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Should DBD add a mechanic to help curb excessive survivor hiding? (hear me out)
Before I state my issue, let me clarify what I mean by "excessive survivor hiding". When I say "excessive survivor hiding", I do not mean survivors with stealthy playstyles. When I say this I'm referring to survivors which:
- Don't work on generators.
- Spend entire games hiding behind rocks and in lockers.
- Generally waste everyone's time.
Alright, with that out of the way, here's why its a problem, and how I would go about fixing it.
This is a problem because, as killer, I've played games which have lasted upwards of half an hour (simply because I couldn't find anyone). This is largely due to stagnant survivors hiding in lockers for minutes on end. Behavior HAS put measures in place to help prevent this from happening, but they nearly aren't effective enough to have an effect on this playstyle.
For example, one measure Behavior did put in place was to add stillness crows (for those who don't know, stillness crows are crows which fly around players camping in one position. These crows cause noise in a radius of increasing size as time passes, eventually plateauing at a maximum size*), However, these crows are largely ineffective because the killer has to be within close proximity to the player to hear them. This means that if a player is camping opposite all of the generators, the only way for the killer to even have a chance of finding them is by leaving their patrol route, potentially throwing the game.
An example of how I might go about fixing it is as follows:
Beginning a minute into the round (to prevent divine intervention from becoming OP), a 2 minute countdown timer starts (visible only to the survivors). This timer is paused anytime someone is working on a generator and only ticks down when all generators are abandoned. The completion of a generator will reset the timer. If the timer hits zero, the entity becomes enraged. While the entity is enraged, all survivors who aren't actively working on generators will have their auras revealed. The entities enragement doesn't end until another generator is repaired (resetting the timer to two minutes).
I think this would be a good change because not only does it curb survivor camping, but prevents killers from camping hooks as well (in order to run down the timer). While you could buff the survivor class to help compensate for this change, seeing as DBD is generally survivor sided, I don't think it would really be necessary.
My idea is likely flawed, but I wanted to give an idea of how one might go about fixing this issue in a more nuanced way as opposed to implementing a hard deadline, (ie. 15 minute timer, when it's up, you lose) which I've seen floating around in numerous killer forums. I wrote this more to get the conversation started, rather than to suggest a working fix. I understand that DBD has a high learning curve for new players, but I think the trade off of addressing this issue would be worth it.
*Unsure of what this is, but it's relatively small.
Comments
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After some balancing this could actually be a nice feature
-friendly neighborhood survivor main
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Man, I did not realize how wordy this was when I wrote it. Mad props to you if you were actually able to make it though it all.
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Your idea has some good ideas, but it really doesn't need to be that complicated. Simply add a timer 20 or 30 min long, and if it expires, all survivors get immediately sacrificed. Or, if a survivor has not performed any actions towards their objective (repair gens/heal teammates) for 5 min, they are revealed to the killer.
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There would need to be a longer timer or special exceptions for occassions when hiding is beneficial, i.e. during Myers T3 or Oni's power but this is a good idea with some fine tuning
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Sounds like a decent idea could have some problems but idk thats what the ptb is made to fix
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It's a neat idea, but I feel like this whole situation could be improved by just enhancing the Stillness Crows. Normally a crow is added at the 60/75/90 second marks when a survivor is mostly inactive with the 3rd crow creating a map-wide noise indicator. Remember that survivor's have perks that prevent aura reading, but they have no perks that counteract loud noise indicators from Stillness Crows.
Just have these crows affect survivors when their team hasn't interacted with anything for over 90 seconds. As in, no gens touched, no chests opened, no totems cleansed, no heals completed, etc. The team would need to complete a certain amount of progress (based on charges) to remove or prevent the crows within this time frame. These crows would effect survivors as a team, not as individuals (meaning 3 survivors could hide while a 4th worked, but once that 4th is hooked and/or sacrificed, their teammates would be revealed by this timer if they continued to hide).
No more matches where survivor teams attempt to take a match hostage by hiding for minutes on end, plus they could no longer wholly cancel out Corrupt Intervention by waiting through its full duration (unless they interacted with other objects during that time).
Exceptions to this system that would deactivate these crows are when a single survivor remains in the trial (or if the penultimate survivor is slugged/hooked) and when the End Game Collapse has started.
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That's a really interesting take, once again I'm not really trying to create a solution, but more just trying (in vain likely) for the devs to take note. I didn't really think of having the stillness crows affect people who weren't repairing gens as well. It's a great idea, but it might prove tough to balance, especially on killers like pig, which force characters to be unable to repair generators (a problem which remains in my prior situation as well). I like how your solution works, it isn't up in your face, and wouldn't affect survivors who were playing the game legitimately (save a few unforseen cases I'm sure), and for that reason, is probably a better solution than mine. It would be quite a bit of work on the behalf of behavior, but I think they could implement it in one form or another.
