Update 4 of 14.1

[Otávio,o avestruz radical]

This update supposedly releases today, time unknown. Probably in like 9-ish hours from now, but don’t quote me on that. They released this changelog at midnight over here. Come on, NW, that’s past my bedtime!

Anyways, first up, respawn wave changes.

- The total amount of possible primary respawn waves has been reduced to 4 (from 5). This means teams can now only earn up to two waves instead of three.
- Mini wave delay timer can now only be reduced to a minimum of two minutes after a primary wave (from 1 minute and 30 seconds).
- SCP-049-2 kill reward changed to no longer grant influence. It does, however, still reduce wave timer by 5 seconds.

So you may notice here that this hasn’t changed much. There’s one less big wave and mini waves come in a little slower (which I believe also means you have more time to get the required points for a mini wave of your team?) + the 049-2 change. According to Onion, the team likes that people are spending less time on spectators, and the philosophy of the changes was instead to bring the SCPs up to the power level of the militants. We’ll get there in a moment. But first, there’s also some DMS changes.

- The Deadman’s Sequence progress meter (not an active detonation countdown for DMS) will now reset back to 2:30 minutes upon a new Respawn Wave being earned regardless of its current progress. Mini-waves will not reset the counter. Instead, it will set the counter’s progress back by 40 seconds. (This can not delay it past its initial starting point of 2:30 minutes.)
- Upon Deadman Switch activation, SCPs below 25% of their maximum health are brought up to 25%.

The first change aimed to fix a problem where sometimes a wave or mini wave happened and then immediately the sequence started, giving that team an immense advantage over the other team(s). The other change is pretty interesting, giving the SCPs this slight edge for fighting people on the surface after surviving so long. I kind of dig it.

Now for the SCPs. First up is 049.

- HP increased to 2500 (from 2300).
- Doctor’s Call cooldown decreased to 45 seconds (from 60).
- 049-2 HS regeneration rate while under Doctor’s Call effects increased to 20/s (from 10/s).
- Good Sense of the Doctor cooldown is now consistently 25 seconds. Currently it has a separate cooldown depending on if 049/049-2 killed the target or not. The 2.5 seconds miss cooldown is not affected.

A bit more health and Doctor’s Call is more efficient. The issue I take with here is the GSotD change, or rather what wasn’t changed. They just made the cooldown consistent, which hey, love me some consistency, but the problem is the speed. If 049 uses it in Heavy, 9 times out of 10 you’re just dead because it’s much faster than you. The buffed speed made some sense previously because I believe it was pre-Heavy rework and humans had many more doors to work with. I think even if it means it’ll suffer a little more on the other zones, the speed of GSotD should’ve definetly been decreased.

079’s change was pretty minimal. They just buffed the AP regen rate of Tier 1.

- Tier 1 AP regen increased to 1.9/s (from 1.2/s).

And then there’s…oh boy, 096…

- HP increased to 3000 (from 2500)
- Minimum HS increased to 500 (from 450)
- Maximum HS increased to 1000 (from 900)
- Speed while Distressed and Calming increased to 3.3 m/s (from 2.55 m/s). These are the states where 096 is transitioning from Docile to Raging and Raging to Docile respectively.
- Sobbing while Docile now has doubled audio radius. Try Not to Cry is unaffected.

Can you tell that an 096 lover was behind the changes? Jokes aside, yeah, wtf?? That’s WAAAAAY too much health on an 096, man. It’s pretty crazy that 049 got a fairly reasonable health increase and then this mf got a 500 HP buff AND an HS buff. On the plus side, at least they made the crying louder, ay?

106 changes were also pretty minimal.

- Attack cooldown reduced to 1.25s (from 1.5s).
- Corroding no longer drains stamina, instead it only prevents its regeneration while active.

173’s are pretty interesting.

- Armor efficacy on base health increased to 100% (from 80%)
- HS now regenerates at a rate of 4%/s. This means it will take 25 seconds to fully regenerate HS regardless of how much maximum HS 173 has, equivalent to regenerating minimum HS to full.

