Looking Back At Patch 6.1.0 ~ Was The "Massive Meta Shake-Up" A Disaster?

Ah. You felt.

Some. Eruption shouldn't double dip the charges and Surge might need a numbers bump as it eats charges too.

Otherwise regression is in a good place overall. DMS+PR might be a tiny bit too good still and Grim probably needs a rework as it's a snowball machine.

Game was way worse before.

Yes, we need more perk variety but it was so much worse before.

Killer no longer felt like a sandbag for SWFs and survivor felt a bit less binary between 'we escaped with 2 hooks' and 'we got murdered by a Nurse at 5gens' which was very much what it was like before.

Dead Hard "for distance" was finally obliterated so I personally think it's the best update ever until the recent Myers changes.

Yes, it was a disaster. Perks were nerfed to the point that they were no longer being used. That’s not good. It would’ve been healthier for the game to buff unpopular perks to the level of Meta perks. That would’ve created variety. Take Territorial Imperative for example, it’s probably the least used perk in the game let alone on killer. Instead of nerfing say a gen defense perk, buff TI to a level where Killers will want to play with it and get value from it. What bothered me most were changes to some of my favorite perks that weren’t even Meta, nor did players complain about (Dark Sense was one of them).

No, 5 seconds nowadays are not the same as back then. Back then Killers were weaker, maps were more survivor-sided. 5 seconds were more valuable a few years ago.

the cognitive bias where tinkerer, a non-gen defence perk that grants information+some stealth needs nerfs while ruin does not need nerf yet was one of they key slowdown perks in which your post ALSO complains about 3-4 slowdowns.

tinkerer absolute did not need nerfs. if the goal is to move killer away from gen defence, virtually every non-gen defence perk needs to be buffed and killer need more base-kit gen defence buffs. 5% regression doesn't on gen-kicks doesn't cut it.

It was more valuable before because hook spawn logic was worse so survivors had to be slugged else the killer risked them wriggling free. Paired with Unbreakable, as DS often was back then, it put killers in losing situations because when those survivors got up they also had better loops as maps were much more forgiving for survivors. Maps are worse for survivors now, more hooks spawn and they spawn closer together, and most killers aren’t really affected by a 2.5 second stun now as they have strong catch up mechanics—paired with the other features I’ve mentioned. DS itself is less valuable because so much that helped bring it value before has changed (maps, killer mobility, hook spawning, etc). That was Aven’s point.

Yes and no. A big part involved a shift from Ruin to other perks.

Kick meta revolved around Eruption. CoB and Overcharge were purely along for the ride.

I saw a lot of PR back then too.

I mean, there are several reasons for this shift, sure. But almost every single one of them is in patch 6.1.

Ruin nerf, tinkerer nerf, and BBQ BP changes all contributed to killers not applying as much map pressure.

Pain res and pop were also hard meta before the patch and those were both adjusted in that patch as well.

And, like you said, Eruption and overcharge were buffed. Eruption actually got triple buffed in short succession: increased chunk regression on down and increased incapacitation in 6.1, and then shortly later was buffed again to apply incapacitation before the regression, which really kicked off the gen kick meta.

But, with the exception of the third Eruption buff, all of that, and the focus change to generators over chases, is entirely due to the 6.1 patch.

Ruin and Tink were QQ'd about ENDLESSLY on the forums. So sure, but this is sort of a hell of survivors' own making.

PR was still a monster of a perk. Pop, if I remember was really crap then it was buffed, then nerfed again.

Eruption was the problem.

OC wasn't even slightly OP and was thus a dumb nerf as it's now mostly worse than an empty slot.

COB was another dumb nerf but it's merely crap now.

Keep in mind that a lot of killers didn't use Ruin before the patch (I never did, it was too volatile) and instead ran PR+DMS. Post patch, I saw some kickers but still a lot of PR. I don't think it changed all that much, outside of Eruption being a horrible perk to go up against. Kicky meta also grew heavily out of NTH and the later PR nerfs, alongside Pop being good again.

So we got a question: The thing that annoyed us with tinkerer/ruin/undying was that tinkerer would keep alerting as soon as we'd get to a certain progress, which would then get killer to come straight away and drop progress via ruin enough to set it under the bar so it would trigger again unless the team found and broke both totems and hope the killer didn't have a tight 3 gen around it. If only ruin got changed what would have stopped killers from doing the same thing but with different regression perks?

Currently it's a moot point but what would have changed back then?

killer got new perk for similar play-style. it's unforeseen.

it was information perk to optimize hex:ruin. Like i said, i do not understand why undetectable and information perks need nerfs

I just kinda stopped reading after the exaggeration of Overcharge and the complaints about tunneling.

The only way in which that patch was a failure is that it wasn't upheld. It brought amazing changes for the game. But basically every killer buff except for the very miniscule kick/attack cooldown speed buffs have been reverted. In essence, killers got crumbs, and survivors got crumbs taken away. Dead Hard, OTR, and all that still being meta kind of speaks for itself.

