Killer Power Creep in DBD
If you don't know what power creep is: it's essentially the idea that as the game evolves older characters/features become outdated and cannot keep up with the current state of the game.
This effects many of the killers in DBD. It's the reason why so many of them are frustrating to play.
I saw someone once say something along the lines of "good killers can make a prediction and make a play, while bad killers can make a prediction and aren't able to do anything."
Mobility and anti-loop have been the focus of newer killers. Whether through zoning or projectiles, portals or speed. Many of the better killers have at least one of these in some way. So much to the point that they dominate the killer roster. It has no doubt made playing killer easier. But some killers are stuck in this limbo of having good powers in theory, but in practicality their powers are lacking.
Legion would be a good example of this. You can injure the entire team in seconds. Meaning easier snowball pressure. But that's without the nuance. In reality you're probably going to get a hit and catch up to someone else to chase. Depending on how far spaced out the survivors are it varies. And on top of that you have nothing but mind-games to help you around loops.
Too many variables for consistent results, basically. You COULD get downs and pressure with this. But that's considering you're already in a favorable position for it.
A glaring issue with the game is how many killers just deny pallet loops rather than dealing with them. And it seems the devs are becoming more focused on this type of game play. Pallet loops aren't being adjusted to be dealt with, killers are being adjusted to deal with pallet loops. This is where the power creep comes in. M1 focused killers have no ability to play around loops. Not saying that they're completely helpless, but their powers usually don't offer any sort of advantage.
Myers is a great example of what I'm talking about. He has stealth to close the gap on unattentive survivors. And there's his insta down. But none of those really matter. Ignoring the stalk mechanic alone which makes him struggle in the early game. There are killers who just do everything better than him.
His stealth is negated by how tall he is or listening for his breathing. Where as Ghostface can navigate far better in stealth and has less que's. Ghostface has a faint rustling but that's not immediately noticeable like Mikeys breathing. Ghostface can expose survivors as well, just not usually all at once.
Micheal has an insta down, but no ability to catch up to survivors. So depending on how you use it, you spend the entire chase trying to get close enough to use tier three or you pop it early and spend most of its duration at a jungle gym or closing distance. I would compare this to Oni. Similar in building up power, but Oni gets a better pay off. Oni can demon dash around most loops, navigate the map at high speeds with an insta down and can hit multiple survivors at once. Yes, its on a timer. But its potential is far greater and more lethal than Micheals tier 3.
So tell me, if I want to play a stealth killer or one with snowball potential, which one should I pick? There is no reason to play Micheal for any reason other than his character. And that's the issue. So many killer powers have been neglected for so long that they literally can't keep up. The reason people play the same 3 killers is because there's no reason NOT to play those 3.
I hope this conveys the bigger balance issue at hand and makes more people talk about it. Because it can turn into a big issue in the future if left uncheck. I know that killers are getting reworks soon, but so far the reworks have either overtuned or added nothing useful.
Comments
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Weird thing is their opponent survivors are somewhat getting weaker overtime, but somehow low tier killers are now pretty much unplayable.
How is it possible even.
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I am sorry, just the title alone had me laughing. Then again, I am not really a survivor main that thought Trickster, Pinhead, or Artist were anything but laughable side grades to vastly superior killers. I expect Sadako will suck unless they finally realized that maybe people would play the new killer for longer than a week if it was viable.
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I mean there are killers that are very obviously stronger than others but there has not been a pattern that shows power creep. Nurse and blight for example were released a while back and are regarded as the strongest. Huntress is incredibly popular and the majority of other anti loopers are just worse huntresses.
M1 killers being weak became a little more pronounced with CoH but that issue mostly affects the hit and run killers like wraith and legion.
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And as we know, Legion is disliked both by much of the player base and fairly unloved by the devs if we focus on the way they massacred our 2boys/2girls
We never really recovered from the sustained nerf bats to the knees.
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You think so? Newly released killers has always been extremely powerful until they get hard nerfed.
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what power creep lol
The best killer in the game is one that's been around literally since near-release, and the second-best is one that came out almost two years ago. The rest are anywhere from somewhat weak to solid but not amazing.
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To your point about zoning killers: I really think the devs should get away from this style of killer. So many killers are essentially copy/paste in how they play with slight variations. You hold M2 and either use your power or zone with it for a free hit. None of those killers are particularly efficient when the game is optimized. You end up with stale gameplay.
I suspect it's a financial decision. They don't have to change maps, tile spawns, assets, or core gameplay. They can just design killers around the problem they created with the maps. But I don't think you end up with a better game at the end of the day. Those killers are hard capped in terms of skill and how well they can do in an optimized setting. There's no back and forth or flavor to the chase. You counter all of them by playing ultra safe and not engaging at all.
