The gen defense nerfs will lead to slugging.
Comments
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Why?
What would that actually achieve? Wouldn't you inevitably end up in situations where something's too strong for the majority of players but only decently strong for the top, and therefore statistically everyone just has to deal with something being OP because the top players don't struggle against it?
You balance for everyone. It's the only way live service games can work, not exclusively DBD.
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I think that some changes brought with this update, like Pop or DS, were way too much.
As Pop gives you 30 (now 20)% out of the gens current progress, it's a bit situational since sometimes it's not worth it.
25% would be a nice middle ground.
Other changes are, imo, fine.
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Then let me rephrase it. I spend my time very ineffiently and there is next to nothing that can be done to speed this process up. Even Agitation and Fire Up only save marginal time and I think we would both agree that a killer should not run both of these perks, if they want to win.
You answer the wrong question though. I did not ask how I buy myself more time in a match, I asked how I would stop losing time from hooking. They aren't mutually exclusive. Even if I play a good macro game, the time I spend hooking, is time that I grant the survivors to do whatever they want with absolutely no pressure applied to 3 of them. Macro plays also are a time investment on their own. I cannot do that while hooking (at least not without getting lucky as it requires bad plays from the survivors).
Basically your answer to my question is to play so good, that I can afford to lose time. But the same logic can be applied to everything. Every map could be Garden of Misery to the power of 3 and you could still argue that the killer only has to play a good macro game to beat the survivors because if everyone is constantly healing, on a hook or right next to the killer nothing gets done. But that is not how the game works.
Ultimately, the killer spends way too much time with everything they do, to keep up with everything else they have to do and there is little that can be done to optimise that. The killer role doesn't really work without slowdown and the nerf of these slowdown perks is only going to highlight that issue. Either that, or we'll see more slugging, camping and tunneling from people that try to force the game to a slower pace. I think none of these are good options. Worse, some people might actually try to and go back to Ruin + Undying. The survivor meta is almost back to 2021 and the killer meta might get there too.
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Reality is pain pop wouldn't be as strong if survivors used some of their brain. Far too many times a survivor will touch the gen immediately after getting pain res leading to a pop. We already been thru this with survivors refusing to stop doing a gen for a second to avoid getting kicked off.
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And then I retort with
Because survivors shouldn't have to team up on a Discord call with 3 other skilled players to be viable at a high level, especially when the game has trio SWF, duo SWF and solo q all with potentially no comms.
Also, only 2 viable killers would be a pretty disputable number even back when the game was blatantly survivor sided all those years ago, let alone now.0 -
Trickle down balance:
Imagine a scenario for DBD, where we see killer shack for example.
Killer shack, is one of the strongest structures in the game for survivors. At a high level, a good survivor pretty much can waste a solid 30-40 seconds or more of a killers time just at this single structure, let alone when it is connected to things. But at a low level, what happens? The survivor predrops the pallet the wrong way, gets hit anyway, and now the pallet is gone.
What happens if they nerf this structure? Does it hurt the low level player? No, it does not, because the low level player was not exploiting this structure to its fullest extent anyway. But it does "hurt" the high level player, by bringing the structure more in line.
The same could be said for nurse. If you nerf nurse, you aren't going to hurt the low level killer players, because they already aren't exploiting nurse to her fullest potential, so they aren't going to change anything. But it will hurt the high level nurse players.
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No, I did answer that question. How do you stop from losing time while hooking? You make the time investment for hooking pay for itself by making sure you get the full benefits of hooking.
It's not just overcoming losing time by "playing good", it's understanding the time dynamics of the trial and what time isn't actually wasted. Yeah, three survivors are doing gens while you're hooking - that's normal. That's not relevant to your gameplan because some generator repair is always going to get done, you can't consider that wasted time because it was gonna get spent by the survivors somehow, they're players with agency.
(It's also not guaranteed, but that'd be getting too into hyper specific examples of specific perks and specific killers, so I'll leave that there)
Examples like the Garden of Joy break this because the other time investment - the actual chase portion - can take too long due to unbalanced amounts and placement of resources. If the chase is a reasonable time, though, the time spent on hooking isn't wasted, it's invested. Those two things are meaningfully separate and it is relevant to this conversation, because different perks govern this.
If the problem is that chases take too long, you'd run chase and info perks, not necessarily slowdown perks. This is part of how I'd argue against this idea that the killer role "doesn't really work without slowdown", because of course it does- you just have to understand how killer efficiency functions and that some progression of the survivor objective is inevitable. Being efficient doesn't mean stopping it entirely, it just means giving yourself time to progress your objective.
