There are really powerful perks/survivors/killers in this game ... and that's perfectly fine.
Amidst the constant threads that pop up on this forum on a daily basis (that I would hope the developers take them in the same way movie critics take the latest Adam Sandler movie -- amusing at first, but it's a tired formula when you hear the same complaining over and over again), I wanted to share thoughts I said in another thread, because I think they're worth stating. As always, this is one person's opinion, nothing more.
I play 50/50 survivor/killer, give or take, and I play about 30-35 hours a week in the game since I started a year or so ago. Do I win/escape every time I play survivor? Of course not. Do I end up with a 3K or a 4K every time I play killer? Again, of course not.
But I DO escape against "broken" killers running "oppressive" perks or add-ons numerous times, just like I've lost badly to those same killers running those perk combos. That's to be expected -- they're strong perks. They're SUPPOSED to be difficult to go against. When I play killer and I go against a team full of Dead Hards/PT/Iron Will/UB/etc. -- some of those matches I do really well in, and others I end up getting absolutely creamed because they're strong survivor perks and are SUPPOSED to represent a challenge. I'm okay with ALL of that.
When people talk "balance", I think that term gets misused a lot. Not "balanced", IMO, would be that, no matter how good you play or no matter what you do, something is impossible to overcome or completely unfair in some fashion. There ARE ways to work around strong killers for the most part (with the elephant in the room being Spirit, but that's another discussion altogether). There ARE ways to work around strong perks or add-ons. There ARE ways to -- gasp -- work around both and still survive. There ARE ways to work around SWF groups, or the strongest survivor perks or items/add-ons. You might not have a ridiculously high success rate when you play against those killers/survivors -- unless you're a God-tier player like an Otzdarva, or ZubatEl, or Ayrun (to name just a couple of examples) -- but that's perfectly okay. That's part of the challenge that makes the game fun to play, at least for me, and when you DO succeed, it feels that much better.
People on both sides in this game want to always blame the game -- or the perks -- or the playstyles -- or the strategies of their opponents -- for why they lose, instead of realizing that it's often their own play or their opponent's that's the reason for the result. No one wins their match every time (even those best players). This game isn't completely balanced, certainly, and may never truly be -- there are still some things that can and should be looked at from both the survivor and the killer experience (The Mori change was healthy, the DS change was healthy -- Clown's Pinky Finger and keys, for example -- I'm looking at you next, lol). But the majority of the time, when a killer or a survivor loses a game, it's likely because they simply didn't play well enough to win, or because their opponent just played better.
Too many people -- at least some notable vocal voices you see here -- want to see anything worth playing nerfed into the ground (again, this menatlity comes from BOTH sides) instead of looking into the mirror and realizing that sometimes you get outplayed, and that's okay. Do people really want to play a game where every perk is Monstrous Shrine/Sole Survivor level of effectiveness, every killer is a walk-in-the-park to play against, and playing against every survivor is a complete non-challenge?
I thought the way some people do now when I started playing -- SWF is impossible to beat, so-and-so killer is too hard to go against, such-and-such perk is "broken", etc. I've learned over a ton of hours in the last year that the problems in those cases weren't what I was up against -- it was ME, and getting better over time in both roles (with a lot of room for improvement still) -- has illustrated that clearly.
TL;DR -- The game isn't the "problem" almost all of the time. The answer to what's holding someone back is likely staring at them in the mirror instead. The game is better balanced then it's probably ever been, and it should be enjoyable if your expectations are to have fun first, know that sometimes things won't go your way, and there's always a new challenge -- and another game -- one click of the ready button away.
Comments
Agreed
While I do have my problems with this game’s balance the fact that I mainly play solo has conditioned me to just not care about the outcome of the match. If I get tunneled so be it and same goes for gen rushing, bad map rng and so on