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I would post a reply explaining how CoH basically negates everything OP said in that wall of text but frankly why bother. Killer powers are meaningless when one perk can remove your pressure in 20 seconds.
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A lot of killers have been powercrept out of the game...BY SURVIVOR PERKS!
Most old style M1 killers just flatout can't win against the survivor perk these days as Strategies such as "Hit and Run" which is used by a lot of older killers aren't viable due to Circle of Healing alone.
Let alone maps since the removal of infinite loops have only gotten WORSE for the killers with the introduction of "Breakable" infinite loops that came with breakable walls.
Even map reworks have all universally been survivor sided with "Breakable" wall infinite loops being introduced to them.
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This is true as well.
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Yes. Zoning killers take away everything thats fun in chases. There is no push and pull or skill difference with them. It's just predrop the pallet and hold W. Survivors don't want to instantly die when looping and killers aren't going to just not kill survivors. Its frustrating for both sides since neither will have their fun.
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The title has you laughing but then you literally talk about how a lot of killers are out preformed by other ones lmao
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Lol nurse is no where near stronger than blight what are talking about blight need few seconds to travel the map by base kit nurse has only 20 meters each main blink that alone makes her weaker than him
I would say nurse is on two maps with distance the number one and thats the game and midwicht
Blight only cant counter god pallets everything else is for a blight main no real problem nurse without range and recovery gets destroyed by dh alone bc the time she needs to wait alone will be enough for three people to rush three seperant gens to 25%
Blight can in the most cases choose to which time he wants to use all of his dashes and can easy counter dh with that
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My fun is when you eat the floor. I am not entertained by having you circle the shack four times just to drop the pallet.
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That is fair, but zoning killers are only going to lead to prethrown pallets and an eventual down. Very little actual interaction other than kicking pallets. Maybe for you all you want is to down survivors no matter the cost, but for other people who genuinely enjoy the chasing it ruins the game.
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yes, this. Maps need better balance. It's madness to have killer shack into a jungle gym, into a safe pallet tile as an option on maps. I can't remember his name but a streamer posted a video a year or two ago talking about the imbalance map tiles. He suggested smaller tiles but more of them so the game becomes more skill oriented gameplay vs. the "throws pallet...tea bag b/c i'm safe" which most loops are. I liked the idea.
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The sad thing is, BHVR is especially slow to make decisions, so the issue of power creep is even more noticeable in DBD than in some other games. Just consider how long it took them to give Trapper the one extra trap people were telling them for years. And he is still thrash tier without the reopening addon and a map offering.
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I honestly hope this is satire because blight is strong but he doesn't ignore pallets/vaults/entire walls. She just can't be compared to any other killer for how quickly she can down someone in chase if you're good. Let's not forget blight's power is on a cooldown where he becomes a generic m1 killer.
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There is no reason to play Micheal for any reason other than his character.
Except he has, I think, the most fun play variant add-ons in the game (the Mirrors and Tombstones). I'm not really into his base kit, but he's a lot of fun when you use one of the alternate playstyles, something which Ghost Face and Oni and Bubba, etc, don't have.
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It's more like they realized the mistakes they made with the first set of Killers... and have failed at updating them but to release new ones
But then again they tend to focus on different things now then they did before (for the most part)
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If they enjoyed the chase then they would play a basic killer instead of a ranged one. There is nothing stopping people from playing legion.
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Chases have been ruined thanks to how the balance is now. Most survivors just constant run along with dead hard the only things killers can do is tunnel or use zone attacks which right now isn't even that fun thanks to most killer's range attacks being slow.
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Other than legion being hot garbage.
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Except not everyone can play that due to the rng nature of the bloodweb so you might get 1-4 matches where you can have genuine fun then you can get stuck with web after web of trying to get specific items leading to a rut and people not wanting to play any more.
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It also shows bias since look at what they have done recently it takes them so long to nerf certain perks and buff killers but if it's a killer nerf it only takes a few months.
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Because playing survivor you don't have to learn to be better at the game. So much random chance is in survivors favor that many players make a mistake and then get the mistake for free, they don't learn, and then when 2-4 survivors escape they party it up like their the best - again still not learning from it. Then they face a Killer that took the time to watch/read guides, and suddenly half the killer roster is considered OP to them.
The game has become too easy for survivor they are not learning, and too hard for Killer it's too stressful. The happy medium is no fun because of Solo Que survivor and too much punishment on Killers when they make 1 mistake, or get hit by one random unpredictable instance.
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It’s not quite that bad, past about level 15 or so you always have a purple or red in the web so your odds of getting a variant add-on are actually pretty high. I know I have probably five or six spares currently for instance.
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It can just due to bad luck cause some addons won't show up or the worst of the rarer add ons can constantly show it.
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Give me one good reason why, as a Killer, I want a 60 second chase instead of a 15 second chase if my goal is to kill you.
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