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DBD Problems and Potential Fixes 5/10 Spreading the Pain VS Killing Early
This is a series of recommendations to hopefully change the game for the better. I am posting each section separate, but a lot of them are connected and work much better understanding the other changes. Some are more Killer sided, and some are more Survivor sided, but overall I think it levels the playing field in a positive way.
If you want to read the draft I am posting the sections from you can follow this google doc link.
With that said, here is part 5.
Spreading the Pain VS Killing Early
Given that survivors can only do gens at one rate, killing a survivor prevents gens from getting done all the faster, in addition to the added pressure. It cuts survivor gen efficiency by 25% (or 33%, if you assume 1 person is in chase or otherwise occupying the killer’s time) to kill someone early, but that makes it boring for dead survivor, only able to spectate now with only the often sub 10k BP earned from the first few minutes they got to play.
Proposed Solution:
Make a lesser Grim Embrace basekit, and both the perk and the basekit version can proc twice if hooked in order properly. The basekit version has 10s gen block and no aura reveal, and 20s if the Obsession is the final hooked survivor per stage. Once a killer completes 8 hook actions, then the killer can Mori survivors on death hook for bonus Sacrifice BP (on top of the 1k base Mori BP in order to help reach the new 10k cap), prestige, block all gens and gates for 5s (or add 5s to an existing block), and to prevent a Ghost. Additionally, Basekit Moris augmented with a Mori offering could be enhanced.
Living Survivors get a bonus to gen repair speeds based on how many survivors are not killed by Moris or basekit killer powers (not add-ons). 0 is normal speed, 1 early death gives living Survivors a 50% bonus, 2 early deaths give living Survivors a 200% bonus and 3 early deaths give the lone Survivor a 600% gen repair bonus. Survivors are also always considered as cooperating with X additional amount of survivors when doing gens for the benefit of gen efficiency (if the co-op version above is used), but not loud noises on Good Skill Checks. In this case X is the number of early killed survivors. (The idea being if 1 living survivor is being chased or otherwise distracting the killer and not on a gen, the remaining survivors have equivalent or even greater gen speeds as if no one were dead. The numbers could be increased further to punish tunneling further.) With this change you are more lethal (and paid more BP) for sharing the pain as the entity desires, and Survivors get added bonuses to avenge their fallen allies, and ghosts (if implemented) can help (and even gain BP) in the case of an early death.
The following might be too hard to implement, but I like the idea and figured I’d throw it in.
Survivors killed early now can still play as Ghosts as long as they weren’t Mori’d by any means/basekit killer power Killed. They can lift dropped pallets, and repair broken pallets. This takes 40s to repair, and 20s to lift. Up to 2 ghosts can do this on the same pallet. Also they can perform other actions at 25% normal speed, doubling to 50% when cooperating with another Ghost or Survivor (healing a living survivor counts as coop for the doubling), and also doubling further during the endgame (for 50% solo 100% coop). The pallet timers are not affected by the coop bonuses, but are affected by the endgame bonus. This allows 2 Ghosts to repair in 10s, and lift pallets in 5s in the endgame. A Ghost cannot break totems, unhook survivors, use perks, use/grab items, or open chests or gates, but they may 99% chests and gates. Instead of breaking hexes, Ghosts de-hex them instead (To prevent Ghosts from griefing Boon perk living Survivors). If a Ghost decides to DC/quit (with no penalty), they cash out their earned BP, and an AI ghost will instantly repair/lift one pallet at random every 80s/40s, prioritizing lifting pallets. An AI Ghost will not repair/lift a pallet within 24m of the killer. In the endgame AI ghosts will 99% gates at 25% speed, prioritizing the furthest gate from the killer at the start of endgame if only one AI Ghost is active. Once both gates are 99-ed, they will go back to pallets with the faster 40s/20s timer. The next queued pallet by AI Ghosts would be highlighted to Survivors. Ghost survivors still get BP at half the normal rate, even if the action speeds are slowed beyond that. You cannot become a ghost if you progressed hook stages from suicide (attempting and failing any Kobe attempts and reaching stage 2 [to still allow for Slippery Meat or meme unhook attempts in a allies face], not attempting 2 hook skill checks in stage 2, or slug suicide bleedout animation). Ghosts have no collision and are visible to other Ghosts/living Survivors. If a living Survivor tries an action on the same area such as a solo gen or a gate or lifting/vaulting over a pallet, the Ghost is kicked off and the living Survivor has priority. Also