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Statistical evaluation of an interesting tournament
Over the last weekend, www.twitch.tv/Wwispy1 held a tournament in which every character, perk, item, add-on and offering was allowed. This makes it special because usually in tournaments there are a various restrictions for these things in place.
I have taken stats on a plethora of tournaments in the past, and every time without fail average kills settled slightly above 2. My experience with and analysis of tournament DbD has contributed to my opinion that the game is actually reasonably well-balanced at the top end, and to my understanding of why the game is statistically killer-sided in public matchmaking. Since killers can evidently compete even against survivor teams composed of some of the very best, most practiced players in the world that are also using voice communications (and do so in very efficient ways) and have highly coordinated loadouts, strategies and tactics, it is easier to understand why in the public matchmaking environment where only around 5% of the player pool even are 4-player SWF groups (of which even less use voice chat, and of which in turn only a tiny fraction is as skilled as tournament players, let alone as practiced and experienced as a team), killers overperform. I think in a scenario of a killer player facing four random survivor players (no voice communication, no prior coordination of builds, strategies or tactics) each equally as skilled and experienced as the killer player, the game is actually favouring killers. I would expect the average result to fall around 2.5 kills. Of course, different killer characters and maps affect things, but we know from public stats that none of them favour survivors universally (even the statistically weakest killer on the statistically strongest survivor map still averages above 2 kills), and so I would assume that scales into the theoretical realm of 5 completely equally skilled and experienced players facing off similarly to how the killer-leaning universal balance scales into the competitive realm. That is to say, I would expect most killers on most maps to still fall within a range of 2-2.5 kills.
One counter-argument against previous tournament stats is that there are various loadout restrictions in place for both roles. I have never taken real issue with that given that the loadouts in these tournament matches are still entirely comparable to those you will see in an average public match (if anything they are much more optimized), and argued that the overwhelming skill, experience, practice and coordination disparity would already more than make up for loadout differences compared to public teams anyway (meaning even with 10 Decisive Strikes the average public group would still not be anywhere near as competitive as these tournament teams are with their 1 Decisive Strike that they are usually allowed to have), but still, those restrictions do make the tournaments somewhat of an artificially balanced realm.
In the tournament I'm talking about now, all those restrictions were removed. So not only do you have some of the most skilled, experienced, practiced players in the world communicating with voice chat and coordinating their builds and plays, but they also get to use the most busted stuff, such as 4 Styptics/Syringes, multiple Brand New Parts, 4 Dead Hards and Decisive Strikes. This is a level of play and coordination and of sheer stacked loadouts that you will never see in public matchmaking. ...And yet, as the following stats show, the killers were absolutely able to compete.
So, we have an average of 2.16 kills, again as in all other tournaments a slightly killer-leaning result. We can see that 11 of the 30 matches ended in outright killer victories (3k, 4k), 13 in outright survivor victories (0k, 1k), and 6 in ties (2k). If we take into consideration that 3 times players decided to play non-S-tier killers (Pinhead, Huntress, Oni), we can say that outright victories are basically an exact split between both roles; in terms of kills, 40% of the time killers won, 40% survivors did, and 20% of the time they drew. That's a surprising level of balance given the ridiculous loadouts at play. It is also worth pointing out that killers overwhelmingly often lose less decisively than survivors, which is to say when the killer loses they usually at least still kill 1 survivor (of 13 losses, 12 (92%) were 1 kill losses), while survivors most of the time lose with 0 escapes rather than 1 (of 11 losses, only 3 (27%) saw 1 survivor escape).
