No Scratch Marks, No Aura, no Med kit? No problem!

I posted the second part of this in another thread earlier but that one got banished to the wastelands of the suggestions forum to never be read again. I very much need to post my declaration here for people to scoff at now so in like three months I get to toss out some epic "told you so," albeit in a haze of bitterness without even the mild satisfaction of being right given how the horrendous imbalance it inflicts upon this already troublesome game will ultimately plague all of us who enjoy both sides of this game.

First an extra observation though:

Perks that are much too punishing for new/learning survivors to handle: old ruin (for its skill checks that are basically the same as any skill checks)

Perks clearly of no concern for new/learning killers to handle: a freaking AOE scratchmark deadzone that's effectively infinite & applied party-wide so each survivor with the perk can compound coverage zones that totally remove one of the most fundamental gameplay mechanics the game was designed around, and finally providing insane synergy with iron will as something that's already meta level powerful for eliminating one of the other most important means of tracking.

Now consider this delightful little perk design with the same weight of balance all the other scratchmark hiding perks get and you'll find their strengths to be gauged in seconds, extremely situational, and exclusive to the perk holder. But hey toss all that out and I'm sure the perk is still totes fair and not a scummy move to sell more DLC.

I'm calling it straight here: boons are the future for as long as they go unchecked here. This is the new meta.

The community as a whole just hasn't figured it out yet because the intangible results of what's not happening over on the killer side aren't so readily apparent. That will change in time though. It's all downhill once players start catching on to the real power boons hold & the time delay required to grind them.

The people trying to claim boons are even remotely balanced are either (A) in extreme denial, or (B) outright lying to further their own agenda favoring something as stupidity OP and broken as boons obviously are.

There's zero value in "stepping away from the stale meta" if the only reason people leave behind their extremely powerful perks is because now they'd hardly ever use them when it's often easier to outright avoid getting downed by usually ducking into one of the hide & seek zones.

All the claims about boons actually "wasting time from gens" are as intellectually dishonest as any claim could be. One survivor wasting 12 seconds on a totem they stumbled across is nigh ALWAYS going to break even with the time it'd takes the killer to track down & snuff that totem. For a competent player, that's basically your worst case scenario. Even a single boon usage from there is a net gain as far as the time tradeoff goes, where the value generated wasting killer's time is so, so, so, so much more valuable than survivor time required. Advocating for boons outright ignores this game being 4 vs 1, not to mention the extreme impact of just 2/16 well placed perks can have on the 4 survivors. The average gains per boon applied are a whole lot more valuable with these being the "risks" to the reward potential.

To consider boons balanced basically requires imagining them in some vacuum so "time away from gens" can be treated as pure cost. In truth, it's blatantly an investment (and an incredibly secure and insanely lucrative one at that) generating returns by impeding killer gameplay that would otherwise (and indisputably) pull more survivors off generators for far longer. A game might go on longer with the boon impacts pushing the survivors back into their safety hubs rather than slamming gens, but unlike typical games the killer isn't gaining footing the longer those games go on. It's almost the opposite, where survivors are free to carve down gens while largely containing killers to failed chases and reverted health states in a stalemate. Boons are so much more powerful than people realize or want to admit.

Hell, now I'm seeing the boon-boosters fall back on conjecture and anecdotal evidence of people being stupid with boons, as if stupidity is some unique, inherent challenge to setting boons. Sorry, but no---the mere possibility of any given person spending the whole match looking for a totem only to end up distracted by the shiny until the killer gets them isn't the same as a meaningful drawback. That's selectively deploying the same excuse applicable to anything; I mean every killer is underpowered for a player bad enough that they can't hit anyone. You've got to assume reasonable competence when talking balance.

Some people are behind the curve now due to newness/ownership/grind/etc, but that won't be forever. Barring major changes, the OP's game is the new meta we'll see.

"Do them bones" is not at all realistic.

As survivor, you do 5 bones and you never have to think about it again.

As killer, you could do a million bones and still have bones to do. The fact they can relight infinitely is just mind boggling.