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Perks have way too many unnecessary and inconsistent conditions
Almost every perk has at least one condition in order to be used. Self Care requires you to be injured, Barbeque requires you to hook a survivor and so on. These conditions allow the devs to design perks while making sure that they aren't too overpowered. A powerful perk that doesn't have the necessary conditions to restrict it can negatively impact the meta of the game, see ruin/decisive/mettle etc. However, when you compare the perks that were designed at the beginning of the game besides the newer perks a certain pattern starts to emerge. From what I can observe, I believe that the devs are misusing conditions in two different ways. They are putting too many conditions on certain perks that severely limit their usefulness, while also being inconsistent in how they apply conditions to certain groups of perks.
When talking about putting too many conditions on perks, there is one chapter which provides many excellent examples of what I'm talking about, the Stranger Things chapter. Mindbreaker is a perk that applys exhaustion on survivors that are working on gens. A pretty decent perk, you might think, if it weren't for the condition that the gen must be below 50% progress. So for this perk to work, not only must the survivors have exhaustion perks, they must also be below 50% on their gen. These conditions make what could be a mid tier perk into a bottom tier perk. It doesn't stop there. Surge has four different conditions on it, being within 32m of a gen, downing a survivor, only using a basic attack and a 40 second cooldown, all for a 6.4 second reduction on nearby gens. Fixated is a neat perk that for some reason doesn't work when injured, even though there's no reason why walking 20% faster while injured is too OP. Meanwhile, Second Wind requires a full heal for it to work, so if someone healed themselves for a second before you found them you're out of luck, and that's on top of the fact that you have to survive 30 seconds after being unhooked for it to work. It's not just these perks either, many other perks suffer from either having too many conditions or having conditions that make no sense. While I'm not saying that these perks need no conditions, it is a matter of fact that because of these unnecessary conditions that these perks aren't used that often.
While having too many or unnecessary conditions is a problem, I think a bigger problem is that the devs are very inconsistent when it comes to putting conditions on similar perks. To understand what I mean, let's go back to our friend Surge and compare it to another perk, Infectious Fright. While these two perks serve different functions, they are both activated by downing a survivor. However, Infectious Fright can be activated by any attack and it has no cooldown. In comparison, Surge requires basic attacks and has a 40 second cooldown. Even though they are activated by the same action, Infectious Fright has way less restrictions. Take a guess at which one's considered the better perk.
It isn't just those two perks that are like this. Pop and Barbeque require a hook to activate, meanwhile Blood Echo requires a hook, injured survivors, and has a 60 second cooldown to boot. Fixated and Urban Evasion both increase movement speed, but Urban Evasion works if your injured while Fixated doesn't. In fact, Urban Evasion used to have this condition but they removed it. Second Wind and Aftercare both activate after a heal, but Aftercare only requires completing a heal while Second Wind requires you doing a 100% heal. Solitary and Autodidact don't work with med kits but Botany Knowledge and We'll Make It do. The game is full of these contradictions. Now I know that different perks do different things so it's difficult comparing them, but it's clear to see that certain perks are given conditions that are inconsistent with perks that have similar activations or effects.
The worst part of this to me is that this is still happening today, as show by one of the newest perks Trails of Torment. This perk requires kicking a gen to gain 15 seconds of Undetectable. It seems good on paper, but surprise, there are two more conditions. It reveals the gen you kicked to all survivors and it has another cooldown of 80 seconds. Now let's compare it to another similar perk, Dark Devotion. Dark Devotion gives 30 seconds of Undetectable, doesn't reveal your location unless you down the survivor, and it has no cooldown. Trails of Torment not only has too many conditions that weighs it down, it is also inconsistent with how other Undetectable perks work. This perk is the perfect example of the problem I am talking about in this thread.
