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KILLER BUFFS (Affecting all killers)

This post is an extension of this post, which seeks to finally solve toxic tunnelling, and create a healthy version of the game where the survivor will be at fault of tunnelling, and not the killer (a change long overdue); How to solve Guaranteed Tunnelling FOREVER — BHVR

With that said, there are a lot of areas where I believe killers in general deserve a buff, that will allow all killers to be more viable in a healthy way for the game, that encourages skill expression:

1.
Patrolling mechanic:
Just like every killer has their own terror radius, movement-speed stat, so should every killer have a patrolling stat. What does patrolling achieve? It is essentially the non-chase variant of bloodlust, allowing any killer, including ones without movement-speed abilities to traverse the map more effectively.
Currently, a big problem we're having with the game is that all our strongest killers are those whose chase power coincidentally also is a map transportation power. This means that the only time we could ever buff non-transportation killers by making their chase power more oppressive to compensate, which would be unhealthy, and in reality is often not even the case.
Having a proper patrolling mechanic would allow all killers who are traversing the map outside of chase, to traverse the map more effectively in a way that they cannot use offensively, based on their patrolling stat, which will increase their movement-speed & terror-radius proportionally. Individual per killer.

This would essentially remove a lot of boiler plate time where weaker killers are traversing the map, while entire half-of-gens are done and lost just due to completely un-interactive traversing of the maps and making all larger map designs more problematic. This mechanic would equalize killers more and help make bigger maps less of a problem compared to smaller maps.

(I deliberately have left out implementation details on the patrolling mechanic as they aren't that important to me, but feel free to come up with a real implementation)

2.
Harmless Pursuer:
Right now, a free way we could buff killer in an absolutely great way would be to give them a free killer instinct at the start of the match that pings the killer 3 times at the spawn locations of the survivors. This will give the killer instant feedback on which direction to head in.

Currently, some killers might lose as much as half of a gen due to mis-guessing where the survivors have spawned, or even more, where as in luckier the time the chase can start before a single gen has even be touched.
Imagine how hard it would be to completely balance a game, as even at it's start, there can already be such big inconsistencies in how much of the game's objective survivors have left to complete before things are even starting off.

Killer instinct at the starting location (that doesn't follow as they move) would ensure that every game has a tight start, buffing the killer in an area that drives more interactions and removes "chores" and gambling that the killer has to do at the start of the match that can lead to balancing inconsistencies.

For an implementation example you can check: The Core Killer Game Mechanic DBD is missing — BHVR

3.
Exit gates:
A more experimental buff to killers is increasing the amounts of time it would take for an exit gate take to complete, where 1 single survivor alive would still take 15 seconds to complete a full exit gate (which helps with close gate spawns/line of sights in hatch situations), 2 would take 25 seconds. 3 would take 35 seconds, and 4 alive would take 45 seconds. Making the exit gates stage a more meaningful part of the game.

There are more variants you could probably come up with for the Exist gates mechanic that would be equally interested. Since it's experimental, even myself am not set on any specifics, so creative ideas could easily make it better.

Keep in mind these changes are all made in mind with the Guaranteed Tunnelling fix in mind, that will change this game from a game where killers are to blame for tunnelling to a game where survivors are to blame for tunnelling, and changes the game away from a guaranteed 3 stage tunnel out match as Meta levels.
A change long overdue!

Comments

  • Snitz
    Snitz Member Posts: 109

    I think even just a perk that gives killers haste outside of chase would be a great idea to help low mobility killers. The rest I don't agree with.

    I think a better fix to tunneling would be to give the killer a direct reward for spreading out hooks, universally some slowdown would be good.

    Then we can adjust slowdown perks if need be.

  • AlwaysInAGoodShape
    AlwaysInAGoodShape Member Posts: 1,544

    That wouldn't solve tunnelling. It'd still be the most effective strategy and there's no way for the tunnelled survivor to realistically have a decent chance of being un-tunneled

    Weaker killers having to give up an entire perk slot just to somewhat get closer to the stronger killers isn't solving the issue. It's building on top of the issue and cementing that it will be here forever

  • Snitz
    Snitz Member Posts: 109
    edited April 7

    Well ngl after looking more carefully at your first two changes I do agree, one thing that worries me though is that sometimes getting into chase is very inconsistent. It would also help against pre-runs and holding W.

    Harmless pursuer is fine really, it's usually quite easy to predict where survivors spawn, if you don't know, they're generally in a cone in front of your field of view when you start the match, unless you get a weird spawn. It would help against these edge cases where you just get unlucky.

    Some people would argue basekit corrupt would be better, sice weak killers still have to walk all the way there even if they know where survs spawn.

  • AlwaysInAGoodShape
    AlwaysInAGoodShape Member Posts: 1,544

    Yeah, one of the things that's so problematic about these inconsistencies is, those little early gambles can have such a big impact on the match. That's why it's also such a safe buff in my opinion, because in many matches the killer does instantly find someone, so it doesn't buff their max strength, but it does buff them in unluckier games, where the general outcomes overall become more positive for killer