The Devs Are Not Biased Against Killers
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Except, kill rates ARE skewed. Case and point, when I play Freddy, I play with 2 perks. BBQ and Brutal Strength. No addons, no slowdowns. A pretty modest build, not overpowered, not game extending etc. Survivors STILL just die on first hook, or just point at a hook and want to be killed. They don't even TRY, despite the fact that Freddy, even with more powerful builds, is MORE than outplayable. He's just an M1 killer at the end of the day.
That's how kill rates are skewed, and that's why Almo's "but the stats lul" lingo is nonsense.
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I've been using "against killer" and "towards survivor" interchangeably even though there's a nuance there.
DS has been nerfed three times since launch. Sprint Burst and Dead Hard have both also been nerfed - all exhaustion perks were nerfed when BHVR removed exhaustion recovery while sprinting and faster exhaustion recovery while couching. Dead Hard is incidentally the last survivor meta perk that has been released, and it came out in July 2017. There have been several killer meta perks introduced since then, including Undying, which I expect will still be meta on highly mobile killers like Blight (Ruin/Undying/Tinkerer) and on killers that can defend their totems like Hag (Undying/Devour) after the nerf.
It wasn't just that people "didn't like going against it" (although that is honestly a fair reason to change a perk, assuming the feedback is loud enough). Undying was very strong across the board, but it was disproportionately strong against solo survivors who are already in a rough state at the moment. That's the exact opposite of what the game needs. The updated version doesn't screw solos while still remaining strong and while also buffing all token-based hex perks, which had previously been more or less irrelevant. I think it's a great change. The only thing I would have changed is keeping the aura reading on all totems in exchange for giving survivors the Cursed status when they start cleansing any totem.
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You don't see to be reading my comments any more so it's not worth my time replying any longer. See you in the fog.
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LOL Yeah. Nice try. I addressed every comment you made. That's the real problem though, isn't it. I even pointed out how YOU kept ignoring the same points I made over and over. Hypocrisy from you, once again. But you are right, it is pointless to continue.
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Sure, some people do kill themselves on the hook, die from bugs, sandbag their teammates, etc. and all that should push the kill rate up. Other people survive for free because the killer gave them hatch, wanted to farm, decided not to kill them after they booped the snoot, was bugged, was afk in order to depip, etc. and all that should push the kill rate back down.
I said in my post that I don't really care about kill rates, though, because it's not clear how these factors balance out. That's why I'm focused on how they trend over time instead. In order for the trend line to be wrong, there would have to be big changes in the factors that could skew kill rate. I have seen no evidence to suggest that would be the case, so I feel pretty comfortable trusting the trend line. That trend line is what shows that the game is about the same as four years ago in overall kill rate, but the red rank kill rate is substantially higher. This does not suggest pro-survivor bias.
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Or the devs could finally add buffs to survivors that would close the solo-SWF gap. Which would allow the devs to make dramatic changes to gens, which could then let devs make camping, slugging, and tunneling less prevalent.
But for whatever reason they refuse, or are taking forver, to help bring solos up to the level of SWF.
Which is sad. The solo-SWF gap is the source of all of DBD's gameplay and balance problems.
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The last time DS was "nerfed", it was a buff. At least before this, there was counterplay. In fact, BHVR has actively removed any DS counterplay (the enduring nerf) since this change.
Exhaustion, as with Bloodlust, is a broken mechanic and shouldn't exist at this stage in the game. Dead Hard is the worst offender, because of what it offers, for free, with no earning or skill involved on the survivors part.
Undying is nowhere near as powerful as any of the survivor meta perks.
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Yep, I 100% agree. They really have to get on that.
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Well, there was a buff following up the nerf, anyway. The 60-second timer was definitely a nerf compared to the version without the timer, but you're right there was a shift back to a 5 second stun timer shortly after the switch to the 60-second timer. The version not tied to the timer was definitely stronger regardless of the stun time change, though, because it was far easier to trigger and the killer could only barely counter it (by juggling if the survivor was downed close to a hook).
I wouldn't be opposed to nerfing Dead Hard - I personally like the idea of the short-term invincibility, but I'd shorten the lunge you get from it so you can't just use it for distance. I wouldn't agree about exhaustion, though.
You can rank Undying and compare it to survivor perks however you'd like, but that's not really relevant to my argument. I'm looking at changes over time, as that best reflects the devs' efforts to balance the game. If killer meta perks are being added while survivor meta perks have either stayed the same or gotten nerfed, that implies that killer perks have improved over time relative to survivor perks. That holds even if survivors started off with a big advantage at launch, which I feel they definitely did.
