http://dbd.game/killswitch
I compiled a list of the new AFK Crow Rules, so you can discuss them
Comments
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I did, when testing with friends. The most common situations were;
Totem hunts (Already mentioned but still, especially for new players it will be a nightmare, ignoring Devour Hope and Huntress Lullaby is simply not an option, especially for newcomers).
Playing very safe/stealthy when in dire situations (injured and/or on second hook, staying on gens is simply not an option productive to survival, especially in a 3-gen situation).
Waiting out/hiding during extremely dangerous situations (Oni's Rage, Myers tier 3, any kind of proximity to Nurse, Exposed perks like Haunted Ground, Make Your Choice and Starstruck, etc.)
Box hunting against Pinhead (even if knowing the location, it's sometimes very far and, especially if having to not run in order to avoid getting seen, at least one crow would show up and render stealth completely impossible if the Killer passed by).
Sadako when 2 tapes were needed to reduce Condemn to safe levels (the travel time, even ignoring a possible encounter with the Killer or having to stop running, is enough to get at least one crow depending on the map).
If a Killer slugs for the 4k (downs the 3rd Survivor and leaves them slugged in order to search for the 4th without worrying about Hatch and increasing odds of a Finisher Mori, which is the outcome of many games where the Killer wins) the 4th Survivor is essentially forced to either stay on gens or rush to the slugged Survivor, both of these exposing themselves (the latter even more so if done too quickly).
Having to wait for opportunities to do gens safely for more than a few seconds in 3-gen situations (especially against fast Killers) sometimes gave enough points for a crow. This is circumvented by being on comms though.
Side-note: For newcomers who don't know gen spawns, map and totem spawns, crows will be easily gained due to being lost. Especially in some indoor maps. Most of the aforementioned situations are also more severe for newcomers.
Side-note 2: When a rare friendly/farming/memeing Killer showed up, crows would just accumulate when messing around, messing with the mood.
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Oh is it BHVR? I had no idea. 🙄 There should not be a time limit at all. And I am sick of giving my feedback only for it to be ignored while killers who are incapable of using skill and strategy are catered to and handed kills. This is not rocket science and feelings don't matter. The afk system is not even about being away from the keyboard. Killers keep complaining that they can't loop (skill problem) they can't catch survs (strategy problem). They complain that survs are toxic. Killers are more toxic. Is a survivor using a flash light? bring light born or learn how to combat it. When I play Michael I never bring lightborn even when all 4 have flash lights. Game on… I'm going to show them how its done without lightborn. Oh the surv found hatch too quickly, they are petitioning to get rid of hatch. What? are you that much of a nutbrain? Hatch spawns closest to killer 80%+ of the games. (don't even mentioning hatch offerings, is it really an advantage when killer can see it and camp the hatch spawn?) Now there's perks to slow down gate opening, after no-ed, nwo etc. Really??? Survs got distortion to combat all the perks killers use and the second killers complained about not being able to see them, wouldn't know, distortion got nerfed. Ugh.. im sick of it. Giving feedback doesn't actually do anything unless you agree with the devs and beg for a minor tweak. I'm not going to ask for a modified afk system. I am blatantly saying its bs and it shouldn't exist to begin with.
I've been playing since 2017, this behavior, catering to killers and shrinking maps, taking pallets and obstacles away, removing buildings, buffing killer perks, adding more killer perks, nerfing surv perks, taking away the fog and removing grass, brightening the maps, removing the old struggle, removing the old hatch system, making empty maps etc just gets worse every freakin few months. Now you wont be able to jump off hooks like you used to, or use skill and strategy like you used to. Stealth killers are a thing but heaven forbid stealth survivors could exist.
I've tested out the new system, killer and map in PTB and HELLLLL NAAAW. I am not putting up with micromanagement. And fact is, that is all this is now. Micromanaging the survs to cater to killers. If I want to be sneaky and avoid killer while helping my team, I should be able to do it my way. Not follow a strict protocol or get penalized. This is no longer a game but more like therapy for those that play killer. Got to feed the babies or they will just keep crying.5 -
There is nothing about searching 4 Jigsaw Boxes just to remove a Reverse Bear Trap. Is that considered AFK? Are crows going to alert what Box I'm searching? Or what if I'm sneaking around to make a Flashlight save or Hook Sabotage? Is that considered not contributing? Some people just don't like doing Generators and would rather have interactions.
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I had a bunch of test cases for various killer power interactions, but the PTB closed a day early, so I never got to test Jigsaw boxes. I'm certainly hoping that searching a Jigsaw box resets AFK points.
