Unsafe pallets are lame... as killer
HOT TAKE
Unsafe pallets are lame as killer. It doesn't feel rewarding to catch a survivor at these pallets because you are all but guaranteed the hit. Nearly every pallet on Hawkins is unsafe and there is nothing a survivor can do to avoid getting hit. The only chance they have is to stun you with the pallet, but even then you will still probably be able to just swing through the pallet and get a hit 50% of the time.
As survivor it's just dumb there is nothing you can do at these pallets. There is no mind game. You drop the pallet, you get hit. You don't drop the pallet, you get hit. It's dumb.
Look, I get that we don't want super strong pallets but AT LEAST have a mind game on these unsafe pallets. The fact both players can see each other removes all mind game potential. This is a problem with many SAFE pallets as well. Blood Lodge pallets are super safe AND there is no mind game.
How about instead of either unsafe pallets, or no mind game pallets, we have semi-safe pallets that have a mind game. Then it's fair to both sides. Survivor has a valid option to evade the killer, and killer has a valid way to outplay the survivor even when the pallet is dropped.
This whole shift in design philosophy to "add more pallets but make them unsafe with no mind game" is worrisome. It's bad design. I'd rather less pallets that are safe AND have mind game potential because then it feels rewarding to either catch the survivor or evade the killer. You don't just get a free hit or a free infinite loop when the pallet is dropped.
A good example of a semi-safe mind game pallet is the pallet at 4 wall jungle gyms. These are probably some of the most fair pallets in the game. The loop is strong if they run around the long side, but if the killer forces them to loop the other direction then it's not nearly as strong and there is a mind game available, one which either side can win (either killer wins and gets a hit, or survivor wins and can get another loop). We need more pallets like this, and less like Hawkins/Blood Lodge.
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I mean, the survivors can still mindgame them if they know what to do or if they have the correct set of perks
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Not really. The ones in the hallway are just a free hit, especially if the killer gets bloodlust. If you get outplayed at these pallets as killer you are doing something VERY wrong.
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4 wall jungle gyms are pretty unsafe if the killer knows what he's doing. I think the pallets on badham are pretty nice (except for the infinites in th school and the house of pain of course).
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The Outside Pallets on Badham are great. They would be even better if Bloodlust would not exist. The Killer has a fair chance to outplay the Survivor and the Survivor has a fair chance to outplay the Killer and get distance. This gets ruined by Bloodlust.
But other than that, Badham Pallets are really good. I like the amount and the safety level of them.
With Hawkins, they did too much when it comes to the lack of safety.
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Yeah definitly agree. I personally think not many people understand hawkins truly. You can loop the killer for quite some time with just throwing pallets preemtively and creating infinites, because killers tend to leave pallets untouched on hawkins.
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Right but even being unsafe there is still mind game potential because the players can't see each other.
Badham pallets aren't so bad EXCEPT there's no mind game and they become unsafe when the killer gets bloodlust. If all pallets were semi-safe with a mind game like 4 walls are, then we wouldn't need bloodlust.
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I don't mind unsafe pallets like the car loops in springwood. These are pretty fair most of the time.
However, loops which have just a tree and a box on the sides are just braindead stupid. These needs to be adressed and buffed. Especially now after several loop nerfs, map size nerfs and pallet amount nerfs
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This only happens when certain doors are open to certain rooms. If you get bad RNG and one of those doors is closed there is no infinite that can be made from the pallet. This also assumes you are far enough ahead of the killer to preemptively throw the pallet. If they are too close they can just shimmy at the pallet and get a hit no matter what you do, especially if they have bloodlust.
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True. How about the badham loops with massive walls?
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Agreed on Hawkings pallets being too unsafe. Honestly I don’t even think it’s just that but there too MANY of them.
I wish they would have made this map a little but different, like maybe walls that have crumbled down and create an interesting loop out of it.
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Tall walls are fine. But any loop where both players can see each other the entire time are stupid.
I don't think Badham is that great either. It's better than Hawkins, but there are still a lot of dumb loops on that map. House Of Pain is less bad since they blocked LOS through the stairs. It sort of has a mind game to it, but the pallet is still really safe.
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I mean tbh unsafe pallets still work out it’s “big brain” survivors who make them look dumb the ones who vault over and over giving a hit instead of dropping and running knowing it’s not safe to loop around
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you know, people do often forget that this game is supposed to be killer sided and that survival isnt necessary to pip as survivor. If you bring complete balance to the game in terms of 1v1 (as in 1 survivor vs the killer), it becomes nearly impossible for the killer to kill because youre outnumbered. THAT BEING SAID, I do believe that pallets should not be buffed in some areas, but instead removed entirely and be replaced with either loopable stracture to give the the survivor a better chance, or mildly open area to give the survivor room to dive hits. But i do not believe that they need to keep the same structure and just like raise walls around it or anything like that, because on some maps that were mentioned there are a fair amount of loops as it is that could be utilized to outplay the killer with proper play and perks.
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I am relatively new so I don't really get the unsafe versus safe pallet thing, but I suppose this explains why Hawkins is probably my favorite map as both killer and survivor. It's one of the only maps where I'm actually a bit tense at the threat of getting chased by the killer playing as survivor and one of the only maps where I feel like I am an actual horror villain as the killer and not just an inconvenience at an auto repair shop.