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So u are giving free aura reading to make 3 gen doc's more impossible to face? If it bothers u so much just use Whispers.
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But I don't like playing Doctor... there needs to be a solution that works for everyone
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Whispers certainly does solve some problems, but perks should be optional buffs, not mandatory to stop a few select situations. (It's kinda like saying you can counter spirit with iron will, you can, but you likely aren't gonna devote an entire perk slot to a mediocre at best perk on the off chance that they play spirit). Besides, Whispers is not as good at countering camp strats as you might think (I'm a pig main so whispers and monitor and abuse are my bread and butter) .
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People who hide behind rocks and do nothing are usually new players. Seems like this type of mechanic would punish them.
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Here's another idea: what if the Devs fixes the sounds so that audio occlusion doesn't make survivors borderline impossible to hear if they are crouched behind a tree?
Seriously, that's actually not how sound works.
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Here's my idea.
For every minute the survivor spends crouching the Entity awakens. Three minutes of crouching leads the Entity to emerge from the ground and stab the survivor in the butt. The survivor then screams and is unable to crouch for five minutes and makes injured noises.
Urban evasion makes it impossible to awaken the Entity in this way, but you look stupid crouch walking everywhere.
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I doubt it would make a difference. The doc isn't going to leave the 3 gen to go on a chase anyway.
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Speaking of not doing anything, I'm I the only one who thinks it's weird that you get crows from not moving when you're down? If the killer abandons you and you're staying where others saw you go down why should you get tagged for not moving. Or is it just a basic thing that only looks at player movement and not the reasons why you might not want too.
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Add whispers basekit for killers and crows show up way quicker when a survivor is not doing any objective (gen, totems, chase, chests) and moving around doesn't stop crows from showing up
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I used to think a timer would be an easy fix but then I realised Killers would just hard defend a 3 gen which would result in boring gameplay.
The other idea can be circumvented by tapping a totem now and then
The afk crows could use an update though they are way to easy to surpase
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I'd hate whispers basekit. Anything on top of dbd's sound makes it impossible to focus, as do multiple notifications (so using discordance is impossible). Having to try my best to hear things and focus on them when I've got whispers in my ear for almost the entire game would be atrocious.
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A solution I thought of was just 20 minutes since the last gen pop. If it's been 20 minutes and a gen hasn't been popped I'd argue in most cases survivors are simply hiding.
20 minutes since last gen pop, killer should get the option to hit open the exit gate and manually start a modified "Sudden Death" EGC. (Half duration, other exit gate isn't powered, maybe survivors auras are revealed? It's a little harsh but the idea behind it is it's supposed to be a punishment for wasting everyone's time so the new meta won't be to ignore gens, let killer open the gate, then leave.)
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I think aura's revealed or afk crows would be better yeah. Then the killer still activelly has to chase the survivors down. the timer wouldn't even need to be 20 minutes if that was the case
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20 minutes is an awfully long time to wait, 5 or 6 minutes might work, but in my mind the objective is to let the killer find players, not give them a new method to kill them. I advocate for the stillness crows proposed by aporpleturtle.
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It's not as much that the survivors are crouching around, but more hiding in lockers for 12 minutes at a time trying to get a win via killer DC.
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No. I'm not being snarky with the short answer. There is already a mechanic (lots of them) to curb spending all your time hiding:
- The Killer is going to find you eventually and kill you. If you are hiding you are not making progress to escape the gates.
- There are countless Perks (a mechanic) that can reveal (will reveal) the location of Survivors.
- There are crows (another mechanic) which will punish Survivors who stay in one place too long, hence they must move around.
I'm sure I could come up with more, but these three are the most important. The ENTIRE game is a mechanic which will punish Survivors who do nothing but hide. Time is NOT on the side of the Survivor. Every second that passes where nothing productive is accomplished plays into the Killer's hands. I'm perfectly fine with skulking Survivors even if my match will be long. It means I will get an Iridescent Gatekeeper and eventually several other lucrative emblems too. It just lets me practice hunting them down, which is something every Killer needs to do. The more skulking Survivors you get to play against, the better you get at knowing where they are even without all the helpful mechanics. :)
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The issue I have with the current system is with how the crows work, say it's final two survivors and their both camping in lockers away from all the generators. With the exception of certain perks, in order the find the survivors the killer will need to break their patrol route (the range of stillness crows isn't very big). This is an issue because if both players are using mics, one of the survivors might be able to capitalize on killers absence.
