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NOED and tunneling/camping are the only things I have a problem with. The rest of the patch is GREAT
I love the new patch and I just wanted to say I think all of the changes are great on both survivor and killer side (I play both, about 60% survivor 40% killer, with about 1000 hours total). I really don't want to see it nerfed so I wanted to come in and voice my support.
What I like
I love the perk changes. I love the killer changes. I love that the meta has been shaken up so drastically and I love how much it's changing on both sides. I love that a lot of perks I liked but weren't very good have gotten buffed, and that a lot of perks I hadn't ever thought about using (like Dark Sense) are actually interesting now! I love the IDEA of adding anti camping/tunneling measures (if not the execution). I love the way this game is going if these changes are any indication.
The things I DON'T like are the NOED change and the unhook changes (the basekit haste+Borrowed Time). Not because it was bad to change either of these things, but because they're treating a symptom, not the cause.
NOED
How does the patch address NOED? It makes the hex totem easier to find. The problem is that I don't feel that NOED's problems are anything to do with that.
First, let me start by quoting the patch notes: "We like the way NOED encourages survivors to pre-emptively cleanse Totems". So having survivors eat dulls is the stated goal of NOED. Not necessarily a bad idea. A good way to buy more time for the killer and add variety to gameplay.
The problem is that there are no other perks in the game, except ARGUABLY Plaything, that work this way. NOTHING else interacts with dulls and lights them up mid-game. Meanwhile, there's four boon perks, sure to be more, that rely on you leaving dull totems intact. As well as Clairvoyance, Inner Strength and Overzealous.
That's one perk rewarding you for cleansing dulls, and seven perks that incentivize you to NOT break dulls. Even if you don't have them, maybe one of your three teammates does - and with several, you have no way to know for sure, so you may as well leave the totems alone. Is Nancy cleansing totems because she likes to cleanse totems or she has Inner Healing? You can't know! Then there's perks that punish you for cleansing dulls, like Undying, Thrill of the Hunt, Pentimento, or Retribution.
This is conflicting game design that can cause friction with your teammates. This thing is completely pointless 99% of the time, but in this one instance it's really bad and if you didn't break it that's your own fault, but also... the thing can be good so better leave a few for your teammates??? What kind of message is that, especially to new players? There have also been plenty of screenshots since 5.3.0 of people getting mad at their teammates for breaking totems because they brought a boon.
I know in high level play everyone breaks a totem or two and it's no problem, but in low to mid-level play if your teammates aren't touching generators OR cleansing dulls, it can feel like throwing the game to go break them all. I try to do my part and break one or two as I see them. I have 1000 hours in this game. But I feel like I've never, EVER in my memory seen NOED in a results screen and went "weird, never went off, I guess everyone did bones" in my matches, which must number well over a thousand at this point. The only time I remember seeing NOED on the results screen but not in the game was because I took a build entirely devoted to totems and broke 4 or 5 myself. I'm sure you can guess how often I've gone down to NOED, though.
(The answer is a lot.)
My teammates rarely do totems. I take Small Game often enough to know. There simply isn't enough incentive to do dulls for the average player - there's arguably negative incentive - and it's often unrealistic to do all of them yourself, especially without a perk for that purpose (try finding all 5 on Raccoon City, even with Small Game).
People argue that it is a "second chance" perk. I have no issue with second chances! I love perks like Deadlock or Grim Embrace or No Way Out! I'd even be fine with NOED with changes.
But NOED, in its current state, is not a "second chance" perk. It's a "you didn't get all 5 of the collectibles, so now the killer gets a free kill, surprise" perk. It feels very bad to struggle through a difficult game and get hit by NOED as you're about to cross the finishing line. But if you complain, people say "should've done bones" as if that's any comfort, or remotely realistic in the game you just played. And that is the only counterargument ever given for not doing the thing for a 1 in 100 chance the killer has a perk.
I'm sure someone will say "it's not really a 1 in 100 chance!", and they'd be right. So here's actual stats: out of 122 games I recorded over the course of two months, at varying times of day, killers and killer skill levels, there were 15 occasions of NOED. Roughly 12%. 107 games where it was never a factor. A lot of them I would not have survived had I stopped to try and break all the dulls.
So how do I think you should fix NOED?
Bring its mechanics more in line with other perks, or make more perks act like it. I'm not a game designer so these aren't perfect solutions, just examples, but either some kind of way to know NOED is a thing (like dull totems subtly lighting up before the last generator is done, so survivors have to check a totem before the final generator gets done and if NOED exists they either need to stop and break them all or gamble with their lives) or add more perks that require you to cleanse dulls. It makes it feel less like a waste of time, and it also incentivizes your teammates to break them as well.
