http://dbd.game/killswitch
Please dont flipflop on Haste/Hindered Stacking BHVR.
What other alternative do you have to ensure balance and quality of perks if you allow stacking of those status effects? Seems to me you are just caving in to an angry mob, because you do not address at all how you will ensure the quality of those perks alone and in combo and I have read loads of these threads too, but none of them seems to have an alternative solution to the problem the Haste/Hinder Stacking Prevention is supposed to solve.
Please explain to us what the solution is then, or maybe don't bow your head in shame even if a change is unpopular, if it solves the problem we have then that will be much much more useful than preserving stacking.
Please reconsider this, You cant just leave fun perks in this dust or leave in broken combos in the future.
You barely have enough time to revisit all the perks properly, you are doing the game a huge mess by keeping it in.
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haste stacking was never an issue
if some perks get out of hand like pre nerf mft they can be dealt with individually without destroying fun build variety for the sake of "balance" that was never needed in the first place since haste perks have pretty strict conditions and requirements most of the time.
i was at least hoping that if they go through with it they'd buff lackluster haste perks that depended on stacking like they promised but we ended up with buffs to already ok perks like champion of light and unbound while perks like blood pact, power of two, game afoot were left in a sad state.
i am very glad they went back on this change it wasn't needed unless they make haste perks actually worth using on their own which they didn't and probably can't without making them too much to handle.
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Obviously haste stacking has been an issue, otherwise BHVR would not attempt to fix it.
BHVR would not have reached this point without Haste combos giving significant Survival or Kill-rates or leaving individual perks in the nerfed dust.
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Honestly, I would be able to live with Haste and Hindered not stacking. Them caving in here but not with the rarity colors (that literally no one wanted) is odd.
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I'm also pretty disappointed that they are backtracking on this. It would make their job creating and balance perks easier, and would cause less player confusion since they wouldn't run into survivors who are legitimately faster than them, among other examples.
Wonder what the breaking point was.
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They're not backtracking on the rarity colors? That sucks. That really sucks. Maybe if they made a halfway decent tutorial it wouldn't be so bad, but players are practically required to watch YouTube tutorials to figure the game out; all of those are going to be confusing and messed up if the color changes go through. Not to mention the issues for color blind players.
With haste and hindered not stacking, why doesn't BHVR just give it a cap? They can stack but not beyond a certain point. Why is it all or nothing here?
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I agree. I was very much looking forward to this problem being addressed and I'm disappointed they decided not to go through with the changes. They just needed to buff some more perks than they did on the PTB, that was all.
As long as these effects are allowed to stack the design space for these perks is going to remain quite limited and some weaker perks will never be able to get the proper buffs they deserve without making stacking them an issue in some way. This stacking system is not sustainable long-term imo and this will likely have to be revisited again at some point.
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The main problem with the Haste/Hindered changes imo was that they were trying to balance both roles equally, when Haste and Hindered provide different levels of benefit depending on the role (a 105% Survivor gains more chase time overall than a 120% Killer, due to how Distance/Time works with two objects moving at different speeds), and the lack of visual/auditory feedback for Haste/Hindered effects. The latter is self-explanatory, but the former is what I'd like to bring to attention:
There's two problems with the current dynamic between Haste perks and Roles, that combine into a much bigger problem:
The first is that Killers get a mathematically smaller decrease to their chase time compared to Survivors. If you use the math equation 'Distance divided by Speed Differential equals Chase Time', or [D/S = C], you can see just what I mean. The speed differential is typically 4.6m/s minus 4.0m/s, the Killer/Survivor default respectively, but can vary. The math results in Survivor Haste/Hindered effects being around twice as effective as Killer Haste/Hindered effects for chase time, with a 4.8m/s Killer saving roughly 8 seconds (8.333~) compared to a 4.6m/s Killer for chase time, but a 4.2m/s Survivor increasing chase time by roughly 17 seconds (16.6666~). This dynamic is pretty much built into physics, not only DBD, due to how Distance over Time works, so we can't avoid that really.
The second is the difference in design philosophy between Killer and Survivor Haste perks.
