I think Truetalent is wrong about game balance being this game isn't 1v1 or 5v5
I watch True a fair bit on youtube and I think he's wrong about survivor being too strong, killers being too weak in the sense that he always misses this very simple point
This game is 1 v 4 and therefore must be slightly biased towards favoring survivor
In order for matches to be made, playing survivor has to be slightly more appealing than playing killer.
Therefore survivors should be given a minor advantage to keep match making going smoothly.
To me it makes sense then that only ~20% of people should feel inclined to take on the challenge of playing killer, thus the in-game fairness can never be properly balance, as match making is much more important for the overall health of the game
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Even so, there's few Killers playing.
My Survivor queues are 10 minutes plus.
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The gist is the same though. This game is a 1v4 and balance can't be thought of like a 5v5 or 1v1 game.
If Killer is too weak, then match making gets broken, too
Survivor has to be just slightly stronger, but not so much that no one plays killer. And that is a hard thing to balance
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Mathematically though, Survivors can win with less skill than Killers.
It isn't even close. Survivors need to average like, 30-45 seconds in a chase and the Killer will LOSE if they don't tunnel.
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Each game has to attract 4 survivors for every 1 killer. And this is a game with micro-transactions, too, which creates another subtle bias. Sadly it just means that killers inherently have to get the short end of the stick forever. There's really no way around it. However that manifests in-game is always a thing, but match making balance takes precedence over in-game balance when the teams are lopsided.
I like to think of it this way
Survivor - Normal Mode, Killer - Hard Mode
Than to think of the game as something that can be balanced properly
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Meh - he's just another player - I don't give his thoughts/opinions any more weight than I do some random players.
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You know wait times got so bad for survivor that they even admitted there was a killer shortage on stream right? This was followed up by the decisive nerf to attempt to bring back some killer players. The only time they ever do meaningful updates to the killer side is when the survivor q time gets too long.
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You're not wrong.
The gist of what I'm trying to convey isn't really changed though. That the teams are lopsided and sacrifices to in-game balance will always need to be made because of this.
I believe it's an error for anyone to be talking about in-game balance without weighing matchmaking balance, too. In-game balance does not exist in a vacuum
I have watched a lot of Truetalent. I think he's a good player. However I get frustrated hearing him talk solely about in-game imbalance without considering the lopsided nature of match-making.
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You're not wrong at all
What I am trying to say isn't really changed though. Sacrifices have to be made to in-game balance in order to maintain match-making balance.
How that plays out, or how it's playing out, I don't have the answers to that
I watch a fair bit of True over the years, and he seems to talk quite a lot about in-game imbalance without ever acknowledging the lopsided nature of match making. He's not wrong that it is imbalanced to favor survivor, but is missing the point that it has to be in some way
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I think tru is wrong that you can balance the game toward the top 1%. You simply can't. There's WAY too much of a gap between 4 random solo players and 4 coordinated players with a specific plan, communication, stretched res, and every advantage they can possibly get. Just can't be done. Even if you gave everyone comms, it wouldn't be near the same level because it's still 4 random people on the internet.
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Yeah, the only reason why they decided to change DS and Object is because people were so mad about the Pop and Undying nerfs that nobody wanted to play killer.
I very much remember survivor queues being long even before night time.
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I think people commonly mistake the ease of playing one side for the appeal of playing that side. As a goofy example, let's compare watching paint dry for 10 minutes with playing Dark Souls for 10 minutes. The former is obviously easier, but I guarantee you if you asked 100 people to choose which one they'd prefer the latter would be there more popular option. Then there's the fact that you can't play killer in public matches with your friends, so even players that would prefer playing killer in a vacuum will play survivor if they have buddies who want to party up.
Game balance is only one small part of the equation here. Right now matchmaking is by far a bigger factor in match outcomes than overall game balance.
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They still could balance around the top 1%. It'd just make the game feel worse for solos but that's probably what you're on about.
I agree that you can't balance DbD around the top 1% without absolutely hurting the games overall health and this isn't even needed. DbD is no hardcore competitive e-sports game and that's fine. People need to be a bit more chilled an stop thinking that DbD is the new League of Legends or CS:GO and just accept that this is not a tournament worthy game, even though there are tournaments for... amusement I assume... held.
