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Otz Makes A Fair Point In Regards To Perks... (And Probably My Worst Take Ever)
I think this can be said about both sides.
With DBD, it can be really hard to tell if the Survivor or Killer is using a certain perk, and if it becomes a requirement to play around it but you do not have enough information to know when/if you are suppose to play around it, it can create unfair scenarios.
Coup De Grace is just a single example, at least presented by Otz, but I can think of many other perks that function with that kind of issue.
With CDG, when a Generator is completed, you know they will have two stacks, the issue here is that once time has passed since the Generator is completed, you are unable to tell if the stacks have been used or not until it becomes too late. It turns the game into a guessing game as to rather you get hit or not.
CDG is not a strong perk anyways, but the counterplay to it is weird and awkward (sometimes even unfun) because of this issue.
Likewise, some Survivor perks have a similar issue.
Any Means Necessary is a decent example of it.
As Killer you have no way of telling this perk is in play at the start of the match. Sometimes you just leave dropped pallets around if it means you can get a hit or get into a chase that is beneficial, but it often can work against you and make things more difficult since Survivors can just reset the dropped pallets.
This perk can be both weak and strong depending on the situation and Killer, but it has a similar problem to CDG where the counterplay can be awkward, or in AMN's case, sometimes the counterplay can lead to future missed hits, downs, and hooks.
I think this can pose an issue with new players especially. The player onboarding process is already really bad, and having to learn hundreds of perks, dozens of Killer powers and items, addons to modify such, as well as seeing how perks interact with those things, it can be absolute hell for new players.
And for experienced players, it can also just be frustrating. You get punished for having a lack of information when the game is not giving you the information you need to begin with, and for many, it can just feel unfair and/or unfun.
EDIT: I do have some replies that at least make a bit more sense. Dear God what was a cooking when I made this post?
Comments
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Why do we have to know each other's perks at all times? Why does everything have to have an outplay or counter?
Can't we just get hit by Coup De Grace and say "OMG they had that niche perk and they got me!" instead of "Ugh I didn't know he had that perk and my looping is invalid now this is so unfair and unfun!"
I feel like it's just a thought he had at that moment that isn't worth having a discussion about LOL.
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This was why I put "Is change really necessary?".
I do agree with Otz that it can create unfun or awkward situations, HOWEVER, I think DBD is already full of that to begin with. Gaming in general is full of that.
- Sometimes things dont work out. Sometimes things are unfun. There are times you want to leave and stop playing. There are times where you really really hate the game.
- Sometimes things do work out. Sometimes things are fun. There are times you want to keep playing. There are times where you really love the game.
There are two sides to every coin.
I do not think change is necessary. It is an issue, but it's an issue that works both ways, and it is something I think most players have gotten use to by now.
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As soon as something has no counter, you reduce your opponent to a mere bot. That is not exactly fun.
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The thing is where do you draw the line with this "change"? Fun is subjective.
Person 1: Hex: Devour Hope is so unfun and unfair! The game didn't tell me killer had that perk and when he had 3 tokens he downed me! The game should have told me he had this perk so I could destroy it early on!
Person 2: Hex: Devour Hope is so fun! It hit me when I least expected and turned the game around for the killer all the team started to look for the totem and it's fair because the killer earned his tokens!
What makes Dbd unique is the mystery. You don't know what killer or perks you're going against.
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Exactly.
Where is the element of surprise. Its not unfair to be caught off guard by your opponent's build. One could make the point that it is the whole point of perks to give you an advantage in certain scenarios and to leverage that advantage where you can.
The surprise element of that is part of the game.
I wonder about how people come up with these ideas really, do they think them through at all?
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I saw that video and I've never disagreed with Otz more than I did when he talked about CDG. Otz can only see the game through a hyper competitive lens I feel so he's way off base here.
We're not all playing in tournament where we have to know everyone's loadout before the match starts, most players are not trying to identify the other side's build during the course of the game. I've been using CDG since the buff and gone against a fair amount of TTVs and not one has commented on me having CDG despite me getting a number of downs because of the perk so I don't think this is an issue anyone really cares about and IMO they shouldn't.
Not everything needs to be hypercompetitive we can let things be in a game because they're fun as long as it's not upsetting game balance who cares. And for my final point I feel Otz is being horribly hypocritical here, he released a killer perk tier list right before the buff and he gave CDG 2/5 stars talking about everything bad about the perk but now that you actually get enough tokens per gen to actually use it it's a huge problem? Nah I don't buy that at all, everything Otz has a problem with in that video was true before it just didn't come up very often so I don't think Otz is being very consistent in his thinking here.
