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What is going on with scratch marks lately?

thisislastyearsmodel
thisislastyearsmodel Unconfirmed, Member Posts: 636
edited August 2023 in General Discussions

Basically the title. There have been countless instances where large chunks of scratch marks will completely disappear when somebody is out of LOS. Now, obviously every case is different, but I don't think survivors randomly start walking during chases — I say this because, during a few Spirit games today, I could hear the survivors breathing hard while running and I could hear fast steps, but the scratch marks disappeared and made me double guess myself.

I use the Spirit games as examples but it's been happening a lot lately and I don't understand why. And no, it's not shadow step.

Comments

  • thisislastyearsmodel
    thisislastyearsmodel Unconfirmed, Member Posts: 636

    Yeah, I thought maybe I was getting hit by weird, niche perks but that wasn't the case either. I'm not saying there's a bug or anything, but I can't place what else could have caused this, especially since it's happened multiple times over the last few days.

  • JustAnotherNewbie
    JustAnotherNewbie Member Posts: 1,941

    I mean they could have started to walk since it helps with losing chase and you losing Bloodlust. Some survivors are just incredibly loud still.


    And without video evidence it's always very difficult to know what happens. Like if they had Distortion and you have the perk that reveals aura's when they do rushed actions then it would make sense their scratchmarks disappeared cause that's what Distortion does on top of hiding auras.

    There's also Dance with me, Parental Guidance, Lucky Break, Self-Preservation and Poised. All but Lucky Break are extremely niche and people forget about Distortion's secondary effect.


    Idk if I'm missing any other perks with similar effects.

  • thisislastyearsmodel
    thisislastyearsmodel Unconfirmed, Member Posts: 636

    But it feels like a bug/glitch/whatever because they only stop in spots. It looks as if they ran, stopped for literally a second, and ran again.

    It happened in matches where everybody was running meta perks so it wasn't a perk, as far as I could tell.

    I don't know. It's weird.

  • Saiph
    Saiph Member Posts: 409
    edited August 2023

    Something is wrong yeah. It's like some survivors just don't leave scratch marks for one second. It's very rare but annoying enough to notice, and I have the feeling that it started to happen only 6-9 months ago which makes me think this is a bug. Maybe that's just me but I also have the impression that it happens particularly on Haddonfield?

    I've seen at least one instance where I've chased a TTV around the stairs and his scratch marks were very discontinuous. I lost him and thought he had corner tech'd me. But then when I looked at their POV they were running normally and had no particular perk.

  • thisislastyearsmodel
    thisislastyearsmodel Unconfirmed, Member Posts: 636

    Yes, exactly! It's not enough for me to think they started walking, but it's enough for me to turn the wrong way and end up like, "...huh????"

  • HarlockTaliesin
    HarlockTaliesin Member Posts: 763

    It's been a bug for a long while. I can't even remember when it started, but it was talked about on the forums for a while then fell off. I don't believe BHVR has ever confirmed it to be a bug, but it happens regardless of perks and the survivors don't have to stop running to the scratch marks to just stop generating for random segments. Not sure if it was ever pinpointed to be survivor-based or map-based.

  • Devil_hit11
    Devil_hit11 Member Posts: 9,097
    edited August 2023

    there is a perk that stops generating random scratch marks. that perk is called lightweight. it could be that a survivor was using it or that perk is bugged and sometimes works when survivor is not using it like those weird bugs where survivor would not make noise when falling(balance landing) or not scream like that weird recent spirit bug with everyone having calm spirit.

  • thisislastyearsmodel
    thisislastyearsmodel Unconfirmed, Member Posts: 636

    I would be willing to bet it's map-based because it only happened every few games, but it happened consistently enough for me to notice it.

  • Malkhrim
    Malkhrim Member Posts: 995

    I believe that happens because scratch marks take a little longer to appear then they did until a few years ago. Sometimes I chase someone to a corner on an indoor map and get close to them, but when I turn the corner right after them, there are multiple possible paths they could have just taken, and no scratch marks in sight. They only appear after a second or two, but that throws me off a little when it happens.

    Other possible explanation could be maps where they are sometimes harder to see on the ground, like Ormond and Shattered Square.

    Either way, scratch marks do act a little weird sometimes. Once I noticed they can appear in places the survivor didn't really sprint through, but where they were facing and seemed "about to run into" instead. Seriously, once I've seen a survivor run until he got behind a short loop and stopped there, but suddenly scratchmarks appeared right in front of where he stopped.

  • HarlockTaliesin
    HarlockTaliesin Member Posts: 763

    This is quite true. I've followed survivors through areas like the main building in the Aerie/Forsaken Boneyard, and they've run past the stairs but some of their scratch marks appeared to go up the stairs. If I were following further back and came into the building at a different angle, it would look like they ran up the stairs instead of going around them.

    The delay in scratch marks showing up seems to be two-fold. One is that the game itself seems to delay them a bit, possibly to compensate for the player's actual position/path, especially for stopping/starting (in cases where they're lagging and not where they appear to be). But it itself also seems to be affected by lag, making them much more delayed at times.