Why are we nuking the beginner friendly perks?

HoodedWildKard

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.

PyramidFootLicker

Hey so, more survivor perk nerfs just mean more casuals are going to get funneled into running meta, Windows really didn't need to be nerfed its a nothing perk same as perks like vigil or hope for example that also got nerfed. Killer mains complain that somehow those perks were OP or added to the strength of survivors not realizing that the less perks are viable the more games are going to feel like sweatfests and they'll scramble to find the next nothing perk to nerf until we're arguing about self care again or bond.

JohnNemesisMan

@FerrousFacade said:

https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/4118477#Comment_4118477

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.

Sorry your experience was bad, that doesn't change the fact that the majority of the cast is affected by the pallet density update.

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.

Gonna ignore a few things from your post not because I want to but to save us both from another wall of text, so I'll just answer the last paragraph.

Looping is just something you're expected to do, there's no better way of putting it. Unless you just joined the game, survivor should know that, yes, they will have to go around tiles to stall a killer as long as they can. Its not something they'll just be able to avoid always, they may be able to make the killer drop the chase, but its no guaranteed.

Yes, people will go down because of things like not knowing that Nemesis can extend his whip, or that Slinger can shoot through narrow gaps, Pyramid Head's ranged attack isn't cancelled if he's stunned. But there shouldn't be something tipping the scales to the survivor side because a teammate wasn't familiar with a chase. You can't ask to make the game to do something about teammates that could or not be bad other than more proper matching making, or ways for them to better understand the game more.

FerrousFacade

@JohnNemesisMan said:

https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/4118494#Comment_4118494

Gonna ignore a few things from your post not because I want to but to save us both from another wall of text, so I'll just answer the last paragraph.

Looping is just something you're expected to do, there's no better way of putting it. Unless you just joined the game, survivor should know that, yes, they will have to go around tiles to stall a killer as long as they can. Its not something they'll just be able to avoid always, they may be able to make the killer drop the chase, but its no guaranteed.

Yes, people will go down because of things like not knowing that Nemesis can extend his whip, or that Slinger can shoot through narrow gaps, Pyramid Head's ranged attack isn't cancelled if he's stunned. But there shouldn't be something tipping the scales to the survivor side because a teammate wasn't familiar with a chase. You can't ask to make the game to do something about teammates that could or not be bad other than more proper matching making, or ways for them to better understand the game more.

Let's say BHVR implemented extensive tutorials on how to loop and a practice ground that could be used to practice against various killers. It wouldn't matter because there would be no way to force someone to use it. I don't have a problem with casual players existing but so long as matchmaking can place those casuals on my team I am forced to deal with it. I can either accept that I lose solely because of matchmaking, always play in a four man SWF, or just stop playing survivor. Only the most casual of players are going to be OK with option one but they don't play enough to maintain queue times and if they started to they would run straight into the same frustrations. If someone does want to keep playing that means going with option two. The logical outcome remains pushing everyone other than four man SWF out of the survivor role.

There could be a way to make this casual player fine amongst less casual but that would mean some sort of overhaul to allow every survivor worse than the killer to die while the ones better than the killer survive. I don't see a way to do that which won't be screamed out of existence before it leaves the PTB. It would need to address the fact that tunneling can leave the match in an unwinnable state for all survivors but that is the primary reason tunneling is guarded so vehemently. I have also seen slugging for the 4k defended far too many times to believe we wouldn't see complaints about the number of times matches would end in a 2k even if that individual killers kill rate didn't budge.

CrossTheSholf

Honestly they could just revert WoO to the old version where it deactivated and went on cool down when you dropped a pallet or vaulted

DodoSwarm

@hermitkermit said:

https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/4118463#Comment_4118463

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.

Doubt they'll ever do killer bots in customs because I for one will just play customs. I have every perk and every character and P100 survivors, If I can avoid horrible toxic strategies employed by killer, I'm just playing casually on customs all of the time.

I have a feeling a lot of people share the sentiment of being utterly fed up with the state of the game on the survivor side so it would just make queue times longer.

Massquwatt

@hermitkermit said:

https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/4118463#Comment_4118463

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.

Sure but I think at some point information and RNG play into a larger part of the game than people are willing to admit, there's a reason why WoO is the most popular perk for survivors by a far margin and that's because it solves both issues of lack of information and rng and people develop a reliance on that. There's not a lot of ways around this, you either accept that sometimes you're gonna have to make judgements based on lack of information or alternatively we just make all maps have fixed loops and spawns from here on out eliminating most of the need for perks like WoO. I think most people will do fine without it if the changes stick and even if you continue using the perk you'll see windows and get the bonus vault speed which is fine.

cogsturning

@JohnNemesisMan said:

https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/4118456#Comment_4118456

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.

