Shadesofjoe

I would put us up against any other team who has ever played this game. Especially @RustInPeace as our Jason. What's funny is that we honestly didn't play at our highest potential as counselors during that tournament because we were never forced to. That said, when we were on and had our A-game going as a team, there weren't many Jason players who had success against us--tournament or otherwise. It's unfortunate to see the game in its current state, because you can't ever have that kind of competitive environment again. There are just too many exploits and glitches.

You can often get decent repair skill check wheels with Vanessa. I do just fine on my own finding parts, taking them to objectives, and making the repairs myself.

Medic, Thick-skinned and Hypochondriac on Vanessa, cause I'm a sweaty tryhard.

Sometimes I'll see a pocket knife on the Packanack picnic table outside the lodge in the cinematic.

Fastest escape I've ever had is 1:28 with the boat on Crystal Lake before the devs "fixed" the game to have a boat starting sound that never existed in the first place.

The best advice I could give Jason players beyond honing their skills in offline bot mode is this... Play lots of counselor matches. Playing Jason well is almost exclusively about predicting counselor behavior. -Is this Vanessa trying to bait me away from an objective? (Probably.) -I see a sound ping near the phone house; are they taking the fuse there? -This Buggzy with a machete seems eager to fight and isn't afraid to die... a telltale sign of a kill squad. (He's trying to get his licks in and die so he can come back as Tommy.) You have to understand what counselors are trying to do before you can become truly effective at stopping them. For less skilled counselors, this is relatively easy. But when you face more experienced players you're going to have to think critically and analyze their behavior...and that behavior is only going to make sense to you if you've played lots of counselor matches and have an idea of how they play. That's my .02 anyway.

Does that include the exploiting?

The lil' Jason was what the organizer staged with it for the photo. I don't think @malloymk got that with the trophy.

He seems to have dubbed himself the definitive authority on competitive F13 play. I'll just leave this here...

After playing this most recent patch for a bit, I feel like there's still some room for tweaking to make Jason more of a threat for the whole game rather than just in a post-rage state. Here are three changes I believe deserve some thought. 1) The phone fuse box should be able to spawn at any house. Those of us who have been playing since day one know all the possible locations for the fuse box on every map. There are several maps where you can simply look at the cabin layout the second the match starts and determine which house has the fuse box. Having this information almost immediately available is extremely advantageous for counselors. Adding more randomness to the fuse box location means that counselors will have to spend more time looking for it. Add in the extra variance of there being a nonzero chance the first counselor who finds the box doesn't have a walkie-talkie yet, and you've inherently lengthened the game... which is to Jason's advantage. 2) Part distribution needs to be less forgiving. The Jarvis House and Pinehurst maps already do this well to a degree. But when it comes to the original three maps, we all know that parts are always near their respective objectives. It's time to change things up. Imagine a game on Higgins Haven where the fuse box is in Blair's Cove but the fuse itself is in the northernmost house in Evergreen Camp. This is an extreme example, perhaps, but it shows the potential of how such a change could impact game play. Simply put--it needs to take more effort for counselors to repair objectives and this is the simplest way to accomplish that. Experienced teams who know how to split Jason between objectives can have the phone/car repaired in 3-4 minutes on Crystal Lake, Higgins Haven, and Packanack. 3) Thick-skinned should only apply to combat damage. As things currently stand, traps are very weak. Counselors with thick-skinned and medic can tank them with absolutely no consequences. Once upon a time, traps were changed so that they put you in the limping state immediately, but thick-skinned gets around this. It's the same problem with window hopping. Jason can break all the windows in a cluster of houses, but if a counselor has thick-skinned and medic, they can effectively kite between cabins for several minutes--especially if one of them has the long table. Changing thick-skinned to only reduce combat damage eliminates both of these problems but still allows the perk to be useful for counselors who want to get in the mix for the kill, or those who want to antagonize Jason pre-rage so that others can complete objectives. The best thing about all of these changes is that they all help Jason to some degree, but you don't have to make any change to Jason himself to implement them. I was able to get attention from @wes during the stream about the fuse box change and he seemed to think it was a good idea. Maybe @mattshotcha can help these other suggestions get some traction and see what the powers that be think of them?

I play with a group of above average to high-level players and have seen no discernible difference in gameplay since the changes. Do you know why? Because none of these players had to rely on chump stuns and other cheap tactics in order to win. They were already adept at avoiding Jason, getting parts to where they need to go, and splitting objectives effectively. You can still have 1-2 players assigned to fend off Jason in tight situations for the first 10 or so minutes. The idea that Jason is somehow "overpowered" now because of this change is nonsensical hyperbole. The stun immunity does help in specific situations but overall if you have enough health sprays and good perks (medic, thick-skinned) you can still kite Jason quite well post-rage. Counselors who were good at the actual game and could work together before the patch will see almost no difference to their games. Counselors who wanted it to be a combat simulator are the ones who are having a hard go of it because they never took the time to learn how to play the objective and just wanted to run around with a wrench so they could pop Jason and tea-bag.

People who actually play the objectives are largely unaffected by the recent changes. It's the counselors who want to gang up on Jason and troll/take the game hostage who are suffering, which is perfectly fine to me.

And the developers are free to balance their game to be more in line with their original intent and vision.

It seems to me that it's the game developers and the publisher who believe escaping is the primary way to play the game...

Exactly my point. Go play MK if you want to 1v1 Jason.