People's perspective on Xenomorph.

It's alien so people are biased without even thinking about the power. A common occurrence in this game.

People like me who don't care even a little bit about blight aesthetic and only think about the power are not nearly as common as the previously mentioned people.

I know I wasn't thinking hag was cool when watching otz play her was the reason I picked up dbd.

Just because alien can be an m1 killer if taken out of power via flame turrets doesn't mean the killer is fun to go against at all. I know every killer can't be blight/wesker but the devs should probably start leaning in that direction more and more.

I never talked about curving. I spoke about being able to hit someone if there's anything visible from survivor body (in specific cases and injured person u don't even need to see anything).

Anyway, after CD change Xeno is fine. In fact, they spoiled his hitboxes a bit making him just a tiny bit underwhelming (but I don't expect them to change it - wesker's tunnel potential with infection is the only problem with the killer and it seems they aren't going to address that one too).

Oh. We are talking about dragging down that basically guarantees hits from above obstacles? Well yes. That's super strong thing he can do (but I feel they nerfed this one - which was IMO not really needed given CD revert). But it 100% was a thing and I was using it and it does not really work in current patch (or at least it works much worse)

Yeah, but when he threw the tail, he threw over the bench and dragged down. I can't quite tell but it also looks like the survivor crouched, because I can't see them over the obstacle.

Without a visible map of the hitboxes, its hard to tell for sure, but that looks a lot like dropping the tail hitbox to me.

Plus as I say, this isn't the example I wanted to find, but I can't the one that pulls it over over the barricade in RPD.

Would be happy to see a custom game where someone labs it.

Well, I think its the motion blur that's making it rough to see, as the video is 1080p.

However slowing the video right down

You can see the initial frame where the hitbox starts. Otz has to throw it over the bench to clear it, the yellow strike is visible there.

He then drags it down, and the strike is now below line of the bench before the final frame where the hitbox sticks and hits the survivor behind the metal bed.

I agree the hitbox is still straight lines, it certainly won't actually curve the hitbox, I think what people are saying is you start the hitbox high and as it moves away from you can drag it down over things that you otherwise wouldn't have been able to strike over. If Otz had gone for this same point without aiming up, he'd have hit the bench, or been too late tag the survivor before they got behind the pallet. So the point is this hitbox is like a rock on a string, where you throw it over an obstacle and if you time it right, you can drag it into place on the other side.

Even without the bench being a factor, you can clearly see that Otz is aiming high to start with, and then successfully pulls the hitbox down. I know Nemesis' hitbox doesn't work like this, as that is essentially a series of straight lines from Nemesis 1 after another, so you aren't able to arc it over obstacles, which I think is what people are pointing out you can do on Xeno.

But regardless, it's not concrete proof granted, actual footage of a reproducible controlled test to remove issues like latency, blur, observer interpretation/bias, etc would be much more objectively acceptable as a proof. Sadly I don't have friends to lab it with 😁

I think there are multiple things going on here.

1) This video clip is a very rare scenario, where the tail starts at a tall object, then goes to a shorter object, and is the only time where tail dragging actually makes a difference.

2) I really honestly think when most people talk about tail dragging, they literally think it causes the hitbox to turn into a curved line. Like the below picture, where it's showing the hitbox literally turning into a curved line. This is NOT what the hitbox is doing....

3) If the tall object didn't exist, then tail dragging would have been completely unnecessary. The rock on a string is a bad comparison, because string can bend. It would be better to consider the tail hitbox as a straight metal pipe, and the pipe can be moved. Below is a picture of what tail dragging actually is doing...

The problem with the tail's hitbox, is we are so used to projectile killers, where the projectile starts in the direct middle of our screen. But Xeno's tail hitbox starts a bit above the center of the screen. This means that if Xeno is "too close" to something, they actually have to aim the tail differently. In the case of crouching survivors that are very close to Xeno, it requires Xeno to aim lower than the direct middle of their screen. This is why so many killers are missing crouching survivors with a tail attack, because they were expecting the tail's hitbox to always be in the direct middle of their screen.

The tail's hitbox starts a bit above the center of the screen, but it looks like it eventually reaches the direct middle of the screen by the time it reaches max length. But the hitbox is still always a straight line. The reason why it can sometimes look like it's curving over close objects, is because the hitbox starts higher than people expect, when they are at Xeno’s point of view.

