Fixing Hex Totems
As everyone knows hexes are rarely ever used with only a few being considered actually "good ish", and even those are very rarely seen. Hexes are "supposed" to be high risk/high reward but the vast majority of them are high risk/mediocre reward.
This gets me to the fundamental problem with hexes, it's their placements and how easy they are to find. For how easy it is to lose hexes in the first 30 seconds of game, which does happen frequently, their effects need to be immediate and game swinging.
Why do they still spawn next to gens?
Why do they still spawn on top of hills and in the middle of a field?
Hexes should be placed in a way that you aren't just running into them on your way to a gen, you should have to actually look for them. This is obviously easier said than done.
I think that to help this be a little easier we should tackle it from an extra angle.
Make all hex totems appear dull to survivors. This gives the hexes a little extra value as the survivors don't know which are the hexes and could be wasting time cleansing dull ones and secondly has the added benefit of hiding them a little better since you won't see the glow and you won't hear the crackling. The killer will still be able to see which ones are hexes from their perspective though.
We should want hexes to be in the meta as it gives secondary objectives and makes the game more fun in turn.
TLDR: Better totem locations, all totems appear as dulls to survivors, and hexes in general should be quite stronger than they currently are for how high risk they are. Hexes being in the meta are good for the games health.
EDIT: Another idea is to have the hexes active but not lit on any hex totem until the first survivor's down.
Comments
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I gave up trying to understand after seeing one totem spawn next to the generator in the projector room on the new map.
They're not even trying to hide them anymore.
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Yeah. We can probably debate about the strength of effect on the totems and how numbers should be tweaked until the end of time.
But the objective fact is their placements are absolutely horrible. Not all the time, but it happens often enough that it has never felt worth wasting a perk slot on a hex totem to me.
From my experiences, seems like 70% of the time if you are running a single hex totem, it's on the other side of the map nowhere near you when you spawn in. 90% of the time it's not really hidden at all, and perhaps 70% of the time in plain view of a generator. In a small percentage of games, like 10%, survivors have spawned next to them and will be on them immediately, usually breaking them before the killer can even cross the map to get to them.
The situation is just horrendous. Maybe boycott hex totems, and after a couple years of the devs scraping together data and realizing no one is running hex totems anymore, they'll fix the problem we have complaining about for forever.
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I agree. I love Hex perks and play them quite often.
The better totem spawns would help a lot.
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Fixing totem placements feels like a lost cause given how chest spawns, killer props, event props on maps of various sizes exist.
The easiest way would probably be making hex totems appear as dulls for a time period. People would probably complain because No One Escapes Death exists though.
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There's a lot of ways to fix hexes. Ruin just needs to get its regression rate returned to 200%, and needs the 'yeets itself upon a survivor dying' back, for instance.
But there's also more creative ways to go about it. I really like Two Can Play's reignition mechanism for example, so…
Hex: Blood Favour, when destroyed, now reignites after you destroy two pallets.
Hex: Face the Darkness re-enables after hooking a survivor twice.
And then there's the option of having hex perks not fully disable, but persist in a weakened state:
Hex: Crowd Control only blocks windows for 5 seconds once the totem is gone.
Hex: Huntress' Lullaby can no longer gain tokens when cleansed, but the effect persists at whatever level of tokens you had.
Hex: Retribution permanently renders whoever cleansed it Oblivious.
Hex: Thrill of the Hunt now simply grants 50% more BP scoring in the Hunter category, regardless of tokens and regardless of whether the totem is still active.
There's ways to shift the risk/reward balance around beyond just 'effect goes up' and I really wish BHVR would get creative with it. Same goes for their design for boons.
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You'd need to adjust the rest of the game speed as well.
Currently, Survivors don't have time to go totem hunting.
I agree that totems need some changes, but I don't feel that this is the right direction.
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I've always been under the belief that Hexes should ignite after the first gen pops or after 60 seconds have passed in the game, that way if you're running a hex build they don't immediately loose value.
I always leave hex totems if I spawn next to them, just so the killer can get some value out of them. Because as a killer main, it's not fun to have your hex cleansed before the game even begins.
