Map Change Suggestion
Now, when I say "map change," let me be a bit more specific - this is an idea to refresh the game for both sides, while giving the map designers more freedom to make good maps.
The idea is simple - add new ways to escape, where each map falls into a category. What I mean is, instead of having every map be these cluttered messes where Survivors have to fix generators and open the gate, have some maps have different methods of escape.
To give an example - an underwater facility where, instead of finding generators that you do QTEs to fix, you must find a select number of fuses or something that you get from boxes with, say, a puzzle lock or something to power escape pods. The escape pod method could also apply to, say, an alien spaceship or something.
Or you could have gas cannisters you need to fill up to power up a train or some other vehicle.
And there are many ideas, I'm sure other people can come up with some.
Additionally, you can give new things for Killers to take the Survivors to and new map mechanics that the Killer can interact with - similar to the breakable walls, but like a two layered map with an elevator that only the Killer can use or something along those lines.
Essentially, this would refreshen the game for both sides, and offer more dynamic map designs for more unique experience regardless of which side you play on.
Comments
cool idea but you do realize that this won't be very engaging to play after the novelty effect wears of?
generators are not very fun mechanics, but they are the way they are so that they keep people stalled and easy to find while giving killer time to play for chases.
look at how recent bloodmoon event played out. removing "sit in one place contributing time to complete objective" dynamic made the game feel fresh but it also broke it in all kinds of ways, resulting into a very boring hit&run meta for killer and stealth meta for survivor.
killers could not commit to chases because their best form of slowdown was to keep finding people to stop them from depositing cans and survivors could avoid being found and pressured in normal ways because the area where they could be spanned way further than one location.
the bloodmoon cans also were a very high skill floor / ceiling mechanic. bad survivors struggled A LOT MORE with juggling cans while strong players quickly figured out how to optimize them to be completed even faster and safer than normal generators.
this did not make up good gameplay, it just made the game even more uninteractive and onesided as the cost of the mistake was even higher.
While this is true, and maybe not ever escape option would be viable, simply changing to type of mini-game that is needed to complete the objective would go a long way in refreshing the game, while a visual overhaul for these new mini-games would give more freedom for more dynamic maps. The Killer loop wouldn't be affected, as Survivors would still need to sit in one place, it would just be a different mini-game Survivors needed to complete. Additionally, with more dynamic maps, you could still add new things for Killers to interact with as well, so the change isn't one-sided.
yeah but the problem is that if you implement these in any impactful way that changes the fundamental "survivors need to spend X amount of fixed time", like doing these minigames successfully greatly speeds up the progress of the objective and failing would slow it down even harder, then it would lead to these exact issues I described above.
It would disproportionately difficult for the survivors at low skill level than it would be for killer to kill them normally and when survivors do optimize that, then the killer would be tremendously struggling as survivors will have yet another leverage to limit killer's time and options.
and if you mean just different skillchecks with otherwise same impact, that might work, but you need to consider that these should be something people can reasonably figure out fast enough but something they all cant immediately perfectly do with high consistency.
The equivalent of hitting good skill checks should be easy and hitting greats should be hard.
The issue with suggestions like this is how many Perks already revolve around things like Generators. Even Blood Generators in the previous Blood Moon event apparently didn't have enough time for Generator perks to be ported over to work on them. For stuff like fuseboxes or puzzle locks it'd be impossible to port Generator Perks over to work on them. Even something as small as a different repair minigame means Skill Check Perks get impacted.
I don't think alternate, map-dependent escape methods can really fit into DbD because of how core Generators are to the game. It could be cool for more alternate gamemodes (and for the record, I'm in the camp of arguing Generators should be experimented with ideas like the blood moon event's canisters for something eventually good enough to fit into 1v4 and make the game less stale) but the game can't completely flip the script on the core gameplay in its base maps.
I do think BHVR have done a pretty good job so far of being experimental with their maps, though. We've gotten things like the Nostromo's unique gas traps and Forgotten Ruin's portals not too long ago. These gimmicks certainly aren't always good, but they prove you can get creative with maps in DbD's format without needing to upend the whole game.
This is very true, and where spending more than a month on the PTB comes into play. In my opinion, it could work, but they'd need to try out various different mini-games to figure out which ones provide the same or similar lengths of time and challenge. Now, I'm not sure if BHVR is willing to spend that much time on revamping the system, but it'd be a worthy investment of time. I have a few ideas of mini-games they could attempt, but even those would need extensive testing so that way they're fair for both sides.
This issue is also a fair concern, but I think it could have a simple fix. All they'd really have to do is make each of the gen perks work on the new mini-games as well, especially if it's just switching up the mini-game being played. Again, this would need extensive testing so that way none of the gen perks from either side become useless, but it is possible.
