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Should Add-ons be removed?
And by extension, items as well as item rarities.
What do they truly offer to the game? I would say build diversity but that would imply that add-ons function completely differently from each other, when in reality the vast majority of add-ons are simply different tiers of the same add-on. Most add-ons give things like +Charge/Duration or +Speed. Out of the few that do actually change how something functions they are either never used or always used (there are some exceptions). Is this truly healthy for the game? Do you really want every match you play against a Myers to be either Infinite Tier 3 or Wall Hacks? Do you really want every medkit to last forever?
Closer to this games release it wasn't as big of a problem because the number of players that had farmed out hundreds of copies of each item was extremely slim so it wasn't nearly as noticeable. But now? Every game its the same thing so I ask, where is the build diversity that add-ons are meant to facilitate?
Personally I don't play with Items or Add-ons and I honestly encourage you to do the same just to see how it feels. Its really not that bad. I would love to see a game mode where Items and Add-ons are disabled and the only access to items you have are from the chests found during matches. That will never happen though, and this is just wishful thinking.
Lets be honest BHVR would never do something like this, it would be silly for them to. But the idea is nice at least.
Edit
The general consensus seems to be "add-ons are there to change the playstyle of X". The biggest problem that I have with this statement is that it simply isn't true in most cases. Most of the add-ons are simple number tweaks (you go X% faster, you recharge X seconds faster, you have X more charges, the effect lasts for X more seconds). These are by FAR the most common add-ons in the game, even among yellow and greed tier add-ons.
If more (or all) add-ons actually did change the way something played (and there was a either a visual or auditory tell that was identifiable by the other side) then I think add-ons would probably be a lot more enjoyable to use and play against. That would actually serve the purpose of changing how things are played and played against. But then you run into the issue of 'add-ons functioning as additional perks'. This isn't inherently a bad thing but with the game having so many killers with different abilities and so many heck'n perks, it would be extremely hard to not have some overlap (there already is) between perks and add-ons where you can literally swap some of them out 1 for 1 on some killers.
The other issue with add-ons is that of rarity. Someone in the comments of this post said it perfectly
"It's not uncommon to go like 4-5 games in a row and face killers using either double iridescent or a mixture of iridescent & purple add-ons."
This is entirely true. I frequently have gaming sessions where I will play 10+ games in a row playing against a minimum of one purple rarity add-ons. But the add-ons are 'balanced' (ha!) around the fact that the more rare add-ons are not meant to be used every single match. That simply doesn't make sense. Obviously removing add-ons from the game wouldn't be something that BHVR would even consider, I even said so when I originally posted this. But it does bring up a couple of different topics of conversations, those being:
Add-on Balance is (and has been) in a pretty terrible place for years now.
Add-on Rarity is (and has been) in a pretty terrible place for years now.
Most Add-ons don't actually add anything meaningful to the gameplay.
It should be significantly easier to figure out what add-ons someone has by the way they are using them. (ie: if I have a medkit with a Syringe maybe make a sound, not a notification, so that if a killer is close enough they can hear it and play around it).
Comments
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If wanna cut down the viability of like half the killers in the game and severely reduce build diversity, sure.
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Its clear that you didn't read the post. I went over why add-ons don't actually facilitate build diversity on most killers. And yes some killers would lose some viability but here is the neat part.. If add-ons don't exist it becomes significantly easier to balance killers abilities.
In the past killers that relied heavily on add-ons have had those add-ons added to their basekit. Wraith for example has, multiple times, had windstorm added to their basekit because they weren't viable without it. The same could be done to every killer that relies on specific add-ons.
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That's an awful idea.
So much flavor on...I'd say more than half of the roster comes from their addons, and the vastly different playstyles they permit.
Myers, for example, has 3 vastly different playstyles, all informed by addons. A VM Myers, a Tombstome Myers and standard Myers all play differently. If they removed VM, I'd probably never play him again.
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Removed? Absolutely not.
Several of them rebalanced along with items? Yes.
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With the amount of things we'd lose with the upcoming mandatory moris, I feel like getting rid of add ons would just make games feel even more bland.
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I did read the post. You're simply wrong.
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Sorry but this is a terrible idea. It makes zero sense to not simply balance items and add ons rather than remove them entirely. That would remove so much variety and experimentation from the game. Also you'd have so much less to grind for. I'm all for reducing the grind but not to the point where there is.. no point lol
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Troll thread.
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It is difficult to solve all problems. Also, there is always a side to every problem.
Is everyone playing the game only a beginner? Or only advanced players?
Let's limit our discussion to advanced players. So why are all the same add-ons chosen? Because it is stronger? Or because the others are weak? What will be the position of the meme add-on?
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The problem of there only being a few viable addons could easily be solved with more rebalancing of them, no need to scrap them entirely.
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That would be the biggest balance change ever done. You'd have to redesign the entire game to a point that just making DBD2 would be less problematic. The game is built on add ons. Killers are balanced with add ons in mind. If survivors lost add ons then yeah, wouldn't matter that much for them. But killers are based around add ons. You can't remove them any more than you can just up and remove the sprint ability from survivors.
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Stupid idea, but I really think both item & power should be relied on addon. Nerf them down, but buff addon real hard.
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I can see where your coming from. Many add-ons just buff said item/power.
So we could remove or decrease the amount of generic ones (or even combine some of them) and keep the unique ones.
This could give us less cluttered bloodwebs letting us get what we want more often. Which gives us more value for our BP.
