A core game mechanic: Hooks, is the primary source of most of this games complaints.
Should this game simply move to a respawn mechanic?
I get why the hooks exist as a horror trope, and as a nod to the influences that led to the implementation of them into this game.
But when we look at the vast list of complaints coming from both sides, most of those can be linked all the way back to the hook system.
What if after a down the survivor instead “dies”, and a timer starts whereby the other remaining survivors need to reach one of 4 randomised respawn “stations” that are unseen by the killer? A downed survivor can be respawned into the game twice, with the third down summoning the entity (as done from the ground in the EGC). If however a “dead” survivors respawn timer expires before another survivor reaches a respawn “station”, this also leads to permanent death.
Let’s look at the problems that the hook system contributes to.
SURVIVORS -
- Hook Camping. Although survivors are NOT entitled to 2 additional chances, most behave like a killer should always allow them to be unhooked twice. This understandably leads to lots of frustration for survivors on the hook when a killer chooses to camp. A respawn mechanic would get rid of this frustration.
- Mori off of first hook, and Tunnelling. Mori’s are only as infuriating as they are for many survivors because of the strategy most killers use when a mori is at play: hook camping & tunneling. It’s not uncommon for a killer to intentionally remain close to a hooked survivor on their first hook, with intent to immediately down them the moment they’re unhooked so that they can be mori’d. Even without mori, plain outright tunnelling is always a miserable experience for the survivor that has been targeted, and DS does little to address this other than giving that survivor a few more seconds in the game. A respawn mechanic replacing the hook system would alleviate these gripes, and a Mori after first respawn would not seem as unfair.
- Slugging. Indirectly, hooks contribute to this issue due to killer time constraints (more on this in the killer section). But the bigger issue is when killers do this for seemingly no reason than to be spiteful, and watch survivors bleed out. The game only makes it possible for killers to choose to grief this way because of the necessity to leave survivors in the dying state sometimes because it simply takes too long to carry and hook in some circumstances.
- BBQ. Yeah in most instances this is usually easy to counter, and survivors usually caught out by it have been lazy. But there can also be many frustrating instances where you’re simply no where near a locker, and simply too far away to reach the 40m “safe” zone either. Plus some killers use the particularly nasty combo of BBQ, Infectious, and Iron Maiden making it borderline impossible to avoid detection if you unfortunately do not have Calm Spirit equipped. BBQ wouldn’t need to exist if a killer has no choice but to go look for another survivor because there is no one to camp if a respawn mechanic existed.
KILLERS -
- Gen rushing & Slugging. With how absurdly fast coordinated teams can get gens repaired in higher ranks, slugging on a regular basis is usually necessary. Why? Because once a killer reaches higher ranks it takes far too long carrying every downed survivor to a hook whilst 3 other survivors are still free to work on gens. It’s ridiculous that a killer engaging in a core part of their gameplay can actually be what LOSES them the match.
- Flashlight saves. Firstly, get off your high horse. It doesn’t matter how good of a killer you are, sometimes you’ve downed someone nowhere close to a wall or obstruction you can look at before a pick up, and you can be diligent checking the area for other survivors with flashlights, yet still end up blinded during the pick up. It’s frustrating, and obnoxious, and is a HUGE set back for the killer. It’s a wasted chase, and survivors have few comparable set backs.
- The myriad of second chance perks. DS would have no reason to exist if it isn’t possible for a killer to know where a survivor was that they had recently successfully ended a chase against. It also wouldn’t unfairly punish killers that aren’t actually purposely tunnelling the same survivor. It would simply be unfortunate bad luck if the killer happened to spot the same survivor again, which would likely be incredibly rare if a respawn “station” mechanic existed.
Comments
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If you like this then you should go play Last Year. It has exactly that.
It also doing nowhere near as good as dbd.
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Please don’t mistake my post as me not liking DBD. This is just my observation that most of the games problems (perceived or genuine) for both sides can be rooted in the hook system.
I get that DBD needs to differentiate itself from other asymmetrical multiplayer games. Can it do this whilst getting rid of the hooks? I’d like to hope so.
