Does Windows of Opportunity help with muscle memory?

I tried WoO briefly a few years back and found it too overstimulating with the constant auras, but I feel it did help me memorise tile layouts a bit better in that time. Overall though I didn't find it a detriment to play without it. If you feel like you're over reliant on it, maybe switch to maps for a bit? They can show you briefly what pallets are available within your vicinity, then just try and remember after that. That way you're not completely switching your brain off. In general, it helps to train yourself to not only be aware of what's immediately around you, but be aware of what's available beyond that too. Helps with chaining tiles.

Or just keep playing with WoO if you like it. Ultimately it's your game and your time, you can play whatever you like.

I found the opposite, WoO didn't help me learn anything, if anything it made me start to forget what I had already learned; it's a terrible perk for teaching people to play DBD and actively hinders your development as a player.

The thing with playing without WoO is you are training your brain to look for familiar tiles and structures in each map, you are teaching yourself to scout while you work on gens and take stock of your surroundings while you move around, to file them in your mind for later.

Even if you don't know exactly where the window/pallet is, you learn to be able to make an educated guess based on what you can see (there isn't one in that tile spawn point there, so there should be one there, etc)... You also learn to play in a little bit more of a safer manner, because you don't know precisely where pallets are, you're mkre disciplined and a little less greedy, make your way there slightly sooner. You also learn to make do with the pallets you have, if you don't know where the next pallet is exactly, you have to make better use of the weaker pallet you do know/have.

In contrast playing with WoO allows you to forgo most of these points, cause you just know where the windows and pallets are at all times, you don't need to memorise or recall anything cause it's always there, and you can muxh more safely hold W at every chance to beeline directly to the next pallet.

You never have to learn to scout tiles, take stock of your surroundings/resources or pay attention to spawn points, cause WoO does it all for you. You don't have to learn how to loop in a weaker tile, cause you can easily chain to a stronger tile with much less personal effort.

For a new player who is trying to improve, WoO makes you lazy, and it means when you don't have WoO, or you become blinded, you become lost and confused because you haven't learned the skills to function without it. It's like NOED for killer... it shortcuts a lot for you; you'll win for a while against players who aren't so good, but once you start getting put with better players, the perk won't be enough to save you, and now you're also missing a lot of fundamental skills you need to exist at this level to put a more useful perk in its place.

I always discourage any new player from running it. If you want WoO to actually help you learn, take a map. They actually require you to retain information you see, and still.help you develop skills you need to play at higher level to eventually function without them.

It doesn't really teach you anything, but it is the best survivor perk in the game.

It provides you with 100% accurate information at all times, allows the chaining/skipping of certain tiles, and with the current pallet density, can win matches single handedly against a majority of the cast.

It also provides you with information that is IMPOSSIBLE to know otherwise, like whether a certain window has spawned or not.

It will always be better than learning spawns because:
1). Teammates can drop pallets.
2). Said pallet may not even spawn.

I use it most of the time and can't imagine doing as well without it - it's amazing information that I simply wouldn't have.

It always blows every other survivor perk out of the water on Nightlight - this is important because these are people invested enough to track their stats every game and are most likely trying to win….there's a reason it is #1.

does the perk really teach anything long-term when you're playing with it?

Personally, I feel like it's helpful for newer players to help them get a quicker idea of pallet and window spawns vs not running it at all the first few months of playing.

Did you eventually stop using Windows?

Yes. As time went on the constant on screen aura become overwhelming and plus I had become somewhat accustomed to map layout at that point and didn't need that help anymore.

How did you train your muscle memory and awareness when you don't have much time to react?

Honestly, this just came with time. While I did run Windows probably the entire first year I played DBD and it helped me to have a general idea of how tiles spawned and about where they did, the majority of my learning came after I took it off. Looking for auras around the map is not nearly the same as glancing at a tile and immediately knowing in your head how it's laid out. It's much less panic inducing lol. Taking Windows off shockingly made me a much stronger looper than I had been before because it forced an awareness I was lacking.

the awareness generated by WoO seems to be transient probably because once you have the aura, that knowledge is kept on auto pilot and you merely respond to the information whereas normally you are more actively mindful which makes it easier to commit to memory.

it's best to think of WoO as a perk that modifies your survivors bhvr to act as if they have all the locations memorized.