I don't like or need theae perks and I do fine without them. People who ran SB/WoO/Vigil builds are generally low to mid level players. Some people do need crutch perks to help them. I don't expect them to put in thousands of hours, memorize maps, be addicted to this game and play every day like me. But this matchmaking sucks and those casual players who don't care that much get put with me if I play solo. If matchmaking worked I wouldn't be so concerned. But nerfing their comfort perks and asking them to just improve isn't gonna work.

Like look at 2v8. There appears to be zero matchmaking and every match it's the worst players ever. My last batch of matches looked like this:

Screenshot_20260917_004740.jpg

Am I amazing? No. But many players are very, very bad, and these same potatoes are in 1v4.

And the 5s BT cut was already impactful enough to mostly make me drop solo. All this is just the cherry on top.

cogsturning

@chipsbone said:

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'm gonna say Resurgence. It's a very good perk and that's illegal.

HoodedWildKard

@CrossTheSholf said:

Honestly they could just revert WoO to the old version where it deactivated and went on cool down when you dropped a pallet or vaulted

This I can get behind. It reins in the perk but still allows you to plan your next tile increasing the skill requirement. Splitting it between 2 perks AND adding a cooldown is just rough. Especially for a crutch perk.

HoodedWildKard

@JohnNemesisMan said:

https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/4118465#Comment_4118465

"HVR doesn't provide enough stats to say how used any of these were outside of the top ten."

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.

"The killers I see most often could not care in the slightest about a couple extra pallets."

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.

Come on nightlight is an atrocious misrepresentation, about 10 people contribute to it, and fair bet that the players who do will be relatively experienced and running meta so it isn't really indicative of trends in the wider playerbase. And the point with stealth is that at this point it's more than a risk, it's totally unviable because of the glut of aura read perks and every aura read counter perk getting gutted.

crogers271

@FerrousFacade said:

https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/4118507#Comment_4118507

Let's say BHVR implemented extensive tutorials on how to loop and a practice ground that could be used to practice against various killers. It wouldn't matter because there would be no way to force someone to use it. I don't have a problem with casual players existing but so long as matchmaking can place those casuals on my team I am forced to deal with it. I can either accept that I lose solely because of matchmaking, always play in a four man SWF, or just stop playing survivor. Only the most casual of players are going to be OK with option one but they don't play enough to maintain queue times and if they started to they would run straight into the same frustrations. If someone does want to keep playing that means going with option two. The logical outcome remains pushing everyone other than four man SWF out of the survivor role.

There could be a way to make this casual player fine amongst less casual but that would mean some sort of overhaul to allow every survivor worse than the killer to die while the ones better than the killer survive. I don't see a way to do that which won't be screamed out of existence before it leaves the PTB. It would need to address the fact that tunneling can leave the match in an unwinnable state for all survivors but that is the primary reason tunneling is guarded so vehemently. I have also seen slugging for the 4k defended far too many times to believe we wouldn't see complaints about the number of times matches would end in a 2k even if that individual killers kill rate didn't budge.

Let's say BHVR implemented extensive tutorials on how to loop and a practice ground that could be used to practice against various killers.

It's also a strange standard to say that one side has to do a bunch of tutorials to play the game, but not the other side.

100PercentBPMain

@hermitkermit said:

https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/4118463#Comment_4118463

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.

many times tiles have changed with no fanfare and nobody is gonna come here to be like "yo, so how do we feel about tile_002 in quadrant 4". WoO was great for that

chipsbone

@crogers271 said:

https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/4118514#Comment_4118514

Let's say BHVR implemented extensive tutorials on how to loop and a practice ground that could be used to practice against various killers.

It's also a strange standard to say that one side has to do a bunch of tutorials to play the game, but not the other side.

It's always the same. Survivors need to git gud. They don't have issues that need to be addressed. They're just whining and bad players. Survivors just need to have the foresight to run the exact perks to counter every killer's build and know what all those builds are and know how to run every tile and know every killer addon and have perfect coordination with the entire team.

But killers? They need material buffs. Buff camping. Buff tunneling. Buff slugging. Any killer on any build should have at least a 50/50 chance of beating even the strongest most coordinated team. Nerf all meta survivor perks if a comp team can use them against randos to great effect. But don't nerf killers who can go on winstreaks in the thousands. That's just bad matchmaking. Completely different and not at all relevant.