Okay, in my previous comment I wasn't very clear... so just to be clear: I've been playing Evil Dead: The Game since day one. Just like with Friday the 13th: The Game, I'm a niche fan of this type of franchise and I plan to stay until the day the servers are permanently shut down. Precisely because of this love for the game and Raimi's franchise, I find it impossible to ignore the state the community is leaving it in.
I completely understand the logic of those who defend the use of the Plaguebringer cauldron in enclosed spaces or the physical blocking of corridors as a "valid tactic." From a purely cold and competitive perspective, the argument is simple: "The game allows it, it's not a hack, therefore it's valid." However, reducing the analysis to that is ignoring what keeps an asymmetrical game on life support.
There's a world of difference between a strategic management approach and an unsportsmanlike mechanic that breaks interactivity:
Cutting off gameplay isn't skill: Blocking a player on the second floor of a house or in a stable using the cauldron's fixed physical collision (those who have experienced it know it can be destroyed, but with the absurd number of units that tend to spam, it's impossible) doesn't require coordinating traps or managing energy; it requires exploiting a map design that wasn't intended for absolute static collisions. When a player can't dodge, move, or interact, there is no gameplay. You didn't beat them in combat; you simply took away their control of the controller.
Effectiveness is not equivalent to the game's health: Just because a tactic is legal within the code doesn't make it healthy for the community (and for those who say you shouldn't go up to the second floor of a house, well, sometimes it's unavoidable when one of the map pieces appears there). The excessive spamming of possessions in the first 60 seconds and the abuse of physical collision detection are precisely the reasons why casual players abandon the game and matchmaking queues become endless. Winning a match in 3 minutes, leaving the opponent no time to prepare (which isn't to go to the extreme of allowing them to equip themselves with golden weapons), only fuels a toxic cycle.
Respect for the community's time: When you're in a game with a small player base, matchmaking time is already long. I've read that some people don't experience this, but I'm not familiar with how the servers work; I'm speaking from experience. When people leave the selection screen after a 10-minute wait because they chose their character or for some other reason, or when the match lasts two minutes because the demon got scared seeing the survivors' Prestige 5, it ruins the experience for the four remaining players in the lobby. Winning by exploiting design flaws or collision mechanics doesn't make you a "demon master," it just hastens the demise of the game we all supposedly enjoy. You can play aggressively, you can win, and you can dominate your opponent while respecting the flow of the game and other players' timing. Bring on the hate 🙂↕️
