Chicken. Fox. Corn.
This famous little puzzler really encapsulates the problem of modern DbD balance wise.
Essentially, you are a farmer and have to get a chicken, a fox and a bag of corn over the river - but can only carry one thing with him in the boat. If the chicken and the corn are left unsupervised on either end, the corn is eaten. Ditto the fox and chicken.
Now, replace 'chicken' with 'solo', 'fox' with 'SWF' and 'corn' with 'killer' - and I guess the boat would be balance, and the devs would be the farmer.
Playing killer against decent SWFs was miserable. So they buffed killers and nerfed some of the more ridiculous survivor perks. But that hurt solos, who were struggling as is.
It's a very tricky one - if you buff solos outside of very specific strategies (what ever happened to those status icons?), you also buff SWFs and killers suffer.
The problems solo is having right now are sort of a result of this riddle playing out in real time - and I'm very curious what's going to happen next.
Comments
Some changes probably should be rolled back.
Self Care didn't need a nerf, for starters.
DS was fine at 5 seconds, so long as it didn't work in the endgame.
Ruin was a bit overnerfed.
I'm glad they are trying to shake things up.
They missed the mark in a few places, but sometimes surgery is needed and the only professional on call is Doctor Chopper.
After the absolute shambles that was the Boil Over buff, I'm surprised this worked out as well as it did.
'Perfect' is always the enemy of 'Better'.
The trend we've seen throughout the years is that BHVR attempts to fix core issues with perks and killer powers. Thankfully, this last update assured us they're willing to change core mechanics to address those issues instead of just giving us another bandaid perk.
I really hope in the future perks become more of a flavor to a match rather than mandatory.
Very nice allegory. Though one of the biggest problems right now seems to be camping and tunneling, and I feel that with the spot killers are right now you can implement some more restrictions on camping / tunneling without making killers suffering too much.
I am more inclined to stomp down hard on camping, as tunneling sometimes has its place, but if both have to go in order to make soloQ viable again and keep our killer buffs, that's a sacrifice that I would be willing to make.
People are running a much wider variety of Ex perks, for starters. I'm seeing SBs, I'm seeing Lithes, I'm even seeing BLs.
Ditto regression perks on killers. Hell, I'm even seeing a small push towards less regression+more info/lethality.
Baseline BT is great.
DH, Ruin and PR needed a nerf.
The goal was to break the incredibly stale meta, and it worked.
I like killer perks a lot - as the good ones require a different playstyle, some risk/reward analysis, some strategy and often give a killer a totally different 'flavor'.
Survivor perks...far too often are passive, or a bit 'press button not to die' simple.
I've suggested this before - but make it so killers can't use their powers within a certain radius of a hooked survivor, or for a few seconds after the unhook. Add in a lesser Kindred (you can see everyone, but not the killer's aura) and I think you'll be golden.
Tunneling is like eating a puppy. If I'm starving, pass the ketchup. But if you immediately ask for the puppy menu when you arrive at a restaurant, you need help.
Camping, as in face or hard proxy camping - yeah. That needs to go away.
So, what you're saying, if I'm reading the analogy right, is we need to put Survivors in cages, and Killers taste good with butter and salt.
Got it, right on it.
I'm a mostly killer player but ruin deserves to die tbh, it's only useful against weak players anyway.
Yeah, I'd love to see it reworked.
The problem with Ruin is that it was stupidly strong on maps/spawns where it's going to be ultra hard to find, and if you were against a weaker group of solos, it could straight up win you the game. On the other hand, it could also get cleansed 5 seconds after the match starts.
I like interactive perks, and Ruin was a mess. Fire and forget, and how effective it is depends too much on pure luck.
They likely nerfed ruin to oblivion because they wanted to change the meta from less passive regression and more kicking generators regression and slowing down generators. At least that's what I feel like they were going for.
Self Care was being used in high end games to make Medkits stronger. There was a powerful heal meta in the high end. They were probably trying to address that, though their Botany Knowledge buff seems completely backwards then.
Yeah, I abandoned Ruin a long time ago - I love Scourged Hooks as a concept and PR is just such a time-saver. Plus there's a nice bit of counterplay now with sabo.
On other killers, I love Surge, or a 'kicky' build with CoB, Overcharge and Oppression when I'm feeling meme-y.
Solos need some love, and a few perks (Self Care...man) need a bit of an un-nerf.