New DBD event (THE TRUE BALANCE EXPERIMENT)
I think 2v8 has been a really cool way for the devs to actually try out a lot of experimental features. From base-kit unbreakable, to adjusting gen speed based on hooking progress, teleporting hooks etc. A lot of things that may have gotten massive backlash if had been directly pushed into the main game.
What this illustrates is that such experimental features are significantly more readily accepted when released in the form of an Event, rather than the main game.
This is why I'm also glad that beHaviour never pushed the anti slug update to the main game of 1v4, as there are safer ways to test these things. That is why I want beHaviour to fully inderstand: You don't need to add radical changes to your own game. You can in fact safely compete with your own main game through the creation of events.
With this mentality, we are going to design a new version of DBD, all with radical changes targeted at solving deeply rooted gameplay problems, that can exist as a 1v4 game-mode and co-exist next to the standard 1v4. With that, players would be able to decide which version of DBD they enjoy better, and through that, they can update the main game should certain features prove beneficial long term.
This, in my option, is the healthiest design philosophy for DBD onward.
NEW DBD EVENT: THE ENTITY'S GRASP
This new 1v4 even will be focussed around the entity interfering with the match in crucial ways that will help assist in solving many of DBD's most long term issues, including:
1. Tunnelling (For a fun-gameplay perspective and not a balancing perspective unless readjusted)
2. Gen-Rushing
3. Slugging
4. Start of the Match Stealth
5. Indoor Map Killers
Here's how we're going to address each single issue mentioned through the entity's theme:
1. (Anti-tunnel) When a survivor is standing in front of a hooked survivor, they have 2 unhooking options:
- Unhook: Unhooks the survivor as usual
- Free: The unhooking survivor pulls on the hook, causing the other survivor to be wrapped by the entity and sent to a hook far away from the killer, which then breaks without a sound notification, freeing the survivor. This survivor then gains Elusive and Broken for 30 seconds. The survivor that freed the other survivor triggers killer instinct on themselves for 16 seconds.
REASON:
One of the reasons tunnelling is hated and why killers are "blamed" for tunnelling, even though it's literally their most effective strategy is because once a survivor is hooked, they can never realistically and in a consistent way enter a "state of stealth" again. This makes the mechanic feel unfair from a fun perspective for a lot of players. This above mechanic would allow every hooked survivor to enter stealth again, but would keep the other survivor at a known location so that, in case the killer finds nobody, they can keep the action loop going by going back to the unhooking person
2. (Anti-genrush) Exit gates take 20 seconds to open, but at the start of the match, the entity's grasp slows survivor's exit gate progress down by a factor of 13 times (taking a total duration of 260 seconds for the exit gate to fully optn). This slowdown is reduced linearly over 8 minutes, reaching 0 slow down at 400 seconds into the match as the entity's grasp weakens.
This means that is games where stacked genrushing or other minimal gamelength accelerating mechanics push the minimal length of the game, they get proportionally counteracted by the longer duration of the exit gates. At a typical extreme gen-rush, that might mean that they have the gens powered at around 240 seconds, at which the exit gates will take around 100-80 ish seconds still.
REASON:
Normally, there is no mechanic preventing over the top stacking of mechanics that push the minimal game-length to absurd levels. And surprise surprise: Not even diminishing returns can fix it. It's because these minimal game-length accelerating sources come from so many angles: Gen speed increased, reducing gen length mechanics, instant gen progress skill check perks, self unhooking perks, instant healing progress perks, etc.
The quite easy to implement fix, of making the exit gates take longer counterbalances the endless complexity of combinations that produce the real gen-rushing issue to begin with. With this mechanic, rushing gens and having higher gate-times is still beneficial, but heavily reduces the effectiveness of said gen-rushing when aggressively stacked, yet while leaving most normal matches untouched, as those gametimes will likely exceed the 8 minute mark. (and the linear decline curve can be adjusted should people believe it should be diminished fully after 7 minutes, or 9 etc. but such finetuning requires testing)
3. (Anti-Slugging) The entity fills you with false hope: For every survivor downed, their recovery speed and your healing speed on them is increased by:
- 1 survivor downed: 0%
- 2 survivors downed: 30%
- 3 survivors downed: 100%
REASON:
One of the problem with the anti-slugging system previously is because it created problematic scenarios where survivors could die on a pallet and self recover if they could have that pallet pressured. On top of that it also gave survivors a free way out while slugging is supposed to be a proper last resort strategy for a snowball if the team has screwed up. In my opinion, it would only become a problematic scenario if it became the main strategy throughout the match, avoiding hooks entirely.
This is why, this current implementation doesn't give people free pickups, but makes it so that if you enter a slugging situation, survivors have to be in the right positions for the pickups, which means killers still get to punish mispositions survivors, or teams that refuse to heal and allow for snowball. With 3 people downed, the team has a significantly better chance at a comeback if the killer can't punish the last survivor before they are able to reach another person, yet keeping it a valid strategy if they do.
4. (Anti-Start-of-Game-Stealth-randomization) The entity lures the killer to their victims. At 5 seconds into the match, killer instinct triggers for 2 seconds at the spawn points of the survivors
REASON:
Currently, one of the biggest balance problems that affect the outcomes of a match is the completely random phenomenon of whether the killer is able to find the survivors at the start of the match. You might see a comp killer run all the way to the other side of a long map, only to find out the survivors actually spawned somewhat close, and as good as instantly losing the match off of that, when the entire scenario to the game has contributed nothing useful in gameplay.
