Discussing the popularity of Pain Res and Pop (and GE)
With the new stats having been posted, both Scourge Hook: Pain Resonance and Pop Goes The Weasel are far more popular than most other perks... with its buffs we all expect GE to do the same. I want to first state that I feel like both of these perks are in a good place and don't really need a nerf IMO... but there is a chance they MAY get looked at with how popular they are, so it's likely worth lending thoughts to the health of their design, why they're great, but also may have a slight issue to consider looking at.
Scourge Hook: Pain Resonance (and Grim Embrace)
Pain Res is a very useful tool for evening out the playing field, and allowing less mobile / weaker chase killers to still have a global presence. It is rewarding for killers who try to down and hook all 4 survivors, having a natural anti-tunnel mechanic. While strong, it can be played around by smart survivors to avoid screaming and combos with DMS, etc.
Pop Goes the Weasel
Pop is another very good perk, significantly increasing the value of kicks, with the trade off you have to physically walk up to the gen and stop to break it in order to get the value, giving survivors a chance to run.
It has a time limit and is based on the percentage of the gen, so while your weaker chase/less mobile killers can't capitalise as easily, when they do kick, weaker chase killers can get a little more value out of a kick than their speedier counter parts.
A potential issue point
The only flaw with these 3 perks, is they are also just as, and arguably stronger, on mobile and stronger chase killers as well. Mobile killers are always in the upper echelon of the game, great because they can more effectively pressure across the map, but also be afforded the luxury of exerting that pressure, and still being able to race back to tunnel a player once they come off hook.
With Pain Res (and to a similar extent GE), a mobile killer can captilise on that same global pressure to halt progression, and then race to affected gens to continue getting pressure and prevent further progress... then sprint back to the hook to tunnel without any significant loss to the value of GE and Pain Res. With Pop they can kick gens harder and be even more comfortable in racing back to the hook.
After tunneling a player out they can still keep popping Pain Res/GE on the remaining survivors, all the while using Pop to maintain a stranglehold in the middle of the map. This combo is good for less mobile killers to have decent comeback pressure, but is all just more effective on the mobile ones who can tunnel while still getting all the benefits.
Suggestion
I would suggest using a similar penalty to old Hex: Ruin for all of these perks.
When a survivor dies, Pain Res and Grim Embrace become disabled. The regression effect of Pop is halved to 15%.
This means against strong/mobile killers, Survivors can more easily hide/heal in the knowledge that if a Pain Res/GE killer tries to tunnel, the killer will be denying their own perk. The less mobile killers who can't freely tunnel as easily due to the sheer time it takes to walk back (and thus have more chance of not finding/losing/being too late to easily tunnel that survivor), will not be a significantly affected.
We keep Pop alive but weakened, because as stated before Pop has a naturally higher return the more progress has gone by, which does alleviate the disparity of strong vs. weak killers on its own.
While these changes affects all killers, the aim is to affect the faster killers who can tunnel more easily without penalty more than the more m1 style killers, who have to make a considerably larger commitment/effort to tunnel.
The numbers and effects are all up for debate. This is my suggestion, but I do believe of there is a concern about changing these perks, my direction would be to try to ensure they maintain their usefulness for the weaker killers as much as possible, while hitting the more lethal/mobile killers more.
It's a little uninspired though admittedly, so if anyone has any better ideas, I'd love to hear others thoughts.
Comments
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And if 3 gens pops and killer only has 1-2 hooks, all exhaustion / gen related / second chance perks will disable as well, yeah? If you love idea to punish for completing your objective, it should works both ways.
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gotta love a perk that adds a 6th generator for survivors to do while also having pop on top with bbq to know exactly which other gen you should go kick before you go back to proxy camp and tunnel the first player on hook and get your juicy 3v1 at 4 gens.
than yall wonder why we give up so quick
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We're not opposed to turning off regression perks when a survivor dies, but there's gonna need to be a trade off as well since that's a big downside, even accounting for the dead teammate.
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OK, if we want to argue without reading anything or engaging with any of the points made:
To be pedantic, your ACTUAL objective, is not to kill survivors as fast as possible, it is to cause as much pain, fear and lost hope as possible in each trial. This is indicated by the way in which bloodpoints (and thus emblems) are awarded to you in the end game, and why if you kill all 4 survivors by hooking and sacrifcing them all after 1 chase with no unhooks, it is entirely possible you depip in iri rank. Your awards are given for getting as many chases as possible (optimally 4 per survivor), as many hits and wounds with your power as possible, and as many hooks as possible. Your actual points for kills are very low, losing out on approximately 5000 points overall per survivor you immediately kill, demonstrated perfectly by how low scoring Myers games tend to be with his executions.
