Are complex killers a failed design?
Chucky's PTB seems to be pleasing most of the public, except the alarmists who are already desperately asking for buffs or nerfs, but these people will never be satisfied regardless of the content that is released. The point is that Chucky is very likely to be a popular killer, given his positive reception.
This made me reflect that most popular killers have low complexity. What I call complexity here is the degree of detail of the power. In this sense, Freddy is an example of a complex killer, as he has two mechanics (teleport and snares/dream pallets), a status (sleeping), several conditions for activating and deactivating status and constant changing the terror radius to lullaby; while Blight is considered a simple killer, because he has only one mechanic (lethal rush) that can be easily understood in a few seconds (although the skill ceiling is absurdly high).
I was looking at nightlight, in the period from Oct 14 to Nov 11, the 5 most played killers were Wesker, Huntress, Blight, Xenomorph and Trapper. Of these five, only the Xenomorph has a relatively complex power compared to the other four, but it is expected to be in popularity given that it is a newly released iconic character. On the other hand, the 5 least played killers were Twins, Hag, Freddy, Singularity and Artist. Of these, only Hag has a relatively simple power, her low choice must be due to her being non interactive in chases, which is what most players desire the opposite.
Of course, this doesn't mean that all killers with simple powers are popular (Hillbilly and Trickster demonstrate this), but it seems that consistently the most popular killers are the least difficult to understand the power. I believe this could direct BHVR to release more content in the future.
Thoughts?
Edited: many are pointing out that unpopularity is not synonymous with failure, which would make a lot of sense if it weren't in the context of a company. If a product is unpopular, the company will not pay due attention, which in my opinion cannot be considered something that is not a failure. This is clearly seen in high complexity killers that receive very few updates like Twins, Freddy and Cenobite. Again, it is obvius that not every complex killer will be unpopular, but what i am taking as question is a trend.
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I wouldn't say complex killers are failed designs, but there's a point where the complexity of a power isn't worth learning. Considering DBD has strong killers with low complexity, a high complexity really needs something worthwhile and that's usually where BHVR fails.
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I kind of agree with your sentiments except that I do think complexity is usually a failed design. Modern bhvr killers require a ton of effort for very little reward (see singularity). I think they should make more complex killers more powerful
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Killers like Singularity aren’t a failed design, they’re just bound to be rare, but I still would like to see more killers like that. Complex killers are usually more unique than most of the roster, and Larry is definitely like that.
While I do think there should be more beginner friendly things in the game so it’s not overwhelming for new players, us veterans need something advanced as well. I’ve been playing a lot of Larry since his release and it’s been fun learning a unique and complex killer like that.
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singularity is not low reward this is just something people who never give him a chance keep parroting.
he's an oppressive killer in chase and has one of the most unique and versatile gameplay.
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I consider them to be failures given the lack of attention that BHVR has for them, both in power updates and new skins. Added to the lack of popularity, I can't use any other adjective than failure, but that's my point of view, certainly in your view it could be different.
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I think there's a distinct difference between an actual failed design, and a killer that just isn't popular.
Singularity and Artist, for example, are some of the best designed powers in the game (so long as we whistle and look the other way regarding Artist's forced-to-leave-loop nonsense, anyway), and they're also not very popular. That's because they're complex and macro-focused powers that are both hard to learn and don't apply in a simple, "you are in chase so you press the button" way. That doesn't, in my view, make them failures.
Complex killers are, typically, unpopular. That's okay, though, the game has enough killers that it can handle having some that serve a more niche audience- everyone else already has their darlings and will continue to get more, after all.
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Complex powers are not a failure, they're just unpopular due to being complex, people are going to be far more likely to pick up a "Press X button to do thing" Killer then a "Press X to do thing then press Y button to do thing and also watch for Z that's super important" Killer
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Just because a killer isn't popular doesn't mean they are a failure. If some players enjoy the killer, that's fine, especially if those are players who didn't like other killers.
I don't see how Artist is that complex of a killer. Going off the idea that Freddy is a complex killer, I think the only killers that really fall into a similar category are Singularity and Knight, and the latter does fine on pick rates.
