P100 Trickster - 6 Months after the rework, more feedback.

EDIT: I accidentally posted the discussion without the body text… oops.

EDIT 2: Noted more bugs.

EDIT 3: Improved wording on feedback and improved some addons.

Yo. It's been 6 months of the Trickster rework, so I figured I'd throw some more feedback into the ring now that its been a while. You may remember I made an extremely long-winded post about it shortly after its release, and I still stand by most of what I said, so I'll keep this updated post relatively short.

Stuff I like

I wrote the last post by only really talking about stuff I didn't like, so this time I'll actually talk about the stuff I like first.

• Being 4.6m/s feels very good to play with. I didn't feel Trickster needed to be 4.4m/s previously as his ability slows him down by a good amount to use and he can't compensate the lost movement speed with any mobility. The best thing to do against Trickster is break line of sight and force him to make a guess where you are, which gives you an opening to make distance.
• I like the increased reload speed at lockers. 3 seconds is a good default duration and shortening it to 2.25s with the USB Stick addon feels very good. Unfortunately the animation is still bugged after several months and it needs adjustment.
• I've really enjoyed playing with the Iridescent Photo Card addon. It makes going for raw accuracy in tiles where you don't get many openings to shoot much more viable.
• I don't like the removal of Recoil and would prefer it coming back, but I'm sure most people appreciate it and I think that's good.

Bugs

I'm going to note some significant bugs I've noticed. This likely isn't all of them.

• During the reload animation at Lockers, the knives are desynced from the Trickster's animation.
• The combo system kicks in too quickly and ends immediately after a miss. This caused many of Trickster's grunts he makes during throws to no longer play, and causes his laughter to frequently trigger.
• Main Event's screen effect will linger on screen even after you can no longer activate it.
• If you activate Main Event just before the timer runs out, you receive the deafening effect, and get a pink overlay on your screen instead of a yellow one. This lasts until you activate main event again.
• Survivors frequently lose collision with knives if they miss a skill check while repairing a generator and leave the generator right after.
• Hit validation causes false positives and false negatives. Blades will often seem to collide with something then still hit a Survivor, or will show the effect as if they hit a survivor and not deal damage.
• Memento Blades causes knives to sometimes abruptly come out of thin air with no windup animation.
• The Shack on Macmillan Estate maps have boarded up windows that are impossible to shoot through, creating more limiting gameplay. This change happened at the same time Trickster was reworked.
• The lockers at the back of the Myer's house in Haddonfield can be shot through as Trickster.

Now I'm gonna go over all the problems I have with the rework again.

Increased Time-to-Kill and Main Event Playstyle

Ever since the rework, the time it takes for Trickster to down people with his power has gone up significantly. The developers silently removed Trickster's old gradually increasing throw rate and replaced it with a faster Main Event charge. This means you have to hit people with Trickster's previous slowest throwing speed only, and then follow it up by using Main Event.

On top of this, you now have to hit more shots than before for each health state, needing 8 instead of the previous 6. This change made Trickster significantly less fun, as the average chase time has gone up by an insane amount. People who know how to loop you will last longer without losing a health state due to how slow the base throw speed is and how many knives they need to be hit by. This has become an even bigger problem due to the prevalence of Endurance effects in the game now, as any proc of Endurance will require you to repeat the cycle all over again.

These problems are only kept in check by the increased frequency of Main Event. You now have to use this ability all the time as without it you don't have much going for you. This ability saves you knives, eats health states quickly, and doesn't require precise aim like the normal firing mode.

I don't like this new playstyle at all, and I genuinely don't know anybody who does. Being forced into autopilot mode every 8 Knives is just not as fun as old Trickster, who had to hit each shot manually and use his different throw speeds to his advantage.

Old Trickster has the option of switching between Tap-firing and Rapid-Fire on demand. New trickster doesn't have the option of rapid-fire unless he has Main event. This is a blatant removal of options in favor of a forced playstyle.

Add-Ons have become significantly less useful

Trickster was never particularly add-on dependent before the update, as he had a lot of add-ons that were viable. The Trickster rework removed a lot of add-ons and left mostly the bad ones, and practically forces you to use the remaining few that are decent. I'd say the only add-ons that are genuinely worth using are Trick Blades, Photo Card, Memento Blades, and Watch. The remaining add-ons have useless effects like combo duration, and frequently have duplicate versions that do even less. When suggesting reworks to add-ons, I'm going to add completely new effects to many of them, so that players can actually choose ones that fit a playstyle.

Updated Changes and Suggestions

Now that I've re-explained all my feedback again, I'm gonna go over my updated suggestions for the kit and add-ons.

