Letting Survivors Leave, Forcing Killers to Stay: What a Perfectly Fair System

Pushing survivors out isn't any more agency than hatch standoffs were.

Sure, but I don't see how that's relevant. We're discussing the agency between a survivor on the floor and a killer when survivors are in the exit gate, base kit. Ignoring that some killers can actually get kills in the exit gate, a killer has the agency to force the survivors to leave under threat of being hooked. In comparison, the survivor base kit cannot do anything except crawl. My point against OP's was this - survivors get the abandon feature because there is nothing they can do if the opponent wants to waste their time. Conversely, the killer can attack the survivors to force them to stop wasting theirs.

And if its not over yet, then why is it ok for survivor abandon to ignore so many perks and mechanics that can be used to prolong the game for them?

The real answer is because BHVR is lazy and didn't want to program a system that would check every single edge case to make sure survivors didn't have a way to come back. If it were up to me, those edge cases would be included in the system, but it's not up to me.

I will never understand the selective nature people use regarding what they consider player agency, as they never seem to reconcile between sides.

I mean, maybe this is just a difference of opinion. Agency is the player's ability to influence happenings within the game. When a survivor is slugged base kit and the killer wants them to bleed out, that survivor has zero agency in the situation. Crawling and recovering are their only options, neither of which will change the outcome of waiting 4 minutes. Killers in EGC have plenty of agency though; ignoring the possibility of kills basekit and assuming a killer like trapper, I can still prevent a 2 minute time waste. Now, if you mean agency as in "the killer has to watch the opponents teabag or waste 2 minutes", then yeah, there's nothing you can really do about that. But I don't think being teabagged (or WS'd by the killer) is enough to warrant an abandon in any situation where that can be the outcome.

This is something that absolutely needed addressing, which is why it always baffles me what the line is for people when comparing the roles. Is it the duration? Because killers can absolutely have more than 4 minutes of their time wasted through things like excessive hiding. They can do it for up to 10 IIRC. The lack of movement? If survivors could zoom around at sprint burst speed on the ground but were unable to escape or interact toward their objective in any way until the match ends, would that somehow be better? How about if they could actively grovel for the same amount of time it takes to swat multiple survivors out? We should have a better solution that addresses the unified issue ofone side being able to stall victory to waste their opponent's time rather than multiple smaller ones between mechanics like abandons and self pickups that very clearly favor one side in consideration.

Again, it's the agency that comes from this being an asymmetrical game. Because of the way killer works, they have agency in any time wasting situation survivors will never have by way of always being able to injure, down, and hook them. An equivalent situation for killer would be one of the old exploits where you could sit below a drop and the killer drop and then would be stuck on top of your head, unable to do anything and completely at mercy of the survivor below them until the server times out or they move.

In lieu of that, they could at least try something like (off the top of my head) allowing the killer to close a gate and auto eject any survivors in it out of the match if, say, 50% of remaining survivors are in it. That way if its just one, smack em, but if its a matter of lingering in the safe zone, pushing out can be done more efficiently. It could even lead to situations where any remaining survivors who get left behind form a "second round" to endgame. Maybe adjust the EGC timer or show any remaining survivors the gate switch auras for a few seconds when it closes to give them a chance to come up with a gameplan. Ideas like that obviously take testing and ironing out, but again, not even on the radar.

I wouldn't mind something like this heading to PTB. Would be interesting to see.

I don't think an abandon option is warranted when the killer can push the survivors out, that's my opinion. We'll just have to agree to disagree.

The survivor can skip the mori because the survivor already had the abandon option for a long time already. Mechanically speaking, its quite hard to disable the abandon ability. It's not suddenly the survivor gaining the abandon feature. And to be fair, so what? The game is literally going to end the same way for you at that point. Either way you will have the mori, the only difference is that the survivor isnt watching the mori with you (in which case, why do you care that the other player has to watch your mori?)

For killers, the moment survivors are able to unhook a teammate in the case the killer is camping his 1k, they are going to abandon, despite it being possible to still turn the situation around and gain a kill (survivors dont always pick the best pathing, I've seen many people die after we managed to unhook someone and were in a situation to basically guarantee a 4 man out, yet someone decided dropping a weak pallet and vaulting it twice was a good idea, they cant abandon when the other 3 survivors escape normally).

