Ideas on how to improve the game and reduce tunneling
The amount of people concerned about game balance and tunneling has increased, which I think is good and necessary to improve the game. After watching Otzdarva's video talking about the future of tunneling I decided to post some of the ideas that I have been thinking to improve DBD and make it more enjoyable for both the killer and the survivors. In my opinion, these are the changes that the game needs to be more balanced and fun.
Tunneling:
The 3 hook rule: Currently if the killer hooks a survivor 3 times in a row the survivor immediately dies, this mechanic makes tunneling more appealing. How do you solve this? Remove the 3 hook rule. Now it doesn't matter how many times the killer hooks a survivor, only the time the survivor has spent on the hook (The hook timer will need to be adjusted after this change). The killer can still hook the same survivor again and again but it won't be as effective to tunnel as before. Of course this is a massive buff to survivors that's why we have to make other changes to make it fair.
Survivors that are unhooked will be granted endurance but also some kind of deep wound state that forces them to spend some time healing. This will also make chasing the unhooker more appealing for the killer in order to have two people doing nothing to contribute to the gen progress. There is also the hidden benefit of some perks that give the killer advantages for hooking survivors multiple times like Pain Ress that can now be used limitless.
Hooked survivors will not longer be able to try to escape from the hook without perks*. Perks that grant you escapes from the hook will be modified to have synergy with the new mechanic.Also the struggle phase will now only activate during the endgame, to avoid people killing themselves early.
Endgame:
After generators had been repaired the game became a race to the exit gates and there is little the killer can do to stop the survivors if all 4 of them have survived this long. The only choice the killer had is to kill one of them before this happened. To change this and give more flavor to the endgame I will propose some changes:
- Entity Summoned: After all gens have been repaired survivors that had their hook timer below half will die the next time they are hooked. This will make the endgame more dangerous for survivors and more rewarding for killers if they have hooked multiple survivors. (The percentage doesn't necessarily need to be below half, it's just an idea that should be tested).
- Gate key:: A chess will spawn in the map at the beginning of the trial. Inside this chess there will be a key necessary to activate the gates (individually). Survivors can look for the chess and loot the key at any point in the game. Once a survivor has found the chess and looted the key a symbol will appear next to the survivor icon in the hud (visible only for survivors). If the survivor dies or drops the key its aura will be revealed to other survivors.
- Escape at all cost: In order to give survivors an extra chance of escape in late game the endurance state upon being unhooked will also be granted during endgame. *Also, survivors will be granted the possibility of trying to unhook themselves if they are hooked during the endgame. This will reduce the time bar for each failed attempt but at a lower rate than before.
Perks:
Now, some perks will have synergies with the new mechanics therefore they have to be modified, these are the perks I think will be most affected by the changes and the ideas I have for them.
- Deliverance: This perk will work now using tokens. You start with a free token and gain more each time you unhook a different survivor, meaning you can only use this perk a maximum of 4 times.
- Kinship: Kinship will work the same as now during the endgame. During the match it will slow the progress of the hook as long as the killer is in a 20 meter radius.
- Off the record: With these changes off the record will no longer require the endurance effect modifier. The other effects from the perk will remain the same (This will make the perk as before the update).
- Reassurance: This perk can either have a limited numbre of uses, maybe 2 for survivor (as it is now) or have a cooldown that doest allow to use it all the time.
- Slippery Meat: This perk will grant you an extra chance to escape the hook during endgame and also reduce the penalty for failed attempts.
Conclusion:
I know that these ideas won't solve every single problem that DBD may have and some major issues are not even addressed by it (Large maps, RNG, balance between killers…) but I think that it will create the opportunity to modify other aspects of the game.
Consequences of these changes:
- Less pressure on the killers to kill survivors early as they will have less incentives to do so.
- More gameplay mechanics for the endgame that add some flavor to the game.
- Longer games for survivors as there will be less chances of people being killed early on.
- Room to modify and create new perks that have good synergy with these changes and encourage the killers to hook multiple survivors.
- No more survivors killing themselves in early game and leaving the team crippled. They can still dc but I don't think any change can fix that.
Thank you for your time.
PD: I want to see what you think of this idea so please leave a comment with your opinion and modifications/changes you think would fit better. Also there are a lot of perks that will be indirectly affected by these changes so if you think of any buff or nerf that will happen please tell.
PD2: I am not a native English speaker so it is possible that some expressions and idioms won't be clear or even make no sense. Please if that's the case feel free to tell me so I can correct them.
Comments
Dbd is fine. The problem is the community within dbd.
