Finishing Mori "system"
Originally, this system included multiple functions (Last Standing with "heightened senses", basekit Unbreakable after 45 seconds, Finisher Mori if everyone else has escaped or is hooked or slugged) and was designed with the intention to create a more climactic, cinematic and satisfying end to matches, with the killer not having to go through the motions of "cleaning up" after already having won, and the survivors not being left to twiddle thumbs on the floor for minutes on end.
Now, more than two years after its initial tests (and probably around four years since its initial announcement as a plan for a feature), calling it a "system" is a little funny. What it has boiled down to is making the Cypress Mori basekit.
While that is well and neat and all to be able to see kill animations more frequently now, one major issue I see with this change is that it will encourage players to "slug for the 4k" much more often, a bad, boring aspect of the gameplay that should long have been addressed and that this precise "system" originally was meant to address. With the last survivor left promising a cool kill, many of the players that currently usually don't care to leave the second-to-last survivor lying around on the floor for minutes (or to refuse to kill them indefinitely, carrying them around and letting them wiggle) will start doing so more often, in order to find and prevent the last survivor from being able to escape.
Again, this yields bad and boring gameplay, with the slugged survivor being stuck with nothing to really do but watch as the hopeless charade plays out, the last survivor standing studying the rocks and bushes on the outskirts of the map as well as the insides of lockers, and the killer just searching for them. Often for up to 4 minutes, and potentially much more than that if the killer decides to pick up the slugged survivor before they bleed out, refusing to kill them.
I think at the very latest now with the implementation of the Finishing Mori feature, it is time to at the very least do one of two things: either give the second-to-last survivor the ability to call upon the Entity to take them should they end up in the dying state (which is very lore-appropriate anyway: they're literally out of hope to feed off of, there's no point for the Entity to prolong their stay in the trial), or give them the ability to recover from the dying state on their own in that case, forcing the killer to either actually kill them or risk them getting back up and having a chance to escape.
On a related note: The Finishing Mori feature will also encourage another really bad aspect of the endgame design, namely the "hatch standoff", wherein a killer will stand on the hatch and refuse to close it until the survivor reveals themselves (which the survivor will of course refuse to do), so as to not risk them even having a chance to open a gate and rob them of their cool kill animation. To remedy this issue, a simple adjustment could be to make it so that the hatch simply automatically closes after a certain amount of time.
Comments
-
Am I the only one who adores the visual effects of the old finisher mori?
I'd love to see the visual effects put in game.
0 -
i am pretty sure that finisher mori is meant to be a reward for getting 4k. you don't need to aim for 4k. you simply get a cool animation for succeeding naturally. it is not incentive's you to slug for 4k anymore then current system does.
slugging for 4k and 2 survivors alive is fundamental problem with dbd gameplay breaking down. from killer point of view, the killer spend a large portion of the game working hard to get the 2 players, so for them to lose at this point feels like robbery. a mechanic that did that was keys ahd the hatch. it didn't feel good to lose to a random item that had very little counter or no counter at all. i remember playing doctor one night, for like 10 matches during the time before keys got reworked and i am joking that for 6 matches in a row, 2 survivors escaped with a key. so i'd win every single round only to lose to an end game key.
from survivor point of view, the survivor believes that they don't have an opportunity to win when only 2 survivors are alive and 2 or more gens are incomplete. the result is that survivor is either forced to suicide to give another hatch or you get this extremely long stalemate game where killer can't find either survivor because they're not doing objective.
my thought is that tru3ta1ent is somewhat right in this instance that the dbd game needs different gameplay loop as this gameplay problem is not interesting. he suggested that all pallet respawn and that killer can see remaining survivor with killer instinct with new item called pocket watch that increase or reduces the time for killer to win the match. if he fails, the exit gates open and the remaining survivors can escape.
an adaptation that could be an idea is using Halloween teleporting mechanic where a survivor must survive in specific world for certain amount of time to escape. sometimes should change about end game however no one has concluded what should be changed about the end game of dbd to make more fun for survivor and killer to play end game. the problems are clear but solution is not.
1 -
i am pretty sure that finisher mori is meant to be a reward for getting 4k. you don't need to aim for 4k. you simply get a cool animation for succeeding naturally. it is not incentive's you to slug for 4k anymore then current system does.
