Survivors, Win States And...Are We Looking At This All Wrong?
Ugh, so I had a long thread written up on this and our cat attempted to eat my keyboard, and I lost it.
So, short version:
I see quite a lot of survivors, or people who play both roles like myself talk about win rate and escape rate, as if they were the same thing. I know I often think of it the same way. I get camped, or tunneled hard and get killed - but 2 or 3 others escape.
I go 'ugh, well, I lost, tunneling is an auto win for killers rawrglblarglrawrgle' and get annoyed.
Thing is though - we won. Or at least fought it to a draw.
Because the survivor win state cannot be 'I escape'. That's...basically expecting a flawless victory every game.
I wonder if, maybe rather than trying to 'fix' tunneling or camping, we should instead look at ways to reward or I guess compensate the person who has to sacrifice themselves for their team - because, as things stand, the biggest problem to me about being hard camped or tunneled is that it's often an unavoidable depip and a waste of my time, for almost zero BP.
There's also a weird quirk to this game in that neither side has any sort of official 'win state'.
The closest we have is the 'Escaped' notification when you get out as survivor. For killers...ugh. Is it a 4k? A 3k?
Personally, I try to see my win state as pipping on either side. On killer, I also try to see my win state as giving the survivors an entertaining match.
Thoughts?
Comments
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If I got more BP for being camped or tunneled and didn't de-pip, it would help lessen the sting.
However, I do not think it would do anything to actually make people feel better about it. It's still a very strong strategy and while receiving BP and not de-piping is nice, if I'm getting tunneled or camped multiple games in a row; I'm just gonna find something better to play.
We should absolutely be looking to fix tunneling and camping. This means re-balancing the entire game and I just don't think BHVR wants to do that, even if it would be the better choice.
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I'm not sure how much further we can go, really.
I mean, yeah. Fix the killers that can bypass BT or those that are nearly impossible to unhook against. But beyond that...mm, it would be a complete teardown of the entire game's mechanics and I'm not sure that's viable.
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don't forget to see things also from the other perspective... as killer main i would gladly avoid tunneling and camping if it wouldn't be necessary most of the times to get results (at my levels i usually found tryharders that won't allow you to play normally or to have perk variety,), but BEhavior must take into the equation also those tactics regarding the statistics of dead/escaping survivors.
Post edited by Tostapane on2 -
Add an Objective BP Score Event that’s based on time on Hook called “Perseverance”.
Also let the Killer leave the match by interacting with the Shrine of Sacrifice during the EGC.
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I think your talking about the video game loser video game paradigm. The paradigm is that everyone wants to be a winner in video games but only few people are true winner in video games. most player are losers in video games and a big part of video games in general retention is making losing not feel bad. I think that is huge secret to making successful video games. you want to make losing not feel bad but make winning feel good. This makes player want to play games to win but they do not feel bad from a loss. You want player to keep playing the game even when they lose. Making players feel good about wins is not difficult. Most games provide dopamine hit when you win. Making losing fun is a lot more challenging I think.
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A) dont give bp for messing up or I will demand killers be given bp for missed attacks "for giving a chance" and bp for escaped survivors.
B) does anything in the game treat survivors as a team? No score for making sure others get out. Currently zeamply, despite swf, is still optional.
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Oh, don't worry, there's already been two great deterrents to these strategies, it's just that both got axed.
DS basekit, Reassurance buffed to three times per trial per perk, instead of once per trial total.
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DS basekit would be a disaster. DS is already really damn strong when it comes to giving a massive and completely free bodyblock, which - especially if it's done in a coordinated manner when you're carrying a survivor can turn games around.
You'd have to give killers a pretty enormous buff to compensate, otherwise we'd probably be in a worse state than pre 6.1.0 kill rates were.
Uh...Reass works twice per survivor, right? Not once a trial.
Huh?
A. What? Okay, I'm not sure if you understood what I'm saying. Right now, the best option if you're being facecamped is to sit there getting hit on the hook for ages so your team can do the gens and get out. You get 0 BP for any of that and you'll depip.
Getting facecamped isn't 'messing up', nobody can loop every killer for 5 gens every game.
The issue is that, in solo queue, you have zero reason to sit there and take it. Much faster to just cable pull or suicide. And that's a problem.
B. Uh, yeah? The...mechanics of the game? There is even a 'Distraction' system where, if you're being chased while other survivors are doing stuff, you get partial credit for that stuff. The problem is that this partial credit is A. pitiful and B. doesn't apply to sitting on the hook getting slapped by a Bubba.
