Diminishing Returns Feedback

This new system is gonna cause so many problems for perks like we're gonna need perks reworked and buffed if this system goes through like 30 perks a patch of buffs and reworks

Making it be affected and effect killer powers seems like a bad decision, since the killers (if im remembering correctly) that have basekit haste, is knight, trapper, skull merchant, and clown. All killers that really dont need nerfs, with 0 compensation buffs.

This also is VERY confusing. Ive been doing a lot of testing and when you say "addons are not affected by diminishing returns" can also lead to confusion on what counts as the "addon"

EXAMPLE -

Ghostface sheath addon (haste when marking a survivor) has no effect from or to the diminishing returns

Clowns addon cheap gin bottle (increases his haste from invigorated by 3%, bringing it to 15%) actually DOES affect and is effected by diminishing returns. cause the game doesnt treat the 3% as its own amount, but rather treats it as the base power being 15%, easiest seen if you have play with your food at 3 stacks

if the addon was its own count it should be

15% + 6% + 3% = 24%. but since the game considers the power to be 15% its actually 15%+17.5% being 22.5% haste

Is this an oversight? a bug? or is it intentional since the addon itself is not giving haste, but rather increasing the power. if so then addons DO affect it. and its addons on already low tier killers

This is just the killer side of things, i havnt had time to test survivor items/addons with perks to see how all that works. like, do addons that increase heal speed of medkits not get affected by diminishing returns?

Not the diminishing returns I thought were coming to the game. Diminishing Returns in THIS PTB only really hurts heavy healing builds because there are NO gen repair speed perks that are stacked that have a high pick rate. Perks and Items that speed up gen completion do different tasks to accomplish that one goal that is not affected by this 'Diminished Returns' mechanic. Set ups like Stake Out, Hyperfocus, Built to Last and a Toolbox. One gives you tokens that turn good skill checks into greats and provides bonus progress from great skill checks, one provides a higher chance to get a skill check as well as increase progress granted from skill checks based on it's token count, one just speeds up repair speed and another replenishes items to reuse again. The only Diminishing Returns I think killers would experience is less Haste stacking (sorry Clown) because I don't know if using Dying Light with Thanatophobia would count as Diminishing Returns.

The kind of Diminishing Returns I was expecting were duplicate perks would get weaker the more were brought into a match. Stake Out loses bonus progress on great skill checks by -0.2% per copy or Hyperfocus reduces bonus progress of skill checks by -5% per copy, or Unbreakable loses -7% recovery speed for each copy, Fast Track loses -0.3% permanent progress of each token for each copy. Also before anyone brings up "Fast Track isn't even that strong and not a problematic perk" by itself not that big a deal but in multiples is ridiculous. If you don't believe me, 9.5.0 PTB showcased the Fast Track change and it had a 0.82% pick rate on Live servers. Checking it today as I type this post, it has jumped to 5.49% pick rate. A perk that "isn't that strong or good" doesn't have a 650% increased pick rate in the 3 weeks since patch 9.5.0's live launch.

We can do this on some group perks for the killer too like regression perks or blocking perks. Like if a killer equips Pain Res, Pop Goes the Weasel, Turn Back the Clock and Surge. Pain Res being the strongest keeps its -20% and unaffected. PGtW drops to -7.5% as the first iteration of Diminishing Returns. TBtC gets cut to 1/4 so -2.5% as the 3rd iteration of Diminishing Returns. Surge eats a fat one being the 4th iteration of Diminishing Returns dropping to 1%

Sorry BHVR but the Diminishing Returns introduced on this PTB just ain't the answer

I feel like that this also should effect skillchecks, status effects (mainly vigil but it would be better to rework vigil), cleansing totems, opening chest etc.

It 1 and it's fast track nerfs but yeah even if I brought it down to like 10 perks a patch Devs wouldn't even be able to reach that quota

