A Newb's Opinion
So I haven't been playing DbD for too long, only for about 2-ish weeks? Currently I'm Irediscent 4 Killer and Gold 4 Survivor if that really means anything and I just wanted to give my feedback on my experience as mainly a solo player with more recent Survivor experience with friends.
So the first thing I want to address is something I believe most people would agree is absolutely stupid and destroys a large amount of the fun of the game and that is Camping. I don't mean a killer who patrols mainly the one person they've hooked and like the 3 nearby generators, I mean a killer that hooks literally just 1 Survivor at a time and just watches them die on hook. While an argument can be made that the other 3 survivors can easily take advantage of the situation and just do generators, that still doesn't change the fact that 1 Survivor basically didn't get to play at all and in a manner worse than just tunneling.
On the Survivor side of things I feel like the worst thing is that until either all Gens are done or until all but 1 Survivor is hooked, Survivors essentially have an infinite amount of time in which they can hide from the killer, which is what leads to strategies like hiding and waiting for Hatch which isn't all too interesting. For new players, it also usually means stupid amounts of time just crouching and walking because they're too scared to get caught by killer.
In order to combat the most toxic side of DbD, I propose that DbD encourages more healthy and fun behavior and discourages and/or punishes toxic behavior (btw I absolutely enjoy facing bully squad survivors because I honestly just find it more fun and interesting to play against them). I suggest 3 new mechanics for DbD: Anxiety and Bravery for Survivors and Unworthy for Killers.
Anxiety should be a Tiered effect which fills while Survivors are Walking, Crouching, Standing Still, or Healing. It is Slowed while a Survivor is Running, in a Closet, or Interacting with a totem. It regresses while a Survivor is Repairing, Sabotaging, Interacting with a Killer Object, Hooked, Dying, within the Terror Radius of a killer, in Chase, Healing a Dying Survivor, Unhooking a Survivor, Stunning a Killer, or Blinding a Killer. It pauses while Mending or Opening boxes. Each time the Anxiety meter fills, the Anxiety level goes up by 1 (up to a Maximum of 3, though it continues to fill after it reaches 3rd level for the purpose of effects that pop when the meter fills) and the Survivor Screams, they are Slowed for 3 seconds, and their Aura is revealed to the Killer for 3 Seconds. While the Anxiety level of a Survivor is 1 or more, the Survivor becomes Exhausted and cannot recover from the Exhausted state until their Anxiety level goes down. At level 2 or more, the Survivor becomes Broken and cannot be Blessed until their Anxiety level goes down. At level 3 the Survivor's Aura is always revealed to the Killer, the Slowed effect persists while the Survivor is not in a Chase, the Survivor cannot interact with Exit Gates, cannot exit the level via Gate or Hatch, the Anxiety Meter is filled 100% faster, and if the Anxiety Meter fills while at level 3 the Survivor must reduce an entire Meter's worth of Anxiety to lower the level down. Now this all seems really punishing, but it's supposed to be as the Meter shouldn't be filled too quickly, I'd say it should be filled in 70 Seconds (over 2/3 of fully fixing a Gen) normally as it's supposed to keep games from going on too long just because Survivors are too scared and are just hiding around the level without actually doing anything to progress the game state.
Bravery should be a Token based effect for Survivors. Survivors gain 1 token whenever they Blind a Killer, Stun a Killer, take a Protection hit, Unhook a Survivor, Heal another Survivor up from the Dying state, Sabotaging a Hook that the Killer then comes within 13 Meters of while carrying a Survivor, or complete a Generator. Survivors can't gain more than 1 Token every 15 Seconds from any combination of the aforementioned methods (so Pallet Stunning chained into a Flashlight Blind will only award 1 Token for a Single Survivor, but will reward teamwork from 2 Survivors with 1 Token each). They also gain 1 Token for every 10 consecutive seconds they are in Chase with a Killer + another 10 Seconds required to gain a Token for every Survivor the Killer is concurrently in Chase with or who are within 20 Meters of the Killer and remain within that distance for more than 5 Seconds. Survivors with 10 or more Bravery Tokens consume 10 Bravery Tokens automatically when they attempt to escape a hook and have a 100% chance of escaping when they do, otherwise if they are Unhooked then they automatically consume 10 Bravery Tokens and both they and the Survivor that Unhooked them become Healthy and gain a 5% Haste effect for 3 Seconds. Survivors in Struggle within 10 or more token automatically consume 10 Tokens when hooked, Doubling the Struggle timer and should they be Unhooked while this bonus time is still in effect then both they and the Survivor that Unhooked them become Healthy and the Hooked Survivor disregards that time they were Hooked (putting them in Struggle the next time they're Hooked rather than automatic Sacrifice). Survivors with the extra bonus Struggle timer gained in this way automatically unhook themselves and become Healthy should there be no Survivors left that are not Dying, Hooked, Dead, or Escaped. Survivors lose 2 Bravery Tokens whenever the Anxiety Meter is filled. This effect is basically to award Survivors who are participating in behavior that is healthy for the game and playing well, after all it just sucks when you loop a Killer for over 90 seconds by yourself while your teammates are just hiding and not even doing Gens. This way you at least have something of a chance in getting out for playing well as Survivor.
