Just a few thoughts on my experience with the game so far
I just thought I'd share my thoughts on the game, after having been gone for years and coming back to basically relearn everything. I picked up the game again just before Halloween and this season I went from Ash IV to Iri I on killer, which is what I play the vast majority of the time. Spoiler alert: There will be some whining, but it's not ALL bad.
Like many other killers on this board, I have many of the same gripes (My post count may be low, but boy do I lurk a lot).
For me, the biggest issues come in a few categories.
Gen speed should be obvious. There seems to be a thread on a daily basis about how fast gens go down. The higher my MMR, the more likely I'll run into a team that will have 2 gens up and running shortly before, or just after my first hook--and there is very little I can do about it, unless I'm playing the Artist and get lucky with a little bird surveillance. Applying pressure is supposed to be the method to prevent fast gen-ing, but you're very limited in your options to do so. Boons make hitting a survivor and letting them flee a terrible idea, and committing to chases with a halfway decent looper will result in more gens popping. When I choose my killer perks, I feel extremely constrained in what I can run. I feel like a great deal of my perks are either underpowered or extremely situational. To put it another way, if I'm going to run perks that don't deal with gen progression, I'd like to feel like I'm getting a benefit that is at least comparable to slowing down gen progress. I could count on one hand how many perks that comes out to be (Thanks, Bubba).
Which brings me to the general annoyance of being a killer. Just about everything I do feels clunky. Yeah, I get it--this is how it was designed from the ground up. I have to be slower in vaulting, lots of "recovery" actions, and a dozen ways to be stunned, blinded, blocked or otherwise harassed. You know, it also had me scratching my head why the "terror" radius never did anything more than warn the survivors of your presence. Why not cause it to have certain side effects, that might make it a bad idea to crowd around the killer (Certain perks nowithstanding)?
Of course, that begs the question--why isn't there more counterplay options for the killer? Take pallets, for example. First of all, there seems to be more pallets in your average DBD map than there is in a home depot. Second, it makes chases both predictable and boring. Loop--Loop--Loop, reach a pallet, wait for survivor to drop it, break it, rinse and repeat at the next tile. Even running something like spirit fury is almost pointless, since you still get stunned. Unless you're running a killer that can hit through them, you literally have no options. The survivor holds literally all the power in those scenarios, and there's so many pallets, they can do it again and again. No wonder anti-looping killers are so popular. Why don't I have more options for modifying the chase or looping mechanic? There are so many counterplay options for survivors. Just about everything is designed to be forgiving, and give second chances. If I miss a melee hit or get pallet stunned, it might cost me the chase, or even a gen. If a survivor messes up, the have a dozen perks that'll help them out from Decisive strike to getting blinded during a long, uninterruptable pickup animation (there aren't walls everywhere), and nice little bursts of speed when you get hit.
And speaking of mechanics, we have some issues. Survivors that charge head first into you because they know you can't hit them, or the mouse flicking to change direction on a dime. Let's not forget the quick jump in and out of closets and the hit registration where I get a grunt of pain and bloodpoints, but no health status hit because reasons (?). Survivors hate NOED, but I hate if they're not already injured, attacking them is nothing more than a nice slap on the rear out the escape gate. If anything, I think exposed status should be the default once the gates open, making escape something that takes a little more planning and strategy other than "Go ahead and hit me, bro. I'm out."
There are many matches that leave me thinking about what exactly my role is as killer in this game. Am I there as an equal player to try and "win the game" or am I simply a "smarter AI" that's something to be something fun to be chased by. I use to play Evolve a lot--also primarily as the Monster. One thing I can say about that game is while it, too, was admittedly more hunter-sided, the main point of the match was to slaughter each other, so there was forced interaction and both sides had to be deadly for the game to work, and there was a certain power scaling where as the monster you needed to evade when you were at your weakest as Stage 1, but were a terror if you reached stage 3. Very rarely do I ever get the impression that the killer is "dangerous" like I did in Evolve. There also doesn't seem to be a lot of QOL or balance changes that are meant to improve the experience of the killer, and yes, I'll echo what many other killers have said: getting 0-1k feels awful. It doesn't even matter if I got every singe of those survivors to their 2nd hook state. The perception is still that you lost utterly and completely. It's why killers tunnel. The game only feels good if you get a kill, and it has the bonus side effect of slowing down some of that aforementioned gen progression.
All this being said: Do I have fun?
Yes, sure. I do. There's enough in this game to like, but I feel frustrated because I feel like this game is so close to greatness with its theme and style and basic gameplay--but I really wish it would do something more to alleviate the frustrations of playing what is essentially the main draw of the game.
Comments
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Play more unfair. You can win majority of your games that way. Start slugging and tunneling smart. Survivor only take you seriously and start to break down once you put slugging into the mix. Playing fair in this game at high rank is nearly impossible.
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Welcome back!
It's...interesting to be a killer main right now.
A few thoughts:
- Gen speeds are, imho, not the issue. The issue is with map design, about half the killer roster being too weak and the overabundance of second chance and anti-pressure perks which allow survivors to sit on gens. CoH killed off basically all attrition play, so now it's either hard aggression, hard regression or instadowns.
- Tunneling, unless you are tunneling directly off hooks, isn't something to complain about. 'The Rule of 3': if there are 3 survivors remaining once 3 gens are completed, the killer wins. If not, they get 0-1k generally. This is a snowbally game on both sides.
- Evolve...eh. A very, very different game.
- Losing generally doesn't bother me, so long as I got 2 hooks on most people or I lost because of my own mistakes. It's the games where it felt like I had no chance at all - be it because of MMR throwing me to the wolves or ridiculous map RNG that bother me, especially when survivors are BM about it.
- Otzdarva (one of the most prolific DbD streamers around) did a fascinating experiment over the past 2 days to see if the game is truly survivor sided in all contexts (rather than most). He ran his strongest builds and addons with every killer, and 4k'd all but one game (which was a 3k). Now naturally he plays this game for a living - but there is something to say about the balance within the role as well as the balance between the roles.
- Right now killers have too few good perks to choose from, while survivors have a handful of perks that are so strong they artificially restrict choice/variety. This has resulted in a bit of a stale meta. However, the Artist added 2 very interesting new perks into the mix, Pain Resonance in particular is seeing a lot of play. The killer also turned out to be a solid 'A' tier.
- I totally understand what you mean about killer being frustrating (the Christmas event has ticked a lot of killer players off too).
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