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A Thorough, Comprehensive Set Of Slugging Changes
Comments
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Nope, it offers an answer for one scenario for the killer: Survivors trying to make themselves unhookable as a team. It doesn't help as much for just one survivor doing it, but you don't really need a basekit answer to that, so that's fine.
And, yeah, obviously this is primarily a survivor buff, the issue is a killer action so that's how you'd fix it.
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SWFs make playing solo hard because SWFS have hard counters to slugging solo none.
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But it doesn’t even really help the killer because it requires the survivors to do a specific action, that the survivors can delay indefinitely.
You could have just given killers an extra 20 second wiggle time as base kit, with zero requirements. But instead, you want it to be the survivor team’s decision on whether or not the killer can get extra wiggle time.
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I mean, yeah?
It's only supposed to happen in very specific scenarios, IE, multiple survivors trying to make it impossible to hook them. Because leaving them slugged indefinitely would be impossible with my suggestions, and that's the way you'd primarily counter that team strategy right now, I wanted to suggest something that would help the killer in that scenario.
If you're in that scenario, someone has to get picked up eventually or they're just letting the killer win. When they get picked up, that's when this new status effect would kick in.
Ideally it'd just stop survivors from trying this deeply obnoxious strat in the first place, it's definitely not supposed to happen every game.
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no thanks. i as killer will never agree to be punished for slugging in any shape or form. the only feedback i have towards performing slugging is that 4 minute bleed out timers in isolation are too long and drag out the game. that is why for awhile, i always suggesting that survivors when picking a survivor up have 10-25 second bleed out penalty for picking up a survivor from dying state to injured state.
this rewards me as killer for successfully downing a survivor and artificially lowers bleed out timer for survivor that repetitively are put into the dying state.
All these suggestions of 45 second unbreakable and 4→5 minutes and Your power as killer goes away upon down(Like freddy) is all complete non-sense. These idea are not good health and should be eradicated.
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I don't think we'd see less aggressive, four-man slugging if you made slugging stronger. That's going in entirely the wrong direction to address the problem.
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It was never announced as a feature in that patch, it just randomly started happening. Pretty much since as far back as i can remember (around a bit before legion release) it has been this way that killers picking up survivors body blocked survivors.
Letting killers grab survivors from one side of the pallet or the other, to prevent pallet saves, but more importantly, it is the reason flashbang is so busted right now. Because a survivor can walk inside the killer and drop the flashbang even if the killer is facing the wall it will still blind them.
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Those are terrible suggestions. It practically eliminates all the risks to a flashllight squad. They can be as risky with their saves as they want because by the time the killer downs them all the other half will up again and ready to go in for the save and repeat that over and over until after over 6 full slugs each they will finally bleed out or, more likely, the killer will make a mistake somewhere down the line and they will return top a dominant position.
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Fair play...
I only started playing May 2023, and I was probably just not astute enough to realise you could body block pallets in this way, so never tried, and have since becoming more aware just accepted you can't body block as fact xD
Kinda crazy how this one has not appeared on my radar before now xD
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I mean, the main risk of a flashlight play is just plainly that it's very likely not to work and you've wasted your time.
Flashlights can be avoided easier than pallet saves in most scenarios, so that's not really a big concern here.
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Flashbangs and Pallets are unavoidable if timed right.
Flashlgihts can be avoided by looking away so they don't work on randoms as well, but in a SWF the Survivor will know to go down in the open and will likely have multiple people ready to come in for a save and/or teammates with background player.
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That is the one very specific scenario in which flashlights can be harder to avoid, yeah. In my experience it's not super common.
There's still stuff you can do, but you do have to be more on the ball about it. Having a basekit Unbreakable that activates twice as slowly wouldn't really change much there.
