DbD balancing for casual players is smart decision, VHS balanced for top 1%, current players at 39
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So then killers should just automatically lose the game if they run into a good 4-man SWF team? Or should we just only have the 1 or 2 viable killers? But then if we have only 1 or 2 viable killers, those killers still stomp every other survivor group.
The real solution to this problem is obvious. They need to make solo queue a little more bearable, by allowing them to communicate with each other. Give them kindred and bond as basekit, make blindness not as punishing as a status effect (seriously against solos it's the strongest status effect).
THEN.
We need to make a separate queue for SWF vs solo queue and have the game simply be balanced differently. Maybe in the "SWF" queue, you have to repair more gens, or the killer moves 5% faster, or there are less pallets, or whatever, to bring down the power of the SWF. Then if the solo queues are still too weak, you can fix that, maybe in that mode, there are more pallets, or gen times are a little faster, or bloodlust is disabled. You get the idea.
OR
They need to change what the definition of a "win" is for the killer. Maybe a "win" is actually just killing 1 survivor. That way, if the killer gets a single kill, they "win" against the SWF, and the solo queue players still feel good because they got 2 or 3 people out. So individually they "won" but maybe their team still "lost"
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Nurse has above 50% winrate even at all mmr stats.
I mean sure its isnt 60%, but still above 50%
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The devs are obviously shooting for 60%. I can't say why, but it is pretty clear that is their goal.
But, let's say they are shooting for 50% +/- 5%. Then based on the data:
Let me know when the nerfs drop for:
- Pinhead
- SADAKO!
- Wesker
- Freddy
- PIG!
- Plague
- Dredge
- Spirit
- Artist
- MYERS!
- LEGION!
- NEMESIS!
- Hag
- Bubba
- Oni
- WRAITH!
- Pyramid head
- GHOSTFACE!
- CLOWN!
- Blight
- Twins
- DEATHSLINGER!
- HUNTRESS!
- TRAPPER!
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Or they just have to play however good or bad and get carried by the other 3 teammates. You can't make that claim when agency is not divided evenly by 25% between survivors, they can carry just as easily as they can throw. Thats before even getting into the agency denial potential of either side.
This game is remarkably easy to "fail upward" due to how simple its win condition is for survivors, paired with the difficulties of their individual contribution. It always has been.
Edit: Regarding the overall topic, balancing for the top 1% doesn't need to conflict with the other 99%. It just means closing things that go beyond what is acceptable for one side or another, like the locker save changes. Things like startstruck nurse would obviously be included in that as well, but actually balancing would involve reducing the exploit potential and agency denial of both sides to a minimum. It wouldn't involve "removing fun" in any way unless the "fun" people got was from exploiting something their opponent can do nothing about.
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That's pretty much how the design of asymmetrical games works. A single person of the team of 4, must be definition be weaker than the 1 of the team of 1. Thus the team of 4 MUST play well as a team in order to win.
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So that means killer has big advantage vs SOLOQ players if there is even one weak link, however they are at disadvantage vs a good SWF, good balancing.
DbD has excellent balance right now.
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It kind of sounds like you want to emphasize the best balance over fun which is another reason that balancing for the top 1% kills games. If people aren't having fun why should they play or buy things for a game they don't enjoy? Very imbalanced is, of course, another way to kill a game but balance is a tool used to achieve fun. If the choice is better balance or more fun then balance is the subordinate goal and fun is the endgoal.
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How many times do the devs need to disclaim not to try to use kill stats like this?
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Yeah I think anymore buff to killers would hurt the survivor playerbase, right now its little killer favoured, but i guess it needed because most people cant handle losing playing as the one role, so they need a little bonus to winrate, 60% quite good number to aim for
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VHS had a large playerbase at launch, the issue is that the monster role is just not fun to play in any way shape or form for the overwhelming majority of players. Most of the reviews talk about queue times, well I had queue times lower than 10 seconds consistently for the first few months of the game being in Early Access on Steam.
