In-game mechanic to prevent survivors from taking a game hostage by hiding
The AFK Crow mechanic is reworked to the following:
- Each survivor has a personal 4 minute timer that decays while not downed or hooked.
- While in chase, doing a Conspicuous Action, or receiving a Conspicuous Action (eg, being healed), the timer is paused. During running, the timer decays at 50% speed. (So they can’t run around in the basement or corner forever)
- If the killer is in 8m and not in chase, the timer decays at 50% speed. (For hiding when killer comes nearby, but not allowing hiding forever)
- Recovering from the downed state or being unhooked restarts the timer.
- If the timer fully decays, AFK Crows spawn and will not go away until chase starts OR 14 consecutive seconds of doing/receiving a Conspicuous Action happens. Eg, snuffing a totem.
- This mechanic is disabled when only one survivor is alive or the Exit Gates are powered.
There is no excuse to spend 4 full minutes crouching/idling/walking and doing literally nothing to progress any objective or Conspicuous Action when it pauses on doing anything meaningful and resets on pickup and unhook. If you are actually playing, you will never have to worry about this ever being triggered on you.
Comments
Friday the 13th would boot counselors idle or not moving outside of a certain radius after 60 seconds. I use Bond just about every match and it's helpful/distressing to see how useless survivors can be.
I feel like I have added sufficient restrictions to prevent it going off in unintended situations, but being helpful for intended situations. What is your opinion?
Sounds good to me. I like that it pauses while running - my immediate concern when it comes to these kinds of things is that there are situations where survivors are not completing any objectives or causing any score events because they're running around looking for a totem (Devour, NOED), but focusing the timer on purely stealthy behavior and even accounting for a nearby killer is well thought out.
I would also disable the timer once only one survivor remains, since the killer can close the hatch to spawn the EGC timer and the game can be made to end that way. But other than that, this solution checks out - and it's pretty sorely needed. Permahiding games are miserable wastes of time.
Oh yeah, forgot to clarify it would only be for when at least 2 survivors are still alive. Thanks for the feedback! I really appreciate it. And yeah, I included running so there’s no weird edge cases like looking for totems or weird moonwalking killer nonsense.
Maybe they could take a hint from VHS and add some anti stalemate mechanic. They have the rift that either side can capture that gives aura reading for a while. To counter stalemates they should spawn a glyph after 1 minute of no chase happening that the killer can use cause the survivors to scream or gives 10 seconds of aura reading that can't be blocked by lockers/perks.
My only concern is that despite your intentions, it may still have the unintended effect of giving the location away of survivors that are playing fairly. The timer shouldn't be paused whenever they perform a Conspicuous Action, it should be stopped completely and reset after they are completing an action (repairing gens, cleansing totems, healing, unhooking, etc). I believe it should be bumped to 3-5 minutes to protect survivors and the consistency of this proposed system. If you aren't doing anything but crouching/walking around after 5 minutes of game time, I believe that is sufficient enough.
The only issue with the full reset instead of the pause is that you can have permahiding survivors crawl up to a gen, tap it for a fraction of a second, and then go back to a locker. I've already seen survivors do this to avoid crows, and they can do this several times before the gen even gives the barest "I've been worked on" sound.
Maybe have conspicuous actions wind the timer backwards instead of resetting it entirely? And 5 minutes does sound fairer than 2.
That sounds pretty interesting as well. Would definitely need some restrictions though, otherwise killer could avoid chase on purpose if it’s too easy to use.
The reason I had it the way it currently is was so that survivors trolling on purpose can’t wait till like 30s left and then finally snuff a single totem just to completely reset the timer. I don’t think there should be more ways to reset the timer. Maybe a generator being fully finished, or a Hex totem being snuffed/blessed, since those give an obvious location reveal. I think 5m is a bit excessive, I think 3m would be fine for some more leniency though.
That’s also an interesting idea. Having to stay productive to "buy" time back. I like it!
