Stop Comparing Killer Perks to Survivor Perks
Been seeing a lot of discussion around perks as of late and people throwing their feelings all over the place and I’m noticing a common theme.
People look at one perk then ask why another one wasn’t changed.
As an example let’s take the recent side grade to Windows of opportunity, many people have made their feelings known about not liking the change simply because it isn’t an unhealthy perk on the surface and it’s one of the most popular survivor perks, and has been for years.
So people upset at the change go and say ‘well what about the popular killer perks like pain res that should be nerfed too’ and that’s where they lose me.
Because fundamentally they are 2 completely different perks with 2 completely different power budgets, their only commonalities are their ease of use for all players and popularity. You have to keep in mind that killers only get 4 perks (maybe half a perk with some specific add ons) and survivors, in total, get 16 perks.
So of course they won’t be treated equally and it’s no surprise over the last few months we’ve seen bhvr steadily lower the power ceiling on survivor perks; because unlike killer survivor can stack duplicate perks with no downside (but they have been addressing this issue with the StB nerf no longer allowing it to be stacked and diminishing returns when it decides to work).
I say this but it’s definitely not perfect on the killer end either, and you all know where I’m going with this, diminishing returns and the fact it has little to no effect on THE most boring killer build, Quad Slowdown.
I won’t pretend like I know how to fix the quad slow problem, maybe it’s just as easy as lowering the regression on the perks, or lowering the regression limit on gens, or simply hardcoding anti-combo features into the perks? I haven’t a clue.
Anyway to wrap up, how would you solve the quad slowdown problem? And how would address certain perks while keeping in mind that survivors get 16 and killer get 4?
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People playing only survivors don't realize how underpowered killer role is. That's fine. Once they fix remaining survivor problematic perks more people may return to the game, hopefully.
I mean, twins, singularity, judgement, Billy, blight, drac, vecna 2, nurse, ghoul, Jason, are all in the game the killer role as a whole is far from underpowered
I liked the title, but the argument is severely flawed.
You have to keep in mind thatkillers only get 4 perks(maybe half a perk with some specific add ons) andsurvivors, in total, get 16 perks.I can't believe this argument has stuck around as long as it has.
If gens took 180 seconds, the killer could play with 0 perks. If gens took 30 seconds the survivors could play with 0 perks. Just because both sides have something that is called the same thing ('perks') doesn't mean one having more is in anyway relevant. You have to compare all of the elements together of the game.
and it’s no surprise over the last few months we’ve seen bhvr steadily lower the power ceiling on survivor perks; because unlike killersurvivor can stack duplicate perks with no downsideOf course there's a downside. They are dedicating a perk slot to something that could serve as another purpose and/or exposing all of themselves to the same counter (going to focus on the former). If four survivors bring StB, and only 1 of them end up using it, that means 3 survivors have a wasted perk slot that could have done something else.
You can't ignore opportunity cost, counter risk, or wasted potential when discussing the idea of survivors having redundancy in the perks they bring. They are trading efficiency in something else to increase the chance they are ensured of having something (which, to be clear, as a gameplay element is absolutely fine)
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As an example let’s take the recent side grade to Windows of opportunity, many people have made their feelings known about not liking the change simply because it isn’t an unhealthy perk on the surface and it’s one of the most popular survivor perks, and has been for years.So people upset at the change go and say
‘well what about the popular killer perks like pain res that should be nerfed too’and that’s where they lose me.Because if a person argues that the perk has been common for a long time, the reasoning being popular perks should be changed for the sake of change, people are right to ask why it doesn't apply to killer perks if the goal is to shake up the meta.
If people argue that WoO is handholding for survivors, and the reasoning is handholding is bad, people are right to ask why not just the perk changes but the devs words are boosting handholding for the killers.
If your argument is that WoO was overpowered/unhealthy, then you shouldn't fall into the trap of either the earlier two reasonings, and just explain why its bad. Its possible something could work for killer and not survivor (or the other way around), but you have to explain the reasoning why its only different/bad on one side, and 'power budgets', 'perk stacking', 'meta shakeup', 'handholding', are either all real bad reasonings and/or being very selectively applied.
Yesh it's weird. You think people would use zanshin as an example because it is just windows for killers. But it isn't highly used so nobody thinks about it. Pulling the popular killer perks up is insane when they have a completely different function
As for quad slowdown? Well diminishing returns is supposed to mess with that. Plus it makes for a one trick build. Play stealthy and a killer with no aura reads will have trouble finding you.
