Merging Maps and Keys into one item: Megathread

MrMori

Right now, Maps and Keys have fallen out of the meta completely. Especially after the hatch changes, Keys are extremely niche, and are pretty much exclusively run to track the killer with the Blood Amber addon, or perhaps if a player has an archive. Maps are also very rarely used, and are mainly used with Detective's Hunch, if at all.

Not only are these items very niche in general, but they both suffer from the same flaw of being almost entirely useless if you do not bring addons with them. Add on top of this the fact that they are also expensive, as they all have "Rare" rarity or higher, and you can see why players don't want to bring these items.

I've attempted to fix that.

Here's a large picture which displays the new, reworked and merged keys and maps. I'll explain the reasoning behind my changes underneath the picture.

Explanation for the changes

The first change you'll see is that there is now a brown and yellow version of the maps/keys, and the highest rarity you'll find are Very Rare, purple. This is because maps and keys are already a niche item. If they remain hard to obtain for newer players, and costly to use due to high rarity, this will make them too unattractive.

I've also changed the maps to track 3 generators by default, instead of 1 random object. This makes them far more attractive to slap on as a cheap item instead of nothing, as you'll at least get some decent info on gen location for free, no matter what map you choose. Maps with Keys can also track players you've met already in the trial within 16m, keeping this functionality from Keys, and without spending a whole addon slot too. Note that the green addon for tracking players within 48m from the start is still there and works the same as before.

Maps of Yellow rarity or higher have a key attached. This lets them open hatch just like before, turning them into a Brown Map if you do open hatch using the item. Obviously this is just a neat little detail, and we could make it so the maps just disappear if you unlock hatch using them. It could be changed so only green and purple maps have keys attached, if too many players start running maps to selfishly aim to get hatch.

As for the addons, I chose to take the most interesting addons from both the item types. I've also condensed all the "Allows you to track X" addons into a single one, the Black Silk Cord.

I personally think these changes would be really great for maps and keys, and would cause them to see far more use than they do now, with the added bonus of not clogging up the bloodweb with 18 different addons spread across 2 item types.

What do you all think? Anything you'd change? Something you miss from the old items? Please let me know.