In-Game Experience Points
First, let me say that I love this game. I love the aesthetic and art direction. I love the killer designs. I love the variety of items and add ons to customize your game to a specific gameplay. I love the hide and seek gameplay of survivor. I love the satisfaction of getting a 4 kill as killer.
What I don't love though is that there are fundamentally some game design decisions that are hurting the game. Sometimes as a survivor you get tunneled and targeted or a killer camps you. Sometimes you get unlucky with a BNP or a Ebony Mori which basically nullifies the entire point of a game due to a random factor you can't control. Sometimes you are completely bullied by a survive with friends team that gen rushes your face. I think there is a solution here, but it is pretty radical and likely will never see the light of day due to how much of a change it would be. However, I wanted to present it to you to see what other people thought of the idea.
In-Game Experience Points
The killer would gain XP in the following positive game influencing ways:
- Map Control: When the killer moves around the map the killer generates an invisible heatmap. The heatmap stacks up to a max and no longer provides XP. The heatmap also cools down over time. This promotes non-camping behavior.
- Hitting/Hooking Unique Survivors: Survivors have a hit cooldown on them that provide less experience if you tunnel a survivor. This promotes less tunneling.
- Speed of Hooking: Survivors provide less experience the more they are on the ground prior to hook. This promotes less slugging.
- Dodging Pallets: Give the killer a goal during the chase other than "Let's burn all the pallets on the map" by giving pallets a more strategic element. If you can prematurely get the survivor to drop a pallet that doesn't stun you you gain XP.
So what do you due to this XP. There would be a shrine in the basement where you can spend XP to get more powerful. Well you spend it on upgrading killer powers and assignable perks while you're in the game. It helps you make strategic choices while you're engaged playing the game rather than when you're randomly guessing counters to the meta perks at the time.
You would have three assignable perks that you could assign outside of the game to mess around with or supplement your play style, but that is all your loadout changes gameplay-wise. You would then purchase add-on like potential through these trees as well as spending xp to gain the ability to mori (at the expense of not increasing your power). You would also purchase levels in your perks. Meaning that you would start the game with a level 1 perk and you could spend XP to level it up as the killer gains more experience. No longer would you just start with Iridescent hatchets for huntress, you'd have to earn it, by playing well in-game.
I think this could fundamentally change the gameplay for the better. It'd give the killers a strategic goal in the game and promoting more desirable gameplay for everyone. It'd give the killers a power curve and make them feel like they're more in control of the game.
I think this approach could also work with survivors (where they level up at the chests in the game), but I think Killer gameplay needs the most TLC right now. The expense would be that you would likely get rid of the grind that are blood points/blood web (I'd argue there are already too many numbers on the main UI anyways) and leave that for the shard/cosmetic approach. The out of game shrine would be changed to buy all perks directly rather than a random assortment. Maybe a random assortment could go "on sale" at various times.
Well, what do you think, is this too crazy?