I bought this game when it was like $20 and played it actively after release up until around 2022. Stopped playing for years because of the rampant cheater / hacking epidemic and it just got stale.
Came back now to find that it's effectively impossible to get the perks I need to keep up with meta builds as a killer main, or even just anything worthwhile.
Like let's say I want lethal pursuer, oh no you can't have that because you have to unlock it by playing nemesis, ok cool, guess what you gotta pay money to play nemesis.
Ok then can I just purchase the perk I want from nemesis?
Only if you get a 1 in 1 billion chance that it somehow, someway, one day maybe might pop up in your shrine of secrets which only gets updated once a week and you will probably have better chances at winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning than getting the perk you actually want.
Ok, so is there someway maybe I can spend a few weeks grinding, maybe even a month to get nemesis since he's licensed then?
No, pay money.
Well maybe I can try and go for the unlicensed killers?
Yeah you can buy those but you have to spend like months grinding for them because we'll short you out at like 50-100 shards off what you need to buy them or just price them at like 9,000+ shards just to buy one even though they're literally unlicensed and we just made them up
Ok. So if I spend all this money, then that means my investment into this game will pay off because you will be able to invest all that money into better anti-cheat infrastructure, optimization, balancing, and update the textures / graphics right?
No, cheaters and hackers are still just as prevalent just a lot more subtle with it, we still use the same outdated useless anti-cheat we did since the beginning (EAC - called Easy Anti Cheat because it's such an easy joke to bypass), the PC optimization still sucks, the game is still completely unbalanced, and the graphics and textures haven't changed at all for 10 over years.
Half the crap you buy aren't even labelled as to what they actually are, so if you are new / returning and you don't know exactly what you're trying to buy then you could get locked out of what you just bought, like a face mask for a licensed killer you just thought was a profile picture avatar icon.
If anyone can tell me how to obtain:
Lethal Pursuer
Barbecue & Chili
Eruption
Without spending real money or waiting years for the ~1% chance it somehow shows up in the shrine of secrets let me know