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Killers, do you believe dbd is survivor sided?
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The game is SWF sided. If you're going against solos it's killer sided.
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"Survivor Sided" vs "Killer Sided" is an oversimplification that conceals a lot of nuance here. You need to define your terms.
Overall, gameplay wise its survivor sided. Killers need to try WAY harder than survivors, and if both sides are 'good' the survivors should generally win.
Low end the game is mechanically very killer sided. This helps maintain the killer base: new killers tend to win and have lots of fun and very slowly encounter strong survivors so they get very attached to the game over time and don't realize the environment is changing around them. It is deliberately habbit forming in an interesting way giving killers surges of dopamine hits early and then basically cutting them off.
Top end. gameplay wise its killer sided. If both sides are only making tiny mistakes the killer probably wins. However if both sides make say... 2 big mistakes a game, the killer loses. The killer will probably win if they play near perfectly, but anything less isn't enough.
"Platonic" end gameplay is killer sided with top tier killers, and survivor sided without, and it will be a blowout every time. A very skilled nurse or Freddy or spirit can lock things down, unlike most other killers where the survivors will win handily if the skill level is equal and both sides aren't making big mistakes. This is why they get so much hate, because NO killer is actually interactive once you get good, its just these killers are uninteractive and WIN because mindgames are super weak right now on most maps. Chases are pretty rote and the way gen time works and the amount of resources on a map allow survivors to just endlessly back off gens and go instantly back to them the second you look like you drop the chase, and mathematically if they do this they will never lose unless a killer can end chases in less than 30 seconds or have innate stall so strong that it nearly doubles gen time.
"Emotionally" its survivor sided. So many mechanics exist solely for the purpose of frustrating the killer, and killer gameplay is 'higher stakes' in most ways. Like yes, survivors can get camped and eliminated, but mistakes the killer make are more devistating, and they are more frequently exposed to sudden mega-negative reversal of fortunes like flashlight saves, pallet saves, or godloops that they can't interact with. The game REALLY doesn't give a ######### about the EMOTIONAL experience of a killer (and actively snubs it, like EGC is by design maximally infuriating to the killer while stopping the literal infinite game length if the killer doesn't chase people out problem) and coddles the survivor emotional experience pretty hard as much as it can. The devs basically only refuse to remove things that are very emotionally negative for survivors if it threatens to kill the game (ex: They literally can't nerf camping anymore without the game breaking, and trust me they nerfed it a LOT from when the game launched and 1 hook was the assumed default), and likewise will do their best to resist changes that are emotionally good for killer unless its required or the killer population is dropping and they want a sacrificial lamb to lure some back.
Development wise its survivor sided. I talked about this elsewhere, but survivors are the 'money' population, killers are infastructure. Survivors are more social and thus recruit other survivors and keep them in the game's microtransaction ecosystem, and care more about their character appearance because they are third person (fun fact, did you know Fortnite is a 3rd person game for this reason?) and because they are social, thus having more reason to buy stuff as well. You can tell this instantly by looking at the in game shop, and you will notice popular survivor characters have many times over more cosmetics than popular killers. Or heck, before the in game shop and all cosmetics were seperate DLC? Only survivors got any.
Socially its survivor sided. The survivor community outnumbers killers by a LOT because of the active bias towards them development wise, and because survivors have a reason to be social and recruit and connect. Thus, they tend to be the more 'organized' community. Its why Survivors can influence BHVR by review bombing, while killers generally can't coordinate: The killer strike was a freak event created by truly, nakedly abusive game conditions the devs refused to solve. This is also why there is, again, no feature to ban toxic community members like basically any other videogame, which is telling tbh.
Economically its survivor sided. See, again, the massive incentive to bias towards survivors in terms of cosmetics. Survivors have BHVR by the wallet, which is why the game is the way it is.
So, overall, its survivor sided, but there is juuuust enough there so that A: killers don't leave, and B: the devs can point to being evenhanded when... just nakedly they are NOT.
