Proposed Changes to PTB 9.2.0 Systems

So, what a wild few days huh? Now that the anti-slugging and anti-tunneling changes have been officially held back for now I think it's prudent to give feedback on how these systems could be healthily reworked. Given that BHVR wants to iterate on them and try them again in the future, now is the time to have discussions and provide suggestions so that they have as much time as possible to float and test ideas. Any mechanic from the PTB that you do not see below I proposed be cut entirely and each section will have a blurb before it explaining my philosophy. After that will be a screenshot of the proposed PTB 9.2.0 changes, and then my own alterations. If it appears in the screenshot and is not altered below then it stays. Hopefully I explained that well enough!

My changes have two main goals: Reducing the frequency of negatively feeling gameplay scenarios (slugging and tunneling) for Survivors without accidentally punishing innocent Killer players, and keeping the changes (and the knock-on effects of them) simple so that they are easily digestible for newer players who already have a lot on their plate.

Anti-Tunneling

Reducing tunneling would create a massive improvement in feel to the Survivor experience, especially solo queue where team coordination can be minimal and even feel nonexistent. However, the proposed changes had a number of flaws including unnecessarily punishing Killers, further widening the gap in Killer viability, and potentially promoting unhealthy Survivor strategies such as flagrant play to hinder the Killer in a way where the best solution is to kill them and invoke the anti-tunnel system's wrath. No Killer playing the game in a normal and genuine manner should be inhibited by these systems; only those that hard tunnel and go into the game with that objective.

PTB 9.2.0 Version:

My Changes:

• Unhook Protections - Reduced duration from proposed 30 seconds down to 15 seconds. Reduced reading of Killer's Aura from 32 meters to the Killer's Terror Radius and only applies for 5 seconds. No longer provides immunity to Killer Instinct.
• Elusive - If a Survivor is inflicted with Deep Wound from a hit that was not deemed a Protection Hit then it will be cleansed at the end of Elusive's duration. Elusive prevents players from being interrupted (grabbed).

The 30 second duration for the Unhook Protection statuses felt excessive, allowing unhooked Survivors to get anywhere they wanted on the entire map virtually for free rather than the presumably intended purpose of getting away from the hook stealthily to recover where the Killer could not find and tunnel them. Reducing this should curb that slightly. Reducing the reading of the Killer's Aura to their own base Terror Radius rather than the static 32 meters increases the value against most of the best Killers in the game while allowing stealthier Killers to remain stealthy (there is an argument that this should ignore Undetectable, but I am unsure for the same reason mentioned below). This should aid the Killers that need it in the event they are playing against a coordinated team with communication and streamlines the system by making it uniform to Terror Radius. Providing immunity to Killer Instinct only serves to impede specific Killers as the effect is usually part of their power. This should be done away with.

For Elusive, cleansing the Deep Wound status effect at the end of the 15 second duration effectively gives Survivors being tunneled off hook an additional health state provided that the hit was not scored as a Protection Hit. Typically, if a Survivor takes a Protection Hit they understand that they are inviting the possibility that the Killer switches targets to them in exchange for aiding their team. The system that decides what is/isn't a Protection Hit may need to be further tuned for this change, but I wholly believe that this would be a great boon to disincentivizing hard-tunneling while not negatively impacting your average Killer player. Preventing players from being "grabbed" during actions like vaults while they are under the Elusive status effect simply helps prevent a tunneling Killer from bypassing it. Since Elusive expires on a Conspicuous Action this won't effect Generator Interrupts and such.

As far as the tunneling punishments in PTB 9.2.0 go it could be useful to have the Generators block regression as they did on the PTB and/or grant Survivors a repair bonus if a Survivor is killed due to a Killer action without any other Survivor having a hook stage (with exception to Killer abilities that kill Survivors before reaching any prerequisite hook stage. Think The Pig, The Onryo, and The Shape's Tombstone add-ons. It would still include things such as The Lich's Recover Artefact and The Executioner's Final Judgement which require the Survivor to reach a prerequisite hook stage). This prevents the system from affecting regular Killer players while still working to reduce the occurrence of situations most detrimental to game quality by mandating that the Killer gives any single Survivor some breathing room during the match. It also simplifies those systems from operating based on hook stages and most recently hooked Survivor to a single point, making it easier for new and casual players to keep track of. This is the only form in which I think the punishments for tunneling could exist in the game as they are nearly impossible to encounter in normal gameplay.

Anti-Slugging

Curbing excessive slugging is a noble goal, but the changes suggested had one massive issue and a few smaller ones. The massive issue was that what I'll refer to from here on out as "Basekit Unbreakable" became permanent once a certain threshold was reached. This was negative for a few reasons. A) Good Survivor teams can pretty easily engineer scenarios in which a Survivor will be slugged for an extended period, increasing the stressfulness of those scenarios on the Killer end. B) It was mentally taxing on the Killer trying to remember who they've slugged for pressure and for how long, trying to calculate how much time they had to play with should a "slug for pressure" opportunity arise. C) It had unequal effects on different Killers, punishing those that slug as a base part of their playstyle (The Twins and The Oni come to mind) for simply playing the game as their powers encourage them to. My changes aim to mitigate the situations where a Killer slugs all the Survivors to purposefully create a miserable experience while being virtually impossible to encounter by regular Killer players.

