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Some Thoughts About Boon: Steadfast

jesterkind
jesterkind Member Posts: 9,847
in General Discussions

I figured I'd make my own post since the thoughts here are a little rambling to be on anyone else's thread. So, Steadfast's preview has some rather worrying elements to it, and I've been thinking about how to potentially prevent the perk from being a huge problem once it's actually hit the game.

The sticking point here is that the perk has two problems, and one of them is both far easier and far less important to fix.
If we're only looking at the perk as it would be used by the person bringing it, the problem is very clear- the numbers it has would require the use of a toolbox and probably some other tools to make it function, and after that investment the perk would only be mediocre. This is super easy to fix, just do something like:

  • Repair speed penalty lowered to 15-20%
  • Permanent progress per great skill check raised to 3-5%

That way the perk has a downside that is both much easier to manage, and a more potent effect that more justifies having the downside to begin with. Just from the perspective of the person bringing the boon, this perk still probably won't be hard meta, but that's fine, it just needs to be worth using.
…But that's the snag. This is a boon. While it only affects one generator, it affects that one generator for everyone repairing it, and they have no guarantee to have prepared for a repair speed penalty, because why would they think to do that?

This is the FAR bigger problem with the perk, and it's also harder to fix without tossing out the core concept of the perk… which we can't do because it was voted on. Sticky situation. You could do something like:

  • Repair speed penalty removed entirely

And that's certainly a solution, but one I don't favour because it means the actual charges taken off can't ever be much better than they are in the preview we've been given. Even with the booning time, permanent repair progress is a big deal, it's something that should generally require keeping in check… but you'd also only bring something like that if the effects are good, and 1% isn't really, even if it's appropriate for the investment the perk asks of you.

So, instead, I've considered something like:

  • Repair speed penalty removed
  • Permanent progress per great skill check raised to 5%
  • Each player repairing can only contribute 10% permanent progress per boon activation

Which would work a lot better, what we see there is basically a sidegrade to Weaving Spiders— it doesn't have the potent upside of instantly adding that amount to every generator on the map, but it also doesn't have the potent downside of the minute-long Invocation or the permanent Broken. You'd need to repeatedly re-boon to benefit more than a BNP, but that'd also be the only real downside.
This version of the perk could also affect more than one generator and be pretty fair… but it's sloppy, right? This is kind of an awkward way to make the perk work?

One final idea for discussion could be a re-imagining of how "boon that provides permanent progress" could work, something like:

  • While the boon is active, great skill checks performed in its radius "lock in" X% of current progress to ensure it can't be regressed even after the boon is snuffed.

Now, the biggest detracting argument for this one is that it does somewhat break the rules of Boons, which typically don't provide benefits that last after the totem is snuffed, but the counter-argument I'd suggest would be that CoH gives health states that aren't taken away when the totem gets kicked, so you could argue it's in a similar vein.
If X here is sufficiently low and we allow it to work on all gens in its radius, this could be a more fair baseline for the perk since it requires repair already be done before it'd be effective. At the same time, it's a similar sort of value to taking charges off the maximum, so similar arguments could be made about it being too strong for a single perk affecting the entire team.

So far that's all I have. It's kind of an interesting problem to try and fix with the parameters we've been given, honestly, I've enjoyed thinking about it. I'm not hard-committing to any of these things as The Changes That Should Be Made, I just think they're interesting + potentially viable directions to look.

Comments

  • DNet89
    DNet89 Member Posts: 259

    If they made Great Skill checks bigger for the affected Generator it could work

  • AbsolutGrndZer0
    AbsolutGrndZer0 Member Posts: 1,993

    Nah, this is a great Killer perk, they should leave it unchanged.

  • crogers271
    crogers271 Member Posts: 3,494

    This is super easy to fix, just do something like:

    • Repair speed penalty lowered to 15-20%
    • Permanent progress per great skill check raised to 3-5%

    The issue is that there is actually a pretty huge difference in these numbers. 20 and 3 would probably be an okay, situational thing that could be pretty useful, while 15 and 5 would be so strong that skill check builds in 4 person SWFs would rival Blight winstreaks.

    • Repair speed penalty removed
    • Permanent progress per great skill check raised to 5%
    • Each player repairing can only contribute 10% permanent progress per boon activation

    Which would work a lot better, what we see there is basically a sidegrade to Weaving Spiders—

    Well a sidegrade to Weaving Spiders isn't great, given that its one of the worst perks in the game.

    However, I think this would be stronger than Weaving Spiders by quite a bit. It's now not hard for a duo* to set up 20% on a few gens at the start of the match, dropping various boon activations around, or for a four person to rotate through and knock out the final 40% of a gen and carryon to the next.

    The raw progress I think is a far bigger issue than the permanent nature on the value side here.

    *If I read the idea correctly, the 10% cap applies to all four survivors, if it was a 10% cap universally it would be a really bad perk.

    • While the boon is active, great skill checks performed in its radius "lock in" X% of current progress to ensure it can't be regressed even after the boon is snuffed.

    I think the great skill check nature of the perk causes far more issues than people realize. Right now as survivors improve at skill checks (something the killer can't do anything about) it provides a fairly minor boost (outside Hyperfocus), however perks that provide progress per great skill check are very hard to balance because survivors hitting 75% vs 40% vs 10% will see radically different worth from the perk (cue cries, this time more justified, about high MMR).

    As @cogsturning mentioned it being a boon and permanent are the only real things the perk needs. I think a lot of people were anticipating something that made the progress of gens in the radius permanent. If they kept the idea of the boon affecting the nearest gen instead of a radius (which incidentally I think is a good way to expand the scope and value of boons in design) and doing something like 15% of progress on the gen as permanent (even with a qualifier of something like a max of 0.2 c/s), you now have a good perk design. The survivors have to consider the trade offs of setting up the boon and the killer has to adjust their strategy - it creates multiple options for both sides on how they play around it (dropping the range nature would probably require some indicator to the killer that the perk was in play, and potentially a downside to the survivors of the totem being snuffed depending on the strength of the permanent progress).

  • Wiccamanplays
    Wiccamanplays Member Posts: 306

    Fundamentally Boon: Steadfast was a promise the devs couldn't keep. There was never a way to make a balanced perk with the given criteria. It was either going to be insanely OP or useless, and for the health of the game the devs had to go with useless. Any attempt to tweak it based on numbers alone won't work, as its core design is a non-starter.