The Devs Are Not Biased Against Killers
Comments
-
Idk, I usually do well on both sides without running sweaty builds, and regardless of the factors going into kill rate, 68% of red rank survivors are dying on average. I don't know how you can look at that and say "if survivors weren't killing themselves on hooks we'd see that the game is survivor sided". Hook suicides usually happen in matches the survivor is already going to lose and they're not that common to begin with.
Clown's yellow bottles are going to be good. Throw a yellow bottle in front and a pink one behind. Survivor gets a boost, then loses the boost and slows down when they hit the pink. Then Clown makes it to the yellow and gets a boost while the survivors are slowed by the pink and catches up extremely quickly for an easy hit. It can also be used to bait survivors too, for example, throwing a yellow bottle to one side of the loop to make the survivor think you're coming from that side, then doubling back to the other side of the loop. Strategies will develop.
Killers will know how the breakable wall plays after literally one chase in that loop, and survivors need to learn which loops are strong too. That is a non issue. It's no different than learning other aspects of map layouts.
In a game this buggy a broken locker and the BBQ aura shutting off to quickly are not the devs giving survivors random little boosts, like c'mon :( They're very clearly just bugs and I'm sure they will both be fixed. It may not be your priority, but there are many bugs and annoyances affecting the survivor side outstanding as well.
Keys will be changed eventually, I am sure. I agree with the devs not making them a top priority, though, because I think they're more of a frustration and stressor for killers than a balance issue. They don't bother me as killer personally.
I can see that you're never going to be convinced by my argument. I think it's a shame that you think the devs don't care about killers, and I disagree, but at least I tried. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
0 -
No it doesn't. If killers are neglected, they will be unhappy, they will leave the game, and the game will die. If you prioritize making a fun, balanced game for both sides, you grow your player base and make money from both sides.
I think the only real difference between a survivor bring a single bad perk versus a killer bringing a single bad perk is the percentage of the team's perks tied up in that. If survivors bring one meme perk, they still have 15/16 perks that are strong and helping the team. If the killer brings a meme perk, it's just 3/4. Survivors would have to bring a meme perk each for that to be more comparable.
I agree that UB/DS is OP, but I don't blame the devs for that existing either. DS is not an easy perk to balance. It has already been nerfed three times since launch, so it's not like it's been ignored, and I can see them wanting to actually do it right this time. I think UB is 100% fine; it's just OP in combination with DS. DS is the perk that needs the nerf imo because it's also problematic when used without UB. Survivors can be as aggressive as they'd like for 60 seconds and then just hop in a locker the second the killer comes knocking. I've had teams all use the same skin against me so I couldn't easily tell who I had just hooked just to make it easier to hit me with DS...it's just not fun for killers to deal with.
I'm not sure I'd agree that loops have been getting stronger, but you're definitely right that you can lose a few gens with a long chase. That's part of the difficulty of playing killer, though. If you're getting outplayed or you got screwed by some terrible map RNG that chained together a few strong tiles, sometimes you just have to drop the chase and get back to pressuring gens. It's just tough to know when the right time for that is, and it's also easy to fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy and just let that survivor run you for a few minutes.
You're the second person in this thread who has gotten better queue times as survivor now than a few years ago! I'm in NA, UTC -6, PC and I usually play in the evenings. I don't think queues were ever this bad for me before crossplay went live.
0 -
I agree that the kill rate could be skewed by things like bad matchmaking and that it's not necessarily valuable to take the percentage at face value. Given that this matchmaking system has been in the game since launch, though, I still think it's fair to use the trend line for kill rate over time to show how game balance has changed over time. In order for that not to be usable there'd have to be a massive change in the rates of things that can bias the kill rate, like sandbagging, farming, hook suicides, bugs, etc. I haven't seen any evidence of that, so I feel pretty confident trusting the trend line.
0 -
I like it as killer because it lets me build pressure and I don't mind it as survivor because it means I'm not getting hooked and therefore am not getting an additional hook state despite having been downed. I also think it's fun to try to hide before the killer comes back for me. Your implication here is clearly that gen times are too fast and that's causing slugging, but I disagree with that. I think gen times are fine and I haven't seen any good evidence to the contrary. If discouraging slugging ends up hurting killer performance and they're struggling to keep pace with survivors then they should of course be buffed. Given that many people don't like slugging, though, I think it's a good thing to discourage.
Survivors seeming more competent over time is probably just caused by you ranking up :) my buddy's a baby killer and he'll stream his matches for me sometimes. There are still plenty of potatoes out there on the survivor side. If a gen is popping in less than 30 seconds, that means that three or four survivors spawned on it with Prove Thyself and/or toolboxes. That's a really risky and suboptimal play for survivors. If they spread out to four separate gens, they just need a good first chase and they complete three gens. If they stack up on one gen, they lose a lot of repair seconds due to the coop repair penalty and they risk having their entire team pressured off the gen if the killer shows up. Big oof if the killer is running Discordance too...at the end of the day, gens just fly at the start of the match. The first chase is hands down the most important part of the match for both sides and this is exactly why.
I didn't see your question, but I don't agree with the premise. New survivors get stomped too. Most players start off playing survivor too, so often rank 20 killers will have more game sense than rank 20 survivors. Wanting to nerf perks that obliterate noobs is not "coddling" them; it's just balancing the game. Hopefully MMR is good when it comes back, because that will hopefully give the new players on both sides an easier run of it instead of matching them up against people with 1000 hours who just took a few months off from the game, and such.
