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2v8 Balancing Deep Dive
I want to open this discussion with the statement; I am not looking to rant or go on about how "X is OP" or "X is unfair BHVR plz nerf" but rather am looking to discuss/observe flaws in the 2v8 gamemode that I believe are over/undertuned or should not be present at all, along with things I find generally unfun/unhealthy.
Disclaimer: I am making these statements under the assumption that survivors are at least familiar with the game (150-200 hours) and not gen allergic Claudettes cluelessly crouching in the corner in fear of being actually found.
1, My biggest gripe: The over streamlining of DBD's core gameplay loop
I think it goes without saying they have attempted to very aggressively streamline the gameplay loop of DBD, which has created a problem I don't think enough people have really put into consideration. 2v8 lacks the main component of DBD that makes the game interesting, The Chase. The gamemode is currently balanced around chases being at most 15 seconds long (or the killers are at a severe losing pace). This results in chases feeling very uninteractive and uninteresting. And since killers can't commit to long chases and survivors never spend much time in chase, what remains in the game? Doing gens and kicking gens, which is often what most matches devolve into. The overwhelming majority of time is spent doing gens, kicking gens, or walking around looking for a gen to kick/do. Additionally, if you get into chase with both killers at once, the chase is doomed to end in about 5 seconds, which is boring for both sides and sets the killers up to lose as it leaves possibly 7 other survivors doing the objective (If all 7 other survivors were split on gens whilst 2 killers are occupied on one person, they can do 11.1% of the entire objective in 10 seconds)
2: Pallet density (This part if a bit of a rant )
Remember that part about how chases need to be like 15-20 seconds tops? Good luck with that, there's genuinely like 40-50 pallets around the map, around half of which are really safe/god pallets (some fillers are doing the weird extension thing like with what happened on Groan Storehouse II, resulting in extra god pallets). And to top it off you can rebuild the pallets as a scout every 90 seconds really quickly, making it feel like there's not even a strategy in whittling resources down/creating deadzones (this is a very core aspect of normal DBD to me).
3: Survivor Skills (Medic and Escapist being no brainer meta picks)
As the subtitle implies, there are 2 main survivor skills that are particularly problematic in what they're capable of. For some reason Medic is a partial instant heal, 2 way botany that stacks with other medics, WGLF on steroids (works on downed survivors) and unbreakable (you can use the ability once fully recovered to just pick yourself up). And despite how insanely strong this ability is, it can still finish heals on its own, can be used twice for a full insta heal, can hit any number of survivors at once if within the 8m range, and for whatever reason it can have its cooldown reduced by unhooking (I've seen it multiple times jump forward in cooldown when I unhook, allowing me to use it much sooner). This is one hell of a multi-tool for what's supposed to be a specialized class for one thing, given it has benefits in chase (no scratchies when injured and you're quieter), healing macro game (lots of time saved on heals to do gens), and short term healing if the killer is approaching.
A major issue I have with medic is it makes the Guide entirely irrelevant as the time saved healing greatly surpasses any time saved by the guide and their abilities (If I use the medic ability injured right after unhooking, I have instantly performed what would normally take 16 seconds, something I can do every 120 seconds, meaning it could be around a 15% ish increase in gen speeds if used as often as possible in this fashion), whilst the guide can only give a 8% gen boost for 10 seconds every… 90 seconds… god that's awful (less than a second of value lmfao). The skillcheck effect is serviceable but only applies to others, giving 2.7 seconds worth of progress every time they hit a great (10% chance per second for a skillcheck, should get one every 10-15ish seconds = 8.1 seconds of time saved on a duo gen in 45 seconds where both are working on it).
TL;DR Medic is way too versatile/does way too much for a "medic" and has too much of a strong impact on the macro game by saving a lot of time, particularly when stacked.
Escapist is also imo a bit overtuned, however it is atleast mainly good within its one niche, which is avoiding the killer. The only thing I'd change is making it to where anyone who doesn't have escapist equipped gets the full exhaustion of sprint burst when activating it (40 seconds) and removing the self care effect in favour of something more appropriate (it's out of place/makes no sense in that skill).