Ergo your argument is invalid, because this change would actually encourage your objective.
There are plenty of people who are extremely biased and blanket ask for buffs and nerfs without any consideration to either side. Please do not insult me by lumping me into that camp. I do try to be unbiased and at the very least provide evidence for my arguments, and would appreciate being respected as such.
Is though really? Both Pain Res and GE only have 4 procs, that requires you to hook all 4 survivors, once you've done that, it's done it's work. If you've been really fast to tunnel someone out however (which lets face it a strong Blight, Nurse, Spirit, Pyramid Head really excel at), you're in a commanding lead already by virtue of a player being dead early. I did say the numbers are up for debate, perks could be buffed a little to compensate, but the overarching point is PR and GE have mechanisms to naturally discourage tunneling, which can be circumvented/undone by mobile killers who can still tunnel effectively, while still getting the full value out of the perks. Should you still be able to use their rewards while still tunneling a player to death?
If I'm honest Pop I think is fine, it's so popular because its a great perk, that also synergises with any kick perk like Trail of Torment, Nowhere To Hide, Call of Brine, Eruption... it just makes kicks better... I bring it up since it is the most popular perk right now, so it's worth being in the conversation, even if the conclusion is "Leave it alone".
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We may have been miss understood, we ment all regression. From pain res to surge.
If we're really just going for these few perks then we'd say a numbers hit and not disabled. Losing full access to the perk, while sweetly karmatic for tunneling at the get go, is still to hefty to us as there are situations where "tunneling" is the smart move (examples: you can really only find one person, the unhooker farms and goes to super safe zone leaving the other at your lack of mercy, etc). If nothing else then could make it % based (wouldn't know what to do about changing Grim Embrace other than lengthen it based on gens, which is its own can of headache).
Otherwise the only thing that would keep them useful for all would be something like a rework of regression mechanics or the perks.
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Oh OK, well thats quite a lot more than what I was suggesting. I don't believe all regression perks should turn off.
The reason I posted this topic is Pain Res and Pop are very common perks right now, and are perks that are used by pretty much all killers, regardless of charatcer, map or playstyle for the extra time they bring. I was bringing up these perks because they are the most popular perks right now, and kinda putting the feelers out to the community as to how they would feel about them being changed if they were to appear on the roadmap.
I think they are really good perks that keep certain weakers killers relevant and able to have some effective global pressure/mitigate their weak map traversal... the problem is they are even better on killers that actually do have that map traversal.... and in doing so, it has the effect that map traversal killers can go hard on slowdown but maintain pressure as they tunnel a survivor off hook. Their ability to apply pressure and rush back with this slowdown means the don't have much fear of survivors being able to complete all the gens while they tunnel, and they can continue getting the value after a player is dead.
The weaker killers can't tunnel as effectively simply because they can't rush across the map as quick to pressure gens and then come back to hook as needed. They either have to tunnel, or pressure gens, they can't do both; these perks for those killers dissuage tunneling, because pushing survivors off gens allows them to stay in the game. My talking points here are, if you add that penalty, this point also becomes a factor for the strong killers too, you can't tunnel a player out AND get your gen regression, it's either 1 or the other.
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Honestly thinking we just see it differently. Because pain res and Grim Embrace (pop is another matter) are only for first hooks it's kinda the same for high mobility killers. I'm a failure at explaining our thoughts so bear with me. The high mobility tunneling will have major slowdown in odd times (fresh hook, boom, run around, unhook, go back, tunnel, hook, repeat from step 3 till dead, repeat from step 1). Only the most worked on gen is regressed while the others are stalled for 12ish seconds which everyone resumes working between step 1 and 9. Kinda depends on how quickly people go down but that can be a lot of time. Stacking 4 slowdowns is another mater where we might agree but as it seems to us that individually each perk is fine.
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As a side note of your rational. You’re confusing the games lore with the games objective. Those are two different things.
While the lore may be all about pain and suffering that is not how we rank up objectively or even how the overall community sees winning for that matter.
Arguing against this with “rank” doesn’t make sense as we do not use that for matchmaking which is what is used for matching equally skilled people up. IE the invisible mmr would be our realistic “rank”. The rank we see is simply play time generally speaking.
If you were saying this back when blood points were used for ranking and that was used for matchmaking you’d have more of an argument.
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We need to stop nerfing perks that encourage the killer to advance the game. For example, pop only comes into effect when the killer actually downs and hooks someone. Doesn't work with slugging. Doesn't work with camping a 3 gen and never leaving them. Every nerf to these kinds of perks just pushes more and more killers to slug and camp.
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Pop , new GE and Pain Res being far more common recently is easily explained.