Here's an interesting thought for you then.
What is 'winning' as a killer?
Is it a 4k?
A 3k?
A 2k?
There is no formal win state whatsoever.
On survivor? Is it escaping personally? Getting a majority out?
For me, on both roles, by win-state is pipping. That's honestly as far as I can take it.
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Devs attempted to fix tunneling and camping but the killer mains defended these strategies so in the end any anti tunnel and anti camp perk got nerfed to the ground.
As stated above, rebecca's new perk released as useless, so doesn't affect camping outside of comp level 4 SWF.
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Wow. Just...I don't think you said a single factual thing here at all.
It's almost impressive.
But yeah, okay. Let's try this again. Because I asked you this in the other thread and you kept dodging - so let me ask it here.
- How did the devs 'attempt to fix camping and tunneling' exactly? AFAIK, outside of the emblem penalty and the 6.1.0 BT changes, it was all internal and whatever they were working on was too exploitable.
- Which killer mains? You keep saying this, but you've yet to actually name a single, credible 'killer main'.
- Which changes were these 'killer mains' against? Be as specific as you can.
- Which perks? DS certainly isn't 'to the ground'. Are you defending stuff like the old(est) DS or release BT? Because those were stupidly broken.
- Reassurance...oh boy. Mate, I hate to break it to you, but Reassurance got nerfed on the PTB because *survivor mains* were complaining about it, as it could let griefers essentially keep you in a losing game forever.
From the wiki.
You were saying?
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I think most people can agree 3k-4k is a win for killer. conversely, that means that not getting 3-4k is loss, so 0-2k is loss.
Survivor is unfortunately team game. Its the nature of asymmetric games. for me, 2 or more people escaping is the survivor winning. Survivor a lot easier to win as but the caveat for survivor is that sometimes your team winning means you dying which can feel bad at times. For example I dislike looping a killer for 4 gens then getting facecamped then dying while my team escapes. that kinda sucks but I understand it is part of team game dynamic.
I don't think depip or piping means anything. When I look at this emblem system, it seems that it was designed with the idea to punish killers for optimal plays and punish survivors for optimal efficiency. Its like someone looked at the game and tried to punish camping/tunneling/slugging/mori/instant downs and someone looked at survivor and tries to punish gen-rushing & encourage farming with the killer. at face value, its just weird. That is why when you play killer, certain killer are really bad at getting their adept because their power punishes them in emblems and survivors in general often depip/safety pip if they gen-rush without farming with the killer. it makes it somewhat challenging to go to rank 1 as survivor unless you play a lot and get potato teammate+bad killer. it is meaningless system.
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I don't know about that. There's no official rule or even consensus. It's just a sort of assumption - 3k+ is a win, 2k is a draw, less is a loss.
I play for pips because, again, there's no binary win/lose state and I find it to be a lot more enjoyable on killer.
On survivor...the emblem system is terrible.
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Reassurance does eliminate most camping effectiveness. With co-ordination.
The problem is that, like everything else that works well with co-ordination, it's lacklustre without it. Of course, the flip side is that everything that's strong against a particular tactic without co-ordination becomes absolutely ridiculous once it is available. Which again goes back to the problem where a win or loss for Survivors gets registered (both in MMR and perception) on the individual level outside of playing in a team.
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but why?
it's pretty simple. if you survive you win. if you don't you lose. choose better perks, offerings, and items. outlive the other players and escape through hatch if you have to. winning a match as a survivor is all about your personal ability to survive. the other players are there to do the same. use them. they're a resource. if you have to bait the killer into chasing someone else. see another survivor enter a locker while you're being chased? use a diversion perk to make the killer think you're the one that went into the locker. now the killer has to deal with a 50/50 hook scenario. that gives you time to hide, heal, and you'll get bloodpoints for the unhook.
it's little things like that. swf has made the community think it's a team game. it's not.
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It's either a 1v1 game where you have to accept that, as the Survivor, you're at a massive disadvantage and should be expected to lose without assistance, or it's a team game and should actually acknowledge that.
The obvious thing is that, since release, people have realised the blindingly obvious fact that working together is vastly better than trying to do it all by yourself. And even BHVR's definitely come around to that philosophy--look at the HUD update, which is blatantly meant to facilitate such things.
