Meta Perks: just an idea
Hello everyone. I am fairly new to the game, having just under 200h, but I am pretty much enjoying it and I play mostly as killer.
Of course I noticed pretty quickly how often the survivors use DS, DH, BT and all the other popular meta perks, while I enjoyed BBQ and Pop on every killer, once I unlocked them.
I also noticed that many people hate that they have to face the same perks over and over again, on their opposing side.
So how about this: once per week, or month, or whatever, a set number of perks per side get declared as meta perks, and you might only pick one of those in your load out. This way, everyone could still play their favorite perk, but the strongest meta perk combos would be shut down. Ideally, over time, people would learn to appreciate other, lesser played, perks more and we would end up with a much more diverse cast of load outs and eventually other perks might make the cut into the meta rotation, changing things up, again.
My other solution would be, that the strongest perk of every survivor/killer wouldn't unlock for the blood web and could only be played with that surv/killer, or maybe that the first perk slot always has to be filled with one of the three native perks, which would help establish the identity of the survs/killers more, but I guess that the meta perk rotation is the better solution.
Comments
Limiting players' options like this is a very boring and inelegant solution to everyone always running the same perks.
The solution is to simply increase the number of viable perks in the game. Will there always be a set of "best" perks? Certainly. But increasing the number people can run will only increase overall variety.
The DS/BT/UB meta exists because of how common it is to face killers who Camp/Tunnel/Slug. In no specific order.
When you look at it from a technical stand point, Survivors are countering playstyles that may/may not happen. There is no way to tell what type of killer you are going to get and with certain ones (Bubba, Oni, Twins) it is almost required to bring at least one of those perks.
So as long as those playstyles remain intact without any sort of built-in mechanic for survivors to have a chance, they will continue to be meta.
Those are intended playstyles btw those perks aren't there to completely counteract them (as shown in their design) they are only there to make those playstyles weaker / slow the killer down for/while using them, there will likely never be a built in mechanic to counteract those playstyles, especially not completely
Its the same on both sides where they have perks to slowdown the other side and buy time and those perks usually end up being meta because thats the strongest effect in the game to buy time
You can't get rid of the meta perks without fixing the reasons the meta perks are run in the first place. DS is run to counter tunneling. BT is run to counter hook camping. BBQ gives much-need Bloodpoints (and occasionally helps killers get into a chase immediately after hooking, but it's really easy to avoid having your aura seen). Ruin and Pop and every other gen regression perk are run because gens can go too fast.
Just taking the perks away doesn't fix the problems that lead to them being popular.
Same thing happens with DS, though. When I slug a survivor whom I hooked recently, I will keep them slugged, unless they vigorously shake, just in case they have DS up. This improves neither their, nor my gameplay, but I'm not risking a DS, so they keep slugging and enjoying the view from down there.
So now we have the situation that you will threat everyone as if they have loaded up on meta perks, which mostly punishes those players who don't run them, but who get slugged for 1min regardless, ie the meta to the meta.
Edit: and the 1min of DS is really long. I adopted the practice of ignoring the unhooked survivor and just chasing the unhooker, so no tunneling at all. And sometimes I down them, hook them, maybe even chase away someone else. Then the first unhooked surv shows up, I down and get hit by a 50+ seconds DS. No way was I tunneling them, so this just feels a bit odd. But whatever, U am not ranting about DS in general, just throwing ideas around.
How do you buy time with DS when you don’t use it because a killer makes it obvious they do not camp though?
I don’t camp and I never (hardly) see DS. Sometimes I get it “out of the way” so I don’t have to deal with it during endgame.
My point is that, regardless of what perks killers bring there is very little a survivor is going to be able to do against those playstyles, that are only there should the killer choose to (or not) use them.
It is part of the core that is very indented but also the reason why survivors opt to not go in without those perks.
I'm gonna suggest what I've been suggesting for years in different variations but will never be implemented because apparently I'm the only person in the world who likes these types of restrictions and differentiation among survivors.
Permanently assign one insanely good perk to each survivor, and restrict it to that survivor.
