Entity Blood Thirst: Can an Anti Face Camp mechanic work?
Is Face Camping a Problem?
From the perspective of someone who leans more killer sided... I dunno how other killers feel, but when I see a face camping Bubba, or a face camping GhostFace, I sigh and roll my eyes. It's like watching someone giving you a bad name... and it's frustrating because these killers are pretty cool and fun when played properly.
It's disheartening to see someone blatantly resorting to this annoying style of game play, where you just have to kinda shrug and say "well... he can do it if he wants... survivors just have to hold on gens and accept it"
To my mind the only acceptable scenario for face camping is when all gens are powered/EGC is triggered, to secure a kill when the stakes are at their highest. An unhook here is probably an escape with base kit borrowed time, and makes perfect sense at this point.
Problems with Hook Progression Slowdown
Hook Progression slow down has been tested before, and ultimately scrapped for a variety of issues. Some of these I know, some I would guess may also be a problem:
- High Level survivors loop near the hook and slow down hook progress to buy their team even more time than they would normally have.
- The issue of how far do consider camping? Is proxy camping a problem? How big is an acceptable proxy camping radius?
- Indoor maps with multiple floors? How do you differentiate camping vs. walking up and down stairs?
- High mobility killers are effectively stronger, as their "proxy camp radius" is bigger. A Nurse hovering 12m away might as well be right next to the hook.
As such I want to introduce Entity Blood Thirst as a negative Killer Status Effect.
Entity Blood Thirst Status - Attempts to make this mechanic actually work
- The "Entity Blood Thirst" Status Effect (EBT) begins charging on the killer 5 secs after hooking a survivor. (This gives time for the killer to leave; 4.4m/s * 5s = 22m).
- EBT has 16 charges. Killers will not see this effect charging but once fully charged, the status will appear and the Entity will slow hook progression out of anger at the killer and a desire for more survivors to be put on hooks.
- When not in chase, a killer between 0m and 8m of a hooked survivor will charge EBT at a rate of 4 c/s. While afflicted with EBT hook progression is slowed +100% (60s becomes 120s).
- When not in chase, a killer between 8m and 12m of a hooked survivor will charge EBT at a rate of 3 c/s. While afflicted with EBT hook progression is slowed +100% - 75% linearly based on distance (60s becomes 120s - 105s).
- When not in chase, a killer between 12m and 16m of a hooked survivor will charge EBT at a rate of 2 c/s. While afflicted with EBT hook progression is slowed +75% - 50% linearly based on distance (60s becomes 105s - 90s).
- When not in chase, a killer between 16m and 20m of a hooked survivor will charge EBT at a rate of 1 c/s.While afflicted with EBT hook progression is slowed +50%-0% linearly based on distance (60s becomes 90s - 60s).
- If the killer is over 20m from all hooked survivors, EBT will lose charges at a rate of 2 c/s.
- All EBT charges are lost immediately upon hooking another survivor.
- All EBT charges are lost immediately upon starting chase over 20m from a hooked survivor.
- All EBT charges are lost after 6s of being in chase when starting a chase within 20m of a hooked survivor.
- All EBT charges are lost immediately once all gens are powered and/or when EGC has started, and EBT no longer charges regardless of killer distance.
- If the killer is 1.8m (or 1 Nemesis) above or below (in the y axis) a hooked survivor, EBT charges are modified by -2c/s, with a minimum of 0.5c/s. This is to account for indoor maps with multiple floors, but also addressing camping around upstairs hooks in maps like Garden Of Joy and Eyrie of Crows, and camping the enteance to downstairs hooks in basement.
Intended Effects
I think this covers most scenarios I can think of where there is a penalty for when the killer excessively camping, while also not hitting killers who are genuinely pathing to patrol and find new survivors. My main goals were:
- Killer is actually informed they are face camping and the entity is displeased.
- Ensure proxy camping is still viable, 20m seems a reasonable camping distance to not be excessively obnoxious, and 16m still gives room for survivor counter play. The penalty drops off severely from 16m up to 20m, so even if the killer gets tagged with EBT unintentionally on indoor maps, the likely hook it signficantly hurts them is limited.
- Hits face campers hard, up to 12m, and even 16m the penalty is pretty severe. Even if a face camper sits at 12.01m, thats 60s - 5s - 8s + 23.5s = 70.5s for 1 hook stage... then another 105s for the second stage assuming no skill check misses.
- Gives a reasonable buffer to be pretty sure the face camper is actually face camping.
- Doesn't prevent the Killer's attempts to secure a kill during end game where they really need it.
For reference distances are visualised here:
Let me know if you'd change anything/what your thoughts are!
Comments
I think it's 99% of the way there. Not a fan of it being a sphere, because like you said, it can punish Killers that aren't camping. Sort the sphere issue and you're left with a really solid idea.
difficult to solve. the point of hook regression is to make survivors go to the hook to save teammates. the unfortunate result of hook regression is killer camping because the reward for successfully camping is -1 hook states and an easy tunnel opportunity to remove someone out of the game. it creates racing dynamic where the killer can purposely give up early gens for 1 hook-state.
that is also why perks early game perks like corrupt intervention and deadlock are somewhat dangerous because they all boost early game on killer so that killer can not lose many gens in 1 chase to do his successful camp - > tunnel strategy. I think once they implement the anti facecamp/close range proxy camping, then strategy will be more risky to do. people will still proxy camp within 17 meters but the reward for skipping hook-states will occur less often which will encourage killer to leave hook because return on rewards for camping will be less rewarding. it will be easier to hook-trade.
dbd should encourage proactive offensive play. not hyper defensive turtling gameplay. hyper defensive turtling gameplay will always be somewhat part of the game with like hook camping hag but i don't think this type of gameplay is particular fun to against for survivor. at the same time, killers know this is competitively strong strategy so killer defend it. as result, i do not think that camping will magically disappear. Just be little harder to do then it is currently.
Well the alternatives sadly are not much better.
I was imagining piggy backing off of the distance calculation in effect for Kindred... but I guess BHVR would likely have a better ridea how to do it than I have anyway xD
Updated the spherical distance calculation to a separate height check, as folliws:
If the killer is 1.8m (or 1 Nemesis) above or below (in the y axis) a hooked survivor, EBT charges are modified by -2c/s, with a minimum of 0.5c/s. This is to account for indoor maps with multiple floors, but also addressing camping around upstairs hooks in maps like Garden Of Joy and Eyrie of Crows, and camping the entrance downstairs hooks in basement.
Cheers for the feedback!
Nemesis is my new favourite unit of measurement.
It seems like a perfectly workable idea, it's just sad there isn't any way to actually test it. I'd be quite interested to see what tweaks would be made after testing.