PTB 9.2.0 Version:

My Changes:

• Self-Recovery - The Resolve bar takes 90 seconds to fill. Progress is reset when that Survivor is hooked. Once filled, the Survivor gains the ability to pick themselves up from the Dying State after fully recovering indefinitely until hooked.
  
• Quality of Life - When full self-recovery is available, tap the Interact button to pick yourself up. Added a new scenario to the Abandon option: After recovering or being healed from the Dying State twice, the option to Abandon becomes available the next time you are downed. Removed crawl speed increase and ability to crawl while recovering. While not crawling the recovery bar fills automatically.

Making the Basekit Unbreakable reset between hooks basically eliminates situations in which a Killer can fully slug a team and bleed them out just because they can. Meanwhile, Killers that slug for pressure or for a quick snowball should be relatively unaffected, as their goals typically are to hook with slugging being a means to the end. With this, Survivors can only gain the ability to self-revive when it truly becomes excessive and is likely being done for nefarious purposes. This change also reduces the added mental tax on Killers and makes it very hard for coordinated Survivors to engineer scenarios in which their early game decisions will result in them having Basekit Unbreakable in the late game. The Resolve bar duration may need to be tweaked for this change; 90 seconds just felt like a fine enough number but realistically it could probably go as low as 60 with little impact. This would need to be playtested though as I really want to avoid scenarios in which a Killer such as The Twins is punished for playing as they naturally do. The required amount to fill the Resolve bar could be adjusted on a Killer by Killer basis (potentially via the "Attribute" mechanic mentioned later), but I feel keeping it uniform is better both for general transparency and for newer players.

Removing the "Basekit Tenacity" (as the community has been calling it) seems like the smart call to me. Both because it seems simultaneously excessive and mostly unimpactful (further complicating the game unnecessarily) and because choosing to crawl or recover can be a legitimate decision provided the Survivor's team goal/build (think Flip Flop and Power Struggle). I would like to retain that decision-making situation if possible, given that crawling and recovering is somewhat unimpactful otherwise.

Here are some of my own, additional changes unmentioned in the PTB:

Pro-Hooking

I believe it is much more fruitful to encourage the playstyles you want to see in the game rather than punishing players for doing otherwise. If we want Killers to hook, they should be adequately rewarded for it. However, I do not think that the basekit "Unique Hook Bonuses" in the PTB were a real solution. While I appreciate that BHVR is willing to adopt pretty wild changes to the game like this giving everyone built-in regression/Aura read, further widening the gap between top and low tier Killers (as high mobility Killers such as The Ghoul and The Blight are far better at capitalizing on them). For future reference, back-to-back consecutive hooks on the same Survivor will be referred to as "Double-Hooking".

• Increased Blood Points for Unique Hook Actions - Just what it says on the tin. Providing a meaty BP bonus if the hook is unique (not a Double-Hook) is easy, simple, and doesn't impact the game mechanically at all. Exact numbers would need to be determined.
  
• Extensive Changes to Hook-Related Perks - Widely buffing the suite of hook-related Killer perks would encourage Killers to hook more often in order to reap those rewards. However, they should be added with the caveat that they only apply to unique hook actions. Some examples would include increasing the duration of the Aura reveal and/or Exposed on Friends 'Til the End, decreasing the dead zone or increasing Aura reveal duration on Barbecue and Chili, increasing the Haste duration or value of Furtive Chase, and increasing the action speed penalty on Scourge Hook: Weeping Wounds/Gift of Pain very slightly.
  
  Each perk would need to be tweaked individually to bring them in line, but I would like to mention two exceptions to the buffs. Scourge Hook: Pain Resonance should disable itself once a Survivor dies. It's already the best regression in the game to most Killers and has an inherent unique hook requirement, it functions well enough alongside tunneling as-is and could use this change. The other is Pop Goes the Weasel. I do not think Pop needs a number tweak to fit into this new system, just the added restriction that its effect cannot be gained on a Double-Hooking action.
  
• Reworking Scourge Hook RNG - This has been sorely desired for some time but this seems like the perfect moment to do it when talking about pro-hooking changes. The change could be as simple as, say, the map is divided into quarters with one Scourge Hook spawning somewhere in each quarter. They could still spawn at the edges of the map or they could spawn all in the center, leading to Scourge Hook dead zones that retain the potential risk of taking these perks. However, the much more consistent value would see their usage increase. On maps that have two levels each about equally sized (The Game, RPD, and Midwich) two Scourge Hooks should spawn on the top level and two on the bottom every time in addition to the above.
  