Sure, it's unlikely BHVR want to encourage slugging for the 4k (and again, originally this "system" was designed in part precisely to rid us of that very flaw), it's more likely they want to make mori kills part of the base gameplay loop so as to sell custom moris more easily. But the effect this will have simply is that a lot of people will be more inclined to play hard to get that final mori kill, which encourages slugging for the 4k/standing on hatch.
from killer point of view, the killer spend a large portion of the game working hard to get the 2 players, so for them to lose at this point feels like robbery.
One of the survivors getting a hatch escape in that scenario does not make it a loss for the killer, and I personally have never felt "robbed" of anything if I just took the 3k and gave the last survivor a chance for a hatch escape (or gate escape by closing hatch). If anything the hunt for the hatch (or the gameplay for the gates) is much more exciting than slugging the second-to-last survivor and stupidly searching for the last survivor standing for minutes on end. But that's just me, I do know all too well that for others, getting that last kill too can be more important than the type of gameplay trying to get it yields, and they wouldn't even mind stalling the game for an hour for it, if they have to. It's just bad game design and can relatively easily be remedied.
a mechanic that did that was keys ahd the hatch. it didn't feel good to lose to a random item that had very little counter or no counter at all. i remember playing doctor one night, for like 10 matches during the time before keys got reworked and i am joking that for 6 matches in a row, 2 survivors escaped with a key. so i'd win every single round only to lose to an end game key.
Keys for hatch were obviously a bullshit mechanic in the past, but not only does 2 survivors escaping not constitute a loss either, but here again I personally never felt that bad - both me and the survivor players knew that they had cheesed out a "free" escape, I didn't feel like they had "won" or let alone outplayed me, so even if they were gloating about it or whatever I had no issue moving on not wasting another word or thought on it. Again, might just be me, but it obviously doesn't matter anymore anyway as they have since thankfully reworked keys and hatch.
my thought is that tru3ta1ent is somewhat right in this instance that the dbd game needs different gameplay loop as this gameplay problem is not interesting. he suggested that all pallet respawn and that killer can see remaining survivor with killer instinct with new item called pocket watch that increase or reduces the time for killer to win the match. if he fails, the exit gates open and the remaining survivors can escape.
an adaptation that could be an idea is using Halloween teleporting mechanic where a survivor must survive in specific world for certain amount of time to escape. sometimes should change about end game however no one has concluded what should be changed about the end game of dbd to make more fun for survivor and killer to play end game. the problems are clear but solution is not.
I agree, and have suggested more and less ambitious models for reworking these flawed endgame scenarios various times throughout the years, including similar "1v1 endgame chase" concepts. More recently here, for instance: https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/412836/2v1-and-1v1-endgame-scenarios. What we have to unfortunately accept however is that more sophisticated or otherwise ambitious reworks of these things are just not realistic, as the example of how long it took them to "work" on this finishing mori "system" and what it ended up being also shows. For that reason, I am proposing very simple solutions that would already go a long way to improve the gameplay experience in these endgame scenarios.
1 -
Keys for hatch were obviously a bullshit mechanic in the past, but not only does 2 survivors escaping not constitute a loss either, but here again I personally never felt that bad - both me and the survivor players knew that they had cheesed out a "free" escape, I didn't feel like they had "won" or let alone outplayed me, so even if they were gloating about it or whatever I had no issue moving on not wasting another word or thought on it. Again, might just be me, but it obviously doesn't matter anymore anyway as they have since thankfully reworked keys and hatch.
that is the whole problem. in a well designed end-game, 2 survivor can escape and beat the killer as come-back. that is exactly what happen to my doctor games years ago where i was losing repetitively to keys. this was also before they added offerings to spawn hatch. the people using keys memorized hatch spawns on every map and would just get 2 man free escapes. when you get a loss by key once, it felt unearned but when you get a loss 6 times in a row by same mechanic, than that is form of frustration. an experience like that will entirely change your perception of hatch in general. you will adamantly dislike hatch as killer.