Any change that contributes towards either of these factors would make NOED less of a pain for me. As it is now, I cannot stand it. I would take ten games where I get camped by a Basement Bubba over a single NOED game. At least Bubba is quick and you know what's going to happen.
The patch makes NOED easier to find when active, but that doesn't stop you the player going from full health to no health right in front of the exit gate with zero warning given. Yes, your teammates can find and break the totem, but they just as easily will leave you on hook. And what if you're on death hook? What if you down right next to where the totem spawned? Guess you're just out of luck. So the patch doesn't address any of the problems I've listed, and there are still scenarios where it feels "cheap" that the patch has done nothing to solve.
Camping/tunneling
Unfortunately, the changes do very little to discourage camping/tunneling. If anything, it feels like it makes them worse - teammates are more eager to unhook in front of the killer thinking it'll be "safe", and with Barbecue stacks no longer being a thing, killers don't have as many incentives to care about hooking equally. The fact is, any change will inevitably fail as long as killers can stay near a hook. 20 seconds basekit BT just means a killer with a 20 second stopwatch. It's just not going to work unless you fundamentally rework it.
So, why not use the system you already made? And by that I mean Pyramid Head's Cages of Torment. I don't mean copy it exactly - a killer still has to pick a survivor up and carry them to a hook, exposing them to Decisive Strike, blinds, stuns, et cetera, and keeping the Scourge Hook mechanic intact. But when they're on the hook, teleport them to a random hook on the map. Make it so the killer does not know where that hook is. Make it so that if the killer finds that hook and gets too close for too long, the survivor teleports to a hook further away from the killer (and pause the timer for a few seconds).
That's it. Now the killer can't camp, and tunneling would be a lot harder to do. The most egregious examples would be gone, for certain. What happens to the basement? I have no idea. Maybe it's the one place you CAN camp. Maybe teleport the killer out if he spends too much time in there, or give survivors free Kindred inside the basement. I don't know. Again, I'm not a game designer. But it's a simple rework based on existing gameplay systems.
Sorry for the long post, thanks if you read it!
Comments
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It'd probably be more of a problem with camping, because then a killer can bait survivors into one corner of the map for the unhook, and then stand in range of it for just long enough to force it to move possibly causing the survivors to have to go to the opposite end of the map. Proxy camping will still happen, it just gives killers another tool (relocating survivor last second). Plus, this will only favor high mobility killers who can very quickly go to the hook's new position and camp again.
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the problem with that idea is that the killer should have the means to defend the hooks unhooks shoulnd be free and safe neither should they be impossible. trapper and hag for example are trap based killer and shine when they can lure you into there net of traps and a hooked survivor is the only good bait for that. perks like make your choice woulnd work if the hook gets teleported to the other side and the killer dont know where it is.
facecamping sucks and that needs to be adressed and bhvr atleast said they are looking for a solution but proxy camping is inteded as a means of pressure and not everyy killer has the means to speed around the map and three hook every survivor like nurse or blight. it a real balancing act to find a way to destroy the real unfun facecamping but at the same time leave stratigic proxy usable
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I appreciate greatly your sophisticated post here. Glad to see that it's not all just worthless arguments on the forums!
You're right about NOED-- I hadn't really considered it before, but the perk is largely contradictory with many game mechanics. I think that the new NOED is definitely an improvement compared to the old one, though it has a long way to go since it can still reward the killer with cheap kills.
Perhaps NOED could only activate if there are more than 3 totems remaining in the match? Then, once there are less than 3 totems, NOED instantly deactivates. This way, the killer can't camp the NOED totem while someone is on the hook, & some survivors can still use their boons while others can cleanse and both groups would still be advancing the gameplay objective. Though this solution doesn't really deal with the fact that NOED provides unfair downs, so I'm not sure.
I disagree with your position on camping/tunneling however. Increasing the endurance timer doesn't mean the killer just has to stalk a survivor for the length of the timer and then immediately down them. The purpose of endurance is to allow survivors to make it to a window or pallet, upon which the killer has to make a decision. He could hit the survivor with a basic attack right as they make it through the window or pallet, triggering endurance. Or he could continue to chase the survivor, though the survivor is now in a much safer position. Or, he could leave the survivor and try for someone else. This last option is what we are trying to encourage. If the endurance timer were increased, this would allow survivors to get to a safe place more easily, further discouraging killers from chasing that survivor since it would likely lose them the game.
I don't think having survivors teleport around on hooks is a great idea. A big part of killer is snowballing and map control. Taking away map control brought about by hooks would completely change the game, and as a result it wouldn't feel very rewarding as killer to acquire hooks.
For example, imagine it's EGC and you down a survivor on the opposite side of the map from the exit gates. You pick up and hook the survivor, and, by random chance, he gets teleported right to the gate, with his friend there waiting to immediately unhook him. It doesn't really feel right to be punished for downing & hooking a survivor-- were you supposed to leave him slugged & let him bleed out instead? That can't be the answer either.