Since 7.5.0, every instances of regression counts, as such the Killer, especially if playing a Killer on the weaker end of the spectrum, must make all slowdown count in order to not end up on the defensive if Survivors are good enough to not die until the 4th gen pops since regression is very important in lategame if there are still 3 or more Survivors alive (it's also the reason why tunnelling became much worse since the Anti-3-gen system).
Pain Res and Pop offer the best regression per activations, even if they have limited uses, which makes them the logical choice in order to reduce the risks of regressing a gen too much if Survivors keep going back to the same gen. Perks like Surge and Eruption simply don't offer enough slowdown for 1/8th regression events.
Grim Embrace, especially on mobile Killers, is also a logical choice to replace regression/slowdown perks as it offers 12 guaranteed seconds of slowdown on every first hooks and 40 seconds on the 4th one, arguably offering more overall slowdown than any other slowdown perk without spending precious regression events that might be vital later in the game. Weaker/slower Killers also love this perk as even the 12 seconds makes them able to start patrolling without having to fear of gens popping before they reach one after a hook.
With every regression perks (and non-regression kick perks) being made a limited ressource during the entire trial when facing decent teams, choosing perks that can save more of that ressource is obvious.
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Completely reasonable change that might discourage some players from tunnelling. I like it.
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it is to cause as much pain, fear and lost hope as possible in each trial
Maybe based on lore, but that's about it.
MMR is based on kills only...
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Not unreasonable points, however, only MMR is affected by kills, and MMR is a hidden value/mechanic, and there is no reward for climbing in MMR beyond your own motivation to do so.
Grades aren't affected anywhere near as much by kills, and Grades are what are public facing. So it's fair to say your skill level is determined by kills, but your actual objective, the things you are actually rewarded for doing each season are far more in line with the theme than getting kills.
All fair points, thanks for the feedback.
As I said in the OP, I believe the perks personally are fine and don't need nerfing. However this topic is likely to mentioned be repeatedly over the next few months, and is worth getting a conversation going to get a general consensus on how players feel.
If these perks do need any tweaks, this is the route I would go, trying to retain the value for weaker killers, while having more impact of the stronger killers (and pushing to a more fun platstyle).
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Judging the objective by what skill level and matchmaking you’re placed into is way more accurate than using something that just gives you a few blood points on reset.
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Except you can't possibly know what that is, can you... unless you have some sort of mod or tool that exposes it to you. Having your objective be this unknown intangible that isn't represented to the player in any way shape or form doesn't make sense no?
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We know how it works. MMR is only based on your kills, hat's it.
DBD created it, so they made this your win condition. 1-2 kills loos, 2 kills draw, 3-4 kills win
Most information we know about it is from devs. You can't have better information than that unless you are developer yourself, which I doubt.
That's all what matters to determine "skill" right now and adept achievements are based on kills too (used to be different).
Trying to torture survivors etc. is simply lore thing, nothing else. It's not a objective for players. If so, slugging would be main objective...
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If you say so dude. We're arguing semantics really, I, like you, of course understand how MMR works, and how skill is measured by the community. This doesn't really matter, but to answer your point seriously and being as objective as possible...
Every other game with the objective to win will activately demonstrate to you that you are progressing towards your objective, be that an elo rank, progressing up leagues and divisions, or by a simple scoreboard at the end of the game.
Dead by Daylight has elo, bit it isn't shown to you. DBD shows you grades. Unless you go outside DBD and look up quotes from developers (which we here of course have all done), for all intents and purposes, that is your objective as defined by the game itself.
Now if you and I want go and impose our own definition of what we want to pursue for our own intrinsic motivation, that's great. Passion is awesome. However climbing up the invisible MMR table is a goal that we have defined, not the game.
The most logical purpose and function of MMR being separated from Grades in DBD is to place similarly skilled players into games together, so that climbing up your grades is consistently challenging for you, rather than requiring you to smash bambis for the first few grades to get into more competitive games at higher ranks.
If you want more proof:
"Dead by Daylight is a multiplayer (4vs1) horror game where one player takes on the role of the savage Killer, and the other four players play as Survivors, trying to escape the Killer and avoid being caught, tortured and killed."
This seems to indicate the killers objective quite clearly. Your goal as killer is to catch torture and kill survivors.
In fairness to your point, the store page also says:
"• A Feast for Killers - Dead by Daylight draws from all corners of the horror world. As a Killer you can play as anything from a powerful Slasher to terrifying paranormal entities. Familiarize yourself with your Killing Grounds and master each Killer’s unique power to be able to hunt, catch and sacrifice your victims."
