Would You Rather Have Power Creep or Redundancy?

I would much rather have power creep over redundancy. The last thing I ever want to see are new perks or killer abilities introduced which in the grand scheme of things are either useless except under specific circumstances, or basically do the exact same thing as a previous character just slightly differently and are therefore unoriginal concepts.

This is something that a game like Rainbow Six Siege suffers from, in an effort to avoid power creep they're starting to introduce operators that basically do the same thing. To the point where they're taking old concepts from the attacking or defending side and slapping them onto the other side as a "brand new operator". Nokk is just Caveira / Vigil, Kaid is just Bandit, Clash is Montagne, Zofia is Ashe, Wamai is Jager, Kali is Glaz, and so on and so forth. In the worst of circumstances you create an operator like Warden, who's only ability is to not get flashed and see through smoke... as long as he stands still. Completely, and utterly worthless (despite looking flashy and fashionable).

It makes for really old, really bland gameplay which hardly ever evolves.

On the opposite end of the spectrum you have a game like League of Legends which recently introduced new champions Sett and Aphelios both of which were received on the negative side because they were extremely overpowered and pushed older, generally considered weaker champions even farther back in the meta than they already are (The latter more than the former, but still). Bordering irrelevancy.

However, in a general sense I think it's much easier to realize what aspects of a character are too powerful and nerf those facets to be more in line with existing characters than say "hey, this character is really weak but their power only covers a niche utility, what brand new mechanic can we introduce into their kit to make them better?". Even if you end up nerfing an OP character into the ground you can still eventually recover by slowly reincorporating those previously considered "op" facets of and begin to strike a balance gradually by either scaling them up or slowly scaling them down.

Introducing much more redundant, uninspired, niche utility characters, are much harder to work with, simply because of the fact there's not much there to work with as a baseline in the first place.

Coming back to Dead By Daylight, I think the devs have done a pretty good job so far (yep) of avoiding introducing niche characters or unoriginal concepts. Hillbilly and Leatherface, despite both having chainsaws are polar opposites in function: Hillbilly gains a massive amount of agility while using his, giving him a lot of map pressure, but can only down one survivor at a time, it is also harder to use. Leatherface can down multiple survivors at once, making him a much stronger defending killer, but he has to accelerate before picking up speed, and gains mobility instead being able to maneuver much more easily and controllably. But both share the capacity to instantly down a survivor from a full healed state to dying state. We all know which is better, but that's besides the point the point is that they're distinctly original

Ghostface and Michael Myers both stalk their unsuspecting victims. But Ghostface's Night Shroud ability, removes his terror radius completely, he is shorter, and also has the ability to crouch making him far more efficient at catching survivors off guard. However, Ghostface (though he can stalk multiple survivors at a time) can only expose one survivor at a time and every survivor has their own individual exposed meter. Because his stealth capabilities are so much more efficient he can also be kicked out of his power, and when he's not using night shroud he cannot stalk. Michael Myers in contrast, has a terror radius that gradually increases the more he stalks survivors, at the beginning he is undetectable but he is slower and relies on these surprise attacks to do any significant damage. In EW2 he has a terror radius smaller than any other killer, and in EW3 it's normal. The difference being he puts everyone in the exposed effect at once allowing him to steamroll a massive amount of pressure at a specific time.

(this next paragraph just continues to illustrate this trend of unique killers by comparing deathslinger to huntress, you don't have to read the next brick of text)

This trend continues with the reveal of our newest killer the Deathslinger. I love the comparison between Deathslinger and Huntress, simply because you could go back and forth for hours about who is more powerful. Some say the answer is clear cut but I say it's more nuanced than that. Both the Huntress and Deathslinger are ranged killers, but how they go about it is wildly different. The deathslinger uses a barbed spear to hook them from a distance and pulls them in close to cut them down. Whereas the Huntress throws hatchets from a distance and deals a straight state of damage. The Huntress (as far as I'm aware) depending on how long you charge and the angle at which you throw a hatchet has a practically unlimited range, enabling her to hit extremely long distance shots as long as you have the accuracy. The deathslinger however, has a static maximum ranger of 18 meters, any farther than that and he won't catch anybody. But to compensate for this, the deathslinger has a reduced terror radius of 24 meters, allowing him to get much closer to survivors without them realizing he is there. Whereas the Huntress has a lullaby on top of her terror radius, which gradually increases in intensity the closer she is making her presence audible at a range of 45 meters. To further compensate, the Huntress has a charge time to throw her hatchets before they're throwable, it's slower and more clunky. Where the deathslinger has an almost immediate ADS time allowing him to hit his shots much faster. The projectiles themselves are also very different, hitboxes for the hatchets huntress uses are rectangles and if they hit anything that isn't a survivor, that hatchet is gone. Whereas the hitbox for the hooked spear the deathslinger uses is very fine and thin, allowing him to hit crazy shots in tiny spaces between objects. On top of all this despite having more aggressive power in her ability at a longer distance the huntress has to reload her hatchets at lockers placed around the map, meaning if she's in a chase she either has to disengage, or suffer through as a 110% movement speed killer. Whereas hit or miss, the deathslinger reloads after every shot he takes, but has the capability to maintain LOS and keep up the chase. Also the deathslinger has the ability to force survivors into the deep wounds status effect forcing survivors to mend after they've been hit, this can give him more slowdown potential than the Huntress and allows his own ability to be just as aggressive as Huntress hatchets, just at a closer range. (I could go on even more but I'll cap it there this paragraph is too long).

TL;DR It would be a real shame for BHVR to start introducing redundant or niche concepts. To a certain extent they've already done this with perks (and I haven't even talked about perks this whole time) like Cruel Limits from the Demogorgon, Blood Echo from the Oni, Solidarity from Jane Romero, Buckle Up from Ash Williams, etc. and I would hate to see this continue.

Read the brick of text and I agree that power creep is better than redundancy more than ever before thanks to the Archive and Rift systems.

In the past, Dead by Daylight had multiple events. I know I first joined the community during the winter event of 2017. I participated in the Howling Grounds event in 2018 followed by fondly remembered events including the Summer BBQ event, the Hallowed Blight Event and even 2019's winter event and the following Moonrise event. You guys remember Moonrise, right? The event with the lanterns? You guys also remember the main menu and side menus getting temporary backgrounds and music changes for winter and Halloween? Now though, it seems like all of that content and the appropriate festivals are being done straight through the rift. No more menus, no more in-game events or new objectives.

What I'm trying to say is, this new shift from temporary events in-game to rift rewards will get redundant real quick. The game is already starting to be more about grinding for Archive rewards than the actual matches. I know I am not innocent of this and have thrown games just for 1 more safe hook save for 30k BP. So I know that powercreep will be good for Dead by Daylight.

I mean, power creep is an inevitability if content is going to be added, so might as well make more powerful perks.