New killer ability to help with gens etc
So there's been lots of things said about gen rushing, pallets and killer really having nothing much to do other than 3 things basically. Well why not give them some things thy can do optionally a sort of make your choice for killers.
- Give killers the ability to pre kick gens once the match starts. - The way this would work would be the killer would kick the gen the same way they do now but without overcharge etc doing anything extra. This would be a perkless kick gen ability of the base kick gen ability.
This could add either 10-20 seconds to a gen 20 secs is better, but also perhaps a no progress skillcheck on 1st attempt. You'd then after passing the 1st skillcheck do regular progress as normal. This might need a normal progress skill check but no great skill checks allowed from that point after. You'd only have great skill checks allowed after if the killer rekicks that particular gen.
Now this adds some intriguing gameplay options for both sides since without great skill checks gens don't get popped as fast, especially at the higher ranks. Due to the generator also being kicked before being repaired it's progress will be a bit slower similar to say Ruin effect. A 5-10 % repair speed debuff would be appropriate given that things got squished together so to speak.
Lets say the killer has Ruin well then if the killer does the pre kick routine Ruin still affects the gen similar to normal but there's no great skill check boxes for that particular gen. You'd still get normal progress and such but to compensate for no great skillcheck removal you'd get this instead. To help lower level players good skill checks don't grant progress but prevent gen explosions.
Now that won't really bother higher skilled players since they;ll always hit those but it'll still slow down gen progress for the higher ranks. If the Ruin Totem is removed then of course it's back to normal constraints but with 1 catch. If the Ruin was still in effect before the player.get their next skill check then it's sill active. But only for that next skill check and only for the player who hadn't yet gotten a skill check. After that skill checks are done as normal as if the totem gets cleansed right now.
Comments
I like this idea.
The 2nd option for killers is the pre break pallet option.
This would work by allowing killers to also pre kick pallets, but this would be a base speed, takes 5 seconds and nothing can lower that speed. Why 5 seconds well you're saving yourself roughly those 5 seconds due to chases etc by destroying.
You have the option with both pre kick things of chaning up how you do things and giving you new game play styles. Don't like those safe pallets well take em out early and leave the unsafe pallets for strategic play. Now to make it a real mind game you could do a partial pre kick style where you do the kick but only partially.
This would work by having a progress bar that you could stop at say 95% so it's not completely broken. You'd use your action key to stop the progress bar where you wanted. so you leave it up but almost completely broken and a survivor you're chasing comes to it and drops it in front of you.
Oh and it's a teabagger you're favorite kind but boy are they in for a surprise. You do the normal break pallet routine like always but it only takes .5 seconds since you already had it almost completely broken. The teabagger is still crouched and whammo gets the surprise of their life when you're already there. So it'll be a great mind game is this a safe pallet or not, can I stop for a 1 second SC or do I run for my life?
Now of course the complaints will be you're taking away gen pressure but that's not true with either of these ideas. You've being given different options of play that can enhance several different styles of play. The 3 gen strat with gen kick and pallets destroyed would be sneaky.
Billy running around with no pallets to stop him is simply evil and can you imagine a Doctor with no pallets in his way..
@Peanits @not_Queen Your thoughts on these 2 ideas?
The generator one, I'm indifferent on. It would be neat as a way to apply overcharge (or Pop Goes the Weasel, even), but I feel like the rest might be a little confusing for most people.
The pallet one, I'm really not sure about. I'm going to go way back to the Grim Pantry example back when procedural pallet spawns were adjusted (varies per map, smaller maps will have less pallets, this does not consider safe/unsafe pallets, just the total). 18 pallets, 5 seconds per pallet. Total of 90 seconds breaking pallets, let's add another minute on there to account for moving around the map. 2:30 to destroy every pallet on the map. While this is a lot of time for survivors to freely work on generators, you'd also be able to disrupt them as you're doing your rounds. For the rest of the game, your chases would be dramatically shorter. Grim Pantry only has three maze tiles, and only one building has windows to buy some time in a chase.
I'm not sure about that. Aside from the fact that getting caught is basically a guranteed 30-40 second down, I don't think that would be best for gameplay. Having the killer waddle around for the first few minutes doing absolutely nothing but break stuff while you do your own thing would make the start of each game very boring.
The other thing I'm not sure about is being able to 'prime' pallets, by breaking them to 99%. Basically the same as above, except you can also lure survivors into a dead zone where they think "Oh thank god, a pallet!" only to have it instantly smash behind them. It'd be one thing if a perk allowed you to do it with restrictions, but being able to just make fake pallets all over as a base ability would be incredibly frustrating to play against.
