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Survivors should be able to break the breakable walls
Since the arrival of breakable walls in the Chains of Hate chapter, it seems the devs are trying to find out how to implement them. However, with the recent changes to their placements a while back there are still many walls that the killer definitely shouldn't break. For example, in the Dead Dawg Saloon map there's a room with only a window and three breakable walls that is basically a dead end. The killer has no reason to break them as doing so will create a strong loop for the survivors. These walls have no reason to exist, thus this new mechanic doesn't promote any new interesting plays. A wall will either make a loop shorter or longer when broken and as a killer, I would only break the walls that make loops shorter. There isn't any engaging choice to be made as I'm not putting any thought into my actions, as breaking these walls would only benefit the killer.
However, if the survivors were able to break the walls as well, it would be a different story. To go back to the dead end room I mentioned above, a survivor could break one wall and make a strong loop, which then the killer would have to break another wall to weaken the loop. This new scenario gives me an interesting choice as a killer, do I want to leave the walls as it is in the hopes of trapping a survivor there, but leaving myself open to a survivor breaking the walls themselves and creating a strong loop? Or do I break the wall preemptively, giving a way out for the survivors, but making sure that the survivors can't have access to the strong loop. When survivors are allowed to break walls, the walls that were previously useless suddenly have a purpose, and the killer isn't just mindlessly breaking the walls to weaken loops, they have to think whether breaking a wall or leaving it be is the right choice for the situation at hand.
Of course some walls can benefit the killer alone and I feel that survivors breaking walls would need some balancing, like making it take longer for them or giving a notification to the killer. We also wouldn't want survivors to make permanent infinites by breaking walls. However, if both sides have the ability to break walls, not only would this promote interactivity between the two sides, but allows the devs to create more exciting tiles and gameplay for both killers and survivors.
For example, let's imagine a new tile that the devs created with breakable walls. Normally this tile would be a medium strength tile, but a survivor could break a wall, turning it into a strong tile. However, breaking this wall gives access to another wall, if broken by the killer would make the tile weaker than it was originally. Survivors would have to consider if they want to break the first wall for a temporary strong loop in exchange for the possibility of making it weaker later in the game. On the other hand, the killer could decide to break both walls by himself to not deal with the loop later on, but doing this would waste valuable time that might make a difference between a generator being completed or not.
With only this one tile, both survivors and killers have to think critically about what to do. This gives survivors another optional objective to do besides gens, which could possibly help alleviate the feeling of gens popping rapidly, while giving survivors more opportunity to survive longer, or they could ignore it and focus on gens, risking the fact that they have to deal with weaker loops. It also allows killers to choose which way to play, either break all the walls to weaken the loops or ignore them and try to outsmart the survivors instead. This adds another layer of strategy to both sides as they have more options to help complete their objectives.
I know this is a long post so I'll summarize it here. When only killers are allowed to break walls it limits the choices the killer can make as they'll only break walls that benefit them, thus this mechanic doesn't promote any exciting gameplay. However, when both sides are allowed to break walls the two sides are able to make choices that the other side has to react to. This not only promotes exciting gameplay, but will allow the devs to make new maps and tiles that both sides could interact with. This is why I believe that BHVR should test this version of breakable walls and see if this mechanic would work in DBD.
This is what I think, but I want to see what the forums think. Should survivors be able to break walls or should it remain a killer only ability? Feel free to leave comments below.
Comments
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...when they got the perk "Any means necessary!" equipped! BOOM!
Seriously i don't think that's a good idea, BHVR should just create balanced maps.
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iirc the map will be tweaked a bit. Breakable walls favor killers , not survivors.
Saloon just has the problem of a terrible tile.
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I didn't even think about Any Means Necessary. It would be a good buff for it to break walls quickly with a cooldown. Ideally I would want the normal survivor wall break animation to be longer than the killers so they aren't just creating strong loops left and right. Maybe around 10 seconds or so.
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You put the thread in the general discussions part of the forum.
You don't need to put "discussion thread" in the title
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Jane and David would be able to Dead Hard through them and break them.
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I'm still not even sure I get the point of breakable walls.
Either a loop is advantageous to the killer with the wall up, so why break it OR the loop is just ok without the wall there, meaning it'd have to be completely bonkers with it there, so you have to break it?
Or, third option I guess, it's just irrelevant and gets ignored most of the time.
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Honestly, i don't understand why they implemented the mechanic, rather than just fixing the god loops. However, since they did, it is a killer mechanic to break the god loops. That death room is a mistake. They need to remove it. Survivors, once they realize what it is, will avoid it, and the killer will never break the walls, so it's pointless. it is not, however, a reason to give survivors the ability to break walls.