Another argument people may have even if they accept the statistical fact that the game is balanced at the top end in terms of kills, is that it is not balanced in terms of hooks. I unfortunately did not count the actual amount of hooks while watching the matches, but I believe that hook stages can still be used to draw reasonable conclusions in that regard. So, if we assume the typical "the killer can just tunnel one survivor to death and then facecamp a second survivor in the endgame to achieve a "balanced" result of 2 kills" scenario that is often brought up to argue that an outcome of 2 kills does not necessarily mean the match was "balanced" in a "healthy" way, we would expect 6 stages to be the dominant result. Looking at the stats, we can see that of 30 matches, only 6 ended in 6 stages, or one fifth/20%. 22 matches ended with at least 7 stages, meaning 73% of matches were killer victories in terms of hook stages, and they were not achieved simply by tunnelling one and camping another survivor. This is also obvious by looking at the fact that none of the 6 2k matches ended in 6 stages, all of them had more. In fact, as you can see further at the bottom of the stat sheet, the perk No Way Out was used in 66% of the matches, and it obviously encourages spreading out your hooks on all survivors. On the flipside, only 2 matches ended with less than 6 stages, a mere ~7%. It is therefore obvious that in terms of hook stages (and in deduction hooks) the game leans even more toward killers.
Now it of course has to be noted that this goes for Nurse, Blight and Spirit, players didn't usually pick other killers for obvious reasons. Either way, at least those three can provably more than compete with even the absolute best that a survivor side can put up (which is way beyond what any public group ever will). This is something that surprised even myself. I always knew the game was much more balanced than many people make it out to be, and tournament results have always supported that, but I did still believe that given the ability to use the absolutely most stacked loadouts of multiple purple med-kits with Styptics, multiple BNP, 4 DS, etc., average kills would at the very least be slightly below 2 rather than still slightly above. Pretty crazy honestly.
In other tournaments even various of the other killers average out around 2 kills and 6-8 stages with 4-kill matches absolutely being possible, but tournaments do show that only roughly half of the killers are viable at the highest level, with only Nurse, Blight and Spirit viable enough to consistently be able to 4k, Twins being a close contender. It also has to be noted that the map pool in this tournament was limited, and although it included Wreckers' Yard, Dead Dawg Saloon, Rancid Abattoir and Gas Heaven which with few exceptions represent the state of balance of most maps in this game, I do think there are more survivor-favouring maps than killer-favouring maps overall. A variety of killers deserve buffs, a variety of maps should be further adjusted. But those buffs and adjustments are not strictly necessary from a public matchmaking perspective - not only can killer players simply choose to play S-tier killers every single time if they so desire, but good killer players win the majority of their pub matches even with the lowest-tier killers. Public matchmaking even with MMR is simply not able to provide good killer players with equal opponents sufficiently consistently. But likewise, the weakest killers could all be buffed, the problematic maps all adjusted, without it all too negatively impacting public matchmaking balance either.
The perks used here tell some clear stories too. There are only 19 different survivor and 15 different killer perks in the total pool. That shows how limited the pool of the strongest perks in this game is - 34 out of a total 185 perks seeing use. Not only that, but if we look at how often the individual perks are being used, it becomes clear that it's really only a handful for either role that dominate: Dead Hard and Decisive Strike alone already make for almost half of all survivor perks used, with Borrowed Time, Unbreakable, Deliverance and Prove Thyself making up another ~40%. So almost 90% of all perks used for survivors consist of only 6 different ones. For killers it's similar, with Corrupt Intervention, Deadlock, No Way Out, Lethal Pursuer, Ruin and NOED being 6 perks combining for 86% of all perks used.
I do think a ton of perks should be buffed to get them to a level where they are even approachingly able to compete for slots with perks the likes of those mentioned, but I don't think that the limitedness of perk usage at the absolute top level is necessarily all too problematic. In games there always are a fairly limited amount of S-tier characters and items, and it's no different in DbD. Ideally there would be more for a more varied top-level meta, but in public matchmaking you can already get pretty creative with your loadouts without giving up much. However, the perks do tell us a bit about the gameplay and parts of it could be seen as problematic: The prevalence of DS, BT, Unbreakable and Deliverance show that camping, tunnelling and slugging are the most effective killing strategies that survivors have to combat. Maybe the game could be better if it was reworked to concentrate more strictly on getting as many hooks as possible rather than revolve around these strategies at the top end. On the killer side, Corrupt and Pursuer highlight that the early game is crucial for killers, they have to get pressure up as soon as possible. It could help to introduce an "early game collapse" phase after all, such as simply by blocking all generators until the first chase has begun. No Way Out and NOED on the other hand highlight the fact that killers are at a disadvantage in the endgame - healthy survivors hit with a basic attack can regularly make it to a gate even over large distances, and killers regularly cannot defend gates unless they happen to spawn within close proximity of one another. I personally would not be opposed to the idea of having NOED be a basekit mechanic, without the movement speed boost, giving survivors a totem counter at base at the same time. To bring Nurse and Spirit in line with a NOED basekit reality, I think making Lethal Blink hits and Grudge hits not count as basic hits would be a welcome adjustment (it would be even without basekit NOED).
