Attempting to Balance Dead by Daylight as a Game Design Major
I LOVE Dead by Daylight but this past developer Q&A has proven to me without a doubt they are out of touch with their game and their community. As someone who has been studying game design for a long time, I thought it might be fun practice to “balance” the game in a possibly more fair way. These are just my PERSONAL ideas and I’ll do my best to explain the reasoning behind my changes.
*NOTE* My overall purpose is to make killers more incentivized to chase and weaken the “dirty” tactics. This isn’t some golden way to fix the game, just some possible changes that could help.
SBMM/MMR:
Killers - the win condition is every fresh hook is worth 1 point (hook stage changes don’t count) and every kill is worth 2 for a potential total of 20.
0-6 points - Loss (Displeased) mmr goes down
7-12 points - Draw (Brutal) mmr stays the same
11-16 points - Win (Ruthless) mmr goes up
17-20 points - Big Win(Merciless) mmr goes up more
Survivors - the win condition is every generator completed while you are alive is worth 2 points and escaping is 4 points.
0-2 points - Loss mmr goes down
4-6 points - Draw mmr stays the same
8-10 points - Win mmr goes up
14 points - Big Win mmr goes up more
***This system is obviously not perfect but it takes into account if you run the killer for the whole game and/or do the gens/keeping teammates alive to do the gens. It also promotes killers hooking more to perform better and campers will fall down the ranks.
Survivors and Killers:
Survivors now cannot install more than 1 brand new part on a generator. It tracks having one installed.
Survivors now have the borrowed time effect as base kit but it only lasts 10 seconds.
Survivors now can push a button and use the mouse to select a message to inform team mates of repairing, saving, and being chased.
Killers within 12 meters of a hook have their aura revealed to all survivors.
Maybe increase killer base speed by 2% among all killers... maybe idk yet
***Now healing won’t be so fast and facecamping at the least alerts survivors that the killer is doing it.
Maps:
Simple, the really big maps like Red Forest will be made smaller and the really small dead dog will be made slightly bigger. The Game map would be reworked again for more interactive gameplay.
Specific layouts would then be looked at like the overall strength of main buildings and the spread of structures. Badham and Haddonfield would lose some of those powerful buildings in favor of normal loops.
Loops:
There is a system in place that randomizes the loops on maps that can result in some maps having awfully weak setups and others having half a dozen jungle gyms and windows leading into shack.
This system would award points for various kinds of loops that cannot be exceeded. Only about 2-4 jungle gyms depending on the size of the map for example though that structure would stay the same.
TL loops would stay the same as they are already quite fair.
I would get rid of the unsafe loops and take away most god pallet loops. A majority of the loops would be versions of the standard loops of one big, hard-to-see-over side, and a small side with a pallet between which allows for mind-gaming from both players.
EVERY killer shack would get a breakable door like the one on dead dog saloon.
***Some maps like Cowshed spawn with numerous loops that once the pallet goes down the killer must break it and so there is no chase gameplay it’s simply drop pallet and make distance, instead both the unmind-gamable and the unsafe loops would be replaced by loops that can be won by either killer or survivor and the chances of the strong loops appearing is minimal. These of course would need to be tested.
Gen Regression:
If killers kick a generator, it will do an instant 5% damage after the 2 second animation before regressing.
***This will make kicking somewhat worth it and be viable against tapping the gen in your face.
Perks:
Tiers - Perks tiers gone, all perks will just have one tier whatever the tier 3 stats are. You unlock the perk in the shrine or through the dlc character and only need to get it once in a bloodweb. The grind would take 8+ years to be as bad as it is now and that’s a lot of time to work on a better solution.
These are some buffs and nerfs I have in mind for various perks.
Survivor:
Boons: all boons create a 24-meter radius (down from 28), decreased boon audio by 30%
A blessed hex totem becomes a boon with a red+blue glow, snuffed boons that are on hex totems return that totem to the hex it was.
After being snuffed out, boon perks have a 30 second cooldown + 5 seconds for every additional boon perk.
Boon: Circle of Healing - allows for self healing action
Decreased healing speed to others to 50% (down from 75%)
Built to Last - Hiding inside a Locker for 10 seconds while carrying a depleted Item will replenish its Charges to 100%.
Each use of Built to Last reduces this percentage by -50%. (does not apply to toolbox ability to permanently repair generators [see: items])
Dead Hard - Getting injured activates the ability to use dead hard. You now must be fully healed or hooked to activate dead hard again. Decreased exhaustion status effect after using to 30 seconds (down from 40).
