DBD's Hit box Problems

AnnoyingNarrator

With the recent release of Project W, the topic of hit boxes has been brought up multiple times, but I have not seen anyone do a good job in explaining the whole mess so I thought I would give it a shot.

Put simply, DBD has two main types of hit boxes. The hit box of the environment and props, and the hit box of the players.

When it comes to the environmental hit boxes, DBD tries to match them as closely as possible to what they look like. When it comes to the hit box of players, both killer and survivor, they instead use simple shapes.

Why? Because more accurate hit boxes don't actually make a better game. Consistency is more important than accuracy, especially in a online game with everyone experiencing some sort of lag.

Many attacks that look like one thing end up being something else in terms of hit boxes. Huntress is in fact the world's best dodge ball player while Nemesis's tentacle acts more like a flamethrower. A great example of why hit boxes are designed this way can be found with Deathslinger. Deathslinger's shots function as you expect, it is a fast moving projectile.

Instead, Deathslinger reveals how absolute jank survivors hit boxes can appear at time. You aim for the head and miss, but aim above them and it hits? This is because survivor's hit box is just a pill that is around them. They all share the same hit box, and it does not change even if they are injured.

So to recap, survivors are in fact fall guys, killers love playing dodge ball, and Nemesis managed to smuggle a flamethrower into the trials. What is the problem?

Remember when I said that BHVR tries to match the hit boxes to the props? I am going to be blunt and say that DBD has some of the worst map making decisions I have ever seen. Most games have a set of consistent numbers and rules that mappers follow. This height does fall damage, this height does not. This door is big enough for two people, this door is not. This is crouch height, this is not. DBD just does not do any of that. Is the loop crouch high? Maybe. Does it protect you from a ranged attack? Possibly. Will this fall trigger balanced landing? ;).

This leads us to the problem. DBD uses two different systems for hit boxes and they don't mesh well at all. As someone with over 1000 hours in this game, I still do not understand how the hit boxes interact. If you want to know why killer's like blight and nurse are so popular, this is partially why. There is no worse feeling than landing what looks like a hit only for a twig to block it.

In the context of Project W, Wesker suffers from a lot of these problems. It is hard to use his power when it feels like I need to be a surgeon to get basic results while Blight, while being just as hard to use, lets me dominate the game.

When it comes to solution, the developers have a couple of options. A good first step is adding some sort of practice mode showing the hit boxes to make it more clear how to use and how to counter certain powers. They could go back and make map's hit boxes be more simple and easy to understand.

This is a complicated problem, one that many games, if not all, have to deal with.

ImNotBobDylan

Totally agree this game has some of the least intuitive hitboxes I've ever seen and when practicing huntress I also wondered why we couldn't get a debug command that shows hitboxes (in private matches).

BHVR should probably do a new pass on the hitboxes of the environment and make them closer to their visual aspect, especially bush and car hitboxes look clearly improvable.