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In another comment I mentioned why I consider them a failure, it's not just unpopularity but the lack of content about them, which is also a trend, mentioning an outlier doesn't nullify the trend in itself. And when it comes to trend, it doesn't mean that all complex killers will be unpopular and all simple ones will be popular, as I explained in the post. What happens is that a large part of the complex cast is unpopular while the opposite is also true, but again, this is a trend and does not mean that in all cases this will occur, like Knight and Hillbilly which deviate from this trend. And taking Freddy as a complex killer, definitively Twins are, but Artist is really a questionable case (for me she is a half term, not so easy to understand in first time, but she is not rocket science)
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this is very well said
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While I agree with the general message, I'm gonna disagree entirely on your stance about artist's power being one of the best destined, but that's ok
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If that was the case, then we'd see less Weskers, Doctor would never have been a popular character (though it seems his popularity has decreased) and some killers like Billy would have way higher pick rates.
It's more that people tend to gravitate towards rewarding gameplay. Freddy has a fairly simple power because his mechnanics don't have to be managed and his abilities are rather straight forward. Still, because he is so weak, pretty much nobody plays him. It doesn't feel rewarding because you just don't get the results. Hillbilly's power is fairly straight forward too. Use chainsaw for map mobility, find survivor, then use chainsaw for insta down. That's not overly complex. The problem is, that as easy as it seems, he is still one of the hardest killers in the game because he is very mechanically demanding. The smallest imperfections on this killer are punished harshly.
Killers like Wesker, Oni, Nemesis and Doctor have lower skill floors. Meaning, you are more likely to get some positive results even if you haven't mastered the power yet. You know what you need to do and getting the power to work in some positive way isn't top hard. Meanwhile there is Singularity, who has a skill floor so high, that only a fairly small portion of players could be expected to do somewhat well. Even players like Scott Jund, who have thousands of hours and an insane amount of knowledge don't seem to know how to play this killer. Because the obvious way; find survivor, set up biopod, slipstream survivor, get EMP out of the way, set up biopod again, slipstream survivor again, teleport and play M1 killer doesn't work. It's a huge waste of time to play in that way and not very effective. If you can maintain a net of biopods across the map however and keep all survivors busy dealing with the biopods over and over again, you have the potential to absolutely dominate.
So, I think killers with low skill floors and relatively strong powers will always be popular, while killers with higher skill floors will always take a back seat in that regard. Nobody likes to get stomped repeatedly after all.
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Complex mechanics are what keeps me playing a killer. Who wants to play Wraith for 3000 hours?
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Some people do, not every killer players are comp level.
Most of our playerbase is probably not competive. Mostly casual (both sides). That's why hard killers are more rare while easy power killers are more popular. Huntress, Wesker, Legion comes to mind. All of these killers have fun and easy to learn powers.
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I feel like your wildly forgetting killer nuance. Just because a killer's power description is simple, doesn't mean it can't be complex. Billy for example had a super simplistic description of hold M2 to vroom vroom run... but there's advanced tricks that arnt mentioned in the description. Things like curving or bouncing of certain terrain to reach pretty wild locations takes alot of know-how and made the killer more fun than just back revving.
You also have killers like Deathslinger that map knowledge plays a part. Knowing about changes in different iterations of the killer shack to shoot through tiny holes adds a new level to the character that allows Deathslingers to flex their stuff.
I feel like the difference though is that these are ADDED complexities that skilled players practice to add to their toolkit. Singularity on the other hand is REQUIRED complexities to function at the base level. Unlike the Deathslinger cheeky hold shot, Singularity doesn't really have anything extra to polish.
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I'm not really competitive. But If I devote a lot of time to a character, in any game, I want new stuff to discover and learn. It keeps things feeling fresh.
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Yes, I didn't forget about the skill ceiling, and I made that clear when mentioning Blight. I'm specifically talking about killers powers that have severals mechanics, activation conditions and that apply different status (which is not the Hillbilly case). Complexity is a word that can be attributed to different occasions, and we are just using it from different points of view.
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Not at all. Some people like challenges.