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Of course I wouldn't want the survivors to break the walls in the same amount of time as killers, for both gameplay and realism purposes. The survivors are weaker so they would have to spend more time breaking a wall, which makes sure that they can't just break walls left and right. And while yes it would give them better loops, they are using time that could have been spent doing gens and ideally there would be multiple walls so the killers would be able to weaken the loop that the survivor created.
Also, I disagree with the walls invoking a sense of dread, as I feel they are a safety net more than anything. If I'm repairing the second floor gen on Dead Dawg Saloon and the walls aren't broken, I feel safe knowing that the killer would have to break the wall to get to me. Plus they are very loud while doing so, giving a survivor enough notice and time to escape.
With this change I'm aiming for a system where survivors can try to outsmart and fight against the killer, as already exists with pallets. People in horror movies don't just stand still and let the killer kill them, they struggle and fight back and lay traps for them. The killer is still powerful as they can break walls very fast and destroy a survivor's plans in seconds, so it's not like the killer has gotten weaker. In fact, from a thematic point of view it makes the killer more threatening, as they destroy all of a survivor's hard work within a couple of seconds, leaving them with a sense of hopelessness as their plans fail them.
I do understand your point that the walls are intended to be a killer only mechanic, but I believe with this change, if done right, could make the game more exciting. However, there should be some walls that can benefit only the killer benefits from as they are supposed to be the power role, and the walls should reflect that to an extent.
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Something else for survivors to do other than gens? Might be a decent idea.
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I wouldn't be opposed to a perk that lets survivors break breakable walls maybe. All maps would have to have breakable walls, though. Maybe give survivors some bloodpoints for breaking them too.
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I don't think making the ability a perk would be the right idea. If the devs made breaking a wall beneficial for survivors then it would be one of the most used perks as it opens up looping opportunities, and we wouldn't want to decrease perk diversity anymore than it already is. If the devs leave walls as a mechanic that mostly benefits the killer than this perk would be useless as you would be actively hurting yourself by weakening the loops for everyone.
If the devs were to allow survivors to break walls I think that it would be best to make it a base mechanic and balance the game around that.
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It doesn't make any sense from a lore perspective. It's not like they can break pallets.
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How does adding another perk to the meta decrease perk diversity?
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For your first comment the walls in Dead Dawg Saloon are thin, worn down and have gaps in them. They might not break them as fast as killers but I can imagine a survivor can break them if using enough force. Plus all survivors can repair gens, perfectly heal survivors and run as fast as normal after being chainsawed in the back so we can say that the Entity allows this to happen from a lore standpoint (it feeds on hope, so why not allow survivors to break walls to give them hope of escaping the killer?) Pallets are thick and are capable of hurting a killer so I couldn't imagine a survivor breaking them. Plus why would a survivor break a pallet when it's one of the few things they can use to protect themselves from the killer?
For your second comment, if the devs change the walls so that breaking walls allows survivors to create stronger loops, than all high rank survivors would want this perk in order to get access to a mechanic that they wouldn't normally have access to. It would be like how old Ruin was used as a band aid to slow down gens before all the map and gen changes happened. Since Ruin was nerfed, it wasn't used in 80% of red ranked matches, allowing killers to use different perks, whether they be gen perks or other perks with different effects. If people felt they had to use this perk to make better loops, then this perk wouldn't become part of the old meta, it would be the new meta. I rather if this change was made that it would be available to everyone and then perks could be changed to affect the mechanic, rather than limiting an entire mechanic to one perk.
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I guess the walls are breakable enough, but just because breaking a wall might make some chases longer there could still be downsides, limitations, and complications that would make the perk balanced. Like maybe breaking walls could take long, like 16 seconds. In addition, the locations of these walls could be where chases don't usually occur anyways or where survivors don't need that much help in chase. You assume the perk is inherently too powerful, but it actually doesn't have to be.
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You do make some good points. A long breaking animation is needed to balance survivors making good loops and not all walls should be broken by survivors as they would benefit the killer more. However, it is a lot of work for the devs to implement walls on every map that benefit survivors when broken for only one perk. It'll be like the devs announced that breaking walls was a perk for killers when they revealed the mechanic. It's a lot of work for a mechanic that is locked behind a single perk that may be on a dlc character, and they would have to do it for every map they release in the future. I see your point, but I rather they make it a base mechanic for every survivor and then add the limitations as needed rather than doing a lot of work for every map current and future to make sure that a perk that all survivors wouldn't use works as intended. Basically for all the work they would have to do to make the perk useful, they might as well make it a base mechanic.
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True, your argument for breakable walls not being a perk is exactly the reason why Any Means Necessary is a failure of a perk. Either the feature gets a lot of work and is therefore made widely available or the feature gets little work and is put into a perk and is horribly imbalanced, like Any Means Necessary. Thanks for the discussion!
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Thank you for the constructive discussion as well! It was great to discuss how this mechanic would work and what restrictions it needed to make this change fair for both sides.
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