OR
Dead Hard - Now doubles the distance you move and increases speed of dead hard by 50%, you are no longer invincible while using dead hard.
Deliverance - Now works even if you are the last person alive.
Renewal - No longer requires you to fully heal another survivor to activate.
Increases broken state after being unhooked to 35 seconds (up from 20).
Killer:
Beast of Prey - Now makes you undetectable after being in chase for 10 seconds. You lose the effect once you are out of chase.
Corrupt Intervention: Now also applies to the 3 furthest totems from the killer
Coup De Grace - every time a generator is completed you gain a stack. Each stack increases your lunge distance by 10% permanently.
Dying Light - Removed Obsession buff
Once the obsession dies/escapes you can no longer gain stacks but dying light stays active.
Fire Up - every time a generator is completed, you gain a stack. Each stack of fire up increases the speed of kicking/breaking, vaulting, picking up, and dropping by 7% (up from 5%) No longer stacks speed with other perks.
Hex: No One Escapes Death (Noed) - No longer gives survivors the exposed status effect.
Increases movement speed by 6% (up from 4%)
Increases Recovery from pallet stuns by 50% and recovery of stuns from perks by 20%.
Hex: Undying - No longer reveals the auras of survivors.
Now has 2 stacks, and will take the place of another destroyed hex totem 2 times.
Pop Goes the Weasel - Upon hooking a survivor you can kick a gen for an instant 20% damage (because it’ll take to 25% with the base kick stacking), this lasts for 50 seconds (up from 45)
Tinkerer - Increased time of undetectable status effect to 20 seconds (up from 16)
Tinkerer only works 2 times per generator.
Whispers - Increased radius to 36 meters (up from 32)
Whispers no longer activates for survivors on hook
Items:
Medkits - speed and charges for the kits themselves remain the same. The add-ons that add more than 8 charges will be removed. The instant-heal and styptic agent now require 8 charges to use, and will deplete medkit on use.
Toolbox - I like Otz’s idea for toolboxes such as making them permanently repair a small section of a gen it cannot regress past and in-turn weaken the boxes overall.
Map Offerings:
Survivor map offerings only increase odds of getting a specific map by 30%.
Killer map offerings only increase odds of getting a specific map by 60%
Removed Sacrificial Ward offerings - compensation given for losing offering
Data:
I’d like to track average hooks and kills per killer and pick rate for killer data.
These are simply my ideas for a possible more fun and less stressful dead by daylight. I don’t think there is any perfect way to fix this game but it could be made better with at least some of my ideas I feel.
Let me know what you agree with and disagree with. I’m sure not everything I said here is great. If only we could all find some common ground to demand better from this game we all enjoy.
Comments
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This is a lot to go through, but I'll try.
The killer aura near hooked survivor: It's abusable without additional criteria. If they are Undetectable, you should not be seeing them. This becomes exploitable in situations where survivors can make it stupid to not camp the hooked survivor.
Loops: TLs should not be able to spawn 3 connected TLs. 2 max, sure. Unsafe loops should still exist. Overly strong loops need to be reduced or removed entirely. Strong unmindgameable loops should not exist at all. If there was zero unsafe loops, there would be a lot of problems. Part of the point of survivor and killer gameplay is to avoid/steer towards those areas respectively. Removing them entirely defeats the point.
Built to Last: Not sure if I'm interpreting this correctly. It should not restore the ability to create permanent progress on generators for toolboxes. That is broken and bad design.
Dead Hard: Nerfed the wrong way. Distance is the issue, not i-frames. Unconditional dash for distance needs to be completely removed or made conditional to actually dodging an attack.
Deliverance: No. The ability for last person to unhook was removed in the past because it's literally pointless, gets used to BM, and was a waste of time.
Renewal: No. Unconditional free heal off unhook that you can passively achieve while doing other actions is busted.
Coup de Grace: Permanent lunge distance is busted on several killers. No.
Fire Up: Removing stacking is unnecessary. It's still not that good.
NOED: This change makes this perk terrible. It's better to rework it into a non-Hex token-based system. For instance, 1 Token per first hook. Endgame is +4% movespeed, and all survivors are permanently Exposed while Tokens are left. Hitting survivor with a basic attack removes 1 Token.
Undying: Very on the fence about this idea.
Tinkerer: Doesn't need changes.
Whispers: The first effect is a nerf when it comes to how Whispers is actually ideally used. The second effect should not exist, and is not the case in-game specifically to prevent it being used for camping/knowing when someone is coming for a save or is already there for a save.
Items: On the fence about what directions items should go.
Map offerings: Should not exist at all.
