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Why is BHVR so afraid to buff weak killers?
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Then that means casual killers are doing good no? But I guess shafting casual survivors is ok, casual killers no.
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The perks would not affect normal survivors. Also, what goofy perks? Every game has a meta, and a ton of players run it in DBD, casual or not. I rarely see great perk variety on either side.
And none of this addresses the elephant in the room: why is killer balanced around top players? Like 1% of Nurse players are at a high level and yet this forum screams for nerfs.
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People complain because the matchmaking is bad...you can get matched with a better killer and have a Claudette with 10 hours on your team. Or the killer can have 10 hours and get match with survivors with 100 each. So those Nurses more often than not don't face the 1% of survivors consistently.
I played two days ago in the morning vs a Sadako and they claimed they were only level 6, if the game can do that you see where the issue is.
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Add coms and add a system to select the languaje you are confident enought then balance all around decent communication team.
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If the game were balanced around strong players, both sides would do fine.
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Even League which is way more competitive than DBD balances for lower MMR as well. They address "broken" strategies that affect lower MMR despite those strategies not working on top MMR players. It's also why champions that are simple mechanically are usually not viable in top MMR cause otherwise they'd be broken (as they wouldn't have much of a counter).
If the game was balanced for strong players, no both sides wouldn't be fine. Sorry to rain on your parade but there's this thing in the game called solo survivor, I know most killers don't wanna acknowledge it. So the difference between casual killers and casual survivors would grow even bigger. And simple killers would be even stronger in low/mid MMR if they were to be viable in top MMR.
Also League has working matchmaking and it actually balances for close to 50% winrate (except for champions that are high skill which usually have lower winrate like Nurse). The game also has a ban system so if you hate facing certain champions you just ban them. If a champion is broken you can ban them, you can also counterpick your champion. Maybe those features should also make it to DBD since we're balancing for top MMR, as well as bring the ability to communicate through pings or something to solo survivors.
if anything solo should become more in line with SWF, but I don't see any killers ever argue for that...I wonder why.
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Maybe because killer vs good swf is the most miserable thing in the game (yes i play solo survivor.) Anyways, I wouldn’t have a problem with solo being on par with swf if they balanced for that. They could do something like this if they added voice comms, but they straight up refuse.
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They can just add a ping system (Legaue added that ages ago) and maybe some canned phrases like "do gen" and some location. At least I'd make use of it.
You're not saying which kind of killer vs a good swf you're talking about.
Also I dunno what kind of nerfs killers want to survivors. Gen rushing is frowned upon. If a survivor is a good looper killers don't like that either and looping is more skillful than doing gens.
Who is more skillful? A SWF that does gens but avoids chases or a team that that is good at looping? Because to me it seems that the first team will usually win more. And looping is or should be a stronger tool to carry your team especially in solo that you don't know everyone's skill level (because not every survivor is good at chases or even decent). If you remove/nerf perks that are good on good loopers you make the game more uninteractive and competitive.
But hey gen rushing is the optimal strategy maybe that's how top MMR games should be played as well...after all in any competitive game players seek to mitigate interaction with the enemy and take advantage of mechanics that are low risk high reward. But looping and chasing is closer to high risk high reward. (the risk for survivors being getting sacrificed and for killers having their time wasted). If winning is that important then people should look to minimize those two aspects of the game but also if you care about winning that much and top MMR maybe you should be more concerned with playing broken killers than seeking to buff weak ones. Your problem would exist if you had no such killers available.
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Two answers: time and money.
The base-game is pretty inexpensive these days so I think it’s fair to assume that most of DBD’d revenue comes from players purchasing new content.
The issue is that creating new killers, survivors, maps and perks all takes time. We know that chapters are thought about at least a year in advance and whilst I’m certainly not a programmer or digital artist, I know these things are costly: both in terms of time and money.
my main point? BHVR are far more incentivised to spend their time on new chapters rather than tweaking old ones as that means more $$$. Look at the RE chapters (new killers, maps, legendary skins, etc); that license probably made them a bucket load of money. Equally, this is important for player retention as it keeps the game refreshing and exciting - especially for people who’ve been playing a long, long time.
don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see changes to some older killers (especially Trapper, Myers, Pig, etc), but I think they’ll do it gradually over time (hopefully).
