Dead by Daylight should no longer be affected by an outage. Players logging into the game between September 26 3PM ET and September 28th 3PM ET will receive 1M Bloodpoints as compensation.

Some (Probably Bad) Balance Ideas I Had

These are just a few balance ideas I had, of course feel free to give feedback.


("Reworked" Means the current text would be replaced or edited.)

("Buffed / Nerfed / Changes" Means new text is added.)


New status effects:

  • Favor:
  • Each stack of Favor grants an additional 20 % blood points at the end of the trial.

The point of this effect is to homogenize blood point gain effects. Although there isn’t a maximum number of stacks, you may only be able to get a small number of stacks from an individual perk.


Perk Changes


Flip Flop (Reworked)

  • While in the dying state, 100 % of your recovery progression is converted into wiggle progression when you are picked up by the Killer, up to a maximum of 40/45/50 % total wiggle progression.

This change makes the perk more useable, by reducing the requirements to get the full effect.


Poised (Reworked)

  • After a generator is completed you leave no scratch marks and recover from Exhaustion 50 % faster for 6/8/10 seconds.

This buff would hopefully make the perk more noticeable.


We’re Gonna Live Forever (Reworked)

  • When you take a hit to protect a Survivor, you gain a 5 % Haste effect for 10 seconds.
  • Each time you perform a Safe Hook Rescue or take a hit to protect a Survivor, gain a stack of Favor, up to a maximum of 2/3/4 stacks.

These Changes make the perk have an in-game effect, while slightly reducing the amount of blood points it gives.


Iron Grasp (Reworked)

  • While carrying a Survivor, you will not drop them when you get stunned or blinded, but you still suffer from the other effects of the stun or blind.
  • Effects of Survivor struggling are reduced by 50 %.
  • Time to struggle out of your grasp is increased by 6/10/14 %.

I wanted to make Iron Grasp relevant by making it give you something that other perks couldn’t, something to make it stand out compared to agitation. By adding the semi-immunity to decisive strike, as well as flashlight or pallet saves, I think the perk could get at least some use again. Also I removed some of the struggle resistance, because I don’t think this made much of an impact on gameplay.


Barbecue & Chili (Reworked)

  • After hooking a Survivor, all other Survivors' auras are revealed to you for 5 seconds when they are further than 40 metres from the hook.
  • Each time a Survivor is hooked for the first time, gain a stack of Favor. You can get a maximum of 2/3/4 stacks.

My goal with these changes was to make Barbecue & Chili less common by making its bloodpoint gain effect weaker, and to make it use the Favor effect. Hopefully now its less generic in its purpose.


Boil Over (Reworked)

  • You obscure the Killer’s ability to see hook auras while you are below 20 % wiggle progression.
  • Your wiggle speed is increased by 20 % while you aren’t Exhausted.
  • When you struggle out of the Killer’s grasp, you become Exhausted for 60/50/40 seconds.
  • You do not recover from Exhaustion while running.

I decided on these changes because the struggle effect increase wasn’t very meaningful, and I wanted to make the perk increase your wiggle speed, but I wanted it to be limited in use. Also by obscuring the Killer’s ability to see hook auras, it tests the Killer’s knowledge of hook placements.


Babysitter (Reworked)

  • Each time you safely unhook another Survivor, you get a stack of Favor, up to a maximum of two.
  • When you unhook another Survivor, the unhooked Survivor runs at 105 % their normal running speed and leaves no scratch marks or blood trail for 4/8/12 seconds. Both you and the Killer see each other’s auras for 6 seconds.

In my opinion, this perk needed a change to make the perk more incentivized, and to make the effects more powerful. Hopefully these changes will do that.


Hangman’s Trick (Reworked)

  • Hooks are no longer destroyed by sacrifice.
  • The amount of time it takes for survivors to sabotage a hook is increased by 30/40/50 %.
  • The automatic repair timer of sabotaged Bear Traps is reduced by 60 seconds.

The point of this change was to make the perk more viable even when survivors aren’t sabotaging hooks.


Hex: Ruin (Reworked)

  • At the start of the trial, one of your dull totems becomes a hex totem.
  • While the related hex totem is standing, the following effects are active:
  • Whenever a Survivor comes within 16 metres of a hex totem, they will be affected by Ruin for the next 40/50/60 seconds, which causes the following:


  • Good skill checks result in 5 % regression on the Generator.
  • Great skill checks grant 0 % bonus progression on the Generator.


  • The Ruin status effect does not go away when the related hex totem is cleansed.
  • Whenever a generator stops being repaired, after 15 seconds it will explode and the generator will regress by 5 %.

