Why are we nuking the beginner friendly perks?
Looking at the new perk changes I'm looking forward to a big meta shakeup. But I'm not too impressed with the changes to windows and five moves ahead.
I may be biased since I still use windows as my crutch perk. But we didn't need to make the game even less accessible for new players. Windows was always the first perk I'd advise new players to get. Having it not show pallets anymore makes it kinda useless. And vice versa with five moves.
Survivor role is hard enough for new players, without nerfing these ones. So now to get the old windows effect you need 2 paywalled perks.
Comments
Players: we want a meta shakeup
Bhvr: fine
Players: but not like that
(God sometimes i feel sorry for bhvr as its damned if you do damned if you dont)
Survivors still have resurgence, lithe, DS, DH, Finesse, Resilience, Dejavu, Iron will, now spine chill, hyper focus, stb is still good, SB is still good, people gonna use woo and fma together etc., usually survivor meta perks don't get touched in years (SB literally took 10 years to get nerfs besides being always meta), while every single killer meta perk got nerfed several times, which is also the reason why there are more killer meta shake ups, because as soon as there is a decent new perk it can already compete with the current meta ones, survivor perks are strong and meta for years and you need really strong new perks to compete, not just decent ones
If you want to use previous nerfs of popular perks as an example, Iron Will used to have nothing to do with Exhaustion. DH and We'll Make It have been repeatedly nerfed. DS as well and is straight trash against strong killers. And the last thing to happen to Pop, Ruin, and Nurse's were buffs and those are meta.
Bamboozle and Eruption have yet to ever be nerfed and Lethal has only ever been buffed.
Idk why it's so hard for people to say killers are eating good right now and survivors aren't. It's been nerf after nerf after nerf, with a dash of broken promises thrown in, in tandem with the release of an endless stream of strong killers. Fog vials, medkit add-ons, OtR, Babysitter, anti-tunnel, basekit BT nerf. Even new and reworked perks get immediately trashed. Fast Track, Cross Examination, and now Self-Preservation too. The vote for Aurora's perk was "a boon that grants permit gen progress" and they just went ahead and quietly overrode that. Even when survivors vote for something they don't get it.
I feel like this is all a set up for an upcoming pallet-focused licensed survivor perk (so we have to buy a character or wait a year for it to appear in the Shrine) that is going to power creep Five Moves Ahead and possibly Any Means Necessary. Will Terrifier come with a survivor? Five Moves Ahead is getting a pretty harsh nerf with nothing to compensate for it, it's worse than pre-5.3.0 Windows of Opportunity now. Getting to move 50% earlier is good for what, 2-4 meters distance? Has anyone measured that?
Maybe BHVR will give Five Moves Ahead something when it goes live but I know better than to get my hopes up. SoloQs need a good pallet information perk because how are we supposed to know if Meg dropped all the pallets in that third of the map on her first chase?
Windows of Opportunity was long overdue for a nerf. It was practically 2 perks in one, was always on, has been meta since 5.3.0 and >20% usage rate for 4 years. And since it got 10% vault speed bonus that will work for medium & fast vaults while healthy or injured, it is going to stay in the meta. I'm sure many killers are going to love chasing survivors who'll be vaulting 25% faster when healthy (WoO+Finesse) and 14% faster when injured (WoO+Resilience).
Quick notes without defending WOO nerf:
WOO allows:
→ see what RNG map was generated - some perks spawn some don't even on static maps, meaning it prevents you from running into deadzones
→ see what pallets been used, allowing you to not run into deadzone aka not die in 20s chase because you have no resource to defend yourself
→ see what tiles rng spawned - let's be honest there are a lot of new type tiles that you can't clearly identify just by seeing it, neither which side window spawned or where pallet spawned and there are many unique tiles (not TL, not Jungle, not pallet jyms, not fillers) I'm talking about those long Z walls, small U pallet loops etc… tbf by adding those BHVR made looping and learning maps already insanely difficult and to extend where you can't even predict loops as veteran player because they simply never spawn same neither same positions. WOO will lead to a lot of free hits from bad pathing, which in the end in massive nerf to survivors especially casual ones because experienced players can chain loops and better know tiles overall.
Okay? and the extreme increase in killer aura reading has made it just "auto pilot to ambient occlusion survivor spectre". that oversimplification means nothing, just because you can more efficiently path to a resource doesn't mean you are going to use it efficiently, just like Killer Aura Reading doesn't mean you're getting a free hit.
The new windows literally just changes it to make it entirely more useful for longtime players and heavily nerfs it for new players. removes most of its information ability but gives a 10% vault bonus lol… here comes Lithe + Windows on everybody.
