Dead Man's Switch Change Idea
It's my opinion that Dead Man's Switch is an extremely underwhelming perk. Between the highly specific activation requirements and the honestly kinda mediocre effect you get for it, I think this perk is long overdue for a change.
I like the idea of riffing on a real dead man's switch, and I like the idea behind the current perk- stay on the generator, or be punished for letting go. However, the insane activation requirements combined with the fact that someone sticking on a generator is kinda bad for you a lot of the time ensures that even when you get this perk to work it's really not that good. So, I'm rolling up my sleeves and I'm getting myself up to the elbow in this perk's innards with a fix.
First step: Remove the Obsession requirement, and remove the duration. DMS is now active for as long as anybody is on a hook. After a survivor is rescued, DMS goes on cooldown for 45 seconds.
Second step: Here's where the fun starts. If you as a survivor are on a generator when someone is hooked, you get a little warning to tell you that you're affected by DMS, and for as long as you hold M1 (or whatever the equivalent is on console), that generator will no longer progress; it will stay exactly where it is. If you let go of the generator, it explodes, instantly losing 15% progress. If the person on the hook is saved, DMS deactivates and the generator can be repaired as normal.
If the generator blows up due to a survivor letting go, it can be repaired again at a slight penalty to the speed, and if it was a generator that was already at zero it's not affected by DMS. These facets would be to make sure nobody can just camp a hook and hold the game hostage.
The way I see this working is that any survivor trying to work on a generator while their teammate is hooked has to make a choice: lose progress and reveal their location to the killer, or sit there and waste time while hoping that someone closer is going to go for the save and let them continue working on their generator. This would especially prompt some fun interactions from survivors playing with their friends- who's going to go for the save, who's going to sit on a generator, does someone want to blow up their generator on purpose to act as bait, etc etc.
I considered making this perk a Hex to compensate for its strength, but since it gets no value if nobody's on a generator and can already be deactivated by going for a save, so to speak, I think it could probably stand without that requirement. It could go either way, though, so I'm curious to hear what others think!
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