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Assuming 9.2 patch were to go through, how to make lower tier killers work with this

TheSingleQuentinMain
TheSingleQuentinMain Member Posts: 173
edited August 30 in General Discussions

This is coming from a killer main, but one who is for the goals behind the new PTB updates. I think making it so slugging/tunneling/camping are less viable is good, and while I do think they need to tweak survivor perks that can make this super exploitable (Flip -flop/Boil over which can make it physically impossible to hook someone you downed), I'm not going to add to the arguments against these changes. I'm just going to go through some lower tier killers, and make some tweak suggestions on how to make it so certain killers aren't as hurt by this. Especially regarding how some killers are incentivized to play in a tunnelly/sluggy way.

Do NOTE: I'm not trying to defend the changes in the PTB, I'm saying if they absolutely will go through, here are killers with problems and some solutions to those problems.

General Problems:

  1. The gen regression boost from unique hooks sounds good, but I think high mobility killers (which includes a lot of the killers who we told will receive weaker versions of the unique hook buff) not only will be able to capitalize on this way more than slower killers, they might be the only ones who can. To fix this, they could make it so a defining feature of a killer, similar to how some have a move speed of either 4.6 or 4.4, could be gen kick boost reward, or a 10 second, 5% passive slowdown on all generator repairs. So for killers like Pig/Huntress/Deathslinger, they get the passive slowdown, and for killers like Wraith, they have to actively kick a generator. It can be case by case how this is done.
  2. No disrespect to the people who use them, cause I sure as heck do too, but the exhaustion perks Sprint Burst, Lithe, and Balanced Landing all hurt lower mobility killers a lot more than you might think. I doubt anyone would agree to this, but I think these three should have there duration lowered to 2.5 seconds. This would also help high end killers, I'm aware, but in theory killer abilities should be counterable without exhaustion perks, but exhaustion perks aren't always counterable by killer abilities.
  3. Killer specific killing abilities, like the Condemned status effect, the Shape's Tombstone, or Pig's Traps I'd assume Behavior isn't going to have these trigger the negative status effects, such as the gen repair boost, or removing gen blocking/regression, but if they do intend for these to be in it, that's very bad.

Trapper:

Problems:

  1. Accidently incentivized to tunnel if somebody who just got off hook steps into a trap, and will be punished for not doing that because the trap they set is now disarmed. Obviously, he's also incentivized to basement camp, and I think it singlehandedly skews his win rate.
  2. Lacks a lot of mind game chase options, and chase trapper is vulnerable to mosquito survivors.
  3. Trapper is kind of incentivized to play in Chess Merchantish style, where he shouldn't leave his traps far behind, because survivors who already injured might get out from traps
  4. Trapper has a lot of general weaknesses: Map dependence, RNG.

My Solutions:

  1. If the survivor who was last unhooked steps into a bear trap, they suffer a 15% slowdown on generator repairs for the next 120 seconds, or until they are put into the dying state by the killer.
  2. A couple Chase trapper buffs:(A) Remove the trap arming finishing sound, so he can fake setting traps better, but it's still telegraphed when he is setting a trap. (B) Add a 100% slowdown on trap disarming for the first 20 seconds after a trap is placed, if the trap is not within 16 meters of a hooked survivor. This way mosquito survivors or coordinated SWFs aren't as good at bullying a chase trapper.
  3. To ensure trapper is rewarded for traps being stepped into, even when he wasn't able to capitalize on them being stepped into, add the following effects: (A) Injured survivors suffer from deep wounds. (B) If a survivor stepped in a trap that was 24 meters or further from trapper, and when the survivor escaped, if trapper was 32 meters or further away, a base kit version of tension spring will come into effect: After 5 seconds, the trap rearms, and will be 25% slower to disarm until someone does disarm it.
  4. To reduce map dependence, and RNG: (A) Lower trap opacity to 80%, so they blend into all environments slightly better. (B) The first escape attempt from a trap is impossible to succeed, but maintain the current maximum number of attempts as being 6 before the game guarantees freeing you.

Twins:

Problems:

  1. Twins rely heavily on slugging, which isn't fun for survivors I admit, but they'll get super nerfed by this new patch.

