What are your ideas for the map & key item rebalancing coming in phase 2?
In the quality of life roadmap in the phase 2 section, the devs mentioned they will be doing a map & key item rebalancing sometime from July - December. Since it will be a while until we see what these changes will consist of. What are your predictions/ideas for the balance for these items? I personally have no idea what to do with these items to make them compete with the other items like medkits or toolboxes since those pretty much run the game currently.
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Maps could be repurposed to be more team oriented. There already exists an addon that allows to create pillars of light, so I'd like them to go more into that route. With that I mean, that the item could allow for the holder to mark certain objects on the map for the whole team. Could help a lot in soloq.
Keys are a lot trickier, as they are directly tied to the hatch and have been a big problem in the past. I personally hope that they redesign the hatch mechanic as it almost always creates a boring scenario for both sides instead of a climactic ending to the trial. They could however also tie the idea of the key to chests, making them drop way better items when opened with a key. One thing I absolutely do not want to see is then being reverted to their busted state.
Changes to Maps;
Changes to Keys;
Alternative Ideas;
These are all the changes that I think (or hope) BHVR will make.
They're already good items. They're add-on dependent, and some add-on combos which are allowed are stupid (because they don't do anything, i.e. 2 duration add-ons w/ no effect). But I'm afraid of what might happen if the devs want these items to be on the same level as toolboxes and medkits. Survivors already don't need that's stuff to win, and again, maps and keys are fine, if not a tad niche.
They're not good items, they're bad items with at most two good addons. The only time I see anyone use a key is for hatch challenges, sometimes rarely with Blood Amber to read killer aura which is admittedly quite strong. And I don't even remember the last time I saw someone use a map. The green map is just a terrible version of the iri map, which already isn't a very great item on its own. The only thing either map is useful for is bringing the purple addon that lets teammates also see tracked items, and also bring Detectives Hunch. That's pretty good info for the team, but again super niche.
I made a thread long ago about combining them into one item type, though I doubt that will happen, but that's my main idea. Both the items provide info/aura read, so I figured it could work, would be less clutter in the bloodweb too. If they don't, they had better make them more accessible and useful at lower rarities, perhaps add a brown and yellow version of them, and make the addons way more interesting and useful. The fact that regular Map and Broken Key start at green rarity despite being entirely useless to almost useless on their own is just sad when you could use a brown medkit and get way better value instead.
IMO Maps should focus on environmental Aura Reads and Keys should focus on Player Aura Reads (with the added bonus of opening the Hatch, but this is barely useful nowadays).
And with that I hope that they retire a lot of stuff when it comes to Maps and Keys and combine other things. E.g. there is no need for a Green Map and therefore no need for any of the Add Ons which add Aura Read to the green map. They can all be removed. When it comes to Keys, duplicates of Add Ons can be removed, e.g. you dont need a Survivor Aura Read for 24m and for 48m.
I just hope they go for Aura Reads with those, improve existing Add Ons and remove a bunch of the useless Add Ons. The Survivor Bloodweb is already cluttered with so many different things, getting rid of a few of those would be great.
keys should let you open the door instantly in a 1v1 😈
or
chests are now locked and you need a key to open them 😈
or
why not both 😈
These are my ideas on how they could be reworked:
Remove all hatch interactions from keys and maps.
I'd love for the keys (especially the Broken) one to have some kind of function without add-ons...
I've made a couple posts about this in the past, but the short version is…
The main issue with Maps is that while they have a clear use case - tracking static objects within the trial - they have huge gaps in actually being able to perform that use case at all. You have to run an addon to have them track pretty much anything you'd want to reveal - like totems, for example, the major object you'd obviously want revealed - and you have absolutely no way of making them track chests - the other big static object you'd obviously want to reveal - without a perk that also does that, thus making the info redundant.
They also have an issue with sloppy tier increase effects. The Rainbow Map just has addons already baked into it, which leaves it gaining no effect from those addons if they were to be equipped.
To fix both of these issues, I would say Maps should track generators, totems, and chests by default, the difference between the tiers should either be standardised number increases or a genuinely unique effect, and the addons should be given a fresh coat of paint.
For Keys, things are messier because that item lacks a little in identity. If it were up to me, though, I'd lean in to Keys being the counterpart to Maps in that they track player positions where Maps track static objects.
To achieve this, make the teammate-revealing addons basekit, and reshuffle around the addons to better lean in to revealing players. My pitch is to include addons for revealing survivors performing specific actions (IE, healing, or repairing) even when they're outside of the Key's default range, so you have a Bond item as well as the ability to track the position of the teammate you can already see is repairing via the hud.
On top of that, probably just buff the charges and such as well for both items. They're a little underwhelming.
They're never going to compete with medkits and especially not with toolboxes in their current unbalanced state, but you can make them do their job a whole lot better and that's more than good enough imo.
The key addon with wall hacks on the killer is actually the best item in the game.
there is a reason why even ever people get a key or a map in a chest they get annoyed. The items suck. They should be on the level of a medkit which are not op anymore. Toolboxes are a different story as it depends
medkit with a syringe is better
When they did the Medkit overall a while back and took the different rarity levels and made them much closer together in power, I thought that was going to be a trend for all items. The Iri version of maps and keys blow away the other options. My guess is that they will make these versions closer together in power.
Probably also look at some of the addons.
I'd like it to be more than that, I'm also in the camp that these should just be one item, but I doubt it will be anything groundbreaking.
Yes, I agree I have no idea what the key changes are but do not bring back the old hatch mechanic.
I say that as a survivor who played during old Haddonfield. I did not play killer back then, but I am sure that it was pretty depressing to have gens fly, the hatch spawns, and you have the survivors just jump in the hatch until the killer inevitably closes it.
I just hope that they don't make keys useless, in my opinion. They're already pretty niche in use compared to other items like medkits and toolboxes.
Depends on the situation.
medkit with syringe does not extend a chase nearly as a long as 20+ seconds of wallhacks will do.
considering I’m seeing more people complain about syringes, yeah I would say getting a heal of and having 3 health states is better than 20 seconds of walk hacks
Most people don't realize the power of the key, the other problem is the key requires you to have an iri key and 2 addons to get good usage, whereas the medkit only needs the syringe and a grey medkit, much easier to get.
Keys maybe. Blood Amber, Gold Token and Unique Wedding Ring (because it's passive) are all quite decent. Plus the added hatch opening, but barely anyone uses it for that.
But Maps, no. Want to see gens? Deja Vu. Gates? You can see them when they are powered and that's usually enough time. Totems? The spawns are obvious anyway? Hatch? May be good for scumbag builds, but aside that... Maps are pretty bad, especially the green one.