"Balance vs Counter Play" (With a brief about how to make keys more fun and fair)

So I like making up my own perks and imagine reworks for perks, because I think that counter play are important, or at least getting as close to those things you can in an asymmetrical game.

However, the Dev's seem to want to droning this idea of balance and I'm sorry to say, that this term is absolutely unachievable without some major over hauls. A new killer comes out who is decent and before it leaves the PTB it gets nerfed to ######### in the name of "balance." Obviously the last time they truly fundamentally nerfed survivor is when they got pallet vacuums out of the game nearly 2 years ago now.

Dev's, lemme level with you for a second. Balance is the highest bar you could strive for which I understand, but you honestly need to stop trying to strive for it unless you are going to change the game at its most base elements. I want to see words like counter play used from now on. The reason is because it doesn't have to be perfectly fair to not frustrate the best players, just possible. I see many a decent killers having to proxy keys on the ground because there is no other counter play to it otherwise. How can you talk about balance when by the mere sight of a key in a lobby, a killer must now add a whole new objective to their game. You even removed the ability to change killers in lobby so you can pick a hag or some other killer who would be best to deal with a key on the ground in lobby? There is literally no way to stop a key, but when it comes time to make a community perk forum, its "remember to think about balance." It's such a point of inconsistency that I can't even stomach the thought of hearing the term balance talked about in these dev podcasts anymore. Please either change fundamentally how the game works so you can achieve something even approximating "balance" or just set your bar lower and just focus on there being counter play.

I honestly believe that there is some genius levels of counter play as a concept that appear all over the game, but Balance is just too high a bar for you guys to attain with the position the game is in. FFS, swf effectively gives you an extra super perk, and nullifies at least 5 perks a killer could possibly take. So just set the bar a little lower and aim for counter play. For the key situation, if a survivor just places a key on top of the hatch, anyone who walks over it later could get a free escape and the killer can do literally nothing about it except kill before the situation is possible. That is not counter play. Lemme tell you what counter play in this situation would be. If a key is on the ground, a killer should be able to pick it up, and if a survivor wants it back, they can get it. They just need to earn it somehow. How about, if they finish a gen, then the killer is forced to drop the key and cannot pick it up, or if the killer is stunned in a chase, or if they get in a chase for over 60 seconds without a down the key drops. Or even better how about this:

After a killer picks up a key, a 60 second timer starts, and once the timer stops, the key is automatically dropped, and they can not pick that particular key up again for the rest of the match. Now wouldn't that be something? So a killer picks up the key they found, and then they can go and do something that helps them win the game, and to mess with the survivors, they could wait until just before the key drops and then go try to hide it in a place the survivors wouldn't think to go.

Now follow me for a second, at first glance if you say "But what about balance?" Well you could come up with a myriad of justifications against this idea. But what if instead you said, what is the counter play? Then the idea can be worked with. So to my suggestion on survivors side, TONS of counter play that is already in the game.

1. Survivors could just go and hide their keys and now the killer has to worry about finding the key.
2. Survivors could track the killer and find out where the killer drops the key if they manage to pick one up.
3. Survivors could just do the fking GENS and escape normally!!
4. The survivor with a key could just be good in chases and not die so they don't lose the key.
5. Survivors could just

And if that isn't enough, you could even make more counters like what I suggested earlier about stunning the killer force drops the key and what ever else.

Suddenly, the game becomes more dynamic with a key in the game rather than just a free escape for 1 or more survivors, and the killer can honestly harbor some blame for their performance instead of being able to (justifiably so) blame a mechanic they have little to absolutely no counter play too. If you Dev's only focus on "Balance" You will never come up with amazing ideas myself and others are coming up with on these forums all the time. But if you just think in terms of "Counter Play," a lot of new, interesting, and most importantly fun design choices could be made. Consider this too, there are high level players who find ways to counter killers you make in the PTB that you think are too strong before you nerf them. In a lot of ways this game is like a fighting game, where there are some strong abilities, but if you can read your opponents intentions, there can be a way around it even if it is difficult. So try out what I'm talking about, or just hire me ffs.