Thoughts on a Comeback Mechanic in an asym
As we all know, 2v8 has a comeback mechanic built into it, where: -
- Whenever a generator is completed, all survivors suffer a 5% repair speed penalty.
- Whenever a survivor is hooked, all survivors gain a 2.5% repair speed bonus.
Thinking about this system, I believe it is far too simple, but as I thought more about it, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole trying to decide what exactly a comeback mechanic means for a game like DBD.
What is a comeback mechanic?
Just so we define our terms, a comeback mechanic is a mechanic where one side is given bonuses in some form in the event that one side starts performing too well and begins to snowball/dominate the game. They provide a means of giving players a chance to "get back into" the game, and at its simplest provides a means of keeping players invested in playing.
It is highly contextual to the games they are in, and the effects are unique for each game. They can be controversial (especially if implemented poorly) since at their core they effectively provide rewards for losing the game. However at the same time, depending on the game, they also provide their own elements of tactics and balance that can smooth out a lot of pain points, particularly regarding combating metas and rush down strategies.
Typically, well implemented comeback mechanics add a different layer of strategy, where a player winning early is still compounding their advantage, but is also incurring a risk along with it, where if they then get outplayed or make a catastrophic mistake despite their advantage, their opponent is greatly rewarded and effectively levels the playing field again.
To explore a couple of genres for games that have comeback mechanics:
MOBAs (team vs. team)
A game like League of Legends for example has multiple comeback mechanics, such as killing spare bounties and objectives bounties.
TLDR - This works in this games context because the focus of LoL is more the objectives and your role in the team, more than your specific ability to win your lane (due to the huge roster). If you're getting ahead, you should in turn be pressing your advantage to help push your team ahead, but that itself comes with the risk you yourself are also a target as well as said objectives, so once you're ahead, you can't just throw yourself at the enemey team and kill as many as you can for free while your team takes the map objectives.
For those who are unfamiliar who want a longer explanation, LoL is all about destroying the enemies base. To do this you farm/kill creeps, monsters and other players to gain experience for levelling up and gold to buy items. The faster you level up and buy items, the stronger you become relative to your opponents.
When a player gets a killing spree, they also get a bounty that increases the longer the killing spree goes. If an opposing player kills the player with a killing spree, they did so at a great disadvantage and can effectively score between roughly 1.3x to 3.3x the gold they would normally get for a kill. A player getting killed repeatedly will also get a losing spree, which will also reduce that players value similary down to 0.33x the normal value.
The idea is that if you've managed to win your lane and get substantially ahead, you are in an advantageous position, and should be pressing that advantage to secure objectives and help your teammates win their lanes to put your team ahead... but if you fail to make use of that advantage, or you get outplayed, your opponents can get their own player fed.
This makes sense in League because the roster is so large with so many hard counters, that a player snowballing a lane is normal, so the comeback mechanic smoothes out the natural snowball that occurs when a player starts to lose, and still forces League goal as 5vs5 teamwork based game.
Fighting Games (1vs.1)
Games like Street Fughter 4 or Marvel vs. Capcom 3 have comeback mechanics in the form of Ultras (a single high damage move) or X factor (a 1 time damage, speed and recovery boost that last longer the fewer characters you have alive).
TLDR - These mechanics work because the pace of these games can quickly result in a heavy deficit for one player, and it's not uncommon to see the fight grind to a halt while a player protects their life lead. These comeback mechanics ensure that both players are still fighting to the end, and actively trying to knock each other out, and the comebacks themselves still require the losing player to outplayed their opponent to use them, they are not "free win" buttons.
For a more full explanation: A game like Street Fighter 4 has comeback mechanics in the form of Ultras, which are a super powerful move that builds up as you take damage with enough damage to totally swing a round.
Marvel vs. Capcom 3 has X factor, which is a 1 time per round boost to damage, speed and recovery that lasts longer based on how many of your fighters are still alive when you trigger it. With all 3 characters alive, it last only a few seconds, maybe allowing a single high damage combo to quickly try and knock out a character, with only 1, it is has a much longer duration, that can turn your lone charactervwothoit assists into a bulldozer that chews through your opponents team.
