What Is the Thought Process Behind Recent Perk Design?
would like to know more about the design process behind perks for both the survivor and killer sides.
Over the last two years, I have noticed a trend where survivor perks seem much stronger than killer perks. They often have fewer activation requirements, if any, and can work extremely well on their own, while also becoming even stronger when paired with other good perks. I am not saying killer perks must be as strong as survivor perks. I am asking why they are designed the way they are.
Let’s use a recent example: Hex: Scared to Death and Wide Open Throttle.
For the killer perk, you first need to hook three different survivors. Then, when you break a pallet, survivors on the other side become Hindered. However, the survivor gains a speed boost after vaulting a pallet, the pallet resets, it becomes blocked for 60 seconds, and all survivors can see its aura during that time.
With the killer perk, you have to do a lot of work before it activates, and you may barely see any value from it. By the time it activates, you may already be close to the endgame, or the survivors may destroy the totem as soon as it appears. On the other hand, the survivor perk feels like it could be split into two separate perks, and both would still be strong.
At the same time, many perks remain unchanged for a very long time. Some are weak or almost useless and never receive meaningful buffs. Others get nerfed because of one specific issue, such as Starstruck with Nurse, and then are never looked at again. Sometimes perks are overbuffed, and very little is done afterward to adjust them.
Please do not tell me this is what the PTB is for. In practice, the PTB rarely seems to do much. They could use it to test number changes, reduce or increase perk values where needed, and revisit the many perks they have said they would adjust in the future. Instead, it often feels like the PTB mostly exists to promote the new DLC or the newest shiny thing.
With all of this in mind, I would like to understand the developers’ thought process behind perk design.
I would also like to hear what theories the community has about this.
Comments
Ive kinda been asking the same thing as to how they come up with new pokemon these days.
But on a more serious note my guess is the killers that come out recently are strong. Almost A-S tier, so they probably feel the new stronger killer needs weaker perks while the new survivors need stronger perks to compensate. But fail to look at the whole picture of the perks being used by every killer, and the strong survivor perks being used by all swf teams.
I see the point you are trying to make, but perks can be shared between characters, and they do not always design a character’s perks to support that killer’s power. Look at Jason: none of his perks directly support or help his power.
I understand that they try to make perks as generic as possible so that many killers can use them. However, when they make a strong perk, or one that becomes problematic, they often nerf it very quickly and then never look at it again.
As for survivor perks, they usually fall into a few categories. Some exist to “fix” certain problems while also giving extra benefits. Some are clearly meant to pair with and support other perks in order to work better. Others are just gimmick perks that can be fun.
That is a big issue. Survivor perks can often work very well on their own and produce good results. If you combine them with other perks that support them, they can change the game dramatically.
On the other hand, killers need perks that either support their power or their playstyle. But because many killer perks have so many restrictions and limitations, the pool of useful options they can choose from becomes very small.
Yea thats kinda what i was getting at, the killers are strong so they are given weaker perks that wont support their power, but end up not supporting barely anyone's powers either.
But i am a fan of stealth perks so i might get some use of that new one jasons got for stealth at the start and end of the round.
To me, new killers feel safe.
What I mean is that many of them seem to follow a similar design formula. They usually have one power for mobility, but it only lets them travel to very specific places, so they do not gain too much of an advantage. Then they often have another part of their power that is used for dealing damage, but it usually feels similar to what other killers already do.
I am not saying this is necessarily a good or bad thing. They have clearly found a formula that works for them. However, because of that, many newer killers do not feel that different or unique.
The reason some of them feel strong is that we compare them to weaker killers like Trapper, GhostFace, Pig, Hag, and others that the developers do not seem interested in meaningfully improving. To me, many new killers feel like simple, safe options and check boxes that need to be filled.
Because they follow this formula, I also feel like they sometimes make perks just for the sake of making them. It feels like they have the following mindset: “The killer is safe, so the perks must be below average to avoid overpowered combinations that could upset survivors or make certain killers a nightmare to balance.”
That is why I want to understand how they design the perks they make, because the same ideology does not seem to exist on the survivor side. We often see survivor perks that look problematic just from reading them, yet they still go to the PTB, and then we have to wait three to six months for them to maybe be fixed.