The thing to keep in mind is that breaking a pallet in five seconds does not translate to five seconds saved in a chase. Pallets create a 'safe zone' for the survivor, that is to say something they can fall back on when windows and mindgames can't buy them anymore time. Or if the survivor isn't good at the game, a couple loops before they throw it down. Shack pallet is the perfect example for that. You can vault the window three times to kill a bunch of time, then throw the pallet down once it's blocked to give yourself enough distance to get to another pallet. In reality, that five seconds you spend up front saves you way more time than five seconds in a chase.
how about instead of this confusing bullshit they just increase gen times across the board by 20-25%.
Because that's not interesting, and it wouldn't really help. At some point it just gets boring staring at a progress bar for that long. Generator times have already been increased from 60 seconds to 80 seconds and it didn't have a huge impact on gameplay.
The gen thing I thought would be something interesting for teh killer to try and the gen would of course have the damaged sparks shooting out of it. You could make this only an option once you get to rank 15 and higher. That way with the 15 safety net people could learn the mechanic without depipping.
The pallets I thought about it but perhaps it could instead be damaged since the killers are going to complain until all the pallets are removed from the map anyways. It also doesn't have to be 5 seconds that was a number it could be 10 seconds so the killer has to decide do they waste 10 seconds or w/e destroying it or not.
The survivors would also get a visual notification of the pallet being broken similar to the doctors screams but 1-5 seconds delay so that the killers exact location isn't automatically known. That is unless the survivors are running the perk for that.
I agree priming teh pallets is probably not a good idea but being able to destroy them outright but have to spend time doing it gives them more options. If the survivors aren't paying attention to the pallet being destroyed then that's their own fault.
So how about if we get a function, as killers, that lets us trap pallets to the point that the survs get stunned when they drop them. We would still need to break them before we could resume the chase. They could still drop pallets anywhere they want and could do this in safety if the killer is on the other side of the map. Downside is that now the pallet is down and removes a looping point and makes the pallet available to break right away. No more loops.
Killers with low mobility would not be able to use this mechanic as much as the others. Imo it would just make the Hillbilly and the Nurse even stronger and increase the gap with other killers.
Is it though? The survivors can't sprint up to the killer and force them to stop. The only somewhat counter they have to it is trying to get the generators done ASAP before he's done, and trying to distract the killer just means more time not spent doing generators.
Rather than introducing even more band-aid to the game, I'd rather see the developers pulling off actual map design to shorten chases and also doing something about all the second-chance perks that extend chases faaar longer than they should be.
They are, for both of these things. DS in particular is in the midst of getting a massive nerf. Loops are being looked at and altered to make them less safe, as well as adding in LOS blockers for mindgames to close some of the distance.
If you've got some suggestions for map design, I'd love to hear them, but I sincerely doubt you've done as many calculations around loop length, pallet safety, and time efficiency as they have.
I'll be cautiously optimistic when the developers are gonna nerf survivor perks since the survivors tend to backlash and the developers usually cave in. Considering that they now, right after the backlash, pulled some damage control in wanting to nerf bloodlust (without looking on fixing long loops) and restoring pallets into a no-killer-safe-space.
And no, I haven't done any calculations or spreadsheets. I've experienced most of them myself. Most of them can thankfully be somewhat "countered" with Bamboozle but that's another example of a band-aid fix. Loops like the collapsed silo in Torment Creek or the storehouse in Groaning Storehouse are perfect examples of areas where you can loop the killer for ages unless they can somehow stop you. Those sort of massive time sinks shouldn't exist.
I’d like this idea if they lowered the time to do the generators by maybe 10 seconds, and then also added a secondary mission to the maps. Not because I don’t want the killers to have more balance but with the time it takes to do generators, it kind of sometimes gets a little tedious, and making it longer would make the game slightly less fun and a little boring.
Maybe adding something different that takes similar time? Like maybe digging through 6-7 new boxes throughout that game, and two randomly have an attachment to attach to the door, which can be done before or after the first generator has been started. You could have to take it to an exit and install it. Maybe like a electric switch to direct energy to the door? Or maybe the handle and lever itself are somewhere in the level, and you can attach that?
Not to derail from generators, but I really feel like adding something slightly different to add time would make more sense for play style. Though I do like the idea of a killer pre-kicking a generator and stalling progression on it for a few seconds like what happens when you fail a heal check?