http://dbd.game/killswitch
Map design is a problem
Does anyone else agree that one of the big main (like over 60%) of the issues is map design?
I am not going to ignore any other issues but I do think that one of the biggest is the design of most maps. For example Mother's dwelling does not need to be as big as it is. It does not make the game anymore fun for survivor, but equally most killers are immediately at a disadvantage (a very noticeable one at that).
A map like badham preschool is also problematic. Not because of the size, but because of the incredibly strong structures it has. House of pain is one and the two story house requires the breaking of both walls for most killers to be able to chase in it. This is just two examples, there are many more.
If the big maps were shrunk and the maps with too safe of setups were made less safe, I feel like the game balance overall would be much better and also people would just have more fun overall.
Thoughts?
Comments
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In my opinion, it's either map design, or survivors objective time, and not both. If map design was much more balanced and fair, far less people would complain about gen times.
Maps need to not be too big, and have a lot of pallets, with many of them being mindgameable however. But after the last new map we got, I am not very optimistic we'll see good improvements to existing maps.
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I think gen speeds are ok. Part of that issue is actually the spawns on some maps. If survs spawn spread out on mothers dwelling, even if your blight you probably cant stop them getting done even if gen speeds were at say 100 seconds instead of 80.
I do agree though a map like mother's dwelling is not only big but has some pretty solid pallets. But as you said I also doubt we will get improvements, but maybe someday.
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The house loops are always badly designed, especially the reworked Haddonfield ones.
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Have not tried Haddonfield too much. The fact house of pain windows are closed and the fences and fence vaults are gone seem to be great changes. Are there any super bad loops in the new Haddonfield I am not aware of?
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I have yet to see a weak pallet, and have seen maybe 2 weak windows. There are multiple infinites created by the street pallets and the garden pallets. There are god loops in the houses justified by breakable walls. The map is at least as strong for survivors as it was before.
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By that logic, shack is an infinite because shack pallet is so strong. The map has weak pallets and lot of deadzones outside, with stronger stuff inside the houses. It is defiantly weaker for survs, for starters the fences are gone and the fence vaults and also balcony vaults. Also house of pain has no strong windows. Regardless of if the map is balanced or not which I dont know yet, I do know it is defo not as strong as before.
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Shack is an infinite. That's the whole point. Once the pallet is dropped, not even Bloodlust 3 lets you catch the survivor. There are several pallets like that on Haddonfield.
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Its a god pallet, not an infinite. An infinite involves windows which the killer cannot deal with and the survivor can loop until they block. Pallets can be broken which means that loop is no longer an infinite. As far as I know Haddonfield did not seem to have many of these god pallets, but I could be wrong (I just have yet to see them I know some of the pallets are strong but they r not god pallets).
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Map design is pretty bad overall. There needs to be a serious font of creativity that overtakes the studio and inspires them to make things a little more... creative.
I've seen amazing forum posts that make the game sound like it would be a colorful place of rainbows and fun if I could play the game with different types of vaults and pallets, different obstacles and objectives. But the best we've seen in the past 6 years are breakable walls... laaame.
IMO 40% of the game's issues is the game's focus on matchmaking (and a very under intelligent approach to it) and 50% of ALL problems (if not MORE) is only trash perks.
Not even kidding.
If perks were not so poorly designed and such trash, this game would be in a golden era.
I'd rather see busted survivors and killers with hundreds of perks and thousands of amazing combinations and interactions than the same 5-10 meta perks being taken on each.
When's the last time you saw someone take Territorial Imperative? Monstrous Shrine? Beast Of Prey? Third Seal? Did you even remember that Bloodhound was a perk?
When's the last time you saw someone take Buckle Up? Up The Ante? Technician? I bet you money you forgot Sole Survivor was a thing that existed.
There are 104 survivor perks, but only 17 of them get any actual screen time.
For each 'good' survivor perk that you see in just about every match, there are 6 bad ones. 6. SIX.
One 'meta' loadout holds its equivalent weight of 24 'lesser' perks. THAT IS ENOUGH TO EQUIP 6 SURVIVORS WITH INDIVIDUAL PERKS.
The next time you see a room of 4 survivors running 'meta' perks from the pool of the top 17 most used, that means that that lobby is worth its weight in 96 'lame' perks.
The lack of value in these garbage perks means there is so much lacking variety. You're missing out on amazing combinations and exciting plays. All of the good stuff in the game hasn't even been made yet, because it's still in the dead tissue of the lost and forgotten perks. Beast Of Prey could become a super good perk on killers and make chases intense. Buckle Up could make risky saves into an unexpected thrill-ride. But no, we are trapped with mediocrity.
