Self Preservation triggers on Basic and Special Attacks, but why can't more killer perks?
A developer's specific comment on Knockout's rework restricting its activation condition to Basic Attack downs: "We don't want it triggering on getting downed by an addoned Bear Trap, or going down to Deep Wound, etc. It's better game design if we don't start stacking up a series of exceptions."
My question is, with perks like Self-Preservation that show Special Attacks are categorized and can be implemented as triggers for perks to activate, why would exceptions be an issue? Why do perks like Blood Flavor, Knockout (which used to trigger on ALL downs), or Surge all trigger on basic attacks? Is it a balancing thing as well?
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I could possibly be a balancing thing but I'm going to assume that the devs are experimenting with perks that activate with both special and basic attacks.
This could be the first step in testing to see if the perks you mentioned and future perks would be overpowered if they activated with basic and special attacks and maybe in the future we could see buff to those perks to included it both attacks.
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Because if they worked for special attacks, they would become too strong on certain killers.
Exposed for example, imagine if Blight could insta-down people with Lethal Rush (without the ultra-rare) or if Oni could slug people using Knock-out. Pyramid head's POTD triggering various effects
The only exception seems to be Nurse and I'm not 100% sure why, maybe because her power is also how she moves/the only viable way to attack with her
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Just going to wait for people to rush in with the "Killer OP They don't need more OP things" arguments.
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I'm not talking about status effects like Exposed though, just perk activation conditions specifically.
Oni used to be able to slug people with Knock-Out before the perk was nerfed, and I don't think it was ever an issue.
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It was probably a balance decision to compensate for the buff they gave it
Not gonna lie though, I would not want to face a Twins using Knock-Out if it worked on Victor
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Which would be kinda ridiculous considering the buff was very insignificant and their intentions were to increase its pick-rate, so giving it a basic attack condition is completely counter-intuitive.
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I somewhat agree that the buff was semi-pointless
The visual effect is kind of neat though
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Knockout and Third Seal have always been issues because they're solo-bully perks.
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(Speculation ahead, I'm not a dev)
They don't want killer special attacks to interact with killer perks. Imagine how busted Surge would be if it worked on Bubba's chainsaw, or if Trickster's knives affected Save the Best for Last, or a Huntress cross-mapping a hatchet with Knockout.
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Mostly balance. Ex: Legion frenzy attacks counted as basic attacks until patch 3.4.0 and it was ridiculously easy to stack and apply certain perks with it, especially before the rework in patch 2.7.0 when attacking a survivor with DW wouldn't remove you from Feral Frenzy.
Regarding the quote, I am pretty sure it was related to game design rather than balance.
"We don't want it triggering on getting downed by an addoned Bear Trap, or going down to Deep Wound, etc. It's better game design if we don't start stacking up a series of exceptions."
From a design standpoint, it is easier and more intuitive to contain information about which powers constitute a basic attack in the definition of the said powers.
Imagine you're not sure if a Nurse blink attack stack STBFL and you want to search the game documentation for it. Would you go to the power description or the perk description? It might seem ok for that info to be in either, but would you attach a bullet point for each of the 20+ killers inside a single perk description it would be huge, disorganized, and just unbearable to navigate. Also, every new killer would mean updating perk descriptions.
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Mostly balance reasons. As time as gone on, the devs have been moving away from having powers count as basic attacks and/or having them proc perks.
Knock out, for example, was changed because they didn't like how honing stone could make survivors almost impossible to find once they escaped... not that THAT makes much sense to me given that's the entire point of the perk.
The only real exceptions to these rules are Nurse and Infectious Fright. I assume this is because Nurse physically can't chase survivors normally and nerfing Infectious Fright would indirectly but considerably nerf killers such as Oni and Plague (both being snowball killers with their power).
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First before the nerf(Which they lied about saying they were buffing it) knockout did work with huntress' hatchets and it was fine.
Second Surge wouldn't be any better on bubba given that it has a 40 second cooldown so even if it did work with the chain saw it wouldn't do much.
Lastly STBFL's effect only works on cooldowns as it doesn't actually increase the attack speed at all. So how WOULD it even work with knifes unless your talking about the cooldown from main event?
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The short version is: because devs.
This is the long version. Because killer perks could interact with different powers with extremely different consequences. The devs would have to balance every perk keeping in mind every single power and update old perks for every new power.
Self-preservation, on the other hand, is 'theorically' type-agnostic in this regard. If a nearby survivor is attacked, you basically become a ghost. There are no unforeseen interactions. In theory. In reality, it doesn't mask killer instinct. So, for example, Legion or the Twins could counter that exactly with their special attacks.
There's also the issue that some killer perks get the basic hit treatment, while others are left out of it. Or, it even gets removed. And there's seemingly no logical explanation for thar. See Infectious Freight, that it's a completely different perk on high-mobility and insta-down powers, compared to other more m1-ish killers. And it did have a basic attack condition, before it got removed.
In conclusion, as I said, we can try to rationalize as much as we want. But in the end, things in this game are like they are because... they are like they are. Unironically.
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It's because her post blink is still considered a basic attack, not special. Probably because she has to rely on her blinks to win so if it was special then any perk that only effects basic attacks would be useless on her like running self-care and no mither.
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