Q&A #4 - Complete Feedback about Discussed Changes

Soren

Rank 1 Killer/Solo Survivor, plays both sides pretty equally, yada yada, you know the speech.

I : Healing Changes

Base heal goes from 12s to 16s.
Self-Care heal goes from 24s to 32s.
Mangled effect goes from 25% to 20% debuff.

Probably the best feature discussed. Time is the most valuable ressource in the game, and what every killer struggles with in high rank. These changes make Sloppy Butcher viable, since it will make a self-heal takes 40 seconds (!) and is an indirect buff to Nurse's Calling. Pressuring survivors will be easier, and actually useful with Sloppy Butcher. Definitively a step into the good direction.

Possible change: Self-Care decreasing healing speed on yourself, but also on other players

As said by not_Queen, it will hurt solo survivors who don't run Self Care more than anything. This is not the solution. Your best input on a Self-Care nerf was: you lose charges if you stop self-healing ; but it might be overkill to nerf Self-Care with the changes discussed above.

II : Sabotage Changes

Buff hook respawn from 3 min to 3 min 30.
Reveals auras of hooks.
Changes to toolboxes.

Now, that is a nice feature. A lot of people, including killer mains, want Sabotage to come back, but in a healthy way. I don't think this will be enough of an incentive for people to come back to Saboteur, though. Maybe an ultra-rare addon to insta-break one hook?

III : Slugging Changes

Recover cap goes from 85% to 95%.
Recover speed goes from 40% (?) to 50%.

Now, this idea is really silly, especially when you know it came as an answer for someone asking about anything to slow down the game. Slugging is, as for now, probably the best stall in the game. It makes several survivors busy for a quite amount of time, and makes altruism actually dangerous since you can interrupt it before they have time to heal them back to injured.

A "tap to heal" is just a huge nerf to any slug build, and slugging in general. It makes killer's strategies even less viable, and there is no reason to nerf slugging without making gens take longer. This is a big NO. Killers need more tools to pressure survivors and stall the game, not to destroy the rare good mechanics they have.

Besides, if you buff sabo, common sense would be to buff slug accordingly (not that I want to), not nerf it furthermore.

IV : About gen regression

Gen tap is "fun" according to McLean.
A gen can take up to 5 minutes to fully regress, they don't plan into adressing that.

Now, another thing I don't understand. It is known that any depip squad wannabee can end the game within 4 minutes. Gen regression is heavily survivor favored: it can be nullified by gen tap, and most often isn't reliable to pressure the team since it takes forever to regress. THIS is something that could be changed in order to slow down the game and balance the core mechanics. Makes it 2 seconds to stop a regression, and makes it so that a gen takes 2 minutes to regress, not 5.

V : End game change

Closing the hatch will introduce a new mechanic: full wallhack for the killer as long as survivor outside their terror radius ; survivor has to survive 1 minute before doors auto-open.
Multi-usage Blood Warden in base kit.

Great ideas, but I'm not sure if they will be balanced: hatch occurs when killer is winning, hence the killer should have the upper hand ; doors are powered when survivors are winning, hence survivors should have the upper hand.

The main issue with the hatch is that it is a survivor-sided mechanic, even though survivors technically lost. Survivor finds it first? They escape. Killer finds it first? Nothing they can do about it, and if they choose to protect it, a hatch standoff begins.

If this hatch change goes to live, Sole Survivor should be buffed to block all aura reading within an infinite range when you're the last one alive. Survivor wastes 1 perk slot for this, it should work properly in the end game. A killer still has a counter to this ; they can refuse to close the hatch to bait a survivor, or they can still hunt anyways since all basic tracking perks work properly.

Besides, it comes with another issue: it will reward more bad teams than good teams. Teams that get destroyed early enough will let a ton of pallets for the last survivor to use, while a team, that lasted long enough so that only 1 gen is left to be repaired, won't have many pallets left for the last survivor to stall 1 minute.

Nobody asked for a buff to killers when doors are powered. The known complain is not how the end game is, but how quick the end game happens, because of generators repair time, and the lack of second objective (no reason to break dull totems). As stated earlier - when doors are powered, game should be in favor of survivors, and a multi-usage Blood Warden in base kit is just a punishment for them and a guarantee kill as well if the killer plays well. I think the correct way would be to instead buff Blood Warden to work every time a survivor is hooked, so that it would be a fun gimmick.

VI : Skillchecks

I completely agree with your point of view on this one. Making skillchecks actually hard will just make the game a hell for new survivors, and it's definitively not the way to balance the game, it just makes it more annoying overall. Though, I would like Huntress Lullaby not to be a hex, I don't think its power (that can be countered by paying attention, and that takes time to build) is enough to justify it being a hex.

flamestandish

Healing: I think that the debuff change should only apply to healing yourself. This would encourage people to seek out a team mate to be healed at the faster speed. I am aware that this is already in the game, but making all healing take longer is a bit over the top.

