Exhaustion perks will never be balanced.
They give you distance for very little investment. But they're also the most fun of the survivor perks to use. You really can't balance them without gutting the perks, yet if the game wants to achieve good balance it's necessary. And I'm not saying this as "argghhh those damn survivor mains and their perks!" because there are many unbalanced killer perks as well. Regardless, 2 of the strongest ones are Dead Hard and Sprint burst. But why?
Dead hard not only gives you the ability to dodge hits, but it gives you a small amount of distance whenever you want to use it. Of course this only works if you're injured but forcing an M1 isn't too hard if you're going against a killer with an instadown or such. It's best used for distance and the dodging is only a plus. It allows you to get greedy with pallet loops or make up distance that you would need to reach said pallet/window. It sucks in the open though because good killers will scare you into the dead hard then smack you.
Sprint Burst can deny the killer a hit and easily let you reposition in seconds. That means if you're doing a gen in a dead zone you're safe as long as you have sprint burst ready. Downside is that you use it instantly upon sprinting. Which is good somewhat. It'd be infinitely more busted if you could do it on demand without 99ing your exhaustion or similar.
Even if the rest aren't very good, they're still better than no exhaustion perks. And it seems like a lot of the game is band-aid fixed by these perks. Such as the Sprint Burst example. A generator in a dead zone is usually that way because of the tile spawns. So the natural solution for these situations is just "run Sprint Burst". It would be infinitely better if we just had consistent tile spawns, but instead of addressing the issue we just have to run a perk or get punished for not having it. The worse ones fill more niche roles, but they still reflect this design philosophy. Hate the fall stagger? Run Balanced Landing. Hate being stuck at a single loop? Run Lithe. Hate life? Use Head on.
They're really a highlight of bigger design issues more than anything. Bhvr's refusal to update core game mechanics and band-aid fix things with perks is catching up with them. And soon they won't be able to ignore it and have to do even more work than before to climb out of the hole they've dug for themselves.
If we want perks to be balanced first we must have the game mechanics balanced. It doesn't work the opposite way. The opposite way only robs players of dealing with the unbalanced nature of the game and worsens the initial issues.
Comments
-
I personally don't want them nerfed but if they were to be changed I would put them on a token system. 3 tokens max and everytime the perk is successfully used a token is taken. When they are out of tokens they permanently have the exhaustion status effect .
Although I definitely agree with what your saying
2 -
Exhaustion just needs to be increased. The perks being strong is fine, the problem is that they are available too often. Instead of being 40 seconds at max level, it should be 60 seconds, with no nerfs to the effects themselves.
2 -
I honestly don't see any issue with exhaustion perks. Perks are supposed to give you an advantage.
The same way exhaustion perks can make chases longer, some killer perks can reduce them, a good example of it being bamboozle and spiritfury/enduring.
11 -
U can easily balance them by removing *game changer* part. No a single Perk/Addon should be game changer. They should be slight adjustment to your playstyle.
Currently if we turn off DS, DH, BT, Corrupt, Ruin and other meta perks off, game will die immediately. Like imagine killer or survivor are not required to respect anything, what would happen?
Those perks all needs to be reworked into baseline and loose their *game changer* value. And others less valuable perks should be made as slight adjustment to your play style here and there.
U are never going to have balance when perks and addons define game outcome.
2 -
I'm fine with chase perks honestly. Chases should be encouraged to be longer. It's the gen efficiency that's problematic.
0 -
Lithe, Balanced Landing, Head on and Smash Hit are pretty balanced if you ask me. Their activation conditions carry a decent risk/reward to them.
I'd even call Sprint Burst balanced considering it takes a bit of brain power to use it properly
I don't wanna get into the Dead Hard side of this discussion though, no way.
2 -
They cost a perk slot.
1 -
I'll explain why in a post I'm working on, but I honestly think that all exhaustion perks are fine except for DH, and that the real issues are map and killer design.
0 -
I'm offended as a dedicated Smash Hit Player that I was not included within this conversation :(
0 -
Whats smash hit?
0 -
//
1 -
Danke
0 -
kein Problem
0 -
Can't tell if serious or facetious. But yes, let me introduce you to the weakest exhaustion perk in the game!
0 -
One man's trash is another man's treasure
0 -
:)
0 -
They could be balanced, if BHVR increased their opportunity cost in a skillful form.
For example, if BHVR used the currently unused 'exhausted running' speed category so that an exhaustion perk opens a survivor up in a way that a killer can capitalize on, but is not so punishing that the survivor is completely defenseless then exhaustion perks would be more balanced. The choice becomes, do I want this speed right now and deal with being slower while exhausted and have to play safer, or do I want the higher continuous speed for longer over the course of a chase so that I can greed resources more?
1 -
I for one would not even be opposed to the idea of simply kill-switching all Exhaustion perks for a month and seeing how that affects things. They have been ingrained in popular play since the game's very launch, and I'm all for meta shake-ups.
That said, most of them aren't really all that problematic and also encourage fun and interactive gameplay, the problem more so being that there is a pretty clear power difference between them, and since they cannot sensibly be used alongside one another, the best ones see a lot of play and all the others barely any. I think Smash Hit, Head On, Balanced Landing and Lithe if anything deserve slight buffs, Sprint Burst (perhaps with a slight nerf) is in a reasonably good spot and around a level that the others should be brought up to, and Dead Hard deserves to be nerfed/reworked.
For a larger rework of the Exhaustion mechanic itself however, I think it could be interesting to replace Exhaustion with a token-based system: Every "Exhaustion" perk starts with 1 token, and this token can be spent to actuate the perk once; in order to reacquire the token, survivors would have to do stuff like spend time repairing generators or get safe hook rescues. Since there is only so much gen work and rescues to go around, and since players will frequently already have a token at that time, the amount of times per trial that "Exhaustion" perks will be able to trigger will decrease notably. However, the amount of possible triggers will naturally increase with the amount of time the trial lasts, the amount of generator regression going on, the amount of hooks happening, which is fair. Just an idea though, it would obviously necessitate reworking all these perks as well as a variety of perks and add-ons that apply to the Exhaustion status.
1 -
That sounds annoying as hell to deal with
0 -
i literally forgot the perk existed lmao
0 -
I think they can be balanced. DS, for example, feels like it's in a much better spot than it was before.
Right now, Dead Hard is the big offender, as the 'fixed' (see: buffed) version is just crazy. The exhaustion effect could be extended by another 40 seconds and it would still be strong, with the way it futzes with some killers' powers and constantly gives false hits to the killer, allowing you to easily escape.
0 -
It is a sad lonely life being the sole smash hitter
1 -
If this ever becomes meta, Fearmongerer/Mindbreaker would then become meta to counter it
0 -
Exhaustion perks are to survivors like gen slowdown perks are to killers. The game was designed around both. You can't really nerf gen slowdown perks without slowing down gens. You can't nerf exhaustion perks without slowing down killers.
0