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Well said! Couldn’t have said it better myself.
it’s almost like there needs to be two sets of days for this game: one for low MMR, and one for high MMR.
A baby survivor playing Dwight with his tier 1 teachables has a very different experience against say, a Trapper, than a P100 player with thousands of hours experience and all teachable perks unlocked.
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Because killers do better in low MMr compared to survivors? The game already favors casual killers compared to casual survivors. But sure keep telling it to yourself that killers struggle vs bad survivors. Unless you're going to bring up actually having to go against decent survivors. Which should not be a balancing issue. Casual killers should be losing to survivors who are more skillful than them, we already accept that casual survivors should lose to a killer playing seriously.
If your problem is that casual killers get matched with higher skilled survivors then maybe you should be complaining about the matchmaking instead.
But yeah, go ahead and act like 90% of the time you face SWF with map layouts on the side bring BNPs and MFT. That's more convincing.
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Face it. You came here because of the Otz stream :)
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When did Bloodlust get toned down recently. If anythign last year hitting BL 2 and 3 became faster. Unless we are comparing it to when BL was introduced and tiles were even stronger than now.
This already applis with certain perks and killers still don't like. Look at the 100th MFT. Killers are like "but good survivors get value from it" which is the whole point. Or killers complaining about WoO which is only useful to SOLO survivors cause seal SWFs already callout the pallets the used and the deadzones.
Also read the posts complaining about the new anti-camping mechanic and hook grabs being removed and convince me camping is actually a high IQ strat that can only be done by people who have 6 fingers because of how mechanically demanding it is. As well as convince that actually tunneling prestige 1 Claud/Meg/Dwight/David is also just as skillful and mechanically demanding. I'll be waiting.
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Never said anything about my experience but fine, go ahead and make assumptions about me. I forgive you.
My problem has nothing to do with matchmaking. "Killers" should do well against bad players. Afterall theyre "nondescriptive" against "bad".
I may dislike the whole "casual" approach but not caring if you win or lose might be good for mental health. But not caring about winning and expecting your opponent to do the same is quite some issue often observed in "casual survivors", but I'm getting off topic.
My problem is the obvious community survivor bias and resulting hypocrisy.
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BHVR could do things like have map generation be based off of the MMR of the 5 players in the game. This would allow the game to have more resources (like pallets) for lower MMR, and less resources for higher MMR.
And if matchmaking couldn't find a good MMR match for the killer, the map generation could make up the difference. For example, if the 4 survivors are high MMR, but matchmaking couldn't find a similarly high MMR killer, then the map generation could just spawn less resources for the survivors.
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That's a nice idea, but this is BHVR, there is no way that would work.
It also assumes the MMR system is accurate, which is debatable
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"Killers" should do well vs bad players, don't they already do? Cause that's what you're implying, that they're not. What is your definition of a bad player anyway? For all I know you could mean people doing gens and playing stealthy or players who can make chases last over a minute (it's not farfetched when you see people complain that WoO actually makes bad players good lol)
Good survivors should also do well vs bad killers, but the points I see is people complaining when they get decent survivors. Even though most of the time you could get 1-2 decent survivors and 2 or more potatoes on the same team. Am I supposed to accept I am just as bad as the Claudette who I got that only has 5 hours and she is in my game and got a killer who has at least a prestige 3 Huntress/Trapper (any killer)? I guess I am bad though and should not complain and killer chasing me and losing over a minute is unfair for him or something...
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I was referring to a fictional scenario where more pallets were designed to be mindgamable, god pallets were removed and bloodlust numbers toned down so there would be more expression of skill at loops from both the Killer and Survivor.
Not sure why you would go on a tangent about Killers camping and what not. I just expressed in my post that if Killers are expected to express skill and not rely on crutch strats to play the game, then the same should be expected of Survivor players as well.
In an ideal world, if a Huntress managed to land every hatchet shot against Survivors in a game, the Survivor players should take the loss as a sign that they should improve their ability to dodge them instead of just complaining “Hatchets are broken and should be nerfed”. The same works vice versa as well.
