Are we leaving pallet density as is?

Thats the thing, some Pallets are straigth up missing, because they got removed when Pallet Density got worked on. Also some Windows and breakable Walls got removed when they introduced the first version of Pallet Density (the one with way too many Pallets), but those never got added back in.

Examples are the Breakable Walls in the Main Buildings of Groaning Storehouse or Gas Heaven or the best Window which can spawn downsides in Father Campbells Chapel. They also reworked the Fun Bus back then to not really be a strong tile anymore. And then they removed the extra Pallets again, which was the second version of Pallet Density with too few Pallets.

Now the amount of Pallets is fine (obviously if you only count them, it seems many, but as I said previously, many are not really playable for the Survivor), yet those things I mentioned got removed, so overall those Maps are a bit weaker for Survivor.

This is not really true the way you think it is. Yes nurse blight spirit ghoul etc don't care. But we are talking about MOST of the killer cast not the top ones which are a different issue. So keep that in mind as you read this.

All it takes is 2-3 pre-dropped god pallets, and 3 gens are going to get done, let's imagine say, a legion, who effectively has no power after the first hit.

Breaking a pallet takes 2.34 seconds. A pallet covers about 5 meters from 1 side to the other (a little under a lunge which is about 6 meters). A killer breaking a pallet, if the survivor shift+w away, the survivor will gain 9.36 meters of distance for a total of 14.36 meters of distance. In order to hit that survivor, the killer needs to lunge at them, a lunge makes the killer move at 6.9 m/s for 0.9 seconds. the last 0.3 seconds of which they can hit, and then for a few frames after they are able to land a hit. The distance of a swing for killer is about 1 meter. Which means that the killer needs to be 1 meter away for the final hit. Because survivors move at 4 m/s, when factoring the lunge and the distance, this means that to hit a running survivor with the very tip of your lunge, you need to be 3.61 meters away from the survivor. (During that lunge the killer moves 6.21 meters and their hit extends out for 1 meter for a total of 7.21 meters, but during the 0.9 seconds the killer is lunging, the survivor is able to move 3.6 meters. Thus, 7.21 - 3.6 = 3.61 meters).

So in summary:

• Dropping a pallet and the killer breaking it puts the killer at 14.36 meters away from the survivor
• They need to close the gap to 3.61 meters of distance in order to hit the survivor at the tip of their lunge.
• This means the killer needs to close the gap by 14.36 - 3.61 = 10.75 meters.

How long does it take the killer to catch up to the survivor at 10.75 meters? Well the killer moves at 4.6 and the survivor at 4. So every second, the killer gains 0.6 meters of distance. So simply 10.75/0.6 = 17.916 seconds. To account for lag, and human reaction and to make math a little easiy, i think we can safely round this up to 18 seconds. And that is in the best case scenario.

So, in our scenario, lets say the survivor just shift+ws to a pallet and predrops it. No mindgaming, no looping, no nothing, just pure shift+w and predrop. Every predrop extends the chase by 18 seconds.

This doesn't factor in the time it took to start that chase. Land the first hit, find the survivor, any of those things. But, lets say the survivor predrops 3 pallets (keep in mind these days maps have around 20 pallets at this point), then they just shift+w to a corner of the map. This means, no looping, no mindgaming, no nothing, just pure, predrop a pallet and shift+w away as the killer breaks it.

In that scenario it will take the killer 3*18 = 54 seconds to down the survivor. Then they have to, wipe their blade, pick up the survivor, sit through the pickup animation, find a hook, walk to the hook, put the survivor on the hook, wait for the hooking animation, THEN they can start the next chase.

How long does that all take you think?

54 seconds + 2.7 seconds + 3 seconds + 8 seconds + 1.5 seconds = 69.2 seconds.

Again this factors in nothing else. This is assuming the killer starts their chase at 14ish meters away from the survivor, the survivor doesn't try to mindgame, they don't try to do anything, they just predrop a few pallets. And its a legion. So the survivor is assumed injured, but the killer has no power to speak of to deal with this in any meaningful way.

So by the time you do that, the other 3 survivors are 20 seconds away from finishing 3 gens? Now how many resources did that survivor "waste" oh 3 pallets? Well how many are left? 20? Oh so they still have 85% of the map to work with.

All of this to reason is WHY killers are relying more on tactics rather than pure "mechanical skill" to win games. And those "tactics" are the very things you don't like. Tunneling at the right time, slugging at the right time, hit and run tactics, playing a more macro game instead of a micro one etc. And these are the types of things that survivors complain about the most, even more so than blight or ghoul. Look at how many people complain about say, the knight, or skull merchant before they intentionally made her bad, or sadako who goes for condemn instead of hooks. I personally like to play a more macro style, and most matches i get tons of anger and vitriol thrown at me more so than if i play nurse and just end chases in 10 seconds.

So, this isn't really a complaint as it were about the situation, more of just an analysis. The problem here is that this type of thing LEADS to killers adapting and using strategies that survivors find unfun. The only fix to which is really fundamentally changing the core game to make chases and hooks more important than kills while making tunneling/slugging/camping etc not only not good, but just not possible to do. But this is too much of a task for the devs i think, which is why nothing will change.