Fog Vials have a max of 2 charges now

See the issue is, both survivor and killer have one main goal, do gens and escape, kill and prevent the gens to be finished before they get finished.

There is no general rule how it should be played but if you want to be neutral like really neutral and root for both sides to get improved gameplay you should start seeing gen rushing + heal rush same as tunneling, slugging is toxic to certain extent i think leaving downed survivor temporary to down 2nd one that was trying to go for sabotage is fine but leaving all players on ground to bleed and hold game hostage is toxic yes.

Like if we want to be fair here and even grounds the game is flawed since majority of people in higher mmr run gen rush builds and know map tiles and punish u for spreading hooks instead of tunneling best player in team to make it easier.

Look at the streamers they are "pro tunnel" in high mmr when its needed when the gens are popping fast to relieve pressure.

those said streamers tunnel and nobody complains in chat.

Like if we talk about extreme tunneling where u go from one to second survivor tunneling then third and then last survivor then thats extreme tunneling.

I hope everyone on dev team is aware if they fully remove tunneling then the game is pretty much going to be 2 kills max for m1 killers and ability killers it wont change so much as they can still go for 3 kills.

Keep limited uses (but honestly, increase them because 2 is nothing), revert opacity change. Impactful but limited is better than unlimited but not making a difference.

With your same ideology what else should a killer do if gens are being finished before they even spread hook states to not "tunnel".

Should the killer just be like oh okay thats fine ill just do my thing and not bother eliminating players that are popping gens.

And dont tell me "just run corrupt or lethal" because then we are going into territory of 4 players with 4 perks for each player which is 16 perks by the way, and there is only one killer, why should i run the meta perks that ruin the general fun of gameplay and change up how my killer behaves

Yeah i get matches where i get 11-20k bp just because i got tunneled.

Not sure why since im on PS5 and my name is nothing fancy or means anything, my skin is fine too like its paid skins who the hell doesnt have at least one.

Like i know the pain i understand it, that needs to go away no questions asked.

Nice to see a Stormlight fan is on the dev team.

The thing is, I wholeheartedly appreciate attempts to make the outdated Maps and Keys more useable, and think that was fairly successful. I'm mainly a Killer player, and I never thought Fog Vials were ever that problematic. Infinite uses were very odd for an item design, sure, and it awkwardly limited any balance attempts — if the effect wasn't good enough, then nobody would use it, and if the effect was too good, it would be miserable to play against.

I think the original opacity of the Fog Vials was completely fine. Generally, I don't think they were ever that bad, just that anyone who expected to completely lose the Killer when they pop a fog vial in their face was going to be disappointed. Being able to turn off your scratch marks at a moment's notice is definitely not useless.

But now, with only two charges, what's the point of the Fog Vials? The effect is not very strong by itself, and you can only use it 2 times per match? It's ultimately the same problem with Maps and Keys — why on earth would I bring any of those items when Medkits (a guaranteed and reasonably fast self-heal, which becomes extraordinarily stronger with the existence of Styptics and Syringes) and Toolboxes (an extremely powerful tool for getting gens done quickly, especially by yourself) exist? Both of these items are fantastic at using Built To Last as well. No item rework can possibly make anything more appealing than a strong Medkit or Toolbox. I think those absolutely need addressing if you want people to be using other items in the first place.

My suggestion would be to revert the opacity changes, and maybe bring Fog Vial charges up to 3-4, maybe with an add-on that gives you an extra charge. I think this would be reasonable and make Fog Vials useable without making them overbearing.

I strolled by and discovered this in a recent match. I'm usually very, very anti-sandbagging but the match was essentially over so she did something funny and it worked cause I let her have hatch. I just can't kill a clown.

I can't tell you how often I'm quietly doing a gen while watching my teammates immediately eat it, usually because they did something dumb. At least he let you go. You just gotta give them a good show lol

I had a Deathslinger looking down his sight at me once on Campbell's but I was petting Maurice (the match was hopeless) and he just nodded and walked away. Those are always my most memorable matches. The breaking down of the barrier between the sides is so enjoyable.

NEW SURVIVOR ITEM: FOG VIAL
Press the Use Item button to release a cloud of fog, decreasing visibility and suppressing scratch marks. Recharges over time.

Each Fog Vial shares the following parameters:
Has 1 charge, that recharges over time.
Has 40% opacity.
Has an 6-meter radius.
Suppresses scratch marks.

