Survivor perk balance and how to make it better
So historically throughout the games life there has been endless complaints and discussion surrounding survivor perk balance and it has shifted from survivor perks being down right broken to them not being very good and has gone back and forth. Now obviously things like un-nerfed dead hard, decisive strike, distortion were pretty unfair and needed changes but I think there has been a bigger underlying issue that the devs needs to address so this type of thing can be avoided more effectively in the future and I’m going to use my favorite survivor to help me explain: Ace Visconti.
Ace is awesome and I love him but his perks are pretty underwhelming and I think that is an inherent issue in the game, let me explain.
His first perk is is Open-Handed. This perk is entirely dependent on if aura reading perks are good and not just any aura reading perks but specifically ones that have a limited range. This causes an issue where you are very very limited in applications for this perk and depending on the state of limited range aura reading perk it might not even be worth while to take. This in turn raises the question: Why take this perk when you can take dead hard, we are gonna live forever, or off the record and have them be infinitely more useful while one taking up one perk slot as you need to take both open-handed plus another limited range aura reading perk to guarantee usefulness out of this perk since you can’t guarantee other survivors will take aura reading perks that combo with this one.
His second perk is Up The Ante. This perk inherently suffers from the luck stat just being kinda useless in its current state plus the fact that if you want a perk to help with unhooking yourself there are just better options that provide more. Agains why take this perk when other perks are just going to be generally more useful.
His final perk is Ace In The Hole. This perk actually has a use and is by far his best perk. Using this perk to play the “what add on will I randomly get” game is actually quite fun and makes looking for chests and viable strat but there is still an issue with this perk. The issue here is not as bad as the other two but it still exists and its the fact that it incentivizes not bringing an item since you will want to open a chest to get a random item plus add on. This is not a huge deal on its own but take this into account when thinking about other perks you can bring and you realize you can instead bring any item plus add-ons you want while having a more useful perk throughout the match and it makes this perk just seem less desirable.
Ok so how does this all tie in to what I said earlier about the state of survivor perks and the constants complaints from killers against them? Well think about what I just showed you with these perks and the common theme: Why take these perks when other are just better even when those perks get nerfed?. I do agree some perks needed nerfs but there are so many perks in this game that should be getting buffs/reworks. We need more perks to be viable and useful that way you don’t see the same perks every game that everyone runs because we will then have more options and more play styles open to us. I used ace as an example because all 3 of his perks definitely need help but there are plenty of survivors that have perks that are just undesirable. Bill has two great perk (borrowed time and unbreakable) but Left Behind is pretty awful and has been for a long time and instead of buffing it to help diversify the survivor meta they just leave it as is.
TL.DR: buff/rework undesirable survivor perk to be able to compete with more meta ones so the meta can be more diverse and we don’t see the same perks every game.
Comments
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There will always be lesser desired perks. Most perks have a niche or synergize with others. Problem with the meta is it's hard to say not to run a specific perk like say windows or an exhaust perk when they help way too much. Perks have been buffed but they still won't be used over the meta because they don't provide enough value.
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I agree there will always be less valued perks but there is no excuse for perks like Left Behind, Up The Ante, and Open-Handed to be in the state they are in. That’s just asking for the meta to always be the same perks even if they get nerfed. BHVR really needs to start looking at the less valued perks and change them to be able to somewhat compete with the meta perks even if they aren’t on the same level.
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Those are pretty niche perks, they can be good if used in combo with other perks. For instance, Open-Handed with Wiretap or kindred is really good information. Up the Ante with slippery meat and a luck offering gives you a very high chance to unhook yourself, and if you pair it with resurgence + medkit you can unhook yourself and heal in a very short time. As for Left behind, it's very useful if you pair it with a key or even open handed. Obviously only really useful if you're trying to get hatch for a challenge but it's never been that great of a perk.
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Open hand doesn't work on Wiretap. There are also a lot of survivor perks that are convoluted and just useless out of doing challenges.
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True, The ones listed though synergize with other perks somewhat well. There's plenty of perks that are utterly useless on both sides. They seem to have been doing passes on the lesser perks as of recent with predator buff for killer and corrective action buff for survivor.
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I think survivor perk balance is tricky because, generally speaking, the community is very hostile towards survivor metas. Every time survivors get a new perk that has the potential to reach meta levels it is complained about, and the complaints remain until the perk is no longer seen.
That doesn't mean those perks were perfect, but those reactions happen and they have real consequences. You can see it clearly with Made for This and Circle of Healing, two perks that could have received very different changes and adjustments than the ones they've received.
So all that is left is to adjust the perks that we already have, but even that isn't easy to do. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to find a survivor meta which the community genuinely liked. The meta being dominated by the original iterations of Decisive Strike and Dead Hard was complained about, the DS + UB combo was complained about even in matches where it didn't have any use because the killer didn't tunnel or slug, Adrenaline was complained about even though it was not overpowered, and the list goes on.
