Put Hatch in Basement
We all know Hatch mechanics need reworking. In addition to other changes I wonder if it would be good to have the Hatch always be in the basement. Sounds mad... but is it? Not really, read on.
This would only work if the Hatch Standoff situation is fixed. You also would probably need to remove some of the lockers from the basement, so the Survivor can't just pop out a locker and get the hatch whilst the Killer is checking a different locker. I know there are flaws with having a basement hatch but combined with other end-game changes it could be good.
Pros of having a basement hatch:
- Everyone would know where hatch is, removing the tedious hide-and-seek and race to find the hatch when 1 player remains. Yes, if the survivor is closer to the basement when hatch is available then they have an advantage, but you could counter this by making the hatch take time to open by the survivor, or force the survivor to finish a generator to open the hatch the if Exit Gates are not open.
- By making the Hatch in an easily defendable location, it encourages the last Survivor to try and get the Exit Gates open and not just look for the Hatch.
- Killers can use basement perks like Territorial to track survivors camping in the basement waiting for the hatch to open, helping to discourage hatch camping. Maybe other basement perks could be modified to take basement hatch into account.
- Would remove a lot of the pointless timewasting in the hatch hide n seek. If the Killer camps the basement, the Survivor can go off and try to open the Exit Gates (ideally with new mechanic giving increased repair speed if you are the last survivor).
Like I say, there are plenty of caveats here but overall I like the idea, it would fix some of the most annoying aspects of the Hatch and at least encourage players to finish generators. For games where survivors get wrecked you would need some fast way for the last survivor to do gens fast so players don't have to wait around for one guy to do 4/5 gens to open the Exit Gates if Killer is camping basement. But that's honestly no different to the current situation where if the Killer has found the hatch already they will just camp it as soon as 1 survivor is left. Combined with some of the ideas like Survivor's aura periodically revealed to Killer, this could make for an interested endgame cat and mouse around the hatch and generators. Having the hatch in the basement makes it a much scarier prospect and not somewhere you want to be hanging around.
Just throwing it out there!