Wording of 3 Gen mechanic has me worried
In the live cast they said this:
"We've developed a system that should not affect normal gameplay but is going to look at those trials where we can detect the player is actively playing for the 3 gen."
I'm concerned because it seems like the mindset they're adopting to address pain points in the gameplay loop is all stick and no carrot. The anti-facecamping mechanic I think worked out nicely, it's not too punishing if normal gameplay leads you to a hooked survivor for killers and it eliminates alot of the most egregious cases of the killer just face camping you if your playing survivor.
However, once you starting adding additional mechanics that punish the killer for being in a certain area, then what? You hook a survivor, and hurry away to avoid the anti face camp. So you go defend the gens that are closest together to maintain pressure and map control. Once you get there now you're worried about the anti 3 gen mechanic. Now what? Hopefully you get a chase in between, but if not, do you go run to the edge of the map to check that one gen way out there knowing you're going to lose pressure and large chunks of progression on the other gens? Just so you don't get punished by the anti-X mechanics? That's going to feel really bad. The more mechanics that are added that restrict the killers ability to control the map the less they are going to feel like the 1 in the 1v4, the worse the immersion will feel, and the more it'll just feel like you're dodging land mines all game, fighting against the game itself instead of the other team.
I think the much better option is to add incentives to have players do the things you want them to do. Devour Hope and Pain Res are some of the healthiest perks in this game imo (grim embrace would be to if it wasn't so underwhelming, thankfully its getting addressed) because it incentivizes one side to play in a way that's more fun for the other as well. To be honest, I thought this was kind of game design 101. But i'm not a game designer so what do I know.
It just concerns me for the long term health of the game if the answer to unfun and irritating points in the gameplay loop are answered with a heavy handed punishment mechanic rather than a carrot that could improve enjoyment of the game for both sides.
Comments
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"I'm concerned because it seems like the mindset they're adopting to address pain points in the gameplay loop is all stick and no carrot."
Carrots don't work. Killers will gravitate to the easiest, highest return strategy, and will continue to do so. Overpowered strategies (yes, chess merchant was plainly broken) need to be nerfed down, since you can't provide an alternative without breaking the game's balance even further.
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Based off of this and other comments I've seen you post, it seems you have this mentality that all killer mains = bad and survivor mains = good. Which is very strange because you need both sides to enjoy playing the game if you want the game to be successful.
That aside, I gave 2 good examples of carrots that work. Pain Res and Devour Hope. If a carrot doesn't work, it doesn't mean carrots don't work at all. It just means it's a bad carrot. See Grim Embrace as an example.
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Not a fan of the stick method but as said above carrots don't work. Players will go for the easiest solution, hence the tunneling epidemic, the gen kick meta and what not (I'm sure there's many example from the survivor side as well).
As for the mechanic I personally think it'll be either OP then nerfed or already pretty inconsequential to begin with. I don't believe it'll be game changing beyond a very few select scenarios but I guess we'll see
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I agree that all players will naturally adopt strategies that are the easiest and lead to the most success. That's the very reason Metas develop in the first place for example. The question I pose though is this, when those strategies cross the line into becoming a pain point in the gameplay loop, how should they be handled? I argue positive feedback in games is always better than negative when you have the choice.
As an example of Carrot vs Stick, every player likes to see 4 Iri emblems on their screen at the end of a match. This is part of the positive feedback or "carrot". players absolutely alter their gameplay so they get better emblems at the end and thus also get more BP. Now, does this mean that's all players think about and only care about getting iri emblems? Of course not, but it's a small example that the carrot strategy works. If you applied Stick design into the emblem system you would have a punishment built into bad performance, like losing BP for bronze or lower emblems. Obviously that's a terrible idea. I hope this illustrates my thoughts and how even if the anti-X mechanics are OK, they are missed opportunities to improve the game at best.
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Forums have a selection bias and I do think they draw out the worst killer players. Lots of forum killers are myopic or have an inflated perception of their own skill ('I am T O P M M R'). That's not to say there's no absolutely horrendous survivor takes either, but there's a lot of other 'survivor mains' that'll happily smack those down as well.
That aside, I gave 2 good examples of carrots that work. Pain Res and Devour Hope. If a carrot doesn't work, it doesn't mean carrots don't work at all. It just means it's a bad carrot. See Grim Embrace as an example.
