This Community in a Nutshell
Community: So what does the new killer do?
BHVR: Well they have these drones that scan an area and you can become stealthy inside them and after a while survivors become exposed if they're in range of the drone too long but then if they try to disarm them they get tagged and you get to know where they are wherever you want so you can be guarding area and chasing down survivors constantly as long as you setup correctly. Oh and then they have these add-ons they basically customize the drone letting you decide if you wanna focus on gen defense or chase more giving the killer multiple playstyles.
Community: BOOOOO! BAD! DELETE! WORST KILLER EVER! BOYCOTT DBD! Well what do these killers over here do?
BHVR: Wesker and Blight?
Community: Yeah
BHVR: They move fast?
Community: What else?
BHVR: No that's it they move fast. I mean Wesker has an infection meter but that's so easy to get rid of you won't notice it much so yeah mostly just moving fast.
Community:
Comments
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As it turns out, "move fast" has more to learn and do than "press button and deploy drone". Who'da thunk it?
Probably something about locus of control, too. Powers whose effectiveness is a measure of your skill, and where the effects are controlled by the player, appeal to people far more than one where it's far more dependent on the other players misstepping.
(and obviously the actual issues with the power implementation like visibility, ######### is up with the timing on the undetectable, and 'you need to place it somewhere it's easily seen and gotten to on top of everything else because it can't get through walls despite its small area')
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moving fast fun
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That's a pretty generous description of Skull Merchant and reductive description of Blight and Wesker.
I don't have to run into the drones. I am under zero obligation to let this killer have a power. They have a normal TR and no ability to close gaps. I can do the same thing against her that I do against Hag and Trapper: run edge map. I get a minute long chase for free and force them to cross the map away from gens by doing nothing aside from holding W up the edge of the map. The killer is designed around survivors not optimizing the game. That's fine, and she'll work 90% of the time because most survivors are really bad and run into killer powers for no reason, but they could iterate on this power more so she isn't completely screwed by smart players.
I can't deny Blight and Wesker their power in the same way. Especially high level ones. You have to pre-drop and hope you don't get dead zoned. And a high level Wesker is going to toss you edge map and zone you.
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From how I've seen people use SM I think I've seen maybe 2-3 people actually figure her out completely while everyone else just gives up and goes "I guess I just put these next to gens?" which sure works but there's a lot more you can do with it so I don't really agree with your premise. It's like saying "hag is just putting triangles on ground" but then you watch a player like michi explaining their play and you realize the killer is so much more complex at a higher level.
Also I'm not saying wesker and blight don't take skill they take a tremendous amount of mechanical skill but what I am saying is that mechanical skill is not the only type of skill. Being able to manage macro, be predictive and have general great game sense and planning abilities is also a skill and that's what killers like Hag, Trapper, and SM test that chase killers really don't.
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Majority of the dbd community only cares about mechanical skill
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it’s foolish to confuse complexity for good design
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right, I’m sure you’re the one guy who’s got it all figured out
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Pretty much. Anything that isn't an immediately obvious chase power is considered bad design by default, and it can get really frustrating.
Skull Merchant is, of course, weak. But that's just balance, not core design, she can and should be buffed to the point where she's got some bite to her- and at that point she'll be one of the most interesting new killers added for a good long while.
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“just 3 gen” is hardly interesting design
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Chase killers benefit from macro knowledge and skill too, though, which is part of the problem.
But as I said, I think what a lot of it comes down to is control over your power expression. SM is another case of giving too much information to the Survivors to enable them to work around it, and a logical counter of "run away from power". Trapper and Hag at least give some measure of 'here's a good place it's hidden/that I can chase someone into and get immediate payoff', aside from the haste and aura addons, SM... doesn't.
I think if she was able to stealth her drones and Survivors had to find them and didn't get immediately told they were taking effect, she'd be in a much stronger place (not that it feels like a sufficient buff tbh; I liked the num drones out * 20% = extra lunge distance someone suggested to just give her something a little more) and lose at least a chunk of the complaints on that. Because then it's more on your clever placement, and less on Survivors ignoring it for some reason.
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Sure, but what does that have to do with anything?
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because that’s basically all this killer is going to be used for
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In her current state, sure, but that's balance. Her core design isn't at fault there.
Also, "what people use it for" and "how it's designed" aren't always the same thing. People use Artist to drop crows at loops for guaranteed M1s, that isn't how she's designed.
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that’s just poor design then
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There's a least one solid jump scare build and that's enough for me
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It literally isn't, no.
She's weak, and can be buffed. If and when she is buffed, she won't have these problems, because her core design is totally fine and even quite cool.
Unless you mean the Artist example, in which case, eh, a little. It's not that Artist is poorly designed overall, just that there's a little bit of an annoyance to the way her kit functions in one specific area. It could be fixed, but it being there doesn't automatically invalidate Artist as a design.
