Best Of

Sorry for the long title, but it’s basically the thesis of my statement:

Balancing the game solely around S-tier killers and SWF bully squads ruins the experience for anyone trying to play a basic M1 killer or solo-queue survivors. The top-tier killers Behavior keeps releasing are so oppressive in their base kits—map traversal, passive debuffs, projectiles, stealth—combined with meta perks, that maps are forced to have 45 pallets just so solo queue has a semblance of a chance to escape.

However, this creates the opposite problem: basic M1 killers are dragged through pallet hell, struggling to down a single survivor as they throw eight pallets in a row, wasting massive amounts of time with little to no consequence. At the same time, average solo-queue survivors suffer against these overtuned S-rank killers, whom they have almost no chance of beating without a coordinated team.

Of course, the current model of meta killers didn’t come out of nowhere. They were designed specifically to combat SWFs—and here lies the real problem. Each new killer is made more powerful and oppressive than the last. SWFs complain, receive new buffs or perks that further disrupt balance, and Behavior responds by releasing even more overtuned killers. The cycle repeats endlessly.

Meanwhile, anyone just trying to have some silly fun with a basic M1 killer or playing average solo-queue matches suffers as collateral damage.

The way Behavior develops this game feels like a snake eating itself.

This is why we have to deal with their constant doomposting:

They're not making the money they used to make while streaming this game because the viewers aren't there anymore. Clickbait and faux outrage is all they have left to get those click$ in. Unfortunately, the playerbase has to feel the impact.

ThIs is pretty rare on my end, especially compared to my killer matches, where I get at least one script-flip every session. Even with that good chase, there's a solid chance the killler will at least get a 2k or slug everyone in end game. I've had plenty of matches where I loose momentum and gens start popping even though I have everyone with hook states and someone dead, but this comebacks is usually everyone dead at 1 gen instead of 4.

But I also feel anyone with any sense will drop chase if a gen or two pops with no down.

I can't speak for OP or the person you're responding to, but two things did leap out at me about your post here.

The first is that the notion of nerfing slugging, tunnelling, and camping forcing players to not do them is sort of assuming a very specific kind of nerf that I don't think most people are even necessarily advocating for in all cases.
Sure, you'll find plenty of people who want tunnelling removed in particular, but take slugging as a counter-example here- slugging has an actually legitimate place within the game, it has contexts that are already well balanced and fair. Most people who advocate for anti-slugging changes are more concerned with reigning in its most extreme versions, like bleeding everyone out or slugging absolutely everyone before you even start hooking.

Hypothetically, in those cases, it would be the case both that slugging gets nerfed to be more fair, but that players still get to choose to slug if it seems like the best call. This isn't even that much of a hypothetical, frankly- that's what we saw attempted on the 9.2 and 9.3 PTBs, even if the implementation was slightly lacking.

The second thing to mention is a bit of a misconception a lot of people have, which is that "spread hooks" is not one playstyle. It's the basic bread and butter that will be a part of literally every single playstyle that isn't specifically tunnelling, including the more fair and balanced versions of slugging and camping, which would be used to get into a more favourable chase to spread the hook states around.

Any playstyle or tactic that you'd care to bring into the trial is going to involve spreading hooks unless it's specifically the one single tactic that is defined by avoiding spreading hooks where possible. It's not actually all that limiting to only take away tunnelling in particular, you'd still have the entire rest of the game available.

Not at all. What I've said many times is that I have lots of suicides but almost no DCs.

I remember when they tried to hype up blood rush and the guitar perks as “swfs will abuse this we are terrified of these perks” overreacting as always

The definition of tunneling is targeting one person to repeat-hook them and get rid of them quickly. I'm doing the opposite. If I rehooked this freshly unhooked AFK that would quite literally be tunneling since they were my last hook. I'm going to ignore them and go for the unhooker, as I would whether they were AFK or not. That's what plenty of killers do. I've had many instances where I've stepped away for a second while on hook thinking I had longer only to come back and see the killer do the honorable thing and run right past me. If you're a halfway decent player, you don't need to down someone who's just standing there.

I reenagage with these people once they reengage. And I mean the team can win, not the individual specifically. I know you don't get it, but some of us view survivor as a team effort.

I haven't noticed any specific trends. It's been going on for about as long as I can remember. It's usually when things are wildly snowballing in the killer's favor early on. I actually have two examples from just last night:

First was a killer match. I downed someone super fast at the beginning and hooked them. I moved on and found someone else to hook. I then came upon that first person again, on a gen, still injured, and downed them. I was Undetectable and came around a corner, so I'm sure that upset them. They didn't struggle when I carried them and then AFKed under hook. They had two hooks with 5 gens up so they felt hopeless, and I can't blame them. The team could still win, but they knew they're own win was unlikely.

Second was a survivor match with two duos. The other pair were TTVers, and they were also hooked early. They just gave up, and that caused us other two to loose as well.

The problem is a few things. There's no reason to continue if you're heading for either a personal death or a team loss, especially if you've already hit a certain burnout threshold. There's also no chance of a proper comeback in these sorts of scenarios. Case in point, one of my killer matches from last night:

Hooks were spread. No one was tunneled or targeted. Didn't change much from beginning to end. And what do they get for this unpleasant match? No chance of comeback and low scores. The Bill DCed as he was in the dying animation out of what I'd assume was pure frustration. There's just nothing encouraging survivors to carry on. On the flipside, I regularly play as straight trash as killer, get like one or two hooks like a total noob, and end up with a 3k or 4k in end game by some kind of heavenly intervention. It's been my consistent belief that this lack of a shock turnaround on the survivor side is why survivors are more prone to hopelessness.

Cool but they're still technically different. People say they see endless DCs. I do not. I see suicides. The suicides are the whole reason I think the DC penalties are stupid. People will always find a way to leave if that's what they want. It'd be much better to make the game less unenjoyable for what's cleary a huge amount of players than to push for more and more penalties, but all people every seem to want in this community is to compound misery.

It feels like they still want to play, but the experience has become so miserable that instead of stepping away,

I've always struggled with this and DbD - sometimes it is the best game I've ever played. Sometimes its the absolute worst. One of the issues, and I think it's getting bigger, is people conclude (frequently too quickly) that the game is in 'worst' territory and just try to get out as quick as possible. Unfortunately once people get into that mindset it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.