They need to completely rework the monster role from the ground up to be enjoyable and accessible to newer players to actually get some players back.
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Thats not the point of the target at all, its due to the lowest common denomination being forced to 25% intervals with a target that is higher than 50% (that still rounds down to 2/2 instead of 1/3,) and is weighted away from the "result of no interaction," i.e 4E.
Its not "because x side is hurting" or anything like that, its actually a very logical target considering how the game is designed, including the very same shared agency difference you mentioned earlier.
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Yeah, I think the next step to aim for is buffs to solo queue to help out solos and then let kill rates settle before changing too much. There are individual Killers like Trapper who need something but, overall, Killer is in a good spot. It's only an opinion, of course, but I think solo needs help the most and after that settles we can see how things look again.
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Pretty much why EvilDead failed really hard. Like that game had some potential, but they kept making huge balance changes based on top SWF v Demon teams and it basically killed it. Sure some people still play but it's kinda dead.
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VHS fell off because of multiple factors, not just because of balancing issues. They had amazing momentum with their game on launch but never used that momentum to their advantage. They never really advertised their game. And more importantly there was a lot of mismanagement which hindered the game's growth.
Combine this with the lack of proper advertising the game never really was able to capture a bigger playerbase and only really blew up because a few content creators just so happened to notice the game. Ive only seen 1 ad for VHS since it's release and that was only for their recently released character, yet Ive seen more ads for other Asym Horror Games, even Evil Dead: The Game made better use of the momentum they had.
Not to mention how Beta Keys were a pain in the rear to get. Most people who wanted the play the game couldnt because the game was basically blocked off to a majority of people. And getting access to a working Beta Key was a horrible experience when most of the time they never worked.
VHS also had major issues with their servers and hacking, which I believe they ended up getting DDOSed and having their servers down for weeks as a result. Hacking killed the game early on because it launched with borderline no anti-cheat, it was worse than DBD's anti-cheat (but DBD is more mainstream so you are more likely to find cheaters, but that is besides the point). It led to a horrible consumer experience that turned people away from the game.
The developers are great, they seem to really care about their game and they really tried to get it off the ground, but their mistakes and mismanagement added up and killed their game before it could even take off.
Post edited by Iron_Cutlass on0 -
Not necessarily, because a Survivor team that is comprised of some better than Killer and some worse than Killer can balance out accordingly if you actually TRY to balance.
Why do most other games that balance around the good players not have this problem of being not fun? Balancing for the top is a common way to balance that is reliable and can lead to satisfying gameplay. Why is DBD exempt from this philosophy?
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Okay but at lauch they had close 5k players, yet they lost 60% of them, I dont think any marketing could have saved the game.
Sure there were less people because the lack of marketing, but player retention easily of the worst in the genre, other failed game in the genre also had no marketing, yet they managed to grow at first like Propnight, and HSHS, only at second month started to lose players, and they also had the same amount of player 4-5k at top just like VHS.
Again DDOS lost players for them before the launch, but after the launch they had no DDOS, those 5k players just hated the game, since player retention was so awful, only 40% playerbase remaning after a month.
Propnight managed to gain +5% after a month, HSHS gained +10% after a month, so those were much more successfull, not to mention that those games even after a year has more players than VHS.
So VHS is truly horrible with balancing
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At least me never said top 1% i always said Comms also i would say the prob with VHS is chasing is uninteractive
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A lack of marketing prevents growth, or at least normal growth. If the player count will never increase because the game can never reach a broader audience, then hypothetically the only direction it can go is a decline. Having growth can also cancel out or reduce the declining playercount.
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Which games are balancing around the top 1% that are actually fun and not esports? The asymmetrical nature complicates all balancing but if you can list some games that would help. I can think of some games where it didn't sink the game entirely but it wasn't fun for a lot of other players but I don't think that's what you're referring to.
