Should perks have downsides?
The last changes to perks showed a new trend of giving downsides to perks to balance them. Trend which I'm personally not a fan of, for a couple reasons...
There are (luckily) few older perks which have a downside/debuff, but how many use them? The answer is very few, and the reason is that no one wants to have downsides. Perks in this game have always being designed as power-ups for your character. They might have conditions to activate, but that's it.
The main problem though it's not in the downside per se, but it's the fact that the vast majority of perks don't have downsides. When it's time to choose between two perks we're naturally inclined to pick the one which has only positive aspects, and that leads to those perks to rarely be seen in matches.
If perks need some balancing imo that should be done with numeric changes or by adding conditions, not by giving downsides, because that's the best way to never see that perk in a match again.
Comments
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Yea I am not a fan at all of this.
Especially this last Botany downside added for no reason, still makes me angry.
I was looking forward to run it every game but right now its even worse than it was before without any changes to it.
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Depends on the perk.
Yes but not in a way so that the downside is so great no amount of effect can help. No if the effect is not at all gamebreaking (i.e calm Spirit)
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I dont think perks should have downsides. What they should have is conditions. Half the killer perks require u to meet a certain condition in order to get value from it. Hex perks like ruin or devour need to stay alive to potentionally get value and have to further meet another criteria to actually do smth. Regression perks like pop and call of brine require u to run to a gen and kick it along to get value with another condition that needs to be met like getting a hook for pop or having the gen being untouched for cob. This might seem killer sided but i cant think of a single survivor perk that i see commonly used that has a condition to it that makes the survivors go out of their way to earn it so dont come at me screaming about autodidact or the rock throwing perk or head on
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If the Perk is really, really strong, it should have Downsides. Otherwise not.
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Some of them should, absolutely.
Weighing upsides and downsides to the thing you want to use is an extremely common and accepted method of game design, there's nothing wrong with it at all.
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The absolutely bonkers ones should definitely come with a catch. But most perks in this game would not qualify, in my opinion. The vast majority of them suck. And if they have the tiniest bit of synergy, they get nerfed before long.
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If this is the future of perk balancing then this game is gonna be trash pretty quickly
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Calm Spirit did not deserve it's downside, it's so ridiculous
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Except Hexes which are quite strong, regular perks shouldnt, especially if the perk doesnt give value always, the biggest example is going to be Calm Spirit, if the Killer isnt around when you cleanse you dont get any value out of doing it silently because he wouldnt hear you anyway yet you still eat a 30% speed penalty.
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It depends, getting a guaranteed self-unhook or instantly healing another teammate? Yeah, it's fine that those perks have a downside attached.
Cleansing totems and opening chests silently? Absolutely not.
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I don't mind them having downsides. But as stated above they need to make sense.
Take autodidact, it's a prime example. The good doesn't outweigh the bad enough to be worth using, so people don't. Dying light is another one but for different reasons. Most of the time isn't worth it over other things. There's a bunch of perks that does what it does, but better and they don't have downsides.
It just has to make sense. I like and don't like the one for botany knowledge. As others have stated, gameplay wise it makes sense. Thematically it makes no sense lol
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I actually in principle like the idea of perks have a downside that it outweighed by a larger than normal benefit. For example, Hexes have the built in downside that survivors can destroy them, but that’s offset by in theory these Hexes having strong abilities (Devour Hope is the epitome of high risk / high reward in that sense for instance).
The only problem really is if you have a downside on a perk with a mediocre benefit or a downside that is so onerous it outweighs even its strong benefit. No Mither for instance has a very nice benefit (you can revive yourself an unlimited number of times) but the downside of being eternally injured is HUGE, much worse than that benefit makes up for. Another example is the new version of Overcharge which starts off at 75% regression and takes 12 seconds to ramp up to normal regression after a kick. That means if the gen is stabilized in that time frame then you would have been better off using no perk at all (assuming the survivor passed the skill check). And the regression benefit it gives even when it works is actually worse than Call of Brine, so it not only has a downside but its upside isn’t even that great either.
So in general perks with downsides are ok, but they do need to have strong enough benefits to be worthwhile.
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Maybe I should have been more specific, but when I talk about downsides I refer to permanent ones. Temporary ones are fine imo.
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I think for something to be a perk it should not come with a downside. Not just in this game, but just in general.
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DS - Skill Check
Dead Hard - press 'x'
Deliverance - Safe unhook requirement
Diversion - Need to be in terror radius
Stake Out - Need to be in terror radius
Detective's Hunch - Need to complete generator
Autodidact - Need to hit two skill checks before you get any value
Head On - need to be in locker for five seconds
I'm sure there are others. These are just some I'm thinking of off the top of my head.
