How to make hex totems better hidden

Doc

They shouldn't be able to spawn within a certain radius of a generator, and they should only spawn touching walls or rocks.

FrenziedRoach

All the ones on top of the hills need to go at the very least.

Runiver

This is actually sort of the case.
We asked devs why the totem spawns are so bad, and it's mostly due to some setups that forces totems to spawn in terrible locations (even tho the spots like the hill is just a terrible spot by itself)

Basically, the rule for totem spawning are the following :

• Not to spawn in the exterior side of the map (except for swamp/lyers for some reasons ?)
• Not to spawn too close of each others
• Spawn in specific scripted locations.

Just with these few rules, some totems are bound to spawn in terrible spot, aka around survivor spawns, or around generators. They're kinda working on it tho. Opening the totem spawn to the exterior of the maps could actually be cool and a good way to make them way harder to find.

Echelonia

@Runiver said:

• Not to spawn too close of each others

And that's not working at all - on the Groaning Storehouse map I see nearly every game two to three totems in the main building^^

Ancheri

@Runiver said:
We asked devs why the totem spawns are so bad, and it's mostly due to some setups that forces totems to spawn in terrible locations (even tho the spots like the hill is just a terrible spot by itself)

On Mother's Dwelling I kinda like the spawn on top of the hill to be honest. If they added several obstacles on hills on other maps as well, it might already fix it.

Runiver

@Echelonia said:

@Runiver said:

• Not to spawn too close of each others

And that's not working at all - on the Groaning Storehouse map I see nearly every game two to three totems in the main building^^

As I said above, these rules, in some maps, cannot be respected due to the limited spots, which "forces" the generation at a random spot rather than not spawning at all.
Obviously, this is an issue.

@Ancheri said:

@Runiver said:
We asked devs why the totem spawns are so bad, and it's mostly due to some setups that forces totems to spawn in terrible locations (even tho the spots like the hill is just a terrible spot by itself)

On Mother's Dwelling I kinda like the spawn on top of the hill to be honest. If they added several obstacles on hills on other maps as well, it might already fix it.

The thing is, debris on top of the hills do fit in mother's dwelling. Not sure if they would in Auto-haven and such.

Ancheri

@Ancheri said:

@Runiver said:
We asked devs why the totem spawns are so bad, and it's mostly due to some setups that forces totems to spawn in terrible locations (even tho the spots like the hill is just a terrible spot by itself)

On Mother's Dwelling I kinda like the spawn on top of the hill to be honest. If they added several obstacles on hills on other maps as well, it might already fix it.

The thing is, debris on top of the hills do fit in mother's dwelling. Not sure if they would in Auto-haven and such.

It would probably need a complete rework, yeah.

MegaWaffle

I think an easy fix would be to not have the Hex totem on fire. All the totems should be "dull" or vise versa they should all be on fire. This would make it so you don't know what totem could be the hex and would slow the game down by pushing survivors to hunt all the totems. This would of course reduce the power of NOED so perhaps make it so a totem appears that becomes NOED instead of relying on one remaining? Or give NOED charges instead of being a totem to avoid this problem. This would allow the perk a chance of becoming active instead of being complete negated like in most matches. I think this would be an easier direction to push how hex totems work since I can only imaging the nightmare fixing spawn locations could be along with how to have props or items blocking their view. This idea by no means anything new but figured I'd add it.

Ancheri

@MegaWaffle said:
I think an easy fix would be to not have the Hex totem on fire. All the totems should be "dull" or vise versa they should all be on fire. This would make it so you don't know what totem could be the hex and would slow the game down by pushing survivors to hunt all the totems. This would of course reduce the power of NOED so perhaps make it so a totem appears that becomes NOED instead of relying on one remaining? Or give NOED charges instead of being a totem to avoid this problem. This would allow the perk a chance of becoming active instead of being complete negated like in most matches. I think this would be an easier direction to push how hex totems work since I can only imaging the nightmare fixing spawn locations could be along with how to have props or items blocking their view. This idea by no means anything new but figured I'd add it.

Not a bad idea, but what about the decreased cleansing speed with Thrill of the Hunt? That only counts for hex totems so far, so survivors would instantly notice which totems are the hex ones. And decreasing the cleansing progress for ALL totems slightly less wouldn't quite help, since the survivors would realize, that it is a hex totem anyway, if the killer comes back (and he has to if he wants to defend it, right?).

SadonicShadow

I think a good way to address the horrible totem situation in the easiest way possible without the devs having to put in a crap ton of work is to tie the hex perk/s to all 5 dull totems in the match. Example: Say you run Hex: Ruin. In order to eliminate Hex: Ruin you have to find and cleanse all 5 totems on the map. It works the same way if you have two hex perks. the hex perks will no longer be tied to a single, specific totem but all 5 of them. If you have Ruin + D hope the survivors still need to cleanse all 5 totems before the perks are eliminated.

With this change it would ensure that hex perks dont get obliterated at the start of the match because even one good totem is all you need out of the 5 to get use out of the hex perks. I think this would also help double as a secondary objective since the survivors would be motivated to find all 5 totems or suffer the consequences from allowing the perks to stay up. Thrill of the hunt would also make alot more sense.

Edit: This would also potentially make small game a meta perk which would be quite interesting.