I personally like this, as I despise survivors that do nothing. But it would add another level of stress to the game that I think survivors just wouldn't go for. Having an inactivity timer to worry about on top of worrying about completing gens/unhooking teammates, on top of avoiding being killed, and finally on top of time-based killers like Pig and Freddy would be like basekit pressure for killers.
This is similar to a solution I came up with for a range of things accelerating a game to a close. For mine I have actions/situations pause, regress, and add to the afk timer, based on what they are doing to the game state.
As far as stealth in general, the game is designed around evading the killer, whether by extending the chase, or never entering it. When all 4 survivors start hiding from the start, preventing the killer from ever interacting with them, then I'd say stealth can be greater touched upon.
I don't think it would be a level of stress, personally. As long as you're actually playing, it will never kick in anyways. So it's like, yeah, there's technically a timer, but it's kind of irrelevant unless you're actively refusing to play. So no reason to even worry about it.
Hiding is a part of the game, but hiding for extended periods of time and refusing to try and repair or progress anything else (healing/totems/etc) is against the rules. It's why I have half-speed for when hiding near the killer out of chase.
That is needlessly strong, since you can kick a gen and afk near it for a minute or two, forcing crows against someone legitimately trying to play, just refusing to go down in miliseconds (exaggeration for effect) in a chase against them. It also could be abused since a killer could just travel between two gens and kick them repeatedly, the survivors never get a chance to work on the gens and progress them beyond the crow timer they are gaining. These are players actually trying to progress gens, but are getting punished for it.
The timer is paused during running, since that generates scratch marks to track survivors with. Also, if the killer is hovering near one gen, they can just do a different one. If the killer is patrolling a 3-gen or something of that nature, they can just chip away at it whenever the killer is not there, and the killer will lose that war of attrition if they never actually commit to a chase. If they only go between 2, survivors just do the third. So on and so forth.
Identity V actually has that kinda agressive crows, It'd work in DBD too. According to some wiki of dubious validity, it's 80 seconds.
What if the killer can't find a survivor for more than 90 seconds base whispers activates reducing the radius till 20m over 2.5 minutes(to avoid slugging for 4k).
The above numbers are placeholders. I don’t think it should be lower than 60 or higher than 120 though.
That’s another interesting concept as well.
You just exposed the flaw that I was talking about by mentioning the 3-gen instance. Many, if not most 3-gen instances, are within the standard 32m terror radius from edge to edge. That is if the gens are laid out 1 --- 2 -- 3 (positioned roughly so), when you are at gen 1, you are terror radius distance of 3. Also in terms of killers with hyper-mobility, in the form of teleporting through walls or dashing at speeds equal to or greater than 6.0, you can still reach each edge and prevent gen progress, cheesing survivors to death.
Also if you sprint in a corner nowhere near gens or in basement you can bypass this, especially with Lightweight. Then all survivors need to do to prevent being reportably delaying the game is tap a gen every 9 or so minutes, since 10 is the reportable duration. I think if the survivor is bypassing these checks hiding near the gens within terror radius it is far better than hiding across the map on in basement.
In general survivors shouldn't be penalized for actively attempting to progress the game, by hiding near gens and progressing them when the killer isn't there. They should be penalized for being on the opposite side of the map or where killers won't look, and cheese the mechanics. If a survivor is hiding near a gen then the onus is on the killer to seek them out better, be that getting better at recognizing hiding spots, mindgame leaving better, or bringing intel perks such as Whispers or Darkness Revealed.
Yeah there’s the current loophole of running in a corner. Was considering adding a minimum distance requirement.
Even with close-by gens, survivors can still chip at them. Lack of ability to do so only comes down to either lack of solo queue info or gens spawning way too close (eg Lery bug where a gen spawns like 10m from another).
