Honestly, I think it would have been a far better course of action to stick with the original plan for Martial Artist, than going off-script with this Survivalist idea and I'll explain several reasons why:
1. If our imaginations about the Survivalist perk turn out to be true, you will have effectively unleashed THE cookie cutter perk of the game; its ability to cover multiple facets belonging to other perks, will greatly hinder the angle of having 9 or 10 perks to choose from but only a maximum of 6 at once. If one perk can have medic grenades while carrying the best weapons for each tier, then it will create the unorthodox problem where you boost variety within one perk's own capabilities, but at the likely expense of the other perks seeing any action at all. If a Survivalist can do a good enough job of slaughtering zeds while keeping the team alive, what is to stop players and teams from just going all-Survivalist and covering almost every angle possible several times over?
2. A lot of people were anticipating what the 10th perk would be, but the idea of an enhanced 'off-perk' perk kind of kills the buzz, mostly because there really is nothing new about it except for whatever is in store regarding the perk's skill tree (assuming they're not recycled from other perks ofc). It's possible (and sometimes better) for some of the current perks to go half on-perk and half off-perk, so it raises the question of what real necessity there is (if any) for there to be a whole perk being dedicated to off-perk in its entirety.
3. This idea also comes at the expense of the Martial Artist which seemingly had the potential to be a lot of fun and a fitting way to complete the roster of perks before the game's release. There's quite a bit that could have been done with MA; you could've made it the other half of the KF1 Berserker which had Zed Time extension, could've made it a pure-melee perk, one that's more aggressive and skill-based than the KF2 Berserker, and its intended tier 1 weapon was already in existence since early access started so only 3 other weapons were needed to complete the set.
Not only that, but one of the devs even stated in an older video (by older I mean well over a year ago) that the Martial Artist was his favourite perk, so you guys clearly had the idea for the perk in all that time. To realise that a potentially awesome perk has been cut to make way for cross-perk support which doesn't really bring anything legitimately new to the table by the looks of it, sounds really disappointing. It just feels like the opposite of a fitting way to complete the roster of 10 perks.
4. The very contemplation of the Survivalist perk, not definitively of course but slightly, implies that TWI is running out of ideas as far as perks with their own unique identities, roles and weaponry go. Perhaps the 10th perk is simply for the sake of meeting the deadline and (I sincerely hope that) there are more ideas in store for extra perks with their own unique weapons and skills post-release. But right now, it's not that reassuring.
I'm not usually highly critical of TWI and I do appreciate the work they do, but this really does feel like a lacklustre way of wrapping things up before full release and I don't just mean the idea of the Survivalist perk, but the timing and execution of it too. In a game such as KF2, a cross-perk support specialist can risk breaking the game in several aspects and unless the player base was granted access to the opt-in beta as soon as possible, then it might prove to be one hell of a juggling act to make it seem 'right'.