It seems to me that the idea nowadays is to make every survivor perk equally mediocre, so you can run whatever you choose to run and not feel the difference. Unsurprisingly, one of the most used survivor perks these days is Windows of Opportunity, which was generally seen as a beginner perk in the past. Its effect is nowhere near as useful as other survivor perks used to be, but objectively it provides more than the entire sea of perks that are either extremely niche, or have been changed to a point where they are no longer good.
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For a while I used Kindred + Open Handed + Camaraderie in my SWF. If I got found my the killer I would try to loop in the central area and if hooked there I basically gave my team wallhacks in half the map, while they could leave me hanging there for such a long time. Its not the most effective build, but it can be fun, if you are a teamplayer and you enjoy the hillarious comments from your god-looper buddies who now laugh their asses off.
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I think the problem is that there are four survivors in the team, and a new meta perk has the potential to become extra obnoxious by being four times in the enemy team.
My solution will always be a pretty easy one: don't allow multiple instances of the same perk in premade SWFs. Done. It would instantly reduce the most obnoxious instnaces of SWFs hitting the killer with 4 DH, 4 Unbreakables, 4 Resiliences, while having very little impact on the more casual groups. Here and there a perk would have to be switched out, but everyone could easily find their identiy, while not affecting soloQ players at all.
People always say "hur dur, you can't punish players to play with their friends, that would be the death of the game", and that is true, but such a system wouldn't be punishing anyone for playing with their friends, it would just balance the info and pre-game advantage a bit and not punish everyone else as hard for the fact that everything has to be balanced with SWFs in mind, thus leaving soloQ players often in the dust.
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I agree here but if you go and look at the history of survivors meta the meta perks always had to be nerfed multiple times and the reason why in most cases is because even a nerfed version of something like Dead Hard is going to be more useful then something like Up The Ante because Dead Hard is just generally useful and helps in every game while Up The Ante is only useful in specific situations that are already unfavorable as you have to be hooked for it have an effect and even then a slight increase to the chance to unhook yourself is just not good compared to even nerfed versions of Dead Hard, Circle of Healing, and Distorsion just to name a few, hell it’s not even worth it compared to other perks that help you unhook yourself. The point is that these perks get complained about so often because they are in every damn game and even when they get nerfed they still show up in nearly every game causing them to get nerfed even more when the whole reason they are in every game is that there are so many perks that are just worthless and get 0 attention by the devs so why would you take anything else.
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MFT and COH were hated due to their infinite Value and reset if devs gave MFT haste a Timer like gain 3% haste for 10 seconds it would have been way less hated and Coh if they made them one time use like Hex perks or just made that killer boon kick perk basekit it woulda been fine
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I remember the hight of the COH discussions back in the day, because I was smack in the middel of it. One interesting sentiment during that discussions that was repeatet quite a lot by different people was this: "If the killer could just snuff a boon permanently and I could end up with a dead perk after 5 snuffs: no thank you, I would never equip such a perk.", yet killers Hex mechanic was always paraded around as "hur dur high risk, high reward. Just live with the fact that it could be gone in 20s or equip something else."
While the discussion was quite dishonest, what wasn't dishonest was the feeling many survivors had: for a perk to have value to a survivor, it must be available all the time or at least most of the time, and there must not be an readily available option to take that power away from them. Infinite DH was loved by 75% of the player base, one DH per hook stage not so much.
Some of it might be due to the fact that a survivor could be killed off by the killer rather quickly, so not having their full set of powers, ie all four perks, is seen as a real disadvantage, while from the killers role it is expected to have part of their powers counters, locked away till end game or even stolen from them within 20s of the game starting without any agency on their part.
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just hypocrits from them
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Coh if they made them one time use like Hex perks or just made that killer boon kick perk basekit it woulda been fine
I agree completely. The original effect would have been fine if Boons (or CoH in particular) could be permanently destroyed.
Yes, there was indeed a certain double standard during the CoH discussions.
I remember that when I suggested that Boons should be permanently destroyed as a way to balance them without changing how the three Boon perks available at the time worked, I was told that it wouldn't work because of how different Hexes and Boons were from each other.
However, I think many players didn't realize that CoH was strong enough to require a downside, or more accurately, a risk. The perk itself wasn't unhealthy for the game, it was the Boon mechanic around it that made it a problem.
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Absolutely. If each boon could be used one time and the killer could snuff if permanently, like the Shattered Hope effect, then CoH would have nev34 been perceived as that unbalanced and could have kept its healing station effect.
But even during the hight of the Boon era Shattered Hope was just incredibly bad. I had it equipped one evening and got so little value out if it.
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I think I only used Shattered Hope, like, once. I got some value out of it, but it was barely even noticeable.
It is safe to say that the situation with Boon perks around Mikaela's release could have been better handled. Maybe they'll get some changes again, in a few years.
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I still don't understand how anyone can defend Ace in the Hole not being able to get Iri addons, when Dramaturgy can. Chest perks as a whole need a buff.
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CoH was the problem, but it could have been fixed, and kept its original effect, if the downside was that it could only be applied once per totem.
* I mean, since you have the totem blocker mechanic in the game now, it could have worked with blessing, to where you try to re-apply CoH to the totem, and it would just be blocked by the Entity.0
