Would a Shared Hook Counter Fix Some Current Issues in the Game? [Serious Responses Only, Please]
INTRODUCTION (YOU DONT HAVE TO READ THE ENTIRE POST BUT PLEASE READ THIS):
I haven't started writing this yet, but I can guarantee you that this will be a long post. This is an idea I've had for a while now, and I've refined it so that it could lighten some of the issues the game currently has, such as:
- Tunneling
- Camping
- Survivors being sacrificed even though there are some people who have yet to be hooked
- An end to the hook vs kills debate
I don't expect this to be the be-all and end-all for this game or for it to even catch the dev's attention. However, if whoever's reading this could share your support, build off my idea, or even tell me why my idea is a flaming pile of #########, I would greatly appreciate it.
I'll include a tl;dr at the end of every following section if you want to quickly read it, as well as a final TL;DR at the end summarizing the entire post.
THE CURRENT ISSUE:
What's currently wrong with the game is what is arguably the most optimal way to play as the killer if you're trying to go for kills, which the game rewards. By killing even just one survivor as early as possible, it makes it incredibly difficult for the remaining three survivors to get any generators completed (assuming both killer and survivor are equally skilled).
If the killer hooks one of the remaining three survivors, then optimally, one of the two survivors will go for the save while the other finishes repairing a generator. If the killer finds one of the remaining two survivors, however, then the three survivors can't finish repairing generators because they're either:
- On the hook
- Going to save the survivor on the hook
- Being chased by the killer
Pair this situation with some gen slowdown perks such as Ruin or Pop, and it's extremely likely that the game will end with at least three people dead. Even though there are perks in the game that encourage getting as many survivors hooked as possible (BBQ, Devour Hope, and No Way Out when the Trickster comes out), the killer will easily get stacks because of how much pressure they can apply to the survivors with only three of them left alive.
Although there are some survivor perks that prevent tunneling such as Decisive Strike, Borrowed Time, and Babysitter, these perks could be countered if the killer goes for the same survivor every other hook.
Stealth is also an option that survivors who are dead on hook could apply, but by playing extremely safe and hiding whenever the killer is moderately close to you, you may as well be dead. Besides, there are several perks, add-ons, and abilities killers have to find survivors. (Perks such as Barbecue and Chili or Infectious Fright, any aura reading add-ons like Myers' Scratched Mirror or Wraith's "All Seeing" - Blood, and the Doctor's Static Blast or Legion's Feral Frenzy).
Although you can take hits for a survivor who's dead on hook and possibly even go down for them, the killer has no reason to stop going after the dead-on-hook survivor. They could very well just ignore you and keep chasing after the survivor who's dead on hook because their death is more valuable than hooking you for the first time.
tl;dr:
If the killer wants the 4k, it's optimal to kill one survivor as quickly as possible, while some survivors have yet to be hooked. This is bullshit.
My suggestion:
If a shared hook counter was made in the game, I believe that would fix several things wrong with the game. Here's what I mean by this:
Currently, if the killer spreads out their hooks across the survivors, the survivors can be hooked a total of 8 times before they're all dead on hook (assuming no one goes to second stage on their first hook). This play style isn't optimal but is considered fair and dignified for killers to play this way among the community. What if we made it so that the killer has to hook survivors a collective total of 8 times before they can kill anyone?
The survivors would all share a hook counter. Every time a survivor gets hooked or for every minute a survivor stays on the hook, the hook counter will go up by 1. Once the hook counter reaches 8, all subsequent hooks will lead to death. This is similar to how the current hook stages work, except rather than each survivor only being able to be hooked twice before dying, all the survivors have to be hooked a collective total of 8 times before any of them can die.
The way stages work will be the same. When you're hooked for the first time, you can still attempt to escape, losing 20 seconds for each failed attempt. Every hook following your first hook will be spent in the struggle stage. Currently, if you spend a minute in the struggle phase, you immediately die. However, with the hook counter, you would continue to stay in the struggle phase, but the hook counter goes up by 1. If the hook counter is already at 8, and you've spent a minute in the struggle phase, then you will die. In the case that a survivor stops struggling to kill themself on the hook, the survivor will die, but the hook counter will not increase. (So if the first downed survivor kills themself ASAP on a hook, the hook counter will only have gone up by 2, leaving 6 more hooks among the survivors before they start dying).
Also, to prevent situations where survivors get one-hooked, if a survivor has been hooked for the first time after the hook counter has already reached 8, then they would enter the first phase without dying. Other survivors can still go rescue the survivor on the hook and this also gives the survivor to use Deliverance if they have it active. However, if the survivor spends a minute on the hook, then they will immediately die. This would encourage the killer to hook each survivor at least once before the hook counter reaches 8, because doing otherwise gives the survivors extra lives.
TL;DR:
Make it so that survivors have to be hooked a collective total of 8 times before any of them can die. If a survivor is hooked for the first time after the 8 hooks have already been used, then they enter phase 1 but don't immediately die until they've spent a minute on the hook or fail the escape attempts.
HOW THIS WILL ALLEVIATE SOME ISSUES:
I'll go one-by-one with how my hook counter idea could potentially fix the issues I've mentioned in the introduction.
TUNNELING:
Let's say the killer tunnels a survivor such that they only hook that one survivor and nobody else. In the current game, that survivor would die after being hooked three times, leading to the 3v1 situation I've mentioned above.
With the hook counter, that one teammate would have to be hooked a total of 9 times before they would die. This gives the single survivor several more chances to keep playing the game despite constantly being tunneled. Also, the survivor will still most likely escape because the other survivors could finish the generators before the killer can hook the tunneled survivor for the 9th time. For killers, it would be most optimal not to tunnel as to spread pressure across more survivors.