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The worst thing is that the totem becomes a survivor item.
They stack 4 buffs on a totem, and then I need to find out the totem which is supposed to be the survivor's job.
They can reburn it forever, and my hex totem cannot.😡
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Well NOED wouldn’t really matter since its aura showing effect would still be highlighted for survivors. So I don’t see an issue there.
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Currently survivors have lots of extra time, we can simply look at time ratios between objectives to see that, like they’re not even close. Unless you’re talking about low mmr survivors.
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So I was considering this option as well. Hexes active but not lit on any totem until the first down? We’d have to do down instead of hook because people would abuse that with slugging. First gen pop would be a good idea as well. This has potential as another option. I might add this to my original post for people to see.
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I like you're ideas, but only issue with it is that BHVR usually goes for the way simpler answers and I couldn't see them willing to put this much work into adding a minor effect to all the hexes. Seems like a lot of work. I feel like they'd want an answer that takes way less work. That said I do love your ideas if they were willing to do it.
Unless they were wanting to simplify it a lot to make it easier, like just make a blanket reignite effect for them all. Something like, each first hook will re ignite any destroyed totems. So it's the same for them all for ease. This would limit their ability to come back to a max of 4 and that's assuming you had one destroyed before each first hook, so best case scenario. It would be limited by the amount of totems available as well, so you wouldn't really be able to have this work with a full hex build for instance. Of course Pentimento would probably need some changes if this happened too.
I agree on Ruin.
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If anything hexes need a corrupt like feature for 30-60 seconds that disables after a down and/or only for a specific totem when one of its effects is activated. People say hex perks are useless, but they're very problematic on the killers that use them well (thankfully nurse is special attack now). TOTH Undying Devour Pent/Haunted on spirit and the game is basically over at select screen. Haunted populates 2 land mines that can be proc'd again with undying. TOTH makes doing a totem insanely risky and if all else fails pentimento can still return TOTH stacks making doing gens pointless and totems hard.
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It’s true, with the current Gen regression meta, Survivors really don’t have extra time to go seek out totems to cleanse.
Also, factoring in Boons to the equation (Yes, some players still use them, and since they are still in game, we can’t just overlook their existence), it’s only fair that if totems were to spawn in less conspicuous locations to make Hexes not as easily locateable benefiting Killers, it wouldn’t really be fair to Survivors who then have to spend even extra time they don’t already have looking for totems that are harder to find just to Bless them; especially considering that Killers can hear boons chiming slightly easier than Survivors can hear Hexes crackling.
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I figured having the ignition of a hex being tied to the completion of a gen meant that survivors couldn't just ignore their main objective and that they'd have a "hand", so to speak, in activating a hex build for killer. That said, I'd also increase the number of totems on the map too so that survivors just don't ignore gens to cleanse totems to "avoid" hexes or that when a gen pops a random cleansed totem(s) is/are chosen to respawn with the hex, so that if survivors try to be clever and get rid of all the dulls.
I do like your idea of them being active but not lit until first down to avoid slugging. Reminds me of an idea I had for nerfing (but not gutting) NoEd, but that's a topic for a different thread.
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Hmm adding extra totems to the base game would be an interesting change. I like that.
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I mean… if Totems were hidden better Hexes (and Boons) would be better outright
But some of the effects are bad for what they are worth
Like why does Ruin deactivate apon killing a Survivor… and only doing 100%
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Yeah they removed the deactivate part, but it's still trash. 100% is useless. For how weak 100% it is could not even be a hex, just permanent and it wouldn't be too strong, that's how weak 100% is. The fact it's also a hex at 100% is just sad.
They need to just bump it back to 200%, that was balanced.
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No, I'm talking about the majority of the playerbase.
You don't have time to hunt down, potentially, five totems whilst the Killer is either tunneling or stacking slowdowns.
To even say otherwise is nuts. Even at high skill matches, it's going to be INSANE if you don't know what totem you need to cleanse. Could you imagine Devour Hope in that sort of lobby? You'd have to assume it's in every match because as soon as you figure it out the match is already over.