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those killers are both simple to pick up so they attract newer players, and have a very high skill ceiling so they aren't too simple for more skilled and experienced players so everyone can find them fun regardless of game hours.
also, i don't think having a secondary power or different mechanics that's only there to hamper the killer's power is being complex. for example wesker is like 5 times more complex than freddy, he definitely doesn't "just dash".
having a large killer variety is definitely nice so there is no failure, some people like complex killers that have higher skill ceiling, some people like killers that excel at macro play and some people just want to focus on chases with simpler powers.
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I disagree, complexity in killers is what this game needs. The issue you're describing (poorly) is killers having a high skill floor. Killers like Wesker and Blight are very easy to pick up, with powers that are relatively easy to understand (press to Rush/Bound, hit during Rush/Bound), but they have exceptionally high skill ceilings because of techs, map knowledge, collision understanding, and many more circumstantial variables.
Compare to a killer like Singularity, whose power is complex and hard to understand for a beginner. You have to put down a pod, switch to it, tag a survivor, get out of the pod, then teleport to the survivor. Or even Artist. Put down bird, shoot bird, if bird crosses an obstacle, it turns into a swarm bird, which swarms survivor for X amount of time, during which a survivor will get hit if swarmed again. And you can place birds in certain ways to antiloop properly, or zone while chasing, or pressure distant gens, etc. There are many more steps involved with using your power for someone who's just picking up the killer, which makes it less likely that they'll stick with it.
Honestly, I think the "free" killers are the best designed in this aspect. They all have a relatively easy power to understand (Trapper has traps, Billy has a saw, Nurse teleports, Wraith cloaks, Huntress throws hatchets) but all of their powers are amplified in strength via the user's game sense, map knowledge, and mechanical skill. The most popular killers tend to fall in this category: easy to pick up, very hard to master.
The reason why you see a killer like Freddy played so little isn't because his power is complex (it really isn't), it's because he's weak, and has a very low skill ceiling. There is no cracked play, or insane game sense that will turn Freddy into a good killer. At the end of the day, you're still playing the redheaded stepchild of Trapper and Clown, with a half-assed teleport and a lullaby. I'm personally of the opinion that it's a good thing for killers to include a certain amount of complexity in their kit, as an incentive to keep playing the killer and get better with it, as opposed to having more killers like Legion, or Trickster, or Pig, whose powers can be mastered with an afternoon on the killer.
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Cost benefit analysis.
Complex Killers should get more benefit when executed correctly.
Larry has complexity but the benefits from using him aren’t anything to boast about
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There is a difference between skill ceiling and killer power , and I explained in the post what was defined as complexity, i dont will explaing again because it's was very clear. Freddy has a complex power and low skill ceiling, Blight has a simple power with a very high skill ceiling. You treat the skill ceiling as complexity, which is not wrong, complexity could mean many things, but it differs from what I defined in the post, so you argue about something I didn't write. If what you meant is that what we need is more killers with a high skill ceiling, I completely agree, but I reiterate that this is not what I defined as complex in the post.
"The most popular killers tend to fall in this category: easy to pick up, very hard to master." That's why I wrote that killers with simple powers are the most popular, but I disagree that the most difficult killers are the popular ones, popularity encompasses both killers with simple powers and a simple skill ceiling, such as Legion and Wraith; but also those with simple powers and a high skill ceiling, like Blight and Wesker.
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i am confused. why is wesker in your words a simple power and freddy a complex power? Wesker's power has same level or more complexity as freddy. freddy has two active abilities and 1 passive status effect. Wesker has 1 active ability, 1 item ability and 1 passive.
In my opinion, the killer that are popular are popular because of 3 parameters. these 3 parameters are strength, fun and effort to learn to reward Ratio. Wesker and Blight are played because they're strength is high. Often when the Strength is high, it leads to killer having more fun but this is not always true. Some killer can be fun without being strong. Legion, Nemesis and Wraith are perfect examples of killers that are not strong but have huge fun factor for many people. A lot of players play these 3 killers because they have low effort to learn to reward ratio and are fun but not necessary strongest. they score high on other two categories for strength to not matter as much. After that, there is something in the middle. Huntress and Xeno is what I would describe as the middle. They're fun to play, somewhat strong and have a medium effort to learn to reward ratio.