Haste/Hindered perks on Killer, with a few exceptions, are almost all Timed. 10 seconds after an M1 for Rapid, 10 seconds after getting an M1, and then vaulting for Unbound, etc etc. Perks that defy this are typically still limited in some way. Batteries requires you to be near a completed gen, AKA somewhere you don't want to be as Killer. Noed has it during endgame/tied to a Hex, though its other effect is still lame.
Haste perks on Survivor, with the exception of Exhaustion perks, can all be effectively infinite. Hope activates when endgame starts, and stays active 100% of the time after. MFT activates and stays active while deep-wounded. Dark Theory applies in an AoE that the Killer can disable, but has to actively do so to prevent it. Blood Pact and Power of Two both require two survivors to be together, but stay active as long as that condition is met.Both Hindered perks for Survivors (Chemical Trap and Champion of Light) are both timed, and IMO are fine. Their High value actually messes with Blight/Billy/other high mobility killers enough to be good against them, and I like that personally.
Killer perks provide less of a benefit than the math above due to having durations, while Survivor perks can more consistently get value that approaches the maximum value possible during chase due to not having time-based restrictions. Survivors are able to have a better Haste effect for longer than most Killers can have theirs, and that causes the problems with MFT/Hope that we saw before. While they're restricted, they're not restricted in the way Killer perks are. A 10% Haste increase for Survivor gives them roughly the amount of time that a 20% increase in Haste for Killer would.
Not only that, but Killers have many more restrictions on their Haste perks than Survivors do. Ex: Unbound requires you to Injure a Survivor, then Vault, within a set time frame. Then you get 10s of 10% Haste. Four overall restrictions. It requires you to Injure, it Requires a vault, it only activates for a set time, and its Haste is time-limited. In fact, due to their time-limits, almost all Killer Haste perks don't even end up stacking with each other. Rapid will often run out until you can vault for Unbound, and even if you do, vaulting takes around 2-3s of your Rapid's duration without other vault speed perks.
Power of Two and Blood Pact require you to Heal a Survivor, and stay close to them, granting you 5% and 7% Haste respectively. Two restrictions, with no time limit, and an Innately bigger time gain on chase than their 'equal' Killer Haste values. (Effectively a 10% and 14% Haste increase, or 24% Haste combined if you wanted to save the same amount of time in chase as Killer). Due to their lack of a time limit, Survivors can stack their Haste effects easier than Killers can, which results in these issues.
Its a whole hodgepodge of really weird design decisions that add up to be a problem, and this doesn't even take into account a bunch of other factors:
How people feel when they have to deal with these. Being slow feels bad, while being fast feels good.
How Haste/Hindered affects lower mobility Killers like Trapper or Freddy way more while not typically affecting Blight, Nurse, or Billy. Nerfing Haste stacking would be nerfing the build options for Killers who don't need those limits.
How Haste/Hindered perks shorten or lengthen the distance between loops/tiles, and affect map traversal time.
How limiting Haste/Hindered makes 'more design opportunities', but also encourages you to just never run any Haste/Hindered perks together, while just increasing the amount of perks that likely will still be niche.
How the design of the perk effects how its perceived. I don't mind Buckle Up stacking with other perks, since it discourages slugging (a playstyle I, and many others find boring). No One Left Behind encourages risky altruism. Babysitter and Borrowed Time both discourage tunneling. The new perk Duty of Care, if balanced properly, could encourage risky altruism and help prevent Tunneling. Meanwhile, most Exhaustion perks are just a free large Haste boost that you can use every like 40s. Perks like Dark Theory are a time investment, but also make the Killer go out of the way to deactivate it. They're kind of boring, or frustrating, to deal with.
Its a bunch of stuff we gotta consider when suggesting changes, and there's not gonna be a perfect solution. Stacking Haste is fun, for both sides, but it can cause frustration when it gets out of hand, and with the current setup we have, Survivors can make it get out of hand more than Killers can. We should treat them as they are, and how they effect the game mechanically, not lump them together.2 -
Only thing that concerns me is they are maintaining the majority of the speed buffs on perks while still allowing stacking. That means players running around at speeds that was never intended.
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To be fair all the perk buffs in the ptb could have been done while keeping stacking and they forgot to buff 90% of the perks and addons related to this change.
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