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Trying to complete the green glyph challenge is enough to make me wish there were more totems on the map, coupled with the Bloodmoon event and the Blood Wells spawning where totems can potentially spawn (many of them are in completely useless or dumb locations btw) was enough time to get my brain-tickling in the way how totem spawn logic could be revamped a little, especially to help with hex builds or even strategic placements for boons, as I still enjoy using Shadow Step and CoH from time to time in meme/challenge builds.
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That is absolutely not the majority.
To say hunt 5 totems while the killer is stacking slow downs is extremely disingenuous. How are they running totem perks and stacking slow down? They aren't. You don't get both. Also how do we immediately jump to the worst case scenario of 5 totems? They could be getting it on the first totem.
"To even say otherwise is nuts. Even at high skill matches, it's going to
be INSANE if you don't know what totem you need to cleanse. Could you
imagine Devour Hope in that sort of lobby? You'd have to assume it's in
every match because as soon as you figure it out the match is already
over."You mean like the secondary objective the community has been asking for ages? Literally multiple totem finding perks and items.
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Honestly the only "High Risk High Reward" Hexes are Devour Hope, Crowd Control and Blood Favour.
The rest of hexes are "High Risk Mid Reward" with the exception of NOED which is "Low Risk High Reward".
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I agree with the requirement to light some hexes similar to the two can play. Having certain ones lit from the beginning is still fine. It would make hunting totems a thing many do earlier. This as mentioned would be a secondary objective or at least something that if left unchecked would be not good. It also would boost the use of some perks like Gunslingers that exposes those who cleanse totems.
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I think all we have to do is find better Totem Spawns.
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Well they can't run both regression and hex perks. So if they were having to find hex totems the killer isn't stacking regression. So I don't see this as an issue.
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And once again, that's one perk.
Devour, Pain Res, Pop and Grim. Have fun, I sure won't.
The idea you came up with is not the right one, but you are on the right track.
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Well, I mean they can if they really wanna run 2 hex 2 Gen perks. Then it’s entirely plausible and valid a argument.
Realistically tho, regardless if Killer is running Hex perks in their build at all, it would most likely (majoritively speaking, as the current meta consists of) would be Gen slow perks in the Killer’s arsenal. So Survivors would be at a disadvantage if they had to spend extra precious time hunting down totems to Bless since the “new” RNG would be spawning totems in random harder to find locations.
Also, Killers don’t have to Curse their Hexes, they’re pre-cursed for them by the entity. So they aren’t having to locate harder to find totems unless there happens to be a Boon, although they’re at the bottom of the perk popularity list… Hexes, not so much.
besides the point, I know, but Snuffing out a boon is nearly instantaneous, as opposed to a Survivor’s Hex cleanse time, not to mention if ToTH’s in play… just saying, the timeframes of hinderance to each side greatly favors the Killer anyway, as Survivors are needing to waste precious time they really don’t have.
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Not trying to battle you at all on your initial point, tho.
I do agree something could be done to prevent totems from spawning next to Gens or in the most silly obvious places. Really don’t feel Devs will be looking into any of that anytime soon, however, since they’ve only addressed totem locations once, I think, maybe twice, or just on the map reworks.
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"Well, I mean they can if they really wanna run 2 hex 2 Gen perks. Then it’s entirely plausible and valid a argument."
But then that's not an issue since we're not stacking regression. This is taking up perk slots where they'd be throwing 2 more gen slow down perks on.
"Also, Killers don’t have to Curse their Hexes, they’re pre-cursed for them by the entity."
They don't have to do this because they're mostly already all so weak they don't need this extra hindrance. Killers time is also x4 to survivors. Meaning each second a killer uses is 3 or 4 seconds given to the survivor, it's not a 1 to 1 ratio. So everything the survivor have/do needs to take longer to make them "equal" in time.
