A DBD balance change document I made cos I was bored
I've had a lot of time to kill as I'm waiting for a replacement part for my computer to get back up and running, and because of that I made a document with a bunch of changes I would make to DBD. None of these I am absolutely set on, numbers could always be tweaked as well, there are even parts where I give multiple options.
I know because it's a lot more to read this post will probably get little to no engagement, but I'd love to hear any and all opinions on anything I wrote down, and feel free to leave your own suggestions as well! I'm just bored and love discussing changes to the game.
DBD balancing changes because I'm bored.pdf(also wasn't sure if I should put this in the feedback category, it's been several years since I've posted here)
Comments
The changes themselves are well thought out. My only issue is the slowdown for killers only occurs when they kick gens.
Gen speeds would need an adjustment if these changes were to go live, and that might mean an extra gen needs to be done, or that gens take longer.
Gen speeds as they are right now would not be fair if anti tunnel, slug and camp measures of this proportion were added.
If that was an issue, I think increasing instant gen regression to 10% (15s or charges) or regression rate to 0.35 charges/second (4m 17s from 100% to 0%) might be fine as long as changes to regression perks accounted for the increase properly.
Otherwise, a couple random ideas from the top of my head come from making certain perks partially base kit. Almost like Ruin, perhaps if a gen is left alone for say 60 seconds, the gen begins to break down again and regression starts on it's own. Or like Pain Res, maybe another benefit added onto the list of hooking an unhooked survivor (before a survivor has been killed) would be to regress the most progressed generator automatically by 5-8% (of course Pain Res would have to be adjusted accordingly).
I think out of all of these, I'd maybe be most averse to increasing the gen regression rate and adding the base kit Pain Res, namely because the gen regression means that if someone goes on just a minute chase while their gen regresses or it takes a minute for someone to find the gen they were working on, almost a fourth of the total gen progress would be gone, and a base kit Pain Res might make DMS annoying to run into every game. But either way, just throwing out some ideas here
These are interesting thoughts, and definitely one's I hadn't considered, but the basekit pain res might be enough to do something to help. I'd be interested to see these at least tested.
Honestly not bad, I think a lot of the "Don't play that way" mechanics are fine as is rn besides the anti-tunnel, which should just flat-out disable in end-game instead of reducing the time. You can still easily walk out a gate with any seconds of endurance as long as teammates are nearby.
The anti-slug I will forever be mixed on, as there is a skill-ceiling to countering said slugging by using knowledge, macro-skill, and lockers. I think the community just needs to get better instead of asking for base-kit additions. EXCEPTION for when there's 2 survivors left and the killer slugs for the 4k.
Basekit hooking rewards, which could be the section at the bottom instead of just flat buffs, would make the slugging play-style a lot more irrelevant depending on value. It would scale further with an actual survivor meta shift, which the game desperately needs anyway.
Combination of the 3rd anti-slug and basekit hooking rewards would actually be fascinating to play with. Do you slug and risk the auto-hook? They might be able to pick if they get by you, or do you hook now for the benefits? if perks didn't activate from the auto-hooking, it'd be incredibly balanced around skill and knowledge imo. Granted, unhooking perks would still work like DS, Gift of pain, DH, etc.
I think you could go a lot further with anti-camp in 1 of 2 ways:
1: The radius is larger than before but killers can use their powers inside the radius (Stream-lines every killer into an even playing field around hooks)
2: Make every killer NOT able to use their powers around hooks. Confuses me why Billy can rev into my cheeks for 2 minutes but Artist can't place crows lol
Either way I still think hook-grabs should return. Confuses me why they were removed
Also people would hate the hitbox change. It would take AGES for huntress players to revert their muscle memory into something new, but it would also open up 20 million shots and make her A tier again without any other changes. Or least a very high B.
I do think you'd be a fan of the status effect "Dread" I have, which does nothing but makes effects from killer powers unaffected by survivor perks (Vigil shouldn't counter powers imo). Freddy would apply a red outline around the screen (or something similar), to show that his snares are unaffected by perks. Shouldn't really matter that much.
I think end-game unhook protections could definitely be reduced further, but I think removing them entirely is a bad idea. There would never be a point to trying to save a teammate because 9/10 times the killer won't even hit the unhooker, and instead wait for them to get unhooked and then immediately down unhooked survivor, just like dbd from like 5 years ago. I think it's a similar reason to why they removed hook grabs.
I also recently heard about an anti-slug idea that's been around for a while that apparently a lot of people felt positive about, and that was that if two survivors are fully recovered and come together, they can pick each other up. I think this is also a fascinating idea since it feels very intuitive and honestly makes a lot of sense. The only concern I'd have is that if survivors literally go down on top of each other, it might be a bit too strong since they could get each other up in just over half a minute and that could punish a killer that is simply opportunistic and not necessarily just hard core slugging.
I do think the base kit hooking rewards I wrote could both be effective at making tunneling and slugging less relevant, and I think it would be a real feel good moment for killers so they don't always have to run Pain Res, Corrupt, Pop, and Turn Back the Clock or something.
I've heard several people talk about Billy face camping in end-game, it's just a difficult issue. A Billy player needs to be able to chainsaw away from a hook because that's their entire power and it's half used for map traversal, and making it so that he can't use it in a radius might not be very effective when he can stand further away and cover the distance in 2 seconds. I'm pretty sure they made it so that he revs the chainsaw slower, but obviously he can just have it sitting at like 80% and it doesn't matter.
I think Dread is an interesting concept, but I'm not sure how many survivor perks this would apply to, I can only really think of Vigil and a few perks that give Elusive. Personally, I just think Vigil should be restricted to Exhaustion, Blindness, Hemorrhage, and Mangled. I might be forgetting a couple, but I don't think it should affect Hinder or Exposed durations, as I think those statuses come from perks and powers in a way that they should be consistent for consistent value.
Just realized what you meant about it being a problem that it only applies to gen kicks, as in the gen kick bonus would not be nearly as helpful to killers that are running pain res or something. In that case I honestly think the 5% bonus regression could be added to the next gen regression event, if they kick a gen then it gets applied there, or if they Pain Res it gets applied there instead.
Is all good DW.
And yeah that'd be a good change aswell.