I agree aura reading is too prevalent now and should be nerfed/a base system change to prevent multiple aura reading from killer rolling out. It's as you say, you don't need to really use your eyes. The perks literally point you where to go
I'm not a fan of either personally because I think they're major contributing factors to the erosion of the horror aspects of DBD but because of the forced comp style match gameplay both have to stay, and it's extremely weird that BHVR is massively increasing killer aura reading options while massively decreasing survivor counters to it and now even decreasing survivors own capability to aura read.
If the Killer can see me even if I am hiding then it is a crutch, but because they can, I should be able to see where to go if I need to go somewhere.
The only good reason to nerf something is if it's overpowered or otherwise unfair for the other side. Anyone claiming WoO is either of those things is just being ridiculous.
I hate to see another popular and decent Survivor perk gutted so soon after SB and Vigil (even if I didn't actually use this one for being so immersion breaking). It's especially annoying to see some auto pilot aura Killer perks get buffs in the very same patch but whatever… That's just another classic BHVR decision for you.
But I don't hear many people talking about the Dark Sense buffs. They're giving it a mini WoO effect, but this time as a totally free general perk! It'll still have the problem of being accidentally triggered before you really need it, but will still be a pretty good beginner alternative to the current WoO, imo.
I'm nearly 2000 hours deep in the weeds of this game but I'll probably be using some of the reworked "beginner" focused perks myself to finally learn the game. Because with these perks I can actually learn by playing and not by watching some boring YouTube tutorial and hoping some of it stay in the memory. I think that's kind of huge.
No, we do care about new players. I would like to introduce a number of friends to the game but now survivor has been gutted into rinse-and-repeat death simulator how can I persuade them that the game is "sometimes" good, 1 out of 10 matches?
Eruption was indirectly nerfed thanks to the gen kick limit, its no longer infinite like it was before. I don't even know why throw Bamboozle into the crossfire, its one of the easiest perks to counterplay against unless you willingly vaulted into a deadzone. Pop goes the Weasel and Ruin were nerfed and useless for the longest time and only recently they were buffed but still in weaker states when compared to before.
Killer has had various direct and indirect nerfs overtime from basekit things like the gen kick limit, increased hook timers or anti-camp. Now that some survivor stuff got hit, with most of those being perks that should have never been added to begin with, like Shoulder, begging to have Pain Res thrown into oblivion when that perk already has a chance to not even get value in some matches isn't going to help the state of the game, it would just throw balance back into the gutter once more. Even right now, some killer perks are being affected due the whole 'basic' and 'special' interactions for no reason.
And Aurora wasn't the only one who had their stuff rewritten. Judgement's beam, exile and even Mori were not what everyone voted for, the beam became a sky beam, the exile can no longer be affected by the Judgement, and the Mori is wrong, not having the target torn in half after being burnt.
Bamboozle because this isn't about perk strength, it's about this person saying all the popular killer perks have received multiple nerfs which is simply not a true statement.
Okay you want to go back in time? There was a time you couldn't kick gens at all and could only damage through perks. Would you like to go back to that instead? Also, at the same time as the kick limit, regress through kicks went up from 2.5% to 5% and gen tapping was removed. Hook timers went up by 10s, yes, and so did gen times. The killer main memory is so very selective.
How? Killers are still going to run meta while survivor meta is getting dumpstered. It's not a shake up if it's just survivor getting nerfed in both perks and basekit while the killer meta remains almost fully intact plus gets cute new little updated perks to play with. But you know what I'll be running as killer on my A tier mains after this update? The same meta build I already do. You know what I'll be running as survivor if this goes through as is? Nothing, because I won't be playing it. More and more 50/50s are leaning towards killer because of how survivor just gets worse and worse. That is unhealthy for the game.
Except hook timers cannot be lowered unlike time gen time with multiple perks and toolboxes, the only perk that could do that was an unpopular Scourge Hook perk, and now that's gone too. Gen damage upon kicking were increased because gen regression time is still incredibly slow, and during that time, perks like Overcharge, Call of Brine and Ruin were all nerfed to being bottom of the barrel, and despite these three perks getting buffs, only Ruin ended up being used recently because Jason and Judgement could abuse Thrill of the Hunt along with it, which Thrill is thankfully getting nerfed too.
And what survivor meta got damaged with this update? Sprint Burst Vigil Shoulder no longer being viable to stack on SWFs? Yeah, that was totally healthy for the game.
no it didnt. knowing where every single pallet is you can use to plan out your pathing to be optimal and make sure you have access to every pallet outside of your LOS is objectively not only useful for new players, and players used it for pallets primarily, not windows. windows you can pretty easily predict based on tile layout.
take away woo from p100s and they start running around like headless chickens. this perk has been carrying people and been something they rely on for a very long time. It has literally been in the top 5 surv perks for many years. how is it in the meta but only useful for beginners?