Also, if the killer gets the hook counter to 8 by hooking only one survivor the entire match, then they'd have to hook the remaining three survivors twice each because they would be hooked for the first time
CAMPING:
If the killer is camping a teammate, preventing everyone else on the team from safely rescuing the survivor on the hook, in the current game, that survivor would die after two minutes on the hook. In those two minutes, one survivor could fix one-and-a-half generators, which means that all three survivors collectively could only complete four and a half generators. This number doesn't take into account the time it takes to travel between generators, the time spent hovering close to the hooked survivor in hopes that the killer leaves, and also assumes that multiple survivors aren't working on the same generator. (Because each survivor individually repairs slower if multiple survivors are on the same generator). The number also assumes that the killer doesn't have any slowdown perks such as Thanataphobia or Dying Light.
With the hook counter, if the killer camps a single survivor on the hook. It would take that survivor 8 minutes before they died. Although this turns the game into a 3v1, even if there's only one survivor working on generators, that one survivor could finish all five generators in 6 minutes and 40 seconds, which leaves 1 minute and 20 seconds for travel time between generators. This leaves the survivors plenty of time to finish repairing all the generators while the killer is camping. Again, these numbers assume that the killer doesn't have any slowdown perks.
If the killer's objective is to camp the one survivor to death, then there's not much you can do which is unfortunate. However, if the killer is trying to get the 4k, it would be optimal to not camp survivors and instead go for chases and other hooks because the killer wants to keep applying pressure to the survivors.
Also, if the killer gets the hook counter to 8 by camping a single survivor for 8 minutes, the killer would still need to hook the remaining three survivors at twice each because they have yet to be hooked. This opens up a counter to camping. If a survivor runs Deliverance and Decisive Strike, they can trade hooks with the camped survivor, get hooked, and use Deliverance to escape from the hook (because they haven't been hooked yet), and then use Decisive Strike if the killer picks them up.
SURVIVORS DYING BEFORE OTHER TEAMMATES HAVE BEEN HOOKED:
As described in the tunneling and camping sections, if the hook counter reaches 8 and some survivors haven't been hooked yet, then those survivors have an extra life that the killer gave them. If the killer wants to make it so that they don't needlessly give the survivors extra lives, then it would be in the killer's best interest to hook each survivor at least once by the time the counter reaches 8. Although this suggestion doesn't necessarily "fix" this problem, it makes it so that it disadvantages the killer if they haven't hooked all the survivors yet.
HOOKS VS. KILLS:
The current issue with the "hooks vs. kills" debate is that the number of hooks you get is not related to the number of kills you get. With how the game currently is, you could kill a survivor in three hooks, or you can hook a total number of 8 times without anyone dying. This inconsistency also makes it difficult for the developers to balance the game.
To get your first kill in the current game, you will need between 3 and 9 hooks. A 6 hook difference is huge. In the event that the first survivor dies after the 3rd hook, then the match is in favor of the killer as it turns the game into a 3v1. In that case, the loops would have to be survivor-sided to buy survivors more time in chases, which will allow the remaining two survivors to fix generators for longer. However, if the game was made so that there are more survivor-sided loops, then the killer will have a harder time securing any hooks or kills in a match, which turns the match in favor of the survivors. This endless cycle of balancing loops is difficult, as one survivor could die really early or the killer can't get any hooks in the early game depending on how the loops are structured.
With the shared hook counter, it makes the number of hooks you get more related to the kills you get. Every game, by your 8th hook you won't have any survivors killed. Also, assuming that each survivor has been hooked once by the time the counter reaches 8, then on your 9th hook, you get one kill, on your 10th you get your second kill, 11th is your third kill, and 12th is your fourth kill. Allowing the game to progress in this healthy manner without anyone dying early will make it so that loops can finally be balanced with some readjusting. If killers are getting hooks too quickly, then loops need to be more in favor of the survivors. And if killers are not getting hooks fast enough, then the loops need to be more in favor of the killer.
TL;DR:
If the killer tunnels one survivor, then the killer has to hook an additional 3 times they could have avoided if they hadn't tunneled.
If the killer camps one survivor, then it will take that one survivor 8 minutes to die, which buys the rest of the survivors more than enough time to finish the generators and possibly go for the save.
Leaving any survivors unhooked before the counter reaches 8 results in having to hook additional times that you could have avoided.
Directly relating the number of hooks the killer gets with the number of kills they get allows the devs to have a more accurate way of evaluating balance in the game between survivors and killers.
IN CONCLUSION:
By adding my shared hook counter idea, camping and tunneling won't be as effective strategies for killers. Not only does it encourage the killer to spread out their hooks among the survivors, but it also will make matches more consistent, which gives the devs an easier idea of how to balance the game in the future. I know this idea does have its flaws, but compared to how the game is currently, I think this is a much-needed improvement. That bout does it. Thank you for reading this lengthy post, but I truly believe this is something that needs to be said. If you like my idea, have any ideas for improvements, or think my idea is a bad one, please let me know by commenting on this post, and I'll be sure to respond to you as quickly as possible!
FINAL TL;DR:
Make it so that the survivors have to be hooked a collective total of 8 times before any of them can die. Also, if the survivors have been hooked a total of 8 times, any survivor that hasn't been hooked yet will be granted an extra hook before they die. This means if the killer tunnels a single survivor, they would have to hook that survivor 9 times before they die, but this also makes it so that the remaining three survivors have to be hooked twice each before dying, which means the killer would have to hook 15 times in total by tunneling. This situation can be avoided by hooking each survivor at least once before the counter reaches 8 and, is in fact, ideal for the killer.
