http://dbd.game/killswitch
Accessibility Update
This post is dedicated to making DBD more accessible to newer players by adjusting some of the core game mechanics.
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FLASHLIGHT SAVES:
It is no surprise that in the past flashlight saves used to be something only more experienced survivors knew how to pull off, as you'd have to time it at exactly the end of the pickup animation. Since then there's been an update to allow a slightly bigger window to blind and still cause the survivor to escape. This was definitely already a step in the right direction, but sadly as for many things, the Devs were too careful with this.
CHANGE: Blinding a killer anywhere during the pickup animation causes the survivor to escape the killer's grasp
Why is this a good change? Because flashlight gameplay is indeed already healthy from the "Right place, right time" perspective, meaning that the counterplay comes from looking in a particular direction, chasing the saving survivor away and causing that survivor to be too late for the save. There's no such counterplay around causing the survivor to be too early for the save, or any meaningful gameplay around it.
However, for someone who has likely invested a significant amount of time for the save, not getting it due to being to early can completely throw the game for everyone because of it. That doesn't create interesting gameplay; It just sucks, plain and simple. Making the save work anywhere during the pickup animation would solve that.
CHANGE: All boon perks by default will reveal the aura of DULL totems within 16 meters
Although experienced players have no problem finding totems for their boons, for beginner players finding totems can be a daunting task in the ever-growing collection of randomized maps, leading to them spending game-throwing amounts of time just looking for a totem. As for you familiar with the kill-rate phenomenon among lower ELO, you know that any killer that introduces side-objectives create the biggest noob-traps of all killers. With the map roster growing bigger each year so does the problem become ever more prevalent. This simple change would help such players and prevent many newer players from throwing their games in public lobbies to this inherent and ever more difficult to avoid noob-trap
Comments
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So killers are never going to be able to pick up survivors with your flashlight change against anyone decent of doing them. So HARD NO to that one. Currently its fine and takes some skill to do yours would literally be survivors running the faster blind add-ons and beaming killed on the start of the pick up animation because timing would be non-issue
No for the totem thing too as making everything being easy with no effort from the user is the most boring way of trying to change a game. New players can run one of the several totem finding perks they have thats why they are there.
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"So killers are never going to be able to pick up survivors with your flashlight change against anyone decent of doing them"
This comment makes no sense. If this was true, then killers wouldn't be able to pickup anyone today already, which is obviously not the case"No for the totem thing too as making everything being easy with no effort from the user"
Considering this "effort" is mainly just map knowledge and thousands of hours of playing the game and seeing the random gen algorithm at work, it kinda proves my point. It harms accessibility for newer players without any real "effort"-4 -
You do realize that you are increasing the blindind window way much making it literal beam when killer picks up and the picked up survivor is off to run away again.
as I added there is several perks to find totems for survivors they can use those if they can't find them without some help.
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"You do realize that you are increasing the blindind window way much making it literal beam when killer picks up and the picked up survivor is off to run away again."
I'm not really sure what this adds to the convo or how this is relevant, but like I said, there is no interesting emerging gameplay from letting a survivor miss a flashlight save from them blinding too early. There's no killer gameplay strategy around trying to make survivors blind you too early, only in making them blind too late. Right now, the only thing that blinding too early is doing is create completely unnecessary gamethrowing situations where beginner survivors have committed a significant amount to the save, have done their positioning and stealth correctly and simply lose the game to an uninteresting technical error. There is no positive to that"as I added there is several perks to find totems for survivors they can use those if they can't find them without some help."
All of those perks aren't for boons, but for finding totems in general, including Hex totems. There's no reason why someone trying to run a boon build should also need to integrate anti-hex perks into their build. On top of that, with those perks existing it's already evident that they have in fact not helped the situation, as beginner survivors are running and throwing games with their boon builds and falling to the noob-trap that is looking for totems for the time of entire generators worth of progress-2 -
Discussion of potential power increases aside, calling this accessiblity feels a smidge disingenuous. I understand you are referring to how accessible the game is, but the words you use are often considered in a more inclusive context, making it sound like this is on the same level as aura options for colorblind people (me) and visual TR indicator.
The flashlight save just needs actual ingame tutorials/tooltips that reflect the difficulty of use. Making them too easy wouldn't change the counterplay much, and against good players wouldn't change much of anything, but it would make the act of getting one less statisfying. Let's keep some minor skill expression.
Dull totem auras as base for all boon perks is something I'd be less bothered about. I'd lower the radius you suggest to 8/12 metres though, requiring players at least check the tiles they want to target for a totem.0 -
"but it would make the act of getting one less statisfying"
I disagree. It wouldn't make anyone less satisfied when getting a flashlight save, however, it would allow a bigger amount of the community to have satisfying moments, especially when they have, by trying to flashlight save, likely invested a game-throwing amount of time in the attempt, which is why I wouldn't see why we'd arbitrarily let them lose those games to merely a technical error, especially since it provides nothing interesting in them timing it."Dull totem auras as base for all boon perks is something I'd be less bothered about. I'd lower the radius you suggest to 8/12 metres though, requiring players at least check the tiles they want to target for a totem."
