Declining quality of killers and the survivor experience
Before anyone says anything I am a killer main and I have played this game for years and witnessed the changes made to it in real time.
I feel the need to clarify that because some players can get so defensive if you suggest even something on one side of this game needs any form of change but I honestly believe the new killers added to the game are making the survivor experience worse. Some people may instead point to the broken things that have been available on the survivor role throughout the years and the loss of them is why some people are complaining. (the big things I'm thinking about are very old DS, Circle of Healing and Dead Hard) but I don't think that's it i think its just coincided with a decline in killer quality.
So I took a snippet of all the chapters on the wiki and on instinct ticked all the chapters with killers I don't mind playing against and crossed the ones I don't like.
There are one or two I would change upon further reflection but these were all on instinct and based on their current state.
I made a post not too long ago on this same topic but because I did not clarify enough for some people I AM A KILLER PLAYER WITH THE -REPS PRE CROSSPLAY ON A STEAM PROFILE TO PROVE IT. I saw people assuming what my takes were saying that I only wanted the game to be easier for suv ect.
Don't take this as an attack on your role. I play it I have since 2017.
The new killers are not as fun to run as the older ones its nothing about them being strong or weak. Hillbilly is incredibly fun to run, he is also very powerful. Some killers (and it goes to survivors as well but it is mostly killers right now from my experience) on these forums need to grow out of the habit of assuming every player who dares ask for something to be changed to make survivor better is just trying to sabotage the killer role altogether.
Sorry if this post is written in a confrontational and ranty manner but I don't want to have to explain some of these things to comments that are so keen on assuming anything typed on the forums must be written from the "other" side if it doesn't immediately conform to their ideas about the game.
Comments
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For me the problem starts with their 60% kill rate goal. This alone makes the game miserable, because they then do stupid decisions to accomplish that.
All the past map reworks did only do one thing in my opinion make the survivor experience even worse.
Then they do questionable perk changes all the time for both sides and why is their only solution for everything nerf it into uselessness?
I don‘t mind the newer killers, but most of them have one thing in common easy and quick downs.
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Looking at this list, I have a vastly different experience. Not saying I'm right or wrong, but it's all subjective in the end.
What does happen as time goes on is - because of the finite possibilities - killers will start becoming variants of existing killers, and some even start adapting a few powers at once. The Unknown is a classic example of that. Repetition can become rather dreary.
However, if I were to make a list of Killers I like facing, based upon the way you have done, this would be mine:
The Nurse👍
The Shape👍
The Hag👎
The Doctor👍
The Huntress👍
The Cannibal👍
The Nightmare👍
The Pig👎
The Clown👎
The Spirit👎
The Legion👎
The Plague👎
The Ghost Face👎
The Demogorgon👍
The Oni👍
The Deathslinger👍
The Executioner👍
The Blight👍
The Twins👎
The Trickster👎
The Nemesis👍
The Cenobite👎
The Artist👍
The Onryō👍
The Dredge👍
The Mastermind👍
The Knight👍
The Skull Merchant👎
The Singularity👍
The Xenomorph👍
The Good Guy👍
The Unknown👍
Basically, whether somebody enjoys a killer or not is much more down to personal experience than anything to do with quality. Some may think similar to myself and other may be more inclined to agree with you. That's absolutely fine, but it's not a reflection on objective quality.
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You probably should have explained your reasoning instead of preparing for an attack on your naked opinion. I have no idea what you are even talking about.
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As stated, this comes down to personal taste. My list would propably also look very different.
It is really hard to say that something is objectively bad, because there are no standards to compare it to. The only standards are very subjective, making a discussion very difficult.
I love playing against Sadako and Pig as well as Xenomorph.
I dont like playing Wesker.
Each their own taste. The best that can be done is to look at the specific stats in terms of how much a chaper has been sold as well as the pick rate of the killer in question. If a chaper has low sales AND the killer is played extremely rare, one could say that this killer might not be a huge success.
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The big issue I have with the newer killers is the only way to play against them normally comes in 2 ways
Forced counterplay eg turrets and the alien because the alien's power cannot be played at loops if the alien is any good you have to engage with the turret system so the core dbd gameplay loop becomes less relevant and whatever anyone says about the game I think the core gameplay loop is very strong hence why I think killers like legion are fun to play against because as suv I always get a chance to display what I can do.
The other problem I have is they can consistently force hits if the killer understands how to use the power and there is not much the suv can do about it I would be able to force hits against the best survivors in the world on Knight. That's not arrogance I'd still lose the game its just you can take the survivor skill out of the equation on him consistently, if I were a blight however id be run for 5 gens. And when I feel like I have no agency on suv it make me not want to play it. Its why i kinda think the occasional post from an suv player that says something along the lines of "Suvs are just supposed to be playthings for the killers ect" complaining about balance is kind of understandable even if they are forgetting MFT and before that COH and before that old dead hard and COH making most chases 3 hits and before that DS unbreakable ect.
