Revamp the Survivor Item System (and Chests)
Summary:
Chest based perks are becoming more common, but chests, and the item system in general, remains archaic and unsatisfying to use. This outdated item/chest system not only invokes disinterest and even disdain when interacting with these game elements, but also negatively affects the perception of otherwise new and unique perks.
Problems:
Some core item tiers feel messy and pointless:
- Med-kits get a 0.4 second heal reduction bonus per tier up when you heal someone else, and that's it; otherwise, a common med-kit is exactly the same as a Very Rare med-kit.
- Commodius toolbox (Rare) is better than the Mechanic's toolbox (Rare) and even the Engineer's toolbox (Very Rare)
- Toolbox (Uncommon) is better than the Mechanic's toolbox (Rare)
Add-on system feels weird and outdated:
- Because there are more "Uncommon" add-ons to split amongst in the blood web than "Rare" add-ons, it's actually harder to get uncommon add-ons than rare add-ons
- Check your inventory, I bet you have more rare add-ons than any of your uncommon add-ons
- Some add-ons are unimpactful or even detrimental to use, like "Instructions" which completely eliminates skill checks (and their bonuses) when repairing
Chests feel unrewarding to open:
- There aren't many on the map, so if you do want one you typically have to go out of your way and waste time to open it
- Chests are often in dangerous locations like the basement, on hills, or in the open, putting yourself at risk
- According to the DBD wiki, there's a 76% chance you'll get a bad item (common or uncommon)
- Even if you hit the 24% jackpot for a rare or very rare item, there's still a decent chance you could get something useless like a Broken Key
- Anything you could potentially get that's good from a chest, you can just bring from the lobby yourself
- You could even go further by taking a perk like Built to Last to keep refreshing its use in the time it takes to open a chest
Because of the above, there's no satisfaction in getting higher tiers of common items like toolboxes and med-kits. Useful add-ons (like wirespool), despite supposedly being common, are a pain to get due to how many common add-ons there are and how the blood web works. Chests feel designed to actively discourage their use given how few there are, their locations, and the odds being stacked against you getting anything remotely useful. As a result, chest-based perks feels bad to use, even though the concept is appealing.
Proposed Solution:
- Revamp med-kits to have higher charges based on tier along with healing speed
- Adjust self-heal efficiency/speed penalties to compensate if necessary
- Rework how toolboxes work entirely, with two separate lines of toolboxes for sabo and repair in each tier. Focus more on gen repair contribution instead of repair speed (which lowers # of skill checks)
- Redistribute item add-ons across rarity categories to create a more steady and intuitive acquirement of add-ons (so Uncommons aren't rarer than Rare add-ons)
- Put relatively strong and unique items in chests that are in-game only, and cannot be brought back to the campfire
- Increase the odds of getting a good item in chests by base
- Or at least put more secondary effects on perks that increase chest luck (Ace in the Hole, Up the Ante, Appraisal, etc.)
- Increase the default number of chests in a game
- Guarantee that the last chest, once opened, contains a key for the hatch
Benefits:
- Higher tier items are more exciting to acquire and use
- Item system is more intuitive with higher tier items being better than their common counterparts
- Add-on distribution makes better sense, and it's easier to get certain common add-ons than it otherwise would be
- Chests are more exciting to interact with because they contain unique items only found by searching them
- Chest-based perks become more meaningful because chests are more desirable to actually search
- Survivor and killer alike has another objective in end game rather than just afking at gates
- The last two survivors in a match might also participate more instead of afking waiting for the other to die, because they actually have a goal for survival to fight for (potential hatch key)
- Because there's more chests in the map, there's less time commitment to find and use them, further encouraging their use
- Because there's more chests in the map and hatch key can only be obtained once all have been opened, survivors get a natural side objective they can choose to do during a game, slowing it down for the killer
Cons:
None that I can think of. I'm open to feedback on the suggestions.
Edit:
Improving toolboxes by focusing them more around gen contribution may alter skill-check oriented builds, like those with Hyperfocus. Could be a balancing issue for that and other perks.
Comments
-
The bad rolls for chests aren't the brown and yellow items, those items are just a fairly low baseline for item strength. All the brown and yellow items - by which I mean, the medkits, toolboxes, and one flashlight that this group represents - actually do something and could easily be considered a win state when opening a chest; it's not hard to imagine someone searching a chest hoping for a medkit to heal themselves, at which point the brown medkit is exactly what they're looking for and they wouldn't be served in any meaningful way by getting something of higher rarity.