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Can i be honest with you. I think you don't like dbd as much as you think you do. You're asking to remove a core gameplay mechanic that was in the game from the very start. Wgere almost everything was build around of
Almost all of the complaints you mentioned aren't really issues and are just part of the game
It's something that happens often though. Dbd has a amazing concept that no other game has been able to do as well and on top of that you can play as your favorite horror movie characters.
It leads to people forcing themself to play this game while they don't actually like it.
If you dislike what's a core concept of the game do you really like the game?
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tbf how many people ask for hatch/moris to be removed and they've been in the game from the start too..
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This is too much work for BHVR to ever do. I think a couple of simpler mechanics (that are already in the game so should be easy to implement) are:
Fix face camping:
- Make it so when a killer is camping (can use the same criteria as the chaser emblem) that all other survivors receive a 50% bonus to their repair speeds. Can tweak the number, but basically, make it so if the killer facecamps, that all gens can get done before the survivor dies, giving the team a chance to even save that survivor. Right now if survivors stay on gens they can finish 4.5 gens before the survivor dies (does not include time between each gen). But if they had 50% more speed then they could finish 9 gens in that time, almost assuring that they get all the gens done.
- Make kindred base kit
Fix Tunneling and proxy camping:
- Make is so when a survivor is rescued from a hook they go into a new state called "ethereal" which behaves exactly like spirits power for the survivor. They become invisible, they have no collision, they move at like double speed, they leave no scratch marks, and they make no sound, they can see the killer's aura, they can see other survivors and other survivors can see them. This effect lasts for 20 seconds (same as BT) or until they get healed, or start repairing a gen, or basically do any action other than run.
- After that you need to rework BT and a few other perks like We'll make it to make them more viable for that scenario.
After that, you need to buff killers a bit, especially in the early game. I'd suggest to do something like, make it so generator speeds are halved until the first chase starts (similar to Scott Jund's trial warmup) or some other mechanism to change the early game.
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First, I do really appreciate you making this post with such good reasoning and explanations all around, you're not missing a point in it.
So many things in this game could be reworked, not removed probably cause then who knows what happens, but I am hoping for some big overhauls at some point in order to make the experience somewhat more bearable for everybody.
Both sides really require a breather at some point, since it can be infuriating to play with both cheesy strats, and simply intentionally abusive game design, (Tunnelling into mori, Bold DS moves, etc)
I just do wish that it was different.
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The hooks are too much part of the core of the game to remove them. Also as someone else said most of the problems you described are "non-problems" or could be fixed singularly.
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Those are not core elements though.
I'm not against asking for a change like how the hatch was changed and how mori's will get a tweak
But the op is bassicly asking for a completly new game
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Not able to fight back & death is permanent are the reason I pick DBD not Last year.
But honestly, the best way to balance this game is to create a whole new one.
Another way is adding more mechanic (like Obsession & Hex).
But remember, every chapter comes with many bugs.
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Not only in the game but also being forced by the devs (mori daily rewards twice as much bloodpoints as every other daily). Tomes tell you to tunnel and mori and use keys.
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Yeah if we just got rid of hooks and gens everything would be fine.
We can call it 'the sims.'
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Dbd is completely unbalanced! i agree the hook system is a pain to work with and needs a rework, i also think its funny how some people only come here to drag people through the mud instead of giving real advice or maybe brainstorming ways to make the game better. In all honesty this game won't last if people think of this as "the best we can get" i like the hook system but I really like the idea of not having to deal with flashlight saves and camping or tunneling. Because let's face it if you have to do either of those things your not really good at this game are you? Instead of making excuses like "but dbd said its a strategy" how about you just get better at the game? Most other games do just that by improving. I like the hook method but what if we did something like they do for pyramid head just like they said above to improve the quality of the game. Rather than let it be so unbalanced and given time less than fun more toxic than enjoyable. My friends enjoy the game but no lie over time they play it less and less. I want to change that and bring new fresh players in but as long as the "i don't think you like this as much as you say people" are here they just gonna ruin it for us all. Oh and for those gonna say well the survivor should "get gud" or they have things to help with getting tunneled or camped i will remind you they don't stop it they just delay it. Also killers pips are much easier to get than survivors. Numbers don't lie!
