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Quick Fix: Totems and Hexes

Aerys
Aerys Member Posts: 179
edited November 2018 in Feedback and Suggestions

While I have made a thread discussing how Totems and Hexes could be used as an additional objective and entire side mechanic to the game I have yet to discuss fixes for them in their current state. As of writing there are seven hexes that exist in the game, each varying in viability, but each sharing their extreme vulnerability and awful lifespan unless guarded with a passion. Some killers can do this well, others not so much. I've had games as Wraith where I spawn in, rush to my totem, and someone is already there cleansing it. So, in this thread I will go over what we can do to address that and other things to make Hexes more viable in the long run, and discuss some potential Hexes that help other Hexes out even.

To begin let's start off with how Totems spawn in. On the map there are five Dull Totems by default, cleansing one gives 600 points in Boldness, and in general they do nothing. Certain Hexes such as NOED or Thrill of the Hunt utilize them, so cleansing is typically a good idea for Survivors to do if they spot them, and spotting them is perhaps the name of the game as cleansing them is hardly an effort at all. Not only does it take a measly 14 seconds to cleanse but there are no Skill Checks involved either making it a cake walk. Hex Totems are the exact same in this respect except they're even more visible than dull totems due to them being lit. Here is how I would change this to be a tad more viable;

  • Increase Dull Totem cleansing time to 16 seconds and Hex Totem cleansing time to 20 seconds.
  • Add moderately difficult Skill Checks to Dull Totems (similar to the difficulty of a Generator) and tremendously difficult Skill Checks to Hex Totems (similar to the difficult of a Overcharge). Failing a Skill Check will reduce progress by 50% (or 8/10 seconds) of the maximum bar. Note that these would be pure white skill checks, that is to say that there is no bonus progress for succeeding them, they are for the Killer's benefit and punish the Survivors for failing.
  • Allow 25% of the Cleansed progress to be kept upon breaking away. Note that if you were to spam cleanse this would reduce the progress to nothing after a few clicks.
  • Always spawn Totems in a location where 75% of their being is hidden by a wall, bush, etc, something that is 100% opaque, make searching for them actually require some effort.
  • Change the skulls on a Hex Totem to black rather than white, this will help reduce their visibility in exchange for the fire that gives them away anyhow.
  • Gain a notification that someone is working on a Totem when it is at 25% cleansed or more.
  • Colour a Hex Totem's Aura so that they have a matching Colour with the Perk (you can put a RGBY node beside each Perk in the lower right hand of the screen to indicate which is which).

With these changes Hexes would be a tad more reliable and worth bringing, aside from Hex: Ruin of course which everyone oughta bring just due to its potential.

But wait, there's more. I felt like including some Hex Perk reworks and an idea or two of my own might be fun so here they be;

Hex: Devour Hope
When a Survivor is rescued from a Hook at least 24/22/20 metres away, Devour Hope receives a Token.

  • 3/2/1 Tokens: Gain a 3% Haste Status Effect for 10/12/14 seconds after hooking a Survivor.
  • 5/4/3 Tokens: Survivors suffer from the Exposed Status Effect.
  • 5 Tokens: Grants the ability to kill Survivors by your own hand.
    The Hex effects persist as long as the related Hex Totem is standing.

Hex: Haunted Ground
Two trapped Hex Totems will spawn in the Trial. When the first trapped Hex Totem is cleansed by a Survivor, all Survivors suffer from the Exposed Status Effect for 20/25/30 seconds. When the second trapped Hex Totem is cleansed by a Survivor, all Survivors suffer from the Exposed Status Effect for 30/35/40 seconds.

Hex: Huntress Lullaby
Survivors receive a 2/4/6% regression penalty when missing any Skill Check
Each time a Survivor is hooked, Huntress Lullaby grows in power:

  • 1 to 2 Tokens: Time between the Skill Check warning sound and the Skill Check becomes shorter.
  • 3 to 4 Tokens: Time between the Skill Check warning sound and the Skill Check becomes shorter and fake Skill Check warning sounds occur.
  • 5 Tokens: Time between the Skill Check warning sound and the Skill Check becomes shorter and fake Skill Check warning sounds occur. Survivors receive a 2/3/4% additional regression penalty when missing any Skill Check.
    The Hex effects persist as long as the related Hex Totem is standing.