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Ok hold on a second.
(Third and fourth paragraph) Now let me get this straight and correct me if I'm wrong.
Are you saying that you guys purposely design killer kits to only be worth a damn up to a certain point, after which you basically have to drop them if you want to continue to stand a decent chance at victory?
Because if that's the case (and again, correct me if I'm wrong), then suddenly I'm no longer confused why so many people seem to be picking Wesker.
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That's part of it but not the whole story. The dev's emphasis was on balancing for the top, where Monster players could perform well if they suffered enough to make it there, and they gave far more emphasis to what a few hundred people who were the best players said during closed beta.
The feedback from those who weren't at the top was given far lesser weight and often written off as 'Dbd players trash talking VHS to kill the competition'. That's part of the reason why the 'git gud' mentality was such a prevalent response instead of addressing the factors that drove off most of the new players. While a few people did well as new Monsters most would have had to suffer through dozens of losses before they got to the point that they could deal with other issues. New players with no investment in a game generally will seek out something more fun and the numbers dropped precipitously.
So while what you mentioned was part of it the balancing for the top was the overriding factor. It was at almost an exact 50% won rate at the top for high end games and doing anything to change that (eg making Monster more fun) was overlooked as that balance was the metric that lead to the game's death. A game can't balance exclusively for the top unless it's revenue comes from spectators and not participants.
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I disagree. Keep in mind that the vast majority of all DBD players are casuals and they absolutely do feel even smaller changes. The game shouldn't be incredibly unbalanced at the top, sure. But more important than balancing is fun. A game cannot survive, if only the top 5% have fun playing it.
So BHVR do not only need to care that everything is somewhat balanced but also that the game remains fun for all levels of play. That is where most problems with lower tier killers lay. Many of them just aren't fun. I won't play Trapper, if it means the only way I can deal with good teams is by playing basement Trapper. I won't play Singularity, Knight or SM no matter how strong they are as long as I don't enjoy them. And I wouldn't play survivor, if gens took 2 minutes to complete just so that at the highest level weaker killers could compete.
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The dev’s emphasis was that it’s super important for survivors to have good player experience….. and killers just get promised a decent kill rate.
Being a top 1% killer in VHS didn’t fix any of the player experience issues that killer had, it just meant that it’s possible to have miserable player experience and still win a decent percentage of games.
This is very similar to what BHVR seems like they are doing. We get announcement after announcement for BHVR creating some solution to help the survivor player experience, but after all these years the only thing announced primarily for killer player experience is something involving FoV. And BHVR states multiple times that if the survivor buffs move the kill rate too much, that BHVR will fix it, which means that it’s ok if the killer player experience is awful as long as the kill rate is where it should be.
So survivors get an entire HUD, visual heartbeat, removed hook grabs, a future anti-face camp mechanic, survivor bots that were primarily added to help survivors, and a future anti-3 gen mechanic, and increased map clutter and increased line of sight blockers to help survivors hide/escape chases/avoid killer powers….. and killers get something involving FoV, and they partially benefit from survivor bots? And that’s it after all these years? Where are the other player experience buffs that are primarily focused on killers? Why is there such a huge imbalance regarding which role gets the player experience buffs?
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Are you saying that you guys purposely design killer kits to only be worth a damn up to a certain point, after which you basically have to drop them if you want to continue to stand a decent chance at victory?I'm not sure you'll get an official response, but I think you make an error on saying 'design', especially given the 7 year history of the game. I think the point is that its not inherently a problem that certain killers aren't as competitive at the highest levels.
It's also worth pointing out that BHVR, who believes that MMR generally works despite the opinion of many on this forum, have the goal that eventually all killers will feel like they've hit high MMR. Eventually, if MMR works, a killer should hit a period where they win and lose 50% of games and because MMR is hidden you have no idea whether you are high, mid, or low, but it will feel like you are at high.
Many of them just aren't fun. I won't play Trapper, if it means the only way I can deal with good teams is by playing basement Trapper. I won't play Singularity, Knight or SM no matter how strong they are as long as I don't enjoy them.I agree with most of your post, but slight disagreement here.