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That would be a good start. But part of the problem with trap killers like Hag and Trapper is that they still require survivors to accept risk to a certain degree in order for the power to work. There are only so many logical places for a trap/drone, no matter how well hidden.
A survivor can choose to not accept any risk at all, and trap killers are historically 100% reliant of traps, which makes them unable to down someone in a timely manner if they simply start running in a straight line up the edge of the map when the killer is 20 meters away. Then those well-hidden traps at loops and gens do nothing. It's dumb, but it works in the survivor's favor.
It's a hard concept to make work in this game. Because a trap-based killer with a chase power would be insane. But spreading out the tools to account for the entire map and not just loops leaves them too spread out and inefficient.
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you can believe that if you’d like but that doesn’t mean it’s going to become true
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Yup, but what are you gonna do? Can't completely scrap all trap Killers. At least this one's got some stealth potential... if it didn't require standing in a time-limited bright glowing area to get it. <_>
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I'm getting the sense that this won't be a productive conversation no matter what, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and ask: What exactly makes you say that? I'm not even entirely sure which part of my message you're responding to.
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If she's buffed, it doesnt fix the fact that her core design sucks.
You've either got anti-loop or hold a 3-gen.
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I will never understand the Skull Merchant Defenders.
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I just think you’re being naive
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She literally doesn't do anti-loop right now and there's no reason to assume she'd be buffed in a way that lets her, and any killer can hold a 3-gen, she'd only be slightly better at it than the majority of the cast.
There's nothing wrong with her core design. It's never going to be top-tier strong because trap and information killers don't tend to be, but it isn't fundamentally broken. I'm starting to wonder if people just, can't see past her current balance problems and conflate that with her core design or something.
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I think you left out the fact that wesker and blight have massively high skill ceilings. THAT is what makes them so much fun, and what makes this new killer extremely boring. There’s ZERO SKILL in her power… you walk and throw up drones. How very exciting that is…
yea… we like killers that go fast because they eliminate the most boring part of the game, holding that precious W key.
What weird take / comparison you tried to make. L. Will never understand people who try to defend this killer, she’s outright awful.
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Her power literally only works in a 3-gen.
She sucks at literally everything else and if you buff her, she becomes way too oppressive.
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I'm gonna have to disagree with you on that one.
Even buffing her into the stratosphere wouldn't make her oppressive because, like, what does she do? She knows where survivors are (but doesn't have mobility or chase), and has stealth (but even the best possible version of it wouldn't be as good as a killer like Wraith).
The only way you could make her oppressive is if you specifically hyper-buff her Exposed, and there's no reason to assume that is the one and only thing you can buff. The only reason she "sucks at everything else" is because she's weak, not because she's poorly designed.
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Most of the Blight mains even though could play other way, relying on broken addons and gen slowdown, nobody cares if the killer can play otherwise, its always the most effective way played, that means, gen slowdown, for every killer thats the meta.
Of course those who poured 10k+ hours in a killer can flex with shadowborn only Blight but thats very low percent
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Tbh I'd describe it more as anti-tile. She locks down tiles, she doesn't really keep you from looping. If you're injured there's no real reason to leave the tile so you can just loop her normally (unless she has certain add-ons ofc which she is always going to have because her power design is inherently poor.)
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I was actually just thinking about this while testing some things with her (meaning all the visual information given to survivors) and I agree it's a bit much with all the harsh glowing lights. I think if they got rid of the orange light in active mode for the survivors and just made the drone slightly louder so aware survivors will find it while unaware ones will get exposed much easier that would be better. As well has letting survivors see the lock on meter, that needs to go away as well because it's like notifying survivors how much stalk GF or Myers has.
For the killer just let them see the orange circle on the ground so they can see the range like hag traps and that would be good as well cuz trying to see through it right now isn't great especially for people with color blindness.
Just to be clear I'm not saying SM is perfectly designed a ton of things need to be tweaked but I will defend her core concept as I find it tremendously interesting and fun to play with and I've waited ages for another trap killer to release. The killer won't be for most people and that's fine I haven't really clicked with the vast majority of killers released recently and that's okay, those killers weren't for me. It's just frustrating when we finally do get something appealing to players like me that enjoy setting up and having a plan come together and everyone wants to instantly destroy it.
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What else WOULD you buff if not her Exposed (her power)?
Buffing her tracking doesn't help her, she has no movement abilities nor any way to get downs.
Her Stealth? Still doesn't help her. She has no movement abilities.
Buffing her Exposed just makes her Knight 2, the Electric 3-Gen Boogaloo.
Buffing her either doesn't do anything for her or makes her WAY too good at holding down 3-gens. If that isn't a design issue, I don't know what is.
