Dev Update January '24: Gens, FoV, Hillbilly, Onryo, And More!

Billy changes are definitely interesting. Considering how hard it is to actually reach the overheat threshold this will encourage billy players to go for curves and the like with less punishment. Also please consider being his cooldown add-ons back to some extent (Huntress and blight both get them so why not him?)

STBFL change is decent but I always felt like tunnelling was the issue with it. Making it not work on endurance hits seems like an easy solution without nerfing it too much

New shadowborn sounds decent but I think we are getting a bit too many haste perks recently. They should be heavily considering dest we have another Made for This situation

Blight changes are good but Alch ring still seems crazy good just in a different way. You should be able to easily cover any map fully now.

Good stuff overall though I have to admit

Any plans to increase the gen kick regression values on Knight's guards since he would be kicking gens for the same 5% as them?

Permanent ADS deathslinger has entered the chat

The generator change is very concerning. Requiring 5 charges to be repaired before the regression stops means when you're in a legitimate 3 gen of the closest generators, killers can just kick once and then forcefully keep them regressing by denying the 5 charges. There are multiple maps and spawn points where this will be a thing and a legitimate problem.

I feel like this is one of those situations where you didn't need to give a compensation buff in exchange for making the change. Limiting it to 8 regressions per gen was fine enough to encourage normal gameplay, adding on the charges required to stop it will just put us in a more complicated version of 3 genning.

I also maintain that a far simpler solution to this would be to buff Deja Vu and/or make it to where there must be X meters between each generator. OR if you're going to keep generators spawning in their normal way now in which 3 genning was very popular and very easy to hold - make it to where those generators gave a passive buff to their repair speed.

This current change that's planned will 100% make 3 genning stronger to hold and worse to deal with.

This is done to make people use tapes. You can't ignore her anymore.

If she spamms, TVs will be on cooldown, denying any chase pressure.

If you spam, you can't interrupt a survivor inserting a tape.

It has a lot of downsides if you spam.

Not entirely. Look at what @Peanits told us above. Condemned is inflicted around ALL tvs in a 16m radius. It can't be ignored. Tvs are around gens. 7 tp are enough to condemn and it has no cooldown.

She's a scary killer.

The “short bursts of repairing + excessive hiding” strategy also works at the very beginning of the game.

And there’s no “just chase a survivor”, if the survivors are literally just repairing for only 4.5 seconds, then running far away until the killer has patrolled past the generator. Against many killers, the survivors can use their voice comms, or the visual terror radius, to excessively hide from the killer.

Im already playing against many survivors that pre-leave generators at the first sign of a terror radius. This anti 3 gen mechanic just makes that the optimal way to break any 3-gen, at any point in the game.

And another survivor strategy would literally be “hide around the map, and repair various generators for 4.5 seconds, then hide some more”. Imagine how frustrating it would be, as killer, to just patrol generators over and over, and never finding survivors, and instead finding barely any progress on any of the generators. This would be a valid strategy, because eventually the generators would become damage immune if the killer tried to kick them repeatedly.

The 3 Gen "fix" is a problem. Players myself included often complain about certain play styles. Slugging/tunneling. The killers who play by mixing Gen control and chase and tries to avoid tunneling and slugging are most punished for this. So when killers abandon more pleasant playstyles because the Gen objective is no longer viable this will be the reason. The harder you make it to protect the gens the less reason a killer has to leave a injured survivor....now tunneling and slugging are the last viable win strats for killers. This will choke the game.

All it is going to do is change the meta again, but still maintain functionally the same meta.

Right now the main build is corrupt + pop + pain res + flex perk

The new build will just become: corrupt + Grim embrace + deadlock + flex perk (probably something like nowhere to hide). So now you can still kick gens, you get your 5% and you get passive slowdown without having to think about it. So functionally this changes nothing. Also "stacking 4 slowdowns" is basically required at a high level because of how efficient survivors can play, so again its not changing anything. If anything the change to grim embrace makes the meta even better here because its all passive slowdown now.

I’m saying survivors could do this strategy at ANY POINT IN THE GAME. Maybe they’ll purposely create a 3-gen, then use this strategy at the end of the game to break the 3-gen. Maybe they’ll start the game with this strategy. Maybe they’ll primarily focus on the easy generators, but will make sure to place 4.5 seconds of progress on the 3-gen, to help start the damage immunity on the 3-gen.

And it’s absolutely world shattering that you could take a scenario of “survivors are literally repairing for 4.5 seconds, then excessively hiding”, and turn it into “the killer is making everyone die of boredom by religiously kicking generators”.

How are most killers supposed to find survivors, if the survivors are literally excessively hiding far away from generators? Are killers supposed to check behind every single object on the entire map? This game is currently balanced around the fact that excessively hiding causes a stalemate, or “excessively long 3-gen” as some people like to call it. Under the new anti-3 gen mechanic, excessively hiding would be rewarded by damage immune generators, which means the survivors get rewarded for excessively hiding.

@Peanits

Does Grim Embrace's initial hook refer to the first hook until the third Survivor, or does it only take effect on the first hook for the first Survivor?

How would this work with skill check regression perks such as Hex Lullaby, Merciless Storm, Oppression, etc? With the survivor failing checks due to a perk would the perk still do the extra regress or would those be locked out after 8 times on a gen?

I'm sorry I'm not in the 5k+ hours club, I guess us measly 2.5k hours peasants are just clueless about the game.

Overall pretty happy with these patch notes I have to say. Excited to see pretty much all of this go live.

The 8 limit is way too restricting. That means killers can only use eruption 4 times per gen at best, and if they have any other gen damaging perks, that makes even less times eruption can be used.

Why make eruption cause 2 uses to be used up? In order for it to work it HAS to be kicked first, so every time eruption is used, it's two uses used up.

Killers now are also punished for kicking low damaged generators. Have pop? Can't dare kick gens any more unless the generator is at least 50% damaged, otherwise you use up your 8 charges for a measly 5% vs a higher percentage pop kick.

Why is it every damn patch makes killers have more and more things to balance and worry about all while having to abide by survivor laws? This is getting ridiculous. There a generator! Oh, I'm not allowed to damage that. If I do, then I can't use any of my more significant damage perks.

This ridiculous 8 limit needs to apply to kicks only. BHVR said this is supposed to only affect people who 3 gen at the beginning of the match. How does this remotely only affect those kinds of killers? This hurts E V E R Y K I L L E R who uses any kind of regression perk. Not to mention, survivors will no longer care about them 3 genning themselves since it does not target just killers who protect 3 gens from the match start as BHVR said it would.

"Tunneling has become such an issue that we are going to buff DS. Like a year from now, until then we reworked STBFL to encourage and reward tunneling."

*Mmm, chef's kiss*

Just checking, are we gonna impose any hard limits on the number of times a survivor can be healed or nah?

Just paranoid that because it's FROM a perk it'll trigger. Intentionally or not.