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Wouldn’t this make so called “gen rushing” worse?
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Grim Embrace will probably cause complaints, if it blocks all generators for 40 seconds.
AFK point gain might need to be paused if any generator is blocked, because survivors will likely be very frustrated if they gain AFK crows while they are standing in front of a blocked generator.Also, I’ve been updating the original post of this forum thread, with more concerns. I apologize if there are so many concerns that it looks like I’m hating the AFK crow system. I really do think it’s a good idea, but I just have a lot of concerns with how it was implemented on the PTB.
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Thank you for taking the time to write all of this out! I'm pulling this together to share with the folks working on AFK crows to ensure these points are on their radar.
Thanks for flagging this question! I'm checking with the team on this.
No apologies necessary! I understand there being complexities with how this interacts with various features, so questions and concerns are natural. This thread has been extremely valuable in conveying specific feedback back to the team, so thank you!
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I forgot to mention not only Flashlight saves but Head On plays which gets disabled at crows.
Invocation Perks take 60 seconds to cast plus time to go in and out of the Basement.
I reread the Patch Notes on this and OP's Rules. The Patch Notes states after 90 seconds alerts trigger. Is that at the 100% speed rule? At 50% speed and 120 seconds do alerts happen? It just seems like a confusing system that removes doing interactive things where someone else said promotes "Genrush."
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This system should really only be active when 2 survivors are left, as this covers the vast majority of scenarios where survivors stop attempting to make any objective progress.
It should also deactivate as soon as 1 of the survivors is slugged or hooked to not reward slugging for the 4k.
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The killer gets loud noise notifications after a survivor has 3 crows. This takes 90 seconds at 100% speed, and 180 seconds at 50% speed.
The killer can see any crows that a survivor has, which means that starting at 1 crow, the killer can easily tell if the survivor is in a nearby locker, because they could see the crow on top of the locker. This takes 60 seconds at 100% speed, and 120 seconds at 50% speed.
The main concern people have been having, is that even though survivors need 3 crows for loud noise notifications, it’s much harder to hide from a nearby killer if a survivor has any crows, because the killer might be able to see or hear any crow that is over a survivor’s head.
Also, calculating the specific times to gain crows can be complicated, because a survivor might have a mix of 100% speed and 50% speed times, which means they might not always know how much time they have left before they gain a crow.
These time calculations are further complicated by the fact that survivors have a 10 second grace period, before they start getting AFK points, and this 10 second grace period always takes 10 seconds (there never is a 50% speed modifier). This means the first crow at 100% speed is really 10 + 90 =100 seconds.
I also never checked invocations, so I’m not sure if they have a progress rule (i.e. reset AFK points after 12 seconds of invocation progress) or a completion rule (i.e. reset AFK points after an invocation is completed). If invocations don’t have any progress rules, then it would be possible to gain all three crows while actively doing an invocation.
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Coming back to two of your questions, completing the interactions for Invocations and Jigsaw Boxes both remove accrued AFK points. Separately, when it comes to the note about reaching 3 crows after 90 seconds, this assumes a situation in which the player is standing completely still for the entirety of that period.
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thank you for confirming this, I've been eagerly awaiting this reply as a Birdvocation lover. cheers
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Bringing this up again because, unfortunately, some MAJOR fine tuning is needed here.
People have reported crows appearing in chase, on hook, or while cleansing a Thrill totem.
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Same. I get them very easily.
Just had a match against Springtrap. He slugged the 3rd, and left them on the floor to try and get me for the 4K. He proxy camped the slug and the gates (both within eyesight unfortunately). So I was playing safe either to get the pick up, or wait for him to hook and then I can try for hatch. It gives me AFK crows even tho I am moving around, moving across the map, repositioning, not just sitting in a corner somewhere. Crows. Here are the crows. He ended up hooking and then I got hatch….but I get crows for playing safe and moving around to get hatch?
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I got them while nonstop crawling in the dying state. That was bad enough, but then I got off the killer's shoulder and the three crows never went away during the chase.
I'm just thrilled that this update was released right around the same time Pinhead's perks became general pool, because these crows go great with survivors searching for their Hex: Plaything totems.
And new players still do not understand what crows are. My friend got hooked in the basement, and the killer stood there hitting them on the hook over and over again. Meanwhile, a Meg in a locker in the killer's direct line of sight went from having one crow to three crows. After my friend died, since obviously the Meg's proximity countered the anti-facecamp feature, the killer walked right out of the basement to go find the final survivor.
