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Really looking forward to a new map aesthetic and realm! The game could really benefit from something unexpected and fresh like this!

This is true, and ties back to my comments about the community maximizing efficiency over time. Stealth has always been a less efficient playstyle in the majority of cases it gets used, which is why perks like Distortion had the changes they did to promote it as more of a situational ebb and flow and less an avoidance of interaction altogether. I don't necessarily agree with where they landed on it, but their reasoning was tied to the fact that interacting with the killer has always been a core aspect of the game's design, and complaints about the inefficiency of Urban Evaders goes back ages.

This is rooted in your expectation that the game's core design principles won't change over time, hence my comment. It's not 2016 anymore, it's 2026. The game has changed. You don't have to agree with the changes, but to use a past and long since phased out version of the game as justification for your points on the game as it stands today comes with the nuance that the game you are using as reference no longer exists. It's the same principle as to why, after so many years, scientific sources become out of date: things change. Additionally, like the famous quote says, people will optimize the fun out of everything. All it takes is a few major content creators to accelerate this optimization. We are at the point where this game will forever be a tug-of-war on balance because people are just that much better than they were 10 years ago, as well as the design changes I previously mentioned.

The fact that the devs are as willing to remove foundations is, again, why we have so much instability and whataboutism on so many topics. The first case was the incorporation of SWF. Yes, I know it was always planned, you can stop typing that response, but it was a necessary evil that contradicted most of the game's design which was focused about obscuring as much information and communication as possible.

SWF was added less than a month after the game's release. This nothing point about "it wasn't always in the game" is grasping at straws, if anything. For all intents and purposes, SWF has been in the game for 99.3% of DbD's existence since launch. Let's not treat the 0.7% as a long standing design pillar of the game, ESPECIALLY when SWF was planned from the start. Calling it a "necessary evil" would be calling the fundamental game design of team play against a power role a "necessary evil." Do you truly believe that there would be any meaningful number of survivor players left with today's DbD if you could only soloq on survivor, and then be met with a killer who camps, tunnels, is extremely efficient, proxy camps, runs 4 slowdown, etc.? I highly doubt it. I usually dislike this phrase because most people use it for changes they don't like, but if you truly consider the gameplay loop of team play versus the power role a "necessary evil" in a negative sense, maybe DbD isn't your cup of tea? If you acknowledge that DbD MUST be this way in order to function, that kind of takes the wind out of your argument's sails because you're logging in KNOWING that it must exist for the game to exist.

The reason I praise the HUD update is because it tied into other game foundations when trying to address the dichotomy. Instead of just giving everyone aura at all times, it gave contextual info that allows players to use game sense to deduce more information than it told. Many perks get used in similar ways, in fact the best use of Empathy used to be to track killer movements based on the aura of the injured player: If they're fast vaulting and throwing pallets, you knew the killer is right on them before having the hud give you that information. If they were curled up, someone else was already healing them. That type of meta information is how game sense is used to take information not  given to the player and make educated and informed decisions based on what the information you're not told explicitly. By contrast, WoO is an amazing perk for learning layouts, planning tile chaining, and managing existing resources without visual confirmation: Unfortunately, it is so direct and blatant that it has a "Why would I not run it?" effect that builds dependance, which then devolves it into a yellow paint perk. The more things are given over on a platter, the less people feel the need to develop the skills that it replaces when it should be only supplementing. The end result is that people don't embrace those foundations, they become willing to pay a cost to remove them outright then turn around and lament what it costs them to do so.

I agree with you, I do think this game goes overboard in spoon feeding information that used to require skill in the past. I don't think that's entirely a function of soloq vs SWF but rather new player vs veteran player. DbD's entire monetary model is to sell as much DLC and skins as possible to maximize a profit. If you've already purchased all the DLC and all the cosmetics you'd want on your main characters, you are essentially an empty wallet to them. A new Sable/Mikayla/Vittorio/Renato can come along and drop easily $500+ if they enjoy the game, so they lower the bar to entry by essentially putting the bar on the floor. Same thing for killer. There's a reason almost all major licensed killer chapters release completely broken and are brought in line a month or two after the patch. New player money.

I wholeheartedly disagree, at least to the degree you imply. As someone who only rarely played swf at all back in the days between spirit and slinger, there is more ability to silently coordinate off of other players without the need for direct coordination with them. The distinction is that reactive play is a skill that gets developed and cultured through game sense: If someone is chasing you off hook to try to heal you immediately, you can make an educated guess on the presence of a perk like We'll Make it being in play. There is a massive assumption in the community that every other player is dumber than oneself, so there is never any attempt to understand that many players do things for reasons. Its why the arm flailing on hook to denote camping fell apart, the understanding was that it was to denote the camp, but some people were ignorant to it while others assumed it was just one of those people spamming a button out of needing stimulus. The lack of faith in other players, regardless of how justified they felt it was, caused it to become a less effective signaling tactic.