Pretty much the only reason the patch gets hated so much is because killers got lots of buffs and survivors got lots of nerfs. But like I said, it's all been reversed pretty much. So it's very petty that, to this day, people call it the patch that killed the game/made it killer sided. Notice how the survivors who knew how to play were barely affected, and didn't complain.

There's a certain kind of tension that two people create towards one another, where they misinterpreted one comment or multiple comments, or heard secondhand that the person said something about them, and that kind of sits in their minds, feeds confirmation bias, feeds paranoia, until finally they have an almost religious-level belief in the idea that this person hates them, or should be a target of reciprocal hate. I think a majority of players have done the same thing in this game, except instead of a person they've set their sights on the killer role, people who play the role effectively, and anything that makes that role/those players stronger. If you look at the facts, and the bigger picture, killers really aren't that powerful, and haven't had much in the way of buffs. The power difference between them and survivors, when both sides play effectively, and the difference in power between each's buffs as well, are worlds apart.

I don't think it was a failure. It was one of the biggest, if not the biggest update we'd ever had and there were a lot of good changes in that patch.

It is almost unanimously agreed that base kit BT was a great addition. No one perk should ever be necessary to ensure the game is actually playable. It didn't end tunneling but it definitely allowed for more perk variety, which is a win in my book.

Whether you loved or hated DH, you can't deny that a perk with that high of a pick rate does cause issues. It's not fun to play against the same killer over and over again and DH made chases feel like they were always the same for killers. You did the first half of the chase, then waited for DH and then hopefully ended the chase. This immense overexposure really was what made so many people despise it.

The old gen regression meta was also getting quite stale. It's easy to say now that we want it back and that it did have some great aspects (like Ruin being worthless when you camped instead of pushing survivors off of gens) but just like DH, it was too common for too long.

The regression meta we got after that was terrible but the intention to shake up the meta was still good. I also disagree that all three of those perks were gutted. Eruption is still fine. Not super amazingly meta but definitely a very helpful perk. Overcharge is worse than it was before but let's be honest nobody used it then, so it's not really a loss in that sense. The only perk that was really lost is Call of Brine. It was fine before (it was no issue at all when it released and even then it had a pretty respectable pick rate) but now it's pretty much a dead perk. The regression aspect could be scratched entirely and I honestly wouldn't consider that much of a nerf, since it barely does anything to begin with and the info aspect isn't good either. It's ok for a secondary effect but not worth a perk slot.

This next part might be a bit controversial but bear with me. The DS nerf was good. It wasn't good because the game was healthy in that state but it was good because it highlighted how much of an issue tunneling really is. It had always been a thing but it was never more rampant than in 6.1.0 and that was probably what caused the devs to design more anti tunnel perks and buff some options that were weak before. I'm glad it got buffed again but I doubt many of us really saw the extend of the issue that is tunneling before that.

The base changes in power dynamics are fine in my opinion. But we've had this discussion a million times, so I don't feel like going into it again.

Overall, I think 6.1.0 had some incredibly bad short-term consequences but it was a good patch in the long run. The regression meta is much less annoying than it ever was and the game revolves more around chases than just stalling (on both sides). I think we strayed a bit too far from that balance between those two because now games feel rushed but sometimes you have to break something before you can fix it.

“If you look at the facts, and the bigger picture, killers really aren't that powerful”

Or your just not that good

We got a lot more anti tunnel perks by now. Even Babysitter is actually quite good. Shoulder The Burden needs a bit more fine tuning but I definitely do not consider it a bad perk. It does help with tunneling albeit less than it could / should because it makes the user too vulnerable, which the killer can use to tunnel that survivor instead. So then you'd need multiple survivors to have it equipped, which creates an issue similar to with old BT.

The endurance problem could be solved rather easily, if they did what I have suggested for years. Make base kit BT make that survivor lose collision with the killer, so they can neither be hit nor bodyblock. That survivor would always get somewhere before they are hit, their endurance effect from anti tunneling perks couldn't be removed immediately and they also couldn't abuse that added protection to be a meatshield for the other survivor. They could also increase DS's duration and add a clause that it deactivates, if the killer chases and downs someone after you were already unhooked (otherwise we risk multiple survivors running around with DS protection, which goes against it's purpose) to reward you more for actually lasting in chase.

They didn't shake up the meta for killers at all I see eruption, pain res and pop goes the weasel still in almost every single round

i do not agree. 300% regression was not overpowered. 3 gen was with said perks was overpowered and regression wasn't free. you spend valuable time kicking gens over immediately entering chases when attempting to walk around the map.

with latest changes to gen-kick nerfs and regression restriction, 3 gen is least viable it has ever been which in turn makes gen-kicking, the least viable it has ever been because gen-kicking outside 3 gen is not rewarding. corresponding perks that supposedly boost gen-kicking are in weakest state they have ever been. as result, when you factor kicking outside of 3 gens, it is also in the worst state it has ever been.