Scout is fine, but I think being able to rebuild the same god pallet with no limit is a bit silly, but I think you should also be allowed to commit to one particular pallet if you want for the fun of it, so I don't know how I would rework this to be more fair (maybe make the cooldown longer if you keep rebuilding the same pallets?)
Guide is actually in its own boat where it could really do with a buff. My immediate suggestion would be to give the guide a passive chest opening speed and a better shot at more useful items (fits thematically with knowing the place better as a "guide" and changing the active ability to be just straight up potential energy or something that somehow allows the guide to permanently lock bits of generator progress, preventing it from regressing (or just functioning like the BNP does). This gives the Guide a more distinct purpose from the rest that isn't just "gen speed go brrrr" since gen speeds are already wildly out of control.
4: Generator speeds
Speaking of gen speeds, I think we should go over a pretty obvious flaw that I don't actually need to go over since most of the community pointed it out immediately. As it stands the killers are heavily punished for fresh hooking survivors as they don't get any closer to winning (kills are more important than hooks, obviously) but survivors are given a bonus gen 2.5% gen speed every time they hook. Survivors also receive a penalty for doing their objective at 5% reduced gen repair speed per completed gen. The problem? This fails to account for gens that already had progress, skillcheck bonus progress (that entirely negates this if you hit them all), and in general the math doesn't really check out as fair, as there are a lot more hooks to go around compared to gens to be completed. If both killers get too many hooks too quickly early on, then every survivor on the map will have around a 10-15% bonus speed on 4 different gens at once. I like the idea of the catchup mechanic to prevent matches from going lopsided very quickly, but punishing killers for not tunnelling people out and not slugging (which is currently the smarter option if the person isn't a medic and will even in that case still usually buy you more time than hooking would since it takes 32s to recover and they have to burn their ability if they even have it ready).
Admittedly this is more of just me observing things and discussing random things related to the mode than it is anything specific, but I wanted to atleast get it out there as I think this has the potential to be something really cool for DBD and its future. I'd discuss killers and killer "skills" as well but they're all so lackluster/gimmicky and constantly go on cooldown so I'm not even going to go there (please just rework them entirely). If there's anything else you want to talk about, bring it up, I'm curious on what others think about 2v8's balance.
Oh also one last thing
Y'ALL GAVE NURSE 7 ADDONS, A BONUS EFFECT AND LET HER KEEP THE CONSTANT AURA READING FROM KICKING GENS AND SLINGER IS ALMOST BASEKIT IN A CORNER CRYING
Comments
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For point #1, I honestly feel like it's hard to tell because I feel that survivors aren't going at full power. They go down in 10 seconds for silly reasons like ignoring the "YOU ARE REVEALED" status
As Survivor you must understand all the killer classes, how their reveal skills work and be able to meta game them. I'm convinced they added the range on Brute's gen kick aura because last go round i would just hover the edge of Nowhere to Hides reveal range. I was consistently the last one to be hooked. Also, since every killer knows how Cages work, healing under. Hook against a meta where EVERY KILLER has crazy mobility is insane. Don't do it please, stop!
A lot of survivors seem to mentally shut down as soon they get tag teamed. It seems like people legitimately go on tilt but I don't understand. That's literally how you win 2v8 is being double teamed. I wish other survivors would take the bull by the horns and try to run with it.
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Before I comment further… Have you seen any overtuned features or issues at all with killer or is it just survivor? This entire post reads like a complaint about survivors and a regurgitation of complaints about survivors other people have made but I want to be sure before I decide to contribute. I did read the little disclaimer where you tried to tell us you aren’t just complaining about (survivor) but like that didn’t translate to the actual post.
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I've played both sides a fair amount (for some reason killer queues were actually really generous to me the last couple days) and just found most of the cheesy or questionably designed things to be on the survivor end. The most egregious thing on the killer side is Nurse and her 7 addons. I never really found any of the killer "skills" to be very impactful or the reason for winning a game (I don't think it makes a difference in the outcome of a match because of how situational they often are).
