Why the game shouldn't be balanced around deathsquads
I've seen countless threads and posts of ppl complaining about deathsquads and that the game needs to be fairer so killers can consistently beat them. I understand that they are challenging and all but let me ask people who think these squads need nerfs this;
If the game was balanced so that majority of killers could decently and consistently beat these teams, then what's actually posing a challenge to you? What's stopping you from just winning everygame? And what's the difference between a 4man deathsquad and an infectious slugging nurse or a ruin undying blight? Sure these cannot be beated by ur average survivors/killers but doesn't that make sense? Why should an average or decent killer with a normal build be able to beat potentailly the most challenging and best teams in the game? It makes more than perfect sense to me that slugging infectious nurses stand a decent chance against these teams and vice verse, because if you were to nerf swfs, what's stopping these insanely strong killers and builds? Because a solo q team sure as heck ain't beating an infectious nurse.
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"And what's the difference between a 4man deathsquad and an infectious slugging nurse or a ruin undying blight?"
Well if MMR comes back and actually works these lot should hopefully face off against each other and spare the rest of us.
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That's the intention of MMR, just seems like there's quite alot of difficulties in getting it to work.
Also curious as to whether it would classify 4man slugs as nurse and 1 hooks as a complete domination or rather you end up black pipping and not increasing your rating.
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Real Deathsquads don't even play public games most of the times, they would balance the game for people that aren't even technically playing it
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I don't think that balance around these kind of deathsquads is something that must be done, but you shouldn't be absolutely powerless against this kind of SWF packed with all the second chances perks possible.
SWF give too many advantages and no drawback whatsoever, that's what I think they should look into
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It's not about making killers stronger, it's about fine tuning the game so that deathsquads aren't as powerful.
There are ways to balance a game without destroying all levels of play. Altering tile efficiency and pathing is one such way, as lower skilled survivors aren't taking advantage of every step they take like higher skilled ones are. A change like this, for example, would better balance high level play and have little to no effect on low level play. Altering the strength of adjacent tiles to already strong tiles is also another such way, as lower skill survivors will just run through and throw pallets, while the higher skill survivors can efficiently loop 3-5 gens on some tile chains.
The changes that can be made require a deep knowledge of the game, as the devs don't play the game to such a level, they need to acquire the knowledge of high level players.
This particular clip is the best example of what I'm talking about. The BASE jumper in TF2 was altered in such a way that reduced its effectiveness in the hands of good players, but bad players weren't using it in that way, so it didn't really effect bad players.
"It was causing way too many problems in the hands of someone who could use it to its full potential"
The issue with DBD is that as a killer, you need to be significantly better than the survivor team to have a chance against them. Given equal skill levels (at higher levels of play) survivors mop the floor with killers. This is a problem. The other issue is that this game is so badly designed for high level play that one side usually just snowballs which leads to unfun gameplay for the majority of the match. The vast majority of matches are decided within the first 2-3 minutes of the game, then the rest of the match just becomes dull.
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May i ask what your queue times are for killer and survivor?
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They need to do it like Zakzan above you said. Nerf things which dont affect bad players.
They did it before with the nerf for Great skill check progression.
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So, if killers are OP, how come, that killers have instant lobbies while survivors have to wait 10 minutes in a queue?
Wouldn´t people prefer to play the OP role?
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You can balance for high ranks without hurting lower ranks, I don't think it's mutually exclusive.
Also, Ruin/Undying Blight or Infectious Nurse is not even remotely equivalent to death squads. Nurses at the level of actual oppression are extremely, extremely rare. Most nurses just aren't that good. I play significantly more than the average player and I run into one of those nurses like once every few months. To be at a death squad level with mics on you don't even have to be that good, just decently good as the mics and gen efficiency will carry a lot of the game alone. Not even sure why were mentioning ruin/undying blight as there isn't even anything oppressive about that at all, pretty average.
There are things high rank swf squads take advantage of that lower ranks don't that you can use to bring them down a notch.
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It the matchmaking that is the problem. Some players are good enough to compete against these teams. The problem is that they are matched with average players and they don't stand much of a chance.
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Because many people play to have fun. They don’t need to feel powerful in a video game
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Issue is your kneecapping the solo experiance to preserve the "fun swf experiance". Perks and items are balanced so swf cant abuse them putting a penatly on there regression and healing that accumulate the more premades are present but keeps solos absent from the debuff is a great way to create a divide in power that gives solo play a reason to exist.
Hell why would a non sweaty swf care about losing when there having so much fun. I have seen genuine fun swf groups. They don't do gens they spend all game trying breakouts, head ons and create flashlight blinding firelines. Tweaking the difficulty of victory for the sweatsquads isnt going to hurt chill swf because they don't care about winning.
There already messing with the swf playerbase by failing to provide an adaquate number of killers for european servers. I know this because i play both swf and killer and the quue times leaves a big question why should I queue up for a 5-8 min game if the wait time is equal or close to equal to the time spent in game.