Neither of those work though. Pain Res has been around for a long time and hasn't really done much to deter tunnelling, and Devour Hope has a very low pick-rate.
What has provably worked though, is DS, but that got absolutely gutted for no particular reason.
We've heard this 'carrot vs stick' argument a great many times, and it's not a solution. Whatever you'd want the 'carrot' to be would have to outpace tunnelling, camping, slugging, 3-genning for effectiveness, without also bolstering those tactics. Currently, the overall game balance is in a good state. Killers are -slightly- more powerful on average, showing more wins than losses, and your solution to fixing exploitative tactics is to very, very, -very- severely buff them.
Do you see the problem I have with that?
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3 Gen is a completely valid strategy tbh.
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Camping, tunneling, and 3gen strategies are all actions that are executed when the killer player, regardless of his or her skills, sees a benefit to the game development and the survivor's playing.
However, strategies for the killer to try to execute as many survivors as possible are dealt with because they cause frustration to the survivor.This appears to be a consistent adjustment so far.If we are going to go that far already, why not just make it PvE with bot killers instead of PvP?
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Agreed. As a Trapper main, it usually falls to that if the survivors don't play a bit more strategically.
That said, I don't seek out to 3-gen from the game start. THAT strat isn't very valid in terms of game health. I'm sure you understand that.
Another reason they might be cracking down on mechanics which require less than healthy brain activity (Camping/tunneling/3-gen out the gate) is to promote player growth. And I mean in terms of getting better at the game. (Wishful thinking on my part, probably.) 3-genning from the start doesn't make you better. At all. And regardless of supporters of this playstyle, its not healthy or what BHVR wants.
So, my suggestion is to start trying to improve, try other strats, see if anything clicks. If nothing works, maybe Roblox dbd would work?
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Yeah,makes sense,and since you said youre a trapper main,what do you think about the devs saying that they will make some changes on sloppy and stbfl ?
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I don't know if you were around this time last year during gen regression meta. That was the carrot. Killers had several tools to make gens take longer. - Ironically, that's also when a lot of killer players learned how both strong and easy it is to keep a three gen. - And when a lot of surv players learned to smash those gens asap. Both sides still do a lot of the stuff they learned back then -- and both strategies are still extremely efficient. So much so that they need to get nerfed and ought to be brought in line with the bulk of strategies.
Imo, the easiest way to detect if someone is keeping a three gen is to see how often and how frequent gens are kicked. The difference between "survs three genning themselves" and "a killer refusing to do anything that could endanger their three genning" is the sheer amount and frequency of gen kicks. That's easy enough to tell and separate from a killer just being in an area a lot.
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I dont use either of those. I find them pretty weak.
You'll find I have a lot of hard takes, but with the healing nerf, I dont see a point in double dipping on the healing time. Mangled isn't needed anymore.
stbfl has never hit my perk bar. I cant say one way or another but I also dont even know HOW they're planning to change it. If its buffed, cool. Nerfed? Cool.
I know a lot of killers lean on stbfl though, so I really hope they make the community happy. History says... they wont though. :(
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BBQ was the proof that carrots do work. Until they removed the bloodpoint bonus.
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Because it will be a revenue loss for BHVR. If customs ever get killer bots (Wait... do they have those yet?) then that's exactly what players can do. Fun >BP yeah?
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The reason why pain res doesn't deter tunnelling is you're not guaranteed to be able to hook someone on a scourge hook because they can all spawn on one side of the map. If it worked on any hook i'd tunnel less
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Don't worry, it is going to be as useless as the AFC mechanic.
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There is nothing which prevents tunneling, because it is ALWAYS the best to remove one Survivor as soon as possible. If people say that Pain Res would work against tunneling or old BBQ, they are just wrong. As long as you get those benefits after tunneling out a Survivor, the incentive is not good enough.
E.g. if Pain Res would deactivate when you hook the same Survivor twice in a row, THEN it would be an incentive to not tunnel. You can then either run Pain Res and get the benefit, but cannot tunnel or you can tunnel, but dont get the benefit from Pain Res. But currently you can tunnel and then get the Benefit as well afterwards, so there is no incentive. (Same would apply if it would work on all Hooks)
With old BBQ it would have been the same. One Survivor dead = no more stacks. But since this did not work this way, Killers just tunneled and still got 100% Bonus BPs.
