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Unnecessarily complicated perks. (e.g. Gearhead)
I'm not a fan of perks like "if it rains and you're wearing a blue sweater and your father's name starts with an 'M', you'll get a sprint burst" like unrelated conditions to achieve something. I see it's starting to gain traction to design perks like that.
I think it started with Nancy's Inner Strength, so you do a totem, then you hide in a locker and then you heal. They have no cohesion whatsoever, totems are a mechanic, lockers are a different mechanic, and healing is a different mechanic. Despite of all that it seems "fine" and it feels easy to use and you have some control on when to activate it.
However, Gearhead. So you hit a survivor twice, it activates for 30 seconds (which is not much BTW) and if a survivor hits a good skillcheck the aura of a gen lights up. It's not a perk you'd plan ahead to use, like "Hold on, let's wait for 15 seconds more before downing this survivor, because in the next 30 second window I'm sure a skillcheck will pop up and I'll see which gen they're working on".
I don't know if I'm explaining this point correctly, but I think perks should be more straight forward.
My 2 cents. Feel free to agree/disagree.
Comments
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I think the conditional statements are going to be an unavoidable result if players are going to expect new perks to continue to be added alongside killers/survivors. The unfortunate reality is there's only so many ways you can modify action speed/exhaustion/aura reading before you have to get creative. The only options are either adding/expanding mechanics entirely, i.e. Ace Visconti bringing luck perks and The Hag bringing Hex perks, or creating complicated requirements for new perks.
In regards specifically to Inner Strength, I think the Totem cleansing mechanic basically serves as a "limited charges" sort of thing, to stop Nancies from healing themselves over and over again in lockers, which are found literally everywhere. I really think the perk is decently designed, but I can understand where you're coming from when trying to view the mechanics as individually separate.
Although I do agree that things are starting to lean towards the "too many conditionals for somewhat small benefits", it's worth noting that the benefit to these perks being only semi-useful is that none of them are meta, meaning you're not required or urged to run them if you don't like how complicated/difficult they are to use.
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Every possible simple perk will be made eventually. Once they're gone, if they're not gone already, they will only be able to make perks with more conditions. On a side note, imagine calling Gearhead overly complex. Dead Man's Switch is way harder to activate and the effect is just as complicated.
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Condition activation being taken too far is a pretty significant problem with recent perk releases.
Perks like second wind could be good, but the condition basically requires you to get 2 heals unless the stars align.
Inner Strength is pretty decent as a perk and is complex but not too complex
Gear head just has so many conditions, first hit 2 basic attacks, now you have it active for 30 seconds, now wait to see if survivors get any skill checks, now hope they don't hit the great.
In addition to lasting not long at all, having an activation condition that makes it bad on a lot of killers, it's completly counterable by great skill checks and bad RNG can mean you just don't get any effect at all even if the survivor can't hit greats. Like what the hell, you know these perks are supposed to effect the game in a way advantageous to you right BHVR?
The reason nobody ever uses your new perks and still use the same old perks they've been using for years is because you make these activation conditions so hard reaching that you actually have to play badly to make them work. Like there's a huge chunk of new perks, where you could have pretended not to have the perk equipped, and played better as a result because you focused on more important things like actually doing your objective rather than going on a quest for the holy grail just to get a mediocre effect.
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I think Dead man's switch is a straight forward perk, and I'm sure it will be useful on some killers. Also, DMS is a slow down perk, while gearhead is an information perk, so even if I don't think DMS is a great perk, I think it's better than Gearhead overall.
Imagine a Freddy hooking the Obsession, you see with BBQ two or more survivors working on a gen, you TP there, they let go... and that's it, they can't work on that gen for the next 40 seconds, which gives you time to chase and hook one of those survivors. It could even work on two gens, since maybe another gen close to the hook is being worked and that surivor goes for the save without knowing. If you hook that survivor, you can even probably "pop" the gen when it's not blocked anymore. It's really good to apply momentary pressure and put the game on hold if you are lucky enough.
You sort of have control and understand when to use DMS. However, Gearhead depends on a skillcheck appearing in a 30 second window (which may not appear at all) and it only tells you which gen is being worked (it doesn't even block it like DMS, preventing survivors to finish it).
And I said Gearhead is overly complex because RELATIVELY there are more straight forward perks.
Gearhead is: Hit-->Hit-->Activates-->maybe a skillcheck will appear, maybe not-->aura highlighted. There are perks that do a better job or give you more consistent info, like BBQ, Discordance or the combo Surveillance/Ruin if you plan to protect gens.
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I think Inner Strength is fine. Gearhead, though, is one of my least favourite Perks ever and I definitely agree it's an overly complex mess- And, worst of all, it's an overly complex mess that fills the same design space as a bunch of other Perks. Why would I touch Gearhead when Thrilling Tremors exists?
A Perk can be simple to use and simultaneously be overly complicated. Gearhead is a REALLY roundabout Perk that does something relatively simple that a bunch of similar Perks do in half the explanation/activation conditions, even it doesn't actually change your playstyle. (and by the same token, a fairly simple Perk like Save The Best For Last can dramatically change your playstyle and still be fantastic)
I'm not actually against complicated Perks, I think the reason people single out Gearhead is because it feels complicated without good reason.
I agree that the design space is slowly shrinking for Perks and new, more complex Perks that retread old ground is slowly becoming more and more of a necessity- I also think a LOT of people place far too much emphasis on Perks being meta-shaking as being an important factor of Perks being good. However, Gearhead is still terrible. To quickly plug my personal suggested rework:
Whenever a Survivor triggers a Great Skill Check for Generator repair, the Generator triggers a Loud Noise Notification for you. Good Skill Check success zones for Generator repair are reduced by 10/15/20%.
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or even:
Gearhead
Anytime a survivor hits a Good Skill Check on a generator within 24/28/32 meters, the survivor's aura is revealed to you for 3 seconds.
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