I'm not super high rank on either (7 killer and i think 9 survivor but it's been a while), and again, I'm comparatively new. I can say that I don't play survivor very much because most maps feel way too safe. I'm not looking for fair chases as a survivor, cause if I've got a fair chase I know I've got the overall advantage and that's boring. I've got three other teammates working on other things towards an escape - the killer only has himself and the chase.
But I guess being new I expected hide and seek instead of duck duck goose. I get that some people enjoy it, but I find looping to be just incredibly lame as a mechanic. I get that scratch marks exist so chases kind of have to eventually devolve into it, it's just become so established that it sort of feels like the horror game immediately turns into slapstick comedy the moment a killer runs into a survivor - when it's supposed to be at it's most tense and dramatic. Hawkins feels like one of the few maps where the game isn't necessarily about running in a circle around a dumpster waiting for an opportune moment to throw garbage at a monster with fair odds that that'll work. Game mostly feels like the "cardio" joke from Zombieland.
I'd leave the unsafe pallets but drastically shorten duration/reduce visibility of scratchmarks to make Hawkins feel better. Then I'd gut almost every other map, lol.
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But all the killer has to do is go around and in most cases you don't get enough distance to get to another loop.
LOL what? Killer sided? Sorry but no. Both sides should have equal and fair opportunities.
All we need are semi-safe pallets with mind games. We don't need any of this fancy nonsense that hasn't been tested. Every loop should have LOS blockers with some holes so that you can trick each other, a short side that is unsafe, and a long side that is semi-safe as it assumes you win the mind game but have to COMMIT to an option to do it.
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I think it's often ignored that having three other teammates is a gigantic weight on the fairness scale. "Equal and fair opportunities for both sides" needs to keep that in account - otherwise you have one person playing four balanced 1v1s at the same time, which is patently unfair on its face.
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I think it's often ignored that having three other teammates is a massive thumb on the fairness scale. Equal and fair opportunities for both sides needs to keep that in account otherwise you just end up with one person playing four different 1v1's, balanced to be equal and fair, at the same time. Meanwhile the three teammates are free to continue to try and win the game with no opportunity, let alone equal and fair, for the killer.
Don't forget that the chase is part of the bigger picture of game design and does not happen in a vacuum. From the survivor POV, the chase is something that happens that prevents them from completing gens which they do with a PvE quicktime event versus a computer. The chase is the killer's gen completion, which they have to do versus a human being. Killers do not have equal and fair opportunities to interfere with the PvE gen completion mechanic outside of the 1v1 environment of a chase, and the ones that touch it at all seem to be the ones most complained about, whether that's Ruin, Forever Freddy, madness, or Legion mending.
The more effort you spend to make chases equal and fair the more advantage you give to the survivor side, if you do not give killers anything that impairs generator progress while they're chasing.
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That sounds good on paper, but it seems like you're just making every area equally safe. So it no longer really matters if a survivor pays attention to the area they're in, or where a survivor chooses to run or what area they got caught in, they're always right next to a strong pallet and decent loop.
There ought not be too many unsafe areas, but some are essential just from the perspective of gameplay design. And that's not even touching the fact that making areas safer would be a direct nerf to the other side.
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i mostly have issues with loops like on Hawkins
i wouldnt even call them unsafe, you literally have to drop them and leave, cant even play them
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Strong agree, just LOOK at Hawkins and Dead Dawg Saloon. Smh.
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The thing is survivors depend on other survivors for a lot of things.
- If you are getting chased, you are depending on other survivors to do gens.
- If you are injured and do not have Self Care or a medkit, you are dependent on other survivors to get healed.
- If you are in dying state and do not have Unbreakable/No Mither you are dependent on other survivors to get revived.
- If you are on a hook and do not kobe or have Deliverance, you are dependent on other survivors to get rescued.'
Killer does not depend on anyone but themselves and exerts complete control over you once you are caught. They also have control over when people DO NOT die, so in the case of hatch all the killer needs to do is slug the third guy to prevent the fourth guy from getting hatch until they catch them.
Pallets and windows are survivors defenses against the killer. If you take them out of the game then every chase would end in roughly 30 seconds because all the killer would have to do is follow you. They have plenty of power on their side to win games, it's just that you will often have to play scummy against good survivors/SWF to gain that power. But they shouldn't inherently have power over survivors. That power needs to be EARNED through skillful play and proper tactics.
Yes equally safe. Otherwise survivors just bolt to the absolute safest places on the map which are entirely too powerful and are forced to avoid the absolute unsafest areas of the map like the massive dead zones on most Autohaven maps. You get very one dimensional gameplay that way.
On some maps there is no place to run. You get found in a dead zone you are just gonna get hit, no matter what you do. Just like if you get found at shack chances are the killer will never get a hit on you until the pallet is gone. That's straight up predictable and lame. If every area was equally safe, then both sides have a fair chance to outplay the other. Obviously perfect balance is impossible, some areas will just always be safer/unsafer than others, but the gap between these areas currently is just massive. And now that they severely nerfed the god loops (which was necessary) they need to buff the dead zones or unsafe pallets to compensate.
The point is that every tile should be about the same fairness to survivor OR killer, and not heavily favor one or the other. Every loop should have a mind game attached to it, and every loop should be semi-safe, as in you have to commit to an option (as either side) and if you win the mind game you get the hit/don't get hit, and vice versa if you lose.
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Yes, the survivors depend on their teammates for a lot of things. Play a game of 4v1 basketball, even a game where someone who is very good versus a bunch of people who are only kind of good, and tell me how that goes. Being able to depend on your teammates is the advantage, it's not a liability. It's also the primary source of challenge on any team. Balancing that out so that you have a team AND if that breaks down you're fine by yourself is just ridiculously stacking the deck.
