Survivor Escape Reward
It is frequently discussed on the forum that we believe more people are giving up in their matches. Many of us deliberate on what the frustrating issues are that encourage Survivors to give up. What if it’s also because the rewards aren’t good enough?
Do you think 7,000 BP and keeping your item are good enough rewards for escaping? Personally I do not believe they are enough of an incentive to keep people in a trial.
What would the reward have to be in order to incentivize you staying in match you’d otherwise want to leave? Don’t worry about feasibility (lol Auric Cells), the sky is the limit. I just want to gauge what the community would find worthwhile and of value.
I mean would 100 Auric Cells per escape keep you in the game? (Again, I know this would never ever happen for a myriad number of reasons, this is just a value gauge). 200? 20 Iri shards per escape? Maybe an escape “count” that you can show off to others through a charm or cosmetic?
What reward (if any) would keep you in a game that you would otherwise leave?
Comments
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Automatic double pip on an escape through the gate is something I've wanted for a long time. It seems really silly to get a 4 out and not even pip because I played optimally. Survivor pips in general need a bit of a rework IMO. Survivor gameplay is contextual, and reducing pips down to things you can do rather than doing the things you should do is counterintuitive to me.
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I feel like most people either give up super early, like because they get hooked first, after there are a bunch of hooks and little to no gen progress, or when they are tunneled/camped. In most cases survivors are quitting when they think/know they can’t escape. So I’m not sure what a larger escape reward would do for that.
Maybe if there was a match completion bonus (that could somehow detect hook suicides so as not to reward them) people would stay.2 -
I want to expand a bit, and yes, I'm quoting myself....
I think pips and emblems should be separate things.
Pips should be based on the result of the trial. A 4k or gate escape is a double pip. The emblems should be BP multipliers for the trial. Iri emblem = +10% BP.
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Maybe even the hatch could get a better reward to encourage people to keep playing.
If a player were in a match with 0 gens completed, one person dead, and everyone else on death hook, what reward do you think would be enough to encourage them to play for the hatch as if it were a serious match?
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Pipping rewards on survivor are kind of a mess anyway. Killers automatically engage in all four categories of emblems, but survivors both compete with each other for team roles and, like you said, don't have control over what needs doing at any given moment. In particular, I don't like Iridescent Unbroken because never getting downed is both unrealistic - this only happens if the killer is horribly outmatched, or worse, if you hide all game and don't take your share of aggro.
That said, I think increasing the bloodpoint reward would be fine. An iri shard incentive would be interesting but might skew roles to the point of killer drought. Though I'm not a good person to ask because I don't give up unless the rest of my team gives up. (I used to also give up in perma 3-gens but that's fixed now.)
Mostly, I think increasing rewards for escaping isn't a very effective way of preventing players from giving up, because players give up when they feel they will not win (or otherwise don't consider the game worth playing, i.e. overpowered or frustrating killer/build, or killer build that negates your own items/build.) More rewards for escaping won't stop the pessimist who thinks any down before a gen gets completed means the game is lost, because they're already convinced they won't escape. To tackle this, I think we need either better comeback options for survivors, or a way to identify and punish hook suicides.
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Escape is already too heavily rewarded. The game needs to reward participation more. The greater emphasis the game places on escape, the less survivors are going to be willing to stick it out the moment it looks like they might not escape.
The higher the value placed on things like escaping through the exit gate or the hatch, the more players will focus on only those. If participating rewarded more points (and maybe if you died but got a gold Lightbringer or Altruism the game could give you a bit of text with some props rather than just "SACRIFICED"), it would be much more worth it to play through a match that doesn't end in escape.
I'd say a big problem is that for many survivor's there's not a big difference between dying sooner vs dying later in a match. Both points wise and in terms of any feeling of achievement. What they do doesn't matter if it doesn't lead to escape in the end.
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Now you're talking. I think this is a better venue to tackle incentives, in games that survivors already consider pointless. A big score event or a bloodpoint modifier akin to an Escape Cake would be great motivators to keep survivors in losing games (i.e., 6 hooks at 5 gens, or a player dead before anyone else has hooks.)
Doesn't address the first person giving up, but makes the experience less terrible for the other three.
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There should be secondary objectives to allow for more then just one person to escape if a game goes south. More then a few games go down the drain because one person is taken out so insanely early that winning after that is near impossible. Something like a 2 man escape plan where 3 people can try to finish the game normally or switch to the 2 man escape option, but one of the 3 is certain to die.
