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What's the ideal chase time?

Could there be a more contentious topic? Yeah there probably is. In any case I'd like to see what wild variables the community has to offer on the subject.

For survivors there is always the desire to see much longer core chases with the opposition of killer needing shorter times to cope with gen progression.

1:

Your thoughts on catching up when starting a chase at max distance; is it enough to properly position as survivor? Is the distance to far or close for the time taken to actually travel and reach an engagement?

2:

How long should a chase be active before the killer reaches a zone of actions? If both side play without mistake; how long should the chase within the zone of action last?

3:

How long should a chase be active before it is considered damaging to the killer?

4:

How long should chase last in comparison to objective times before less seasoned killers can get bloodlust and reach a conclusion?

5:

How long can a chase be "fun" and "engaging" without dragging on into frustration at someone's expense?

6:

How many complete chases should happen on average within the gen time?

7:

In addition to the overall time allotted to chases, how much leniency should there be for travel in the length of a match?

Comments

  • Sava18
    Sava18 Member Posts: 2,439
    1. 10 Seconds max because anything else is boring and unskillful
    2. If by zone of actions you mean when skillful interactions start to happen, then 20 seconds max
    3. Lots of variables go into this. If they are throwing everything then the reasonable time increases. I would say 40-60 seconds are regardless of resources used it's detrimental
    4. not sure
    5. 45 seconds
    6. If by gen time you mean until last gen pops 9
    7. The reason blight is so well designed is that mindlessly walking across the map and holding w after a survivor who left a gen early is negated. You either play well at tiles or lose the game, something most players aren't ready to handle.
  • crogers271
    crogers271 Member Posts: 1,820

    The way you've put the question together is kind of confusing and is touching on multiple elements.

    If you are asking how long chases should be from balance perspective - well then take however long it takes to do all the genes and divide that number by 6 (probably) and you're in ball park.

    If you're asking what time is the sweet spot for chases (ie not related to game balance, just the fun element of the chase), I'd say the sweet spot is 30 to 45 seconds. Anything less than that feels like it isn't even a chase, more than that feels like the killer isn't powerful.

  • MegMain98
    MegMain98 Member Posts: 2,919

    The chase time is super RNG dependent. You have to ask yourself questions…

    What killer are you? The chase time is going to vastly different when you’re a Spirit vs playing Pig.

    What map are you on? You are going to waste a lot more time destroying resources on Cowshed compared to Shelter Woods.

    Is it the beginning of the match or toward the end of the match? The survivors have a bigger advantage toward the beginning of the match because they still have the entire map to work with while at the end of the match they would’ve drain a lot of the resources.

    How good are the survivors and are they pre-dropping pallets or milking their resources?

    There are too many variables to say what a true “ideal” chase time should be. You could be Pig on Cowshed and your first down is at 2 gens or you could be a Spirit on Shelter Woods and the chases last 20 seconds. The game is way too RNG dependent.

  • Blueberry
    Blueberry Member Posts: 13,668
    edited February 2023

    That’s the fundamental problem. The length of time that survivors want chases to last for them to be fun is unviable to win as killer. Realistically as killer you need chases under 20 seconds to not be losing. On like 90% of the killer roster sub 20 seconds is just not happening with how safe so many tiles are, hence why so many killers aren’t viable against good survivors. This is why so many killers tunnel, stack slow downs, or camp a 3 gen since they can’t make that sub 20 second down time it’s a way around that limitation.

    To illustrate how bad it is, from the time they see the killer coming they could quite literally just hold w in a straight line and the killer wouldn’t make the chase sub 20 seconds..that’s not even using a pallet, window, looping, or throwing an exhaustion perk in there…so you can see where the problem is. The reason the hold w problem exists is because of map design and maps generally just being way too large.

  • Mr_K
    Mr_K Member Posts: 9,225

    Around 5 gens worth.

  • Ayodam
    Ayodam Member Posts: 3,122

    I don’t think there is an answer. As a survivor, you want your chases to last as long as they can—ideally from start to finish. As a killer, you want extremely short chases. From a balance perspective, I guess you have to leave that mostly up to players. When stealth was primarily how survivors played, many people complained. Now that chases are at the forefront, people still complain.

  • M1_gamer
    M1_gamer Member Posts: 359

    forever. chases are fun no matter side.

  • RaSavage42
    RaSavage42 Member Posts: 5,549

    30 seconds....

    30 seconds means 1-2 Gens pop and the Killer gets 1 hook out of it... or 3 Gens are around 33% done

    Anything less then that means the Killer was better... and the Gens aren't that progressed

    Anything more then that means the Survivor was better... and 1-3 Gens will be done

  • solarjin1
    solarjin1 Member Posts: 2,154

    For survivors a min or up.

    For killer 30sec max.

  • sanees
    sanees Member Posts: 615

    Mind games should be encouraged depending on the skill of the player, but just shift w the chase is clearly supposed to last no more than 10 seconds

  • Reinami
    Reinami Member Posts: 5,525
    edited February 2023

    This right here. What i would like to see, is to increase the amount of loops/pallets in the game (but decrease/remove God loops, they should not exist) and rework bloodlust to no longer be about how long you are chasing the survivor for without a hit, but make it so if you keep walking in the same direction, you gain more speed. This would make shift+w be bad, and make you want to play around loops and pallets instead, making the game more interactive in chase.


    Could also do this with a stamina bar, similar to HSH, where survivors can only shift+w for some set amount of time, then they have to walk, but if they vault something, or drop a pallet, or get hit, etc. then this bar is reset. This would encourage them to actually loop instead of just holding shift+w


    Then balance the gen speed and killer powers around this. Ideally you'll need nerf/rework some of the more crazy killer powers in chase like nurse, spirit, and knight (yes knight without hold w is pretty strong), and probably need to buff some others that are more macro, like trapper and hag.

    Post edited by Reinami on