Non-bugged 3 gens are absolutely manageable even against mobile killers. You have a survivor on each of the 3 gens. If the killer commits to chasing a survivor off a gen, the fourth can get on that gen to have all 3 gens progressing simultaneously. Even without that, just 1-2 others on the others still means continuous progress. If the killer drops chase, then that means they got nothing after other survivors got progress chunked on the gens.
The running in a corner loophole could be killed off by making it so the timer goes slower instead of stopped while running. This would give ample time for finding things like Devour Hope but would not allow running in a corner forever. Eg, 50% or 25% speed (4m or 8m of pure running respectively).
And this wouldn’t affect a survivor running from a killer anyways, and if Wraith is following invisible or whatever, it’s not like the crows suddenly tell him the location of a survivor he doesn’t know. He’s literally following them anyways.
@Laluzi Thoughts on this change to the running timer? Made some edits to the original post.
Another idea could be what @SgtMittens suggested of requiring people to leave a certain radius.
The final paragraph is assuming a survivor wasn't killed early. If survivors are cut down to 3 players the game plays out far differently, as you cannot properly progress the game on the survivor side. When normally if S1 is on hook, S2 went for the unhook but got caught and ran away taking an injury, S3 goes for the backup unhook, and S4 can progress gens. With 3 people (or fewer) that removes the 4th survivor gen progress entirely and snowballs the game to a quick (and unearned imo) win for the killer. This would reward tunneling even further.
3 people is meant to be a disadvantage. It also isn’t unwinnable, especially depending on number of gens left.
Instead of forcing people to move with AFK crows it should be tied to : have you gotten more than 200 points toward the objective in the last 60 seconds. If the answer is no then you get crows.
Once you have a crow that means you have about 20 seconds to start getting points. Obviously if you had crows and were attempting a totem the timer should pause. But if you get the totem 75% done and stop then you should get your second crow (and the resulting explosion).
Not sure about the exact numbers but that’s also a very interesting idea.
Given the current greater ease than ever of hard tunneling out survivors, it seems too good of a buff for scummy killers, despite the benefits it would provide the general population of killers.
Then that means the game should be adjusted in some other way to help counteract that. For instance, better information for solo queue so they can coordinate properly in response to early wanton tunneling. Or other forms of mechanics to help with that. So on and so forth.
Even when playing with friends and coordinating bodyblocks when a killer is hard tunneling the not so good friend, that still isn't enough and we can't crank out gens faster than the killer can hard tunnel. This is partially due to there only being 1 plausible level of anti-tunnel at the moment due to endurance not stacking, and DS being nerfed out of existence.
Semi-off topic to the thread, but I honestly think slowdown and second chance are both basically bandaids for poor map and tile design. Because think about this. If:
Then traversing the map and chases would both happen quicker, right? Then this means pressuring different locations and generators on the map becomes more frequent. Which in turn would reduce the pressure to run slowdown as well as employing strategies that are situationally risky against better players (tunneling/camping/slugging). Which in turn would reduce the pressure to run second chance.
Slowdown perks could be almost entirely removed at this point. Slap on some basekit protection against camping/tunneling to make it less appealing than playing without doing so in a map and tile system where it's not even necessary to do it. Then most second chance perks could also be entirely removed. Then the result is people who used those strategies for strategic value will not do so, because it will be less rewarding than playing without doing so.
Eg, why would someone tunnel through 15s basekit BT (that removes the unhooked survivor's collision) and basekit good DS or similar anti-tunnel equivalents when playing without doing so would be way more effective since maps and tiles are both way more manageable? People who will do it regardless because they don't care will have to chew through whatever additional difficulties exist.
Unfortunately, this is an insane amount of work I don't see happening anytime soon.
I do agree that maps are the prime issue for both sides, but I don't believe it is responsible for choosing to tunnel. But as you said, that is getting a bit off topic of the proposition.
While this is an infrequent issue, it is still one that needs a better in-game solution.
Realistically, this timer will only ever go off in a situation it would make sense for it to.