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Finisher Mori has indirectly made the survivor experience worse

Laluzi
Laluzi Member Posts: 6,223
edited November 1 in General Discussions

I truly didn't expect this to happen without a bloodpoint incentive, but here we are. I tracked 22 matches, watching the game play out if I died early. There were 4 where players escaped out the gates, so technically 18 matches with relevant data. 10 of them had the killer slug the second last survivor. In 6 of those matches, they slugged for over 30 seconds in order to wait for the mori to become available. In one instance, I asked the killer not to do this in endgame chat, and they blamed the person on hook for making them wait, as though they didn't have full control over simply hooking everyone.

I've also seen an increase of killers deliberately bleeding everyone out, in that it's gone from a one in a hundred game type thing to maybe one in twenty-five. Still rare, but not nearly as rare as it ought to be. I can't tell if giving hatch has become rarer or not - it feels like it's rarer, but that's because a killer standing on you waiting for someone to die on hook often meant hatch before, where now it's almost always a mori. But it's unlikely the same players who wait to mori would have waited to give hatch before.

I gave it a few weeks to see if the hype over a shiny new feature would die down. Perhaps it did slightly, but the dust has settled in a state of affairs that's noticeably worse than before.

Slugging for the 4k was already very unpopular to face, and dangling another incentive for killers to do it - and keep doing it after they've won - has only made the problem worse. I think BHVR needs to address this and either give survivors a way to leave the match under these circumstances without losing everything they've earned (I've always championed being able to replace yourself with a bot when everyone's incapacitated and it seems more relevant than ever), or redesign this system, before proceeding with more expansions to moris.

I'd like to clarify that this is not an issue with slugging as a strategy. I have zero desire to see basekit Unbreakable in the game and I think the risk-reward of slugging is currently fine (outside of Knock Out, which is just a solo queue griefing perk.) And in the problem situation, the killer has legitimately won the game. The issue is that survivors are regularly being forced to wait in games that the gameplay loop intends for them to be killed in, and that killers are being incentivized to keep players in lost games instead of sending them next. Waiting on the floor is becoming part of the gameplay loop. This is causing a lot of frustration and general dissatisfaction with the game. I know I'm not alone in this. Being completely helpless, having lost, and not being able to go next because the other player wants a power trip is not a good feeling and it's become the spoiled cherry atop my questionable sundae that is solo queue.

Comments

  • angrychuck
    angrychuck Member Posts: 79

    I've been playing quite a bit of survivor recently and I have seen more slugging than normal but not nearly as much as people seem to have been. It might be because I'm ash right now but idk.

  • Prometheus1092
    Prometheus1092 Member Posts: 398

    Personally I've only started doing it since the 2v1 situation got out of control lol. Before that, it never benefit me to slug.

  • Spare_Them_Mori_Me
    Spare_Them_Mori_Me Member Posts: 1,674
    edited November 1

    Ah, makes sense. I wonder what kinda of findings we'd have in going through the history of DBD and finding cause and effects. Like.. what really caused tunneling to uptick? The comp scene? Thats my bet. What really started an uptick in bleeding out? SO many questions I'd love answered.

    The slugging thing has been around long enough. But its only become a bit more common lately. One could guess the finisher Mori, and honestly, Im sure it added to it. But it was happening before. So eh.

  • radiantHero23
    radiantHero23 Member Posts: 4,238

    Thanks for the insightful post.

    I honestly didn't think that the mechanic would be that impactful. It felt to me more like an optional ending that might come into play in like 1/5 games.

    Come to think of it, I've also seen people that are very keen on achieving their 4th kill as a mori. Why do people want this so badly???

  • BrightWolf
    BrightWolf Member Posts: 444

    Yep, their first iteration of the finisher mori was such a bad idea I'm even surprised it made it to PTB, I'm even more surprised this version made it to PTB. But whatever, I'm not a Dev.

    IMHO a better solution to the 4-man slug problem would be to create a "concede" vote between all four survivors, say if any number of survivors have been slugged for 30-60 seconds, a vote pops up and says "The entity is feeling generous and would like to extent an offer to concede defeat? Yes? No?" at which point it's put to a majority vote, if the majority is "yes" the Enity comes in a kills the survivors similar to EGC if you stay beyond the timer. If a "no" vote, you stay slugged but are then offered the chance to concede again in say 5-10 seconds, and the full bleedout timer is still 4 minutes.

    I figured adding in the small "wait" timer is to prevent salty people who are slugged for strategic purposes, say trying and failing flashlight or sabbo saves, from just giving up instantly.

    As to discourage the 4-man bleedout from killers, I'd award a penalty to the survivors who had to concede, like say a set amount of BP for every generator remaining unrepaired and punish the killer for leaving the survivors slugged for too long. Maybe not removing BP, but rewarding less of it, because they didn't play the game, they just left four people on the ground out of spite.

    I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not, but it's an idea.

  • albertoplus
    albertoplus Member Posts: 389
    edited November 1

    Mori should totally be available if every person is hooked already.

