Gen skill checks with dynamic speeds
Thinking about how some of the newer types of skill checks operate where the skill check difficulty changes over time, I wonder if it would be more interesting for survivors if generator skill checks had a similar feature where the speed of the dial increased or decreased as you made or missed the check? So at the start of a match the skill checks go the normal speed, and every time you make a successful check the dial speeds up a bit until you miss at which point it decreases or resets. This would potentially make skill checks a bit more challenging for people who play the game regularly, something which could be beneficial since a common complaint seems to be that the checks are either too easy or too boring once you’ve played enough to get used to the game.
Of course this does imply more explosions and slightly slower gen speeds, so if that makes survivors too weak then the devs could compensate by making successful checks give a bit of extra progress and/or reducing the penalty for failed checks. The goal isn’t to “nerf survivors” but just to make the checks a bit more tense beyond the newer player experience.
Comments
There needs to be a constant to work off of. Needle speed is that constant.
Audio/input reaction time are much more volatile on a player-by-player basis.
Visual is a near basic requirement to even play the game to begin with.
Needle speed doesn’t necessarily need to be constant, it just needs to have a starting speed which is visually gaugeable by average players on the fly. As it ramps up it becomes more difficult to read, but once it resets it goes back to that easier to hit speed.
Think of it like a rhythm mini game where the speed of the rhythm increases as the difficulty ramps up. That’s not an uncommon game mechanic (for example one of my favorite little indie games, One Finger Death Punch, is built around that as its core design.)
So long as it's a base-kit mini-game it should remain a constant. (Unlike OFDP DBD's core is not skillchecks)
Perks and Powers could affect that, sure.
It's very simple:
ALL Skill Checks need to be harder (less advance warning, faster dial speed, smaller success zones) for high MMR survivors and easier (slower dial speeds, larger success zones) for new and very low MMR survivors.
The skill checks are currently too challenging for new players and too trivial for pro players. Having checks scale with your value lets the difficulty slowly ramp up to provide a continual challenge even if you get to the max MMR. Gen Speeds can stay fast when there's ALWAYS a risk survivors will miss a check and reset progress passively.
They already have the harder check code in the game (Huntress Lullaby, Doctor Madness, Unnerving Presence), so half the work is already done.