Hex: The Third Seal
Hitting a Survivor while the Hex Totem is active applies the Blindness and Exhausted Status Effects. This effect applies to the last 2/3/4 Survivors hit.
The Hex effects persist as long as the related Hex Totem is standing.

Hex: Thrill Of The Hunt
For each Dull Totem and Hex Totem remaining on the Map gain a Token.

  • Gain 1/3/5% more Bloodpoints for actions in the all Categories for each Token.
  • Survivors' cleansing speed is reduced by 4/5/6 % for each Token.
  • Gain a notification when someone starts working on any Totem.
    The Hex effects persist as long as the related Hex Totem is standing.

Here are a couple Hexes I've thought of myself;

Hex: Fleeting Hope
For each Totem that has been cleansed gain a Token. Start with one Token.

  • Gain a 1% Haste Status Effect for each token for 2/4/6 seconds after breaking a Pallet.
  • Gain a 1% Haste Status Effect for each token for 1/2/3 seconds after vaulting through a Window.
  • Gain a 2% Haste Status Effect for each token for 1/2/3 seconds after hooking a Survivor.
    The Hex effects persist as long as the related Hex Totem is standing.

Hex: Festering Wounds
Hitting a Survivor while the Hex Totem is active applies the Broken Status Effect for 60/120/180 seconds.
The Hex Effects persist as long as the related Hex Totem is standing.

Hex: Carrying Winds
Survivors Footsteps are 30/40/50% louder and are audible from 20/25/30 metres further than usual.
The Hex Effects persist as long as the related Hex Totem is standing.

Post edited by Aerys on

Comments

  • AlwaysInAGoodShape
    AlwaysInAGoodShape Member Posts: 1,301
    edited November 2018

    One of the bigger problems I see is that if you run a perk like Hex: Devour Hope, is that when a survivor Randomly runs across it, you will lose your perk to this randomness, even without the survivors knowing that you even used a hex perk.

    What about a solution where we fix this randomness of finding a Hex Totem before you were even able to use it due to this randomness and making it so that the typical survivor only starts working on a Hex Totem AFTER they have noticed it's effects:

    SOLUTION
    The candle of a Hex perk only turns on while within the killers terror radius. While outside of the killer terror radius, the survivor has no visual clues to differentiate between a hex totem and a dull totem.

    This means that if you randomly run around the map, all you'll see is your usual Dull Totem. If you know there is a Hex totem then you might want to start to work on the Dull totems, or when the killer is near, you know which dull totems to skip as they didn't light up.

    I think this is a better way to counter the Randomness of a survivor stumbling on your Hex totem as often, good survivors know where the spots are anyways and without being aware, you'll likely not start working on all random Dull totems they come across, but wait it out a little bit.

    This solution will also come with interesting killer interactions, such as Wraith or Pig being able to hide their terror radius while not in a chase, michael myers Tear 1 spoopy builds and it actually Buffs freddy!

  • Aerys
    Aerys Member Posts: 179

    At high ranked play people cleanse Dull Totems anyhow, so that wouldn't work to keep the Hex safe. That's why I proposed a higher cleansing time for Dull Totems as well as an even higher cleansing time for Hex Totems. Don't get me wrong, I do like that idea as it's rather dynamic and interesting, I just don't think it'd work the way you think it would.

  • AlwaysInAGoodShape
    AlwaysInAGoodShape Member Posts: 1,301
    edited November 2018

    @Aerys

    What if we'd use as I suggested and make the cleansing time a variable that changes based on game duration, as if "the totems grow old and feeble".