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I think increasing rewards for escaping isn't a very effective way of preventing players from giving up, because players give up when they feel they will not win (or otherwise don't consider the game worth playing
Maybe not but I do think it’s an untapped contributor to a solution. I mean let’s be silly, would 1,000 Auric Cells per escape including hatch keep people in the game? Mostly right? Would there still be people that leave? Of course.
Since the KR is 60% we know that the game is not your traditional 50/50 PvP competitive game. The Survivors die more than they live so why not make it a win win so that the Survivors earn something special when they die so that no matter what happens they are working towards something?Why not make dying something that can actually be fun on the Survivor side? Maybe Survivors can earn “death tokens” every time they die. Maybe they can be redeemed for iri shards or something else entirely. Maybe a set of banners that you unlock at 100 deaths, 1,000 deaths, 10k deaths etc.
I agree with you that this concept isn’t the end all be all solution but I strongly believe that it would smooth things over much more than we think they would.
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I like your ideas of more rewards for participating. I still personally believe that increasing escape rewards would help more than hurt but I do respect where you are coming from.
In the very least I think that we can both agree that while it won’t solve the problem of giving up, Survivors could do with a reward “update” as a whole.
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increasing escape rewards would help more than hurt
One of the things I complain about most on this forum are teammates who hide and wait for the hatch. Many do that from the moment they load into the trial. Those ruin more of my matches than suicides or anything else. Other people may have a different experience, but from my perspective increasing rewards for escape, especially escape through the hatch, would be one of the worst things that could happen to my own survivor matches.
Escape is the win condition. It's already so highly valued that the last survivor will teabag on the hatch for 10 minutes until the killer comes to see them escape because, even though the killer got a 3k, that survivor considers themself the overall winner thanks to the RNG we-don't-want-survivors-hiding-for-30-minutes pity mechanic. Meanwhile, I'm waiting there on the spectate screen wanting to see the killer's loadout.
That's where I stand on that. It's why I have never and could never advocate for greater escape rewards, because it already brings out the worst in many of my teammates.
I think that we can both agree that while it won’t solve the problem of giving up, Survivors could do with a reward “update” as a whole.
Definitely. Survivors absolutely need an update to the way the game rewards them. Bloodpoint gains are pretty miserable.
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It's not even about the rewards, although a little extra BP would help newer players. I'm simply not motivated by the BP anymore. I have most of the perks, items and addons that I need or want and I only really spend BP when I reach the ridiculously low BP cap.
Maybe it's to do with my personality, but it's not much fun to lose 8 out of 10 trials (some at 5 gen where the Survivors never had a chance because the MMR system is so poor). There's little point in increasing the escape rewards when so few Survivors can escape anyway. I only expect my own personal escape rate to fall even lower with every Killer they buff each patch.
Killer queues are a relatively long wait in my region (5 mins) yet the Survivor queues are instant. I think it's just not a popular role at the moment.
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I see I see. So from your experience there is a toxic behavior (hiding and waiting for hatch) that would only get worse if there were increasing rewards.
As bad as it can feel, I do believe that players hiding and waiting for hatch is better than the players who give up on the match as a whole. Which isn’t to say that you, TragicSolitude, should change how you feel or anything.
It’s a complicated issue because I believe it is a multi-step process. If we give greater rewards maybe we will help with people quitting, but now more people will be tempted to play in way that brings out their worst tendencies.
Are both equally frustrating for you? Players who hide and players who quit?
I imagine a solution where we try and make a dent in people giving up. While also reforming other aspects of the game the community dislikes. For instance what you dislike, excessive hiding. What if we can solve that AND increase rewards? I think it is possible. Excessive hiding can easily be fixed with some kind of notification or aura read.
If this post makes you feel dismissed then I am sorry. I just want to make a case that I truly believe that we can (mostly) find win/win solutions to the aspects of the game that frustrate us.
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If this post makes you feel dismissed then I am sorry. I just want to make a case that I truly believe that we can (mostly) find win/win solutions to the aspects of the game that frustrate us.
It's perfectly fine. It's a discussion. We all have different experiences in the game; I know that mine may be different from others.
Are both equally frustrating for you? Players who hide and players who quit?
