What would happen if we stop hook timer when killer is within a certain range?
We often see this as a suggestion against camping: Stop the hook timer if the killer is in a certain range.
Sure, it would make camping useless, but the counter argument is that survivors would abuse this by deliberately looping around the hook.
I was wondering though... Is it really that big of an issue if another survivor deliberately loops around the hook to stop the timer?
Or can't we add some conditions to fix the most common cases, e.g. "hook timer resumes even if killer is within range, but in a chase"?
UPDATE: Please don't post your other alternative anticamp ideas, this thread is not about "what are your anticamp ideas". This thread is about what are the issues of the above proposal and how could it be fixed with a slight change. So an ideal reply is: "I think the issue is X, because Y. It could be fixed by adding Z to it."
Comments
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What would happen is 2 other survivors would bait and loop the killer around the hook, pausing it indefinitely and giving survivor no. 4 all the time they need to crank out the gens.
We know because they tested this on a PTB.
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I mean, it shouldn't be hard to program it so that if there is a survivor in the same perimeter, the timer starts back up. That would solve the issue.
Even though knowing camping killers, they would step one foot out of the radius and still camp.
Would still be a step in the right direction, as some of them would probably not calc it well.
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Yes. Yes, it is. /thread
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What I don't understand:
- Why can't the killer chase down one of these 2 survivors looping around the hook and basically get at least an exchange?
- Seems like this experiment didn't have the additional "killer not in a chase" condition.
- Only one survivor is doing gens, is it still an issue with increased gen times?
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With your suggestion I see this issue: The killer would know that a survivor is approaching the hook by looking at the hook timer. Not sure about the impact of this, maybe it is completely fine. That's why my suggestion was based on chase condition.
Even if they would camp one foot out of the radius it would at least prevent total face camping.
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What would happen? Some Killers would not be able to camp, which is good in general. Others would be - Blight, Billy or Nurse as an example would still be able to "camp". All strong Killers. (They would all be able to be out of range, but still be at the Hook in very short time)
I would say that prolonging the Hook Timer to 90 seconds each stage would be enough to make camping unattractive. And it also does not need any complicated solutions which prevent it from being exploited by Survivors or Killers, other than your idea.
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Easily abuseable, please stop suggesting this dumb idea
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You're right, your suggestion is smarter.
And yes, it would already really help.
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Even the strong killers couldn't facecamp, but yeah, some of them could get back fast to the hook. But I think it is already some improvement.
I guess prolonging the hook timer could work as well. The issue I see there is that survivors would tend to finish the gens before going for the save. That would maybe result in bigger genrush.
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Thanks for your constructive feedback, very useful.
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No, bad idea. Survivors would just bait the killer by looping him near hook as much as they can.
Better idea tho, is making a hooked timer longer, so survivors would have enough time to pop all 5 gens by that time. Even tho, it's still gonna be unfair to the hooked one, but at least killer will have only 1 kill out of such matches. Maybe killer will stop with such tactic sooner.
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The reason why we can´t have nice things is, that people would abuse the ######### out of it.
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Thank you for your constructive comment, very useful
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Good idea but absolutely needs chase condition.
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What's more is camping is a valid tactic, with counters.
Two healthy survivors can guarantee a rescue, and if that's not good enough (Bubba) you can all do gens. That's what the killer is giving up by camping, any and all gen pressure.
So... maybe instead of pausing the hook timer, a camping killer can trigger an increase to repair speeds instead.
This wouldn't be as abusable because in order to capitalise on it, survivors would need to do gens, and any not doing gens are squandering the effect.
Either 5% baseline, or it could be a survivor perk like Kinship and boost gen speeds by 10%.
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You seem to ignore my suggested additional condition: "killer is not in a chase". With that additional condition the abuse you described (looping around the hook) does not work.
Increasing hook timers is maybe a solution. An issue I can see is that survivors would tend to finish gens before going for the unhook, which could increase the genrush.
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More useful than your idea, which seems to not have any thought behind it in any way
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I want to understand how would they abuse it. So far what I heard is that survivors would deliberately loop around the hook.
I want to know if this is really such a big issue, and if yes, why can't we easily fix it by an additional "killer is not in a chase" condition.
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It doesn't need to be looping, survivors can instigate the same effect without triggering a chase.
Two survivors flank the hook, and the killer can't chase either of them without opening up the hook to the other one.
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Interesting suggestion about gen speed increases, could also be a solution, didn't think too much about it.
In this thread however I would like to focus on "pausing hook timer" solution: what are the possible issues and how could it be fixed.
I am not sure about what's the problem with two healthy survivors able to do an unhook. They can do it even now, unless the killer plays the "let's wait until the timer nearly runs out and then do the unhook grab game" tactic. That is not a fun gameplay IMO, I would prefer to have chases instead of some hook grab games.
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I replied to your other comment, but I mention it here as well: I think that's not really an abuse or issue. The killer has 3 survivors not on gens with the possibility to injure and immediately chase one of them.
