Ten ideas to improve the totem system
The totem system must be drastically improved: a good team finds and cleanses Ruin within a minute, and at that point a lightning-fast gen rush begins. The killer, if he wants to have a second chance for the immediate loss of that perk, must spend another slot for Dying Light, be lucky enough to find and down quickly the obsession and then do a grueling camping until they die: it's a sad solution for the unfortunate, little fun for the killer and still unacceptably random. The hexes have gone from being fearful to discouraged, as perks destined to last too little to have a significant impact on playing time.
Some possible solutions, to be evaluated individually or in combination among them:
1) to increase the number of the totems (at least 7, in my opinion);
2) to allow the appearance of totems anywhere on the map sufficiently sheltered from view, rather than in a restricted list of known places (much more unpredictable than now);
3) to make totems smaller (two thirds of their actual size, for example);
4) to make totems semi-transparent, so they are invisible farther than a few meters (like the cloaked Wraith);
5) to increase the hex totems cleansing time (28 seconds, I suggest);
6) to impose a minimum distance between survivors' and totems' spawning points (like between survivors' and killer's ones);
7) to require seven difficult skill checks for cleansing a hex totem, one every two seconds (like Brand New Part);
8) to rework significantly Thrill of the Hunt: "The Entity fills you with excitement and strengthens your totems. You lose your ability to see the Hex Totems' Auras. You start the trial with 4 Tokens and lose a Token when a survivor is killed or sacrificed. Survivors' Hex Totems cleansing speed is reduced by 12/16/20% for each Token. Survivors' Dull Totems cleansing speed is reduced by 6/9/12% for each Token." (with all survivors alive and tier 3, the hex totems cleansing speed is 20% of the normal speed, i.e. a survivor spends 14*5=70 seconds to cleanse Ruin, but no one knows where the hex totems are, so the killer cannot patrol them);
9) to introduce Black Magic, a killers' uncommon/rare/very rare perk: "Your deep knowledge of the Dark Mist corrupted the Totems functioning. 1/2/All Hex Totems seem Dull Totems." (hex totems are secret: the survivor cleansing them doesn't understand their real nature until they explode);
10) to introduce a new mechanic, common to all the hexes active from the beginning of the trial (the NOED is excluded, therefore), the Blood Price: the survivor who cleanses a Hex totem, if healthy, is injured and suffers the Broken status effect for 60 seconds, while, if they are already injured, they suffer the Deep Wound status and, after mending, they are Broken for 60 seconds; but Small Game grants immunity from this mechanic (the rationale is that well organized teams cannot no more have just a survivor with Small Game, who finds the totems and, if discovered and chased by the killer, explain the mates their locations by chat).
Of course, the totem system improvement requires the SWF-Killer-Solos gaps are bridged, otherwise solo survivors are condemned to death: https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/46538/definitive-solution-to-bridge-the-swf-killer-solos-gaps
Your opinions, contributions and amendments, if well explained, are welcome: please, avoid dogmatic or poor answers, which are useless for the debate. 
Comments
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Add something other than a skill check for hex totems. Add a mini game or puzzle (timed or not) to occupy a survivor's time instead of just holding a button. Better spawns as well of course.0
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My personal idea is just to have it so totems don't light up until certain conditions (specific to each Hex perk) are met, and from there, a Survivor can then cleanse the lit totems to shut off the Hex perk.1
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Let me start off saying that Hex: Perks currently also have something very unequal about them:
There are many Hex: Perks. Certain Hex: Perks like Hex: Ruin start taking effect at the start of the game.
Other Hex: Perks may only start to take effect somewhere during half of the game: like Hex: Devour Hope. Then you have end game Hex: Perks like NOED.
What is weird about this is that even though all these Hex: Perks have a different moment of the match where they start taking effect (typically/absolutely) only 1 of those perks doesn't get lit from the start; NOED.I think part of solving the Hex: Perks is part of solving that weird bridge that mid-game Hex: Perks currently suffer from, but what managed to cure end-game Hex Perks, and that is the idea that all of them shouldn't be lit from the start. Every single Hex: Perks should only search for an empty dull totem the moment they start AFFECTING the game. For Hex: Ruin this would be on the first generator skill-check. For token Hex Perks this wouldn't be upon their token, but on their effects as well. The only thing that would need a slight adjustment is Hex Devour Hope as the lower tiers would skip the ms bonus and thus only start to take effect the moment you instantly down someone.
