Adds-Ons are a Weird Game Concept
So every now and then I would see post on here complaining about flashlights. And I always thought 'those things that almost never work? how are you getting hit by them' Well I just played my first game against a player running a purple flashlight with an odd bulb and high end sapphire lens.
Suddenly we're in a different game. I can't even pick up a survivor if this player is anywhere near me. Combined with another player running a sabotage build, hooks went from easy to virtually impossible.
Now I'm not complaining about the game, it was great. Ended up giving up on picks unless I was certain they were safe and while they all got out during EGC two players down and one on a hook (two players ended up having to crawl out, one barely made it before bleed). I'm more interested in just how weird of a design this is.
It's common to point out that this is an asymmetrical game and thus hard to balance. That's a fair point, but then you have things like add-ons that make it impossible. Most of my games as survivors players aren't even running add-ons (if they even bring equipment). I can easily imagine that if we all ran high level gear the game would very quickly change and the killer would be routed. That's kind of a weird way to decide a game though, which side was willing to give up their best stuff?
Outside of the balance, it's just a weird concept. I have no knowledge going into a match how challenging it is going to be. I imagine it would have to be frustrating seeing all of your equipment burned away if you hit a killer who went AFK. Also I suspect Solo Q uses a lot less add-ons. Like if I was playing with friends not only could we work out our gear, I'd be far more willing to use the best stuff. Now we have three advantages: communication during game, pre-game coordination, and using superior equipment. In solo Q I don't know if survivors just forget about add-ons, don't care, or are just hoarding.
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Add-ons help give diversity to gameplay. That said, I think there are too many currently. Also, all the ones that are just duplicates of another but higher numbers should just be merged into basekit and/or a single add-on. Eg, Green Engravings made basekit on Hillbilly, leaving only yellow as the only Engravings. And I think more add-ons should be bonus/changed effects instead of numbers. For example, instead of "Recharge X% faster", something like "Gain additional effect" or "X does this instead".
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Honestly I think the addon system could use some overhauls. Too many addons that just flat out buff the killer power without any drawback, situation or activation condition. Addons should be more varied and fun, more sidegrades than direct upgrades, and I'm happy that Wesker's browns seem to be following that trend. Otherwise we just get killers using the same strongest cookie cutter addons over and over and over again.
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Addons seem like a product of the old grind of dbd. They throw in variety or used to since it was pretty rare to actually have access to the strongest addons/people didn't really know what was best anyways.
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For killers I think add-ons would be better served as a sort of killer specific perk that doesn’t run out, but changes a killer’s play style. The idea being it isn’t an upgrade, but a side-grade to a different play style. This would be safer to tweak than perks because being killer specific, it wouldn’t be necessary to consider how it would affect other killers.
For example, say you want to play Nurse but aren’t great at aiming your blinks - there could be an add-on that increases run speed to standard killer speed, limits her to 1 blink at a time with a bit of a max length extension, and removes the fatigue slowdown but keeps it to where she can’t attack while it’s playing and makes it immediate after blink. Now she can use her ability for better map traversal, but not for attacks that come out of nowhere.
For survivors, it could be similar in respect to what items do. Like say you could make a flashlight no longer blind killers but instead, reveal their aura while the beam is hitting them.
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This is a complicated subject, because DBD is far from being a perfect game, I try to give ideas myself, other people try too, but a crowd always collapses putting a defect in our ideas, and why is that? because the game has a lot of holes to plug, a lot of things, so even good ideas end up seeming harmful to most of the community that plays the game
About the add ons, I don't know how the devs think, as well as the perks, I think the biggest problem is that the game is not being played the way it was designed, I believe the idea was to be able to play with friends without them being communicate, but they use communication, and then there are strategies to use flashlights, sabotage hooks in an organized way because they create a game plan
for DBD to become balanced they would have to recreate the main base of the game and organize things better, which would be a big and risky job of losing the fan base
DBD is the only asymmetrical game that can have so many people playing, so devs take time to make decisions for fear that those numbers will drop, which is quite understandable
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How are addons a weird game concept. Its legit the same concept of attachments on guns for CoD. You lose out on some stats with some while gaining in a different category then there's just other stats that provide small boosts with no downside.
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On lower level add-ons sure, and on that part I think its a great idea, but it's a massive change later. A flashlight with two brown add-ons is a minor annoyance for the killer. One with two top level attachments fundamentally changes the game.
Additionally (and I don't have a CoD reference point since the mid 2000s), the guaranteed expire nature means frequently they just aren't being used.
The difference between yellow and purple perks is usually not that big of a deal and, once you get to purple, you never have to worry about it again. For items whether survivors/killers are or are not willing to throw in top level add-ons is a massive deciding factor for how the game goes.
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