The comeback mechanic makes sense here, because the pace of these games means a few unfortunate 50/50 exchanges can result in the better player falling significant behind and then getting "lamed out" using keep away and run tactics, non-stop blocking, and running out the clock (having more health when the timer expires is a win).
While people can still do this in these games, the comeback mechanic is a new threat to take into consider. It still requires the losing player to win an exchange (which is harder to do because while on low HP a mistake easily results in a round loss, especially on a time limit), but playing overly cautious and falling for a grab or a mix up can lead into being punished extremely hard and even the game back out (or lose it outright)... this keeps both players engaged the whole fight, and taking opportunities when presented to try and close out the round.
It's also worth noting though in both cases the formerly winning player will now also get their ultra/factor boost as well, but now like before they still have to win the exchange to use them.
So what does a comeback mechanic mean for an asym?
The traits that make up a good comeback mechanic are: -
- It only comes into play when one side is being heavily dominated, and otherwise has a minimal or non-existent effect.
- It doesn't remove the winning sides advantage (which effectively punishes them for winning), it instead creates a "risk" that the winning player has to be wary of.
- It still requires skillful play from the losing team to exploit that incurred risk, rewarding them for good play and not giving up.
With this in mind, while I'm not full.blown negative Nancy on the 2vs8 catchup mechanic, I believe it does fail on all 3 of these points.
That said, it seems to me that coming up with a fair and balanced method of employing a comeback mechanic in DBD is quite hard.... I don't really want to make a suggestion, because this thread is more about what the comeback mechanic should achieve more than making an actual suggestion but to give an idea off the top of my head:
The comeback mechanic should track the amount of meaningful Generator Progress made by survivors and, I dunno a Pressure system of some kind for killers. The difference between these 2 defines whether the comeback mechanisms for either side trigger.
I'm gonna gut feel numbers without doing much maths or really balancing it, but hopefully you get the idea.
Generator Progress is something like a % of the total gen progress done, maybe weight gen each gen at 1, and the progress on each generator so has a value multiplier at boundaries for 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%, valued at 0x, 1x , 2x , 3x, 5x respectively.
Killer pressure is more complex, Killer pressure has points weighted based on survivor states. Something like 0.5 points for injured survivors, 1 point for currently hooked survivors, 1 points for downed survivors scaling to 2 over the course of a minute, 1.5 point for survivors on 1 hook stage, 4 points for each survivor on 2 hook stages, 7 for each dead survivor.
If I eyeball it, say the comeback mechanic would trigger when say one side is 15 points ahead of the other.
Off top of my head, for survivors getting the comeback mechanic results in getting a Distortion token passively every 120/60/30s based on their 0, 1, 2 hook stages, and a Bardic Inspiration 1/2/3% bonus on skillchecks based on comeback scaling, with an addtional 10% chance of getting skillchecks. This rewards playing smart and staying hidden, but also encourages jumping on generators and risking being found.
For killer getting a comeback mechanic results in getting a 10/20/30% faster pick up speed and passive movement haste increase out of chase of 10/15/20% for 30s after hooking a survivor based on the comeback scaling. They also gain a 10/20/30% Pop Goes The Weasel with a 10/20/30% faster gen kick speed after hooking a survivor, based on 2/1/0 hook stages on that survivor. This rewards identifying the gens needing to be protected (and helps m1 killers), not being hindered in kicking them (tempered by the anti- gen mechanic), and rewarded with a fast turnover after committing and downing survivors (especially not yet hooked survivors) and getting back into the fray.
That's obviously a rough version I came up with in about 30 minutes, but you get the kinda things I'm angling at.
Survivors comeback should involve being rewarded for playing smart, keeping their vulnerable teammates hidden and drawing killer attention.
Killers comeback should involve being rewarded for holding your important assets and converting chases successfully.
The current system doesn't encourage these things. I'm not really putting my system as a concrete suggestion (I eyeballed everything), but I hope it might inspire others to come up with their own systems!