Obviously, slowdown perks make this easier and there's nothing wrong with them existing, but they should be considered a way to boost your basekit slowdown from macro play, not a replacement for it.
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achieve the goal of almost every mp game. the game is both balanced and fun. no bs at the competitive level and you can join in at any skill level and have a good time.
you could run into those, you could also run into a falling meteor tomorrow. do you have a practical example?
and that would be affecting the fun right? it needs to be fun at the bottom while balanced at the top, so some change would need to happen.
no system will ever happen without finding issues, pretending one hypothetical issue means it's useless is just arguing in bad faith.
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What killer besides Nurse can realistically keep that up? Survivors naturally reset way faster than the killer gets their next down. Unhooking, healing and getting back to a gen is much quicker than getting a down.
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Being fun for the entire playerbase is the only goal, and being balanced is the way you get there most of the time- obviously there's other factors at play.
The fact of the matter is, you can never ignore any section of the playerbase. You have to keep all of them in mind for every change and make sure you've got a good amount of changes that'll affect each skill range positively, where applicable. If that sounds nightmarishly difficult, welcome to game design.
This is a great example. Would there be anything wrong with that change? Nope!
As long as other changes come out that would more positively affect lower skill levels and not affect high levels. In other words, as long as it's part of an overall mindset of balancing for the entire game, not just the top. "Trickle down" doesn't work, direct actions will always be needed. All skill ranges are always important and none can be overlooked.
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You can still run whatever you want. You're not being forced to run gen defense perks.
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If it's up to killers, the games will -always- go 'too fast'. But nothing in the statistics suggests that this is actually the case.
The point is that, if you continue to make it so killers aren't even able to gain any time by hooking, then why bother hooking at all? Which is the point of this thread.
The problem is that this is always what happens whenever any nerf to killers gets announced. 'If this nerf goes through, I'll just slug/tunnel/camp'.
And this will continue to happen as long as killers feel dissatisfied in any way. Killers have never been able to 'gain time' by hooking, and it's never stopped them from continuing to win games.
This is another reason I detest camp/tunnel/slug strategies. They get pulled out whenever a nerf is announced, almost like a protection racket. Even this thread, in which you yourself do also recommend nerfing all the perks, still has an air to it of 'if we don't get compensatory basekit buffs, I'm gonna slug'.
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What is the bigger problem.
The fact that 95% of the killers are not viable at a high level, or that 5% of the killers are too strong lower levels?
You need to address the thing that impacts the most players. And take a look at these forums, people are tired of seeing blight/nurse/wesker every game.
See my point?
2 things can be true at the same time, there can be multiple problems in play, but there are degrees of problems.
The only REAL solution to SWF is to split the queues, solo queue and SWF are separate queues with separate rules that balance the game for those different types of players.
Personally, i'd like to see a "ranked" mode that is a traditional ranked mode like other games, where there are ranks shown, leaderboards, etc. And that ranked mode is where the SWFs go, and then there is the "solo queue" where you can only queue with 1 other person and a match can only have a single premade (so always 4 solos, or 1 duo and 2 solos). That is a different problem entirely though.
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the only goal is making money. let's be honest.
and making it fun is how you do that.
making it balanced is how you keep players in after the initial part and they learn how the game works.
fact of the matter is that you should not change what I'm arguing for. never said to ignore anyone.
I'm saying you balance for the top. because that's where you can find balance. you can never balance for the entire playerbase, and it's insane to even try.
were you actually trying to scare me with that? I literaly said to do that…
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Its not a threat, its a prediction. If they keep nerfing the things that are viable alternatives to the "unfun" strategies that survivors complain about, then all that is going to happen is more and more killers are going to play in that "unfun" way.
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Many high-mobility killers, killers that have basekit slowdown mechanics, or killers with exceptionally good 1v1s. And killer players that can find and exploit survivor mistakes especially in macro play. The grand majority of killer games aren't against a seal team 6 SWF on comms with callouts who never make mistakes. Just like the grand majority of survivor games aren't against a 10k hour Blight streamer on a 1900+ winstreak. Skill is a real factor in DBD games.
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How about you take another look at what he said? I give you some hints: "consistently winning" … "zero slowdown". Your turn.
And to your title: If that would happen, we would have another bright example that killer players are just too reliant on game mechanics than on learning proper gameplay.