Some other notes: No Way Out's popularity shows that even the best killer players expect to get into an endgame scenario regularly in even matches. I think there has to be a change in mentality of players to not consider a game lost just because all generators have been completed. Given a desired goal of 2 kills and 2 escapes, a balanced match obviously has to see all generators get finished. Not only that, but since killers can almost always all but guarantee 1 kill in the endgame, a balanced match much of the time is expected to see all generators get finished with at least 3 survivors still alive at that point. Food for thought.
I was surprised that Circle Of Healing didn't see more play. It goes to show that other perks are more valuable if you just bring a med-kit. The standard build for most teams was: 4 DS, 4 DH, 2 BT, 2 Deliverance, 2 Unbreakable, 2 Prove Thyself, with everything else being "tech" variations, and Circle not even being a popular tech (only brought in for 3 matches of the 30).
The problematic add-ons are definitely still problematic: Nurse's range add-ons, Spirit's Mother-Daughter Ring, Blight's Alchemist Ring, Brand New Parts, Styptics, Syringes - these are all blatantly overtuned, and particularly the survivors' ability to bring 4 overtuned add-ons is ridiculous. I would even say it's precisely the ability to bring multiple that makes them a problem - if random survivors only bring 1-2 of these (which is already fairly rare), their impact potential is mostly alright. I think SWF groups should have perk and item limitations in place, such that they can only bring any perk or item/add-on at most 1 time. The killer add-ons should simply be rebalanced.
Moris are still the most balance-relevant offering in the game. Without map offerings, survivors in this tournament usually burned Petrified Oaks, and their impact on the matches was moderate at most. The Ebony Memento Moris that killers usually burned on the other hand consistently made much more of a difference. Bypassing any and all rescue mechanics (DS, bodyblock and sabo plays, pallet and flashlight saves) as well as saving time and holding positions particularly in the endgame turned out to be crucial at various points in these matches. That said, I still think moris are in a fairly good spot now.
Final note: The finals of the tournament are actually still to be played out. They will happen next weekend, so keep on eye out on the stream I linked.
Comments
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I'm gonna need to hire an intern to read and summarize this.
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I already did provide a summary, if you simply read the things in bold.
TL;DR: a tournament in which every character, perk, item, add-on and offering was allowed; average kills settled slightly above 2; the game is actually reasonably well-balanced at the top end; In the tournament I'm talking about now, all restrictions were removed; 4 Styptics/Syringes, multiple Brand New Parts, 4 Dead Hards and Decisive Strikes; the killers were absolutely able to compete; average of 2.16 kills; outright victories are basically an exact split between both roles; 73% of matches were killer victories in terms of hook stages; etc.
To note: The conclusions I draw from it (and many other tournaments) are not that the game is in a perfect spot. Various killer characters are not viable enough at the highest level and do deserve buffs (in public matchmaking most killers are perfectly viable enough, we don't need all killers to be S tier, but I do think all killers should be at least B tier at base, and A tier with add-ons, which is currently not the case for a little under half of the killers), various maps are not fit for higher-level competition and should be further adjusted. Some killer and survivor add-ons are overtuned and should be toned down, or in the case of survivors, I think it would be more sensible to make it so SWF groups (i. e. where players can actually coordinate their builds) cannot use any add-on (or perk) more than once between them.
