Lights out needs way more work before it can be a fun gamemode
TLDR ;Make an actual hide and seek gamemode and not just dbd in the dark with less toys to play with and boring long ass endgames.
I can understand that some people are having fun but overall,it's just dbd with less stuff,survivors that have more incentives to hide for hours and you're basically forced to hit and run because on a lot of map it's impossible to track the survivors after a hit unless they hit a wall.
If you want to make a hide and seek typed gamemode,there just need to be a big change in the formula. So I'm going to try to give some thought,from someone who only play the mode as killer.
First maybe the gamemode should be like little oni,something where survivor are at a large disadvantage and an escape is not to be expected. (before you ask,I've just played 4 hours of the gamemode and havent lost a single match). It's something small but it might invite both survivor and killer to try new gamestyle,if the outcome of the match is basically already decided,might as well just have fun right ?
and so the main question comme quickly which is :do we just want a dbd match modified or something else ?
IMO the idea of a hide and seek game would work much better in a different setting,either something like a battle royal (last survivor alive survive) or a TDM,when a survivor get caught he respawn and at a certain number of hook the match end,no objective for the survivor except to survive a certain amount of time.
We might want a specific map,with designtated layout to keep everyone able to understand the map pretty well quickly.
The main problem in all this will be looping,because if it's the only way the survivor can defend themselve the killer will be invited to just chase the easiest survivor,funnily enough the best workaround might be to just,delete all looping. Either all survivor are exposed or make a map with really little loop,to really focus on the hiding aspect of the gamemode. If we want to keep looping,adding some items on both side is probably the best,for survivor they need to be to help hiding/going back into hiding,in this gamemode the main point for survivor should be imo to hide and nothing else,if you're caught you're caught, and yes touching the shirt count.
If you want to go above and beyond you could straight up just make a prop-hunt game,but since we probably want to keep the identity of the game mode:the lack of light and visibility,then the best you can do to make it interesting it to change the goal,because doing gens and defending them is not fun.
When it comes to killers tho,well seeking is always the unfunny part in a hide and seek,so might want to make it interesting with items that help them find survivors and jumpscare them,add bp incentive behind it like if the killer manage to get a sneak on a survivor they get more reward and maybe more stacks towars their next item and you get it.
Overall,just making the Objective of both sides being about hide and seek and reducing the capabilities of looping so survivor are heavily encouraged to hide for their survival could be enough to make the gamemode already much more interesting.
Find a map with some nice big rocks and some good mixture of high and half wall,reduce the number of pallets and windows into the map generator,put a timer instead of gens,and already the gamemode would be more interesting that what we have currently.