Heck No to secondary objectives

I would be okay with the delay after one gen is completed before another could, IF when survivors 100% a gen it stays at 100% and can't be regressed.

It would be pretty lame if you did all the work to complete a gen, move onto the next one and the first one is sitting there for 18 seconds and then the killer comes over and kicks it at second 19. Now you're halfway across the map a third of the way through another gen and you have to abandon that one to go attempt to finish that gen again.

This would be especially problematic on small maps, with Tinkerer, and against Nurse, Doctor or Hillbilly.

What if the secondary objectives were optional?

For example, give a large BP bonus for finding and disarming a series of props that would give the killer a small bonus in the endgame. Escaping would be more difficult without doing this, but this possible.

Let's use NOED as a starting point. Not the instant down, but the other bonuses... 8% reduction on attack cooldowns and 4% bonus speed. It's a nice bonus, but hardly game-breaking.

We could have up to 4 props, each one worth 2% cooldown reduction and 1% speed. At the start of the endgame (last gen is finished), the killer gets that bonus for each remaining prop. Each prop is worth 1000 BP. That BP is given to the survivor who disarmed it, or to the killer if the prop activates at endgame.

Tier it so rank 20-16 gets 1 prop per match, 15-11 gets 2, 10-6 gets 3, and 5-1 gets 4. That would help even out the disparity in power level between low and high ranks.

@thesuicidefox said:

@Tsulan said:
The game is easier than ever for solo survivors. When I started, I had no indicators that told me that NOED is active. Or that I'm within the range of UP. But now we've tons of indicators and warning signs that don't even require that I pay attention. 

Do you really think that a secondary objective would be to much to handle for survivors?
Are you implying that survivor is brain dead easy, and that it should stay that way?

The game is for adults. Adults usually have a driving license. Driving requires to use hands and feet simultaneously.
Survivors will do just fine with a secondary or tertiary objective.

I'm saying adding a secondary objective will throw a wrench in all the work that has gone into the game thus far. It makes no sense to completely overhaul the most fundamental aspects of the game when there are better solutions. Obviously you didn't even read the OP where I offer an alternative solution that would achieve the same end result without creating a whole new mechanic for the game.

And I'm not talking about solo survivors, I'm talking about NEW survivors. Solo survivors will be negatively affected by any secondary objective as it just increases the gap between no comms and comms, but for NEW players this type of change would create more of an entry barrier to the game when it's already difficult enough to learn. If you don't think so then try to get in a game with rank >17 survivors and watch how they struggle to do even basic stuff because the way the core gameplay works is not actually that clear.

As far as your driving example, let me ask do you know how to drive manual? I do, and it's not at all intuitive or easy for beginners. Hence why automatic exists. It doesn't change how well someone can drive, it just makes it more accessible.

What you are asking for is to basically gut the game and create all new dynamics. That would require a lot of work to just bring everything up to date with that system. Perks, add-ons, items, they would all need to change. At this point it would be more cost effective for BHVR to just make DBD2.

Oh i read the whole post. But making gens take longer by slowing them down isn´t the solution. Gens are already boring af as of now. Making them even slower by your suggestion, would make people fall asleep mid game. Also your proposal would result complicated for new players which wouldn´t understand why their gen suddenly works slower.

We already have a tutorial. Just add the new objectives into the tutorial and new players learn it from scratch. Do you know Eve Online? THAT is a complicated game! With all the perks, loadouts, weapons, damage types, etc. But new people join every day.

Yes, i drive manual. The first time it´s hard. But thats what the driving school is for. After you learned it, it´s pretty much intuitive and you don´t even haven to think about how you have to hit 2 pedals, shift the gear at the same time while setting the blinker and moving the driving wheel.

The way you picture survivors, it makes them look like they are all dumb.
They are not.

Making secondary objective optional but very rewarding wouldnt be so bad.

Doesnt pressure noobs but gives something to do for high ranks where games get finished in 5 minutes.

