An analysis of how a new player's grind is impacted by the grind 'reduction.' (It increased. A lot.)

Preface and Assumptions

I'm firmly within the group of players who benefits most from the grind changes. This isn't complaining out of self-interest, this is sheerly to point out that the new player experience is going to be significantly worse.

I am going to analyse as accurately as I can how the grind has changed over the period of playing "catch up" to an 'ideal' player. For this, I am taking the assumption that the regular player: a. did not care for prestige in the current system, as it gave no gameplay benefit, and b. wants their 1 main survivor with all perks unlocked and maxed, but wants all unique killers with all perks unlocked and maxed.

These assumptions don't apply to everyone, but as best I can see it's the fairest way to analyse the grind for a new player, as it's all of the work that provides a gameplay benefit in some way. Realistically, players may P3 random survivors they like, or collect perks on multiple, not play one side or the other, or only play killers they like. This is just the fairest way I can see to look at the grind for someone who doesn't want to be missing an option that benefits them.

So step by step, let's break down how a new player progresses in the game now, and how that changes after the patch, starting with survivor.

How Optimally Leveling survivor has changed

As a survivor player, a new player (generally with advice from a vet) will start by picking a character. If they choose to have this character as their "main" like many early players do with Claudette and Meg, then there are 20 generic perks and 3 teachables initially for that character. Starting with the 3 teachable perks at tier 1 that leaves 66 perk tiers to unlock everything at max tier. Between level 1 and 50 you can unlock 60 perk tiers, so a further 3-4 webs will net you a 'maxed' character. I'm not going to include prestige as a concern initially, as many new players don't care about prestige and realise it provides no benefit to them while extending the grind they face. At the absolute most, they would probably P3 a character they like before collecting perks, adding 150 levels to this.

From this point on, the most efficient way to progress survivor is this: level your next character up to 30-40 depending on what teachables you want, (for the sake of argument we'll say 40 for everyone) and then going back to your main, those new teachables are now unlocked and maxed out in 5 level-50 webs. (9 new tiers, webs allow you to get 2, 2, 2, 2, 1, totaling 5 webs) Therefore, to keep a character with all your current perks maxed out, leveling each survivor only takes 45 webs to get the maximum value out of them.

Following the grind "reduction," the new player experience changes. Obviously no new player is going to P3 every survivor they work on in a row to collect their perks at tier 3, the optimal play to keep a survivor with all perks is to reach P1 to unlock tier 1, then level their main up to max them. If the player chose to P3 a survivor each time, they would be spending a tremendous amount of levels per perk, and early into P1 their bloodwebs would not even contain perks.

In this case we have gone from 45 levels per survivor to: 50 levels on each new survivor that they level up, THEN an additional 4 bloodwebs on their main to max out those new perks (6 new tiers, 2, 2, 1, 1, 4 webs), a total of 55 webs, and it isn't just 9 more webs, it's 9 webs at the point where they are largest and cost the most. Since the new prestige system is automatic, it also means that the '4 webs' used above to collect 6 tiers will vary every time. Early on it will be 6 small webs as your character will be about P1-10, then it will scale up to 4 large webs, then back down and so on as you prestige again.

So while the initial idea that prestiging gives you tier 1 of 3 new perks on your main character is nice, the nature of bloodwebs means it's only 1 less web to max those perks out on a character at the cost of 10 extra webs for their teachables.

How optimally leveling Killer has changed

Killer is significantly different, as in this case, there is a significant benefit to unlocking the teachables on all characters, versus them appearing on a "main," though in most cases players will still have a main killer and most of the benefit comes from getting perks on them, moreso than on everyone.

Killers only have 16 global perks, so to initially have 'everything' on your first killer means you only need 54 perk tiers, reached before you even hit P1, at about level 47-48.

In the current system, assuming again that you want all perks, the most efficient method I can see is that each killer takes 48 webs + 10X large bloodwebs, where X = # of killers you've leveled up -1.

(For example, Trapper = 48 webs, then Wraith = 48 + 5 to get Trapper's perks on Wraith, + 5 to get Wraith's perks on Trapper = 58, then Hillbilly = 48 webs + 10 to get Trapper and Wraith's perks, + 10 to get Hillbilly's on Trapper and Wraith = 68.)

That's a bit confusing, but we at least have a simple formula for maxing perks on all killers. Currently there are

As there are currently 28 killers, the final killer would take a grand total of 318 webs to unlock everything available to them, and then their own perks on all the rest of the killers. In total for all killers it would take 5124 webs to max out every perk on everyone.

Clearly it becomes much more complicated to assess in the new system. Prestige automatically occurs so the number of additional webs is again going to very. Since on the killer side we have some motivation (though little) to level them to a baseline of 48 in contrast to the survivors only needing 40 for teachables, the new system adds 2 large bloodwebs to each killer's progression to prestige and unlock level 1 of their teachables. Then, once again, it will take 4-6 bloodwebs on each killer you've previously unlocked to max the new killer's perks, and 4-6 bloodwebs on the new killer per older killer to max all remaining perks. If we just take the average of 5 for simplicity's sake, we once again get the same formula that maxing all perks on all killers once again takes 48 + 10X bloodwebs. The difference in this case is that the 10 comes from combinations of 6 small early bloodwebs or 4 large late bloodwebs, rather than a consistent 5 level-50 webs. The two are still relatively comparable though.

So is the grind exactly the same on the killer side? No. Because our formula increases linearly, on about your 10th or 11th killer, the webs to max everything will tick over 100, meaning you will break into P2. As this method of leveling your killers means all will be at the same level, all your older killers will also reach P2, and the grind will heavily fall off to 48 + 2X webs, as only tier 3 of each perk needs to be obtained, taking 3 small webs or 1.5-2 large. With enough killers in the game, you would eventually hit a point where you would break into P3 as well, and each killer would need a flat 150 levels to max everything on everyone. Great, but probably not for another handful of years.

Conclusions

So this here is where the "new" player finally sees some form of reduction in their grind. They can unlock every single perk tier on the survivor of their choice, as well as basically reaching P2 on 10-11 different killers, THEN the new system makes the grind easier.

This is hundreds upon hundreds of hours of work, maybe breaking the thousands, before any of this grand 'grind reduction' trickles down to touch anyone who hasn't already played thousands of hours.

I am a player with thousands of hours, there are plenty of others of you out there. We all know that one of the biggest issues with getting our friends to play and keep playing a game we love is that there's this insurmountable wall of grind before they feel like they even have the same fair options that we do to just have freedom in bringing perks they want.

The grind to get all perks maxed on one single survivor has been significantly INCREASED by this rework to the grind. The grind to get all perks maxed on all killers only sees benefits after reaching P2 on 10-11 different killers.

Saying "the overall grind has been reduced by 75%" may be factually true when you compare P3ing every character, and maxing every perk on everyone on both sides, but that's far beyond the practical grind that benefits the player, and is only looking at the final total for an absolute completionist, not where the reduction actually fits into the player's experience.

These changes are frankly awful justification for taking out the bloodpoint bonuses from perks. All of the above calculations assume that the rate of bloodpoints gained is consistent, when in reality the killer side will take up to twice as long to reach that huge goal of 10-11 P2s as they would now.

TL;DR

The new player's grind to "catch up" in progression has been significantly increased by what was meant to be a reduction in the grind.