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Addition of new perks worsens the game. Nerf "random rule" perks, and stop introducing them entirely

Many times when a new perk is added, the perk introduces a strange and unpredictable set of rules. For die hard fans, the ability to strategize intelligently is lessened with each addition, because they must guess at which of these "random rule" perks are in play. Each new "random rule" perk increases the required knowledge a player must have to play effectively, making the game far less accessible to new players.

I've been playing religiously since pre-release, and it's getting harder to drag new friends in, because there are so many Killer perks I have to explain. As of lately, my friends are immediately turned off by the needless complexity.

"Ok, this killer might have Discordance, so that means we have to make sure not to run a generator together, or he can see us!"

"I know I said 'only cleanse the fiery totems', but Hallowed Ground might be one of the fiery totems, so don't touch them unless you know there's Ruin. Wait, you don't know what Ruin is?!"

"Every time someone gets hooked, you have to sorta walk one direction, then double back in case the killer has Barbecue and Chili, and can see you for 4 seconds outside of a 40 meter radius. I KNOW IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE, JUST WALK!"

"Don't heal when the killer is too close because they might have A Nurse's Calling"

After getting burned by a few of these perks, my friends tend to say "This game is stupid", and abandon it. These "random rule" perks should be reformed so the way to win a game is through skillful stealth and teamwork, NOT an encyclopedic knowledge of nonsensical random rules.

Perks which I believe are the worst of the "random rule" perks, which should be removed, or aggressively changed.

A Nurse's Calling

Barbecue & Chili

Blood Warden

Dark Devotion

Discordance

Haunted Ground

Thrill of the Hunt

Insidious

Iron Maiden

Surveillance

Territorial Imperative

Tinkerer

One simple way to help nerf the aura reveal perks, is to highlight a player in red whenever the killer can see their aura. So at least a new player will learn "I'm red, the killer can see me, I don't understand what "random rule" perk caused this, but at least I have a chance to run".

Bracing myself for rage from diehard players, and hoping the devs at least understand where I'm coming from.

Comments

  • Tru3Lemon
    Tru3Lemon Member Posts: 1,358

    Theres alot of killer perks that needs a buff or rework i dont really get this post to be honest if you dont like the way the perk work just play civ or something else

  • Rydog
    Rydog Member Posts: 3,275

    The knowledge burden is particularly stupid in this game, I agree. I've gone through this exact same scenario with friends, who have predictably arrived at a "This game is stupid" conclusion. There's just a lot of weird claptrap to get used to, and Behaviour has roundly disregarded any kind of healthy or positive new player experience.

    But at this point, what is even the solution? At its heart, this is a game of collecting and denying information; any kind of broad tip-off that an aura perk is in use is essentially self-defeating, but killers need these detection perks to function. I can say "run Distortion" to essentially accomplish what the OP is suggesting, but I think "run X to counter Y" advice is idiotic because you can't know what perks your opponent is bringing, and also it's not newbie-friendly.

  • Raptorrotas
    Raptorrotas Member Posts: 3,257

    Yeah you're right about some stuff and the general idea behind this thread is legit.

    But you shouldnt have picked only killer perks ans then so many of them. You come ascross as a petty survivor.

    Thrill of the hunt and territorial? Really?

  • starpilotsix
    starpilotsix Member Posts: 203

    So... you want a game with only 10-15 perks?

    Because there are only a limited number of game mechanic things you can do that don't fall into the category of "random rule." On the killer side, you could increase attack swing/cooldown, movement speed, generator and/or pallet kicking, and stun resistance. Maybe killer power activation, but as we saw with Tinkerer, that kind of thing is a huge load on Devs and makes some perks not really work with killer powers. But pretty much everything else would fall under your "random rule" complaint.

    And survivor? If you fast-vault, you suddenly get a boost of speed! What a random new rule! If the gates open, you get healed if injured! What a random new rule! After unhooking someone, you heal super fast! What a random new rule!

    Personally, the wide variety of perks is the main thing that makes the game FUN. Every match is a little different, you can try out weird builds that make you awesome in one rare situation but less effective overall than the average survivor/killer.

    Get rid of the variety and it's just a game of who can run around pallets better and I'm bored AF.

  • Karltastisk
    Karltastisk Member Posts: 529

    I understand where you are coming from, but alot of these perks is what keeps the game fun. bloodwarden being an example. If you play with a new friend and bloodwarden triggers you are gonna have the OH Shiat! moment. And next time he might ask should we leave to not get bloodwardend? Thats how you learn the game. And thats what keeps the game fresh, not always knowing what you are up against. If they simply get mad and refuse to learn, then thats on them not the game. I can agree that getting no notification when lets say being aura read can be annoying. I feel this is what people have to go trough to get better at the game. You can't expect to be instantly good in any new game you start to play. I just recently introduced 4 new friends to the game and had to go trough this explaining period. And now they all go into lockers for 4 seconds when someone is about to get hooked ;P

  • Stick
    Stick Member Posts: 2

    I actually WOULD be glad to get rid of the vast majority of perks. There's tons of variety in the game already based on how each of the killers plays. Go the route of Freddy, and make add-ons that modify their powers. (Dream Pallet vs Dream Snare). My new friends love researching the killers' skills because their uniqueness feels motivated, not random. "The hillbilly runs fast, the nurse teleports, wraith goes invisible. This is cool, what does the Scream guy do?"