FOG VIAL ITEM VARIANTS
APPRENTICE'S FOG VIAL (COMMON):
Reaches its maximum size after 2 seconds.
Lasts 8 seconds.
Recharges 70 seconds after use.

ARTISAN'S FOG VIAL (UNCOMMON):
Reaches its maximum size after 1.5 seconds.
Lasts 10 seconds.
Recharges 65 seconds after use.

VIGO'S FOG VIAL (RARE):
Reaches its maximum size after 1.2 seconds.
Lasts 12 seconds.
Recharges 60 seconds after use.

FOG VIAL ADD-ONS
Volcanic Stone (Common):
Decreases recharge time by 5 seconds.

Reactive Compound (Uncommon):
Decreases fog cloud expansion time by 1 second.

Oily Sap (Rare):
Increases fog cloud lifetime by 2 seconds.

Mushroom Formula (Very Rare):
If you use a fog vial while crouched, it throws the fog vial 10 meters in front of you. (Like a Clown bottle)
Note: The fog vial magically reappears in your hand afterwards

Potent Extract (Visceral):
Clouds of fog also suppresses survivor auras.

Discussion: The two most important things for survivors, is the infinite charges and the opacity. So the best solution is to keep both those things intact, and make the rest of the effects weaker, to justify having infinite charges.

I don't envy the number of responses you have to go through on this post. That said, I'll try to provide as clear feedback regarding the vial as I can. Use it or don't, its always the choice of you guys on the other end what gets taken from the feedback provided, but I feel like the damage control with the item has been as bad as the initial problems it introduced. All I ask is that if balance focused changes are the only ones given, none of them be presented as accessibility focused.

Give more counterplay for people who are impaired vs the item. Opacity and charges are balance focused changes, I don't have any dog in the race on that front, because they basically render the game unplayable due to the level of multi-sensory disorientation and lack of compensatory options that can be used to minimize their impact. Don't start with making aspects of them weaker, start with allowing ways for players to work around them when affected. Changes like that and normalizing their impact across maps should be the priority before touching them balance wise, instead of just making panic nerfs that just piss off the majority of players while not addressing the accessibility aspect of the item.

Changes that should be focused on should involve the number of tracking elements the item affects, or there should be a perk that minimizes or reduces aspects of the item. Look back at how you handled spine chill, which was being used by hearing impaired players to minimize the disadvantage they had regarding TR intensity as an audio cue. When the visual TR was introduced, it was touted as a leaning experience that fair access to basic functions of the game should not be locked behind a perk slot. Start there and give us that perk to work as a stopgap (the fact that it has a loadout cost will help prevent abuse in just nullifying the item) until you can come up with a non-intrusive method later.

The alternative would be reducing the number of targets for disorientation. This doesn't even have to be a complete removal, but something as simple as allowing auras but having them fade in and out in half second intervals or something similar would allow them to impede, but also allow affected players the ability to course correct within the cloud instead of just losing all bearings. Scratch marks and audio are tricky to even touch, since they can cause issues for people even when "unimpeded," so the safer option would be to remove any audio effect from the item as scratchmarks being unaffected would be more impactful against the item's viability. Ironically opacity might be both the least effective thing to change for this reason, and shouldn't even be looked at until the effect is normalized across applications (lighting, maps, existing fog, etc.) If you want to look at that specifically for balance reasons, create a LCD to work with as a baseline and then factor in the impact each element like lighting or map filter have on its visual obfuscation, and either create an adaptive formula to have it factor those variables or simply find a middleground baseline and resign to it working better or worse on certain maps. For all I know that was already tried and thats the conclusion that was arrived at, but I feel the need to mention it since opacity was probably the last thing that should have been touched (and did the most instant harm to its perceived viability.)

If thats too hard/not allowed/ignored for whatever reason, at least keep them usable in their intended purpose. Pandora's box was already opened, and if you want to damage control the item, it needs to be done properly or not at all. Many of the accessibility issues in the game could have been prevented with proper planning and more careful implementation, but now that it's in the game, it's just another for the pile of things that would need to be addressed with extra labor in order to help affected players. If the idea is to make them so weak that they get buried in the subconscious of the player base (AKA perma-benched like multiple killers have been while awaiting "reworks") that will absolutely backfire from a customer perspective, due to introducing near-worthless clutter. They need to be worth using but allow affected players better methods to compensate. Or just any at all.

Those have nothing to do with the topic and even then I'm stating that Fog Vials are still viable. Just because some people can't brainlessly pop one mid tile and get a free 20 second chase extension doesn't mean it's suddenly useless.