This does state your goal is to hunt, catch, and sacrifice your victims, and even says "the killing grounds", giving a strong indication you need to kill survivors, but all the in-game point scoring and reward systems stress the importance of scoring maximum hooks, starting and completing chases, using your power as much as possible and inflicting and keeping survivors wounded as much as possible.
Kills gets you very few points. That is fact whether or not you think points matter, and points is the only feedback the game gives you.
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Passionate about it enough to create an account? 😅
I've already answered this above in previous posts.
What is winning the game? What the devs have said on twitter or AMAs doesn't matter to the overall playerbase. Look at it from your average player perspective who doesn't observe anything outside the game. If you never read anything on social media, forums or wikis about MMR, what is the game itself telling you a win is?
Kill 4 people in 1 chase and 1 hook each. At higher ranks you will lose a pip in the end score screen. Everyone has had this happen at least once to them. How, prey tell, is losing a pip not a loss?
I dunno why everyone is so passionate about this point, I don't really care, but I'm not gonna admit I'm wrong when EVERYTHING in the actual game itself is telling to you score as many hooks as possible, not kill players as fast and efficient as possible. 🤣🤣🤣
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thought I disagree with your changes and Idea, I see where you are coming from. Pain Res is powerful, and making it deactivate after death, allows you to keep full value of it, while punishing tunneling, cool! I don't agree with that change but I understand the idea behind it.
For Grim Embrace... its still new... Id say give it 2 or 3 more months to let it settle in and then we can see, its also well designed to avoid tunneling, so someone running this is less likely to tunnel, but I don't think it would hurt to add a fail safe to punish tunneling, Personally I disagree but I see the logic
you lose me when it comes to pop, 15% Current regression? that's nothing you are better off running eruption at that point, it makes no sense to be punished for playing well, the other 2 Perks (Pain Res, GE) you get rewarded for picking out different targets already, and you can reap all the rewards with your proposed changes. With this, kill one survivor and gut your slowdown. Pop Works because it rewards getting as many hooks as possible, and your reasoning for this proposed nerf is "Its too powerful on more mobile killers" which is insane, how does weakening the slowdown of the perk help slower killers? if you wanted to help slower killers the change should be increasing the time to 60 seconds.
Also, someone getting killed, should be bad! you shouldn't be given pity boosts for letting a survivor die, yeah it sucks and a killer can tunnel which is something that can't really be prevented but still, A teammate dying should be bad! its not something to take advantage of, or get boosted from or even have the killer get weaker from, its not supposed to be good, why do you think the ruin change got reverted, because losing a powerful slowdown due to a death is just not good.
Also about the debate of a killers goal, you lose me further. what do you mean a 'KILL"er's goal isn't to kill, last I checked 8 hooks and no kills is a loss. A good killer's power ends a chase as fast as possible, so by your logic, that's bad? No, your goal is to get kills and to get them faster then survivors can do Gens, and apply pressure which you do by being good at end chases fast. I struggle to think of a reason excluding bloodpoint farming do you want chases to last long as a killer
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Hey did you know that DS and OTR, two mid perks (Unlike Pain res and Pop's META perks) get disabled when the gens are done?
Killers always love playing the victims when their boring and oppressive meta is subjected to potential changes. Even adrenaline, a totally fair and balanced perk is going to get nerfed because killers just couldn't get gud.0 -
If we gonna SERIOUSLY believe regression is unhealthy for the game, just remove it altogether, we don't need to live in regression meta when it doesn't exists.
If not, just keep them strong and stop tampering without any real reason, they are fine, they are healthy, they are fair as is, no need to make weird nerfs at all.
Huh, if you believe killers can do anything at end game, you should learn to coordinate better.
If more than 3 survivors are alive and all is healthy it's pretty much impossible for killers to secure a kill, UNLESS they make extremely stupid mistake.
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Hmmmm... necro. This thread got heavily sidetracked previously, was not too sad to see it die, but since its back...
I still have concern that the strong regression perk meta of Pain Res, Pop and Grim Embrace being used in every killers loadout regardless of killer is a little stale, and there is a real possibility of them being lined up for changes.
I also stand by the point that a Myers, Clown, Bubba or Trapper using this perk setup is not really a problem as it gives them a global presense and keeps them in the game by shoring up their main weakness (lack of mobility)…
However a Spirit, Wesker, Blight or Nurse using it is very unfun due to the sheer tunneling power they have, while still having the ability to reap all the rewards of these global regression perks.
I'm not so keen on my Pop suggestion anymore... but having Pain Res disable when a survivor dies is a nerf proposal I would be happy with if the perk has to be nerfed. Grim Embrace might be fine with out changes if Pain res is changed, as it loses tunneling efficiency by proxy, and doesn't give much slowdown on its own without Pain Res.
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