The problem is that you are demanding that killers "EARN that power through skillful play and proper tactics" while wanting to give survivors every advantage with very little requirement. Looping is braindead easy. Yes, you can be good at it and be virtually uncatchable, but it's relatively trivial to be decent enough at it to waste at least a minute of time. Meanwhile the other "skill" requirement is not blowing a gen skill check.
The skill for survivors ought to be in not getting chased at all. The skill for survivors ought to be in extending a chase past 30 seconds when they should be at a disadvantage at that point. Otherwise you are expecting everything from the killer, who is alone, and next to nothing from the team of survivors, who have teammates who can help.
The challenge for survivors should be in finding a way to work together (the game balance is already massively in their favor if they do). Trying to balance the game so that survivors don't have to depend on each other gives them not only an equal and fair chance in a 1v1 versus the killer but ALSO a near unbeatable advantage if they do work together at all.
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Tofu did a video a little while back covering this topic. I think he hit the nail on the head in it. Basic recap was there should be a few safe pallets. Every other pallet should be moderately safe. Meaning both sides have a reasonable chance to mind game the pallet.
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Here's the thing. The consequence for a survivor if they lose the mind game is what - they get hit. Maybe this downs them, maybe they get hooked. Worst case, it's giving up 1/12 of the killer's win condition. If the survivor wins the mind game, no progress is made on the killer's win condition.
What's the consequence for a killer if they lose the mind game? Against a competent survivor team, probably at least one gen. Best case the killer gives up close to 1/5 of the survivor's win condition. Not to mention, even if the killer wins the mind game he's given up significant progress on the survivor's win condition.
Yes, other factors enter into that math as generators start to dwindle, but the consequence disparity remains. It's far worse on the killer to lose the mind game than it is on the survivor, and it's far better for the survivor when the survivor wins.
So why is it important for survivors to have an equal and fair chance?
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Yes! That's right! Dead Dawg Saloon is a mess. The Game is also unbalanced, since most pallets are god pallets.
Maps like Autohaven or Macmillan achieve that.
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I have to agree, I fail to see the point of so many unsafe pallets. They may as well not even exist if all it does is just delay the inevitable by a few seconds. Killer sided pallets should exist to elevate the danger for survivors to make escapes require reading and mindgaming skills as well. But stuff like Hawkins and the rest take zero skill to manage
If these become more and more the norm they are seriously going to damage the integrity of the gameplay loop
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Most of the pallets outside of the rooms don't work in Hawkins. They always have a place where the killer can just walk around them and get a hit regardless if they're thrown or not. Throwing them is usually dumb in itself rather than just attempting to run to another one. If anything ignoring them completely is the best option.
I also hate how they changed the main building on Wretched Shop. Like it's absolutely pointless to use now at all, when they could have just maybe broke it up in the center of the building to make it at least worth using somewhat. Blocking off that one window just made it useless imo.
The killer's win condition isn't broken up into 12, it's broken up into 4. People can die on one hook, or two, or be mori'd, etc. Both the killer and survivors decide how much of a win condition the killer has. IDEALLY it's 1/12, but more often than not I see people giving up more than one hooks worth due to either survivor team incompetence, or killers playing scummy. A killer can get a 4k just as quickly as a survivor team can finish all the gens if they're good enough. There are far more bad killers than good killers in this game, honestly and it's the same with survivors.
Even in high ranks, you'll find those that want to play "hide and seek" like you're suggesting. Problem with that is those same people only win by sacrificing their team. They don't take on hooks to keep their team lasting longer, they just let other people die so they can get hatch or hope their team pulls them through enough so that they don't have to be hooked. If they ARE hooked, they're usually the last ones hooked, meaning they still get a ton of points and that's why they pip. You may want hide and seek, but the way the game currently works is NOT SUITED for hide and seek. There's aura reading, there's whispers, there's scratch marks, there's Surveillance/Discordance/etc, you just can't hide from someone unless you're a Blendette eating trees constantly and doing nothing all game, which is not fun for the rest of the team when they see people aren't doing anything except running and hiding in corners self caring while they're sticking their necks out trying to be a team player. You can't make this game "hide and seek" without changing the game SIGNIFICANTLY. It'd just create a bunch of selfish people who would let everyone die on their first hook, like some of the playerbase already are.
Post edited by Atrushan88 on2 -
Please, please damage the integrity of this gameplay loop. Skill as a survivor shouldn't be measured by how efficiently they run in a circle occasionally dropping garbage on a monster but in being able to read the map (in real time, not just knowing which piles of trash are the best to run around) and in working with their teammates. If the game is balanced around four individual 1v1's then what's the point of the asymmetry in the first place? Just make it one killer versus one survivor.
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"while wanting to give survivors every advantage with very little requirement"
No I want both sides to have to exert skill in order to win against their opponent. Super safe pallets with no mind games, and super UNSAFE pallets with no mind games do nothing to that end.
"Being able to depend on your teammates is the advantage, it's not a liability."
It's both. You outnumber the killer and therefore can do multiple things at once while they are limited to one thing at a time, but you have nothing to actually stop the killer from doing what they are going to do except evading them. If Bubba puts you on a hook and face camps with his chainsaw rev'd, there isn't anything you can do. The BEST that can be done is someone saves you with BT and trades a hook. Likewise, if the killer slugs multiple survivors, there are less people that you can depend on and a greater chance that killer kills everyone. It's part of the reason why Unbreakable exists and why slugging in general has been nerfed to be less effectively, because previously it was simply too strong of a tactic to secure a 4k.