Because a lot of people play the game casually or are just bad at memorizing the layout of the 40+ maps we have in this game. Its simply not reasonable to expect a casual player to know all of this. Then we move to solo queue who can't know with certainty whether or not a pallet has been dropped in an area or not without a perk. This is all on top of any beginners trying to learn and experienced players that find it comfy. Killers do not need to know exactly where a pallet spawned until a survivor drags them over to it and can run Zanshin if they do want to know in advance. If a survivor can't find a resource they just go down. These are the causes of its high pick rate, not strength. If a killer is getting run for a long time its not because of windows its a skill issue on their part.
and if survivors cant figure out where one of 30-40 pallets might be on a map, that is a skill issue.
The reality is, this isnt a perk mostly used by beginners. its great for beginners absolutely, but its extremely powerful with people who also know how to effectively use pallets and experienced survivors will sue the knowledge on every single pallet, perfect pathing and make a chunk of the roster struggle to catch up. because if its impossible for the surv to run to a spot without a pallet and pallets are chained close together than non mobility killers or range killers spend large amounts of their time holding w to catch up after having to walk horizontal to get around a pallet while the survivor moves vertically, and by the time you make up the distance, the surv can just repeat the process.
beginners arent able to do this. i mean they CAN but they dont have the skill to do that. however, im not in baby lobbies as killer or survivor aside from matchmaking being what it is, and its still guarenteed to exist at least 1-2 times in 90% of my lovbbies.
Blindness became one of my main tactics to use in matches and it absolutely destroys even experienced players because its just a run to yellow perk. there is no accidentally reaching an ubrokenpallet. there is no accidentally running to a deadzone.
Meta for a reason mate.
Maps can spawn in hundreds of different configurations, unless its a guaranteed pallet spawn you can't know with certainty without checking first and there is simply no time to do that. Even if its a guaranteed spawn we have had bugs in the game for over a year where some do not spawn, I have had Shelter Woods main spawn neither pallet multiple times. Even with guaranteed spawns a teammate could have already thrown one. That's before we also look at the reality of 30-40 pallets.
It is a perk mostly used by casual players and newcomers, you are not providing any evidence for this not being the case just claims about non-mobility killers as if people are unaware that they are weaker than mobility killers (who you need more pallets against, hmm I wonder if its pallets or this discrepancy that is the real issue). That is reality not the made up scenario in your head about "experienced" survivors. No one is pathing perfectly 100% of the time. No one is playing perfectly 100% of the time. I simply don't believe you on your blindness claim, they might have hours in the game but that doesn't make them good or non-casual players and they could have last played years ago and need the perk in order to relearn spawns since they have drastically changed since they last played.
Meanwhile there is real evidence of WoO being a weak perk. Look at the builds of the hardcore winstreak squads, do you see windows in them? No, because it isn't strong enough for them to use and they know that any killer capable of beating them isn't going to hindered by it for even a second.
It's hardly meta. You've said yourself the survivors who use it are either new or pretty bad at chase. It's a perk that allows these players to string a servicable chase together. Gutting it like this is just going to tank chase times and throw a lot of games for players who currently don't have a decent winrate.
Windows does not turn a new or mid player into a chase extraordinaire. In my killer games when I have a survivor who gives me real trouble in chase, I very rarely ever see them using windows in their perk load outs.
It has a super high pickrate for sure, because it helps players maintain a basic standard for chase.
Bruh? I've introduced new people to this game this year and they've literally never used WoO. I still remember my first few hundred hours and yeah I lost a lot on killer and surv, that's just how it goes. Anybody claiming you can't pick up the game without WoO is self reporting hard.
I'm not saying every new player needs to use it. If someone can get good at the game without it, more power to them. My point is that it's not problematic as is, and doesn't need changing.
And yh there are plenty of people who rely on it to run a halfway decent chase. Myself included, as i mentioned in my OP. Nuking the perk is just going to help spike killrates and dissuade a lot of players from playing survivor, which isn't good for the game.
Elitists can call "skill issue" as much as they like. But if you make the survivor role more punishing for a big chunk of the playerbase (in what lets be honest is already a very killer sided update) then less people want to play survivor. You need 4 survivor players for every killer player. Game can't function otherwise.
It was a response to someone who said that current players don't care about new players. Not Windows specifically.
You literally just mentioned the perk that does the thing after saying it can't be done.
SB, Vigil, Deli last update. WoO, Five Moves, StB, and Stake Out plus the basekit BT nerf. That is a massive amount of nerfs, and every survivor is affected by the basekit. Not so for killers. I'm completely unaffected by anything on the killer side aside from one of my favorite perks getting needlessly buffed, yet I'll benefit from all these survivor nerfs with no downside for me as killer. On the flip side, NtH and DMS are getting relatively minor nerfs and that's it. Nurse's is meta and that was buffed. Coul is not meta and was nerfed but so was SP. Thrill is a rework and it remains to be seen how it goes. Totems being repeatedly blocked from being cleansed isn't neccessarily going to be a nerf.