To tack something useful onto this post, here's the items, add-ons and offerings people used in this tourney:
What I find interesting is that Brand New Parts by far dominated the field. I would have expected for Styptics and Syringes to be at least equally as common picks, but it's not even close, with BNP having 71 instances, and Styptics/Syringes only 38.
Reminder: The finals for the tournament take place tomorrow or Sunday!
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1 tournament that strictly used 3 killers does not make a good argument for balance...
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Did I just enter the matrix?
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A better argument anyway than anyone's ever brought forth when saying "the game is completely hopelessly survivor-sided at a high level and you can't get a single kill", as is common on the online outlets. It is indeed only one tournament where everything is allowed, but in countless other tournaments where both sides have restrictions the game also trended toward a balanced, slightly killer-leaning result.
Most of all I just found this tournament interesting and surprising, because I too expected the results to be while not "hopelessly survivor-sided", at least still survivor-leaning.
That only 3 killers were used is not relevant for balance arguments. You can use 1 killer 100% of the time, and in competitive settings players will always use the best characters/items/etc. a game has to offer. DbD is not unique in having a limited pool of S-tier characters. I do think there should at least be a couple more (Artist might be, although I don't quite think so, she lacks really strong add-ons), but that's not a problem of "balance", since again, you can just play those killers all the time. It's more a personal problem of lack of diversity in the playing experience, if you will, but a lot of players have no issue still having fun playing (as and against) Nurse and Blight after years and thousands of hours of already doing so, so not even that is a problem for everyone.
(Besides, it was not strictly 3 killers, 3 times other killers were used, with 1 3k 9 stage and 2 1k 6 stage games, which is not awful).
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It does when those killers are considered the top tier in the entire game, if anything it proves that when you have top tier survivors and top tier killers that it's almost a even split
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It's actually a pretty good statistical analysis of the tournament and does show a leaning toward the game being balanced at high levels of play when using top tier killers.
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A killer getting 2 kills is not a win buddy...
I also had a great laugh when you said that killers were overpowered in public matchmaking.
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2 kills is considered balanced though, that's what the devs want to see, while I agree public matchmaking killers are nowhere near overpowered these statistics do prove that when you have top tier players on both sides the game is balanced, now if killers had been playing wraith, legion or another strictly m1 killer with no power to instashot then the stats would be more survivor sided due to the fact that at top level play theres not much those killers can do to stop the gens from pumping out, at the same time though if you're playing bottom tier killers at high ranks what do you expect to happen? BHVR came out like 2-3 years ago and said some of the killers are made for beginners to use as stepping stones into playing killers that require more skill you're supposed to use them up to a certain point and switch when the going gets rough that way they can cycle people into playing different killers than the same one they started with
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2 kills is not a win, the devs don't know what they are talking about. Most devs don't even play their own game. I can easily get 2 kills with bubba by just camping someone in the basement and then crawling out with noed to get another free kill. That is not a win, nor is that balanced.
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So a 4k every game is what you must consider balanced then because a 2 for 2 literally is the most balanced thing in this game, it's not a win for the killer but it's not a win for the survivors either
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I honestly stopped reading when I got to the only 4% of the players are SWF. From my experience that is a bs number and definitely varies on mmr.
Edit: you said 5%.
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I do think that Killers on these forums believe that 4k is a win and 3k is a loss and 2k and less means the games inbalanced.
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2 kills is a tie, a balanced result. And the hook stages show that all of the 2k matches here were actually killer-leaning, with more than 6 stages happening in each of them.
I would go as far as to say that it's a healthy mentality to consider a 1k or 2k with more than 6 stages a killer victory, but I do not make that statement in my evaluation of victories based on kills, where I clearly state only 3k and 4k games are outright killer victories.
I also did not use the word "overpowered", but killers do factually perform better than a 2k average in public matchmaking (it is "killer-sided" statistically), with the kill rates increasing notably the better the killer player is (based on stats taken from various killer streamers).
I encourage you to read my post more carefully, because I think you will find I'm not so disagreeable to killer main sentiments. I do think a bunch of killers should be buffed, SWF needs nerfs, some maps are ridiculous, etc.