EDIT 1:
I accidentally dropped my mouse and clicked post. Don't ask, even I'm not sure how it happened. I will edit this post again when I finish writing it, stay tuned.
EDIT 2:
Thank you to those who've already responded to my post! I see the notifications of several responses and I can't wait to read them as soon as I finish this! As I didn't finish typing my idea when I accidentally clicked post the first time, I would greatly appreciate it if you guys would read my finished idea and share your thoughts!
EDIT 3:
Grammar fixes/clarification
Comments
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Do I have to pay $4.99 for expansion pass DLC?
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The idea sounds interesting, but I might have some concerns:
1-At the moment killers tend to search and find the weakest link in the group to focus, remove, and make the match a 3v1. How would the change solve the issue with a killer focusing on the weakest player to eat the most amount of team hooks?
2-How do you think a team composed of the average DBD players with a shared hook resource pool would address an inexperienced team member dipping too much into that communal resource?
3-How do you think the average first hook suicidal teammates would dip into that resource while trying to leave the game?
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I'm argue against this with a reminder of the last game that tried this; Deathgarden.
Among a lot of reasons the game was sadly killed off was the shared life that the runners had. If even a single weak team mate was found then the hunter would capitalize and damage the entire team as a result. With dbd's match making this problem would only be made worse.
I don't think this system should be implemented.
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I've had so many matches where a weak teammate is taken out early and the rest of us are able to escape having only used one or two hooks. This is especially true when that survivor was one to run killer at gens teammates are working on. If that teammate survived they could use up all the communal hooks and screw over the rest of the team later on as well as just be a hinderance for the time they remain in the match because they now have more than 3 hooks.
Maybe this would be good for 4SWF but not so much for solo players.
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I like the idea but it punishes good players for getting teamed with much casual ones more than it already does now. Now imagine if this happens to them every game and then their MMR drops significantly to a point where MMR isn't just reliable anymore.
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No, this would ruin the game. Having to get 9 hook states before the first survivor can die is pretty unrealistic.
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It'd encourage tunneling if anything.
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I finished my post! I'll be responding to your guys' comments now. Thanks to all of you who have responded!
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Interesting, but I think it would really frustrate people who die on their first hook because the rest of the team blew through the first 8 health states.
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Hook* states ^
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Perhaps not make it a pooled hook count but make it optional for survivors. Whoever is rescuing, If they are not on second hook they can transfer the hook count to themselves by pressing special ability button during the unhook. Killer should get a notification just in case they're keeping track of hook counts.
Just finding a way to make it so a crappy survivor doesn't pull down the entire team. I personally still dislike the whole idea.
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They tried this in Deathgarden.
It was, in short, a horrible horrible system that basically gaurenteed, along with a few other choices, that the game died.
See, it sounds neat, but the problem is that hooks as a shared resource remove all the tension from the snowball potential of killers. It turns out that while getting camped, tunneled, or whatever doesn't feel good IN THE MOMENT it actually is really really REALLY important to the overal experience of DBD, and removing it makes the game kinda braindead and removes most tactical consideration from the game.
Either a good survivor can carry and the game is just boring cuz the survivors always escape, or they can't so one anchor causes you to just flippin die.
You actually kinda want things in the game like 'the weak link gets eliminated' or 'the killer focuses weaker/stronger targets depending on how threatened they feel' because that creates like... an emotional arc and a relationship between the killer and individual survivors. Without that you get really lame interactions where the killer just constantly picks on the weakest player, and never has to feel threatened by the strong ones, and strong players feel unduly punished by weak ones.
The real problem with hooking and tunneling is something the devs talked about earlier when they discuss why they aren't going to nerf camping anymore: Killers NEED TO SNOWBALL. They NEED IT. They need to reach a point in the game where they hit critical mass and are disproportionately threatening the survivors.
Slugging and camping are SYMPTOMATIC of killers not having enough general pressure and not feeling rewarded enough by taking more dynamic playstyles. Fighting these is without addressing the fundemental lack of reward for killers results in killers just slugging or tunneling HARDER. If a killer doesn't think they will be rewarded with a player elimination on a realistic timeframe and that the rescue is too likely to come fast, they won't hook because slugs remove someone from gens longer.
So, paradoxically, if you want killers to camp less and slug less... you need to make hooks safer, easier to defend even if your not next to them, and generally HARDER to unhook people from. This is why camping was really rare pre BT-DS and pre swivelhook: The trapper could literally trap the unhook spot meaning they got a giant warning the unhook was happening, and the survivor who was injured would be easy to win a chase vs again, so they could roam anywhere on the map and not lose too much tempo to an unhook. As more and more unhook tools were added this became less and less true, and 'slug metas' develop any time unhooking is too strong.
So, you want less camping? Give the killer a tempo based perk that rewards them for letting you unhook. Or even better? Add it to basekit. We have 'anti-camp' rewards right now in the form of Devour Hope, BBQ (Which also is well designed because it tells you when defending the hook is a good idea), and Make your Choice, and none of them address the core problem with hooks, which is they are generally a major tempo loss. Something as simple as 'If a survivor is unhooked outside your TR, all survivors repair slower for X seconds' would do a LOT to make killers less dependent on converting any hook or down into two and would make winning lots of chases rather than playing very defensively around downed and hooked survivors a lot more valid a playstyle for killers that aren't able to insta-win chases like Nurse or Spirit.
