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Noise Indicator Crows change suggestion

Nobsyde Nobsyde
in Feedback and Suggestions

After reading a topic on survivors holding a game hostage by not doing anything, and me being on the taking side of this a few times as well, I thought of some little change to the afk crows system.

Right now crows spawn only if being relatively stationary or without performing actions - which can be exploitable for example by repeatedly touching a totem.

So, here's my proposal.

CROWS SPAWN

Noise indicator crows spawn on a player which failed to achieve at least one of the following interaction with the game in the past 90/100/110 seconds (current tier 1/2/3 of crows - since it will be easier for crows to spawn, they have also ≈30 seconds timer increase for their spawning):

  • being chased
  • completely cleansed a totem
  • unhooked a survivor
  • healed self or others for at least 50% health state or changing health state (e.g.: if you heal a slugged survivor which was already 98%, you still reset the timer)
  • being healed with the same limitations as the previous point
  • repaired a generator for at least 15% of completion
  • completely repaired a generator (last tap)
  • performed a rushed action without perks silencing it still active (no Quick and Quiet)
  • failed a skill check
  • threw a pebble
  • any other action which would manifest a sound bubble for the killer which I may have forgot (killer perks not withstanding)
SPECIAL CONDITIONS

Crows never spawn around a survivor in the following condition:

  • the survivor is being slugged
  • the player is the last survivor alive


Crows de-spawn time remains invariant.


RATIONALE

Aside for the obvious exploitation of the system (e.g. just tap a totem to reset the crown spawning timer), the reason for my suggestion is to improve the 2v1 experience; often in those situations what will happen is that one or both the survivor will just hide away waiting for the other survivor to get caught by the killer. They just need to carefully walk around or exploit the system in other way to never trigger the crows, causing frustration for the killer and creating a game theory problem: as a survivor, if I do a generator and the other hides, the other will win, if we both hide we both (probably) lose, if we both do a generator we could both win, with not guarantee.

Using a graph:

Screenshot 2019-11-25 at 18.16.19.png

Being a game theory problem, there's no intrinsic correct solution for what survivors should do, but we can consider that if the other survivor is doing a generator, the killer will find him, meaning that if the killer hasn't found him yet, he's not doing a generator. In other words: in doubt, just hide - and that's exactly what happens with solo survivors.

By increasing the difficulty to hide from the crows, avoiding to do a generator does not guarantee anymore an escape from a chase, since eventually his location will be made known to the killer.


Another reason is that slugged players could find the hatch in their long slugging adventure, but can't stay in its proximity because crows will eventually spawn and reveal the survivor's location. Similarly, if a slugged survivor finds a good hiding spot from the killer, he still can't remain there. Considering that a lost slugged survivor is simply the killer's fault in the first place, crows become an unjust help for the killer.

Similarly, once only one survivor remains it becomes very difficult if not impossible to perform certain actions and avoid crows spawning. Since EGC can be triggered at any time, preventing the game from being held hostage, crows are not needed anymore.

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