Issue With Items/Add-ons/Offerings on P100 Characters

Main Problem: Once a character is Prestige 100  and you run out of items/add-ons/offerings, they become “dead”/bloodpoint sinks. Spending bloodpoints on them feels unsatisfying and pointless but eventually you can't run the builds you want on them anymore without doing so. 
Possible Solutions: 
A: P100 killers & survivors get access to infinite amounts of each item/add-on/offering.
B: Killers and survivors each have a shared pool of items across each role.
AB: P100 killers & survivors each have a shared pool of items across each role.

Main Argument: Since the prestige system was revamped, it has become the only meaningful way for long-term players to feel a sense of progression. This should be supported and encouraged through changes to the way that items/add-ons/offerings work.

Personal Experience Details:
I am an Orela main. I have her P100. I really really love Orela and want to play her every match. However, my Orela is starting to run out of the offerings and add-ons that I want to use. Additionally, when new events come out, such as the upcoming anniversary event, I will want to get the event offerings on Orela so that I can use them for the next year during regular gameplay, however, I don’t want to spend bloodpoints on her because it feels like a waste. 
As a long-term player, the only sense of progression I have left is from prestiging characters. The sense of achievement and time spent to get a character to P100 is very satisfying and feels just-right. It’s what keeps bringing me back to the game, and it dictates the length of my play sessions (e.g., “I’ll play until I reach the next prestige”). 
This leads to the dilemma I wish to present. I want to continue prestiging characters because it is my main driving force for playing DBD day-to-day. I want to play Orela because I like her as a character. But, I am running out of the items/add-ons/offerings I want to use, and thus feel forced to play someone else, lessening my enjoyment of the game. 
This issue is even more exacerbated for killer mains, because add-ons are killer dependent. You can’t just switch to a non-P100 killer to get the add-on you want. You are forced to throw bloodpoints into a prestige black-hole. 

Solution A: P100 Characters Get Infinite Items/Add-Ons/Offerings
The first and simplest solution would be to reward players for reaching prestige 100 by giving them access to an infinite amount of items/add-ons/offerings (preferably including event offerings pls). Also the solution that feels the most unrealistic as infinite items/add-ons/offerings just sounds divisive.

Solution B: Killers & Survivors Each Have A Shared Pool of Items/Add-Ons/Offerings
A more interesting and potentially better solution in my opinion would be as follows. All survivor items/add-ons/offerings are shared across all survivors, and all killer items/add-ons/offerings are shared across killers. 
This is very simple for survivors as they each have the same things available to them. Simply sum up the total of each item/add-on/offering on every survivor and make them available on all survivors. For a simple example: If one survivor has 2 flashlights and 4 toolboxes, and another has 3 flashlights and 3 toolboxes, after the update they would both have 5 flashlights and 6 toolboxes. Using a flashlight and losing it would result in all survivors having only 4 flashlights. This would probably lead to having a lot of low level items/add-ons/offerings, so just representing it as 999+ would be fine. 
This is a bit more complicated for killers, as their add-ons are all different. My solution would be to divide add-ons by rarity categories, sum them up across all killers, and have the rarity be decreased across the board when one is used. Here is a visualization of it:

r/deadbydaylight - A Discussion About Items/Add-ons/Offerings on P100 Characters

Solution AB: P100 Killers & Survivors Each Have A Shared Pool
This is just a mix of the two options above and probably the most reasonable. It doesn’t result in truly infinite items/add-ons/offerings but is still functionally “infinite”, but only for characters that the player has devoted a lot of time towards. 
One caveat with this solution would be if the pool only takes into account P100 characters, event offerings would not be a part of the pool unless the player gets a character to P100 during the event. To combat this, perhaps the pool would pull from all killers/survivors inventories. It could just take from characters chronologically, so it would remove one from the number of brown add-ons Trapper has, or take a map from Dwight first until that character runs out of the items selected, then move on to Wraith/Meg, etc. This certainly sounds like the most complicated solution, and probably wouldn’t work for killer (Trapper would end up with no items/add-ons/offerings). A simpler solution could be to remove event offerings from bloodwebs and just make them infinitely available, in spirit of the event, and keep the pool be P100 characters only. This would greatly increase the incentive to P100 characters, without completely breaking the game.

Counter-Argument:
The biggest point against this I can think of is that it would lead to both killers and survivors bringing the strongest items/add-ons/offerings each game. I agree. However, I think this reveals something that would help a bigger DBD issue: the disparity between what each side brings. I personally think the meta-game of the DBD bloodweb and items/add-ons/offerings is out-dated for modern-day DBD. The outcome of a match should not be decided on whether or not a survivor had enough bloodpoints to find a brand new part in the bloodweb, or whether a killer could find the iri add-on they were looking for in time. Eliminating this meta-game from DBD (in some capacity) would actually allow the devs to get more accurate usage rates on items/add-ons/offerings, leading to better balancing. I just don't think the availability of specific items/add-ons/offerings are relevant anymore to DBD's balance when a good chunk of players have 1000+ hours. A downside of using solution A or AB is that you lose a little bit of this balancing possibility by locking the feature behind long-term players only. 

Additionally, when a player has played long enough to have a P100 character, they already have an essentially “infinite” supply of the vast majority of items/add-ons/offerings. Outside of iri add-ons, it is quite easy to gain more of an item/add-on/offering than you can spend, just on different characters post-P100. Perhaps a limit should be added to iri items/add-ons/offerings in that case? Not sure how to balance that part. Preferably, iri add-ons could be re-balanced on the basis that they could be run every game (looking at you BNP).

Another counter-argument would be that this would make lower levels of items (such as green flashlights vs. purple flashlights) useless. The same goes for add-ons/offerings that do the same thing but the higher rarity version does it better. To combat this, I suggest a rework to how the tiers of items work. Instead of purple flashlights being straight up better, push all items more into the direction of toolboxes: have different “rarities” specialized for certain uses. For example, base purple flashlights blind for longer than any other flashlight, blue flashlights have the longest range away from which they can blind, and green have the longest battery life. 

Outro

Extremely long read, I know, but I have a lot of thoughts about this bc I really don't want to break up with my darling Orela ❤️. I think I personally lean towards solution B. Thanks for reading and please consider!

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Comments

  • vol4r
    vol4r Member Posts: 1,121

    I mean I wouldn't like the fact that people would have access to most broken things possible forever.

    But on the other hand… some killers require certain addons to be decent - Hillbilly for example needs engraving.

    Bubba needed double speeds for a long time.