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My Take on How To Change Eruption
I think it's a fairly uncontroversial statement to say that Eruption fills an unhealthy niche in the game right now- whether you think it's just straight overpowered, or just poorly designed in that it loses a ton of effectiveness against SWFs, it's clear that changing this perk could benefit everyone.
So, first off, I don't think its activation mechanic or regression portion should be changed at all, really. I think that part is fair and balanced, and I think it's the secondary mechanic (the Incapacitated status effect) that should see some changes. With that in mind, here's what I'd suggest:
The explosion affects a radius around the generator, not just whoever is working on it. This standardises the perk's effect against both solo queue and SWF, as those on comms wouldn't be able to last-second inform their teammate they're about to go down if that teammate would need more than that last second to actually clear the small radius, which in turn means we can balance the effect based on the fact that it'll be more consistently activated. With that in mind...
No more Incapacitated, instead reveal auras. If you're near an affected generator when it explodes, you scream, and then your aura is revealed for a fairly lengthy amount of time. I suggest this change in particular for a few reasons- first is that, unlike Incapacitated, it's a mechanic that has direct counters on the survivor side in terms of perks which could have a knock-on effect to diversify the meta a little bit. The second is that it's about as useful as the old effect for the killer if it only affects one survivor, and still provides decent value if it hits more than one-- as well as giving the killer good info that encourages them not to stick around the hook after they secure it.
With those two changes implemented, I think Eruption would be in a much more healthy spot. Still very useful for killers, but less sharply binary in terms of SWF vs solo, as well as having more direct counters and reactions on the survivor side. What do you guys think?
Comments
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Entity blocking instead of incapacitation would be more in-keeping with what it does, and not turn its secondary effect into a really weirdly timed aura reveal--you down someone, then find out people are working on a generator half the map away? That's only of use for slugging.
Plus, this way it equalises solo queue and SWF in a different way: neither of them can dodge or immediately negate the regression, but it's not also an information perk (and it doesn't doubly punish solos with extra regression).
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Entity blocking would also work, though that still kind of just leaves survivors hit by it with the singular option of "don't repair". Still, I suppose they could go find an unaffected generator, so that's still an improvement.
Personally, I think making it more of an information perk is more thematic to Nemesis and gives far more direct use than only stalling, but I'd be okay with entity blocking or even an entirely different effect. I just think the Incapacitated has to go in order for this perk to be balanced right- just making that timer shorter risks making it never run again, I'd like to see the troublesome part excised and replaced with something healthier.
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Yeah, they can't repair that gen, but they're able to repair other gens, and don't run into incapacitated's "no healing, no totems, no nothing" aspect.
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I like your ideas in general. But incapacitated has an advantage over aura reading in that scenario: If incapacitated, the survivors can't stop the regression for 20s, which means, that on top of the base reduction, the gen will regress at normal speed for 20s. You don't have that if you remove the status. And Auras don't help you much, if you are about to pick up a survivor anyway. You can already see which gens you kicked in the first place.
Therefore, if you want to remove incapacitated, you need to increase the base regression accordingly.
But I think we both agree that Eruption is a nightmare if you play solo.
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Incapacitated is fine. I'd say the perk is fine in terms of its effects and lengths. What should be changed about it is it should have a timer on how long it can be applied to a gen. Call of Brine is 60 seconds, Overcharge is 30 seconds. Eruption should have a 45 second timer before the effect leaves the gen. If it doesn't get procced in that time, no cooldown. If it does proc, then it still gets the normal cooldown it has now. This would solve a lot. Maybe even make it so it can only be applied to a maximum of 3 gens. I feel like both of these suggestion would make it much healthier. People will still complain, but the perk was nearly useless when the Incapacitated effect was 16 seconds.
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You're failing to account for the fact that back when it was 16 seconds the generator didn't regress for that time. They recently patched it so the gen will regress during the incapacitation.
25 seconds is just too damn long to be forced to do nothing.
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16s was plenty so that survivor working on a nearby gen did not come and flash saved or sabotaged. Anyway giving it 45s cooldown sounds much more reasonable. This will make it so, that killer will have harder time keeping his 3gen indefinitelly. So it will no longer create unwinnable games when playing solo
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eruption is specifically designed to be a perk to refund the time in kicking generators. Incapacitated is how the entire perk gains value.
When they changed scourge hook pain resonance, one of description of dev's opinion in regard to that perk was jack of trades perk. Eruption is now jack of all trades perk. It does everything. it has regression, incapacitated and tracking capacity from survivor's screaming. With how current version of how this perk functions, it is combined mini-pop goes weasel+mini dead man switch. I could heavily see dev's weakening the perk by removing the regression of the perk simply because pop goes weasel is supposedly meant to fill the role of a generator kicking perk that provides raw regression to generators while no other perk fills the role of applying incapacitated effect on survivors.
a possible change to the perk is removing the regression aspect of the perk from 10%->0%. Perhaps they might improve the incapacitated effect of the perk from 25 second->30 seconds and add a 5 second lingering effect upon leaving the generator to prevent clever survivors from avoiding the effect. The perk would be less of jack of all trade perk and more of specialized perk.