Every other non-assigned perk has to have less impact than linked ones and be balanced around each other in terms of strength.
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Example:
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This would allow you to create new meta perks since they'd all be distributed and linked to their respective survivor. You could also then buff otherwise uninteresting survivor perks to insane levels by restricting them, encouraging new ways to play and build diversity.
I also just want character differentiation for survivors really badly.
Well, now we are two: I like this a lot. Thats basically what my second idea build upon, but I penned it way more clumsier then you. This would help to establish the survivors as characters with a givin identity, and not just skins, once their perks are freed in the blood web, sorta like the different killers, and give each of them a core gameplay. But the normal way is already too established instead for them to change something profund like this.
Oh heck, you did - I completely glossed over that.
I'm so happy I'm not alone now. Have an upvote!
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Sadly, I've been wanting this since 2016 and proposed it multiple times in the past. I doubt it will ever come true at this rate.
We can dream though.
Borrowed Time (BT) is "meta" due to it being a safety net... and it being a Team Perk so I don't mind it being "meta"
Dead Hard (DH) on the other hand has gotten me kinda pissed off seeing the Survivor take the hit and me wiping the blade but they keep on running... I know that baiting it out is a thing but at the same time it's also the Survivor trying to bait a swing (timing is everything)
Decisive Strike (DS) being "meta" I'm also ok with... Yea it's true that Killer Camp and Tunnel a lot (for various reasons) But it's knida easy to tell who's got it and who doesn't
Some ideas I have for Buffs...
If Killers stopped Camping/Tunneling then We'll Make It/ Guardian would take BT's place (but that highly dependent on the Killer's playstyle)
Same can be said for DS
Dead Hard.... I wish I could have an idea on how to fix this perk (I'm saying fix loosely) maybe increasing Exhaustion (but that seems unreasonable given that you gain minimal distance)
Boil Over- give it a slight wiggle speed
No One Left Behind- Starts up when the Gates are Powered (not Opened)
I can't think of a 3rd perk I would Buff (sorry maybe someone can fill this part in)
And on the flip side... Killer
Corrupt Intervention (CI) is strong cause it gives the Killer the chance to start a chase without having a Gen pop (Yes I know that isn't true for all of us whom play Killer but it still remains)
Pop Goes The Weasel (Pop) is strong due to it taking 25% of progress instantly after hooking a Survivor (and kicking a Gen)
Ruin is strong due to it being a Hex that does need to be cleansed (or Blessed... I guess) and any Gen that has progress on ti will begin to regress at (up to) 200% normal (which is .50 charges per second)
Some Ideas on Buffs I'd make to Killer perks...
Brutal Strength- Make it 50% faster break speed or make a special effect pop onto Survivors if they stand too close to a pallet being broken with Brutal
Dying Light- Have it give a bigger debuff at the start and less with more hooks (maybe like 6% with the first 3 hooks then 3% for the rest
I don't know of any other Killer perk that I would buff right now (But I'm sure someone will fill in this blank spot as well)
For me this sounds terrible.
Survivors just being skins means you can level up one survivor and keep thr others at lvl 40 and have acces to all the builds
If you like build variaty then with your suggestion you would need to level up every single survivor.
No thanks. Grind is bad enough as it is
Yeah, that's one of the typical argument against the idea.
But personally, I'd much rather have this system be a replacement grind system for the current perk-tier system. This way the phenomenal grind of dbd still exists, but is lessened by lowering the individual grind of each survivor and instead dispersing it across each of them. Players could then pick and choose what/who they exactly want to grind for and in what order, and therefore lower the short-term grind further that way without actually reducing the overall grind too considerably and potentially robbing players of long-term of grind objectives (leveling other characters).
And since the grind has to be reduced eventually, this would be one way to tackle that issue + the meta issue without straight numbers-nerfing or power creeping everything.
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The other argument against this idea is that everyone will just play x-survivor for their specific unique perk.
But at that rate all you have to do is make each super unique perk powerful and interesting enough to warrant building around by tweaking their dedicated perks effects or numbers.