How long would you like the killer queues to get with all these people returning? Because it sure isn't all the survivors who've quit that'll be coming back.
People use this point because the killer meta has gone almost entirely untouched, and if you are looking realistically at this patch and the last few patches, they have all been a lot more beneficial to killers than survivors. People complain about WoO because the perk was simply popular, not meta. You will never see a winstreak squad run WoO literally ever, it is just not worth running. It is only popular because it is useful for newer players, solo players, and comfortability. It is genuinely not problematic in any way and anyone who thinks it is is only annoyed that new players don't go down in 10s and has barely played survivor.
Another reason is that WoO was entirely unproblematic and undeserving of a rework, yet genuinely problematic perks remain. Forced Hesitation and Infectious incentivize heavy slugging. Pain Res, while being even more popular than WoO, is not only incredibly powerful but also often used for tunneling because, despite its surface design encouraging spreading hooks, you still can continue to get Pain Res hits after a survivor dies early.
The 4 perks vs 16 perks also makes zero sense, the perks are already made with the concept of an asymm in mind. How does WoO even stack with itself? It doesn't. Which is more impactful, one Sprint Burst that gains you 5m on the killer at the beginning of a chase, usually just guaranteeing you are able to get to a resource without getting hit within a few seconds, or one perk that effectively stalls the entire game by 20s every time you kick a gen after a hook (Pop)?
And yes, putting on multiple slowdown perks is still meta, and unlike survivors who mostly got QoL changes with some nice buffs that make more perks usable, killers got many new strong perks including a few that may contest spots in the meta.
If you want to solve the quad slowdown problem, nerf both killer slowdown perks and toolboxes.
Queues got longer because a lot of new players with massively known licenses added to the game. Untill Ghoul queues were instant, with Springtrap and Jason they got much longer.
Gen perks will remain meta no matter what. Nerf pain res, people will run TBTC, nerf Eruption, people will run Surge, nerf pop and people will run undone. It doesn't matter. Same as WOO, killers also like compfort of having game more under control.
DBD had massive licenses before Springtrap and Jason. The Resident Evil Chapters exploded DBD's Steam player count. Michael Myers was literally the first license in the game and arguably is one of the reasons DBD is what it is today (and still exists). Saw, Hellraiser, etc, are all of these not big licenses?
Many huge licenses existed in the game far before Springtrap, arguably some bigger ones. Springtrap is also one year old and only has a 3% pickrate, surely you don't think this 3% of players has been driving killer queue times up to a constant 6-8 minutes for the past year before Jason?
Yes, gen perks will remain meta if one gets nerfed and the rest are untouched. That's why (along with toolboxes) you nerf all gen slowdown perks to make them all less impactful. People might still run them because they'll probably still be good, but with toolboxes gone there will be less pressure or need to use them, making it not like it is now where people feel it's practically required to run gen slowdown.
I don’t like WoO because it lowers the skill ceiling of the game, it also lowers the skill floor, which I’m completely fine with as we shouldn’t be punishing new players even more.
But the problem is it doesn’t lower the ceiling in a fun or interesting way, it just incentivizes you to turn your brain off and run to yellow pre drop and pre run, without having to learn tile spawns, tile weights, and resource management(this is the big one as you can severely screw your team over) ; which are fundamental parts of the macro game for survivor to keep tabs on and learn.
I don’t think it’s overpowered nor do I think it’s overly unhealthy but it does encourage a lack of thinking in the average player which over time will make you worse, because while everyone else is learning the game you’re falling behind and you don’t even know it.
I may have to check my bias here though, because I’m a big believer in self improvement and just learning the deep systems and mechanics of games and overall strategy/knowledge as a whole, I get not every player is like that, nor wants the experience I’m looking for. So perhaps it’s not my place to be discussing such things. But this is where I’m coming from personally.
And on a note about pain res, I think it’s completely fine when not stacked with other regression perks. because it actually does encourage you think about the game on a deeper level, you have to actually get a down to even use it, you have to track which survivors you already use pain res on, whether or not you wanna use the pain res right now or bank it for later , take note on where you’re looping and if you can make it to a scourge hook in time before a gen pops. It’s definitely a far cry from its initial debut of essentially infinite stacks of uncounterable regression.