the summary is that come-back mechanics aren't fun for killer in a game like this which is why BVHR hasn't changed anything anything towards end game for long time. Hatch losses are like….. out of your control if you ignore said mechanic. in those 6 games, i did not slug for a 4k. I would hook people until 2 people die and on 2nd hook of the person dying, you'd just see escape symbol either right away or like 30 seconds after 2nd kill. The way BVHR gives you control over the hatch post-key nerf is by slugging 3rd person to deny exit gate rng and hatch rng. Survivor hate this mechanic. they do not like being slugged in first place. Having 4 minute game-extensions in the end game is not fun for survivor. so here we have these two problems where killer losing to a key item is unfun and survivor being slugged for 4 minutes because killer is aiming for a 4k to what they see as hatch being unfair mechanic. The keys and hatch may be nerfed but the whole mechanic and end-game interaction is still there. it went from survivor sided to killer sided.
I agree, and have suggested more and less ambitious models for reworking these flawed endgame scenarios various times throughout the years, including similar "1v1 endgame chase" concepts. More recently here, for instance: https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/412836/2v1-and-1v1-endgame-scenarios. What we have to unfortunately accept however is that more sophisticated or otherwise ambitious reworks of these things are just not realistic, as the example of how long it took them to "work" on this finishing mori "system" and what it ended up being also shows. For that reason, I am proposing very simple solutions that would already go a long way to improve the gameplay experience in these endgame scenarios.
i would not say that end-game rework are not realistic. they may be more realistic now. it is simply question for what should be changed to resolve issue. The finisher mori mechanic is insight mechanic for what BVHR thinks about end game. To me, it seems like their vision for end game is that that if 3-4 survivors are alive, they want the game to be survivor sided. that is why we have like end-game base-kit BT for example. Sure there is some killer that are excellent hook defenders but in general, more killers when 3-4 survivor are alive will not be able to defend hooks outside of specific perks like STBFL. Most of the time, if both sides are equally skilled, end game is 4 man escape or 3 man escape with correct bodyblocking.
When a killer slugs all 4 survivors, the killer automatically wins. They reinforced this idea in the finisher mori system. The only problem is that in this same system for some reason, they also made it impossible to slug because unlimited 45 second unbreakable makes slugging a dead strategy.
these two ideas are what their current opinion is for end game. this is not something that they have explicit said. it is what they have explicit showed and done. There is saying, action speak louder then words and these are actions they've taken or wanted to take.
0 -
so here we have these two problems where killer losing to a key item is unfun and survivor being slugged for 4 minutes because killer is aiming for a 4k to what they see as hatch being unfair mechanic. The keys and hatch may be nerfed but the whole mechanic and end-game interaction is still there. it went from survivor sided to killer sided.
Keys were not a "comeback" mechanic where the remaining survivors had a fighting chance to beat the killer and escape. They were a completely unearned, free escape. Of course killer players did not feel great about that. There are other ways however to actually give the remaining survivor(s) a bit of a fighting chance that still yield actual interactive gameplay, some of which are outlined in the thread of mine that I linked as well (but various other ideas are also possible).
That unfortunately is something beyond the scope of what we can realistically expect from BHVR though - again, they spent years on this Finishing Mori "system" that was intended to alleviate some of these lategame/endgame issues as well, and it ended up being as laughably little as "Cypress Mori is now basekit!", even exacerbating some of the very issues they had sought to address with it. And that's just a recent, relevant example. Another recent such case would be Twins, their rework of which was deeply flawed in certain aspects and then they went back on almost all of it, in the end just slightly buffing and improving various things about this killer that was in a good spot strength-wise as it was, not doing anything about the issues they had wanted to rework them for to begin with (most of all the incessant slugging).
So again, I'm not even talking about comeback mechanics or anything ambitious to make the 2v1 lategame/1v1 endgame more engaging and less foregone of a conclusion here, this thread is concerned only with simple steps to actually end the game when it is over, forcing the endgame by forcing the killer to kill the second-to-last survivor in a timely manner or giving that survivor the option to end it themselves. The last survivor then having a chance to get hatch is not a "comeback" or "loss", and the hatch endgame is still tilted in the killer's favour anyway. Achievements or challenges that depend on 4ks can be adjusted for that reality as well.