When someone quits, everyone has that information immediately, and the person who's gone can't sabotage the match in any other way. Teammates who hide, if they're found, very often run at areas where they know other survivors are. It's pretty common that if a hiding teammate is found, rather than keeping the killer busy they will run towards a gen being worked on. The hiding survivor was never on a gen, but now someone who was on a gen is being chased by the killer.
I have let hiding survivors die on the hook and the quality of the match improves afterward. It seems backwards but it's true. So, in my experience, a useless survivor in the match is much more frustrating than no survivor at all.
What if we can solve that AND increase rewards? I think it is possible. Excessive hiding can easily be fixed with some kind of notification or aura read.
I'd love for killers to get notifications about survivors who aren't participating in the match. AFK crows are not aggressive enough. However, I also try to be careful about suggesting possible killer buffs, especially in a topic about decreasing the rate of survivors quitting.
In terms of decreasing the rate of survivors quitting, I'd say the solution is to give them goals that look achievable. They're quitting because the goal of escape does not look achievable. Increasing the reward for escape won't make it more achievable, so those who are quitting probably won't be enticed by an increased reward. Increasing the rate of escape would negatively affect killers, so I don't want to suggest that, either. Survivors need things they can achieve, goals they can reach other than escape, within their matches. That could be increased Bloodpoints for participation, that could be some text calling you a "HERO" instead of just "SACRIFICED" if you helped your teammates a lot, it could be something completely new added to the gameplay mechanics, but there needs to be something that will keep survivors playing when escape is unlikely. As is, everything hinges so much on escape that many players don't feel like what they do outside of escaping matters. When people feel like what they do doesn't matter, that's when they give up.
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As an aside I just want to say this is an enjoyable conversation.
I really appreciate your pragmatic stances on this issue. I respect your experiences. I especially love the idea of rewards other than escape.
I’m in full agreement that there needs to be more to work towards the Survivor end besides escape and challenges. I think I remember hearing that challenges were going to be overhauled so that there is a central bank of challenges that simultaneously fill as you complete the miscellaneous tasks. I love that, it’s like how some battle royale game challenges work.
I know it would garner a lot of opposition but how do you feel about “death rewards”? On the surface it may seem like people will die on purpose just for these “death tokens” but if we just shelf that problem for a bit in my opinion it would go a very long way in reducing the sting of death on the Survivor side. It could even be a like death punch card. Just something to make players feel like they are making more progress than BP or Devotion level. Even just adding rift level 200 feels better than before even though it is just BP. It feels good to see a counter or “high score” go up.
Edit: TyposPost edited by HerInfernalMajesty on1 -
Survivors overall should get more bloodpoints. Maxing out all 4 categories is basically only possible when there is a farming killer.
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Very true, had a whole night of Solo Q recently where I died four matches in a row, finally escaped on my fifth and got zero pips and bronze and silver emblems despite pulling a 3man out against Nurse when one of our teammates gave up on 4gens left.
Like, what's the point of a ranking and reward system if it doesn't, y'know, rank and reward things appropriately? On killer, I think the system is decent enough, but there should be some serious changes on the other end imo.
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A comeback mechanic where gen repair speeds increase once a survivor is sacrificed so that having one person tunnelled out isn't an automatic 4k over 90 percent of the time. A lot of survivors that go next do that because they don't see a chance of escape so give them a chance.
If this is also balanced out with slowing down gen speeds while all survivors are alive this should encourage 1, 2 and 3Ks more often.
It also incidentally discourages tunnelling as spreading hooks would become more effective. That would also discourage going next as people are more likely to stay in an enjoyable match instead of one that's not enjoyable.
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The thing that would probably be the most effective would also be something ridiculously crazy. The main problem we see is that there's rarely a specific thing to nail down. Some leave because they see a "losing" game and want out, others don't like this or that, etc. We don't think there's a reward that would be reasonable and would keep a majority.
Personally we'd like a guaranteed pip for an escape (despite the worries some of us have) and more of everything really. More iridescent shards for leveling up devotion, more rift exp, and maybe small amounts of cells too if we're being greedy. The idea behind this madness is the better you do in a match the more devotion exp you get to get these rewards while it works for both sides (well sans the pip part). It's basically a buff to what already happens but its what we'd want.
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As an aside this I just want to say this is an enjoyable conversation.
I agree. It's is nice to have a pleasant back-and-forth conversation on the forums :)
I think I remember hearing that challenges were going to be overhauled so that there is central bank of challenges that simultaneously fill as you complete the miscellaneous tasks. I love that, it’s like how some battle royale game challenges work.
