http://dbd.game/killswitch
The Recent Killer Weakness Design Philosophy is annoying the hell out of me
The trend has been done throughout the life cycle of DbD but it has become really REALLY egregious as of late.
The weakness I'm talking about is giving the survivors the ability to control the killer's power. At first, it came with killers like The Trapper, Plague or Hag. Where the survivors can take a bit of time to attempt to weaken the killer's power. But these usually came with a big risk, and a big reward of done right.
Then came killers such as Pinhead, Nemesis and Wesker, two of which sharing the Antidote Spray to allow survivors to stop the effects of their powers, and Pinhead whose power needs to be kept in check by finding the box before the Chain Hunt starts.
These are alright. They provide a good side objective for the survivors to weaken the killer. They are dangerous to perform, or takes a decent chunk of time away that you could have instead used to do gens or heal and such.
But then came the latest 3 killers. Arguably 3 of the most notorious killers in Dead By Daylight history. The Knight, The Skull Merchant and The Singularity, and it's with these three that my temper is rising like a souffle.
The Knight allows the survivor to cancel his attacking partner by claiming the Standard. Which is fine and all, if you can kite both the Knight and the Partner to reach it, you get to end it early right?
But then why the hell when you claim it does it give you Endurance and a Sprint Burst. Why? Why are they rewarded so heavily for Countering your power? Having it stop the chasing Partner should be enough.
In anycase, The Knight was just a small sign of things to come.
Next is the Skull Merchant, another Killer where BHVR gave the keys to her power to the survivors and completely botched it in the opposite manner. Having the only way to stop her cameras be to interact with them, made her one of the most notorious 3 Gen holder in the game. There is skill involved from the Skull Merchant. There is no clever time limits or design philosophies.
In the end, The Skull Merchant's gameplay loop is fundamentally flawed due to her reliance on the Survivor needing to stop the drone. Making it that there is no small way to fix her, they need to completely rework her from the ground up.
Lastly it is the Singularity, the killer with so much potential, but his ENTIRE gameplay loop is ruined because the survivor can LITERALLY turn his power off at the 2.5 second channel of a button. EMPs is one of the worst ways I have seen counterplay be implemented for a killer.
However, because of the Sigularity's high potential, any further nerfs to EMPs risk breaking him. He is so reliant on the off button that the survivors have to keep him in check that he is also a balancing nightmare, and because he is so weak against competent survivors, nobody bothers playing him.
And that ends my rant. Thank you very much for reading it if you made it here. And if a BHVR dev reads this. Please stop giving survivors literal off buttons to killer's powers to balance them. Make the power in and of itself be balanced without such an external factor
EDIT: RANT EXTENDED _ With the new PTB changes, it seems this design philosophy has made it's way onto Sadako. Survivors now entirely control HOW Sadako can distribute Condemned stacks. In addition, intelligent survivors can now make her a bargain bin wraith by taking 10 seconds to grab tapes and insert them into as many TVs as possible, completely crippling her ability to teleport.
Again, why make interesting counterplay for a killer when the survivors now have a literal OFF Button for Sadako's teleporting.
Comments
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You forgot to mention Wesker and how awesome of an addition he's been to DBD.
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May be you should add Sadako to the list if you didint saw the incoming rework.
But looks like sigularity 2.0 to me.
Yes you have a power but survivors "needs to be strategic" (or something like that devs said) to counter Sadakos power.
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i really want to because this rework does seem to be another case of this
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and then they say the game is not surivivor sided...
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I don't think it is Survivor sided game design.
I think it is lazy game design. Why give the Survivor an interesting way to counterplay the killer when you can give them an off button?
Give the survivors a difficult way to counter the killer, but make it rewarding. If they have the skill and instinct to pull the mechanic off, then it should be rewarded.
but they shouldn't be rewarded with a literal off button.
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Basically they add safety measures to prevent any situations where killers would feel oppressive. I see why they did it for Singularity (3 gens) but it was clear that you cannot give survivors full agency over a part of the killer's power, that they actively use.
With Sadako they did the exact same. Grab a tape and now you kill 3 birds with 1 stone. She can't teleport to condemn you, she can't traverse maps fast enough to play hit and run and she loses pressure because the only possible ways for her to condemn you are taken away, which results in less control over the match and faster gens.
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Though they should not lean into giving survivors safety measures so hard. Or at least, make it more risky.
For example, if you try to solve the Lament Configuration against Pinhead, it allows him to teleport straight to you. We all are aware of this.
While the teleport doesn't guarantee a hit, it is still a danger because it reveals your location and brings immediate danger to you. So smart survivors will first move into a position that is advantageous for them to negate the teleport, but there is still the downside that it literally brings the killer straight to you.
Even smarter survivors will know to solve the cube as Pinhead picks up a survivor, as he needs to either drop the survivor and teleport, risking they get healed, or let you completely solve it while securing a hook.
This is intelligent safety measures that allows for counter play from the survivors, but it is still dangerous. With Sadako, when a survivor removes a tape, it doesn't even notify you. It doesn't even reveal the survivor's location to Sadako. They just turn off your teleporting spot with no drawback at all. in fact, it is better to do it as you don't get passive condemned anymore.
Where is the intelligent counterplay? "You gain a stack if she hits you?" She needs to find you first, and then she needs to actually hit you. How many decent survivors can stall out a hit from a M1 killer?
It's just infuriating. Why not at least give killer instinct when they get a tape so she at least knows in what direction to walk to? Or any repercussions for getting a tape?
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RIP Oreo
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I'll be honest I don't think a lot of these counterplay mechanics even really need to exist, singularity would still be mediocre and fiddly without emps, knight would still be boring but fine if he didn't give free endurance and haste.
Honestly I think this is why I like projectile Killers so much because the only counterplay is "Dodge", at least until MFT ruined that too
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I just feel that instead of BHVR addressing the core issues with the game like mag RNG being to big of a factor in matches,
power gaps between killers the difference between blight and legion is insane and also there shouldn’t even be a D or C tier killer all killers should be at least B tier or better
instead the devs just create a perk for the problem and just say either use the perk or dead with it either that or they just tear and gut down both roles till they’re as bland to play as possible all in the name of balance
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i think it depends how you implement item. an item that provides counter-play can be interesting if the item is engaging for survivor to use and add's entirely new ability to survivor master to play against the killer. The issue is that they've been adding items on killers where they do not need an item and item is not adding anything unique to killer.
For Wesker, he has passive to grant survivors -8% hindered so item exists to counter-act this incredibly powerful passive but he would not need this powerful passive if his virulent bounds were strong by default in any situation at loops.
Sadako tapes are suppose to be clutch tool to save yourself from a mori. mori are powerful so I think this item does make sense but you have to be careful to not makes tapes so strong that it hard-counters power making it impossible to mori.
these two characters warrant items. they're boring implementation of item counters because your countering passives but they worthy of it.
where the problem of items goes is next two killers.
Nemesis has this infection mechanic where it allows survivors to tank 3 hits? it provides no benefit for the killer and only hurts killer. its like having anti-corrupt intervention as killer power. nemesis with this mechanic is legit forced to run corrupt intervention to counter-act the anti-corrupt intervention of his power. its kinda silly and infection serves little purpose other than to make killer worse.
Singularity has Emp mechanic. This is also not needed. it just adds chase extension if it is cleverly used by the survivor mid-chase either by teammates or by the survivor itself.
these two killers are great example of killers that do not need such a mechanic. their power are not strong enough to warrant drawbacks and they add very little in term of gameplay. So I do agree with your post that item-counters on not strong enough killers is uninteresting design.
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I agree
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