Game balancing: A response to complaints...
Consider this, 1 killer = 4 survivors.
If a survivor disconnects, you automatically are looking at 100% vs 75%.
There generally is at least one potato on a team = 100% vs 80%.
On one hand as killer, you can control your 100% anyway you see fit to maximize it's effectiveness, on the other hand, survivors can be in more than one place at a time. As killer your job is to lead the survivors where you want them, ie, off generators, and onto hooks, or hook saves, retrieving items, cleansing totems etc.
As survivor in a random game, you cannot communicate with your team, you cannot tell them when to pull you from the hook, you can't tell them to do the gen when you draw the killer to the other side of the map. You can't always rely on them to make the smart/good play, but instead they make the selfish move. This being 25% of your side and hoping the other 75% does something halfway right is a big reason survivor is so challenging.
There are many issues that play heavily in the killer's favor, like hits through pallets, or through windows, hits when the survivor is behind the killer, grabs when survivor has already stopped interacting with an object etc. Not to mention some very strong add ons, iridescent items, mori's etc. Most of these issues I'm holding my breath on, hoping that dedicated servers will correct them. - At least when dedicated servers happen you will be able to tell how these interactions are and time them more consistently.
There are other strategies that work perfectly fine, but a standard strategy as killer is to grab the potato quickly and hang on hook, this will pull at a minimum of 1-2 more survivor away from gens/totems/etc and apply pressure.
thoughts?
Comments
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Ok, using your notation, thats how I see our situation.
The game is balanced around 4 solo survivors representing each 25%, i.e. they try as hard as they can and are no potatoes.
That woudl make a game balanced if both killer and solo survivors tryhard (which sounds reasonable).In reality however, due to broken matchmaking you will always get at least one 5-10% survivor or even harder potatoes, which puts the killer into favour. He just has to collect his win and cook the potatoes on hooks.
However looking at SWF, they can choose their buddies such that they can eliminate the potatoes from the equation. Now with the additional voice comm, they gain an extra burst of efficiency, making every survivor lets say 30% more efficient.
This means that if both sides operate as best as they can, we now have a 100% vs 130% scenario.
The survivors are heavily favoured and just need to knock out gens and tbagg the "potato" killer in the exit gates.Of course things get a bit more difficult if we look at the different killers.
By the way, you talk about strong addons, but you forget about the items/addons on the survivor side
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SWF lobbies are much longer than random lobbies, so SWF is less of a normal situation. Further, killer can just drop the lobby before the game if a SWF joined and they don't want to face the challenge. If a killer goes against SWF, it's their decision.
Your estimate of 130% I would argue is a little high, probably more like 120% communication helps but only helps in certain ways. A killer can easily play expecting communication and predicting the movements of the survivors. Remember the killer doesn't have to worry about someone dropping the ball and losing some of his 100%.
The second a survivor goes on the hook the game becomes 100% vs 50%. Or 100% vs 60% on comms.
The second a survivor is killed it becomes 100% vs 70% permanently, or even 100% vs 60%. The power shift with the first dead survivor is extreme.
If the killer is struggling, they should adopt the 3 gen strategy, then even with comms, the killer can easily manage 2-3 kills. (half the killers are certain to win with a 3 gen strategy, the others are still very favored.) (likely 1 is already gone before it gets to a 3 gen strategy.) The killer needs to plan ahead, in the same way survivors should plan ahead and try to prevent a 3 gen strategy, a killer that is struggling should change strategy to ensure a 3 gen strategy.
PS. As far as survivor addons, they're much less powerful, Keys are only useful if you live long enough to use it, and if you can find the hatch. Flashlights are difficult to use. Toolboxes are useful, but with the above mentioned strategies, they are not very effective. DS is overrated, and most killer perks void survivor perks. BBQ chili voids the usefulness of stealth and killer tracking perks. Self care helps killers (this is time spent off of gens-think about it) exhaustion perks only work for a short time during a chase. Even if all 4 survivors bring in a BNP, that just means they saved what? 40 seconds? half a generator?
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SWF lobbies are much longer than random lobbies, so SWF is less of a normal situation. Further, killer can just drop the lobby before the game if a SWF joined and they don't want to face the challenge. If a killer goes against SWF, it's their decision.
Your estimate of 130% I would argue is a little high, probably more like 120% communication helps but only helps in certain ways. A killer can easily play expecting communication and predicting the movements of the survivors. Remember the killer doesn't have to worry about someone dropping the ball and losing some of his 100%.
The second a survivor goes on the hook the game becomes 100% vs 50%. Or 100% vs 60% on comms.
The second a survivor is killed it becomes 100% vs 70% permanently, or even 100% vs 60%. The power shift with the first dead survivor is extreme.
If the killer is struggling, they should adopt the 3 gen strategy, then even with comms, the killer can easily manage 2-3 kills. (half the killers are certain to win with a 3 gen strategy, the others are still very favored.) (likely 1 is already gone before it gets to a 3 gen strategy.) The killer needs to plan ahead, in the same way survivors should plan ahead and try to prevent a 3 gen strategy, a killer that is struggling should change strategy to ensure a 3 gen strategy.
PS. As far as survivor addons, they're much less powerful, Keys are only useful if you live long enough to use it, and if you can find the hatch. Flashlights are difficult to use. Toolboxes are useful, but with the above mentioned strategies, they are not very effective. DS is overrated, and most killer perks void survivor perks. BBQ chili voids the usefulness of stealth and killer tracking perks. Self care helps killers (this is time spent off of gens-think about it) exhaustion perks only work for a short time during a chase. Even if all 4 survivors bring in a BNP, that just means they saved what? 40 seconds? half a generator?
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