    Having said that, however… i think you should also blame the survivor who is struggling in the hook when no one is going to come to rescue him. That person can get out asap and so the killer will mori and the match will end.

    The killer choses to mori in that situation, but the hooked survivor choses to drag out that moment. Its both's fault.

    On that case yeah, killer should be able to mori if everyone else are hooked so the match can be over quickly.

    Now, about the slugging last second person so he finds and mori the last one.. it was already being done thanks to hatch, so nothing changes here.

  • Royval
    Royval Member Posts: 733

    blowing it out of proportion if they wanna stop slugging for 4k remove the trap door.

  • Spare_Them_Mori_Me
    Spare_Them_Mori_Me Member Posts: 1,674

    This would be awesome actually, if the killer would have a 50% penalty to BPS, maybe more. A growing penalty like DC'ing could work also. But, otherwise… it would just force a concede for faster games. I think it would exasperate slugging and scummy playstyles. Could be wrong though!

    There's workarounds for a lot of ideas. That sucks, but thats how it goes.

  • Royval
    Royval Member Posts: 733

    I really don’t care if the survivors don’t get an escape count for getting the trap door if you don’t do all the gens you should never be able to escape.

  • BrightWolf
    BrightWolf Member Posts: 444

    Thank you, I've been thinking about ideas on how to dissuade slugging without encouraging the "Go Next" mentality that is common with some survivor players when the game isn't "going their way" and killer players who will just 4-man slug to end the game faster.

    Honestly, trying to come up with a healthy middle alternative is tricky, so I can understand and appreciate the position the devs are in. Especially since I have had a few massive fights with some of the community over on Reddit. When I suggested a one-time usage (notice the "one-time use" as in can only be used once per game without having the perks equipped and they don't stack) of a basekit Unbrekabale or Decisive Strike as a potential/hypothetical option to prevent slugging or tunnelling. With the caveat of the one-time usage basekit DS or UB deactivating in the EGC, with the gates powered/open.
    I tell you, the responses I got from some people, you'd have thought I had suggested that we commit human sacrifice or drown a basket of puppies to stop slugging and tunnelling.

    Like I get second-chance perks can be used aggressively, and are annoying to deal with. I've used OTR to protect my teammates from tunnelling attempts all the time (If I'm able to get close enough to them to allow for such usage, cause I suck at chase lmao) and I know old DS was used as a last-minute end-game escape along with old BT and DH and people are worried it would be the return of that.
    However, something needs to be done as slugging for the 4K-mori and four-man bleed outs is starting to become common even in middle-low MMR and that is a huge problem.

  • Pelaan
    Pelaan Member Posts: 221

    Except they can't nerf it it's the most bare bones of what they wanted theres no possible way to nerf it their only option is to remove it except the Devs are so hard stuck on keeping this finisher Mori system this is gonna be the new norm sadly

  • drsoontm
    drsoontm Member Posts: 4,903

    It's often faster than waiting.

    Beside if you find the hatch first you can either "call" the survivor to it or close it to guarantee a collapse.

    How many times I've been in a match where the survivor can't seem to find the hatch?

    And if you find the survivor first, then it's a last chase you can have.

    There is no downside.

  • drsoontm
    drsoontm Member Posts: 4,903

    I certainly didn't asked but I'm kind of glad they did it.

    It can be a satisfying ending for the match, or at least a change from the usual hook.

    And I've been showing DbD to Discord friends these past few days and they loved to see the Moris (Plague was their favorite). So far I got us two new victims/killers to play with/against.

    Also, many are expecting BHVR will sell us new Moris in the shop. Making them more frequent is a good way to do it. I don't know for you but until now I may have used fifty or so Moris over the past five years.

  • Pelaan
    Pelaan Member Posts: 221

    Agreed way more satisfying end of match with new system can't wait for the Mori shop so the variety will be immense for the game

  • Toystory3Monkey
    Toystory3Monkey Member Posts: 809

    I called it from day one, but people called me crazy.

    It's kinda sad how devs didnt think of anything to address 2v1/1v1 alongside adding the biggest incentive to sweat for 4k so far.

    they could`ve make it so that you could kill 3rd survivor and get a hint where the 4th survivor is so you have less guessing involved at least.

  • Toystory3Monkey
    Toystory3Monkey Member Posts: 809

    basekit UB was scrapped because it was weaponized and was unfun mechanic for both sides (mainly for killers, but I can assure you, it wasnt very fun to hold m1 for 45 seconds as survivor or have a perk slot permanently locked with a perk that doesnt really do anything normally). I wasnt even remotely surprised they scrapped it, just too many issues, not worth the value.

    It took away killer's ability to punish swarming/group ups, counter sabo/saves and it also lead to hardcore slugging becoming a consistent win con because recovering w/o unbreakable perk was very hard and the moment you played whack a mole enough to get 4th survivor down, the game was instantly over which saved you a lot of time and made it actually worth doing.

    so it essentially punished&took away ability to utilize slugging as a fair strategy, but made everyone double down on all toxic instances of it.

    they had to find some solutions to easing the frustrations of being slugged, but they failed to realized the way to solve issues like that is not give more counterplay than they already have, but make the process itself less boring and painful. they never try, though, sadly.

