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Were breakable walls a failure?
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Answers
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Huh? Failure how? Like they don't work? Not an interesting gameplay element? Or are you talking about the proposed killer long ago who destroyed permanent walls?
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In theory, they were a new and interesting gameplay mechanic that would enhance the strategy aspect of the game by giving players the opportunity to decide whether to open up new routes or strategically deny certain paths.
In practice however, they're nothing more than an annoyance. The vast majority of them are positioned at very strong loops where you stand no chance of catching up to a survivor if you don't break it. And the remaining ones are either in obsolete locations (like the very edge of the map on Dead Dawg Saloon) or open up strong loops for survivors when broken. So instead of interesting strategy, you're left with:
- Walls that you NEED to break.
- Walls that you should NEVER break.
- Walls that are kind of just there for some reason and never see any use.
They're not fun or interactive and I wish they would rework their implementation to be more engaging...
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Definitely not an interesting mechanic. They literally function as a "predropped" pallet. But the reality is the way they are setup is pretty simple.
You have your walls that you want to break, and your walls you don't want to break. Why are there breakable walls you don't want to break? Breaking a wall shouldn't be good for survivors, so that is already bad. But, why are there some sections of a map that just exist as an infinite if you don't break the wall? They just exist to waste extra time for a killer with no real strategic gain. Survivors would likely prefer if they were just a standard loop rather than a breakable wall.
The only breakable wall that i think is well designed is the shack in the deathslinger map. That one is good, because the wall being there makes it stronger than a standard shack, but the wall not being there weakens it to being less than a standard shack, but it isn't useless. That is more how i think the walls should work, where when you break them, it weakens the loop, but doesn't make it useless, and breaking it isn't completely required (depending on killer).
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What we expected: KoolAid man busting through walls to destroy loops
What we got: doorway "pallets" that arbitrarily make loops better or worse for either side depending on the map
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Only time the breakable wall implementation was interesting is the alternate way to go up on Midwich.
Rest of the maps have must breaks or never break walls.
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What they should do is change breakable wall so that it breaks faster and damages survivors too close to the door.
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Yeah, probably.
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Good concept that got wasted by lazy execution. instead of actual interesting decision making, you get amain building with 3 god vaults you need to spend 30s breaking down walls just to make balanced.
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The only one that is somewhat interesting imo is either of the ones on Badham. Optimal route into the building to get to the gen at the cost of opening up a strong survivor loop. I wish a lot of them were like that.
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They can work, but their overall implementation was bad.
It shouldn't have been a base time waste for the killer to go around breaking. It should start broken and the survivors have to waste time building them up.
It's basically been a bad bandaid fix for bad map design and still hasn't really fixed the issue.
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I like them. When you have a strong idea that a survivor is pathing past a breakable wall and you smash it right in front of them, I can just picture the survivor crapping their pants. That's always a good feeling. Plus there are some killer abilities, add ons, and perks that interact with breaking pallets/walls. So having them on the map is certainly relevant from that perspective too.
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(I love opening only one side and letting people get stuck in my lil trap)
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Walls are a very one sided benefit for survivors.
As far as an interesting addition for killers, it's a complete failure.
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bad mechanic I like how when reworking maps they just brought back one time usage god windows
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Massive failure
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Most breakable walls are like predrop god pallet. Some are really meaningless.
Only bathroom Midwich are the unique one that killer has a choice to either create short path for both sides, or just leave it there, or break one to make a trap.
We need more breakable walls like bathroom Midwich.
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We'll echo the sentiments above of "coulda worked but executed poorly".
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The idea needed some more time in the oven before it was done
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Unfortunately this is true of a lot of things in this game.
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Too many of them have zero strategy and are simply survivor sided until the killer breaks the wall. Specifically on Dead Dawg.
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Failure isn't the right word. But they were definitely poorly implemented with a lot of them being useless. I'd like to see them reworked in the future. Especially the ones on Gideon.
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Speaking of breakble walls. There should have been ways for survivors to utilize them as well, like creating a temporary breakable window vault or something. That could have been a very interesting and interactive way for both sides to shape the trials to their advantage.