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Gotta say, it's pretty funny seeing streamers who thought VHS would be a DBD Killer come crawling back.
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The disagreement I have with the lack of marketing argument is the timeframe. In a matter of a few months VHS went from a high of 6,023 concurrent players on Steam to 140 currently and I wouldn't be surprised if next month was double digits. That is too fast of a decline for not marketing to be the primary cause. If it were spread out over years, that would be a different story.
The not enough marketing, at least to me, seems to be an extension of the 'But more beta keys will fix it!' to but 'But EA will fix it!' to 'But a better tutorial' and now to VHS needed more marketing.
It's too fast of a decline to be just marketing and the core issues were never fixed; new player Monster isn't fun enough to keep more than a small amount of people who tried it, of the ones who stayed they learned Monster wasn't fun even once you learned it, and without enough people to fill one side the match making, queue times, etc break down and impact the otherwise amazing and well-done Teen side.
In closed beta, whenever the fun part was brought up a common retort was 'But the balance!' and the devs gave high priority to the input from the same group of 50 people who were highly skilled at the game while ignoring the people in the lower levels of VHS who were saying it might be fun at the top but it's not balanced.
I literally said directly to the devs that if Monster is not fun enough to keep at least a minimum of 15% of the playerbase playing it and preferably 20% then all the rest doesn't matter because as Monsters leave queue times will grow, matchmaking will become harder and the Teens will also start to leave and this would crater the game.
Unfortunately, I was right and this is exactly what happened. I'm not surprised because as for my actual job over the last decade I have advised businesses (I'm not a teacher, I use TheSubstitute because of the mistaken leak for the Teacher Killer for DbD and teachers are good horror genre) and it was easy to see coming.
I am saddened, to be honest, because the game had so much potential but it forgot its product was entertainment value and balance was a tool and not a goal in and of itself.
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Why do they have to not be "esports"? Games that are balanced and played at the tournament level can still be plenty fun for casuals.
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100% but DbD is not an esport and doesn't have the market to be an esport. If it were an esport or becoming an esport were a viable business model I would change my mind. I could be mistaken about the model; it's not like I've carried out extensive market analysis but based on the reaction from esports players going to play DbD I don't think that's viable (but still just an opinion).
If being an esport is not a viable option, then DbD should balance for its strengths and not for something that's not a good course of action.
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NGL if you actually do this for a job like you claim, you really should learn the difference between correlation and causation. You're doing an awful lot of dismissing of relevant factors to laser focus on a single one, which would be extremely bad for prospecting clients who wish to take all relevant data from any success/failure in marketing and growth.
Lack of growth is much more of a death knell than even balance, as it creates a net negative potential. If you literally have nowhere to go but down, then the failure cascades rapidly as the sample set not only has no room to expand, but it shrinks directly relative to awareness. Its both poisoned stock and natural decline bottled together, and the vast majority of almost any game's sales happen in its opening 2 weeks, while marketing and advertising/promotion are designed to ebb vs the natural decline flow.
I'm not saying anything you have to say about VHS is right or wrong necessarily, just that you're drawing a lot of assumptions and dismissing a lot of valid reasoning.
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Well said, but they never listened, there was always some excuse, just as you say, open EA will fix everything being free game will fix everything, marketing will fix everything, now I see that full release will fix everything.
They just forgetting its too late and since its free game, it doesnt matter if fully released because already free and few remaining 2000+ hours player will ensure that no new player can stay
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Balancing around the top % is bad, but you can balance things FOR the top %.
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I was saying it as it being one of many factors leading to VHS's downfall, Im not saying the lack of marketing is the sole reason behind the game dying. "There are a lot of moving parts towards the game's decline" was the mere concept of what I was saying, since a game's decline is more complex than just one thing being the cause.
Balance, or the lack there of, can be a contributing factor, but I believe it isnt everything when the game's early management made the game destine to fail. VHS's developers were kind of just known was "the people making that one game that will never come out in a polished state" and a lot of my friends dropped the game because they felt the direction it was going early in development was not so good. And I feel bad for the developers because they really tried to make the game work, just so many things went wrong.
