perks having less impact?
this is a personal view of mine, just an idea i want to throw out into the abyss in hopes that its considered
but i feel perks should be less impactful. as is, perks are kinda needed for everything. killers tunneling? hope you have ds/otr. not good in chase? run an exhaustion for free time added to chase. gens go too fast? hope you have slowdown.
i feel it would be nice if perks did small things, keeping the game close to at base, perhaps perks could all have a give and take
consider no mither - you leave no blood, and are quieter, and can always pick yourself up (at 25% faster speed too), but youre always injured
or resillience (this doesnt have the give and take part) - you do pretty much everything 9% faster, but only when injured (resillience is an extremely powerful perk, with an incredibly small number, and is conditional)
whispers - you know if someone is within 32m, arent told where, but you know there is someone
if more perks had minor effects, or larger effects with larger drawbacks, or somewhere in the middle with conditions for activation, i feel it would be easier to balance the game since thered be less to consider
exhaustion perks are incredibly powerful - what if they were toned down a lot? sprint burst triggers for pressing shift, and its a big speed boost for a few seconds, and killers kinda just have to hold w since theres nothing else to do with it. what if instead you just had a permanent 2% haste (tiny number, always active)
lithe - you vault 15% faster, but it goes on cooldown for 30 seconds after vaulting (middle ground number, conditional activation)
dead hard - you press e to gain endurance for .5 seconds, in doing so playing an animation that blocks other animations (disallowing vaults, pallet drops, how it currently works but i word it weird since im not smart), but you vault 15% slower and/or move 2% slower (extreme effects, extreme drawbacks)
i feel it would also help with creativity problems. they can have many perks with similar effects, but different numbers, conditions, or drawbacks to fit specific playstyles better. i feel that it would also help with variety since perks would overally matter less
this is just something ive been thinking of for a while. the state of balance is a thing that is widely debated, and i feel removing the extreme impact, and almost requiredness of perks would help
and currently there are perks that counter unhealthy things (otr/ds for tunneling, reassurance/kinship for camping. imo slugging isnt that big a deal unless its bleeding out but unbreakable/soul guard still), but making these perks have small impacts can have what these perks do be basekit
e.g. picking up a survivor who was freshly unhooked gets you a 4 second stun and removes all charges from your power. what does ds do now? adds a half second to the stun maybe? perhaps give a minor haste (2-3%) until a different survivor has been hooked
and then killer side - imo they already have a system for the "minor, mediocre, major" impact system in the form of hexes and scourges
e.g, mediocre impact perk (pop? jolt maybe) could be reworked to be scourges - gimmicky activation bc only certain hooks can proc them. major impact perk (corrupt?) could be reworked into a hex. major impact, but then its gone once its broken
they could add drawbacks to perks as well for killer, but i feel killer shouldnt be treated identically to survivors. killers dont have an injured state, cant be "vulnerable" the way survivors can be, the only ways to make a consistent change between killers would be changing distance between gens, hooks, and altering gen speed overall. i dont think those are good gameplay alterations to be made
so id prefer hexes being powerful perks that you lose when broken, maybe the perks they see as more impactful in the hex section could be louder, have aura shown in radius, tell survivors of its existence before it actually procs (e.g. if they did this, devour would be considered rather insane as a perk. it could notify survivors on the first down, first stack, rather than when the first hit on 3 stacks occurs)
and scourges being the in between perks, you cant lose them (minus hooks going on a journey forever when a survivor dies on them but i think thats kinda incredibly outdated and will willfully ignore it), but you still need to earn them (via hooking on a scourge hook). example - jolt. you hook on a scourge, and then you get 2/3 stacks and downing a survivor procs jolt, which could stay at an 8% since its not a big number - then again i dont think jolt has a large enough impact to warrant it, but its an example
but yeah, these are my thoughts, if you actually read all of that i sincerely apologise
tldr; perks do too much, make perks have less impact, give perks with stronger impacts drawbacks. it will lead to more variety in perks, and probably help the games balance since perks wouldnt be so much of a deciding factor
Comments
Well they certainly seem to be heading in that direction. If you look at the meta from several years ago, most of those perks have been toned down in one way or another. Plus, most newer perks they release are the definition of low impact. The Skull Merchant DLC didn't have a single strong perk across 3 characters.
1% versus 100% of what?
it doesn’t matter how impactful something is in terms of value.
1% faster is still by definition faster. And if there is an option to be 1% faster then everyone else is now officially 1% slower. That’s basic logic. No brain needed.
if that base value is increased by 20 or 2000 it does not matter. What matters is the overall stat variance and how the stat is utilized by the players and the game as a whole.
i say this because the problem with using a perk system is that it will always suffer from power creep and have individual perk identity issues.
not sure there’s a way to objectively fix that without just removing the perk system.
Yes, perks should have less impact.
The lack of core game play mechanic, giving strong perks that make player who dont use certain perk is completely screwed. I prefer to have half a perk to be corre mechanic, and who has the perk can perform the action better.
Something like all survivors have 3sec DS basekit. Who uses DS perk have 5sec. Or Killers have 30sec Corrupted basekit, and who uses the perk have 2min. Something like that.
Doctor chapter gave killers ability to kick Gens, Overchange makes kicking Gen more effectively. It would be stupid if Killers who dont use Overcharge can not kick Gen, right? Same to Shattered Hope.
If you scroll through some of Peanit's forum posts I think it's somewhat clear that the dev vision (or at least his) is that perks are meant to spice the match up but should never be the deciding factor / a necessary component for a win.
I don't really like this idea. Having impactful perks (and also items/addons for that matter) means, that you have different playstyles. Different things you can/can't do. This promotes variety. This is even more visible on survivors. Base survivor can only chase with killer or do gen. With perks, you can distract them (like deception), you can hide better and try to play stealthy (distortion), you can try to save your teammates (saboteur/residual manifest), you can troll killers and play around that (blast mine), you can be team medic (things like autodidact/empathy or another variant being bottany/we will make it). All these things are not really that significant without perks.
Perks having impact is a good thing. Problem is, if the game "forces you" into certain playstyle only (say it's not viable to take bamboozle, enduring, spirit fury and blood favor, because you just need your slowdown perks). Meaning ideally perks enable/highlight certain playstyle, but you are not really required to take any single perk in a game (meaning ideally all perks should have overall same average value (average meaning - if it does a lot, then it needs to be rare to actually pull off or niche in use) - where value by definition should be a little subjective term to promote variety between different players).
This enhances the game and makes much more variety. I don't want every killer and every survivor be totally the same no matter what. That sounds boring.