My Solutions:

  1. Ideal, unrealistic Solution: Make it so there are special map interactives, similar to Onryo's TVs/Animatronic's Doors/Xenomorphs tunnels, where Victor can run into them, and hold Ctrl to not only switch back to Charlotte, but to relocate charlotte in the place victor was. This will take 5 seconds of reforming time. Victor will now be back inside Charlotte. Visualization Below: This is how you make a charlotte.png
  2. Realistic, simpler to code solution: When a survivor is downed by Victor, the survivors can't move in the dying to state for the first 10 seconds. Additionally, if you switch back within 20 seconds to Charlotte, you'll gain haste depending on how far away the survivor was. (For 16 meters+, 3% for 8 seconds, For 24 meters+ 2% more for 8 seconds, and 32meters+ another 2% haste for those 8 seconds.) Additionally, Charlotte wake up time is sped up.

Myers, the Shape:

NOTE: He's getting a whole rework, but assuming a lot of elements were to stay the same about him.

Problems:

  1. Incentivized to slug due to his power meter draining, even when carrying survivors.
  2. Removing the Stalk limit I think will cause one players mistakes to impact every one a lot more.

My Suggestions:

  1. Carrying a survivor pauses Evil Incarnate/Tier 3 evil within timer, and hooking a survivor pauses it for 6 more seconds, and dropping them will pause it for 3 more seconds. (this way if he is dropping to counter a sabo play, he's not punished, but he still is incentivized to hook more than drop them on the ground if he can.)
  2. Survivors have 9 points of stalking at the start of the trial. Stalking 3 points from one person gives all other players 1 point. When a survivor is unhooked, if you are 24 meters or further away, the unhooked survivor will gain 1 stalk point.

The Hag:

Problems:

  1. Survivors can run through to disarm traps, which is fine, but now survivors who were just unhooked can abuse this to trigger traps even though you'll be punished for killing them.
  2. Even if a survivor didn't mean to abuse the trap triggering, when a survivor triggers a trap, the killer might teleport to it, realize it's the person they just hooked, and now they are punished if they don't go for the tunnel because they just waisted time teleporting to this person.

My Solutions

  1. A couple people have suggested making it so survivors have to manually disarm traps, and can't just trigger them to disarm them. This would not solve the problem, but it would lessen it. Not really recommending this as I'm not sure how this would play out for other gameplay elements.
  2. A buff that might be really good for hag is to make it so when a trap is trigger, the survivor who triggered it's hud flashes green or some color to indicate, "This specific survivor is who triggered the trap."
  3. A good general buff: if the trap teleports you 12 or more meters away, you leave behind a husk, similar to the unknown, and you can instantly return there within 10 seconds if you look at the husk you left behind. This could even allow for a better resetting playstyle. The 12 meter minimum is to ensure survivors aren't super pinched between two teleports you just did where they either fake out one teleport or another.

I'll come back and work on my solutions to other killers, but let me know how terrible my ideas are in practice.

Post edited by TheSingleQuentinMain on

Comments

  • ChaosWam
    ChaosWam Member Posts: 2,083

    People are already going over Sadako so I'll leave that to them.

    But I'm going to be vocal over a killer already struggling: Hag.

    The survivor you hooked last can just… Ruin your web of traps and if you go after them, you get punished. You can slug them for 90 seconds, sure, but you have to go back and set up again, take another chase, down and hook a second while they're probably already back up and ruining your traps again.

    Not sure of a fix either, since I don't play enough Hag to really think of any solutions.

  • ControllerFeedback
    ControllerFeedback Member Posts: 565

    The more I think about this update and the more I hear other takes (especially edge cases I haven't thought about), the less I like it. Well, the less I like the actual changes. I like laughing at them though.

    It's absurd that we're at the point where we're doing this huge, needlessly complex thing with the game instead of trying something simple like giving lower tier killers better base regression or any variation on that idea that's actually easy to get data on and doesn't just inadverdently screw over the lower tiers and barely affect the higher, thus encouraging people to just only play higher tiers more. Especially when we're more than happy to include basekit exceptions within this complex mess.