173 now joins 106 and its HS also regens at a % rate. What’s more interesting is that now it got the 100% armor, after years of slowly building up to that. How bulky is this armor? Well, let’s take default E-11 DPS and damage per mag for comparison. Previously, those values were ~195 DPS and ~843 damage per mag. With 100% armor, these values go down to ~166 DPS and ~720 damage, so it’s about 15% more tanky against that.

939 got nothing because it’s God’s most perfect SCP, ig.

Besides those changes, Pipe Room is also being changed. Yes, again. From the changelog, “The upper area is now considered a playable area. A staircase has been added for improved accessibility, and the arrangement of pipes have been flattened to increase area.”. There’s also an inaccessible lower area. I believe the patreons already got a screenshot of what the Pipe Room looks like, but unfortunately I can’t show it. The elevator in Server room now kills you even if you stand behind it, so beware if you liked exploiting that, and another 173 blink shenanigans has been fixed in Server room.

For the one guy that cares, there’s now a TextToy. “a world space text capable of syncing text and formatted text arguments to the client”.

[Ω Arkandor]

yeah, 096 didnt need that health buff. His base health was alredy good, you either wait for him to cry again and gang up 3 people and kill him or nearly kill him or someone with micro/jail bird does the job. Also he's more like to get destroyed if he rush a wave so he picks like 2-3 players and run away to regen shield. He's alredy pretty offensively strong if you have time to pull the rage balanced by the fact that he's harmless and can suffer massive damage if 1-2 people find you and keep shooting at you before 96 pulls the rage.

Only thing i would like to see a rework for 96 is his anger field of vision. Sometimes it can trigger without you even properly looking into his face.

[Ender]

Whoever is responsible for the changes that 096 has received clearly has no idea what they are doing and should be removed from the game design team ASAP.

[Otávio,o avestruz radical]

Originally posted by Ender:

Whoever is responsible for the changes that 096 has received clearly has no idea what they are doing and should be removed from the game design team ASAP.

Again, quotting OnionMan here:

"096 got a rather large health increase for a reason. His hitbox is noticeably larger than other SCPs, and considering we buffed accuracies in 14.0 and are now expecting the scps to deal with a lot more militants, making the class meant to fight on the frontline able to do that without being crippled for the rest of the game was needed.

Its something we'll monitor though, and changing his health on the release patch if needed is a simple value change"

I can see what he means and where he's coming from, but at the same time, like... it's really hard to gauge how much damage 096 is expected to receive in a round where it's playing "well".

From my experience, it's roughly a 50/50. Either it straight up dies relatively early, usually from Micro but it can die from other damage sources, or it takes minimal to no damage the whole round. There's rarely an in between of that. Maybe it's a region thing? Maybe in like the US people are a lot more eager to shoot the 096? Or maybe somewhere else it's even worse and no one wants to shoot it...

idk man, I think until 096 rework/rebalance number 852351467910 rolls up, I'd refrain from doing many changes to it, particularly health. (The crying being louder was a good change, though!)

[Sex destroyer]

the fools think that the skinny albino can be salvaged

how FOOLISH of them fools

[derpasorus-rex]

049 and 079 changes are nice
096 is just unneeded for the most part
i can understand the HS buffs for slightly better survivability but the 500 hp increase is a little extreme
and 106 change is not much difference

[Auto cone]

Most of these changes i'm ok with, but why do they gotta buff 096 again for poorly executed reasons.

Wish they'd just finally remove 096 and 173 from this game, i'm genuinely tired of seeing them in almost every SCP game that's trying to be like CB and they honestly aren't that good/flexable for most pieces of media (Especially for something like this), and even if they were i'd rather have them not appear in said media.

Hope they go back and revert some of these changes cause this really ain't seeming very balanced.

[Otávio,o avestruz radical]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krN6UvINe5w

They put in a quote by a brazilian writter in the beggining of this one.

...

I forgive every sin the writting team has commited...for now...

[76561198450747805]

Can they STOP buffing 173? It has been the strongest SCP for how many years now?

096 changes are not what it needs. They simply make the Shy Guy stronger where it was already strong, but do nothing with its main weakness: dying to 3+ people shooting it during the Distressed state, or literally one person activating the Micro HID right next to it.

[Otávio,o avestruz radical]

Originally posted by SMILE:

Can they STOP buffing 173? It has been the strongest SCP for how many years now?

