Distortions rework undermines its core audience
Distortion used to be a reliable tool for stealthy survivors, especially newer players or those who struggle in chase. The current version, which ties token regeneration to being in chase, punishes the very audience most likely to equip it. There's a weird mismatch between perk design and player behavior.
Meanwhile, the aura reading on the killer side continues to proliferate and expand. Distortion burns out entirely too fast in a match and for all intents and purposes is a dead perk right now. I never see anyone use it, and rightfully so, it was neutered.
I think the following adjustments should be looked into:
Token regeneration: Tie this to working on gens. This encourages game advancement and supports stealth/supporting role type players who don't thrive in chase
Starting token amount: this needs an increase, starting with 2 seems fair, negates Lethal pursuer at the very least and still allows you to block one additional aura read.
From the Killer side: disable distortion when there are only two survivors left in the trial, or when all gens are completed. That's a fair tradeoff, the game has to end eventually and it sucks trying to find the last two stealthy survivors.
This seems like it could bring back the original spirit of distortion, while limiting some of the unfun parts of it from the killer side.
Comments
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While you're not wrong that Distortion no longer allows you to evade chases forever, that doesn't mean it's a dead perk. Distortion is a very respectable perk at the moment- it boasts good stealth (by means of allowing you to avoid bad chases, play more safely, and even sometimes break chase safely), and good information (by means of telling you what triggers the killer's aura perks have).
The fact is, the game has shifted a little over the years to a state where you will be expected to engage in chases at some point. Stealth isn't meant to avoid that outright, just delay it- either so the killer chases someone else at that moment, or so that you can get distance on the killer before the chase starts for a more favourable chase, or by letting you escape a chase without the killer following you.
Stealth isn't dead, not as a concept, but stealth will involve getting chased sometimes now. I play pretty stealthy as survivor, and I even use Distortion for it fairly frequently, but the fact remains- the killer's gonna chase me at some point, and unless I specifically brought other perks to compensate for it, I'm probably only gonna be pretty average in terms of chase length. That's not inherently a problem if I can avoid some chases to get some objective progression done while my teammates take the heat.
All that being said, I don't think it would be unreasonable for Distortion to start with both tokens. That'd be a nice little buff to an already very respectable perk, it'd cement Distortion as a very solid pick.
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It’s really unhealthy to bypass core gameplay and avoid being engaged. I mean, even from the logical point - isn’t the chase the most interesting part of the game? Or you want to press M1 most of the game?
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It used to be a reliable tool to NEVER GET FOUND!!! This perk was ridiculous, you didn't even need to confront the killer at all for it to get tokens. Super unfair, glad it's gone
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While agree distortion is a perk that got hit a little too hard, i still think that's kinda a necessary evil, Distortion in practice was such an unhelath perk design when able to gather tokens away from chase. Giving surv a very easy way to counter so many perks for just being the killers' terror radius or even as you pointed out as a buff, doing gens, still isnt very healthy since a surv can just hide, leaving every surv to potentially die.
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I lost so many games in soloq cause of scared distortion players refusing to do anything, ever since distortion got changed I noticed a lot more players adapted and overcame their fear of getting chased, while yes they are more then not holding W with lithe + windows. I rather have those players then ever deal with selfish stealth players ever again. I would be fine with these distortion changes ONLY if it was capped on one token
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