BHVR and their game design decisions
Its just baffling to me how almost every decision and change they make to the game is so out of touch with how basic human psychology works, its frustrating.
Increasing gen time so the killer would feel less pushed into using slowdown perks, how does this idea even make it out of the meeting room?
With this logic you could make a single gen take 40s to repair, because this will make survivor feels less in need to focus on gens so they wont try as hard. But in reality you would see even more perk/item loadouts to get the gens done even quicker. it crazy that after so much years there is still so much incompetence in the company.
The biggest mistake which seems like the nail in the coffin was to increase killrates. Past few years the killrates were around high 50% and with the latest stats released we got close to 50% (aka BALANCE). As stated they want the killrate to go higher. Again this huge incomptence, lack of understanding of basic human psychology. People want a challenge as long as it feels balanced. Making 1 side stronger than the other does only work in PvE games but not in PvP games. PVP only works if it feels fair because the players know that they are playing against another person, not some AI.
Am i out of touch how this works myself or does BHVR lack a department that takes stuff like this into account?
At this point all fun of survivors feels to be drained away from the game to make place for this weird powerfetish that some killer players seem to have.
I could be wrong about all of this, yet im curious what other people think.
Comments
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I don't want to become one of those on this forum that always seem to bash BHVR, but I have to admit in the 4+ years I've been playing, their decisions for the most part do seem more focused on their own personal agenda rather than what they think is best for the fans or the game.
Clearly they make a good amount of money from the DLCs and Cosmetics, so I can't see why they can't start putting fans first instead of always trying to milk as much cash from the game as possible.
I also feel like they treat fans like idiots by making rubbish excuses for certain changes and expecting us not to see through it. Removing BP from BBQ + WGLF for example. Instead of saying, 'players only used these perks for BP which is a waste of a perk slot' they should have said 'we know players on both sides love double BP, but it's more beneficial for us as a business to keep the grind for perks and items so completionist players will remain commited to our game and invest more, so now we want players to work a bit harder for BP'.
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But then they have lot more data than you, are you sure they are that "out of touch"?
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In this case - yes,they are out of touch.
Taken the MMR system as an example. They do have the "data" of all your escapes via exit gates. So that's what they base your MMR on,because this is the ONLY condition for your +MMR.
But does it really represent what kind of player you are,especially in solo Q where YOUR win depends on 3 other people? The so called data doesn't care how many gens you repaired, how many teammates you unhooked, how long you looped the killer for so your team could do the gens, how altruistic you've been in game by taking chase/protection hits when someone else was injured or dead-zoned. NONE OF THAT MATTERS if you didn't make it through the gate.
And for all the "git gud" arguments - even if I'm able to loop the killer for 5 gens, there's no guarantee that after I finally go down the said 5 gens will be done. You know why? Because it's solo Q and everyone is doing god knows what.
That's why MMR is complete BS and will continue to be until they rework the factors playing into increasing/lowering each one's individual MMR.
That's why you get into MMR hell, meaning you may be a competent survivor but get thrown into lobbies with newbies or baby survivors, because 1 person can't carry all 4 to victory if he's the only one trying.
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Actually, MMR calculation has never been an issue for calculating individual MMR, maybe it could be replaced to team win/lose but that's about it.
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The weirdest part for me was that they had the forethought to make it so endurance couldn't stack but not much into stacking slowdowns despite it getting just as many complaints.
But then again. Healing speed have already been able to reach busted levels, so I guess it's not all that surprising.
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This 100%. Nobody was asking for the BP bonuses for these perks to be removed, and tons of players (including me) loved using them and were totally fine “wasting” a perk slot for extra BP. Then BHVR, thinking that their idiot player base would be just fine with the rationale, came along and gave us laughable reasons for taking the BP bonuses away. “We didn’t want players using a perk slot for BP”. Well, a lot of players were perfectly happy doing this! It was just an excuse to undo a good chunk of the grind reduction, and everybody knows it.
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I don't think that was their logic, if they wanted less slowdown perk usage, they would have just bombed all slowdown. Games rarely went beyond five minutes and that was an issue. I still believe they need to nerf slowdown into the ground, and they probably will soon enough.
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Related to that kind of changes with a hidden motive, the grind reduction for me its one of the worst, not the grind reduction itself which is ok but the change to the Shrine of Secrets, before getting a perk was 2000 shards, getting a full Survivor loadout was 6000, while unlocking the character costs 9000, this means you saved 3000 shards by using the Shrine instead of unlocking a Survivor (which are skins anyway, they function all the same), you could use those saved shards to unlock Killers which have different playstyles so its worth having them.
Now unlocking a perk costs 2000 shards but only rank1, rank 2 is 4000 and rank3 is 6000, adding to a total 12000 also you cant even unlock the rank3 on the same Shrine, you have to wait 3 cycles, not only is 6 times more expensive but it may take 2 years for it to appear 3 times, this puts people who dont want to grind bloodwebs into a dilemma, either you go back to dealing with bloodwebs or you cough up money to unlock the characters, especially the licenses, Im not interested on paying money for licensed Survivors because they are just skins but this change pushes me into grinding bloodwebs or paying because the rank3 shard unlock is not feasible.
I wonder if the developers tought of this change or was it the marketing/bussiness department...
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Reading that about the shrine is actually kinda depressing
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Eh, I think that touches on something else BHVR tried to address with the update. Killers were not weak before this update. If someone was losing consistently, they were doing something very wrong.
What they may have seen was that kill rates were ok, but participation was low. Meaning the casual killer either wasn't playing, or they were playing and had those 5 minute games.
But you create another problem when you balance around that type of player. Now survivors aren't rewarded for their good plays to nearly the same degree. If a survivor takes the killer on a long chase to an optimal area while their teammates slam gens, why shouldn't the survivors win? Why would survivors play if their good plays no longer matter and poor killer decisions are half as impactful?
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The devs have also said earlier this year that they want to adjust the MMR system to treat survivors as a group versus individually so that, for instance, if someone sacrifices themselves so that the other three survivors escape then all four survivors’ ratings increase. My guess is that change is on hold since they probably will want to collect a lot of additional data post this midchapter patch because it will cause a seismic shift in the ratings as players get used to the new system. But I definitely support this stated intention to shift focus toward the survivors actually being a team rather than four individuals that are kind of like a team but not really.
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Honestly, the removal of BP on BBQ is one of the big factors increasing camping/tunneling.
With BBQ: you're incentivized to find, chase, and hook every survivor at least once. And to help that, you're given a little (long-range only) aura reading to send you on your way. Without the BP boost, the long-range aura reading isn't even remotely useful enough to bring the perk. And without the BP boost, you have no reason to find all the survivors instead of just making sure one or two survivors get knocked out.
If they were going to remove the BP from BBQ, they should've made it a core game mechanic instead. As is, why bother trying to chase the Good player on the team, when you can just knock out the Bad player instead?
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