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Ah ok. Thank you for such a well thought out reply. I hear you and will think about this.
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I actually agree with this. Here are the following points I agree with:
(1) If all 4 survivors are playing well, they will usually win. Depending on how well, they could win by a small or big margin
(2) Game is balanced around mediocre players. Meaning people who don’t have the time to sink into this game to become the best. People who have jobs, relationships and family to take care of.
I feel this is what the game is about, learning to cooperate, empathy for others, being brave, altruistic, standing your ground in intense situations. 4 (normally selfish) players are learning to do this, and one is threatening them with death for not doing so. The killers role isn’t actually to kill survivors, it’s to teach them a lesson. And if they learn it, they escape! And if not they lose friends or die, or escape with a bad conscience. It’s a great horror plot!
If the 4 survivors manage to cooperate and escape and learned a lesson doing so, I think we’ve all won, whether killer or survivor. If they escaped without learning a lesson, then I think we need better killers. And if they don’t escape then well, they probably didn’t learn the lesson and can try again.
To me this is the magic of the game, it’s a microcosm of life, a place to learn some valuable life skills through an entertaining genre. I think it’s what attracts many people to play this game. So no I don’t think the game should be balanced for competitive play. No I don’t think tunneling is healthy. No I don’t think killers should focus on killing in this game. They should focus on punishing cowards and greedy, selfish play. It’s a role of service, which many of the antagonists in horror films try to play. I think that’s what this game is about.
So yes I think the game is biased towards survivors when they play in a manner that is good for all. And it incentivises or limits the killer to doing what is necessary to teach them that lesson. And the most stubborn survivors who do not learn, die on the hook.
So I actually agree with your post. But rather, I think the premise that the game is meant to be competitive and pit the killer against survivors and that if the killer doesn’t 3-4K is not correct and not in line with what the devs envisioned for the game and for us. I see this actually as a 5 man cooperative game for people to learn to be cool to each other.
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Look at the recent nerf to Pop Goes the Weasel. The logic given for the change was that the timer was too long because you had lots of time to do other actions.
So - exactly the same as Decisive Strike.
Which one got nerfed?
DS+Unbreakable has been a brokenly OP combo for years. Undying+Ruin is only a few months old.
Which one got nerfed?
I'm seeing a pattern here....
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I love this comment!
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One data point is not a pattern :) And, even still, DS has been nerfed three separate times since launch. The third nerf in particular (tying DS to the 60 second timer) was a substantial nerf to the DS/UB combo. The devs have clearly had their eyes on DS and I expect it will get nerf #4 soon enough. Meanwhile, Pop launched with a 30-second timer, so it's actually quite a bit stronger now than it used to be.
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You've got to be joking about stat evaluation. It does not take into account the skill level of either side. People often DC when they are pissed, which is often. There are many hackers. There are different regions and some regions seem to be dog**. I've seen many killers just afk maps they don't like and survivors throw matches. Many people aren't trying. It's random survivors paired with each other. It takes 1 or 2 weak survivors to throw a match for everyone. There are countless other variables skewing stats.....
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The skill level should come out in the wash given this applies to all matches; sometimes you'll see top killers matched with green rank survivors and sometimes you'll see the exact opposite. If you feel that survivors are just systematically worse players compared to killers or that they don't try as hard, though, maybe survivors reaching their ceiling isn't a realistic expectation and the game should be balanced with that in mind.
It is very, very unlikely that DCs, AFK killers, etc. are enough to make a sub-50% "true kill rate" (i.e. kill rate in balanced matches in which everyone tries hard to the end and there are no bugs) jump up to 68% on the stat sheet, especially when you consider the other factors pushing it back down such as killers giving the last survivor hatch or wanting to farm. Regardless, as I said in my post, the actual percentage isn't the point; it's the trend line. There would need to be a massive change over time in factors like DCs/hook suicides, AFKs, hatch granting, farming, etc. in order to bias the trend line, and I see no strong evidence for that. I can think of a few factors that would have changed kill rate biases over time (e.g. tweaking rank reset and the emblem system a few times (might impact red rank kill rate vs. overall), hatch now always spawns for the last survivor (deflates kill rate), DCs while loading now don't make you play the whole match 3v1 (deflates kill rate)) but nothing that would artificially inflate the kill rate substantially more now than in the past. If you can think of a reason why the kill rate in 2020 would be massively inflated compared to 2016, I'd love to hear it - 100+ comments in this thread and no one's really tried yet.