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aggressive four man slugging is fair gameplay. the whole premise is that it is on the survivor to go down and be put into the dying state. it is entirely survivor fault for being put into dying state. they are also at fault for being put on the hook.
being put on the hook is intermediate step towards an optional killer objective where you are suppose to be rewarded for completing this objective. The default reward is suppose to be killing survivors faster however due to changes such as increasing hook timer from 60→70, it has made unhooking unrewarding. Survivor are also suppose to be put in vulnerable positions for hooking however this is largely mitigated by perks such as Base-kit borrow time and items like stypic agent where you unhook, pop styptic and than you get to move 30 meter in any direction.
as result of these type of nerfs to hooks, many killer feel that the rewards are not there and more of drawback as you waste 10-12 seconds on hook+give up position map advantage. as a result, they slug.
the way to fix slugging is to make hooking more rewarding such as reverting 60→70 second change and removal base-kit borrow time. other alternatives are to look into perk that reward killer for hooking. we will be looking into game-delay perks.
these perk being
Pop goes weasel
Grim embrace
Scourge hook: pain res
Scourge hook: Gift of pain.
Instead of removing base-kit BT or decreasing hook timers, you may choose take one of these perks and put them into base-kit. they give game-delay to the killer which cancels out the delay for hooking. Pop goes weasel to kick a gen, easily worst one out of 4 as it wastes time kicking gens unlike other 3 which are automatic. Grim embrace block all gens, it's very mild but does cancel it perfectly. Pain res hits 1 gen. it is reward would be over-time regression to cancel 12x3 progression bonus. Gift of pain grants -16% repair and healing after healing. this does incentive spreading hooks but the amount of charges remaining in the game varies from # of gens needed to complete so it has early game syndrome problem. survivor may also choose remain injured so there is that problem.
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I have a couple of issues here— the first is that I think it's kind of debatable whether aggressive four man slugging is fair gameplay. It definitely does have counterplay, but a lot of that counterplay is locked behind either specific perk picks or coordination, the latter being effectively locked out of solo queue games.
Regular slugging is unambiguously fair gameplay, but as more survivors get knocked down, the less fair it becomes. In solo queue it's often not obvious to any one player that they need to be aggressively trying to pick up their teammates until the second person's knocked down, and by that point the killer's already looking for the third.
I am sympathetic to the idea that the solution should be some kind of information instead of a more potent effect, but personally speaking, I think that's too much of a half-measure. Basekit Unbreakable is a scary proposition because of the ways it could be abused, but if potential abuse is properly removed from the system, it's a perfectly fair way of addressing the issue while maintaining the fair gameplay. It's best to just, try and fix the problem outright if you can.
The rest is stuff I know you and I have gone over before, so I won't belabour the point too intensely. Suffice to say, hooking is supposed to be rewarding because of the opportunities it opens up for you, not because it's supposed to generate the value for you the way regression perks like Pain Res and even arguably Pop do. When you actively capitalise on hooks, the time spent doing the hooking pays for itself and then some.
Many killers may feel that hooking isn't worth it in the current state of the game, but they're wrong. That feeling may be relevant to conversations, but it shouldn't be considered an unquestioned truth.
Also, even if hooking weren't worth it in the current state of the game, you wouldn't fix that by reintroducing old problems like no tunnel protection or easier camping.
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Yes it would. It would allow the Survivors coming in to be as risky as they want and it would stop slugging from being punishing because no one needs to waste their time coming for the pick up.
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I mean, they can't be that risky or they'll get downed as well.
45 seconds isn't particularly short by DBD standards, if survivors are reckless you have time to down them depending on context.
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You need to down 3 Survivors in a 45 second window to get 1 hook or unless they can go in for the save. And if you fail they can recover.
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Many killers may feel that hooking isn't worth it in the current state of the game, but they're wrong. That feeling may be relevant to conversations, but it shouldn't be considered an unquestioned truth.
No, your wrong. your the one that is complaining about my gameplay or other killer's gameplay to slug. Your not in charge of dictating how i(Other) should be playing.
Also, even if hooking weren't worth it in the current state of the game, you wouldn't fix that by reintroducing old problems like no tunnel protection or easier camping.
Enable tunneling to be stronger or easier camping is increase in reward for hooking. it may be unpopular way to boost reward of hooking but it is still metric to be considered.
I have a couple of issues here— the first is that I think it's kind of debatable whether aggressive four man slugging is fair gameplay. It definitely does have counterplay, but a lot of that counterplay is locked behind either specific perk picks or coordination, the latter being effectively locked out of solo queue games.