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Do you really need the game to tell you what exactly your opponent brang to the match to guarantee counterplay? Or do you use your own skill and knowledge to figure out what's going on around you? Which one is more bot-like?
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It can be frustrating - but I don't think it is an issue atm. It is however something to keep an eye out for. - The moment the question of knowing or not knowing a perk is in play impacts the match to such a degree that the outcome of the match is in no small part determined by that one perk.... then it becomes an issue. Tbf though, perks that toe that line are probably more often than not surv perks, simply because surv perks can stack; one Adrenaline is whatever, two can have a serious impact but with three or more we get into the "it's an issue" territory. But even there; there's not really a way to address this. Blanket nerfing the perk means it's useless for the individual user. Keeping it as is means every so often it will be the sole determining factor in how a match plays out.
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Just make it so it's possible to communicate it to your team lol. Sometimes it's easy to guess a combo based on a single perk one party is using, since they go so well together. If both sides get to see each others' perks etc. then we'd need the ability to bad as killers/perks as we;; etc.
The problem is simply the game being a party game and having so much RNG, but I'm sure despite people crying about losing etc. they'd probably hate it if the leaned into those parts and you couldn't bring duplicate perks with other survivors etc. or it had a limit and they'd ask for casual DBD again.
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Honestly I think the fact that nearly every new killer perk has to alert survivors is largely unnecessary and leads to many perks being a lot weaker to use than they could have been.
Yet we don't ever see the same thing for survivor perks. Survivors perks rarely tell the killer about them before they go off.
I think this general direction will be bad for the game, because it just means killers get added layers of frustration for trying to create fun builds.
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We could just show everyones perks then in lobby.
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Otz makes money off these videos so he's got to make stuff interesting or controversial to keep people engaged and share it with other platforms or websites to make more money. Who knows if he really believes what he's saying.
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There's a lot of fun to be had in the unknown. Coup De Gra is probably a bad example because they could have been seeing his longer lunges happening all match to know.
Should we all know every single person that's running Unbreakable, DH, DS? Probably not. There's a massive list of perks that would be rendered unusable if we knew they were running them.
This isn't an issue. We get surprised by perks we weren't expecting, that's the game. Good players mid match weigh their odds of a player having a certain perk given a scenario.
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If Otz cared more about money I think they would literally play any other game.
While DBD is popular in the horror game scene, you need to remember that it is only a smaller portion of gaming as a whole.
And if they cared about money, I dont think they would go through the trouble of making several hour long guides that only really help new players.
I think Otz just looks at things a lot more critically than most people do, considering how casual the playerbase is for DBD to begin with.
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Part of the skill for both sides is identifying the opposing perks. Showing perks will just completely remove that.
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I hope he stays in DBD and never plays the new TCM.
I'm really sick of hearing how a rando from the internet is the authority on this game. Dude complains about everything, it's annoying.
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As long as I have a realistic chance to figure it out, I don't need the game to tell me. But perks like MFT with a 3% haste effect have subtle but very strong effects, that you can't reliably call out. This is something that subtle cheaters do. They give themselves slight advantages in every situation, so that you can't tell what's going on. Ultimately this isn't healthy. You gaslight your opponent into second guessing everything and even after the game they can't tell what was going on.
Coup de Grâce is a perk that you can easily call out. Brutal Strength and BBQ are the same. Even Lethal Pursuer is quite recognisable. These are things that you can use your brain to call out and counter.
The same can't be said for MFT, some main buildings, Nurse and some addons (Tombstone Piece comes to mind). You cannot play around them by using your brain.
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Would just lead to more lobby dodging. "Oh that guy has Sole Survivor he must be selfish"
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I like Otz well enough, but the longer I've played, the less I agree with him.
His hyper- competitive outlook on the game is the epitome of unfun.
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Why does every discussion on this forum turn into MFT?
What I said was not every perk can have a counterplay and sometimes you just have to deal with it. It's the nature of DbD. Nobody is entitled to have information over other side's perks.
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I think he is burned out and had he not been a guy with viewers he would have left the game long ago. I don't like watching him play he is so frustrated and stressed out, a lot of times anyway.
But I like his ratings of all addons and such just sitting and talking. But he made more sense a couple of years ago.
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That may be right. Obviously, all we have are assumptions, but he's definitely been playing this game a lot for a long time. It'd be natural for anybody to be burned out after such a long time doing, more or less, one thing.
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Otz does play other games. It's just people watch Otz for DBD so he ends up always going back to DBD. He's built up an audience around DBD and it's very hard to break into popular games who already have huge streamers for those games.
He's definitely sticking with DBD, because it's where he gets views.
