A Constructive Conversation on Recent Events and Game Issues

AntiJelly

Doc is getting buffed, Ruin is getting nerfed, and the community is up in arms.

This is certainly one of the worst community reactions I've seen, close to on-par with the Howling Grounds event.

However, I think that with the focus being on Ruin, the devs and the majority of the community have lost sight of the underlying problems that makes Ruin feel necessary. Not that it isn't. Because it certainly can be.

I've been skimming over many dozens of forum posts and YouTube videos from several content creators, all basically boiling down to "Ruin is needed to have a chance to win the game". You can agree or disagree with this, but this is the big message coming from the large majority of the community, or at least the ones that voice their opinions.

I've seen devs respond very indirectly. They've said things like "Use other perks" or "Good players don't need Ruin" or "Just pressure people off gens with new Ruin", among other things. It feels like there's a disconnect, but I'm sure the devs have their reasons. I hope.

I think, and I'm aware other people do too, that Ruin isn't the big issue. But then, what is the issue? On other posts I've seen, people have said that it's "Just gen times" that need to fixed, but that's much too simple. I don't think it's just that. It's a very large slew of problems all combining to make a bad experience, and the perceived issue of gen times.

We first have to talk about where Ruin is necessary. When facing against any amount of high-mid to high skill level survivors, that's when it is. Basic knowledge of how to manage time as survivor is disgustingly powerful. If all the survivors know how to mindgame basic loops, and how to string them together, you will not win. The issues I'm about to discuss is what lets good survivors win unconditionally, and why so many players feel like most game are against good survivors, even when they sometimes aren't.

First, there's maps. There are still way too many maps that are way too big, there's way too many god loops, and there's way too many safe/LOS pallets. Even on Badham, after the rework, there's just so many pallets on that map that one survivor can run you for most of the gens, especially since there are literally zero LOS-blocked loops. It actually takes about 40 entire seconds to cross the map on Mother's Dwelling. Half an entire gen.

Second, matchmaking. Completely broken. The change that made SWF use the highest-ranked player for finding a Killer made a large majority of the playerbase effectively turn into red and purple ranks. This is making games completely inconsistent. You can get anything now. In green ranks? Here's a 4 man SWF with all toolboxes. At rank one? Here's a potato team who can't run loops and hide all game.

Third is ranking. It's not hard to pip as survivor anymore. That, compounded with the new Rank Reset, means it's extremely easy for every survivor to rank up and stay at high ranks. This is lending to the same issue as stated before. At this point, ranks do not matter at all. Even so, the emblem system as is, is so rigid that it cannot account for everything that happens in a game. It doesn't work.

So, the reason everyone is mad, Behaviour.

You are nerfing one of the only good band-aids that high skill Killers have to counter competent survivors, without fixing the issues that make Ruin necessary, first.

People feel like you aren't listening because of this, and I feel as if you should remedy this as soon as you can, so you can quell the raging bonfire of the community right now.

This is the place I want to constructively talk about this. Do you agree, or disagree? If you disagree, what is the issue?

epyon

Totally agree. Too bad remaking maps takes longer than just nerfing a perk and be done with it. (Hi balanced landing). Matchmaking and ranking system in this game is so broken that's hilarious.

SambaSaw

Dbd players: "begging bhvr to fix bugs and balance the game".

BHVR: "NERF RUIN."

Witas

I'll focus on ruin and BHVR aswell, since other than some Quality of Life stuff I don't have problems with him at all.

I obviously agree with all of your points, but Im gonna try to give some clarity as to why they aren't responding directly and addressing issues directly, that's all speculation and my opinion (duh), but I feel like it may not be far from the truth.

It's not that there's a disconnect and they don't know what's going on, they very well do, but choose not to answer for multiple reasons. First, they have a very slow update cycle, any meaningfull changes are introduced every 1.5 months (mid chapter/chapter release), it doesn't matter whether or not said changes are easy to implement, they leave'em out till big patches. So in a situation like this, they're propably hesitant to answer because it'll propably be a month atleast before they do something about it, and as we know people get impatient the second they hear anything (I formed my sentence this way, since it's pretty obvious that ruin is making it in in it's current form, the fact that they completely skipped ruin feedback from the ptb survey practically confirms this).

Another thing is that they're in a genuinely ######### situation, balancing an assymetrical game where skill variance is so immensly huge between players is hell. Especially when you don't have a ranking system (No, Im not calling this thing a ranking system, since it doesn't rank players properly at all), it's unfortunate that due to money (making new chapters/battlepasses and in general ... making money) they've been postponing a rank rework so much, but there is nothing we can do about how they are, and we're getting one in 2020, so things should get better once this hits, for now, it's not a bad business decision technically for them to focus on bad players when balancing more, since that's like 80% of the community, but I've always believed that dedicated players>casuals. Still, even before any rank changes come in, Im positive they'll give us some "gen changes" sooner rather than later due to backlash they've gotten, but don't expect anything too crazy, since they're clearly focusing on new/less skilled players more, which isn't bad in and of itself, but it sure is painfull for the dedicated playerbase. You gotta remember that there is no objectively good solution, someone will almost certainly suffer. Still, I believe that things will be mostly ok (better than they were until this nerf) once they adjust gens in some way soon, which they will. I have enough faith in them to say that confidently (rip me if they don't lol)

Lastly, don't flame the devs, they've gotta manage things somehow and considering their situation they have very little choice (I know I just repeated myself lol).They're passionate about their game, if you've been here for atleast a while, you know that, even though they undeniably are greedy, but Im 99% sure that's not the developers' fault, but the higher ups who just want money. Business is business, unfortunately.

Have a great day everyone <3