Auto-fail Skillchecks and Potential Solutions

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There are times where letting go of objectives is necessary due to situations that arise in game, but there is always a chance in letting go that you will get a skillcheck at the same moment that you let go which leads to an automatic fail, 10% regression on the objective and a loud noise for the killer. In most cases letting go of an objective isn't an issue as no skillcheck pops up, and in other cases you are fine to wait for a skillcheck to appear before letting go, but this isn't always possible for a number of reasons, there is always a chance that when you let go you lose progress and alert the killer due to no actual mistake on your part.

After some thinking I have come to the conclusion that there are two healthy ways we could fix this mechanic, so the skillchecks still need to be completed by the player, but they also will not be automatically failed (unless they are just impatient in my second solution), leading to healthier teamwork on the survivor's end, while not necessarily taking anything away from the killer. That being said, here are my solutions:

  1. Normal skillchecks function in the same way as Overcharge and Merciless Storm. If you let go before the skillcheck it will not count as an automatic fail, Overcharge still lets you pass the skillcheck anyway, and Merciless Storm will block the generator, but it will not lose progress or begin to regress in any form (even though failing the skillcheck is supposed to explode the generator for more than a normal failure). This is my first solution as it does not lead to any form of game balance being affected.
  2. Skill Check Frequency Adjustment. If we do not want to move the skillchecks towards working like Overcharge, I feel this to be another suitable solution that addresses the core of the issue. Sometimes when we are waiting for a skillcheck before letting go (example teammate is on a hook but you want to hit a skillcheck before rescuing them to avoid the possibility of the generator explosion) the skillcheck doesn't actually appear, sometimes we are sitting on generators for upwards of 40 seconds without a single skillcheck, and it leads to a sunk cost fallacy - you feel it will fail the moment you let go, even when it didn't blow up for the last several moments. I believe this can be fixed by putting a maximum amount of time interval between skillchecks appearing, something like 15 seconds. 15 seconds isn't so short of a time that it is too frequent, but it also isn't too long that waiting is doing more harm than good, it would also be a nice change for Autodidact, if everyone is aware that you are guaranteed a skill check in each heal. 15 seconds is more what I find to be a reasonable time frame, as long as we have some way of knowing that we will get a skillcheck after some time, that is better than never seeing one at all, or getting hit by them at the worst times. Skillchecks would still have random times to appear, one could show up in 5 seconds, one could show up in 12 seconds, but it will never keep you waiting for longer than 15 seconds, as an example.

TLDR; Waiting for skillcheck bad for gameplay, overcharge skillcheck is good, skillcheck appearing in guaranteed maximum intervals is also good. Thank you for reading!

Comments

  • Caiman
    Caiman Member Posts: 2,207
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    I think 12 seconds would be better than 15 seconds.

  • Vhillain
    Vhillain Member Posts: 123
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    Whatever works as long as it's consistent and fits the theme :) I'm sure there's a bunch of differing opinions that people would find reasonable, 15 was my spitball example, but in no way meant to be taken as a guideline for what the devs should follow. Even if they did 20 seconds or 30 seconds maximum interval it would be better than the current system of having to wait almost an entire minute for a single skillcheck in some cases!

  • Vhillain
    Vhillain Member Posts: 123
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    It's definitely a good question, and also why I worded my suggestion as "frequency adjustment", because if there is a maximum interval for a guaranteed skillcheck built into the game already that we are unaware of as players, the timing is quite far apart. I can't recall if there are times where I have got zero skillchecks on generators, but there are times where I have been able to do 70% of a solo generator before seeing one pop up, and that is certainly far too long to wait.

  • sizzlingmario4
    sizzlingmario4 Member Posts: 6,549
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    It's just random. Basically, the game checks every second to see whether you should get a skill check or not and there's a certain chance of a skill check appearing depending on the action in question. For repairing, it's 8% every second by default, but for other interactions it’s different.

    Things that increase the trigger odds of skill checks have their values added to this base value. Unlike a lot of other things in this game that are applied multiplicatively, this is just an additive modifier, so for example repairing with Unnerving Presence makes the skill check odds 18% every second (8% default + 10% from the perk).

    There is no maximum time interval between skill checks. It’s entirely possible to do an entire generator without seeing one, but this is very unlikely.

  • Vhillain
    Vhillain Member Posts: 123
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    Good to know, thank you for providing insight into the information around this subject that we were lacking, it's a great help and something I will certainly keep in mind moving forward!

    Hopefully the developers consider the suggestion to add in some kind of frequency interval, as I don't believe that waiting extended periods of time for skill checks should be a part of survivor gameplay, but this is just my opinion and anyone is free to disagree.