I still think the game overall is in a much better place than it used just based on the fact the most egregious perks suvs have right now is For the people, buckle up, distortion and background player. That is quite a step down in the broken scale but because the survivor experience is mostly dependent on what killers are released (because as killer i can just ignore any killer I don't like and never have to play them on suv I don't have the luxury of doing that) I found myself enjoying it less.
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What percentage would you prefer? Higher? Lower? 60% kill rate means on average they are getting roughly 2 and a half kills a match over an average of matches (slightly closer to a 2k by 2.5%). Killers win with a 3k, so they are expected to win half their matches with an occasional extra failure to win from time to time.
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I would prefer a 55% kill rate, in this scenario the killer would still have the upper hand, but you aren‘t guaranteed to loose by default as survivor. Killers shouldn‘t win because of a win rate goal, so shouldn‘t survivors, but with 60% you almost win by default all the time. For me it‘s incredibly easy against good survivors and I don‘t play nurse and blight.
Counter question aren‘t Games supposed to be fun and fun also comes from winning and isn‘t it unfair objectively to loose more than 60% of your games just for we „ we want 60% kill rate“? I wonder what killers would say if they only had a 40% kill rate by default.
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I still fail to see how the map reworks were in any way bad. Many of the maps were survivor sided and are now fairer for both sides. Survivors simply don't have as many loops any more where they are safe. The only bad map rework I can think of is Rancid Abbatoir. Tunneling and camping are the real survivor issues if you ask me.
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There seems to be a marked shift in power design philosophy as more of the playerbase shifted towards console and analog stick controls. Killer kits are increasingly complicated as a whole, but the powers themselves are very simple to use post 2020. There are obviously exceptions, but most killer powers are binary now and take less skill. We can call it like it is. Chucky, SM, Knight, and other recent killers are kind of braindead easy to use effectively. And that sucks to face in chase. It feels bad to be "outplayed" by a SM drone or Knight guard
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It‘s no bad thing having survivor sided maps since most of the killers a powerful and performing good. Survivors should have something to play with.
Borgo was the worst map rework, it‘s incredibly killer sided. It‘s such a unfun map. Garden of joy also was a terrible rework, you only have the strong main building and everything outside is trash. Most maze tiles don‘t even have a window most times. The cold wind map with only shack in the middle is far too small and has most times only one pallet near gens or no pallets at all near gens. Rancid like you said. The sice decrease of mothers drawling was unnecessary and what ever else got changed.
No rework actually helped survivors and not every map should be made bad for survivors only to be easy for bad M1 killers, instead they should buff them. Making every map easy for bad M1s leaves you no chance against an actual good/stronger killers.
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60% kill rate means slightly under a 50% win rate. 62.5% would be an even 50% (on average, of course). A 55% kill rate would mean on average, every match the killer would not win. It would mean failing to win every match except for every 5th match where you'd end up getting a 3k at a 75% kill rate.
If we are averaging
Match 1 55% (the 5% will carry over into future matches via averaging. Will calculate the current average carry over below per match)
Failed to secure a win with 3k
Match 2 60% (carry over up to 5%)
Failed to secure a win with 3k
Match 3 65% (carry over up to 10%)
Failed to secure a win with a 3k
Match 4 70% (carry over up to 15%)
Failed to secure a win with a 3k
Match 5 75% (carry over up to 20%)
Killer win with a 3k
You're asking for killers to have a 20% win rate. That's not feasible. At 60%, they have slightly under a 50% win rate. That fairly balanced.
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That makes no sense. With 55% there is only 20% missing for winning all the time.
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I edited my post to make it more clear.
Remember, a 50% kill rate is a 2k. Failure to win
A 75% kill rate is the minimum needed for a win, a 3k.
If their kill rate was 55%, then they are failing to win the majority of their matches, as a 75% is needed for a win.
Look at it this way. If they had a 50% kill rate, that means every match on average they are only getting a 2k. They would essentially never win despite being only a 25% difference from a win. At 55%, that's barely a difference even if only 20% away from a win.
Let's trim the fat on these numbers. Anything below a 50% kill rate let's ignore and anything above 75% let's ignore. Anything below 50% is just as much as a failure of a win that 50% is, and anything above a 75% is just as much as a win as 75% is. If we trim the fat, that leaves us with a scale of 0-25. 0 would be the old 50% and 25 the old 75%
Now your 55% translates to 5 (55 - 50).
From a scale of 0-25, how long would it take to get to 25 for a win when on average you're getting 5? It would take 5 matches to finally get to 25, a 3k. If we are dealing with BHVR's 60% kill rate, that translates to 10 in our example (60 - 50). We would win after our third match with a little extra that would carry on into the next games. Over the course of several matches, it would roughly come out to slightly under a 50% win rate. 10 + 10 + 10 (a win in 3rd match with an extra 5 left over), 15 + 10 (a win in 5th match), then we would be back to the 10 + 10 + 10 pattern again.