What you could do though is that you can bring solos closer to the level of coordination SWFs would be capable of and then adjust the killers/survivors accordingly to that. This would narrow the gap of the top 1% and the average match making. This again would make your average solo survivor team a bit stronger while also making killers a bit stronger against sweaty SWFs which then again would make killer less frustrating to play and in return there would probably be more people playing killer which would lower the Q time for survivors.
I think that's a reasonable request to make and it would benefit killers as well as solo survivors.
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You're absolutely right. While I do enjoy the killer gameplay far more than the survivor gameplay, I'd sometimes enjoy a chill survivor match for myself but I just cba to wait 10 minutes just to get into a lobby thus I mostly just don't even try to queue up as a survivor except if there are 1-2 friends I want to play with.
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I exclusively play solo the majority of the time as a survivor, I really don't want to have what you have when you play swf like with aura reading and all that, I like the random nature of each match not knowing where everyone is and where the killer is. I enjoy bringing in perks to help me find more information or deciding if I want to be better in chases. You take out all the choices and planning, you leave a lot of perks useless, like what's the point of strategizing if you are just going to simplify it for every game. It's more boring if you make every match swf level swf is boring and sucks the fun out of the game for me. :c
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This game is 1 v 4 and therefore must be slightly biased towards favoring survivor
In order for matches to be made, playing survivor has to be slightly more appealing than playing killer.
Therefore survivors should be given a minor advantage to keep match making going smoothly.
It's literally the opposite. People will gravitate toward playing a multiplayer game with other people if they can, and if the game is to be balanced, it must favor killers in 1v1 situations. Otherwise, you're going to be waiting in that queue for a long, long time.
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Actually, the game needs to be fun, not balanced. Killer isn't very fun right now, becuase you have no control and the gameplay is uninteractive, so survivor ques are insanely long.
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It needs to be both fun and balanced if you don't want to have to play against bots. And balance is more important than fun, because a balanced game with average gameplay is always more fun than an unbalanced mess with good gameplay.
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No, I don't believe I have this wrong.
Because in-game balance must always account that 4 times as many people need to play on one team than the other. Which means that the team which has the more people, survivor, must be more appealing to 4 out of 5 people in order to keep match making healthy. The conclusion is that killer must then be slightly weaker in order to make that a reality.
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I agree with you completely. That is how ideally it should be if the game were to be balanced towards making it like how it is in a horror game.
But that's not the reality of how a game that needs to find 4 people to be on one team while only 1 on the other needs to be balanced.
If killer was stronger than survivor, then match making would never happen. Because it's human nature to wanna pick the OP side, and if everyone wanted killer, there wouldn't be enough people to fill the survivor side... ever
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Not really. Balanced games attract the competitive scene that people play games like DbD to avoid.
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Yes, and they're usually 1v1 or 3v3 or 5v5. A game that has lopsided teams like DbD can't be balanced for competitive play as well as casual play like a game that has equal teams. Because unlike a game where both sides have the same number of people, DbD requires that one side by more appealing than the other in order to keep the matches going. In that respect, DbD will always be a bad choice for an esports game.
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I think killers need a few buffs, but there isn’t much to do until we have a proper matchmaking system.
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Anything is a competitive game if it's relatively balanced. eSports has little to do with it compared to mindset.
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In-game balance must always account for the fact that 1 killer not playing means 4 survivors not getting a lobby. Driving 1 killer player away has a much larger impact than driving 1 survivor away, the survivor pool is more than large enough to fill a vacant slot, the killer pool isn't, admitted by the devs. The conclusion is that killer must be slightly stronger in order to make match making healthy.
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Every time the balance problem with swf comes up, a lot of people claim that its not about the advantage they have, just about playing with friends. If thats true, simply playing killer isn´t an option for them, and thus your theory would be false, seeing that at least 50% of games have some kind of swf in it. Also, SWF survivor is stronger than killer, and solo survivor can be if you get a decent team. Lets see what happens when matchmaking finally comes out.
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Yeah enjoy with long survivor queues.
Game is so fair and balanced!
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The game is 4 vs 1. Which means that the 1 player should be as strong or even stronger than the 4 players combined.
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Are you serious?
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My personal experience confirms this.