Tunneling is not solved by giving Killers more and more stuff they benefit from, as long as they still get to keep those benefits after they tunneled.
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I thought 3gen was fixed by drone rework and Deja vu buff? How is it still a problem now
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I think @Aven_Fallen raises a good point, if the incentive allows you to have your cake and eat it too then it's not a carrot, it's just a buff. So any design that addresses a gameplay pain point should take that into consideration. They've shown the ability to do that though with the changes to Ruin and NOED, so I don't see why they couldn't make them same progress with say Pain Res. Have it deactivate after one survivor dies but enable all hooks to activate it.
@Firellius As for Devour Hope having a low pick rate, that's kind of missing the point. What do you think would happen to it's pick rate if it wasn't a boon and just a normal perk? It'd be #1 for sure. Not saying it should be, that'd be way to OP. But it illustrates that the mechanic itself is solid as a carrot incentive. So it comes down to implementation of the carrot. To dismiss the entire design philosophy of incentivized behaviors because you haven't seen the perfect implementation yet is, to borrow your word, myopic.
I think the attitude of throwing in the towel and just needing to tackle problems with a stick mentality will lead to decline in this game. Games are just unfun when you feel like the game is punishing you just for playing it, when that happens people will stop logging in.
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Sticks don't work either. What do you think will happen, when they eventually address all "no no, not good" killer strategies? We'll have the same problem all over again. Killers will double down on these because 12 hooking clearly doesn't work and there is no incentive whatsoever to even try.
Even a 10 seconds DS wouldn't save your butt, if killers in general decided to play for a 5 gen tunneling. In fact, this would be used aggressively and force the killer to tunnel even more. If every but one play style is nerfed, that doesn't make that one play style stronger.
That's why it needs both, the carrot and the stick. So far we've seen the stick with base BT, AFC and the upcoming 3 gen solution. But no actual carrot.
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Carrots work in conjunction with sticks. Ideally 3 gen would get nerfed, but killers would see a different kind of buff to make 3 gen less necessary.
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Even if Pain Res were to activate on every hook, would that be enough to outweigh the value of tunnelling?
I think @Aven_Fallen 's point wasn't so much that this is a good way to solve the issue, but more that current Pain Res isn't a proper carrot for non-tunnelling strategies and thus can't be used to support an argument about that.
But you're not just dealing with the strength of a tactic, you're also dealing with the input effort. Going for four clean chases is considerably more effort than one clean chase, followed by two off-hooks.
As for Devour Hope having a low pick rate, that's kind of missing the point. What do you think would happen to it's pick rate if it wasn't a boon and just a normal perk? It'd be #1 for sure. Not saying it should be, that'd be way to OP. But it illustrates that the mechanic itself is solid as a carrot incentive. So it comes down to implementation of the carrot.
I think you're missing my point though.
If you leave tunnelling unchanged, whatever mechanic you come up with would have to compete with that for effort and reward values. It can't break even with it because then it won't work as an incentive for most players. In order for it to be an incentive, it would need to be better for the killer. More rewarding, lower effort. And I don't think you can do that without decimating game balance.
Keep in mind that killers are at a slight advantage, judging by current stats. Your suggested solution is to put new tools in the killers' toolboxes that are more powerful than anything they have at the moment. What do you think that's going to do to game balance?
On top of that, whatever the alternative is will have to be easy to execute as well, otherwise less skilled killers will give up on it and go back to tunnelling.
On the flipside, we know that countermeasures can be put in place to deter these kinds of playstyles.
Sticks don't work either.
No, they do. From 4.6 onward, with DS being a dedicated anti-tunnel perk with proper weight behind its punishment, tunnelling became significantly less commonplace.
The reason there is now always an obsession, even if there is no perk to take advantage of it, is specifically because DS was working. No obsession meant that there was no DS, and it notably caused an uptick in tunnelling, which is why obsession became baseline.
6.1 brought the problem back in, because even though killers were universally buffed, DS was gutted and the replacement was countered by tunnelling harder. With the brakes removed, tunnelling is now back on the menu as a major issue.
The sticks work, so long as they don't get nerfed into plastic straws.
Even a 10 seconds DS wouldn't save your butt, if killers in general decided to play for a 5 gen tunneling.