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Did you just say the devs, the people who made the game don't know what they are talking about? Sorry but I'd rather take thier word over some nobody on the forums.
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They don't understand the survivors didn't win either it's a draw for both sides, they just get triggered because they can't 4k every single game, if they were getting 4k every game they would say it's balanced but then they would still find something to ######### about it's literally all they know how to do at this point, for ######### sake they want running nerfed so you can't do that anymore either I saw someone suggest a stamina bar for survivors, listening to these people is How To Kill The Game: 101
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What the devs want is most games to be in the 1-3 kill range, i.e. some survivors live and some die. I don’t think they’ve ever called 2 kills a win, if anything it’s more like a draw game.
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The last time we got official stats on player population, 4-player SWF constituted 5%. While that is admittedly 2 years ago, we have no reason to assume it has changed significantly, and that is the only objective evidence we have.
Of course, at high MMR 4-player SWFs could make for a larger chunk of the population, but I think it's highly unlikely to be more than 10% even there. I certainly don't see 4-SWFs all the time in my killer games.
As a by the way: The stats actually showed that the survival rate of 4-player SWFs was not notably higher than the global average survival rate. That doesn't mean SWF isn't a problem, I absolutely think it is and want there to be perk and item/add-on restrictions in place for SWF, but it does go to show that not every 4-SWF is a death sweat squad.
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They don't. Any veteran player with a brain knows this. Making a game and balancing a game are 2 completely different things. FYI there balancing is #########.
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In a tournament setting its probably fine yes. With individual killer MMR in game it's not acceptable.
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I would say the evidence is the community discord for finding teams to play with. I’ve gone there and found teams in under 5 minutes I always already in discord and queueing with them. This game is unplayable solo q survivor and I personally wouldn’t play it without a team.
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you are forgetting that those killers live their life by playing the game
it's much easier to learn how to play survivor as best as you can, compared to killer
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Tnx for posting this. I will share my thoughts probably on Monday, as I don't have much free time in the weekend.
Do you happen to know the scoring criteria? Those would impact the way the trials play out and how players approach them.
Also, is the killer know beforehand or there's a surprise factor?
4% is in a 4-man, not total swf.
Iirc, the last figure we received was that swfs are in 45% of matches, but only a minimal portion are full pre-mades.
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Trying to use bold text inline to create a summary is terrible readability, FYI. Particularly with this forum's font and colours, it barely stands out at all.
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BHVR is pretty infamous for messing up many things. Their statement is correct since the devs were found to be all low ranks on Not Queen's stream years back.
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Wasn't there also a more recent version of this as well that showed it was around the same as two years ago? In the same year that the devs posted that statistic of the most popular killer and survivor perks, I think.
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Disregarding whether I feel like that is an accurate assessment, most of these players are at 4k+ hours, and most of them play both roles. The killers here do not have more hours than the survivors, many of them are one and the same players. Sure, maybe 4 1k hour survivors would perform better against a 4k hour killer than a 1k hour killer would against 4 4k hour survivors, but the "difficulty" of playing either role is not an actual balance argument because for balance arguments we assume everyone being equally skilled at the game. And to that end, it shows that players can become skilled enough at killer to compete with the most skilled survivors.
Besides, if we assume not only that the game is survivor-sided at base, but also that players playing survivor more quickly reach their ceiling than players playing killer, we would expect public matchmaking to only even more heavily favour survivors statistically. But it doesn't even favour them.
Not only that, but I would argue survivors stand to gain much, much more from the tournament environment than killers. Killer players are still the same singular player on their own just like they are in every single given pub match. Survivors on the other hand get to play in a team with which they can practice all the time, communicate, coordinate their loadouts and strategies, something only a vanishingly small minority of groups in pubs do (again, a fraction of the player population even is 4-SWF, of which even smaller fractions use voice comms, even smaller fractions coordinate their builds, make strategies, practice together frequently, etc.).
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As for the actual assessment, I'd say that's 11 wins for killers, 12 draws, and 13 wins for Survivors (I refute the notion that having extra hook states counts as a win unless you were using it like goal difference with tied points; you still didn't finish the person). Of those killer wins, half a dozen were Blight, 3 were Nurse, and 1 each of Huntress/Spirit.