Hook respawn time should be increased further. Make it so that they can't grow back for atleast 5minutes.
OR, as discussed in the Q&A, make it so that base sabotage and toolbox take a shorter time to complete. That way, hooks can be removed whilst a killer is picking up and taking to a hook. (Make sabo great again). I like your idea of instant sabotage addon, make it work the way brand new part works (or used to work).
This would also make Hangmans Trick more usable.

I'd also like to see a feature where if a survivor has already been placed on a certain hook, they can't be placed on the same hook again. This would reduce farming.

I also put forward an idea/change for the perk Boil Over (I posted it up in Not_Queen's discord).
"Boil Over change:
Level 1: The entity blocks the use of the nearest hook.
Level 2: The entity blocks the use of the nearest 2 hooks.
Level 3: The entity blocks the use of the nearest 3 hooks.
This also works on basement hooks ^ but as we know, there are 4 in the basement".

"it would make more sense than just obscuring the view of the hook aura from the killer. in many occasions the survivor goes down in range of a hook. the killer would have probably seen this hook while chasing and knows it is there. and, he can scout the area before picking up the survivor with boil over. Kates perk currently doesn't really do anything worth while in my opinion.".

Slugging. Your point regarding slugging and gens take long time is in no way related. I think you are just trying to make a reasoning behind this change but that certainly isnt it.
I can see what you mean about the sabotage reference, in the case of slugging, then yes sabotage buff does promote slugging. But in fairness, neither is fun for any player. We sabotage = Killer unhappy., We dont sabotage = Killer hooks and ends our game.

Slugging, yes, is a viable strategy in some cases. However, if you played the previous versions of DBD you would have seen how much gameplay it actually did produce in a positive way. Having an extra 10% fill on your meter isn't really that great. Yes it helps survivors pick up a friend quicker, but in all senses of the game, it doesn't really effect anything. Also, it is not just a 1 tap deal, it still takes 3 seconds or so. Rather than the 5 seconds it previously took. It's not really a big deal. (this is including the self heal changes!).

The change that they made regarding end game sounded to me, too much like how Deathgarden is. When the objective is done, the exits open and the Hunter can see the aura of the runners. We don't need a feature like this.

HOWEVER, also discussed in the stream was a timer that would count down when the exits are open so that the survivor would have to leave the match. This, i can see as a good idea. A kind of 'Time till Daylight'. Which would work well with the games name. I've always had this idea that the whole game should be timed and if things are not done within the time (until sun-up) the game would end.

Whether it would end in survivor favour, or killer favour is another story. Anyway. A Death timer could be a good addition. But randomly revealing the survivor location is a bit dumb.

And, Still. I say NO to the closing the hatch mechanic. That is incredibly dumb. What I would like to suggest again is a second hatch which; if used, the survivor would only get half or less than half the points that using the gate would. The killer would only be able to 'camp' 1 of the hatches.

Your blood warden change sounds good, but im not sure that would be needed in my opinion. Maybe different perks to do a similar thing, but I quite like how Bloodwarden is right now.

Skillchecks, I made a killer idea suggestion a while ago 'The Mimic', one of her perks was called 'Mirrored Edge' which was to reverse skillchecks so they are counter clockwise. This was discussed on the stream. I still like this idea. Here is my DLC killer idea which said perk on (its in an image so click the link)

Other than that, leave skillchecks as they are, OR revamp the whole skillcheck look and feel and change it completely. Neither hard or easy!.

Good thread by the way, rated up!

Master

I have no idea how the devs even come up with the idea to change the slugging cap from 85 to 95.
That literally means that it is 3 times, yes THREE TIMES, easier to pick up a survivor.

Thats literally insane, how about tripling gentime? That would be a joke too.
Seriously I am starting to lose hope. The whole issue is gentime and it wont help to add alternative (not forced) secondary objectives. They already tried that with the hex totems and survivors always prefer it to rush through the gens and complain about NOED instead of cleansing the totems.

The survivors need to be forced to do other objectives, otherwise it wont help. And taking hooks away from a killer will make him lose momentum and even worsen the genrush situation.

The endgame mechanic is still better than the stupid standoff /hostage situation we have now.
BUT as usual, its a mechanic designed for low/medium ranks. Competent survivors will easily loop you for a minute and then escape, but I wont care, anythign is better than the current situation

Sure, skillchecks might be hard for beginners, but why not simply make them harder the higher you rank up (add different features like counterclockwise, other great spots etc when you reach a certain rank).
Then introduce a small multiplier for your BP which will increase the higher you get, such that you actually reward ranking up and we have an actual competitive game where players want to rank up.

White_Owl

I agree pretty much with all you said.
About the end game, I like how it is now. The only times it annoys me is when there is one last survivor and he is just crouching everywhere doing nothing, but the there are many possible simple solutions, like having a default Whispers after x time you kill your third survivor (just an example).