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I tested intentionally standing still/running around without doing anything and it felt too generous.
I still have yet to see Survivors get AFK crows by playing the game normally.
What I have seen however is that before this patch, sometimes my soloqueue teammate would not do any objective for a minute straight at the start of the game. So yeah, I think encouraging objectives is good. This is one of the greatest changes brought to the game in recent times.
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I only played 2 games. 1 on dead dawn, no crows. The other was the new map, I recieved crows once looking for a gen because I don't know the map. Almost got them a second time (I think) looking for another gen, found it and then thrilling tremors, or grim embrace, or whatever gen blocking perk activated, but I was able to get on it before crows activated again. I was absolutely playing the game normally, but searching on the new map took me too long. That's ridiculous.
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This fails to take into account that not all survivors just need to be doing generators during the game. Some survivors go for saves, unhooks and healing or find hex totems. There’s no reason why you should be getting crows for playing the game. Here’s another thing to take into account since we get crows for pretty much everything except touching generators.
Tier 3 Mikey. The duration that his power lasts for guarantees you get a crow if he’s chasing you and you’re certainly not stopping to do a generator in this situation UNLESS he’s tombstone.
That’s just one example. But there are several killer powers and perks that either prevent you from doing generators or it is optimal to do anything but a generator because of the power.
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I just edited the original list…
39) Invocations have a progress rule, where somewhere between 12 and 15 seconds of progress, remove all crows. So you don't need to complete the entire invocation to remove crows.
Crows appearing in chase, or on hook, would definitely be a bug.
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LOL I got a crow while repairing a Deja Vu generator.
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The crows are way overtuned. Got crows along with a teammate because a Springtrap ran "no way out". Us having to wait out the timer for the perk gave us crows that lasted while we finally got to try and open the door where he had "remember me". So we ended up dying because of afk crows that we could do pretty much nothing about. This is a load of BS to say the least and they need to dial this change in a bit again.
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So in one of my matches the killer was using Freddy's gate perk and the one that blocks the gate as well. I got punished with 2 crows for being forced to wait, then got a THIRD while attempting to open the gate. This cost me the match.
I cannot and will not be playing until this is addressed.
The other time I hid behind a rock for about 10 seconds while a killer was patroling where I am…bam, crow, the killer beelined to me. I have no desire whatsoever to play like this. I do not hide for ridiculous amounts of time, I just use stealth when appropriate to waste the killers time. This is no longer viable with how these crows are. Please fix it.
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Current list of situations in which myself or my teammates got crows today during less than a dozen matches:
- While running from the killer.
- While running generally
- Moments after getting into a locker, turning what would have been a safe evade of the killer into a death.
- While doing generators
- While looking for totems
- While cleansing totems
- While unhooking fellow survivors
- While healing other survivors
- While opening the exit gate
- While slugged on the ground, attempting to crawl away from the killer in order to use Unbreakable—which is impossible now because of the near instant crows snitching.
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There might be bugs with the AFK crows. Being in a chase should reset AFK points. And getting slugged should reset AFK points, meaning that you should have another 70 seconds of not moving before a crow shows up.
I also wish there were some recorded matches of these issues. I haven’t been able to recreate any issues where the AFK crows were showing up earlier than I would expect them to.
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How lucky you must be.
Alas, thus far myself and my group of friends have all had encounters with the crows showing up when they really shouldn't, to the point of actively sabotaging our chances at escaping. So I guess you could say I'm pretty unimpressed with the system so far.
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From what I have read these changes are going to scare away new players pretty quickly. I think this has been implemented far too harshly
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Has any of them recorded any of these matches?
Without recorded matches, I’m not sure if the AFK rules have bugs in them, or if people are spending large amounts of time not interacting with stuff but feel that they are honestly trying to progress the game.
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We all know how much of a disaster this new system is, but something that I think also needs to be pointed out for feedback to BHVR is a broader problem of these kinds of things getting into the live game to begin with. This either wasn’t tested at all, which is alarming, or it was tested and everyone said “yep, this is good!”, which is also alarming, or it was tested and they noted the significant problems but decided to release it anyway and just hoped everyone would be ok with it, which is especially alarming. All scenarios are very bad.
We’ve seen so many similar situations in the past where bad changes are very apparent to players but somehow they still made it through the QA process. There is clearly something fundamentally flawed with how BHVR is evaluating changes and how they are using player feedback in the change process. Unfortunately, I have no confidence this is going to improve anytime soon because the same thing keeps happening over and over again, yet people are not leaving the game.This is probably one of the worst changes ever implemented and yet the game still hit an all time high player count, so I guess that’s all that matters from a business perspective.
