What will happen after DS change? A possible chain reaction survivors would not like?
Hello there,
While on the first look this questions seems to be easy to answer, it is actually not - at least for me. Lets assume this scenario:
DS will be buffed to 5 seconds as it used to be.
Many survivors will run DS because of that, and to counter slugging, survivors will also bring Unbreakable. Even tho not every survivor is running DS, killer will most likely assume, everyone has it. Therefor it is a constant threat, a spirit protecting the survivors, so to say.
Now comes the part where i am unsure: What will killer do in response to that more or less unbeatable meta?Slugging wont work very well, because anti slug perks will be meta. Tunneling would not work because DS. So normally, the next best strategy is gen pressure.
When killers are "robbed" by their best and second best strategy, wouldnt it be possible, that killrates drop down? Sure, MMR is there, but lets assume the majority of killers drop down all together in MMR, this would eventually lead to less kills, right?
And aren't the devs seeking for a way to instal 60% killrate? When killrate significantly drops, wouldn't that mean they have to
- Increase Gen time?
- Lower pallet count even more?
- Make maps even smaller?
I know how bad Tunneling is, but would it be really better to play on a map with 2/3 size, 7 pallets and 100 second gen time (all exaggerated of course!)??
Throw in your thoughts please.
PS. i am not a killer main, who wants to sneak away from the DS buff, i only want to have a discussion about a topic that might be more complex then it seems to be.
Comments
The only thing I worry about is survivors being able to weaponize it again en mass, especially with basekit BT. I'm not opposed to it being a counter to hard tunneling, but the problem I recall having is survivors not using it to avoid tunneling but trying to get tunneled to stall a ton of time, bodyblocking for other survivors/doorways and combining it with unbreakable, exponential, etc so you're punished for both ignoring and not ignoring them. We also have the current Buckle Up+For The People to add to that mix as well.
i don´t think ds will be increased to 5 seconds, but i´m pretty sure bhvr will buff killers instead of nerfing maps/objectives, like hillbilly, i just hope they buff the bad killers and not... plague or something like that haha
Honestly it'll probably just end the same as it was during the time it was like that. The main reason survivors could weaponize DS was because they could do anything while still being under its protection with unbreakable as a fall back. Long as the conspicuous actions restriction is there many will act the same as before (some respect it, some won't, some will still go out of the way to tunnel). Not unbeatable, just annoying.
The cascade effect is another matter. We agree the kill rate will probably drop a good deal (least if it hurts tunneling as much as people oh so dream), and something will change in response. Honestly we're hoping on perks changing or less pallets (keeping the mind game ones) to ease burdens.
I think it should be put back up to 5 seconds as it's effectively useless at this point unless you happen to get use next to a vault or pallet. Against Nurse or Blight it is an absolute joke and not at all a tunnelling deterrent.
No other changes, just increase stun to 5 seconds.
I just wish they make some basekit rewards for spreading hooks, so killers actually be more interested in this than in tunneling. Also anti-tunnel should not work in offensive way. My biggest problem with old DS is that i was punished if i was tunneling and if i wasn't at all.
Since they said they will fix problems for both sides, i am not expecting anything.
Anti-Face Camp turned to the most useless mechanic and very much manipulatable.
Anti-3 gen turned to be killer general buff.
So probably they will buff DS for good but it won't stack with Endurance effect. If you get hit under effect, you will lose perk. I am expecting something like that. They will make DS worse than the current version sadly.
The DS "buff" should be
-5 seconds stun
-Only activates after being put to the dying state (60 seconds)
Conspicuous action and endgame still deactivate the perk
But I will not be surprised if DS get a nerf
-Only activates at death hook
-30 seconds
The only base kit reward should be the points system
Spreading hooks: 50k BP, 500XP
Tunneling survivors: 5k BP, 100XP
Maybe you are correct, that many will still keep tunneling, but i am sure, a good portion of killers wont.
But lets assume everybody keeps tunneling - then DS will be a staple perk, runned by almost everyone on mid/high MMR. Compared to now, only 6% use that perk, so its easy to get kills. And even killer gets hit by it, 3 seconds (its actually less then 2 seconds) is not often time enough to make it to the next structure. With 5 seconds, it certainly is.
My point is, and you said it yourself, that killers will get less kills. And this might lead to even more killer buffs in the future, rendering maps even more useless for survivors (or even less playable so to say).
My biggest concerne is that Devs will do the Clow mistake years later again - but reversed. Instead of making loops weaker, they came up with a killer who can render loops useless. Now they might bring DS back and realize killer wont get enough kills for their silly 60% killrate philosphy, therefore making maps even more killer friendly.