This is the issue. There are so many killers now, many of which are very strong, and they're probably worried about unexpected synergy that'll make the perk busted on certain killers. They already have this problem in reverse, where they release a new killer and older perks might be super cheese on them (recently, certain anti-chase perks on Krasue) so they are probably being very cautious. Even newer perks that are being used, like Turn Back the Clock, are pretty cautious and repetitive.
That being said, a lot of recent survivor perks are also crap. Out of the 9 new ST perks, maybe 2 are decent and see real use. TWD perks were also mostly bad. And even Five Moves Ahead is just Windows 2.0. The fact that so many perks look a lot like older perks shows that the ideas are kinda running out. Elusive being scrapped from basekit has given them a little bit of newness to work with on the survivor side too.
There are also more survivors released than killers lately, so the chances of something decent for survivor is statistically higher.
That would make sense, but the problem is that if you look at some perks, you can already tell whether they will be problematic without needing to test them.
For example, Fast Track, Wide Open Throttle, and Cross-Examination are some of the newest problems. Anyone with a decent number of hours in the game could see that these perks would be problematic, yet we still need to test them just to confirm what many players already knew.
On the other side, look at Jason’s perks. They wanted to create a theme around the number 13, but because of that, they ended up making the mostly useless and forgettable perks that people will use for the adept achievement and then never touch again.
Maybe Silent Shadow will become useful with the new change they want to make, but then there is another issue: Blight and Nurse will probably abuse it. Then it will likely get nerfed and become useless again within a few months.
I do not want to sound like I am attacking anyone. I just want to understand how perks that seem obviously problematic from a mile away make it through the discussion meeting and into the game, while perks that are useless from the start, or have not received changes for literally years, never get improved.
I think you're seeing what you want to see.
Out of the survivor perks released since 2025, a grand total of one (1) was undeniably very strong, Conviction. If you want to stretch things, you can consider Do No Harm, Last Stand, ESP and even Five Moves Ahead as others worth mentioning, but even some of those are tough to call "strong" perks.
In the same space, killers have seen Turn Back the Clock, Phantom Fear, Forever Entwined all be considered strong enough to see regular use. Hardly seems like there's a bias, especially when there's been almost twice as many survivors versus killers released in that time span.
You might also re-examine how you're evaluating what a strong perk actually is, especially if you think Wide Open Throttle is the strong survivor perk of this latest set.
This is pretty much my point. I really don't think it's simple. Survivors are all the same. If something needs to be adjusted, it's pretty easy. But if there's a killer power/add-on/perk synergy issue that goes live, do you change the perk, the add-on, or the killer? It's more complex on that end. I'm pretty sure that's why diminishing returns happens, so they don't have to worry about accidental busted builds as much, like what happened when Clown's yellow bottles were overturned and everyone put Haste perks on him.
I also don't think these issues are as obvious as you might think. Even if people are being loud, not everyone agrees which perks are busted, and the numbers on the devs end may not reflect it either, even when there's uproar.
I think they're trying to make quirkier perks for survivors, as these new ones are rather odd, to try to compel them to play. You need a lot of people to want to play survivor for this game to function, and I know a lot of people who won't touch the role unless it's with friends or 2v8. They'll still play killer though. So the logical way to entice them is with wacky new stuff to try out.
You don't remotely sound like you're attacking anyone btw, especially by forum standards.
It really feels like a 50/50 these days.
It's like that for both sides, for example Road Life, Wandering Eye, new Teamwork perks, Overture of Doom, ect.
So sometimes we get these awful perks, and then we get some downright busted ones like Cross Examination.
It's not a role thing, it happens constantly.
We also know that the Grimoire perks also would be the same: Boon: Steadfast for instance.
They may have since changed how they design them now, but they used to go by the this philosophy,
-Beginner Perk
-Crazy/Wild/Niche Perk
-Meta Perk
They have a pool of perk ideas and try to work them down into those three categories. It doesn't always end up working out that way but that's how they used to do it.
Are you sure that in the past two years survivor perks have been stronger than killer perks? I dont think that this was a thing, I would even say both roles have equally useless perks, though latest Vecna perks are used quite a lot. The process behingd killer perks is easy, you cant give them perks that are easily used and strong too as those perks become too offensive. So having more activation requirement is pretty fine. On the contrray, Survivor also just got perks that are useful in a certain niche situation and even in those situation theyre barely noticable effective. Thats design-wise even more of a problem.
