Why do Basic Attack perks exist?
Adding the basic attack requirement to a perk automatically makes it awful or inconsistent for at least half the cast of Killers. What's the point of even designing perks if they're not meant to be widely used and are incredibly niche? Use the Dev time for a better idea instead.
Comments
STBFL is a really good example of a perk that needs this requirement.
Surge is a really good example of a perk that doesn't need this requirement.
Because they want to limit what killers they're good on. In other words they want the perks to benefit weaker killers but not make the better ones even better.
The problem is those better killers still wouldn't even be close to too strong or un fun if they were able to use them. So it turns into just another unnecessary negative on most the parks.
It's also an artificial way of trying to force perk diversity because a large majority of the perks aren't balanced well enough to have more diversity on their own.
It's a bandaid fix and misunderstanding of certain perks power levels in other words.
There are a few exception perks, but generally speaking. It also is simply for consistency.
STBFL is amazing, not all perks need to be good on every killer
The reason why Tinkerer was reworked was because it worked on a small amount of killers, while STBFL works on all killers but isn’t recommended on some
STBFL 8 or Unrelenting that works on Huntress hatchets would be broken.
Because every killer has a basic attack, so every killer is able to benefit from those perks equally.
In general, killers who use non-basic attacks to injure or down have an easier time in chases, so allowing those perks to work on those attacks too means widening the gap between them and M1 killers which isn't something healthy for the game.
Because the developers can't figure out any better way of doing things.
Clarification: the perks' cooldowns wouldn't inherently work on special powers; only the gain and loss of stacks would be affected by the special powers (as they once were until they were changed for no good reason imo).
To limit their ability to be applied far more easily than intended and to limit ambiguity in some cases.
For example, if Dark Devotion didn't have a basic attack requirement then there would be ambiguity with cases such as: The Obsession hitting a trap, Grabs, Being broken by vile purge, being downed by deep wounds, disarming a trapper trap with the bloody coil addon, the obsession using the For The People perk ect.
Additionally, things such as Plagues vile/corrupt purge, Legions Frenzy, Huntress hatchets ect all have a much easier time hitting Survivors, which causes balance issues with perks like 3rd seal, remember me, sloppy butcher (well not for plague) and most importantly the exposed status effect.
And then some perks are basic attack perks because they are directly interacting with the properties of the basic attack itself. In this case that means Unrelenting, Mad grit and STBFL.
The only perks I can think of that don't have ANY of these issues are Surge and Knockout. Both of which have minor effects and trigger on a down, which is unambiguous.
Yes I know ambiguity has other possible solutions, such as Forced Penance using protection hit requirements instead of basic attack requirements. But they had to do SOMETHING and a basic attack requirement is one such solution.
The devs don’t want to risk breaking the stronger Killers. However, all of the perks that are receiving this condition (minus STBFL and Unrelenting) don’t need it and wouldn’t break any of the stronger Killers, especially when some of the perks are receiving more restrictions than just requiring basic attacks (cough Surge cough).
Because they don't want a Ruin 1.0 to exist
plus as mentioned before every killer has a basic attack (some killer only have a basic attack)
Honestly the meta would be healthier if STBFL was the only basic attack perk. all other perks would be affected by the following:
All other sources of damage would be unchanged
Dark devotion never really worked like that even when a lot of Killers had the ability to trigger it with their abilities.
For example the frenzy hit from legion would trigger it not the downing from Deep wounds.
So I have no idea where the point you're trying to make came from.
In fact in the case of frenzy which used to be able to trigger all perk effects it was not massively overpowered you were able to activate third seal efficiently. You could have applied remember me without hardcore tunneling.
Also exposed never worked with powers to begin with you couldn't down somebody who was exposed in one shot with huntress hatchets only with iridescent head.
You couldn't do that with frenzy you couldn't do that with any power in fact the only power that actually allows you to do that was chainsaws. Chainsaws would actually trigger exposed but the only way you would end up knowing that is if you are using something like speed limiter
Ambiguity doesn't mean the interactions don't have a specific result, it means that the result wouldn't be consistently deduced from the stated mechanics due to inconsistencies with the rules.
Like ok Legions Frenzy triggers it because it injures them, but vile purge also injures Survivors so why doesn't THAT trigger the perk? And downing the Obsession via basic attacks triggers it so how is that different than a deep wounds timer?
Just saying Legions Frenzy is a basic attack dodges the question at best. This thread is about why perks have basic attack requirements in the first place not about why some Killer attacks don't count as basic.
But even if we do want to cover that. Legions Frenzy never triggered expose.
Expose is a status effect that effects basic attacks. So if the Legions Frenzy is indeed a basic attack then it should down them.
If it does we have a balance problem. If it doesn't we have an inconsistency and thus ambiguity.
In the case of before his nerf it was the 2nd.
And that's without even getting into perks that modify basic attacks.