"Looping is braindead easy."
Yes because you can see each other and/or because the pallet is super safe. Looping a long wall is easy because you can see the killer coming around each corner with plenty of time to make a move. Looping a 4 wall is NOT as easy because you lack the information required to react the same way and thus you have to commit to an option. If you guess wrong, you get hit.
Any loop that is both long enough to loop but short enough that the killer can land a hit if you weren't committed to a direction AND one where you cannot see each other the entire time are no easy loops to do. It takes skill, for both sides, to win those loops.
"The skill for survivors ought to be in not getting chased at all."
Bro there is little to no skill in hiding. There really isn't. In some instances there is, or knowing how to maneuver around while ALSO avoiding a chase is, but it is very easy to straight up hide from the killer. We shouldn't be encouraging that as the main method of survivor defense because it's easier than looping AND it's boring, particularly for the killer. The chase is where the real skill in the game lies.
"The skill for survivors ought to be in extending a chase past 30 seconds when they should be at a disadvantage at that point. Otherwise you are expecting everything from the killer, who is alone, and next to nothing from the team of survivors, who have teammates who can help."
Yes, skill in being able to consistently mind game/read your opponent. There is no mind game at any Z pallet loops on Blood Lodge. NONE. You can see each other. The killer's only chance is to bloodlust, and really that's not even going to cut it at the end of the day. They are forced to break the pallet and let you get to another loop.
I expect survivors to be able to mind game/read the killer and commit to an option. I also expect loops to not basically give the killer a hit regardless of what the survivor does. The latter is a problem with Hawkins, also Saloon and some of Badham. It's becoming the new trend for the devs to make loops like these where, whether you drop the pallet or not, whether you loop or not, you get hit. There is not avoiding a hit at these pallets, merely delaying it in some cases. That's stupid. Like old Legion level of stupid. How is it fair to basically guarantee the killer a hit anymore than it is to guarantee the survivor DOES NOT get hit? Neither of those should be a thing.
You seem to be under the impression I want every loop to be safe. I said several times SEMI-SAFE. As in if played perfectly it's safe, but in order to do that you have win 100% of the mind games and/or bait the killer 100% efficiently. Both of which are effectively impossible, and therefore it comes down to survivor skill V killer skill. With the exception of maybe 1 pallet on the map (eg. shack) no pallet should guarantee either side anything. It should be EARNED THROUGH SKILLFUL PLAY AND TACTICS, as I said before.
"So why is it important for survivors to have an equal and fair chance?"
Because otherwise they might as well be bots. This is a pvp game, and those should never favor one side over the other. Those that do are party games, gimmicks. Mario Party comes to mind.
"Here's the thing. The consequence for a survivor if they lose the mind game is what - they get hit. Maybe this downs them, maybe they get hooked. Worst case, it's giving up 1/12 of the killer's win condition."
The consequence is that they could die. What if it's a basement hook against Bubba or Huntress? What if the killer has a mori or Devour. What if it is last hook? What if they just slug you and then catch someone else? WHAT IF THE PEOPLE YOU ARE DEPENDING ON DID NOT DO GENS WHILE YOU WERE CHASED???
Survivors have to collectively spend 400 seconds repairing gens. It can be less with perks and such, but basically that's how much time they have to put into their objective. On the other hand, a killer could, in theory, down all 4 survivors in under a minute. Granted that's likely not going to happen against good survivors, but the point is that killers can snowball a win WAY harder than survivors. If they lose a mind game it's not the end of the game. If a survivor loses a mind game, that very much could be the end of THEIR game.
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Again, you're approaching this as if it's a game of four individual 1v1's. If the killer wins the mind game and it's last hook the game isn't over for the survivor team, it's over for that survivor. That's part of (or should be) the downside to playing on the team in an asymmetric game.
The balance in the chase shouldn't be weighted towards the two players but the consequences to the entire game. If you make the chase mechanics not favor either side, then you are only giving advantages to the survivor. If every chase, played at equal skill between both killer and individual survivor, resulted in a 50/50 split, then the survivors gain FAR more benefit from that as a TEAM in the context of the entire GAME than the killer does.
I get that survivors don't want to get hooked and they don't want to die. But we are approaching, if not already, at a point to where killers can't down people fast enough to win the war of attrition if the survivor team is coordinated at all, whether through swf or not.
400 seconds is less than seven minutes. How long do you want each chase to be? I get that it's all fun and games for survivors - chases are fun! Come get me let's test our skills! For a survivor, you might have a couple chases a game and I get that they're exciting and fun and you want the chance to outwit the killer etc etc etc.
For a killer, chases are a chore. A killer goes on every chase. Winning a mindgame is a relief, not a victory, because they're still under a tremendous time pressure that the survivors just don't deal with at all. The war of attrition is played on the survivor's terms, not the killer's.
How about this, as compromise. You can have the 50/50s at every pile of trash to play duck duck goose around (sorry, "mind game") if they implement a general match timer for the Entity - like when the doors open, but from the beginning (obviously it would be longer - say roughly 30 minutes). If long chases with fair and equal opportunity for both sides is important, it shouldn't ONLY benefit survivors if the chase is long. There should be a downside of not working towards the escape for the survivor as much as there's a downside of not killing anybody for the killer.