So at what point do you introduce the abandon feature for killers without effectively removing 10-20% of the game? With survivors, most abandon options dont matter. You would always pick them up for hooks anyway, or you would always bleed them out. You would always have to mori. And even in the few other cases where abandon appears when IMO it shouldnt but because there are edge cases, the survivor gets replaced with a bot and you still get to play and none of the gameplay gets removed or impacted much untill 2+ survivors were able to abandon (in fact, the bots can be harder to deal with than the real players)

I can understand survivors camping in the exitgate, but then at what point do you introduce it? They could be healing inside the exitgate for a multitude of reasons, perhaps going back to rescue their teammate on a hook, but you're a killer who does have the capability to down survivors if they are slightly too far removed from the exitgate. And even if they do manage to implement that, the same survivors who now edgecamp the exitgate, would just slightly stand outside the exitgate so you cant abandon.

It is functionally impossible to add in an abandon feature for the killer on top of the current ones, because the killer always has agency. All survivor abandon options are because they remove player agency. Even the slugging 3 times exists, because basekit endurance doesnt exist on pickup.

And to be fair, so what? The game is literally going to end the same way for you at that point. Either way you will have the mori, the only difference is that the survivor isnt watching the mori with you

They aren't just skipping an animation though. It makes a difference internally. When you abandon, you don't get a death on your personal stats despite losing. As far as anyone can tell (based on the limited info we've been given) you also don't lose MMR, and the killer doesn't gain any from you. You've basically removed yourself from the match entirely and left a blank void behind. The function is quietly throwing matchmaking and data out of whack.

All survivor abandon options are because they remove player agency.

This isn't always true. I've had bots use Deliverance to hop off the hook or use Unbreakable to get up before I could hook them. Some people just can't be bothered to keep trying even when there are still options.

Foreward: Some of the wording might have come off a little annoyed, but I couldn't really think of a way to retread some of the stuff from earlier and its been a long day. Its not intentional, so apologies if anything comes off as such. A lot of it seems to stem from our definitions of agency itself, so that makes both arguments more subjective.

Sure, but I don't see how that's relevant. We're discussing the agency between a survivor on the floor and a killer when survivors are in the exit gate, base kit. Ignoring that some killers can actually get kills in the exit gate, a killer has the agency to force the survivors to leave under threat of being hooked. In comparison, the survivor base kit cannot do anything except crawl. My point against OP's was this - survivors get the abandon feature because there is nothing they can do if the opponent wants to waste their time. Conversely, the killer can attack the survivors to force them to stop wasting theirs.

I entirely disagree on that based on agency as a concept. See my previous posts in the topic about it, because I even gave examples of how the way killer "agency" works would look on survivor. You're too focused on the asymmetry that you're missing the commonalities, and if I'm understanding you correctly, your concept of agency is limited to your character does things when you press the buttons, maybe tertiary bonuses like BP more than your character can make meaningful progress without relying on their opponent actively allowing it.

I've already gone into my stance on agency in this topic a bit earlier, as well as explained how checkmate scenarios exist for killers, but think of it kinda like this: If someone in an FPS takes the lead and then glitches out of bounds so their opponent cannot kill them, that doesn't stop the opponent from having any of their mobility, actions, or even have input be taken from them. It simply removes their objective from being possible in that scenario, creating a dead man walking loss. Kinda like in an old point and click adventure if you forgot a key item back in chapter 2, but the game didn't have the decency to just finish you so you could reload and not waste time. Both sides have the ability to have their agency taken away in both micro and macro play, but as soon as it is taken for the remainder of the match, only one side gets to leave while the other gets to balance patience and potential humiliation.

The real answer is because BHVR is lazy and didn't want to program a system that would check every single edge case to make sure survivors didn't have a way to come back. If it were up to me, those edge cases would be included in the system, but it's not up to me.

If its lazy, unfortunately that doesn't make it justifiable. Half baked plastifixes solve one problem to cause 4 more down the line. They could easily have exceptions for the mechanic based on portions of a loadout, even if they were as lazy as to just disable it in the presence of specific perks on a per survivor basis. But again, zero effort, zero thought, and zero announcement of planning.

I mean, maybe this is just a difference of opinion. Agency is the player's ability to influence happenings within the game.

I think that would be better described as input. Using the TF2 example, you can do pretty much everything except shoot (even stuff like double jumps iirc) and it removes any and all effective impact you have on the game. By your definition, your agency would be being able to run into the enemy to get killed faster, or attempt to hide and get found instantly 90% of the time. Just like how swatting out at the gates could lead to a hook or kill, but that is a fringe case that, past a certain point, specifically requires the survivor to allow it to happen. I specify that because as my posts point out, I would only really be ok with killer's getting the ability to specifically abandon in checkmate scenarios, not checks like the survivors currently can.

