What Change Would You Make to Game Design To Combat "Holding W"?
No, this thread isn't to ridicule survivors for walking and playing efficiently, nor is it to ridicule killers for complaining: it's a question that could be beneficial to answer. This is a game design issue, and every person has the right to complain about this being the most logical thing to do in the game.
What changes would you make to fix this problem? It seems to be a complicated, convoluted issue due to being the culmination of lots of design choices rather than something randomly brought up. The unfortunate thing is how people are only now complaining about it when youtubers/streamers bring it up, but there's nothing that can be done about that now.
For example: I'd like to think a 'reverse bloodlust' would combat the effectiveness of this strategy while also giving incentive to make the looping meta more powerful (thus making chasing more fun for both sides):
- The Killer gains a base 10% speed boost when not in chase, giving a maximum of 125% base movement speed. - This would give all killers a time management buff and make breaking out of the chase not ideal for the meta.
- The Killer loses 12% movement speed while in a chase. The Killer returns to regular movement speed after the chase has ended. (125% No Chase -> 113% In Chase -> 125% No Chase) - This would encourage survivors to loop the killer around as much as possible instead of running away, thereby giving the killer the chance to beat the survivor at the loop.
Holding W is now inefficient, but looping killers is MORE efficient than it was previously. This tackles generators being done too quickly as well as the meta problem, making the game more fun for everyone. Obviously this could cause other issues, but there's a neat little example I put up.
Comments
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I think if you just increase all killers movement speeds by 5% All the time, not only does it help map mobility for the killers that need it, It also lowers the duration of chases and encourages higher level more complex strategies on the survivor side to try and escape the chase. Resources such as pallets will be used much quicker, so survivors will have to either rely on Windows (which I believe should be destructible after a survivor has vaulted it anyways) or use perks or line of sight blockers instead of holding w.
You could go even further in this by making it so survivors don't get a speed boost when hit unless they have deep wound applied. This makes it so that holding w is even less effective, severely reducing the ground that is covered. This makes it so that survivors have to go loop to loop to loop, T wall to L wall to pallet to window etc. It makes perks much more valuable and encourages play that doesn't involve you literally running towards the killer. Anyway that's my piece.
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The game used to be more about looping but people said they didn't like to play against it so they changed the maps a bunch and made more killers with powers that shut down loops. If we made changes to bring looping back, we would just go back to hearing about how much people don't like the looping meta and would have threads asking how to solve that again.
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Running is not an issue 👻. But I always have suggested an idea of injured survivors should run 5% slower. It makes sense since a survivor is injured, it would encourage people to heal or be 5% slower.
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Make smaller, denser maps with a bunch of pallets that aren’t super safe. People use wraith because you can zoom to the next chase and mitigate the dev’s fetish for large maps
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That’s still a whole lot better than people complaining about holding W being basically the best thing in the game to do. You’ll always have people complaining, but I’d rather have people complaining about looping than having to deal with boring cookie-clicker gameplay 24/7.
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Killer would moonwalk or other tricks to not start a chase. Only 113% movement could be problematic on some loops, but i dont know.
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eeeeeeeehhhhhh
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You’d have to change what constitutes as starting a chase (I.E being close to lunging distance causes a chase to occur). It’s just a simple example I thought would be neat to try to get conversation going
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To be fair looping in the beginning of dead by daylight was waiting until the survivor makes a mistake.
Looping should be interactive and some maps dont work that way. If i know i can run two laps around a house in haddonfield until the killer catches me or i run to a pallet, drop it, killer breaks it, i run to another pallet, its boring. In general chases where i know what will happen in the next 30 seconds shouldnt happen. It should be constantly outplaying each other.
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there's some infinites that are really difficult to break on 115% already but with map/structure reworks and forced chase trigger to avoid looking down/moonwalking exploits this would be an actual good idea.
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Yh i just wanted to point out this problem. I dont think they can solve this problem. They changed mending bc of that.
I personally think map design is the problem.