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I agree completely. I cannot fathom how any dev even looked at this system in it's current state and said "yeah let's put this out in a patch". If it was tested and the testers told them that it was a good system, then they're lying or don't know how to play the game. If it wasn't tested…well, truthfully, I cannot imagine a system this fundamentally broken (that is, as a result, fundamentally breaking other key aspects of the game) was tested at all. Because if it was, anyone with half a braincell would have shut it down immediately.
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The majority of people, myself included, don't typically record our matches.
The new AFK system obviously has bugs. But even if it was working perfectly and exactly as described in the patch notes, the system would still be TERRIBLE and a detriment to gameplay.
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I agree with the pain points but I don't think nerfing hexes is a good or feasible idea
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If there are bugs with the AFK crows, then those things should definitely be fixed. But if people really are spending large amounts of time, not completing interactions, then maybe they should be getting AFK crows.
Yes, I do think there might be scenarios where fixes should be made. For example, Thrill of the Hunt might really be a problem, especially when combined with screaming perks or addons. But the solution would be to fix the bad scenarios instead of completely reverting the AFK crow changes.
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Hey there folks! I mentioned this in another thread, but wanted to make sure I caught y'all as well, given this threads specific focus on the changes to AFK crows.
Arguably the most useful intel we can get right now is footage of this happening, as that helps us understand the exact circumstances that led up to this. If any of you have video footage of situations where you received an AFK crow over the course of regular gameplay, we'd love it if you could share it with us. I'd make sure it's shared with the relevant folks!
Specifically, it would be immensely valuable to have footage of instances where this is happening, including the 2-4 minutes leading up to the AFK crow appearing. That way, we can get a clear idea of exactly what gameplay led to this situation.
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Where can we find instructions for how to share footage with the dev team?
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Please don't take this the wrong way. This is not a personal attack. I would very much like to see this new release to be a success. It would be great to get new players in and keeping them. Sure, video evidence is great and useful. But surely you must have internal quality control? If you want this chapter to be a success, BHVR must act now and quickly without hesitation. Killswitch the new AFK system and the go next prevention system, do internal testing, troubleshoot and bring it back once it's fixed and ready for final deployment. You can't implement a new system that punishes people for playing. It's not just the AFK system though, but also the "go next prevention system" that has major flaws, like punishing people who got tunneled out. On top of this, there are audio issues on multiple maps where directional audio is simply broken. This entire "problem" is something you have to troubleshoot internally, fast.
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Why do we need footage? Community feedback is that it is not well received. We frequently see comments from devs/mods "we heard your feedback" and didn't go forward with the artist add-on changes, or the xeno changes, etc. But since this effects survivors we need video evidence? The community was screaming this is going to be a problem, and look, it is, yet our screams fall on deaf ears. It's utterly defeating.
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If you'd like to share it here on the forums, the two approaches we see used most commonly are attaching the video to a comment (using the paperclip button) or sharing the link to an unlisted YouTube video. Either way, please don't hesitate to tag me in the comment where you share it so I can make sure it's shared with the team immediately.
That's a good question! With the examples you provided, the concerns and relevant feedback tend to be quite straightforward, making it easier to draw a line between a player's feedback, their perception, and the change itself. There's an immediacy to these issues (i.e. I used Xenomorph's tail attack and it was sluggish) that generally relies on a direct statement like "I experienced this at this given moment," which can often be easily conveyed in text.
Where the AFK Crows topic differs is that there is a lot more nuance involved. This is a system that takes a longer period of gameplay time into account - not just the moment at which a player gets their first crow - which makes it more difficult to rely just on text-based recounts of what happened. This is because there are so many variables that could be coming into play - often extending further back than a player may anticipate. For instance, how long were you running vs. walking vs. standing still? Was the Killer nearby? Did you interact with a gen and if so, for how long? If we have footage of these occurrences, it allows our teammates to better understand these more of these nuances and react to the specific gameplay situations.
All this said, the best way I can be an advocate for the community if there's a potential issue, is to make sure I have as detailed feedback as possible. And in this specific case, video is the most valuable form of feedback we can get. I promise you, your concerns aren't being missed.
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In theory, I get where you're coming from.
But in practice given that by and large the feedback is very clearly and bluntly "Get rid of the entire system, we hate it", I don't feel like video evidence is all that necessary. The feedback, at least from the bulk of people I've spoken to, is "I experienced the new AFK and anti go next system while playing, and it worsened my game experience significantly".
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