I respect your effort, really. But it doesn't matter what will be changed, you can not change the behavior of the average player.
Less pressure on the killers to kill survivors early as they will have more incentives to do so.
Sorry if I missed it but where in your suggestion was anything incentive for killer not trying to kill or any benefit for the killer from this changes?
The only thing remotely positive for killer would be no hook suicides and the "everybody on death hook in endgame" but that should be the case anyway in normal trials right now, that on or a few survivor are already dead or on death hook when endgame arrives.
You say the change would be a huge buff for survivor and i would agree, but i see NOTHING positive for killer in your text to balance that?
I appreciate the thought and effort you put into this but maybe BHVR should just add the BP bonus back to Barbecue. I don't remember having so many strings of unfun games as Solo Survivor prior to the 6.1 update and I think the biggest change to Killer behavior is just the absence of BBQ. I went up against a Clown on Midwich yesterday with an extra bottle add-on, purple intoxication duration add-on, Deadlock, Pain Resonance, Eruption, and Call of Brine. He also camped and tunneled against what was likely four Solos. We got two gens done. Six months ago he might have been running BBQ which would have gotten him away from the hook. My first time getting downed was going for an unhook and he then proceeded to tunnel me. This is common "gameplay" at this point in Solo Queue.
Removing the BP bonus from BBQ has just resulted in Killers using four gen slowdowns and not, perhaps, developing the patience to learn game sense and the ability to find Survivors.
One thing i agree is that the entire Hooking system needs a revamp. However you still have Hooks and you can still tunnel and Camp.
My suggestion is to make use of Pyramid Heads Cage's as the new model for the Sacrifice System.
Every survivor that gets downed, can quickly be sent into a Cage to a random location, not the fursthest away from killer, this would directly give killer an area to look for the cage in the pursuit to tunnel.
This solves both tunnelling and Camping. If the Cage is sent away then you have nothing to Camp and if the Cage is sent to somewhere Random then you have the whole Map to search, so the Survivor can either have been sent far away or actually stayed Close.
This creates a scenario where killers won't have easy access to Tunnel or Camp the Survivor.
Should the killer find the survivor before they are rescued, the Timer is stopped and the Caged survivor is relocated. This prevents Camping and forces the killer to move. This will repeat until the Survivors is Rescued.
After the Survivor is rescued they'll have 60 seconds of Endurance until they take any action to progress the game, doing gens, Totems or healing, healing assumes you are in safety thus not being tunneled.
This is mostly already existing, you simply give Survivors endurance after being rescued from cages. Removes Camping, minimalizes Tunneling to such a degree that it's now a time waster not a time saver.
2 Birds 1 stone and minimal effort from BHVR required.
Change Perks to procc with Cages and there you go.
Benefits survivors because they can't be relentlessly asssaulted by killers but they now can't make flashy rescues, now flashies can be reworked for something new.
Benefits for killers is more time being active instead of having to worry about wether or not they can get to a hook in time and to which hook should they go. Quickly send survivors away to cages spawned by the entity and go about pressuring somebody else. you can change Scourge Hook Perks to work on a timer. They activate once, they go on cooldown, any cages used during cooldown will be treated same as non scourge hooks are now. Once cooldown is done next cage is a special cage again. This way we keep the original spirit of the Perks but in a new format.
I meant less incetives not more altough i think you also readed as i meant to write it. Of course more changes need to be added to buff killers. They idea is to remove the thing that survivors complain about the most so there is no excuse to add better perks for killers.
For example I think that hexes should not be removed if a survivor boon on top of them. I also think that perks like thanatophobia or grim embrace should be more powerful as they incentivate to spread the focus and create pressure in other ways.
I also miss my BP 😥. But the full slowdown perks is more than people not running BQQ as often. Killers run these perks because are more optimal. You focus a survivor to remove it out of the game trusting the perks to stop the survivors from genrushing and even with that is not enough against competitive SWF. Of course this gamestyle hurts the solo players the most, but killers just run this kind of builds by default just in case the run into a premade that otherwise will destroy them.
I like the Pyramid head model and i agree it would solve many problems. The main issue with it is that forces the Devs into change or remove many other core mechanics. Flashlights will be pointless and many perks will need to be completly changed or removed as they are tied to the hook gameplay. The perks i can think of: (Agitation, Iron Grasp, Power Struggle, Mad Grit, Boil Over, Saboteaur, Starstruck, Awakened Awareness, Flood of Rage, Thrilling Tremors, Desicibe Strike, Breakdown). The endurance for 60 seconds have the same problem as the current Off the Record perk, its fine for solo survivors but it can be easily exploited by SWF.