The bad item rolls are exclusively greens and arguably above: It's the base Map, which only tracks generators, and the Broken Key- arguably the other keys too, but at least the other two open hatch, whereas a Broken Key you get from a chest literally doesn't do anything. Those are the actual fail states when rolling the dice on chests, not the baseline of decent items.
This is my biggest problem with your suggestions, which are fairly reasonable otherwise- the actually unappealing items that people don't want when searching chests aren't being addressed at all here. Medkits and toolboxes are the only items you're proposing changes for, but they're also already the only items people actually want.
If we're tackling chest problems at their core, and we're doing that by changing items, we need to change Maps and Keys before we look at Medkits and Toolboxes. They're the underwhelming and sloppily designed items, not the two that function perfectly fine. We can only consider a chest overhaul a success if a reasonable survivor would be okay with getting rolled any item in there- obviously it's fine if someone was hoping for a specific item and groans when they get anything else, but if everyone universally groans when they roll The Item That Literally Does Nothing, we've still got a big problem no adjacent changes can fix.
2 -
Yeah I concede common med-kits are actually useful, but I don't know about toolboxes.
A common toolbox just gives ~5 seconds worth of generator progress, and chests always take 10 seconds to open. So if you get a toolbox, you're always losing time. Even if you get and hit 2 Great skill checks in those 5 seconds, that's just 7 seconds of time saved for a minimum 10 second investment. I just can't see that as worthwhile, so I always consider it a consolation prize for trying, but still means my effort was wasteful and meaningless.
In fact, all toolboxes aside from Commodious give a return that's lower than the cost of the investment. Even then, Commodious with add-ons gives 10.7 seconds of gen charges, which is just the cost of opening the chest so you only break even on the investment there. Still a loss for you if you took at least 1 second worth of time to travel to and from that chest, which is almost always going to be the case.
Concerning Rare items, I actually like maps for the points which is why I didn't mention it; but yeah, they are pretty useless otherwise thanks to their range and limited tracking potential (just gens). Totally agree that keys and maps should be revamped too though in hindsight. I'm hoping they just do a total rehaul of every item at this rate, even if some changes are less significant than others (med-kits).
Anyway love the points, agree with most! Maybe even all, as toolboxes acting as consolation prizes could be fine as well short-term. Just as long as there's some items (preferably unique) in chests that are exciting, rewarding, and satisfying to get and use.
0 -
I think the big thing to remember with toolboxes is that, while the repair speed on lower rarities doesn't really break even, all the toolboxes are perfectly capable of sabotaging a hook. Not as fast or as often as some other toolboxes, naturally, but getting a brown or yellow toolbox always represents an opportunity to create value and justify the time investment. A single sabotage at normal sabotage speed can swing games, hypothetically.
Toolboxes right now, while they absolutely need addressing from a strength and skewed-rarity standpoint in general, kinda slot in where I was talking about the acceptable outcomes for chests. Right now, someone might groan if they get a brown toolbox when they wanted a medkit, but the toolbox does something and it's feasible that a reasonable player would be able to make use of it.
That being said, I agree, a full item overhaul would be a very welcome change. Honestly, that alone would go a fair ways towards helping chests.
2 -
I really hope for an chest/item update in the near future.
For chests
- the time to open one should be 7s
- Basement should have better rarity items or even a safe where you have to find a key for like on nostromo
- Ace in the whole basekit, which gives items from chests addons and let‘s you keep addons when escaping
- More chests like 8
- Luck also increases the chance for better items and addons from chests
Items
- Medkits should get reverted to before the nerfs. Currently there is sadly no difference and they could just remove every medkit except of grey
- Maps should all be like the blood map or iri map and get most addons base. The iri map would then need a new effect
- Flashlights are fine, but could get a buff too
- Keys need some big changes
- Toolboxes (I liked the first version they had, where you had 100+ charges, but it repaired slower) Alexes should have 24 charges, Commodious is fine, the green and purple gen speed ones should get some buffs. Grey and yellow should be removed.
- Overall I would prefer, that they remove all those useless rarities and just make it one item instead of 5 useless variants. But as long as those variants stand out enough like with commodious and Alexes, it‘s fine. And if they keep those 5 variants of one item, they should make them all useful and interesting by giving them a unique and cool use, that stands out from the others
- It would be cool if we would get new items, that you can only get from chests (like firecrackers for now until we get new one items)
1 -
The elephant in the room is the Bloodweb. Items and Add-Ons fill out the Bloodweb. Discussing what to do with that is a whole discussion on its own, but it makes it hard to fix the Item issue.
New items, at least, would definitely help, because they could take the place of redundant rarities and such on the Bloodweb. Otherwise, I really like the ideas brought up here.
1