It doesn't matter if most players find a killer fun to play. For a killer to be viable only a small portion of players who are killers have to play them. If 1 out of 50 times a killer is chosen it's Twins, but that player loves Twins, and the survivors enjoy playing Twins, then rarity is not a huge problem.
and killers get something involving FoV, and they partially benefit from survivor bots? And that’s it after all these years? Where are the other player experience buffs that are primarily focused on killers? Why is there such a huge imbalance regarding which role gets the player experience buffs?Outside Field of View what exactly would you want that could apply to all killers?
That's the big difference. Survivors get changes because there are numerous elements of the game that are just awful from the survivor's perspective. Facecamping ruins the game because you just sit there, 3 genning that goes 45 minutes is a slog and not exciting at all, etc. These are elements of the game that could apply to any killer and any survivor scenario so enacting a change isn't that hard.
Most of the killer complaints are either specific killer related or balance based, over which there is a lot more argument.
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I'm not saying Killer doesn't need more. Trapper needs some sort of buff if anyone but new players are to main them, the most original and coolest Killer concept in my opinion (the Singularity) is almost never seen despite being new and I often make jokes about the Twins asking who they are and if they've been added to the game yet as examples.
My only point was that VHS stands as an example as to why games can't balance exclusively for the top. While the best players' experience is important if a game is so miserable at the lower ends that people don't have fun then player numbers drop and the game dies (but devs don't want all the experienced players quitting en masse either if they want a successful game).
Personally, I think the VHS devs lost the forest for the trees. Balance is a tool used to acheive fun; not vice versa. The most important item for a successful product is do people want to use it and VHS focused on is it balanced instead of asking do people want to play the game. Perfect balance at any skill level means nothing if not enough people for the game to survive want to play.
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You could nerf swf by giving them an action speed debuff, not having items or perks repeat etc, but then a common retort is that you can't punish people for playing together in a swf.
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Honestly, I think the fact that killer was super miserable to play, was more important than the fact the game was balanced for the top players. The game wasn't fun for killers of average level, and it wasn't fun for killers at the top level. It really didn't matter what level the game was balanced for, because the killer role was an unsatisfying mess for everyone.
In fact, high level VHS killer gameplay was even more miserable to watch than average gameplay, because the good killers stopped and hesitated so much more than the average killer, and it always seemed like the killers were more afraid of the survivors, than the survivors were afraid of the killers.
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1) The game needs to stop double validating killer attacks. This is why the game has the forced short M1 attack bug that can steal hits from the killer. And if double validation can cause aim dressing to steal hits from the killer, than that should be fixed too.
2a) Sound occlusion is way too overtuned. Survivors noises shouldn't be super muffled or deleted just because line of sight is broken, especially with this new map strategy of filling maps with way too much clutter.
2b) Chase music is too loud
2c) Survivor noises are too quiet. Footsteps sometimes just go silent, depending on things like ground material, and that should be fixed too.
3) FoV should be fixed, enough that survivors don't "teleport" out of the killer's FoV.
4) Survivor movement needs additional animation frames, so the movements look smoothly animated from the killer's screen, instead of survivors wildly spinning their cameras, or wildly pressing movement buttons, to purposely cause their character to make erratic movements that are missing so many animation frames that it's unnecessarily difficult for the killer to follow. And if survivors are currently allowed to use a tech to exceed the intended turning speed then BHVR should fix that too.
5a) If killers are expected to leave a hooked survivor to find someone else to chase, than BHVR needs to majorly help the killer find someone else to chase. It's unfair to punish killers for not interacting with all the survivors, but then tell survivors it's totally fine to excessively hide from the killer instead of interacting with them.
6b) Survivors excessively hiding in general needs to be fixed. Patrolling maps and finding zero people because everyone is hiding feels bad, and survivors that pre-leave generators at the first sign of a heartbeat terror radius are a problem too. Part of the 3-gen problem involves excessively hiding survivors. In fact, many of the killer "problems" happen because it often feel like a waste of time to patrol the map to find hidden survivors.
