General Discussions
General Discussions
Why don’t killers get punished for missing their power?
Serious question, why do so many killers in this game barely get punished for missing their power? One of the main aspects of survivor is to dodge killer powers to make distance and extend the chase but there’s so many killers that barely get punished for using their power. Just to name off a few… Billy: barely gets punished when cutting you off or missing a chainsaw right next to you, Nurse: if she misses her blink on you it doesn’t matter since she recharges the blink back instantly during her fatigue, Huntress: barely looses any distance after missing a hatchet, especially with oak haft. Freddy: barely looses any distance when missing a snare or using pallet rupture, Pig: laughably quick recover after a miss ambush (not that bad since ambush is already trash), clown: can just throw another bottle instantly, pyramid head: can ready up his m2 right after missing if survivor stays at the loop, Blight: really fast fatigue with only a 2 second recharge per rushed used, Trickster: can spam knives while also tap firing 2-3 blades at a time to lose pretty much 0 distance, nemesis: fast recovery after missing a tentacle, Knight: sends another guard out if the first one didn’t detect anyone, Dracula: can shapeshift to a different power the MOMENT he misses one of his abilities.
Most of these aren’t as bad as others but it’s really dumb how some killers legit don’t get punished at all for missing their power (looking at you nurse, Dracula, huntress with oak haft) I don’t understand why killers get such minimal punishment after missing their power but survivors get punished HEAVILY if they don’t get a fast vault or don’t get their timings right to make it back to a pallet…
Comments
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I agree with some of those, like Nurse and Blight who could really use a longer power recovery time, a lot of those you mentioned are punished for it.
Clown can rethrow a bottle, but he has to reload soon after which costs him a lot of distance. And with Clown missing a bottle can be the difference between a survivor reaching a loop/fast vault in time or not. (Also it's Clown, the biggest punishment is playing him).
Pyramid Head can ready up another M2, but the survivor can easily just run off during the cool down and make distance. Similar with Dracula when he misses his fire pillars, but I'll admit not as punishing as Pyramid Head.
Trickster can spam knives, but if you do that you will have to reload. You don't lose much distance but you will lose pretty much your entire power if you keep missing and have to break chase. Huntress as well to a lesser extent.
Knight can throw out another guard if they don't detect anyone, but he has to wait until that guard actually de-spawns, leaving him without a power for the entire duration of their wasted hunt. That is honestly a huge punishment for missing.
Freddy missing his snares puts it on a 6 second cooldown. That's more than enough time to reach a loop or extend the one you are already at. If Freddy hits you even after he missed, he didn't need to use his power in the first place.
The main punishment in most killers is that you don't get the hit, which can always lead to the a survivor getting just enough time to make a loop that they wouldn't otherwise and now can use to extend the chase that probably would've been over had the killer not missed.
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Interesting thread. I'd be curious to see more thoughts. Not sure what I think at the moment… its never occurred to me.
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Didn't they change Knight so if there is a guard already you can summon another one and the old one just de-spawns?
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A lot of Killers do get punished for missing their power, they often get slowed down and/or are unable to perform another action for a short duration. This being said, the window to take advantage of them missing is small and can make the difference between a hit/down but depending on the situation can also be too small of a window to really do anything with.
I am a Demo main, missing Shred can happen a decent bit and you are significantly punished for missing Shred. You camera is locked into a single direction which restricts your ability to see Survivors, you can launch yourself further away from the Survivor, and the recovery is painfully slow compared to a normal M1 whiff since Demo's ability is still based on the old base DBD recovery before it got changed.
As for other Killers, their "punishment" can tend to vary depending on the nature of the power. Dash Killers and High Mobility Killers naturally have to worry about them moving past the Survivor (among other things), Stealth Killers have to deal with restrictions/cooldowns and opporunity-cost, Macro Killers often come with the punishment of wasting their time thus halting their macro play, and any "striking" Killer has to deal with resource management, environment hazards, or movement speed penalties (among other things)… some Killers get punished more than others, some get punished less than others.
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New Xenomorph - they decreas cooldown on missed attack lol, now he can spaming tail without being punished almost
Post edited by sethrollins on-4 -
Did they? I thought it was just that you could spawn one while the other is on cool-down. I haven't played Knight in a long time so I can't remember what they did to him so you could be right haha.
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I have checked, and yeah. When they reworked knigth there was a bug in the PTB that allowed him to spawn a guard while other one was already there and it just de-spawned. When on live they fixed the bug and so he couldnt do that anymore but the community had a big uproar so they made it again possible to spawn a guard while another guard is active and that guard will just de-spawn.
