What I think are the main issues with the game
Gonna start with my issues with survivor gameplay, leaving soloq alone because thats an entire other can of worms.
-note pretty much everything here but dead hard is fine for soloqs because they need everything they can get.
-most of this is about bad balance decisions and perk design, with some about map design.
-o-Looping-o-
Looping is a really fun mechanic, and the skill ceiling it holds its pretty high. So dont get me wrong, im not against looping and I believe as long as its meta then its healthy. However, it began as an exploit of killer hotboxes getting caught on random geometry survivors slid off of. fix that, give killers the same side or remove it for survivor. thats all, otherwise looping is perfect, except dead hard.
-o-Dead Hard-o-
Dead hard. Removes multiple game mechanics. on command. only a 40 second cooldown I have a few ideas of how it could be changed to still function similarly while not being... grossly overtuned.
Dead hard Issues
- removes lunging when used competently, a base mechanic.
- also stops the usage of multiple powers entirely, and occasionally actively punishes the killer for using them. Outlined in a previous post.
- now gives more distance on successful usage than old dh.
- was nerfed to lower usage and provide counterplay. Still most used survivor perk, and multiple situations lack counterplay.
On my fourth point, I'll elaborate. If looping, someone with dead hard and create an uncounterable situation when you'd typically be able to lunge them down before the get to the pallet. However, if timed properly (something even im capable of as a killer main) the survivor can dead hard just barely to the other side of the drop hitbox and stun you. In a more uncommon situation, a survivor could be looping a window and force you into a situation. In this situation, the survivor has just enough distance that if you lunge, they get hit. but if you wait out a dead hard, they get through the window and keep looping.
Why this is uncounterable
- lunge, tank dead hard, they get distance and probably run to a safer loop.
- dont lunge, tank pallet, they keep looping or use stun+break distance to get to another loop. replace pallet with window and stun+break with vault, still applies.
This could be remedied by the aforementioned changes, or keeping the perk the same but having it deactivate forever (or until a condition) after a successful use.
-o-Pallets-o-
A bit of a personal preference. Instadrops are my issue here, because they allow for gameplay without thought. Not to say it limits gameplay to that at all, however. In fact, my supposed changes here would increase the pallet skill ceiling. Lets say that you're in a chase, and you made a mistake so now the killer has much more distance on you. If you're near a pallet, you can just immediately drop it and gain distance easily. Perhaps a very short, but still impactful cast time to pallets would be better. with this, skilled survivors would still be just as effective, simply have to drop a pallet a little bit sooner. However, the unskilled players would need to adapt the timing it well, as not to predrop and lose a pallet. Maybe 1-2 seconds, no way scrawny lil claudette can drop a wood slab as fast as she does lol. Like a said, this is probably just a personal thing, just dont like that someone can panic, drop pallet, and be nearly guaranteed value.
I also dislike pallet saves. Unlike a flashlight save that requires positioning, staying hidden, timing, hoping the killer doesnt look at a wall, and losing charge, a pallet save requires 2 things. Positioning, barely any timing. An argument I've seen is that their fine because they sacrifice a pallet. I disagree, because they only sacrifice a pallet if the killer chooses to break it which, while common, isnt guaranteed. The survivor also gains much more distance than a flashlight save due to there being a pallet to vault over for distance. The timing is also much easier. Imagine your the survivor going for the save. If the killer baits you, run a bit but stay nearby and go back when the killer leaves you. Repeat until the pickup. At this point, the downed survivor should have crawled to the center for an easy save. Now, all you have to do is wait to see the killer move slightly and drop. worked every time for me. Then to protect the injured survivor, you can bodyblock or maybe take chase if the killers willing. However its likely you wont need to, as the saved survivor will have vaulted over the pallet and made some distance from the likely break. Now the chase is completely reset for much less mechanical and gamsense skill. Please make pallets break on a successful save, still completing the "sacrifices pallet" argument without the absurd distance gain on the killer. Now its a flashlight save, just with a pallet.
Fix pallet hitboxes. The pallet vacuum is kind of stupid. dont like it. A pallet drop should have to be done at the edge of the pallet, instead of like a meter away. This leads to situations where you could lunge and get a hit if the vacuum didnt exist, but it does so you dont. And even more situations where you shouldnt get stunned but you do. Also fix the stun hitbox, a lot of the time im not even touching the pallet and I'm stunned. This hitbox change would also make pallet saves more mechanically precise.
