Shoulder the Burden deactivated for all Survivors can't go live.
This is a very dangerous precedent and may pave the way for more of the same in the future.
It may start with Shoulder the Burden and seem harmless, but slowly and gradually we will see more perks deactivated for all survivors when one survivor use the same perk that the others have.
This is an unfair design; survivors cannot see each other's perks before the match. Even if the developers allow it, it is still bad because a survivor is deprived of using a perk just because someone else is using the same perk, and this rule is only used in some tournaments and not in regular gameplay.
It is one thing for the killer to take something from the survivor, but it is quite another for another survivor to take something from others survivors.
This "Shoulder the Burden deactivated for all Survivors" is a seed that paves the way for more of this rule; this seed must be uprooted and crushed from existence!
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I am also very annoyed that Altruism is being heavily discouraged for regular players. StB and for that matter BT both encourage players to help their teammates and allowed survivors create situations which could surprise the killer and put them at a momentary disadvantage by way of countering strategy. seeing both of them gutted alongside Knockout really gives the impression BHVR is removing counterplay as a viable option for survivor gameplay.
StB Already had a major downside for the user, it gives them the hookstate of the person they use the perk on. first of all, It doesn't remove progress from the killer at all, it's not vanishing a hookstate, It's giving it to someone else. If anything StB is a cool example of how Survivor perks can have tangible effects in the future without being in the Exhaustion or Stun Perk categories. a sort of offensive altruism that was a healthy idea. yes, StB can be very powerful, believe it or not people want perks to have a potential for a memorable moment in a game. Perks are the only expression survivor has. If Tunneling is a valid strategy, and Slugging is a valid strategy then why is it "unfair" or "too powerful" for a survivor to take extra risk on themselves to save a teammate from being on death hook?
SP/BT/StB/Vigil getting seriously nerfed in very quick succession really gives the impression that BHVR wants survivors, especially solo queue survivors to play for themselves and not as a team.
I mean even basekit BT was decreased by 1/3 of its value to discourage players taking hits for eachother off of hook. that's altruism lol… I don't know why the idea seems to be "prevent survivors from helping eachother"… I think that overall precedent is extremely bad in and of itself
Like if you look at the dev note for the nerf on SP it's so insanely unaware:
Dev Note: We know that Elusive can be a strong status effect. Several Self Preservations in a lobby can have the unintended effect of the Killer returning back to hook more often. We're reducing the numbers here quite a bit, but are keeping a close eye on this perk.
How on earth does this even make sense? The killer is going to return to the hook regardless. BT doesn't exist anymore, Basekit Endurance down 5 seconds, Elusive on Unhook means its even more important for tunneling killers to be nearby to actually see where the survivor goes. "the fact the killer can't see you when they hook someone means they are going to tunnel" killers are tunneling anyway, and SP was used to safely get to the hook without being seen. "Several Self Preservations" okay…? How often are Several Self Preservations seen in a match? about never? and when they are seen how would diminishing the timer change the outcome of a killer returning to a hook as opposed to if they could see you running to get the unhook?
Shoulder having 1 use for the whole team is what the perk needs, because hook shuffling is insufferable and completely broken. BHVR could put up a notification in the lobby on the perk stating someone else currently has it equipped, letting others know the risk of still taking it into the trial.
As for other perks receiving the same "tourney treatment" I wouldn't worry and think you're just strawmanning. No one complains regularly that having 4 DSes needs to be changed so that when the killer is DSed once the whole team loses access to it.
Unless of course you DO like the slugging meta. StB makes hooking pointless.
I did not defend Shoulder the Burden in my post at all, nor did I address its impact; I only focused on the rule "Shoulder the Burden deactivated for all Survivors".
I am not strawmanning, and this is a pattern that has been repeated a lot. It starts with a very simple and limited rule, and once the players accept it, the developers increase the dose a little, then let the players accept it, and then increase the dose a little again, and so on, just like a seed when you water it.
If Shoulder the Burden too broken then the developers must rework it, not put this rule.
If Hook Shuffling is "Insufferable and broken" then so is any form of tunneling lmao.