I have been matched with maybe one or two hackers in 1100 hours; they're really not that common. And still, there are hackers on both sides, so it's not like it's just attack helicopter Ghost Faces inflating kill rates. I'm not sure which side hacks proportionally more, but either way this should be a drop in the bucket for overall kill rate just because of how rare they are.
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Prefacing this by saying you have given me reason to want to visit these forums for more than just the odd dev activity or update post. In the past whenever I ventured into the discussions subforums looking for conversations on game mechanics and balance, I was quickly put off by seeing completely unreasonable statements made by people with thousands of posts, causing me a fair amount of concern as to the general state of the forum and one's ability to have reasonable and constructive conversations in it. As you have also pointed out, usually those statements will unreasonably be biased toward killer gameplay, and so seeing well-reasoned statements to contest some of these ridiculous sentiments from someone that also has thousands of posts is reassuring.
I find myself in disbelief whenever faced with what on the one hand is my experience and view of the game, and what on the other not few people seem to think of it judging by various online outlets. When I can go from growing tired of watching some of the streamers I watch play killer as they genuinely almost never lose and are so rarely even challenged enough for it not to become mindnumbingly boring to watch them, to seeing people complain that the game is impossibly survivor-sided and that there's nothing killers can do and the devs hate killers and only nerf them and as survivor you can do whatever and still escape all the time, I am just baffled and trying to find ways to explain this disparity to myself, of how I am seeing a reality that players can dominate as killer in the vast majority of their matches and have done so for thousands upon thousands of hours, year after year, going on 4k streaks of hundreds of games in a row, and on the other people that genuinely seem to believe they can never even... what, kill a single survivor without the universe aligning to somehow make that happen? I have around 4000 hours in the game, with roughly 1500 spent on killer, and even after 500 hours I already grew tired of playing hard to win with the best characters, perks, add-ons and strategies. I regularly use more exotic perks and weaker characters, going out of my way not to employ the most effective strategies of tunnelling, slugging and camping, and yet I still comfortably kill two or more survivors much more often than one or less.
The facts are kill rates have shown very clearly time and again that the game for public play is actually killer-sided. There are things that skew the statistics, but they do so in both directions, and there's no reason anyone has brought up that would suggest that these things should skew the statistics more so to inflate kill rates. In fact, the only thing I can see could significantly skew the rates are disconnects, and when these statistics were taken there weren't even disconnect penalties in the game. And yet, not only were disconnects actually excluded from them, meaning the reported kill rates are actually deflated, but even disconnects only amounted to a ~5% difference in the statistics, as stated by the devs. So if even those are not nearly impactful enough to make up for the difference, it is only even more unreasonable to think those other vague factors could not only amount to more than 5%, but do so disproportionally in either direction. Hell, there is the argument that these factors should not even be excluded to begin with. These things all do affect the rates, they are for better and worse part of what shapes the gameplay experience of Dead by Daylight. And if they happen frequently enough to non-negligibly affect global statistics, that is precisely why they are something that has to be included in evaluations on game changes. E. g. back when these stats were first released I saw quite a few people arguing that Moris would be inflating the kill rates. But is it really "inflating" if they are an item in the game that players can use as they please? It's actually part of the game and does affect the global experience and balance, as are many of the other factors that are usually being brought up.
And then there's of course the fact of the trend of the stats, as you state, which has to be even less affected by any such factors. And anybody that has been around for a couple of years in the game and has taken an honest approach at evaluating the balance patches would have no reason to doubt that trend. There have been a lot of substantial changes to shift the balance more toward killer gameplay. Furthermore, tournament play shows that the game is in a rather reasonably balanced state even at the top level. You have some of the best and most experienced players in the game competing against each other consistently, and while yes some of the killer characters do average only between one and two kills, others average between three and four. Also to be considered is that various add-ons and even perk combinations are banned for killers in those tournaments, and that survivors are using voice communcations. So, we have video evidence of players that showcase that they can kill around 80-90% of the survivors they face in matchmaking, in the form of streams. We have game data provided by the devs. And we have video footage of tournaments showcasing that even at the very top level killers absolutely stand a chance to perform well and can even win decisively. What is there that has led so many people to assume as self-evident the idea that killers are completely underpowered?