The rest of the game needs to catch up to the de facto state, rather than half a decade old steam page writeups.
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DS basekit would be a disaster. DS is already really damn strong when it comes to giving a massive and completely free bodyblock, which - especially if it's done in a coordinated manner when you're carrying a survivor can turn games around.
At that point, it's the coordination that's the problem, not DS. DS isn't a free bodyblock because if the killer doesn't pick you up, it does nothing. You'll still be slugged out.
But don't worry, I've still got you covered: Anti-tunnel mechanisms should be dependent on an effect called 'Desperation', which persists for 80 seconds after unhook, or until conspic action, and Desperation also removed survivor-killer collision for the duration.
There, no more bodyblocks.
Uh...Reass works twice per survivor, right? Not once a trial.
It's once per hook instance, so if the killer camps the hook and prevents an unhook, it can only be used once. The nerfs it got were tailored to make it as weak as it could possibly be against camping, especially for solos.
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i fail to see what's wrong with the first option. that's what an asymmetrical game is.
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People not accepting that premise.
Also the part where the game is increasingly treated as a 1v4 by the developers.
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"people not accepting that premise" - but how can one argue with a fact? i don't play call of duty and complain about not being able to get a nuke every game? that's not how the game was designed.
i can't speak for the devs. but if i had to guess it's because they're trying to appeal to a new audience since the game has had swf for long enough that the community is now predominantly swf players. and those same players likely hate the solo experience because it's so different from swf.
had swf never been added then these issues would have never arrisen. so if we're to point fingers i think swf should be removed since it's the actual problem.
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People did SWF before SWF was a thing, remember. It was just endless lobby dodging.
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i can't speak for everyone. but i do remember the lobby dodging issue. that would have been easy to fix. league of legends has a punishment system for lobby dodgers. 🤷🏻♂️
at this point we don't even need the lobby. just throw us into a match. why should i spend an additional 2 minutes waiting on people to ready up? that's a side effect of the old killer host system, but now we have a dedicated host and people that disconnect are (supposedly) punished for leaving. why should we sit through an additional loading screen and menu option? when you ready up it should lock your loadouts and your character. no more stream snipers and no more last second item swaps
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A couple of Killer perks would get totally killed in the process (Lightborn in particular), which would be a problem.
Anyway, they're not going to remove SWF; we have to move forward and not keep looking back to the game's release premise.
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Technically you get more chase BP the longer the chase.
Also Altruism is a Bloodpoint category.
Working together will increase your individual chance at survival, but not all survivors will make it out. That’s the premise. A 1v4 by necessity until the escape route is open.
The question is how to make it more obvious that a partial victory has been achieved. How to showcase your sacrifice aiding in others escaping, and how to showcase the sacrifices you make as a Killer (problem being this objective only has an obvious threshold at a 4K - as it’s always the same gameplay up to that point).
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They could at very least remove hook grabs those are even killer sided. I was grabbed long after letting go of the survivor on hook and I have gotten grabs as killer even after unhook has happened. And yeah ds should be basekit. After that killers will have to be buffed for example basekit corrupt, grim embrace, BBQ and mini pop goes to weasel and speed boost after hook or ability to teleport.
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Much like DbD moved away from stealth to looping gameplay I really feel like they need to ditch the idea of survivors are not a team (1v1v1v1v1). While a nice concept, it doesn't really work as a game.
As @StarLost says above, if as a survivor I'm getting facecamped why shouldn't I suicide and go play another game? The way to counter camping on the survivor side is to just do gens/reassurance the survivor on the hook. This all though depends on the survivor sitting on the hook and just accepting a loss. Which they currently have no rational reason to do other than the idea that they are helping their "team".
I feel that the game would be improved by an end screen that says 'survivors win', 'killer win', or 'draw' - we don't even have to discuss new perks/changes. Knowing there is a team to play for will give a reason for the survivor to stay on the hook instead of suicide and also give the killer reason to play more aggressively. You can then also do BP, etc. based rewards on overall survivor performance, but I think the message screen would be a big help.
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You shouldn’t surrender on hook because even though the game may be over for you and you’ll de-pip, earn fewer bloodpoints and drop in MMR (all tangible measures of loss), you’re helping other players earn more bloodpoints, pip up, and increase their MMR by escaping the trial—which may well come on the back of your loss. We call it ‘sacrifice’ so it doesn’t sting as much. But for some reason DBD is the only game where you’re like expected (mostly by killer mains) to basically give up your enjoyment of the game you’ve purchased so that other people have a good time.