If generators are going to be made slower to repair, this perk would need to be rebalanced. I also decided upon these specific changes because I think they will make the perk more interactive, and make it something that discourages leaving a generator.


Prove Thyself (Reworked)

  • Reduces the size of good skillcheck success zones by 20 %.
  • Succeeding a great skillcheck within 4 metres of another Survivor will result in an additional 2 % progression and increase your chances of triggering a skillcheck by 8 % for 3 seconds.
  • Gain 50/75/100 % more bloodpoints for performing cooperative actions.

These changes would make the perk be much more beneficial for survivors who are confident in their ability to hit great skillchecks, and it would make generator work more interactive at higher levels of play.


Leader (Reworked)

  • Increases the other Survivors' healing, sabotage, unhooking, cleansing, opening exit gates, and chest search speeds by 25 %, and increases the size of their great skill check success zones by 10/15/20 % when they are within 8 metres of range from you.
  • Survivors can only be affected by one Leader effect at a time.
  • This effect persists on other Survivors for 15 seconds after leaving the leader's effective perk range.

These changes allow the perk to help make working together more easy, without making it too much stronger.


Discordance (Reworked)

  • Any time two or more Survivors are working on the same generator, that generator’s aura is highlighted in yellow for 4 seconds. This effect can only trigger once every 8 seconds.
  • Reduces the range of Survivors’ aura reading perks and items by 0/2/4 metres.


Mindbreaker (Reworked)

  • For Survivors that have repaired less than the equivalent of one generator:
  • Any existing Exhaustion status effect timers are paused while the Survivor is repairing a generator, and after ending a repair action, the Survivor is afflicted by the Exhausted status effect for 5/10/15 seconds.
  • Survivors don’t recover from Exhaustion while running.
  • Generator repair speeds are reduced by 10 % for Exhausted Survivors who aren’t using toolboxes.

These changes were designed to make the perk have at least some use against survivors that aren’t running exhaustion perks, and to make it change up how survivors play.


No Mither (Reworked)

  • You don’t leave pools of blood.
  • Your grunts of pain caused by injuries are reduced by 75 % at any time.
  • Grants the ability to fully recover from the dying state.
  • You recover from the dying state 50 % faster.
  • If you would ever become fully healed, you will instead remain injured, but gain the Enduring status effect for 10/20/30 seconds. Any damage taken during that time that would put you into the dying state will instead apply the Deep Wound status effect, you then have 20 seconds to mend yourself.
  • If you take any damage while affected by Deep Wound or if the Deep Wound timer ends, you will immediately be put into the dying state.

This change solves two of the issues that made No Mither such a bad perk, while keeping what made it challenging. Because you don’t start the trial injured, and aren’t technically broken, the killer no longer automatically knows if you have the perk equipped. Also, you can now make use of healing, but it only provides a temporary buff.


Cruel Limits (Reworked)

  • Whenever you injure a Survivor, all windows and vault locations that are further than 24 metres away from you become blocked by the entity for 20/25/30 seconds.

This version of the perk makes the effect make more sense in context of the description, and will make the perk much more powerful.


Item Changes


Toolbox nerf:

  • While holding a toolbox, you suffer from the Exhausted status effect, and can’t perform fast vaults. You reman Exhausted for 5 seconds after holding a toolbox.
  • You do not recover from Exhaustion while running.


Flashlight change:

  • Each time you turn on the flashlight its battery will be consumed moderately faster for the rest of the trial.
  • Added 2 seconds of use to each flashlight.


Spirit Changes (Based on The Spirit and her addons from version 3.4.0)


Quality Of Life Changes:

  • Added an indicator to the Killer’s screen to give better feedback for passive phasing.

I wanted to make The Spirit’s passive phasing more central to their kit. Now that The Spirit knows when they are phasing, they can try to take advantage of it. 


Yamaoka’s Haunting Changes (Nerf):

  • While activating Yamaoka’s Haunting, all Survivors within 6 metres will hear an auditory warning.

This change means that The Spirit now will have a harder time at pallets, because there will be a giveaway as to when they are charging their power.


Father’s Glasses (Rework)

  • Survivors and their auras are visible during the activation time of Yamaoka’s Haunting.
  • Moderately decreases Yamaoka’s Haunting reappearance movement speed.
  • Moderately decreases Yamaoka's Haunting reappearance duration.


Prayer beads (Rework)

  • Removes the sound emission while using Yamaoka’s Haunting.
  • All Survivors hear the auditory warning during the activation time of Yamaoka’s Haunting.