And going even further than that with the idea that the devs are somehow biased against killer is only even more ridiculous. For one thing, there have been the many substantial survivor nerfs and killer buffs throughout the years, which as you correctly say, if there had been an actual bias those things would have not been changed to begin with. Then there is the fact that while killer players get an entirely new character with every chapter, with engaging new mechanics, a learning curve and new ways for strategic approaches and perk synergies, survivor players get pretty much nothing new. Survivor gameplay has barely gotten any new mechanics whatsoever in the game's entire lifespan, no new possible actions or even just items. Firecrackers as a borderline joke item, that's about it. Hell, even the best survivor perks are still mostly the same old 10-or-so they have always been, whereas killers have gotten a variety of highly viable perks while in general already having more variety in perk usefulness due to how they harmonize with different killer characters. And then on top of that as you again also state, BHVR is a multi-million dollar company, they have a clear bias and that is making money, and the idea that they would be biased toward either "side" in a way that is detrimental to their money-making is childishly naive. They have hundreds of employees getting paid a salary every month, that somehow such a petty bias could survive through the many real-world practical and financial functionings of a modern-age company is laughable. If the game were as unattractive for people to play as it is regularly being made out to and actually lead to the game suffering because of it, you can believe that the devs would be the first to notice and change this - and they have, that's where those substantial pro-killer balance patches in the past came from. If anything, the fact that this company with much more ways of analyzing and evaluating the game, as well as quite literally an existential interest in making the game as attractive as possible to as many people as possible, is choosing to nerf Undying and Moris should tell you that internally they have reason for concern that the game currently is not attractive enough for survivors to ensure its longevity.
I think many of the survivor nerfs and killer buffs were healthy for the game, and even necessary for its longevity in a few cases. I think a fair few of the killer characters are absolutely deserving of buffs. The pool of viable perks for the killer side is also too small. There are legitimate balance concerns left in the game from a killer perspective. I do see various issues in how BHVR handles the game, including the balance approach. But one has to be reasonable and sensible in how these things are framed, and just factual with regards to the realities of them. The game is in a more balanced state now than it has ever been, and its nearing a state where even at the top level an overall balance of two kills and two escapes is entirely feasible, with both killer and survivor victories happening frequently and a few of the killer characters arguably even being more on the side of too strong. Killer releases for over a year now show a trend of competitively highly viable designs. In public matches a competent killer player will more often be successful than not (and I think the game on average favouring a killer in public play is a good thing).
One can realize that the game does actually have a considerable skill ladder, and before blaming the core game balance, one should evaluate one's own gameplay and accept that there are things that can be improved upon. And that acceptance should be something positive, that adds to the experience of the game. Learning from mistakes and improving at a game mentally and mechanically is what makes playing games worthwhile to me at all, and so I have an even harder time understanding all the people that are so eager to complain and blame the game. Where is the "gamer" mentality? Where is the drive to improve, the ambition to see a streamer dominate their games and to want to be like them? Do people just accept themselves to be mediocre and unable to learn and improve? I doubt that is the case. Maybe much of it ultimately is indeed an emotional response, an outlet to vent after tough games, to not be alone with any frustrations one might feel stemming from the game.
Either way, I would encourage anyone to give themselves a chance and believe in the possibility that they can improve at the game and elevate themselves into a position where they too can succeed in most of their matches. That's not to say there won't be games where it can feel almost impossible to win, some of the characters, maps, items, add-ons and perks can certainly combine to yield games that are arguably too challenging, especially if a group of survivors is playing together and even communicating with voice chat, but not only will those games be rare, but even then you can still have engaging chases, get a few hooks, a kill or two, and be on your way to more reasonable experiences for the next 100 or so matches before you get another team of 4 survivors that are actually good at the game and abusing the strongest things in it. Just like a very good Nurse or Spirit player will completely take you apart whenever you meet them in public matches, but that also doesn't happen very often. Take every other challenging game as a learning experience.
I hope MMR will even out the playing field a little in the future, creating more consistent gameplay experiences with more evenly-matched players, and that there will be adjustments made with SWF in mind, potentially then based on new statistics arising from those more evenly-matched games.
Post edited by zarr on2 -
I really appreciate and wholeheartedly agree with your comment. Ours is an unpopular point of view, but I think it would make for a friendlier and healthier community if it could gain some traction. The devs are imperfect, as are we all, and I of course have my own list of pet issues in the game that I'd love to see them address, but at the end of the day it's just not fair or productive to treat them as the enemy. They're doing their best to make a fun and balanced game and I feel they've been making steady progress towards that goal.
