I like the new perk organization

It's gonna take a little for me to get used to for last minute swaps but I think it's a great change.

The point I try to make is that rarity in this game has always been tied to how impactful an item/add-on/perk is in the match. For instance, brown medkits are less impactful on a match than yellow medkits than green medkits than purple medkits, and a brown battery on a flashlight is less impactful than a low amp filament than a green battery than an odd bulb.

It used to be the case that like everything else, perk rarity told the players how impactful the perk was on the match (with a few exceptions such as Monstrous Shrine). For instance, Deerstalker (I) was less impactful than Stridor (II) than Devour Hope (I) than Brutal Strength (II) than A Nurse's Calling (III). Over time, this changed slightly (i.e. Brutal Strength was nerfed, pallet count was generally reduced, and its rarity stayed the same), but rarity was clearly tied to impact on the match.

This held true for survivors as well. Iron Will (I) was less impactful than Quick & Quiet (II) than Lightweight (III) than Leader (II) than Sprint Burst (III).

It all made sense: a higher rarity meant the perk was more impactful regardless of the tier.

However, the developers started paying less and less attention to this as they strangely wedded themselves to a "formula" for perk releases (and add-on releases) for newer chapters that made it so that balancing was harder because inherently powerful add-ons / perks by their use on a killer could not be made a higher rarity if there was already a perk occupying the space for that rarity. Furthermore, with the bloodweb rework, the devs mashed together the bottom two rarities and the top two, muddying the logic in greater amounts.

Then we started getting things such as: NOED now gives Exposed at green rarity (doesn't make sense at all for the system). Balanced Landing now gives a speed boost at (what used to be common) tier I. Ruin now affects how much regression is happening vs number of survivors per tier (made rare Ruin much more powerful than the corresponding rarities of perks like A Nurse's Calling or Thanatophobia). Discordance starts at uncommon rarity and moves to rare at tier III (even though it was significantly more powerful than other perks at the same rarity).

The change the devs did most recently was basically: "Well, we ****ed the logical system we set up, so let's just get rid of it entirely while keeping the grind." The reason higher rarities are more expensive is because they're more impactful, and what we have now does not reflect that at all.

So, this is why I don't agree.

@APoipleTurtle I think the intention was misplaced. If the devs wanted to make a change for the sake of organization, they should have implemented alternate sorting systems rather than throwing the logic behind why things were the way they were in the trash.

but fr, the perk rarity changes are a big nono from me.

I mean, perks technically still do this.

With your example a brown medkit has less impact (even if only by little) than other rarity medkits.

Wouldn't you say Iron Will 1 has less impact than Iron Will 2 or 3? In their own little triangle, it works.

On the grand scheme of things, if they kept the old system, they would have to change rarity of perks they just released every mid-chapter (because this perk wasn't as strong as they anticipated).

I was considering adding a line in my original post about this, but I can do it here.

The only reason perks change rarity with tiers is because sensibly, if a perk is increasing in tiers, it must be getting better than it was previously. That means at least an increase of 1 rarity between tiers. With old NOED, it probably would have made more sense to have tiers one and two be uncommon and rare, respectively, and have tier III be ultra rare, but the devs raised the rarity of the lower tiers to keep them all one apart. I didn't have a problem with that.

While you say "perks technically still do this", you've taken a small subset of a larger issue and reduced the problem down to that. The rarities are currently redundant anyway for tiers because the tiers exist as that indicator of changing in worth. Perks don't follow the rules for applying rarities any longer, and the only way it may seem that way is when tiers and rarities coincide, with tiers taking precedent and rarities being dependent on tiers.

So, yes, higher tiers for Iron Will being more impactful than others still is the case, and this is indicated by the tiers themselves.

The only reason for rarity to exist is to provide a way to balance the different perks, add-ons, and offerings against one another in each's respective category. Common rarity things are common because they're least impactful, and the devs wanted to make sure that these were the most seen in trials. For every higher rarity, the devs made the node to acquire it on the bloodweb more expensive and appear less frequently to ensure that they couldn't be used every match (players either couldn't find it, couldn't pay for it, or both). The devs are throwing that out the window, which is why we're stuck with piles of hundreds of iridescent heads on Huntress that we'll never use up before we acquire more (I talk about this problem more in this post:

).

If the devs stuck with the grand scheme of things, then, yes, they would have to occasionally go through and change perks' rarities as the game developed over the years (almost as if they were actually doing balance passes, hmm...). It's not like they haven't done this for the Odd Bulb or the Haemorrhagic Syringe, but this process of going through the game and making sure perks, items, and offerings had the right rarities would be something we would all become accustomed to and appreciate (the devs did it early on in the game's history with things such as the murky reagent). I didn't plan on ending on a somewhat negative note, but I'm going to do so anyway because I ended up writing myself to here.

Devs, we've been shown evidence from years ago that you do actually care about balancing the game and having rarities make your lives easier by automatically scaling usage and availability for everything that has a rarity in this game, so please do it again. Please properly care for your game's built-in balance features, devs. I know that you often seem like you don't care (eg. OoO comments, Clown comments, etc.), but I do have a small amount of faith I really want to give you guys, and that's what I'm doing right now. I've explained why you did what you did in the past and all the logic that went into it and why that logic works. I haven't talked about (in this post) how sticking to such a rigid formula for chapter releases makes for a balancing nightmare, but it does. I see you making things so much more difficult on yourselves than you need it to be. The game was built to support balancing updates through the use of the rarity feature, and you should use it! Getting rid of it doesn't make things easier for achieving true balance. I know you rely heavily on gut feelings (one of three key factors you stated in a recent stream), but allowing for systems already in place to do the work takes the brunt off of your gut.

I will even direct this @Almo because of how important I think this is, and I don't think that doing that once in a blue moon will annoy anyone (I hope). This ended much more hopefully than I expected...huh. I'm looking back at my comment, and I'm realizing that the tone shifts quite drastically from beginning to end and might not be suited for being shared around BHVR offices, but I'd be happy to edit this later on if it seems like it would benefit from being accessible to a larger audience.

Anyway, that's been my schpiel :P