Main Event: A Nightfall-Inspired Mechanic
Current Main Event
Main Event is a Trickster ability that activates after hitting about 30 knives onto survivors. Main Event currently has a 30 second window to activate to encourage the use of the power in the moment of its activation. Similar to seeing a stellar performance and the crowd going wild, you would not wait on its activation or else the hype would die down and that is why the duration exists in a sense. However, after seeing how Dredge's power works, specifically Nightfall, an idea popped into my head that works in a similar way to that mechanic; However, instead of everything being dark, it could be bright like a stage. I had thought "What if Trickster had a real main event?
New Main Event
In this new version of Main Event, Main Event still takes about 30 charges to activate, maybe even 35. Once activated by the player, the map begins to look stage-like and The Trickster and all survivors will have a spotlight around their characters.
Spotlight Mechanic
Survivors that have a spotlight on them are affected by the blindness status effect. For Trickster, this spotlight can be seen from the sky, and it is similar to if a survivor had placed a map marker on the ground, except that it follows the survivor (Survivors can see the spotlight of other survivors and the Trickster on the ground, but only Trickster can see the spotlights that appear in the sky). Additionally, Trickster can see the aura of the spotlights. Survivors will hear a special lullaby melody that is map-wide and only appears in the Main Event. Survivors will still hear his TR when he is within 24m, but now cannot discern his approximate location through his lullaby melody as it is map-wide.
Edit: Survivors that are downed during Main Event will have their spotlight flicker. A flickering spotlight means that those survivors are no longer affected by the blindness status effect for the rest of the duration of Main Event and the Trickster can no longer see the aura of their spotlights.
Trickster Buffs
During Main Event, Trickster can only use his knives, but walks at his normal 4.4 movement speed and has temporarily unlimited knives until Main Event ends. When he throws the knives, he will slow down like usual, but will have immediate max fire rate. This buffs Trickster during Main Event in three ways: no speed penalty for holding the knives while walking, max fire rate immediately, and gives Trickster tracking potential by seeing the location of the survivors through the spotlight.
Power Duration
Originally, I had thought a good duration of this new Main Event would be a 15 second window to activate with a 50-55 second duration of the power. This would mean that if Trickster had downed someone and Main Event had activated during that time, he would be encouraged to either find other survivors to make use of the power instead of hooking the downed survivor, take the risk and hook anyway, or activate and then hook the survivor which would lose some time of the duration. However, it would also make sense to make the power have a 25 second window to activate and a 40-45 second power duration to that the Trickster can still hook the survivor he had downed with no risk at the expense of a shorter Main Event. Additionally, The Trickster will still have a short fatigue effect and be unable to use his knives temporarily after Main Event ends just like in the current game.
Edit: I would personally go with the 15 second window to activate to prevent a survivor that is being hooked from being camped while The Trickster waits for the last possible second to use the ability and camp with it. The auras of the spotlights should encourage The Trickster to go out and chase other survivors during Main Event.
Comments
This is a very cool and thematic idea, but I'm honestly not sure trickster needs buffs. He's oppressive on maps with low loops and much weaker on maps with high walls. This doesn't really cover his weaknesses and make his strengths feel more fair.
I'd suggest it ends as soon as a survivor is downed and the spotlights flicker on and off. There could be an addon that stops the flicker even. It's still activated automatically?
Ooh, I like that idea too! So that the Main Event Spotlight would end for the survivor that was downed regardless of the duration of Main Event. This would work thematically too in the idea of a main event.