The problem is how unbalanced this is because of the game being assym. Survivors are effected by their teammates, not just themsleves, so if I solo (which I may never do again) I now have to deal with 3 other people with a nerf to basekit, plus them probably being meta perk enjoyers who will likely be worsened by the loss. Survivor nerfs have an echo effect; killers are solitary. If your killers and your perks weren't touched then you're completely fine, but every survivor will be touched. That's the biggest problem with the sledge hammer method.
If you're thinking about never touching soloq again because the biggest crutches got nerfed and your teammates cannot handle the meta shift, it just makes it sound like you relied more on those perks than the people who actually used them.
Your argument is nonsensical. This is not a game you can carry a team in, having a single bad link is all it takes to tank the entire survivor team. Matchmaking doesn't work well enough for a match to consistently have everyone at the same skill level. Killers just win and then claim the entire team was bad and go on to claim there is rampant survivor skill issue, which is equally nonsensical to anyone that knows what a normal distribution is.
The moment matchmaking turns on killers and gives them a team better than them its instant "survivor sided" "crutches" and the rest of the crying comes out. The only question is which "crutch" you're going to complain about the next time you're not winning as many matches as you feel entitled to or which one "forces" you to tunnel.
You're missing the point entirely. If I play with randoms who crutch then I pay for their lacking. That's how soloq works. I can be an amazing survivor but if I get matched with people who can't function without these perks I just get to be the one who dies last. And why should survivors have to "handle the meta shift" while the killer meta goes untouched. Make the bias make sense. Killers are crutching too. I crutch hard on my killer meta perks.
And it's not just the perks. It's the imbalanced nature of the changes, it's the 5s basekit nerf that buffs tunneling, and it's the endless stream of horribly designed killers with overstuffed kits. It's mostly bad things for survivor and mostly good things for killer. So why should I play survivor? I'm begging you to give me a good reason to play nerfed survivor against Jasons and Judgments over playing an A tier killer with a fully intact meta build.
Putting Sprint Burst Vigil on the weak link isn't going to make the weak link more skilled. If they suck, they suck. If Sprint Burst Vigil made a weak link survivor win the match then it was absolutely a crutch.
I'll give you that, Jason and Judgement are bad design. Jason can at least be fixed with some nerfs to his Omnipresent Evil, but Judgement was a mistake from the get-go ever since they began shifting what people voted about her. Yes, I agree going against them currently suck.
But goddamn, StB and Vigil had to go. WoO was literally number #1 perk among everything else and used by everyone. But the game is in a comfortable position to do without those perks no matter how much into account you wanna put the bad teammates into the mix, because those will always exist.
And don't know how else I can put this point across because I have stated it many times already but killer did have negative meta shifts. Pain Res was popular for the longest time because due a lack of options. Pop was nerfed, Ruin got nerfed, Overbrine was nerfed, gen kick limit were still affecting all those other perks while hook protections were extended for a while. And that's not counting the 'Quality of Life' update of pallets that still affects multiple maps to this day. Survivors were eating good for a very long time.
And so is Pain Res. Why does popularity get something nerfed? And if Pain Res was so terribly bad and nerfed it wouldn't be the unanimous winner. I run it too and it is good. People just pretend it isn't.
Debatable. Medkit add-on nerfs, fog vials, fast track, cross examination, canceled anti-cheese, constant A tier killers. Survivor gets a lot of whacks. But I was personally eating good in both roles. Both are allowed to have toys. But there's no reason for me to spend time at the table whose plates are being taken away when I can just hang out at the buffet. There's more incentive now to play killer and less to play survivor. There's really no debating that. And no matter how much you may prefer a role I don't see how anyone can view that as good, especially when killer already has the long queues.
Mentioning soloq and teammates in the same argument is a bit contradictory.
But this change will make soloq even less tolerable than it already is. Bad enough I personally rely on windows to run a passable chase. But now I'm going to see a considerably larger portion of any random survivors I get matched with also being unable to run a consistently decent chase. One weak survivor player can ruin a game. Hamstringing a large number of survivor players fron running chase isn't going to do anything good for gane balance.
You can't expect every player in the game to know tiles by heart.
Are we for real "If using perks help you win a match they're crutches"
reminds me of the good ol’ “noed is a crutch perk” days 😂
I don't pretend Pain Res is bad but I don't think its the perfect gen regression perk either. It was the best through a process of elimination for the longest time because all others sucked. I don't need to write a wall on this, its not the point.
