Built in perks

@Master said:

@Peanits said:
Whispers for the last survivor would be neat. Maybe not immediately, so they have a chance to hide and finish the last generator (it's not common, but if they killer already found the hatch, that's their only option). But y'know, in case they just decide to play musical lockers for the next few hours.

Though the built in kindred is not to counter camping. In fact, kindred does a relatively poor job of countering camping to begin with. The radius to show the killer's aura is incredibly small, so it's very easy to sit just outside that radius and still get the full benefits of camping. (For example, I could sit 10m away with insidious. SWF groups could easily see me and tell their buddies, "Hey, he's camping." but kindred wouldn't.) Built in kindred is to bring solo players up to the level of SWF groups (since SWF groups don't need kindred anyway, they can just use voice chat to communicate that info).

In doing so, they're able to create a more level playing field and balance the game better. There is a gap between solo players and SWF groups. This way you don't have to worry about leaving solo players in the dust when buffing killers since they all have the same info and tools to coordinate.

Basically, it's not just "hey, let's give survivors a free perk!", it's "Let's give solo players the same information as groups so they're closer to groups. Then we can buff killers without leaving solo players completely screwed."

(But real talk, I kinda' like ruin as a base perk. I like the secondary objective it adds. Maybe not ruin itself, but a different ruin-like mechanic that forces you to do something else before doing the generators.)

Nice that a mod answers here.
But there is one point I dont understand. I am aware that the gap of solo and SWF needs to be closed in order to achieve balance.

However, how can it be "balanced" if the gap between solo and SWF is closed by lifting solo up and at the same time buffing survivors in generaö (pallets, bloodlust etc).
That is a thing I am really curious about and I can only hope that I misunderstood their plans for chapter 9 or that they left important information out of the Q&A.

Not entirely sure what you mean by pallet buff. The only upcoming pallet change I'm aware of is an animation one which doesn't have an effect on gameplay (just so you don't do a wicked spin before throwing down a pallet). Otherwise, the only change recently brought a pretty big nerf to pallets by removing the vacuum, allowing fewer loops before survivors drop them.

Regarding bloodlust though, it's just not a great mechanic. It doesn't fix the issue it was made to fix (pallet loops), since you lose bloodlust when you break a pallet anyway. More than anything, it punishes the smart survivors that are able to gain distance via windows and mindgames, since vaulting or going around windows do not recently bloodlust. I've played a lot of killer in my time, and the only time I have ever hit bloodlust 3 was when I was actually trying to activate it just so I could see the speed, or back when EW1 Myers could get bloodlust. In the current state, it's basically just a brute force mechanic. There's no thought involved in bloodlust other than hold forward and look at the person you want to kill, go around any obstacles.

Currently, you move at 1.2m/s faster with BL3 (5.8m/s on a base 4.6m/s killer). That means you close the distance at 1.8m/s, or three times your normal speed. With this change, you'll instead close the distance at twice the normal speed (1.2m/s) instead of three times. It's still a massive speed increase, but it's a lot more manageable to play against.

BL1 is unaffected. BL2 is only slightly slower.

I'll just be blunt about it, if someone is regularly relying on BL3 to catch people, there's a reason they aren't catching people, and it's not because of balance. It's not because of pallets either, because pallets reset bloodlust. It's because the survivor they're chasing is repeatedly outsmarting them with window/LOS breaks and gaining distance.

Even in the longer window loops (ironworks, cow tree), you won't get to BL3 before you catch up to them/the window gets blocked from too many vaults.

To put it simply, it's just a crutch, and the numbers are too high. You don't really need it, and I'm willing to bet most people rarely if ever reach BL3 without specifically trying to activate it.

Getting back to the original question: Sometimes a step backwards is a step in the right direction. Giving the solo survivors more info puts them on the same level as groups, which allows you to buff killers to be threatening against everyone without the risk of leaving the solo players behind. Bloodlust is not the key to balance though. The real issue lies in pallets and the amount of time someone can waste just by running around them (something bloodlust does not help with), as well as perks like SB and DS. Exhaustion perks recently got a pretty sizable nerf, essentially only allowing them to activate once per chase, and a DS nerf is in the works. Loops are also being looked at to decrease their power, adding LOS blockers to allow mindgames and tweaking loop lengths to be more risky and force survivors to throw down pallets sooner.

Personally, I feel like bloodlust needs to go in order to buff killers properly. Something to keep in mind is that you can't just keep adding speed boosts to the killer. Stacking speed boosts lead to F1 killers that have no counterplay, and that's neither fun to play against nor fun to play as. If you get rid of bloodlust, you can instead focus that speed increase where it's needed more. For example- just spitballing here- you could instead focus that speed boost into a mechanic that increases speed based on the number of pallet stuns you've received, or by adding additional objectives for the survivors to complete in order to give you more time to catch people. Could even just increase the base speed of killer slightly. Just throwing random ideas out there, none of this is set to happen. But making those changes on top of bloodlust gets messy, and doing so without bringing solo players up to the same level as premade groups leaves them stranded and miserable. Stacking speed boosts are risky business, and you want to steer clear of that as much as possible.

TL;DR: Get rid of crutches (for both sides), level the playing field, add actual power where it's needed.