Edit: In other words, if the killer has the advantage, that's fine because survivors control the time crunch. If nobody has the advantage, then everybody should feel the time crunch.
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But the thing is with looking at maps, there shouldnt be only looked at the amount of pallets or how safe they are but also what the map looks like.
On a map as dead dawg saloon, there is a lot of hiding spots with these bushes which makes it harder for the killer to Find survivor. This environment isnt at the game or Hawkins. That's why i think these maps need a bit more safe pallets then maps like dead dawg saloon. Because survivors can only rely on these safe pallets in maps like the game.
But dead dawg saloon is Just in general a mess of a map because of the bad implementation of breakable walls.
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"If the killer wins the mind game and it's last hook the game isn't over for the survivor team, it's over for that survivor."
Except survivors are not actually a team. They have the same collective goal, but the outcome for one survivor does not equal the outcome for another survivor. It's in their better interest to keep other survivors alive, because the longer any individual survivor is alive the greater the chances that all survivors have to escape, but they are not explicitly a team. Even in an SWF, if you die and I escape those are two vastly different results. It's unreasonable to treat the game a a straight 1v4 because the outcomes can be different, and because majority of players play solo. It's not a straigh 1v1 either, it's a mix of both actually. You seem to be under the impression I'm explicitly asking for the game to focus on 1v1, I'm not. I'm only presenting an argument for this new very bad pallet/loop design philosophy. I never mentioned anything about other aspects of the game, but just to humor you, I do believe that survivor objectives need to be looked at. Gens go way to fast and it's unfair that killers have so little time to get any kind of pressure going. Thus they resort to camping/tunneling/slugging because it's all they can do really. That part needs improvement ON TOP OF improvements to the loop designs.
"The balance in the chase shouldn't be weighted towards the two players but the consequences to the entire game."
See but the "entire game" isn't the same for either side. For killer, the whole duration of the trial is the "entire game". For survivor, the time they are alive is "the entire game". So when one sided is already weighted to have a potentially shorter game than the other that means chases need to be weighted to the killer and the survivor they are chasing. If you give killer these built in "wins" in a chase then you're just making the survivor's game shorter with no way to change that, regardless of how well they play. They just have this timer above their head that says "you die in 2 minutes" or whatever. That's not exactly fair to them.
For killer a long chase is their decision. If you choose to chase one person for 5 gens, that's on you. It would be wiser to go for someone else and have a shorter chase. You also get heavily rewarded for ending chases faster because it means survivors die faster. For each survivor that dies, the game shifts HEAVILY in the killer's favor.
"But we are approaching, if not already, at a point to where killers can't down people fast enough to win the war of attrition if the survivor team is coordinated at all, whether through swf or not."
No we aren't. With no god loops, less safe pallets, and fewer pallets overall it's becoming increasingly easier and easier for killers. Every action they can do has been made faster over the years, while everything survivors can do is being made slower. Gens could be done EVEN FASTER in the past, yet killers had fewer tools to win in the time they had. Now they have more time than ever, and more advantages than ever, and that's still not good enough? Bro do you just want survivors to spawn on hooks or something?
The game should require skill from both sides. The game in it's current state is WAY WAY more balanced than it ever has been. Again, gen times need to still be looked at, but the devs have said they are working on some kind of early game warm up period like EGC is for end game.
"For a killer, chases are a chore."
The fact you look at chases as a chore suggests that you don't want to put in the effort to outplay your opponent. You just want the chases handed to you. Again, do you just want survivors spawned on hooks? Because that's what this sounds like.
Chases ARE the core dynamic in the game. They are where the true skill lies for either party. They are where the game is the most fun. It is the reason people play the game past the initial spooky factor for first timers.
"If long chases with fair and equal opportunity for both sides is important"
You are completely misunderstanding my points here. I never said "long chases are important" I'm saying "balanced/fair chases are important". Those are two wildly different things.
If a chase is long it benefits survivors. If it is short, it benefits killer. There is no getting around this. If the chase is artificially long/short (by means of super safe/unsafe pallets without mindgames) then we might as well just replace the other side with bots. That's basically what you are asking for here. I'm asking for balance opportunities for both sides. I win plenty of games as killer and survivor. I lose games too. That's fine. But when the game is built for me to lose or win, where the ######### is the fun in that?
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Saloon isn't nearly as bad as Hawkins when it comes to pallet design. The fact you can hide better, yes is a good point. My main issue with Saloon is the Saloon itself. It has 2 windows, 1 leads to a dead end and the other is super strong until the killer breaks a wall. I honestly don't mind that but I would trade one of those windows and some breakable walls for a pallet inside the Saloon. Sure, the window is good but then it becomes doo doo butter once the killer breaks certain walls. But then in doing so it becomes very killer sided, and the survivors have no way to break other walls to make it 50/50.
The rest of the map isn't so bad. Most pallets aren't super safe or unsafe. Some are safe but can be made unsafe by breaking a wall. Some of the pallets around the edges of the map need to be made a tad more safe. But otherwise it's fine. They just need to fix the Saloon really.
Hawkins and to a lesser extent Badham need big changes though, on both ends. IDK about the SH map, it looks like most pallets are unsafe, which is why I've made this thread because we need to make this a point that the game is actually better with a medium amount of semi-safe mind-game pallets than it is with a bunch of trash pallets or a few safe pallets.