    You can play around with the numbers, but say: 25 seconds at the start down to a mere 10 seconds at 10 minutes decreasing linearly?

    float Y = 25;
    If(Y > 10)
    {
    Y = Y - (15/600) * delta time;
    }

    Y = The Cleansing Time it requires to destroy a Totem.
    25 = Starting Cleansing speed.
    15 = Difference between Starting cleansing speed and end cleansing speed. (25-10)
    600 = amount of seconds at which you should reach your Shortest possible cleansing speed.
    10 = Minimal duration for cleansing.
    delta time = time in between frames. (as this will most likely placed in an update function)

    Because of the terror radius mechanic you will not Randomly stumble upon a Hex Totem due to bad placement
    AND
    you are incentivised to start cleansing Totems at a later duration in the game in order to maximise time efficiency.

    Maybe that solves it?

    Post edited by AlwaysInAGoodShape on
  • Aerys
    Aerys Member Posts: 179

    If you combined that with Hex: Thrill of the Hunt that'd mean to cleanse one at the beginning would take 32.5 seconds, a bit long for a totem by most standards, and while that would definitely incentivize cleansing them later there's a problem with that for three reasons.

    1. The first is due to Hex: Ruin. As a Survivor you want to cleanse this asap, and people running Thrill of the Hunt would have that 32.5 second cleanse speed to back it up. If my changes weren't implemented that means each attempt to cleanse it would take 32.5 seconds, something that's very easy to defend. This would mean no one would bother to get rid of Ruin and while that would make it a great Perk to bring it would also become the most common one (not that it isn't already).
    2. The second is due to Hex: Haunted Ground, a Hex with the purpose of being bait and upon being cleansed gives the Survivors a negative effect. You would want this to be cleansed on purpose, especially earlier in the game, so that you can get an edge on them early and take control, but with that change it'd be rather hard to do so.
    3. The third is Hex: No One Escapes Death, and this is for somewhat obvious reasons. Say the game takes a good ten minutes, that means that when NOED pops up it'll only take 10 seconds to cleanse, and that's on top of it already being massively weak due to being completely avoidable by cleansing dull totems throughout the game.

    Just those three Hexes alone show why having a varying Cleanse time factor could be bad overall, making some things way strong, making some pointless, and others incredibly weak.

  • AlwaysInAGoodShape
    AlwaysInAGoodShape Member Posts: 1,301

    Hex Ruin
    But if it requires you to run Hex: Thrill of the Hunt, a second perk, in order to increase the duration of the Totem by 7.5 seconds (Up to 37.5 seconds if you find Ruin last) and doing the totems at the very 0th second of the match, wouldn't that be a quite balanced perk & combination? Considering that these MAX 37.5 seconds are slightly less then kicking a Gen with Pop Goes The Weasel 2 times?

    Then to consider that Thrill of The Hunt would, on average stall only about half of the 37.5 seconds, being 18.75 seconds and at this point we are still calculating it at the 0th second of the match? With on top of that the "Depip Squad" of Marth88 showing us that RUIN can be completely ignored and the match still easily won.

    Haunted Grounds
    This was the whole point of your post; To make it harder to cleanse totems. It doesn't matter how you put it; The easier it is to find and destroy a hex totem, the better haunted grounds gets. The opposite does the opposite.

    If haunted grounds wouldn't get worse with your change then it probably wasn't worth changing in the first place.

    I quote from the original post:
    "So, in this thread I will go over what we can do to address that and other things to make Hexes more viable in the long run, and discuss some potential Hexes that help other Hexes out even."

    NOED
    Against a good team, the game can end within 5 minutes. That means that it will take 17.5 seconds in these Gen rush cases, meaning that NOED is actually more viable than it is, but unlike the old system, if the game is not a gen-rush and plays out over a longer period of time, it only seems healthy that the Survivors can get rid of the NOED slightly faster. (4 seconds) Though they will spend most of their time trying to find it anyways.

    I don't see how this change would negatively influence current Hex perks, with the exception of Haunted Grounds, but that was the whole point.