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If you add everything up, the game is survivor-sided, but I wouldn't say its massively survivor sided, more like 60% survivor favoured if I had to put a number on it.
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The game IS survivor sided at high level play. That's not an opinion that is an observable truth, probably measurably statistically as well.
There is a reason tournaments have to be done in the way they are.
However, when looking at the general public and so on, I think it's fine.
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Against solo survivors, I think it's more killer-sided.
Against a 3 or 4-man SWF, it's a ton more survivor-sided.
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Nice circle jerk post. I see you don't play both sides.
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No, but I do think that it's very temperamental. Survivors need not only to be good individually, but also to be coordinated in order to even the match. There are so many factors involved in determining who wins that it's impossible to say if the game is "survivor sided" or "killer sided." It's an asymmetric game, and comparing the difficulty of survivor to killer is comparing apples to oranges. Even individual killers are different. Since there's no base kit for killers, it's now twice as impossible to compare.
Now, onto your particular complaints,
- Perks. Yes, there are killer perks that are very good, but most of them have counters. Hex:Ruin, Barbecue and Chili, Thrilling Tremors and NOED all have counters. Let’s have a look at survivor perks that can’t be countered: adrenaline, sprint burst, lithe and don’t get me started on object of obsession. The devs have turned a MASSIVE blind eye on object. People who say “Oh you’re just bad learn how to counter them” are the same people that bring unbreakable and decisive.
Exhaustion perks and object both have counters. Exhaustion perks are fixed by zoning (sprint burst means nothing if you sprint burst into the Great Plains), and they're frankly not that hard to catch up with. Dead hard is easy to bait out too; just tail them, or force it out in another way. Remember, the point of exhaustion perks is not necessarily to make distance. It's to get to another loop safely. That means zoning, and if you can cut them off, they're useless. If you see object users, tunnel them out of the game, and don't even feel bad about it. It's leaving them exposed, and if you see them, you have license to go after them. And don't go strawmannirg survivors. It's that kind of self-righteous toxicity that this community desperately needs to shed.
- Map design. A good majority of maps are heavily survivor sided, including Hawkins, Lery’s , Red Forest and Haddonfield. Most killers get countered by maps like these. I understamd the devs have been attempting to add balance to certain maps such as Macmillan and Autohaven but that isn’t making up for the pure amount of unbalance in other maps.
Again, this is all subjective. Some killers excel on these maps, some killers don't. Swamp is miserable for both sides. Lery's is always a prayer to RNGesus. Red Forest, Haddonfield, and new Game are usually survivor sided, just as how Midwich and Dead Dawg are typically killer sided. But again, it depends on the killer and the survivors' playstyle. A nurse who knows what they're doing on any corn map, or even Ormond, is an automatic GG. Demogorgon is pretty good on Midwich, or any map that has tight corridors (Haddonfield included).
- Gen speeds. Do I even need to go over how quick gen speeds are? And with addons gens can get done in a matter of seconds if everyone is working on one. 45 seconds for 2 people. 2. That is a ridiculously quick time considering that’s cutting 35 seconds without that extra person. They need a nerf, or else they are trying to encourage people to start bringing ruin, but wouldn’t you know! Your totems get done within 30 seconds of the map starting. That leads me into my next point.
It's difficult to tell statistically, but here in rank 1, maintaining pressure to force them off of gens is not that hard. Plus, don't underestimate 45 seconds at the cost of having two survivors together. At rank 1, the hardest part of killer is tracking. Being able to pressure, and even down, two survivors at once is an absolute blessing. Don't forget that survivors on hooks, survivors going for saves, and survivors healing are not survivors doing gens.