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If anything I feel we're moving away form this idea where camping and tunneling is discouraged and I don't think BHVR did this on purpose or even thought about this when they made the change but the merciless killer change has lead to kinda weird scenarios where I had a knight game yesterday where I tried to play fair and I two hooked everyone but everyone escaped so 8/12 hook states and I then finish by hearing the "entity hungers" horn that comes in and that was so jarring after having a game where I thought I did alright.
Meanwhile and this hasn't happened to me but you can hypothetically snowball get 4 hooks or taken to it's most extreme 0 hook and bleed everyone out and get merciless. This sends the message hooks don't actually matter and you just need kills. I'm not gonna make any value judgements on that I'm just saying we're very VERY far from sending the message you can play what's regarded as "fair" and get rewarded for it. Killers are encouraged to play as ruthless as possible more and more with every change.
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I would also like for the lobby screen to go away. Because of survivor last second switches, it doesn’t reliably allow the killer to switch stuff in reaction to the survivor items, which was supposed to be the point of lobbies.
The only thing lobbies do, is encourage people to purposely not hit there ready button, so they can last second switch, which is a waste of game time.
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You shouldn’t ragequit because that is against the game rules.
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That's kind of my point. I don't give up on hook even when face camped because I see the other survivors as my team.
Some people in this thread, and BHVR themselves, say that each survivor should only care about themselves. The whole 1v1v1v1v1 argument, which, if true, every survivor should give up on hook if facecamped.
That's why recognizing survivors as a team and giving a team 'win' message would help a lot. In plenty of multiplayer games sometimes I end up in the "boring" role, but I do it because I want the team to win.
Who said anything about rage quitting? The game has a built in get out of the game mechanic.
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Purposely leaving a game early is ragequitting. It doesn’t matter if you use a “built in” way to quit, you’re still ragequitting.
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From a roleplay aspect you wouldn’t suicide on hook as you’re still trying to survive and there’s still some chance of potentially being rescued.
But there is no meta-game reason to stay on Hook unless you’re in a SWF or empathetic as quite frankly the being Hooked gameplay is boring and the reward is minimal.
I don’t think a “Survivors Win” or a “Killers Win” end of match screen will help at all, since for SoloQ the match would need to fully end for a result to be made, for SWF they’ll have commentary on the outcome, and in both cases they’d still have the least amount of BP by a significant amount.
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You are underestimating player selfishness. These kiddies are not capable of vicariously enjoying their teammates survival.
But I like the idea and I wish reality was different.
Maybe a Stat called 'Assists' that you earn for dying when your teammates escape. Rack up enough and you get cosmetics or some nonsense.
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I wish you got points/emblems if your teammates actually escaped, since this is a team game.
But the original premise implies that despite you being in the same boat, you're ultimately supposed to be selfish and sacrificing yourself for the team is not how you're supposed to be playing.
Plus it would require to change the way rewarding system works: make it award point only after the match was concluded for everyone, not just you.
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I don't mind the first idea, but I was there for the reass 'nerf', and it wasn't 'killer mains' demanding the nerf, it was survivors worried about being griefed.
If I had one wish for 2023, it would be that anyone who says 'x mains did y' without substantiating or bothering to specify loses their DbD account.
There are tens of thousands of people on these forums. You can find someone who fits nearly every crackpot opinion you can name. They aren't representatives of anything.
The issue with hook suicides isn't that folks do it when they're being camped.
The issue is that they'll do it on first down, at 3 gens, because they challenged the killer to a chase at shack and lost.
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Then look at it this way.
If a survivor is on a hook and being facecamped then trying to escape the hook is playing the game the way it is intended because the small chance of escaping from a hook is greater than the 0% chance of surviving by being facecamped. Sure, that action is dooming the other survivors, but if the survivors aren't a team, doing the escape from hook (ie suicide) is the absolutely right move.
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I don't mind the first idea, but I was there for the reass 'nerf', and it wasn't 'killer mains' demanding the nerf, it was survivors worried about being griefed.
No, it wasn't. I know that's what BHVR claims it was, but the nerf they chose says different. They could've opted for any number of measures to make the perk not keep survivors on the hook indefinitely, which is a scenario that would require all three other survivors AND the killer to cooperate for that, so that would still be incredibly unlikely to occur, but they went for the absolute most crippling nerf, inventing new conditionals to make sure this perk would be as weak as possible against camping. If it was once per hookstate, it would've worked. But they made it once per hook -instance-, per survivor. It cannot produce more than 30 seconds now under any circumstance. Even if multiple people bring the perk, it's still locked at 30 seconds and no more than that.