They lost a huge chunk of their audience in early development. Yes, those who stayed despite it's early on issues might have not liked it, but the fact so many people left in early development should be considered since the game would have a better possibility of a thriving playerbase. Post-launch, it died because of the balance or lack there of, but through it's development, it could never get the foothold it needed to go anywhere to begin with. As I stated, the game was destined to fail to begin with.
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The product itself was flawed, and almost anyone who played monster could tell that its the most frustrating role in the whole genre, I never played anything more miserable in the genre than that, after few games unistalled, and teen while was fun, didnt worth to wait over 20+ minutes to get a game, thats how it is. DbD killer without any buff felt so much powerful than the monster in VHS.
It was also better to be "killer" in Propnight, in F13, in HSHS, in Sprit Detective, in Evolve and even in Deathgarden .
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Cool, none of that refutes anything that I said, however.
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I understand what you're saying but it's not like I was hired and performed analytics. I was a player with a business background. I'm also not saying other factors didn't contribute but as for the primary cause it was primarily problems with the Monster role, and while not having any research or data so I'm making an opinion, I'm guessing the primary part of that was the new Monster experience based off of what I saw repeating from the beta waves.
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I'm not disagreeing that what you said was a factor; we just have a disagreement over what the primary cause was.
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You went off listing valid reasoning as excuses and conflated them with other excuses made concerning other games. Why try to throw clout with your profession if your observation was directly counterintuitive to it? My point was that the person you were responding to had valid reasonings that can both coexist with your own and can have more direct causation than your hypothesis. Your stance is also subject to outcome bias paired with anecdotal accounts, which again, makes it a secondary cause much more than a primary one. Just try not to be dismissive with stances that agree with reality but disagree with your outlook.
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It doesn't have to be an esport to be viable for balancing around the good players, though.
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This post is a little disingenuous to be honest. Do I think exclusively balancing for the top 1% is the best way to to balance a game? Not really, but that's also not the sole reason VHS flopped. Whoever is in charge of their marketing needs to be fired because between the waves of beta keys and its official release there was no consistent line of communication and unless you were deeply invested you more than likely missed out on key information/dates that would contribute to you playing the game. That combined with balance and other factors is more relevant than just the balance alone
Its one thing to try to compete with a monopoly, its another thing to compete with a monopoly while also treating it like a small fish in a large pond. I rip BHVR a hole whenever they do/say something dumb but I'm also the first one to give them props when they deserve it. Despite being cringe sometimes, BHVR does an amazing job of trying to maintain multiple points of contact with the community via Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/Forums/Twitch and their unique gimmicks (Into the Fog, Roadmaps, Developer Updates, etc.)
Even if it winds up being wack sometimes I at least know BHVR tries to redeem themselves and will continue to utilize their promotional tools. They go out of their way to try and pull players in, VHS to my knowledge did none of that, to the point that me (somebody who was actually waiting for the game to come out) forgot when the game was even coming out because unless I went out of my way to search for it I wouldn't see any news or promo. You also have to consider the fact that it was also renamed due to the VHS trademark from what I heard. I had a friend keep on asking me if I was gonna play Video Horror Society and I had to actually connect the dots right there and realize he was actually talking about VHS. I wasn't a die-hard fan waiting to play it on day 1 so maybe its just me, but I legit didn't know until that moment that the name was changed
Post edited by AJStyIez on1 -
Yea, I just now realized how poorly worded my original reply was, I changed it since when I first started commenting on it I was still half asleep and more focused around a discussion based around balancing Eruption.
I was trying to say that the game fell off for a variety of reasons, not just a single one, and that what you said can be a contributing factor, but not the sole reason behind the game dying. I changed my original reply so it reflects it a lot clearer.