I agree with you that old Ruin didn't really bother me as survivor. I thought it was a nice little challenge and it gave me a reason to run niche perks like Stake Out. Still, I definitely played with some friends who couldn't hit the skill checks and didn't know the totem spawns, and they would get very, very tilted playing against it. I agree it was somewhat risky, but the effect was so massively helpful, and right from the start of the game (which we've established is the most important time for gen progress!), that it was a no brainer to run. Yes, it might be gone in 20 seconds with terrible luck, but with good luck it would never get found and it would basically win the game by itself. The other underrated part of old Ruin is that you could run it with Pop. From 3.0.0 to 3.5.0 killers had old Ruin as well as the 60 second version of Pop, which was clearly OP imo. If you loaded in and saw a good totem spawn the game was basically already over.
Applying pressure is not a "survivor main" talking point. That is what every single action the killer does should be aimed at doing. People sometimes don't like that expression because it trivializes it, as if you can just snap your fingers and apply pressure. In practice it means chasing well, knowing when to slug vs. when to pick up, prioritizing disrupting multiple survivors over one survivor whenever possible, not letting yourself get drawn away from the gens you're defending, etc. I just use it because it's easier than listing out all of the things a killer needs to do during the match to keep survivors off of gens.
Idk, I know that totem spawns aren't perfect yet, but given that they have improved over the years, they're already working on updating the maps, and have been making reasonably quick progress on those reworks, I can't find it in myself to be bothered. Totem spawns clearly weren't bad enough to hurt old Ruin's viability given that killers were running it in ~80% of matches, and they clearly aren't bad enough now to prevent the Ruin/Undying meta from emerging (and which I still expect to persist on mobile killers like Blight after the nerf). As for the god loops, they did address a number of them without adding breakable walls. For example, they chopped up the walls on maps like Rancid Abbatoir to weaken the extremely strong windows in the main building. I don't like breakable walls personally, but I also don't think they're a balance issue. If you can take a strong loop and make it weak by performing the break action, it's basically the same as the map spawning in with a couple a pre-dropped pallets in some of the loops (ignoring that survivors can't vault the walls, of course). If the survivor gets to that loop first you're pretty much forced to break it unless you want to rely on Bloodlust, but if you get there first you can deny the strong loop entirely. Seems fair enough. People have complained a ton about the breakable wall in Groaning Storehouse, for example, without considering that a pallet was also removed from the storehouse when the breakable wall was added. It's basically like they took that pallet and spawned it pre-dropped. So, on the whole, the building really isn't much stronger than it was before.
---
The answer to that is an emphatic "no". I don't think it's accurate that only killer mains think the game is unbalanced, though; I have friends who only play survivor who moan too every time coop repair speeds are nerfed, or add-ons are consumed at the ends of trials, or toolboxes are nerfed. People get weirdly attached to the side they main and let that bias color the way they see the game. It's like a freaking political party lol. I play both sides (maybe 60-70% survivor) and I don't want one side to "win". I just want the game to be fun for everyone because I like it and I don't want it to die.
I do think there's a disproportionate amount of killer mains on the forum, though, which is why the narrative feels so slanted to me, and ultimately why I made this post. You'd think that we'd have about 75-80% survivor mains and 20-25% killer mains given how many game hours exist on either side, but that is very clearly not the case here. My theory is that people who play only survivor are able to get out their frustration in the post game chat, while killers feel ganged up on in the post-game chat and come online to vent instead. I think most people start off playing survivor too, so my guess is that killer mains tend to be more experienced, serious players than survivor mains. More experienced players are also going to be more likely to find their way onto the forum in the first place. The final factor I can think of is that most of the prominent content creators for DBD are killer mains, so people who are really into DBD and consume lots of content related to the game are more likely to see the game through that lens (although those creators are generally less extreme in their views than the folks posting on the forum).
The devs being biased to favor survivors is something that would make no sense for economic reasons even if we ignore the compelling evidence that suggests it isn't the case, so it just blows my mind that the forum basically just accepts it as common knowledge. I just wish more people truly didn't main one side or the other, because that would turn down the temperature around here and probably lead to much more useful feedback for the devs. I also think that's the only way I'll stop having such a hard time trying to reason with people on the forum lol
0 -
There are a lotta points here but I thought I’d just talk about one. I actually prefer the way killer pipping works. I’m not a good killer. I don’t want to be matched with good survivors. If I pip slowly it gives me more time to learn (assuming I don’t get matched with red ranks at yellow or green).
I’d argue actually that survivors pip too easily and it’s unclear that that is a bias toward survivors. As a survivor I don’t want to pip so easily either. I don’t want to be matched with other players and killers who have way more experience than me and get thrown in the deep end.
I understand it can feel bad not pipping as killer but I just feel that gives me more time with my training wheels, and any pips I earn with game after game of experience. (Assuming again of course that matchmaking does a decent job and I do think the devs are trying to make matchmaking decent)
I think using pips to argue about survivor or killer bias is not quite accurate. I don’t actually think the devs think about the player base as divided survivor and killer bases. I think we are seen more as actors who can play either role of we wish to, and can change roles if we fancy. We then get into a game and pretend to kill each other or get scared of each other (and I mean that too, survivors get scared of each other. Will he leave me? Or will he save me? Will he take a protection hit for me? Or run and save his own skin? Should I risk getting hooked now, and believe he will save me later? etc etc.).
