How will Dev’s Buff Killer’s after this Update?

What "buffs" to knight? That is more like a QoL Change nothing less. Killer is still garbage and still W-Shiftable. Guards are still technically not able to catch survivors. Simple maths.

Most Survivor sided map? You ever played Garden of Joy? The main building in Eyrie is still untouched.

"massive buff for survivors"? Have we played the same PTB and seen the same icons? - Yes, the icons are neat for borderline "######### is everyone doing?"-situations; aka 'do I really need to run across the whole map to unhook?' or 'is someone on the other gate?' and 'where the f* is the killer, are they chasing someone or what?' ---- answers to these questions are good to have and help avoid borderline ridiculous situations (like two people running across the whole map and arriving at the hook around the same time - potentially together with the killer cause they can't find anyone anywhere else) but they don't have a huge impact on match outcomes outside of accidental stomp-fests.

Considering the icon change exists in a weird spot where it's both overestimated ("every game will feel like a sweaty 4man!") and underestimated ("it'll do literally nothing, zero, nada") at the same time it's a brilliant example of why it's a good idea to actually see what happens before you make any further changes. The reality is somewhere inbetween, where no amount of information will ever be able to emulate other aspects of swf (like being able to pick your teammates, knowing 100% they won't DC because of the location of Venus in the sky when they went down or something), and at the same time believing players that are genuinely interested in making smart decisions won't put the info to use is also pretty silly imo.

I mean I thought the "let changes actually apply before making further changes" philosophy was considered a good thing at least, ever since the original very quick change to Freddy after his release made the devs noticably shift towards it. Not that there hasn't been changes that either luckily got nuked quick (like the "no timing needed for pallet/flashlight saves" one that didn't last long at all, luckily) and stuff that should've been nuked far faster (release Legion) but you know.

Cross that bridge when we get there I guess.

A minor buff to survivors warrants only a minor buff to killers.

A FoV slider, up to about 100 degrees, and rework Shadowborn/Monitor.

are you seriously the Shadowborn op? this is the same perk that no one uses and which makes it easier to blind the killer

even more interesting how it will help some freddy against swf

Game is nursesided

First you need to evaluate how much of a difference these survivor buffs make. I don't expect it'll be a massive drop in kill rates, maybe 5% among solo survivor lobbies, less than 2% among SWF if that.

Then you need to work what sort of killer buffs would work in turn.

Personally, I think the best kill buffs that provides the same kind of buff and of the same magnitude, would be increasing killer FoV (via a slider setting) and giving killers hook state indicators. These would be minor info/QoL buffs, that help killers be a little more efficient in their main objective, but crucially don't provide killers who are either already at the top or using cheap tactics as much of an advantage.

The wider FoV would give less experienced killers a better chance at not getting spun out by 360's or survivors hiding on their toes, which very experienced killers can already deal with, while the hook counter wouldn't benefit campers and tunnellers because those players already know who they're targeting.

5 years of us telling them, them not doing it, and then continuing to release new maps that are too big as well. I'm more pessimistic from the track record. I hope you're right though.

I don't expect it to have too big of an impact on kill rates because it should only really improve the gameplay of a very specific subset of survivors, namely:

1. Not on comms
2. Good enough to interpret the status icons to know what they should be doing
3. Not good enough to do so without the status icons

At the fabled "high MMR" most survivors are either going to be on comms or will have enough game sense to know what's happening even without icons.

At "low MMR" most survivors won't be able to interpret the information well enough to do anything with it.

It's only at "mid MMR" that survivors might see some use out of this, but even then since there's no way to see if the killer is camping from the icons (other than not seeing anyone in chase for a while) you'll still see people just straight up bringing Kindred

Chase music needs to be dramatically quieter, so that killers can have a QoL increase too.

Nurse is completely unplayable for me on the PTR because of the chase music. I refuse to play a character, where survivors are instantly silent whenever they break line of sight. Chase music should be much quieter than it is on live servers, for all killers, so it’s easier for killers to track survivors that break line of sight.

We shouldn’t need to “wait and see if killers need buffs”. We should be implementing QoL improvements for survivors and killers, and then balance accordingly.

"Hey im being chased" instantly automatically available without the chased survivor needing to distract themselves from the chase.

Its just one of the better comms callouts.

"Wait and see, unless we've already made up our minds"