This supports the thing people are actually complaining about: the game is horrifically survivor sided against the majority of the roster, and only a tiny number of killers can consistently pull off wins in these scenarios because of mobility or outright ranged pressure. But there's 26 killers in the game. And it's not balanced at the high end if you exclude 80% of the roster from being playable at all, because all the highly skilled and high-MMR players picking those are not having an even time.
I don't think we should draw the tautological reasoning from this of "the game is balanced because the things that aren't played at the top end aren't played at the top end". It'd be like having an RTS where entire factions aren't played competitively because they're not viable, but saying the game is balanced because the factions that are viable are still being played. You're just ignoring the things that aren't balanced at all once you do that.
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From what I can see, experienced survivors wait 10-20 minute queues, just to get matched with killer of the same skill level. Also majority of the survivors in the game are casuals who don't even know basic ways of looping killers in general or specific counters to specific killers. That is why killers dominate statistics, simply because majority sucks, and minitory waits hours to get match on their skill level.
Also 4k hours is loads of time, and for regular players who play 2-3 hours a day, it would take 4-6 years to reach such playtime. Also the game is constantly changing and so are the mechanics. This puts regular player into great disadvantage when learning game's mechanics.
One of the biggest issue is that killers gain MMR way too quickly. Some people are just naturally good at the game, so they get to high level very quickly, and then they simply suffer because of massive imbalance in the game for majority of the killers at that level and also lack of experience gained by playtime.
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I think you have to concede that that's not very convincing evidence. Do you really think 4-SWFs make for more than 10% of the player pools? I just don't see it. (And I still want SWF nerfs.)
I don't think solo queue is "unplayable", my survival rate is above 50% in solo and I do have genuinely good gaming experiences in solo with an alright frequency, but I understand of course what you mean when you say that. It can be a frustrating experience that makes one question the worth of playing survivor solo ever at all, since many random survivors you'll be "teamed" up with seemingly refuse to play the game themselves.
Thanks for thanking me!
Yes, the scoring criteria are as follows:
Killer Scoring 2pts for first hook 2pts for second hook 1pt for Death hook Total Possible Points = 20 Survivor Scoring 2pts Per Gen 3/2/1 pts per escaped(based on hook stages left for survivor. Ex. 0 hook escape = 3 points) Total Possible Points = 22
This goes to show that the points are entirely based on kill and survival objectives, and not only that, killers get more points for fresh hooks and are therefore even less encouraged to simply play for kills (and yet still performed well in terms of kills).
The killer was not known beforehand, but of course players expected one of the big three every time.
Yeah, I originally didn't have the bold parts but then added them because I thought it would draw the eye to a more digestable "summary" way of reading it of sorts, and also to break up my long ass texts. But you're right, it's not very nice on the eyes, not on this forum anyway.
I don't remember another stat presentation of the player population, but there may have been statements in threads presenting/regarding stats from the devs, or maybe on some stream...
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I would like to see a fun tournament which randomly gives any perk to the teams. And the challenge is to make the best with their perks.
That would be also nice as a game mode for the game? You can choose your killer and survivor but the perks are totally random. It's not for competitive ofc.
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Nice stats, an average with deviation, omg... never released by the dev>
So what do we see ? Average kill is around 2 but deviation is 1.29. It means the game is totally unbalanced and that trials are never tight, it's most of the time a big loss or a big win for the killer.
Moreover, most of the trials are played with the 3 best killers...
It shows how broken the game is atm, and why SBMM is despised by the killer community...
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Whatever bro. You lost me when you decided to get all up your own arse
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I dunno man, I think thats where our experiences might differ...I play this game super casually, I think I started playing when nurse came out, so I have been here a while. I guess I play it for what it is as a fun party light game. It never felt off I. Terms of my wins and loss ratio, usually if I do poorly I chalk it up to my own skill rather than thinking it's a balancing thing.
But as I said, that's been me experience, your milage may vary.