I'm also optimistic that MMR will be another step in the right direction. The first time MMR went live I was getting such outstanding teammates in solo queue that I've been really looking forward to it coming back. Unfortunately I was also mostly getting matched with inexperienced killers, so hopefully that gets sorted this time :)
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Thanks for coming out top say it. The killers on this board won't accept it though.
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Speak of the devil. First reply in the thread. Exactly what I was talking about, gets 62 upvotes while original post only gets 18.
By the way, where are the 2020 kill rate stats from? Could you post the link to the official stats for that? Didn't know it went down to 56%.
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Where are your stats to back that up? Oh that's right you don't have any because BHVR never released player breakdown stats.
Arguably what you said is 100% incorrect. Back in 2018ish survivor queues were lightning fast and killer queues took 10 minutes or more. I remember this vividly because it's when I decided to stop playing killer. Matches just took too long. That suggests that there were too many killers and not enough survivors. And yet there were still a lot of nerfs and reworks to survivors at that time.
Today it feels like there aren't enough killers because survivor queues for me now take 2-5 minutes whereas just last year they were 30 seconds. If the queues get longer I will probably decide to stop playing survivor and play only killer. Maybe. Depends.
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Skip forward a minute or so if you just want the graphs 👍
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You're delusional if you think there's a way to extract accurate stat information with the way matchmaking currently is.
You are even more delusional if you think that there are not many, many, many hackers.... A lot of people use walls and try to hide it.
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The same matchmaking system has been used since launch, though. The only differences over time have been tweaks to the pip/emblem system and how far you drop on rank reset, and I don't see these impacting overall kill rate much at all (probably mostly red rank kill rate). Matchmaking itself has been the same.
If the hacker is just turning on auras for the other side all game, or something, I would have no sure way of knowing, true, but then again how would you know there are lots of people doing this if it's this well hidden? If they increase their speed, or give themselves free health states, or perform actions faster, or start flying and spamming out hatchets, that's what I'm talking about when I say I've only seen one or two hackers in 1100 hours.
Regardless, unless if the hackers are disproportionately playing on one side or the other and there are a ridiculous amount of them now and this has gotten a lot worse over time (think like 90% killer hackers, 10% survivor hackers, and hackers in 1 in 10 matches now as compared to 1 in 500 matches before) this is not going to invalidate the trend line. These less obvious hacks wouldn't guarantee 4ks/0ks either, so you'd likely even need more than this amount of hackers for it to compromise the data... There's just no way lol
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There's that completely unreasonable attitude again that is so tiring to see. "Delusional". I know that word - like many other words - has lost much of its actual meaning to most people, but it's still entirely inappropriate to throw such words around senselessly and contentiously. But for something that would actually be more akin to a delusion, perhaps it's your completely unfounded belief that there are so many hacking killers that it would notably affect statistics that are gathered from millions upon millions of matches.
As for "extracting accurate stat information with the way matchmaking is", even apart from what's been said about how that doesn't affect the trend, I honestly don't even know what you mean with that. Is anyone playing the game on a different matchmaking system? No. The stats show what the balance is like in the actual matches being played of the actual game, not some imaginary control environment. Millions of hours of actual players having actual gameplay experiences. All of those deathsquad SWFs so many killer mains allegedly get every round? All in there. This is the actual game as it is being played, and it is actually favouring killers to kill two or more survivors more often than not on a global and per-rank average. If the game would be changed to more consistently match people of similar skill and experience levels the stats might change (or they might not), but it would also be a different game, so let's leave that for a future in which that hopefully does happen with an improved MMR system.
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Yeah, even a disconnect between the "sides" is not necessarily a bad thing or something we have to "get rid of", just a reasonable disconnect would already be desirable. Ideally everyone would play both sides and "see" both sides quite literally in that way, but that's not something we can expect or effect, of course. And to villainize the developers over any such disconnect is of course the most unreasonable thing. There's fair criticism, and then there's making it out as if a team of hundreds of people that literally spends their days constantly working on ever-new killer designs "hates killer players". Just baffling. Especially after the streak of engaging and viable killer releases we've had for more than a year now. Is the playerbase for this game really this young an age group for that absurd sentiment to gain as much traction as it has?
