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Perk System Rebalance: Perk Points
I have had this idea for a while, but what if the perk system was reworked to give each perk a price of perk points, and you have a set amount of perk points to use (say 100 perk points). I think a large problem with perk balance comes from the fact that since each perk uses one of the four perk slots, for a perk to be 'balanced', it needs to be as good as other perks that can also potentially take up the same slot. Consider if this was changed however, perks would NOT need to be equally powerful, but just need to be balanced for their perk point cost. Instead of being limited by having four perks, you could instead have up to say 8 perks, but only 100 perk points to spend. Pop goes the weasel outclasses the perk jolt, but if Pop took more perk points than jolt, that would balance out the power difference, and in some builds where you have left over perk points you could experiment with lower perks that take less point perks. Pop is better than jolt, but if pop took 40 perk points and jolt only took 25, killers may be enticed to use jolt to save a few perk points for extra perks. Similarly, a perk like current Boon: Circle of healing that provides a strong effect to the entire team could be relatively strong, but cost like 60 perk points. Since dead hard is super strong, what if it took say 50 perk points to use, survivors may not run it since of how limiting it would be to their builds. Behavior could fix the current meta by simply making the current meta perks cost so many perk points so that they could not run it any more.
*** Survivor Example: 100 Perk Points to spend ***
Borrowed time - 20 perk points
Decisive Strike - 35 perk points
Unbreakable - 30 perk points
Dead hard - 50 perk points
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Total: 135 perk points (30 over the limit)
*** Killer Example: 100 Perk Points to spend ***
Pop Goes the Weasel - 40 perk points
Scourge Hook: Pain Resonance - 40 perk points
Dead Man's Switch - 25 perk points
Corrupt Intervention - 20 perk points
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Total: 125 perk points (25 over the limit)
These infamous current meta builds would not need to be changed at all, because survivors/killers simply wouldn't have the perk points to use them! Of course, certain problematic perks like dead hard/NOED should still be rebalanced or overhauled, but behavior would not need to try to make all perks equally strong while also taking into account niche uses on specific killers that could make a certain killer super strong. If in the future some perks seem to develop into a meta as being too strong for their perk point cost, behavior can just increase the perk point cost instead of needing to change the perks. Similarly, underperforming perks can have their cost lowered to make them more competitive. The current meta alienates weaker perks because they have the same cost to players as strong perks, but this system would allow for both weak and strong perks to co-exist with different costs and give both a role. The devs could still make fundamental changes to perks if they wished to, but a perk point system give them a new way to rebalance perks. This would also make new perks more exciting, because they don't have to be as strong as current perks, they would just need to be properly priced for their effect.
Imagine if we could one day have fun builds like this example build using a variety of perks, instead of the current meta of choosing the strongest perks available with slowdown/regression or similarly on the survivor side stacking 2nd chance perks.
*** Killer Example: 100 perk points to spend ***
Nurses Calling - 19 perk points
Forced Penance - 11 perk points
Mind Breaker - 17 perk points
Remember me - 16 perk points
Play with your food - 14 perk points
Brutal strength - 22 perk points
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Total: 99 perk points
*** Survivor Example: 100 perk points to spend ***
Flashbang - 15 perk points
appraisal - 17 perk points
distortion - 13 perk points
balanced landing - 26 perk points
calm spirit - 9 perk points
Boon: Dark Theory - 18 perk points
Hope - 15 perk points
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Total: 98 perk points
These builds doesn't have a ton of synergy, but it provides a few good buffs for the killer/survivor. These builds opt for many medium/weak buffs over only a small number of strong buffs.
Also as an aside, imagine the cool mental math of trying to calculate the cost of the killer build based on what perks you've seen as survivor to deduce what perks they could still have. 'No they can't have NOED, they don't have enough perk points'. Or similarly on the survivor side, once a killer sees boon: circle of healing, they might know that they don't have dead hard just from perk point cost. The specific costs of the perks are not meant to be meaningful, but just as an example.
Would you prefer a system like this in dead by daylight instead of the current system? Any tweaks to this you can think of?
Comments
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Considering they're gonna rework a bunch of perks, I don't think this idea is something that will come into fruition.
Would honestly be pretty cool as an alternate game mode though, having a bunch of small, non meta perks, but beingable to have far more than 4 of them.
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They're already doing a massive rework, I don't think this would interest them.
BHVR is also not great at understanding which perks are stronger.
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I understand it probably won't happen. Sadly most of the great recommended changes on this forum never happen and especially one like this, since just as you mentioned, they already have a rework in mind. The problem is that although they said they are reworking 40 perks, there are far more than that, so we already sort of can guess that a bunch of them like left behind or poised will still be garbage and will never see use. At least we can dream ;-;
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People often suggest this and I think it's a bad idea for many reasons.
A: how do you ensure the perk valuations are actually equivalent to how good the perks actually are? The perceived goodness of a given perk fluctuates over time. Considering how reticent they are to change anything it would take a long time to adjust these values.
B: It stifles creativity. If I think of a suboptimal, yet dumb and fun build and it puts me like 1 point over the cap that's not gonna feel very good. Conversely of I'm only using 30/100 points or whatever is going to make me feel kinda bad. It's not not a good or consistent system.
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no thanks
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It stifles creativity. If I think of a suboptimal, yet dumb and fun build and it puts me like 1 point over the cap that's not gonna feel very good. Conversely of I'm only using 30/100 points or whatever is going to make me feel kinda bad. It's not not a good or consistent system.
I disagree with this statement. There are already dumb and fun builds you cannot run because you might want 5 perks but only have 4 perk slots such as no mither + tenacity + soul guard + flip flop + power struggle. If the perceived goodness of a perk fluctuates over time, they can adjust the perk point cost, similar to how they have already buffed perks like boil over, distortion, or dead man's switch. If they don't buff them, then the perks will just fall to the waste side as some older perks already have like for example the drop off of nurse's calling or thrilling tremors. What part of this system would you say would be inconsistent?
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I think it'd be better if there were dedicated slots on killer for specific things, like chase or information, so that you're not playing at such a huge disadvantage perk-wise. Give killers more perks, but not ones that can be used to double down on a single gimmick but rather something that encourages you to run more of a variety of perks.
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I like this idea. The points could be determined automatically based on perk usages. This automatic system could give points not just for single perks, but also for perks combos, i.e. certain perk combos would use more points than their individual sum.
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