096 changes are not what it needs. They simply make the Shy Guy stronger where it was already strong, but do nothing with its main weakness: dying to 3+ people shooting it while the rage mode slowly activates, or literally one person activating the Micro HID right next to it.

Y’know, I’m not gonna contest you with the 173 thing, even if I think the opinion of it being the single strongest SCP in the game is…certainly one of the opinions of all time.

What I want to know is the reasoning for the 096 logic. It has more health and more shield, plus it gets to move faster while enraging. Yeah, that’s probably still not gonna do much in the Micro HID matchup, but does that not help it better tank/dodge the 3 guys trying to kill it before it enrages?

[76561198450747805]

Originally posted by Otávio,o avestruz radical:

Y’know, I’m not gonna contest you with the 173 thing, even if I think the opinion of it being the single strongest SCP in the game is…certainly one of the opinions of all time.

This opinion is yet to be proven wrong.

Originally posted by Otávio,o avestruz radical:

What I want to know is the reasoning for the 096 logic. It has more health and more shield, plus it gets to move faster while enraging. Yeah, that’s probably still not gonna do much in the Micro HID matchup, but does that not help it better tank/dodge the 3 guys trying to kill it before it enrages?

These changes help in that situation only because they improve 096 in EVERY situation.

[Ender]

Originally posted by Otávio,o avestruz radical:

Originally posted by Ender:

Whoever is responsible for the changes that 096 has received clearly has no idea what they are doing and should be removed from the game design team ASAP.

Again, quotting OnionMan here:

"096 got a rather large health increase for a reason. His hitbox is noticeably larger than other SCPs, and considering we buffed accuracies in 14.0 and are now expecting the scps to deal with a lot more militants, making the class meant to fight on the frontline able to do that without being crippled for the rest of the game was needed.

Its something we'll monitor though, and changing his health on the release patch if needed is a simple value change"

I can see what he means and where he's coming from, but at the same time, like... it's really hard to gauge how much damage 096 is expected to receive in a round where it's playing "well".

From my experience, it's roughly a 50/50. Either it straight up dies relatively early, usually from Micro but it can die from other damage sources, or it takes minimal to no damage the whole round. There's rarely an in between of that. Maybe it's a region thing? Maybe in like the US people are a lot more eager to shoot the 096? Or maybe somewhere else it's even worse and no one wants to shoot it...

idk man, I think until 096 rework/rebalance number 852351467910 rolls up, I'd refrain from doing many changes to it, particularly health. (The crying being louder was a good change, though!)

At this point, especially after certain questionable balance changes that Northwood made in 14.0, I don't think that they can ever make 096 work. They should instead focus on trying to find a suitable replacement.

[RocketPillow]

Originally posted by SMILE:

Can they STOP buffing 173? It has been the strongest SCP for how many years now?

My favorite SCP to play as for many years. Coincidentally the one I've also died to for many years.

I wish there was an easier way to host private servers for friends, cause despite the big ass map, the initial confusing learning curve for new players, and the far smaller player count, it's more fun than public.

Balancing doesn't really matter when everybody enjoys messing around, dying, messing around, and dying again.

[Otávio,o avestruz radical]

Originally posted by RocketPillow:

My favorite SCP to play as for many years. Coincidentally the one I've also died to for many years.

I used to find 173 kind of lame and boring, but after playing a few rounds with it recently, I grew to appreciate it. Went way up in my preference slider, even.

[Azeltorez Ⓢ]

I think that these are... interesting choices for changes, especially the DMS effect, but I would've loved something that rather than giving flat initial buffs to the SCPs, made them stronger the longer the round went on, to compensate for the attrition effect of the high rate of spawn waves, and to reward them for when they kill most of a spawn wave. Maybe even a way to spot the one or two last remaining humans, due to the issue of them just staying on surface playing snake or hiding in light after slipping past the SCP team, idk.

[Azeltorez Ⓢ]

Also, disappointed to see literally nothing for dog. I understand the issue of trying to buff dog due to their heavy focus on ambushes and misdirection, but something like reducing the cooldown of amnestic cloud based on the size of the cloud created a little bit more would be nice, since that's the main tool that allows it to mess with people when there's large groups of them, rather than just focus behind a door and lunge on the first person and try to run away before getting mulched.