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You are forgetting that these are pro SWFs going against Killers. If you took away the pro-SWFs, the game would be horribly Killer sided.
Yes, pro-SWF is imbalanced against most killers, however most survivor players are Solo, 2-SWFs, 3-SWFs and a whole-lotta-non-pro-SWFs.
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For outright wins I didn't consider stages, as that's indeed another argument. I only argued the 3 games where non-S-tier killers were played could be ignored if we are looking at the actual top-end state of balance. But results were overall pretty even regardless.
I do agree that too much of the killer lineup is too weak and various of them deserving of buffs. I do not agree that only these three are able to compete at the highest level. In other tournaments a wide variety of other killers is played, and they average slightly above 2 kills as well, with 4ks being possible. In this tournament without any limitations, do I think most of those other killers would still be able to replicate those results? Well, in those other tournaments killers have limitations too, various of the killers actually have pretty busted add-ons with which I don't think it's imposslbe they could still perform here (see Huntress getting a 3k here, similar story could be the case for Clown with Pinky Finger, or Plague with Iridescent Seal, etc.). But I do think they are obviously not nearly as fit to compete as the big three, which stand a pretty good shot of 4king and that's indeed just not the case for most other killers, they would probably fall at an average 2 at best, with the "almost guaranteed 1ks" helping bump their stats to that.
I absolutely don't agree with the idea that most of the other killers are not "playable at all", let alone at high MMR. Again, in restricted tournaments around half of all killers perform well enough, in this tournament I would at least still expect a third of them to be able to average around 2 kills and/or 6-8 stages. And public matchmaking is a whole different story still. When these tournament players (or any really good killer players) play pub matches with even the weakest of killers, they still win much more often than not. Sorry, but that's just true.
I do not ignore the fact that the highest-end level is not balanced for ~80% of the killer lineup, but that's not a game balance argument. I do think having at least 5 S-tier killers would be nice, that would make for more variety. I also think all the other killers should be B tier at least, and A tier with add-ons, which again is not currently the case for around half of them. I doubt we'll see that happen, it's been years already and they are still cautious when adjusting killers like Legion and they nerfed Pinhead and Slinger recently, but I do hope it will happen. That said, I don't really think it's a huge issue. If you want to stand a chance against much of anyone you play Nurse, Blight or Spirit, but you can still play any other killer and do well in the majority of your pub matches if you play enough to get good enough. I've 4k'd around 30 matches with Legion over the last week, losing only 4 times.
I don't see 10-20 minute queue times, and I watch and play with and against some of these tournament players.
If we were to suppose that the lack of skills and smarts on players playing survivor would tilt the global average rates to favour killers, the conclusion would have to be that it is more difficult to play survivor in skilled and smart ways, because everyone playing this game is just human, why would we expect humans playing survivor to consistently be less skilled and smart at the game than humans playing killer. I think the asymmetric format actually is mostly at fault for that imbalance in pub matches, where 4 survivor players each have to match the "skills and smarts" of only 1 killer player, and are much more likely to suffer from skill disparity for that reason, as well from disconcerted plays and decisions. But either way, I also don't think or see any evidence that the base game balance is nearly as far off as people make it out to be, all evidence points more to the opposite.
I think you got a point with your last statement. We actually know from dataminers that there are (or were) significantly more killers in the high MMR population than survivors. I think the MMR is not strict enough and allows many players to rise particularly on the killer side that are not actually experienced and skilled enough to be able to consistently compete with the best opponents within those respective MMR brackets. I think it should be harsher, such that people don't see such jumps in difficulty levels, and that they fall to more reasonable levels more quickly if they do.
Could be cool! I would like to see a "solo queue" tournament, where the survivor players are one big pool that matches are randomly created from, and they have no voice comms or prior coordination of builds etc., with the killers likewise being a pool randomly "queued" into these matches, ultimately the survivor and killer players with the highest survival and kill rates winning after X rounds. Would be fun and interesting, both to watch and participate.
