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Ruin Nerf, Gen Speeds, and balance suggestions.
Quick background on me feel free to skip if you don't care, but some people might.
I'm a killer main that consistently gets to red ranks and usually bounce in and out of rank 1/rank 2. As a survivor, i generally hover around the purple ranks. I'm not quite as good at survivor but i do generally play it. I almost exclusively play survivor solo, although sometimes i play with some friends who aren't too good to mess around and have fun together. I have been playing DBD since about 2018 for most of the year, then i took a break for most of 2019 and came back near the later part of the year, and am back now. I have around 300 hours of playtime. I created this account on the forums specifically to post this.
The Ruin nerf is coming, whether we like it or not. Killer mains everywhere are complaining how fast gens are and how this will "ruin" the game. At high ranks, and especially against SWF i agree with them. However, i recognize what the devs are trying to do. As a survivor, ruin is hell. It is really hard to play against when you aren't that good at the game. I generally have a hard time against it, and most of my survivor games are basically a race to the ruin. If we can find the ruin before the first couple of hooks, we tend to have a good time, if not we lose. It is too binary. On top of that, it makes the game really hard to balance. Ruin is pretty balanced at high ranks, but at low ranks it is extremely overpowered. This creates some problems in balancing that are nearly impossible to deal with for the devs without getting rid of ruin.
Because of these things, i AGREE that ruin, in it's current state, NEEDS TO GO.
With it gone though, we now have a problem with gen speeds going by too quickly at high ranks, and probably still a bit too quick in lower ranks. However, the solution should not just be to increase gen times passively. Holding down mouse 1 for longer periods of time isn't going to help. It will just make the game more boring and not promote chases and killer/survivor interaction, which is the part of the game that is fun.
Additionally, one of the other major balancing problems is the RNG aspect of the game, especially as it relates to Hex totems. In games with current ruin, i can have games where the survivors find the hex less than 30 seconds after the game has begun. And others where they never find it. The difference is extremely obvious and makes the totems either too weak, or too powerful.
Without further ado, there are 2 major changes that should be made to the game to solve the RNG aspect, and deal with gen speed, without making the game more boring.
The Major Changes:
- Show survivors and killers the remaining number of dull totems on the map as an indicator on the HUD.
- For each dull totem remaining on the map, slow gen progression by 5%. (Could be tweaked)
- Increase the cleansing time of dull totems from 14 to 15 seconds (I like "even" numbers)
- Remove Hex totems from the game. All Hex perks now use dull totems to gauge how powerful they are, when all totems are removed, the Hex perk is also removed.
Hex Perk Changes:
- Devour Hope: Every time a survivor is rescued from a hook at least 24 meters away, devour hope receives a token.
- At 2 tokens gain 3/4/5% haste status effect 10 seconds after hooking a survivor, for a duration of 10 seconds
- At 3 tokens, survivors suffer from the exposed status effect
- At 3 tokens, grants the ability to kill survivors by your own hand. The number of tokens required for this is increased by 1 every time a dull totem is removed. If this effect is active and a dull totem is removed, making it so you no longer meet the token requirement, remove the effect until the requirement is met again.
- Haunted Ground: Once all dull totems are completed, all survivors become exposed for 40/50/60 seconds and have their locations revealed for 3 seconds.
- Huntress Lullaby: Survivors receive a 2/4/6% regression penalty when missing any skill check
- Time between the skill check warning sound and the skill check becomes shorter for each dull totem remaining.
- When 5 dull totems are up, there is no skill check warning.
- No One Escapes Death: Maintains current functionality, survivors are immediately notified once the gens are done that NOED is in effect. Also makes the totem glow/behave like current hex perks.
- Ruin: Gens automatically regress when not worked on. Regression speed is increased by 40% for each remaining dull totem.
- The Third Seal:
- While there is at least 1 dull totem remaining, survivors hit are affected by Hemorrhage.
- While there is at least 3 dull totems remaining, survivors hit are affected by Blindness.
- While there is at least 5 dull totems remaining, survivors hit are affected by Broken.
- This works for the last 2/3/4 survivors hit.
