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Dear BHVR: Do I miss a point of meta shake-up

Maybe it's just me, but I just don't understand the logic of using a "meta shake-up" to replace existing perks with new ones, which again leads to perks that you see every match...! It is clear that every player wants to increase his chances and accordingly chooses a setting from which he hopes for the best.

Instead of making the current meta partially useless, isn't it much more sensible to increase the selection of good perks to create diversity?

There would be so many possibilities...

If you look at overcharge or surge now, for example, the portfolio a killer can choose from regarding slowdown is much bigger. OTR in a weakened form would be a great alternative to the existing ds and bt. I find such an approach much more effective and sustainable to soften and overturn the existing meta.

Above all, the possibilities would be almost infinite. Imagine sprint burst would only go for 2 seconds, but instead you could activate the perk with e at any time or superhit would stack with frontal... or a new perk that blocks the window for the killer shortly after the survivor has stepped through... thrilling tremors could block all gens, so survivors couldn't finish a gen in the next seconds or remember me would regress a 99 exitgate.... 

I firmly believe that it would be much healthier and more varied for the game to bring all perks to a similar level and keep the whole thing in check and balanced by exhausting and cooldowns. This would really provide lasting variety and not just replace a previous meta with a new one for the moment.

I'm very curious what you think about it, whether you agree or I'm completely wrong. But please keep in mind that the examples given are just to underline my idea and don't immediately shout "op" or something.

Comments

  • ich_häng_mal_rum
    ich_häng_mal_rum Member Posts: 435

    I don’t say that nothing has to be changed, especially dead hard. It’s important to make tweaks, buffs and nerfs here and there.

    But fact is that in longterm they have to do this meta shake-up over and over again…

  • Yffriium
    Yffriium Member Posts: 140

    Meta shake-ups are good. Seeing the same perks every match for 2 years has gotten pretty boring.

    In any game, there is guaranteed to be a "meta"-- this is inevitable. You cannot prevent some strategies being slightly better than others. This is because developers are trying to balance between two different things with perks: diversity and strength. Developers want maximum perk diversity to make the game interesting, but also want minimal strength differences so that all perks get used.

    However, these two ideals are impossible to achieve in tandem. They are somewhat oxymoronic with each other. The fact that perks do different things means that they can never truly be equal in strength. Even if you took precise, surgical care into trying to make every single perk exactly balanced with another, some superior strategy would eventually develop. After all, there will always be some situation out there in which one perk beats out another. The best the devs can do is make each perk /approximately/ equal to each other, which is what they have been attempting to do by nerfing the strong perks & buffing the weak ones.

    Mixing things up brings new life into the game and introduces entirely new scenarios, which I'm definitely looking forward to.

  • ich_häng_mal_rum
    ich_häng_mal_rum Member Posts: 435
    edited July 2022

    We are all think a meta shake-up is important, but the way to reach this is different. You also say bringing perks on a similar level/strength is good, but how is a 35% selfcare equal to inner strength, coh or something like that? That doesn’t make sense to „remove“ a perk from the viable options… or now everybody will run otr instead some run otr, some bt, some ds, that would be a shake-up to not see every match the same perks.

  • ich_häng_mal_rum
    ich_häng_mal_rum Member Posts: 435

    That’s what I said: every player will always look what perks gives him the best chance. But if you can choose from 6 viable equal good exhaustion perks, from 5 healing perks or 8 good slowdown perks, which are all strong then you don’t see the same 1 perk like dh or ruin every match

  • anarchy753
    anarchy753 Member Posts: 4,212

    I'd be fine with a new meta. The issue is, the survivor meta is still just the "how many free health states can I get" meta, but the perks have been renamed.

    Oh wow, OTR is sooooo different to BT, in that it's just the same perk with 5 times the duration.

  • JawsIsTheNextKiller
    JawsIsTheNextKiller Member Posts: 3,367

    I agree with you. Surely the point of nerfing the meta perks was to prevent everyone running the same perks. Since both sides clearly have combinations of perks that are too powerful, there will again be no variety.

    Just nerf these new overpowered perks before they get released and we might be in a situation where everyone doesn't feel forced to run a meta build.

  • ThanksForDaily
    ThanksForDaily Member Posts: 1,305

    OTR is overrated. You can get rid of it in the first 2 seconds.

  • Bwsted
    Bwsted Member Posts: 3,452

    New meta is broken as well and already stale. They actually reduced the number of viable perks to choose from and the viable ones have the same goals of those they replaced, only different names and flavors.

  • ich_häng_mal_rum
    ich_häng_mal_rum Member Posts: 435

    And killer will still run genregressing perks and slowdowns… that shows the upcoming changes are more or less useless in point of meta shake-up. That’s what I said.

  • ich_häng_mal_rum
    ich_häng_mal_rum Member Posts: 435

    Players will always feel forced to run meta perks (maybe a few run fun settings).

