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Larry, New Sadako and Chess Merchant are a result of BHVR's new design flaw
EDIT: Some have pointed out the flaws in my logic, and I agree with them. While the thoughts below don't match with my current views, i think it can still lead to interesting discussions,
As of late, Behaviour have been giving killers powers that are directly countered by some mechanic they give to the Survivors.
While killers like Plague, Wesker, Trapper, Pinhead all have mechanics that the survivors need to interact with to do things. Those interactions aren't manditory.
You can play an entire game against plague without cleansing once, if you are good enough. In face, a strategy against plague is that once she used her one corrupted pool, you can deny her any other pools by not cleansing.
Wesker is a whole can of worms, but in the end, if you are good enough, you can honestly play against a Wesker without needing to vaccinate yourself.
This same philosophy also applies to the other killers, I meantion, however the 3 in the title is where it goes wrong.
The survivors MUST interact with that power, or else it is the equivalent of throwing the match.
They put too much power in the hands of the survivor to counter the killer, and it leads to balancing nightmares. Sadako was literally a F Tier killer in the PTB, and with 3 changes, she became super oppressive.
Larry barely sees any play, but they can't risk buffing him more or he will become broken. Just like what we saw with sadako.
And dont get me started on Chess Merchant.
In the end, the killer's power should not have an external factor to buff it. Let the killer's power be dictated by cooldowns, flaws, or weaknesses.
So that, in the end, it is not a survivor that turns the ability off, but improper cooldown management or other resources.
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Well, correct us if we're wrong but someone has to interact with the box for pinhead or the match is basically thrown because no one will be able to realistically finish gens while the hunt is on.
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While I can agree on Sadako and Skull Merchant (please do not call her Chess Merchant...chess can be exciting and has quick formats like Blitz and Bullet... Skull Merchant only has one mode: boredom), I disagree on Larry.
You can play a match against it without once using an EMP if the survivors are good and spot the biopods. EMPs just make it a lot simpler.
I would also like to differ here because Sigularity has interactive gameplay with the hiding from the pods, keeping an eye out if the Killer is using them or dodging their line of sight. There is far more here and it is a lot more intuitive than Skull Merchant. Also the counterplay is a lot more rewarding: EMPing an area is a huge blow to the Singularity and rewards the survivors by basically turning it into an M1 Killer. Skull Merchant barely feels rewarding when you hack her drones...
I would also say that there is nothing wrong with forcing survivors to interact with Killer powers. Pig is not a bad Killer and I personally like facing a Cenobite.
The issue is if the counterplay does not feel rewarding, challenging or is just boring.
Sadako with her current state is just no good. She needs a few tweaks that make her more interesting. Yes, carrying a tape should have a good risk/reward ratio and no, you should not be able to play only for condemn. Condemn should be a secondary things that slows the game down and not a win condition.
In my opinion a good "mini-game" is to carry the tape across the map and avoid the Onryo via using her lullaby. This is sensible. However as you wast a lot of time this should also give a good reward to her.
I like both designs and I have no problem if survivors are able to counter my power (yes, I play Oni how could you tell). However it should a in a good risk/reward ratio.
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Why do people call her "chess merchant" anyway?
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It's because someone said on twitter that Skull Merchant is like playing chess. Both nicknames come from people who dislike the character, neither of them are flattering.
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Thank you
People still surprise us with how..... creative...they can be when they want
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Yes, which is why the mocking nickname caught on. People believe it to be incorrect, and considering people generally only think she's capable of 3-genning they are correct that what they're thinking of doesn't require any thought, so they're using a sarcastic nickname. That's where it came from.
To the wider topic, just so I'm not entirely derailing: I don't agree, partially because what's described has already existed in the game with Pig for a long time. Powers that survivors have to interact with are totally fair game, and the three killers in question have flaws that lay elsewhere. Different flaws, at that- Sadako is (potentially, still early days) overtuned where Singularity is perceived to be undertuned.
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I see.
Perhaps I am wrong.
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The game is in the worst state it has ever been to my mind.
There are so many flaws that it is out of control balance and fun wise.
4 survivors stacking MFT + Resilience + strong items = busted, literally unplayable for killers
Killers using distressing/coulrophobia/sloppy + Midwich MO = unplayable for the survivors
Killers using one shot add-ons or Blight + Ring or Nurse + aura perks = unplayable for survivors
There are so many loadout that make the game impossible to win for the opposite side that it is deeply concerning.
At high MMR 100% of the trials are unwinnable, for one side or the other depending the killer chosen (+ the add-ons).
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People have been asking for years for a 'secondary objective' for survivors.
BHVR tried this with boons, but, entity forbid, those actually were beneficial to survivors, and we can't have that now. So they got effectively removed.
Now they're trying it with killer powers, where investing time to interact with the killer's power is time not spent on gens. I suspect this phase probably won't last long either.
What people really want with 'secondary objectives' is doing something besides gens that provides no benefit to survivors and no detriment to the killer, and it then has to be mandatory because there's no incentive to do it. Essentially it's expecting a mechanic that forces survivors to be afk.
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I feel like this is a little misleading.