  • jajay119
    jajay119 Member Posts: 1,061

    I know why base kit UB wasn’t included my point is they should have thought of an alternative. Now we’ve handed more powers to a situation that was already problematic.

  • Toystory3Monkey
    Toystory3Monkey Member Posts: 809

    yes, but i suppose they didnt think it would be an issue.

    i think when asked about finisher mori encouraging slugging for 4k, they said you cant use it if the other person is slugged. that sums it up honestly.

  • jajay119
    jajay119 Member Posts: 1,061

    I can see that but we all know it’s a hand wave - they were willing it not to be an issue when they knew it would be because the evidence is already there.

  • Toystory3Monkey
    Toystory3Monkey Member Posts: 809

    we`ll just have to wait and see.

    i dont really trust them with a solution, tbh. we're already past the point where their solution would be "here's a timer that just makes it so it's not an indefinite hostage situation" and it's not enough, so the next step is usually hurting good faith gameplay to try to make bad faith gameplay harder. Though in that case there's no bad faith gameplay in the first place, it would be more like just removing good faith gameplay because they`d want to prioritize survivor's fun over fairness to killer.

  • squbax
    squbax Member Posts: 1,493

    The comp scene literally use slugging in an effective way, not like the pub killers that slug everyone for 4 minutes. Its funny af how people just blame comp because they need something to blame without even having an idea whats going on in comp.

  • albertoplus
    albertoplus Member Posts: 389

    Honestly i dont even remember about that. Maybe i did, maybe i dont.

    However im pretty sure you know that giving up on hook at first down or giving up on hook when you are the second to last to die, the other two survivors are dead and the last one is being slugged…yeah, those are not by far the same thing, and you know it.

  • TerraEsram
    TerraEsram Member Posts: 671

    It's what the dev wanted in the game
    Otherwise, they never have the idea to do that

  • edgarpoop
    edgarpoop Member Posts: 8,369

    I'm of the opinion that trials in general drag on way past their expiration date. Would love to see the devs address the pacing of trials and clean up those last 3-5 minutes where the result is locked in but the trial just keeps on going

  • bjorksnas
    bjorksnas Member Posts: 5,616

    Simple solution

    Allow the killer to mori the last survivor if all other survivors are on hooks past stage 1

    Now you don't have to wait for a killer to let the person die on hook and go through the 10s of sacrifice animation

    Also we don't have any actual statistics on how common it was before the changes. Your set of data is purely observational, we can get ideas from it but unless you have a solid control data set to compare it to its worthless to draw actual conclusions from. There is a non 0 chance that its EXACTLY the same as it was before but now that there is a high potential for a bit of waiting to be attached to it the feeling from it is being exaggerated and feels much worse that before thus while not more common feels more impactful every time it happens.

  • cluelessclaudette
    cluelessclaudette Member Posts: 67

    another half baked idea by BHVR. Sometimes I think they don't think or do any sort of balance contemplation on big changes.

    i've had killers work with the 2nd last survivor to out me out cause of this dog piss change.

  • Phantom_
    Phantom_ Member Posts: 1,354

    BHVR devs seem to be very impulsive, they will just about throw anything in the game, without ever truly testing it themselves, because why should they when they have a select few in the PTB doing their literal jobs for them? And based on what those few say, they will either ENTIRELY revert their changes or go so overboard with it that they nerf things into the ground and it becomes useless once more.

    See what they did with Freddy, Trickster, Chess Merchant, on and on the list goes. I've never seen Devs of any other game try to ruin their playerbase's experience as much as BHVR seems to be set to do. Said it before and will say it again BHVR needs to take lessons from CD Project Red, and actually FIX their mess of a game and come out with something better, not updates that cause more bugs. Not changes that lead to more nerfs or overpowered bs.

  • smurf
    smurf Member Posts: 342

    It's a big mistake on BHVR's part though. I suspect a decent fraction of people are going to stop playing the game. I used to play some every day, but now with all the tunneling, proxy camping, and slugging for 4k/mori I'm seeing, I've only played one day in the last four and don't even feel like I want to.

    Killer can be fun, and I tend to play it about 30% of my time in game, but survivor is more fun for me. If things keep heading in the direction they are, I suspect I'm not the only one who'll have this experience.

  • theblimp
    theblimp Member Posts: 161

    They should just make it so that if all other survivors in the trial are on second hook stage or dead and the last survivor goes down then you can mori. disincentivizes slugging for the 4k and means there'snot a waste of time waiting for the last person to die on hook

  • baharuto48
    baharuto48 Member Posts: 123

    I feel bad for the survivor slugged but I hope I'm the one getting Mori. I try to give Mori the way survivors wanted hatch from killer.