The Gap Between Winning and Having Fun is Growing Wider
I had this thought recently best explained that the way the game has been going is that there is so little of fun being had for people who try to win vs. those that don't. I understand that it's always been a thing but now more than ever I have felt like if I want to win I have to play "optimally" and playing optimally for either side is straight up not fun.
Gen builds/crazy items and oppositely Tunneling/camping/strong addons etc. all feel much more common. While they do have their place in the game I think people have given up on trying to play the game differently and to have something crazy or play well without these items/strats.
But maybe that's just me.
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It certainly feels like people are trying way to hard sometimes, like trying to be overly competitive in a game that doesn't really support such behaviour. If that makes sense.
Like, when I just want to chill I get paired with sweats. When I'm actually trying, I get paired against baby survs or killers who don't know the map very well. 🤔
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I do feel that the "I must have X perk to counter X strategy so that I might be able to have fun" idea is not really one that I enjoy.
You must run gen regression or chase perks as Killer. You must run anti-camp, anti-tunnel and gen perks as Survivor. If you don't and someone else is performing the strat their meant to counter, you're in for a bad time.
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True. As killer, I don't always have fun when I win. Whether that be because the game was stressfully tight, or because I stomped a group of newbies. And games where I have most fun are sometimes games where I barely get a kill (or willingly let people go after having fun together).
As survivor, I'm not escaping that much anyway so I can't really speak for getting wins, but I sometimes have fun just messing around with random perks without actually trying to win or pip up.
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Truth, I'm not having fun anymore. I play primarily solo survivor, I thought the breath of fresh air is what we needed as things were incredibly stale before the update. Instead its just turned the game into a 3v1. I'd usually play like 10-15 games or so and be over it now I play 3 or so and need a break. Sweating out a 3v1 is not fun at all and its basically impossible.
Not blaming anyone for using the most effective tactic available, as I do it myself. When its actively ruining the game though its time for a change.
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I wish the time back before MMR. The games overall felt more casual, you had some sweaty matches between, but nothing compared to now.
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Same here. Let's have some fun, try a new killer or a funny build.
=
No-interaction Commando Elite death squad who have Windows of Opportunity as a fifth perk.
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Yeah, and it's becoming super obvious who's in a swf too. Even if they're not good, because of how coordinated they are and how they always seem to be around eachother to rescue etc.
Nothing against ppl who play in swfs, because that's how I started playing DbD. But can you at least have the decency not to be on Discord?
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Which is funny, because that was the whole supposed whole point of mid-chapter perk rework. But that feeling is worse than before at times on survivor. I escaped games last night solely because I ran Deliverance/OTR/DS and occupied a hard tunneling killer for an exorbitant amount of time. I have to run those perks to have a chance a lot of the time at my MMR.
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Pretty much this ^
Mosty as killer tho, because i feel that i have more freedom to choose perks as survivor. I do also have less wins as survivor tho.
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Do people not realize some people have fun by playing all-out?
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The tell for me is that you NEVER surprise anyone, because they've been alerted by their buddies where you are at all times (which is what, three perks worth of free info?). So every chase is longer and less interactive, more gens pop, and more guided tours of Pallet City.
A good SWF team is effectively unbeatable for me, and just feels like a frustrating and dull waste of time. MMR is virtually irrelevant compared to how much difference that makes. Right now, it's 50% interactive matches (win or lose) and 50% ones where I may as well have not shown up.
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The biggest burst window for survivors is at the very start of the match, which means that neither side really has much room to react to how a match is going if they either start extremely well or get shut down extremely quickly. Due to this, anyone who doesn't take things seriously at the very start is either sandbagging themselves or their team if their opponent is focusing on either aspect of early game impact. As people get incapacitated or killed the killer's power grows, but between when all 5 load in and that point, the survivors have massive control over the pace of the game (which they need to make progress with in order to prevent being starved later in the match.)
It was less of an issue without MMR because solo teams were much more chaotic, your chances of getting coordination (silently or through comms) were lower, while good survivors could still provide disproportionate agency reactively. Now since like minds get paired more often, you start to see more games be determined solely by which side better handles that early game situation, which is why the better you play the more sweaty every single match ends up being for either side.
The game just isn't balanced or designed well for MMR, especially with how it gets handled in terms of metrics. Its yet another thing ruled by averages, banking on "good players will win more often" regardless of their input, and resulting in "good players will get matched with other good players, who will press every advantage due to being used to expecting having to carry worse players or counter better ones."
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Yep, I literally watched this happen over the weekend. I had just spawned into a map, think it was the Mac Millen estate and I was starting my sweep of the outer gens to just figure out where everyone was, I saw a Mikalea out the corner of my eye. I see her crouch and watch me, next thing I know I see the other three survivors scatter from a nearby gen behind an LT wall. Now the way I was approaching this gen, there was no way in hell the three survivors working on it would have seen me comming (hearing the terror radius is a different issue) so how did they know that I was there, if they weren't in a swf in Discord together? Because Mikalea didn't have a flashlight to warn them. 🤔
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DbD was intended to be an e-show, not e-sports.