The coordination is not any different than holding m1 to recover and healing someone of the floor. there is knock out and third seal which remove the UI info from soloq survivor and that is questionable design within in the game but swf vs soloq is separate problem that many player talked about. take away information is likely WRONG way to balance dbd. they still have no aura's to find healing survivors. they still have no auras to see where survivor are working gens to lead killer in efficient chase paths. there is no aura for-co-op gens. there is still no aura for pallets are used. it's separate issue to slugging.
As right now, BVHR believes that taking away information is good design and so we are here with said perk designs to nerf soloq so that killer can 4k more easily by bad plays.
I am sympathetic to the idea that the solution should be some kind of information instead of a more potent effect,
game-delay perks just some of possible thing to add to hook to increase reward. other ways is to invent 6 perk slots and every time a killer hook all 4 survivors, they unlock perk slot. that is another potencial reward. the problem is, if your reward sucks or isn't good enough for that "slugging" killer player where they say, who cares 6 perks, they'll just continue slug until you present them with solution that is stronger then what they're doing.
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I feel like this hypothetical is getting away from us here.
At this stage you're talking about a scenario where nobody is doing generators, everyone is getting downed one after another, and even when they pick themselves up they go right back towards the killer instead of resetting.
That doesn't sound like a game the survivors are going to win, to me. One of them is, unavoidably, going to go down next to a tall enough structure that they can be picked up, and if nobody is doing generators it doesn't matter how long that takes.
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In order:
1: Absolutely, I don't dictate how anyone should play. That's… pretty obviously not what I'm doing here, though. This thread is pretty obviously some suggestions to make certain elements of the game more fair and balanced, not decrees that other players must follow of their own volition.
2: "Unpopular" is a misleading way of phrasing it. They'd be ways of increasing the reward for hooking that are unfair and unbalanced, so the only real relevance they have to discussions like this is that they're obviously not viable options. If we wanted to increase the reward for hooking - which, the reward is perfectly good right now so that's not necessary - we'd have to look elsewhere because we can't just make the game unfair and unbalanced on purpose.
3: The coordination starts with knowing you need to do those things to begin with. A survivor left on the ground for a few seconds could be the start of a killer that's trying to slug aggressively, or it could be a killer kicking a pallet, or a killing trying to harass away someone with a flashlight. If it's one of those scenarios, you going over there makes things worse, it takes someone off generators to give the killer free value + pressure.
In solo queue, you don't even know you need to start running over to aggressively pick up your teammates for sure until someone else gets downed. From there, you have to gamble on whether the killer's looping back around to their first down or not- if they are, congrats, you're giving the killer more free value + pressure by approaching.
In addition, you also have the smaller questions. Who's going over to pick the first guy up? Does the first guy have Unbreakable? Will anyone else actually be doing generators if I leave mine to go pick this person up? Is the first guy even recovering right now? None of these are The Reasons to address slugging on their own, but they compound the main reasons above.
All that on top of default recovery being kinda slow, incentivising bringing perks to make it quicker, makes countering aggressive slugging without preparation kinda hard. Not impossible, but hard enough that it warrants a conversation about whether it's fair. I don't think it's absurd to say it isn't, which is why I thought it'd be a fun thought exercise to come up with a fair way of fixing it.
4: I don't know why this point is connected to that quote? I was talking about the survivors getting more information so they knew to start countering an aggressive slugging strategy.
But, as stated, the reward for hooking is more than good enough if you're actively using that reward. It doesn't give it to you for free passively, you have to go chase someone to actually get the reward for hooking.
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It is a winning scenario. Because if one of them manages to chase zou around for long enough the others can recover.
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45s is a long time for killers, but its 45s MAX of a single survivors time which is basically nothing.
If you compare it to what it is now, with the ability to pick yourself up you drastically increase the time efficiency of survivors it is always efficient to not go pick a teammate up if they are outside of 52m even if you could go after them directly with no pressure from the killer and no worry about having to be healthy, the time spent going to them, and picking them up 45s (52m away slug = (13s of travel + 9.5s of healing) x 2 for 2 survivors time being taken up) 45s. Now for fun lets add into the mix you have to back where you came from like a gen or something like that, you know get travel time x 3 and healing time x2 for total time taken up. Meaning if the survivor is further than ~26m away, you lose time efficiency as a team to go get them.
