Killers need something else to do
This is not a killer vs. survivor issue, this is not a "survivor OP" complaint. This is feedback on the general design of gameplay. Right now virtually everything a survivor does besides dying helps them advance their objective, while nothing except dead survivors helps the killer's objective. This creates a one-dimensional gameplay loop for the killer (show, chase, hook) that inevitably leads to the kind of "scummy" behavior that ruins games - from the holy trinity of camping/tunneling/slugging to survivor 2nd chance perk stacking and BM like teabagging and flashlight clicking.
There is virtually zero upside for a chase, for the killer, unless it results in a down and a hook . That is the only thing that helps them win, and even a successful chase concedes objective time to their opponent. A chase where the survivor gets away (injured or not) is a total loss for the killer. Meanwhile, virtually every chase for a survivor is a win to some degree for their side, whether they escape or just buy time.
This encourages survivors to stack perks that give them chase prolonging and hook rescue power over stealth and speed and encourages killers to tunnel and camp.
There needs to be some upside for a killer to engage a chase besides the potential for a down and hook. It needs to be reasonably valuable to the killer to have a chase that only manages to injure a survivor. Conversely, being chased needs to have more downside for the survivor than just the possibility of being downed/hooked.
My suggestion is to make the Entity's trial a test for everyone and not just the killer. I suggest adding another generator or two to the maps (to make it difficult to create a 3-gen type scenario), significantly reducing scratchmarks, and introducing a generous timer for the gens to be completed (much like the EGC) before the entity sacrifices the survivors. This would be in-between being sacrificed by the killer and escaping, in terms of end of game rewards. That timer would have time added when a survivor is killed. Gens should be slower to repair with one survivor than they are currently, but faster with more than one, and should regress without a kick (like with Hex: Ruin, but at a slower rate) by default. Survivors should no longer require a teammate to recover from the dying state. The regression stops when there are two survivors left.
This would encourage roaming from killers, as pushing survivors off of gens would be actually valuable towards completing their objective and not just slowing down the survivors towards theirs. It would give value to chases that do not result in hooks for killers, and make a chase where the survivor was only wounded reasonably satisfying for both sides. It would put more value on escaping the chase, and create a cost/benefit for survivors in prolonging it. It would give killers more breathing room to approach the game with creativity, rather than just a mad dash from gen to gen. It would discourage the spread out gen rush by encouraging teamplay, and would discourage camping/tunneling/slugging by encouraging hunting/stalking/chasing.
Thoughts?
Comments
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If they did anything but kill, they wouldn't be killers.
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Nothing about the current state of the game encourages tunneling and camping. Having interactive chases with all the survivors is the best and most fun way to play dbd. If people tunnel and camp then that's just them being trash at killer. Pressure isn't hard, and the killer gameplay is far from boring with it's repetitiveness. These changes wouldn't be good, and your reasoning behind them leads me to assume certain things about your level of play at killer. A killer that has active pressure on the map, currently, IS doing progress towards their objective of hooking and killing the survivors, since the longer the match goes on, the more it favours them achieving that objective. Why would you think that it doesn't?
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The longer the match goes on the more opportunities the killer has to down and hook somebody, yes, but the longer the match goes on the more progress can be made towards the generators - match length doesn't really favor either side.
I understand the temptation to just say "git gud" but that's not really the feedback I'm looking for. I'm average at both killer and survivor, but see these fundamental issues cropping up the better I get. The game works fine - better even - when you're worse at it. The solution isn't to just get pro as these issues are min/max issues and just get worse as you get better.
Yes, tunneling and camping are symptoms of problems with the game design. They are both "too much" of the only thing the killer can do. I didn't say it was boring I said it wasn't varied enough. The best way for a killer to put pressure on the map is to remove survivors. The best way for survivors to complete their objective is to waste the killer's time. The survivor knows the killer has no other options... and so does the killer. Therefore, survivors load up on chase/hook perks and killers start to tunnel and camp more often than they would if they were just "trash" killers.
Time pressure is the only real pressure in this game, after a certain point. Once survivors figure out what they can do and once killers figure out that they only have one thing they can do, it just becomes a race with one side entirely controlling the finish line.
If the response is just that these ideas are not good because I'm bad, then save it. If there's an actual issue with the design idea, I'm all ears.
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Agree with everything you said except about camping. Tunneling is abhorrent, but they're the same vein.
Camping is designed to punish Survivors, who believe they are going to spank the Killer with an ez unhook recovery. There is law found in this concept assuming all player skill levels are at least acceptable, if not ideal. Tunneling is an extension of this concept. The game seems to me, to be designed so that the survivor team will almost never fully recover after the first hook, however the means of escape can still be within reach if survivors are working on their objectives or enduring and sharing the burden of the chase.