I like playing Killer but as soon as my two friends are online we play survivor together. It is just more fun that way. True sometimes one of us plays Killer alone while the others are online but that is mostly when one is eating, we provide the entertainment to to others.
The balance problem is that you can not balance this game around a 1 vs 4. It is more like a 1 vs 1, 2, 1 or 1 vs 1 , 3. So you do not even have a stable number of "vs" here as it splits. The difference between a 1 vs 4 and a 1 vs 3 , 1 is massive assuming all players are on the same skill level. However not even this is true as you can play against a bad 4 SWF or against 4 brilliant single survivors.
My most feared set up is it when all 4 survivors start the trial seperated and I frist chase that one very good survivor. Then I drop chase because nothing comes from it and search the next one, two gens pop, and the next one is also good. Not finding the "weak link" early dooms me harder than any 4 SWF. Because even if there is a bad survivor I just wasted 2/4 gen chasing the good ones. 4 SWF tend to often be ultra altruistic for their "weak link" and you can abuse that.
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That's not wrong at all. I agree
My point remains is that people looking for completely fair balance are never going to find it in this game, ever.
That's because the advantage of the *combined* power of 4 survivors must always be slightly more powerful than the power of playing solo killer solely to attract enough people to play survivor and keep match making healthy.
And it is my belief that a failure to acknowledge this makes the subject of "is survivor too powerful?" or "are killers too weak?" hard to talk about it when the lopsidedness of match making requirements isn't being included in the equation.
As far as competitiveness is concerned, this game is definitely that. But anyone playing killer needs to understand what sacrifices to the in-game balance that need to be made in order to keep the queue moving along.
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Aye, the gist is that there must always be an imbalance. In other words
The combined power of 4 survivors must always be slightly more powerful than playing killer, but never too much so, otherwise, match making just couldn't happen. It follows that a slight disadvantage for killer is inescapable. Therefore, talks about in-game balance require acknowledging this reality.
So in regards to Truetalent, and he talks about in-game balance a lot, but I never hear him talk about this point regarding match making.
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I would agree if match making weren't a thing. If I was talking about solely balancing the game via what happens in game, then I'd be on the same page as you.
But the reality is different. Match making is inherently lopsided and attracting people to play survivor means there must be an imbalance
In other words, the combined power of 4 survivors should be slightly more than the power of 1 killer.
If killer was slightly more powerful than the combined power of 4 survivors, match making would suffer tremendously. If killer was perfectly balanced to the combined power, I believe it would too suffer, since the imbalance is still present. This is a 1v4 game.
It's only when killer is slightly weaker does the issue of how to keep match making going smoothly seem resolved imo
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The problem is less than 20% of players "take on the challenge" of playing killer, it seems to be more like 10%. And that's for a reason, because playing killer at higher levels is not a good experience.
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Yeah, no. Thats not how this works.
Survivors already are way stronger than the killer when they play SWF. This didn´t help the survivor queue at all.
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I agree it should be balanced in such a way so that 20% of players pick killer. I don't really have a solution to that.
My thread is to point out that there must be an imbalance of power to keep match making going. How that imbalance is or should be implemented, I am not sure the answer. It's my opinion that in-game balance will always be skewed because match-making requires 4 people to decide that the survivor role is what they want to play. Balancing for that seems... hard, to say the least.
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Survivors are very strong,not only strong. They are the power role
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You're assuming that the game ought to be balanced to account for SWF. I don't know if that's possible.
It's possible that in order to keep match making healthy, that SWF can't even be factored. I wish I could see some sort of solution to this.
This is a 1v4 game, with micro transactions no less. New and/or casual players should slightly favor playing survivor over killer, and thus keep match making going.
I wish that weren't the case, that the game could be balanced in such a way that the OPed-ness of playing SWF at a high level could be balanced for. I am having a hard time even imaging how to balance the game given how much of an unfairness there is to SWF versus solo survivor.
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Okay, well the gist is that the combined power of 4 solo survivors should be slightly more than the power of 1 solo killer as the base case for keeping match making healthy.
SWF breaks this, but I am not sure that SWF should even be apart of the equation.
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You seem to forget that survivors are the ones with the long queues. NOT killers.
As you said, you need survivors, so this game can be played. Yeah, but you also need killers. For over the last 6 months, the game had a problem with unbalance of the survivor killer ratio. Where we had way to many survivor players and to few killer players.
