New Ruin is a Nerf.
Title. Ruin is used as a small advantage in a game where it is a four versus one. Ruin is a perk where you have to learn to hit great skill checks, work through it, or find the totem.I play both sides a lot, and yes. Ruin is hard to new players, they'll have to figure out how to hit those skill checks, or find the totem. Maybe new players working with veterans wouldn't happen so much if the matchmaking for ranks was better. Maybe removing the ranks in the lobbies would hide how poor the matchmaking is, allowing for a high purple rank to be placed in a group of yellow ranks. BHVR is killing the player base just by being out of touch at best and deliberately disingenuous at worse.
BHVR seems to be content with nerfing high performing things in order to be more like the rest of the killers, instead of fixing low performing killers. BHVR's bias is certain. They like survivors more, when something plagues the survivors (Legion, Nurse, Ruin, Old Spirit, Doctor) they're right away on it to change n̶e̶r̶f̶ it right away, but when something's wrong with the killers (Demogorgon Shred Glitch, Sound Issues, MoM, Decisive,) their response time is drastically slower.
I hate to see this game go in this direction. In a game of 80 second generator times without buffs at all, no toolbox, no perks. The killer has to play extremely optimally in order to keep up. Ruin was a bandaid for the generator times, to give leeway to set up or search and chase but it seems like BHVR doesn't want to take the issue at it's source.
Their disingenuous Designer notes was frankly insulting and it makes me no longer want to play this game. They treat killers like a part of the game, not like they're humans. Ruin being too hard for new players and "might hurt more than they help" reads to me like it's a patch note in a normal PVE game. "Ruin nerfed to help new players and encourage them to work in a team."
The entire point of the perk is to make it so it's more difficult to complete a gen, and yes, if you can't hit those skill checks, it will hurt you. This isn't a game where killers have to make sure that the survivors are having a fun, fulfilling time. This is a competitive game where you can't pull any punches, because I assure you that the guys on the other side will not.
I loved this game but every single time a new announcement comes out it's "We're changing X killer or X perk to be more in line with the others" I've sunk time and money into this game and, it seems like it doesn't want me to anymore. I assure you guys.
When these ruin changes go live, the next nerf will be to PGTW, or Thrilling Tremors, or Devour Hope. I can see it now. "Pop Goes The Weasel gives too much of a advantage to killers, allowed for a snowball effect and slowing the game down, so we've made it so PGTW only activates on a successful sacrifice." "Thrilling Tremors is too powerful and gives too much information in it's current state, so we've changed it to affect only a certain radius around the downed survivor" "Devour Hope being able to expose and kill survivors for such a little amount is too much for killers, so we've made it you have to be pallet stunned while also being the required distance away"
After Ruin, these kinds of perks will become the best performing ones, and then they'll get nerfed too for being too good. It's a viscious cycle and I don't want to be around it anymore. BHVR needs to really get it's bearings and learn why people actually play this game.