New Killer Attribute

I think the most warmly-received part of the PTB 9.2.0 was the notion that different Killers could benefit from base-game actions to different degrees (these being the "Unique Hook Bonuses" in the PTB). I propose a new system, tentatively titled Entity Alterations, containing either Entity's Blessing or Entity's Curse (could also be Entity's Favor or Entity's Ire). These would be displayed on each individual Killer's Bio, right below the "HEIGHT" attribute with an entity-themed icon.

Excusing my pretty ugly mockup, this is what it might look like. Next to the icon would be a key word that sums up the Blessing/Curse. Mousing over it would provide a popup display much like mousing over a Killer's Power or their Perks on this same page that further explains what the Blessing/Curse does.

Here's an example of a Blessing:

• Entity's Blessing: Progression Erasure - The Entity tells you where to apply the most force, damaging Generators even further. Kick actions deal an extra 5% instant regression to Generators.

Pretty straightforward. Nice and simple buff that you could easily apply as an attribute to Killers like Trapper and Skull Merchant who need all they can get right now.

Here's another Blessing idea:

• Entity's Blessing: Hook Leniency - The Entity provides you a small reprieve, as it knows the nature of your task. The resolve meter for hooked Survivors takes 10% longer to fill.

Simple, easy, and would be nice for The Trapper and The Hag to give them a little more wiggle room when setting up traps near the hook.

Here's an example of a Curse, and a more complicated idea:

• Entity's Curse: Hook Obfuscation - The Entity knows what you are capable of and seeks to limit you in order to squeeze the most out of every Trial. The hook status of Survivors is hidden from you, silencing the unhook notification and revealing the HUD status 5 seconds later.

You'll probably be able to tell that this is a reused version of the hook-hiding effect in the PTB. This is a Curse that would be applied only to the Killers that represent the highest threat of going back to hook and tunneling. Killers like The Blight, The Hillbilly, The Ghoul, The Dark Lord, The Nurse, and The Singularity being the prime suspects. These six, I would argue, represent the best six Killers at going back to hook and therefore could be effectively impeded at doing that with this Curse.

I think this system is a really solid idea that fits into the world from a thematic/lore perspective and also expands the ways in which BHVR can balance the game. They also have a high design ceiling, as you could get fairly abstract with them or keep it relatively simple. If these Blessings/Curses are kept to a small list of keywords and used somewhat sparingly I think they can be an effective way to alter game mechanics on a Killer by Killer basis!

Killer Specific Changes

Along with these proposed system changes there are a few specific Killer tweaks I think should be made to play into/around these systems. Basically, these are special mentions being made just to prevent any potential issues. There's probably more I haven't thought about, but these are the ones that came to mind.

The Legion

• Feral Frenzy hits inflicted during the Unhook Protection window will not advance the internal counter for the insta-down but will refresh the duration of Feral Frenzy. This is to prevent a situation in which the Deep Wound cleanse of Elusive that I suggested earlier would grant two steps towards the insta-down Feral Slash and also incentivizes The Legion to hit other players instead for their power.

The Mastermind

• Using the First Aid Spray does not trigger Killer Instinct while under the effects of Elusive. This is to prevent Wesker specifically from being able to easily locate a recently unhooked Survivor and to give them a moment to either safely cleanse the infection or heal, forcing the Survivors to make a choice. Personally speaking I don't think he needs this Killer Instinct anyways but it could also be tweaked to only revealing when a Survivor cleanses the infection themselves rather than having a teammate cleanse them. Doing this could encourage teamplay opportunities the situation otherwise lacks.

The Singularity

• The Slipstream effect cannot be applied to Survivors under the effects of Elusive. Singularity is extremely good at getting right back into a Survivor's face after they've been unhooked provided he sets his Biopods up accordingly. This should make it a little bit harder for him to tunnel off hook as he'd need to teleport to the rescuer if he wants to start a chase. If the rescuer runs the opposite direction from the unhooked Survivor this would grant the unhooked Survivor a little more breathing room.

Closing Thoughts

I love this game. Maybe I shouldn't, but I do. I want to see it thrive and I think the best way to do that is to give the most thought-out feedback I possibly can and I encourage everyone else to do the same. If you made it this far, thank you. I think the changes in this post would do a lot to curb the worst offenders when it comes to slugging and tunneling while not impacting Killer players just genuinely playing the game and trying to get hooks. I want to reward that playstyle, not to have such a heavy-handed approach that Killers are punished for taking advantage of Survivor mistakes and opportunities or to where Survivors can exploit those mechanics. Maybe you agree with these changes and the logic behind them. Maybe you don't. You should tell me what you think below so that we can further iterate on these ideas and get a system that works for as many people as possible, because that's what I really want.

Thanks for your time,
Atlas