I've have rambled long enough so I summarize it here. I believe that the devs should go back to these perks and make them as consistent as they can be with one another. Then when designing perks they should ask themselves questions like "If this perk didn't have this condition, would it be too powerful?" and "Is this perk in line with other similar perks?" I know the devs don't aspire to make top tier perks every chapter, and that's alright. However, I believe that every perk should be in line with similar perks in terms of strength and not be outclassed because of unnecessary conditions.
Comments
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I agree with the core principle of this thread, but there are some things you missed about some of the perks you mentioned.
- Ruin, like all Hex perks, is meant to be powerful until it is destroyed. In Ruin's particular case, the effect is negligible as long as survivors never let go of the generator, so putting more activation conditions would make it worse.
- Blood Echo only requires the survivors be injured to apply the Hemorrhage effect. They all get Exhaustion regardless.
Other than those two nitpicks, this is an excellent thread.
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Thanks for your feedback! For your first point of you're talking about what I said in the first paragraph I meant old Ruin. I'll update the thread to make that clear. I do agree that Hex perks should be powerful as they have the condition of not being broken.
For Blood Echo though, I never knew that! I always taught that the survivors have to be injured to be exhausted. I'll look that up to double check.
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well, I wouldn't say that being injured is an unnecessary condition for self-care, it's how the perk works. It is true tho that devs changed how perks were created, i.e. older perks give bona, no requirements (iron will, enduring, sprint burst, adrenaline, dead hard, unbreakable), while every new perk has some requirement, even if easy (deliverance, MoM, inner strength).
Now, the requirements is what balance a perk, for example deliverance and unbreakable have similar effects, both let yourself be autonomous to save you, but the first have a requirement, while the other has not (that's why unbreakable is meta, while deliverance it's not).
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This is what Blood Echo says:
When hooking a Survivor, all other injured Survivors suffer from the Haemorrhage Status Effect until healed and the Exhausted Status Effect for 45 seconds.
Note that "until healed" only applies to Haemorrhage, not Exhausted. They get Exhausted for 45 seconds.
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I never said that being injured is a "unnecessary" condition, like you said that's how the perk works. I said that to illustrate what I meant by a condition, like how for Barbeque you need to hook a survivor to activate it.
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The description makes it sound like the exhaustion only affects survivors that were injured when the perk activated and not the healthy survivors. I haven't played against it in so long so I can't remember how it worked in game. I'll leave the blood echo example up cause even if I'm wrong it still serves the point I'm trying to make.
Also I can't edit the OP, is it just me or is it the forums fault? I'm on mobile if it matters.
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Y'know, you might be right. Now I'm not so sure either. Anyway, this is detracting from the overall point, so I'll just drop it.
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That's because the designers worded it poorly. What actually happens is when someone is hooked, all Survivors who are injured receive the following:
- A Hemmorhage debuff that lasts until they're healed
- A 45-second Exhaustion timer
If you aren't injured, you will not receive any debuffs. This is why this Perk is best on Killers like Legion, Plague, et cetera.
Source: Playing with and against the Perk.
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You are absolutly right and it does kinda suck the fun out of some perks
I do need to say
"Self Care requires you to be injured" this made me laugh on how technically it is indeed a requirement
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God, that is just garbage.
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It's impressive how they made two killer exhaustion perks and made them both near useless.
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The only garbage thing here is that take. The amount of chases I've won because Blood Echo disabled Win Hard and/or Second Chance Burst (which for some reason is becoming meta again and I see it at least twice per game now) is too high to count.
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Unless the survivors, y'know, heal. Takes 16 seconds, much shorter than it takes to down and hook someone and they can get back on gens in the mean time. Or does it activate if you injure them after the hook? Because if so, that would be better.
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That implies that Survivors actually do heal. Usually they prefer to hump gens instead of each other's injured bodies. Plus, if you find them grouped up, you can hit multiple and down one, making things even harder. It's also a great way to give low-tier antiheal Killers like Legion and Plague a boost.
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That's fair, it's good because survivors refuse to heal. My point is that good survivors who realize you have it will simply heal to avoid it.