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He is absolutelly low reward, for instance if I spent the same time learning and mastering singularity as I did say blight or wesker, the wesker and blight player will get rewarded more for good plays while the singularity player would not. Even if we take that aside looping singularity is easy af, I play larry a LOT and let me tell you any time someone drops a pallet on me when I am on overclock I think they are bad. You have a visual indicator that tell you to NOT drop a pallet, if you do you are just quite bad, even then if singularity chases you he is still and m1 killer that can be looped easily, can he tp behind you? Yes, does he give you a starting distance that you could use to get to a loop/vault a pallet/window? Absolutelly yes. Now why can I still win most matches as larry? Because people are awfull at this game as I said there is no excuse for a singularity to get a hit after you throw a pallet on them, but somehow people are so bad that they do it, I bet those players would also let a trapper 4k
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Both apply an passive effect (sleeping and infected), but Freddy has several activation or deactivation conditions, while there is a single way to activate (virulent bound) and deactivate (vaccine) the infected effect. The number of survivors under the effect sleeping impacts the teleportation cooldown, while the number of infected survivors don't afecct in nothing; and in addition, Freddy has intermittent invisibility when the survivor is awake and oblivious when the survivor is sleeping, while Wesker has just a 40 m terror radius. Although Wesker has conditions on removing health status when a survivor is hitted by a virulent bound, I can't see, in terms of complexity, this being equal to Freddy's power. In the first half of the first macth in which I played Wesker, I was able to understand his power. To fully understand Freddy's power, you need to play against him at least once. He is a low-efficiency Swiss army knife, a bunch of details that don't help in practically anything.
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The number of infected survivors reduces the cooldown of virulent bound.
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Lil bro, reread what I posted. I'm talking about skill floor, you're talking about skill ceiling.
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The number of survivors under the effect sleeping impacts the teleportation cooldown, while the number of infected survivors don't afecct in nothing.
your second sentence on wesker is wrong. the number of survivor infected decrease wesker's virulent bound cooldown by 0.5 seconds per survivor. this is mirror towards freddy tp cooldown. your saying it is so easy... yet it is not easy. this is what i mean by complexity of freddy and wesker is of similar level.
Wesker is getting played because he is strong. Many people that play wesker also enjoy playing wesker which indicates that he is fun. Wesker is average/high in term of effort to learn ratio. freddy is opposite. He is one of weakest killer in the game. He is not fun to play, like he is 1/10 killer is fun from my subjective opinion. The effort to learn his kit is non-existent. within 5 games, you will think you mastered freddy.
Like I said Fun ->Strength->Difficulty to learn are ordered list to what makes a player decide to play or not play said killer. these ideas are linked. For example, if you find the killer hard to play, you might not find them strong. By not finding them strong, you might not have fun playing said killer because you are losing games constantly.
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No, you are not talking about skill floor, although you mentioned it at the beginning of your text. If you are dealing with something "very hard to master", this is a skill ceiling, as you even mention twice.
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wow, this one about recharging is new to me, I really didn't know about it. But I don't believe that this alone puts it on Freddy's level of 1001 details.
I get what you mean, and I think the most fun killers, in general, are the ones with simple powers. See the popular cast: Blight, Legion, Wraith, Wesker, Huntress. Wesker may be a point of discussion, but the others undeniably have extremely simple powers, without an absurd amount of detail. In the opposite side, the unfun cast tipically has powers with several details, conditions and states.
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Firstly, keep the discussion at a respectful level, there is no reason to be rude as at no point have I given you a reason to be. You discuss both, although you place more emphasis on the skill ceilling in the third and fourth paragraphs. And that doesn't change the fact that you're arguing about something I didn't write, you already started saying that the game needs more complex killers, showing that you definitely didn't understand the OP.
Post edited by BoxGhost on0 -
His power doesn’t even ensure that you get a hit when you set it up right. Compare that to Nurse who allows me to blink, wesker, or even deathslinger. Singularity is the single biggest example of overcomplicatd, failed design. He is too much effort for way too little reward.
