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Place-able Totems: Player-specific totem spawns

Kind_Lemon
Kind_Lemon Member Posts: 2,559
in Feedback and Suggestions

Totems

Totem spawns have been for quite some time (this has died down somewhat recently) the subject of a heated playerbase's ire. The history of totems has been difficult, and some of the more memorable highlights were lighthouse totems on hills, totems spawning in the middle of open fields, and totems spawning in LOS of survivors. The developers, since the introduction of totems, have hand-chosen totem spawns, and this post aims to finally break that tradition. Coming from a comment from one of the developers about being unsure if cleansing totems he had placed himself was cheating (humorously stated), I realized that the next step for totem placement was to give the choice to the killer player in each match. Now, this does bring up a series of necessary, complimentary changes that would be needed to shift from developer-placed to player-placed totems, but this post is going to cover all potential issues and pose solutions to each one of them.

The killer receives five dull totems at the start of every match. This is coded into every killer's power, so that just like how GhostFace's crouch is designed, totem placement requires an unused button and is completely optional. The killer may at any point in the trial place down a dull totem (Default E key) directly in front of the killer's own position (this fuctionality is similar to how The Trapper places traps, and this ability includes placing totems inside the basement). Pressing the (E) button again when within 24 meters of the totem will apply the first Hex perk positioned in the killer's loadout (as chosen before loading into the trial). Totems cannot be within 24 meters of one another (cylinder) and take a total of 2 seconds to place into the environment. Consider a summoning from the ground animation (like Freddy's snares).

These changes prevent totems from being too close together, addresses how this ability might function through killer UI, and also (negligeably) provides a potential way for killers to lure survivors (through dull totems) away from objectives.

What this means for NOED

All Hex perks may need to be slightly modified to compensate for this new mechanic, but NOED (and Haunted Grounds) is going to receive special attention in this section. NOED will can no longer be prevented prior to the final gen's completion. Instead, if there is not already a dull totem within 24 meters of the killer, the killer will first have to go through a slowdown and a 2 second animation before lighting the totem, at which point nearby survivors will have a heads up on NOED. This does mean that a killer could hook down a survivor, hook the survivor, and then place the totem right in front of the hook, but scenarios like that already effectively exist currently and do not comprise the majority of experiences with NOED. In the case that this is an issue, the NOED hex might receive a timer and only be able to be applied to a totem for the first 30 seconds following the last gen's completion.

For Haunted Grounds, the hex will not apply to a totem until there are at least two dull totems on the map with the killer within 24 meters of one of them.

Design

Having the playerbase choose their own totem spawns will always ensure that totem spawns are changing from trial to trial and prevents the developers from wasting time and resources on just moving around totem spawns to make finding totems a little harder for players. Additionally, where a killer places his/her totem now carries more meaning and requires more game knowledge and removes any frustration that may arise from particularly bad RNG.

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