Thoughts on the state of recent changes and early game gen stall

Kiskashi

Very Long post- beware, general concentrated thoughts, venting and comments on suggested changes below. You don’t have to read it but I needed to say it, a form of relief I guess, the devs need the feedback before this mentality continues, it’s not the ruin or doc changes themselves it’s the underlying mentality. Just another thread in the stack I suppose 😂

Wow the ruin and doc changes are so polarising, I know it’s early and we still need PTB feedback before we jump on how bad the change is but honestly if it stays a hex and as is, I’ll be switching to corrupt/pop combo instead of my current pop/ruin, I already used dying light/thanatophobia etc a fair bit too but now it will be super common, that isn’t the issue though, pop, Thana and dying are mid/late game stalls.

I mostly play killers who need time early match, I.e. Michael stalking, trapper area set up. On larger maps ruin is absolutely a saviour, even if people say it’s broken in 30s that’s 30s of slowed progression and/or someone totem searching to gain your first Pressure/down etc. 

It just baffles me how, instead of updating the core gameplay after 3 years to include a second mandatory objective for survivors to make the game more interactive or balance maps, particularly their size, to prolong the game without increasing boring gen times and facilitate the removal of need to slow the game down while refreshing the gameplay itself for survivors interactively and killers by freeing up their perk slots, nerf one of the most used perks helping killers against gen speed in the first minute before the killer finds/downs anyone to get pressure. I know such large changes are hard and take a lot of effort and planning but it has been 3 years and recent changes are steps backwards as they’re only picking certain issues rather than the overall picture with a lack of foresight to how these changes interact (see recent videos such as tofu’s on the new matchmaking/reset changes and the impact on queue times and ranking)

Just really disappointed honestly. I’ve loved this game for over two years and this isn’t the first time I’ve questioned the logic, I’ve continued to support them and hope for the best because I wanted to see this game grow and it isn’t all doom and gloom, there have been some extremely positive changes and additions such as EGC and archive lore and changes to perks making them better like the recent kindred and dying light changes but also balance of insta blinds, pallet vacuums, insta heals among many other great changes and I love the lore and the characters and the design, there is absolutely a lot of skill and passion in this game from the devs but the core gameplay and balance is suffering lately.

The entire recent post just reeks of survivor bias (aforementioned dangerous mentality), survivor should be hard, it’s a 4v1, the killer is having to juggle 4 people and check up to 7 gens on a potentially large map at the start of the game, that is why ruin was seen as necessary. I’ve even said it myself recently when discussing this with my dbd friend who I SWF sometimes with (yes we duo, yes we are survivor mains, no ruin is NOT the issue) I wouldn’t mind survivor being more difficult to survive and not escaping as much if survivor scores weren’t so dependant on escaping (5k for escape with very minimal ways to get points in survival during the match) and if games weren’t 100% gen focused allowing for long fun chases and saves etc. you know actual gameplay. Surviving isn’t even that important when it comes to pips and levelling anyway. Killers need to have the upper hand because again it’s a 4v1 on often terribly unbalanced maps. Stress levels when playing killer are already through the roof and now either people are going to leave entirely affecting queues, run NOED/slug/tunnel etc even more to have a chance at winning etc.

Before anyone starts the whole “but I can win without ruin etc etc” yeah you might, yeah you might be a great killer, but compare this to how survivors at ALL levels of skill are constantly being babied to rank 12-15 levels (killer nerfs for counterplay, perk nerfs, nerfs because they’re “not fun”, “irritating””annoying” etc) survivor is already so chill, god forbid we must learn how to hit a skill check or actually improve at the game. Why must killers of an equivalent level be expected to win/play without ruin/early game gen slowing perks and play full sweat all the time especially with the current matchmaking issues pairing green killers against full red teams (another major issue) why must killer always play to a top standard and be told get gud but survivors constantly get beneficial changes slowly removing all skill from survivor. It should be equally fun and a little stressful on both sides. Ruin already had counters such as hitting the checks, breaking the totem, using maps/small game/stake out/detectives hunch etc some of which a new survivor can do or learn.

Also if they really want to get into skill based, there are a lot of survivor perks and addons that are not so skill based (DS, keys maybe?), ruin is a bandaid fix at best to some of the poorer map designs and gen speed (not including toolboxes, prove thyself, resilience etc) this game needs to adapt its core gameplay if it ever wants to survive another few years and stop nerfing things no one asked for, no one asked for oni nerfs (even if the flick was unintended it separated him from billy as he must actively gain his power), no one asked for legion nerfs (destroying a lot of perk synergy), no one asked for decreased speed/lunge after phasing on spirit (and the nerfs didn’t address the only issue other than prayer beads that survivors had with her phasing being a coin flip guessing game anyway), nurse was changed (with mostly meme addons now) entirely even though the main issue was multi blinks and range, the doc changes aren’t even really a buff despite him being a bottom tier killer for years. 

I respect and understand it is the devs game and they have the authority over the game direction but they have a passionate community who constantly offer their thoughts/feedback on changes and additions and want to see the game live long, constantly ignoring this will only see a continued drop in player retention.