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You don't have to, if you save up iridescent shards, the new killer and survivor will cost 9000 shards each! This will take some time, but if you don't want to spend the money on them, you can save up shards. Please keep future responses related to what I posted!
Thank you for commenting! I'll address your concerns right now:
1: Addressed in "How This Will Alleviate Some Issues" under "Tunneling". Currently, if the killer tunnels one survivor the entire match and ends up putting the remaining three survivors in a 3v1 situation, then the survivors will have only repaired 3 hooks worth of generators, and can each be hooked three times. With the idea I've proposed, the remaining survivors will have repaired 9 hooks worth of generators, and can each be hooked only twice. This means that with the change, survivors will get roughly three times the time to repair generators before the first survivor dies, and the killer will have to hook each survivor 2/3 less. This still results in an advantage for the survivors, as their triple time saved trumps the killer's 2/3 time saved.
2: A strategy I've thought up of is only saving the inexperienced survivor just before they advance the counter. I agree that saving that one survivor too early will cause them to dip too much into the pool, but doing gens while they're on the hook and saving them before they can advance the count, saves you and the team time. Also, keep in mind that if the killer doesn't hook you before the count reaches 8, they'll have to hook you an additional time.
Also, although an inexperienced survivor may try to escape from the hook and cost the team an additional hook count, that's a mistake they can only make once per trial until they realize how bad it is.
3: THANK YOU FOR MENTIONING THIS! I completely forgot to mention this in my post and will edit it after I've finished responding to comments. If a survivor is continuously pressing the struggle key, then after a minute, they will continue to struggle and also increase the count by 1. If the survivor lets go of the struggle key, then they will die without adding additional counts to the hook count. (If a survivor is caught first and kills themself on hook ASAP, then they will have only increased the hook count by 2 out of the total 8).
Great points! Hopefully this clarifies some things for some people. Thank you for commenting! If you see anything else flawed, please comment them!
I'm not too sure how Deathgarden works. I remember when it came out and it died after a week or two of its release, but I never actually played it. If you could remind me how the collective counter worked in that game in comparison to my complete idea, that would be great!
Thank you for your concern! My idea for a hook counter has a bit more to it than what I think you have in mind. Please read the 5th paragraph under the section "My Suggestion". Thank you for your comment!
Please read my finished idea once more! Do you still have these concerns now that you can read my final idea?
I've been playing this game for three years. Currently, I have 3674 hours on the game with every killer Prestige 3 lvl 50, with most of them having all the perks at tier 3. I try to play the game where I have to hook each survivor twice before I get a kill. In the vast majority of my games, I'll get my first kill on my 9th hook. Sure, I won't always get the 4k, but playing this way makes the game fun for both me and the survivors. I don't think it's unrealistic to pull this off, but I still appreciate you sharing your concern!
Please read "How This Will Alleviate Some Issues" under "Tunneling"! If you still have these concerns please let me know!
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The core problem is in how killers can't apply pressure easily, namely through massive maps or extremely strong loops tied together.
If you were to reduce the size of the maps to something relative to coal tower or father's campbell Chapel, then it would make it much easier to apply pressure since it wouldn't take an entire generator of time to simply walk to the other side of the map.
Also weakening the amount of safe pallets in the game and loops tied together would be beneficial, since it's brainless and would encourage more mind games at unsafe loops, which is more fun.
I don't think you could fix the issues of tunnelling or camping, they're part and parcel of the game and survivors do have perks to supplement a defence against them. Adding a shared hook counter wouldn't be satisfying since a weak link could literally get the entire team killed.
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I appreciate the effort you've put into this and it's good to have people think outside the box. However the main concern i have is this is very very survivor sided. So what about the killer? Do you know how hard it can be to get 8 hook states at red rank? So now I have to get 8 until someone dies? What about ridiculous gen rushing? Even at a 3v1 survivors can still be optimal but now it's 8 hooks until any death? What about the sweaty 4 man SWF they already break the game is this gonna make it fair?
As I said i appreciate the effort and im not trying to be confrontational but please answer me this;
What's the incentive for me to play killer?
The love of the game- it comes and goes. And of late I'm getting impatient with the constant sweaty SWF
Balance- very survivor sided as is and nerfs to gen rush perks and combos don't help.
Higher BP than a survivor game- but is it worth the stress?
So, what's would my or anyone else's incentive to play killer be? Apart from increased stress levels and/or no longer playing as killer if this was implementation why implement this? Sure it'll help tje survivor side but having even less killers playing won't help it either.
Not including the low rank killers, facecamping or 'hard tunneling ' - aiming only for the unhooked and ignoring other survivor, as in going out your way to tunnel- ask yourself one question;
At higher ranks why does proxy camping and tunnelling occur??? What makes a killer do that? If 3 gens go in 2 minutes do you think I'm going to pkay by the survivor rulebook?
Maybe thats a question we should be asking ourselves
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This issue is addressed in "How This Will Alleviate Some Issues" under "Survivors Dying Before Other Teammates Have Been Hooked"! If the count reaches 8, then any survivor who hasn't been hooked yet will receive an additional hook before they die. If you still think there's an issue, please be sure to comment!
Please read my post again! If you still dislike the idea, then please let me know!
Thank you for your input! You make lots of great points I haven't thought of but am happy to address!
If the survivors want to leave the weak link on the hook until they die, that's completely fine. My idea wasn't meant to encourage going for saves, rather to stop situations where the killer could force a 3v1 by their third hook. Personally, I don't like the idea of the weak link getting eliminated early because it forces the 3v1 situation. I've mentioned this in the post, and unless a survivor is a god at looping killers, 3v1s usually end with the killer getting a 4k very easily. Also, if the weak link kills themself out of frustration by not struggling after failing the escape attempts, then they will die, but not add an additional hook to the hook counter.