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Dbd is not nearly as unbalanced as many people claim.
It's really on the higher and lower level of play where there are problems. And even then it's not that big of a deal.
There is no perfect balance to achieve in a assymetrical game and completly changing the core mechanics is throwing away 4 years of balancing.
I can say the same that people that are constantly asking for reworks are ruining it for people that are already enjoying the game
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So, basically "nerf killers, buff survivors". Brilliant. 🙄 While we're forcing killers to play a certain way, how about once a generator is complete, another one can't be worked on until after a set amount of time? Or maybe implement a pallet and window exhaustion feature to prevent lengthy looping?
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All of these killers require a time investment to be what is effectively a basic two hit killer. At trappers core, he is weak. It takes more time to set a trap, than it takes to disarm it. That in the most basic form, is unbalanced. This is only one of the ways its unbalanced.
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And it takes a lot less time to set a trap that succesfullly catches survivors of guard then it is to chase them 2 times. There are killers that are weaker then others but that doesn't make the game unbalanced.
Not to mention that what you said is false, setting time is 2.5 seconds disarming time is 3.5 seconds
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I agree, the game is not terribly unbalanced. There are a few things, like keys and moris, but the devs said they plan on reworking them. As for tunneling and camping, sure it sucks, but its balanced. If a killer face camps someone, the killer will lose because the survivors will finish all the gens if they are smart. Plus there is comradery, which will extend someones hook time. There are also perks that hurt the killer if he slugs or tunnels. The killer also loses bloodpoints and medals for camping. I think the real problem is that survivors will throw the whole game to save someone. I'll play as trapper, put someone in shack basement, and trap every entrance. People will still go for the save and all I have to do is reset the one trap they set off and now I have two people in the basement, but if they just did the gens, I would only get one kill and I wouldn't see this as a viable strategy anymore. This happens consistently in my red rank games. If people would punish the killers for camping and tunneling instead of playing into it, killers would not camp so much.
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As mori and keys should be. They make the match tense and exciting as long as the killer doesn't instant mori at five gens...I believe in the motto "mori for a key"
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Very poor idea, everything you mention has an extremely high potential for abuse and even used as you suggested it would still be completely busted.
Your camping ‘solution’ would just make the meta to loop the killer around hook to make them ‘camp’ as a 50% repair bonus is huge. On top of this, the counter to camping is that the killer has no map pressure, so maybe just do gens in that case, it’s already a counter.
Your tunneling solution is also completely busted and wouldn’t even work as a perk due to how overpowered it would be. It would completely remove the need for safe unhooks, and would make killer far more frustrating. You could literally just run up to a survivor and unhook in killer’s face, and boom you’ve actually given your teammate an advantage in that they can get to a gen or anywhere they need to be at double speed with 0 counter play for killer. Same thing in EGC, might as well just let them all escape as you have basically no way to secure a kill as they can just dive hook and the hooked survivor can run to the exit invincible.
This is what happens when people who only play one side suggest balance ideas, you get completely busted stuff that would kill the meta.
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Did you read the last bit? They said buff killers a bit. Just read the whole thing
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This...this right here might be the most survivor sided thing I've ever heard in this game, survivors already have way more than enough gen speed, camping isn't a big problem in the game as it stands, it leads to the killer getting 1-0 kills if the survivors are smart, and that ethereal bull ######### imma just say i play killer a little more than survivor but if they introduced that I'd delete the game and play neither side, and your killer 'buff' was so pitiful in comparison it really shows what side your bating for
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Preach brother, thank you for wording this way better than i tried too.
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I'd rather just bring Franklin's and camp the key lol, way funnier and i get to keep my mori for blendettes.
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I hope the gen one gets added 😆
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I totally get what you are saying. Hooks are, in a way, asking for killers to camp and go for the vulnerable survivors off the hook (because strategically speaking, why wouldn't they?). The problem is hooks are a mechanic that is so rooted into the game that it would be hard to change it and keep the same essence. I think this is one of the things a dbd 2 could improve on, although I really don't want them to do that.
