Keys > Mori

Marth depip squad proves everything you said as wrong.

It's funny; you denigrate tunneling in virtually every post I've ever seen you make, but now you suggest it as a way for killers to deal with this perfectly okay item? That doesn't check out to me. Either you have way more tolerance for tunneling than you've suggested, or maybe keys aren't okay?

Anyway, tunneling the survivor with the key doesn't accomplish very much. The key drops to the ground, another survivor will take the key, and now the hatch is available at 1 gen. Franklins was a counter to keys because it could remove the key completely and force survivors to complete the game normally. It wasn't perfect, most SWFs knew how to counter it, but it was something.

Something I'm not sure you realize, because it doesn't sound like you've played killer extensively or at all, is that most of the killer's power comes in the late game. In the early game, nobody is injured or hooked, only one player is being chased, and everyone is free to work on gens. Depending on how the survivors spread out, if they brought toolboxes, and how long the first chase took (as the first chase is the one with the most resources for survivors to burn, and pallets can extend chases massively if used well), 0-3 gens will pop - 0 being the worst case scenario for the survivors and 3 being the best. Then the ball is in the killer's park, as fewer survivors can be on gens once the cycle of being chased/recuperating starts, and there are fewer gens left to work on, meaning a smaller patrol area. The reason a 3-gen is potentially powerful is because it is the smallest possible area to patrol, and unless 4 survivors are still alive, survivors generally can't out-attrition you through the cycle of chasing, unhooking, and working on gens. (If 4 survivors are alive, you can brute force any 3-gen unless you're up against a killer who can hit multiple survivors at once. Totems no longer matter; the killer can't guard the 3-gen and stop you from totem hunting at the same time.) But depending on that first chase, and how many gens popped as a result, the killer is either advantaged or disadvantaged for the rest of the map. As such, and this is the point I'm gearing towards, it is extremely difficult for the killer to prevent the hatch from spawning in the late game, unless the survivors massively screw up in the early game or the killer plays like a ruthless SoB and kills players on their first/second hooks. Because the killer will generally win the match by those later gens, hatch can spawn and enable multiple survivors to escape as early as 2 gens left. 1 gen left, or a 3-gen, is when the killer is the strongest, and a key allows 3 survivors to say 'nah' to this and walk out.

I take a lot of umbrage with your statement that "it's the killer's lack of foresight that allows survivors to complete enough gens and escape through the hatch." First off, you're assuming that killers should be able to kill all the survivors before 1-2 gens left, which is not something that should be expected and only possible against a team that screws up. And again... I do not believe you understand how this works.

Defending a 3-gen and a hatch at the same time is impossible unless the hatch is within the center of the 3-gen. The second you leave the hatch, the survivors will escape through it. There is no charge time for opening the hatch; it isn't something you can interrupt unless you're literally on top of it, and even then, that just means you stop subsequent survivors from escaping. The first guy always gets away unless you can down him before he reaches it - and if survivors have brains, they're going to heal up while you're guarding an objective and then rush it the second they have an opening, so unless you're a killer that instadowns, they aren't even afraid of that, just you closing the hatch before everyone gets out. If you camp the hatch religiously, because this is the only way to stop the mass key escape, the survivors can do your gens, and they also get out. None of your setup earlier in the match matters. This is busted the same way old moris were busted, and believe me, old moris were busted. It was the same principle; bringing an item allowed one side to win the game early, without having to meet the usual milestones of victory.

Like, I've really never cared about keys in my gameplay because I don't care much about 4ks, but everything you're saying here is wrong.

You really need to play some killer or SWF to expand your horizons. This laser focus on solo survivor, and the lack of scope to see that this is not how all matches play out and not the only power balance in the game, is not healthy. You're trying to dictate survivor based on their most disadvantaged form, and refusing to understand that killers need their tools on higher forms of competitive play in order to stand a chance. Should killers be weakened against solos? Maybe. Should killers be weakened uniformly? Hell no; games would become largely unwinnable once you refactored comms and high-end survivor gameplay back into the equation.

Also, Clown? Really? Clown is one of the most mediocre killers in the game. He can end chases easy, but has zero map mobility (theoretically he has some, but if he uses it for mobility, he has no chase power, so no Clowns use it like this.) He can't make use of Tinkerer at all, and Ruin/Undying is useless when you're not present to bother survivors off gens. The reason Ruin/Undying is so powerful on Blight/Spirit/Freddy is because they can be everywhere on a very short timeframe, and constantly interrupt survivors' every attempt to repair. This kind of info is not nearly as harmful on killers that have to walk all the way across the map to reach you.

Moris in their current state are pretty pointless. I don't get how keys are still in the game.

Moris dont even feel like a threat anymore since your basically already dead when they are available.