I agree with you that killers need to have the confidence to be able to perform well. But I don't think forcing them in situations where they have to camp and tunnel is the way to do it. The game should be balanced in a way where the killer can threaten survivors without having to camp. You mention a lot that because killers don't have that confidence to be rewarded by going for downs on different people, they end up slugging or tunneling. A huge part of this issue you've brought up is that matches are too random to be balanced properly. I think the rest of your concerns are addressed in "How This Will Alleviate Some Issues" under "Hooks vs. Kills". There, I talk about how it's difficult for the devs to balance the game because of the huge disparity between how games go.
Thank you for your comment! Please give my post another re-read and let me know if you have something else you'd like to mention!
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You have a really good gamesense, but I disagree with your idea entirely. Imagine if the survivors have a p3 claud that hides in bushes all the time, she's not even doing gens. That means that it's quite literally impossible to find her, the only possible way to do that is aura reading.
Now, a different example. A swf keeps messing with you while one person is doing gens. They're not afraid that they'll die since the one guy will be on the hook. Since survivors also have hook counters, your idea could massively backfire and reward stealth over good looping skills, so the game will basically become hide and seek.
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Sooo. How is there pressure to leave a gen to rescue a teammate, or ATTEMPT flaslight saves or any other strategy/reaction, if that teammate isnt in any danger.
Everyone talking about killer behavior bit ignore that this concept would kill any survivor strategy except genrush.
I also consider deathgardens changes to the kill system a main reason for its demise.
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Since you both share a similar concern, I'll try to answer your questions at the same time. You both bring up the fact that killers have a harder time at red ranks because of how survivor-sided the game is. I 100% agree with that, so to that address that issue, I'll do my best to explain how things got this way.
Let's assume that with how hooks work in the game currently, the killer will play in a way that gets them the most guaranteed kills. Let's also assume that loops are balanced fairly between killer and survivor such that on average, a killer will get 10 hooks (two kills and two people dead on hook) by the time all the generators are completed. If we assume that the killer will always be chasing a survivor, one survivor will be on the hook, with another going for the rescue and healing, that would leave, on average, one survivor's worth of repairs for the entire game. Let's also assume, for simplicity, that time spent traveling between generators among other things (hiding from the killer when he's close by, survs looping the killer close to a worked-on generator, the killer regressing gens) is canceled out by the lead survivors get at the beginning of the match.
This would mean that it would take about 400 seconds before all the generators are completed. Because we assumed that the game is balanced fairly between survivor and killer, such that the killer will get two kills and two people dead on hook by the time the game ends, then that would mean the killer, on average, would get 1 hook every 40 seconds.
Let's start the match. The killer gets their first hook with 360 seconds left to go until the last gen pops. After the killer hooks the survivor, the killer camps them. This is optimal for them because while they now only get 1 hook every 60 seconds, they only have to deal with three survivors after the 120 seconds are up. If the killer instead had alternated hooks between two survivors, then the killer would get their first kill after the 5th hook, which means it would take them, in our model, 200 seconds before their first kill.
Let's assume that while the killer camps the survivor, two people go for the save and stick around waiting for the killer to leave. Then the survivors would only have one survivor working on gens, which means after the 160 seconds the killer would have used up to hook the survivor and wait for them to die on hook, only two generators would have popped, leaving 240 seconds worth of repairs left to do, minimum. This would result in a 3v1 where one survivor is on the hook, another is going for the save and healing, and the last survivor is going down in 40 seconds. I don't have to explain why the killer would get the 4k here.
Next, let's assume that when the killer camps, only one survivor goes for the rescue and sticks around while the other two work on separate generators. Once the killer gets the hook, there will be 360 seconds left in the match. With the two survivors working on generators, they would get two minutes' worth of gen time completed by the time the camped survivor dies (assuming they work on different generators the entire time). Then by the time the two minutes are up, 240 seconds worth of gen time will have been completed, which leaves 120 seconds left in the match. This means, at best the survivors have two gens left to complete in a 3v1.
Although all the survivors could spend their time only repairing generators, by the time they need to repair two generators, optimally, at least two of them will be working on the same generator, which reduces each of their repair speed to 85% of its max. If the penalty wasn't there, then the 3 survivors could repair the generators after (120 seconds of camping * 3 survivors) = 360 seconds of gen repair. But because the penalty is in place, the survivors won't have enough time to finish the generators by the time the camped survivor dies.
Because this set-up makes it so that it's unfair for the survivors who want to try and play the game by going for saves, the devs make it so that loops are now stronger for survivors, which means that the survivors can loop for longer, which means more time to repair generators. Now let's say that the devs make it so that on average, survivors can loop pallets for an additional 20 seconds, for a total of 60 seconds. Now, after three minutes, the killer will secure their first kill. We assumed that the first 40 seconds of chase have been canceled out by travel time and various other things, but with the additional 20 seconds the devs put in, each of the three remaining survivors can repair a generator for another 20 seconds before the first survivor gets hooked. So by the time the survivor gets hooked, the survivors would have done 40 + (3 * 20) seconds worth of generators, which is equal to 100 seconds (Assuming that each survivor is working on a different generator). This means that there will be 300 seconds left in the match before the last gen pops by the time the first survivor gets hooked.
