Should Pallets Still Matter Against Every Killer?
With all the discussion around maps and pallet balance lately, I've been wondering if we're focusing too much on the number of pallets and not enough on how Killer powers interact with them.
I'm not arguing for more pallets. If a map has too many strong pallets, reduce them. Survivors shouldn't be able to go from one safe pallet to another forever.
But I also think that the pallets that remain should actually mean something against every Killer.
Nurse is obviously the easiest example because she largely plays outside the traditional rules of looping. But I'm not trying to make this another "Nurse needs a rework" discussion. She's been part of DBD since the very early days, and her identity has always been built around Blink. I'm only using her as an example of what happens when pallets stop functioning like a normal chase resource.
What makes me think about this more is seeing newer Killers move in a similar direction, even if they do it in completely different ways. The First isn't Nurse, for example, but there are times where dropping a pallet feels less like using a resource to create an actual chase interaction and more like entering another power-based 50/50.
And with some newer Killer designs in general, I sometimes get the feeling that I'm seeing familiar pieces of older Killers remixed together. A little bit of the kind of mindgame pressure you'd associate with Spirit, some ranged or projectile pressure you'd associate with Huntress, mobility, anti-loop, and so on.
Obviously the powers aren't literally the same, and I don't want every Killer to play like an M1 Killer either. Different powers are supposed to change how we approach a chase.
I just miss the feeling that each new Killer introduced a genuinely different kind of chase.
To me, pallets are one of the core parts of DBD. Different Killers should force you to use them differently, but when a pallet becomes almost irrelevant against a particular Killer, I sometimes find myself wondering: is this really the direction the chase system should be going?
There's also a balance problem on the other side. If maps are given more resources to help Survivors deal with very strong anti-loop Killers, those extra resources often hurt the weaker or more traditional Killers much more — because they're the ones who actually have to respect the pallets.
Then those Killer players feel more pressure to use stronger Killers or stronger meta builds, and it feels like we're balancing one extreme with another.
I'm not really trying to argue for Survivors or Killers here. I'd rather see fewer pallets where necessary, but make the pallets that remain meaningful parts of the chase against the whole roster. And at the same time, I'd love to see more Killer powers built around genuinely different interactions rather than increasingly bypassing the same basic chase mechanics.
Different Killers should change how you play a pallet, not whether the pallet matters at all.
I'm curious how both Survivor and Killer players feel about this.
Comments
Yes I think they should, one of my main examples is Nurse, I feel like we should still be able to stun her if she is in fatigue to put her power on a longer CD/reset the CD. Plus it just feels better to interact with casually and opens up the window for a blind against a more skilled one if they are stunned looking at you potentially.
Pallets should be effective in some manner versus every killer, even if its different for each one.
To this day I think they should have kept the Bug that made her go into Fatique after a Pallet Stun and made it a feature.
Henry is still stunnable during his power I believe, just not the undergate so there is still a way to punish him, Nurse is the main outlier coz of her "fatigue" immunity, it's dumb.
Fair, yeah its mainly the denial of interaction I think stinks when it comes to pallets. So I think that's the line to me personally.
It's why I have no issue with him overall, I just wish bada bada boom/chem trap triggered if killers use their mobility power through a window (Nurse/Lich/Dracula/First) IDK if that's already the case though it's been a while since I tested. Please correct me if I'm completely off with this.
For 10th anniversary we got our 9th ranged/projectile based killer with mobility power. So yeah I agree it's power design hurting the feeling of unique chases. But after 10 years it was bound to happen one way or another. Especially if Bhvr doesn't care to expand their power concepts (RiP trap killers). But i cannot agree that every killer should have a unique feeling to their chase. This is unrealistic at this point and would constrain the devs even more. And you cannot force people to play more unique killers if they are too hard compared to the survivor counterplay, too buggy or simply too weak.
Making filler loops feel unique and valueable would help a lot as well. There too many of them and many of them are low enough that killers without anti-loop struggle to mindgame while ranged killers can just zone you out.
But isn't that kind of what killers like Henry do? Make you run a totally different chase? The best way to go against a killer like that, who never needs to break a single pallet most matches, is to do fake outs towards pallets and vaults and move erratically and unpredictably. That's a different kind of chase.
But to answer your question, no, I don’t think pallets should be relevant against every killer. I like the Idea of killers who are still juiceable but require a totally different thought process aside from running in a circle around a rock until you drop a pile of wood.
Pallets are an odd one atm. There are a lot of killers who turn using pallets into a dangerous move, especially ranged killers. But a lot of the melee based m1 killers really suffer to pallet density.
Pallets and windows are great...
against the weakest Killers.
Womp womp.
Look, when it comes to pallet count and how many are strong or week, bringing up Nurse as an example doesn't do anything. You could make every pallet god tier, have to break, and Nurse will blink over it.
So stop bringing up Nurse in pallet balancing discussions.
You have killers like Leatherbilly and Billy who can chew through pallets easily. Then you have killers with no ability to harm survivors that pre-drop every pallet. These two constraints are the true measurement for pallet density.
Nurse just needs more sight blockers, but that ultimately also hurts ranged killers, I do think the new sound system might make her more balanced if sounds are masked better when through walls etc.
I don't want more pallets to deal with her (I thought I'd clarify on my end tho I know its aimed at OP) I just want to be able to interact with her, a laggy nurse especially is frustrating coz her fatigue immunity lingers after it ends, and it looks like she just eats the pallet while m1ing someone.
I feel just being able to interact with her more easily, this also applies to head on, would make her a lot funner to play against, even if it doesn't achieve a win anymore than we have now. It feels GOOD to stun a killer, it feels GOOD to interact with them.
As the game is designed now with all the killers having a chance to go to every map in the game, then the answer is a very firm YES pallets should matter always.
If they decide to make pallets not matter against a killer then that killer should have maps designed/altered around them or at least have only certain maps for them and their power.
If BHVR ever actually does do away with the map offerings (or make them ban maps instead) as they should they could move toward curated map lists for every killer and that actually has the potential to be awesome. It could vastly improve DbD.
pallets to me are just "baseline dbd". killers are free to play into it or around it.
killers are like clowns at a 6 year old birthday party they bring tricks and party favour's and try to please the crowd. Doesn't matter how they do it as long as the kids are happy.
Trust me, sound hasn't helped since version 4.0.0. The new chase music certainly didn't help.
Animation quirks should be fixed as bugs. I agree that what the survivor sees on their end must reflect the state the killer is in.
I'm not understanding the headon bit. Maybe it's something to do with the animation syncing?
Don't agree with the map curated thing. Sure the offerrings are useless and should go to make room in the bloodweb.
I think its a poor design that they forced the game to be so linear, its an awesome concept but they refuse to make the killers truly unique likewise the gameplay loop has gotten stale and easier to lose at (for both sides) as the game goes on because so much newer stuff breaks what the game used to be.
More and more killers with anti-loop get released as a crutch for bad players that can't win their 50/50s and mindgames. These are the players BHVR caters to.
And Head on suffers from the same pallets too but it puts you into exhaustion when you attempt to stun during fatigue (and when she lags out of it, she just eats the stun.) Basically