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I mostly agree with you, but in my experience the "fun" SWF is even more rare than the deathsquad. SWF does need tweaking because if we look at the average players, an average SWF is fully capable of easily stomping an average killer, even though their skill levels are equal. I'm not a fan of buffing solo to SWF level as an alternative though. I enjoy the challenge of solo play and think all the tools are already there to be successful without making the game too easy.
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You'd think by now that people would pick up on that. I mean it is the biggest giveaway on how whack the balance is.
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So, killer isn't fun. Why do you think that is?
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I dont know about yall's killer experience, but for me (Rank 1) about 3-4 of every matches I play every survivor in the lobby has either the same skin/name or are friends on each-others profiles which for the most part means probably at least two of them are using comms. Even for the other 6-7 of the ten games almost always the survivors will run a mixture of DS, DH, SB, Unbreakable, BT, PTS ets. The fact that you can watch streams of players like otzdarva (who objectively is one of the best killers in the world) play extremely well and still get gen rushed and lose in 5 minutes is a problem.
On a side note why is balancing for the top 1% wrong? That is literally what every competitive game and esport does. Why would you want to balance around people who have a minimal understanding of the game rather than those who understand the complexities of perk combos, strategies, and have the skill to execute those plays?
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Good point
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I wait 10 mins for a killer lobby in the morning and survivor is instant. Opposite at night.
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So raise/maintain the power of solo as is, hit swf and most importantly add some new base game mechanics to dbd so survivors have more tools to combat power based killers. Swf needs to be tuned to allow for this without breaking the experiance on the killers side.
The kill rates are definatly favoring killer now but i think it can be easily addressed once matchmaking (a lot ti say on how abhorrent it is right now) and undying, ruin is adjusted (saw that coming from a mile away). Whatever this rumored glyph content might be im hoping it hasnt been shelved survior is lacking options beyond just jamming a builds of second chance perks that have there own problems.
Obviously a lot here but piece by piece hitting swf first follow up with ruin undying or both at the same time would be my priorities. Tweak ds for hopefully the last time and finish with some new glyphs mechanic that could add map traversal for killer and survivor.
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So survivor queues are shorter during office hours.
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If you're gonna balance for the highest level of play in dbd, then theres gonna be a whole lotta things on killer that need to be removed as well you realise? It's not just survivors who have strong stuff.
Otzdarva has literally gone on 50+ winstreaks with some of the worst killers and ur trynna tell me that genrushing and survivor perks are the biggest problem? Watching him will teach you things but there's actually alot of passive things which you will and need ot pick up the more you play the game. Don't expect to beat 4mans when you just start playing a killer or dont have an excessive amount of experience.
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Killers have instant lobbies at night, survivors have instant lobbies in the morning. It is not a representative of which role is stronger, just which role people preffer to play when and who's on at what time. Havn't you noticed alot of killer mains streamers play in the mornign in their respective region and at night people come home from work and want to play with their friends in swfs and have a good time? There's not playing with ur friends as killer.
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Have you seen a tournament nurse or spirit? They will destroy 80% of teams, teams which are meant to be the "best" fyi. Sure you can try and balance for high ranks but that also means killing some of the broken stuff on killer side as well, somethign I don't think many killer mains would be onboard with.
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Maybe the strongest swfs should be toned down in ways like this but it sounds like a very dangerous path to take. It'd be very easy to basicalyl remove all the skill from surviovr doing this, makign all teams seem very similar if not the same and making the game quite boring.
Deathsquads aren't that powerful when they are matched up with their sweatlord killer counterparts, slugging nurses, stridor spirits etc. In those cases the games actually become quite balanced.
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How would you implement swf drawback tho is a huge problem. What happens to non-coms and casual swf? I woudl rather just see better matchmaking which puts these "deathsquad" swfs against the sweatlord killer counterparts.
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I think we see different tournaments. In the last one i saw, survivors rofl stomped every killer but one.
Must have been the prize money.
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Well first of all, tournaments for this game are a joke. The game isn't remotely balanced well enough for a tournament. There's a good reason why most tournaments make up their own additional rules, it's because they're trying to add artificial limitations to compensate for its problems.
Even with those limitations, most Spirits got destroyed in those tournaments. I'd also argue there were a lot of bad players in the tournaments as well. A good Spirit still gets beat by good swf on coms.
A really good nurse is the only one with a solid chance but as I already stated, those level of nurses are extremely rare.
What broken stuff are we talking about on killer side? The only real overpowered things on killer side were mori's and those got reworked. NOED is unhealthy design and should be reworked but it's not overpowered.
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The problem is that there isn't that much sweatlords killers and neither deathsquads, they're queue would be horrendous. I think they should improve the rank system, to make it really indicates the skill level of players. Once this is done, if you're in a SWF and you guys are purple/red ranks, you should have a drawback. 1 less perk, maybe do one more gen, I don't know. And if the SWF is being beat up with these limitations, then they lose rank and return to their level of skill.
Also map offerings shouldn't be a thing for SWF (I personally don't think it should be a thing at all, but then we would lose jump scare Myers). The amount of information they got, with the ability to send to a survivor sided map and with perks that will sinergize with that map, it's overkill.