I think camping should have some place in the game in order to discourage certain survivor strategies, but it should absolutely be less powerful than it is today. I've only got rough ideas for how to make this happen however.
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i really love the new patch, and i also play both survivor and killer.
My issues are the same as you mentioned, I have thought on ways to fix it, and seen other players solutions. This is the way it would fix it the problem:
NOED - should be reworked/removed entirely, it reward the killer for basically not doing his job.
Tunnel - let Unbreakable recover you from dying sate. Not just once per trial, as it is now.
This way we get a perk that counter that play style, and still let the killer have that strategy in the backpack.
Camping - let the timer pause as long as the killer is too close to the hook. (10-20 meters from the hook)
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I honestly agree with a lot of the points brought up here. It's clear that my tunneling/camping solution isn't as foolproof as I'd hoped. I think the one thing we can all agree on is that the current system isn't working and needs to be revised, though. And I'm glad to see others agreeing about NOED.
This suggestion is really interesting! I think only breaking 2 to stop NOED is a little too weak considering the perk is a paperweight for most of the match, but maybe 3 + some passive effect, I don't know. Maybe something like Thrill of the Hunt where dulls are harder to break. Maybe breaking a dull locks all other dulls for 45 seconds, the way Plaything bars a totem from being cleansed by anyone else for a bit. I think this would be a cool idea for a hex perk in general, something that requires you to eat dulls to destroy its power (and you know 100% for sure it's there).
Actually, here's a fun NOED idea: have it light up all 5 totems as Hex Totems and you have to break them all or NOED activates at the end as it usually does. Booning does not remove the effect, when kicked it just restores it as a hex totem.
With regards to your point about hooking someone and they show up at the other side of the map next to an exit gate... I agree it's a problem, but unfortunately this is already Pyramid Head's reality, haha.
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I can't imagine anyone still using NOED in its current state. To me it was never a problem unless we are talking the 2016 version that gave 9% movement speed, was not a hex and lasted forever.
Tunneling/camping is not going to stop until the game changes. Why? Survivors eliminate generators and in order to counter maximum efficiency killers need to eliminate survivors. Gen times were made longer but it still doesn't account for the changes years ago that gave 15 seconds for the first and second hook phases. That increased time to die on hook is part of what makes the killer objective timer longer unless you camp.
Before the update it was easy to trade 5 gens for 5 hooks on any killer that is not Blight/Nurse. The game scoring system basically says : get 2 kill or you lost. This too encourages killers to tunnel. The devs refuse to acknowledge that lots of chases and hooks is better than kills "no matter what".
There are tools to address camping. You can bring kinship and it will severely punish a camper. You can bring DS to prevent tunneling - it will create room where there is a chance someone can save you.
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I agree that the game needs to fundamentally change in some way for tunneling/camping to be less of a problem. What that looks like, I don't know, but the current change isn't it, yeah.
I disagree about tools to address camping. You cannot predict if a killer is going to be camping, and multiple survivors needing to bring perks to prevent that - especially multiple perks - is bad. This is what this update was supposed to address, that people would no longer need to bring BT or DS to be tunneled or camped, and unfortunately it's just not solving that particular situation.
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Just give ten minute base BT and be done with it. Nothing less will ever please you people.
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Very interesting proposition about NOED lighting up all totems, or some sort of NOED system which warns survivors that it's approaching. I hope that the devs experiment with one of these & find out which is most fun.
Maybe NOED could work like Pentimento, except it lights up all dull totems instantly when the exit gates are powered, and gains different abilities depending on the number of totems lit. Perhaps something like: 1 totem -> 5% movement speed bonus, 2 totems -> Survivors are exposed, 3 totems -> Slows exit gate speeds.
I know that the proposed hook system is already part of Pyramid Head's power, but he at least has the option of using cages or hooking survivors, allowing him to decide for himself which is most effective in the present scenario. For all other killers, they wouldn't be granted the ability to decide & will instead be forced to hook survivors, losing lots of pressure and map control in the process.
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the problem with noed lies within the way survivors think about the perk.
every time people talk about noed you hear it gives killer kills they dont deserve because they screwed up. thats just not true its an endgame perk its dead the whole game and the killers playes with three perks the whole game. the killer didnt screw up because the gens got done the devs says multiple times they want the game to be balanced to roughly 2k 2e so the gates must be powered in most of the games there is nothing undeserved. if we go with that mindset bloodwarden is undeserved hope is undeserved adre is undeserved.
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NOED gives undeserved kills because it guarantees you get a +1k to whatever you were already gonna get. No perk should reward you like that. It's fine for perks to have strengths but the effect of NOED is too strong since you're bringing 1 perk to increase your kills by 1.
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