In my mind the developers have absolutely no creativity in perk design and lack too much gamesense to make valuable perks everybody could live with. Unless they get this knowledge into their own staff, I have no hope for good perks. But BHVR isnt such a company to take into account the good feedback of their community. They have a history of ignoring the objective feedback and mostly making knee-jerk reaction on unreasonable shitstorms.
They need to make a big turn in their game-development strategy, otherwise this game wont evolve any further. Were basically been on a halt for several years now, just pushing out content over quality.
all 3 perks in this round for survivor are very useful and one is completeley broken (cross examination)
the 3 perks for jason are almost utterly worthless.
what do you mean exactly then when you say they just got perks that were niche and barely noticable effects? all 3 are incredibly valuable perks.
Most of the points I was going to cover have been made.
1: @Science_Guy points out, and I agree, that the idea survivors have been getting a lot of great perks is not correct. Things that were meta builds (on both sides) many years ago are still meta builds.
2: @cogsturning mentions that killers are just inherently more difficult to design perks for. Take Haywire, a pretty weak perk in initial idea, but brokenly strong on Singularity.
3: Survivor's have built in systems that make new good perks not as good as they sound (even before diminishing returns). Mostly the exhaustion mechanic, adding a new strong exhaustion perk doesn't actually make survivors that much stronger, it just serves as a slight variation of what they could do. Also healing perks, which have always had their own version of diminishing returns, adding new variations of ways to increase healing aren't really making survivors stronger, its just giving them more variety of how to activate a boost.
On the other hand, we're still basically reliant on Unbreakable and DS as the anti-slug/anti-tunnel.
4: If we're going to talk about perks in the PTB, the devs designed a survivor perk that makes more sense as a killer perk for the vote chapter.
TBH the only way they can give killers actually good perks is if they just make it so some perks just straight up don't work on certain killers. Survivors don't have this issue since they are essentially just skins but if you give trapper and skully a good perk that also means nurse and ghoul get it too. Just make it so some perks are unavailable or like give half their value to some killers and they can start going crazy with perk design for killers.
From what I have seen, strong survivor perks tend to stay unchanged, while newer survivor perks often try to mimic some of their effects in different ways.
It also seems to me that some newer perks, especially after the diminishing returns system was added, are designed to bypass those limits. For example, Lend a Hand is a healing perk that helps you heal faster, but the way it is designed allows it to ignore diminishing returns. At the same time, Wide Open Throttle is designed in a way that lets it be used with almost any Exhaustion perk except Lithe. That means survivors can effectively have two Exhaustion perks that they have full control over.
As for killer perks, I mostly see the same meta perks being changed and rotated around. Do not get me wrong, there are some newer killer perks that see use, but most of the time it feels like the same perks keep appearing.
The perks Jason brought are a joke. Once again, the most useful one seems to be Silent Shadow, but mainly on the stronger killers. This leads into the other point you made.
Stronger killers can capitalize on almost any perk because their powers are already strong. But if you make a perk useless for them, you often make it useless for the entire killer roster. At the same time, if a perk is created or reworked in a way that is useful for certain weaker killers, it often gets changed later because stronger or specific killers can use it too effectively. Thanatophobia is a good example of this, because Legion and Plague were able to use it far more effectively than most other killers.
I feel like it applies, but very loosely.
We could read this every Patch. Survivor perk X is so useful and/or broken, yet after release you hardly ever saw them again. People always overestimated survivor perks on PTB and neglected all arguments.
But here comes my real issue, there was no talk about new perks at all. So why even throwing this in ignoring the discussion?
"on the contrray, Survivor also just got perks that are useful in a certain niche situation and even in those situation theyre barely noticable effective. "
If i was supposed to assume you meant perks that were released months ago that was no clear in your post. but sure, im ignoring the discussion.
The problem is the mentality of survivors who do not want to change their builds.
Survivors often choose not to use stronger new perks because they do not feel like direct upgrades. For example, Five Moves Ahead can be seen as an upgrade compared to Windows of Opportunity, but many survivors still choose Windows of Opportunity because it does not have a 30-second cooldown.
At the same time, when Fast Track was changed, many survivors initially chose not to equip it because they thought it was not strong enough.
Most of the time, the new survivor perks are strong and can change the game. However, because players are not willing to change their builds, or because they think a cooldown of 30 or 50 seconds is too much, they choose not to use them.