Take, for instance, the Nurse. Decent Nurses will never run gen regression perks because they don't need them. The ability to down survivors in quick succession, and not have to worry about getting looped, is a high-pressure machine. That's why Oni, and even Plague or Myers are pretty good. When an Oni has blood fury and top knot, you better pray to god someone else is going to die before you. When a plague has corrupt purge, you hide. When Myers is in tier III, you scramble to good loops. It's all about maintaining pressure effectively and efficiently.
- Totem spawns. The amount of times I bring ruin undying and undying goes within 1 minute. 30 seconds later, and there goes ruin. Totems are way too obvious and need better spots other than just smacking them in the middle of the map where everyone can see it. At least make it so that survivors kind find totems until after the first minute of the match.
You shouldn't be relying on totems to stay around for the entire game. That's the entire point. Plus, some maps have absolutely blessed totem spawns. Lery's, the swamp, and Springfield have very strong totem spawns.
- The killers them self. Bhvr have added killers that have very weak map pressure or abilities that are useless, turning killers into a laughing stock. The devs release a killer then ignore them, leaving them to eventually become a meaningless killer with no good perks, or one good perk and two completely awful perks with no use at all. Compare that to survivors with actually all viable perks that can be used including Meg and even Fen Ming. Killers need some love!
Don't write off killers as being plain bad. They all have nuance to them. Just look at pig; she's got no chase help and she's one of the deadliest killers out there, statistically. Even clown has some very good anti-loop potential. Twins, even. Absolute slugfest they have going on.
Calling Feng's perks viable, or claiming that ace in the hole is viable really chips to your credibility. Feng's perks suck, ace in the hole sucks, lucky break sucks, breakout sucks, the new survivor perks suck, half of Felix's perks suck, leader sucks, self care sucks, babysitter sucks, buckle up sucks, No-one left behind sucks, etc. etc. etc.
And, I mean this in the nicest possible way, you come off as a typical entitled killer main. The reality is that the game is subjective, it depends on an individual's ability to harness the power of the killer, if you find that factor a or factor b is ridiculously this or that, it's more than likely your own fault (other than keys), and DBD is pretty much as balanced as can be. Believe me, I used to think just like you, but those sentiments begin to fade.
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I have 3 rankings from most powerful to least powerful
Least powerful is Solo Survivors
Mid range is killers
Most powerful is most forums of SWF. The most powerful being 4 man with comms all trying to do gens and gtfo.
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It's survive with friends sided for sure. communication is a big part of it, solos can't do that and as for killers you're on your own so yeah.
most of the "rules" that are in place were put there by survivor players not the game devs. so it feels more killer sided then it actually is.
and toxicity on both sides doesn't help, either both side go out of their way to make the game annoying for the other.
today I was just doing rift stuff and I wasn't even trying hard to do well as a killer and I was called a noob and told that I sucked and that I tunneled you name it. I was just going for hooks I didn't care if anyone died or not.
what bugs me the most is that some people take this game 100% serious and they really shouldn't.
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Even after 4 years, DbD is still balanced arround R10 solo Q. Always keep that in mind.
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at a totally fundamental level it is
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Game has always been and will always stay :
SWF > Killer > Solo survivor
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The games more balanced than its ever been but killer is by far the more difficult role in the sense that you need to do so much more multitasking survivor can be more layed back at least to me and i think that helps killers if that makes sense that most the time if your a suv you are not fully paying attention and may just accidently throw. But on balance killers harder
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It's situational.
At lower ranks, killers tend to dominate, because they have more effective base tools within which to punish poor survivors.
At higher ranks, survivors tend to dominate, because skill build upon skill, and the 4v1 aspect shines. Genrushing becomes the norm, survivors are far better at avoiding hits, looping, etc. and yet the killers can only improve so much. They're balanced 1v1, because every survivor needs a fair shot at escaping a chase, but there's 4 survivors of this higher skill level to contend with.
It's also situational based on killer, as some are more effective at 'dominating' than others, typically the high mobility ones or ones with innate gen pressure.
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If both sides play optimally, yes the game is survivor sided.
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You lost me when you said Hawkins is a good survivor map.