As for the nerfs you mentioned, that was during BHVR's health update where they threw spaghetti on floor and begin slipping on it everyday. Shoulder the Burden was added, pallet density was added during time, Syringes got removed instead of rebalanced, Healing was its strongest due Do No Harm's released which later caused diminishing returns, Myers got turned into dashslop, Krasue was a balance nightmare, the game was in its buggiest state ever. That was just a bad time for everyone.
Regardless, yes, survivor was more affected than killer in this update, but that wasn't always the case for previous ones, and the update tackled perks that were unhealthy for the game. Saying only survivor ever lost stuff as the game continued updated is just ignorance, specially since you just constantly said the stuff killer did lose wasn't a big deal because you didn't feel like it was, then you call me selective.
He said he wouldn't want to play SoloQ due the recent perk nerfs, not me. Regardless, WoO isn't removed, just divided into two perks. Five Moves Ahead is still pretty good given it will show the closest five pallets with no distance limit until you drop the first one. By no means the perk is unusable, if you're having that much trouble, equip those two.
“Survivors were eating good for a very long time.”
Killers have been eating good since 6.1 (2022)
It’s been 4 years
No, the whole deal wasn't that WoO made people win, is that people can't do the most basic function of the game that is looping the killer. Emphasis on HoodedWildKard's post:
Literal definition of crutch. Not being able to do a basic gameplay without a perk.
Yeah both sides lose things but right now is mostly what we're talking about, and it's not as though people have been talking about how great and blissful survivor has been before this.
But, again, killer changes have smaller effects. Nothing bad has happened to killer in a global way in a very long time. Killer has had new strong killers released one after another. You could argue pallet density but that's another killer-specific issue. Pallet density has never even made me flinch as killer because I'm not playing Ghostface. Most killer issues can be solved by simply picking another of the over 40 killers. Basically nothing effects all killers unless they change 3-vault window blocking or bloodlust. Survivor has no such luxury.
Pain Res is the most used perk on killer because it is the strongest perk in a class of strong useful perks, not through some process of elimination or lack of options, those are lies pushed by killer biased content creators. If this class of perks wasn't strong it wouldn't be so common for killers to equip four of them. The last change to every perk you mentioned as nerfed was a buff. You are reaching back to 6.1 for most of these nerfs, four year ago. A patch that saw the introduction of basekit regression on kick and an increase to gen times, the perks were nerfed alongside those changes for obvious reasons.
Pallet density update went through multiple iterations, the final of which saw more pallets but reduction in the length of many and the nerfing of most main buildings. Claiming this was some universal survivor buff is ridiculous. Shoulder the Burden is a useless perk in most situations and one or two where its actually strong. Or we could be honest and just accept that the most complaints about shoulder are coming from tunnelers where shoulder is doing exactly what its supposed to and some people can't stand that. Do No Harm is outclassed by botany in most matches because you are not always healing someone with hook states and it doesn't work on yourself. Anytime we get perk usage stats if a healing perk shows up its always botany. Diminishing wasn't added because of Do No Harm, it was added because of a multitude of perks that stacked.
None of this was a major boost to survivor in any way. Pallet changes are harder on the lower tiers but that is a problem with the existence of the high tier characters, not survivor. Now we get this "meta shakeup" that will change some of the perks we see killers pick but primarily it will be swapping this piece of gen slowdown for an even stronger piece of gen slowdown while they still go for a tunnel out that has been made easier by numerous nerfs to anti-tunnel. Some survivors might change out their medkit for road life but quickly realize that a medkit is more consistent. Vault speed perks will be tried and then dropped as users realize how often they go on cooldown and how often the killers ping means they just don't work. This is why people are quitting, survivor hasn't changed in ages and this patch clearly shows how little thought they are willing to put towards the survivor role.
The most basic function of the game is sitting on a generator, not looping. Pushing looping as the only thing survivors are allowed to do (as we have begun seeing directly in the dev notes, straight from the mouths of killer content creators btw) dramatically hampers the possible tactics survivors could employ. Stealth hasn't been viable for ages and is becoming even less viable with the nerf to self preservation following in the footsteps of distortion. Why? Because killers demand the game handhold them over to their next chase instead of using game sense to identify likely locations a survivor will be and then use their own eyes to find them if they are hiding.
Some people will not be good at looping or memorizing map layouts, there is nothing wrong with that and they can still contribute to the team in meaningful ways. They can even contribute a hook state via shoulder without ever being in chase (somehow I have seen people claim this action is "rat" behavior which is a great showcase of how few ways these people think survivors should be allowed to interact with the game). If BHVR were more creative with their perk creation and stopped nerfing every other viable strategy to take on a killer we could (and really should) have other options than looping but killers demand that survivors loop and only loop while they themself can play however they damn well please, no matter how unfun it is for the survivor side, problem is BHVR is clearly willing to listen to killers on this and not survivors.