But no killer is going to bash their head into a brick wall. A ten second DS would be a serious threat to tunnelling. No killer is going to want to deal with that every match. Yes, a killer that is tunnelling for the explicit sake of making one survivor's game miserable will do so no matter what. But tunnelling will cease to be meta, at the very least, if it's ineffective. I'm not particularly aiming for a 100% removal of tunnelling, but having it be rare instead of meta is already a huge improvement.
The majority of players will be playing to win or have a good time, and those will both be deterred by a ten second DS, even if they could technically tunnel through it.
In fact, this would be used aggressively and force the killer to tunnel even more.
Same point here: No survivor is going to bash their head into a brick wall. Leave them slugged out and they'll learn it doesn't work out for them to try to use DS offensively.
That's not to say people haven't been trying this against me, but after falling for it once, I turned every other instance of someone trying to pull that trick into a 3K+ because they wasted so much of their own time trying to pull it off. This one's a bit more of an issue because, every once in a while, it'll work against some newbie killer, but some instruction about that in the tutorial might spare them that, too.
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Missed your post earlier, but: BBQ lost the BP bonus in 6.1. That is the exact same patch that removed the stick, so no, BBQ is not proof that carrots work.
That said, BBQ should get its BP bonus back, absolutely, same with WGLF. Those mini-objectives were undeniably super healthy for the game, literally just making each side feel better about the outcome of a match without giving them any extra power. No bad word about BBQ.
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idk how and why they would do something like anti camping to address 3 genning. just fix gen spawns so atrocious 3 gens won't spawn, easy fix. you can't fit the game into a locker dwelling distortion user's understanding of dbd, sorry. they need to come out of that locker and have some killer interaction at some point.
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Those who 3 gen out the gate, any stories of how that didn't work? How was it beaten?
Thanks,
~A concerned bear trap
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DS wasn't just the stick. It was the carrot as well. It was a very popular perk often supported by BT, which limited tunneling (stick) and encouraged everything else (carrot) because it would allow the killer to ignore up to 8 perks per match. That is a very significant advantage.
You do not seem to understand why tunneling is such an attractive play style. It's stronger and easier than going for more hooks. Playing for hooks is very time inefficient. It consumes time that the killer doesn't have and it creates less pressure than the killer needs.
The aggressive use of DS was extremely popular because it had few counters. One counter was to grant them their wish and tunnel them. The other was trying to ignore it. Which didn't work all that because, if done right, that survivor could stop the killer from progressing by coming for the bodyblock, pallet stun, flashlight save etc. while they're team mates would repair gens. Progressing with 2/3 of the normal rate is much better than not progressing at all.
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Oh yeah, I've said it before as well that pre-6.1, the survivor meta was basically three band-aid perks and an exhaustion perk, which is why I think some killers think that gens are faster now.
You do not seem to understand why tunneling is such an attractive play style. It's stronger and easier than going for more hooks.
That is kind of exactly what I've been using as an argument for why the carrot doesn't work.
The aggressive use of DS was extremely popular because it had few counters.
It had a very blatant counter in not pressing spacebar.
Which didn't work all that because, if done right, that survivor could stop the killer from progressing by coming for the bodyblock, pallet stun, flashlight save etc. while they're team mates would repair gens. Progressing with 2/3 of the normal rate is much better than not progressing at all.
But this would save, at max, one hit. The killer gets bodyblocked for one hit, but on the survivor side
1) It requires a hook state
2) Requires DS
3) Requires the unhooked survivor to do nothing of use for the majority of that chase
4) Somehow find a way to interfere in a meaningful way
5A) Still pull another survivor off a gen to reduce gen speed by another survivor because the heroic bodyblocker has to get picked up or
5B) Blow a single-use, second perk in Unbreakable after 16 seconds of incapacitation.
6) All within 60 seconds of unhook
Only if the killer picks up the DS user does the killer lose out. If you don't hit spacebar on that person, the situation benefits the killer tremendously. Again, if you don't pick the survivor up, trying to use DS aggressively is a losing play.
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Looking at gen kicks is the exact same Idea I had after watching Coconut's recent video, and I thought back to some of my own matches against killers trying to hold a 3 gen from the start. It's absolutely right, Killers camping a 3 gen kick those gens no matter how little progress, even choosing to kick the gen over chasing the survivor they caught doing it. If the prompt is there they kick it.