So where before, counterperks like DS would be largely useless unless the killer specifically played that one particular strategy, now we have a counterperk that may not even work, even IF the killer is employing the strategy it is supposed to counter.
You could maybe argue incompetence, but let's be honest: It was harder to make Reassurance as ineffective against camping as it is now, than it would've been to just give it three tokens. This would be the weirdest incompetence I've ever seen.
So I'm just going to say it: BHVR lied. They nerfed Reassurance because they wanted to protect camping.
And yes, there were people on the forums adamantly arguing that Reassurance was punishing camping too much.
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Mm. I just aim to enjoy the game.
As killer I often see a voluntary 2k as a win. I out play the survivors. Kill 2, get the other 2 on death hook. Then down them, carry them to hook, shake me head, and take them to a gen. They usually get the message. According to most, 2k is a draw, but I see that as a win where 2 of the survs get to live and get a bunch of BP because I'm feeling nice. But I had the challenge of out playing them and succeeded. If I don't gain control of the game I'm happy with at least 1 kill, 0ks kinda suck.
As surv, I'm mainly looking to finish gens at some point with at least 1 escape through gates even if it isn't me. 2+ escapes is a great result imo, hatch escapes are ok but a loss for the team with one lucky survivor. And 4ks just kinda suck.
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(Does a quick search). Nope, not finding anyone credible. For the...fifteenth time? - Do you have any actual examples or are you making stuff up again?
Also...wait, are we really back in 'BHVR are secretly conspiring to fudge over survivor players in favor of killer players despite that making zero rational or financial sense' land?
If you aren't going to believe the developers when they literally come along and say 'this is why we did a thing' - then what's the point of even giving feedback? Clearly they're all just out to get you.
Again - I was there. People said 'oh, this is going to be used to grief people'. BHVR said 'yes, we're going to change it'.
And then they changed it.
Now, you're welcome to your tinfoil hat here, but you need to realize that it makes you (and your alts) look a wee bit silly.
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So if BHVR said 'We want to buff No Mither' and the first and only thing they do is remove the sound reduction on it, would you still believe that they actually intended to buff it?
Words speak louder than actions, I suppose?
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Are you familiar with Ockham's Razor?
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You're picking up the wrong razor, I'm using that one.
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I don't think you're removing the possibility that requires the fewest additional assumptions.
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This.
Not to derail, but Why do Survivors get last minute swap and killer doesn’t?
As far as win rates, no one likes being tunneled and camped. Why do killers do it? Because the game is unbalanced. Because weak killers. Bad maps. Bad RNG. Bad loops , double window vaults, etc
Killer should be the power role. Does that mean killer should always win & stomp? Absolutely not. But agsinst competent survivors or 4 man SWF Killer especially the weaker ones don’t stand a chance many times.
Since the core mechanics of the game won’t change, something else has to.
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I think people aren't thinking this through.
If they really -only- wanted to address the 'perma-hook' issue, why add the 'once per hook instance, per survivor' stipulation? That's a new conditional that didn't exist yet in the game, so it's not some numerical adjustment, which would've worked, nor is it a pre-existing condition that could be copy-pasted from another perk.
Why put in -extra- work to make a -less- tailored solution?
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Have you ever spoken to a developer in general, not just BHVR's ones?
Overcomplicating the solution by going with the first thing that comes to mind is a really recurring problem. xD
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Okay, so they put thought into it. And at no point did any of them say 'hey, this completely defeats the point of the perk'?
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I think that you're being ridiculous and seeing the Loch Ness Monster instead of a bunch of sticks.
Not going to get into the coding here, because neither of us know exactly how this is coded, but intuitively speaking, it's not a new conditional - it's something that already exists in the game.
You don't know it's extra work, unless you are now about to claim you work at BHVR.
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it's not a new conditional
What other game function uses this?
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Well, if it's checking something the game already tracks for some reason, it's not any more difficult to check than a condition already used by another perk.
So, when the Survivor's hooked, it could enable the reassurance usage.
The condition it's checking on (Survivor being hooked again) doesn't introduce anything new that needs to be specially tracked. Which makes it no more work to implement than any other change.
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