In order to help them with the area of the game they struggle with they are sacrificing one of their perk slots. That is a fair trade off. WoO has never caused me to lose a chase, it just allows someone to actually have one in the first place instead of running to nothing. This has never been a problem for me because I can deal with a real chase and don't need survivors to go down for free.
Nobody used nerfed Pop, nerfed Brine, nerfed Overcharge or nerfed Ruin due how little they did. They've been buffed out of uselessness but still in weaker states that they were compared to before. Overcharge and Call of Brine can no longer be combined due Diminishing Returns, while DMS has had multiple nerfs and now can no longer be combined with Pain Res. Thrill is getting nerfed, which affects Ruin because those two were often combined together. Quad slowdown was mostly had Corrupt and DMS in the mix because the perks that affected gens themselves weren't all that useful. Just because you don't agree with them, that doesn't mean it was creator propaganda.
Shoulder the Burden was a mistake. Otzdarva created every aspect of the perk before its inception, from the name to the yellow hook counters, yet was added with none of the downsides because Behavior didn't have any foresight in the Houndmaster update. If the perk was useless as you claim, it wouldn't have been banned in tournaments. Do No Harm was the straw that broke the camel's back due it being another healing perk when the healing meta going very strong.
Pallet density was absolutely a survivor boost, and I don't know what world you're playing unless the every killer you match against was Nurse, but almost every killer felt pallet density update and became one of the biggest talking points of the game.
You're going to tell me that out of 150+ survivor perks in the game, you're out of options because Sprint Burst, Vigil and StB got nerfed? Mentioning bloodlust and 3-vault blocking also doesn't work. If these two mechanics were just outright removed, it would only affect the most bottom tier killers who literally cannot press M2 without sacrificing their chase like Trapper, Ghostface or Hag. They would got from bottom tier, to even more bottom. Pallet density was absolutely the most universal killer change of killer as of late and still affects a vast majority of the cast, including affecting Bloodlust too that you just talked about.
You're still not understanding. It's the echo effect. Survivors are a group. They fail together. What hurts the many hurts all. I don't use these perks but I will still be touched by these nerfs. And the 5s BT cut was massive. That was already enough to make me drastically reduce my survivor time. This next blow is just making it worse.
Many things have and will hurt me as survivor going forward. All that's personally happened to me as killer over tthe last year is I got a new A tier main and the best perk on him was recently buffed. Again, I have zero incentive in recent months to play survivor.
What?? Looping is not a choice a survivor can select whether he does or not. Looping is incentivized because it will eventually happen if the Killer finds the survivor, he's not going to drop chase because the survivor didn't feel like looping. A survivor HAS to at the very least be decent at looping because once a killer focuses on them, it'll be the only way they can effectively help the team, is by stalling the killer in the chase for everyone else to do gens. Rat behaviour is when someone constantly hides, taking no risks and doing nothing until they escape or get hatch.
And there are still ways of stalling killers aside looping, like going for sabos and saves, which at the same time also helps your team. But those will still require you to loop the killer, if the killer spots you before the save for example. It literally is the basic gameplay loop.
That still doesn't mean survivors won't be able to perform well in-game. It just sounds like an excuse to pick on every nerf and claim it'll indirectly affect you because it may affect someone else. And when you say you don't use them, does that mean you were damaging your team by not using the meta perks when the others were in order to win? That's what you sound like.
Looking over the arguments being made here and I don't know about you guys but if the nerfing of WoO means that the looping ability of survivor players goes down collectively because of it…I think it's time we look at other ways at trying to improve the looping skill of players rather than letting everyone's skill be dictated by a singular perk. cough improved tutorials cough.
BHVR doesn't provide enough stats to say how used any of these were outside of the top ten. These are claims with no evidence to back them up. You can still combine them, one just gets diminished. DMS was nerfed specifically because of its interaction with pain res, given another patch or two you may see it buffed because of the removal of that interaction. Thrill is a side grade in every situation other than the one where your hexes are instant cleansed but that is a problem with hexes themself, old thrill was problematic because a part of hex balance is them being cleansable and thrill made that near impossible on some killers, if you want to blame something for this its once again the strong killers that can easily defend their totems with thrill. Slowdown is slowdown it doesn't matter what form it takes, its still quad slowdown stacking.
Shoulder is the only significant change to tunneling survivor has gotten in a long time. It wasn't a mistake and was conceived before Otz made the video with the idea because of how long things take to develop in this game (at least it seems that way based on the timeframe for minor changes). Its strong if the killer is tunneling but then its doing exactly what it was designed to do, prevent tunneling. The only other scenario I have heard of it being strong that makes sense is the killer having two hooks on one survivor and them currently on hook, one on two others, and the fourth that shoulders with no hooks before the shoulder. Even then only at low gens where no one reasonable is going to fault the killer for taking someone out. If there are a high number of gens still up it sounds like the killer is rolling to victory, shoulder or not. That scenario could easily be solved simply by making shoulder deactivate if the killer has a hook on at least three survivors. So tunneling or a single incredibly niche scenario that I cannot possibly see coming up often and easily resolved with a minor change.