I think 8/12 meters would be fine indeed too. Whatever it would take for beginner survivors to run past a tile and know for sure whether there was a dull totem there or not-1 -
Presently, the mechanics of a flashlight save require quite a few things to go correctly:
- You need to remain hidden until the killer commits to picking up.
- You need a route to get an angle for the beam.
- You need to be the right distance to get there before the killer can look at the floor.
- You need to start the blind at the right time to avoid triggering it early.
Removing point 4 would make flashlights more consistent for lower-level players, but remove some of the precision required to execute the save. It would make the decision of when to break cover and go for it have a little less thought to it, including the impact on perks that impact pick up speed, as the optimal play becomes "shine as soon as physically possible" regardless of killer choice.
I'm not very good at flashlight saves, happy to admit that, but that difficulty makes getting them a satisfying achievement each time. If I felt like I was being handheld through that, it absolutely would reduce the dopamine hit.2 -
The best time to flashlight save would still be at the last possible end, as it would waste the maximum amount of time.
Interestingly enough, if survivors would try to go for the save earlier, it would often also mean they have an increased risk of being spotted, since sometimes they have to pre-run, which allows killers to fake the pickup.
That is the beautiful thing Imo. Timing your save until the very last end remains optimal and makes you most resistant to pick-up fakes, so all the advantages are still there for better players.
However, the timing of the save, like I mentioned, adds nothing interesting to the game. It doesn't interact with the killer much at all, unlike other chase-based techs and other skill expressive elements. Timing the save is a purely one-sided technical aspect that is currently creating games where players invest a game-throwing time into preparing for the save, doing everything right, staying hidden from the killer, finding the right angle, and then failing the blind to a technical error that will then often lose them the entire game. That's why I say, it doesn't add anything interesting to the game to having to "time" flashlight saves, other than arbitrary creating game-throwing situations among beginner survivors, and arbitrarily making the game less accessible.0 -
I think the problem here is you could apply this logic to pretty much every game mechanic in existence and refer to it as abritrary. There are some arbitrary difficulty gates I do agree with, such as the lack of a crosshair option outside of wasting an addon, but this is not one I'd classify as the same.
I understand your perspective about interactivity, however not every bit of skill expression requires direct interaction and we wouldn't argue they should be gone. For example, do we say someone in a PvP FPS that got the positioning advantage on an opponent should just get a button prompt to kill them instead of having the aim the shot? A sniper holding a good sightline, should they have to aim when gamesense already had them in the right place at the right time to lock down an area? They didn't interact with their opponnent to achieve those advantages, and taking a shot against an unprepared enemy is not particularly interactive either.
No, despite doing everything right, they are still only setting themselves up with the best chance of success, and rely on their mechanical execution to succeed, even if the player in those examples has already outplayed their opponent. If a survivor outplays the killer via game awareness, they should be rewarded with the opportunity for skill expression to conclude the interaction, not a near guaranteed reward.0 -
Making blinds work any time in the pick up animation would simply make it horrible to play against.
Ever since the change with the extended window you can already turn away sometimes half a second before you would be blinded and still get blinded (with 20-30ms btw, so not impressive but good), I won't accept more of those random blinds that shouldn't have ever worked. I'm positive that people are smart enough to learn at least the slightest bit of timing.
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"such as the lack of a crosshair option"
Unironically, the lack of a default crosshair option is bad game-design, as pc players often already have access to this by default through their monitor crosshair"They didn't interact with their opponnent to achieve those advantages, and taking a shot against an unprepared enemy is not particularly interactive either."
This is simply incorrect, and kind of proves my point. In this case there is interactivity. In the types of precision shooters you refer to people can crouch around corners as well as stand peek, where headshots are often crucial. There are also ways to juke such as a fake peek to bait a shot, jump or come from an unexpected place. Every bit of it shows there interactivity as well as a subjective/varying place where your crosshair might be considered meta"they should be rewarded with the opportunity for skill expression to conclude the interaction, not a near guaranteed reward."
The problem with this claim is, it simply doesn't really apply much nor involves any meaningful skill. We are literally talking about a basic timing that most people are able to do after just playing the game for a mediocre amount of time. Neither does it punish killers, as survivors saving earlier would only mean the killer's game-sense is worse as it's harder to save earlier than later and puts survivors more at risk as well as requiring to be closer/ at better angles.
