Fast Track and perk activation requirements
The dev notes for the Fast Track changes look like this:
Some people argued the permanent progress was too much, others said it punished killers for completing their objective. The first part stayed, the second is gone. According to these notes—despite the criteria for activation being the same for years—Fast Track was changed because the survivor should have to perform a useful action to gain a benefit instead of acquiring it through their opponenet's successes.
But what about other perks that activate not just through passive inaction, but through opponents moving their objectives forward, like Fast Track did with hooks? Is it really fair to be rewarded for failing? Coup de Grace, Fire Up, Rancor, Deadlock, Wretched Fate, Batteries Included, Bitter Murmur, Cruel Limits, and Dark Arrogance are all perks that activate from survivors completing generators. Is that fair? Should you gain things like vault blocking, aura read, and action speed increases because opponents did things correctly? Or is it somehow fine when a perk is weak or unpopular, like Fast Track previously had been?
Comments
Does it? They've a track record. Even this change they lied about, as it was supposed to be a sidegrade. And they've lied about their reason before, as they did with Distortion.
While I agree calling this a sidegrade definitely isn't accurate, the rest of their communication has been pretty above board.
Their stated reasoning both scans logically and matches the change they made, which are the two most important parts, and also matches how other related perks are balanced as well. Whether you like the change or not - I think it's lacklustre , personally - isn't really relevant there.
Is there any evidence they lied about Distortion?
The stated reason about 'rat play' doesn't work with Distortion, as Distortion only allowed rats to help the team while playing safe. It didn't enable ratting since lockers still exist.
Could you not just as easily interpret that as them being wrong about Distortion…?
Also, I may be misremembering but I'm pretty sure BHVR's stated reasoning for Distortion was just that it made it too easy to hide from auras, not that it specifically enabled useless teammates never engaging with the objective.
Yeah, the Distortion change did nothing against Rat behavior, since those people are just spending more times in Lockers. Let alone that I have almost never seen actual Rat behavior and both times I can remember, Distortion was not involved (one somewhat recently, another one I think even before it was buffed).
But yeah, Rat behavior was the communicated reason why the Perk got nuked, but it was not the actual reason.
Sure, but the reason they're wrong ties into the same issue we're facing here.
Distortion becomes the FOTM nerf call, just calling it unfair doesn't work, since we're hot off a pretty hefty power creep on aura reading which gave rise to Distortion. Back-up plan: 'think of the
childrensurvivors!'-appeal by blaming rat behaviour.Argument is nonsense, since Distortion makes rats less of a problem, but the complaint is copied, verbatim, and the perk is taken out back.
Fast Track follows a similar pattern. FOTM nerf call shopping for an excuse, excuse is nonsense, BHVR takes it down anyway, perk is taken out back.
Regardless of Distortion, that's plainly not what happened with Fast Track.
BHVR gave their reasoning for Fast Track and, whether you agree or not, it is internally consistent and logical. It's not nonsense, they identified a thing that is true of the perk that wasn't in line with how other tools work.
Which means accusing them of lying about it requires some pretty hefty evidence, due to their stated reasoning looking above board.
and Fire up PERMANENTLY speeds up killer action for doing NOTHING
good thing slippery meat + luck is an outdated topic now
Not really. Again, there's their track record. This isn't some court of law, they either have the benefit of the doubt, or they don't.
But beyond that, if, as stated, it was simply that the effect was too powerful for simply equipping the perk, why go to all the trouble of completely rewiring it on top of nerfing the effect?
When 3% wasn't a problem, but 6% is, if the issue is the value balance, would you:
A) Adjust the value from 6% to 4 or 5%
or
B) Nerf the value to 5% on top of adding an activation condition that makes the perk thoroughly unreliable and also removes the possibility for it to stack between survivors in a way that makes it even more unreliable
One of these is consistent with 'it just gave too much value' while the other perfectly lines up with the nerf call's excuse.
It's not really benefit of the doubt, it's just there not being any reason to think the thing being suggested here. Benefit of the doubt would imply there's something to doubt.
As for the rest of that, I don't disagree the decision made wasn't ideal, but we're not analysing if the decision was good, we're analysing if it matches the reasoning given, which it does.
Like I said up above, if the problem is a combination of the effect and the activation not matching, you would logically fix that by changing one of those variables. They chose one, some would've preferred choosing the other.
My personal opinion on the perk is a little outside of the point being made here, but for the record, I don't mind changing the perk's activation because the prior version both wasn't very good and was difficult to safely buff, but I think this new version is too weak. I'm cooking up my own post for how to fix it, though, so I won't stray too off topic here.
we are at the mercy of content creators
Look out everyone, I can see my teammates perks in solo queue. Those exit gates are practically opening themselves!
They didn't choose one, they did both at the same time.
That doesn't really change anything, it still fits with what they said, but for the record I also don't really think a 1% nerf is worth including in the discussion. It doesn't affect any breakpoints for value in the perk or anything.
It happened, worth mentioning for thoroughness, but it doesn't impact the discussion any.
It's 1% on 6%, if you don't account for the stacking exclusion. With that, it's 13%.
I'm sorry, I think you have that confused with pre-nerf Fast Track, where you could do absolutely nothing for free permanent gen progress. But don't worry, I know this game can be confusing.
Snark aside, if you don't care about the feature that's fine, but it's been one of the most requested solo queue features ever. You can't tell me that the devs don't care about survivors (as others claimed) when they bring a feature like that to the game just because they nerfed a clearly busted perk in a reasonable amount of time.
People have been complaining for ages that BHVR moves at a glacial pace when it comes to game balance, and while I understand concerns about knee-jerk balance, there are some cases where it's obvious when something is problematic enough not to require the standard 4 year waiting period.
I honestly wonder what people would be saying if original Mettle of Man was released today…
Yeah, looking at each actual use of the perk is more important. Only one survivor per hook getting to benefit is also important, but not numerically, that's part of the activation trigger changing.
That's a very narrow view of it, since the amount of actual gen progress you get out of the perk is, in actual effect, heavily reduced. It's a bit of a weak argument to go 'well technically, the amount you get isn't reduced!' when in actuality, you're never going to get anywhere close to the same gen progress out of the perk because you're never going to be the one getting all the saves.
Yes, but that's the activation condition changing, which we already went over.
The point of changing the activation condition is to limit how frequently you can get tokens, it was always going to result in less permanent progress overall. My point is that them also nerfing the percentage isn't really relevant because that part doesn't move the needle at all, I honestly suspect they did it because 5% looks nicer than 6% in a description.
That's not true, it'd depend on the activation condition. If it happened when -anyone- gots an unhook, it'd still change the activation condition without crippling the effect value.
I mean, sure, but there'd also be no point in doing it, that's functionally the same as it happening on the hook action. If the point of changing the activation condition is to make it less passive, it's always going to result in less activations.
But that's the logic they presented. It was too much for just equipping a perk, now it requires an unhook.
But they went above and beyond to put it in the grave.
…But if it activated on any unhook, and everyone brought it, two people then would just be getting the value simply for equipping the perk. That wouldn't match their stated reasoning at all.
I'm not arguing if the change was good here, either way.