    Survivors are worried if they go against a 3blink nurse or a blight with alchemist or something like that. Maybe the killer will tunnel or camp… As long as extremely strong killer and addons or these strategies are in the game, the meta shakeup will fail. Killer on the other side want win against a sweaty swf too, so they bring the same strong stuff like the survivors will do.

    but in my opinion these risks: against which killer I go? How will he play? What could be his perks/ addons? All this make dbd interesting and entertaining. So why nerf everything to the ground instead of make all weaker perks stronger to shake-up the meta??? Of course player complains about tunnling, camping, slugging, different perks or killer, but be honest: it would be boring to get the same matches or 4k always and nothing to discuss… 😉

  • WesCravenFan
    WesCravenFan Member Posts: 2,638

    Stale? It's not even live yet. Tens of thousands of players don't even touch the PTB. This is hyperbole.


    Secondly, you only think perks are viable/unviable because you are holding them to the standard of the old meta.

  • Bwsted
    Bwsted Member Posts: 3,452

    It's stale because it's already the same effect as we have on live, only with a make-up job.

    Viability is measured as having an impact on gameplay. There's no reason to run 90% of the reworked perks, let alone those that haven't been touched.

  • WesCravenFan
    WesCravenFan Member Posts: 2,638

    Ah, the only "Most perks don't do anything" argument.


    Most perks are fine. People have just come to expect Dead Hard / Iron Will / Decisive Strike level of impact.


    Learn to live with perks like Alert and Self-Aware and stop expecting the moon.

  • ich_häng_mal_rum
    ich_häng_mal_rum Member Posts: 435

    Good luck with alert against a 3blink nurse, alchemist blight or a endless slowdown Legion with mending simulator… that’s the reason why survivors feel they need the strongest perks. Survivors and killers will always fear the heaviest opponent and try to prevent a chance. That’s reasonable

  • Yffriium
    Yffriium Member Posts: 140

    Alert is a very fun and powerful perk against most all killers, there's just a few scenarios in which it won't provide much value. All perks have their value & situations, save a specific very few. You can't judge a perk by its absolute worst case when the worst case is pretty rare.

  • Yffriium
    Yffriium Member Posts: 140

    I think you misinterpreted what I said. In my post, I stated that it is impossible to make all perks equal strength. Having perks be equal is an approximate goal, not a fixed one. There is bound to be some variation. Some will be slightly stronger, some will be slightly worse.

    I also never said that the devs did a good job of this with every perk. Self-care and Spine chill were definitely overnerfed. Though, I think they did a good job with some other perks.

  • ich_häng_mal_rum
    ich_häng_mal_rum Member Posts: 435

    I like alert very much. Run this with dark sense and you have a nice „wallhack“ during chase ☺️ I like the stone too: blind the killer on a pallet and throw it to a near window while crouching away…

    Niche perks are important and funny.

    but if you want „win“ it’s a better chance with strong perks aka meta.

    Alert for example is less useful against all the stealth killer or tinkerer. While exhaustion perk’s mostly helps a lot. Sure, iron will or selfcare can be useless to against plague, or ds against pyramidhead, but with all the possible killer you can go against stronger perks do more.

  • ich_häng_mal_rum
    ich_häng_mal_rum Member Posts: 435

    It shouldn’t be all perks the same, but more options on an equal level, not this 5-6 perks you see all matches. I would prefer buffs to perks like balance landing, headon, superhit, jolt, inner strength and so on, instead of switch the meta to a few new perks. So every player, killer and survivor, can choose perks which complements their playstyle

  • Bran
    Bran Member Posts: 2,096

    All they did was change the meta. Should've done more perk changes being real.

  • WesCravenFan
    WesCravenFan Member Posts: 2,638

    No, that's BACKWARDS.


    "I need these 4 perks to face this Killer" means you are balanced around that metric. That's bad. It creates a reliance.


    Drop the perks, let the Killer stats increase, the imbalance becomes noticeable, Devs can adjust accordingly.

  • ich_häng_mal_rum
    ich_häng_mal_rum Member Posts: 435

    Personally, I like that there is this variety of killers, strong perks and addons, as well as tunnling, slugging and camping, but there must be counter against all this. That's what makes dbd so varied and exciting: you never know what to expect in the next game! Really think increasing the selection of good perks would be the more interesting way to shake up a fixed meta. Especially it would be more sustainable than just nerfing the next meta again, and then the next one and so on... 

  • WesCravenFan
    WesCravenFan Member Posts: 2,638

    This is a great idea in theory. The problem is that the last batch of meta perks were SO OVERPOWERED that people are going to use them as the gold standard of "what perks ought to be", and not realize they are outliers that never should have been that strong. Some of the perks existed because of poor core designed (Borrowed Time), but others were just flat abusable (Decisive Strike in the end game), or point blank broken beyond all reason (Dead Hard).


    The sooner the Survivor community gets over this idea that all perks need to be at old Iron Will never, the better off they will be.