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"Otz said about DBD..." is something I file right next to "Cohh Carnage said Pathfinder Kingmaker was good because the dev team speciifially diverted resources from actual game development to personally patch his broken save file and he doesn't see the problem" on the list of stream opinions I don't care about at all.
It's very, very hard to have decent perspective from the inside.
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To me, it's the same issue as MFT. Things like lunge distance, action speeds and walking/running speeds are the building blocks that this game is made of. Changing these things almost makes whichever side have to play a different game. It's not OP or broken, it's just kinda... lame?
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cough cough at dredge's dissolution perk revealing itself to the survivor upon hit so just run forward, loop around and perk gains no value...
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Basically lol
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Yeah I understand your point but it's kinda weird to balance the game around MFT. I feel like he specifically made this Coup De Grace statement because he also made an argument saying we should know when MFT is active. If MFT causes issues it should be dealt with separately we shouldn't re-design the whole game over a perk.
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I agree. I'm not saying anything like that. I'm saying that having perks like MFT and Coup in the game is a dumb idea LOL
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"Is change really necessary?"
It really isnt. To take the two example Perks (Coup de Grace and Any Means Necessary):
Coup de Grace is visible once the Killer did his lunge with it. At this point, the Survivor knows that they have CDG. Before not, which is totally fine. The Killer got value from their Perk, they deserve to get value from it. And afterwards, the Survivor has to play with CDG in mind. And if they decide to be greedy and make the extra Loop and get hit by CDG again, it is their fault.
Same with Any Means Necessary. It is a Perk you rarely get value from, but if the Killer decides that they do not kick a strong Pallet immediatly, the Survivors deserve to get value. This happened to me a few days ago, I tried the 4K Clown-Challenge (and got it in this game) while being sent to The Game by the Survivors. I had Hubris, Enduring and Spirit Fury, so I thought it will work out. And well, I did not kick a Pallet immediatly in my first chase and it got picked up (at least two Survivors had AMN). Was I mad? No. They got value out of their Perk. And I made sure to kick Pallets to avoid that they can pick them up again.
It is totally fine that some Perks are unknown to the other side.
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Agreed. I feel he was just having a moan and groan at that point with no real thought behind it, just like anybody else may feel when things aren't going this way.
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Why? Im one defender of no counterplay just softcounters
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I watched this video, and I'm not sure I agree in all cases. There are quite a few perks that only work because the other side doesn't know about it until it is revealed. Head On for example is really hard to use if the Killer knows. Lightborn does nothing once survivors know.
The problem comes when it's so powerful an effect with virtually no downsides that everyone runs it, to the point you have to assume the other side has it and it significantly affects your gameplay even when they don't actually have it... Dead Hard being the textbook example.
The other example of a problem perk is when you can't tell its in effect. Otz and Hens have both said that the 3% haste of MFT itself is not a problem inherently... though I would argue their showcase of Hens doubling his chase time on average vs.Otz's Pig consistently, puts a dent in that argument...
However because you don't know for sure its in effect, you can't even decide to not chase if you encounter it. You learn it's in effect after you've committed a while and already paid the cost... though I don't think knowing about it is enough when everyone is likely to run it cause its so powerful....
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He just thinks perks that mess with distances are unhealthy and I agree, if complaining about MFT is normal then it's reasonable to complain about coup de grace, you can't do anything and you go down it's not particularly fun
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I like when stuff happens in the game that I have no way of knowing about until it happens - Dead serious
Most games/builds on both sides are so predictable/optimized + New HUD (I am not saying it is bad before anyone pops off) + being able to see what perks are active in most cases even if they haven't effected you yet = no real 'AHHHHHHHHHHHH' moments.
If I 360 someone and they hit me pretty fast after, for example, and I see end game that they are 1 of the 8 people left alive that run Unrelenting....I'MMA LOSE MY MIND AND SCREAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM! >:3
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Would you like a killer that just instantly kills everyone at the start of the match? Probably not. The reason why is that it makes absolutely no difference how good you are because all your skill and experience get nullified when something has no counterplay. You get reduced to a bot.
And if I can't influence how the game goes in any way, then I won't play it. That's something I'd expect of a film but not of a game.
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Nobody is suggesting if we should have a killer that instantly kills everyone with no counterplay though. That's another discussion.
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While I'd say STBFL and MfT should be made aware to their 'victims', most other perks I think are fine to be something aspirational to learn. The only issue is when playing outside of a SWF, the Killers perks and add-ons should be visible on death. When I was brand new I legit thought a bunch of Killers were cheating to 'hide' their perks, because it was only when I would lose early that they couldn't be seen. Obviously if I died that quick and they didn't have visible perks, it was because it was a cheater, right? That makes it such a disservice to learning the game to hide the perks and add-ons when playing solo.