  • Aerys
    Aerys Member Posts: 179

    I don't watch youtubers or streamers play the game so I don't know who Marth88 is, but I do know the Ruin trick and am sure that the Devs will fix it in time (Basically if someone is spamming on and off the Gen over and over the game will detect that and treat it like a failed skill check after X amount of times within Y seconds).

    Aside from that, like I said before at the beginning of the game it would take a long time to cleanse things, so long that with Hex: Thrill of the Hunt (which gives you a notification when someone starts working on a Totem btw) a Killer would have no problem defending their Hex, and as soon as they push someone off it the timer to cleanse it would be reset; That is the issue with your idea, it becomes near impossible to cleanse anything early game because of it. If you were to add my "Allow half the Cleansed progress to be kept upon breaking away." bit to it then it may become viable, but overall it's a dynamic approach to the system when a static approach would be better just due to how different Hexes work in the game already :T

  • AlwaysInAGoodShape
    AlwaysInAGoodShape Member Posts: 1,301
    edited November 2018

    @Aerys
    To quickly mention the Marth88 reference; he is a youtuber who played over 100 survivor games to demonstrate how imbalanced the game was in favor of survivors. In almost all of those 100 games Hex Ruin was active for the full duration of the match and no killer in all the matches has managed to score even a 4 Kill game, not even a 5 blink nurse. Among the 100 matches only 3 killers got a 3 kill and Almost all killers Depipped.

    The "Allow half the Cleansed progress to be kept upon breaking away." could be added, but simply better hiding spots will do little for Hex Totems, as reasonable players will know where to look, even when not necessarily scouting for hex totems.
    You will still have the chance to randomly spawn close to a Hex Totem and nullify the use of your perk before anything happened. Because the timer doesn't reset, there is no real way a killer can defend the totem as they don't have a regress option for Hex totems.

    Post edited by AlwaysInAGoodShape on
  • Wolf74
    Wolf74 Member Posts: 2,959

    @Aerys said:

    • Add basic Skill Checks to Dull Totems (similar to the difficulty of a medkit) and moderately difficult Skill Checks to Hex Totems (similar to the difficult of a Generator). Failing a Skill Check will reduce progress by 30% of the bar.
    • Allow half the Cleansed progress to be kept upon breaking away. Note that if you were to spam cleanse this would halve the progress to near nothing.

    Skill checks are beneficial to the survivor and would count as a nerf.
    Same is keeping cleansing progress, it is already difficult enough to defend totems, so keeping any progress would be a huge nerf to totems.

    I really start asking myself if you really want to buff killer or actually nerf them.

  • Aerys
    Aerys Member Posts: 179

    @Wolf74
    When balancing things you have to be mindful of both sides; Killers and Survivors have to be equal. But it is my bad for not being more specific as one could indeed take the skill check bit the wrong way, and I get how keeping the Cleansed progress to be kept could feel off putting, so I will edit the post and be more clear.

  • Orion
    Orion Member Posts: 21,675

    @Aerys said:
    @Wolf74
    When balancing things you have to be mindful of both sides; Killers and Survivors have to be equal. But it is my bad for not being more specific as one could indeed take the skill check bit the wrong way, and I get how keeping the Cleansed progress to be kept could feel off putting, so I will edit the post and be more clear.

    1 Killer has to be equal to 4 Survivors. One of the problems with your "Quick Fix" threads is that you're ignoring all the nuances of the mechanics. Another one is that you seem to want to have mechanics that allow for a 1v1 comparison between any one Killer and any one Survivor, which spits in the face of what an asymmetrical game is supposed to be like.

  • Aerys
    Aerys Member Posts: 179

    @Orion
    Well, I'm coming up with ideas and giving the Devs food for thought, they may not be the best of ideas but that's where feedback and refining them as a community would be rather ideal. I may accidentally spit in the face of what an asymmetrical game is supposed to be like, but at least I try not to spit in the faces of you, wolf, and others who disagree, but take what you say and try to better my ideas with it. So please, be constructive not mocking.