Amid the Initiative to Make Chests Viable & Relevant, Consider Increasing the # of Chests in Trial

I've been thrilled to see that chests and looting has gotten a lot of love and attention over this last year to make chests feel better and make looting mid-match feel an activity worth doing.

The new perks like Specialist, Moment of Glory, or Apocalypstic Ingenuity that encourage and reward chest use are very fun to use, and the reworked Keys make it easier and more fun than ever before to get items in a match!

However, there is still a remaining problem: there are only 3 chests in a match, at default.

In Order to Get Use Out of Chest-Oriented Perks, Survivors Must Cater Their Entire Build Towards Chests

There's pretty huge logistical and practical frustrations & problems with there only being 3 Chests in a trial, with the new Chest-activated Perks requiring 2 openings or rummages to activate them.

1 ) These Perks aren't strong enough to warrant being force-limited to only one use per the entire TEAM per trial:

With only 3 Chests spawning in a Trial and all of these new perks requiring 2 uses of a Chest before they activate, in most scenarios only a single player out of the whole team can only get a single use out of these perks. There aren't enough chests to use these perks more than once. Most of these perks are not THAT strong that they pose a threat worthy of forcing them to be limited to a single use by a single player only once per trial. Moment of Glory is weaker than a syringe and leaves survivors incredibly vulnerable for a long time, and Apocalyptic Ingenuity isn't guaranteed to even protect Survivors when it's used: Fragile Pallets are so dangerous that in most cases I opt to not even bother looping Fragile Pallets, and if I did manage to land a stun there's the possibility the killer can just immediately catch up again because the pallet is gone.

2) Solo Queue Players Have to Race and Fight Over Who Gets to Open Chests or Else Half The Team's Perks are Un-Activatable and Useless

Not being able to communicate that your build requires you to open chests to get a single use out of your perk(s) makes matches really frustrating in solo queue. Sometimes you don't realize that your teammates may be doing the same thing, or they don't realize that you need to loot for your build and are just looting for the fun of it, opening your precious chests without the realization or a care in the world for how it affects their teammates. Maybe they wanted to activate their own Hardened or Moment of Glory, but only one of us can with this last chest remaining.

If any more than one person is running one of these chest perks, half of the team has a perk that's worthless because it's impossible to activate. At least Invocations grant the ability to speed up the Invocation if multiple people run it!

3) Appraisal or Other Rummage Perks FEEL REQUIRED to Get Value Out These Perks More Than Once:

If Appraisal isn't used in these builds, it feels pretty impossible to get any use out of these perks. Most of the chest perks don't even guarantee value, so it's nice : Apocalyptic Ingenuity can be missed if the pallet's thrown early, and it doesn't guarantee safety. It's very easy to go down when running Moment of Glory unless you can last a whole minute in chase, which is rare honestly. It's nice to get value out of my perks a second time, plus these risky perks in particular. Also, if one doesn't run Appraisal, Scavenger, or Residual Manifest, then if someone else opened more than one chest your perks are completely useless for the entire match.

4) When Multiple Chest Perks are Used, it Rewards Min-Max Stacking Them on One Player

If I want to run Moment of Glory, my duo queue wants to run Specialist, and my 2 randos that I'm matched with are running Apocalyptic Ingenuity, only 1 of us is going to be able to use our perks this match. Therefore, if one of these perks is equipped, it encourages stacking more of these perks because not just the synergy potential but because otherwise, you're potentially 'stealing' someone else's ability to use their perks. We can't all get value, so I may as well get as much value as possible

5) Chests Have Become a Precious Currency, and Now I Actively Avoid Chests to Avoid "Stealing Value" From Other Players

With so many Chest-activated perks in the game, even though Chests are easier than ever to use I actively avoid them now, because I fear what if a teammate needs them?

By turning Chests into an activation requirement for Perks, Chests have become a form of currency. In a way, every match now has a Chest Economy, and it's important that I don't hoard the wealth if I don't need it. And if I do need it, I feel I must have it all to myself.

Plus, this grants Killer players an advantage with the Cut Coin offering: by decreasing the available economy, they have the potential to completely deny Survivor players from being able to use their Perks!

This means, that if I do need the 'wealth', I feel I must do anything possible to ensure I have even a single piece of the cut, or as much of it as possible. This means I feel I MUST run Appraisal or Residual Manifest or Scavenger to get as many Rummages as possible or in case my teammates open the Chests first. I MUST bring my best Coin Offerings just to have an increased chance that I MIGHT get to use these Perks in case someone else has the same idea. I MUST bring a Key so that my teammates can also Rummage through the Chests I open in case they also need to use Chests. I MUST do these things or there's a chance I might either ruin this economy for my team, or that I will not even be able to partake in this economy.

It's genuinely great that there are more options than ever to synergize and get more value out of these perks, but it does not feel great feeling like I HAVE to synergize and cater my entire build toward using this perks or else either I (or my teammates) may not even be able to use these Perks.

Proposal: Increase The Default Number of Chests by 1 (to 4 Total)

I believe, as a part of the ongoing initiative to make Chests and Items more relevant, we should increase the number of Chests that spawn in a Trial to 4 by default.

By doing so, we would grant the opportunity for a single player to get value out of Chest-activated Perks more than once without having to min-max their build for Chests, or, grant the opportunity for 2 players to have the chance at activating Chest-activated Perks.

By adding a fourth Chest to the Trials to boost the Chest economy, players will also feel more freedom to experiment with creative and interesting builds when running Chest-activated Perks.

Increasing Chests will also make Chest Offerings less directly impactful on gameplay, as the way Chest Offerings are implemented on Live servers renders them the only Offerings in the game that have the potential to completely enable or invalidate whether a player is able to use the Perks that they brought, since they directly affect the Chest Economy which is now tied to Perk usage.

Additionally, increasing the number of Chests found in a Trial gives Killers more creative opportunities as well. It would provide the potential to get increased value out of Chest and Item-centric Perks, making them more valuable. Hoarder, Human Greed, Dominance, Weave Attunement and any future item-based Perks all would become more valuable with this change. This also provides trap-based Killers with more interactables to strategize and play around.