I don’t care if it goes back to 5 seconds as long as they fix it being used offensively. I shouldn’t ever be getting hit with it when I’m not trying to tunnel. Also, what we really need to come along side this is incentives for killers not tunneling. Currently not tunneling is just playing inefficiently for the sake of being a good sport.
Even if the five second stun returns, very little will change. Plenty of killers can invalidate a 3.whatever second stun pretty easily. Nurse, Blight, Huntress (who can now sprint whilst holding hatchets). Don't expect a rework of the perk to make it useful in the current meta. It will get a stun increase and nothing more. Killers that could ignore it before will still laugh it off as they carry you back to the hook.
The issue with that is, that there is no benefit greater then the close to certaint victory which provides tunneling.
I came up with an idea recently that gens have early game penalty on repairing, but this penalty is lost as soon as the first survivor reaches stage 2. And once one survivor is killed, survivors can repair gens even faster then usually. A ballance adjustment without any bandaids, and the perfect basekit reward for spreading hooks.
Thats the post
Maybe you let me know what you think about it.
It happens the same as before: killers will tunnel through DS. Thats what happens if you try to bandaid fix bad gamedesign with perks.
if ds gets buffed back to 5 seconds or even 2 uses with that I wonder if they’ll revert enduring to work with any stuns
Yes, but they will loose more often. What do you think about the rest of my posting?
DS will not be effective enough to cost them matches. Just watch it have almost no impact on tunneling. BHVR will not allow survivors to have a perk that makes it significantly harder to tunnel. At best it will be a slap on the wrist that only delays your return to the hook by a few seconds.
I'm probably gonna slug anyway tbh you can only Unbreakable once and if everyone is on the ground or getting people off the ground they're not doing gens and that's good enough for me.
almost nothing will happen. The kill rates wouldn't even go down much either
Tunneling still will be better than camping, 12hooking, 3 genning, or whatever else so they will tunnel through the DS. Tunneling would just be way more risky that it. A great player could possibly shift the game off the new buff DS but good players can do that currently anyway. The vast majority of survivors are low level and will still die immediately afterward. and the average decent player might die on 2 gens now instead of 3. you may see these streamers who tunnel all day for a 99% win rate go down to 95%. This is all assuming that DS will go back to 5sec (might not)
We used to have that meta already, which is what worries me most. Back then, camping was a lot more reliable and it was probably the bigger issue but with base kit BT, the removal of hook grabs, the near impossibility to interrupt unhooks and the AFC, that is not as reliable anymore.
So I expect that killers will either double down on tunneling (even harder than now) so that the 5 seconds stun becomes less impactful or to focus even more on gen defense. Both of these options aren't ideal. Slugging would probably decrease at first but then become more of a problem later on. Unbreakable only saves you once and if a killer can down you multiple times, then they will still get value out of it.
A DS buff will unoubtedly lead to the same situations we had pre 6.1.0 where survivors that were recently unhooked were no longer affraid of the killer and instead played like they were invincible. This resulted in them bodyblocking and even lingering around for pallet / flashlight saves. This is an issue that will have to be addressed or we basically force killers to double down on tunneling. If you are going to eat that DS anyway, you might as well do it on your terms and capitalise from that.
The kill rates will go down. By how much I cannot possibly say. But it will happen and it will lead to some further changes to help killers that struggle. However, I think this will still be more enjoyable than having a team mate eliminated early on. I also doubt that the devs will try to balance survivors around killers again. We had that once (6.1.0) and while it definitely helped it has become apparent that individual killer buffs are far more effective. MMR will do the rest to keep a 60% kill rate (or something close to it).
This is no reward. You could give killers 100k BP per match and they'd still try to win by using the most efficient strategies. But then winning would be punished. If your goal is to push people away from playing killer, then congrats, this will do the trick.
It's a much safer way to punish tunneling in game and reward spreading hooks in game as well. That way, the latter would become the more efficient strategy to win, which would have the intended effect for survivors while keeping killers in a good spot.
The point of the game is to have fun
Make it so the game is fun for all parties regardless if they are winning or losing
Whats the point of sweating to kill all survivors as fast as possible? If you have fun doing so, then do it, however the game should not be designed like that, instead promoting fun interactions between all parties. And I'm also talking about survivors, only rushing gens should not grant good amounts of points either.
Yeah old DS was complete nonsense. Hook someone, go all the way across the map, down someone with Billy, hook them, end up running into the other guy, down him... DS LOL.
Basically lol.
We're long past that point. This game has become competitive and you can't just implement such a change and expect the player base to deal with it. This will not happen.
They wont lose more often. 5s ist still nothing to fear. We learned that already. So there is no need to think about killers being compensated for something that doesnt even matter to them.