So every Hex: Perk would work like NOED, which proves to work, even as an end-game perk.
So now we bridged that strange gap between early game, mid game and end-game perks, this is where your post becomes crucial:How do we ensure that differences in strength between Hex: Perks can be handled and how do we prevent unluckiness with totem spawns:
Point 1 Shouldn't be needed if we had a solution.
Point 2 This could be more work than needed, but nothing is inherently wrong with this idea.
Point 3 For the animations that we have atm, I think keeping their size is better.
Point 4 (I'll come back for this one)
Point 5 (I'll come back for this one as well)
Point 6 Something similar like this is/was being created; the LOS method, but I think it only helped a tiny bit and was ignorable.
Point 7 Difficult skill-checks worsen the skill-cap as we've learned from Hex: Ruin
Point 8 & 9 reworking or creating new perks shouldn't be needed once we've solved Hex: totem spawns, so I don't like the idea of considering it a solution, for the same reason that I don't like Lightborn/Hangmans Trick. It would be a waste if those 2 perks would prevent us from tackling the issue. As unrelated change: Nothing wrong with it.
Point 10 Might feel too strange/unnatural.So to come back for point 4 and 5:
I really like the idea behind 4, because what this suggestion tries to achieve is that it wants to make Hex: Totems work DESPITE terrible totem spawns and that's the ingenious part about it.
If you'd get something like point 4 to work, then that would eliminate the need for point 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.Now the question is: How do you get such a mechanic to work?; If you take into consideration what I suggested above: that all Hex perks work like NOED and bind themselves to a dull totem at a certain point other than being the start of the match.
That is the trick. You want to come up with a solution that conforms to the thought behind point 4, but also manages to become weaker overtime with a varying rate, as to make it easier to dismantle stronger hex totems once they have been alive for what we consider to be reasonable, thus creating more consistency, thus:
1: All perks work like NOED and bind themselves at a later point. (elimination of x-game gaps)
2: A system that makes them hidden event if the totem-spots themselves are bad.
3: A system that allows activated Hex: Totems to become easier to find depending on how long they have been active for.That is the main structure for a healthy Hex: perk system in my view.
thus as for my point 2, thus your point 4: we've your transparency idea, I've seen people suggest something like the light burning during certain conditions, etc.as for my point 3: you might play around with your point 5, which is an important variable. You might have it vary depending on how long it has been burning. You could also try something with making the burning sound grow wider the longer it stands, etc.
That's what I think about the Hex: Perk issue. I'll leave the specifics for point 2 and 3 up to you, but that's the main structure that I'd you to keep in mind.
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Will some of the aforementioned totem system improvements be in the 2.6.0 patch?
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most of ideas are awful, especially semi-transparent totems, like #########? how am i supposed to find them on swamp, lmao.
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I like it all except for the skill checks for hex totems. I think a test would be fair, something drawing their attention span to distract them from watching their back, but the R1/M1 pressing seems kind of...bleh. at least make the interaction different. Maybe each time you get a skill check it speeds up, or the speed changes? Something challenging but not so similar as the gen checks.
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@Artisks Run Small Game. Is there any idea that you like?@xmenfanatic What kind of test would you suggest?0
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@not_Queen @Patricia I humbly ask you to evaluate these ideas to make hex perks viable against powerful SWF, to slow down gen rushes.
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If they add more totems to maps I expect a sufficient nerf to NOED.
With every patch solo survivor gets worse. At that point why even play survivor anymore, solo.
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Kagrenac said:
If they add more totems to maps I expect a sufficient nerf to NOED.
With every patch solo survivor gets worse. At that point why even play survivor anymore, solo.
Yeah, solo survivors are too weak, while well organized teams are too powerful: I address a solution for this huge issue in the following thread: https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/46538/definitive-solution-to-bridge-the-swf-killer-solos-gaps If you want, give me your feedback about it.0