Only Survivors can empower camping. Only a selfish teammate can allow tunneling. These are laws, not simply actions the community evokes as emotional or skill-based detriments describing a certain playstyle of killer. These incidents usually speak more to the Survivor's inabilities than the Killers lack of skill.
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It's pretty easy for the survivor side to recover from the first hook - it's the first death that starts to turn things to the killer's advantage. That's part of where camping comes from. The other motivation is just frustration, as the killer's invariable gameplay isn't very rewarding unless it's entirely successful.
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@JustCats this game isn't meant to be perceived as a crazily competitive game like people like to think it is.
And no, this isn't merely a response saying "git gud" but the way you're talking about tunneling and camping needing to be done is ludicrous and could sway someone to think that response. A killer never needs to camp and tunnel, those two strategies do not offer any pressure on the other survivors or gen progression. I vs'd a Trapper yesterday who said he slugged and camped for gen pressure...that did not stop them getting done at all...it's a delusion to think that camping, slugging amd tunnelling are forced onto players. Just like people are delusional thinking slowdown meta is needed as killer. There are so many thing wrong with the attitudes and mentalities of the playerbase, the game is fine the way it is. If anything needs changing, it's the matchmaking and ranks reset. Playstyles are not a biproduct of the game, they are mentalities of the players.
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@Onyx_Blue I'm not saying that camping/tunneling/slugging are necessarily good strategies, just that they are strategies and ones that survivors (and killers, honestly) don't enjoy. And it's not uncommon to see them as a survivor, and as killer the game definitely pushes you towards them.
I am not saying that players are forced into using those strategies, I am saying that the game design encourages them.
And playstyles are absolutely framed by game design... that's sort of... basic.
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What about the game encourages camping and tunnelling?
Not really the case for DBD though, what with every killer being different and there being 69 perks to choose from. Nothing about dbd encourages camping, tunnelling and slugging.
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I mean... read the OP? The killer has one objective and only one method to accomplish it. Show, chase, hook. The killer is highly rewarded for removing a survivor from the map, and greatly penalized if they're not able to before 3 gens pop.
The survivors have multiple ways to frustrate their one and only gameplay mechanism, so playing "fair" is an exercise in frustration as the survivors always know what the killer is going to do and the killer has to make many guesses as to what the survivors are going to do.
I get that you're a fan of DbD and that's cool - but it's got loads of flaws. One is that the core gameplay loop of the game encourages scummy play. If it didn't... it wouldn't be much of a thing...
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I read the initial post, and it just doesn't make logical sense. The killer is tasked with hooking them all, culminating in their death, 12 later, ideally. That doesn't mean the survivors can go into a match knowing exactly how the killer will approach it, with their strategy etc.
You're attitude is almost like "killer is hard", am I wrong in guessing that? It really feels like you think that. Nothing about what you said makes sense.
DBD doesn't punish scummy play, but it doesn't encourage it either. There are a wide variety of killers, a wider variety of perks and maps too. There's not a direct correlation between the two things; just a common theme between them when players choose to abuse boring playstyles because they aren't punished all the time for doing them.
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@Onyx_Blue I... don't know how to make it simpler for you. I don't mean this as an insult but I've tried to make it as A+B=C as possible. The killer has very little variety in gameplay. Yes, each ability makes things slightly different, but ultimately - for the most part - it boils down to show (hi it's me the killer), chase (picks a survivor and runs after them), and hook (if successful and the survivor gets downed). Again, whatever ability the killer may have will make the chase slightly different, but 1. the survivor immediately knows what that mechanic is and 2. for the most part none of them impact the core gameplay of the chase.
Survivors choose how the chase goes, every time. Do I use this loop, do I drop this pallet, do I use this window, do I try to get away or do I keep him on the leash, do I flashlight, do I locker stun, etc., etc.. In other words, killers have a single mode of play and it is entirely reactive, whereas survivors have multiple modes and has a healthy mix between proactive and reactive. Killers play the game that survivors give them. In addition to that, a chase is only beneficial to the killer if it is 100% successful. If a survivor is not hooked, then the killer gets virtually nothing in exchange for a large chunk of time he gave to the rest of the survivors to complete their objective. With that set of circumstances, the only real proactive gameplay the killer has - where he has agency - is when they camp, tunnel, or slug. It's the only avenue where the game isn't just about four people trying to waste one person's time.
I hope that makes sense for you. If it does not, I don't know any other way to explain it. You'll have to take my word for it; agency and feedback loops are not particularly esoteric design concepts and DbD, with it's simplistic gameplay loop, wears them on its sleeve.
I am saying that adding some time pressure to the survivors would open up gameplay options for killers as well as make the game more strategic for survivors. I am not looking to make killer easier. I don't find killer particularly hard (this isn't a game that takes any real skill), it's more that I find it unpleasant. There's very little room for creativity and it is incredibly constrained.
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