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"If the game was balanced so that majority of killers could decently and consistently beat these teams, then what's actually posing a challenge to you? What's stopping you from just winning everygame?"
Players being better than you, obviously. Balancing around "deathsquads" doesn't mean that facing "deathsquads" are now close to freebies. It means that facing "deathsquads" are now more about the more skilled side winning.
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Actually a good point
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From some of the tournaments i've seen even nurse and spirit players had to hardcore camp,slug and tunnel if their opponents were decent.
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No, it wouldn't be removing the skill from the survivors, it would be removing broken game mechanics that are exploited by high skill survivors. When you get the strongest players in the game playing the strongest killers in the game against the strongest survivors in the game, you get 1-2 kill games. See Hexy's tournament. It's also apparent when streamers that have played for thousands of hours just get demolished by a team of survivors.
On equal footing at higher skill levels, survivors destroy killers handedly. The amount of time it takes to catch higher skilled survivors is far beyond what it takes for survivors to complete 5 gens and open the exit gates. It's really not even close. When you get one of the strongest players in the game playing nurse and the fact that even with good luck they can only hope for a 2k, there's a severe problem with game balance at high levels.
There is, on the other hand, quite a disparity between survivors who are unskilled and survivors who are skilled. This is also evidence of how poorly balanced the game is at higher levels. There are very few mid-level survivors, because survivors are bad until the game clicks for them, then they're quite good. The majority of survivors are either very good or very bad at the game.
All of this does make sense because the game is balanced around mid level play where survivors still don't know efficient pathing or looping and killers dominate. Spreadsheets aren't going to show major balance issues at high levels of play, the devs don't play the game at a high level, nor do they take much advice from people who do
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because they read these forums and they feel they need to 4k every game. That's why they think it's stressful. Or do you think is stressful as killer to 2k?
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Compared to repairing gens? YES!
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I play both roles. If I'm preferring to play chill games I usually play survivor because a quarter or my interatctions are just holding m1.
If I want to be more interactive or want more bp I play killer.
In either situations I just want fun games. I don't care if I win or lose as long as the game last more than 5 minutes.
I'm not a sweat dick though, so maybe I'm in the minority.
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Playing survivor isn't only about repairing gens though.
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Same as me. But that's because hundred of r...n campers appear
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Yeah, the holding m1 phases are only interrupted by running in circles phases.
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If the game is balanced around "noobs" what happens once they decide to be "deathsquads" instead?
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I literally posted this same thread couple of months ago. Surprisingly, most people agreed iirc
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Top tier players aren't encountered all the time but we do need balancing at that level. Anybody can play like trash, but that's not something you can balance around. Most players will improve at least somewhat making balances at that level obsolete. Balancing for high level means mistakes will carry more weight early on but also better highlights areas in need of corrections.
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The thing about detahsquads is that they trump everything ever in the history of DbD. There is nothing that can be done about them. A good team can beat anything the killer throws at them (now that Mori's are third hook) but a good killer cannot beat a deathsquad. Why? Gen speeds. All the regression in the world doesn't matter when survivors, from mediocre to deathsquad level, focus on gens.
But you are right, the game shouldn't be balanced around that. They should just be forced to the top of the MMR ladder where they get 3 hour wait times only to go against the strongest, most obnoxious killers. That's the only solution that doesn't hurt anyone else.
Now all we need is MMR to be enabled and functional...
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Yes it shoudl be about the more skill side winning, and it mostly is. So many newer or mediocre killers expect to be able to be beating these swfs consistently when it's quite clear they don't have enough experience or skill to do so, even people who try and beat these swfs with extremely casual and memey builds/killers.
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I think the game should be balanced the way every other multiplayer game worth a dang is balanced. And that means doing something about what is generally labeled a "deathsquad."
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So you wanna nerf loops even more? Loops are highly balanced now and fair for both sides there's not much more you can do to them without killing looping. Although i do think some main buildings are a bit busted still and a few loops on the newer maps, other than that maps like macmillain, autohaven, fathercampells, ormand, even some corn maps are where the balance of maps should be sitting at. In hexy's tournament it made sense some killers were only getting 1-2 kills because some of the best surviovr teams in existense were there. No standard killer should be able to beat some of the best survivor teams.
I do agree with you're second point though, and it's somethign that is gonna be really hard to adress in the long run.
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Well the game is a 4v1... Makes sense that the single role has more responsabilities and is more stressful, that's the payoff for having more of the game in your control.
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Have you not notcied thought that even when survivors stomp killers, they almost always come back with a 1 or 2k regardless? And i've seen countless games where the killer gets everyone at 3-5 gens. All it takes is one survivor mistake and it's game over.
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Same thing as when killers decide to be sweatlords and 5gen sluggers. Put these two against eachother or if you happen to run into the occasional run, try your best, learn a few things, move on. You can't win them all.
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I don't think 1-2k is a "comeback." That falls into the opposite mentality of "it's not a win unless it's a 4k".
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That' fair, but then people seem to forget that both sides would need balancing if you were to balance for a deathsquad, becasue currently those are the only things stopping the best killers like i said.
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