"besides the point, I know, but Snuffing out a boon is nearly instantaneous, as opposed to a Survivor’s Hex cleanse time"
As mentioned above that's not really a relevant point given the time differences I talked about. When you compare the survivors walk time + bless time to the killers walk time + snuff time x3 or 4 since that time is given to the other survivors as well, it is actually more time consuming for the killer, not the survivor blessing.
"Realistically tho, regardless if Killer is running Hex perks in their
build at all, it would most likely (majoritively speaking, as the
current meta consists of) would be Gen slow perks in the Killer’s
arsenal. So Survivors would be at a disadvantage if they had to spend
extra precious time hunting down totems to Bless since the “new” RNG
would be spawning totems in random harder to find locations."This was already mostly answered above. 2 gen slow downs and 2 hexes is not going to be more time wasting than what we have now which is 4 gen slow downs. This is simply giving more variety in the meta.
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Literally equip one totem finding perk out of the myriad available or a map. You make this sound so difficult and overbearing when it's not. Survivors have the extra time. These kind of complaints are why secondary objectives are never going to happen.
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I hate to do this…
But having to find, chase, down and hook 4 survivors 3 times while the Survivors have Gen progression perks, Toolboxes and Second Chance Perks
To say otherwise is nuts
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You aren't proposing anything to mitigate the time lost by Survivors.
This is going to absolutely murder the casual players whilst providing free value for Killers by simply having the THREAT of a Hex.
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60% KR.
Needing to potentially cleanse five totems would skyrocket the KR.
Their heart is in the right place, and their brain is too, but it's just not the right idea.
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"You aren't proposing anything to mitigate the time lost by Survivors. "
I have. They're running less gen slow down perks if they're running hex perks. On top of that I'd argue survivors have too much time at the moment anyway, even if I hadn't proposed anything.
"This is going to absolutely murder the casual players whilst providing
free value for Killers by simply having the THREAT of a Hex."MMR adjusts for casual players. If they lose more mmr will adjust them until they're winning/losing the exact same amount.
"free value for Killers by simply having the THREAT"
You realize the amount of survivor perks that exist giving survivors value by the THREAT of their existence right? This isn't new. It already exists.
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If you're just going to insist your right, why even post?
I'm trying to point out issues and it feels like you're just saying, "Nu uh"
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"If you're just going to insist your right, why even post?"
I never just insisted I was right, you just didn't have an answer to my points. Those aren't synonymous.
"I'm trying to point out issues and it feels like you're just saying, "Nu uh""
I gave actual responses to all your points. You've basically just said "survivors don't have time", that's basically a "Nu uh" answer.
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Personally i think they should make hexes work off of tokens. So, when a match starts, if a hex is in play ALL totems become hex totems, and then each hex's power is equal to the number of totems remaining. Similar to Thrill of the hunt for example.
Then i would rework "undying" to make the hex literally "undying" I.E. the hex always stays active as if 1 totem was remaining even if there are no totems remaining.
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I like the idea. The only rough part is that then we'd have to give ALL hex perks different token levels of strength which sounds like a lot of work and kind of a mess since some of their effects are easier or harder to have multiple levels of strength for.
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Not too bad tbh, there hardest one is probably third seal (which realistically should be worked and buffed) and maybe devour. For devour i would simply make it so every cleanse removes 2 tokens.
For third seal i'd make it do different effects for each totem like:
5 totems: Hindered + Oblivious + Mangled + Hemorrhage + Blindness
4 totems: Oblivious + Mangled + Hemorrhage + blindness
3 totems: Manged + Hemorrhage + blindness
2 totems: Hemorrhage + Blindness
1 totem: Blindness
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You literally said, "survivors have extra time" and that was that. You can't prove it and the burden of proof lies with you.
As for your points....
They're essentially replacing Corrupt with something stronger. Survivors HAVE to cleanse every totem. That's not somehow better for them.
MMR doesn't work. This is gonna kill regular Survivors OFTEN. It will feel terrible to play against and be far too strong for them as is.
One thing being bad doesn't excuse another and certainly not on this level. This is beyond even original 2017 DS levels of threat. This is, "If you don't spend four minutes cleansing totems you will get insta-killed by my Devour."