It won’t be as bad as before as long as it’s only buffed to 5 seconds and the conspicuous action restrictions remain. If kill rates drop, then hopefully the devs don’t take the lazy route and generally buff killers, but instead only help the weaker killers so they perform better. Maybe they’ll finally make Trapper more viable and give him a machine gun.
Is it really? The grand scale of the game is a non cometetive environment, which is probably roughly 80% of the playerbase. We should not forget that we mostly represantate fans who have thousends of hours and are around since many years. The average player has nowhere near that experience nore passion.
The thing is, this is way too many thought for a change like this. If DS gets buffed to 5 seconds, it will not change much. Killers already know that tunneling one person out is the best way to secure a win. Having a DS which is 2 seconds longer will grant the Survivor a bit of distance, but will not really change the Killer tunneling. And on second Hook, DS is not active anyway.
At best, it will help against weaker Killers. But thats about it, every above average Killer will not have much of an issue with DS. As it was before.
I guess many Survivors would equip DS again after it was buffed to 5 seconds, but will drop it once they realize it does not do anything.
Let alone that I dont think that it will be buffed to 5 seconds. 4, at best. And since the Devs want to ensure that Killers are ok with the change (as they do it with every Perk nowadays, trying to not upset Killers in the slightest), I expect either a Killer-Buff with it or something that balances out the buff of DS.
So I think a crucial piece missing from your analysis is that when DS was 5 seconds long there were other survivor perks & strategies available to maximize its value. These things no longer exist. DS at 5 seconds in the current meta will be as impactful as DS at 3 seconds in the current meta.
Even if killers were to get weaned off tunnelling somehow, the idea that this must unconditionally mean that killers would experience some radical dip in killrates is entirely unproven. Didn't Hens run an experiment of 'no tunnelling, no camping, no slugging, and no killer power' and still come out to a 90%+ killrate?
'You need to tunnel to win' has been the anthem since 6.1, but since then, the game has gotten consistently better and better for killers (With a dip with MFT) and the same excuse still gets trotted out. I want to see what actually happens to the statistics if tunnelling were to actually take a hit. No conjecture.
Unless DS grants a decent stun, disables the killer's power for a set time and grants the survivor either haste or endurance, then it's gonna be next to useless.
I don't care if the survivor loses the ability to body block, or deactivates when the survivor touches a gen or the killer hooks someone else. Unless it's strong and can't be nullified by certain killers, then it's gonna be useless.
But like you said, it's gonna have to be approved of by killer players in general, so if it's better than mediocre it's going to be objected to.
I personally think they should just leave it as-is. Lately when these devs ‘improve’ a survivor perk it ends up somehow worse than before.
At best it will be a stun increase, that does nothing to affect mobility or ranged killers. No new perks are allowed to be strong enough to become meta, and meta perks are gradually getting nerfed one by one.
Might as well go back to the old days of doing gens and hiding in a bush when the killer gets anywhere close.
Except now Killers have perks to flush survivors out of hiding. lol. They (killers) don’t like immersed/stealth gameplay either—look how they complain about Distortion.
I honestly think survivors who experience tunneling should just equip Distortion and CS, then just stealth gens till all of them are completed. Fight one miserable experience with another.
It will continue to be as is, just with DS, you just won't tunnel your obsession because they are likely to have it. The other problem is tying anti-tunnel to a perk to begin with. It should be handled at a systemic level not via bandaid through perks.
Yeah, I agree, it would need to have an effect outside of the stun. There have been several ideas over the years. As mentioned, disabling the Killers power would be one. This would not really influence the weaker Killers as much, but would guarantee that a Nurse or Blight are not on the Survivor immediatly.
Another things I always liked was that the Survivor would leave no Pools of Blood, Scratchmarks or Grunts of Pain for a certain amount of time (lets say 20 seconds) on top of the Stun being 5 seconds. This would make it way harder for Killers to track a Survivor after DS, especially for the stronger ones. (A Nurse just sees the scratchmarks and follows the Survivor)
Another thing was a more dynamic stun, based on the number of Gens remaining. E.g. 2 seconds per Gen. So if someone tunnels at 5 Gens, they have a 5 second Stun. Which would feel awful, but then again, there is not really a need for tunneling at 5 Gens (and that is what Killers like to say, that they HAVE to tunnel, but you dont HAVE to tunnel at 5 Gens, you WANT to tunnel at 5 Gens). This would also mean that DS gets weaker over time and at 1 Gen remaining, it would basically be non-existent, but at this point, the Killer really needs a Kill.
But yeah, I dont care if they remove collision either. I am not a fan of Survivors bodyblocking after they get unhooked. But unless DS is actually a strong Perk (because it was the only thing that held tunneling back at least a little bit), there is no point in bringing it anyway.