This creates a weird situation where the best move for the killer is to continue patrolling and the best move for the survivors is to continue hiding ; waiting for the killer to do something so they can capitalize on it.
It's sorta the same issue with deathmatch in shooter games, if everyone agrees to play fairly, it can be a lot of fun. However, if you get put against a 5 stack which all camps a certain position refusing to leave certain angles, it turns into a waiting game where whoever concedes first wins.
I'm not advocating for an large overall change, but merely a certain amount of measures to be put in place preventing strats like this from happening. By putting a timer on the survivors, it forces the survivors to be moving and trying to get objectives done. A game where the best move on both sides is simply to wait around is at the very least problematic, and in some cases, gamebreaking.
I have heard the argument for certain perks, however, most perks don't reveal survivors in lockers, and the ones which do need the killer to go out of their patrol route to use.
However, even if their were perks which would constantly chase camping survivors out of position, they likely wouldn't be very useful because of how rare it is to find an abusive team of survivors. It's not that I'm running into this problem constantly, it's more that this problem exists. Wasting an entire perk slot isn't a solution in the same way that saying "play doctor" isn't a solution (I realize you never said this).
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There's already a mechanic in the game to discourage immersed survivors and force them to actually play, it's called matching against doc
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Boi, I already explained this like 173 times though. I DON'T WANNA PLAY DOCTOR, SO I SHOULDN'T HAVE TOO!
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It doesn't have to work like the perk whispers. They could also just remove tall grass and bushes or something and make it that crows appear way faster if hiding in a locker
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Unfortunately, I don't really think that shorter grass would solve the problem. One thing someone did point out is to have the stillness crows appear for still, as well as players who aren't repairing gens. Then, if you have stillness crows for an extended period of time, your aura is revealed, further still, you just get entity sacrificed (like in end game). I really like the idea of buffing stillness crows as opposed to adding another mandatory perk.
Post edited by Madmanslime on0 -
Nope. Leave it the hell alone. Ok, after reading more. If you're playing stealthy, and being productive that's one thing, but if you're hiding, and doing nothing just to benefit from your teammates hard work, then you are on your own if you get caught.
Post edited by evil_one_74 on0 -
I love this, small adjustments but I love it
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Things that currently can help you locate survivors:
Mechanics
- crow disturbances when survivors move around
- breathing and other survivor sounds
- your eyes on most maps (Yamaoka is stupid and so is Badham along with Hawkins and Lery's and somewhat Swamp when survivors decide to do nothing, but since Swamp has the crow bombs, that one gets a pass for now).
Perks
- Spies from the Shadows except that the devs nerfed it to practically worthless on any map other than Hawkins or Lery's. The cooldown was unnecessary and so was the reduction in range.
- Whispers. This is by far your best option for pinpointing survivors who are trying to hide somewhat nearby.
- All aura-reading perks. Lockers can be an annoyance, but usually aura reading perks get to be used without interruption.
- Stridor
- Insidious. Yes, believe it or not, going to an alcove without being seen and letting your heartbeat fade away is a great way to spot survivors emerging from their hiding spots.
Do we need more right now? Not really, and it would probably hurt far more than it would help (but I 100% support breakable sticks on the ground as single-use, more accurate crows).
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I understand the frustration that can be had from that kind of behavior, however lets step back a bit and understand what this would do for the game. First, it would punish survivors heavily for putting themselves in a 3 gen situation while praising killers for just patrolling. Another thing it would do is force survivors to make decisions they may not have made and will heavily hurt survivors who are new and don't know better. It would do almost as much for camping as bt does, which is pretty much nothing. In my opinion, it would only encourage killers to run builds designed to force players to do nothing. This game is definitely survivor sided in certain situations, but in this regard survivors not doing generators will only help the killer. Games with no one working on generators will only ensure that 1 person escapes or no one escapes.
I would love to stop people from being useless for the entire match, but I don't think a timer will do that nor do I believe people should not be punished for giving the killer an advantage.
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Problem with that: Forever Freddy.
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Thing is, Aura readings are a problem and lockers are a thing, let alone that Sole Survivor could circumvent it. I guess this idea would work if it were more like killer instinct and if the survivors are within Terror Radius, Killer Instinct would kick in. Only Freddy would have an issue with that, but lets be honest, considering BT doesnt work on Freddy at all, I think thats fair. All other 0 terror radius killers have other mechanics at play or have the ability to turn the terror radius back on whenever they please. Besides that, Killer Instinct also triggers when a survivor is inside a locker, unlike aura's.
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I love this idea; but I actually have problems with survivors ONLY doing generators and " professionally " hiding the entire game.
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