Since the goal of this is to specifically address killers playing for a 3-gen from the start I figured a system that looks at different actions iv various context -
- How many times the killer kicked a specific gen in a set period of time. ( Is it obsessive for a Killer to kick a singular gen 2 times in 30s? How about 7 times in 60s?)
- Survivor progress vs. killer caused regression in a set period of time. (Has the killer regression reduced survivor progress because the survivor abandoned the gen to regress naturally after being kicked once? Was regression caused by a perk with strict activation requirements like Pain Res or Pop? Was regression caused after the gen was kicked with overcharge 3 times in the last 45s and resulted in 2 missed skill checks?)
- How many survivors are in proximity to the gen and how long compared to the killers time in proximity. ( Did the killer spend 97s within 16m of a gen because 3 survivors were also with 16m of said gen with varying but overlapping times? Did the killer spend 97/120s near a gen with 1 survivor who was only within the area for 15s?)
This could yield a reliable system if executed properly.
But then the next issue is, if the game detects 3-genning, what happens? I've seen a lot of suggestions saying to just cause the gens to trade places with the farthest completed one, which would work, if it wasn't common for gens to spawn on top of each other in the first place. To make this a workable solution they would need to rebuild spawn logic for maps from the ground up (This is the correct way to fix this issue completely, enforce a minimum spawn distance between gens, and might as well address hook, totem, clutter and tile spawns at the same time because maps have way to much rng potential that can absolutely dictate the match results). However I don't think this is what they're doing based solely on the fact that they said the system will DETECT 3-genning which, to me, implies the possibility is still there and this is just a deterrent to the killer.
As for buffing the survivors repair speed on those gens, would that be enough? It doesn't stop the killer from camping the gens, does it really help if survivors can't sit on a gen long enough to out repair the regression. I thought about making a gen immune to killer regression for some time as well but that also doesn't help if you can't sit on the gen. I'm really curious to see what the solution is.
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There are ways to deal with 3 genning without affecting normal gameplay. If they do something like have a counter on gen kicking for example, it can be pretty easy to detect what's going on. Normal gameplay does NOT involve kicking the same gen 20+ times.
If they did something like place a limit on the amount of times you can kick any individual gen... 3 genning would be over. Just have to make sure that limit is at such a number that it does not affect normal gameplay.
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Just spitballing here, but what if regression from kicking a specific gen reduced at certain kick counts, where each kick is multiplied by the amount of gens left to be done?
That way, if the killer is trying to hold a specific 3-gen from the start and survivors try to do that first, each kick would be multiplied by 5 and you'd feasibly hit those kick count marks to get penalised, whereas if the survivors do four gens and then end up 3-genned, it'd take 5 times as long.
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Looking forward to the solution on this to be another success in BHVR’s “killers can only play the way survivors want” design philosophy
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I think the much better option is to add incentives to have players do the things you want them to do.I'm going to be in the all stick, no carrot approach here.
The problem with the carrot approach, which was one of BHVR's major design flaws, is what happens if a player doesn't care? This was a major issue in Deathgarden (similar game by BHVR) where the Killer (Hunter) could execute a survivor (Scav) after the first down, but they got more points if they did an execution later.
Except what happens if a player doesn't care about points and just winning? Well, they kill right away. That was the most common experience.
If you don't want a design element to be in the game, don't let it be in the game. Full stop. I'll throw in 2 survivors hiding for hatch here as an example that they should smash to pieces on the other side. Don't deal with it via perks or points, if it is an element of the game that clearly results in unfun, dragged out situations, destroy it.
That's what anti-face camp did. I've seen one game so far where this triggered (basement trapper). It totally removed a problematic game element.
Hopefully they do the same with 3 genning, but I'll wait to see the actual solution.
I've always thought a kick limit would really help. My guess is that the design philosophy is that killers don't run out of things (outside of Myers for some reason), so a kick limit would do that. But I think if they'd put in an amount of times a killer could kick (either per gen or overall total) we might never have even had the Overbrine/skull merchant problems we encountered.
I don't have a problem with the idea, it just feels unnecessarily complicated.
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The game should look at how often the chase ends and how often the killer kicks generators.
If the game detects they're doing this too much without commiting to getting any downs, then the "punishment" should kick in, whatever it is they have planned.