since Ghosts cannot be chased by the killer anymore, repairing/lifting pallets gives BP at a similar rate as repairing a gen, but for Boldness. Repairing/lifting pallets has an interruptible progress bar, so if you start and stop you can finish it up later. Also to mitigate griefing, killers cannot see Ghosts unless they are engaged in an action such as working on a gen. Ghosts leave a lingering phantom visible for 15s when performing actions. Also Ghosts can only heal living survivors if the survivor is crouching, again, to help mitigate griefing. Additionally the killer hears an audible effect if they are within 32m of a ghost or lingering phantom, similar to Dredge sound effects in Nightfall, Plague in her Corrupt Purge, or the Whispers perk, as the prematurely killed survivors torment the killer for not doing the entity's bidding. The killer can ward off individual Ghosts for 30s, by performing a Snuff Boon action where an active Ghost is, or was performing an action in the past 15s where the phantom is visible, giving the Ghost the Incapacitated condition. This also gives survival and sacrifice BP to each side of the action respectively (numbers up for debate, but I’d say 100 each). This incapacitated duration is halved in the endgame. Ghosts also receive 1k Survival BP for each living survivor to escape while they are active (AI Ghosts do not give the player who left the BP). Also Ghosts repairing generators do not end the regression when working on a regressing gen, but they prevent the regression while they are working on it, same as slugged survivors as above in the excessive slugging section.
A caveat is that bonus “AFK crows” are gained by living survivors in a reduced time per player Ghost active (1 Ghost at [30s/45s/60s/70s], 2 at [20s/30s/40s/50s] and 3 at [15s/25s/35s/40s]). This bonus “AFK crows” progress cannot be gained while within the Terror Radius/Lullaby, LOS (character model, not camera based), the survivor being within 16m of a killer (for undetectable/oblivious), being chased, leaving scratch marks by any means, performing “Conspicuous Actions”, or being healed by a living Survivor, in order to prevent hiding in the corner of the map waiting for Ghosts to do everything. The bonus AFK crow timer is regressed in chase and when performing “Conspicuous Actions”, but the timer is only paused for the other conditions listed above. It is also reset to 0 when injured by any means. Perk based Loud Noise notifications caused by the survivor regresses this timer for 15s, (Such as Diversion, Deception, Flashbang, or Red Herring) and has a corresponding “Killer Distracted” buff tooltip to show the survivor for the timer. Bonus AFK Crows are disabled in the endgame entirely, only normal AFK crows apply then. Overall this is to accelerate the game to a close, and prevent hiding out for Ghosts to finish gens. To prevent totem/healing Conspicuous Action cheesing, tapping a totem or healing starts regressing the bonus timer until you let go, then cannot count as a conspicuous action until requalified by killer related qualifications listed above, or the action being completed by anyone. An action being completed on the person or totem also requalifies, in case of re-boon/cleanse/re-healing instances, or if they are damaged/grabbed/boon snuffed by the killer. Creating distractions, creating scratch marks, or doing gens does not requalify the specific heal/totem action as a “Conspicuous Action”. If you touch the same totem/heal the same person again without requalifying then it does not count as a Conspicuous Action, and your bonus AFK crow timer accrues. Gens are not included in this due to it directly progressing the game, as opposed to delaying it.
These changes (Ghosts or no) might need Mori offerings reworked. One possible method is Mori’s could reduce 1 required hook per rarity of the offering. That is 8 for basekit, 7 for yellow Mori, 6 for green Mori, and 5 for iridescent Mori. Those would still need the survivor to be on death hook to activate. Alternatively they could not alter this hook number, and just change the entity block numbers from basekit 5s, yellow 10s, green 15s, iri 20s regardless of mori duration. A final alternative could have yellow mori entity block for the duration of the mori, the green also lingers for 5s afterward, and iri incapacitate the remaining survivors (living or ghost) for that timer as well. I would say the third version is the best, but the more ideas the better.
One final change to help prevent one survivor from hiding all game would be that perks that hide your presence do not function when all other survivors are alive and have more hook states than you. Specifically aura hide, scratch mark hiding, pools of blood hiding, silencing grunts of pain, and silencing screams, with an exception for the effects of Low Profile or Sole Survivor and they are active. This way killers who do not want to tunnel are rewarded, but if a survivor is prematurely killed then the killer doesn’t get the same reward, and gens are as, or even more effective at being completed.