Data: Is near irrelevant without full record because of the dozens of factors that affect this sort of thing.
Anything not mentioned is stuff I don't really have an opinion on/don't know how I feel about yet.
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You just wasted your time and energy. the devs don't listen to this and do what they want or their investors demand. The COH "nerf" made this obvious.
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The MMR you're trying to create is gonna create the same issues that old matchmaking has. You might aswell just go back to the old matchmaking system. It's not gonna fix the issue of new players facing veterans. It's not gonna fix skill in anyway. Patrick is 100% correct that wins and losses in MMR should matter. You cannot create 1 million ways to draw if there are only 1-2 ways to "win".
However, the way MMR is distributed now is flawed. MMR for killer is fine. MMR for survivor is not. If you got 8 hooks on survivors without being able to kill any of them, you're lacking skill. That skill being strategic skill, but its still skill. The objective of the killer is to try and kill all survivors. A killer getting 4 hooks and 2 kills, even if may people claim it to be less skillful, DOES complete the killer objective more than 8 hooks and 0 kills does. The objective of survivors(as a group), is to escape. The flaw here is that the first dead survivor gets punished the most, even if 3 people escape.
Survivors need to have a group MMR, if 3 survivors escaped, that should give all survivors a similar increase in MMR as killers get for 3 kills. Because all survivors worked for that 3 man escape. But that's not being implemented(however, they did mention that they might work on it).
So what can they do? Create a secondary system that's based on distracting the killer, AKA chase. But not between the survivor and the killer, but between survivors themselves. Basically making survivors fight amongst themselves on who gets the most MMR between them through chase, while the MMR gained relies on escapes.
This creates a system where you can die first hook as the only survivor, but still gain the most MMR since 3 teammates escaped. But it also means that if you hide all game and escape through the gate alone, you could lose the most MMR.
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Also, The Game is technically the MOST interactive map. I dont want it to be more interactive. Pallets are by far the most interactive looping resource that survivors have.
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Except it's completely one-sided and overwhelmingly survivor-sided against almost every killer in the game. Pallets are fine. 25-29 of them in one map with every single one being unmindgameable safe or god pallets are not.
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I'm just going to bring up MMR, because you sorely miss a major point of MMR. There cannot be MMR bloat or the system completely breaks. MMR bloat is like a memory leak in a computer. Basically it's a situation in which all players increase their MMR. Your system would lead to MMR bloat because many matches end up with all survivors killed and all generators completed. In this situation, based off of the points that you have listed, all players would have their MMR increase. This leads to run away MMR gains and the MMR rating simply becomes an indicator of how much you play because the more you play the more you'll win because you have a greater than 50 percent chance of increasing your MMR every match.
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No, its not one-sided. It starts out survivor sided, and over the course of the game, becomes more and more killer sided.
The lack of windows means that any pallet used increases the deadzone, any gen done makes it easier for killers to cut you off and even connect dead zones.
As for unmindgamable and god pallets, there are 7 god pallets, 4 of which near the basement, 4 mindgamable safe pallets(hard mindgames, but if you do time it right, you can hit the survivor before they finish the vault), and quite a lot of very predictable pallets.
Besides, there are up to 26 pallets in Gideon, but there can be anywhere between 16 and 26 pallets.
Again, there are practically no windows(there are 6 total, one next to the exit gate which is kinda useless, one at the funnel which often costs 1 hit, one at the tv room, which often also costs a hit, one in the ice room and 2 at the t&l). Once a pallet is gone, its a useless zone. You would need to chase the same survivor around constantly for that to be an issue. If you spread out your pressure, survivors, especially if they arent on comms, would reach the same area again and have nothing to stop you from hitting them. If the pallets at the basement are gone, you could stand away from the staircase, and no one can enter the basement without swapping hooks, nor can anywone exit the basement without taking another hit.
Mechanically, it's balanced. Over time, it gets more and more killer sided. As long as you can cause survivors to require more time(which is kinda your job as killer anyway), there is a high likelihood of a 3k. If you cant force the survivors to spend time healing or have gens regressing to take more time to finish, you would lose like on any other map.
The reason why it feels unbalanced, is because its boring to break pallets. You keep losing the flow of the chase. But that's inherently to do with how pallets work. If DBD created a mechanic that is practically a reskin of a pallet, but causes the killer to keep the flow of the chase, suddenly you would enjoy The Game much more. Nemesis is quite fun to play on The Game, and thats not because he can get rid of pallets easily, it takes him the same amount of time as Demo or Blight. Difference is, is that Nemesis keeps the flow of the chase while breaking pallets.