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Most of the blight mains?? Nahhhh. Maybe the casual blight players.
I don’t run slowdown outside of maybe bringing pain res. And that’s majority of blight MAINS. As for addons… I feel I could run any addons and you would say they’re “broken” so I won’t even touch on that.
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I don't want to be mean or rude, but if you really can't see any application for a killer with mapwide tracking and consistent stealth, that's far more on you than on the core design of the power. You put "her power" in brackets next to Exposed like it's all she does, but it's like, a tertiary thing at best. The main thing she does is track survivors, and the secondary thing she does (or at least is meant to do, as far as I'm aware; nobody's denying she's weak) is give herself stealth. The Exposed is like, pressure to mess with her traps at best, it's far from the only thing her power has.
She's not a chase killer. That doesn't automatically make the design worthless.
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If the Knight fine, the she also fine buffed.
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Knights strength level is fine right now, we'll have to to see how it is after the Eruption nerf.
However, he's still one of the worst Killers to play against. It'd be like adding Legion 2 the chapter after Legion came out.
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The core concept, if you assume it's traps that give info and a punishment for hanging around the area, is okay, but I'm not sure how much of the implementation is salvageable. Like, if you kept the way drones turn on and off by default, the area, and the existence of claw traps, and reworked it from that starting point, it might be something?
Stuff like the claw traps giving Oblivious rather than the weirdly-overcomplicated reactivation situation, being in the drone area doing something aside from 'give exposed if it has LoS' (or addons focusing on debuffing and not a few scant buffs) to make it more actively useful... eh, they're ideas, I guess?
Because 'info and very limited stealth' don't go well with no mobility, and info is not something so hard to get it makes for a good core power.
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She tracks Survivors only within a certain radius and I'm pretty sure she gets slightly slowed for doing so. You could say she can track people with Claw Traps, but there's no reason for survivors to disable drones and it's incredibly easy to remove them. Out of all the Killers with tracking, she's probably closest to Wesker or Nemesis. She gets occasional info. If that's your idea of a main power, yikes.
She gets stealth in an area, which Survivors will be running away from and stealth isn't really all that anymore.
If you buff her tracking, that doesn't really help her. She doesn't have a way to capitalize on it. If you buff her stealth, again, she has no real way to make any use of it.
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Those are all, in fact, balance related! Those things don't have to be true, because they're not part of her core design.
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Her core design is that she punishes you for being in an area but the punishment is largely countered by running away, and the area can be disabled, at which point she has nothing but info.
I question how much that can actually be improved on.
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You will see in time.
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also, as it turns out "move fast" powers are more fun than "well duh i can sometimes see survivors and make them exposed for 30 seconds if they allow that to happen, but wait, that looks cool"
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The battery on the claw traps being able to be recharged by entering new drone areas I'm NGL is kinda weird because you're gonna be chasing those people most likely and the traps get destroyed when you down them so it's an odd feature that doesn't really do anything. I think to make the claw traps better they should get whatever add-on effects the drone has like oblivious, blindness, exhaustion, etc and that would give them a bit more utility and make her add-ons better overall.
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My problem is the lack of interaction in this new killers the Knight and SM. This are characters that revolve around map control, the problem is that survivors can't do anything about their tools, so their tools need to be bad in chase to compensate, well now survivors just have to play smart, be in safe areas and attack objectives strategically so they don't have to deal with the killer's tools.
This designs just create a cycle, nobody can do anything until one side makes a mistake, turns matches into a grinding game.
Blight and Wesker are very simple, but because their power's are more mechanical based and with more room for active choices, people enjoy them more.
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I dont want to ever see another Blight ever again, its only possible to win as survivor if Blight is bad, autowin for Blight has no counter, its only counter if Blight is bad.
I dont even play survivor anymore because of Blight
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Hmm, i prefer to get wrecked in 5 min by a Blight than to win a 30 min game against Knight.
And i don't think Blight is the the problem, his add-ons are the problem, they are busted and need a complete add-on pass rework like nurse just got
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Lilith has like 100+ winstreak with Blight only using Shadowborn
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Ok
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Less is more. Always.
This isn’t an RTS.
With Knight, bird lady and now this new dog shite killer, it’s no longer about simplicity as a killer. It’s now stop playing action paced killer to become a part time dungeon master and minecraft map creator with drawing shapes and paths and placing drones.
Gimme Bubba , twins, dredge etc any day of the week. Im right in the action. No slowing down to pause to play some stupid mini game with drones and birds and ghosts.
F outta here with this direction they are headed.
Less is more. Killer go zoom zoom stab. That’s all we need. That’s all it ever needs to be.
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That's really impressive
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"Community: What else?
BHVR: No that's it they move fast."
You're actually trolling, right?
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