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These might be two of the worst ideas I've ever heard to fix either problem lmao
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It's actually a lot simpler to balance this out with hooks that no one suggests. Instead of doing the usual "rule of three", you could just change hooks to a meter burn mechanic so when someone gets ripped off for bloodpoints/grief/naivity instead of going to straight struggle it burns a percentage of the meter instead. They also have all the capabilities to implement it, and would make monstrous shrine actually viable.
There would be obvious changes to how certain perks work, but nothing too drastic and it shouldn't affect killer game play too much if we tied it to bleeding state perhaps. Idk I'm just a player so the devs would have to figure out the balancing part.
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I’m not quite understanding what you’re suggesting.
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Oh and let me follow up with, I'm not implying struggle state being removed either, just in case I made it sound like I did, it would actually give camaraderie viability to add (effective) meter back essentially.
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I like the idea. The only problem is that BHVR is over DbD. The "base mechanic" of the game got changed without anyone testing it, and hooks are broken, again. I doubt anyone at BHVR would be able to fix anything, let alone, tweak anything without causing major problems.
I understand the old folks going, "but it apart of the game, go play Last Year," sure, change is scary, kill off Pyramid Head I guess. But on the other hand, something simpler than hooks is available, and could be a saving grace for this game.
Go ahead, @ me, I'm a Killer main that plays survivor only in SWF because randoms are useless. I just think more alternatives should be looked into, like Dorito-boy.
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Well in theory its simple. They have a meter mechanic, which is effectively a timer, so instead of skipping stages between hooks we could have a reduction to the meter (time till you die) instead of just switching phases (hanging > struggle > Dead)
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Apologies, but I hate that idea. That sounds like it would possibly give survivors MORE than 2 extra chances, making the game MORE miserable for killers, and encourage MORE hook camping.
Unless I misunderstood what you meant?
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They’re not over DBD at all. They have projected to support it well into next gen. The only issue is their stubbornness in holding onto some of the core game mechanics in the way that they are.
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For better or worse Hooks are a thoroughly ingrained part of the game, removing them entirely would be like trying to build things from the ground up at this point. Imagine all the perks and add-ons for instance that would have to be changed.
That being said I do agree that Hooks are an underlying cause so some of the more common complaints. I do sometimes think that in some ways the game would be a bit better if when you downed survivors they simply swapped the hook timer for the bleed out timer. So the first time you're downed you have one minute until you go to stage two, then another minute until you die, and at any point before you die anybody can come and revive you. The advantage would be that since you're not on a hook you'd at least have the freedom to crawl around if you want, for instance which would be a bit more interesting for the survivors. Also it would mitigate the minor issue with the endgame where sometimes you have a third survivor downed but want to look for the fourth by shortening the bleed out timer and making it so if you are downed three times total you are out.
Like I said at the top, though, even that would take a huge development effort and a lot of rebalancing, it would never happen even if the devs actually thought it was a good idea. And, to be fair to the hooks, they do possibly open up a small additional game space in which to put in some perks like Agitation and Mad Grit and Hangman's Trick, etc, that specifically work during the carrying or hook stage. (I'm pretty sure those particular perks aren't that great honestly, but I admit that Agitation is growing on me a bit since I frequently face survivors who love to try and block me or blind me on the way to the hook.)
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The lack of hooks in Last Year is not why the game is not as popular. It is mostly due to bad marketing close to release, and it's over reliance on Discord as a fundamental part of the game.
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There have been many instances where perks have been reworked. Hook perks could easily be changed to proc on downs. Perhaps hooks don’t need to go at all. Perhaps survivors are spawned to a random hook upon a down and the aura is NOT shown to killer anymore.
Of course PH would need a partial rework so that Torment does something else entirely.
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Well im still playing around the specifics cause I'm trying to keep in mind both sides of the debate. It'd be a balance of how much percentage is lost for each hook, self-pull, deliverance, or other mechanic such as if we include combining the dying state to the sacrifice timer.