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Oh interesting. Thanks for the correction :D
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The worst offender is Dracula, IMO after any M2 attack he shouldn't be able to shape shift for a short period of time, same after any successful attack, M2 or basic.
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You can't really increase Nurse's power recovery time since she also needs it for basic movement. Nurse is naturally going to use Blinks to close distance on survivors and those Blinks arnt going to result in hits. Increasing the cooldown so Nurse can NEVER close distance wouldn't really work out.
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Billy: Using movement to cut a survivor off is a legitimate strategy. I'd be down for increasing bump cooldown, but stopping the sprint should stay the same.
Nurse: Her only form of chase is those blinks. If they don't recharge quickly, she literally cannot chase.
Huntress: I agree.
Freddy: His ability as is can be kinda trash against players who know how he works. His punishment revolves around you doing clocks, not him missing snares/pallets.
Pig: The punishment is built in to the start of her ability; a warning noise as well as a charge that, while active, halts all movement. It either pays off with the hit, or she loses distance from the initial warning.
Clown: Punishment is built into his reload where if he runs out mid chase the survivor basically gets off scot free (or the clown plays without a power)
Pyramid Head: The attack has a ton of telegraphing, odds are the survivor's gonna dodge it. Adding a punish would literally kill his power.
Blight: I agree here, he might need more punishment, but I'd give it specifically to missed rush attacks rather than just running out of charges/timing out the ability.
Trickster: His power require a multitude of knives to hit in order to damage. Punishment is built in by it's degradation; if a survivor manages to dodge and evade the killer long enough, their laceration decreases.
Nemesis: His tentacle is a glorified M1 with a bit more range than a lunge.
Knight: The knight does miss out here; he loses that guard for some time. Sent toe assassin after a player but missed? Now you have to use the carnifex or jailer to chase instead, who both move slower and don't inflict deep wound. Break a gen with carnifex then immediately find a player? Likely gonna have to start kicking pallets yourself till they're off cooldown.
Dracula: I'm personally not sure. On one hand you're correct. On the other, I've never found it a real issue. Probably to do with how dodgeable/blockable they are.
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Let me tell you about trapper who only have "2 shots" and then he have to travel all over the map to get more power, on top of pressuring gens and do loops, and hes not even moving fast..
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PREAAAAACH IT!
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They really do get punished. And the people who always bring this up clearly don't grasp how punishing misses are for killer. You miss once or twice, maybe still a recoverable game. Any more than that, you've probably lost no matter what at that point, and some of these killer powers and last-second M1 opportunities are extremely hard to hit. Each miss could lead to like 20 seconds minimum being added on to the chase. And the problem is the game state forces killers to get downs back to back to back to compete. You really think the killer still winning, when it's Hillbilly, Pyramid Head, Twins, or Dracula constantly missing, is because the killer's just that strong? No, your teammates definitely had to be throwing, with their inefficiency on gens. The only one who can immediately recover the game from missing a bunch is Nurse. She can play like a 5-hour player, turn her brain on at the last second to get a bunch of blink hits, and walk away with a 4k. Other killers, not so much, not even Blight.
You want to talk about killers not getting punished at all for missing, try old Legion, or Friday The 13th (no successful attack cooldown OR survivor sprint burst). What I want to avoid is killers getting any longer stuns/cooldowns in this game than they already have, because at some point it becomes "Why even use my power? Why even swing at them? Why play killer?" Killers in Texas Chainsaw Massacre go into an annoying cooldown animation if they hit survivors like 3 times, when it takes like 10, it feels like, to down them (and then instantly kill them, tbf). And when they get stunned otherwise, they're literally standing still for like 15 seconds "recovering."
Players don't want to suffer cooldowns and stuns all the time, because that's not fun, and it usually stems from bad design. Why do Hillbilly and Demogorgon go into such lengthy cooldowns when hitting against something? Why does Deathslinger have to wait for the super long "chain coming back" animation every time he misses a shot AND THEN has a slow base reload? Same thing with Huntress with her hatchet miss cooldown and time to reload. You see, it's not just the killer missing and then "immediately" recovering; there's so much more going on, and none of it good for killer. You almost seem to be ignorant to cooldown add-ons, like killer gets that quick of a recovery base or something. And others do have quick-ish cooldowns because they're laughably weak, like Pig's dash attack which is almost always worse than an M1, on an already bad killer. Or Demogorgon's cooldown on portals, because yeah he can go back and forth between portals basically before the survivors can destroy one, but then that's literally all he's doing, rather than commiting to chase or gens. Really, I don't think killers need more or longer cooldowns than they have now.