This change sounds like a change that punishes weaker killers who typically have longer chase times but keeps the perk exactly the same for stronger killer that end chases quickly.
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That change would worsen the aspect of the perk that's actually causing problems, though. The Incapacitated is why we're having this conversation to begin with, because its application and length cause frustrating scenarios where only those on comms can respond effectively to it and those playing without comms are left to twist in the wind.
Completely separate from the design of Eruption specifically, Incapacitated is just not a status effect that should be hitting someone for that long. It's a lot to ask of a survivor to do nothing for thirty full seconds if they aren't playing on comms and can't avoid it. That's just not good design.
Someone above suggested replacing Incapacitated with just blocking the generator, and that would be more useful for a more healthy version of the perk's current niche. Personally, I think the perk should be given a different niche, but even if you like what Eruption is meant to achieve right now there are better and more healthily balanced ways of achieving it.
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Oh yes. It refunds the value. Then it gives it fully back and then it repeats that 3x times. That is if you play against solo. Against SWF the perk is strong (you can't always say you will go down in time) but fully ok. 40s gen slowdown per survivor hit by it. 9s if nobody was on the gen. One would say killers will realize when something is waaaay too op given they had to deal with old hatch mechanics, but aparently that's not the case. And I don't even consider info part of perk. That one does not really matter.
Imo the game would be overall much better if eruption swapped cd time with oppression or dragon's grip. That's how strong the perk is right now.
Also your solution is to make it from supper oppresive for solo to very oppressive for everyone. 36s slowdown (30s incapacitated +6s regression from 0% explosion survivor can't stop) is still way too much and unhealthy. For comparison BNP is considered most OP addon (especially when stacked) survivors can bring to a game. And it can at most progress gen by 22.5s after which it forever disappears. Yet hitting survivors multiple times (with just 30s cooldown) with more then 1,5x anti-BNP is healthy? And there will be no dodging it with your version. Game breaking change.
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I think the perk should be given a different niche, but even if you like what Eruption is meant to achieve right now there are better and more healthily balanced ways of achieving it.
like what? what exactly will reduce the survivor's total up-time on generators? its only perk right now that punishes survivors for being glued on generators. Rewards the killer for downs, punishes survivor for ineffective looping.
Incapacitated is just not a status effect that should be hitting someone for that long. It's a lot to ask of a survivor to do nothing for thirty full seconds
why? dbd already balances around survivors doing nothing, inefficiency.
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Why? Because you need survivors to play the game. Check steam stats (as the available statistics) about ever-dropping number of players. Then see which players are always (not counting 1hour/day when a lot of SWF plays the game) is missing. Now do the math who is leaving the game and why.
I will give you a few hints. Camping, tunneling, 30+ minute games thanks to perks like eruption, nurse and her 2 recent buffs (5.5 and 6.1), tombstone piece, MDR spirit, desynch hits, 60% kill rate "is fair", this forum with above average number of suggestions that slightly or insanely buff killers
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I'm not a game designer, there are probably a hundred things you could do with Eruption, most of them thematic to the Nemesis. My suggestion is to make it about controlling the trial via constantly being on a new survivor without having to search, which seems to be what the other two perks are designed to achieve too; Lethal Pursuer lets you start a chase immediately, and Hysteria seems... well, okay, I really don't know about Hysteria, that perk is weird.
As for your second statement, no it doesn't. I get what you're saying, that you think DBD is balanced around lower-skilled players and said players are inefficient, but that doesn't actually translate to the take you're trying to make here. But to take it at face value for a second, there's a big difference between choosing to do nothing (or more accurately, nothing productive ) and being forced to do nothing.
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To me, it's seemed that the issue with the Incapacitated effect has been the fact that it's impossible to avoid barring someone on comms saying they're about to go down, making it a bane on solo queuers in particular.
That in mind, my thought on what to do with the perk without seriously changing it was add a small window from the moment a Survivor is down to Eruption's effect kicking in. Small enough that it doesn't make the effect too easy to avoid but enough that an alert Survivor is able to react to the coming explosion and avoid becoming Incapacitated.
It keeps Eruption powerful but offers a form of counterplay. One that all players can take advantage of while, at worst, having no effect on a SWFs' ability to avoid the effect
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there's a big difference between choosing to do nothing (or more accurately, nothing productive ) and being forced to do nothing
sounds like same end result.
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With the pretty huge difference in that one feels neutral to the player and one feels awful to the player. A pretty important distinction for game design.
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Very least you choose to do nothing it's your own fault if nothing gets done
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