Dried Cherry Blossom (Changes)

  • Added slightly increases The Spirit's base movement speed.
  • Added tremendously reduces Yamaoka's Haunting power charge speed while in a chase and for five seconds after. (1.5 seconds to 3 seconds)


Juniper Bonsai (Buff)

  • Added considerably increases The Spirit's passive phasing duration. (0.5 seconds to .75 seconds)


That's all of them.


Edit:

I've got some more


Sabotage Changes:

  • Hook sabotage progress will be reduced by .5 % of its total progression each second that the hook isn’t being sabotaged.
  • Hooks destroyed by sabotage will auto repair after 240 seconds of being sabotaged.
  • The amount of time until a hook is automatically repaired is reduced by 30 seconds each time another hook gets sabotaged or a generator is repaired.


Quality Of Life Changes:

  • Added another bindable action specifically for grabbing Survivors.
  • Added options for players to change the color of auras.
  • Added an option to change the opacity of noise notifications.

Comments

  • Plaquer
    Plaquer Member Posts: 197

    Honestly, for the most part, all great suggestions, although personally I believe no mither should stay where it is, it is a fun meme/challenge perk, and I personally enjoy using it if games are going too easy. Although the flashlight change would basically remove clicking at teammates which is literally one of the only reasons I even bring them

  • cave_ghost_al
    cave_ghost_al Member Posts: 14
    edited December 2019

    Oops! I wrote a reply on two computers, and it sent both!

    Post edited by cave_ghost_al on
  • cave_ghost_al
    cave_ghost_al Member Posts: 14

    First, thanks for the feedback!

    To address your concerns, the point of the No Mither changes is to make the perk more reliant on player choice. For example: If you don't like the enduring effect, you can choose not to let players try to heal you. For flashlights, maybe the ramping drain rate could be moved to the bulb addons, what do you think of that?

    Also, what do you think of the Hex: Ruin changes, because I'm wondering if I made it too complex or confusing.

  • SkeletalElite
    SkeletalElite Member Posts: 2,687

    The flashlight change basically kills batteries for flashlights. I get you want to make light clicking not a thing but it really isn't that important in the grand scheme of things.

  • cave_ghost_al
    cave_ghost_al Member Posts: 14

    Thanks for the feedback! To explain, the changes to Hangman's Trick would replace the way it functions currently, and the point of the changes is to make it less torpedo-ey. I'd love to hear how you think that could be done better! I also proposed some changes to the way sabotage works, so it's supposed to be balanced around those. I'd love to hear any of your other opinions!

  • cave_ghost_al
    cave_ghost_al Member Posts: 14

    Thanks for the feedback! I guess you're right, it's not really that big of a deal. Maybe making the click sound could get quieter instead of the battery draining faster would be more reasonable. What do you think of that? Also are there any other things opinions you had, because I'd love to hear them!

  • Fibijean
    Fibijean Member Posts: 8,342

    I like the changes to Flip Flop, Poised (although I don't think it's a bad perk as it is) and Mindbreaker.

    I think that We're Gonna Live Forever, BBQ, Babysitter (although I wouldn't be opposed to the perk granting bloodpoints as well), Ruin, Prove Thyself, Leader and Discordance are fine where they are and don't need adjustments.

    I think making the killer completely immune to stuns or blinds with Iron Grasp is too powerful, no matter what else you reduce on it. A perk that hard counters DS would become meta in a second, and I don't believe any perk should have the power to render another perk completely useless. If you want to buff it, perhaps you could make it remove the effects of survivors struggling altogether.

    A Boil Over rework is a good idea, but exhaustion is too valuable a stat. Just putting the perk itself on a cooldown would be a better idea, and maybe have it increase wiggle speed by only 10% to compensate.

    I agree Hangman's Trick could use a buff, and I like your idea of not making hooks break from sacrifice, but I think just adding that to the existing effects of the perk would be enough rather than reworking it entirely.

    When it comes to No Mither, I think the only change it needs is that the killer shouldn't know you have it. So the perk should not activate until the first time the survivor gets hit, and the killer should not be able to see the broken status symbol.

    I'm torn with regards to Cruel Limits, because while I agree that it's not a good perk currently, I have a hunch that it could become too powerful with the changes but I'm not good enough in a chase to be able to articulate why.

    I'm not a fan of the changes to toolboxes and flashlights, particularly the toolbox changes. Yes, they're annoying for killers, but I think flashlights are okay as they are, and making toolboxes - an item that the survivor paid bloodpoints to use and which is supposed to grant them an advantage ingame - an actual detriment for survivors to carry instead of just nerfing the numbers a bit is taking it way too far in my opinion.

