Fog vial first survivor item in years

I didn't mind the Thickness of the fog at all tbh, nor the "bottled" Light footed + Poised + Iron Will + Distortion effects, no, for me the biggest issues were the sheer size of the clouds that look WAY bigger than 8-10 meters, the noise volume outside of the fog, and The unlimited uses each match.

Regarding the Size, I believe there's an additional 3-4 meters outside of the center 8-10m concentrated area of effect that is clearer in opacity and simulates it thinning out, but all it really does is make them look MASSIVE. Comparing that to the Halloween event crystal smoke bombs, which had roughly the same internal radius and thicker opacity, these new ones are less contained to an area and end up seeming Larger and more overpowered/obscuring than they really are. Add in how they diffuse lighting on certain maps, and you get an awful effect with too great a range for something that's only supposed to fill an 8-10m (shack sized) space.

Then there's the Sound. I'm glad they changed it so that it happens only when you're inside the clouds inner 8-10m range now, because before this change, they were insanely loud and obnoxiously over tuned even from 32m away. Hell, I lost survivors I was chasing 20m away from a Smoke Bombs area, simply because I could no longer hear my prey's footsteps or pained grunting. It was hard enough to hear the average survivor noises in the first place, and I know that the clouds are supposed to silence survivors, but doing so by drowning out every other sound in the map from 20-30m away from the cloud? That's just overkill!

Finally the unlimited uses… yeah, I wouldn't mind it IF the survivors had to do Something to earn the refill, like doing a gen, hanging around a killers TR, being chased etc, but just having it auto refill every 60 seconds is absurd. I was expecting them to be more like flashbangs, wherein you have 1 shot and thus have to choose when, where, and how to use them for greatest effect/value, and only with the aid of perks are you able to earn another. With Fog Vials having no limits to their usage, and just a timer, there's no strategic planning, timing, or value to them at all. Even Flashlights have a sense of strategy to use them, but that's because they eventually run out of charges! These "things" were frustratingly overused upon release because they have unlimited uses, and if all 4 survivors bring them in, at a recharge rate of once per 60 seconds… it was HELLISH to be the killer!

An average game lasts about 10 minutes, that means that 1 survivor could use one 10x per match, multiply that by 4 survivors, and as a killer… you hardly ever had a moment in a match where you could see clearly or be free of that obnoxious sound design! If anything, this alone is the most braindead and irritating Feature of them ever since they were introduced.

The devs didn't Have to adjust their thickness/opacity at all! If anything, obscuring the killers vision IS the primary Reason to use them so you can make your escape, no, all they had to do was tone down the volume, decrease or remove the outer "thinning" cloud range, and give them limited uses or some method, other than sitting around for 60 seconds, to refill them. Instead they went overboard on the nerfs, and as a killer main, I can agree on that. The question is do any survivor mains agree with my assessment of what needed to be changed?

OP, I hope you understand that these "Killer Main complaints" aren't simply because I'm bitter or any of us are having trouble adapting to the new mechanic, Just that the mechanic needs some fine tuning for the sake of the games balance and health. As the Fog Vials are right now, you're right, the devs nerfed them too hard, but I don't think that's entirely due to Killer mains complaining, as most of us are more reasonable than I think you're giving us credit for. I mean, we have to be… as far as the player base is concerned, we're outnumbered 4 to 1, we can't afford to waste everyone's time whining about every little new toy the survivors get to play with, just the ones that fundamentally break what little balance this game has.

Actually, the wiki says the Fog Crystals went up to a 6 meter radius, and the Fog Vials go up to 12 meters, which means the Fog Vials are literally up to 4 times the area as Fog Crystals.

This is the important part. There are a lot of players that think Fog Vials, which are literally up to 4 times the area as Fog Crystals, should be really difficult to see out of.

yup same here. Let’s get rid of the problem killers are having and nerf survivors items, um clown nerf when? Spring trap nerf when? Like the game is unbearable as survivor. Just hoping the devs are playing survivor and sees how these matches are going across the board of MMR. I bet just like mine go, not so great. Makes ya not wanna play the game. Just hope they hear us and do something. Seems we already lost around 2k on steam already……

The stats speak for themselves. Look at the crazy player peak that the five nights at Freddy crossover had compared to The walking Dead. And let's make no mistake here. The walking Dead has an absolutely insanely huge fan base. But no cares since it's just more survivors with bad to mediocre perks. The game lives and dies from its killers. Chucky? Literally people who never played a game in there life before loaded dbd to run around as Chucky trust me I know a few older people who did just that as I had to help them. If you make the killer experience to hard or punishing you kill the game simple as that.

The stats don’t matter if those new killer players don’t stick around long-term, though. And obviously, many of them aren’t. New hyped killers are a temporary moneymaker and playercount boost, sure; but they don’t really lead to long-term player retention in most cases for reasons that have been discussed over and over again by people who’ve spoken about that issue more eloquently than I can. Especially recently with Ghoul’s/Springtrap’s releases-yes, the stats were high-but the majority of the playercount was obviously queueing to play killer because killer queues were awful compared to near-instant survivor queues. Four survivor players are needed for every one killer player. If people refuse to play survivor during those “peak times,” killer players will continue to have 20+ minute queues because most players queueing during those times (and 2v8, which is why the devs are making a “play survivor while you wait to play killer” system for the next iteration) are probably queueing killer for one of three reasons:

A)They want to play the new killer B)They’re a killer main and almost never (if ever) touch survivor regardless of queues (but are playing their main, not the new killer) OR (and this is the part that is the biggest problem for the game’s health) C) They want to avoid constantly vsing said new killer match after match after match because it’s simply boring. Particularily when a new kiiller releases in an OP/severly buggy state and doesn’t get the same insta-hard nerf treatment the fog vials for survivors did (I don’t think a new killer has ever been nerfed as quickly and to the same extent that the fog vials were-feel free to correct me if I’m wrong). I don’t see why the devs didn’t focus on hotfixing the ACTUAL biggest bug (AFAIK) with the vials (disabling chase/bloodlust for the remainder of the trial) instead of hard nerfing them. They could’ve been kept as they were for at least a month otherwise to give everyone time to adjust to them before any balance changes were made. After all, they were the first new item survivor players recieved in 8 years. Even moreso since the changes to maps and keys made them effectively useless for many survivors who actually used them with the same update that introduced the vials.

Personally as a chronic solo queuer when playing survivor, I never paid money for survivor cosmetics (except indirectly through the rift pass-but I queued with/against many survivor players who very obviously did). I spent money on a couple of killer skins that couldn’t be grinded for, but the reason I never bought survivor skins was my own form of protest against what I perceived as the constant neglect of solo queue. Still, would’ve made a one-off exception for that Lara skin had the game been in its pre-Ghoul state (the last time the game was-at least sometimes-remotely fun for me in solo queue).

Anyway, the game is uninstalled. Maybe I’ll come back if solo queue (and Skull Merchant) ever get more than scraps-and don’t immediately have said scraps taken away when too many people complain about them.