http://dbd.game/killswitch
A way to prevent survivors from taking the game hostage by hiding
Survivors hiding and refusing to repair is against the rules, because it is refusing to participate in normal gameplay and taking the game hostage, and as such, can potentially lead to a ban. It does not matter if it’s a 3-gen or 2 survivors left. The survivors are required to attempt to repair.
However, that only helps after the game when you report them. There needs to be an in-game measure to prevent survivors from extending the game insufferably long by breaking those rules in the first place. This could be done in a few different ways. But some form of an anti-hostage measure does need to be implemented. It is stupid and unreasonable to expect people to play specific killers/run specific add-ons or perks just in case the survivors decide they want to break the rules to hold the game hostage.
The idea I have is a per-survivor unique timer. Being chased, downed, hooked, or doing actions (repairing, healing/being healed, totems, etc) pauses the timer. Escaping chase/standing up/being unhooked, or finishing an action resets the timer. If the timer runs out, that survivor will be revealed by Killer Instinct until either they enter chase or they finish an action (gen, heal, totem, etc) fully.
The point of the timer is to give time for trying to find a Hex, hiding occasionally for a short while when killer comes by, etc. The timer running out means they were doing nothing for a long time, at which point they would be revealed so the killer can find them. As for the length of the timer, around 5 minutes would suffice. A survivor has no rule-valid reason to do no actions for that long.
Comments
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I've never had a game where this was an issue, personally. So when I read these posts I have to assume the situation where survivors are hiding for 'indefinite or extended amounts of time' is incredibly rare.
A short, 5 minutes timer with these conditions won't resolve the problem of 'extreme hiding'. For one thing, the most common, legitimate gameplay strategy form of hiding is when the killer is slugging for the 4k. There's zero reason, strategically, to reveal yourself as the last survivor standing in that scenario. It takes 4 minutes for the other survivor to bleed out, so the last survivor would be revealed looking for the hatch quite often.
Or, in a 3-gen scenario (for any reason), you could just have permanently revealed survivors because the 3-gen could take a long time to actually complete one, or never. Even if the survivors are actively trying to break the 3-gen to win, running to avoid damage and not entering chase would trigger your conditions.
But most importantly, survivors who actually do this will just bring a boon and switch between a handful of totems to keep the timer down. The same reason idle crows don't solve this problem: people will just play around them.
What you are looking for instead is a monitor on the match as a whole, not individuals. So the server detects chases, *any* gen progress at all, health states gained or lost, etc. Basically BP gaining events.
If none of that is detected, then a switch spawns at the back wall of the basement that anyone in the game can trigger to start a stalemate collapse. This is just the end game collapse timer, but without opening or powering the exit gates. Progressing the game pauses the timer, but any time is permanently lost, even if the gates are powered later.
And while we're targeting hostage scenarios, any player idle long enough to get any number of idle crows loses collision with other players. Crows also disable that player's items, perks, add-ons, and killer power until they are active enough to have lost all crows gained. Idle killers can now also get crows, but this does not give 'explosion' notifications to survivors.
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This is an interesting idea. Regarding a few points you said:
- Hiding during last 2 for an extended time when the other survivor hasn’t been downed yet is against the rules. Because at that point, it’s not a definite 4m timer. It’s an indefinite hostage situation until someone goes down.
- Didn’t think about people running early during 3-gen, which would prevent chase from starting. Good catch.
- A solution to boon-swapping could be making it so booning Dulls don’t reset the timer, only pause while Booning. Getting rid of Hexes makes sense, but with this, they’d have to continuously go across the map to swap boons just to pause the timer, while losing time crossing the map to do so. And by crossing the map, killer is more likely to find them.
- The global monitor idea is interesting. I think necessary criteria would be generator progress, gaining or losing a health state, snuffing or booning a Hex, chase, and being unhooked/rescued from killer grasp. I think that covers all the ones that actually matter. Also generator progress would have to still be a minimum amount, so people can’t tap a generator for 0.01s and then hide again.
- Just for clarification, by stalemate collapse, do you mean a draw? Because I don’t agree with that. If survivors are hiding and refusing to play, timer end should be death for all survivors.
- I agree with the crow idea. It would prevent dumb situations of being bodyblocked into a corner forever.
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