The maps are not great, but they're mostly 'meh'. They are but the playgrounds.
To hell with the playground. Let me play with the toys that you have yet to create. For even the lowliest of playgrounds can be made interesting with the advent of good toys and a bit of imagination.
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I agree with this lol, though I think if we were gonna buff some perks like this we would need to nerf the meta perks. Since no perks will actually be used over the current ones unless they were better (lets be honest do you really want a perk stronger than DS or DH?). So we could have a meta like this if the current strong perks were toned down and it would be awesome since I love running goofy builds.
As for the maps ig it does not seem like as big of a deal but you just need to see the stats on WRs for these maps. Its a big gap between the worst ones and the more killer favoured ones. Some killers just cannot win on huge maps with survs who knows what to do (Especially with spawns, some spawns mean no matter how well you play, you will lose like 2 gens at the start). Ig strong loops aside the problem for me is some map's size. Like lets be real, Mother's dwelling does not need to be that huge lol.
Some perks do see occasional play, but I get what you mean. You could get away with less strong builds but I think it does come down to the survs feel like they have to run strong stuff (I run DS simply because it feels so bad to be tunnelled when I don't have it and I am not someone who tells the killer off for doing it since tunnelling is an effective strategy).
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I agree. But some perks don't need hard nerfs, just slight mechanical tweaks.
Hex: Ruin only starts after 3-5 seconds of being idle.
Dead Hard is not an exhaustion perk, but makes you Broken for 60 seconds - cant be used until restored to full health again.
DS is an exhaustion Perk, BT has a cooldown.
Echoes Of Pain doesn't make survivors scream, Pop has a cooldown.
Meta perks can get love taps to cut them back down to size.
In truth, you don't need to do much. If you just make lame perks actually work well - they'd at least be contenders.
Oh absolutely.
IMO, I actually find the map to be less at fault than the flow of the game itself.
The current meta is based off 100% off of a time economy.
Distance is time.
Map design could be upgraded to make time a less prominent investment to traverse these maps.
However, Behavior could just as easily tweak generator values in order to make each realm sport a different size and overall different time economy.
The problems you see are that the time economy itself has not changed, but the distance of the map strains the economy of everyone - most notably the killer.
In the end, everyone feels the need to run 'strong stuff' - and that's my point.
Very few things in the game feel as 'strong' as DS.
What if Second Wind/Revitalize guaranteed a free health state mid-match when you needed it the most?
What if you could rely on Dance With Me to bamboozle the killer every time you use it?
What if Windows Of Opportunity allowed you to vault through Entity Blocked windows once?
What if Deliverance worked on 2nd hook stage as well?
What if Hysteria could spread to healthy survivors and, conceptually, have an unendiing up-time?
What if Hoarder stacked mounting debuffs on greedy survivors that could be used to iniitiate deadly chases?
What if Predator was an actual perk?
What if Furtive Chase made chases fun?
Killers NEED strong perks to contend with strong survivors. Survivors NEED strong perks in order to contend with strong killers.
In the end, there are only 17 actually STRONG perks in the game. You may see some funny guy try to make a niche perk work - or take the occasional No Mither for a meme.
But at the end of the day, if you want to have a fun time playing killer on Mother's Dwelling - don't rework the map, rework the perks.
No child cares about the candy store if it has pitiful morsels and bitter tastes within.
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Map design is a problem. There's not a single DbD player that thinks Maps aren't a problem
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Again I agree with a lot of this, but your point on Mother's dwelling I think I still disagree with. As a killer even if survs had no perks equipped I would still hate the map (perks or no perks I could still lose 2/3 gens b4 the first down just because of spawns and size, especially if im a low mobility killer, yes prove thyself could make this worse but out of all the meta perks none of them cause this issue, its 100% the map in this example).
I think those buffs you mentioned are fine to, I like them. The only one I disagree with is deliverance. The perk is already a very good perk and does see comp play, buffing it to that extent would be too powerful. In a swf you could co-ordinate it and make it so that you can just free yourself twice whilst the other 3 stick on gens which is incredibly strong especially in a time economy. I have lost games because of the perk and getting hit twice as much would hurt a lot, but I like the sentiment.
I think overall though doing some number changes which would be incredibly easy to do to buff some underused perks would be great. You can even keep the meta perks as they are, maybe nerfing them a bit like you suggested but the other perks could be considered in this case.
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Agreed, I remember when this update came out it was glorious. I think breakable walls do have some design room but their placements have been pretty unreasonable so I agree with this to.
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