    I think changes to sabotage are unnecessary, since it's niche and unrewarding enough as it is.

    I like the first two QOL changes, but the third sounds like it would mess with balance a lot. I'm sure there's a reason that the noise notifications are opaque to begin with.

  • DeKillerKiller
    DeKillerKiller Member Posts: 547

    I feel like we shouldn't nerf a perk by giving less bloodpoints in favour of a stronger ingame effect. I doubt most people who run BBQ and Chili & WGLF will like seeing their BP gains lowered, making the grind artificially longer than it already is.

    BBQ and Chili is very common because it helps killers get to the next chase faster and gives them a nice bonus Survivor Pudding. Which again, reduces the grind by a lot. Also, the fact it's very common is a good thing as most killers who does run it won't be incentivized to camp a survivor near a hook and forcing them to run to the other side of the map to catch another survivor. To both get another stack and a chance at killing them.

    I would make a more detailed answer to your other suggestions, but I don't really have the time and I would just be repeating myself a lot. Sorry, but I personally think a lot of these are pretty bad in general. I'm not going to lie to you. The reworks are either unnecessary or the nerfs are a bit too much.

  • cave_ghost_al
    cave_ghost_al Member Posts: 14

    For the blood point perks I totally understand, and those changes were some of the ones I was least confident about. Also I'm glad you took the time to provide your thoughts!

  • cave_ghost_al
    cave_ghost_al Member Posts: 14

    Thanks for all the feedback!

    On the subject of Ruin, the point was to make the perk less random, and make the interaction more interesting for survivors. Also I was thinking that the current ruin would need to change if devs would ever change the game to make matches slower. I was really hoping this new version of prove thyself would be a hit because I really liked the idea of this effect and I thought that this perk was not only a good fit flavor-wise, but also one that could use some more depth, but I understand that change for the sake of change is probably not for the best. On the subject of iron grasp, I had completely forgotten that DS was included in the stun category, it was supposed to be more like the wording of nemesis. Your feedback on boil over makes a lot of sense and in the next few days I might change it to that. Your feelings about the proposed version of hangman's trick are also something that I understand, after all the less changed the better. No Mither changes are supposed to be things you have to specifically try to use for them to take affect, but this is probably another good case to stick with simplicity. I suppose the changes to cruel limits would prevent survivors from going to new areas, and force them to use up pallets or stay in a small area, which could be a bit too powerful. Maybe an increase to the size of the unaffected area would fix it.

    For toolboxes, I knew that this downside would be a bit too far, especially how it effects vaulting, but I just wanted there to be more of a trade-off when you decided to bring your heavy box of "win faster" into the trial. Maybe even just have it be that you're exhausted while holding one, and as soon as you set it down you're fine. I just thought it would make the game more interesting and fair at higher levels of organization and skill, but I do see why downsides like these would feel annoying.

    The point of the changes to sabotage is to make it more powerful, but make it so that it has to be used in moderation to stay effective.

    For noise notifications, I just find them to be annoying because they can just pollute your screen sometimes and make it harder to see what's right in front of you.

    All in all I'm really glad you took the time to write all that, and I think it was all wonderful feedback.

  • Fibijean
    Fibijean Member Posts: 8,342

    Yeah, I think with some things it comes down to personal preference. I don't really have a problem with current Ruin, I think it does what it's supposed to do quite effectively and it doesn't bother me overmuch as a survivor, but I can understand why some people may feel differently.

    The main problem I had with Prove Thyself is firstly that I'm a fan of how the current version works and wouldn't want that to change, and secondly I think that Dwight's perks with their passive effects are meant to be quite noob-friendly, so I think changing one of them such that its effect is based around one's ability to hit great skill checks would be a significant downgrade in that sense. In general, I think it's good to have a balance of perks with both active and passive effects.

    As I mentioned, I think that the best change to toolboxes, if there were to be a change, would be to just nerf the numbers a little, since I don't believe that anyone should be punished for wanting to use items or add-ons that they bought with their bloodpoints and that are meant to give them more of an advantage. Having a downside such as reducing skill check success zones or something is one thing, but actively penalising people for using a good item is quite another.

    I definitely understand where you're coming from with noise notifications, and I think there should be some changes made to them, but I think they should be across-the-board changes enforced by the devs, not an option to alter them on a player-by-player basis since that would be much harder to balance around.

  • Waffleyumboy
    Waffleyumboy Member Posts: 7,318

    These are all very good and well thought out :)

  • cave_ghost_al
    cave_ghost_al Member Posts: 14

    I do agree that saboteur should be changed, and that's probably a good way to do it. Thanks for the feedback!