Ooh, I hope that's true. I like doing the Tome challenges.
I know it would garner a lot of opposition but how do you feel about “death rewards”? On the surface it may seem like people will die on purpose just for these “death tokens” but if we just shelf that problem for a bit in my opinion it would go a
verylong way in reducing the sting of death on the Survivor side. It could even be a like death punch card. Just something to make players feel like they are making more progress than BP or Devotion level.I think this has a lot of possibilities, as long as it's handled with care. Like I said, people feel that there's no difference in dying early vs dying later, so why stick it out if you feel your death is assured. If people make it to the late game and die, it can hurt a lot more than dying early: you put in all that effort and don't get the big reward. Dying early is no big deal compared to the absolute frustration of dying later. As people get further into the match, they take fewer risks, they participate less, because participation is what gets them killed. And again, it's escape that matters.
There are many instances where death stings when it shouldn't, and those are the instances that deserve some sort of reward so the player feels like their sacrifice was worth it. For example:
- You open the exit gate but don't escape
- You go to save someone in the end game but fail (yes, it's a fail, but players should be encouraged to try and right now they're really not)
- You go to save someone in the end game and succeed but die in the process
- You do a lot of gens or keep the killer in chase for much of the match, and then you're hooked in the end game and your team leaves you to die
- There are still gens left, it's down to 2v1, and you die saving your teammate
Those are deaths the player should feel good about and yet the game treats them no differently than if they'd died two minutes into the match. Risks in video games are the fun part, but this game punishes taking risks so much that many survivors play it as safe as humanly possible. Dying in the video game doesn't kill us in real life, but the way many players act you'd never know it.
Even just adding rift level 200 feels better than before even though it is just BP. It feels good to see a counter or “high score” go up.
I agree with this. I don't need BP at all and yet I feel rewarded in a match where I earn a lot of BP and I feel like I wasted time in a match where I earn very little. This is totally counterintuitive because I actually hate spending BP, I try to avoid prestiging my favorite characters, and yet my brain is still tricked into feeling rewarded when I earn BP. It's so silly.
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The rewards you all mentioned sound pretty great. The idea that the better you do the better the rewards feels like a no-brainer. Maybe we’ve all outgrown Bloodpoints lol
Personally we'd like a guaranteed pip for an escape (despite the worries some of us have)
What’s the worry?
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People using sole survivor + wake up + left for dead + [random] way more often to leave their team to the wolves when things look dicey and use these to get out alone.
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What reward (if any) would keep you in a game that you would otherwise leave?The prospect of better teammates. Similar to the old emblem system, it encouraged trying the best and remaining active in an already lost match to pip up and get better teammates who are actually doing something.
Nothing else would work for me. I don't need bloodpoints, I don't need shards, all I want is that most of my matches feel fun and fair.
If they're not going to fix MMR and matchmaking and expect me to lose most of my games thus making MMR gains hopeless, I'd want being one of the last two (or the last) survivor a less boring experience. It's either slug for 4k (super boring and complete waste of my precious time) or search for hatch (less boring, but feels utterly unrewarding and pointless since it's too much RNG). Eliminate the 4k slug and replace hatch with something more exciting, I don't know what, maybe a 1v1 of last survivor and killer where skill matters enough that when you get out you gain MMR.
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The prospect of better teammates. Similar to the old emblem system, it encouraged trying the best and remaining active in an already lost match to pip up and get better teammates who are actually doing something.
all I want is that most of my matches feel fun and fair.
This is a very good point. My biggest gripe is my teammates.
It drives me nuts that no matter how well I do, low MMR hell keeps me at the bottom because I don't want to play in a 4-man. I don't escape. I do gens, I do chases, I do saves and heal and take aggro if the killer comes back to the hook, but unless I escape it all means nothing and I continue to get the same teammates who will abandon me first thing. I am always complaining that MMR rewards the wrong thing, that participation matters way more than escape. I want fun matches.
Like I said in my earlier posts, I want to feel rewarded for participating. Getting better teammates is one of the biggest rewards the game could give.
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During the last Chaos Shuffle, I got two of my teammates off the hook in the end game and they were able to safely make it to the exit gate. Maybe the Killer just respected my sacrifice I don't know, but it felt good to get them out all the same.