Sadly I also agree here. I just dont want to see changes, because I know I will be disappointed of them.
This is something I see happening quite a lot lately. Stealth-Perks. Which is understandable, because if you cannot really defend yourself anymore after you get unhooked, you need to make sure that you dont get hooked in the first place. So Distortion to block Lethal Pursuer and Calm Spirit to block Ultimate Weapon are things I see quite often in my games nowadays. And while Distortion is at least a good Perk (so the high usage is not surprising), Calm Spirit certainly is not a good Perk.
But at this point it is more simply to avoid being the first one found.
Well, expect the game to die sooner than later
I agree with this. I would love to be able to run creative loadouts without having to devote between one and three perks to avoid tunneling or to at least deter it. It would also be nice to relax a bit and not worry about having to throw myself in front of the killer because they decided to eliminate one of my teammates before a single gen has popped.
Having to deal with the worst things that this game can offer removes all the fun and just replaces it with stress.
My solo teammates never seem to be able to loop, so I wish they'd just hide and leave the killer to me. Not that they'd be able to figure out how to repair gens though.
😒🤢🤮
jk 😂
haha
If that was the case we'd see a lot more people play nice. But it's always the same few perks and the same strategies used. We call them casual because they are not as optimised as comp players but they have the same mind set. Winning above all else. And that seems to be the overwhelming majority of players. This is a competitive mind set, that will not go away in one update. Especially since we have been going in this direction for 7 years.
What perks that optimised DS value are no longer availabe? Unbreakable hasn't been touched. Spam healing wasn't necessary to maximise DS value either. It worked long before we ever had CoH or 4 medkits per game. DH wasn't necessary to maximise DS value either. It was even argued back then that SB, which again has not been changed, was better.
Saying that a DS buff will have little to no impact is dishonest at best. I'd argue that the anti tunnel meta with a 5 seconds DS would be even stronger than it was before 6.1.0. Nobody has to run BT anymore since that is base kit, we also have OTR, Unbreakable is still the same and DS would be just as strong as before. So you could have 3 highly effective perks to support DS, an exhaustion perk and DS itself.
i like the idea of removing the ability to force it with locker grabs.
Are you guys at least wearing your tin foil hats when posting stuff like this, like there is this secret killer main society in McCotes basement with him wearing dark robes: "Brothers, we are going to buff DS, but no worries we have a plan!"
Or maybe the killer main circle captured his hamster and holds it hostage "You shall not buff DS, here is the little guys small toe"
😂
Yeah, it's true, tunneling is strong, same should be reward for spreading hook, if we want something to be changed.
I read your post before, i have some problems with your suggestion tbh. Overall, i don't think reward for spreading hooks should be related with gen speed. Doing gens is boring and as a person who did 6k+ gens i just can't accept gens last any longer. I think, majority of community agree with this. But even besides it, i have some problems with your suggestion.
1) This obligates killer to find all the survivors in order, and ignore all other survivors while he searches for "missing link", otherwise he will be punished. It's core issue, because it's nearly impossible. Sometimes i take 3 aura perks and just can't find one survivor whole game. For this suggestion we need completely delete stealth from the game and give to killer few aura perks basekit. I don't think anyone will be happy with it and it's nearly impossible with lockers in the game.
2) Even with no stealth in a game and some aura perks basekit 20% penalty is just compensation for killer's time to find all survivors one by one, there is no reward at all. One thing just neutralizes other.
3) Killer will punished with extra 5% to gens speed even after 4 unic hooks? What is the point of spreading them then?
4) I think that your suggestion will somehow okish on lowest MMR, where game is killer sided, but high MMR killers will be literally unplayable. There is no reward for spreading hooks as such, but a lot of punishment. In high MMR killer (it's better to say "against good survivors", since mmr is a pretty bad) should tunnel just to have a chance to win, and it's not even a guarented win and pretty risky. With your suggestion there will be literally no chance to win a game against strong survivors.
Look, there is a match i had with friends few hours ago. Random was tunneled out on 3 gens and we did 3 mans out without any other hooks at all.
I already discussed a lot reward for spreading hooks in my most, there are some of my suggestions.
I'm actually against DS being buffed for 2 reasons: It's behind DLC so unless it becomes a general perk. Also because I don't want my ability to play survivor completely defendant on a perk. It seems like devs only want a few perks to be useful and 90% useless which reduces variety and experimentation.
A lot of people are theorizing the change is going to be a strict buff, but I'm thinking it might be a bit of a rework / sidegrade, just based on how BHVR has liked changing effects (furtive chase, for instance)