I would agree if the matchmaking system worked as intended. There should be no reason why I am getting 10 hour sable players against a 250+ win streak blight who is streaming to 150 people. Zero reason, yet it has happened multiple times. I can't play off people who don't know how to play the game. I recognize your comment about the game handholding players, but like I said, this is a new player and matchmaking issue. I'd rather have a 5 or 10 minute queue for a competent team, rather than a 1 minute queue with a coin flip on whether or not the game is over at 5 gens because the 10 hour sable got sacrificed at 5 gens. Let the newer players match with newer players and have them build up their skills.

Pot, kettle, etc. This is why I actively don't like engaging in your posts, so please miss me with that.

Yet you typed up 6+ full paragraphs to argue against my points. Also saying pot, kettle would imply you are admitting to said pedantic/dishonest behavior. I don't want to end on a one liner out of the intent of discussing in good faith, so while I agree with some of your points, all I was trying to explain was that 2016 dbd, for better or for worse, is not what we should be entirely comparing against when talking about current balance.

I get why the “remove DC penalties because of cheaters” idea sounds attractive at first glance. Nobody wants to sit in a match that feels illegitimate. The problem is that removing the penalty does not just affect cheater matches. It changes the entire game’s baseline behavior, and it creates more damage than it prevents.

It is the same kind of short sighted fix as saying “some cars have unsafe brakes, so let’s remove seatbelts so people can jump out whenever they feel in danger.” You would solve one uncomfortable situation for a small subset of cases, but you would also guarantee constant abuse everywhere else. Most people will not DC only for cheaters. They will DC for a bad map, a killer they dislike, a rough early game, a teammate mistake, a perk reveal, a gen popping too fast, a mood swing, or simply because they do not feel like finishing. In a five player PvP match, that decision does not just affect the person leaving. It directly degrades the experience for everyone else.

Bots do not fully solve that either. A bot replacement is still a quality drop. It changes chase patterns, macro decisions, pressure, and the pacing of the whole match. If DC becomes frictionless, the “optimal” way to play for many people becomes leaving anything that is not favorable. Over time you do not get a healthier PvP environment. You get more partial matches, more snowballing, more people giving up the moment something looks off, and a queue experience that feels like you spend more time searching for a clean match than actually playing one.

Also, not every match has a cheater. The cheating problem is real and it feels worse than some players admit, but treating every suspicious match as justification to remove the entire integrity system is not a serious solution. It is basically admitting defeat and turning match quality into “whatever happens happens.” That helps cheaters too, because it reduces friction and increases chaos. It becomes harder to separate legitimate play from manipulation when lobbies constantly collapse.

The real fix is boring, expensive, and unglamorous. It is better server side validation and better automated detection for the obvious stuff, plus faster action for repeat offenders. It is also making reporting less punishing for the reporter, because right now the player is doing a lot of the work. That is a pipeline problem. If the only reliable route is recording, editing, uploading, then support ticketing, you are effectively asking the victim to do manual moderation for a live service game at scale.

If anything, the compromise should go the other way. Keep DC penalties for normal matches, but create systems that specifically reduce punishment when the match is genuinely compromised. That could mean better automated flagging, quicker match termination when something extreme is detected, or protection for players when a lobby is clearly being disrupted. Removing penalties entirely is the nuclear option, and it would punish normal players far more often than it would save them from cheaters.

So yes, the frustration is valid. The proposed solution is not. The focus needs to stay on the root cause, not on making it easier for everyone to quit the moment anything feels inconvenient.

brother, new Killers ARE the content lol. if you get a Hag or Trapper you are playing Minesweeper. if you get Springtrap you are playing FNAF etc. helping us helps you.

I'm so sick of seeing all these 2v8 killers. I seriously need springtrap and dnd vecna. being paired up against wraiths is killing my soul

Yikes. You'd think based on some of these responses that h the topic was bringing back old dead hard for distance or letting survivors carry a pallet around with them or something.

This community continues to frustrate with the insistence that kicking every gen on cooldown or tunneling the first thing that moves is supposed to be "genius tactical strategy" that should never be inhibited or changed in any way, yet also the idea of "I should let the person with we'll make it unhook instead" is somehow a ticket to impossible games and shouldn't be allowed for people to even consider as an option. Come on.

To topic: yes, you shouldn't have to expect your teammates to be literally psychic to be able to get value from your perk. Even simply allowing survivors to see each others loadouts would go a decent way here.

yes!!!

no disrespect to Chuck, we need any new Killers to alleviate both survivor and killer boredom. but the ST combo woulda went hard, I vinged the whole series in just under 2 weeks to prepare myself