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What Perks do you see as Unhealthy design?
AlwaysInAGoodShape
Member Posts: 1,300
Disclaimer: This is not about what perks you believe are too strong. This is about what perks you believe are inherently unhealthy for the game and limit directions the game can head into?
So what Perks do you believe are inherently Unhealthy by design?
Mine:
-Whispers
-Surveillance
-Monstrous Shrine
Slightly less:
-Self-care
-Unbreakable
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Comments
I don't really think any of them are too strong per say.
I think that they need to shake up the ones people don't use... which they've been doing recently... and create more varied perks.
No perk should be above 33% use. I would assume Self Care is around that mark.
Ruin: Heavily punishes new players with little effect on veteran players.
Killer
HEX - NOED, Slopery Butcher, Iron Maiden
Survivors
prove thyself, Self-care, Dead Hard, Sprint Burst, Bond, Empathy, WGLF
One single wiggle DS can make you lose the game if you lose that important hook to keep the momentum. Also it creates big cocky egos.
Noed: The only reason why a bad killer can get kills. It doesn't come with a requirement of the killer to perform good (like Devour Hope) but beeing bad (kinda same with DS, Punishing the killer for getting downed)
I think self-care tells a different story;
Self-care's pick-rate tells us that the survivor experience at it's base state is just more fun when you have basic self-sufficiency. Even when people have a particular built, they will shove in a self-care anyways.
That is why I believe self-care should be base. (And killers need a more healthy version of hex ruin into their kit, or anything that grants them more time, while not hurting lower-survivor count teams.)
Facts.
Everything else is fine although some perks are in need of a slight buff to make them viable.
Insidious: Simply a Perk which promotes a really bad way of playing this game, also has a bigger impact on Solo Players and nearly no impact on SWF.
WGLF: For me the most stupid Perk in the game, it does not help you to survivor or does not help others to survive. If all of the WGLF Players would run We Will Make It...
not sure about unhealthy design, but i think the killer perks that unconditionally boost a stat (brutal strrenght, shadowborn, unrelenting etc) might be "boring" in comparison to more interactive perks.
But getting rid of those and compensated buffs wont happen ad that would buff base killers
insidious.
The idea behind perks is to get a varied play style...
Exactly, which is why a perk that is for so many people part of their basic need of making the game enjoyable, should be part of their base-kit. Could've prevented all the awkwardness with older versions off BT and could've prevented the entire Mending mechanic. (:
Diversion
Autodidact
NOED
DS
Slightly Less:
Self Care
Pop Goes The Weasel
Wtf? What's wrong with the most useless killer perk?
We're not discussing whether it's Overpowered or Underpowered. We're discussing whether it's problematic game-design.
I don't consider NOED bad game-design, although it might be over-powered relative to other killer perks, there are a million ways in which you can turn an end-game buff into a healthy mechanic.
Monstrous shrine however cannot be healed. The number increase that you get from hooks is so low, because you wouldn't want it higher as the only thing that'd promote is camping. (And if buffed high enough even among the higher tier players.) The perk in it's design cannot be properly balanced without becoming toxic.
Similar to how whispers is problematic, as it kills off any real dynamic progression a 1 person team could achieve, limiting us to a very specific state the game needs to be in, in order for it to be balanced.
Self care has a bad design because it's trash.
DS is too overpowered and should be removed.
Monstrous shrine is trash.
NOED should be removed.
Huntress Lullaby. Its poor design because it alerts Survivors of its presence even before it becomes useful. At least Devour Hope doesnt.
Actually only NOED:
Even if you play very well the whole match you might just get hit 1 time at the end and die because of it.
For DS:
Just make DS stun for like half a second less and it will be fine in my opinion. You can still counter ds with bringing "Enduring", dropping survivors off an edge or dribble them (often survivors do not even get to the next pallet).
Whispers is fine. It's meant to help you find that 1 survivor that refuses to come out. And as survivor you can dodge it so long as you know the killer has it, which you can usually tell when they are always near you. Not to mention if it's a situation where you are the last one left and hatch has not spawned then the killer should get the 4k. If the survivor was going to outplay them they would have done it sooner.
I can see your point about MS but it's a bad perk anyway and needs a rework.