When a survivor is slugged base kit and the killer wants them to bleed out, that survivor has zero agency in the situation.

Haven't been able to play for a bit, but did the anti slug get scrapped as well? I know they were tinkering with it and making it even better, but haven't been keeping up with how much gets kept and how much gets thrown out lately. If not, then no, that would be a check as long as there are means to be picked up (teammates are basekit) and would require any and all ability to be picked up to be a check mate (even all 4 down is still technically a check, though it could be a checkmate if zero survivors had any means through perks to pick themselves up) as even a single perk like UB or Conviction across the whole team (always remember, survivors are the shared agency role) would be enough to keep reasonable potential for a reset. Hell self unhooking would as well, and while something like the AFC version probably wouldn't do anything, deliverance or wicked could lead to a reset. Then you add perks like resurgence to give the reset and even better chance.

My point is a real checkmate would be all 4 survivors in the exit gate, positioned so they will fall past the exit gate when downed, and there is no basekit solution to that for killer. There isn't even really a perk IIRC, just specific killer powers and addons if memory serves. This absolutely can reach those levels on the survivor side, but that type of checkmate is far more strict than how the disconnect system works.

Crawling and recovering are their only options, neither of which will change the outcome of waiting 4 minutes.

And if two survivors decide to forever hide, at any point in the game, they can delay the game for up to 10 minutes per remaining gen and/or regression event. Killer gets bored after 9 minutes and decides to kick a gen to flex their "agency?" Just added another 10 minutes to the timer. People seem to think killers can never have checkmates because they carry a weapon, when survivors have an objective that doesn't even rely on one.

Killers in EGC have plenty of agency though; ignoring the possibility of kills basekit and assuming a killer like trapper, I can still prevent a 2 minute time waste.

We have differing opinions on what constitutes agency, so I can understand your reasoning. However, the thing about your definition is that it ignores concepts like checks and checkmates entirely, as well as all the examples I've given in the topic. If you are playing something like a fighting game and you got touch of death combo perfected every single round, how much agency did you have? How about if you get spawncamped the entire game in an FPS? You start with agency until it is robbed from you, its not just your inputs moving a character onscreen, nor is it purposely walking to your doom to speed up your your loss of the match, which is why I've brought up TF2 so many times.

Now, if you mean agency as in "the killer has to watch the opponents teabag or waste 2 minutes", then yeah, there's nothing you can really do about that. But I don't think being teabagged (or WS'd by the killer) is enough to warrant an abandon in any situation where that can be the outcome.

What I mean by agency is that the player has zero realistic ability to have their personal input influence the game in their favor, most notably toward their objective. If a survivor can't use any action commands on gens or other survivors, they would have limited agency since they would still be able to interact with the killer and resources. If they lost that as well, and could only move, they would still have the ability to sandbag themselves but would have zero agency. The only possibility they would have of a positive outcome would require their teammates to use their agency to compensate for the lack, as they would be unable to physically advance their goal and the only impact they could have would involve the killer willfully giving it to them (chasing them and ignoring the rest of the team enough for gens to be finished, or being ignored and having a shot at hatch.)

Again, it's the agency that comes from this being an asymmetrical game. Because of the way killer works, they have agency in any time wasting situation survivors will never have by way of always being able to injure, down, and hook them. An equivalent situation for killer would be one of the old exploits where you could sit below a drop and the killer drop and then would be stuck on top of your head, unable to do anything and completely at mercy of the survivor below them until the server times out or they move.

Basically, the main source of our disagreement is about the application of the concept of agency to the game. The interesting thing is that this was exactly why the anti-tunneling mechanic bombed as bad as it did, that type of baseline couldn't be established by the community nor the devs (even though they apparently know a third way to tunnel, but just trust them bro.) Also, now that survivors can abandon in so many non-checkmate situations, it kinda kills this argument. And can you not think of a single situation where a killer cannot "injure, down, and hook them?" People have known how to position themselves to fall out of the exit gate for years, its basekit, only specific killers can do anything about it, and it makes it impossible to ever hook or even pick them up. Thats nowhere near as extreme as things like OOB, locker clipping, or immobilization exploits (which are pretty much all gone, thankfully.)

Again, I feel like the main source of the schism is coming from your definition of agency. You keep switching around on whether even simple mobility and input recognition is what determines it, yet survivors still have that when crawling. They only lose that during animation locks (like the killer pickup animation) but they are always able to relocate as well as crawl through the hatch if it has spawned and they find it. The latter of which straight up nullifies both the loss and the win for their opponent, so while niche, I would argue it's technically still more agency than swatting out at the exit. At least you have luck as a potential to see your goal rather than having to rely specifically on your opponent willingly giving it to you.