    What are we even doing anymore…

  • SnakePVP
    SnakePVP Member Posts: 102

    Yeah I think the issue with these changes is that they did not consider killer enjoyment whatsoever and just tried to forced break all the biggest complaints from survivors without considering while low rank killers might have to take advantage of some of these killer strategies to get back into the game. Especially against coordinated SWF that can gen rush while wasting a lot of low rank killers time that do not have the high speed movement most S ranks have to apply pressure on large maps. I can only see these changes bringing more abuse and arbitrary ways for killers to punish themselves. Forcing us to keep track of more things.

  • ControllerFeedback
    ControllerFeedback Member Posts: 565

    I don't really care about survivor or killer enjoyment necessarily, nor am I going to ascribe any particular narrative about what BHVR thinks about killer or survivor players. I can understand where the sentiment comes from, but it's just more us vs them slop to me. And as a side note, I find it really funny when certain content creators call out other content creators for "causing" the devs (as if the devs don't have autonomy) to make changes to appease them/their audience/their narrative and then proceed to push their own narrative about the devs as though it's fact, which just causes THEIR audience to parrot their biased opinions.

    I just don't think whoever was responsible for the anti-tunnel changes especially (and to a lesser degree the anti-slug) has any sense about how this is going to negatively impact player incentives at a base level and create all sorts of edge cases (and thus more work in the future when these edge cases inevitably become a problem and they have to go in and change things in an arbitrary, unreadable way AGAIN) and potentially not even solve the problem they set out to solve, which seems to be "aggressive tunneling/slugging by high tier killers". Like…why can't we just directly address the problems with those high tier killers…you don't even have to neuter their powers if you're already willing to make exceptions for them anyway…

    There's more madness being put out here than Libra in Nightreign. I feel like the devs have completely lost the plot.

  • SnakePVP
    SnakePVP Member Posts: 102

    I honestly think if they just nerfed higher rank killers and had perk do things differently for different killers base of movement and abilities it would make so many other strategies viable it it wouldn't force killers down to such same styles of play. They could even make some perks not work on certain killers and so on. I feel like that would bring a lot to the table where these current changes wouldn't seem like such a bad time for lower rank killer players.

  • ControllerFeedback
    ControllerFeedback Member Posts: 565

    I mean I don't even like the exceptions (unless it's something natural like how they made Nurse's blink attacks count as special attacks to get rid of the Starstruck Nurse problem). I'd rather them rework/nerf the high tiers than go down that road. But again, if they're already willing to make them with new mechanics, I fail to see how doing it for old mechanics that are easier to get metrics on and don't inherently screw up the flow of the game would be any worse.

  • TheSingleQuentinMain
    TheSingleQuentinMain Member Posts: 173

    Thanks for pointing that out. I hadn't even considered that.

  • Crowman
    Crowman Member Posts: 10,095

    The funniest thing is they already recongized that killers like Nurse and Blight will benefit more from basekit BBQ and basekit Pop, but fail to recognize that these bonuses really do not help the weakest killers who really need to get a survivor out ASAP.

    Nurse will be fine. She'll utilize the BBQ to jump quickly between survivors while running generic slowdown perks since she won't need information perks as much and can quickly down survivors due to her power.

    Meanwhile an average killer like demogorgon will struggle to get the most value from BBQ and Pop and will be forced into situations where they could get an early kill due to survivor mistakes but may pass just to avoid being punished for it.

  • SweetbutaPsycho
    SweetbutaPsycho Member Posts: 343

    Im presuming that the answer for many players will be that you simply can't make them work and have to switch to a stronger killer.

    The update is super punishing for killers that were already struggling and made them even more underwhelming by forcing unnatural playstyles. U have area killers like trapper or hag that now have to go actively search the map for the survivor they haven't hooked so they get their buffs. Also the survivor that was recently hooked can now just trigger all your traps on purpose and if you kill him survivors get their gen buff cause u "tunneled".

    Meanwhile good nurses or blights will absolutely not give a damn if they don't get their 5% haste buff after unhooking multiple people or if the gens don't regress anymore.

    Pretty sure this update will make far more killers switch to one of the golden 4, which will then in turn lead to complaints that people only play against nurse, blight, wesker and ghoul.

  • TimberGoingDown
    TimberGoingDown Member Posts: 944

    People will either swap to S tier killers or quit the game. Survivors will be waiting in queue for 10 minutes only to get yet another Ghoul/Nurse/Blight that ignores the anti-tunnel stuff.