Unworthy should be a Tiered effect which fills if a Killer is within 26 Meters of a Hooked Survivor for 5 seconds or more with no more than a 5 consecutive second window where they are not while there are Unhooked Survivors that are neither Hooked, Dead, nor Escaped and there are no other Survivors that are not Hooked within 26 Meters of the Hooked Survivor. The meter regresses while the Killer is in Chase and must be in Chase for 5 consecutive seconds or more for the regression to start. The Unworthy meter no longer fills when Hatch is open and/or the Exit Gates are Powered. Each time the Unworthy meter fills, the Unworthy level goes up by 1 (up to a Maximum of 3, though the meter continues to fill for the purpose of effects that occur whenever the meter fills), the Aura of the Killer, any Killer Objects, and all Generators are revealed to all Survivors for 5 seconds. Additionally, any Blood Points the Killer earns at the end of the game will be split evenly among themselves and any Survivors that are Hooked when the Unworthy meter is filled. At Unworthy level 1, the Killer is Slowed while they are within 26 Meters of a Hooked Survivor, take an additional 2 seconds to recover from attacking, are Blinded and Stunned for 2 additional seconds when they suffer from either of those effects, and cannot gain Bloodlust. At Unworthy level 2, the Killer cannot use any special abilities and suffers from Blindness while the aura of all Generators is revealed to all Survivors and Survivors cannot become Exposed. At Unworthy level 3, the Survivors gain 200% Healing speed, the aura of all Survivors is revealed to all Survivors, and the Killer cannot kick Generators or break Pallets and the Unworthy Meter is filled 100% faster. if the Unworthy Meter fills while at level 3 the Survivor must reduce an entire Meter's worth of Unworthy to lower the level down. This should honestly be a bit more harsh for outright Camping as it really does just take away a lot of fun from the game and I'd say the Meter should be filled relatively fast, filling in about 30-40 seconds that way the Killer begins to suffer the effects of Unworthy before a Camped Survivor even goes into Struggle. I believe I've also addressed situations where I find Camping to actually be acceptable, namely when the Exit Gates are powered and when Hatch is available as at that point Killers don't have much else they can do really.
I believe these new effects would positively influence the game, especially at lower skill levels as it encourages more healthy habits while punishing bad habits. I feel that at higher skill levels these effects won't really affect the game too much considering that a Survivors needs a total of being chased for 100 seconds (longer than it takes to complete a Gen) by themselves to gain enough tokens to benefit from Bravery. Obviously numbers could probably be tweaked here or there depending on how things actually play out, but I hope these ideas are considered, especially the Unworthy effect if nothing else.
Comments
-
I don't think the Anxiety effect would be all that fair.
Sometimes standing still doing nothing to evade the killer is the right thing to do.
Imagine you've been playing pretty stealthy so far so you've accrued a fair amount of Anxiety. Then suddenly the killer comes to patrol by you. You're forced to hide somewhere at that pointn but then you risk tiering up your Anxiety and ibstantly alerting the killer to your location.
Your other two ideas sound like good bases for some new survivor perks.
0 -
The devs have acknowledged they want to find an ingame mechanism to steer killers away from literal facecamping but haven’t found a system they like yet. The ones they experimented with so far apparently either weren’t effective or broke something else in the game. Maybe they’ll come up with something someday but I’m not holding my breath. 🤷♂️
As far as ideas people have suggested, the ones above seem a bit too complex. I think the idea I like best so far is to simply pause or greatly slow the hook timer when the killer is within X meters of the hook. By carefully choosing X you can entice the killer to be far enough away from the hook that a safe hook rescue is more likely but not be so large that the survivors feel no pressure to rescue the hooked player. Note also that this is in line with perks like Devour Hope, Make Your Choice and the new version of Monstrous Shrine which give incentives to move so many meters away from the hook. Basically if they make that type of incentive to move away from the hook or have the hook timer take a really long time to complete part of the base game it would directly impact face camping. (It still could happen hypothetically but it would be much easier for everybody who’s not hooked to escape.)
0 -
Mmm... while I understand the concern about the Anxiety suggestion, at the same time, I don't really see a situation where it would be unhealthy for the game considering the amount of time it would take to accrue a level of Anxiety. Like a Survivor can still be stealthy, but this pushes those survivors to actually DO things like Generators. If the Survivor is stealthily stalking the Killer to aid someone who is currently being chased by the killer, then chances are that Survivor is in the killer's Terror Radius. The only situation I see where a Survivor would be JUST stealthing and not helping with Gens or anything of that sort that i can think of is if they're just waiting for Hatch to open after the other Survivors die so they can escape themselves in which case I feel as though that is a behavior that isn't exactly healthy to the game.
Hm... Idk, I feel as though even if there is more incentive to move away from hook, but no real punishment, Killers will still facecamp hooks. Like right now Blood Point gain is reduced for facecamping, yet we still have a decent number of killers that just facecamp. But honestly the reason why I suggested Buffs to Survivors for Unworthy levels is because it just addresses the problems that Survivors might face with a face camper in that they might just not be able to find Generators or something of the like and this just eliminates those factors and highly discourages the Killer from facecamping.
0 -
Just to add on to this thread to hopefully push action onto the devs, in a game where a Survivor either gets Tunneled out really early or just dies on hook early, that Survivor will earn somewhere from 4-6k BP. Meanwhile a survivor who hooks 2 survivors and face camps them will earn around 10k blood points. This is assuming they only get 2 survivors and they are very much more likely to get multiple in Solo Queue because of survivors not doing Gens and instead just sneaking around and literally just watching as their teammate dies on hook. So not only do the survivors that got face camped to death on hook not get to even play that round, but to add insult to injury they also get next to no BP while the killer actually gets a decent amount?
Honestly I believe the proposals I made would solve most of this and encourage players to play DbD in a much more healthy manner that would be more fun for everyone.
0