This is one of those cases where player's Stockholm Syndrome kicks in. Nobody would hate it if it'd be in the game already, neither killers nor survivors, which is why I invite you to look at this experiment to take you out of the Stockholm Syndrome;
Let's do the opposite: Instead of making flashlights "less skilful", let's make them more skilful, in the same uninteractive way of failure: Instead of a normal flashlight save, halfway during the save your aim gets shot in a random direction, forcing the survivor to having to quickly correct it back into the killer. (It takes slightly less time to blind to compensate for the minimal time it takes to correct it).
Now, I hope you could see that this would definitely make flashlight saves more "skilful", but not having Stockholm Syndrome around this feature, I hope you'd see why this would just universally be a bad idea, as none of it interacts with the killer in any meaningful way, and all it does is lock a fundamental game mechanic behind a one-sided technical prompt of which's outcome of failing is quickly turning those games in which that happens into a fail, causing less players overall to interact with the feature.
The Stockholm Example is relevant, as no players on the long term would ask for flashlights to only start working at the end of the animation again when it would be implemented, since my suggestion would make the game universally better, just like the many other features that used to have pushback, like the survivor icon info on the left screen that caused killers mains to worry, yet today, not a single person complains about it. Because these types of accessibility changes make the game better overall, and once the Stockholm Syndrome has settled, there'll be no haters left to hate, and only enjoyers left to enjoy, which in case would be a lot of beginner players who did a play and did it well, but merely screwed up a meaningless technical prompt to reap their rewards of their efforts.0 -
I'm not sure so feel free to correct me on this, but the more forgiving flashlight blind gap was, I think, added to the earlier part of the animation, so it never created saves that were able to take place later. (Which would've been a flashlight save buff if it genuinely did)
What most likely happened to you, where you turned away is simply caused by ping. The player blinded you and stunned you (at the end of the animation), but since that has to be communicated over the internet you see that later, which can cause you to be able to look away before the game can tell you that you were already stunned 30ms ago0 -
I don't think we will find agreement because ultimately this boils down to subjectivity. What is worthy of being called skill expression and what isn't, and where we draw the line of what is arbitrary. We agree on the crosshairs, for example, but timing is where we disagree. Timing is not inherently pointless, neither are knowledge checks.
Your thought experiment sounds horrendous, I admit, but I would not say that I am in any kind of Stockholm Syndrome with the timing mechanic. Your example is wresting control away from the player, whereas timing is not, instead narrowing the margin for success and by definition making that success more meaningful. I can appreciate you don't feel that way about it, but I stand as one example of a player that this matters to. And I'm not even considering this from a killer's perspective. I tend to play presuming a flashlight is on the wings at all times, so your suggestion wouldn't change much for me on the killer side.
I think there's also an element of understanding different stages of player development. Even with reference to new players and this making flashlight saves more accessible, it also removes a small win for them in getting the timing right. It's just removing a challenge that is worth overcoming for some people. How long has it been since you've been in VC with a new player that got a flashlight save and was riding that high for like a solid twenty minutes after? If they were guaranteed so long as you're in front of the killer at any point in animation, I sincerely doubt that kind of reaction would happen, at least more than once or twice. Keep in mind, I preface this by admitting I'm bad at flashlight saves and your suggestion would only benefit me in terms of success ratio. Maybe you consider finding satisfaction in nailing the timing as the Stockholm element, but speaking obtusely we could apply that to every mechanic in every game. What's different between you and I is what we consider an improvement to the gameplay experience in this situation.
As for the FPS example, you're kind of adding context to the basic situation I was referring to. Take hero shooters, which is more where my mind was as I probably should have clarified - Extreme mobility/power options result in a flanker getting to their ideal position, and they're about to get the drop on a juicy support. It took skill to set this up in terms of map knowledge and movement tech, but there wasn't interaction during this. They time their engagement correctly too. For a good player, this will result in value 99.99% of cases, but they are still required to execute mechanically. A bad player would be less consistent, even when set up with all the same advantages. Do we consider the final mechanical skill check in this situation arbitrary because the outplay already took place? I was referring more to this sort of situation as opposed to holding corners like in CSGO, perhaps mentioning a sniper was a bad idea.1 -
(also off the back of the recent post about upvotes/downvotes I'm actually all for this kind of chatter and I'm not the one dropping down arrows on everything you're posting)
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One of the reasons why I wanted to bring the Stockholm Syndrome up was because it's a more common phenomenon than people realize. I do agree, my example is kinda of bad, but you could take any type of skill increase addition to the flashlight save (hell even something as insane as having to do quick skillchecks during the beam as you hit the killer's eyes), I just want the underlying thought exercise to come through, because when we tell ourselves that "removing timing from saves makes saves less fun", the only way to differentiate between Stockholm Syndrome and the reality is by breaking out of it, which we can do by looking at it from a different direction.
With flashlight timing being an un-interactive technical prompt, would increasing the difficulty of this prompt make saving more fun or satisfying? That is the question I want you to truly ask yourself, independent of what implementation you could come up with.