@thesuicidefox said:

@Tsulan said:
Oh i read the whole post. But making gens take longer by slowing them down isn´t the solution. Gens are already boring af as of now. Making them even slower by your suggestion, would make people fall asleep mid game. Also your proposal would result complicated for new players which wouldn´t understand why their gen suddenly works slower.

It wouldn't be hard at all to convey to the player that gens are locked. Just simply put an 'lockpad' icon over the generator UI and prevent gens from being finished. Pretty clear and obvious, whereas a secondary objective is not that clear.

@Tsulan said:
We already have a tutorial. Just add the new objectives into the tutorial and new players learn it from scratch. Do you know Eve Online? THAT is a complicated game! With all the perks, loadouts, weapons, damage types, etc. But new people join every day.

Eve Online is complicated and not at all accessible to new players. That's the problem here ACCESSIBILITY because anyone can put in the time to learn all the ins and outs of something. In fact I would bet even the bet DBD players still have stuff to learn about the game, that's just how it is. But making a game more complicated only reduces the accessibility even further. Going back to the cars stuff, if automatic didn't exist it would be a lot harder for new drivers to learn to drive. Can you still learn it? Yes but it's more difficult and time consuming.

My point in this thread is that secondary objectives are not a solution. It just muddles the game and makes it more difficult for new players while also screwing over any solo players in the process. It's uncommon enough for low ranks to finish gens and escape, with secondary objectives it would probably never happen. What I'm suggesting is just a slight alteration to the current formula, one that only effects optimized survivors. At low ranks, you never see multiple gens popping at once. The solution needs to affect only the top tier players, not everyone. Secondary objectives affect everyone.

@ShrimpTwiggs said:
1.) You stated that survivors could simply 99% gens and that the killer can just go around and kick them. This makes Alert a meta perk. They would 99% a gen and, if another gen was completed, go off and hide for twenty seconds. If you happen to kick a gen, then from a pretty good range, they'll be able to see it as well as your aura. The killer would waste their time searching a pretty large area and/or doubling back after kicking just about every gen in order to counter it.

So then a completely non-meta perk now becomes viable? That's kinda what we want here. The other alternative is a secondary objective, in which case such perks would still be mostly useless on top of the fact a whole bunch of them would need a rework to fit with the new mechanics.

@ShrimpTwiggs said:
2.) It doesn't open as many doors as secondary objectives. There's nothing new in the game play and most unused perks and items will remain stagnant. With the addition of secondary objectives, new ways to adjust perks and items come with it, which could take that edge of difficulty off of newer and solo players that you're worried about.

By "opening doors" you are also making the game less accessible in the process. See above.

Also, the gameplay doesn't need anything NEW, this is where you guys keep falling into the "feature creep" trap. You realize that game development has costs right? These things don't just happen, you need people to design, program, and test it. That's time. That's money. And there's no guarantee it would work. It's the exact reason they haven't completely gutted the game to fix problems and instead are doing things in small doses over a long time, because big changes = big risk. They could very well completely fork up the game with new mechanics. Simply adding a buffer to gen completion is way less risk, time, and money, and would likely yield more fruitful results.

@ShrimpTwiggs said:
3.) It punishes success. Outside of perks like Tinkerer, which are supposed to give you an upper hand in some situations, there shouldn't be a punishment for doing your primary objective.

It's not a punishment. Punishment would be something like "finish a gen and get injured". This isn't that. It's "you can't do blow through your objective super fast you need to pace yourself". Furthermore, the limiter would only really apply to the highest tier players. New players, or just low rank players, would be more or less unaffected by it, which is what you want. You don't want to make the game harder for everyone, just for the players that optimize the most because that's where the problem is.

@ShrimpTwiggs said:
4.) It adds more of a buff to SWF. Due to communication, they all know when someone is about to complete a gen and which gens have been worked on, which means that they wouldn't mistakenly go to another gen to work on it for the twenty seconds only to find that it's already at 99%. In all fairness, however, this could also apply to secondary objectives in some cases.