But players had a greater desire to win.
Also, the introduction of rates was e-sports-like. A chasm between words and execution.
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Hih, no idea why it didnt quote text the person I was replying too just now. Anyway, yeah I was playing Trickster. And I knownabout his huge radious, but the thing is I wasn't even near the wall or at least close enough to tell which direction I was comming from even if they did hear me.
Idk, I just found it suspicious that I saw Mikalea crouch into a position that had a good line of sight on not just me, but also the LT wall blind gen. Could just be a coincidence, but idk, just super suspicious. 🤔
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"Every game of dbd is uphill both ways" smh 🤦♂️
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Yes.
I feel that if you aren't running certain perks and the Killer decides that they want to play in a certain way, there's pretty much nothing you can do.
I feel that the meta shake-up, for Survivor at least, only shifted the meta slightly. The meta is still preventing Killers from tunneling you out.
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The meta shakeup only changed which perk icons you see in the corner, the core reasons for the old meta on both sides is still completely untouched, so people just adapted the changes in perks to suit the same end.
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It was a move in the right direction to shakeup the meta, undeniably.
Meta shakeups mean little when they need to cover for the base-game mechanics being flawed.
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Yep, thats why it wasn't really much of a shakeup at all. It treated symptoms but not causes, and a good number of those smaller changes actually made some aspects worse than better. Whether it was an improvement overall is going to vary from person to person, but it did fix a few issues while introducing new ones as well.
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I agree with this but I also feel them defining a win condition for MMR has made the community change too.
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The game has always had a win condition--survivors surviving and killers killing.
Regardless of whether or not an individual player put greater emphasis on pipping & bloodpoints than the act of surviving & killing, the goal has always been one and the same.
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Pipping arguably had more of an impact on your matchmaking when ranks were used for that, making it closer to a win condition in that regard. Its worth differenciating since you could depip while escaping, making the latter be only part of the former.
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It kinda shows the reason for it though
The Devs have said the way to increase MMR is too Kill or escape... And we as players want to be "the best of the best"
So that's why this is happening
Like what's fun for Survivors VS what's fun for Killers... and What's a "win" for Survivors VS what's a "win" for Killers
Are short matches fun for either side (either 5 Gens in 5 minutes or a 4K in 5 minutes)... NO
Are longer matches fun for either side (either a 20 minute match where all Survivors escape or a 20 minute match where the Killer Finds hatch and the exit gates are close by)... not really
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I think part of the problem is that they defined it (at least, by MMR standards) but have done nothing to make the game flow around that standard so it's enjoyable.
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But at that same time, rank reset only pushed everyone back a grade. People playing regularly were back to Rank 1 within a couple days--a week at most.
I'm hard-pressed to believe a majority of players were playing with pipping as their win condition when a) Ash, Bronze, and Silver Rank players could expect to pip any time they escaped or got 3-4 kills, because the prereq to pip was so low, and b) Red Rank players had nothing to gain from pipping.
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I'm going to be completely honest, if it wasnt for people defining their own personal win conditions, most of them wouldnt have stayed with the game as long as they have. My point was that there was even arguments for what the win condition was, with people having their own details they prioritized. Whatever their reasons, even just having fun is a valid win condition, especially in a game that lacks inherent balance.
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I guess this is just a different perspective but I don't really consider lack of communication from survivors to be a feature in the game. So I generally just assume if one survivor saw me that all of them know where I am. If I'm playing a killer where that really matters, like Trapper, I'll sometimes check by doing something like placing a really obvious trap and see if the rescuer either falls in it or disarms it. If the one who was unhooked disarms it, I generally don't think they're communicating with each other because if I were in an SWF I'd have my buddy disarm it rather than me who was just unhooked. It's also a bit of a test for Kindred sometimes.
I just generally don't get why in a team game, the side that's the 1 in 4v1 thinks the 4 shouldn't be able to communicate with each other. I enjoy voice comms not being in the game itself though as I don't particularly want to talk to people I don't know or feel pressured to talk to people I don't know when playing by myself.
I also know that if I'm playing survivor in solo queue and I hear Trickster's lullaby that I'm getting off of the generator to figure out where it's coming from rather than be caught in a dead zone. Especially if we've got 3 people all grouped up on a single generator at the beginning of the game.
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To me, all competitive games are about trying to win. It bothers me when someone playing isn't trying their best. I would rather have the newest player in the world who has never heard of DBD in the game than a 1000+ hour player goofing off.