Revert the following:

• Revert Laceration Meter to 6 Blades per health state. (from 8)
• Revert Throw Rate to Pre-7.4.0 Version. (Base throw speed of 3 Blades per second [0.33s windup,] with each throw decreasing throw windup by 0.01s, reaching a maximum of 0.25s windup or 4 Blades per second after 8 throws.)
• Trickster now once again suffers reduced movement speed after each consecutive throw, down to 3.68m/s after 8 throws. Tie this directly to throwing speed. (from the previous 30.)
• Revert the Combo system to how it previously worked. The current version is too buggy.

These things simply didn't need changes as they kept the kit feeling strong and functional. The problems caused by changing these to begin with have made the kit feel really undercooked and bad to use.

Improve Laceration Meter Gameplay

• When the Laceration Meter begins decaying, Laceration Meter Stacks will be preserved until 1 whole stack is fully depleted.
• Decrease Laceration Decay time to 12s. (from 15)
• Laceration Stacks now deplete in 3 Seconds / at 0.33 c/s (from 2 seconds / at 0.5c/s)

These changes would improve the gameplay around the Laceration meter by giving Survivors quicker feedback on when they're losing chase, and not screwing over the Trickster player by making him have to hit another whole blade to compensate for the meter decaying by like 1%.

If you're confused by the wording, think of Ghostface's stalk meter but in reverse. You're still exposed until the moment the meter fully drains, right? With this system, If you were hit by 4 Blades, your laceration meter would still count you as at 4 Lacerations until the meter drained down to 3.

Improve Main Event Design

• The sound the Trickster hears when Main Event is ready is now a global sound effect for all Survivors.
• Set Main Event Duration to 5 Seconds. Remove Combo system implementation.
• Main Event now requires 10 Blade hits to activate.
• The Main Event gauge will lose 1 Charge for any Blade you miss when Main Event is not charged or activated.
• No slowdown effect during Main Event, like before.
• Main Event throw rate multiplier is now +33% on top of maximum throw rate, up to ~5kps.

This new design for Main Event makes it a reward for accuracy, instead of an eventuality. The reason for changing it so drastically is that I wanted the base kit to be strong, but not too strong with the threat of Main Event. This makes it so you'll still very frequently be able to activate Main Event, but not nearly as frequently and easily as you can currently.

Add-on Pass

I don't think I'll go too in-depth on the addons here as I think you'll quickly understand the playstyles I wanna open up with each add-on.

Killing Part Chords - Increases Vault and Break action speed by 20% during the Main Event activation window. (NEW)

Trick Pouch - Increases Blade carrying capacity by 8. (BUFFED)

Inferno Wires - Increases throw speed modifier during Main Event by 33%. (NEW)

Memento Blades - Increases Laceration meter of Survivors by 2. Consecutive Direct Blade hits increase Laceration caused by Blades up to 200%. Missing a Blade resets Laceration modifier to its initial value. (NEW)

On Target Single - Increases the time before the Laceration meter begins decaying by 3s. Decreases the time it takes Laceration stacks to deplete by 1s. (REWORKED)

Ji-Woon’s Autograph - Decreases throws required to reach maximum throwing speed by 2. (REVERTED, BUFFED)

Lucky Blade - Decreases charges required to activate Main Event by 4. Increases charges lost when missing a Blade by 1. (NEW)

Fizz-Spin Soda - Survivors Injured by Blades become Mangled for 70s.  Injured Survivors receive the Hemorrhage status effect when they have 2 or more Lacerations. (NEW)

Waiting For You Watch - When a Survivor’s Laceration meter begins decaying, reveal their aura for 3s. (NEW)

Bloody Boa - Activating Main Event causes all Survivors in your Terror Radius to scream. (NEW)

Ripper Brace - Laceration caused by Direct Blade hits increases by 50% for every 16m a Blade travels, up to a maximum of 200% per Blade hit.

Ricochet Blades, Shatter Blades, Pierce Blades - Clarification: Laceration caused by these effects are not counted as "Direct" Blade hits by other addons. Direct Blade hits only count if the Blade hits the Survivor first.

Iridescent Photocard -  For each consecutive Direct Blade hit, gain a stackable 1% Haste effect, up to a maximum of 10%. This bonus is lost when missing a Blade, when a Survivor is put into the dying state, or when the Laceration Meter begins decaying. (REWORK)

Death Throes Compilation - During Main Event, the amount of Blades you hit Survivors with will be returned as Ammo at a 2x conversion rate when Main Event ends. (NEW)

This is a near-complete rework of his add-ons. Can you see yourself using any of these? Please let me know.

I hope the developers will take this into consideration. I want to be able to enjoy trickster again in the future. Thanks for reading