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Completely depends on the killer, as do most maps, and certain killers are strong on certain maps.
I've had plenty of matches on Hawkins where we wiped the floor with the killer because they simply can't find anyone through all of those walls.
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Understandable. I find it mostly killer sided because all the pallets are just horrible so once yo do find some one it’s a done deal. A free hook
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Oh yeah, unlike The Game which has up to about 5 god pallets now, nearly every pallet in Hawkins is on a short loop and usually parallel to a typical chase route rather than perpendicular where it would be easier to drop. You know, all of those short loops in the middle of the rooms where if you see a survivor going around to one side, you can simply go to the other side in just as much time without losing any distance.
But every killer has different capabilities, and every player has different strengths too. Without AoE or aura reading capabilities, I find Hawkins to be a very difficult map to kill on.
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Yea it may also help that I basically only play doc so paired with Hawkins being ######### I can deny pallets static blast most of the map with distressing on
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Against the majority of survivors, no. They're not good enough at the game and often it's a very killer sided massacre.
Against good survivors, as a good killer, they will always win. Only when killers play Nurse or Spirit perfectly, making absolutely zero mistakes, could they win vs perfect survivors.
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Nope. It's pretty equal footing. Both sides can be oppressive given the right mix.
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Yes
Swf with strong perk builds and items, offerings is basically lowering the difficulty of your game to 'easy' so when they lose of course they're gonna be extra salty and toxic.
SoloQ is also not that hard as most people make it out to be, I often escape without min maxing everything in survivals arsenal and it's lot more fun imo, because it requires me to make smart plays and not rely all the time on my perks/teammates to remedy my mistakes.
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i main survivor but id say the balance goes like this: SWF>killer>solo queue.
now most of these comments will be biased (including mine to some extent) but what can you do, you get used to a side too much that you think the devs make it suck on purpose
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Ive seen this said by a lot of big DBD killer and survivor mains and it is probably the most accurate way of stating it. If an average survivor team goes against an average killer, the game is balanced and either side could win but put the best SWF team against the best killer main, and that best SWF will always win. Survivor can get away with more mistakes and win, killer has less space to mess up before the game is already gone.
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Map RNG is probably the bane of the game's balance at this point
You could be an amazing looper but good luck if rng decides you're getting dead-zone and L wall, T wall city
You could be an insane killer mindgamer but good luck if the Survivor can just daisy-chain jungle gyms into shack into other structures
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As someone who primarily streams killer game play, has 4k hours in the game, frequently looks up the DBD wiki, and gas been playing since December 2017 I am addressing this as a veteran player. There are counters to survivor perks, 1) Adrenaline, can't use it if they're dead, doesn't matter if you play an insta-down killer, you can drop them to see if it procs and if it does, smack them again to get rid of it before hooking them. Mindbreaker and exhaustion add-ons are also a thing. Object, though powerful. Is countered by Undetectable killers and perks, it used. Before the Undetectable staus became a thing, you could see an invisible wraith, you could see a crouching Pig, Ghostface in Night Shroud on the PTB. Only person you couldn't see was Myers at tier 1. I'm sorry if you think Lery's is a survivor sided map but that map, before it was reworked was a lot stronger with window spawns. It was easier to loop and rooms didn't have 4-7 doors to the majority of them. Which killers are you identifying for being weak and or laughing stocks? Because each of them have their strengths and weaknesses with their power which requires the player to actively think how to use it to the best of their ability.
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If on comms. Yes.
If no comms. Maybe, but probably not.
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It is most certainly too surv sided. Not to mention how toxic those little shits are.
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It used to be, but it’s not anymore. Honestly just feels like they’ve been needing survivor so much over the past year compared to killer. Gen times, loops, ds, est.
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Kinda. At the top 1%, yeah, definitely, but for the most part I feel the game's pretty balanced.
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Pretty much what the OP said.
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eeehhh not really
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