Uniqueness among the survivors.

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This is not a suggestion yet. For now, I am trying to start a discussion, preferably whether such something should even exist.

Killers are unique not only in appearance, but also in behavior, in addition to various statistics such as height, terror range, they also have different powers, and it is these powers that make each of them different and unique.

Survivors ... are the same. You can use exactly the same perks for everyone and the only thing that makes them stand out is their appearance. And sure, it's fun to be able to play Dwight with four boons and pretend to be a wizard ... but there is also something ... different about them ... I don't know about you, but I can't imagine Mikaela without CoH, or Meg without a sprint burst.

So maybe we can give the survivors some uniqueness that would make everyone play differently? Not much different, but at least a little different?

I have two suggestions to illustrate the problem.

1.Each survivor has only one slot for any item attachment and one own, unique attachment that works whenever a matching item is equipped. e.g. Claudette increases the amount of first aid kit charges by 10%, Jake speeds up hook sabotage by 50%, Dwight can mount two attachments to the key.

2. Each survivor has one perk only for himself, no one else can get it, but also the survivor cannot take it off, and in the other three places he can put on any of the teachables. eg Bill is "left behind", Ace has "Ace in a hole" and Laurie is "sole survivor".

Comments

  • Mooks
    Mooks Member Posts: 14,529
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    I mean… same can be said about killers, only the strongest will be played.

    it would need balancing and especially changes should come more often.

    the main problem I see is that the current version where survivors are just skins is established and people would get upset if their main they spent millions of BP on get a passive/ability they don’t want/like etc.


    i would like to see something like this, having character have a positive but also a negative trait. Number changes if anything comes out as too much etc. But i wouldn’t expect it at all - maybe in DbD2

  • Archael
    Archael Member Posts: 748
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    Those things should be of course balanced in a way that everythig would be usefull, and nothig too/not enough strong.

    Yeah im aware that everyone would go with best survivor "power".

    Tho, it would be fun if every survivor has its niche.

  • HugTheHag
    HugTheHag Member Posts: 3,140
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    I'm pretty sure the devs have said that this couldn't be done without making the game significantly more "pay to win" because people would want the one character that has the better base kit.

    Right now, people tend to play characters they like the cosmetics of, and for all that can be said about Feng having a billion of them, there are enough characters with cool cosmetics right now that I rarely see a lobby full of identical survivors, which are a nightmare when you don't want to tunnel.

  • Seraphor
    Seraphor Member Posts: 8,986
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    My idea is that characters (killer or survivors, but it's relevant for survivors here) can obtain Ultra Rare/Iridescent tiers of their own perks.

    These Iri perks don't necessarily make those perks stronger, but alter the way they work a little or change them in a cosmetic way.

    For example: Laurie Strode

    Sole Survivor - Able to gain a 4th token if you repair a generator after all three other survivors have been eliminated. With 4 tokens you gain an additional +100% BP for the 'Obsession Escaped' score.

    Object of Obsession - You are also able to see the aura of survivors within 24 meters of the killer when activated every 30s, but they benefit from the action speed bonus instead of you.

    Decisive Strike - Laurie gains a unique animation for DS that takes 0.5s longer, and gets a 0.5s longer stun duration to account for it.

  • Archael
    Archael Member Posts: 748
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    Its quite a good idea, tho, to find best balance, those iri perks should only change something visually in some way... Tho i have no idea what this would be (Maybe sole survivor Laurie would have more manace face, Claudette would have some herbs in pockets with botany knowlege. Yet this should be visible only to survivors, Killer should not know what perks are surv using), but should work only if surv is equipped with that perk, and does not change gameplay at any way.

    (Tho it could be quite fun if surv would have slightly better perks if using their own)

  • dugman
    dugman Member Posts: 9,714
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    Technically the survivors are different because they have different perks available to them initially. A new Dwight isn’t going to be using the same perks as a new Kate for instance. So in the short run they do have different abilities.

    I’m not against the idea in principle of survivors having unique innate abilities, I’m not sure it’s worth the developmental effort though since the character differences probably wouldn’t be too much dissimilar to simply running different perks.

  • Jivetalkin13
    Jivetalkin13 Member Posts: 746
    edited November 2022
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    I don't think it's a good idea. In theory, it would be cool and add more uniqueness to each survivor, but in practice it can add some "pay to win" factors as well as cause people to gravitate toward the most "optimal" survivor.

    If anything, I'd want to see maybe 4 cookie cutter roles that could be assigned to each survivor. (Btw, very little thought has been put into this so take this with a field of salt).

    "Leaders" who do generators 1% faster and have better aura reading.

    "Runners" who vault 1% faster and have scratch marks spread out a little more.

    "Healers" who heal other survivors 1% faster and have slightly quieter grunts of pain.

    "Saviors" who sabotage hooks 1% faster and blind killers slightly longer.

    Just small buffs that realistically won't have too much of an impact and can be assigned to different survivors semi randomly.

    Again, I don't think it's a good idea to give survivors individual skills or buffs and I hope they don't, but if they did I'd want it to just be small things that assign a certain "role".

  • Marc_go_solo
    Marc_go_solo Member Posts: 4,921
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    I guess my worry would be a limited pool of survivors that would be used, owing to most players using just a survivor who offers the one perk they'd want. Since all survivors are basically skins, it meams at least the variety will still be there and they could pick any survivor and customise them how they want.