Do you know what else is banned in many tournaments? Human Greed, This is Not Happening, Genetic Limits, Low Profile….. Compies ban things for a variety of reasons, are you going to claim any of those are strong perks because comp bans them? In shoulders case they ban it because they want to push gameplay to focus around a tunnel out. They could easily make other choices. Personally, I think its an incredibly boring choice to make and makes some matches incredibly bland to watch.
The killers I see most often could not care in the slightest about a couple extra pallets. Maybe if those killers didn't exist you would have a point but they do and survivor must be balanced around facing them otherwise they become auto-win buttons. Some killer players might have additional issues with them but thats on them not the pallets. I personally have not noticed a significant difference unless I am playing a low tier like ghostface but as I already mentioned this is a ghostface vs blight problem first and a pallet problem second.
You are entirely missing the point but partially correct. Looping is not a choice, IF you get found. The basic gameplay loop of survivor is get on a gen, killer approaches, respond in some way, most choose looping as their response because perks that promote any other way of responding have been nerfed to uselessness or have become unviable because of perks/addons on the killer side, particularly aura reading in the case of stealth.
If you are good enough at stealth and actually had perks to assist it could be possible to avoid the killer entirely or have ways of losing the killer and never need to loop based on stealth skill alone. I personally would find that incredibly boring but have friends that left post distortion nerf because it was their preferred playstyle. They enjoyed being in the spooky atmosphere doing gens under the killers nose but every patch solely pushes looping as the only option for survivors and nerfs all other tactics and we never get perks or items that innovate new options, killer gets new options every time a new killer is released. Give a player good at stealth shoulder the burden and they can even contribute a hook state without ever being found while still contributing to gen progress. This situation is what I am directly referring to as having heard people claim is rat behaviour, the most selfless act you can take of giving someone else your hook state while stealthing and doing gens → still a rat according to them.
If BHVR were more creative with perk design we could have even more options than just stealth or loop as the response to the killers approach but we just get the same perks with minor differences every time.
Saves and sabos are usually a waste of time against any killer not playing on auto-pilot and more likely to throw the match than waste the killers time.
I’m sorry, but unless they give maps infinite charges, it’s not gonna be an adequate replacement. And we all know how killer mains would react to anything being infinite. Fog vials, anyone?
I use maps every now and again to find dull totems. And I can say seeing auras of pallets for ten seconds at a time ain’t that helpful.
BHVR may not but Nightlight is a good reference for the popularity of perks and killers. Pop specially went from about 25% pick rate to about 5% around the 6.1.0. patch by the time the nerf dropped. Even if Nightlight doesn't account for the whole community, its a good enough indicator. You can also check the same thing happens to all the perks I mentioned. The moment the nerfs came, the usage in them dropped significantly. Unless you want to argue that they're lying about the stats, I don't see how else you can prove that nerfed Pop the Weasel was somehow in top 10 during its nerfed era.
And the perk has the name, and it is the way that it worked literally because of Otz. You know what he also said? That the perk was only meant to be activated once because the whole point of it was to prevent hard tunnelling at 5 gens. The perk can still do that, but now its no longer able to always force a 12 hook game. I never claimed being banned from comp automatically made every banned perk there strong, I just was claimed it wasn't useless you like you said.
Sorry your experience was bad, that doesn't change the fact that the majority of the cast is affected by the pallet density update.
And let me elaborate on that, stealth is a risk. No matter how stealthy you are, there's a chance you get found. You could hide for the whole game, that could work, maybe even be useful for you team, but its not a guaranteed. Some killers are just better at spotting survivors like Doctor, Nemesis, Lich, etc. Or the player may even be used to dealing with hiding survivors by now. You're going to need to learn to loop more than you're going to need stealthing.
I promise you, Lithe is next.
And probably after that, Kindred will be in killer CC's crosshairs. I can already see them saying that solo queue doesn't need it any more with the chat wheel update and it makes camping harder.
I think if BHVR consider looping to be a fundamental Survivor skill, then they absolutely will have to put the resources towards making a proper in-depth looping tutorial soon. I personally don't see looping that way, it's more an intermediate to advanced Survivor skill to me. And as a former Sprint Burst away and hope for the best type Survivor (now a stay under the radar and evade the Killer type Survivor), I think there are still ways to play the role that don't involve being able to loop effectively. I've wasted a ton of Killer time by sending them to investigate my pebbles or by walking away from a gen after an early warning from Premonition. It's just that these play styles are much less effective at "high MMR" where Killers are more likely to be running aura spam builds and targeting the weak links for an early 3V1.