Remember that Xeno’s point of view is lowered while in crawler mode, and I think Xeno’s tail attack actually starts where the center of the screen would have been if Xeno was at normal (point of view) height during crawler mode. And if Xeno’s tail hits a survivor that is too low to be visible in Xeno’s screen, you need to ask yourself “would the survivor be visible if Xeno’s point of view was at normal height, instead of the lowered height in crawler mode”?

Disclaimer 2… I think the actual reason tail dragging is popular is specifically because some people don’t know how to properly aim it. I think people realize the tail sometimes misses when they aim it at the center of their screen, but they aren’t sure why the attack is missing, so they just drag the tail downwards so they don’t need to actually stop and think about how to properly aim the tail.

Lets break it down to the way BHVR looks at things:

2156 games, 52,53% average Killrate.

BHVR wanted 60% killrate on average

= definitely no nerfs needed

In addition: The Tail-Attack is currently bugged.

That is what the survivor looks like when Xeno isn't in crawler mode. And considering that Xeno's tail attack starts higher than the middle of the screen (from Xeno's point of view while in crawler mode), then it makes sense that Xeno should be able to make this shot.

When you try to figure out if Xeno should be able to make a shot, you should look at Xeno's point of view, while not in crawler mode, because that would give you a much better idea of what shots it should be able to make.

It also helps when the survivor is uninjured, to give a better idea of what the survivor's hitbox looks like. Remember that injured survivors have the same hitbox as uninjured survivors, and the fact that the survivor is leaning forward, doesn't actually change their hitbox. This means a survivor's hitbox might be in a killer's field of view, even if the survivor isn't visible in the killer's field of view.

You should look at the below screenshot, that is from Xeno's point of view, while not in crawler mode. That is the point of view that matters, because the tail's attack is based on the middle of Xeno's screen, as it is shown while not in crawler mode. Look at how much of the survivor is visible.

Remember that Xeno has a lowered point of view in crawler mode, and that the tail's attack isn't based on the lowered point of view.

That scenario requires an upward tail drag, because the game yanks the camera downward if Xeno tries to do a tail attack at a steep upward angle.

Below is a screenshot from when I connected an attack with Jake, who was on the floor above. The tail itself doesn't look like it's angled high enough to reach the floor above.

Below is the yellow tail graphic that appeared shortly afterwards, which didn't match the tail's actual location at all.

And here's a before picture, which shows that Jake was actually visible from this angle. Disclaimer... I bumped up the brightness of the picture, because he's barely visible in the actual video.

1) I'm wondering if the tail attack actually starts behind Xeno, (I thought of this because I think one of the bugfixes stopped Xeno from being able to hit survivors behind it, and I was wondering what could have possibly caused that).

2) Anyways, I'm guessing BHVR didn't expect anyone to try to make a tail attack this vertical, so they never tried to get the tail graphic to match the attack in this scenario. …Or maybe Xeno’s camera got yanked because someone at BHVR realized that sharp vertical angles make the attacks look bad, and they were hoping the camera yank would stop people from making attacks like this?

One of the biggest problems with Xeno is its camera point of view. Xeno is super tall in normal mode, but BHVR gave this a normal height point of view. So then when Xeno goes into crawler mode, it’s stuck with a lowered point of view, which ends up confusing many people, because its tail attack isn’t based around this lowered point of view.

It honestly would be much better if Xeno’s point of view were a bit higher than normal when it is in the super tall normal mode, then Xeno would drop down to a normal point of view in crawler mode. This would make the attacks make way more sense from Xeno’s point of view.

Then BHVR could use aim dressing to fix the tail’s placement on the survivor’s screen, if a hit occurs.

If BHVR did these things, then we wouldn’t have so many issues where people don’t understand where to aim Xeno’s tail. I imagine that people that rely on tail dragging, will just miss some of their tail attacks, on crouching survivors or turrets, because instead of aiming correctly, they’ll aim over their target, will end up hitting the ground before they hit their target, then the attack fizzles so they end up missing the tail attack. I’ve seen so many people aim incorrectly on low targets, and it’s just sad. People just don’t seem to understand that Xeno sometimes needs to angle their camera dramatically downwards, to hit a low target with its tail.