A better NOED change

With the release of the newest developer update, we are finally able to get a glimpse of the changes to those 39 perks that were promised during the anniversary update. Among those perks resides NOED, a perk that has been a nuisance to survivors for a long time, mostly because it feels cheap and unfair, where you get punished with insta-downs regardless of the amount of totems you cleansed.

Naturally when I saw that NOED was going to be changed, I was hoping the devs would remove the annoying aspect of it. So it shouldn't come as a surprise when I say that I am disappointed that they are basically doubling down on the perk and just instead adding an in-built aura reveal to it.

For those who don't know, this is how NOED is being changed:

So as you see, it simply makes it so, after 30 seconds of activation, you will be able to see its aura from 24m meters away, slowly from 4m.

This isn't that huge of a deal when there are plenty of survivors around, say all 4 still alive, since it does make it easier to cleanse post-activation, but it does nothing if there are only 2 or even 1 survivor alive, since at that point it basically guarantees 1 or even 2 kills, which is unfair.

Instead I propose a better change to NOED. One that makes the perk still good end-game, but that still rewards players for cleansing totems of any amount.

One of the glaring issues with NOED is that you are punished regardless of how many totems you cleanse. Unless you cleanse all 5 totems, the perk still activates and gives killers free insta-downs. And if you are the only survivor contributing to cleansing totems, it feels really bad, because not all totem spots are easily visible (which is good, but not for NOED).

So I propose this change: NOED now has an effect depending on how many totems are left, similar to Hex: Pentimento.

Once active NOED receives:

• 5 totems: All survivors are exposed
• 4 totems: Gate progression speed is reduced by 20%
• 3 totems: Killers have a 5% haste effect
• 2 totems: Killers break pallets and walls 20% faster
• 1 totem: Killers cooldown for successful basic attacks is reduced by 10%
• These effects all stack, so at 5 totems you will have all of those effects.
• Once all generators are powered, all totems are blocked by the entity for 30/45/60s

These effects have been ordered in such a way that the most desirable effect is at the top, but I tried to make sure that the effects were still nice regardless of how many totems are left. Numbers also can obviously be changed later for balance purposes, but you get the idea.

With this change to NOED it will make so survivors no longer feel punished for not managing to cleanse all totems, whilst keeping NOED a good end-game perk that provides some tangible benefits.

Looking forward to hearing your feedback on this and devs, if you are reading this, I hope you change NOED to be something like this. I want you to understand that NOED is simply not healthy for the game in its current state. To feel like, just because you managed to cleanse only 4/5 totems, you are still punished just leaves people with a sour taste in their mouths. Totems are a side-objective and should remain so, but you should still feel like you made an impact on the game by removing any number of them. Nobody likes cheap kills and this is the point of such a change, to make NOED feel less cheap and more like an actual punishment for people who do not cleanse totems at all.

So devs, if you do implement a change like this, remember, NOED's exposed effect should always be the reward for 5 totems being up. It should be a punishment for not cleansing any totems by the end of the game. It's the reason the totems are blocked, it's to seal in the effects you have once the generator is completed and prevent survivors who didn't cleanse any totem from just doing one right at the end to remove the exposed.