I remember seeing someone bringing up that idea a long time ago, not that long after breakable walls became a thing. It would have been really cool seeing that being implemented in some way. Just hopeful thoughts.
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Some are good. Some are bad. And some are just a failure.
Good Breakable Walls - IMO the breakable Walls in Main Structures are good. Because after the rework they did not really have anything going for them. E.g. I like the Breakable Wall on the upstairs portion of the Ironworks-Mainbuilding. Without it, the Main Building would not really have anything to work with and this would be a huge structure on the Map which will not be used for gameplay (aside from the Gen inside).
I also think that breakable Walls which block of paths and should not be broken are good. The Killer can ignore them anyway, but if needed, they can break them. Like Badham-School-Breakables. They make the structure a bit weaker, but are still an option to break if needed. (a solid wall would be worse)
Bad Breakable Walls are basically almost everything on Dead Dawg. Because it has standard structures but sometimes made a big stronger with a breakable Wall which makes the structure way weaker. Really bad concept. And I am glad that they did not adapt it for other maps.
Failure - basically The Game. Because of breakable Walls and Walls which only open when the Gen next to it is repaired, there are quite a few of deadends on this Map. And some Pallets are not useable due to this, which means that they had to add more Pallets (since The Game only has Pallets). They could reduce the number of Pallets a bit if they would remove breakable Walls. Because I think the Deadends on this Map are really the worst.
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I don't know about failure but they're certainly disappointing. Instead of more strategy you just have walls that should break and walls that you shouldn't break, and on top of that survivors have no way of interacting with them (besides them cluttering your screen with WoW for no reason whatsoever).
The only ones I like are the ones where you can trap survivors on Midwitch, but even then it's just for the memes and not actually useful.
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They’ve stopped using them on the most recent maps, so I would say that they are a failure.
The only map that really did breakable walls well is Midwich (and maybe Saloon).
Garden of Joy’s main building could really use breakable walls though.
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Plus introduce the sledgehammer item for survivors that allows them to open up a breakable wall themselves and maybe even start regressing a gen without damaging it, if a killer is running kicking perks
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I'm absolutely disappointed in how they're being implemented thats for sure. I thought they would be more like the optional stairway in Midwich, offering chances for the killer to open up new routes altering the flow of movement in the map.
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Not completely. They did get it right on The Game in my opinion. Breaking one of these walls is always a tactical decision. It makes traversing the map easier but it also removes some dead ends. You can profit from both depending on the situation.
On maps like the Saloon on the other hand, they really missed the mark. You should always break the wall in shack, the one wall on the second floor of main building (next to the window) and the ones at the jungle gym / whatever structure you get. all the others completely useless and you shouldn't break them (especially not the ones on the second floor of mainbuilding with that one room that can only be entered via a window).
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Not entirely, but there are some bad ones. I think people focus too much on the bad, though, because there are some great breakable walls in the game!
Some examples:
- The alternate ways up to the second floor on Midwich are a good example of how to make breakable walls into a "spend time now for efficiency later" situation.
- The breakable walls next to generators on the Game provide the killer with bottlenecks where approaching from one angle heavily impacts where survivors can run but at the same time repairing that generator removes this benefit, adding more tactical gameplay. Not much, but some.
- The main structure in Torment Creek has a breakable wall that some killers want to leave up, but others would want to break, which makes the structure play differently depending on who your killer is. Huntress, Pyramid Head, Deathslinger, and a few others would want to force the survivor to take the window, but others would want to shorten the way around and break the wall.
- While the Badham main structure absolutely sucks, I actually quite like its breakable walls. It makes it so survivors are stuck with fewer ways out, but it also means you have fewer ways out when trying to get to a hook, making your timing on breaking the wall important.
In general, I would say any time a wall promotes literally any kind of tactical decisionmaking, it's a good one. Walls you just absolutely have to break whenever survivors start using that structure, or walls that you never want to break at all, are the ones I would say are poorly implemented.
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They still need to release a perk that lets survivors burst through breakable walls!