The best solution in averting this is as I’ve seen here

In which ruin stays a hex (hexes are by default risk/reward and should be powerful as they can be removed and the killer must play with 3 perks if it gets destroyed early btw) but there is no skill check aspect and the progression speed is even slower, it’s a better medium even though there is absolutely nothing wrong with current ruin imo other than bad totem spawns and survivors spawning in walking distance/earshot or not getting a single check. Or make it like corrupt intervention where it is not a hex and the decreased progression is low but active by default for 1-2 minutes. This new regression perk might as well be an entirely new perk, as it does have some synergies but not at the cost of ruins base concept (early game stall).

The whole gatekeeper change does my head in too, killers don’t run ruin specifically for gatekeeper, they do it so 1-2 gens aren’t gone by the time they find and or chase one person, especially since most have no map control and take 40s or so to cross some maps (given gens only take 33-60 seconds?) that effects ALL emblems, if gens get done too fast there goes your chance at all of the emblems. Multiple killer streamers have expressed time and time again, chase time/hook ratio does not equal gen times.

I rarely rant like this and others have probably listed everything I have here before but this update is so heartbreaking, just the language of the update most of all, no consideration on how fun it is to PLAY doc, and immediately listing ruins new “benefits” and they’re all survivor sided benefits while telling the killers they have no skill for running ruin, it sounds like a gross biased survivor main.

I really want to get into playing killer more as I am a survivor main (60/40) (rank 1 survivor and approx rank 8-5 killer because I avoid red ranks by just stopping playing killer if I get close and I don’t play super often, usually just a long killer session once or twice a season then occasional dailies, not like that matters with the new everyone gets red matchmaking and new reset, judge me for that if you want but I tend to stay around purple so it’s not bullying newbies) but with killer power changes and perk changes every other time just making it worse and worse I just don’t even know if it’s worth the effort anymore. Who knows what the next big nerf is? Killer gameplay always changes so much too, survivors might have to swap a perk occasionally but a killers entire power can be reworked at a moments notice, meaning all skill learned with that killer can be gone in a blink and you need to learn the new power and addons.

Maybe we should all just be babysitters and farm and hold hands with the survivors while they rush gens in 3 minutes? I don’t know anymore, I’m not looking for arguments or salt or anything, I probably won’t reply after this, I know there’s some general salt in here that could be overlooked, I’m just expressing my disappointment in the direction this game is going and hope the devs actually listen to us for once, I see top streamers and forum members constantly offering good, balanced views and then the devs just 180 and do stuff like this that no one really asked for? Sad times, but sure, let’s wait for the ptb again, where they’ll just implement it anyway.

I’m not going to stop playing killer because ruin is going, I’m going to adapt once again, I mainly use it in set up killer builds who have no map pressure or early game power, as I always have, but the ideas and general “changes” towards killer gameplay while trying to make everything about survivors fun and easy, as if it already isn’t, it’s not a good look. If you really think ruin and doc are what are killing survivor numbers and fun at low ranks, maybe reevaluate the matchmaking and general grind/sheer number of perks etc and things a survivor must learn, maybe make better tutorials, make a tutorial/KYF lab type session where killers and survivors can opt into practice hitting ruin checks, running tiles/loops, new killer powers etc in exchange for small bp rewards instead of just removing every challenge. 

Jeez I still remember when I was a rank 20-15 against ruin, gen tapping was a thing and back then we didn’t have perks to help like stake out etc but we didn’t give up, we got better at the game to the point where we can hit great skill checks and memorise totem spots if we are having an off day with checks. Makes me sound like such an old timer, but the game was hard at low ranks, until you got better, as the game should be.

Sorry, I just had a lot to get off my chest after looking into the wording and understanding the motivations behind the recent post. I just hope we start seeing some positive changes again soon...may the map reworks finally come soon and be good. I still have some hope left, but who knows how long that will last. I hope this change is just the start for a mass overhaul because if this change stays as is without any working/changes to the reason people run ruin...I hope it does not come to that. 

I know we get told to wait things out and be patient and most of us try, this is even my first vent on here, sorry again, but I really wish the devs would be a little more transparent with us, about data/stats and how they’re gathered and rank distributed, about the feedback they get overall (common issues), about future balance changes/problem areas, we love the game, we just want to help make sure this game lives on even if we as a general community sometimes get heated and wrongly misplace aggression/passion.

Sorry for the long post, I probably reiterated a few things but I’ve just been silent on here for way too long, I love this game but I do have some gripes and in the current state of dbd this is not a healthy change for the game by itself, for this change to work, other key areas (which by now if not listed above we all know what they are if we’ve even played the game past rank 15) (maps, gen speed, second objectives, chase to gen time ratio in respect to map design) must also be changed without months of issues before an eventual (maybe) change

Tl;dr Please stop making killer more frustrating and survivor easier and “more fun” balanced at a low rank or low/high rank SWF mentality, it’s a 4v1 and people can always get better at the game.

Cetren

Agree with most of what you said. Pretty disappointed. Not in the ruin change itself, I see it as a positive change, but the fact that it didn't come with a rework to objectives or with a new way for certain killers to slow down the game to have a chance. In the end the rework is gonna do exactly what they intended to do. Make gens easy for newer players. Make gens easier for moderate players. And not make gens harder door experienced ones. That's it.