- Thrill of the Hunt:
- For every dull totem remaining on the map, gain 10% more bloodpoints in the hunter category
- Cleansing speed is reduced by 4/5/6% for each remaining dull totem on the map
- When a dull totem is completed, reveal that survivors location and aura are revealed for 3 seconds
- Increases the number of dull totems that spawn on the map by 1
These changes would do several things. It would naturally slow down gen progression through the dull totems being up. Survivors can look for these to increase gen speed, or ignore them and leave it at 100 seconds per gen. This gives the killer enough time to patrol gens faster if the survivors don't remove the totems, making it riskier to gen rush. If the survivors to opt to do the totems, it will make the gens go faster.
This also makes hex perks more consistent. With all dull totems up they become extremely powerful. When a few are done they generally maintain current power level, and when they are all done they are removed. This means that hex perks tend to start out really strong, but get worse, as the game goes on. They are also now tied to dull totems, making it so that they are directly tied to the game objective.
This means that they will be less likely to be "accidentally found", more likely to stick around longer, but also be tied directly to the game objective so they don't slow the game down further (unless the perk specifically does that). This also will buff several of the hex totems that aren't very good, like TOTH, Third Seal, and Lullaby.
Let me know what you think! Thanks for reading.
Comments
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- Removal of the repair penalty means the gens would be done so much faster, even with a 30% penalty.
- With Ruin also dependent on standing dull totems, you have a 30% repair rate, or a 240% regression penalty, which is chump change as the rate of regression is 2 seconds of regression for 1 second of survivor time, which, while shortening the time needed to fully regress, doesn't affect the early game at all.
- People have already completely memorized totem spawns at high ranks, meaning that unless you get a map like The Game where totems are few and far between, it's a useless change while on the flip side it guarantees a victory without any real skill required on the killer's part.
- The issue with hex perks is less the consistency, and more so the fact that they generally didn't give enough reward for taking the perk. For example, I run MYC/DH on my hag, Im lucky if it lasts past the first hook in the higher end of games, meaning I just lost 25% of my loadout.
- The better solution is to simply just let killers open a screen for every map, and preplace totems themselves, which would also be a good way to buff Trapper and hag in the early game as well.
There's no real way to balance gen times by lengthening them. What needs to be done is disassemble it into parts needed before you can start repairing, and then keep the current gen time. It prevents gen rushing without creating artificial pressure, meaning that either side can still snowball if they're coordinated.
(Edit: Gen times by your proposal:
1pg: 104 seconds
2pg: 57 seconds
3pg: 42 seconds
All it does is just cause people to find a gen someone else is on and power through that without touching totems)
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Not sure where you got your numbers but they are wrong it would be 100 seconds base not 104. I do know what you are saying about that, but i think that aspect would be more difficult for the devs to make. Dull totems currently exist and repurposing them this way would be easier than making an entire new game mechanic. This is why i think this would be a better solution as they would be able to more quickly get it out and it would be less likely to break.
I also see what you mean by gen speeds with multiple survivors and i do think that penalty should stay at this point now that i see the math more clearly. I have edited my OP to reflect this.
In response to your points:
- You are right an i have removed this suggestion
- The purposed changes i make to ruin would mean with 5 totems it regresses at 300% the rate meaning only 25% slower than the speed survivors do it at. Not sure where your math is coming from
- This may be true, but it is already the case that hex totems go so quickly. This would mean your hex lasts more than 30 seconds in this case. It would require them to cleanse at least 2-3 totems, which would require them time to find them (even if they memorize spots they still need to check them all) and each totem cleanse takes 15 seconds. That should easily be an extra 30ish seconds for each totem making the survivors have to do something else besides gens.
- i disagree, Hex perks in general are very strong in practice, but they take so long to get their effect, such as with DH. You actually proved my point by saying your DH is gone so quick you cant use it. That is exactly my point, if it took much longer for survivors to do the totems instead of just finding the one, you would get much more use out of your DH. You would have expose for much longer and you have a higher chance at getting a mori later in the game.
- This could be the case but it also makes the game harder for survivors. Killers can start putting totems in really weird places making it much more difficult for survivors to find them. This would make hex perks too strong and i think the idea would be to reduce the RNG factor, as survivors could still accidentally stumble on it, or never find it and be left against a really powerful perk.