1 random incomplete gen becomes powered while another previously completed gen becomes unpowered, requiring the survivors to repair it again, but potentially spreading the 3-gen apart?
Reduced regression from kicking gens and reduced regression over time?
Increased repair speeds of survivors?
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They seem to really be going all in with this, so blatant at this point.
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it not really a problem at all now! but in the future it could become an issue i guess? they not taking any chances.
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I figured if they did something like removed the option to kick a specific gen after that gen has been kicked 10-15 times already... most people wouldn't even notice a change.
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Saying the kilelrs defending every bit of detrimental gameplay they have. Sigh.
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To be fair that can be turned around to some survivors too. I would reword your first sentence to "Forums have a selection bias and I do think they draw out the worst players" only.
I clearly remember people defending old CoH, DH or MFT, or other broken stuff like old medkits (labeling it as balanced and telling killers to just get good) , but ofc survivors always gravitates towards the easiest, highest return strategies. Sounds familiar?
Anyway, I just hope that they'll mostly concentrate their work into fixing gen spawns to avoid stuff like this
But I'm curious to see what solution they have in mind that will keep into account killers going for 3gen strats without penalizing them if the survivors did it themselves
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80-90% of the 3 genning i experience is on the survivors, not the killers. I cant remember last time i saw a killer guarding 3 gens from the start of the game.
This is from today, there are 4 gens left and they are all in that cluster. Not because killer guarded them, but because survivors did the rest.
This is from the day before yesterday, again survivors are doing other gens, i was the only one trying to split those gens.
None of the examples here are the killers fault, but the survivors.
Sadly the vibe i get from this 3 gen debate is "we play bad, punish killers" .
I hope BHVR are aware and the solution will not punish killers.
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He does have a point though. We've seen again and again that even when the alternatives get buffed, killers will still overwhelmingly use these tactics. Killers still mostly tunnel even when more non-tunnelling perks have been released. Even if we encouraged killers not to play for a 3gen, many will still do it as long as it's a strong option.
It's not saying "all killers are bad", this is equally true on both sides, players will play in the most efficient, 'low-effort' way they possibly can, even if it's incredibly unfun for the other side.
I say this as someone who plays more killer than survivor. If there are effective strategies that don't require as much skill, many people will gravitate towards them, and it's mostly a fault of bad game design that there even are tactics that are THIS effective for their skill requirement.
ALL of that said, I am confused as to how they're gonna effectivelly nerf killer-created 3-gens without affecting survivor-created 3-gens, the latter of which is fair and should remain in the game.
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"what happens?"
just apply a mini-bnp-effect; within x time killers get y gen kicks for free. for each kick exceeding that limit the gen needs 3 charges less to get repaired.
Survs attempting to break a three gen will have brought the total amount of charges needed down to somewhere between 50 and 70 -- which is manageable even if three gens are pretty close together.
survs who three gunned themselves by just not doing them are still stuck with the full charges needed.
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People sometimes forget that BT basekit wasn't to prevent tunneling but to not punish the unhooked Survivor because their teammate wanted to farm off them.
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Mandy already addressed this months ago when they first announced they were looking at a 3 gen solution and people had questions. Theyre not looking to change survivors accidentally 3 genning themselves.
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I cant recall the last time i saw the scenario shes is describing, but thank you for the information tho, it is appreciated :)
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@Firellius I think we're talking past each other, so let me try and restate what I think our positions are.
My position in one sentence: Positive Reinforcement/Carrot/Reward (whatever you want to call it) design is an integral part of good game design and I'm concerned the devs are losing sight of that.
To support my claim I'll give examples outside of DBD, look at looter shooters and MMOs. Players tackle hard and challenging content to receive rewards, like raiding in WoW or Destiny 2. That's carrot incentive. In competitive games like CoD or CS, players are rewarded with the victory screen at the end usually accompanied with other rewards like XP, skins, ladder ranking etc. all of those rewards are incentives. Heck, everything even down to shiny particle effects and victory music are designed to give you that positive feedback/carrot effect. Of course for competitive players the biggest carrot is outside the game, just the satisfaction that comes from winning based on your mastery of the game. (However, outside factors are less important in this discussion because game design can't control all player desire. So discussing what to do about the small % of mememr's, cheaters, malicious players, RPers, etc. doesn't really factor.) In short, "Carrots" are just a fact of game design.