And again best case scenario the killer slugs them and vanishes into the mist. You don't go for pickups outside ~26m for time efficiency to sit on a gen
You remove any of the requirement to play smart of play as a team if you let everyone do everything by themselves as the team role and drastically reduce the effect on survivor time efficiency because 45s from one player doesn't compare even close to the upper limit that a single slug can cost the survivors as a team currently. If you add any other factors like being healed up before going for a save, healing yourself before going for a save, ect you also have to think about the time spent preforming actions before going for a save vs weighing the risk reward of going for it anyway.
Grand scheme huge survivor buff to not actually having to play as a team no buffs to the killers who basically need it to get by or get through some matches, no dice.
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…Isn't all that assuming you'll actually let those survivors pick themselves up, though?
You don't have to do that. I acknowledged that you could to try and knock everyone down and force them to reset, but you don't have to.
Killers with slug-happy powers would be pushed to just cash out with two downs at worst, as far as I can see. You very rarely are in a situation where you have to slug for over 45 seconds, and anyone picking themselves up during that time is catastrophically bad for you.
Your post seems to be from the perspective of a player that just wants to knock everyone down before even trying to hook as just, their basic strategy, and that's the literal thing that these changes would be trying to weaken, that's the entire purpose of doing this in the first place.
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My perspective is that you are allowed that as an option, and even if you back out of it you still buy a decent chunk of time from it and not you can do 2 max before you are no longer allowed to have agency as a killer on how you want to win.
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Absolutely, I don't dictate how anyone should play.
adding base-kit unbreakable is dictating how the player should play by removing any alternative.
They'd be ways of increasing the reward for hooking that are unfair and unbalanced
That is merely perception. unfair and unbalanced can be in many forms. this is only one of them.
In addition, you also have the smaller questions. Who's going over to pick the first guy up? Does the first guy have Unbreakable? Will anyone else actually be doing generators if I leave mine to go pick this person up? Is the first guy even recovering right now? None of these are The Reasons to address slugging on their own, but they compound the main reasons above.
all of these and more are soloq vs swf problems. as i said, i think most of these would be solved by granting soloq base-kit bond. Blindness and Knock out are complete opposite of the problem. they're exaggerate soloq incompetency for slugging and unhooking. I am surprise that third seal does not remove the bubble for when the survivor put on the hook. I think it should consider how it works for slugging. Not that i think these two perk are good design. they're another example of as you would call it "Unfair and Unbalanced".
All that on top of default recovery being kinda slow, incentive's bringing perks to make it quicker, makes countering aggressive slugging without preparation kinda hard
I disagree. I would argue opposite. 4 minutes to bleed out someone with 32 second recovery times is 30 x 6. you need 6 downs to bleed someone out to 1 minute. that is twice number of downs compare to hooks. that is extremely long. it is no wonder that dbd gameplay for killer in relation to slugging is unnaturally slow. hooking itself, 10 hooks is like 12-15 minutes games. now if you need double downs, your looking at nearly 20-25 minute games. 25 minute games is like old skull merchant 3 gen games. it is way too long. survivor games are like 8 minutes and killer on average win in 8 minutes but because of end game and hatch, that pushes game time by 2-3 minutes for average of 11-12 minutes. The math does not support your claim. slugging is too slow. not too fast. many survivor even claim that they would like to self-suicide on the floor because of how slow it is. they want kobe mechanic for slugging, similar to how hooks allow you to kobe and you can self-suicide on hook. they want that, for slugging.
But, as stated, the reward for hooking is more than good enough if you're actively using that reward. It doesn't give it to you for free passively, you have to go chase someone to actually get the reward for hooking.
Absolutely not. hooking is least rewarding it has ever been in dbd history. this comes from both systematic base-kit changes such as base-kit BT and higher hook times alongside a massive laundry of survivor perks that activate after being unhooked or during unhook aspect of the game. it is no wonder that killer are not hooking less. hooking now needs upgrade in reward for killer because of massive list of hand-holding mechanics that have stacked up against the killer. It is to the point that every killer player is now only tunneling off-hooks because of how punishing hooking has become. Tru3 for example just slug and tunnel 1 person. I don't slug, i hook 1 person, chase another person. down them than just tunnel player #1 till death. Hooking right now is literally 0 or negative pressure and the only reason to hook right now is to tunnel people out of the game.