The new Surveillance is a good perk, but I don't think it's bad design. It requires the killer to kick the gen, and you can bait the killer to waste a lot of time by just tapping gens that were kicked with little progress.
Insidious is a perk that is badly designed because it requires a killer to stand still for extended periods of time. This is just completely contradictory to what a killer should be doing, which is always doing something. The only actual use of the perk is to camp a hook. It needs a rework to make it viable and not trolly. That's really the only perk I feel is "bad design" most others are just useless.
@thesuicidefox
I agree that the perks are fine in the current state of the game. But here is the slightly less subtle part; They would completely not be okey if the game ... X.
In this case, X for surveillance would be any game in which the survivor count would be too low, or in which stealth would be vital to survival.
Similar to Whisperers, we assume that when there is only 1 person, all they have to do is find a hatch. In any more complex version of the game in which a 1 person / perhaps 2 person team has still a valid role to play, whispers would ruin their experience, mandating that stealth and low-survivor-counts never see any real play as their own state of the game.
You can look at it from a killer perspective too; Doctor of the weaker killers is also limiting such directions of the game, as he has an overabundant ability to track, making him too powerful in certain alternative, yet realistic stages of the game, thus limiting design and balance choices.
Slightly Less
There are a lot of things I think bend the game a bit, considering there was one foundation it was built on (Two hits down, hide & seek, etc). Yet we have killers right off the bat that can down you in one hit, survivors who can heal themselves and thus don't rely on teamwork, more and more perks developed not for hiding from enemies but for spotting them across the map, and some which turn a clearly new player into a deadly adversary. No perk should guarantee any outcome, and I still wish for a mode without perks (though I know it would favor the Killer pretty well, although isn't that sort of the point?) The match is supposed to be thrilling, not leading the Killer around for another run and then laughing the whole time.
@Freudentrauma
Dying light, good one! Together with Autodidact, (& perhaps no mither), these 3 perks can some times prove to be more of a net-cost than to be a net-benefit.
I think the evidence is clear that people don't want perks that can put them behind more than they help them.
@AlwaysInAGoodShape
I would say Balanced landing is an unhealthy design. If we examine the picture:
You can see the poor form Nea is taking when hitting the ground. Given that falling from a high place puts a lot of stress on your bones and joints upon landing it is ill advised to land on one leg, especially in a position such as this. This is truly an unhealthy and unsafe way to land on the ground.
Decisive Strike should be clear
Sprintburst counters every killer and provides a reliable safety net. Learn how to manage exhaustion and i believe sb to be the best, most versatile perk in the game. Wether its genrush, unhooking, looping, escaping hooktunnelers, getting away after slugged, escaping the basement or just general efficiency.
Ruin as Might_Oakk said
Noed is decisive strike as killer
Insidious
Decisive Strike: Gives the Survivor a free escape which can prevent the Killer from getting early-game momentum and has no counter that is 100% reliable. Enduring, Unnerving, and dribbling are all situational. To give it a healthier design, I would either bring back the stun-in-place idea that the devs had or give it multiple requirements for the skill check to pop up. This way the Killer can keep their momentum and Survivors will not have a guaranteed free escape. They will have to earn it.
Breakdown: The Killer is punished for doing their job. They could be on the other side of the map and the hook will still break. I know Hangman's Trick exists, but I shouldn't have to run a perk simply to hook Survivors. To make this perk healthier, I would either rework the perk completely, give the hook breaking part some requirements, or have it fill up a portion of the sabotage bar. Any of these changes would not punish the Killer for doing their job, especially when they're on the opposite side of the map. Severely punishing a player for trying to do their job in any video game is just terrible game design.
There are a lot of poorly designed/poorly thought out perks in the game, but as for unhealthy design:
NOED and DS are the obvious go-to ones to name.
Ruin: I think this the worst offender here. It is unbelievably punishing for new players. It makes the dead weight on your team even heavier. Half the time less skilled players won't even power through a gen, instead they spend all their time walking around looking for the totem. Not to mention that it promotes survivors to do solo generators (this is efficient for survivors and bad for killers).
Bamboozle: Why learn how to properly play certain tiles when you can just 4Head your way through a window?
Rancour: Add a 120 second timer to the exposed effect and this perk would be fine.
Sprint Burst: Extends every chase by 10-15 seconds, no activation requirement needed.