This mechanic will normalize killers in their ability to find survivors consistently at the start of the match, reducing the massive disparity in match outcomes based on the purely coincidental fact of whether the killer ended up stumbling on a survivor early or got unlucky and guessed the wrong spawning points first.
5. (Pro-Indoor-Killer change) The entity's fog fills the realm: Whenever survivors are playing against an "indoor map killer" a fog surrounds them which fully blocks their vision from further than 24 meters, which cannot be seen through.
REASON: Obscuring someone's vision from further away brings back the fog that DBD has slowly been removed, and allows any "indoor killer" like Myers and Ghostface to play as an indoor killer, even on outside maps, removing the massive balance disparity that such killers experience between indoor and outdoor maps. As this mechanic could potentially become a staple, said stealth killers would of course have their kits range slightly adjusted to be balanced around this core stealth mechanic
With these changes, THE ENTITY'S GRASP could become one of the most amazing balance experiments in DBD history ever, yet, unlike PTB experiments wouldn't risk facing similar levels of backlash, as survivors essentially can choose which version of the game they want to play. As this philosophy allows DBD to compete with itself as best ASYM horror in this genre, allowing itself to naturally evolve itself to its most ideal version, as the player-base will organically move to the version of the game they believe is the most amount of fun ❤️
Comments
I would argue testing balance experiments as events rather than PTBs isn't unprecedented, Blood Moon essentially is testing a "gas" system for Generators. I like doing that so support it here, but Blood Moon has revealed a pitfall in that unlike straight balance changes, Events have a greater obligation to be interesting for both sides in comparison to base 1v4.
As for your specific ideas:
Overall while I think the idea of hook warping is solid, and testing some kind of big reenvisioning of the game as an event makes sense, the other stuff I don't think warrants a special event to test it, so the idea doesn't quite come together.
"Basekit optional unhook warping: I think this is a neat idea and worth testing out in a scenario like this, so sure. I have no idea if it would be a good resolution for tunnelling, but we currently don't have a Perk or etc that does a similar thing so hard to understand how it would affect the flow of games until it is tested."To be honest, it is not truly supposed to "solve tunnelling". It is supposed to make tunnelling fair, and put the control back in the hands of the players. If it were possible for hooked survivors to enter a state of stealth again, them getting tunnelled would become "their fault", rather than the killer's. As they have a responsibility to play less aggressively and more stealthily if they are the person on death-hook. One of the reasons why our culture has evolved this way, I believe, is because getting tunnelled historically hasn't been something the survivors themselves could have properly and consistently prevented. If a survivor gets tunnelled now, it will either be the fault of the teammate, who did not "free" them, or the fault of the survivor who played too aggressively on death-hook. What's most important about it is that it's no longer the killer's fault for playing in their own strategic interest, but this time, that strategic interest has a healthy game mechanic behind it.
"I think a timer like this would moreso encourage hiding if it ever came into play rather than actually stop people from rushing gens."This is where the beauty if refining such a mechanic comes in. With minor tweaks for example, one could make it so that the entity grasp no longer diminishes once the gates are powered, meaning there's no invisible progression to the time to open the gate. Although stealth will partially be less effective as during this stage of the game, someone will most likely already be chased or hanging on hook, so the survivors are forced to interact.
"I'm not sure how much this really changes, given that in these scenarios where 2-3 Survivors are going down, Survivors probably don't struggle to get their recoveries 99'd that much."They do struggle, and that's a problem because if the last survivor is close to the last downed survivor, that recovery would take a very long time, without the survivor being able to transport themselves very effectively.
The point of this change isn't to make slugging impossible, as it's a valid strategy, but does make it harder for it to be a strategy that can be used more widely as a full replacement to hooking, and turns it into an opportunistic mechanic for which the conditions have to be more right, but continues survivors having to play well to counter act it, rather than handing it for free.
"Basekit KI at start of match: I don't really like this. Yes, when and how Killers find the first Survivor is a bit random, but it's usually acceptably fair on both sides. In extreme situations where a Survivor goes down really quick or a Killer takes truly ages to find anyone and it really puts them on the backfoot for the rest of the match, it's usually a skill issue."Although knowing highly likely spawn points is a general map knowledge thing that can help, this isn't guaranteed. And as we've seen in comp, aka the best players in the world, it is in fact not a skill issue. It creates a massive balancing disparity and difference in match outcome without providing any real meaningful or fun aspect to the game. It just creates games where, before the killer has interacted with anyone, they for no meaningful reason are already significantly more likely to lose the match. Which you can't balance as other times they will just stumble upon the survivor instantly. You can't balance the game around both scenarios.
"Thick fog for indoor Killers: Honestly this could be a basekit feature for all Killers, as long as the fog feature isn't ruining the aesthetic of maps"I have considered this suggestion too, however, considering the existence of ranged killers I've realized that it would be unfair. I've also made the fog explicitly solid so that people with shaders or other modifications cannot use it to see through the fog somehow. and gain an unfair advantage
That's clever