My suggested Survivor changes
Note that I´m a Killer main who also enjoys Survivor very much and no gaming session goes by without some Survivor matches. Currently close to 2k hours in DBD and only 1 pallet save away from 100% achievement completion.
That being said, my goal with these suggestions is to improve the soloq experience and to address some broken outliers in terms of balance.
A common complaint I share with many others is that the use of voice comms is a performance enhancing tool that sets a premade leagues apart from solo players. As long as one Survivor has sight on the Killer and/or uses Object of Obsession, voice comms grant the folowing perks without taking up a perk slot:
-Aftercare
-Alert
-Better Together
-Bond
-Buckle Up
-Dark Sense
-Deja Vu
-Empathy
-Kindred
-Object of Obsession (1 Survivor has to use 1 perk slot for all 4 of them to have unlimited Killer aura reading)
-Open Handed
-Premonition
-Visionary
Even if a solo player was to dedicate his whole loadout to just information/coordination they couldn´t get anywhere near the level of information a premade has. For a group using comms, aura reading perks other than Object of Obsession are obsolete, opening their loadout up for the classic, impactful chase and anti momentum perks. This is a luxury a solo player does not have if they also want to coordinate better as a team.
In my opinion, the only way to attempt and lessen the gap between solo and premade players is to integrate certain effects into the Survivors basekit and to buff other perks to give them more value for those solo players that use them.
Kindred should be included as a base effect sans the aura reading on the Killer. This way the perk retains some of its value but enables way better coordination between solo players without the hefty cost of a perk slot, again something a premade gets for free.
Bond could go two ways. Either make it base too, or buff the aura reading tremendously, preferably map wide and add the effect of revealing your aura to other Survivors as well. At face value this might seem pretty strong, and it is, yet it´s an effect a premade already has for free and it should be strong for a solo player that sacrifices a perk slot for it.
Many of the remaining aura reading perks either fill a specific niche (Alert, Dark Sense, Premonition) or are good perks for brand new players (Deja Vu, Visionary) while others would lose the minimal value they currently have if these changes were implemented (Aftercare, Better Together, Buckle Up, Empathy, Kindred).
Perks from the last category should be reworked to give them different effects. For example, Buckle Up could enhance the recovery from the dying state (remove this effect from Unbreakable to compensate and allow perk diversity/synergy), Aftercare could buff the altruistic action speed between Surivors that performed altruistic actions on each other previously etc, but I´m not the most creative person when it comes to creating perk effects.
While this is not the main topic of the post, I´d also like to briefly touch on the subject of Object of Obsession. As I´ve stated above, the goal of this post includes addressing some broken and imbalanced outliers.
Object is widely considered to be the single perk that negatively affects the fun in matches the most. This goes for the Killer player, the Object who gets either tunneled and camped or completely ignored, or the team of the Object who may or may not know why the Killer is unable to play a "normal" match.
In its current form, Object is the single strongest and most reliable aura reading effect present in DBD. As it stands now there is nothing to balance it, since the majority of available Killers do not have the neccssary tools to counterplay it and the Object retains 100% control over the aura reveal. If the Killer happens to not be looking at the Object while they are scouting them, the alleged downside doesn´t even exist in terms of gameplay. A brand new player may not be able to fully capitalise on the permanent aura reading on the Killer, but a decent player and their teammates will start every single chase with an absolutely massive headstart.
If used by a solo player, Object is just very strong and the slight downside can affect them, However, if used by a team, it enables the most baffling amounts of coordination. At no point in time is there any uncertainty of where to go when. If a teammate of the Object is being chased, the Object can easily negate any of the Killers attempts to mindgame by calling out every step the Killer takes. A Trapper is for the most part completely powerless against an Object team and has to resort to playing Machete Man who can sometimes force a relocation to another tile. This comes at the price of a single perk slot of the up to 16 slots a premade has available, making it the strongest perk in terms of value.
I have several suggestions how the perk could be changed.
A) When you and the Killer are looking at each other directly, your auras are revealed to each other for 3/4/5 seconds. 60 seconds cooldown.
B) Aura reading on the Killer outside of TR causing increasingly negative effects to match the perks theme. After 10 seconds of aura reading, the Survivors aura is revealed while inside the TR for the remainder of the match. After 20 seconds, they also become Exposed until downed. After 30 seconds, they can also be killed by the Killers hand.
In the past, slowdown synergys on the Killer side have been nerfed to prevent anti gen builds that were too oppressive (PoP+Ruin, Thana changes for example). In my opinion, these were good changes, and especially the Ruin rework was nothing short of an elegant and impressive change.
In my opinion, the same needs to be done to the Survivor tools that affect gen speed. My simple suggested solution would be that gen speed enhancing effects do not stack. This would prevent matches like the one recently showcased on this very forum, where 3 Survivors were able to complete 5 generators in 2 minutes and 26 seconds, as well as encouraging perk diversity. Prove Thyself, Toolboxes, Resilience etc would still all be decently strong yet they no longer shift the games balance to the massive degree they currently do.
There should always be an Obsession regardless of the perks either side brings. The main reason being to discourage tunneling. The risk of falling victim to a Decisive Strike and potentially losing the game because of that should always be a coin toss for the Killer if they decide to take the short cut to victory. In addition to that, Decisive Strike should be disabled while in a locker. If the Killer decides to slug to keep pressure, there´s still Unbreakable, Soul Guard, Tenacity and the potential for teammates to pick the Survivor up. Also, the Survivor can attempt to bait the Killer into grabbing them at a vault, gen or window. This would remove situations where the Killers best possible choice is to stand in front of a locker for up to 60 seconds, which is just silly.
Add a totem counter to the status HUD. This change would further bridge the gap between solo players and premades. While a SWF would keep their advantage of not only knowing how many totems have been broken but also which and where, this tool would be highly appreciated I´m sure of it. The uncertainty about the totem situation in any given match is one of the main reasons why Ruin+Undying is so oppressive against solos if used by a good Killer but just decent against a good team.
Exhausted Survivors should breathe louder. Exhaustion perks are considered to be among the strongest for good reason, and this change would make sense balance wise as well as thematically.
This concludes my brief summary of suggested changes on the Survivor side. Thanks for reading!
Comments
The main problem I have with Obsession perks is that killer ones all come with a downside.
Eg: Having to build up Tokens that you'll lose if hitting said obsession, having to find the obsession and waste time dropping chases for a minimal speed boost. Causing you to have to ignore them to play optimally and take full advantage of them.
Meanwhile actually being the obsession isn't really an issue, all killer obsession perks encourage ignoring the obsession outright for as long as possible, increasing their escape odds and ability to gain rank points and BP. And the survivor ones (outside of Sole Survivor) give an incredibly strong effect with minimal downsides. Imagien if Dyling Light permanently gave the obsession a 20% repair speed slowdown at the risk of giving them that 50 or even 100% altruism speeds.
Using an obsession perk literally deincentivises chasing them at all. You're more likely to survive WITH one active, yours or otherwise, than without.
It's bizarre. I get why it was changed as old Dying Light encouraged Mori tunneling but right now it just feels silly that I go "Oh you're the obsession my B as you were".