What I believe to be your position: Carrots don't work because In order to provide a big enough incentive to counter the best player strategies that players work out themselves you would have to give massive buffs breaking the game.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that when you say carrots don't work your referring to specific application of carrots such as camping and tunneling. Because as I already stated carrots already exist in every game and can be some of the best parts of gaming.
My counter to what I believe your position to be, 1st your assuming that I'm calling for a massive buff to killers, which I'm not. I believe you're underestimating how much you can alter player behavior by offering alternatives. The reason I brought up Devour Hope was to illustrate this. I'm not talking about it as the be all end all solution to tunneling, but killers who run it definitely alter their play style to gain it's benefit. So expound on that philosophy. And you don't have to make killers super overpowered in the process, just make the alternative at the same level of effectiveness as the tunneling strat. Note I'm not offering an example of how to do this for a couple reasons. Mainly I want to stay on the topic of game design philosophy. Instead of getting bogged down into why this or that idea doesn't work for tunneling, camping, 3 gen etc.
Finally, I wanted to address the fact that you brought up the statistics. I know they're all we have to go on, but they're awful. I wouldn't base any arguments based off the kill rate statistics BHVR provides. Otherwise Nurse will be getting giga buffed every patch until the heat death of the universe. Also it'd be incredibly easy for BHVR to manipulate them. They've said they want killers to have a kill rate of 60% (which imo kills shouldn't be the objective here, but thats another discussion) to achieve that all you have to do is turn the knob on gen timers and/or killer interaction times. All killers in the 60 million player community getting to many kills? turn the knob lowering them xS/0.xS Killers not getting enough? turn the knob the other way. What does that actually do for game balance and how the game feels? zip.
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Talk is cheap. Previous actual changes paint a different picture
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Thats the point,we cant trust bvhr not to do something stupid (specially that it is related to catering to survivors)
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To support my claim I'll give examples outside of DBD, look at looter shooters and MMOs
Neither of these are applicable analogies though, as the problem I have with your argument is specifically in the one thing looter shooters and MMOs don't have to deal with. DBD is PvP, the game styles you mentioned, are not.
Even in the cases you mention of PvP games, the carrots you mention are also already in the game. They won't do anything to incentivise non-tunnelling strategies. In fact, they do quite the opposite. They reward tunnellers more than they reward non-tunnellers.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that when you say carrots don't work your referring to specific application of carrots such as camping and tunneling. Because as I already stated carrots already exist in every game and can be some of the best parts of gaming.
Yes, but I had hoped that that would be obvious from my argumentation.
My counter to what I believe your position to be, 1st your assuming that I'm calling for a massive buff to killers, which I'm not.
Unfortunately, you are, implicitly. What you are suggesting isn't feasible without raising the issue I bring up. Whatever method to achieve a win you want to implement or boost to compete with tunnelling will have to be more effective, and lower effort.
just make the alternative at the same level of effectiveness as the tunneling strat.
But that wouldn't be an incentive. An alternative existing is not, in and of itself, an incentive.
Mainly I want to stay on the topic of game design philosophy.
I appreciate that, but at that point you are diverging from any practical application of your feedback. BHVR can't do anything with feedback that only works within a purely hypothetical setting. I'm not trying to sound dismissive here, but game design is only useful insofar that it can be applied. And it is in that application that I find issue with the suggestion of trying to use the carrot to lure killers away from tunnelling.
My point is that, even though the design concept of carrots is fine, I don't see there being any possibility of creating an alternative to tunnelling that can fulfil the carrot function you are looking for, without devising something that is, de facto, stronger than tunnelling.
I think it'd be much, much easier and much more efficient to implement targeted nerfs to tunnelling (And BHVR already has a solution available for that), and if need be, buff killers to keep the balance level.
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"Neither of these are applicable analogies though, as the problem I have with your argument is specifically in the one thing looter shooters and MMOs don't have to deal with. DBD is PvP, the game styles you mentioned, are not."
It wasn't meant to be a 1 for 1 comparison. The purpose of that comparison was to illustrate the presence and success of carrot style game design across games as a whole.
"Even in the cases you mention of PvP games, the carrots you mention are also already in the game. They won't do anything to incentivise non-tunnelling strategies. In fact, they do quite the opposite. They reward tunnellers more than they reward non-tunnellers."