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I can't argue with you if you're saying the game isn't 4v1 its 1v1+1+1+1. Game is absolutely impossible to make fair for the killer at that point, because if it's balanced to where a single survivor has an equal and fair opportunity in every encounter then all it takes is the survivors working together to always win - or at least demand FAR more from the killer than the game demands from the survivor.
You can make the game fair and equal for each individual versus the killer, but because the survivors are, in actuality, on a team, then you're looking for a game where 4 people who can beat the killer on their own get to team up against him.
Which is almost what we already have. Notice the consternation about SWF and how an average group of well-coordinated SWF can easily take down a reasonably skilled killer. It's already much easier to play survivor than killer, I don't understand trying to make it even easier.
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Part of the reason why there are so many unsafe pallets is that without having some pallets favoring the killer it tends to be a 5 gen loop vs any good survivor when the killer isn't playing a meta killer who can bypass/Make the pallets unsafe like freddy/Spirit.
The game isn't a 1 on 1 its a 4 on 1 so the killer SHOULD have an advantage on MOST pallets or else non meta killers would auto lose every game which is what happened in the past.
Mind you I am not against strong pallets like cow tree or killer shack(Unless they are back to back but that's a different issue entirely) just trying to balance ALL pallets for 1 v 1 in a 4 v 1 game is a fool's errand.
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You dunderhead. You would destroy the mechanic that has kept this game relevant and above all its rivals just so you can smack people down with no challenge? You would reduce a game that's about keeping track of the objectives, other players, mindgaming, tactics into a glorified walking simulator with no challenge?
The reason getting kills especially a 4k feels great, the reason why winning matches feels good. Its because there IS a challenge which is essential to a engaging PVP game, its what kept me going back to this game. DBD is simple on the surface but with an incredible depth just below the surface. Yet you in you're selfishness would throw that all away so DBD can repeat the mistakes of its intended "successors"? F13, Death-garden, Last Year, that Battle royale game that went bloody nowhere all these projects didn't have "running in circles" and look what has become of them . Think to yourself and ask why DBD has triumphed over all of them, and then you tell me you are still fine tearing everything this game is for the sake of easy and short-term monotonous gratification
If after all that you still want this game to change completely, well bub. This game isn't for you and your extreme emotional bias
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You are literally just asking for the game to hand wins to the killer because they happen to be outnumbered.
Survivors are NOT a team. Again, if you lose it doesn't mean I lose. I have a higher chance to lose, but my fate is not tied to yours. If we were talking Deathgarden, where the runners have to have X amount escape to win then yes, they are a team. But that's not the case at all.
"Game is absolutely impossible to make fair for the killer at that point"
Did you read my comment? The game has become more and more fair for killers over the years. When we get this early game warm up mechanic I'm fairly positive that will be the point when the game becomes almost entirely balanced.
SWF isn't the problem, the problem is that the gens can just be done too quickly robbing the killer of the time needed to kill survivors. Artificially shortening chases by handing wins to killer is not the fix we need. The fix will come with changing the gens. Remove gens from the equation and just pit 4 survivors against the killer and the killer actually has a lot of power. It's the reason overly altruistic SWF teams often lose, because the killer can slug them all and effectively win the game. There is very little they can do about it.
If gens couldn't be done so fast, SWF would inherently be a lot less powerful.
But it's not explicitly 4v1. That's what I keep saying.
If you give the killer wins in a chase by design you are just making the game basically a PvE experience. What is the point of playing survivor if you are destined to get caught every chase?
Furthermore, if a survivor takes you on a 5 gen run THAT IS ON YOU. It's not the game's fault you got outplayed over and over again. You should have ended the chase a long time ago and went for another target that was easier to catch, or force survivors to waste resources (ie. pallets) so that future chases would end quicker.
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Yes. This.
Unsafe palettes are a joke, especially since Killers have hit priority. Survivors were told these palettes were meant specifically for a stun, not a loop option...yet if you let a killer get close enough to stun them, latency and hit priority usually dictate that you get hit anyway - making them nothing more than useless destruction points for the killer after you're downed.
My hope is that they actually come through with their proposed fix for hit priority issues and that this makes these resources more viable. I don't mind having unsafe palettes - but when you can't even use them in the limited way you're told you're supposed to it seems like total horseshit.
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...You know the point of bloodlust was to stop infinite loops as survivors being caught IS PART OF THE GAMEPLAY.
Looping is meant to waste the killer's time not make you untouchable.
Look up old game play of when nearly all pallets could be mind gamed. Unless the survivor messes up its a 5 gen chase and a 0k.
Also no matter how much you might deny it its a team game for survivors or else survivors would be allowed to turn on each other/sandbag without penalty which is not the case.
Ps. There are video series of survivors in 4 man SWF with the old pallets of them getting over 100 4 man escapes in a row!