Now, if one survivor tries going for the save, while the other two fix generators, during the two minutes the killer spends camping, the two survivors can repair 240 seconds worth of generators, leaving 60 seconds worth of generator to complete, a little less than one full gen. Even though the survivors got loops buffed in their favor, this situation still isn't ideal. So the devs buff loops even more.
Now, killers can't down survivors fast enough to have an ideal match where the game ends with two survivors escaping on death hook with two survivors dead. So if people tried playing in this way, it's extremely difficult without some outplays.
With my idea of the hook pool, games will become more consistent, which means devs can balance them accordingly without killers having to camp and tunnel to secure any kills. With better balancing, MMR can be a more accurate portrayal of how well you fare in the game, which leads to being paired with better teammates. I went over this in "How This Will Alleviate Some Issues" under "Hooks vs. Kills".
Thank you both for your comments! If you feel like I haven't addressed your concerns, please let me know.
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In your first part, I'm not sure how this change I've suggested would lead to P3 clauds hiding in corners. If the survivors play stealthily for the entire game without doing generators, then no repairs would get completed. I might be misunderstanding what you mean here, but please let clarify for me if I did!
In your second example, if there's only one survivor doing gens while the other three members of the swf loop and bully, then the last gen would pop when the solo survivor finishes them by themself. If it takes let's say roughly 15 seconds or so for the solo survivor to move from one generator to the next after it pops, then it would take the surv (80 seconds of repairs * 5 gens) + (15 seconds of travel time * 4 times needed to travel) = 400 + 60 = 460 seconds to repair all five generators by himself, which is 7 minutes and 40 seconds. I think with only one person doing gens, this is a fair amount of time to get several hooks by the end of the game. You'd just need 1 hook a bit under every minute. which should be easy to do if a group of survivors is always close to you.
Also, the above example is assuming that the survivors don't loop you to where the solo surv is repairing generators, the game would take longer if the solo surv can't do gens because you're close by. Thank you for your response! Please let me know if I've addressed your concerns.
Let's assume that nobody goes for the rescue because the survivor can stay on the hook for up to 8 minutes if nobody else gets hooked. The killer is still in the match patrolling generators looking for other survivors. If the killer manages to get another down before the first survivor can get saved, then the remaining survivors will be losing hook states twice as fast, because the first hooked survivor is still on a hook, and now a second survivor is on a hook as well. There's no way for people to complete the generators that quickly by the time both survivors die within 4 minutes, with the killer still looking for the other two survivors. If nobody goes for saves, then the hook count would stack up fairly quickly, with the survivors eventually being overpowered by the pressure the killer applies.
I hope this clarified some things for you!
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The way Deathgarden's system worked was the hunter had to down a minimum of 5 runners before being able to execute them. So if there was a team of skilled runners who got matched up with a mediocre runner, the hunter would be able to easily down the weak link multiple times and instantly kill one of the other runners if they get downed.
Match making was usually ok in my experience. But if this same system was added into dbd it would be horrendous because of how players are matched up together by the flawed emblem system.
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It would make it impossible to win
A tactic swf already use is to throw survivors with hook states to spare at the killer to keep them distracted.
You would need to reduce the hooks for this to work.
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I see where your concern lies. Please read "Tunneling" which is under "How This Will Alleviate Some Issues". If you still think that tunneling is an issue, then read this:
Currently, if the killer tunnels one survivor the entire match and ends up putting the remaining three survivors in a 3v1 situation, then the survivors will have only repaired 3 hooks worth of generators, and can each be hooked three times. With the idea I've proposed, the remaining survivors will have repaired 9 hooks worth of generators, and can each be hooked only twice. This means that with the change, survivors will get roughly three times the time to repair generators before the first survivor dies, and the killer will have to hook each survivor 2/3 less. This still results in an advantage for the survivors, as their triple time saved trumps the killer's 2/3 time saved.
If this hasn't convinced you, please let me know!
Part of this issue is the disparity between the number of hooks you get with the number of kills you get. I've addressed this issue in "Hooks vs. Kills" under "How This Will Alleviate Some Issues". If that section wasn't clear or if you still have the same concerns, then read this:
If you need clarification on anything or still disagree with me, please let me know why and I'll respond as soon as I can!
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What you are suggesting is making Nurse and Spirit the only playable killers in the game.
Going for 12 hooks is completely unreasonable. Killers are, thanks to gen speed, forced to either tunnel, camp or slug. I like the idea of shared hooks, but you have to work it around a more reasonable number, like 8 hooks. That's the number of hooks a good killer can reasonably expect to get against sweaty survivors without tunneling or camping.
With this in mind, make it so that the killer has to get 5-6 hooks before survivors start to die and it could be a good system.
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Yeah I dont fancy having the game lasting that long even as survivor lol
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I think that forcing the killer to wait out an 8 minute timer is not the answer to deter tunnelling and camping. In a lot of scenarios such as survivors who go down next to 99'ed gens or after the exit gates have been opened, the best possible decision the killer can make is to camp them. The extended timer punishes them for punishing the survivors. Which I don't think is the way to go.
Instead, killers should be given some incentive to go after the other survivors. For the end game this can be as simple as being able to close the exit gates, forcing other survivors to either open it again or abandon their team mates. But in the early game I believe the killer needs some new kind of mechanic that activates upon hooking different survivors.
Perhaps suspending generator completion in accordance with how many hooks the killer has if someone is currently hooked? This would buff killers that would otherwise be weak because of their inability to get downs quickly by stopping the number of completed gens from reaching a certain amount of they hadn't gotten enough hooks.