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Even taking your premise as true, which I don't think it necessarily is, I think there are a few main issues.
First off, its a regressive punishment. It punishes worse players more than good players. While this needs to be true to an extent, as good play needs to be rewarded, it just creates further disparity between the top/above average players and the average/below average players which leads to major frustrations. I see it similar to increasing the penalty for missing skill checks on generators. Sure, it helps with regression and can punish "mistakes" but this would clearly just make weaker players (or solo queue, where you can't control the skill level of your teammates) worse while barely touching top level players. This would then be similar for killer players. A cracked Huntress who snipes you across the map isn't going to care about a missed attack cooldown nearly as much as your average player who had a Huntress daily and now needs to have all their mistakes compounded on them.
Second, there's a "feels bad" argument that has to be considered. While I don't think this argument should stand in the way of properly balancing the game, you do have to consider how a killer feels to play to an extent. Look at Twins before their mini-buffs they received. They were a legitimate threat with the right player but anyone who just tried picking them up would always complain about dealing with the cooldowns, especially when switching between Charlotte and Victor not necessarily because it stopped them from winning but because it was a chore to deal with constantly having your control locked. Decreasing cooldowns like that didn't all of a sudden sky rocket their kill rates (as far as I'm aware) but it did at least make them more enjoyable for the players who did play them. Even complaints about Chucky right now generally reference how terrible he feels to play which is a legitimate concern when video games should, by design, be fun to play.
Last point then, is that it punishes killer players for trying to use their powers more. Any Deathslinger or Pyramid Head can hold their power and only use it when its guaranteed a hit like at a window/pallet and most people would agree that is boring (but consistent). Adding longer cooldowns to them means that it encourages this safer playstyle even more and doesn't allow for them to risk using their power at non-guaranteed moments. The same could then be said of Blight then. Why try to use my power to outplay a loop when I could just force the pallet drop, break it, and chase them down with my power instead of risking the whiff and the punishing cooldown?
Obviously, there is a balance to be had and you can argue specifics on any killer but unless something is grossly overpowered or leading to other unsavory outcomes (like old Legion or Skull Merchant), I think killers should be encouraged to use their power more rather than less.3 -
Serious question, why do so many killers in this game barely get punished for missing their power? One of the main aspects of survivor is to dodge killer powers to make distance and extend the chase but there’s so many killers that barely get punished for using their power.Well, the simple answer is that they don't get punished because they aren't supposed to be.
Thematically: If the Huntress misses a hatchet the survivor isn't supposed to think 'good, I'm safe'. but ''phew, I'm not dead yet'. The Killer should not feel so easily defeated as if by just a missed power. In a horror movie sense, this is when the killer swings and hits the wall, as he pulls out his axe/knife the victim has a moment to gain some distance, but that's all, the chase is still on.
Killer comparison: For some of the killers listed, the power they can miss is really all they have. If something like hatchets had a longer cooldown, then killers with unmissable powers (i.e. Wraith) would be far stronger by comparison. And we/BHVR want Killers to engage with an use their powers.
Game Balance: Seconds are really important in DbD, or at least they should be. The goal is not to win the chase, game design makes that a necessarily rare event, but to make it last as long as possible.
Powers that have longer cooldowns, but bigger impacts, generally aren't that desirable. Iri Head on Huntress usually isn't that desirable to play against - trade off of much longer cooldown (by needing to go to a locker), but insta downs makes each throw more beneficial and costly. I think its a better game when that is spread out.
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A few Killers could do with longer cooldowns just as a way to balance them (probably Dracula), but that's a specific balance issue, not necessarily a broad view of how powers should work.
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This is essentially the difference between a strong and a weak Killer. The strongest Killers have little or no downtime on their abilities, hit or miss (Nurse, Blight, Spirit, Billy, and more recently Dracula, Singularity and Houndmaster), while the weakest either have insane downtime (think Trapper's traps or SM's drones being effectively useless about 90% of the time) or don't actually have a power that can hit or miss in the first place (Wraith's cloak, GF or Myer's Stalk). IMO the most ideally balanced Killers at the strong end of the spectrum have a reasonable balance of uptime and downtime for their power, with consideration taken as to how impactful their power can be: Plague, Unknown, Oni (when he's not bugged or clunky as hell), Artist, Cenobite and Wesker.
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