Item Rework Ideas - Keys
It's no secret that keys aren't particularly useful overall, barring the use of one or two very specific addons or a dedicated hatch build, so I'd like to pitch some ideas that I think would give them more of a consistently useful niche that might attract more players to use them. I'll also give my reasoning behind the changes afterwards, to better shed some light on my thought process.
Without further delay;
Broken Key:
- Removed.
Dull Key:
- Rarity downgraded from Very Rare to Rare.
- Has 15 seconds of use.
- Has a radius of 24m.
- Channelling the Dull Key reveals the auras of all survivors within its radius.
- Can be used to open the Hatch, even without charges.
Skeleton Key:
- Rarity downgraded from Ultra Rare to Very Rare. (Optional, unsure about this one)
- Has 30 seconds of use.
- Has a radius of 32m.
- Channelling the Skeleton Key reveals the auras of all survivors within its radius.
- Can be used to open the Hatch, and also shows the Hatch's aura when within 32m of it.
Addons:
Here I have less a list of proposed changes, but rather a design philosophy I'd want to see carried through to specific changes. Some addons can stay as they are, largely range and duration addons, but a few would necessarily have to be changed; as the survivor-aura addons are now basekit, they would have to change, so we have at least a little room for new effects.
Specifically, I'd like to see Keys serve a more potent purpose as a source of player-aura reveal, so replacement effects would show the aura of survivors who are performing a specific action regardless of range while the Key is channelled; EG, show any healing survivor on the map, show any survivor repairing a generator, show any survivor on an exit gate, and so on. There aren't so many addons that would need replacing with these changes in mind, so this could be a nice opportunity to give Keys more addons in general.
Reasoning:
There's a bit of a trend in item design for survivors that there's often a perk equivalent of their unique effects; Self-Care allows you to perform the healing action on yourself without a Medkit, Saboteur allows you to sabotage hooks without the use of a Toolbox, Clairvoyance (among others) allows you to see static/Objective auras without a Map. With this in mind, I'd want Keys to become the item equivalent of Bond and other associated perks, to allow players (especially those in solo queue) to have a little more build flexibility by giving them information on an item instead of needing to rely on perks.
Additionally, part of the reason that chests are such a waste of time in the current state of the game is that there's a strong possibility that you'll roll one of the two far less useful items- and in the case of the Broken Key variant of the Key item, a literally useless item. If Keys at least allowed you a little extra information regardless of addons, and were guaranteed to be able to open the Hatch if it came to it, chests would become that little bit more appealing, and I think survivors being able to build for chest searching (or just spend time doing it without a build) is healthier for the game.
None of the specific numbers or changes I listed are necessarily ones I'll go to bat defending, but I do think this general direction is the best way to change Keys.
Comments
"keys are not particularly usefull overall"
Keys are the strongest item for a chase build in the game, with the right addons or even a build around it you can see the killers aura for quite some time allowing you to basically never fall for any mindgame and making the chase last several minutes before you even run out of juice for your key, if you pair it up with the right perks it might even last for the entire game. I completely disagree with the statement that keys are not usefull, people just don't use them properly, all they were ever looked at was the opener for hatch and not the ridiculous aura reading they provide.
You mean Blood Amber is useful, not the keys themselves.
As the above response said, you're talking about the Blood Amber, not the Key it's attached to. That is exactly and literally what I meant when I said "barring for one or two specific addons" in my post.
You say people aren't looking to the ridiculous aura reading that Keys provide, but they don't provide any. At base, a Key does nothing except open the Hatch, and a Broken Key doesn't even do that. This issue is precisely what I want to address, and I'm not suggesting nerfing the Blood Amber so you'd still have that build available if you want it.
I would say any other item does not really have more than two functions, yes they are already available as it is, without additional addons but at the same time nothing but medkits are worth the time investment anyway when you pull it from a chest. The time you would save by using a toolbox on the gen is most likely less than the time it took you to open the chest in the first place. It is basically never worth it to open a chest anyway so even with this change nothing changes there.
Yeah I agree the key is very realiant to use it with certain addons to give it functionality but same goes for toolboxes for example, just using them without any addons saves you a few seconds on a gen thats it, or sabo a few hooks. Yeah sure the other items have some more usefull addons and are not completely reliant on just two of them, but over half of them are trash as well and bascially no one uses them either, so the comparison is not that far off. It is pretty clear that you are not supposed to just run the item without addons I guess.