From the perspective that this is all a game and all pretend, the devs then go on to balance the game to make the experience of killing, chasing, getting rescued or getting farmed interesting and compelling. Because we can be treated so well or so poorly in this game by teammates or foes alike, it makes for very interesting pretend and games, PROVIDED WE REMEMBER IT IS PRETEND.
So as long as we take this too seriously, we will always be debating on who came out on top and who is favoured. But if we all remember it’s a game, and the devs are just trying to make an interesting, compelling game, and we participate as good actors (and that means no berating killers and survivors) then we can all have fun.
As long as we are taking it too seriously, the devs can listen to us all day and we have all already lost.
1 -
I won't disagree that killer rank up is tough and that is a good thing, but here is my problem though survivor rank up is too easy as you said as well. Now with MMR coming back out (I don't expect anything more than the last time it came out and was a crap shoot) you have survivors that are marked with good games against certain killers and those killers were inexperienced so the mmr system looks at that as they did great and marks them up, when in reality the system did not see anything more than an experienced survivor trounce an inexperienced killer. this is a skewed result and the fact that there is no information given as to what is being done the devs only need say oh yea it's working as intended (which they did before yet shortly after they pulled it which makes me suspect it didn't do anything).
The bias I am talking about is the handling of complaints and issues that have come up. if survivors are affected it is going to be fixed FASTER and without regard to balance, if killers are affected it might get fixed but no one knows exactly how far down the like it will be addressed. look at the complaints about keys and moris, these are not exact comparisons outside of HOW they take action.
Keys are powerful and they introduce two basement affecting offerings (ok fair enough, it can mess with the killer OR survivors) and two that affect the hatch location, and this is where the power of keys come into play. now all 4 survivors know where the hatch will be so they know where to go when the hatch reveals itself and if they have a key all get out without continuing the game ( all that is left in) and the killer can do nothing about it. Now killers have been complaining about the power of keys since they were introduced and nothing at all has been done about them, even when promised they'd be re-worked to something better when the original mori's were changed to require first hook to be done. Now survivors complain more and more about mori's as they become more prevalent after the ruin changes, so the devs say they will look at both mori's and keys once again, and suddenly the mori change comes out, completely gutting the effect mori's have because it takes longer to mori someone than to hook them. but keys again are not touched.
now look at the clown changes, his power can now positively affect survivors and the clown, there is nothing that the survivors have that benefits the killers. hoarder lets the killer know when the basement chest is looted but adds two more chests to the board for survivors to get things out of and doesn't reduce the chances of finding good things in the chests so that's minimum 5 chests to find a purple or pink key. no survivor perk helps the killers, why do killers have to help the survivors? this should have been a survivor perk that added 2 free chests and alerted the killer that someone was in the basement looting the chest there. oh no can't have the survivors helping the killers.
this is where the appearance of survivor bias is coming from and there is a great deal more. it ALSO comes in waves this is true where the killers were buffed more than survivors etc, but it's been a long 2 years since they were truly given a good buff that wasn't just immediately taken away (look at freddy).
1 -
Of course you think gen times are fine, that's why you started this thread. You can disagree that slugging is caused by gen times all you want, but that is the case. And you may be fine with being slugged, but clearly most survivors are not. And you opinion that if people don't like it killers should be punished for it, show your bias.
Finishing a gen in 17 seconds is not that risky. It has one gen completed and still gives the survivors plenty of time to spread out and complete the rest, the fact that they can be done that fast is ridiculous. I find it funny that you keep saying that killers are more experienced, yet you ignore them when they say the game is imbalanced, because it doesn't fit your narrative.
"I didn't see your question, but I don't agree with the premise. New survivors get stomped too. Most players start off playing survivor too, so often rank 20 killers will have more game sense than rank 20 survivors. Wanting to nerf perks that obliterate noobs is not "coddling" them; it's just balancing the game."
I never said new survivors didn't get stomped. I pointed out that killers get nerfed to make things easier for new survivors, but when new killers are getting stomped, they are told they just need to play better. Plus, the changes that made things easier for new survivors, made the game easier for all survivors. New killers still have to deal with the fast gen times. No matter how many times I say it, you ignore it. If both sides got treated the same, I wouldn't call it coddling. It's certainly not balancing if new killers suffer more while new survivors have it easier.
I love how you are so dismissive of all killer concerns. Totem spawns were always bad for Ruin, but was worth the risk because it was in effect from the start of the game. Nerfing Ruin made it a late game perk, so having it as a totem that can remove it from the game before it can even become useful is ridiculous. So yeah, totem placement is an issue. Fixing them in the future doesn't help today, and that process should have been started before making a major nerf like that. And, of course, it made Ruin + Undying viable, if you removed the perk it jumped to another totem.
I never said that breakable walls were a balance issue, I said they were a waste of development time and that the god loops should have been fixed directly. Many of the breakable doors are in places that aren't even worth breaking, or would even benefit the survivors. They should have spent that development time reworking maps and other stuff.