I am cautiously optimistic about MMR. As you point out, the first time around it was quite the mess, and I have my reasons to doubt whether the devs' ideas on what constitutes "skill" correlate as closely with mine as to yield matches made in a way I would prefer, but certainly after months of working on improving it I don't doubt the rating system will be a step in a better direction than the ranking system we've had so far, where the disparity in skill and experience can be ridiculous from game to game. For an easier solution than coming up with a complicated rating evaluation, I have often thought it would already be nice if the game paired players of more similar total playtime. Pools of players below 100 hours, 100-500 hours, 500-1000 hours, and 1000 and above hours, preferentially matched as-available. Anyway, for the MMR system that is coming I hope kill and survival rates as well as chase times will factor majorly into the player rating. And how diligent a player is about doing gens, lol.
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I agree
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nah just because you can write something that looks convincing, doesn't mean your argument has any valid principals to fall back on... the anti-cheat is near nonexistent... anyone can find working hacks in a matter of minutes.
the statistics would be much more valid <5%-1% error according to the "cautiously optimistic mmr/hours played" you mention in the following post. right now they mean near nothing, unless you are balancing for weaklings and rule out hardware diff/hacks and purpose throws/trolls that happen all too often
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I mean, the principle of "proof" is pretty valid regardless of how convincingly worded notstarboard's and my arguments are or aren't. If you are actually so knowledgable about cheats in this game for some reason that I won't question further here, what concrete information is it that makes you think 1. enough players do it to notably affect statistics covering millions of matches, 2. disproportionally killer players do it, 3. they are not being banned/the exploits are not being fixed, and 4. this has gotten significantly worse over the years?
Here's something people don't quite appreciate when looking at stats I think: In a month, about 30 million hours of Dead by Daylight are being clocked in on Steam alone, according to steamcharts.com. Let's be generous and subtract an entire third of that for menu/queue/idle time. 20 million hours, with an average game let's say taking 10 minutes. That's 120,000,000 (one hundred twenty million) matches being played. Even just 5% of that would still be six million matches. And that's not even including console platforms, which add many more million matches to the statistics, and on which cheating is not possible to nearly the same extent to my knowledge. Cheating is not that rampant, or we would be seeing it constantly and the community would be up in arms about it constantly. And for more "insidious" cheats (trust me, wallhacks are still fairly obvious, I've seen them in action), as notstar also pointed out, it begs the question how anyone would then know people are using them to begin with.
Edit: Forgot that those 120 million have to be divided by 5, since there's 5 players per match of course. Still 24 million matches, of which 5% would be 1.2 million. In other words, 4.8 million survivors a month (not necessarily individuals) would have to be on the receiving end of cheating killers if it happened in even just 5% of matches, i. e. an amount where it could even start to factor into the statistics. I think we would all be painfully aware of this issue if it were even only a fraction as rampant as that. And even ignoring that cheating survivors would counteract that impact, the idea that there's that much cheating going on in this game is just absolutely ludicrous. I have seen maybe two handfuls of cheaters in my 4000 hours of playing, and the more subtle the cheats the less impact they would have on the game result as well.
Along the same vein, the idea that the statistics that tell a significant part of the story of these millions of actual matches that actual people are actually playing would "mean near nothing" is perplexing and fails to appreciate the scope of what they are. Yes, they aren't statistics telling us what the core game balance is, for that we would have to control for a wide variety of variables. But they are statistics telling us what the game balance is, on average, of the countless millions of hours of game experiences that players playing this game are actually having; it is the so-called "live balance", and it means just about everything (about balance) to just about everyone that is playing this game. People don't care about fictional controlled environments and how they could theoretically perform there, they care about how they perform when they actually press "Ready" to have matchmaking find them a game. And to that end, balance is such that killers can and do perform well.
If the matchmaking system is to change to actually more consistently pit more evenly-matched players against each other in the future, a new balance approach might very well have to be taken to fit that new game reality, then also with the help of the statistics that new environment would bring about. Fair warning though: in that environment you might be surprised to also see some of the killer characters overperforming to an extent that cannot be ignored (primarily Nurse and Spirit).
And just to note, as a quite avid follower of competitive DbD, I can tell you that in tournaments core balance does not matter all that much either, since not only can rules and formats be adjusted to accomodate for any possible base game imbalances, but in tournaments killers are not winning by outperforming survivors, they are winning by outperforming the killer of the respective other team, against the survivors of the respective other team. So even for the 0.01% of players at the top of the skill ladder, core game balance is not very relevant. Plus, again, if they play killer in public matches they already obliterate the vast majority of the opponents they get with relative ease. They have 4k streaks of hundreds of games in a row. These people would not want killer to be even easier for them (in general).
