert when it comes to dedicated servers so I wouldn't know how to fix revealing around that. The other option is to make the area of sight for survivors bigger. Unless you have a better idea, which I wanna hear to help this balancing idea.
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I have played against Red Grades as him. Biggest weak is simply looking at him so much he never can get to use his power most effective when SWF. Otherwise a bit harder.
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@DeafCommie Actually, I have a very detailed thread still on the page about a lot of these same problems, aside from the inconsistency with being revealed due to it often being a server issue and not a function of his power. Actually, if you could read it over and write some of your own ideas and suggestions, I'd appreciate it. Here is a link to his upcoming add-on rework: https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/282174/upcoming-ghostface-add-on-rework-critical-essay#latest
To touch on your own post, I'd say that you hit the nail on the head for the first two bullets. The add-ons are unimpactful or middling at best. But what we agree upon most though is that there should be a reward for hitting a survivor while cloaked. Though, I would say that cutting the time in half as a base mechanic or staying in Nightshroud may not be the best way to handle it. In the rework I propose, Ghostface's power should be cut down to roughly the base with the Matchbook and Chewed Pen. However, several add-ons increase the recovery of his Nightshroud when revealed outside of a stealth hit. What this creates is a risk-reward dynamic between killer and survivor that better celebrates planning, awareness, and positioning. One of the biggest changes to his add-ons in addition to that is providing their bonuses mostly during stealth hits.
Super good post from you and I'd love for you to add some input to my own. I've consulted a lot of notable Ghostface mains and I hope to do so more often before this next mid-chapter drops. 👍️
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