I didn't say that only Killer mains feel the game is unbalance. I said that one side feels the game is MORE balanced than the other side. Of course individual survivors will always feel that the game is unbalanced against them, but it is nearly universal that killer mains feel that the game is unbalanced. I don't know if there is a disproportionate number of killer mains on the forums, but if there is, what does that tell you? They are unhappy. Most people only come to forums when they are looking for help, or when they are unhappy with the game. People having fun just play the game. Again, more evidence that there is a problem you refuse to see.
Many feel the devs are biased because of the things they do and the things they have said. When they nerfed Ruin to make things easier for survivors, and killers were complaining, the devs essentially told them to "git gud". They told the killers that they need to learn to play better, while making the game easier for survivors. Also, as I said. It could be that the people that they use for internal testing are not as good as their player base. They looked pretty bad when they played the general public last year. If they internally test with potato survivors, naturally they will think killers are OP.
Post edited by illusion on3 -
I started this thread because of the complaining about bias, not because of how I feel about game balance. There's a difference between a game that is poorly balanced and a game in which the developers systematically disregard part of their player base. I have also said multiple times that I am fine with discouraging slugging in the base game because many players don't like it, and then buffing killer if this hurts game balance. I have no idea how this is being construed as wanting to punish killers.
The base time for four survivors repairing a gen is ~36 seconds. You can't finish gens in 17 seconds without 4 survivors all spawning together with some combination of BNPs and good toolboxes, so it really doesn't seem that ridiculous. If you're bringing all of that into a trial you'd still be way better off splitting up and working on separate gens so that you don't lose time to the coop penalty and risk the killer pressuring your whole team at once. If the killer is a Legion with Discordance, for example, congrats, you just threw the game. That's four injured survivors, limited toolbox charges remaining, and likely a quick down before you even complete the first gen.
Experienced =/= reasonable, especially if you don't really play both sides, you're neck deep in tribalism, and you're unwilling to take any responsibility for negative outcomes in your matches, which is the case for too many of the people are on the forum. It's obvious when you see people respond to a post like this with frustration and anger that people feel as if their precious side is being attacked. Most of the commenters in this thread clearly didn't even read the post; they just read the title, skimmed some keywords, and sent a heated comment about why I must be wrong. You don't respond with anger unless you feel attacked, and no one should feel attacked by a post saying that the developers of a video game want to make their game fun for all of their players. That should be an uncontroversial statement that I don't need to waste hours of my time trying to prove to people, and the fact that I do says a lot about the extent to which hearts, and not minds, are doing the talking on this forum.
I don't have a "narrative" beyond enjoying the game and appreciating the forum as a place to talk about it. I want to have positive interactions with the community, not read mountains of posts with people whining about bias that they have no evidence for. If you don't like a change the devs did/didn't make, the correct approach is to make a logical, cool-headed post to make your point of view heard. That is not how people usually use the forum. That in turn makes me empathize with the devs and community managers who have to put up with these armies of angry partisans all the time, and leads to posts like this one.
0 -
If gen times weren't too fast then why was ruin the most effective perk at all levels of play
0 -
This game is easy as a top killer, until you play against a few good survivors. Then you see it is completely imbalanced because there is literally nothing you can do to counter them. This is coming from ~1000 hour killer main who has no lifed enough to have been in the top 1% of 4 other competitive online games that actually have objective measures of skill like accurate rankings.
It's rare, but it has happened enough that's it too common place for completely ######### survivors to all escape despite me playing very well. They just happened to get several gens of pressure very early and there was no recovery. You can't pressure 4 corners of the map simultaneously.
If I outmatch my opponents, they should never blow me out like that. The game is imbalanced period.
This game is innately imbalanced and not because it's asymmetric like most will say. Instead, it is imbalanced because it is balanced around mediocre and new players who may or may not be playing on console.
I would rather play PC vs PC like I did in the past, although it will bring back the nightmares of back to back to back unwinnable games because good survivors are like I said, unbeatable. A lot of people don't have the perspective of playing in the "no life hour" timezone eastern from 12am to 12pm as well as primetime, when really good survivors who may or may not being using wall hacks come out to ruin your fun.
0 -
No it doesn't have to be systematically disregarding part of their player base. When the game becomes poorly balanced because they ignore part of their player base, that is seen as bias. When the developers make the game easier for one side, while telling the other side that they need to learn to play better, that comes across as bias.
Your not sure how what you said can be construed as wanting to punish killers? That's what discouraging implies. Since just asking people not to slug wouldn't help, discouraging would require some type of negative reinforcement for the behavior. Punishment. Pretty straight forward.
Your gen time stuff is just trying to ignore the reality. It doesn't matter what the perks being used are. If a gen is done in 17 seconds, that is shorter than it takes for killers to cross the maps. Still plenty of time to split up and work on the remaining gens and you now have one less to do. Even the 36 seconds is ridiculous.
I play both side, though mostly survivor now because playing killer has become far less fun. You can claim that you were just making an innocent statement that nobody should get mad about, but you are dismissive of any comments that killers make about feeling the game is skewed in favor of survivors. Maybe that's what has made some of them frustrated. Also, once again, you ignored the point I made about the devs making changes to make the game easier for new survivors while completely ignoring the negative impact to new killers.