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That is, unfortunately, a consequence of having these 'unfun' strategies continue to exist.
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Well, it sounds like we almost agree, save for saying that balancing for everyone is impossible. It's not, it's just difficult- and it's still necessary.
Players aren't going to have fun if they're facing things that are too strong for them to reasonably deal with outside of just investing thousands of hours into the game. That is relevant to a studio's balancing efforts, it can't be ignored.
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Again, just because something is rare, doesn't mean it is balanced.
Why is it ok for those "seal team 6" guys to just queue up and have a near 100% win rate? Why is that ok?
What if there was a killer offering that:
- Made the killer move at 200% movement speed
- Permanently exposed all survivors.
- Permanently revealed the aura of all survivors
- Permanently increased gen times to 180 seconds
- Permanently made it so all survivors are immediately moriable
- Appears in the bloodweb with a 0.01% chance
That offering would be fair right? After all, a 0.01% chance means you'd only see it in one out of every 10,000 games roughly. So that would make it fine right?
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So take those strategies away. What is left?
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"Too reliant on game mechanics instead of learning the game properly"
What exactly is there other than "game mechanics" that doesn't make any sense.
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it is. people with too varied skill level are not gonna find common ground on balance. ask just about any FGC player how they feel about any grappler and you'll see.
but it's not necessary. new and non competitive players just wanna have fun.
and you change that when it happens, but keeping it balanced for the top.
fun is for everyone, but you focus "fun changes" on the bottom. because the top will find their fun simply by the game being balanced properly. so you must focus the balance changes on the top.
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Liked your posts in this thread, specifically wanted to comment on one thing:
That's not relevant to your gameplan becausesomegenerator repair is always going to get done, you can't consider that wasted time because it was gonna get spent by the survivors somehow, they're players with agency.I think this is a great point and highlights a big disagreement on what the game is supposed to be. Both sides have different objectives and the goal is not to stop the other side from completing their objective, but to complete yours before they can finish theirs.
This is a great example. Would there be anything wrong with that change? Nope!The shack example is a crazy one on the idea that it means 'balance to the top'. It seems like a perfect example of balance for everyone or balance to the middle.
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It doesnt need any gen regression nerf to start slugging
You can equip Knock Out, Sloppy Butcher and other perks of your choice (perks and add-ons that cause blindness for example, perks for chase or some other slowdown that doesnt need hooking survivors), and always slug. This is without a doubt the most effective way to win any match as killer
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Why is it then that some of the most successful and long running games in history are ones that do just that?
- DotA
- LoL
- Counter strike
- Rainbow Six
All of these things are extremely difficult to play and often find you "having to deal with something that takes thousands of hours to be able to get the skill to counter" and yet they are some of the most popular and long running multiplayer games ever made.
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At this rate you're pulling numbers out of the blue. No, there are more viable killers than 2 of them. Do I know the exact number? No since I don't play every killer.
Just splitting the queues won't work unless you plan to add a full-blown competitive ladder and hard incentives to even play in the "try-hard" queue. Not to mention enormous balance efforts to get rid of map RNG, and many other things that affect match outcomes in a random way. Losing the game as killer because 2 god windows and a couple god pallets spawned is not gonna feel good, nor is it gonna feel good to lose as survivor because the map decided it's gonna be 2 pallets and a giant deadzone.
As it is right now you'll just be giving killer players a choice. "Do you want hard matches or do you want easy matches?". Guess what most people who derive enjoyment from winning will pick? All this is going to do is make finding matches to play with friends impossible, while giving tryhard killer players very easy games to win in.0 -
I'm not saying that you need to nerf gen regression for it to happen. I'm simply stating that, as they make things less viable, killers will turn to strategies that survivors find "less fun" in order to continue to play in a viable way. So its just going to lead to less fun for everyone.
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I do think that's a big hangup some people can have, and to be fair it's not like the game goes out of its way to convey otherwise. Your objective progress isn't tied to your opponent's, at least for killer; they can get almost all the way to theirs by finishing all the generators and you'd still absolutely have a shot at winning.
Too many killer players see a completed generator as a loss in some way, I think.
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well, too bad
Aren't we supposed to repeat the moto "your fun is not my problem"?
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I'm not familiar enough with those games to really comment, but based on what I do know of other games, I'm willing to bet they absolutely make changes aimed at lower skill levels too.
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Even as a survivor main, I think it's a shame that killers are bashed so hard here.