Just think of it this way, the more variety a game offers you, the more agency you have. Multiple endings, multiple characters, weapons, all of those extrapolations allow the player to have more direct control over how the game plays out for them. Your literal button input is much smaller than your overall input into games themselves, and it goes beyond the mechanical. Agency is essentially choice.

Yeah just something engaging that's part of the game. I'd really like more magic in the game as well. I love hex/blessed totems and invocations, even if I rarely engage with them myself. I want more like that.

As I said. Give the Killer the abbandon mechanic when all remaining survivors are behind the Exit Gate. You can still decide as Killer if you want to try to go for the Kill or not. So no the argument that some Killers could do something doesn´t fit here because the Killer has to decide.

If you have red my arguments than you should know that if the last Survivor got unhooked in endgame the Killer could not abbandon in this Situation. He can only do it if all survivors are in the safe zone behind the gate. If they are out of this zone it is fair game for Killers but when you are at the gate spamming emote to fall safely out of the gate where is the point?

To be fair this argument is funny at all. "But you can still kill me so you shold endure toxicity" but if the Killer tunnels someone out survivors go "Why would you kill me thats toxic"

And just repeating myself I haven´t seen someone answering my question. "Why is it important for Survivors that the Killer hits them out?"

Foreward

yeah no worries here. Just a discussion happening between two forum users.

if I'm understanding you correctly, your concept of agency is limited to your character does things when you press the buttons, maybe tertiary bonuses like BP more than your character can make meaningful progress without relying on their opponent actively allowing it.

Not entirely. If that were the case then I would argue survivors on the ground basekit have agency, just having a character respond to your inputs isn't enough. I think our definitions are pretty similar (agency is the ability to progress/change the outcome or situation in your favor) and we're just looking at the situation differently.

I've already gone into my stance on agency in this topic a bit earlier, as well as explained how checkmate scenarios exist for killers, but think of it kinda like this: If someone in an FPS takes the lead and then glitches out of bounds so their opponent cannot kill them, that doesn't stop the opponent from having any of their mobility, actions, or even have input be taken from them. It simply removes their objective from being possible in that scenario, creating a dead man walking loss. Kinda like in an old point and click adventure if you forgot a key item back in chapter 2, but the game didn't have the decency to just finish you so you could reload and not waste time. Both sides have the ability to have their agency taken away in both micro and macro play, but as soon as it is taken for the remainder of the match, only one side gets to leave while the other gets to balance patience and potential humiliation.

From what I gather, your argument is that in certain situations, you can be in a scenario where your opponents have made it impossible to change the outcome of the match in your favor (like the FPS example). And as a killer in that scenario you should be able to abandon.

I guess for example, playing against survivors that know how to point and heal tech that are all standing against the edge of the escape part of the gate while you are playing wraith. In a scenario like this, regardless of what you do, the only way the outcome will change is relying on the opponent to make a mistake, which realistically will not happen, correct?

I was arguing against what someone else had said, which is that there is no agency in reducing the time waste aspect. If your objective is simply to end the match as fast as possible and move on after your loss, survivors on the ground don't have agency in that (without the abandon feature), but killers in EGC do.

However, from the point of view of "do you have agency if your goal is to progress your objective", with "objective" being hook states or survivor deaths, then I can agree with you that there are scenarios as described above where the killer has none.

This, I think, is where difference of opinion kicks in, I think even in an unwinnable scenario that relies only on opponent mistakes you should still play it out for sportsmanship's sake. In a 2v1 at 5 gens, a similarly hopeless scenario that relies on opponent mistakes, I would not give survivors an abandon option either. But I can respect and understand your opinion that in cases like these or killers in EGC that there should be one, and that not everyone thinks the same way I do.

If its lazy, unfortunately that doesn't make it justifiable. Half baked plastifixes solve one problem to cause 4 more down the line. They could easily have exceptions for the mechanic based on portions of a loadout, even if they were as lazy as to just disable it in the presence of specific perks on a per survivor basis. But again, zero effort, zero thought, and zero announcement of planning.

I agree, and I wish they did it that way. It really kills the momentum of the team when someone abandons when multiple players have perks like conviction and unbreakable.

Haven't been able to play for a bit, but did the anti slug get scrapped as well?