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Yes. Having a simple to pick up power doesn't mean the power lacks complexity, is my entire point. Blight and Wesker both have very simple powers to pick up and understand, yet Blight possibly has the most complex power in the game. Its nuance feeds into just about every aspect of loop generation, realm uniqueness, and game sense. As opposed to a killer like Freddy, whose power is very straightforward (and actually the opposite of complex), and lacks nuance or skill expression.
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he is not talking about how to use the ability. he is talking about complexity. complexity refer to how many parts connect to the ability. for example, trapper has 1 ability. Placing traps. The pig has 3 abilities. Crouch, Ambush dash and Reverse bear traps. he is claiming that people do not play killer with multiple abilities. I don't think complexity is what makes people choose x killer over y killer. It is whether multiple abilities work together and whether they're fun to use and powerful. Nuance =/ complexity. Blight has simple ability but his 1 ability has many functions. the many functions is nuance. I think it would be more correct to say that killer with high nuance are more popular then killer with low nuance.
I think a lot of unfun killer for killer side are generally killer's with poor balance or low nuance/undesired gameplay. For example, the hag is unpopular killer because her gameplay is based around proxy camping and defending hooks. the killer have no desire to play like that so hag remains as unpopular killer. It is also that proxy camping hooks is ineffective strategy because if hag hooks a survivor, survivor will ignore the hook timer for 1:45 and rush gens. Hag has no chasing capacity as 110% so she cannot adapt to playing offensively. She only has defence and her defence is predictable. as a result, unpopular killer.
Twin''s has an gameplay issue where survivor that downed by victor from far away makes you spend time walking to pick up slug to hook survivors. In order rectify the issue, you need to slug. How effective is slugging and bleeding out survivors in dbd in 4vs1? Not effective at all. Very time consuming. as a result, nobody wants to play twins because slugging gameplay is completely undesired.
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i dont will explaing again because it's was very clear.The standard of communication is whether other people understand your words, not whether you thought they were expressed clearly.
Multiple people are struggling with the categories you have created and what you are dubbing 'complexity'. You seem to be making a distinction between killers that have multiple powers, and killers that have a single power but learning when to use it is tricky. If you'd just called this 'multiple powers are a failed design' it probably would have been clearer because that's really different than complex.
So if we look at killers with more than one power, or who power varies during the course of the game we've got: Knight (one summon, but three types), Clown (two types of bottle), Pyramidhead (ranged attack, ground trap, cage), Pig (crouch, trap), Singularity, Nightmare, Twins.
The first three types of killers all have decent pick rates, they've definitely given a lot of attention to Pig over the years just what they've decide to do has confused the player base, Twins has issues and no one really knows why it has taken BHVR so long to address those, so that leaves Freddy and Singularity. There are plenty of other killers down there at the bottom of the pick rates/BHVR attention which are very straightforward. So you don't really have enough data to create a trend.
On the edit of the original post
Edited: many are pointing out that unpopularity is not synonymous with failure, which would make a lot of sense if it weren't in the context of a company. If a product is unpopular, the company will not pay due attention, which in my opinion cannot be considered something that is not a failure.On 'due attention' - some killers work well, even if not popular. Artist doesn't need a major look because the killer works. Same with Cenobite. Lots of killer players don't care for Singularity, but the ones who play him seem to think he's really good.
And as long as a portion of the player base likes to play a killer, and the survivors don't hate the killer, then BHVR is probably pretty happy with the result.
Also, if your theory is true, shouldn't Wesker/Blight/etc be getting much more frequent touch ups than they do? They're still calling hug tech a bug and how long has it been around?
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I wouldn’t say failed but it seems like most people prefer simple designs
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If I say that all felines are mammals and someone interprets that all mammals are felines, the problem lies in the person's interpretation and not in what I said. In the second paragraph of the OP, I made it very clear what I defined as complex, but I agree with you that this may not have been the most appropriate word. The fact is that I clearly explained the definition with two examples, if anyone still interpreted that I was talking about skill ceiling and mastering, it's not my fault. Just as there were people who didn't understand, others understood what I meant without any major problems.