You claim to not have a narrative, yet you dismiss killer concerns, or ignore the ones you don't want to acknowledge, and defend changes made that benefit survivors. When your part of the conversation is so one sided, there is something driving it. To be fair, I have not read any of the comments from other people. I'm sure there are some less than logical people, but we see that on both sides. As I mentioned before, there have been some extremely well thought out, logical posts made during PTB's, and they get ignored by the devs. That's why so many people have asked why they have a PTB, at all, if they are going to ignore the comments and suggestions. I saw posts last year from one of the lead designers and he was actually mocking and insulting killers (as I previously mentioned). I have never seen anything like that from any developers. That's why I don't have anywhere near the confidence in the dev team that you do. They have ruled out making any significant modifications to the game and insist on trying to balance the game via perks. That just isn't working.
0 -
Because it wasted the most survivor time. That'd be the case regardless of gen times.
1 -
If it's balanced around newer and mediocre players, causing top killers to struggle, why are red rank kill rates so much higher than overall kill rates? If MMR drops and the top 1% or .1% of killers are suddenly not able to hang, that'd be indicative of a balance issue. So far I've seen no evidence of that. And, when I lose as killer, it's usually because I made costly mistakes or simply got outplayed.
0 -
It is rarer to see good survivors these days because of cross-platform diluting the playerbase.
The truth of the matter is that mediocre survivors can get away with a lot. I am not nearly as good at survivor as the better survivors I have played against and I find survivor very easy at all ranks unless you have teammates that are really inexperienced or don't just don't understand the game.
In other words, I am mediocre at survivor and good at killer. I have put 85% of my time into killer. I get over rewarded for being mediocre at survivor and routinely get punished on killer for just picking the role.
0 -
If that were the case, I could see people interpreting it that way even if it makes no sense. The stats clearly show that the game balance has shifted in favor of the killer side over time, though, so that argument holds no water.
Negative reinforcement of one behavior that people don't like...and then buffing killer if this hurts game balance. I didn't bold that section for it to be ignored.
You're missing the big picture in this argument. You need ~400 seconds (+ regression time) of repairing to finish all of the gens over the match. If you stack up on one gen at the beginning, you're wasting time where you could have been chipping more away at that total. You're also going to spawn on a corner gen, which is less important to defend. Even if you don't find the gen and it pops 17 seconds later, know you know where all four survivors are, meaning you can likely pressure multiple at once, and they have no items. If you don't agree that's fine, it's not important.
I am not dismissing killer concerns, as you would clearly see from my post and replies in the thread. I am dismissing killer claims of BIAS. There are many problems in the game that affect both sides and I look forward to all of them being addressed in the future. Thinking that game devs want their game to be balanced and fun for both sides is not a "one-sided perspective". That is literally their job.
The PTB is also for finding bugs. It is not feasible to make significant changes; based on community feedback in just a few weeks and it's usually not even that smart when the feedback is based on such little game time. When the community makes a lot of noise about something, though, like with Billy's overheat being way too punishing, they usually do change it.
Please link me the post where the dev was mocking and insulting killers.
Post edited by notstarboard on0 -
I win a lot more in both roles since crossplay went live, so I agree with that bit, but I really don't think survivors can get away with more than killer. The only difference is that one survivor goofing off a bit and making bad plays still leaves 3/4 of the team playing well, so it's not quite as impactful. If you goof off a bit and make bad plays as killer, though, that's all of your time being used unproductively; it's more akin to all four survivors playing poorly at once.
Still, if one survivor messes up badly enough, it can still be enough to lose games singlehandedly. All it takes is one ill-advised save that results in a free hook or greeding one pallet and getting dropped in the basement and you can gift the killer a ton of free pressure.
0 -
Okay
I'll rephrase what I mean then, I am probably around top 40% survivor and I routinely win. I am around top 1% killer, heck for sake of argument, let's say I'm top 10% killer. Well I run into survivors worse than I and they can occasionally get the best of me because of the state of the game. I am near max potential for killer and nowhere even close to as good as survivor, yet I have about the same results.
0 -
Where are these percentages coming from, though? And how are you evaluating that these survivors are worse than you? I'd be more receptive to this kind of argument once MMR goes live, but for now we don't have a good way of evaluating your skill. You could just be better than you think at survivor or worse than you think at killer.
0 -
I have played thousands of games against survivors. I can tell their proficiency of hiding/looping/teamwork. It's not hard to see how many survivors I am worse than which is many. I am only okay at looping and hiding. Often times I am obvious when going for the save. I heal in the wrong places, etc. etc. But ultimately, it doesn't matter how bad I am as survivor because I still win.
If I played against myself as killer, I would feel like I was playing against a rat league player because I have gotten very good in the elite in chasing/game sense as killer.
0 -
Stats certainly DON'T show that game balance has shifted in favor of the killers. And you wonder why people have become frustrated with you.
I didn't ignore the buff killers AFTER they get punished, IF it hurts game balance. Slugging happens because killers were nerfed. If survivors don't like it, punish the killers more. Then fix it if the game is not balanced. That is still punishing the killers in advance. Also, it lacks any exploration into why killers are doing it in the first place. The appropriate action would be to fix the reason that caused the killers to start slugging in the first place, and then discouraging slugging if it continues (assuming that the fix makes slugging unbalanced as well as unfun). The idea that they should punish killers before trying to balance the game is a one sided point. Nerf killers, killers adjust tactics, punish killers for adjusting tactics because the other side doesn't like it, then try to balance the game. It's funny how you don't see that as bias.
