Killer win condition is flawed, here’s how to fix it

That‘s because a 4k is a win? It’s the only win. How else would a killer win? Destroy the gates? Killers are killers for a reason. Their goal is to kill. Hooking is a method of killing. Moris are a method of killing.

it’d be kind of weird if the goal of the killer wasn’t to kill. Let’s assume hooking was the goal. Then basically getting hooked would have to remove survivors from the game. Thereby hooking would eliminate a survivor. Which is the exact same thing as killing a survivor.

i mean we could always get rid of the entity sacrificing mechanic and make it so the entity no longer kills players after they’ve been hooked a certain number of times. Maybe that would be better. Instead of dying to sacrifice you just have a consistent bleed out timer. Once it reaches zero you die. That means no more hook farming teammates and no more rage quitting by hook pogoing.

I mean, I have no problem accepting this, but as you said: if the survivors can get a 3E, they can also nearly always try for a 4E, and I never ever experienced that they said to themselves "you know what? That killer earned that one kill. Lets just leave." I will stand on the hill that there is way, way, way more altruism from the killer to the survivors then the other way around, as I have given hatch to more survivors then I can count, where as it is somewhat rare that survivors would give me a couple of mercy hooks in games that they totally dominated, and actually mercy kills are the real of legends, with less then two hands full, even after 2k hours of gameplay.

I am not complaining, btw, just observing. Its not rare for the killer to have pitty on a group of survivors that they stomped, whereas its exeptionally rare for survivors to show any kind of mercy to a killer that they dominated.

Circling back to OP: something like this could work, IF you gave the survivors some kind of escalating debuff for each hook, while everyone is alive. Normally, getting a survivor out of the game is the most beneficial thing you can do as a killer, a 4th survivor alive and kicking can do gens just as good as everyone else and you can't win the attrition game as a killer if you can't seal the deal. If we got some debuff in the style of Dying Light or Leverage for every hook while everyone is alive, things could be different. IMHO DBDs biggest failure is that there is no catch up mechanic for either side and games can be decided pretty early on. Its exeptionally demoralizing if 3 gens pop at your first down, but with the current meta and increased efficiency since the HUD update its happening a lot more then before. Maybe its just as with 3 gens: 3 gens was always one of the best killer tactics, but only recently even cassual killers woke up to it; same thing with splitting up on gens: that was always the best survivor play, yet in the past survivors got away with slamming gens together and then moving on to the next, now its common to have 3 survivors sitting on their different gens, while you chase the fourth one.

Players skills have long since outrun the games basic mechanics and its comming appart at the seams pretty easily with just a little tuck. The reset of healing and gen regression as actually a good thing, even though it needs to be seen if this just opens more problems in different areas of the game. The thing is that the player base can't unlearn their skills, so certain things will never revert back to how they were during the golden times, because back then most people wouldn't and couldn't play as efficiently as today.

Just imagine sending some good (not exeptionally good, just regular good) survivor back to 2017, they would be totally untouchable and dominate everything and probably be accused of cheating. And 2 weeks later everyone would know about looping and be doing it. Not only the game changed, but also the audience.

That's mostly because killers can afford to do that, and survivors can't. Giving the killer a free hook risks giving the killer at least one free kill, flipping one survivor's game from a victory to a total defeat. This is not the case with a mercy hatch, where the killer has 3K and has the survivor at their mercy. I've also played matches where I 2-hook everyone in record time, basically before they've done two gens, and then let them all leave. It still feels like a win for me because I dominated that match.

But survivors just don't get that kind of luxury. You get put on that hook, all bets are off. There could be Blood Warden, they could camp, there could be Terminus in play, your team might make a slight mistake, and the slightest thing turns it into a 4K.

Survivors aren't the power role, so they have less leeway to give 'mercy'.

That all said though, WGLF used to be phenomenal for game health. That side objective gave an exterior win condition and should not only be reinstated, but further expanded upon.

You went on a weird tangent rant.

"I think it's too late to change the win condition"

A 4K is a win, not sure why you are raving about me thinking it isn't?