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Realistically, I have no idea how to fix this issue. Do we just keep things how they are? Is change really necessary? Again, I have no idea.Broadly, no, change isn't necessary. Generally, I like Otz's takes, but when he said survivors were going to realize this is unfun, I was thinking that's exactly the thing that makes the game fun. Not knowing what the killer has actually creates the impression that they are strong, something to be scared of. The randomness of each match is a huge part of what makes the game fun.
On top of that, there is the whole strategic layer to the game. Taking coup means you give up some other perk. The fairness of the game shouldn't be judged on whether each chase was a perfect display of skill, but whether the overall trial was (and even then probably not, more whether over many trials the game averages out to fair).
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perks used to be visible to dead survivors., which led to SWFs calling out entire loadouts once one of them died. It made surprise perks like blood warden even weaker than they already are, so they made them hidden until the match ends.
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I think the problem is that mistakes in this game are extremely punishing for both sides. This game is a giant snowball where a single misplay on either side results in the entire game being lost. So when you don't know one of those perks is in play, and then you make a mistake because of it. Now you just completely lose. Not really fun for anyone.
I don't think the problem is so much the perks, but the snowball aspect of the game. Which i think should be evened out. I don't even think starcraft has as big a snowball effect as this game does.
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I think it's perspective. If I get outplayed by a perk and snowballing happens I don't think much about it. They got value from their perk. Not everything has to go my way and I move on.
DbD is a very unique game where stereotypical set of rules we're used to see from others game don't apply well.
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Tell that to the survivors who DC as soon as something goes wrong, or if they have a flashlight and the killer is running lightborn, or if they get outplayed and go down super early. Or the killers who DC if the first chase goes bad, or if their hex gets cleansed early.
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Yeah that sucks LOL. But I don't know how what Otz suggests is going to make any of that more fun. Knowing what power other side has isn't going to prevent them from using it.
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Like i said, even out the snowball curve for both sides, so that a single mistake doesn't cost you the game.
I mean, if that first chase goes bad as a killer, you lose 3 gens, and then the survivors just predrop every pallet, and get a 4 man escape. If a survivor goes down super early, or another survivor goes down trying to get a flashlight save, its game over. It shouldn't be that way.
That way, you'll have time. So as you play the game you'll see "oh the killer has coup, let me play around that" rather than just, oh, the killer has coup, i went down, now we lose. Or, oh the survivor has Dead hard, i'll play around that, instead of, oh the survivor has dead hard, now i just lose because i'm chasing someone with 3 health states.
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DbD taught me to enjoy and love the unknown and unexpected which is the reason why it's so unique. If I can already tell and expect how everything is going to playout there's not much excitement or enjoyment in that.
I understand your point though maybe this topic is more subjective than I thought.
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imagine the amount of perks that would be completely irrelevant if they were known right at the start. noed, bw, devour, spirit fury, enduring, lightborn, discordance... and hope users could expect to get tunnelled in 90% of their games. it's a massive NO from me, and my imagination can't go further on how that "issue" could be resolved other than showing the perks from the start.
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That's why I said only for soloq. If you are new, playing in a SWF, and die early, you probably are going to spectate your better/more experienced friends instead of quitting to the lobby. They can also tell you what the perks are and what they do. But when if you are new and trying to learn, if you are going to spectate a match, it will be a tutorial video on youtube, not your soloq teammates who probably let you down seconds ago. At the bare minimum they could put a text box that says "wait until the match is over to view the Killer's loadout", but since they didn't, they clearly don't care about the newer player experience.
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So would you prefer a version of DBD where Devour Hope is unable to be cleansed? It's only one example but Hex: Devour Hope being cleansable is the counter or outplay. Would you rather be permanently exposed after 3 unhooks? If the game makes you feel powerless with no ability to impact things then why play? If there were no counters, outplays, or outpreformances then "Cookie Clicker" has more engaging gameplay because at least you can click and affect your outcome.
HOWEVER; DBD has kinda reached a point where certain perk, killer, and add-on combinations are entirely unbeatable so you'll get a game there you'd be better off on cookie clicker but a majority of the time you can play around certain things provided you have memorized each perk and it's effects. So long as DBD is at least kinda fair it'll keep going on unchanged and I'm fine with that so long as we don't have the "afk cenobite" type builds being left in.
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I really don't get this... is anyone saying that every single perk needs to be known from the start?
All I see is "this specific perks needs a tell that it activated".
And "so every perks needs to be known from the start?" Is just an entirely new sentence people are saying like it answers anything...
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