Basegame Changes Ideas

Howdy!

I've been musing with a friend about the kinds of basegame changes that are coming alongside the 40+ perk reworks announced during yesterday's anniversary stream (which I loved, by the way! Thanks for all y'all do and congrats on a successful stream!)

I know that whatever changes are planned are probably already close to being locked in, so these are intended to be just as much predictions as they are suggestions.

Mainly, my friend and I were looking to identify WHAT exactly causes the sort of mechanical incentives that lead to the meta perks we commonly see.

The four areas we settled on are as follows:

* Problem: The time-sensitive nature of rescuing survivors on hooks is the primary incentive for killers lingering at or nearby hooks, knowing that survivors who have to respond to the limited time window to rescue their teammates presents an easier opportunity to intercept and score additional hits / downs on survivors. (Which is why we see BT, DS, and other anti-camp & tunnel perks as frequently as we do - even killers who aren't aggressively face camping are still usually around the area and looking for a quick followup)

Solution: Honestly, we don't know. What we agreed on is that the best solution would involve introducing a positive incentive that would give killers a reason to lure themselves away from a hook because it would be just-as-if-no-moreso advantageous for them to do so, like the way Devour Hope functions. Disincentives are more likely to be viewed as punitive and may cause the killers to behave the same (still obeying their incentives) while just being even less happy about it.

* Problem: The default early-game state of a trial is too difficult for the average killer to exert pressure over, setting up a playing-from-behind scenario that the killer has to overcome to get the pressure rolling. (Which is why we see Corrupt Intervention).

Solution: What if the first time a gen gets touched in a trial, it explodes? It'd be like a soft lethal pursuer at the beginning of a trial, giving killers a quick clue on which direction they might head. Clever survivors will tap a gen and hide, or make quick rounds of the map tapping every possible gen, knowing that a gen that goes untouched until late in the game may provide critical mid to late game info to the killer (while accepting the risk of being caught out early while running around the map).

We think killers may find it distressing to hear four gens explode seven seconds into the match during the unfortunate scenarios where the survivors spawn split up (speaking of which - quick aside; why is the shroud of separation a killer offering? It gives the survivors a huge early game advantage) so maybe it could have a different effect or something. We also thought it might be interesting if just, say, 4 gens started the match as "sparking gens" which perform this explode-on-first-touch interaction, so survivors might intentionally avoid interacting with them in favor of the usual generator, situationally.

* Problem: The default tools killers have to contest generators is inadequate in the face of confident survivors. While a killer can spend a couple seconds kicking a generator, a single nearby survivor can tap the gen (sometimes even in chase!) and resolve the problem the killer has caused for the survivors in an instantaneous moment.

Solution: This is my favorite - imagine if, when the killer kicks a generator, the generator begins regressing as normal. However, the generator remains "regressing" until the survivors have repaired that generator back up to the point it was at before the killer kicked it. This would mean that if survivors repair a generator part-way and get pressured back off of the gen, it immediately begins regressing again at the usual rate.

This regression-threshold should probably be unaffected by instant regression effects like pop, jolt, scourge hook: pain resonance, eruption, etc. But would give Call of Brine a boost and make Hex: Ruin a bit less common, as it'd prevent killers from kicking.

This mechanic would have the potential to give killers some pretty powerful dividends for kicking a gen that regresses significantly, so a tamer version would be to have a kicked gen remain in the regressing state until it has been repaired for at least 5 seconds, or something similar. Another way to temper it would be to have the above "regression-threshold" cap out at a maximum of 25% or even 15% of the gen's progress.

(To be clear - in both of these cases, the survivors would be able to develop progress on the generators as normal, a generator that is still 'regressing' while repaired would function like ruin: repair at the standard rate, but if you let go before it has stopped regressing, it will immediately spark and begin regressing again)

* Survivors have no way to benefit from exhaustion without a perk. Exhaustion perks are among the most powerful in the survivor's arsenal, so much so that the mere existence of exhaustion as a status effect is meant to be a batch-cooldown to make exhaustion perks mutually exclusive with one another (as opposed to, say, individual cooldowns). If a survivor does not have at least 1 exhaustion perk in their build, they're depriving themselves of significant opportunity-cost.

Solution: Provide survivors with a (relatively weaker) base-kit exhaustion effect. It'd need to be something relatively uncomplicated, possibly even a one-time-use effect like Unbreakable (but probably not Unbreakable...). So long as whatever it is provides some avenue of meaningful value to the survivor, it would take pressure off of survivors to make sure that one of their four perks is always dedicated to an exhaustion perk.

What do y'all think? Do these takes seem accurate?

Also, just as an aside, I'm certainly hoping to see some decidedly NON-meta perks get some love, too!

(Any chance for Territorial Imperative to lose the cooldown and range requirement, and instead just deactivate while any of the basement hooks are in use?)