7) Fix the excessive clutter and line of sight blockers from the maps, that were added as the "new map strategy". It makes it unnecessarily annoying to find and chase survivors, and it makes some killer powers feel like garbage. And maps should never be red, unless killers are allowed to have preset colors for things like scratchmarks/blood/auras, so that the map colors don't purposely hinder the killers.
8) Scratchmarks need to be more consistent, and actually show a path more consistently. There are too many instances where I survivor makes a sharp turn, and the killer sees zero scratchmarks showing if the survivor went left or right, and the killer has to basically guess a direction, and possibly spin around if they guessed incorrectly.
Summary: All the above things are purposely designed to work against killers, for the sake of survivor fun. This is starting to become a PvE game, where the killer is just fighting purposely bad game mechanics, instead of fighting the survivors.
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For the record, I play on PC, this might be a difference on systems used.
1: I much more frequently have this go the other way where I as killer get hits I never thought I'd hit.
2: Again, I have a much different experience than you do. Once I'm anywhere in the vicinity of a survivor, tracking them via sound feels almost too easy.
3: FoV is the thing they're discussing changing. I've never had a problem with it, but understand there are a lot who do.
4: I wouldn't have a problem addressing the spin tech that some survivors can do, but that becomes a question of whether you think survivors should have any chance of defense once the killer gets close.
5: I can't comment on this because I have a totally different experience. There are lots of things I struggle with as killer, but finding survivors is pretty straightforward. Not only are there audio and visual ques, there are the aura reading perks and as the game progresses the number of places survivors are likely to be drastically shrinks.
6: Agree that this is kind of a stalemate situation if the survivors just decide to pull back completely.
7: We're back on the issue of how difficult it is to find survivors.
8: I don't know if that is the intent of scratch marks, so much as show the general location of a survivor.
Summary: Points 2, 5, 7, and 8 all kind of deal with the issue of finding survivors. While I've said this isn't an issue for me, it's also not a complaint I generally hear from killer mains. Given the propensity of aura reading perks, stealth plays are already risky as is without bringing distortion, and hiding survivors cannot progress the objectives so the benefits they gain seem like a trade off.
Point 1 I think everyone agrees is an issue, just whether it benefits survivors or killers more is disagreed upon.
3 they are changing, 4 and 6 I agree on (though 6 is already against the rules, it's just something that has to be reported).
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Point 1 isn't what you think it is. You're talking about game latency, where the server validation sometimes makes a hit that looks bad on one of the player's screens. I'm talking about a bug that literally steals hits from the killer, as in the game forbids the killer from lunging, and it steals hits from the killer because the killer would have gotten the hit if the game had allowed them to lunge.
Killers don't usually complain about hidden survivors, because they just deal with it by camping, tunneling, and 3-gens. Why should a killer leave a hooked survivor to patrol the map, when there's a very real chance they might not find anyone, and the survivors might get a free unhook when the killer is away? It's too risky, because when survivors pre-leave generators and are hiding in random parts of the map, it's unrealistic to expect killers to find them.
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right but camping, tunneling and 3 gen is still in the game. in your post, you complain about patroling gens and not finding anyone. Nowhere to hide is exactly that. you get aura reading for kicking gens to avoid hiding survivors. a counter to stealth. I personally don't have this problem but you seem to have this problem so the perk is right there for you fix your weaknesses.
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It's not that they're afraid it's just not simple as changing numbers there are a lot of people involved in killer reworks/balancing before it even reaches the stages where people are actually testing anything. These "weak" killers tend to actually do pretty well because they have stealth or passive slowdown that helps them a lot against the average survivor.
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That perk just makes people run even farther away, and still results in a slow 3-gen game. The difference is that BHVR wants to give survivors help in this situation, but I haven't heard them mentioning any help for killers...... which means survivors can just excessively hide and profit from whatever anti 3-gen mechanic BHVR adds to the game.
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your complaint is unclear. your not complaining about not being able to find survivors. your complaining about survivors holding shift-w away from you and effective yoyoing survivor tactics. you can fix that by playing high mobility killers that have strong mobility options though i am not sure how BVHR would improve this situation for m1 killers other than giving them permanent haste effects in the form of perks.
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A hook state counter for each Survivor on the Killer HUD would be nice for starters.