A major reason for me almost exclusively discussing survivor balancing is because killer is in a situation where the chase time is basically plateaued. The speed you down survivors feels extremely inconsequential since you can pretty much always just crank out gens faster than the killers can kill, even if the max chase time was 15 seconds somehow. I mentioned this previously, it feels like there is minimal interactivity happening, as how fast you down almost doesn't matter since it's more of a generator repair/kicking simulator.
What I am effectively saying is no, I don't see much overtuned with killer. You know something is wrong when I can consistently escape (along with 5+ other survivors) almost every game in a row in solo queue.2 -
It's true that on a purely competitive balance point the mode would be survivor-sided.
But due to lack of MMR and the fact that competitive SWFs are no longer a thing in this mode (because you would need 8 people which is impractical) means both sides can win the game easily now.
I started playing this mode as killer with a friend and past the first few games we basically won every single one. The reason why we ultimately switched to surv, was none of the things you listed, it's because the queues are just unbearably long and that's in fact my ONLY complaint with this mode.
You complain 90% about survivor things, but survivor is currently the role with low player count. We need more incentives to play survivors, not less, and some of the things you listed are some of the only reason to play this mode on the survivor side, like the overabundance of pallets or broken class powers
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Is there anything for killers in 2v8 that is genuinely overturned? I don’t think there is a single thing that’s overturned considering how easy it is for survivors to win.
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You could easily write a similar list on the survivor side. Here'd be my top5:
- Nurse gets random aura reading on you during blinks, completely breaking her counterplay, and it happens completely randomly.
- Server lag is much more common now and almost always disadvantages survivors (example).
- Getting 2v1'd feels awful as you can't do anything but press W and ultimately die. I think this one is fine to stay as it's the core of this mode. But it still feels awful.
- Trapper is horrible to play against, as he basically makes the game a constant 2vs1 for his duo, you now need to look for traps while also looking behind you to dodge hatchets or Nurse blinks. His traps seem much harder to see, he now has some nearly invisible spots like this one.
- SoloQ teammates are still abysmally bad and because you are now only 1 player out of 8, your skill matters even less than in 1v4.
It's true that because gen speed is so fast, the mode is objectively survivor-sided, but getting constantly ######### on during chases due to lags or random traps then having the game tell you "You escaped" because you sat on gens all game is just as frustrating as what OP described, if not more.
(I do want to acknowledge though that despite all these flaws I think BHVR did an amazing job with this mode and it's still a lot more fun for me than 1v4).
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Couple killers have some pretty annoying bugs that broke their powers while overturned features might be Guide and the comeback mechanic
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Uh, the "2" part?
Like, this forum is roughly 50% posts about how SWF breaks the game, "the game wasn't designed for comms", and playing in a group is simply too powerful.
Now you're giving the group the PoWeR RoLe and the ability to damage the other team and it's considered balanced?
I personally didn't think SWF, in general, is nearly as big a problem as people want to make it out to be. But if people are genuinely convinced that it's game breaking (or should be bannable for some people) then this is absolutely valid.
Again, it's an LTM, so I'm not expecting balance. Hopefully it's fun, and it appears to be popular enough even despite the balance and queue times issues it does have.
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Guide is actually more overtuned than Escapist, Escapist is fine. Guide is broken with the catchup mechanic because it can NEGATE the catchup mechanic for Killer, plus stacks with it and toolboxes for Survivor.
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Can someone elaborate more so on what they mean by "Negating the catchup mechanic", because I've heard this a few times and don't fully understand what is meant by this. Are you referring to the skillcheck bonus being a flat % and effectively negating it or is there something else I am not aware of? Because as far as I'm aware, Guide is by far the weakest skill for reasons I explained in the main post.
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for each hook, survivors get a 2.5% gen repair speed but for each gen completed they get a 5% gen repair slowdown
- [NEW] Generator repair speeds are reduced by 5% for each generator completed.
- [NEW] Generator repair speeds are increased by 2.5% for each cage state.
