Cause and Effect in a Game where EVERY SECOND Counts
This game is incredibly reactionary:
- Once a killer experiences the misery of DS, they start to assume you have it - Modest slugging
- Once a killer experiences the misery of DH (AND THE 7 HIT VALIDATIONS IN A ROW I GOT. THANKS), they start to assume you have it and ride your ass before swinging
- Once a killer experiences BT bodyblock squads, they start to assume it's coming and will go out of their way to make unhooking an exercise in madness - Obligatory Bubba complainers feel free to chime in here
- Once a killer experiences the misery of the DS, DH, BT, Unbreakable squad the killer loses their mind and tries to send a survivor to meet their maker as soon as possible every game
- Then you get the threat of COH, and now we see that extreme tunneling start to crawl up the MMR ladder to where most high level players are doing it too - And if they're not already doing it, wait until they hear that Boon gong sound in the distance and watch their personality change instantaneously
- Now we have Boil Over, and yes, you can all downplay it, but the perk is strong. Strong enough that Killers are going to treat it exactly like they treat the previous five perks. They are going to -assume- you have it and play accordingly
You know what my play accordingly is? Starstruck/Agitation Nurse. I turn into a totem-snuffing, survivor slugging, 1 blink 1 kill monster. Frothing at the mouth as I carve down survivors so panicked by expose that gen pressure collapses 30 seconds into the game.
Business has been good. Too good.
But the DC's are getting to be too much, even for someone like me who relishes the salt. Hell, I usually dance in it while begging the survivors for more in post-game chat.
Obviously, I'm leaving some things out here. I'm leaving out how Killer adaptations like the above are fairly responsible for the 5 Gen rush, the horrendous map offerings that have become the staple of higher MMR, and several other survivor tactics that I'm not looking to downplay or complain about, or even bring attention to. There is a myriad of bullshit in this game.
And yes, I run survivor the exact same way. My one filler perk is Detective's Hunch. I've stopped every NOED of every game I've been in since I slotted it, whether it was in play or not.
The point of this longwinded thread is simple. This isn't fun. With the exception of DH, depending on how you play you can go through an entire game without ever seeing the above perks kick in and provide value. But killers will assume you have them and play accordingly anyway, because the second chance perks are instant game changers. If only a few of them get value you've most likely lost, and most killers will tell you that even if they resisted the invisible perk arms race at first, once they see the EGC hostage holding T-Bag danceathons all bets are off for future games.
But that's how this game is currently designed, strategies designed to counter perks that might not even be present in the current match. An early survivor out, a few critical killer misplays. I can't tell you how many times my stubbornness blinking after a single survivor with more experience than me lead to a 4E. But at least that was a learning experience. I promise you I will never play a divide and conquer strat ever again, COH is that much of a threat to what used to be my favorite strategy.
The casualty of this is everything that isn't meta (Read as - Extreme value second chance perks). I can't tell you how many survivors I put into the dirt in seconds only to find out they were rocking a meme build and just trying to have fun. They never got the chance to use those perks either, because I wasn't going to let them for fear that I was going to have to deal with the second chance menagerie of bullshit.
I don't think there's a solution here. I say remove them all, including Killer ones (NWO, NoED, whatever others ones I can't recall because all I do is slap cheeks with Nurse so my perks don't really matter).
And for all of you who are going to jump in and suggest we play chill, or fool around, this thread isn't for you. People are allowed to want to play this game competitively, and they are allowed to hope for a meta that isn't built around second chances.
I'm just tired of the invisible perk arms race.
Edited for clarity and succinctness and my ######### typing skills.
Comments
Honestly is this a problem the devs can even fix?
I think the main difference is that, aside from NOED, Survivors have a lot more ghost perks. i.e., until it's proven that they don't have it, a Killer has to assume a lot of perks are likely in play--because the cost of not assuming it is usually a lost hook/swing/chase. Hell, even Spine Chill gets in here--think how many Killers move around at an angle just because they don't want to maybe look at someone.
Most meta Killer perks can be checked for basically immediately or don't come into play until they get a hook. Or, in many cases, pop up a handy status notification.
But yeah, Boil Over just adds another one onto the pile. Maybe it'll happily go into being non-meta and people won't adapt to it because it's not necessary unless the other team is playing suspiciously. If they do...
You're absolutely right that spine chill belongs on the same list. But I'm not trying to make this us vs them, most of my games go really well for me because of how I play, I'm willing to see an entire perk overhaul if ghost perks go extinct as a result, on both sides.
Well yeah, there are some things on the Killer side, too, but the reaction on the Survivor side is more one towards tactics, whilst the reaction on the Killer side is against perks.
Which I think is a pretty big indicator that trying to stop undesirable tactics by making counter perks is really not working out, because it just funnels more and more into unfun gameplay. And Boil Over is just silly because it makes it too easy to do something that's not meant to be done most of the time; what's that even supposed to be doing aside from driving people nuts?
Between the perk arms race and band-aid fixing flaws in the gameplay with perks, DbD needs a serious overhaul. The playstyle this encourages isn't fun.
Okay, first of all thank you for clarifying that this thread is not for me. And this it not sarcasm, this is honest.
I will however ask you one question: What kind of meta do you want?
I get that you dislike second chance perks. However every time a new "strong" perk is implemented (Cycle of Healing, Boil Over, Shadowstep, Mettle of Men...) there are also complains even if those perks change the things you face. In order to overthrow the meta a new "most effective tactic available" has to be introduced after all.
A meta where it isn't the same group of 6 or 7 different perks on all 4 survivors would be a good start. Nerf the outrageously obnoxious ones (Dead Hard with new validation, Circle of Healing which killed hit and run playstyles and forces hardcore tunnelling) and buff a ######### tonne of the useless ones that are currently never ever seeing use.
Not hard at all.
So that's thing, imagine how much easier it WOULD be to balance the meta if everything wasn't based on over-tuned second chances? I know we all like a good power creep, but this is not it. There are a few perks/combos I really like, but there's no point in running them because at any given point the Killer might tunnel me or another survivor and once that happens I will need the top 6 to pull out the win:
There are at least 15 perks that I feel provide a ton of value, just not as much as the meta, and that's incredibly depressing. If we gave up on the power creep and removed it completely, I think you'd immediately have a more entertaining and thoughtful experience in this game. Maybe there would be an imbalance, maybe killers would start doing too well. But here's the kicker:
That could now be balanced.
Edit: Maybe you could call it a #'s crunch, consistent with how WoW manages it's ever rising level cap or how DBZ handled it's galaxy destroying power levels. We need a crunch, we can't just keep going up and up infinitely.
I'm up to 115 survivors I've bled out so far. Because of Boil Over/Flip Flop.
Soon, they'll be trained.
You're a man after my own heart. I may want both sides of the meta nerfed to make this game healthy, but I get a visceral pleasure from slugging someone who was clearly looking to make a Boil Over play.
######### I'm not going to fall for, for $500, Alex.
Forgot to mention. Out of the 115 I've bled out, and almost all confirmed to have Boil Over/Flip Flop, I've been "reported" 28 times for "taking the game hostage".
Keep track of the number on your profile like a badge of goddamn honor, soldier.