http://dbd.game/killswitch
Last 2 Survivors and Endgame
The whole system with the last player being mori-able and now the last 2 players being able to be along with the go-next changes have created an unfortunate combination of conditions that are frustrating for survivors and frankly boring for killers. Killers are either slugging for the 4k, or a player has to spend 2 entire hook states sometimes waiting for a chance to get hatch when a willing team mate waits to give them the chance. I am sure many killers will prefer the easier ends to matches and increased 4ks thanks to this, personally I find it takes away the excitement of what would be a close match, the chances for a comeback or the excitement of rushing to find the escape hatch.
My suggestion is this; an entirely different endgame state that triggers when 2 survivors are left. There should be 2 key features added for this game state, the ability to self-sacrifice on hook, and a terror radius based recovery system.
During this game state if either of the 2 final survivors are hooked, a prompt to Self-Sacrifice should appear. The player will instantly be taken by the entity, allowing the remaining team mate to have a chance to find the hatch and escape. As a bonus for being willing to forego their chances to escape, the player should receive points towards the altruism category at approximately half the value of an escape.
Meanwhile to reduce the nearly constant slugging to secure a 4k, while there are only 2 survivors left both survivors should be granted a modified version of unbreakable/tenacity that is affected by killer terror radius. It should be triggerable once the survivor who is downed is no longer in the killers terror radius, drastically increasing recovery speed and allowing the survivor to pick themselves up. This will incentivize the killer to hook survivors instead of slugging them, which can then trigger Self-Sacrifice or allow a shot at an unhook/rescue or just straight up cause the hatch to appear.
There would be downsides this system which may lead to some frustration for killers (special consideration for Twins will be needed), and it may create situations where players expect or wait for a team mate to Self-Sacrifice. However, it would be nice to at least have an OPTION for survivors to do something beside bleed out or use the abandon feature. As it stands now the last 2 survivors have next to no sense of agency, and any sense of challenge for the killer is basically non-existent in these situations.
Comments
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But then if I down one survivor, and I know exactly where the other one is, and it takes more than 20 seconds to hunt them down, you just get to get up for free?
If we do add in some kind of unbreakable feature with only 2 survivors remaining, the recovery time should be slower if anything. But then again, I feel like this will really only exacerbate the problem. If the killer really wanted to slug for the 4k, and now you are picking yourself up only to go hiding again, this only drags out the game more.
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For your first question, yes exactly. If you can't get the 2nd person within a short period of time, you should have just hooked the first survivor. They aren't "getting up for free" they are getting up because the killer chose not to hook them.
As far as picking yourself up to hide again and dragging the game out, this is already accounted for by the abandon feature and anti-AFK. If the players do just use the second chances to literally do nothing, they get crows and get hunted down, where once again the killer can hook the survivor to move the match along. Otherwise if gens do not get completed the killer can end the match after being unable to down both survivors.
The viewpoint many killers have which is that it is only a win with a 4k or that every match needs to end in a 4k. As this is a mindset that can not be changed otherwise, this solution will help encourage many killers to simply settle for a 3k and move matches along more quickly while maintain a greater sense of player agency for survivors.1 -
Survivors already can attempt to unhook themselves when only 2 players are left, and it takes about 35s to die. That's quite reasonable, and I don't perceive that as a problem at all, in fact I'd call that an improvement for the slug for 4k situation, cause the killer actually has time to look for then other survivor before they die.
The fundamental problem with any "solution" to slugging for the 4k is that the killer is winning this game, and has a right to go for the 4k, whether it's for challenges or achievements, more bloodpoints, or just cause they want to get a 4k for any reason. The problem is hatch basically puts all of that on a coin flip at the end, and no matter how you slice it, it isn't really fair for the killer to lose their 4k on that coin flip at the end of the game... that's why people slug for the 4k, to avoid that coinflip.
However, Hatch is a necessary evil, because the only reason the hatch exists is so that survivors have a faint hope of escape to keep playing in a losing game, rather than just give up and die... hatch is not a meant to be a reliable escape method for survivor to cuck the killer out of their 4k, it is meant to be the final distant hope to keep the game going... so I can't say I'm on board with an Unbreakable suggestion at all.
With that in mind, I think a better solution is, similar to the ability to unhook yourself becoming unlocked when 2 players are left, give survivors a "desperation" crawl where they bleed out substationtially faster (say 90 seconds), crawl faster but make louder grunts of pain. Bleeding out from Desperation will cause the survivor to be grabbed by the Entity and counts as a kill normally.
This means the killer has a choice between taking the hook for the advantage of many perks to help find the last survivor, or taking the slug with a slightly longer timer but no perks to help.
Still some stuff to iron out, but you get the concept. However regardless the point I want to stress is, going for the 4k is not evil or greedy, it is perfectly fair for the killer to want the 4k, and you can't bring in mechanisms that punish them for doing so.
Post edited by UndeddJester on0 -
Only thing they need to do is to add back the two skillcheck miss to die on hook if there is two survivors left. I suggested this some days ago as originally that feature was added to give the chance to the last survivor to get hatch anyway so it would be doing again what it was originally added for.
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I understand where you are coming from in saying that killers have the right to go for a 4k. To say that these mechanisms are something that would "punish" them for doing so is a bit of a stretch. I would still be able to go for a 4k, it just would require a modified playstyle and would certainly in some cases be harder to do so.
The issue that as game designers needs to be looked at is if the killers "right" to a 4k and the most common practice for doing so, is also having a negative impact on the enjoyability of the game for other players. There is no easy way to say it, but a single player as killer can make multiple matches for 4 players more frustrating with this playstyle. As such the developers in fact do have to weigh that into consideration when coming up with a solution.
Your post seems to indicate a viewpoint that the game is designed around killing the survivors and that surviving is a secondary design choice and not the main point of the game. However if you look at it from the other side, there are 4 players trying to survive vs one player trying to kill, surviving should be the primary focus of the game to maximize engagement and player satisfaction. This is why hatch is needed, not to prolong the game or "cuck" killers as you so eloquently put it, but rather to increase the odds of at least 1 player succeeding in their goal on the team with more players attempting to do so.
Simply adding solutions for survivors to lose faster is not going to garner a lot of enjoyment or really give players a reason to want to continue playing survivor in the long run. If you pursue that path for too long you will end up in a situation like TCM but the other way around (no one in that game wanted to play killer side because it was too balanced the other way).
Personally I would much prefer a system where a 4k is more rare, requiring more skill than just slugging over a system where I can 4k every match by slugging the last 2 players and ending up with 20 minute queue times because no one enjoys playing survivor anymore.3