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Make maps smaller is the only thing you can do.
If maps are smaller then a survivor holding W will eventually lead you to a gen a survivor is on.
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I'm not saying I disagree. I like looping more myself. But many of the changes over the years to maps and the new killers with powers that shut down loops have been because of the feedback of many on the forum who said they didn't like playing against it. My point is when it comes to the 3 ways survivors have to play, looping, shift w, or stealth there is little point in making changes to combat one of them because the other 2 are always going to be complained about and be the next thing that needs to be "balanced".
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If you make the maps smaller, the problem of density would come up: if the map is a lot smaller, doing nothing but chaining tons of pallets close to each other and running away would be extremely easy or, if they reduced pallets, there might not be enough pallets to consider the map balanced. I just think that’s not a good idea, as it’s going around the issue rather than addressing it from here-on.
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I don't disagree. I like looping more myself. But looping was what many called "no skill, boring game play" back then to the point changes were made to "balance" it. Now we are saying we want to go back. And when we go back we will probably say we want to go back again, and again, and again, and again, and again.
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The complaints about looping that were actually relevant were about the vaccum, pallet placement, and pallet amount. All three of those are much better than before (with the exception of The Game and possibly the new map), so I don’t think we’d have the issues repeating themselves
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Make a tutorial that teaches killers how to zone and break pallets on the right side
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Fixing W doesn't fix the game.
The entire game needs a massive overhaul before it becomes an enjoyable, balanced experience for both sides.
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I just think of the fact Coal Tower is considered the most balanced map in the game with it also being the smallest says a lot.
Chaining loops is easier yes but in theory that survivor is more likely to sandbag another survivor on a gen.
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That'd just make tunneling more effective and people would complain way more than they already do. Its a it makes sense change but a stupid one gameplay wise.
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Easy. Return to Hillbilly.
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^ This.
In my own opinion, the game needs more structure. Maybe escalating objectives that bring the two sides together more to force teamwork between survivors and interaction between sides which can be used to determine an average length for matches, avoiding them being too long or too short. Maybe different maps have different objectives, maybe one is hide-and-seek-based instead of objective-based.
The maps themselves could be more interactive for both sides, adding a new dimension to chases.
Get rid of the dying state, get rid of hooks, instead the killer does a kill animation on the second hit. Survivors get three lives, maybe they have to help revive each other, but get rid of the ability to camp, lessen the ability to tunnel someone out.
None of this will ever happen, it'd be a completely different game, but the devs need to look at the things players don't enjoy and come up with creative ways to minimize those elements while adding new fun gameplay.
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Clearly the solution is to give all killers chain rifles.
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tighter maps with more resources closer together
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Remove bloodlust! If you want survivors to play pallets and loops than make it so they can play pallets and loops without the hand holding mechanic of bloodlust.
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Few things:
Add a mandatory secondary objective (like switches or something, 4 switches at 20 secs each have to be flipped before gen progress can start)
Add on a communucation ping system so that solos can communicate together more effectively (closing the gap between solo and swf).
Reduce the blade wipe animation speed and reduced tge survivor speed up after getting hit (testing would need to be done but probably about half each, stbfl woukd need to be reworked)
All maps always have 10 pallets, no more no less
All maps are the size of badham (except indoor maps).
Killer standing within 8 meters of a hook for longer than 8 secs his aura is revealed to all survivors, overrides any stealth mechanics or perks
Remove noed and exhaustion perks from the game (rework them all i suppose)
Yellow mori is now basekit (offerings removed), keys no longer appear in chests, hatch only appears when a single survivor is left or all gens have been completed.
Edited to add another: bloodlust is removed during chase, all killers get bloodlust 3 when not in chase longer than 5 seconds
All of these things are tied together, so just changing one thing doesnt do much and tilts the balance. All of them should be done at the same time. Holding W and predropping pallets is less effective when you know theres only 10 of them, but theres still 10 of them so its a decent amount if played right.
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