Your two examples are off, mostly. Boons as a whole haven't been touched since their introduction in Mikaela's PTB, iirc, and even three of the four we have also haven't been touched. What happened was Circle of Healing was nerfed due to it being overpowered- not just because it was beneficial, it's beneficial now, but because it was too strong. Boons as a whole probably were an attempt at a secondary objective, and it's a shame they had to live in the shadow of CoH for so long, because now people will claim they're "effectively removed" after the one clearly OP one got nerfed to just be pretty good.
Second, I don't think it's accurate to say there's a "phase" of killers with powers that force interaction, because BHVR just kind of do those every once in a while. Pig was the first, Plague was probably intended to be one, Pinhead wasn't part of the recent batch... it's just a thing they do sometimes. They probably will do other power ideas soon, I don't think it's directly related to the idea of a secondary objective- maybe at most they're more inclined to think of powers that push for interaction these days, but that's not quite the same.
That being said, I'm not necessarily defending anyone who calls for a secondary objective. I just think it's important to be accurate.
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That's just pickrate, it only loosely correlates to the perk's strength.
As I said, it's a shame that old CoH was seen as the benchmark, because it makes the other boons look worse than they are and means people discount the current version even though it's perfectly usable. Hell, it's even pretty strong- even when situational, a 100% healing speed increase is nothing to sneeze at, just look at We'll Make It.
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In fairness, CoH is only "nuked" from the pain in the bum it was previously. It's still useful if people need a reset but the fact is most want things that are self reliant.
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I'm pretty happy with the Singularity and Onryō, albeit if Onryō is toned down a tad that would be fine too. Both killers require some more thought, away from some of the more straightforward slashers and I welcome this change in direction, so long as it isn't done into the ground.
The Skull Merchant is absolutely terrible though, with one of the least thought-out power designs BHVR have ever done. Her power definitely needs changing, of that fact I feel is almost universally agreed.
The game needs to offer more variety as it evolves and this character-dependent set of powers which rely on survivor skill over killer weaknesses is a nice way to explore more styles (so long as they are well thought-through).
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The devs make so many questionable decisions and make it seem they never even play tested it. Or the people who playtest it doesn’t know what they’re doing.
I wish there was some transparency between the devs and the community. That would be way healthier for the game than any of the recent “balance” changes they’ve done
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I say 'phase' as it appears to be their focus on current killer designs, not as a 'new' thing, but that the most recent examples all share that trait and likely will continue to for a while.
Skull merchant is designed so survivors are forced to interact with their power to disable it. Same thing with singularity, except it's a crate with an EMP instead of interacting with the pod directly. Now onryo is encouraging interacting with tapes and tvs. Even the Knight's banner falls into this category, tbh.
All these examples are the most recent killers/rework, and survivors have differing levels of need to interact with the killer power, which disables some or all of their power for a while toward that survivor.
It might be coincidence, but it feels like there's a conscious choice by the devs so that the killers power acts as the secondary objective. These are certainly deliberate design choices, I'm only reading between the lines to assume that this was some kind of meeting decision/directive at BHVR to design killers in this way for a while.
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a perk that you need setup to heal faster and it is in small radius is not worth it. given that player need to walk to the boon if it is far away and you are setting up boon. you can heal people faster then setting up the boon. We'll make it works because it does not need any setup and you are a moving boon for 90 seconds. all the boon have awful usage rate because their radius is too small. they're not worth time or effort to use.
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I'm not even talking about power level of boons at all, I'm taking about them being a secondary objective.
You want a secondary objective to be something that survivors are naturally incentivized to do on their own, voluntarily, and ideally even spend a perk slot to do it. You also want it to be something they choose to do at the start of the match as a tradeoff (instead of gens) for a potential gain later.
That's why I claim boons were 100% successful as being a secondary objective. It slowed down the early game and introduced inefficiency (for gens) that survivors were glad to trade off.
Now, though, that's gone. Unsurprisingly, now instead of investing 20+ seconds searching for a totem and 14s blessing it, survivors dedicate those 34+ seconds at the start of the match to gens instead. Now that healing is less efficient, instead of walking to the boon and spending ~22 seconds healing, all that time is spent on gens injured, not healing each other for 32s like killers seemed to hope for.
Boons were successful at slowing down the pace of the game. Period. More heals meant longer games, which is generally beneficial to the killer. The alternative is that no one heals at all, which means all that time spent booning, searching, walking, self-caring, etc just became gen time instead, probably with resilience. The alternative is where the game was before boons and is the current state of the game.
The only reason power level of boons comes into play at all is if they're not enough of an incentive they do nothing, which is where they are now.
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Killers that can put pressure on good survivors make my survivor games more fun.
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Chess Merchant would be flatting if she at least had the same level of depth as the game.
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Where did this idea of mains come in? I actually use boons occasionally when I play survivor, because I think at least two of them are pretty strong.
Are they the top tier of things you can bring? No. Are they worth bringing? Sure, they fit in a few different builds depending on which one you're using.
Pickrate reflects absolutely nothing but overall community perception. It goes the other way, too- not only are there assuredly good perks with low pickrates, there are objectively and provably bad perks with extremely high pickrates; Self Care was one of the top three most picked survivor perks last time we got official data.
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