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@kommandantlocke pointed it out already but the math shakes out like this:
2.5% bonus for Survivor per Survivor, per hookstage. That means every Surv gets, baseline, a stacking and increasing permanent FREE 7.5% boost to genspeed all round, on every Survivor, PER Survivor. Everyone is essentially walking around and slowly being given free basekit Resilience just for Killers playing normally. On top of this, Guide offers an 8% bonus PER Survivor running it to gen repair, as well as gifting that through its class skill to ANYONE AND EVERYONE within a fairly large radius when activated for a second. This increases if Survivors work together on a gen, and if the Survivors manage to find a toolbox, which are not uncommon in 2v8, this can increase EVEN MORE because they all stack. And the most commonly found toolboxes are browns and yellows, which increase gen efficiency by 50%. You can have up to four people on some of these gens. And one more thing - the gens take way less charges to finish, I think it's something like 60-70 seconds. Because of this, multiple gens can be done in sub 1 or 2 minutes, because of sheer number of Survs. And this is every. Time. Killers. Hook.Meanwhile, Killers only get a 5% regression per completed gen. The Survs only need to do 8. This also stacks, but baseline regression is 5%. So every time a gen is done, add 5%. Now that means when one gen is left you can remove up to 40% of a gen, but remember - there are more Survs than Killers and they can easily undo that between toolboxes, Guide, the catchup mechanic, and sheer numbers. So really, that up to 40% means nothing, because if even one person has a toolbox, enough people have Guide, and enough hooks happen, the Survs can still power through. The Killers will not and cannot win by spreading hooks, they basically have to play sweaty and hardcore, which is why you see so much hyper-aggro Killer play in 2v8. Unlike 1v4, there is no way to control the runaway genspeed besides kicking, which wastes time in this mode. Unlke 1v4, the gens legitimately do, 100%, go too fast to handle for many Killers of average skill.
In other words? BHVR screwed up the catchup mechanic by basing it on hooks not Kills, and they overtuned Guide WAY too much. They overestimated the true strength of Killers in 2v8, and this is the result - extremely breezy matches for Survivors if they have some teamwork and even remotely try, and extremely tense, sweaty, difficult matches for Killer where you wait 20+ minutes for a game that is over in 8 minutes.
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What does this have to do with the Guide skill in particular though? They are still effected by the mechanic and the 8% speed boost is not a permanent effect, it is only available for 10 seconds every 90 seconds, which is virtually nothing. And the only other ability the guide has that gives a personal bonus to gen speed is after being hooked once and doing a gen near other survivors, which is more gimmicky than it is useful. That's it, that's all that guide does, read the description in game, a single use of Medic's ability saves more time than 8 uses of the Guide's ability when alone on a gen (0.8 seconds of time saved with 8% gen speed boost for 10 seconds vs 8 FULL seconds for half a single heal's worth of time).
TL;DR Medic is somehow better for rushing gens than the Guide skill; Because both Medic is overpowered and Guide is really bad0 -
facts i hope bhvr sees all this
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That's incorrect, it's not that simple. ALL Survivors within that range get the benefit below already, ON TOP of whatever repair bennies they already get from other classes, items, and the catchup mechanic. "Saving time" on the order of a couple seconds does not matter when progression is this rapid. That 8% bonus may be for only 10 seconds, but it hardly takes that long to buff a toolbox, another Guide, or to stack bennies to create an over 50% buff to a gen for that 10 seconds… and this is how you get things like three gens done in under 10 seconds in this mode.
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OKAY MINOR DISCOVERY
The skillcheck bonus for greats applies to yourself now, unlike last 2v8, meaning you get an instant 3.6 seconds (an extra 2.7) for every skillcheck, of which you'll get around every 10 seconds, which is actually pretty significant overall, especially since this aspect entirely ignores the slowdown effect from gens completed (Skill check bonuses are not based on repair speed to my knowledge)
I am going to play a bunch of guide to try to get an idea of how much time is being saved overall and make a better judgement on the potential, given I hit mostly great skillchecks0