You pretty much nullify your own point here with the last sentence. Exactly that will be the case with secondary objectives. In fact one could argue that secondary objectives would create a greater gap between solo and SWF than a simple gen completion limiter, as you would be able to call out that you are going early to start on those objectives or just that you can coordinate doing them faster. It just makes the game more top heavy, the opposite of what we want to achieve. We want to smooth out the game at all levels such that low rank play remains the same while high rank play changes a bit to make it more fair to killer. With secondary objectives it just makes killer even better at low ranks.

You guys are defending an idea that just honestly isn't very viable. It's too costly to implement, would have too great an affect on the game at all ranks, and ruin quite a lot of the work that has gone into the game over the last 2 years. We don't need that, we just need a simple solution that makes the game more fair for killers that play against the most optimized survivors because that is the only place where gens getting done too fast is a problem.

PS. Going back to cars, if you had a problem with your automatic transmission would you rather completely remove it to install a manual transmission or would you rather they just go into the cars computer and tweak the functionality of it? That's the crux of what we are talking about here, and any reasonable person would rather take the easy/cheap/fast solution over the hard/expensive/slow solution, especially if the former has more potential for better results.

It wouldn't only make Alert a meta perk, it completely counters your idea that kicking gens would counter the 99% problem. Long story short, Alert would make kicking gens just short of useless in this playstyle and if the killer tried to play against it, they would waste that time they have. And with secondary objectives, there's all kinds of new options to tweak perks and shift the current meta.

And I disagree that adding secondary objectives making the game less accessible. Tutorials are a thing and there's nothing overtly complicated about searching around the map. You're acting like all survivors are idiots. The secondary objective doesn't have to be something difficult. It could be as simple as adding a few parts scattered around the map to find. Chances are, there would be more on the map then actually necessary, so you wouldn't have to search way too long to find them. And while you have a point about cost, the devs have already shown interest in secondary objectives in their latest stream, indicating that it's in the realm of possibility. If they were unable to do it, they would never have brought it up, or they would've turned it down.

Yes, it does punish success. By someone completing a gen, they bar someone else from doing the same. This means that their primary objective, completing gens, is locked. This would feel clunk and irritating, playwise. Secondary objectives would work with the flow of the game, and they would slow it down as well. With your idea, someone would 99% a gen and then go and hide for a while. They wouldn't waste time going to another gen and working on it.

My point was to indicate flaws with your idea. Because the same idea might apply to secondary objectives doesn't mean it will affect locking gens any less. In fact, it would affect it more since people would still be able to jump right on a gen right at the start of the game, always know which ones are worked on, know when a gen is almost done, and when to go hide. Not to mention that with Alert, which will no doubt be a meta perk, they can see your aura as well so they could share when you've kicked a gen and where. With secondary objectives, it still requires you to do something beforehand to even start those gens and any information shared about, say, the location of parts or gas, would still have to be found first. Not to mention that the idea is very flexible. There's more things that you can do with it then locking gens. And there's always the question about what would happen if two survivors were to complete gens at the same time. Would one, at random, be complete and the other locked? Because that would make things even more frustrating.

Your idea would not only make the game feel clunky, but it leaves things very stagnant. By adding secondary objectives, you could tweak things like maps and perks to help find them or increase their utility. That would not only add more options for builds, but it would take that edge of difficulty off of newer players that you're worried about. Not to mention things like the tutorial for newer players which could easily explain the secondary objective.

I personally wouldn't mind more objective but it is dependent on map implementation. I don't want clustered maps with crappy objectives that aren't suitable. I want objectives that make sense like perhaps in the slaughter house we have to power gens to return power to the building so that we may escape from there we need to throw the switch to open the exit doors than from there we have to hit these switches to get to the main exist area. Something like not fully but still you get the point and the map has to be just right.

