Why so many perks are bad.

The meta in this game has ultimately been the same for about 2 or 3 years. Killers run BBQ, and a gen perk, survivors run an exhaustion perk and decisive. We all know how it is. But the question is why? Why has after all of this time, the meta hasn't been changed nearly at all. It comes down to 4 things. Utility, Consistency, Activation and Reliability. I will go over both killer and survivor perks, so maybe something can be taken away from this.

Killers Perks:

There's a lot of problems plaguing killer perks. The problem is that a majority of them are either, too situational, have a long cool-down, and just aren't threatening.

Pyramid Heads perks are a highlight of these. Trail of torment has a long cool-down, isn't very useful, and shows survivors where you are at. It has zero threat to survivors other than they can't hear your terror radius for 15 seconds. You kick a gen and wait a whole minute for your perk to be usable. Not only does it show survivors that the gen has progress, but it also shows where you are, being completely counter intuitive.

Another one is Forced Penance. Forced Penance gives a survivor the broken status affect after they take a protection hit. It's very situational and in every scenario it does nothing. If you leave the survivor alone to keep chasing your original target, they'll just do a gen and wait out the broken status effect. If you chase the broken survivor, the perk will wear off whenever they get unhooked or when they lose you. It has no impact on the game and isn't threatening to survivors.

Basic Attack Activation:

This is what limits the killer perk pool so much. You can't use Surge on a killer with a power. You can't use the new Knock Out. You can't use Dark Devotion. You can't use Gearhead. While many of these perks have more problems than just the activation, there are many more like them that cannot be used on any killer with an actual power. Infectious Fright is a prime example of how impactful this is on a perk. It went from being stuck with all of these other basic attack perks, to one of the best snow-ball perks in the game. It rewards aggressive game play and only has the limit of how good you are with your killer. It is an immediate threat to the survivors, because now I know where you are and I'm coming right to you. The removal of this feature would change so much for the better. For perks like Sloppy Butcher and Dark Devotion it's understandable why you could have that requirement on them. But that doesn't make it better, since as I stated, any killer with an actual power outside of just stabbing survivors can't use these.

Perk Threat Level:

A majority of killer perks are just not threatening. They don't impact the game in a significant way where survivors think "Oh ######### he has ____". I think pre-nerf Ruin was a prime example of this. No matter what survivors wasted time doing gens when you had the perk equipped. You couldn't get great skill checks, and if you missed it regressed. So if somebody was doing a gen, and their teammates went looking for the totem, that's still a lot of early game time wasted. The only thing that held Ruin back, along with all hex perks to this day, was the placement. That's why it was common for Ruin to just break in 10 seconds. It still is. But, if you did get Ruin to last more than 2 seconds it was very significant. While I don't think EVERY perk should be this impactful on the match, I do think they should make survivors actively do something against them. But I also think that perks like this should be worked for instead of just giving you free game pressure.

Hex Perks:

The problem with all hex perks is that they are either, not significant enough to run, or they get placed by a gen, or in front of a tree with a patch of grass. Third Seal, Thrill of the Hunt, Huntress Lullaby, all of these are useless. Thrill isn't worth running, since if all you do is protect your totem all game you'll lose. Third Seal has no impact and has the basic attack requirement, and Huntress Lullaby doesn't affect good players in the slightest. Hex perks are suppose to be risk reward, but when the risk is higher than the reward, whats the point of even trying? So we have 2 core problems. Hex placement, and utility. Third Seal can be good for slug builds, but not really anything else. Huntress Lullaby relies on the survivor not paying attention, and could be kind of useful on stealth killers, but the rng nature of the perk and stealth killers being kind of weak already doesn't help. This is also considering it isn't broken by the time you get your second stack. A suggestion I've heard is to give hexes passive effects. An example would be, whenever Ruin is broken gens do not automatically regress, but kicking one regresses it at a faster rate. Not Ruin fast, but still faster than usual. This way you're not completely out of a perk for the rest of the game and can still try to stand a chance.

Survivor Perks:

Survivor perks are more or less the same thing, except to a lesser degree. The problem is with survivor perks is that many of them just don't do anything, or we already have one that does it better. As well as the activation. Second Wind is a good example of this, since you already have to be close to dead to use it, and you're broken for the whole time it takes to be healed by it. You're completely vulnerable for 30 seconds, when a teammate could've healed you in that time. That's also assuming you had the chance to heal someone before that. The same thing with For the People. It's so situational and you put yourself and your at a huge risk when you do use it.

So what makes survivor perks good?

The answer to that is the ability to deny the killer and advantage, and correct mistakes. But these perks are not healthy for the game. Sprint burst saves you from being out of position while giving you a ton of distance on the killer, Dead Hard ensures you get one more chance, Borrowed Time guarantees that your teammate doesn't get slugged or hooked again, Unbreakable robs you of pressure, and Decisive is a minute of invulnerability. On their own these perks aren't so bad. But it's when you start pairing them together that it becomes a problem. DS and Unbreakable gives you no option but to let the survivor escape. Dead Hard can extend a loop and save the survivor from dying when they should've. Sprint Burst ensures that you get a huge head start, meaning that the killer takes about 15 seconds of time just catching up with you. Borrowed Time is yet another invincibility window that can be used to save team-mates. DS alone gives you 4 lives (not counting the final hook).

Their purpose is to band aid fix things that people don't find fun, but they go even further beyond that.

These perks are just too good to pass up.

At the current moment in time, there is absolutely no reason for any survivor to run anything else. All of these counter things that aren't fun like tunneling and camping, while also giving an advantage outside of those scenarios. I'm fine with exhaustion perks, but they only serve exemplify these problems.

I would love to see more perks that are used to trick the killer like Red Herring and Diversion. I think giving survivors ways to actually outsmart the killer would make the game far more interesting. But as I said, these perks just aren't very useful and could never compete with the current survivor meta.