For example: if the killer hooks someone for the first time after 2 gens have popped, chasing another survivor would prevent gen repairs from going over a certain percentage. Survivors would have to spread out their repairs until the killer gets another hook. At which point they would be free to complete another gen.
This idea certainly needs more refining. But what do you think of it so far?
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You suggest survivors to be sacrificed only when all 4 survivors have been hooked up first correct? (8 hooks). If a survivor hides and they're never hooked, nobody can be sacrificed.
Unless I didn't understand correctly then I'm an idiot
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I believe that this is a deeper discussion between the devs and the community.
The hot topic and one that intertwines with this post is: what constitutes a win? The proposed changes skew the answer towards the 12 hooks instead of the number of kills. The only concrete info we have is provided by the in-game tutorial: Survivors need to escape, Killers need to kill as many as they can. But if you do either efficiently, you do not progress in ranks. If survivors fix gens and leave in 4 minutes no one pips. If the killer kill manages to down everyone in 4 minutes, no one pips either. That dichotomy is more a symptom of design changes that happened as the game evolved into something more than it was intended to.
If the game was remade today, I am certain many changes would be made to its core, or at least I would hope to. How would you change the game to make the premise of victory clearly delivered to both sides? There are many possibilities, my personal favorite would be:
1-Make each player in the Survivor Team select 3 different characters and 1 main to start the match, for a total of 12 characters in the team.
2-The 8 remaining survivors start the match trapped, inaccessible, and uncontrollable by any Survivor Players.
3-Hooking a survivor instantly kills that character, no questions asked, and the Survivor player goes idle.
4-Upon hooking, a limited duration trap key spawns on the floor by the hook. If the duration runs out, the survivor team effectively loses one active player.
5-Upon retrieving the trap key, any of the remaining caged survivors can be released and will be controlled by whatever an idle Survivor Player.
6-Idle Survivor Players can be rescued as a survivor character that belongs to someone else.
Hook counts effectively become kill counts, The killer can still camp the trap key to reduce the number of active players in a match, and the message of winning is delivered clearly to both sides as the number of casualties in the group of 12.
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Thank you for your suggestions! Although 8 hooks for the counter is what I said, I don't expect it to be the final product. The end goal of this idea is to make it so that the outcomes of all the matches are more consistent. Some killers prioritize hooks while others prioritize kills. With how the game is, you could have your first kill in three hooks, or not have any kills after 8 hooks. I think this problem makes balancing the game a lot difficult, which is why tunneling, slugging, and camping are strategies. With a shared hook counter, the number of hooks and kills you get are related to each other, which allows the devs to balance the game more effectively by changing the balance of loops between survivors and killers.
I personally don't think gen speed is the issue we should be focusing on. Forcing survivors to spend more time on a generator would actually make tunneling and looping more effective strategies, because they can't complete the gens as quickly if the killer camps, which leads to a 3v1 with more gen progress to complete. The problem that should be changed is looking at how much of the killer's time survivors can waste by looping. However, if loops are survivor-sided (like they are now), and the killer doesn't camp or tunnel, then we have the current issue where gens get done extremely quickly and the killer barely has time to get a lot of hooks in. On the other hand, if loops are killer-sided, then killers can get downs quickly, which means they can afford to camp and tunnel the first survivor and force a 3v1.
By making hooks and kills directly related, then most of the game would be spent as a 4v1, which means that devs can more accurately guess how much time generator progress is being completed across the entire game, which means they can adjust loops on each map accordingly. Your issue seems to be that gens fly quickly, part of the issue is that killers can't get hooks as quickly. If the devs just make it so that killers can end chases faster, then tunneling and camping become more effective strategies. So to resolve that, we'd have to make it so that tunneling and camping are bad options for killers.
If you still think my idea is bad or have any new concerns you'd like for me to talk about, please respond!
With the change I've suggested, games could go quicker by making changes so that the killer can down quicker, but also making it so that tunneling and camping make the killer lose progress.
Thank you for expressing your concern!
A lot of great points here! I'll address them now.
If the killer downs a survivor next to a gen that's 99'd, then the killer is faced with the choice of camping or leaving to find and down another survivor. There are two reasons why the killer would camp, the first is that there's a gen that's nearly completed close to them and that they don't feel incentivized to find someone else because they can't down them fast enough. This change isn't forcing the killer to wait the 8 minutes for the survivor on the hook to die, it's meant to incentivize them to go and find other survivors to down. If the killer wants to wait until the generator doesn't have as much progression on it, they can do that. But keep in mind that generator regression is only a quarter a speed of normal repair speed (It takes 80 seconds to complete a generator, a nearly completed generator would take just under 320 seconds to fully regress). If the killer waits the 160 seconds for the generator to regress to 50%, then just one survivor alone could complete 2 generators.
To further incentivize killers to go for chases, I think making loops more balanced towards killer (but not in an overpowering way) is the way to do it. If the killer can get hook states faster by hooking rather than camping the hook, then it would be beneficial to go for hooks on new survivors. Also, because hooks are directly related to kills, a 3v1 won't occur until late in the game, and ideally, the generators are completed by then, and the killer has hooked everyone at least once.
Your idea is an interesting one, but I don't think it's a good idea to have the killer control how much progress the survivors can complete on generators. There are already several perks in the game that inhibit generator repairs like Pop or Ruin. Also, the killer could take advantage of that system by not hooking and slugging. And if the system was changed so that it counts downs instead, then survivors could take advantage of that by purposefully going down at pallets with a teammate nearby to go for the pallet save.
Great ideas, though! If I misunderstood what you were saying, please let me know!