It could however give the strongest add-ons or items more often, allowing for more aggravating gameplay.
Not the worst thing basically.
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game would be seriously boring to the point no one bother play this game anymore.
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I would say that this would be a hard no.
Yes there are various ones that do the same thing but each one is a varying tier. If you combine them into one then new ones might have to take their place to have variety of different tiers. But removing them all together would make Killers boring and make it so everyone would know exactly how to deal with them since there's nothing augmenting thier powers.
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A lot of add-ons give variety of playstyle to killers so no, they shouldn't be removed. They should be rebalanced. Some add-ons should be a different rarity while others should not exist at all...
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I believe they should be standarized and Iridiscent addons removed entirely, something like this 4 brown, 3 yellow, 3 green, 2 purple.
Im going to use Myers as he is my main and its the one I have more knowledge:
- 3 brown, 3 yellow and 3 green affect each one of the power in different tiers, (EW3 duration, speed while stalking and aura detection after stalking), for example brown aura addon gives you 1 second of Aura reading after stalking for 2 seconds, yellow 3 seconds after stalking for 2 seconds, green 5 seconds after stalking for 2 seconds.
- 1 brown addon (there are 4 instead of 3 like the other 2 colors) is the "gimp myself but I get more BPs addon" something like "you cant walk while stalking but get double BPs on X category" or something like that.
- Purples become the addons that affect your power in some way, for Myers I believe Scratched Mirror and Dead Rabbit (which should get the value increased to 50%).
This way makes it much easier to balance the addons and Killers themselves, reduces clutter and makes it clearer for everyone what you are getting, how many times a Killer is ok but a few addons make it completely busted? Or when balancing a Killer they have to account for a myriad of variables, with this kind of change you have to take account of only 3 parameters.
Survivors would get a similar treatment except only 2 addon categories instead of 3 and half the items are gone too (only 2 kind of medkits and of toolboxes).
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Removed? No. I do think the game would have benefitted from having them re-balanced around there being fewer rarities, though (either same rarity across the board or divided between basic and advanced or something like that). That way, we might have fewer instances of "this add-on is just this one but with better numbers." Way too late to do such a drastic change to the game, though.
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Just no it would ruin the game.
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The thing is It's apples to oranges since not much changes with Survivor addons.
By removing the Iri Addons many Killers will lose major builds or thing that dramatically change their powers.
Doc for example, all his add-ons from low tier up to purple have some similar effects just varying strengths but most change his power dramatically. Each of the files add something to the madness while others change the shape of his shock. But his best Addons are his Iris The King and Queen.
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No but i do think they could scrap a lot of the browns and just add them to base kit.
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I'm of the opinion that most addons that only modify variables (or stats) by percentages should be removed and partially made basekit. They're dominating the addon slots, see Nurse for example, her best addons are those that "only" modify charge and range variables.
Turn Killer addons into something like mini perks or whatever. Stuff like Mirror Myers or Pallet-Freddy (unless fused into basekit for freddy) could also be alternate abilities in the "item slot" instead of addons.
If thats too extreme, we maybe should just get rid of item/addon rarities. We dont need 2 unstacking addons that do the same, just better or worse.
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I think the smarter, albeit harder path, would just be to recognize the vast disparity between the best and worst addons and reign the high end in some, especially on stronger killers(looking at you alch ring), and maybe even bump some of the weaker addons up a little, like maps and like half of billy's addons
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But most importantly majority has to be relevant.
Most are just pointless slot filler no one want to use.
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No, add-ons shouldn’t be removed, they add a lot of variety to the game. I switch up my add-ons all the time on most of my killers.
I have no problem with some weaker add-ons being buffed up though.
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And thats what makes addons such a problem at the balancing side, once you get rid of busted addons and streamline the rest its much easier to detect what a Killer needs and adjust it, right now certain Killers can go from weak without addons to insane with them and balancing it makes it so much harder.
Whoever needs a bump after an addon prune can get a buff without the hassle of "well now this addon is totally broken so we have to nerf it in 3 months..."
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Oh I agree but it seems from many survivors that I have seen based on what I have seen in the forums want Killers nerfed without any compensation in return.
In the end do you bring the strong Killers down to the weaker levels or do you bring weaker Killers up to the stronger levels.
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I'm for removing add-on rarity, but not add-ons.
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As part of some insanely huge change that's basically burning everything down and regrowing it from the ashes? Sure. But that's a "DBD 2" scale change right there.
Without that? Absolutely not.
No shortage of add-ons that need either buffs, total reworks (as what they do in the first place is just kinda ... eh at best) or nerfs though. A huge add-on change patch could change up the game a whole lot and might be interesting to see.
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Can we please stop trying to make dbd stale?
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I'm not a huge fan of iridescent add-ons to be honest. It's not uncommon to go like 4-5 games in a row and face killers using either double iridescent or a mixture of iridescent & purple add-ons.
I know they're a rarity, but I see significantly more killers using iridescent add-ons than my fellow survivor team mates when I'm playing solo queue.
Balance wise I think brown to green is optimal & still allows for quirky builds.
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Of course. Addon less wraith sounds like fun. Who wouldn't want to play as that?
Oh, wait....
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Yes, let's limit the variety of killers while also ruining their and the survivor side's fun.
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I would honestly argue for a vast reduction of addons per killer. The devs can't balance more than 2-3 killers at a time max in a single update, and we have 29 of them now ingame.
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