The Addon System is bad for balance.

savevatznick

@Peanits please refer to my other thread. I will link it if you need it.

If you don't want this game to be competitive, just say it. Stop keeping the community in suspense with your phony "ranking system" and whatnot.

The addon system ruins balance because it gives killers a variable level of power. This means they are either objectively more powerful, or objectively less powerful. How do you balance an assymetrical game when one side has varying levels of power?

Examples

1. The brown-to-green addons scale. Most addons linearly increase a killer's power in a single dimension. When stacked, they can result in a vastly more powerful killer than before, due to addons alone. A full green-addons legion, or trapper, or spirit, or nurse, or any other killer except for Wraith, is more threatening than a full-brown addon version. Why? Because addons are linear increases in power. A Legion who can frenzy for 15 seconds as opposed to 12 seconds is objectively more threatening, just as a trapper who can hold three traps is more threatening than two. There is no reason not to use more powerful addons if they exist. The only thing stopping killers from achieving their maximum competitive power level is the amout of grind from bloodwebs
2. Killers varying in power sucks for survivors. It sucks to play a competitive game against an unknown quantity. Does that Spirit have prayer beads? You don't know until it punishes you. Do the trapper's traps reset, or inflict dying on you? You can't know until someone walks into a trap. What's worse is that a killer's power level varies more drastically. A brown-addons killer is less threatening than a green addons killer, because the green killer is objectively more threatening than a brown addon killer. Shorter downtimes, more uptimes, better stats, a green killer is objectively better. Why leave this to chance? Why would you balance a killer's kit around whether or not they have the right addons?
3. Killers varying in power sucks for killers. In a game design/ balance perspective it sucks for a trapper to be stuck at a one-trap threshold simply because his addons give him the "potential" to carry four traps at once. The add-on system introduces a frankly uncompetitive level of variability founded on scarcity, in which a killer is balanced around whether or not they CAN be threatening with the right addons if they have grinded for it, as opposed to each killer being viable on their own, and addons simply modifying their power. The game sucks when you can't play a killer at the rank you're placed in, simply because you haven't ground out the addons needed to make them viable.

The addon system and the bloodweb are intertwined. Without addons to grind for, the bloodweb is just filler. Addons should not be limited-use if they are needed for core gameplay. This should be pretty simple for a AA game studio to grasp.

Remove the bloodweb. Balance killers around their core power. Let add-ons be side-grades that enhance one aspect of a power while detracting from another. There is no reason to keep the blood web, other than to inflate your Steam player numbers with poor newbies trying to grind for perks to actually be able to play this game at a competitive level. My other thread goes into this more deeply, but my point is :

TL:DR

This game is broken because killers come to the table with a variable level of power. The whole game is balanced around a killer playing optimally with the best addons, when that is rarely the case for people besides no-lifers. . The devs should balance killers around their core powers, and have add-ons be modifications, rather than straight upgrades.

Warning : Don't flood this thread with stupid pro-killer/pro survivor whining. Mindless "killers / survivors always get what they want" solves nothing. Address the core problems with the game.

derperson

The whole asymmetrical balancing seems so hard to me. Like, I always imagined that the power of the killer and a cohesive 4 man survivor group shared a reciprocity that kept them in line.

When I first started playing, I imagined that the survivors power was within their cohesion, and in a sense it is. But, there are instances where they're not going to be together, so balancing the game, considering that creates a bunch of circumstantial issues that need to be addressed to keep things fair.

Like, I see how addons that increase values linearly can get out of hand when stacked, but we see a similar level of growth in power when you have individual survivors working on a gen each without any interference from the killer. Even three working on a gen each, while the killer is chasing another is immense survivor power. Three survivors on one gen would take 33 seconds, or 99 seconds for 3, assuming they go together. Whereas doing a gen each they net 3 gens in 80 seconds which is huge. This kind of cohesion the survivors have access to is what I imagine the linear growth of certain stacked addons are meant to counter. In cases where survivors aren't maximizing their strength of cohesion, those same stacked killer addons can be brutal and maybe thats why they appear unfair? But, I have seen survivors do the same when they all bring in items, and are cohesive af.

I feel you though, because everything I just said about killer performance relies on killers having access to those addons, and without those addons killers can be nearly ineffective. I just ran out of my favorite addons for my spirit and I'm having a pretty hard time playing her, even though I have 50+ of every other addon I don't use.

I know your post isn't entirely about that, but I wish that killers had a way to get addons in the level like survivors can. I suppose BBQ and chili is supposed to be our saving grace for this complaint. Iunno.