The Bloodweb should not be the progression system. How about this instead?
A skill point system.
It's a pretty basic principle. You play a character and earn skill points for you to spend on perks. For the sake of creativity, I'll delve deeper into the idea.
Skill Point Types & Spending
Think about the mobile progression system. Say for example, we're levelling up Adam Francis to get a high-level Deliverance. If we want to level up his perks, we need to play him in matches.
There are four types of skill points: Boldness, Objective, Altruism, and Survival. For conceptual understanding, let's say 2,000 bloodpoints equals 1 skill point in its associated category. (For example, the Late Hook Rescue score event will guarantee an Altruism skill point since it awards 2,000 bloodpoints immediately.) You can earn a maximum of 8,000 bloodpoints in a single category, which means you can earn up to 4 skill points for each category. Easy, right?
Back to Adam, if we want to level up his Deliverance to minimize the punishment in using the perk, we'll need skill points that relate to Deliverance's purpose as a perk. So... Deliverance requires you to unhook somebody else, and then lets you unhook yourself. Therefore, you will need both Altruism and Survival skill points to level up the perk.
Now say we want to get Off the Record as a part of our build. We don't have to spend ages in the bloodweb looking for Zarina's perk anymore, because we can just buy it immediately with skill points! (Note: You obviously need the teachable perk from the associated character in order to buy.) For Off the Record, we'll need Survival and Boldness skill points.
A few more examples... Want We'll Make It or Bond? You need Altruism skill points.
Looking for Prove Thyself or Stake Out? You'll need Objective skill points.
Better Together? Objective AND Altruism skill points.
For Killers, it's the exact same but with their own set of categories: Brutality, Deviousness, Hunter, and Sacrifice.
Brutal Strength? Get some Brutality skill points.
Blood Warden? Deviousness skill points.
Save The Best for Last? Both Brutality AND Deviousness!
Barbacue & Chili? Hunter AND Sacrifice skill points! You get it now.
The Bloodweb remains
While perks are being distributed with skill points, the bloodweb will serve a different purpose. You may have been wondering, "What happens if I don't make enough bloodpoints to get a skill point?" Well I'm glad you asked, because I have an answer!
Say you make 7,999 bloodpoints in the Deviousness category as... Hillbilly. You'll get 3 skill points, but the remaining 1,999 bloodpoints will go into your bank. The bank puts all bloodpoints together, so if you got some extra points in other categories, they'll be combined with everything you've already made. You can spend these bloodpoints in the Bloodweb.
How the Bloodweb Works
Items, add-ons, offerings... It's all found in here! The more bloodpoints you give it, the larger the bloodweb and stronger the commodities it yields. However, big bloodwebs have a higher chance of the Entity consuming a portion of it, just like it does currently.
For example, say you have... 200k bloodpoints stocked up. You pour in 100k, which is the maximum amount that you can use in a single bloodweb. The bloodpoints are consumed and a bloodweb slightly larger than that of a LVL50 bloodweb would look like. All nodes bear a commodity of Rare or higher. You can take any items you want the same way you do presently, except everything in the bloodweb costs nothing and creates paths to stronger items on the outer reaches.
After nearly completing one quarter of the bloodweb, the Entity will begin consuming nodes starting from the opposite side of the completed portion. Once the bloodweb is exhausted, you can repeat the process once more.
In the next bloodweb, you bet 50k. The bloodweb is half the size of the previous and bears items no greater than Rare rarity that are only present on the outer nodes of the web. The Entity only appears when half of the bloodweb is already completed, which will give you three quarters of the items in total.
Conclusion
My goal in making this is to remove the RNG reliability when progressing through the game. In my experience, I went through hundreds of bloodwebs and spent over a month of my free time pouring bloodpoints into Yui Kimura for Blood Pact. A few days ago I finally got it, but only level 1, and the game didn't give me any higher of a level from that point on and I don't have the patience to sit through it any longer. So, the less RNG, the better, and I'd like to see this game move away from RNG as it grows, and I would also appreciate any criticism or questions from my readers.
Thanks for reading!
Comments
I appreciate any post that makes a good faith effort to change the leveling system. I do think that categorized bloodpoints would be cool, I think it would be somewhat difficult to implement given the way bloodpoints are already calculated in DbD non-mobile. Limited range for RNG on perk discovery on bloodweb is always a good direction to move in.
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Bloodpoints are already categorized (ex. unhooking someone rewards BP in the Altruism category, etc.) and the skill points utilize that for progression since every 2k bloodpoints equals a skill point for its respective category. I figured building off of what we already have would be the easiest course of action both for implementation by the devs and understanding by the players, which is what I saw you've done in your post.