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To be fair, even though VHS and Evil Dead flopped the build-up to them is not to be underestimated. They legit applied pressure on BHVR to step their game up, its not a coincidence some of the most controversial patches and popular licenses to date all happened within the same timeframe as the hype-train for those two games
BHVR clearly took them as a serious threat, because once they found out VHS did a surprise wave of beta keys they instantly launched a surprise bloodrush event the same day
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This is exactly it. The optimal play is almost always to not engage at all or to play passively. It has little to do with a balance target. It's just a boring game. You duck around cover and wait for cooldowns. Rinse and repeat. No mechanical skill involved with any of the powers. The most complicated thing is a watered down Demo shred with WART. Plus there's the frustration element of completely silent ambushes. You constantly have to stop and stutter to bait out ambushes at every corner because there's zero input that one is coming. It's not a well-designed game. That's why it failed.
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Where did I ever say that the other reasons listed were excuses? What evidence do you have that the new player experience for Monster was not the primary cause and where did I make the logical fallacies you said I'm making? Also, where did I say that what I said was the only reason instead of what I believe to be the main reason? I'm also not throwing clout by mentioning my background to further elaborate on what happened but to try to help convey part of the reason why I'm so disappointed this happened to VHS.
You're normally very calm and reasonable but, and my apologies if this isn't the case, but you're coming across as a bit hostile. Did I phrase something poorly or annoy you somehow?
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That's cool, thanks. None of us have the data or are willing to perform an extended analysis even if we had the data so we're just stating opinions. What I believe is the main reason might not be and what you believe might be; it's just opinions and I'm fine to agree to disagree on any opinions anyway.
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In the very post i originally quoted? In case you forgot:
The not enough marketing, at least to me, seems to be an extension of the 'But more beta keys will fix it!' to but 'But EA will fix it!' to 'But a better tutorial' and now to VHS needed more marketing.Again, You were being extremely dismissive to another person who was making very valid points about the game's outcome in order to try to push a lesser reasoning as primary. Balance doesn't matter if the game's only sample size is its release window, and it gains little to no new blood to expand said sample size. Thats why I called it poisoned stock earlier, it lacks growth both in actual players as well as perspectives. This game didn't even have looping as an intentional mechanic at the start, and it changed a lot over the years, and had plenty of its success while in an extremely unbalanced state. My issue is that you're trying to force a lesser reason as the primary one, which I would dismiss as simply uninformed if not for claiming to understand how these things work from a professional level. That makes it come off as more disingenuous, regardless of whether that was your intent.
Edit: if your dismissals were knee jerk or something then fine, seeing you're more agreeing to disagree is also fine, I just call these things out as I see them. Sometimes people don't even realize when they do it.
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In this case while marketing is a factor it would be, in my opinion, fallacious to say it was a primary factor. A game that is fun to play, even without marketing, will not experience an over 95% drop in its playerbase in the timeframe that VHS has been out.
I'm not being dismissive of the person either. I am dismissing marketing as the primary reason it failed. If you are unfamiliar with this part of VHS history everytime the issues with Monster came up they were dismissed with the 'But this will fix it!'.
Rather than launching ad hominem attacks such as claiming I don't understand correlation and causation and calling me uninformed and disingenuous perhaps you could explain to me or show me a game of similar complexity as VHS but was fun that lost over 95% of its playerbase in a few months due to just not marketing? One that had a few thousand players in its playerbase would make for a more accurate comparison.
If you can't find one or show that losing over 95% of your playerbase over a few months in a fun game that has the same complexity and replayability of VHS is normal perhaps you should consider that a lack of marketing was not the primary reason.
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I just saw the edit in your post. That makes it seem a lot less hostile. Thanks for adding that.
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The devs definitely have the right idea, balancing for the vast majority of players.
