Balance gaps: We need adaptive difficulty mechanics during the match for both sides (à la Bloodlust)

_VTK_

Most of my games as solo survivor either end in 4k (most of them) or 0k.

By the nature of this asymmetric game, plus solo vs SWF gap, one of the possible solutions for game balance could be introducing more adaptive difficulty mechanics (not perks) into the game, in the vein of Bloodlust, but for both killer and survivors.

If the killer tried his best, but all 4 survivors survived until the end game and are opening gates, it's probably due to bad game balance and matchmaking, it's ok to give him some bonus, to increase his chances to kill 1-2 survivors. Same goes for survivors, for example if there are still many gens to be done and there are only 2 or 1 survivors left, introduce a special mechanic, call it "dedication", "Entity mercy" or something else. It can be anything, for example speed up all survivor actions (repairing, healing, opening gates) for each killed survivor, speed them down slightly for each repaired gen.

I would rather just buff Solo to the level of SWF and re-balance killers accordingly to fix the balance, but since this is still not done, adaptive game difficulty is another way to go and we already have in form of Bloodlust and Hatch, we need more such mechanics.

Adjatha

Adaptive Difficulty is a good call.

The best place to put it? Skill Checks.

For new players, skill checks are challenging and require a great deal of focus. For experienced players, skill checks are a nuisance that might as well not exist. But what's this? We have mechanics that make skill checks easier and harder in the game, increasing/decreasing the size of the zone, speeding things up, moving the meter, reversing the dial, diminishing the warning sound, and so forth.

Ergo, New players (and those with very, very low ELO) should have EASIER skill checks, so they can focus on the game going on around them rather than tunnel vision on the generator. As they improve the checks get harder. On the opposite end, super high ELO players get VERY difficult check all the time. They actually have to focus instead of just breezing through the game's central Survivor Mechanic. They would actually sometimes fail their checks, slowing down Gen Rush and giving the killer much-needed information in the super high tiers.

All of the tools to do this already exist in the game.

_VTK_

To both of the replies above. Maybe I wasn't clear enough, I meant adaptive difficulty per match, not globally.

For example if a killer gets matched with very skilled survivor on a very killer-unfriendly map, you might end up not killing anyone, this is frustrating, it happened because of game issues, not because the killer was bad, because the average skill is probably equal for both survivors and the killer, since the game put you into the same match, so during a single game the difficulty should be adapted, since global game balance fails very often in DBD. Unfortunately global adaptive game difficulty wouldn't be able to solve that problem. I'm, not saying it's good or bad, it's just a different issue.

What I agree with is that skill checks could be made harder for survivors during the game, if survivors dominate over the killer.

randonly

At the beginning of the game, it may not seem like it, but things were balanced around the highest possible potential expected from the game where many consider "survivor side" and broken/stressful things (for both sides)

1. At the very beginning there were no groups, you just joined the Solo survivor queue

2. Infinite, with standard fast vault - on the other hand, the killer had the iri Mori that allowed him to kill as soon as the survivor fell to the ground for the first time regardless of how many times he/she went to the hook (was nerfed 2x)

3. No bloodlust and no exhaust system (perks used cooldown and could be stacked in the same game)

What I mean by all this is that "the global balance", as you called it, in fact tends to constantly fluctuate (they don't live only on successes), since one of the big flaws was adding groups in the queues, and has been improving little by little in certain aspects, like adjusting the moris, the keys, and from there decreasing and removing the infinities, etc., but I don't think a simple difficulty adaptation system will solve more serious problems.

As long as BHVR doesn't have courage to try to change intrinsic mechanics in the game to improve game design issues, (like, for example, changing hook system to an auto-respawn and creating secondary objectives to repair generators), this adaptation system will just be more a band-aid for the game, like the bloodlust mechanic you mentioned.