Most of the time, if both sides are equally skilled, end game is 4 man escape or 3 man escape with correct bodyblocking.
I really don't think so. That would only be true against an ability-less M1 killer, and even then only if the hook is fairly close to the gate. The killer can simply hit the first survivor attempting to unhook, and then go after them. There is nothing the other survivors will usually be able to do for them since they can't catch up, and so if that survivor cannot reach the gate, they end up on a hook themselves. Of course it can work out, especially with 4 survivors left, but then not only do various perks and killer abilities/add-ons change the scenario entirely, but it's just not something I think is indicative of their "vision" for endgame design either way. On the contrary, it seems clear to me that being able to secure a kill in the endgame even in otherwise badly lost matches is a killer-sided design intention in the game BHVR has continually fostered, such as with disabling anti-tunnelling perks in the endgame.
And I also don't think winning when you have everyone slugged is some vision BHVR has. The fact that that aspect of the original Finishing Mori system actually could encourage killers to try and slug all remaining survivors was major reason why they didn't go through with it, from what I understood. What they really wanted to address with that change was the issue of killers slugging the remaining survivors for minutes on end, be it just out of spite or to prevent the last survivor from being able to escape through hatch. They wanted to force the killer to pick up and actually kill people, or to force the game to an end if they still refused to. That is also why they came up with basekit Unbreakable. BHVR has long recognized that slugging is an issue - if not necessarily a huge issue from a game balance perspective, certainly from a game experience perspective - and they are not a big fan of it even outside of the particular late/endgame scenarios where it frequently happens (where I personally actually am). They are implementing basekit Unbreakable for the 2v8 mode for instance, likely after having seen the players that 8-slugged survivors for some 80 or so matches in a row. The last thing BHVR wants is killers to continually slug everyone and win by doing so. Them buffing We're Gonna Live Forever in the same patch they are bringing what is left of the Finisher Mori system I'm pretty sure is also a concession (however weak) to their original intention with said system to combat slugging.
Anyway, I'm not sure what their "visions" for the late- and endgame design really are, I more so think they not only don't have a great vision, but they don't even care enough/think enough/are confident enough in their design ideas to change anything and even just fix the blatant flaws that exist currently (and have existed for years) for which there are simple, obvious solutions. Again, for just one very cut-and-dry example of this, they had already set out to fix the "hatch standoff" years ago, which was a comically flawed design issue of course - only they have since neglected the fact that a form of the hatch standoff still exists, and I don't know what compels them to not implement a simple solution to that issue such as "hatch closes itself automatically after X minutes", if not for a lack of care/thought/confidence to change anything about the current "formula". That would also fix issues of having to look for the hatch for minutes if you want to give it to the last remaining survivor, or if you want to close it so that they can leave through a gate because they are clearly just hiding and scared to look for it. As well as issues where survivors can stand on hatch to taunt the killer, refusing to leave until you eventually find and force them out. Couldn't be more obviously beneficial of a change.
Or another just as obvious example, the fact that survivors get "sacrificed" after an hour when the session ends, instead of the game simply saying "server closed" and not telling players they've killed or escaped or the like. There couldn't be an easier change that obviously benefits the game, not encouraging killers to hold the game hostage if they can because they won't feel likey they've "won" in the end if the survivors aren't being shown as "sacrificed". Would have maybe taken them an hour of work to change on any day during the years since the implementation of the 1-hour playtime limit (or they could have originally already thought about this), and it could have and would still prevent at least some instances of killers being fine with delaying the inevitable indefinitely. I'm willing to bet there's at least a handful Hostage Merchant players that would have not done what they did had they not essentially been told "you won! the survivors died!" at the end of such a "match".
So yeah, no shortage of blatantly obvious issues with incredibly simple solutions that they're not concerning themselves with, so it wouldn't really matter even if they have some "vision" for these late-/endgame scenarios.
Post edited by zarr on1 -
I would love to see the visual effect again. The game overall needs more visual effect. And some were so much better, like the old doctor madness effect. The game sadly takes so many steps backwards. Lighting got worse, Filters also and many other visual effects got removed. The game could be so much more appealing for new players and people would stop complaining about DbDs graphics.
0
