Gen Speed & Chase Times Aren't The Problems
Title.
The real problem is the skill gap between Rank 20's and Rank 1's.
Think about it...
If you run ruin in a Rank 20 game, not a single gen will get done. But in a Rank 1 game, it's almost a wasted perk slot.
If you get in a chase in a Rank 20 game, you down them in less than 30 seconds. But in a Rank 1 game, you can be ran around for a minimum of 2 gens if you're not careful.
See what I'm getting at?
It's not the gen speed or chase times that are the issues. If the devs increase either of these, it will just scare away more new players; and we, nor the devs, want to do that.
The solution is more so to tighten the skill gap. So let's focus on that!
Stop saying that "gens need to take longer!" and "remove even more pallets/windows to shorten chases!". That's not going to work and will only hurt one side (the one that doesn't know how to adapt because they haven't played the game long enough).
Instead, think of some ways to increase the MATCH TIME overall. Don't even take gens or chases into mind. Want to think of a second objective? Sure. Just keep in mind that new players are still going to struggle with just doing generators; let alone anything else you plan to throw at them.
Comments
#usedynamicsolutions
The way to stop rank 20 Survivors from suffering due to a change is to make it something the Killer has to actively do and is hard enough to execute that a rank 20 Killer won't make use out of it (while a rank 1 Killer will).
Preferably something seemingly simple like with gen regression.
You can't tighten the skill gap without increasing lobby wait times.
And yeah. Popping a gen in 30 seconds is a big problem.
Skill gap isn't a problem.
It's a REALITY.
And not something you can ever remove from any game.
You are correct though. Anything that increases survivor objective time will have a bad result on the game unless things are taken to mitigate it on the killer side.
More Lanterns would be an excellent thing. Pop 5-20 auric cells or 25-50 Iri Shards in a lantern, and you know people will waste a lil bit of time every match going for them.
@Thaznar
Agreed completely, BP is all people need. I just like to shoot higher than needs, to leave some wiggle room :P
Skill based map pressure and maybe gen regression would be the best. But no idea how something like that could be implemented. Especially since some killer already have great map pressure, while other killers, mostly the weaker killers, don't.
This is precisely why we haven't just done something simple like, "Increase generator times" (at least not since early 2016, when they were increased from 60 seconds to 80 seconds). Tightening the skill gap is also out of the question, though. That essentially means "make skill not matter as much", which is a really bad move for any game. Rather, you'd want to make sure that the skill level of both sides scale equally.
(It's a whole can of worms, not going to go into it, it would be a novel and a half.)
Don't forget that also killers who camp depip and are at lvl 16-20. A hell
Just make each colour rank more difficult as you progress and also increase the amount of BPS you get.
For example, you could increase the gen repair speed for survivors and reduce the amount of hooks on a map for killers.
Maybe expand upon the basis of status effects which can be inflicted. Making the status effects potent enough that players want to remove them would help to expand game time without actually making things take longer. Seems that as things are many status changes are ignored in favor of objectives and come across as a minor inconvenience at best.
I mean, depending on the details this isn't inherently bad.
The entire point behind QoL changes for example is making the parts of a game that aren't supposed to be where the difficulty comes from easier.
So while we could show the optimal route for looping to Survivors in the UI in theory, doing so would take away from the game.
However making notifications for generator completions also have a generator symbol on them and have a counter for the number of generators isn't a problem, since keeping track of the number of remaining generators isn't supposed to be hard to do.
Same goes for a ton of other QoL stuff, all of which tighten the skill gap without taking away from the overall experience.
Part of the issue is the level design. Rank 20 don't know how to run loops, even the busted ones, while rank 1 will milk every centimeter of a jungle gym and move to the next one with their eyes closed.
I'm prefectly OK with different maps favoring a different side, playstyle or specific killer. But strong loops close to each other and terrible totems are unacceptable on all maps.
would like increasing skill check difficulty in the higher ranks actually work pretty well? This would make sure red rank survivors aren't only good at dancing around a pallet for 3 years, but they're actually good at something that takes a tiny amount of skill!
There's no drawbacks to increasing the game difficulty the higher your rank becomes. I mean, killer emblem system let's a killer sometimes even depip while they 4k, while a surv can die and still pip. So giving them a challenge and making them actually earn the pips with skill would be way better and more fair.
You make it sound like there are no solutions. But that isn't true. I would actually make a 3rd argument to the OP. While both chase and gen times can be thought of as an issue, I would argue that the real issue with balance in this game is how quickly the game snowballs out of control for either side. If you are playing as a survivor and a team mate goes linkdead during the first 20 seconds of the match then you are in for an almost impossible task. Likewise, as a killer, if the survivors finish 3 generators before you even hook a single survivor then the game is basically over.
There are plenty of ways that the game can introduce handicaps to help assist whatever side is struggling the most. This would also address the skill gap issue. For example, if the killer is getting trounced then survivors could have a penalty toward gen repair speed and the killer could go into bloodlust faster. If the survivors are getting trounced then they could get a bonus to gen repair speed and hook sacrifice progression could slow down. There are plenty of levers to pull on and they could introduce new ones at any time. This is a solvable issue.