As I pointed out earlier, I'm not saying there aren't real balance concerns left for killers just because they on average already perform well enough. Statistics are indeed not everything, and not only did I also suggest that the game statistically being killer-sided is probably a good thing, but I am aware that game balance can and should also be evaluated in logical and not merely numerical terms. And one such logical line of thinking is this: some killer characters are clearly more powerful than others, and so if the game is alright with having those stronger characters, there's no reason why the weaker characters could not be buffed, if not to be equally as strong, then at least to be stronger than they are currently, without problems. And I welcome such buffs. And the devs are shipping such buffs. They are slow at doing that stuff, and too slow for my liking too, but they are doing such stuff (which, again, is more than can be said for survivor gameplay, which is at the mercy of how fun and interactive these killers are to play against, as they themselves never get any new mechanics or toys to play with). The Clown buff might not be what many of us hoped it would be, but it's something, and other killer-specific buffs have been impactful (Doc, Leatherface, Hag, Freddy, Spirit and Blight out of PTB, Wraith is actually not bad now (and will also get slightly better next patch), ...).
Post edited by zarr on1 -
the more skilled both sides are, the more imbalanced it is for killer
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I've actually taken stats on tournament play, and while for some of the killer characters it is true that they are at arguably too stark a handicap (averaging between one and two kills), others are arguably too strong (averaging three to four). And overall kill rates actually do usually settle around 2. I'll give you one example, of a tournament I haven't previously taken stats on, so that I can't pick-and-choose whichever tournament I did. The "New Year's Revolution" event held by Boomer_Live on trovo.live was a recent tournament featuring some of the currently most successful teams, with hooks, gens, kills and escapes being the point factors.
Twins: 1k, 1k, 4k, 4k, 2k; 12 / 5 = 2.4k average
Huntress: 4k, 1k = 2.5k
Pyramid Head: 2k = 2k
Hag: 4k, 4k, 1k, 1k, 0k, 0k, 0k = 1.4k
Legion: 1k, 4k, 0k = 1.6k
Billy: 4k, 1k, 0k, 4k = 2.25k
Blight: 4k, 2k, 4k, 2k, 4k, 4k, 4k, 1k, 4k, 4k = 3.3k
Doc: 4k, 3k, 1k = 2.6k
Trapper: 1k = 1k
Deathslinger: 1k = 1k
Nurse: 4k, 1k, 4k, 1k, 4k, 2k, 2k, 0k, 1k, 2k, 2k, 2k, 3k, 4k, 2k, 0k, 1k, 2k, 3k, 1k, 4k, 1k, 4k, 1k, 1k, 2k, 2k, 2k = 2k
Spirit: 4k, 1k, 4k, 1k, 1k, 1k, 1k, 4k, 1k, 4k, 0k, 4k, 4k, 2k, 2k, 2k, 3k, 1k, 3k, 1k, 1k, 4k, 4k, 1k, 4k, 4k, 4k, 3k 28 = 2.3k
Overall average: 2.02 kills per match.
These are some of the very best players in the game, matches of this quality are vanishingly rare in matchmaking (one-in-a-million-matches-type occurrences), and yet even in this highly competitive, high-skill setting, with both sides trying their hardest to play as efficiently and effectively as possible, killers perform well. Despite the survivors using voice communcations (and in highly practiced, coordinated manners at that), and despite various perk combinations and add-ons being banned for killers (of course, there's also bans and restrictions for survivor perks and items/add-ons). It is also worth pointing out that these are merely absolute kills - the amount of hooks per game on average is significantly higher than the mere kills would indicate. For example, Spirit and Nurse almost never had anyone escape that wasn't hooked at least once, more regularly being on death hook.
Your statement does not hold true even in the most skilled environments. Like I said, some killer characters are underperforming there and I do think they are deserving of buffs, but others are overperforming even there, and on average almost all killer characters perform well-enough in tournaments from a 2 kill/2 escapes balance perspective, and even more so from the in my opinion more "skill-centric" perspective of how many hooks happen in a game.
In the public matchmaking environment on the other hand (read: like 99% of matches being played in this game), your statement loses most of any accuracy regardless of whether it would be true or not. 4 highly skilled survivor players coming together is nigh-nonexistently rare to happen in public matches. Whereas having 1 highly skilled killer player in a match happens literally every single time such a player decides to play. Do you want me to show you streams of these players? If a highly skilled killer plays public matchmaking, they can go on 4k sprees of hundreds of games in a row. Survivors are completely hopeless in this scenario, and can't even manage to get more than 1-2 gens done, if that. Even just a merely-competent killer will average more than two kills. And the stats further cement this: the lower the rank, the higher the kill rates, not the opposite. Yes, 4 highly skilled survivors playing together are likewise able to show impressive stats in public matchmaking, but not only would they not 4-escape hundreds of times in a row, but that's just not what happens in public matchmaking to nearly the same degree that 1 highly skilled killer player playing does. The ratio of occurrences between these things is, dunno, probably at least one to a thousand, i. e. there's at least a thousand games of highly skilled killers dominating for every one game of four highly skilled survivors dominating.
