Pace of the game making event irrelevant

Dexorf

I'll not reiterate the usual "gens fast" subject or suggest a solution as obviously it isn't as simple as "make gens slow". I also think the actual event is perfectly fine and cute & I don't mean to criticize it. What I want to argue is that the effort devs put into cute events like this kind of suffers from the current pace of the game.

From the killer's perspective, taking part in the event and doing snowball fights with the survivors, you're essentially make a huge risk, far above what survivors do for doing the same.

If you're dealing with survivors that are at all competent, the game is normally pretty cutthroat about how you have to manage your time as killer - waste 30 seconds on a bad chase at a time when you shouldn't, and that can be enough to snowball (pun intended) the game against you.

And now we load into the game, with 4 individuals. Do all or any of them want to mess around, or will they sit on gens with Prove Thyself & toolboxes and then proceed to teabag and trashtalk you at the end of the game for just trying to throw some snowballs and have fun? You don't know. And if you burn even just a minute on trying to figure it out, you've put yourself at such a disadvantage that the match is barely worth playing if the survivors really just want to do gens and get out.

Personally, after a couple of days of trying to feel this out in my games it just doesn't feel worth it & I'm returning to playing as normal. My ego gets boiled over by trying to mess around, getting teabagged at, and thinking "This guy could be on a hook right now".

BooperDooper

Well survivors can't really afford messing around too much especially since killers are tunneling a lot.

It's an endless cycle of killers are tunneling so survivors gotta escape and leave as well as survivors are gen rushing, killers gotta tunnel to get kills. So it's like 💁‍♂️ What can you do. Both sides forcing each other to be sweaty 24/7.

Fortunately I've had some fun snowball fights with those willing to not take the time during event so seriously, both as killer and survivor against apposing sides

Dexorf

https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3611359#Comment_3611359

Oh yeah, I've had some fun snowball fights too & I also understand that the game isn't exactly easier on the survivor side. But what can happen is

1. One gen pops by the time a couple of survivors figure out you're chill and just want to mess around
2. Two survivors come out and you just mess around for a minute or two
3. Two gens pop because the other two survivors aren't on board

The hell do I even do in that scenario? Hunt down the two people doing gens so the game isn't over in three minutes? But the first two will likely get bored and just get back to playing the game normally too. These situations are really frustrating.

BooperDooper

https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3611368#Comment_3611368

Yeah having 4 people can be difficult as everyone is doing their own thing so coordinating them together to particpate in having some fun and chilling is almost impossible. Kinda have to throw as killer if u wanna have fun sadly

OrangeBear

I think this event is probably the least time consuming event they have released. Personally i just use the snowskulls to hit snowmen to get points and maybe reveal a survivor. You can do it at the same time as doing other stuff.

Since the MMR change i personally do not have any time to waste as killer but i think this is how it should be. If the game is ever too easy for you then it's too hard for the survivors. Ideally both sides should feel challenged.

zarr

This is partly my jadedness speaking, but I really don't think the snowmen and snowballs constitute an "event". Yeah sure, it can be fun the first two or three matches to mess around a bit, and here and there there might still be opportunities to have a little fun with that, but they really just do not provide actual fun and interactive gameplay. Snowballs don't do anything but very briefly obscure vision, which is useless, and the snowmen are glorified lockers.

If they actually want to meaningfully change the game experience and gameplay during the events, then actually introducing, you know, gameplay mechanics would be a start. It's only for a couple of weeks, why not live a little and mix and spice things up a bit? Snowmen have been nerfed multiple times to be in the sorry state they're in now. They used to tank hits if a survivor was inside of them, now they don't even tank hits anymore if you hide behind them. And sure it was BS on the killer side that they tanked hits (although there were killers that even benefitted from this, such as Bubba or Doctor), but not only could they just ship compensatory buffs for killers to do with the snowmen (e. g. if you jump out of a snowman within Xm of a survivor, they become Exposed for Xs), now that snowballs are here and allow us to destroy snowmen that really wouldn't be much of an issue anymore, and make both of these mechanics much more gameplay-relevant. Hell, they could even make it so that getting hit by a snowball incurs a brief Hindered effect on the respective player. Since killers and survivors can both use it, it would be fairly balanced, and fun. Killers would in fact stand to benefit from this, because not only is it easier to throw snowballs while looking ahead rather than looking behind like survivors have to, but if you decrease the speed of both the killer and survivor while maintaining the same speed differential, the killer always benefits as the survivor covers less of the map in the time needed to catch up, therefore not being able to reach structures they otherwise would have, or to chain them as well.

It's probably a mix of negative feedback from prior event mechanics and just the fact that they don't want to invest time and effort into events if they can help it. Not least because such gameplay mechanics can cause bugs or exploits that they potentially would have to address, which is difficult with the holiday break. It's lame especially given that they've said they want to be more ambitious with events and such. The Halloween event at least had that secondary realm thing going, which was neat enough an idea and an alright execution on it (the realm itself could have been a little more interesting, and overall the event was rather survivor-favouring again; maybe the realm should have been much darker but with outlines around player models, like Dredge's Nightfall).

But yeah, bottom line is that the event gives nobody a real reason to do anything but play normally, past a short grace period perhaps.