Perhaps im being too reductive when it comes to WoO and the brain power it takes to use it though.
When I think of healthy perks a few things come to mind: does it meaningfully change the way you play the game, does it encourage you to interact with the games systems in a different way, is the effect noticeable for 1 or both sides, bonus points if it encourages your opponent to play around it in a back and forth. And perhaps the most important thing is it fun which of course is purely subjective.
funny I haven’t seen that one before😅
It is true.
I would not call Singu weak by no means, but he is too matchup/map/rng dependent to be consistently rated A+ imo.
He can absolutely make you cry on Suffo 3 gen but at the same time a map like Lerys makes him relatively harmless.
Am I crazy for liking him on lerys? yeah all the windows are butt, but the long hallways corners make it easy to set up choke points, it feels like I’m playing fnaf sometimes.
the only times I can remember losing on lerys were to hatch escapes and those don’t particularly count.
A global cooldown on major regression events, similar to how Exhaustion was added to prevent stacking of Sprint Burst-style perks.
All regression perks trigger a status effect that lasts 60 seconds. During this time, no other regression perks can proc.
Of course, this would have to come at the same time as some robust anti-tunnel measures, because you can imagine the kind of tantrum that killer mains would have when they find out.
Some perks could even be buffed to compensate.
That's not the skill ceiling, that's the skill floor.
WoO does nothing to the skill ceiling.
the killer role wins most of the games and go on winning streaks……but yeah underpowered
that could work with some refining.
Now how would this work, would it be applied to all regression perks flat, or just the one and done perks like pain res, pop, eruption, surge, clock etc etc
survivors streaks are a thing just not near as popular to watch.
Like as a spectator it’s not exactly riveting watching survivor gameplay even if the team is insanely cracked it’s far more interesting to watch killer gameplay.
whataboutism will never stop in dbd .
Just the ones that cause a generator explosion and regression, like the ones you listed. Not perks like Ruin, Oppression, etc.
And not gen blocking perks either. I think those are mostly fine.
I see yeah I like that idea
I would be fine with the other posters suggestion of an exhaustion style effect for them. However, I think if you truly want to move away from them and really change the meta the best course of action would be to delete from the game every perk/item/etc that effects gen times from both sides and add basekit regression of some form to hook events.
Since that is still going to leave tunneling as incredibly strong we should pool survivors first 8 hook states. No one can die until 8 hooks have been made but it doesn't matter which survivors are hooked, after that any hooked survivor dies. Anytime a survivor is hooked for the first time gen progress is stopped until survivors collectively repair for X charges, anytime a survivor is hooked for a second time apply the same effect but for a smaller set of charges. This gives a consistent bonus for hooking everyone twice but still allows you to hook the same player over and over again if you really want to, you would probably lose for doing so but at least the targeted survivor would get real opportunities to learn chase.
If compies don't like that and want to keep playing the way they do they can use the old system in customs.
By delving into 16 vs 4 you are going against the stated intent of your title. You are comparing killer perks to survivor perks and claiming that the 16 survivors get across the whole team are comparable to the 4 the killer gets.
Part of the problem is that Killers are each their own, they have unique addons and powers and playstyles and also perks, survivors are bound to be null characters with 4 perk slots, 6 items, and model reskins. perk nerfs to survivor are everything. major aspects of survivors game can be totally nullified by going against certain killers or perks. Survivor never gets anything new, but consistently faces the same things from killers who have different combinations of addons and powers in addition to the most consistent and effective strategies and perk builds.
Nerfs to commonly used perks for survivor are more akin to nerfs of popular killers basekits in general. if I like playing killer and they nerf this or that stat I can do this or that to compensate with perks or addons or playstyle but if a perk gets nerfed (more often gutted than normally nerfed) for survivor it's just an aspect of possibility entirely closing. that creates malice, that's why people say "What about Pain Res", because just in this update alone survivor is getting outright nerfed if you look at it in the proper lense. Survivor is receiving significant nerfs to popular, or good perks which equates to a flat "Survivor is getting nerfed" and the few perks getting buffed are nowhere near good enough to compensate, and this comes after SB and Vigil just got destroyed as well.
But Killers are just getting Buffed across the board, never mind how that disproportionately affects S - A Tier Killers compared to C - D Tier Killers… Tunneling was just made easier, Gen Slowdown is just as strong, a handful of killer perk changes are outright nonsense but overall there's a lot of perks being buffed which could allow them to expand their playstyles, Survivor just got even more narrow as their only avenue of expression (perks) got even smaller.