Once again, you ignored how the nerfs to killers has dramatically made the game worse for new killers. How many times has that been? You talked about how oppressive Ruin was to new survivors but ignore how the changes have been oppressive to new killers. Again, everything is one sided with you.
I didn't miss anything. If a gen is done in 17 seconds, you only have 4 gens to worry about. If it takes 400 seconds to do 5 gens, and it only takes 17 seconds to do the first one, and the standard 80 to do the remaining 4, that means that the total gen time is only 337 seconds...so considerably less time. That's over a minute of extra time to work with, and that assumes no other buffs to gen repair. Also, the killer doesn't know where all 4 of you are, he/she just knows where you WERE. You can still spread out and work on gens individually. 17 seconds in gives you plenty of time for that.
You do, in fact, keep dismissing their concerns. The game is clearly skewed in favor of the survivors. You refuse to acknowledge that, and actually defend the changes that caused it. I have stated, I think 3 times now, that it may not necessarily be that they are intentionally biased, and that it could be that their internal testing is flawed because their staff aren't as good at the game as their player base. If you test with bad players, you get bad results, which is why they should pay more attention to PTB feedback.
It may not be feasible to make significant changes in a few weeks, but it is feasible to postpone the changes until a more balanced option can be implemented. Making negative changes with a "maybe we will look at it in the future" plan, is just sloppy.
I would have to know what the threads were called in order to find them and link them. I could maybe spend the day searching, but it is not worth it, since it seems like you would just defend them anyway. You have already expressed your devotion to the dev team.
2 -
I agree of course. Any reasonable person would. The imbalance against killers are blatant. I'm starting to realize it is pointless to argue with these people who either lack the intelligence, experience or have such a strong cognitive bias they are lying to themselves. I think people are the problem here. This isn't even about facts anymore.
2 -
I'm basing my opinion on statistics. You're basing yours on your subjective evaluation of the skill of survivors you've played against and your performance against them. If I'm just some moron ignoring the obvious facts, please refute my argument. So far many people have commented saying "you can't trust kill rate because it can be skewed". No one has offered a good reason why you can't trust the trend line, though, and that's the main thing I'm basing my argument on.
0 -
So far many people have commented saying "you can't trust kill rate because it can be skewed". No one has offered a good reason why you can't trust the trend line, though, and that's the main thing I'm basing my argument on.
The reason killers slug is because it is effective. You need to make it less effective if you don't want people to slug. It is not rocket science.
Many of your arguments are predicated on the fact that devs have been repeatedly nerfing killer, either intentionally due to bias or by flawed internal testing, which I feel I have demonstrated is not the case in my original post. You need to address this argument first before alleging that "the game is clearly skewed in favor of the survivors" and that I'm dismissing killer concerns when I dispute that. Otherwise I have no reason to agree with you.
That is why I have no problem discouraging slugging and seeing how things play out; the game seems to be in a reasonably good state right now, and I don't think changing slugging would affect game balance all that negatively. I don't have numbers on this, but low-rank players already typically don't have the confidence to slug, so I'd anticipate this would mostly just impact high-rank players. High-rank killers currently drastically outperform low-rank killers and are likely performing a bit too well in general (if we consider two sacrifices and two escapes "balanced"), so I think it could be a useful change. I'd support changes like nerfing DS at the same time, but I don't think they necessarily need to come out together either; whenever they're ready.
I 100% agree with your point on the PTB. When the new patch has lots of gamebreaking issues even by DBD standards, like we saw with the Twins, that patch should not go live until they clean things up.
I am not devoted to the dev team. Part of my job is basically tech support, so I empathize with them having to deal with lots of angry people who have trouble staying objective. I haven't heard of them ever mocking or insulting killers and it doesn't make any sense for them to do that, which is why I want to see it. Makes me wonder if one of them just lost their cool.
0 -
You can't count on kill rate because they pool low skill survivors with good survivors data wise. A good survivor, especially in a SWF with other good players, is going to have a higher escape rate. You really don't see how this can cause an issue if they make balance changes around kill rates?
0 -
Idk man
1:39 (i know they aren't but this is kinda funny) he also earlier says legion shouldnt maybe be able to jump pallets.
2 -
Lmao ok he's a potato at survivor. I will say, I think the delay in the cursed status effect outweighs the nerf to make it only impact repair and healing, but I wish Lullaby did affect all skill checks. If so it'd actually be pretty darned good on an anti-skill check Doctor.
0 -
Actually fun fact he lied according to the comments and checking pictures from old lullaby "it doesnt say it effects all skillchecks". But i guess i won't fault em on miss remembering its not like hes a game designer and should know.
1 -
I'd think that this concern would be mostly addressed by giving kill rates at red rank only - not all red-rank players are good, but still, they generally at least have a head on their shoulders.
I definitely agree that making balance changes only based on kill rate is stupid. If that were the only factor we'd have to give massive buffs to Nurse and Blight, for example. I think it should just be another data point for the devs to consider. I do think the changes in kill rate over time over all killers and all matches is useful for evaluating how game balance changes over time, though.