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Because it would punish players that are using camping in the proper non toxic way like having the hooked survivor in the middle of a 3 Gen area and able to keep a eye on the gens and keep the survivor on hook. I do like your idea of not in chase or if another survivor is within the hook area as well.
We need a way to punish the Toxic campers and not the valid non toxic campers.
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I mean, we could have had double CoH, buffed Boil Over or penta Enduring. But people chose to abuse them, so they were removed. Introducing a frozen hook progress would be simply the same thing.
Even with normal progress during a chase, survivors would find a way to loop the killer around the hook, without triggering it. Just watch how survivors can loop a Huntress around a stone, without triggering Bloodlust.
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WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF WE STOP HOOK TIMER WHEN KILLER IS WITHIN A CERTAIN RANGE?Well, I guess you will spend much more time with Bubba in the basement :D
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Yeah, it would punish a bit the killer in the 3 gen + hook in the middle situation, but in the other hand if there are survivors around I think it would not be difficult to trigger a chase and start the timer ticking. Also the 3gen + hook in the middle is quite a strong position for the killer, so I don't mind if the killer gets punished a bit in that situation. I am saying this as a killer/soloQ player, but I understand that others may have different opinions. I also try to look at the overall situation: this proposal would be an improvement despite having some of these questionable situations.
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Well I want to understand what are the potential issues and the abuse possibilities. I don't care about other perks, this thread is about the "stop the hook timer" anticamp proposal.
So far I didn't really get any replies that would present some serious issues.
You mention that maybe survivors could delay the chase with slower killers like huntress. Yes it's possible, but is it really a big issue? I am not convinced. Maybe it would be a new "chase delay tech" that sometimes survivors could manage to pull off, but that's it.
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So what? You can easily adjust this by make pre-conditions. Youre just repeating the same things over and over ignoring how to handle adjust this situation properly.
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I dont think that this is really a thing that would happen. But what happened (and what was already known before and during the PTB and STILL made it to live) is that the extra seconds which are needed to Gens were a Buff to camping.
The thing is, if we want to pause the Hook timer when the Killer is close, we would need to avoid situations where Survivors can pause the Hook Timer if the Killer is not actually camping. A Killer is not camping if another Survivor is running around the Hook for example. And the Devs would be very careful so that those situations can be avoided.
And on the same time, they need to make sure that it is not possible to have a running Hook Timer and a Killer camping nearby. e.g. a Nurse with a full-charged blink camping in the distance will not be affected by the Hook Timer-thingy, but if a Survivor goes for the Unhook, she is there.
In general, I would avoid having over-complicated solutions for those issues. Just increase the Hook Timer to 90 seconds each and a Killer who is camping will have a way less reward.
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Even a flawed idea is more useful then a snarky no.
That would be an interesting idea.
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There is a conundrum when it comes to camping. I, personally, hate the idea of camping someone on a hook. It's boring and I know it's miserable for the player as well. But, there are time where camping makes the absolute most sense. If you jave 3 gens left and someone hooked in the middle of them while all are close enough to see/hear, then why would you leave the hook?
If you have 2 people hooked with 3 to 4 gens right there, why would you not camp that spot? I don't know that we should force killers to be dumb, just to stop camping, but there has to be a better way to mitigate camping the 1st hooked person.
Maybe a system that takes the game stage into consideration. If 4 to 5 gens are left, then the hook does like PH's cage and randomly goes to a location no less than 32 meters away and the killer can't see the aura. Once 2 gens are done, that ceases to happen.
I don't know. I know being camped from the start completely sucks, especially in solo que, but th idea of forcing killers to make dumb decisions just to alleviate it makes no sense either.
EDIT
Maybe a perk that gives survivors a boost to gen repair speed if the killer is near a hooked survivor for x amount of time without being chase. Or one that boosts gen repair speed for each hooked survivor with slight boosts for the hooked survivor's stage. If the killer is camping then survivors get faster at gens as the hooked victim progresses.
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Yet again all objections about it is that killer is "sacred cow". I still don't see the problem except punishing bad killers, which is fine by me.
- "Survivors will run around the hook." Great, you can chase that survivor, you should do it anyway.
- "Another survivor will freely unhook first one." Great, he unhook, spend time on healing, meanwhile another one is on hook. Snowball begins. That's basically what good killers do now, they go for another survivor, and in this scenario you don't even need time for searching.
- "Two survivors run around the hook". Super great. You can smack both of them, that's 3 injured, 1 at best on the gen, you can go after injured 1.
Problem is that all discorse is based on axiom that killer always should win. Survivors don't, they die always anyway, they got used to it.
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Abuse is what.
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Survivors are clever, they´ll find a way you and i won´t think about, to squeeze additional time out of it, even when the killer has no intention of camping.
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Conversely, killer is the power role. Survivors are the numbers role. They outnumber the killer, and through teamwork, they can beat them.