TBF If it was as close to a "one to one" comparison as possible people would compare WoO to Killer Aura Reading Perks which are at an alltime high while SP is getting slaughtered and Distortion has already been dead. Survivor is just slowly running out of options, and at the same time the role has recieved no meaningful gameplay updates in years, so what's left is animosity, especially towards perk nerfs because Perks encompass most of the survivors gameplay alteration ability while only affecting a single element of killer gameplay. (that's also why there's a huge killer disparity too because BHVR is trying to balance an Asym by perks and not by the kit potency of individual killers)
Survivors were able to go on a 850+ winstreak recently with matches lasting 3min in average. Its not like survivor is underpowered.
“By delving into 16 vs 4 you are going against the stated intent of your title. You are comparing killer perks to survivor perks and claiming that the 16 survivors get across the whole team are comparable to the 4 the killer gets.”
Apologies if I misled you. In your defense i phrased it poorly.
I wasn’t exactly comparing the number disparity between killer and survivor directly like you said that antithetical to my whole post. I was referring to the disparity within the roles themselves. How would balance botany when you can stack 3 additional times across the team and still have room for 12 more perks STOP. How would balance sloppy butcher in comparison to killer addons/powers and other anti healing STOP.
Looking back and reflecting I really wish I could phrase it better I can’t to seem to exactly describe how im thinking about it.
And like Dodoswarm mentioned killers do have their powers and addons to think about on top of perks.
And survivors have items. Which I didn’t really factor in when making my original post.
This also makes me think how cool a draft perk game mode could be with beefed up perks but no repeats between survivors, could be fun for build crafting, kinda like a more controlled chaos shuffle.
But the problem is it doesn’t lower the ceiling in a fun or interesting way, it just incentivizes you to turn your brain off and run to yellow pre drop and pre run, without having to learn tile spawns, tile weights, and resource management(this is the big one as you can severely screw your team over) ; which are fundamental parts of the macro game for survivor to keep tabs on and learn.That's fine. We all have things we like and dislike. I barely ever used windows because I felt like all the yellow on the map was ugly and broke immersion.
but it does encourage a lack of thinking in the average player which over time will make you worse, because while everyone else is learning the game you’re falling behind and you don’t even know it.I may have to check my bias here though, because I’m a big believer in self improvement and just learning the deep systems and mechanics of games and overall strategy/knowledge as a whole, I get not every player is like that, nor wants the experience I’m looking for. So perhaps it’s not my place to be discussing such things. But this is where I’m coming from personally.Yes and no. There are certainly casual players who want to boot up the fun, silly slasher game and just play and aren't thinking about long term skill expression.
But its also what we consider skill expression. You mention tile layouts. I suspect there are lots of players who would consider memorizing tile layouts and window placement not to actually be skill expression, just a chore. Instead they view skill expression more in game sense and decision making (likely other possibilities as well) and WoO let's them focus on the meaningful parts of the game.
How would balance botany when you can stack 3 additional times across the team and still have room for 12 more perks STOP. How would balance sloppy butcher in comparison to killer addons/powers and other anti healing STOP.I'm stealing a line from someone, but 'game design isn't easy'.
However, they aren't in a vacuum. If we're just talking balance, the starting point is clear - is a certain game element (perk, map, killer, etc) over or under performing? If so, why might that be? Simple nerfs/buffs might be all that is needed, or you could have a deeper design problem.
Take botany - BHVR should have data on how strong it is if 1 person runs it, 2 people, 3 people, or 4 people. They could look to see how people do with it and if its a problem (they should also look to see if there is something its paired with that might be the issue, such as the Asian self-heal meta).
The issue becomes trickier if its a perk that does something some players find unenjoyable but others like (i.e. Ghoul), then you have trickier decisions.
i play mainly killer, other than pallets which can be heavily rng dependent i have no issues with survivor perks and never considered any of them to be busted, annoying but fine.
I can also say the same for killer perks when playing survivor with the odd exceptions combo’d with specific killers.
Killer is not underpowered. The game is in your hands fully. Play better. Survivor you can’t say that, because 1 potato can toss the entire match out. Just because strong 4 mans exist doesn’t change that because for every 1 really strong swf there are hundreds of bad teams.
couldn’t agree more. Well said