Yes, the carrots are in the game and they work. That was my point. Incentive based game design is as fundamental to games as is rigging 3D models and backend code. Also, I don't understand what CoD and CS have to do with tunneling. But this highlights the whole reason I referenced games outside of DBD, people get caught up on one specific example and lose sight of the broader point being made.
"Unfortunately, you are, implicitly. What you are suggesting isn't feasible without raising the issue I bring up. Whatever method to achieve a win you want to implement or boost to compete with tunnelling will have to be more effective, and lower effort."
The difference again here is your focusing in on one specific instance. My thought process is more wholistic, if implementing a carrot/stick game mechanic were to result in a buff to killers than they would be nerfed to be brought in line elsewhere and vice versa. This is almost implied in the term "game balancing"
"I appreciate that, but at that point you are diverging from any practical application of your feedback. BHVR can't do anything with feedback that only works within a purely hypothetical setting. I'm not trying to sound dismissive here, but game design is only useful insofar that it can be applied."
The thought process behind actions can be equally if not more important than the actions themselves. The forums and reddit is already full of "practical" suggestions of Nerf this or Buff that. And the devs have pretty well demonstrated that they nerf and buff based very heavily off of what %s and #s they're seeing. I'm sure they take community feedback into account too, but It seems like it has to reach a critical mass kind of level of outcry to be the main motivator for the change. See the Blight addons as an example.
What I don't see alot of feedback on is next level order of thinking. Providing feedback on vision and philosophy for the game can be just as useful tools because it can make you pause and look at problems from different angles opening new solutions that wouldn't have been seen before.
It can be easy to get stuck in a cycle of playing whack a mole with problems and tempting to just solve solutions with a hammer (or nerf bat) . In my opinion the truly great games are the ones that find creative and elegant solutions to problems, using them as opportunities to enhance all of the players experience.
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So strange. It’s a common tactic for the Skull Merchant, it’s common for the Knight, it’s very common on maps that spawn 3gens (RPD, Haddonfield, Eyrie, the Swamp, and a few others). Not rare at all. 🤷🏽♀️
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It wasn't meant to be a 1 for 1 comparison. The purpose of that comparison was to illustrate the presence and success of carrot style game design across games as a whole.
That's not my point though.
Yes, the carrots are in the game and they work. That was my point. Incentive based game design is as fundamental to games as is rigging 3D models and backend code. Also, I don't understand what CoD and CS have to do with tunneling. But this highlights the whole reason I referenced games outside of DBD, people get caught up on one specific example and lose sight of the broader point being made.
I mean the carrots you are referring to in this example are already in DBD, and they currently incentivise tunnelling.
The difference again here is your focusing in on one specific instance. My thought process is more wholistic, if implementing a carrot/stick game mechanic were to result in a buff to killers than they would be nerfed to be brought in line elsewhere and vice versa. This is almost implied in the term "game balancing"
Right, but this ultimately comes down to what I'm saying: You can't fix this problem without applying the stick. 'They would be nerfed elsewhere' is the point. Since you still have to adhere to game balancing, the carrot approach creates a shift in balance that ultimately does little more than, effectively, nerf tunnelling.
Imagine you have two weapons that each have a DPS of 1, and an enemy that has 100 HP. Each of these weapons would have the same TTK, that being 100 seconds. Then the devs decide that they want to lure players away from using weapon option #2. So they use the carrot approach and buff #1 and #3 to have a DPS of 2.
But now the enemy goes down in 50 seconds, which is too fast, so they buff the enemy to 200 HP.
So now #1 and #3 are back to a TTK of 100 seconds, while #2 is at a TTK of 200 seconds.
This is functionally no different from changing #2 to a DPS of 0.5. It is ultimately still a nerf. It's still the stick, not a carrot. And you might say 'but it might feel different', but trust me, DBD players will absolutely notice.
The thought process behind actions can be equally if not more important than the actions themselves.
Right, but only insofar as this factors back into a practical solution. You need to be able to apply this thought process in order to benefit from it.
What I don't see alot of feedback on is next level order of thinking.
No, this discussion is pretty old and has been on these forums several times over. You've really only brought more verbiage to the same old point: "Just buff killers more and we'll totally tunnel a bit less, perhaps".
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