Post edited by RpTheHotrod on0 -
That‘s not how it works, 50% means you get 2 kills by default and this is a draw not a lose - not a win (objectively).
Also the game should be fair and fair would only be a 50% kill rate (objectively). Then killers and survivors would have the same chances.
I can understand what you think, but a draw is basically a 1:1 in soccer, no one won - no one lost.
Your calculation missed that you shouldn‘t always get 2ks. It should even be possible for good killers to lose against good survivors with 0k and then the next round according to your logic you would get a 4K. With a 2k you objectively never lost a game, therefore your chances shouldn‘t increase.
I hope I could make my stance clearer.
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Slight correction on your part, as this is easily misunderstood and very confusing due to BHVR's design. The game is set up as a 1 vs 4 individuals with their own win conditions. It's not a team vs team game. There are 4 distinct 1 on 1 situations in every match. It's impossible to have a draw in this game design, as it's binary. Each 1 v 1 situation either has a winner or a lower (not counting server crashes). Draws requires both opposing teams to neither win nor lose. With a 2k, 2 survivors won and 2 survivors lost. A draw requires no one winning or losing. Now, for MMR purposes, it counts a 2k as mmr neutral. People confuse this with assuming MMR adjustments are a reward or penalty for winning - this simply isn't the case. MMR only cares about making future matches more fair. That's why many games can have winners lose mmr and losers gaining mmr. MMR is not related to wins or losses in any way. Their have their own calculation for adjustments. For dbd, 0-1k lowers mmr, 2k is neutral, and 3-4k raises mmr. That being said, a killer is defined as winning a match if he wins at least 3 of his 1 on 1 situations. Confusing? Yes. The survivors do NOT win or lose together as a team. However, I seriously think BHVR should change this to a team vs team game. Survivors would then win or lose together. This would encourage survivors to cooperate more as opposed to an every man for himself mentality as one the devs once mentioned in their live streams. If it was a team vs team situation, then yes, a 2k would absolutely be considered a draw. However, for whatever reason, BHVR says it's not designed that way. 4 individual 1 v 1 situations just makes everything more unnecessarily complicated.
In your soccer example, it's one team vs another team. In dbd, it's just not that way. In soccer, you don't have 30 individual 1 v 1 matches going in per game (however many players there are in soccer....not a sports guy, my apologies).
Now, with all that being said, ONE COULD ARGUE that the killer getting a single kill in a game is a killer win with the possibility of 4 wins every match for a killer. However, that hurts my brain too much, lol.
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The MMR system they have considers a escape a win and a death a loss and hatch a draw factoring in for hatch escapes 60% is reasonable as for killer a win is 3k and 2k is a draw
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Heavily disagree. Most map reworks were good for the game. Maps should be actually balanced and not survivor sided.
I see no problem with Borgo. That map isn't as big anymore, and it doesn't spawn as many safe loops any more, but it still has a good amount of loops, some of them still very safe.
I also am very surprised to hear that Garden of Joy is now a bad map for survivors? Pretty sure most people agree that that map is still survivor sided, with how strong the main building is, and how big the map is. Coldwin maps are also perfectly fine if you ask me, except for Rancid Abattoir.
My only issue with some maps right now on the survivors side is that rng can sometimes screw over survivors, spawning too many big deadzones. I do not think that has necessarily something to do with the map reworks however, because I have noticed this issue on the swamp maps as well.
Killers having higher kill rates definitely shouldn't be combated by making maps unfairer again. Instead, actual survivor issues should be addressed, there are still more than enough. Solo queue could use more buffs, and tunneling and camping need to be further nerfed. No idea who would actually prefer maps to become survivor sided again instead of having survivor issues like tunneling and camping addressed.
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Id attribute the decline mainly for survivors is that there's no incentive to save each other so you'll probably die your first hook most of your experience in solo que. I saw people saying new killers weren't as fun, that's not the problem either is I am a killer main and never play some of the old ones. There is nothing wrong with the game as a killer. Yes you can get gen-rushed but you can also camp and tunnel. The real reason for the decline is the devs Nerfing perks tho. Sloppy butcher just got hitched yet they added a speed boost perk for the unknown that their gonna nerf later also. Like I thought the game was supposed to be fun. Biggest hit yet was boon healing getting hitched I say drop the healing speeds to 5, 10, 20 not take away the self heal ability altogether. The quote on the perk doesn't even match it anymore. Literally any healing perk is better than boon healing after the devs nerfed it... Which they love to do. Give us jeepers creepers and I guarantee you get a slew of new customers and returning old ones
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