It would be better if killers have as base kit that give them an additional 5% more in the next gen regress event for each alternating survivor hook.
Then I would find the gen perks nerfs acceptable, but not like that.
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Did you miss the part where I mentioned the Blight on a 1900+ winstreak? Why are you focused on the seal team 6? Some killers can also get a near 100% win rate as well. Arguably easier to do as well since it doesn't require 3 other people to team up with, just you getting really good at a top 2 killer as you mention it.
I can now spin your argument around and replace "killer" with "survivor" and change some wording around to survivor beneficial factors and ask you the same question.
Do you understand your us vs them based arguments aren't going anywhere when those same arguments can be used by the other side?3 -
Every single patch I've seen, there's been at least one person *insisting* that slugging would increase in reaction to [killer nerf or survivor buff]. That trend of slugging has always failed to materialize.
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A game that can be balanced towards a broader, more engaging gameplay experience, without the constant threat in the background.
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Thats it, I've had it. As an m1 killer main I needed pop and pain ress to prolong the game. Why can't you just nerf the top 3 killers that we all know are too strong?
Guess you guys will see a lot more SMs etc from now on which is going to be my new main. I will enjoy a lot of dcs. Just ridiculous.
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Its more of a thing that none of them are as asymmetrical as DbD. If a weapon or class is overpowered, changing it changes it for everyone. So you can just look at one sector of the player base to determine if its a problem.
DbD isn't like that because of the problem with the differing skill floors in the game. Killer is much more straightforward to start, meaning the balance of the game is inherently skewed. On top of this one side of the game can add in SWF and comms which is an option the other side has no access to.
Additionally, the argument suffers from the fact that just because one approach might be successful, doesn't mean its the only approach that is successful. DbD is a wildly successful game after all, so using the same logic if a game did balance just around the top, it would be fair to ask why don't they balance around all skill levels, like DbD does.
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I don't think there will be more slugging; I think there will be an increase in tunneling. It won't be a huge increase but, unless the unannounced changes include something that affects this, there will be an increase.
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They absolutely do. Some of my favorite heroes in Dota have been tweaked to remove things that were too powerful in lower level play, and I'm certain I've seen balance posts from Riot talking about champion balance across different skill levels.
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You guys say this everytime gen perks get nerfed.
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Without any "unfun" strats or good gen regression, the only viable things left are the game being balanced either for chases to end very fast and/or for gens to take a mind numbing amount of time to complete. Both of which survivors in general have stated they don't like.
What gameplay experience are you talking about if not those? Realistically they're not gonna remake the game from the ground up either, so it can't be something that'd require that.
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CS is inherantly asymmetrical. 1 side is on offense and 1 is defense. And they have different weapons available.
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Hence why I main Ghostface who really needs pop and pain ress in order to not lose 4 gens instantly.
But I guess SM will be the one from now on.
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True, the question is if they finally nerfed them too hard. Usually when they have done this, another gen defense perk is buffed in some way, so we are able to just switch to the new one. This time around they just hit all of the good ones left at once. So its a question on whether they are still enough. After doing the math, i don't think they will be, which is why i made this prediction.
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slug? no I feel you should go 100% endgame build since survs just want to pop gens so damn fast.
(I mean it's what they have to do can't blame them)
Devs planned how to make this game as hide and seek all the time
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Especially since gates are just effectively a secret sixth gen for the survivors that normally take 20 seconds to open.
Remember Me (24 extra seconds to open a gate. Gives an excuse to tunnel out the obsession.)
No Way Out (60 second gate block)
Which that together is 104 seconds to open up one gate or 144 seconds to open up both gates.0 -
lol, it'll just lead to more tunneling.
If PR was 100% regression on every hook, I am convinced nothing would change and some people would still say that Survivor is OP
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Yes, some maps are CT sided, some maps are T sided, some weapons are more effective on some maps on one side, some are on the other side.
But then what happens in CS? Both teams get to play both sides so there is in effect no imbalance because both sides get to play as the stronger and weaker "role" in any given match, in equal proportion.1 -
This is too off topic anyway, and i don't want the thread to get closed, so at this point i'm going to disengage from this discussion anyway. If you'd like to continue it, feel free to make a new thread about it and would be happy to participate.
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You cannot win the game before the sides switch, at best you can make it require 1 more round for a win. In the competitive maps at least, the map are not so one-sided for this to happen, the usual cause of this instead is a huge gap in the teams' skill.
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