While the deviation is fairly big, you can look at the actual results and see that it's around 40% wins for either side and 20% draws, which is not an awful split. But beyond that, that deviation is only for actual kills, if we look at hook stages (which I find are a better indication of "balance" with relation to the actual experience of the gameplay), the average and deviation fall around 6-10 stages, which is a totally reasonable state of balance in my mind.
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"solo queue" tournament
Could be fun. Always like when Streamer getting perks from the chat and have to play solo queue. 🤗
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I knew it that compound 33+blighted crow is best add-on combination for blight. I use it this as well.
in your post, you said alchemist ring is overtuned than you show a chart where 1 person out of 9 games uses alchemist ring. Blighted crow is 9 out 9 add-on.
Its not surprising that brand new part is most used add-on. Stypic needles aren't that strong, their main use is for egc where you can save against instant down killers by popping it before hook save with BT. They can extend looping in some cases and give killer bad early game. Sometimes they provide more value than BNP,
When your using 4 toolbox with BNP, Healing isn't too important because most of the games are so fast that you are unlikely to heal, so you do not need COH. COH is old self-care. Long match = good. short match=bad.
Saying killer is balanced when only 3 killers are being played with ebony mori, best perks, best add-ons is a bit misleading. Try playing killers like ghostface, legion, wraith, demo, pig with like no anti-loop than look at results. even if killer tried to play camping killers like trickster, clown with pinky, myers, billy, hag and so on, they'd probably struggle to secure 2 kills on average. just my 2 cents on it.
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"If we were to suppose that the lack of skills and smarts on players playing survivor would tilt the global average rates to favour killers, the conclusion would have to be that it is more difficult to play survivor in skilled and smart ways,"
Wrong. The game favours killers at low level of play, because survivors don't have the necessary basic skills to survive, while killer does not need any skill at all to be able to fulfill his objective vs such players, you just swing your weapon and they die and they don't know what to do.
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Kills' deviation is too big for the game to be balanced but still, even if we admit that the stat showed here are balanced, they are obtained with the 3 best killers...
Just imagine any other killer that are all way weaker than the Nurse...
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I do want to clarify a few things in regards to these stats and the level of play in general:
It's hard to draw general public match balance conclusions from competitive DbD play. Like OP said, there are usually balance restrictions in place.
Many of these teams rarely play public matches together, if at all. The "tournament" SWF people claim to run into is probably goofing off.
Keep in mind that these killer players "scrim" against these teams all the time in custom lobbies. They are used to this level of play. In a 3 hour scrim session, they are playing more games against this level of team than an average high MMR killer player is seeing in a 6 month span. It's not really reasonable to take their results and set that as an expectation for public matches.
I know from experience that many of the players from the high end teams put in 40+ hrs every week. They are literally playing DbD as a job against that level of competition.
The average player against a 4 man SWF with 4x BNPs is going to struggle regardless of what killer they're on. They don't have the reps against high level competition. It's something you might see once a week, not multiple times every day in team practice like these players do.
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Old numbers suggest that only about 5-6% play in 4-stacks. But overall, 48% play in 2-3-4 stacks and 52% solo que. Numbers i believe are from 2019 or 2020.
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TLDR: Only 3 killers are viable at top mmr
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Top MMR public matches =/= tournament play. Tournament play is a much higher level of coordination and game speed. Play whoever you want.
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I tried. getting stomped too often to enjoy killer
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It should have gone without saying that tournaments are not a good indication of what is balanced in the game... from what I'm hearing, official tournaments have their own rule set and limitations their participants have to follow in order to make the game manageable at such a high level of play. This is just a random tournament with some shoddy data trying to force the opinion that if you play only 3 killers in the game then it is balanced. Not even close...
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I can get one free head pop with body blocking Pig and another kill courtesy of Rancor.
I didnt realize I was winning this whole time...
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What is considered a top tier Survivor and a top tier Killer?
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Map pool was limited and every killer was nurse/blight/spirit. I think that's all that needs to be gleaned from this, sorry gamer.
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So who was actually IN this tournament? A random streamers tournament, while likely has people that want to play the game sure. But were these ACTUAL high caliber players?
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