Maybe give survivors a noise notification on where a pallet goes down to help soloq a little bit.
Fix rng! Sometimes the map is 16 chainable loops, and others theres 7 pallets. Just decide where the healthiest places for pallets are, make variations, and have it randomize between the variations instead of the tiles themselves. Rng is bad for both sides, as it often decides how chase will go.
Basically it for me with survivor. Fix soloq, nerf swf, yadda yadda.
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Killer. This stuff is basically about how god awful the meta is and a few QOL changes, along with adressing the way BHVR handles perk balance.
-o-Perk Balance-o-
Main reason survivor section doesnt have this is because most nerfed survivor perks are still decently useful. Decisive is not nearly as strong is it was, with only 2 real seconds of distance (one being taken by the stun animation). Thats barely any distance, but if you go down near a pallet you can easily start looping again. BT isnt meta, because its basekit. its still a useful perk, countering tunnelers who wait out basekit bt.
A meta perk or combo is rarely even decent after its forcefully removed from the meta. Take ruin and pop as examples. Both powerful, meta slowdown perks that rewarded good gameplay. Pop, you needed to hook a survivor, walk to the best gen to pop, kick it (free distance for any survivors working on it, profit. It regressed a generator quite a bit, but rewarded hooks and gamesense. Ruin provided massive slowdown if proper pressure was applied to generators. 200% regression by default without kicks removed any thought of gen progression, as all you needed to do was keep survivors off of gens and they wouldnt get done. This sounds far too powerful on paper, however this was fixed by its hex functionality. Its usage was largely RNG based, requiring a good totem spot or undying for long withstanding value.
However, when BHVR decided these perks were too good they were nerfed. One would think that nerfing them would be good, leading to better game health and perk balance. But BHVR did not even try to keep them as viable perks, instead opting to make them totally worthless in the playerbases' eyes. I wont describe what they do now because if your on the forums I'm sure your well versed. This is objectively bad. "Balance" is something that requires equality in power, so nothing else shines above its peers. The idea of intentionally taking perks that people liked and though of as useful, and flipping that entire perception over through demolishing what made them good is bad. BHVR NEEDS to start balancing perks better.
Eruption. Obliterates soloq. Practically useless against a coordinated swf. The precise opposite of what a perk should be, that is equally powerful on all fronts. Someone did the math, and an eruption wastes about 40 seconds for simply doing a generator. This perk rewards getting a down and kicking gens (sacrificing distance), which is good; or at least it would be if they didnt put it on so much weapons grade crack. 40 seconds for getting a down. on multiple generators and players. Compare this to pain resonance, a perk that requires a specific hook, a down, and only takes away about 13.5 seconds on one generator. This perk was just a poorly thought out mess that led to a nearly uncounterable monster of a perk and meta.
Call of brine is fair, its just ruin but manual and not a hex. it still rewards properly pressuring generators, and gives a but of info. Pretty ok.
IMO unnerf ruin and pop, then adjust them accordingly.
-o-QOL-o-
FOV
Killer FOV makes many people motionsick, especially on nurse. Please buff the fov a little bit, maybe not an entire shadowborn but enough that players dont get sick from existing.
Base Adjustments
something to help the lower tier killers that wont make the highest tiers more oppressive. Maybe a basekit corrupt or deadlock that makes genrushing harder. After all, basekit bt exists to nerf the annoying and effective strat for survivors , so killer should probably get something similar for genrushing. Possibly buffing base regression or making auto regression basekit, so the choice to go for an unhook or something has weight to it.
I would kill for a movement speed buff of like, 3-5 percent. Small rant here. I actually hate when a survivor drops a pallet, removing the loop and I cant catch up before they get to another, or they can run miles around a pallet and it takes so long to catch them. Killers who move at 115 gain .6 meters on a survivor every second, meaning if they have 12 meters on you it takes 20 seconds to catch up. plenty of time to get to another loop. if another 5 percent was added, this would be reduced by 5 seconds. Still enough to reach another loop depending on rng, but speeds up the actual looping by 25%. this buff could just not be added to those who dont need it, or would be overpowered on some.
Stuff survivors can do that they probably shouldnt be able to
Heal tech on down survivors at exit gates is just so. annoying. Its an unintended mechanic thats just infuriating to deal with. i downed someone, i should be able to pick them up instead of having to give a free 5.4 seconds of crawling out. remove this.