You placed all killers who have multifunctional powers as what was defined as complex in OP, it's an extremely simplistic approach, besides you ignored several other killers who have more than one mechanic such as Doctor, Plague, Demo, Nemesis and others. An killer having more than one mechanic does not even remotely mean that his power will be full of details (complex). The clearest examples of this are Demo and Plague. Of the ones you mentioned, those that really present powers with a lot of details are Twins, Freddy, Singularity and Knight, and of these, as you mentioned, only Knight has a reasonable choice rate, which comes back to what I mentioned: a trend.
Regarding the Artist, I must agree that in general she doesn't need many changes (that's why I didn't mention her in the edit), but Pinhead, it's clear that BHVR simply doesn't care about him. All that he received after his release were two consecutive nerfs (with a third scheduled after the current PTB launch). Even though it is unpopular and there are no major unhealthy mechanics in his power/add-ons (with the exception of the old engineer's fang), the treatment given to him is a clear sign that his purpose was achieved (sales) and now it is not there is more reason to give him any attraction. You could even argue that this was done to control his lethality rate, but this measure does not take into account that many of the deaths caused by Pinhead are due to the complexity of the power (many survivors do not fully understand his power and/or they don't know how to manage it), but it is easier for BHVR to nerf him to achieve the long-awaited statistic than to make changes that improve things for both sides. They just don't care.
Regarding your last paragraph, see the amount of content (skins) that Blight has already received. Hug tech is a known problem, but possibly difficult to resolve as it involves not only power, but map structures (there are much more detailed posts on this issue). I don't know if you've followed Blight's story closely since 2020, but his has received several bugfixes and QoL over the years, many involving collision and FoV issues, respectively, clearly showing BHVR's concern in keeping him functional. Compare with Twins, as you mentioned, with the reports that they simply crash and stop working, the problem has persisted for over one year, which to me is seen as ill will on the part of the Devs and the complete failure of this killer in every way.
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A failed design for me would be less about which killers are used less, moreover killers which needed reworks.
The best example is The Skull Merchant who not only needed a rework, but in her former state was having a severe negative impact on the game.
From a financial perspective it certainly says something about the usage of characters, although what would be more helpful would be to see how many units of each chapter sold and made money, although I appreciate that's not practical.
As for complexity in killers being a factor, no doubt some players may not have the patience nor the interest in learning a killer which is obviouslt a turn off. Complexity is subjective though. As an example, Huntress has a simplistic mechanic, but to be good takes a lot of practice. Some may have little patience for that or simply find her too complecated to get the angles right.
You're argument does hold some weight. However, it's not the whole picture and I would say having to rework a killer's power is more a sign of a lack of popularity. We may have Nightlight, but DBD have the final figures and I'd assume from a business point of view they'd want as many killers as viable to play as possible, so if they need to change a power there must be a business reason behind why they were a priority.
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I would say no only simple, but efficient too. Clown has a very simple power (if you consider just the purple bottles) but its not that popular due to not being that strong. The same with Doctor.
Wesker, Blight and Huntress quite have some power in their kit that make them reliable killers in most matches.
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Not by itself.
Can be complex but enjoyable. Im sure killer players enjoy different ""flavours"", someone likes to chase, others to trap, others stealth, may be something easy to play like clown or something more demanding like singularity.
At least i think killers should have the lowest skill floor posible but as high ceiling as posible.
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I don't think that's the case. What makes a killer popular is that it's fun to play. The proof is that Blight is one of the most complex killers and at the same time one of the most popular, not only because he is strong, but also because he is one of the most fun to play. He is much more popular than other strong killers like Spirit, Artist or Nurse, because these are really boring.
Singularity is not popular because his power is clunky and requires too much from the player to do the minimum. Not to mention how frustrating is that a killer's power can be completely nullified by survivors. It's a similar case to Hillbilly, people don't play him because he requires too much practice for the results you will get.
I'm pretty sure that if Wesker is heavily nerfed he would still be among the most popular killers. There are killers like Legion that are extremely popular despite not being very strong.
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