In other words, I think it would be dumb to say "overall kill rate is 56% and we consider 50% balanced; let's nerf killer"; there's probably enough bias in the numbers from things like farming, giving survivors hatch, hook suicides, DCs, bugs, sandbagging, etc. that 56% probably wouldn't be the expected kill rate of a match in which both sides just played to win until the end. With that said, I think it's reasonable to say "Overall kill rate hasn't dropped over the past four years while red rank kill rate has gone way up. Therefore, the devs have not been systematically nerfing killer."
0 -
Yeah only using red ranks kill rates sound like it would work, and should, but red ranks aren't an indication of survivors skill. People make it to red ranks without even knowing what every killer does, or how to loop shack, and so on. You say not all red ranks survivor are good, which is true, but I honestly think you are overestimating how many red rank survivors actually have a head on their shoulders. From my experience, as a solo survivor player, most red ranks survivor aren't even semi decent. The skill discrepancy of survivors at red ranks is HUGE, to say the least.
0 -
Yeah ngl there are a lot of potatoes at red rank. You need to be good, play a lot, or both, and there are definitely a good chunk of people who fall into the second bucket. Still, though, I don't think this has really changed over time. They've messed with the rank reset and the emblem system a few times, which might influence things a bit, but there have been potatoes at red rank for as long as I've been playing the game. In other words, if kill rates are high at red rank because there are too many boosted survivors, there would need to be big shift in the proportion of boosted survivors at red rank over time to account for the increasing kill rate at red rank. If not - which I think is a lot more likely - it's probably just caused by game balance.
0 -
Yeah, I'm wondering if that's just something they discussed when they reworked Doctor that didn't end up making it into the game.
0 -
no lullaby used to affect all skillchecks and when they reworked doctor that was added in at first since it stated all skillchecks but since almo couldnt hit the skillcheck and lullaby punished him he came up with some story that "lullaby doesnt specify it works on all skillchecks so were gonna bugfix it to make sure it doesn't" when in fact it did and he didnt like that so they kinda brushed it under the rug as a bugfix when the perk was clearly working (so they called it a bugfix instead of a nerf)
(Kinda shadey when ya ask me)
2 -
I think you have the argument wrong. The devs aren’t biased towards survivors because they like survivors better. It’s because they don’t understand the game. They take the numbers at face value and don’t understand that the vast majority of the playerbase is bad at the game, which inflates the kill rates. The devs choose to cater to bad players and ignore people who have invested time and money into their game.
0 -
I see what you're saying but I'm hypothesizing from his reaction that they may have already discussed not making Lullaby affect skill checks for the Doctor and other killer-specific powers during the Doctor rework. That would explain why he was thinking that was already in the game.
0 -
What makes you think that?
0 -
because the old description before the bugfix specified it worked on any skillcheck and it was well known it worked with snap out of it.
After the "bugfix" it said only healing and repair speeds. sounds like a nerf more than a bugfix right? and the update happened right after that stream where ethan couldnt hit the snap out of it skillchecks resulting in his snap out of it going back in progress.
2 -
Ethan is 100% bias. If you watch his stream he's blatant about it.
0 -
I think you replied to the wrong reply :)
0 -
Could be. I haven't watched him stream, but I've watched several of the dev Q&As and I haven't gotten that impression from those.
0 -
never saw that he said OoO is fine because survivors die when using it (because their tunneled most of the time or camped) and said clown was underated but look now clowns getting major buffs? your funny.
Also otz in the comments
The original "Dying Light" perk wasn't super powerful, it probably didn't boost the win-rate of Killers and it was also very "thematic". But they changed it because it encouraged unhealthy tunneling. Why they can't see that the same thing applies to OoO absolutely baffles me.
1 -
Their balancing decisions make it pretty clear. Old ruin was explicitly nerfed because it hurt "new players". They nerfed pop and they are nerfing undying, even though decent players have no problem punishing the killer or playing around them.
1 -
I agree OoO should get changed because of its ceiling (imagine a skilled SWF team on comms against a Trapper) and because it annoys people, but I also don't doubt OoO is not beneficial to survivors on the aggregate. I hope they change it at some point personally.
I don't love the Dying Light comparison, though, because OoO is a survivor perk. If you're running Dying Light, you just always have an incentive to tunnel. If you run OoO you give the killer an incentive to tunnel, and once you realize that your matches aren't going well you can rectify that by taking the perk off.
I think Clown actually was underrated, just not strong - both can be true. Like, many people said he was the worst killer in the game despite that his strength in the 1v1 makes him way more consistent against good survivors than low-tier killers like Legion that are a lot weaker in the chase. Kill rate ain't perfect, as we've established, but he's only 2% below average by that metric. So, not good, but not F tier either.
0 -
Im sorry but you could not be more wrong, even the devs know they're making survivor unplayable
0 -
Old Ruin was hurting new players, straight up. If you can't hit great skill checks gens against Ruin gens are completed at less than half the speed, and all the while it's just tilting the survivors every time they regress the gen. A perk that strong that caused that much frustration just wasn't good for the game. It was still very strong at red rank, but not overwhelming; I thought it was fun to play against and was a high-risk / high-reward option. The new version is more fair, though, because it's still strong but it rewards the killer for applying pressure. That's a healthy design philosophy in general imo and it definitely helps new survivors not struggle so much against it. At the same time they also nerfed coop gen speeds, toolboxes, and great skill check progress bonuses, so they clearly also wanted to slow down gen times in the base game.