Any perk build can be considered a crutch, I guess, if it helps you to win games you wouldn't have won otherwise (in which case, almost every decent perk in the game is a crutch perk). But then if we're nerfing things because we're worried players are reaching a match-making rank they don't belong in by hitting strong perks like WoO, why are we doing all this after we've just had a rank reset? Surely you would nerf these "crutch" perks before pulling the trigger on resetting everyone's MMR, so we can all reach our proper level? That makes no sense to me.
I kinda want to poke this. Yes eventually the killer is likely to find the survivors but previously survivors could delay that with stealth. This delay bought precious time which now is has become harder and harder. The current trend is pushing survivors to basically "loop or die" with little else because other tactics like stealth or even chaining tiles as shown with the logic of Knock Out is being hindered more and more lately. To quote the devs:
Now... what to do about that Clown who's tossed the bottle down here at this pallet? Or that bubba who's ready to saw me? Or hell that killer who's got me exposed with Devour hope or something? Guess I gotta stick here and die cause I can't move somewhere better nor could I hide to avoid this situation in the first place, but I'm sure that guy with the flashlight will save me this time right? Third time's the charm right? Right?
Things are becoming…basic, for survivors.
And ya know what a lot of killers call people who go consistently for sabo or blind saves? Bully squads. Which get complained about, sometimes with reason, sometimes not. But survivors getting pushed that direction doesn't seem good to me as either role.
I’m all for improved tutorials and I’ve advocated for killer bots in custom games for a long time so survivors can practice looping without learning entirely through trial by fire.
But I don’t think WOOs impact can be reduced to “people just need better tutorials.” It provides information in a game where that information constantly changes. From the maps, to map variants, to things you have no control over like used pallets. I wouldn’t be surprised if chase efficiency dips after the change, just like I’d expect killers to struggle if gen auras or scratch marks suddenly disappeared. Of course it’s possible for everyone to play without that kind of information, but the game is much more difficult and frustrating without it.
That’s why I’ve never understood the “run to yellow = brainless” argument. Killers use blood, scratch marks, gen auras and sound cues to reduce uncertainty all the time. Nobody seriously argues that a killer following scratch marks means they don’t know how to chase or a killer going to a red aura generator means they don’t know how to patrol a gen. Information about the resources around you is valuable regardless of whatever role you’re playing, and having that information doesn’t automatically mean you know what to do with it.
Nightlight is bad data that doesn't match official data, nor can I go back to even verify what you are claiming and I am not going to pay nightlight or register with them or whatever I would have to do to see that data. Its unofficial, voluntary, and easily manipulated if a single bad actor chose to do so. It isn't trustworthy and never can be because of how the data is sourced.
Otz suggestion was also a basekit mechanic that's usage was hidden from the killer until they hooked the targeted survivor a third time and the hook stage wasn't transferred until that moment. His suggestion would also be to have perks activate as if it was a real hook on the other survivor, which is idiotic. Sure this person isn't tunneled out but the killer was just rewarded for taking the easiest chase they could, that is bad design. The immediate response would have just been, welp I guess it takes four hooks to tunnel someone instead of 3 and continue doing exactly that. Maybe they renamed the coming perk to match but even Otz has outright stated that he had nothing to do with the perk. This is just something that happens sometimes where two places have similar ideas at around the same time, it happens with movies all the time.
I feel for lower tiers I really do but that doesn't change the fact that I and everyone else have to face the high tiers far more often than the low tiers and the high tiers just don't care. Your platitudes mean nothing if you are going to keep pushing for survivor or pallet nerfs instead of rebalancing killer strengths to a more even level so that pallets can be more balanced for everyone. Identify the real problem and fix that first.
As I said, you are partially correct, a survivor cannot totally avoid looping but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to stealth first and waste the killers time that way before needing to loop, that has skill expression too. The problem is requiring every survivor to solely be good at looping and not accepting that some players simply won't be as good at memorizing map layouts, a perk slot is a fair trade off to let them stand a chance once they are found and doesn't stop them from being great at stealth, they are separate skills. I'm not asking them not to improve, I would love it if they would, but that takes a significant amount of time with the sheer number of maps and killers in the game. Plus some players are casuals that never will be good and that goes for both sides. However, its really only a problem for survivors because of matchmaking placing those casuals on their team. Killers cannot be negatively effected by bad teammates in 1v4. So long as matchmaking prioritizes speed over fair matches this is going to be something the game must account for, again many killers face a team with one bad survivor stomp because of that player and then label the whole team bad. If your goal is to push everyone but four man SWF out of survivor then keep moving in this direction, that is the logical outcome of the continued changes.