Ah! I think you were mistaken. Survivors die when they've been hooked a collective total of 8 times, yes. But not every survivor needs to be hooked for the killer to be able to sacrifice people.
Let's say in a game with have Survivors A, B, C, and a Blendette who hides the entire game without doing gens and is never caught. Each survivor can be hooked multiple times without dying, as long as the hook counter doesn't reach 8. Let's say Survivor A is not as experienced as Survivors B and C, and so they go down more frequently than those two. Survivor A ends up getting hooked a total of 4 times. This happens because the counter hasn't reached 8 yet, so Survivor A lives past their third hook. Now let's say Survivor B was hooked 3 times, and Survivor C was hooked once. Now that the counter has reached 8, and Survivors A, B, and C have all been hooked once already, they are all now on their death hook. Even though Survivor C has only been hooked once, they are still on their death hook. Although this may seem unfair for Survivor C, keep in mind that the killer has had 8 hooks so far, which means that Survivors A, B, and C have completed 8 hooks worth of generators among the three of them. The survivors most likely won't be able to get much progression completed because only three of them are on gens, but the three of them get to play the game for about the same time even though Blendette is hiding.
As for the Blendette who's hiding in a corner, because the hook counter has reached 8, and she hasn't been hooked yet, she gets an extra hook state because of that, which means the killer needs to hook her twice before she dies. Although this seems unfair for Survivors A, B, and C who have been playing the game while Blendette has been hiding the entire game. Survivors A, B, and C will receive more blood points and higher rankings at the end of the match while Blendette will most likely depip and not break 5,000 blood points.
Although the idea is flawed, I think it's still better with what we have currently. If there's a Blendette hiding, forcing the other 3 survivors into a 3v1, then the killer could tunnel one of the survivors without much trouble to turn the game into a 2v1, which is impossible to win unless a survivor is a god at looping.
You're not an idiot, you just misunderstood, which is completely fine. I hope I was able to clarify what I meant for you!
How emblems would be affected by this change is a great point. I agree that the current emblem system is flawed and needs changes. I have some ideas about how I would change emblems, but I think it's important to know how emblems work in the game currently. I will be referencing this link here which explains how emblems are earned between killers and survivors:
Here are the changes I would make:
Survivor EMBLEMS:
- Lightbringer:
- No change
- Unbroken:
- Because survivors will be alive for about the same time, I would change this emblem to focus on how many times you've been hooked rather than how long you survive the trial. For example, if the hook counter reached 8 and the killer has hooked you 4 times out of those 8 (the killer has hooked you 4 times, not you have contributed 4 counts to the counter), then you should get a Bronze.
- In the current game, if the killer has tunneled you, you wouldn't get many points because your Unbroken emblem would be Bronze at best, and you wouldn't have many Lightbringer points because you weren't in the game for as long. However, with the hook counter idea, a tunneled survivor could still pip because they will last longer in the trial, which will earn them more Chaser and Lightbringer points.
- Benevolent:
- No change
- Evader:
- No change
KILLER EMBLEMS:
- Gatekeeper:
- No change
- Devout:
- Because with my change, kills coincide with hooks, I think no emblem to silver should be based on how much progress the hook counter has, and gold and iridescent should be based on how many kills you get (1-2 kills earns gold, and 3-4 kills earns iridescent, or something like that).
- I'm not sure how kills by Moris and Reverse Bear Traps would work with my idea, if anybody reading this has some ideas, please let me know!
- Malicious:
- I'd add it so that insta-downing a healthy survivor (like with a chainsaw) awards the same amount of points as hitting that survivor twice with a basic M1.
- Chaser:
- No change
Your 12 different character idea is interesting, but unfortunately, I don't think it would work. The killer could make it so that they hook survivors far away from where the idle survivors are. The killer could also camp the key or focus a survivor who has the key. And survivors would spend too much time picking up the key and going to a cage to unlock survivors.
On top of that, you could have different builds on each one that could counter specific killers or work great on different maps. If you're worried about Spirits, just have one of your survivors run Iron WIll and Quick and Quiet. If it's a stealth killer, having Sprint Burst on one of your builds would be great. It gives survivors too much power to have three different load-outs.
Thank you for sharing your ideas! If there's something I missed or something I'm not understanding properly, please let me know!
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Your suggestion for 8 minimum hooks before deaths just means 12-hook trials. I'm suggesting 8-hook trials, which strikes a fairer balance, although the number is easily up for debate, I'm just saying that 12 hooks (in other words, 8 hooks before people start dying) is not achievable. The system eliminates tunneling and camping, and I also agree that gens shouldn't be changed so that leaves slugging, or more accurately snowballing. I think this is the helathy, fun, exciting win condition of DbD, because to be perfectly honest everyone getting 3 hooks, 3 chases and 6 hits would get pretty boring, and it's also just not viable without changing gens speeds, which we both agree is just not the way to balance DbD.
And I think I said that twice but I'm a little tired and editing is not good right now.
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Quite interesting. I'm afraid that the gen times won't allow 8 hook games easily. If they're adjusted based on this theory, then I personally have no problems with this.
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It seems to me that this would promote tunnelling.
It doesn't matter to the killer who they hook, they just need to get those 8 hooks ASAP. So why not go after the weaker survivors? Farm your 8 hook states off of them, hell you could even camp them and just let all 8 hook states tick off, then go and instantly kill everyone else on their first hook. They wouldn't even need to camp for 8 minutes, camp them until they go into stage 2, let them be saved, tunnel and hook again, let them get into their 2nd hook state again and repeat, and you can get 8 hook states done in a little over 4 minutes.
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