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Didn't someone already prove looping wasn't an intentional game mechanic
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And said old footage was when the game was a small indie project, the original vision of being hide and sneak, along with a misguided knowledge. Comparing DBD now to DBD of 2017 and especially DBD 2016 is a joke. The game was absurd and broken for both sides you had the infinite sabos, the machine gun killers, insta down hatchets, 115 movement speed Goku Nurse. Yeah if you wanna go down this rabbit hole we'll dig to China and back again
I don't care about the depip squad's adventures that version of the game no longer exists. A balance has to be struck between power, agency, and the ability to actually PVP. Demanding the game balance heavily for killers just because of issues existing in the past is not only absurd but it is a poisonous mindset. We are owed NO special treatment just because of what we play other then what is needed to make a balanced game for BOTH sides. And that does not mean nerfing the other into oblivion
The chasing is the game the LMB/right trigger clicking and holding down the hook button is the destination not the journey. Do you play games to have a title screen say you win? You play them for their GAMEPLAY not a sticker that says you win
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Just because individual solo survivors have to engage in teamwork as their best means for escape A) does not make them a 'team' and B) does not mean they find penalty in punishing their fellow survivors via any number of methods...sand bagging, fast vaulting near them, pointing them out to the killer, refusing to help with objectives, leaving them on the hook for the hatch, etc. Yes, it is a "team" of 4 people vs. the Killer...but those 4 people are not a traditional team unless they entered into a lobby together as a SWF. Your 'teammate' can easily be your enemy, just as much as the killer is.
I am primarily a solo survivors. I am not responsible for the actions or lack of skill of the three people I am randomly stuck with. Does it advantage me to try and keep them alive until the end of the match? Yes. Will I do it? Yes - because it is my personal best chance of survival. But when it stops being my best chance...its a solo game all the way.
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Bloodlust was a band aid mechanic. Getting caught is part of the gameplay, but it's not supposed to happen regardless of what either party does. It's supposed to happen through skill of the killer/misplays of the survivor. Escaping a chase is part of the gameplay too, else there would be no exit gates and survivors would just always die every game.
Looping only makes you untouchable at safe pallets with no mind games. At semi-safe pallets like 4 walls, you are not untouchable. Only if you make consistent reads is that the case, and as such you SHOULD be rewarded with not being caught since you are outplaying your opponent.
Old gameplay where all pallets could be mind gamed? Yea this is just flat out false. Coldwind maps all had cracks in the walls where you could see killers. Cow tree you could see the killer the entire time. Autohaven Z pallet loops are basically the same as they have always been. MacMil/Coldwind/Autohaven jungle gyms are basically unchanged from how they were years ago. What you are talking about is ACTUAL infinites, not mind game pallets.
You can sandbag each other without penalty. It only becomes bannable when you are working with the killer. As in you are friends, in a party chat/discord, helping each other out and they let you go. But in a normal game, if I rat you out to the killer and they decide to let me go, there is absolutely no punishment for that. It's a dick move, but not bannable.
You mean Marth's Depip squad? Bro look at my post count. Look at when my account was made. I've been around this game since the beginning. I KNOW about depip squad. But there are three problems here. 1) This was from a much older version of the game where things like Pop, Corrupt and Infectious didn't exist. What applied then does not necessarily apply now. 2) No one plays to just rush gens and leave. Nobody. Survivors will try to save each other and even SWF's will mess up. Plus with emblems, if you play like this yea sure, you escape but you will depipp YOURSELF in the process. 3) They had ABSOLUTELY no controls for this "experiment". They just got matched with any and all sorts of killers. Not all killers have the same goals to 4k every game. Most do, but sometimes people play killer for dailies or to practice. Point being there are a lot of holes in his whole methodology and it holds no actual merit, especially 2 years later when the game is quite different.
There is also a series of games by Scott Jund where he 4k's 40+ games in a row as speed limiter Bubba. He didn't set out to prove anything, but the fact that he could even do this suggests that if a killer REALLY wanted to kill all 4 survivors every game without regard for BP or emblems, they could do it. Like really all you have to do is pick Nurse with Ebony, Infectious, Sloppy, Deerstalker, and another game slowing perk like Corrupt, slug everyone and you win in 2 minutes with 8k BP and depip from it.
Hey I'm making like 4 more forum accounts right now to upvote this some more.
(PS. I'm not mods don't hurt me it was joke)
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As long as the devs do something about the number of safe pallets, having mind-gameable loops should be okay.
Devs also need to address window spawns. There are still god windows that exist.
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I'm not saying it should be an auto-down for killers in a chase. I'm saying it should generally be harder - in a chase - for the survivor to avoid getting hit than it should be for the killer to get that hit.
I get that you don't approach survivor as a team game, that's fine. Plenty of people do. I'm saying that if we made your game easier, the killer would have equal opportunity to catch you and you could have fun, but virtually no avenue to victory versus the numerous players that DO approach survivor as a team effort.
I definitely don't want auto 4k's as a killer. But I also don't want to be bored as a survivor. I'd like to require the same kind of tense gameplanning and awareness and dread for the survivors that the killer role has. I don't want a one dimensional cardio contest around a pile of trash being the "skill test." The skill contest shouldn't be in making the killer bored or frustrated enough to abandon the looney toons chase, it should be in actually.. uh.. getting away from the killer. Or managing to stay alive long enough for your teammates to complete objectives when the odds are stacked against you. Right now - and especially if every pallet is semi-safe - survivors accomplish both of those by default. No real skill required. Just don't make any braindead errors and at the very least you've wasted a significant amount of killer time. If you're lucky and guess right on the "skill test" you probably also get away.
I said earlier, or somewhere else, that scratchmarks are a big problem with this - they need to go or be drastically reduced in utility. I'm not all about buffing killers; that's not what I want to see. I just think survivors are waaaay too safe in what is supposed to be an asymmetric horror game. The general consensus shouldn't be "I play survivor to relax and killer when I want to push myself."