It is my claim that it wouldn't make it more fun, and neither has the previous change of making flashlight saves more forgiving made saving less fun for anyone, as even the people who used to argue against it back and the days have all recovered from the Stockholm Syndrome.
I think it's important to realize why we ended up with this system in the first place to truly understand why my change would be beneficial. For many people who don't know, flashlight saves were never necessarily intended as a game-mechanic to be exclusively used after an animation stun. For those who remembered the "Hag incident", flashlights used to be so quick with blinding that you could pull it off against the killer at many times during a chase without any form of animation lock. The "blind after stun animation" has solely manifested itself through the players, who have since then used it in such a manner that is actually healthy for the game. That is why it's so important to realize that why we have what we have right now isn't the result of careful game-design around how to make flashlight saves more fun; it's the result of a legacy feature back from when the Devs didn't quite know which direction to take the game in. (And back when they didn't quite know whether they wanted it to be a hide and seek game or chasing game, with the players pushing for the latter).
Inherently it has always been awkward that the only wait that flashlights remained useful after the initial nerf, reducing it to an animation lock mechanic, that it had to be timed exactly after the animation finished, with the killer not being able to turn away fast enough (though always theoretically possible with insane sensitivity). That is why, imo the initial change of creating a more forgiving gap was great, because for the first time the Devs were actually playing into how this feature is supposed to work. It was the first time Flashlights as a mechanic became more than just a random thing you can blind killers with in chase, nerfed to the ground and after only usable after animation locks, to actually acknowledging how Flashlights currently exist in the game as a healthy mechanic;
A mechanic where survivors have to position for a save and try to get the right angle, while the killer tries to look away, or chase survivors far away so they can't get the blind in time.
Sadly, this healthy way of Blinding saves existing has never seen a proper look after that, and some part of the playerbase surely is stuck with the Stockholm Syndrome that the clunky remanence of the current flashlight save mechanic was any way was intentional, or had anything to do with fun.
That is why I want you to ask yourself, if increasing the skill for a flashlight save doesn't make saving more fun, and the current already decreased difficulty hasn't made it less fun, would implementing flashlight saves as a fully fledged and intentionally designed flashlight mechanics around "right place right time" while having it's playstyle accessible at all skill levels really ruin the fun? Or would it expand it and make the fun available for all players, while keeping the meaningful gameplay between killers denying the save and survivors positioning for them well and alive, and simply removing the random gamethrows among lower ELO's where a beginner survivor did everything right, but arbitrarily gets their progress and plays taken away due to failing some arbitrary one-sided technical prompt, resulted from this unintentional legacy mechanic?0 -
"As for the FPS example, you're kind of adding context to the basic situation I was referring to. Take hero shooters, which is more where my mind was as I probably should have clarified - Extreme mobility/power options result in a flanker getting to their ideal position, and they're about to get the drop on a juicy support. It took skill to set this up in terms of map knowledge and movement tech, but there wasn't interaction during this. They time their engagement correctly too. For a good player, this will result in value 99.99% of cases, but they are still required to execute mechanically. A bad player would be less consistent, even when set up with all the same advantages. Do we consider the final mechanical skill check in this situation arbitrary because the outplay already took place? I was referring more to this sort of situation as opposed to holding corners like in CSGO, perhaps mentioning a sniper was a bad idea."
I wanna add, I'm definitely not for removing any form of knowledge based mechanics from games, in the slightest, as I do think knowledge can play a very meaningful part in gamedesign. Although I do think that in the case of Flashlight saving, considering the context of its history, that all it achieves is fundamentally making a core part of the game inaccessible for newer players, who are, at their elo already significantly behind in survival rate in general and do not need to have this feature as well as entire playstyle taken from them by just requiring them to simply play more, as in this case, this knowledge element mainly adds a negative and doesn't provide anything interesting to the game, rather than making a core playstyle less accessible to people who are at their skill level in least need of a nerf / causing arbitrary gamethrows for merely failing a quite uninteresting technical prompt in my view0 -
I can appreciate that and fundamentally, I do not think you are wrong. I just believe that having the ability to do so be a reward for consistent practice is better for survivors that will stick out the rough early game. I'm one of them, given the raw time I've put in, and I've enjoyed learning the quirks of the game and bit by bit putting them into practise. There are elements that bother me. I think the onboarding process for new players is ass. I think there should be lots of mini tutorials with small iri shard rewards that you unlock in tandem. Nothing to explain everything too concrerte, but mini challenges.
- Loop the bot killer on a single tile for 60s.
- Get a flashlight save for a bot ally that starts downed with the killer on the approach.
- Hit X amount of great skill checks.
Lots of bitesize things to make some elements of the game clearer, using community-made techs/strats to inform them. It'll still be basic, but even the concept of running a single tile is alien to most new players.
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