That's how I play games. I've learned that others don't. BHVR though seems interested in pleasing everyone and that leaves everyone with problems.
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Oh yeah, I remember when that was the biggest topic of discussion.
"12 hooks is a win," "4 BBQ stacks is a win," "5 Stacks of Devour is a win," then the same for survivor side...
"Pipping is a win," "25k BP is a win," "4 WGLF stacks is a win."
Now we have "completing an archive is a win."
Outside of the discussions surrounding what BHVR should dictate as a win--the great Hooks vs Kills debate--I was never really convinced all these people actually considered these wins. They all sound more like silver-linings everyone sees to stay in good spirits despite what may have otherwise been a frustrating or undesirable game.
Maybe this big announcement they teased on Twitter will be another win condition! 🙃
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Getting four stacks on BBQ was the ultimate "I didn't win, but at least I accomplished something, so I had fun anyway."
The fact that they removed it from the perk without making building the system into the game itself does a pretty good job of telling you how little the Balance Team actually plays killer.
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Killer is still fun when you stop caring so much, I play farm builds with distressing+ beast of prey and I get 30k+ BP win or lose, stop caring and suddenly killer is not stressful or frustrating anymore. It's only stressful if you play like your life depends on it, run 4 slowdown perks, tunnel every game and rage at every little mistake
Solo q is another story, hard to have fun currently when tunneling is meta and camping is more effective than ever, most killers run 4 regression perks and games can last forever, most killers slug for 4k too, really obnoxious.. it's concerning that devs are ok with current state of the game
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truest statement ive read, I find that them changing the meta perks didn't fix the problem that the meta perks were originally covering and so now we have just found a new way to cover for them, and I still feel like even with somewhat different perks being used the game isnt anymore fun for having "shaking things up".
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removing bbq and wglf stacks really killed peoples incentive to play the game in a more fun / fair way since people run it less often and its stacks arent incentivized. like when you see peoples auras you wanna go chase em, which made tunneling / camping much less an issue since killers would actually be able to leave the hook and find someone.
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Just make survivors respawn after a brief wait once they're 'dead,' except after all gens are finished. Then the killer gets credit for every survivor they 'killed' while survivors still get the chance to 'escape' as long as they don't die during end game.
And since 'killing' a survivor won't permanently remove them, now they can actually buff killer powers to be POWERFUL, feel great to control, and have major impacts on the game. You know, quality of play elements that make it feel like the game wants you to use your power instead of layering a half dozen self-nerfs to punish you for trying anything other than M1.
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I've had a couple of matches yesterday where everyone popped BP offerings randomly, and Killer would use streamers/Flan. In my head I thought, "Oh good, a killer on a BP grind, fun game incoming!" but that wasn't the case. The 3/4 matches like that, Killer pretty much sweated for the 4k with 3-5 gens still up, with the endgame lobby showed them earning 12k-17k Bloodpoints without the offering bonus. From what I recall, there was even a Tombstone Myers in one of these matches, another one was a camping Andy Hag. Like, congrats I guess on the premature victory?
I'm not saying instantly meme around or let the Survs all escape and "win". You already won by applying so much early game pressure... at least take advantage of the opportunity to farm more, max out your possible earnings.
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Like I said, it could have been a coincidence, but it was just too sus for my liking.
During that match I had Bitter Murmurs equipped and everytime a gen popped, it would always be three people on the gen. While the Mikalea was always sort of off to the side, with a good sight line on possible angles of approach for the killer while also keeping the gen in view as well.
She was also the one who would try to body block the hook when I'd manage to down someone, she was also the one who went for the unhook the most as well.
As for why I'm against VC in a game like DbD, it just gives the survivors an unfair advantage over the killer. In that they'll always know where the killer is in position to gens, so they can plan which gens to do in advance etc. It's very unfair, heck I'd even go as far as to call it a varient of subtle cheating.
If your in a VC to just talk or meme with friends, then that's fine. But using it to pass information that the killer just doesn't have, it's just too unbalanced.
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I just think it's a strange opinion to think that the opposing team should have no information from each other and to believe that having that information is either unfair or even as far as subtle cheating.
It's a part of the game. You're on the side with 1. Of course you don't have information from your teammates. But, if you go into the game thinking that it's an unfair advantage, of course you'll feel like they're cheating even when they're not. The devs have openly stated that it's an intended mechanic of the game and the reason they haven't added VC are for unrelated reasons regarding other problems with VC. They know that VC exists outside of DBD and the only reason to use VC built into the game is to talk with strangers and they just didn't want to add that.
I just think you'll generally have more fun with the game when you stop thinking of survivors communicating with each other as cheating. I've seen that's a fairly common belief in DBD and the feeling like the other team is cheating will of course trigger a person. But, that's really all just your own perspective and not one that's shared by the game developers. It's also not one consistent with other online games that have a team component.
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