    The main reason I picked the perks I did is because they're not understandable to a player WHILE playing against them, the player must have pre-existing knowledge to understand. It has nothing to do with how deadly they are. If this was about balancing, I'd throw Ruin on there, but at least it's plainly obvious when you're being ruined.

    Franklin's Demise for example is a "random rule", but the player very clearly sees "I got hit, and I dropped my item. A clear cause&effect relationship. I should avoid getting hit". It's a perk that is self explanatory and fair, it's not like BBQ + Chili where a new player will get burnt by the perk repeatedly in a game, and have absolutely no idea unless they read up on DBD and study it like a test. Thrilling Tremors is a good example of a fair "random rule", you see a player get picked up, at the same time you see the claws wrap the generator. These are fair because they can be understood during gameplay. So maybe I should change my definition. "Random rules that can't be learned while playing, only understood by reading about them in a post-game lobby or on the internet."

    Yeah there are obviously some absurd "Random Rule" survivor perks too. Too many to list, but maybe the biggest would be Deliverance. I focused on the killer perks because my whole gripe is that the game is evolving in such a way that it's harder to bring friends in. And you can obviously only play with friends as survivors, not as a team of killers, so it's far more important to focus on the killer perks to solve the "bring a friend" issue. I would not mind nerfing a ton of survivor perks too.

  • savevatznick
    savevatznick Member Posts: 651

    Well, this may not help your concern, but part of playing the game on both sides is reading what perks the opponents have as well as their general temperament.

    As survivor, you certainly want to be making not of ever instance of perk usage so you can begin counterplaying them as soon as possible. It's easy to read perks like Discordance, BBQnC, Nurses's calling, etc after observing how the killer moves and such. It's good to build a profile of sorts and see if you can read every perk the killer has at the end of the game so you won't be surprised by them. The killer generally has to do the same per survivor.

    It takes game knowledge, which newer people might not understand.

  • ABannedCat
    ABannedCat Member Posts: 2,529
    edited August 2019

    As far as I see, you wanna get rid of all the strong killer perks, while not touching the strong survivor perks. I killer too has to learn these "random rules". Dead hard, Decisive Strike, Borrowed Time, just to name a few. The knowledge burden on the killer is even bigger than on survivors, since survivors are just skins, and could therefor run anything. For example a Leatherface is unlikely to run Nurses Calling, since he cant capitalise on it properly, while on a Nurse or Huntress, its an amazing perk to run.

  • PolarBear
    PolarBear Member Posts: 1,899

    Every perk basically is a "random rule". If you have botany knowledge and the killer can't know you'll pick up a slugged player faster than normal.

    If we were to remove perks that you consider to be random rule perks, almost all tracking perks would be removed as the survivor couldn't possibly know if the killer can see you. It's always a guessing game and you can almost never be 100% sure.

    In rainbow six siege you also need to figure out what all the operators do and how fast they move, how much armor they, what equipment they have access to, etc. it would limit perk options immensely if bhvr couldn't make random rule perks.

  • KillermainBTWm8
    KillermainBTWm8 Member Posts: 4,212

    There is a meta. This helps with knowledge greatly the majority of perks on both sides are trash. They'll catch up soon enough.

  • TheUnendingNightmare
    TheUnendingNightmare Member Posts: 1,172

    You can't be serious ?

    Is he serious ?

    Just use a better build, in the entity's world the survivors have the large end of the stick.

  • Rydog
    Rydog Member Posts: 3,275

    I think some people here are really not understanding the OP's point, and trying to hijack with strawman arguments. This isn't an issue of "use a better build." It's an issue of new players hitting a brick wall in terms of understanding, and having no accommodating path toward even creating "a better build."

    @savevatznick said: "Well, this may not help your concern, but part of playing the game on both sides is reading what perks the opponents have as well as their general temperament."

    Part of the issue is that there are 125 perks in the game. Learning the telltale signs of this and that is not an easy or intuitive process. I've got at least 750 hours in the game, and I still make false-positive IDs on BBQ & Chili and other perks all the time. A new player isn't going to understand all of this stuff, and it's very easy for someone to quickly hit this wall and go "oh hell no" and move on to something else that's more respectful of their time.

  • Rydog
    Rydog Member Posts: 3,275

    @TKJesse Yeah, I've complained about this exhaustively in these forums. The grind is unreasonably excessive.