Then I think you misunderstood my first post.

Yes, I added the 4-out part because I realized I had forgotten about the Survivor side of things.

The only thing I said was that I did not think it was possible to switch the win condition at this point in time. It's been 7 years of 4K or 4E as the ultimate win condition.

You'd not only have to re-balance the game but also change people's minds; which I do not think is possible at this point.

The game doesn't even stipulate that 4k is the only win. It's a sliding scale that's graded on the curve with the devs preferring to see a 2 and 2 split ratio between kills to escape.

Kinda why the game is set up to tell us vaguely where on the scale we fall from entity displeased to merciless killer. If you're able to consistently hit ruthless killer you're winning as per the game's calculation. If you're getting brutal killer you're still technically winning, but most consider it at best a tie as brutal killer doesn't cause you to pip or depip usually.

Im pretty sure half of Killers really love the idea that now they can camp 2-3 survivors to death and drop MMR to play against newbie teams because they have 2-3 hooks.

While the other half of Killers who play 8 hooks 0 kill and play against squads of 4 Ayrun.

No thank you.

There is litterally meaningless to increase MMR through kill already, while the rewards from playing fair are everyone have fun, have high BP, keep MMR low and play stressless matches.

If you hook no one at all then you can't really gain devout emblem properly.

At best you could iri gatekeeper, maliciousness, and chaser. Realistically though even with the perks you listed it is unlikely to get iri gatekeeper due to a variety factors. Though I don't see how Forced Penance helps as it is a protection hit dependent perk that just makes the survivor broken and if the idea is to just make them spend time healing with sloppy why you would take forced penance is beyond my understanding since should you get it then it sort of nullifies the point of having sloppy. In theory there is nothing wrong with Thrill or jolt though thrill isn't really able to help you hold gens unless you have strong patrol routing and high mobility.

From experience of getting no hook games you can still gain a single pip if you max out your maliciousness, chaser, and get a gold gatekeeper which is more realistic depending on the killer. So by the grading metrics of the game it is still technically a Pyrrhic win at best. Unless you have a team of No Mither players there will be a point where none of them can be picked up because they'd all be slugged. At that point you'd need to hook or bleed them out both of which the game scores you on. You get 1 point per bleed out which is the same as single hooking each survivor. Which would give a silver emblem at best and bronze at worst if somehow only one person bled out.

If all survivors escape the emblem wouldn't scale since you didn't hook but you're likely to still get a silver or bronze gatekeeper so as long as you get max chaser and maliciousness you at worst you just barely depip and at best barely null pip.

The incentive is already there BP wise. I see a lot of 3/4 escapes where the killer gets more points than anyone on the survivor team and would probably still consider it a bad game. You get more points for multiple hook actions versus survs progressing hook states.

Point is, the whole thing for killers is to KILL. A sacrifice or a mori is the satisfying part. And if someone gets killed before 3/4 gens are done then, unless killer deliberately tones down their play, gens are not going to get finished and it will be a hatch game.

The nature of the game means it is really geared towards landslide games, where it's pretty clear in the first 5-10minutes who will win.

So you mean to say, according to you its not the point of the game for the Killer to kill Survivors.

Rather by you its the point of the game to Hook them 3 times.

What are Killers, murderers or service workers?

To me this seems to be a fatal misunderstanding of what makes a Killer/Survivor scenario fun.

I think Killers could adjust if you designed the game around that, it would just take a huge chunk of freedom out of how Killers do their plays. I think the loss of Killer freedom is much more damaging to the future of the game.

What about:

Trials have time limit.

Survivors cannot be killed by sacrifices, hooks only slow them down.

Instead of gates there are switches.

Turning both switches will banish killer and survs won.

After time goes down, survivors are killed by the Entity and killer won.

After time goes out there is day on the realnewso either killer is bannished or survivors are dead by daylight

(Moris would further slow survivor progress or apply some status effects).

like i said - it's possible. not that it's viable.

People talk about changing balance for encouraging hooks over kills, but OP (and a few others I've seen) want to change the win condition specifically- that I've never seen any suggestions for.