Remove collision on injured survivors so you only need to hit a bodyblocker once, and remove collision on those affected with endurance. Endurance on most perks (I.E. all perks except dh) is meant to be a defensive, anti tunnel effect. An OTRed survivor should NOT be able to abuse a defensive ability for offense (and no, bodyblocking another survivor does not count as defensive use, because its meant to defends yourself.) This would even discourage tunneling, dont understand why its not in the game yet.
99ing exit gates... I understand why its done. I respect that it is done, and that its a smart decision. I do not respect the fact that it bypasses EGC. Have switches that arent being used regress to 80% instantly after 10 seconds, so the last survivor could play smart and make it out.
I'd love a hatch rework, as it feels often RNG based. I get that a 2-3k is considered a win, but that last survivor should at least have to do something other than walk around for a bit to win. Same goes for killer, as its often after the hatch closes the killer just wins because of gate rng. I dont have any real ideas of how this could work.
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Both roles. Gamewide stuff that'd be nice.
AUTO PRESTIGE BUTTON. I think we all agree its about time that we stop spending 30 minutes using our bloodpoints. Add a system to prioritize certain perks, addons, offerings etc etc then let just click a button to use as many bloodpoints as we want instantly.
More presets
we all love our 2nd and 3rd presets for our convenience. It'd be nicer to have 10. thats all.
SHRINE OF SECRETS.
completely worthless. Game is p2w for killer right now, nearly all meta perks are on licensed killers. Shrine is not an excuse for this, as soul guard hasnt been in shrine once. soul guard, which has been out since june 2020. These perks need to be avaliable 24/7, as you should buy a DLC for the characters, not the perks. This is just an unfair system.
Let people try out cosmetic combos in the shop. Im tired of photoshopping the different segments together, haha. This would just be a good change. Also unlink all non-character changing cosmetics, and let us use linked cosmetics in combos as long as they dont look really ridiculous.
Let us customize custom games more. Let us changes stats for cooldowns, movement speed, etc. It doesnt need to be as detailed as overwatches custom game (it lets you change practically everything, with its own coding system for making games. someone used it to play Rush E in game for perspective). Make infinite addons a thing, let us use remove addons and offerings in custom games, infinite perks, how many pallets there are. Just make it much more custom. A custom game should be much more customizable, plenty of people would love more than just the regular dbd experience.
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THANKS FOR READING! i know this was reaalllyyy long, but I appreciate you getting this far and taking it in.
thoughts? comments? concerns?
Comments
So this is giving me buff killer, nerf survivor.
You did say that solo queue is its own can of worms I guess b/c you didn’t want to seem completely killer sided here. But then every change you proposed hindered solo queue.
I think I stopped reading around “Yes DS with 2 seconds sucks but if you make it to a pallet you’re good!! See when nerfed survivor perks are still decently used!”
I have personally seen DS maybe.. twice since it was changed. Every other perk nerfed in 6.1 minus Dead Hard hasn’t seen any play in my games as killer or survivor. I doubt you’ve seen them either.
Yeah. If you want killers buffed just say that.
I don't agree with a lot of this.
not really what I meant at all but ok
the ds example was the show that it wasnt completely worthless, just niche. if you went down strategically to use your distance to reach a loop then it still had a use.
just went scrolling through the survivor perk changes in 6.1.0, other than ds only iron will got completely gutted. and OTR has the same function anyways, but with more effects so I dont really see your point. yeah, iron will is gone. but otr is just iron will with more effects and has it when you need it most. Looking at the changes, most of them were buffs and bt became basekit. spine chill basically just serves its intended function now anyways, and nerfing it was a good idea.self care was already bad. less people using it the better. i still see spine chills and decisives, and most people w/ self care swapped over to CoH.
also sorry I want pallets to have a skill floor, if you think adding more skillful play hurts soloq specifically then your just saying soloqs are bad. i dont think its that much to want the ability to gain so much distance while much thought is unwarranted.
99 exit gates change seems warranted, egc only exists in closed hatch scenarios. and with the new changes coming to soloq in 5.0 having to spent like 1 or 2 more seconds opening a gate isnt that bad, it just means you can ignore egc without ppunishment. open gate and start the timer, or keep it 90d and risk going down trying to open it? meaningful gameplay decisions make the game more engaging.
the looping thing was just a QoL change that was technically an exploit anyway.
why should survivors be able to abuse having another health state from endurance when its meant to defend them? and anti tunnel perk she be for just that, anti tunnel. your points dont really make that much sense, probably because you stopped reading because I said ds wasnt a useless perk.