I will go as far as to say core game balance with the competitive premise in mind that both sides should be equally skilled practically *has to* be tilted in survivor favour for the game to yield a balanced live experience given the fact that it takes 4 survivors to each match the skill of only 1 killer. The killer side will much more often have the "skill advantage", so to say, and this has to be accounted for in live balance.
Again, I think there are absolutely balance issues left. Certain killer characters are comparatively weak, certain maps or structures too strong, certain perks/item/add-ons too problematic when coming in multiples. Voice communcations are something the game in many respects has not been balanced in mind with. But there are also real balance concerns on the survivor side, and Moris and Undying were just some of the more blatant examples of things that absolutely warrant being addressed. Killers are not underperforming in the actual game, they are not an oppressed "group" or whatever, the devs do not have it out for them. These are just realities I hope people will at some point be able to accept. It will help them in many respects, including that they can start working on improving at the game rather than succumbing to the mentality that they stand no chance anyway due to game design, and including that they can meet other players and the developers in reasonable and constructive conversations on balance.
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are these tournament players playing in a Lan and screened for wallhacks that cannot be seen while streaming? I think not. It is likely every single killer that is considered a top player is hacking because there is no way to compete with the ones that do hack so naturally those that rise to the top are hacking. Wallhacks are prevalent. Sorry to burst your statistical bubble regarding tournament play. If it was true none of the killers were using walls, then I would take this seriously... for real.
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are these tournament players playing in a Lan and screened for wallhacks that cannot be seen while streaming? I think not. It is likely every single killer that is considered a top player is hacking because there is no way to compete with the ones that do hack so naturally those that rise to the top are hacking. Wallhacks are prevalent. Sorry to burst your statistical bubble regarding tournament play. If it was true none of the killers were using walls, then I would take this seriously... for real.
also in reference to your streamers that get hundreds of wins in a row. ez against bad survivors, ez against almost everyone with walls. every top killer streamer is hacking. it is blatantly obvious when you know what to look for and/or have done it yourself and very prevalent in games with much better security than this game. the people that get away with it as streamers generally have good personalities and are at least okay at hiding the fact they are blatantly cheating. pretty much all top players in other games are aware of it and other hackers in the same game are aware of it. it is almost pointless to blow the whistle because people are such sheep regarding this fact.
I just am spilling the beans because this is my favorite game and I want to see some balance and security. I feel like I have rose colored glasses regarding what this game could be.
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Looking at kill rates is a really bad way to look at balance. Why?
Low ranks miss skill checks.
Low ranks throw down pallets early and waste them.
Low ranks run when the killer approaches.
Low ranks farm one another off hook.
Low ranks don't know what perks are good.
Low ranks hide rather than do gens.
Low ranks don't loop.
Low ranks run into nothing.
Low ranks don't understand which gens to prioritize.
On the flip side low rank killers also make lots of these mistakes but as they don't get punished as heavily for chasing into a bad area if the survivor doesn't know how to use it and actively profit from survivors running into dead zones and missing skill checks that doesn't matter. They also don't really need top tier perks because the gens won't be done in 3 minutes, they have no need to pressure specific areas for a 3 gen and chases won't be difficult.
Once you reach green and purple ranks this changes dramatically and the game becomes much harder but for the majority they will never get to that level.
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And low rank killers never make mistakes, I'm sure.
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Okay, this is a little too out there for me to further want to engage with. All power to you if you can provide a shred of proof for any of this though.
But killl rates actually go up as ranks do, so this argument doesn't hold.
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it is obvious sheepling, do some research and ull realize the esports industry except for a few games is completely corrupt. for starters every popular FPS game, 90+% of people in top 20-15% or so are hacking.
and "provide a shred of proof" is exactly why everyone gets away with it. if they get cheats from the right provider and the anticheats are not updated correctly, it is nearly impossible to prove despite all the blatant footage people have gotten on top streamers... nothing happens to them. they are getting away with fraud essentially.
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