I did this because I knew there's no MMR loss or gain in the time limited modes. Would I have played this way in the regular mode? Probably not. And I don't go back into the map to try to get the rest of the team to safety unless a lot of us still have hooks to spare.
At the moment, DBD is split between two play styles: aggressive, altruistic team players and the more selfish, lone wolf scaredy cat types. Ideally, the game should be able to support both play styles. I think it would be pretty dull if it didn't (I think I fall between both styles at times, depending on the situation).
But overall, I think the game would be healthier if MMR gains and losses were more team based. Maybe it could be a system like this:
A 2K should be a draw with no loss or gain for either side.
A 3K or 4K for the Killer - Killer gains points, all Survivors lose points. If hatch is found by a Survivor, there will still be a BP reward (and you still get the feel good factor of escaping).
A 3E or 4E for the Survivors - All Survivors in the trial gain points. Survivors that die also gain points, but slightly less points than the others. I know this doesn't fully solve the issue when a Survivor is tunnelled all game, but still manages to keep the Killer occupied so the others can complete the gens and escape, but it's better than a total loss.
Losses and gains are adjusted for any big discrepancies in MMR scores (though I assume this is already the case). If I'm predicted to wipe the floor with a Survivor team and that's exactly happens, they should lose pretty much no MMR points at all.
For all we know, this could be the system that's already in place. I don't think anyone outside of BHVR really knows how it works.
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They actually used to have that, but it was removed. When it was first introduced, The Hatch spawned (but was closed) once there was a certain number of generators remaining, based on the current number of survivors alive. If I recall correctly, it was 1 for 4, 2 for 3, 3 for 2, then the normal last survivor it opens. If players had a key, this meant that they could all escape through the hatch, all 4 survivors, if they completed enough generators but for some reason could not or did not choose to complete the last ones. There was even an achievement for opening the hatch and having all 4 survivors use it (this was then changed to just needing one survivor to open the hatch with a key and use it.)
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I did this because I knew there's no MMR loss or gain in the time limited modes. Would I have played this way in the regular mode? Probably not. And I don't go back into the map to try to get the rest of the team to safety unless a lot of us still have hooks to spare.
A match that comes to mind is one I had in Lights Out 2.0. The killer was not very aggressive at all. Not sure he hooked anyone during the match, actually. But he did hook someone around the time all the gens got done. Hooked Lara down in the basement. People were healthy, alive, no one was in danger, no MMR to impact… and yet both of the other two survivors on my team ran straight the hell out. I couldn't do that to the Lara. I went to the basement and the killer was nowhere to be found. I got her out easily. I really don't think the killer was trying to kill, especially since he wasn't camping, but even if he were there was no reason for the other two survivors to ditch. Yet they did.
That's how this game has trained people to play. They get to the end, they don't want to risk anything.
I think the game would be healthier if MMR gains and losses were more team based
Yes, I made a post above about how I think participation in the match is more important than escape, and MMR needs to be adjusted to reflect that. I would like to be rewarded for participating by getting better teammates, teammates who also participate. The more emphasis BHVR places on escapes, the worse the experience is. If people aren't rewarded for participating in the game, if the only thing that matters is escape, then playstyles are going to reflect that. That includes giving up early if escape isn't guaranteed. Win or lose, people should be able to enjoy playing the match. Yes, some people will only enjoy winning because that's how they're wired, but the game should not constantly reinforce that so it becomes true for everyone.
tldr: The more emphasis BHVR places on escapes, the worse the experience for everyone.
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I think survivors "must" have a team-based score, not the individual.
Overall it will encourage team-play, over being lonely-wolf. Even if you played poorly and died early, you still have a chance to get pip if your teammates played good and escaped.
But there is 2 sides to that, unfortunately - unexperienced\bad players from a survivor team will decrease overall score point of the team. This system will also encourage afk playstyles (why I need to work for points, if my team is good? I'll just stand there and let my team work).
While I want more team-play as a survivor, I'm always get reminded by the 2 sides issue…
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BP all around for survivors needs a buff. maxing all every thing to iri and leaving only gets at most 27k points (Not counting the killer specific 200 scores stacking) that takes 30 minutes and a killer farming a challenge or BP around. Most games in got escape you get around 12-17k. And every killer game unless they are new is 20k-35K points in 7-15 minutes depending on how efficient they are.
The main objective for survivors is only 1k points on a 90 second solo completion. Being chased for 30 seconds nets more points.4