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It pretty much sounds like you’re saying that the top 5% fun doesn’t matter.
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I'm complaining about both.
1) I'm complaining that some survivors are excessively hiding, so the killer doesn't find anyone when they get to a generator.
2) I'm complaining that some survivors, instead of hiding near a generator, will just shift-w far away at the first sight of a terror radius symbol, which still results in the killer not finding anyone when they get to a generator. And the survivor is so far away that it's not worth trying to search for them.
And it's a double standard that it's ok when survivors want basekit help for things like 3-gen, but it's not ok if killers want basekit help for things like 3-gen. It's a major problem when survivors excessively avoid the killer, just like how it's a problem when killers excessively avoid some of the survivors (which is what camping and tunneling is). The game should be pushed into a more chase-oriented game, which can only happen if killers AND survivors are both pushed into more chases.
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shift-w away from generators when the killer is coming is smart survivor play. haste is the mechanic to counter it but killer have no consistently good haste perks. as a result the strategy has no real counter if your not a top-tier high mobility killer that can use their mobility in the chase.
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It's both good and bad that they put too much stock in pure data and analytics. Considering how the playerbase reacts to things that inconvenience them even slightly, I think gauging community reaction and making changes based off that would be disastrous.
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They do. But only as a 5% ratio. They are neither more nor less important than anyone else. When you have to decide who to make game fun for, then it should be obvious. The game won't survive for only the top 5%. I'm not saying to throw balance out the window but to focus on the majority of players, which happen to be casuals.
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Didnt and wont happen because "but killer could tunnel with it".
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It doesn’t matter if it’s the “smart survivor play”. Defending a 3-gen is the “smart killer play”. So why should a 3-gen solution be 100% nerfs on the killer, when the problem is caused by both sides?
Because if BHVR’s solution is just to move the generators farther apart, then the survivor tactic of pre-leaving generators, and excessively avoiding the killer, will be an auto win against some killers and some killer builds. I’ve had people complain about a “3-gen” when the 3 generators were very far apart, but they were still close enough that I could defend them a very long time when all the survivors pre-leaved the generators super early and therefore really didn’t get much repair time. Because really, that is what some people mean by “3-gen”, where it’s possible at all to defend the generators, and some people just want the generators so absurdly far apart that it’s an auto-loss for the killer of the survivors excessively hide at the first sign of a terror radius.
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they were still close enough that I could defend them a very long time when all the survivors pre-leaved the generators super early and therefore really didn’t get much repair time.
your suppose to repair generators as the killer walks away to kick gens. i think that is why otz calls it yoyoing because your yoyoing the killer to kick gens and slowly chipping away at the gen until you complete it.
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The “yoyoing” strategy needs to be nerfed as part of the 3-gen solution. The 3-gen problem is an issue for both sides of the game, and both sides should be nerfed as part of the solution.
We shouldn’t be seeing the 3-gen problem as “100% the killers fault”, when survivors are absolutely part of the problem too.
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The survivors trying to complete their objective to escape when the killer is camping their objective is somehow the survivor's fault? that is a confusing take.
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I’ve said multiple times the problem is with killers AND survivors. Both sides of the game are contributing to the 3-gen problem, and a good solution should fix the issue from both sides of the game.
Both sides of the game are trying to complete their objective, so trying to blame one side of the game 100% is wrong.
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Because this would backfire as much if they make unable to SWF. Do you want to wait an hour on queue?
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Their point is that you can't keep one extreme (swf) while getting rid of the other (S tier killers.) The game is a constant arms race, so one side can't have a higher potential than the other. You would need to honestly nerf both extremes simultaneously.
(well, now this looks silly with the other post deleted)
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The very same MMR that's meaningless?
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bro some killers just should not be buffed, instead should be reworked altogether.
trapper, twins, skull merchant etc
now I see y’all talking about doc and trickster like ??? They are both solid killers. Trickster only suffers on bigger maps.
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Wrong. Good players will do well with whatever. Just look at any good player who streams, and you’ll see patches come and go and they still do fine. Help is needed when it comes to casuals only.
Or do you think MMR in this game is crap because good players?
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