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It honeslty could be that 75% healing speed is fine. Because, if I am not incorrect, the self-heal speed is affected by this too. The reason the speed was increased to 100% was to cancel out the speed of self-care initially. If the mechanic still works the same, this means that self-healing now takes 19 seconds. You might think that it only adds 3 seconds to a 1 on 1 heal, but that's 6 survivor seconds being wasted(minus the time needed for both to be in the radius). And if 3 people heal, it might "only" add 1 seconds, but that's still 3 survivor seconds wasted(excluding the time needed for all 3 to run inside the radius).
Personally, I think they should add 1 more mechanic to boons tho: for every boon that is active, increase the radius with 6 meters, starting from 0. I do think that effect is a bit too weak with Exponential and Shadowstep, since those effects arent particularly amazing in most scenario's, but they could be buffed somewhere else to compensate(not necessarily practical buffs, but like, exponential also making you crawl 10% faster inside it's radius, shadowstep making footsteps 5% more silent)
So that if people JUST run circle of healing, its 6 meters, but if they run 4 boons, its 24 meters. Basically giving people the incentive to run more boons together, making it worth the killer's time more to snuff the boon. Or they could start out with 6 meters and cap it at 24, meaning you'd max out with 3 boons(so CoH is 12, 2 boons is 18, and 3 is 24, which is still worth snuffing regardless of where it is, since it's 3 perks).
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??? It is literally one of the most survivor-sided maps in the game because it allows for zero interactivity. Killer has to go through every single pallet which cannot be mindgamed at all, and by then every single generator is done. Also, you are incorrect. Gideon spawns 25 minimum, 29 maximum. Even 16 is way too many let alone 25. There is no way you can legitimately be serious.
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Pallets are the most interactive looping resource in the game, point disproven.
Plenty of pallets that can be mindgamed, go ask a friend to open up the map, drop the pallets and take a shower afterwards or smth, take Unrelenting so you can try out from what point you can start a lunge and where those points overlap. You'd be surprised to see easily half of the pallets being capable of hitting a survivor before they finish vaulting as long as you completely use the lunge.
I have seen 16, never seen more than 26 spawn. Spawning more than 26 would mean pallet spawn mechanics being overridden. Which could be a bug that has been unnoticed, but everywhere I've looked, there are at least 16 spawning and at most 26. Maybe that people used customs to count, but here's a little secret, customs do not take MMR difference in consideration. Customs assume you are a godlike killer compared to the survivors. In reality, you're not gonna be matched up against 0 MMR survivors.
Why do you think some maps spawn in with a 50% deadzone when you play survivor, but with a 20% deadzone when you play killer? That's because in those games with 20% deadzone, your MMR much closer to the survivors, if not exceeding their MMR, while the 50% deadzone happens when your MMR is much, much lower than the survivors.
You can tell how big the MMR gap is between you and the killer, based on how big the average deadzone is. The more loops have spawned, the higher the MMR of the killer.
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Man is really trying to argue that The Game isn't a god tier Survivor map.
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Okay, you're either inexperienced or baiting. There is no point for me to bother wasting my time further on this.
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All maps at the beginning of the match are survivor sided. And heck, my average killrate on The Game is 2.5 kills on killers I play casually. Slightly less than 2 kills against sweat squads, but close to a 3k on my 2 mains.
So no, it's not really survivor sided. It feels survivor sided. There is a difference. Why does it feel survivor sided? Because you constantly lose the flow of a chase.
Seriously, play Nemesis on that map a few times, my rate with Nemesis on average is 2.3 kills and I've just started learning him.(once you start up the game in the future, assuming you still have it uninstalled).
Do I sometimes lose with 0-1 kills? Yeah, but the majority of games are 3 kills. If The Game is a god tier survivor map, I should struggle with killers to get more than 1 kill. I dont. With t1 myers I do, but t1 myers is 105% and not really meant to perform amazingly. Yet, I've consistently gotten 1-3 kills with t1 myers. With a 1.7k on average. Considering t1 myers isnt really meant to be competitively viable, 1.7k on average is really good.
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So all you can tell me is that an anti-loop Killer that forces a 50/50 is good on a map where there are lots of opportunity's to 50/50?
For every Nemesis, there's a Legion or Clown or Artist or Freddy or ect ect
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A survivor healing doesn't stop the other survivors doing gens or keep that survivor vulnerable for an extended period of time. This is the problem with COH. Healing was already becoming a problem when you got lobbies with 4x stacked medkits, but at least you coud do something about it with franklins.
Unless that survivor is kept out of the game for an excessive amount of time like self care or worse then it is and always will be way to strong
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