The most consistent excuse for tunneling is "Its an elimination game, It serves me best to eliminate one survivor, it's not personal"
then keep that energy for StB, it serves the survior side best to not have one person tunneled out. it's also not "hook shuffling" it's incremental. no hook state is being taken away.
StB does remove progress from the killer. It can transfer a hook stage from someone who is on death hook to someone who has no hook states. The problem is when you use it like this when no one is being tunneled. If you don't understand how important it is to have a survivor on death hook even when not tunneling then I legitimately don't know what to say to you, you don't have enough understanding of the game yet and you probably need to play more killer - a lot more killer, so that you can get a high enough MMR to go against teams who know how to coordinate multiple StBs.
Borrowed Time's problem currently is that Babysitter just mostly does its job better. Babysitter provides a longer haste boost, strengthens the initial haste boost, and removes scratch marks and pools of blood. And it lets the unhooker see the killer's aura as a bonus, so they know whether it's safe to heal under hook or if they need to warn the unhooked person if the killer is coming back to hook.
I don't know if Babysitter is still a perk available to all survivors or not as I owned Steve before his initial removal and had him at Prestige 3 already when he came back. If it still counts as a generic perk and not a licensed perk, then it even has an edge over BT in terms of availability because you don't even need to prestige Bill to get it.
The times where BT is a better altruistic anti-tunnel perk than Babysitter are very rare and situational, mostly owing to extending the endurance by 10 seconds. It needs to be the very specific situation of the survivor being hooked in a large deadzone against a tunneling killer who can stay on top of them for 10 seconds. Mainly this just counters a tunneling Deathslinger, as they will sometimes spear an unhooked survivor and count down the endurance.
I think that BT should have its current effect buffed rather than being reworked into this new weird and very situational Dead Hard partner perk.
gotta love the classic "You're inferior to my understanding" rebuttal to a conversation. I've played the game for years, nobody on the forums is just brand new to DBD. Survivors are beating you with counterplay. I'm getting sick and tired of the weird double standard that it's only fair when killers can do things that inconvenience the survivor and not vice versa. Survivors are supposed to set you back, StB Is not removing progress from the killer, it's distributing it amongst survivors, that's a fundamentally different thing.
This is why I made that post today regarding perk changes not changing the "meta" of DBD. so long as camping and tunneling are prevalent in DBD as valid strategies, then it's equally valid for survivors to have valid recourse. if you don't like that tradeoff of design, then join the party of people vehemently against these design choices.
Right now, Tunneling is extremely viable and also encouraged, with these perk changes, survivors are encouraged to "suck it up" and have no agency to respond.
regarding BT, BHVR making copycat perks with powercreep is irrelevant to them totally ruining the older version of that perk. maybe if they expanded the core gameplay they'd have more to design perks around.
You're talking about it as if killers must 8 hook before they can start killing anybody. This is completely unrealistic, usually only happens if the killer is going out of their way to do it because there is a massive skill discrepancy.
A survivor being on death hook must play differently, take less risks, play more cautiously, work on safer and less exposed generators. This is a massive boon to the killer even when they aren't tunneling that person out. Moving a survivor from 2 hook states to 1 without also moving the other survivor to 2 hook states is an enormous gut punch to killer pressure. And that would be fine if it could only be used when the killer is tunneling, but it can be used when they aren't tunneling and it's an even bigger gut punch in that situation than in the one it was created to counter. That's the problem.
I spent the rest of the post explaining the fact Babysitter is just better than Borrowed Time, and ended it off by saying BT should be buffed somehow and keep its current effect. So clearly I don't have a problem with survivors having nice things or inconveniencing the killer.
Also BHVR didn't "create a new perk that powercrept Borrowed Time." The fact you think this once again tells me you are new, despite what you say.
Borrowed Time was once a basically mandatory perk for all survivors to bring, and during that time, Babysitter existed alongside it and was much weaker than it is now. Borrowed Time's effect got implemented into being basekit, and then Babysitter got buffed, which created the question of why you should ever bring BT over Babysitter.