I think if we do have a system like that we need to focus on it addressing the core issues we have with current gen system - volatility of pressure they both sides can create by interacting with it.
it's not really an issue on its own, it's good really, but the alternative to generators can be more streamlined to give out more consistent performance.
for example new objective could be a passive timer than survivors can only slightly speed up instead of having to constantly take their time to progress it otherwise it stops. this objective will not let survivors go before or after, for example, 7-8 minutes pass, making it so survivors being objective efficient or inefficient will not have such drastic impact on the match, allowing to make killers harder vs bad survivors and easier vs good survivors which is the kind of changes BHVR should be making sometimes.
I do agree. On a personal level, I just want more or at least something new to do as Survivor, as the gameplay loop is pretty stale. But I agree that it shouldn't come at the cost of the Killer experience (which, I feel, is something that BHVR constantly struggles with - their changes to Killers often come at the cost of the Survivor experience, but there are changes that come at the cost of the Killer experience. A change should only improve the experience for both, not hamper either). That passive timer could be interesting, but it would still need to be balanced right.
While I doubt BHVR would take any of this into consideration, I hope if they do any of these changes - new mini-games, passive stuff, new interactable stuff in general - I hope they do extensive testing instead of one PTB trip and then onto live, like a lot of their… less than ideal changes that we've seen.
I like bhvr's approach of testing things as part of the events. Sadly, I dont like what they are testing there and how it ends up being.
smoke bombs were amazing on their respective events because they could actually enable clutch getaway scenarios that killer could still reasonably counter. the base game version however is just a boring tool of mild annoyance and accessibility hazard.
Personally, my main critique of how BHVR does their testing is that it's never long enough. I do agree that introducing new, potentially permanent, features in events is a good way to ease those ideas in, but once they decide they want to make it permanent, they put it on the PTB and then make it go live with little to no actual changes from the feedback on the PTB.
I like the Fog Vials for what they're meant to counter, but I do think they need more testing than one PTB - like a lot of changes, like the Pyramid Head add-on changes that are making him an unbeatable monster. Good ideas, but they need more fine tuning to make them fair.
In the case of the Fog Vials, I think the biggest issue, from what I've observed anyway (I can really only view YouTube videos, like Spookyloopz, since, as a console player, I don't have access to the PTB), is that, for the Survivors, it doesn't seem to really counter tunneling like it's intended to, as the Killer can still see you if you're within a certain range. And from the Killer's POV, it does need a visual overhaul - something that will ensure it performs as it's meant to without being an accessibility nightmare.
It would be nice but I think that all maps need the same rules otherwise the game becomes complex to understand and can make some players lose the desire to play, for example TSM was a little complex learn to escape, then the mechanics should be simple and applicable to all maps but it would be nice to add other forms of escape but it would complicate the killers.
the issue with fog vials is that they just dont actually create a 50/50 / actual opportunity for getaway, it's way too easy to see through them, so you cant really use them in "gamble" ways, they're way too easy to counter.
killer players cry about that, even about current ones, but the surv item that could genuinely give them a way to get away in dead zone, but only if the killer doesn't manage to make a correct read is exactly the kind of item we could've used as a new variable that can help accomplish those clutch moments people play for.
but alas, devs listen to wrong people and we're still stuck in meta where it's better for survivor to take toolbox and just shave off more time off gens or use medkit for free pressure relieve
That is the unfortunate bit, honestly. I can see the intention of the Fog Vials, and it shouldn't really be that hard to make them work - really the only hard part is not messing up accessibility - like how Clown's stuff needed to be adjusted visually due to how bad it was.
Maybe it could be fixed if either Killers within it take a 2 second slowdown to movement speed (obviously Killers with high mobility would like not be affected by it, but Killers like those are always the hardest to balance without making them useless), or maybe giving Survivors temporary haste, so they have more of a chance, but not guaranteed, way to escape inside it.
As for them listening to the wrong people, alas there's nothing we can do about that. In reality, to make a healthy game, developers need to listen to the majority, but many game developers - BHVR not excluded in this - only listen to either the loudest section of the community (who usually aren't the majority), or only listen to the top percentage of players. Doing this normally ruins the balance for everyone else, as the loudest section normally only cares about their fun, and the top percentage of players do not play at the same level as everyone else, making their input skewed and unreliable. After all, no matter what changes are made to the game, the top percentage won't be affected that much, it's everyone else who suffers, no matter which side you play on.
the fix to fog vials is reducing radius, duration and making them actually impossible to see through, aka making them work like they did in the events.
making them apply slowdown will not create a fun interaction, it will just make the item into chase resource you invoke when you are screwed
That's fair.
Maybe instead of haste or a slowdown, make each rarity of it have a different radius and up time, with add-ons that don't make the item overpowered, but instead increase duration or thickness of the fog or something. It'd need to be play-tested, obviously, but I agree it should actually work as an appropriate anti-tunneling tool, while creating more diverse chase interactions.
Perhaps having them have a limited number of uses, with an add-on that makes it rechargeable, instead of it being rechargeable from the get-go to help make it fair for Killers, while ensuring it still works as intended.