Pop got a relatively inconsequential nerf honestly and I thought it was a fair change. As killer I was often hooking someone, chasing someone off a gen, downing them, then going back to pop their gen, and then hooking them to refresh my Pop. That just feels like overkill. I thought 45 seconds was a fair compromise. It's still very strong and it's still a lot stronger than it was at launch, but you usually have to pop the gen before taking the chase now so the killer needs to decide which is more important.
As for Undying, it's still going to be very strong. Ruin/Undying/Tinkerer are probably still going to be meta for mobile killers light Blight. Meanwhile, because of the token change, I'm fully expecting Undying/Devour to be the new meta on killers like Hag that are good at defending totems. It also effectively buffed all token-based hex perks, which is awesome and opens up a lot more synergies. It was also extremely punishing for solos before, which I don't think is ideal for a perk getting that much use. I think the devs should be trying to close the gap between solo and SWF whenever possible.
Keep in mind also that survivors haven't gotten a single meta perk since Dead Hard, which was July 2017. Killers have gotten several meta perks since then, while Sprint Burst, Dead Hard, and DS (three times!) have been nerfed since then. I'm not saying this to say "reee u evil killer main what about my side" - I'm just making the point that "the devs nerfed strong killer perks" isn't enough to suggest they're biased.
0 -
You think the devs are knowingly making survivor unplayable? That would be an interesting change lol, I've spent the past few days responding to people who think the exact opposite. I'd agree that solo queue is pretty rough right now but I think the game's in an okay place overall right now. Once MMR is released and in a good state it should help smooth things out too.
0 -
Well mate I've been solo queueing all day and every game I get I do every single gen myself, have the most chases with the killer and die first hook everytime so Idk what to think, literally every game the survivors I play with die in like 2 minutes, unbearable
1 -
Yeah I feel you, solo queue definitely sucks sometimes. I do think MMR will help, but in the meantime you could try switching up your perks a bit if you haven't already. I like running perks like Aftercare, Kindred, and Alert in solo queue, but Kindred in particular should help a bit with you getting left on the hook. Other than that you could try to find some friends to play with if you're into that - I think there's a "looking for players" section on the forum :) I play mostly in a two-man SWF, which is really nice because you at least can have your buddy come unhook you if your other teammates are being idiots.
0 -
When they haven’t touched any meta survivor perks in that time, it’s perfect proof. They tried on decisive and made it better lol.
0 -
"Devs aren't biased against killers".
True, they are just biased TOWARDS survivor, which makes up the majority of the community, and therefore their bottom line.
Proof? They're making literally three changes to Undying, a perk with plenty of counterplay to all of it's abilities, because "survivors didn't like going against it", after only barely 4 months.
Meanwhile, Dead Hard, Decisive Strike, Unbreakable, Spine Chill etc. Fundamentally broken or overtuned perks (and are far more powerful than Undying), all in the survivor meta (and have been for the last nearly 5 years), receive absolutely no changes, even though "killers don't like going against them".
They are fundamentally more biased toward survivors.
8 -
There are probably many reasons that the kill rate is skewed, not the least of which is the fact that so many killers stopped played, so more potato survivors are going up against more experienced killers. A popular streamer often says that this game would have died by now if it wasn't for potato survivors balancing things out. That is probably an accurate assessment.
Slugging is effective, but it's usage has increased dramatically in the last year. As you pointed out, the game is 4.5 years old. If it was so effective, it would have been used right from the start. The reason killers didn't use it before is that it feels like a cheap tactic. Now they just do what they have to. So nerfing killers led them to start slugging more, and your solution is to nerf them for using a tactic that they were essentially forced to start using. Again, bias against killers. Of course you see no problem with nerfing slugging. It benefits survivors and hurts killers. Maybe fix the problem that led to slugging first, but no, let's just keep nerfing killers to make the game ridiculously easy for survivors. You want to keep the game alive, that isn't the way to do it.
Btw, for like the 6th time you have ignore the negative impact that the killer nerfs had on new killers, yet I still see that you are STILL defending the Ruin nerf because it hurt new survivors. That is complete bias against killers. You are a hypocrite. A change is OK as long as it helps survivors, regardless of how it hurts killers. You are not the voice of reason you claim to be. You have an agenda, and it shows the more you talk about it.
"Many of your arguments are predicated on the fact that devs have been repeatedly nerfing killer, either intentionally due to bias or by flawed internal testing, which I feel I have demonstrated is not the case in my original post"
No, you didn't. You made opinion based arguments, which is not proof of anything. You also didn't even mention internal testing. That was something that I brought up as a way to meet you half way, by agreeing that it might not be intentional, just poor internal testing, but clearly you can't even meet halfway. You can't possibly know that their internal testing is not flawed, so it is a ridiculous claim to make. On the other hand, we have seen their staff get destroyed in public games, so we know that they are not nearly as good as the public. They were essentially potatoes as survivors, so if that is who they test with, no wonder they nerf killers.
Of course you see no problem with nerfing slugging. It benefits survivors and hurts killers.
1
