Balancing loadouts and reducing the grind
The numbers below are just hypothetical, so don't pay much attention to those and instead focus on the overall idea.
Consider the following:
- When buying a perk from the bloodweb, all tiers of that perk are instantly unlocked.
- Each perk tier is assigned a numerical value denoting its cost. Weaker perks (underused perks, like Slippery Meat and Monstrous Shrine) would cost 1 point at tier I, perks of average strength (moderately used perks, like We'll Make It and Sloppy Butcher) would cost 2 points at tier I, and powerful perks (overused perks, like Decisive Strike and BBQ) would cost 3 points at tier I. Cost would increase by 1 point per tier.
- Rather than perk slots, players would be granted increased point capacity at regular intervals, up to a maximum of 15. All players would start with all four perk slots unlocked.
- Players would be able to select perk tiers as they wished.
These changes would:
- Make loadouts more dynamic by allowing players to "customize", in a manner of speaking, the perks they want to take.
- Break up the meta a bit (maybe).
- Make perk tiers relevant, instead of an inconvenience.
- Considerably reduce the grind by having players unlock all perk tiers simultaneously.
- Make it easier to balance perks by preventing certain perk combinations through the adjustment of their respective point costs.
- Provide data on which perk tiers are useless, so they can be changed.
What do you think? I don't think I was the first one to suggest something like this, but hopefully the devs will take notice of it now.
Comments
Yes yes and yes. I love point-based loadout systems over slotted ones because it gives an extra balance factor. For example they wouldn't need to rework DS, they could just increase its point cost.
Plus it makes for more fun builds because you could just run 15 ######### perks for memes XD
No, note that you'd still only have 4 perk slots.
Oh okay, read it wrong. Whoops
I don't support this idea for several reasons. Since I already discussed this with Orion in private chat, I'll only give the TL;DR
Here's the thing. There will always be a meta. All this would result in is lower overall power rating for both survivors and killers. But eventually players would reach a consensus on what is the strongest strategy and that would be the new normal. So why even bother? All it would accomplish is pissing players off. The game wouldn't be any more balanced.
According to your system if I wanted to run BBQ rank 3 it would cost me 3+4+5 points! That is 12 out of the 15 points I would have available. Pure insanity. God forbid I like to earn a decent amount of bloodpoints in a match. If you wanted to kill this game off then that would be a good way to do it. I know that I would delete the game.
As far as the grind goes, I have a few suggestions here:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/39591/addressing-the-bloodpoint-grind
Say what? It'd cost you 5 points, because that's the cost for a powerful tier III perk.
I misinterpreted what you meant by this "powerful perks (overused perks, like Decisive Strike and BBQ) would cost 3 points at tier I. Cost would increase by 1 point per tier." If it cost 3 and increased by 1 point per tier then the second tier would be 4 and the 3rd tier would be 5. You are saying that the base cost would be 3 and each additional tier would be 1. Got it.
Either way, everything else I said still holds true. Players would figure out optimal builds and a new meta would evolve. It would severely piss off players that are used to playing with 4 perks at rank 3 as well as make all the players that worked hard unlocking all their perks feel cheated. It could possibly be an alternate game mode, but it seems like an awful lot of work for something most players wouldn't actually like.
I'm in favor of seeing some mechanic that would allow for the tier one and tier two perks be used even if the player has the tier three version available. I disagree with your idea solely because I do not want the developers being the ones to make the decision about what perks cost what and etc. Same as @DocOctober —no offense, devs.
It could kind of work. But I think this would have to be in a PTB to see if it really works.
I want 15 ######### perks!
@Orion and @DocOctober both have good points about this but how would what's powerful beyond the commonly accepted ones be determined.
For instance DS is basically Nurse tier on survivor side and BBQ isn't and potent as it once was so perhaps you could include another formula or in it's place.
DS is a one time use item but can be very impactful of used right and then you have AD which is very impactful but situational.
On killer side you've got Sloppy Butcher which is pretty much as meta as DS is alongside Ruin.
i dont know...
the grind is the only thing that actually keeps me playing this game. if there was nothing to grind, i would have stopped playing ages ago.
i would like to leave it the way it is. at least that way it is an achievement to say "i got 8 P3 lvl 50 all perks killers and am currently working on Spirit". cut 2/3 of that grind and a lot of people will have everything maxed out very fast.