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"You literally said, "survivors have extra time" and that was that. You can't prove it and the burden of proof lies with you."
And you literally just said "survivors don't have extra time". How's that anything different? Provide the proof.
If you really want to go into numbers in the game we can, but that's a large conversation. If you add up chase times, pick up times, walk and hook times vs gen times the comparison between each sides objectives in terms of time is not even close. While the exact numbers can vary as we would be making approximations and averages, the general difference in times as far as conclusion is objective.
"They're essentially replacing Corrupt with something stronger. Survivors
HAVE to cleanse every totem. That's not somehow better for them.""HAVE" to cleanse every totem is wrong. You are stating the WORST case scenario. They could get the hex on the first totem and now the killer wasted a perk slot for basically nothing, that's awful in the other direction. HIGH RISK/HIGH REWARD. That's their point. Also, finding and clearing all the totems is extremely easy with all the totem finding perks (one of which is a common perk for everyone btw) and maps if they want to go that route.
You are also basing your entire argument on DH. Let's say this change also brought a change to DH since you're going to the extreme scenarios. DH is an exception to how it would be strengthened in this scenario compared to others. Taking DH out of the equation the others are not having issues like that.
"MMR doesn't work"
We can say MMR is heavily flawed and does give you potatoes every now and then but to say it doesn't work at all is just factually untrue. "Generally speaking" it does work. Exceptions don't disprove a generality.
"This is gonna kill regular Survivors OFTEN. It will feel terrible to play against and be far too strong for them as is. "
MMR adjusts them to where they would not be losing more than they are now. Also, as I already mentioned multiple times, there are multiple totem finding perks and maps.
"One thing being bad doesn't excuse another and certainly not on this
level. This is beyond even original 2017 DS levels of threat. This is,
"If you don't spend four minutes cleansing totems you will get
insta-killed by my Devour.""Common…4 minutes..seriously? You know as well as I do it's not taking 4 survivors 4 minutes to cleanse 5 totems, and again that is the worst case scenario, not how many they would realistically be cleansing. Let's say DH gets reworked as well so we can move that to the side and focus on the points. I also don't think one bad excuses another, but you have generally in the past been completely fine with those other examples, that's why it's relevant here. That would be a double standard. If you thought they were both issues then yes I would agree it's not worth bringing up.
Post edited by Blueberry on0 -
People often ask me if I could change one thing in the game what would it be. Honestly, I would pick totem placements. Make them more hidden. Right next to a gen? Really?
Please, just fix this. I agree with OP 100%
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I am not the one making a change with the potential to decrease Survivor time allowance. I like that you're very confident about this, but the fact of the matter is that nobody is that hyper-efficient in normal matches. I'm sorry, maybe I could stream for you sometime and you could see what I see, but that's just not how it works for us mere mortals.
They don't know when the Hex is cleansed if it's not already active. Oh good, they can run Small Game and get tunneled out. Adding more perks that Survivors need to run in order to have a tolerable experience isn't a good feature. Even if the Survivors somehow teleported to every totem; that's a bare minimum of seventy seconds. That's not accounting for travel time, looking for the totem or…you know, THE KILLER
MMR absolutely does not work. The current Survivor experience proves it, as does the Killer experience. It's set up based off of speed, not fair matches and we know this for a fact.
Name something.
2017 DS? Bad. 2019 DS? Bad. DS after it didn't work in the end-game and had the Conspicuous Action? Good.
FTP + BU? Strong, for sure. Devastating in tournaments. Could stand to have a nerf now that it's functionally being replaced by DS.
Old old DH? Horrific perk. Old DH? A problem, but not something terrible. New DH? ######### perk, not worth running.
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"the fact of the matter is that nobody is that hyper-efficient in normal matches. "
Lots are. It's viewable in my matches I stream.
"They don't know when the Hex is cleansed if it's not already active."
The feature could have it tell them when they broke the correct one, just like it does now. Problem solved.
"Oh good, they can run Small Game and get tunneled out."