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There is a reason so many companies do not make new IPs. It is an extreme risk to release a game with zero foreknowledge and pre-release marketing is all that is needed for a "single experience" title. When you make a "game as a service"/living game/whatever moniker is used for it, post release support and promotion is even more important then pre-release. It affects everything including balancing, as rebalancing is a very important aspect of player retention. This is actually a very important distinction in the medium, and is a major part of why even single player games attempt to mimic it when and where they can.
Marketing is more than just pre-release advertising, post-release support is also a factor in it. This game is a great example with its licensed chapters, they do a lot to market the game to new players and understandably see a jump in players with their releases. People buy chapters like the SH and RE ones, Pinhead/Freddy/etc because they're iconic. BHVR pays for the licensing because they know it will bring more people in, aka marketing.
Games that don't get post release support are a trend that the industry recognizes too well. Its why growth is so important, this game in particular has lost a massive amount of players since its release, but also gained much more to offset it. And again, this game has gone through some near unplayable levels of imbalance, even if the worst of them were generally short lived.
Also when did I say "just" marketing? Again, I have been saying that poor balance was not the primary cause, and have been showing that marketing has more of an impact relative. I also stated that you can agree to disagree and reiterated that my issue was only with your insistence that your perceived issue is both the primary one and that others are inconsequential. Also don't know when I made any ad hominems, unless you mean pointing out your stance leans heavily into outcome bias.
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I never mean to be hostile with these types of things, I'm always more for clarifying and avoiding dismissals. Even with what I've said about lessening the burden of the outcome on the game's balance, I have no opinion if it was a contributing factor and am sure it played no small part. Its just a bit dangerous to incorrectly assume single factors like that are the only one when trying to learn from another company's mistake, thats the kind of thing they did a lot in the industry in the 90's.
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But I'm not insisting the other reasons are inconsequential. I'm saying my belief is that the primary factor, which as I define as greater than the other factors, was the Monster side and of that the new player experience of Monster factored more into player retention than the unfun nature of Monster. As I stated above, I don't have any data and, to be honest, don't really care if I'm that accurate in my attributions of importance or not since if any reliable data ever came out I would change my opinion to be in accordance with the data. I'm not aware of any historical comparisons that show that the player loss that VHS experienced could be attributable to a lack of marketing and thus don't see it as a primary factor. A factor, yes. A primary factor, no.
I think this is just a breakdown in communication. I might not have explained it clearly enough but of the multiple factors that caused the downfall of VHS my opinion is that the largest factor, but not the only, was the Monster experience and this primarily came about because the devs focused on balancing on the top 1% as the primary goal. As I said, I don't have any data or analyses to look at but from what I've seen and my experiences in closed beta I think there's a good possibility that that was the primary cause. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong and if I'm right, I'm right. It's not a big deal to me if I'm correct; I'm more upset over the fact that this was all avoidable and VHS had a lot of potential that will be lost if it simply just closes shop.
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The reason I'm so insistent on the clarification is because of how dangerous that type of information is. People who don't understand the situation will easily point at people who do to make their arguments for them, not understanding the first thing about the topic to begin with. The echo chamber effect is too strong, which is why opposing viewpoints need equal consideration. The topic was originally about how this game apparetly needs to balance specifically for casual players because balancing for top players is poisonous because of VHS as a case sample, which is why I'm so adamant in my stance. Its more about the conclusions people draw from the data than the data itself, which is why its near impossible to actually have constructive balance discussions at all. The initial dismissals, regardless of whether you meant them, serve as vindication for people who refuse to take insight from opinions they disagree with. Agreeing to disagree is perfectly fine, its just important that such a stance be an informed one and not one of vindication.
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VHS was never gonna be able to compete DBD anyway.
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I see your point. I assume that most people know that I will change my opinion based on data, that I'm fine to agree to disagree on most topics and that without data and facts backing me up I consider everything I say to be an opinion and to be taken as such. I know that I shouldn't assume everyone knows that but it slips my mind since the natural tendency is for people to assume other people think like them. Thanks for clarifying.
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Of course, and sorry I came out of the gate so strong.
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