Queue times are already pretty high for survivors. Encouraging a gameplay loop designed around making the killer have an unpleasant experience because everything is stacked against them - they have no team, they have a time limit, they can't use the environment as well, etc. etc. is just a recipe for longer queue times and greater disparities in killer skill level. Creating an environment where they also not only have to outplay a team of four people in the larger context of the game, but also require that they have no advantage in individual encounters... I mean, do survivors need more help, at this point?
I'd like to see something done with gens as well, but remember that a decent group of swf have 16 perk slots between them to share. The game (and the perks) are not designed around comms, but they're a reality. Even if they don't concentrate on genrush it still requires much more from the killer to make any progress as it does for the survivors. Making it even easier than it already is for survivors in a chase... I don't see the point.
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"I get that you don't approach survivor as a team game, that's fine. Plenty of people do."
Including me. I play SWF almost 90% of the time, at least 2 man. I solo too but I'd rather play killer most of the time instead. Plus stats show that MAJORITY of players are solo. Only some are SWF.
My SWF group still loses, and when we lose it's either because we didn't do gens fast enough, the killer did a good job of shutting down the gens (eg. Forever Freddy with Pop), the killer got a massive snowball, or some combination of the three. The problem is not that chases last too long, it's that gens are too fast. Artificially shortening chases in a way that SERIOUSLY favors the killer will just kill the game. We don't need that. It's not fun to be in a chase with a killer when you know there is no way to escape the chase. And it's no fun to win a chase as killer that was basically given to you. Hence why I made this thread "unsafe pallets are lame". It just is. It's lame for survivor because nothing you do matters. It's lame for killer because it's not rewarding.
What we need is something to prevent survivors from just plowing through gens, or at the very least from doing that so early the killer never even gets a chance to get a proper foothold on the game. If gen speeds were address, or (as it seems the devs are doing) some kind of trial start up mechanic is added, then SWF becomes a moot point. Killers have PLENTY to beat SWF, it's only that they punch out 3 gens in the first chase that makes them a threat. If that didn't happen it wouldn't matter that the killer is outnumbered because they can still snowball at any point from good plays and/or capitalizing on the survivor's mistakes.
"I definitely don't want auto 4k's as a killer. But I also don't want to be bored as a survivor."
So you don't find hiding boring? Or being in a chase you can't actually win? Those both sound like really boring options.
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Just a point - you can play with the survivors on your team as a team even if you're not SWF.
I'm not talking about making chases seriously favor the killer, I'm just not about giving survivors even more ways to avoid getting hit and even more ways to lessen their concern about the killer. You should be able to win a chase but it should require overcoming odds stacked against you. The entire rest of the game is stacked against the killer in the expectation of this dynamic. It hasn't really evolved that way, and looping became a thing - but they never removed all the various stacks against the killer outside of the chase. So now the dynamic is flip flopped. The killer is stressed out and anxious while the survivors dictate the pace of the game.
With the current gameplay design yeah, hiding would be boring. As I said that's why I rarely play survivor. They'd have to make some adjustments but the bones are there to flip the script and have the survivors scared of the monster (in a fair way) at least as much as the monster is scared of the survivors (which is the only source of real tension in this game at the moment). That would be a different post, but I'd much prefer more of a cat and mouse stealthy game than one where survivors don't really care if the monster sees them.
I just feel like escaping from Michael Myers or any of these monsters should feel like a hero moment and not an expected outcome. Michael Myers is supposed to catch you. If you escaped that means you did something special, not because you won a skill contest of equal opportunity. The movie is about Laurie somehow getting away even though she should have been killed - she beat the odds. It's Halloween, not SportsCenter. The rest of the gameplay aside from chases is about giving the survivors means to even the odds as a group; if you completely even the odds to an individual level there is no game, it just becomes "how hard can we beat up on this lone creature."
So no, the game is already soft enough on survivors as it is, and probably about as hard as it needs to be on killers. I don't think they need safer pallets and I'm fine with the unsafe ones.
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"I'm not talking about making chases seriously favor the killer"
But... that's what this thread is about. The super unsafe no mind game pallets that appear mostly on Hawkins, but also on Saloon, Badham, and seems more maps going forward. These pallets shouldn't exist any more than the super safe ones with no mind game.
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Those chases seriously favor the killer only if you try to loop the unsafe pallets like they're safe. Don't... do that and you should be fine. They still work to delay the killer. They still stun the killer. They just can't be cheesed - sorry, looped - the same way.
Hawkins is definitely harder as a survivor. That, again, is why it's one of my favorite maps to play as a survivor. I lose more there than I do on other maps, but it's 100 times more fun. Still plenty possible to win, just have to play smarter and utilize more than just the environmental advantage survivors get to do it.
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"So you don't find hiding boring? Or being in a chase you can't actually win? Those both sound like really boring options."
I love hiding in this game, my favorite survivor moments are well-crafted movements around a gen I've been working on when the killer knows I'm there SOMEWHERE but can't find me. Legitimately the most fun I have as a survivor.
I also have been playing on and off since 2017 and can't loop for ######### so for me most chases are going to be losses, and quickly, when I'm surviving. Unless it's a Nurse or another killer where mindgames matter more than ability to run in a circle tightly (which I cannot do)...as a result Spirits are fun for me, amusingly enough.
So, yeah. If I didn't have fun I wouldn't be coming back to the game time and time again, and I absolutely fall into your cookie-cutter "this would be boring" options and have active fun doing it. Red ranks, by the way. Can't loop, get through more games than not without a single chase against me, but an iri altruism, lightbringer, and survivalist.
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