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Agreed. It needs to be a number where cleansing them is efficient but doing gens is also still viable if you can't find any totems.
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30% of 80 is 24, 24+80=104
From there it's just 30% of the time it takes to repair a gen with each person added onto the normal time.
All that does is change the optimal repair speed from 1 person to two on a gen and that time dips nearly in half to 57 seconds, meaning your change gets negated by not touching totems at all. While Hex perks do need an overhaul to this, I disagree with tying gen times to dull totems for that reason. As it is they need to overhaul gen completion to be more than just M1 simulator.
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You have a problem with increasing gen times?
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Gens right now are braindead. They are the EZ mode of the game. Requiring survivors to find stuff in the trial before they can start repairing, and then tying more items to each stage of the gen requires them to actually search the map, and makes it just as hard to apply pressure to the killer as it is for the killer to pressure survs.
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Again, not sure where this is coming from, there are 5 totems, not 6, 25% increased speed would make it 100 seconds. Unless you are talking about with the new thrill, which is more meant to go with other hex perks to make them stronger, but does have the added effect of adding a few extra seconds to gens.
This is exactly the point though, it is viable to ignore the totems completely or also go do them. it needs to be relatively balanced toward that so that survivors can make the choice. But if they ignore the totems they run into the potential of getting a DH mori at only 3 hooks or having to deal with exposed the whole game. Hex perks become much stronger and more likely that someone will be running one making it so survivors are more incline to do the totems to deal with the hexes.
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If they implemented your changes, killer winrate would skyrocket and the game would die because all survivors would quit.
The only way survivors would have any chance would be if they only used an optimal loadout and only played with friends.
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My bad, had the numbers reversed on the percentage and totems. So at 25%
1pg: 100
2pg: 52
3pg: 39
That will still just shift the meta to two people on a gen rather than totem hunting.
I do think hex perks should be tied to total number of totems, but gen speeds can't be reliably balanced around them due to what I just mentioned. Those times are with the repair penalty as vanilla times are
1pg: 80
2pg: 44
3pg: 33
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The ruin part is not extremely hard to deal with. Like you said, the newer ranks are extremely difficult at beating against ruin, while in higher ranks it is balanced, perhaps requires even more buffs to totem spawns.
But that just seems like a skill issue, not a balance issue.
Remember, they reworked ruin because it is hard to deal with for newer players. So, it is impossible for the devs to rework hex perks and totems to work the way you listed.
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Its interesting idea to give hex perks 5 totem lives.
I dont like instant NOED notification. It will make the game more predictable than it already is. Its boring.
About Ruin - I would make it like Pop. If survivors let go generators, they explode and lose half of repairs progress.
Devour Hope number of stacks for mori, imo, do not need to be changed. Its not easy to get 5 stacks in a good match. Exactly 5 hooks to mori is perfect number. Exposed, yes, can change. With 5 totems, exposed after 3rd hook can snowball too quick. If breaking totems would delay it, that can be interesting.
Huntress Lullaby- I like the idea.
Haunted Ground sound like NOED, so I would change it. Maybe instead of making everyone exposed at the end it would make everyone exposed while survivors are cleansing totems? :D SWF can dodge the bullet, so it would need a litlle more- at least 15s of exposed effect after a totem is broken + it would stack. If SWF break 2 totems at the same time = its 30s.
The rest- I have no opinion or I felt too lazy to think about it.. :c
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Not really, as someone has already said, the meta would switch to two Survs per gen, which means Prove Thyself will be used more often, and that'd help Survivors quite a bit. This also doesn't account for toolboxes, which already make Gens go nearly twice as fast.
Discordance would be silent buffed by these changes, but so would totem Hunter builds.
I like these ideas, and I'm a hybrid player, higher rank on Survivor.
Maybe not the haunted grounds though, little too strong.
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Give killer totem perk extra slot. The perk still requires killer to perform an action for example for ruin to work. Killer must kick gen and only that gen now has ruin hex on it. For NOED to work killer must have at least one hook on that survivor. If survivor was not hooked then NOED isn't in effect.
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