Is gen speed really the problem?
Been seeing a lot of topics focusing on balancing gen speed, or bringing back the old ruin, etc. And i have definitely come across those survivors where it feels like that is necessary. However, i thought about it a bit more and came up with some interesting thoughts.
This game has some of the strangest player skill progression i have ever seen in a competitive game. From the survivor side, very little of your skill in this game is learned naturally. Every instinct that you have as a new player is basically the worst thing you can do. You want to run away as far as you can, and drop pallets early to get stuff between you and the killer, run in a straight line because turning feels like its slowing you down or putting you in a scary 'box'. When you are new to this game, the killer doesn't even need to use his powers to 4k you every game, because you have no idea how to get away from a killer, the game feels almost unwinnable. "The killer is simply faster than you, how can you possibly do anything other than run and hide and hope he loses me?"
On the other hand, with the gen speed the way it is now, it makes top ranked groups basically impossible to defeat as a killer, because none of them are going to waste a single second, always on a generator at all times, all safe being independant from each other split up across the map. All of them knowing exactly how to waste as much of the killers time as possible. You are lucky to even get one hook, much less a kill, before the gates are opened.
So, the biggest problem with balancing the games speed right now, is if they make it slower, it will affect newer/less experiences players on an extreme level.
The balancing act the devs have to do with this game is nearly impossible to do because the skill levels from the average player and the advanced players is SO EXTREME that any change in either direction will be catastrophic to the opposite end.
But, what if we step back and stop focusing on the generator speed as the cause of this problem? We only focus on gen speed because Ruin was the tool we used to fight back against the top tier players. Maybe it has incorrectly caused us to all look through a lens focusing on the generator speed.
Rather than slowing gen speed (which will affect both ends of the skill spectrum) what they really need to do is find a way to slightly nerf the crazy things that only top ranked survivors take advantage of. Because technically its not that gens pop too fast, its that the really good players are able to waste too much of your time in too many places. There are a lot of small little things that make no sense that survivors can take advantage of. I was looped around a fat tree for like a full 30-40 seconds yesterday on huntress. No pallets, just a tree. All because the killer has to fat hitbox around objects a little too much. Even though the chase music never ended, the survivor was just barely out of lunge reach the entire time. I was close enough to basically smell her breath, yet bloodlust wouldn't activate because she was technically behind a tree. It's tiny loops like this that make gives the skilled survivors too many options to stay safe, with very little to no counterplay on some killers.
The bloodlust system seriously needs to be looked at. It mostly only activates against survivors who run in a straight line basically, which is exactly who you don't need it for. It does almost nothing to prevent survivors from just running in tiny circles just because it breaks LOS for half a second intermittently. If they fixed bloodlust to activate just a tiny bit sooner and smarter they could fix this balance problem. For example, lets say there is a loop that a skilled survivor knows he can loop you around 4 times currently before he is forced to drop the pallet, they could tweak bloodlust to activate just soon enough to make him only able to loop it 3 times instead. Making each loop just a 'tiny' bit weaker, still safe enough for survivors to use, just not for ages at a time. I mean, supposedly there is a bloodlust tier II, but i don't think i have ever seen it. There are basically no conditions that would ever allow it to activate.
Another option could be that IF you reach bloodlust, and then they drop the pallet, you should break the pallet a little bit faster in exchange for losing your bloodlust. This would make looping a killer in one location for too long a bad idea, and prevent some of the more unreasonable looping.
Basically, the problem might not be that gens are too quick, maybe it's that chases can be extended for too long in too many places. Giving you the feeling that there isn't enough time to both catch someone, and protect the generators at all. If they can 'shave' off just a few of the things that only advanced survivors use, it won't negatively affect the lower/average player. They don't need to make looping impossible or useless, just some tiles/loops are overpowered in the survivors favor.
Of course, some killers don't have as much of a problem catching survivors/protecting gens as others. Maybe they could tweak bloodlust to be a bit more or less powerful depending on the killer to balance their chasing potential.