Anti tunnel perks aren't required. I nearly never run them. Even aside from that though, I'd like base game anti tunnel mechanics implemented to solve this. That isn't really a counter point. Also, Small Game is one perk, they still have 3 perk slots for anti tunnel if they wanted to run them. I think this is exaggerating a bit.
"Adding more perks that Survivors need to run in order to have a tolerable experience isn't a good feature"
So before I jump to conclusions would you say requiring any perks to have a tolerable experience is a bad thing? So as well as we shouldn't need anti tunnel perks on survivors we shouldn't need any gen regression perks on killer? As long as we're consistent I'm fine with this point. "Tolerable" is also a tough point to balance around as that is extremely subjective and could be stretched very, very far.
"Even if the Survivors somehow teleported to every totem; that's a bare
minimum of seventy seconds. That's not accounting for travel time,
looking for the totem or…you know, THE KILLER"Split among four survivors. We get less than that currently from 1 gen perk on killer…of which he'd be down at least one gen perk…negating this whole extra time point.
"MMR absolutely does not work. The current Survivor experience proves it,
as does the Killer experience. It's set up based off of speed, not fair
matches and we know this for a fact."No it does not. Whatsoever. This is like saying the old rank system didn't show skill. Yes many rank 1's back then were bad and it represents time more than anything, but in general most rank 1's played better than lower ranks. Exceptions don't disprove a general rule. Pretty sure I remember us disagreeing on this many times back then.
"Name something. "
So with these examples you're conflating two different points. Yours was about "free value from the threat of something". Yet here you are listing all things that provide "free value from the threat of something", while being okay with some and not with others.
This means your issue really has nothing to do with free value from the threat of something. Your actual issue is with the value they provide. AKA just whether you thought they were balanced or not.
So if you want to drop that point from the issue with my change being "free value from the threat of something", that's fine. You just think it doesn't sound balanced is all, it has nothing to do with free value.
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I don't think I ever said free value was a bad thing, if it was I'd despise Corrupt. I should've been more clear, sometimes I word vomit stuff out, especially now that it's just me on this account
It's the strength of that value and when it comes into play. If Corrupt was for two minutes when there was one gen left, that'd be massively OP despite it having the same effect.
Let's drop the skill thing. It's an age-old disagreement, best to let it lay.
Splitting it makes it worse. That's now four Survivors wasting time instead of one.
Ideally, yes. Perks should be a bonus, not a necessity. However, that's subjective. Some people would say four gen perks and hard tunneling are required and they still lose. Others wouldn't.
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"I don't think I ever said free value was a bad thing, if it was I'd
despise Corrupt. I should've been more clear, sometimes I word vomit
stuff out, especially now that it's just me on this account"You had more than one person on your account?
"It's the strength of that value and when it comes into play. If Corrupt
was for two minutes when there was one gen left, that'd be massively OP
despite it having the same effect."That's kinda what I was getting at. So we just disagree on that being too strong then. We've said all our points, I don't think we're going to agree.
"Splitting it makes it worse. That's now four Survivors wasting time instead of one."
This is just getting back to where we disagree on it being too strong.
"Ideally, yes. Perks should be a bonus, not a necessity."
So you would also agree that no gen regression perks should ever be necessary? So we could nerf all the gen regression heavily and build a bit of into the base game?
"Some people would say four gen perks and hard tunneling are required and they still lose. Others wouldn't."
Generally speaking for most games and against solos? No, I'd say not necessary.
Against 4 mans on coms at high mmr (yes I know you disagree with this principle) on low tier killers? Yes. Unless you're getting lucky and they're making a lot of mistakes. Which don't get me wrong, can happen quite often. My issue here is being reliant on survivor mistakes to win is flawed design and most the killers roster falls under that umbrella.
On high tier killers like nurse, blight ect against 4 mans? No, those killers are good enough, not necessary.
As you said, all subjective stuff though.
Post edited by Blueberry on0 -
Yes, all subjective stuff. Some people will simply have different ideas of what is necessary.
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Especially when the NoEd spawns near a totem and the killer can just guard it in the EGC, especially after they've hooked someone.
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200% would be too much maybe 150% is more reasonable
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