Sadly, completely scrapped. No increased crawling speed, no self pickup, no crawling and recovering. All that made it through was 5 more seconds of basekit BT and tweaks to the anti-facecamp self unhook system (which make it harder to camp/proxy camp).

If the same thing happened when survivors abandoned, meaning that the killer would be replaced by a bot, then I am absolutely all for it. But as it currently stands, the game just ends when a killer leaves. And when that happens, any achievements you may have gotten in the match won’t count. Obviously that’s not healthy. They should definitely give killers an option to abandon, but only if the same thing happens when survivors do, with a bot.

They pretty much fixed that MMR-wise. And even then, it only counts as a draw for the survivor. Aka, they dont lose MMR. The killer still gains MMR when they kill the bots.
And it not counting as a death, so what? Any DC counts as generally losing the game statistically. It doesnt count as a win, that matters more. Besides that, dying doesnt mean you lose. You can die but the game ends in 3 people escaping, that's still a win overall (and honestly, if thats the end result, the dead survivor should gain MMR imo, just like a survivor who escapes through the gate but let all their teammates behind for dead should lose MMR, meaning Hatch is more enticing MMR-wise).

As for the second scenario, in most cases, they would have DC'd prior. And even then, you cant exactly hold everyone else hostage because 1 person brought a perk that could in continue the game. Otherwise, the killer shouldnt get the abandon option whenever they bring an aura perk.

Where is your info coming from on killers gaining MMR from bots?

Why should a survivor who is in the middle of dying not loose MMR? They lost.

What is your definition of agency then? If you can still act and participate, that's agency. Agency doesn't mean a path to a win, it's the ability to still act and make choices.

I had a pair of toxic flashlight users the other day who kept running to me to do saves on one another. Slugged them repeatedly because I wasn't trying to tunnel them out, just wanted them to stop. They were able to abandon at 4 gens up instead of just changing their behavior. Their bots continued the match in a more normal way. So the game let them act stupid and then freely leave their teammates behind, with no penalty, in a match that had barely started. That's an idiotic system.

And it not counting as a death, so what?

It's improtant because people use their personal stats as examples of their experiences, and to prove to others that they can do just fine. But if your 55% ER would be a 40% without the abandons, that's a problem. The personal info we're using to discuss the game is wrong.

In both those cases, the abandon option has been unlocked through previous means:
1. you got picked up after the 3rd time you got slugged in a row, you got the option to abandon prior to that
2. you picked yourself up once after everyone who remains got downed once

In the second aspect, you dont get the abandon option unless the last person remaining turned into a bot(in which, there is a glitch where a survivor escapes and gets turned into a bot, therefor unlocking abandon, but at that point, the gate is open already, abandoning would be the bad option)

Or both could be triggered because no gen has been completed in the past 10 minutes, in which case, the killer can abandon too.

You can only abandon in those cases due to other triggers. You could in theory have 4 survivors use plot twist at the start of the game with No Mither, and then those 4 survivors could abandon when all of them are finishing the final gen together. They got the abandon option and it doesnt go away after.

And once again, the issue there is that you cut the game short just to cut the game short. That's not what the abandon feature is for. The abandon feature is to prevent people from exitting the game for MINUTES, not seconds. Survivors who are all in the exitgate can be cleared within 10 seconds. It's annoying, but eh.
Survivors who are slugged over and over again have to wait up to 4 MINUTES if the killer doesnt hook them.

So that leads again to the question: how are they comparable? You're comparing a situation where it can last 240 seconds that happened commonly to the point that people were quitting, vs a situation that can last 15 seconds if they all have DH and are at full health, that happens so uncommonly that you are pretty much the only person complaining about it.

Why should a survivor lose MMR when alternatives are impossible?

Becuase they lost? So you think survivors should basically get free match deletions just because? A loss is a loss. Being the last one/s to die shouldn't give you free hatch. You're team sucked? Well, you chose to soloq.

Are you saying it's fine that those flashlighters were able to just check out of the match, not get a loss, and leave their teammates behind because their choice of method didn't work? Lightborn is part of the game. If it wasn't supposed to be there, it wouldn't be. You shouldn't just be able to leave for free because you don't like the killers perk.

DCs are different because they can happen as soon as the match loads, and the killer may have only interactd with a bot. The killler has to have at least played against anyone who abandons. They're not the same.

MMR gain isn't some badge of honor. The killer goes up and gets more skilled opponenets. If two people abandon every time I 4k and I don't gain MMR from them, the game is forcing me to smurf by staying lower, and if my opponents played like crap they get to stay higher, where they may not belong. How can you possibly defend that?