Hooking rewards need revisions now. Slugging is by product of hooking reward being ineffective.
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Earlier this week I had a game where…
- I knocked the 1st survivor to a ground, searched around for nearby flashlight users, and found the 2nd survivor with a flashlight.
- So I chased the 2nd survivor, and they suspiciously got knocked down under an undropped pallet, so I searched around a found the 3rd survivor.
- So I chased the 3rd survivor, and they also suspiciously got knocked down under an undropped pallet, so I searched around a found the 4th survivor.
- So I chased the 4th survivor, knocked them to the ground, and now all 4 survivors are slugged.
Everything I did was valid and justifiable. I literally had 3 times in a row, where a survivor purposely chose to try to make a flashlight save or pallet save. This is why anti-slugging solutions need to care about both sides of the game.
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I agree with that last part, anti-slugging solutions need to care about both sides of the game.
…That's why I crafted my suggestions to allow the killer time to chase flashlight savers away and even to just outright slug someone for a second down if there's someone nearby. I already took this kind of thing into account.
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You literally didn’t take this scenario into account. In my scenario it was absolutely valid and justifiable to slug all 4 survivors.
Your suggestion allows survivors to bully the killer, because if 2 survivors are slugged, you’re saying a 3rd survivor should be able to bully killers with the threat of a flashlight/flashbang/pallet save, because if the killer tries to chase them, the 1st survivor can self pickup.
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Sure I did, you don't lose out on value in this scenario with my suggested changes.
What you'd do is one of two things depending on context:
1: Chase survivor 2 away, loop back around and pick up survivor 1
2: Chase survivor 2 and down them, see survivor 3, and loop back around to pick up survivor 1
Sure, you won't get to outright win anymore from just that series of events, but you can still gain quite a bit of value. Hell, let's look at hypothetical scenario three here, just to showcase how many options you'd have depending on what you're going for:
3: Chase survivor 2 and down them, chase survivor 3 and down them, chase survivor 4 and down them, then pick up and hook survivor 4. From there, go backwards to everyone still on the ground.
Does scenario three actually look bad for you just because survivor 1 and possibly survivor 2 picked themselves up? No, of course not, you've massively damaged generator efficiency and you've effectively forced the team to reset. That's a good position for the killer to be in.
You could argue that maybe survivors 1 and 2 would try and get into position to save survivor 4 if you pick them up, but they're injured and who knows how far away. That is an extremely risky play and at worst only delays your pickup by an extra down or two. If they don't reset, they can't threaten saves as easily, and they will lose if they keep trying.
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If 2 survivors are slugged, and a 3rd survivor is threatening me with a flashlight/flashbang/pallet save, it is completely valid and justifiable to chase them.
Your solution is 100% unacceptable. Killers should not be punished for slugging, when it was forced upon them by survivors.
If a survivor has been slugged for 60 seconds, teleport them to a 2v8 cage. That fixes prolonged slugging issues that happen to BOTH sides of the game.
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Absolutely. My suggestion doesn't stop you from chasing them, that's kinda why I designed it the way that I did.
It's just that if you do chase them, and the chase isn't very quick, you lose out only on the ability to outright win the game. That's it, you're still in a favourable position, you still aren't being punished in the least, and you still get a very noticeable amount of value.
It's literally just a way for survivors to not instantly lose because multiple people got downed, that's it. It's something the killer would keep in mind when choosing to slug, because what they get out of slugging changes a little. Instead of just flat out winning, they instead get a forced reset; still good, still in their favour, but not game-ending on its own.
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If 2 survivors are slugged, and a 3rd survivor is threatening the killer with a flashlight/flashbang/pallet save, it is completely valid and justifiable to chase them. There should be ZERO punishment for the killer in this scenario.
Punishing the killer with a reset, when the killer is repeatedly being forced to slug, is unacceptable.
I'm done with this conversation.
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