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This assumes that players only choose the Survivor role based on how powerful they are.
Maybe players choose roles that are more "fun" to them, and not because they are easier to win. Maybe they simply like the characteristic of that role (e.g. - being chased vs chasing, playing alone vs playing with others). Maybe they are tired of playing one role, and want to try another. Maybe they want to challenge themselves. Maybe they want shorter wait times in lobby. There are many reasons why players could choose one role over another - not just because that role has an unfair advantage.
Every good game should be properly balanced. The role of Survivors doesn't need any unfair advantage in fear of lopsided matchmaking. If the matchmaking is lopsided, then simply make the less favored roles more appealing without breaking the balance - e.g. for roles that are more needed at any given time, give them increasingly more BPs (or other rewards) the longer they have to wait during matchmaking, or give extra challenges in the less played roles, etc. All of this can be done while striving to make the game more balanced and fair for everyone.
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Sure, that's a good point. I actually did start of this thread by saying that the combined appeal of playing survivor must be slightly more than killer. This morning I changed it to "combined power", but perhaps appeal is better.
I agree that every game needs to be balanced. I don't see how match making can be healthy though if there isn't a very slight net advantage given to playing survivor on account of match making.
If we are talking about solely in-game balance, then yes, the game is not balanced, and SWF is broken. Perhaps though since the lopsideness isn't going away, and the overall appeal of survivor has to be accounted for, that this game is straight up never going to be fairly balanced
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Playing as Killer is very much a 1v1 game, but a coordinated SWF can absolutely destroy the Killer since the game is not meant to be a 1v4. Tru's recent games against Oracle proved that. Yes I fully acknowledge the team is one of the top competitive DBD groups in the world, but it goes to show just how powerful a SWF with proper communication can be.
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I am not forgetting that at all. Really.
There are 3 possible team combinations cases here in regards to in-game balance
1) 4 solo survivors vs killer
2) Mixed SWF and solo survivor
3) Pure SWF vs killer
My belief is that the **base case** for in-game balance ought to be so that the appeal of playing survivor with **4 solo survivors** be slightly more appealing than playing solo killer.
SWF thus breaks this and the imbalance it creates is actually just because this game is fundamentally broken from a balance point of view, and always will be
By pointing out that the queues are longer you are saying that there needs to be more appeal to playing killer, thus a buff. And I would agree, then.
That doesn't change the point that killer needs to be fundamentally less appealing overall to any player wanting to play this game
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I understand and agree that SWF is busted. My previous/last reply to Tsulan I think is relevant to what you're saying.
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"I don't see how match making can be healthy though if there isn't a very slight net advantage given to playing survivor on account of match making."
To me, that just seems like an assumption on your part. What I'm saying is that the 4-1 ratio for matchmaking can be maintained without needing to give any advantage to one role or the other. Like I said, 1. there are plenty of reasons to pick one role over another besides giving unfair advantages to one side and 2. there are ways to adjust for matchmaking ratio without needing to break the balance by giving a "slight net advantage" to a specific role.
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Even if this were true, clearly theres an issue since survivir ques are so long.
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Well it doesn't have to be an unfair advantage. Perhaps just an advantage? I have been saying slight advantage and I do mean slight. "Unfair" denotes "more than slight", to me at least.
If you have to find 4 people to play on one side, yet only 1 on the other, how are you going to get enough people to go on the side with 4 if they didn't think that doing so was going to be "the better game experience". I feel like there has to be some sort of tacit psychology going on to coerce people to pick survivor, but perhaps you're right and that's not needed
And I'm using quotes here because I really don't know how to balance this problem. It seems to me like this game would be really impossible to balance.
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Tru3talent is just all around wrong
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SWF, while fun, is indeed busted. Killers that can hide their terror radius (Wraith, Ghostface, Myers, Pig) is rendered useless so long as your team has proper communication. Even stronger Killers in the hands of professional streamers like Dowsey's Twins proved to be no match for Oracle because of their strong communication and teamwork.
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As you know, the game doesn't allow audio chat built in for survivor teams. To me this really suggests that using comms is outside of the game's design and thus balance decisions. And therefore, this game, and it's balance, is and always will be fundamentally busted af
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