Also a few last basekit changes don’t really fit anywhere else, but here they are. The Basement chest normal search is guaranteed to contain a green rarity or better item (unless overridden by a perk), with the Broken Key excluded from the list. Secondly, if all gens are complete, all totems are cleansed/destroyed (even pentimento bonus totems), and all chests are opened, then the Hatch spawns, regardless of the number of survivors remaining. To correspond with this change a bonus chest spawns in the opposite corner of the normal basement chest, and it only contains a limited key. This bonus chest can be opened once per survivor, and a hatch escape while holding this limited key or by using it grants 10k bonus untyped BP, and counts as a win for MMR purposes. This hopefully might get a Survivor bonus BP if they are greedy or have an AFK killer, and may reward a killer with Survivors wasting time further in the trial, potentially leading to extra kills to punish that greed. The killer gets 10k bonus untyped BP for basekit Mori-ing a survivor who opened the bonus chest and exited the basement (before they are put in the dying state), or 1k if killed by any other means after the Survivor opens the bonus chest instead.
Corresponding Perk Changes:
Grim Embrace is now buffed to reveal all survivors on the 4th hook for each proc of the effect if the Obsession was the last one hooked. (The innate buff of being able to activate twice is also extremely powerful) An alternative I have read was incapacitating survivors for half the duration instead.
BBQ and Chili now also reveals the aura of a survivor with the least amount of hook states, at least 20m away, furthest in case of tied hook states, in a different color with a symbol above them for 6s, in addition to the 60/50/40m 4s aura reveal for everyone else. (Clearly you want a varied recipe for added flavor, too much of one good thing can be bad.)
Eg. A Tombstone Myers kills a Yun-Jin early using the Tombstone/Tombstone Piece. Since this isn’t coded as a Mori or a basekit form of killing, her Ghost can rebuild pallets, or otherwise help. The remaining survivors get a bonus to gen repair speeds, making them faster than before at finishing the remaining gens. The 2nd survivor, Ace, falls to Myers’ blade after he finished the gen in front of Myers. This gives an even greater boost to gen speeds, a new shorter bonus AFK crow timer, and 2 Ghosts rebuilding pallets or doing gens/Totems. David barely misses the locker play, and dies to Myers. Cheryl looks for hatch, and sees Myers camping it, so she quickly pops the 2 remaining gens and tries to stealth out the gates when Myers closes the hatch after the last gen popped. Myers seems all the quicker than normal and finds the Cheryl, and thanks to the rebuilt pallets she is able to delay him long enough for NOED to be cleansed by one of the friendly spirits, and the other 2 spirits opening each gate. The Cheryl barely makes it out of the match and each dead player still gets to feel like they contributed, and got more than 5k BP for playing/spectating.
Eg2. Nemesis loads into a match seeing Jill as the Obsession, and finds her early. He decides to infect her and leave her for now, seeing as he brought Grim Embrace, and he saw 2 others on a loud sputtering gen. Feng Lithes away, as Dwight is left to fend for himself after staying for the last second Great Skill check. Nemesis reaches Tier 2 and quickly downs Dwight. He then goes back after Feng who barely failed the Pallet save for Dwight and took a hit in the process. He hooks her and sees Bill in the backdrop rescuing Dwight. After he hooks Bill, he sees the far gen light up and knows Jill has to be there by process of elimination. After he takes her down, he gets the juicy 40s gen block, and sees all survivors on the map. He decides to go back for Bill Booning Shack. He repeats the cycle, but this time Jill forced his hand and got hooked 3rd in order. After he got the final 2nd stage on Feng, Jill is revealed by Grim Embrace, all the gens are blocked for another 40s, and he can finally yell “S.T.A.R.S.” After Jill is basekit Mori’d there is only 1 gen left, but the survivors won’t be able to get it done any quicker due to the Mori Death. He takes the Feng down and starts the Mori, but the last gen is popped shortly afterward. He remembers where Bill foolishly set the Circle of Healing 3 times before and searches there, since it also is near an exit gate. Bill is booning the shack while Dwight is opening the gate, and drives them off. He decides to take Bill out, and Dwight is able to escape through the other gate.
One final nice side perk of this form of basekit Moris from a business perspective is that alternate Moris could be sold as cosmetic options for the killers.