That is to say I get why they have the current method for hooks in the game. Right now they have the rule of three in place as a killer goal essentially for ease of understanding the game, hook three times and youre rewarded. This gets muddied down with additional mechanics and certain perks.
Regardless though, I get what you mean by them having more unhook chances. I was more thinking that if they play more into the timer aspect of being hooked, there could be diminishing returns on tunneling or something. But that would support bold strats, and honestly any way they address this issue someone will find a way to give themselves the advantage lol.
Of course I'm only suggesting this, I would have to spend much more time fleshing out this idea rather than the hour I've been in this thread lol
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I mean sure perks get reworked over time but it's they typically don't change too many at once except when they do a character revamp like with Bubba and Hillbilly. All I'm saying is fundamentally changing or removing hooks would be a project larger than a chapter release, it would require them to really at a core level reconsider how they want the gameflow to work before they could even work on it. Plus for all we know they've already looked at ideas like having people bleed on the ground and tried it out in the early stages of the game but opted not to do it for various reasons.
All that being said they can do things to tweak hooks in more minor ways, such as replacing rapidly hitting the space bar to struggle with skill checks (which they are or were apparently looking into based on a survey they did after the Silent Hill patch) or buffing a couple of underused perks like Monstrous Shrine and Hangman's Trick, etc. Those small changes wouldn't address the fundamental recurring posts about things like being bored while hooked or some killers facecamping for no reason, etc, but they would at least improve the game in some other ways.
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A new objective would fix this- like say repairing a fuse box where the fuses are scattered around in chests
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How about stop or slow hook progression when the killer is within a certain range of the hook? Could even make that range expand when the hooked survivor reaches stage 2.
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I really do not see how that would address any of the issues I listed for either killer or survivors.
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I think they mean have the meter maintain meter progress between hooks. So it's no longer three and done, but a need to empty the meter over whatever necessary number of hooks.
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How does that also address some of the problems killers face surrounding the current hooking system?
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And I’ve already addressed how that would cause MORE problems playing as killer.
There needs to be a solution that’s fair for BOTH sides.
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But I already kinda addressed it, and honestly the more I thought about it, if you would tie the bleed out timer to sacrifice timer and made adjustments to the total time the problem is more of playtesting to find the right amount of time.
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The reason the hooks are the way they are is to speed up games anyways, my method would slow the game down slightly depending on how you tweak the percentage losses from hooks and the total time till death.
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Personally, I feel like this is an awful idea. First of all, there are so many more pressing issues that need to be resolved first.
Secondly, this suggests removing and reworking the main mechanic of the game. I feel like I should emphasize this, the legion skin for the community contest would have an animated mask, but bhvr said that couldn't be done. That would change texture, which is simpler than for example Oni who changes his entire model. It also clearly couldn't be that difficult, as yandere dev, also known as internet's worst game dev implemented that on a science club guy. If bhvr 'can't do that' I wouldn't be too confident in changing some of the base game's code without massively messing something up.
Lastly, almost all of the game mechanics revolve around hooks, so removing them would have them to have to rework almost everything in the game. Things from flashlights, to BBQ and DS, to deliverance and luck, and what about cages of atonement. Downed survivors disappear, making pyramid head lose half his power, along side pig, who can't put bear traps on heads. Even hag would be majorly nerfed, and as it is, the game is in survivor favor. Killers would still be able to tunnel really easily, as the respawns can only have so many set points, so people like nurse, billy, and spirit would still be super broken cuz they could patrol all respawn points
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By forcing the killers to apply pressure elsewhere, it should slow gen rushing naturally.
Flashlight can be helped by clearing the area before picking up a survivor, I don't think it needs addressed personally. Just don't rush every action.
Honestly, I think attacking a survivor in the process of unhooking should interrupt them like at a generator. Whether a free pickup or a general interruption.
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The Only inherent problem in this is that certain killers don't have to care about that range nearly as much as others (huntress/demigorgon vs trapper/pig)
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Then make it like a terror radius and adjust based on who is played.
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