How to Improve the Raccoon City Police Station
The Raccoon City Police Station, one of Dead by Daylight's most controversial additions in a long time and one that has faced the ire of many fans both Survivor and Killer alike. Well, I want to propose a series of changes to the map that would make it more pleasant for both the Survivor and the Killer to navigate while keeping the overall structure of the station itself intact.
With this, I'm not going to be suggesting any changes to how the map should be played; no additional versions that have different layouts or segmented areas whatsoever. This is purely for one map and one map only.
Let's begin.
The Map
Raccoon City Police Station
Maps
- The Raccoon City Police Station now has special maps that appear in various areas of the station. These appear in:
- The Main Hall (1F)
- The Operations Room (1F)
- The East Office (1F)
- The Upper West Hallway (2F)
- The Waiting Room (2F)
- The Chief's Office (2F)
- These maps display the overall layout of what you will expect within the map and is meant for navigational purposes and easing players into such a gigantic, if not inhospitable, stage.
Navigational Arrows
- The Raccoon City Police Station also now has navigational arrows, painted by the blood of the victims that were once in the station. These arrows showcase how to more properly navigate the hallways within the station, but are very subtle in how they do so, and only appear primarily within the halls and not inside of the rooms.
Revamped First Floor Area
- The door to the Fire Escape is now opened, allowing Survivors access to the previously inaccessible courtyard and graveyard of the Raccoon City Police Station. Additionally, there is a new door in the first floor West Hallway that leads to the graveyard, interconnecting the East and West Hallway to make it easier to navigate. In addition, pallets and some tiles will be present in the courtyard and graveyard.
- The Records Room now has an additional door on the south east side of the room.
- The Safety Deposit Room now has an additional door on the north east side of the room.
- The West Office now has less debris littering the tables, allowing for Survivors and Killers to see through it much more easily.
- The Operations Room now has a door on the lower righthand side that leads into the hallway, allowing players to navigate it and use the room as a proper loop.
- Marvin's Office in The West Office now has an added doorway that leads out into the hallway. This is to prevent players from unfairly being kept in the room once they get inside.
- The East Office now has a window vault that leads out of its main office and into the hallway. The window vault that led from the main office to the larger office is now removed.
- The East Office now has a Breakable Wall near where one of the shelves was at the upper right hand portion of the room. This is to prevent the room from becoming an infinite.
- The uppermost part of the Press Room in the East Hall now has a special Breakable Wall. This wall is a cracked version of its current wall and can be completely broken down to add a new method of traversal.
Revamped Second Floor Area
- The hallway leading from the roof now has an extra stretch past the helicopter, which leads into the art room, allowing for slightly easier navigation.
- The lowermost door in the Art Room is now altered to face the Waiting Room door.
- The door leading out of the Armory is now pointed north instead of west.
- The Library now has a new doorway that leads out into the upper part of the Main Hall second floor, creating an additional loop area where there wouldn't be one (see removed areas).
- The Roof now has a second air conditioning unit that has its own pallet that can be dropped. This allows for the area where the helicopter wreckage is to be used more properly as a loop.
- The stairway leading to the Fire Escape and East Hall (2F) is now expanded to allow players to walk from the hole made by the helicopter to the balcony, although the balcony where the hole is could have seen better days.
Removed Areas
- The new exit gate area on the upper left first floor is now completely cut due to it adding more confusion.
- The library walkway is now cut off by debris on the stairs due to its overall lack of use.
- The toilet area is now blocked off by debris on both sides to make navigation simpler.
- The closet in the East Hall is now closed off.
New Exit Gate
- When all five Generators are completed, the statue of the maiden in the Main Hallway will open up and show a staircase leading far towards a new Exit Gate. This replaces the old Exit Gate that was removed prior.
Totems
- Totems are reworked so that they are slightly more obvious to find, with them having less of a chance to be found within harder-to-see areas.
- Only one totem can spawn behind any of the given desks.
- Due to the removal of the third floor in the Library, the totem that normally spawns inside of it is now moved to the second floor portion of the Library.
Hatch
- To improve ease of navigation, the Hatch now spawns only on the first floor of the station.
So the goal here is to make the station much more cohesive and in line with other indoor maps, where there's usually a way to navigate it without having to take this extremely long, tedious and often times confusing route. Areas have been removed, adjusted or outright even added to improve map traversal and give players better ways to play than simply holding forward during a chase.
There are also additional doorways to various rooms to allow them to become more proper loops than they were before, which grants them further utility than they ever had before, which is one thing that will be nice for both Survivor-Killer interactivity.
Additionally, maps and navigation were a key factor I wanted to potentially add to improve quality of life in this map as a suggestion. This would make it so that both Survivors and Killers can get a real grasp on what the map layout actually is and will find it much easier to utilize altogether. I've thought of changes that would significantly impact both sides in a much more player-friendly way and makes the station less of a navigational mess that people can enjoy playing in.
What do you guys think? Would any, or perhaps, all of these changes make for a much more cohesive and fun map for both the Survivor and the Killer?
Comments
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I just afk at a corner when i get this map.
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ADDITIONALLY...
The reason I didn't want to make it so that the map is segmented is because, by design, the Raccoon City Police Station is not big enough to be segmented as a map. Despite the seemingly large surface area, it's actually a medium-sized map that's only made large by the fact it has two floors and an immense amount of area to navigate.
If you attempted to segment it to first floor and second floor, you will immediately notice that the map is far too small and would scrunch up Generator spawns like no other between sides. This would also make it a design nightmare to attempt to balance out and remake entire sections of the map to compensate.
If you attempted to segment it to East Hall and West Hall, you run into a very similar issue, but also the fact that you will not be getting that third exit gate at all. Even if you had it as the East Hall + Main Hall or West Hall + Main Hall, both areas are too small to navigate and would be arguably smaller than even Midwich Elementary School's size. The generator spawn locations would, once again, be too scrunched up in order to justify segmenting it.
So, this is what I thought of to compromise. Cutting off various areas and making other areas easier to navigate, while having a whole new section of the map dedicated to actually getting between both the East and West Halls so much more easily.
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You obviously put a lot of thought into this, but it just so happens that I still have no clue what most rooms look like off the top of my head despite your provided map and despite having played on the map a good 10+ times, so I can't even really visualize how your suggestions would affect gameplay.
I do agree with you on one point though: cutting the map by floor or by East/West Wing + Main Hall would definitely make the resulting maps too small.
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Here's a map with all of my indicated changes:
- The Skull Icons are examples of new Hex Totem spawn locations.
- The Box Icons are examples of new Hatch spawn locations.
These changes would allow the flow of the station to be more coherent and navigation to be a little less clunky, while still retaining some semblance of a maze-like structure to the map. With the addition of the main bottom portion of the map, it ultimately would allow for easier traversal to both the upper and lower floors since the stairs will almost always be within distance of the two doors.
If these changes were to all happen, then I'm certain that the Raccoon City Police Station would be given a far more favorable review by the community.
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Your changes make the map even bigger. With your changes, I'd say there is more justification to split the map into two variants, maybe just enough that the two variants would actually be big enough on their own.
If you add the catwalk back into the Library and include that in each version, then it could make two viable variants, each of them more comparable with The Game or Midwich.
This isn't quite as neat as yours but it's a rough mock up to show a possible split:
Post edited by Seraphor on0