Fundamentally a good idea however... As it is right now it is just gonna remove builds people use with not much incentive to use a mix of everything. In order to successfully achieve build diversity you'd have to buff the individual perks that are being limited by stacking, for example haste perks on both sides, as of right now the only strong thing this addresses is healing speeds which are strong just by putting on we'll make it alone anyways (please nerf healing speeds in general). This should be made to affect the strongest stacking on both sides of the spectrum these being slowdown stacking on killer and skill check gen rush builds on survivor because if not then people continue to run the strongest stuff and no diversity is achieved. Another issue is how these dont really affect team perk stacking, for example four survivors running sprint burst, vigil (though no longer stacks if everyone runs it everyone gets it) which causes trying to commit to a chase miserable for any killer that isn't nurse or blight, who can catch up quickly. And even then if you do nerf full slowdown and gen rush builds survivors have so many tools to extend chases and waste time that it can feel almost impossible to play against. Perks like Decisive Strike, Shoulder The Burden, Dead Hard, Lithe, Sprint Burst, Dramaturgy, basically any exhaustion perk, Finesse, Vigil in combination with exhaustion perks, Windows, and 5 Moves Ahead (to always have a resource to go to with 5 Moves even countering some killers that try to hit at pallet drops). Im sure theres even more im forgetting but these all are the most popular and the easiest or most effective at wasting time. Running into a full squad of Decisive Strike, Lithe, Finesse, Windows/ 5 Moves feels like misery and they don't even always need windows and it can be replaced with something like dead hard that wastes even more time! Shoulder the burden also has less stacking use but more insane slowdown and progress removal. An example of this is if someone less skilled messes up and gets to death hook, the more skilled player running this removes a hook state and now the killer either has to spend more time on the less skilled survivor or go after the more skilled survivor who will waste their time so much more. It is essentially a lose lose situation. If you really want perk variety bhvr you need to heavily shift the meta and nerf a lot of the strongest perks on both sides and buff the individual perks that get affected by this change. Until then this just makes 4 Slowdown and meta survivor builds more prevalent. (Also nerf healing speeds and revert mangled or something)

I think this is a good change. There are some things I would note for future iterations:

— needs to be followed up with status effect reducer perks included — Vigil, ghost notes, etc.

— needs to include skill check bonuses

— selection of survivor and killer perks buffed. Sloppy butcher and self-care for example.

(Iron Will preventing Plague cough noises would be great)

Thanks for your hard work!

Resi and Finesse don't stack in real gameplay, but I'll check on Bam and Dark Arrogance still stacking later today.

I think this system needs a bit more work and testing before hitting live servers.

There seems to be quite a few issues overlooked - basekit BT being hit with diminishing returns, getting hit with diminishing returns based on what your teammates are running when you have no control of their load out, killer and survivor perks impacting eachothers diminishing returns are just a few to name from feedback on these forums.

BHVR has a history of being frustratingly slow when it comes to fixes and adjustments. This new system already has multiple issues players have discovered in just the first day of the PTB that should be addressed and based on past experience a "we'll fix it later" response is not reassuring at all. I think BHVR should hold back releasing diminishing returns and take the time to address the issues and concerns people have brought up from this PTB. Once those have been addressed have the updated version in a later PTB instead of releasing the system as is and making players deal with it until the devs finally find time to address the problems with the system.

I'm gonna be honest it's nearly impossible to tell but I do believe vault speed is effected by this change. PTB vault seems to take about 1.5 seconds while the live vault is about 1 second. Without having Michael on PTB I can't test if this is combined with his base vault speed buff so I'm using Ghostface instead, enjoy

Exclude killer powers from diminishing returns. Having a basekit nerf to your power for running a single perk isnt good design. It limits killer design and requires you to have to keep rebalancing the powers based on perks which is hugely unnecessary and makes it harder to work on killers when there is external perk variables that have a huge impact on their performance. If items are not affected then neither should killer powers be.

The system should only be perk based balancing as it makes far more sense to keep adjusting them individually than having to adjust or take into account constant necessary changes to killer powers and items and their add ons.

i genuinely think the way this idea has been constructed really doesn't work imo. the percentage dropoff is way too steep, and i feel like ultimately it's just removing build diversity from the game. it also doesn't acknowledge that with only 4 perk slots, running a full healing build already has a cost: you're not running anything that will help with gen progression, or what will help you in chase. as killer, if you run a full haste perk, you're sacrificing gen regression and aura reading for example.

this change not only kills a bunch of perks that only worked because of the way they synergized with others (for example overzealous) but also does nothing to make people not run meta builds. it actually imo will make meta builds more likely, as it gives people zero incentive to run anything else: if i can't run a specialized healing or totem cleansing build, sure, i'll run dead hard and decisive like everyone else.

in conclusion, i think this concept needs a lot more work before it's even considered as a possibility for going live.

Things like the 3000% Clown Haste build are wickedly not okay to play against, I disagree with this entirely.

Also, items are affected by the system?

Here is my post that I made on this forum regarding the Diminishing Return changes and how they specifically affect Clown:

I'm a Clown main who is involved in the general Clown main community of DBD. We are very dissatisfied with the way the diminishing returns interacts with our killer's power for the following reasons:
1. Reduced perk variety: essentially any perk that gives haste is not worth running anymore on the Clown, which limits our build variety. Instead of being allowed to use fun haste perks, we are being funneled into aura, slowdown, or utility perks. We could of course theoretically use the haste perks still, but most of them will be worse than an addon slot for Cheap Gin Bottle.

2. Reduced addon variety: if we cannot run haste perks but still want to increase the value of our speed differential as Clowns, we will be forced into running the two addons that increase the basekit invigoration haste (Cheap Gin Bottle and Sticky Soda Bottle). Previously, we could run Rapid Brutality for 5% extra haste alongside two other addons such as Middle Finger, Thick Cork Stopper, Garish Makeup Kit, Starling Feather, etc. Going forward, if we still want to achieve that reliable +5% haste, we now need to run Cheap Gin Bottle and Sticky Soda Bottle, which will effectively make our chase power weaker when we can't justify the opportunity cost of other addons.