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Is a skill check and a button press a condition lol? Both these perks are meta af cause they are provided for free by just doing anything. Also when was the last time u ever saw any of the other perks other than deliverance ig.
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All perks have a cost, and that cost is it uses up a perk slot.
If the perk itself is particularly strong, then it may need additional costs, in the form of in-game prerequisites, or downsides.
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Literally makes no sense to give a perk a downside the literal definition of the word Is a benefit horrible game design
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If a perk is really strong then yes, it should have Downside.
Buf if a perk is decent to weak then no, it should not have a Downside.
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I think downsides are fine if it is inherently a strong perk, but the tradeoff should also exist in that it should have a secondary perk that can further increase its strength. Not to OP levels, but enough to make sacrificing two perk slots to do it worth it. A perk that is designed to also have a downside is already poorly designed, I agree. I think there aren't enough perks that all go together to create a unique, fun synergy and form a complete build, it's just random perks placed together that hep with different things, but that's mainly out of necessity
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Perk downsides are fine.
Most perks don't need downsides because the benefit is minimal.
However, if a perk exists which has a major benefit, then a minor downside could balance them out.
Let's say perk A provides +5 utility points to your character. If perk B provides +10 utility points as a bonus, but also has some downside which has a value of -5 utility points, then the two have approximate equal strength of +5 utility points.
Consider Autodidact, Deliverance, or Renewal/Second Wind. They all have downsides, but they make sense in order to offset the major benefit.
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i think they should have a downside as then it would make picking perks more interesting as you no longer just pick the best one if the downside to it is ok, Take F13th they had it set up that each perk had a positive and a negative so when it came t o pick your perks you had to work out which one was the best for what you needed i.e do you take the perk to give you 2 first aid sprays when you picked one up but the down side is you run out of stamina quicker.
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Maybe if they were strong enough, Hexes have the inherent downside of being able to get removed but it's gone too far for some perks in the update, like Ruin at 100% and being deactivated once a survivor is killed, arguably Overcharge, Botany and Calm Spirit, I'm not too sure about how those will work in practice.
And the old ones No Mither is the biggest example of a perk that is outright like playing on hard mode.
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Yup, this was not a buff. Those who currently use CS do so for the stealth/silence aspect, which still allows them to participate in necessary objectives like cleansing totems and opening chests. Now if you wanna use CS, you're given a penalty on those objectives. If you were a frequent CS user, this is absolutely a nerf. That they presented it as a buff is confusing.
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Perks do have downsides...cool downs.
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I would say that most of the time they shouldn't. After all, they should offer some sort of help to the players. However, I can see certain abilities being a little too overpowered if they don't have some sort of drawback to them.
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yes it should
at least for survivor considering they have way more
killer should not be overwhelmingly strong but shouldnt have downside
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Downsides are never fun. We play the game to have fun. If there is a powerful perk, then a downside is understandable, but perks in general having a downside just because...I'm not a fan of the idea.
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You are remembering that it's a 4 v1 game yes? Killer perks should be powerful to enable them to counter the 16 perks that survivors bring
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Yes. They are by definition a condition of using the perk.
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Exactamundo. My work perks do not have downsides or else I would look for a new job.
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perks with downsides always sound bad on paper.
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Cooldowns are not a downside. Having a perk with a cooldown is still objectively better than having a perk without one. Sprint burst, for example-- even though the cooldown limits the ability, you still get faster movement speed every so often, meaning that it provides you with additional utility had you decided to not use the perk instead.
A downside is something inherent in a perk which detracts from your strength, such as the new Botany Knowledge which provides a 20% healing efficiency penalty to healing with a medkit.
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Im thinking, what if perks are powerful but limited use, like DS, Unbreakable, Lucky break?
What if giving Botany 60sec use, each sec healing reduce the charge of the perk. Which 6 heals will deplete your ability to heal fast (given ~11sec per heal)?
Im always think of Perks should be something like a resource for Survivors, instead of benefit them for a whole trial or giving downside.
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I don't think survivor perks should have downsides since most of them are merely quality of life improvements or alternate playstyles that may not directly help you escape. I'd rather have a bunch of players bring "info" or "alternative" survivor perks than to see the same strongest meta perks every match. I don't even bring slowdown, I bring comfort perks and info, so seeing hardcore meta perks isn't very fun.
All downsides do for survivor perks is make sure they're never picked. Why should something as niche as opening a chest, which is already inefficient to do by itself even have a downside? That kind of play should be encouraged. Like hunting totems, anything outside of gens.
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