Incentives Matter

People and players respond to incentives and disincentives.

How do you want players to play DbD? Do you want players to have fun?

Do you want killers to camp and tunnel more? Killers will camp and tunnel more after 6.1.0 because of the BBQ changes because the incentive to hook every player at least once is gone, as well as the stack counter. There is a very minor and easily avoided Chaser Emblem penalty for camping there is no disincentive for tunneling. Is camping and tunneling or being camped and tunneled fun?

Do you want to decrease camping and tunneling? Add a dynamic penalty for killers camping and tunneling that is severe when there are 5 generators left but becomes less severe as generators are completed and becomes non-existent once the generators are completed.

Do you want some killers to try to hook everyone once before they start killing survivors? Give us an incentive. It doesn't have to be large. If there is any reward, some players will want it. You could also help by giving us tools to help like a base kit BBQ stack counter. You could also add rewards for getting 8 hooks before anyone dies and rewards for getting all 12 hooks. On the survivor's side, incentives could be added to go take chase if 2 or 3 of your teammates have been hooked twice and you have yet to be hooked and perhaps the game could prompt them to do so.

If these changes were implemented would camping and tunneling stop? Certainly not, some players just want to kill and wouldn't care about the incentives at all. But some players would seek the rewards and we would see a net reduction in camping and tunneling, which many would agree would make the game more fun.

What incentives could you use? The low-hanging fruit is Bloodpoints and Rank. Killers should definitely gain more rank for getting 12 hooks than a 4k with less hooks. Score Events could easily be added, and could be used to fill out the Sacrifice category to make that 10k cap more attainable. Another idea (read: pipe dream) is an automatic killer notoriety system where the killer has a notoriety bar (probably only visible post-game) that goes up whenever they have games where they get more than 9 hooks and goes down when they get less than 7 hooks. There could even be an achievement tied to getting maximum notoriety.

I think changes like these could start a golden age for DbD and reverse the downward trend in player retention.

See you in the fog.

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