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Understand why new killers would tend to be weak. I will explain it to you.
You're BHVR. You release a new killer to live environments.
Imagine if that killer is very strong and you have to nerf the killer in the first few weeks.
what would you imagine the player reaction would be?
People would ######### and complain, many would demand a refund because they were sold on one thing and it changed, there would be hinted threads at legal action or lawsuits and other crap that won't go anywhere but is a pain in the ass to deal with from a PR perspective.
OR...
You release a killer slightly weak and ramp that killer up. No one can complain if a killer gets stronger. You're getting more than you paid for!
So, expect any release to be weak to avoid all of that crap I listed above. Thanks, DbD community...
Comments
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Darkness Among us
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Releasing a killer too strong is more annoying to most players since they are going to be played so much at their release. It’s also easier to buff a weak killer as opposed to nerfing a strong one
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Oni wasn't weak when he came out, pyramid head was stronger than he is now, blight functioned and had working collisions, twins was just a bug mess, ghostface was weaker on PTB, slinger stayed almost the same.
So no, they are just making killers weaker now because honestly and this is my opinion, they are running out of ideas and who can blame them in that?
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I think the killers are always made weak upon release because the developers are heavily survivor-biased and want to cater to the majority of the game's player base since it makes financial sense to do so.
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I mean, people will complain about the state of a killer regardless if they're strong, weak, broken, bugged, reworked, etc. I'm no game dev, but surely the aim is to release a killer that is fun for the player base. What that looks like in an asymmetrical game is not a thing I can answer.
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I hear you, but I think it's that they don't want to deal with all the static of dialing back a too-strong killer.
It would be too easy to say 'look, they sold this to me and it's bait-and-switch because now the killer is weaker!'.
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Slightly
Try again, they have not released a competitively viable killer in over a year at this point. Even after their "buffs"
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That's simply untrue. Nurse, Myers, Spirit, Legion, Oni, Pig and Pyramid Head were all stronger on their post-release versions.
There's no threat of a lawsuit because when you buy a DLC you agree with BHVR's EULA that characters can be changed at any point in time. Just look what happened with Freddy, even though he obviously got buffed when he got reworked, a lot of people are firmly believers that he lost his identity.
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sus
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You know its pretty obvious why they do that, but here is the catch:
They take so much time to buff à killer and not often in the right direction
So...eh
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Do you feel that is how the community reacts, or that this is how you would treat it? I feel like this is why new killers come out weak and need adjustment up. Maybe I am wrong.
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True, took them years to simply change NUMBERS.
-Buff wraith movement speed
-Change trap escape attempt
-Change iri head add on
-Change clown bottle reload speed
I can go on but u get the idea, everyone is demanding for a trapper buff and when they finally do it, it's gonna be "increased starting bear trap to 2 (was 1)". Behavior is like the EA of updates
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I feel devs don't create a killer thinking about how weak or strong it is going to be. If that was the case we would consistently have S tier killers released because it would make huge profit for them. I remember after Trickster came out that Almo said on a stream they had the next 4 killers already in mind, so it's safe to say they come with a design and release it with a functional gameplay. After some time, they probably check if it is underwhelming (like Trickster or Nemesis), or overwhelming (like Nurse and Spirit).
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Still waiting on Trapper to carry more than one trap basekit.
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i think most of the new killers they released in the last 2 years were alright on release day (except for Trickster maybe). There were weaker ones in the older roster. But i also think that most killers are fine right now as long as you're not playing in the top 5% tournament level (There are only few top 5% players in the pub matches so only because you're rank 1 doesn't mean you're top 5%. Those people rarely play pub matches.)
People need some time to get all the timings and tactics and stuff, Blight is a good example for that. He is considered the best killer after Nurse right now (thanks to Spirits bugs). I remember back then a lot of people said he is B tier at best and not fun to play.
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I think that is more a problem with the maps than with the killers themselves. Since Nurse's power LITERALLY can ignore obstacles, the difference in viability between Nurse and other killers goes up with how strong the map is.
I think if the loops were more mindgame-able, like Hawkins or the TL Walls on McMillan maps, the difference would not be as big.
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Maps are a problem, but watch a tournament sometime that doesn't have external rules, like not repair gens while injured, no items, or scoring systems to slow the game down. Watch one where the goal is, get kills, or escape and watch what the game turns into. You will see the game devolve into, killer takes noed, and 3 slowdown perks, and tries to tunnel and camp someone out of the game as fast as possible, while the survivors slam gens extremely fast. Maps are only part of the problem.
Watch the tru3ta1ent games vs team oracle to see what happens at high level when a killer DOESN'T play like i mentioned above when they aren't nurse or spirit.
This is how my games are now, every single game, and it is not fun anymore, my only hope is they stay true to their word and actually balance the game for the top players like they said in the announcement.
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This is actually bad to do
You wanna release something OP in the ptb so you can nerf it to strong accordingly
Making something terrible on purpose just makes it hard to buff them
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Having something strong as well will have players play them more, meaning they can get more data
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All the killers since PH(with the exception of Trickster & Pinhead) have been A tier
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Stop talking that logical sense. We're emotional around here!
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And wheb they do bigger buffs they arent always usefull
-Clowns yellow bottle is mostly used to shut down loops even faster then before
-Trickster is even stronger in 1v1 and downs survivors super quickly!
....but we where many to say hes mostly fine, needzd some aim biffs and something for map pressure...yet they buffed the 1v1 more instead
Imo killers shiuld be created à bit weaker, espdcially when SOLD and be buffed or balanced soon after whith feesback, but thzy dont do that saddly
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That is a lot of exceptions, and you have a surprisingly high opinion of Nemesis. I kind of agree though, especially with survivor validation existing.
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I'm a plague main & having another 4.6m/s killer that can injure you over obstacles is probably why I'll never see him as anything lower than A tier. Plus he just gor buffed to boot.
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Except they haven't been ramped up at all. Pinhead, Trickster, Nemesis, Twins have all been recent(1 yearish ago) kiillers who are low/mid tier and are doomed to be that tier forever. Nemesis walking faster at tier 3?? Is that really going to help his abysmal kill rate vs good survivors? Absolutely not. Same thing with all of the above, their powers are inherently flawed. There is a reason every A tier/S tier killer has a power that functions in a way that can directtly reduce the amount of time spent traversing the map/ignore terrain/ignore normal chase mechanics. BHVR can't release killers that aren't variants of 'run in a straight line fast'/'move very very fast'/'ignore terrain' that are good and that don't get complained about by survivors. I would love to hear an example of them ramping up a killer released in the last couple of years that has been good who isn't Blight.
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U make a good point with trickster, but no clown's yellow bottle is useless. His counter still stays, simply pre drop every pallet. Trickster has good 1v1 in low loops, meaning he's very map and rng dependent. The only killer that needs a nerf is spirit, everything else is either fine or needs a buff
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If its so easy why did it take them 3 months to buff nemesis barely
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Because he’s not that weak in the first place? The devs themselves said he was very balanced but just needed a small buff
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Yellow bottles are pretty useful actually. They make loops like shack unplayable for survivors when combined with his tonic
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Also, people just suck with the killer. That is by far the biggest reason - every single killer has about a week of people with overinflated self-images assuming that they mastered the killer and know all there is to know.
And the worrt part is, their behaviour is reinforced when they are right but they conveniently forget when they are wrong. For example, PH, Deathslinger, Blight...
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