@thesuicidefox said:

@ShrimpTwiggs said:
So if two people finish a gen at the same time, it's chosen at random and the other is locked. That would create nothing but frustration and only add to the clunkiness of the gameplay. As for the gas can, perhaps you find a gas can before working on the gen to prevent that? There's the main difference between locking gens and secondary objectives. Secondary objectives slow down games in a way that the survivor still feels like they're making progress. Before you start a gen, find a can of gas. If you start working on a gen without one then you have no one to blame but yourself when that roadblock hits. And it could be made where you couldn't even start working on a gen until you find gas to prevent the confusion. With gen locking, it just brings your progress to an abrupt stop. It doesn't really feel like pacing as much as it is sudden jarring stops. Secondary objectives like finding gas would flow way better. As for how it affects the endgame, in the case of secondary objectives, the survivors have the choice to plan ahead. How about instead of just finding one can of gas and fixing one gen, you find multiple cans and fill up multiple gens to make the end game smoother? The survivors still have some control. The situation you stated, where the survivor is struggling to finish the gen but runs out of gas, that scenario is all his fault. If he thought ahead and found a can of gas before working on that gen, he wouldn't have been in that situation. It would suck, but it would be something he could improve from. Not to mention all the new ideas this could create for improving perks or items. Pair that with a tutorial to teach new players just coming into the game, and the game will be in a much better place.

Again the idea needs testing and polish. Maybe there is some method to selecting which gens have priority. But to say that you need X amount of gas to finish a gen only serves to make the game less accessible, period. There is no other way to slice it, add more stuff to do and you make the game harder to learn. It's basic logic. Being forced to go find gas or do something else can be frustrating, just look at games where Ruin is too well hidden and doesn't go down until there are like 2 survivors left. That can be immensely frustrating for survivors (which I know if it goes down fast that's frustrating for killers, but that's a separate issue) because you have this other thing you need to do on top of the normal objective. Gens should be the only objective, there just needs to be limits on how fast you can do them.

I really need to know why you are defending secondary objectives so hard when the outcome will obviously have an effect on the entire game. We don't want that or need that. We only want something that affects the highest tier players because that's the only place where gen rush is a problem. Why do we need to make survivors do other stuff when the game just needs something to stop the most optimized survivors from rushing their objective? Why do we need to over-complicate the game with new mechanics and core fundamentals when it just needs something to balance out on the upper end of the spectrum?

@Peanits said:
Sure, if it's a game of only new players. But I could get paired with someone playing the game for the first time and work on a different generator than them. When mine goes off, they're going to be really confused as to why they suddenly got kicked off the generator and can't fix it anymore.

They would arguably be just as confused, if not more so, by having to do something other than their primary objective. If you are in a party with this person you can simply explain it to them. And again, they see a gen pop and a lock icon, that is a very clear indication that you can't do the gen because another was just completed. If necessary you can even add a timer/clock to the UI to show when it can be done.

Like really any argument you make against a gen completion limiter can be made against secondary objectives and apply even moreso because of the fact that it's just more to do. If you have 1 thing to do but are locked out from doing it, maybe it's confusing but not overwhelming. If you have several things to do it's overwhelming AND confusing, as well as tedious. It just leads to more issue down the road.

Really guys take a step back and think about what would happen if you had to do secondary objectives. Think about how much work it would take to make the system, integrate it smoothly with the current design, adjust perks/etc. to work with it, how new, solo, and SWF players will be affected. It's not a good solution when you actually go through all the motions, and it's not necessary for every game. We only need something for the top end players, not everyone.

How about one gas can per gen and you could work on it the rest of the game? It doesn't need to be as convoluted as you're making it out to be. And the difference between finding gas cans rather then finding Ruin is that there'll be many gas cans scattered around the map, meaning that it wouldn't take you too long to find one. And all because there's one more mechanic in the game to learn, doesn't mean that it'll make it overwhelmingly difficult. If anything, I'd prefer if my main objective involved more then holding one button and pressing another one now and then. As for the a secondary objective being tedious, I would find it far more irritating if I had to leave a generator and hide for twenty seconds every time a gen gets done. Bringing the game to a screeching halt isn't fun.

As for any argument applied for one side applies to another, I disagree. Gen locking punishes you for doing your objective, secondary objectives don't. Gen locking is sudden and clunky, secondary objectives aren't. Gen locking would leave the game stagnant, secondary objectives allow for new approaches to perks and items. Yes, it involved more learning, but 1.) tutorials can help with that and 2.) finding parts or gas is a very straightforward thing to do that wouldn't take long to get a grasp on.