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No, good Survivors will do gens. That's why the Perk is good. If good Survivors healed, the Perk wouldn't be good.
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Good survivors let themselves be hit by a perk that leaves them with two perks (Adrenaline being the third)? That's like saying good killers let themselves get stunned.
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The objective is more important than healing. Most good Survivors will usually bring Perks that benefit from not healing: Adrenaline, Dead Hard, Iron Will, and even Spine Chill+Resilience are all incredibly common Perks. When the meta is bringing a billion second-chance Perks that enable you to survive extremely well while injured and/or Perks that outright make you stronger when you're injured, yeah, most good Survivors aren't going to heal because it goes against their entire build.
Also, good Killers do let themselves get stunned. If you're not getting stunned, that probably means you're respecting pallets, which is a much worse tactic than eating them.
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Blood Echo does have its uses, but the cooldown severely limits its uses and it also doesn't work on downed survivors. It does it job, but it's hampered by the unnecessary cooldown it has.
It's still an alright perk though. At least it's not Mindbreaker.
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You're right, I wish Self-Care worked when you were uninjured! Imagine being able to Self-Care in the corner as a potato Blendette ALL GAME.
Also, re: your other example, Barbecue & Chili -- I wish it didn't have those stupid conditionals, either. I would love to see survivor auras at all times, and also for my BP gain to just multiply constantly.
In all seriousness: Behaviour's stated design philosophy is to err toward conditional perks, as these types of edge cases make more sense than just making a bunch of grossly overpowered new stuff every three months. If I were to guess, they probably would have taken a different approach to the perk system if they had known that the game would have more than 150 perks at this point.
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I do get their reasoning as power creep is bad for any game and I wouldn't want 6 new meta perks every chapter. But they are just going the opposite direction and making perks that no one uses. Would Mindbreaker be OP if it had the 50% gen progression removed? Would Fixated be too powerful if you can use it while injured? I get that they are being cautious but they make bad perks and then never change them. Since their release not one of the Stranger Things perks were buffed even though they need them. I'm not asking for top tier perks but I do want perks that are at least mid tier by themselves or combo well with others.
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Even in just the stuff we've seen in the past year, almost every character has a perk that is at least reasonably valuable.
- Nancy: Inner Strength is indisputably a meta perk.
- Steve / Yui: OK maybe not so much here.
- Zarina: For the People can work out well for aggressive players who build toward protecting teammates and looping.
- Demogorgon: Surge is widely considered to be a good slowdown perk on a lot of killers.
- Oni: Nemesis + Play with Your Food is a killer combo.
- Deathslinger: Retribution is a dangerous component of a full hex build, which maybe isn't meta, but can be a real goddamn pain to face.
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I don't deny that they made some good perks. I use some of them myself, but it doesn't change the fact that they made a lot of perks that were weak and haven't been touched since.
- Nancy has good perks in general I'll give you that.
- Steve's perks are either too conditional to be good or aren't strong enough in the first place (Babysitter doesn't have any bad conditions but the effect isn't strong enough).
- Yui has Breakout which I actually really like so there's that. The other two not so much.
- Demogorgon has Cruel Limits and Mindbreaker which are probably the worst perks created in the last year. Surge is okay but is hampered by all the conditions it has.
- Oni's Blood Echo is another perk that is hampered by an unnecessary cooldown. I don't need to say anything about Zanshin Tactics.
- Zarina perks are actually fine, even Off The Record can synergize with Object. Though if Object is reworked then Off The Record would need some type of buff.
- Deathslinger's Gearhead was nerfed and now is outclassed with other perks like Discordance or Surveillance.
Im not saying that all the perks they made were awful. However I am saying that there are perks that the devs left in a weak state and that need to be looked at. Even going back farther there are perks that still need to be changed, whether because of unnecessary conditions or a weak effect.
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Yeah !
What cancan said !
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