So in a 1 v 1 scenario, killer has to win, or the game is fundamentally broken. This means:
- Chases eventually have to end. (Bloodlust)
- If a killer wants to eliminate a survivor, they can. (camping and tunnelling)
The only question is at what cost does this come at to the killer. They're putting all of their effort into eliminating a survivor, then they lose elsewhere in the game, and that's why the best recourse for camping is and always will be, doing gens.
Hence my previous suggestion of instead of extending the hook timer when a killer camps, award survivors with faster gen speeds. Punish the camping killers where it counts, instead of preventing them from being the power role and destroying the entire killer dynamic.
If the cost for camping increases (rather than any hard preventative measures that can never be effective enough without royally screwing the killer role) then killers will on the whole be less inclined to hard camp from the start of the game.
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i don't think camping and tunneling is a problem, i think they are legit strat. the problem is that there is nothing to counter these strats atm.
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Killer in a range: timer stops
Killer in a range but in chase: timer continues
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That's what I think should be done as an initial change, then adjust from there if needed. The only thing that could complicate it is the 2nd stage skill checks, which they could just increase the time between skill checks to compensate rather than add more or continue decreasing the size to hit even further.
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Interlocking pieces and variables, no single isolated number to tweak.
That doesn't mean that we can't figure out a way to do it, but just that it isn't as clear-cut as "omg, all BHVR needs to do is this single thing and the game would be perfect. Clearly they are either dumb or catering to the evil other side :<"
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A better solution is a perk for survivors that increases their gen repair speed for each currently hooked survivor and their stage as long as the killer is within x meters and not in chase.
In short, the further along the hooked survivor is, the faster your gen speeds go if the killer is in x range and NOT involved in a chase.
The coding would not be that hard it's a simple if, then scenario.
Tgis would punish campers by increasing the gen repair speed while they camp. Can make it a compounding increase.
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People talk about it being exploitable, but if it was a slow down instead it would be less so. Just make sure to give killers something in return to REWARD playing differently as well. I've advocated for slowing down the hook progression but giving killer a speed boost. It would allow for killer to catch nearby survivors making risky plays, but would also make them want to leave hook because now they are faster and can reach somewhere else quicker. That's not even getting into how people could finish a gen and have time to spare before the person gets into the second hook state if the killer decides to be stubborn. Killers are strong right now, they can afford a nerf to a broken playstyle- especially since they are stronger in chase now. Although I also like the idea of undoing the slowdown effect if a survivor is nearby as it would be good to force survivors to be smart about unhooking rather than just going for it in front of killer like some do.
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I prefer making them work like Pyramid Head's cages but with a longer margin of time, like 30 seconds of staying near a hook and the survivor teleports to another hook. Whenever a teleport happens the survivor gains 15 extra seconds of hook timer so the other survivors have time to unhook.
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He's got a point though. It really is a dumb idea
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Paused hook timers weren’t abusable because you could chase near the hook, rather they removed any incentive to hook save.
So players just left their team mates on hook all game with no incentive to save them.
So sure killers could camp but survivors had no need to intervene, you didn’t even get chase around the hook you just got one person hangs on hook all game. That was all.
Survivors we’re just as happy to leave a player on hook as killers were to camp them. So it wasn’t a great fix.
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Yes, this is the best solution. 30 seconds that would be paused if the killer starts a chase with a survivor.
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This would end up with people being held hostage.
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I would personally go for the idea of periodicall increased gen speed if the killer is nearby a hook without any survivors nearby but the hooked survivor would be left to die on hook.
The idea of the stopped timer seems fair but as people say, they could let you on hook on purpose so you are there like a charm on the hook until ypur teammates try to save you and sucxed or die in the process.
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The replies are confusing me:
- When did they "already test this on the PTB"? I don't remember the hook timer ever being paused when the killer was close.
- Some people are saying it's "abusable because survivors could bait the killer at the hook", but why wouldn't the killer simply down those survivors and get a hook trade?
- Also note that the idea of pausing or slowing the hook timer when the killer is at least, say, 20 meters from the hook is directly in line with perks such as Devour Hope, Make Your Choice and the new Monstrous Shrine, all of which directly benefit the killer for being far enough away to make a hook rescue safer. I've run all those perks on all sorts of killers and never had an issue with them, why would it be a bad idea to make the base game use a similar system?
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I am always for the carrot over the stick solutions. Making campaign unattractive by slowing, but not entirely stopping, the hook timer if the killer lingers too close out of chase sounds good, but I would also love a juicy incentive to actually leave the hook when not running any perks.
My favorite idea is a sorta BBQ light: after hooking show the killer the aura of the farthest survivor who is minimum 24m away and give the killer a 10s +15% movement speed if they move away from the hook and are out of chase.
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Well, you could do a carrot and stick timer - something like have it go 1/2 speed while the killer is within 24 meters and 2x speed while the killer is further away than that. On most killers that's probably fine, the hitch maybe being the ones that can teleport back quickly.
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This. Or another variant:
Killer in range: timer stops
Killer in range, also another survivor: timer resumes
Hook progress is not shown to killer at all.
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