3. Possible future nerfs to addons: if the usage rates of Sticky Soda Bottle and Cheap Gin Bottle skyrocket for the above reason, it is reasonable to expect that the balance team will nerf these addons and buff the subpar addons. This seems to be a common trend among killers like Unknown and Demogorgon who have standout addons.

4. Overall, it's a nerf to the Clown: Clown isn't exactly a stellar killer that keeps up with the modern state of the game. The fact that his chase power now can only be supported by addons just makes it worse, and will lead to a rise in camping, tunneling, and "dirtier" playstyles as dedicated Clowns now have to struggle even harder to match survivor strength.

I know this also affects killers like Trapper and Knight who have basekit haste, but this update seems to specifically harm Clown and Skull Merchant who frequently use their haste and hinder in chase. I also fail to see how this will "shake up" the meta of the game, as it seems to me this will just encourage survivors to run more antitunnel, antislug, and exhaustion perks. My proposed solution is to either make the effects of Clown and Skull Merchant's power affect their base movement speed or to make an exemption to allow one perk to stack with their power as previously. I personally agree that running four haste perks on Clown was unhealthy for the game, but running either Rapid Brutality, Play With Your Food, Batteries Included, Furtive Chase, Agitation, NOED, etc. have all been part of the Clown's playstyle for as long as these perks have been around. Please don't nerf the Clown and consider what I've mentioned above.

I also think racecar Clown is ass to play against and have openly stated I hate Clown. I also think that diminishing returns should not effect killer powers because they explicitly stated that addons are not effected, so that should extend to the entire kit of the killer, especially when some killers have their entire kit countered by one perk. Ignore that I play the Shape, the Brutal Strength is not in the room with us xdd

After 200% is where most people start to notice it as the diminishing returns become more and more steep.

The same principle applies to gen perks as well, just harder to notice being the 'percents' are smaller.

Example:

Deja Vu would finish a gen in 84.91 seconds, saving 5.09 seconds

Resilience would finish a gen in 82.57 seconds, saving 7.43 seconds

So a person might think running them together would save 12.52 seconds. It would actually save 11.75 seconds, so not really noticeable in the same way that combining BK and We'll Make It don't get the results one might anticipate.

The only offerings I can think of where this could matter, is map offerings, fog amount(which might mean they could remove the fog cap), hook distance, and luck.

Because right now, map offerings are kinda useless and the biggest problem was SWF stacking offerings. So diminishing effects would actually help killers more and allows them to stack again.

Fog offerings are literally useless, there is 0 effect. Back on release, it could be stacked, which then got capped to a maximum amount (remember Lights Out? That was basically 4 stacked max thickness increase offerings). Afterwards, they lowered how high the fog would go. Some maps dont even have any fog. It would be nice for Fog to be reintroduced as a mechanic (infact, I would LOVE fog-based perks to be entered)

As for Hook distance, they are basically useless for survivors, especially after the hook spawn reworks, unless they use 3 or more, at which point they are too strong. Personally, I feel like these should either be reworked that sacrificing a survivor will consume the hook like it used to back in the day, or should increase/decrease the duration the hook cant respawn after hooks rather than change hook distance. Even with diminishing returns being applied, I dont see them ever being a healthy offering in that scenario. They are always going to be too strong or too weak.

I do hope they do buff the luck offerings individually, because other than very specific builds, they are kinda worthless. You can increase the chance for each survivor to unhook themselves by 99.3%, but that will require 4 offerings, 8 perkslots just to have 4 self unhooks that arent even guaranteed(very close to guaranteed). This is probably the main reason why offerings are included to stack with perks, which means that with 12 slots dedicated to luck alone.
So right now, that would be:
4+9+9+9+9+4+3+3+3+3=56% chance to unhook yourself per unhook attempt, having 6 attempts, giving you a 99.3% chance of a self-unhook. But it leaves other aspects quite vulnerable because if everyone runs Up The Ante and Slippery Meat, they basically are a team of 4 survivors who each have 2 perks.
After diminishing returns, that would be:
4+9+4.5+2.25+1.125+0.2+0.15+0.15+0.15+0.15=26.2% chance to unhook yourself, after using 12 slots. With 6 attempts, that's only 83%. And while that still sounds extremely large, you can get that same number right now using only 4 slots(1 Vigo's, 2 Up The Ante, 1 Slippery Meat). That's quite a big nerf to luck too.
IMO, self-unhooking through luck isnt that strong. The only heads up should be informing the killer about luck being increased so that they dont even try to proxy-camp, as they are better off being somewhere else.