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I am not sure how you mean. The only thing I dislike about them is when I used to use Windows, they made me think they're a palette and it actually hurt me more than helped. I wish they were white instead of yellow so I knew :) I stopped running the perk and no longer have this issue. This is the only way I can think of them as a "failure"
I really like though, especailly on the Game, when a killer breaks them and it jump scares me haha.
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Failure how they are now. While re-working or eliminating them, they could at least allow the killer to burst through them almost instantly. That would at least give them a scare factor and not be as much of a hindrance.
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Basically, just the fact that the killer has to waste time breaking the window. And they need to break it in multiple situations. It's a lose-lose situation.
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Some maps don't even have breakable walls and for the ones that do they fail to really offer any interesting gameplay dynamic.
Breakable walls should be replaced with something like collapsible structures. So that way there's a more interesting dynamic to destroying something. Destroying a support beam to a room to narrow the path or remove the upper floor, destroying the bottom part of a window to turn it into a doorway if it gets vaulted enough to even damage it, a wall becoming breakable if a pallet falls onto it. All of these things could be done to make breakable walls a cool feature but it's basically summarized in the second reply.
I honestly would have loved if breakable walls served as a mid chase mechanic where if you broke one while in chase it would give you a speed boost similar to a surge of adrenaline. It would have been a good limited resource the killer could use thoughtfully.
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Breakable Walls that spawn 100% of the time eschew the unpredictable nature of the Trial.
Breakable Walls that serve only to strengthen a loop are just there to be broken at the earliest opportunity, favoring mobility Killers (Or Killers with ranged attacks that can Break those Walls) over less mobile Killers.
Breakable Walls that add an element of Surprise near an Objective (such as some of the ones on The Game), aren't surprising against a Killer that is not Undetectable.
Deadzone to Deadzone Breakable Walls (EG: Midwich Bathroom and some interconnecting room Breakable Walls on the top floor of The Game) may give the Killer some more mobility, but takes away time dealing with them in the first place, and if an Objective is there you can no longer corral the Survivor.
Breakable Walls that don't connect to any loop whatsoever serve no purpose, such as the bedroom Breakable Wall on Dead Dawg.
The only Breakable Walls I like are the Breakable Walls that control movement flow between loops or between loops and Deadzones (if there is no nearby Objective). Badham Preschool Walls, Most of the Breakable Walls on Midwich (apart from the 1st floor reception desk Breakable Wall).
The loop(s) are boxed into their own system, and Breakable Walls serve to puncture more holes into that "box" as entryways and exits, but don't add much to any of the loops or detract from them due to surrounding blockers (The walls of Midwich) or deadzones (The Hallways of Midwich).
An example that I would propose for the upcoming Rancid Abattoir rework would be a Breakable Wall involved with the Freezer, likely entering the Freezer from outside the building, though how the tiles surrounding this wall can be chained with and without it being there should be taken into consideration.
And I should mention that Survivors don't have much interaction with them at all. Which seems odd.
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I concur with others in that breakable walls have never seemed to be anything more than a Band-Aid fix. Instead of reworking a map to adequately benefit both sides, we instead have these structures that either need to be broken, or they need to be left alone. To me that just comes off as lazy, which I hate saying because I know the devs are anything but lazy.
This is why I really wish BHVR would dedicate a chapter to game balance. Spend a chapter or two dedicated to rebalancing maps and killers that struggle in today's current meta of DBD. The devs talk about how they can't be spread too thin, but if they were allowed to stop working on new content for a little while and instead focus on rebalancing, I think it would do DBD a lot of good.
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Would have liked to have seen killers and survivors being able to interact with devices that open/close areas of the map for tactical reasons. Walls are just bp fillers and Carnifex spamming (Knight)
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They are probably hard to implement correctly cause for them to be a successful feature, in my opinion, would mean that different killers would choose to break different doors to force survivors to play their game.
As it is now people have figured which are the more optimal walls to break and which ones to leave on, so you don't see any variety.
Maybe there are a couple of secret "good" wallbreaks left for incredibly niche scenarios? Who knows... I don't think anyone's looking into it atm.
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