Visit the Kill Switch Master List for more information on this and other current known issues: https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/kb/articles/299-kill-switch-master-list
State of the Game
Gonna Be Long:
So, I play mostly SoloQ Surv and Killer, I don't play SWF, but I'm finding the game to be almost unplayable on the Surv side and just frustrating to play on the Killer side.
As a SoloQ Surv, if the game is even remotely going in a positive direction, the Killer DC's so it completely takes us out of the match and ruins the experience. If that happens, it's almost always because I was put with a SWF group. Now that's not extremely common, but it does happen. Very rarely do some of us make it out the gates by the skin of our teeth and if it looks like all four of us will make it out, the Killer DC's.
What is common is that most SoloQ (with 4 randoms) matches are a waste of time with almost 0 actual gameplay and near 0 bloodpoints. Killers tunnel, slug, and camp almost every single SoloQ match that I play and then I usually just refocus my gameplay during the match on completely evading the Killer and helping out the Survs that are left, where I can. It doesn't help that the end mori change has now made the last two Survs left a complete stalemate as the Killer will just slug the 2nd to last person and just go looking around the map for the last one to prevent hatch and endgame progression. Some Killers will even pick the 2nd to last Surv up and then let them out of their grasp to again, delay the endgame that's supposed to happen. Then it's a toss up if that Surv will then work with the Killer to find the last Surv or just do gens (taking even longer now) before the Killer will be forced to hook them because they don't want the gates powered.
I'm usually the last person, because the game is often completely unwinnable and I see so much talk about "Creating Your Own Fun" since escaping isn't even considered anymore, so I try my best to just evade the Killer until endgame collapse is done; Killers also get extremely salty in endgame chat over it, so it justifies me more to do it.
Then as Killer, I play a wide range of Killers and not even the top ones (No Blight/Nurse) and being matched with SoloQ Survs is such a slaughter that I often then take it extremely easy on them as they literally don't have the tools to do anything and then sometimes I'll be matched with SWF who prevent me in-game from doing anything. Both are unsatisfying. I also never tunnel, I never camp hooks, and I don't delay the endgame by slugging; I win most of my matches (2k-4k), but again they are unsatisfying.
Overall the game seems to be going in an awful direction fueled by extreme salt and trying to make the other party miserabe. Queue times are getting longer (I'm in NA) for both sides. Surv always has bloodpoint incentive and takes a bit to find a match that then is usually a waste of time, while Killer takes even longer to find a match.
I've been playing since it released on Steam, many many many years ago so I question…. why has BHVR been focusing on buffing Killer and Nerfing Surv perks, nerfing maps (making them smaller, taking out loops, unsafe pallets, dead zones) to make Killers able to compete with SWF and ruining non SWF Surv play and Killer play, instead of changing SWF mechanics?
I know that people will spout "Why Should I Be Punished For Playing With My Friends?" and to that I'd ask, Why are you comfortable ruining the game for almost everyone else involved instead of being open to balance changes that would benefit the entire game and the community? Every PVP game has mechanics and nerfs/buffs to compensate for what goes on during the game, why should DBD be any different?
I'd propose that SWF shouldn't be able to repeat perks in their loadouts (which will incentivize different perks and classes and prevent SWF from all running the same meta perks), shouldn't be able to bring in any tools (they have to use chests in-game which will incentivize different perks and offerings) and they should have their gen progression speeds changed depending on how many are in the SWF party (since they get information without perks during the match that was never intended to happen and advanced co-ordination). This also wouldn't affect SoloQ Surv play so SoloQ can stop being punished for the imbalance of SWF.
Then BHVR could have an easier time to balance out Killers>SWF>SoloQ.
Comments
-
I agree, I experience the same sort of things. Soloq survivor is an unplayable slog. Killer is now too easy and boring. Game is going to straight up die at this rate, no idea what the devs are thinking other than they dont care or are not paying any attention to what's happening. Might be bad leadership who knows, but they keep making it worse so I give up hope they know what they are doing or will fix anything.
Since they refuse to give soloq any sort of comm wheel or comms of any kind, I agree swf and soloq should have different under the hood rules to even it out. Somethings gotta be done because the game is awful right now.
3 -
What is common is that most SoloQ (with 4 randoms) matches are a waste of time with almost 0 actual gameplay and near 0 bloodpoints
Is it truly that common? My SoloQ winrate (0k/1k) is hovering 40%, with another 8% in draws. That's about half of my matches where we get at least someone out of a gate - i.e. succeeding at the stated goal for survivors.
Then as Killer… …being matched with SoloQ Survs is such a slaughter
You have no confirmaton that they are Solos at any point. The only way you could ever presume this would be circular reasoning - "i won, must be solos". You can know when players are partied sometimes but you cannot for-sure confirm that a group is a SWF or a solo squad in any given match you play.
I try my best to just evade the Killer until endgame collapse is done; Killers also get extremely salty in endgame chat over it, so it justifies me more to do it.
us vs them, truly a continued dead horse of all time. "When the killer wastes my time, it's awful, but when I waste theirs? a-ok! They did it first!" Break the cycle, something you want to happen as we'll see shortly anyway.
Overall the game seems to be going in an awful direction fueled by extreme salt and trying to make the other party miserabe [sic]
…something you admit to perpetuating. As I just said. Break the cycle.
why has BHVR been focusing on buffing Killer and Nerfing Surv perks
This is simply untrue. Instead they've, in general, been decreasing overall perk impact in the game. We can see this in the downward trend of the power of both second chance (DH, DS nerfs, etc) and slowdown (Pop, Pain Res, Eruption nerfs, etc) since their additions to the game. This is good, as it brings the game to a level where meta and non-meta are closer in scale to one another.
nerfing maps (making them smaller, taking out loops, unsafe pallets, dead zones)
Plenty of maps maintain their position as survivor-sided. All five of Badham's variants, both maps in Withered Isle (provided you approach Greenville Square with proper macro), I could go on. Making them smaller does have an added effect of making killer more bearable on these maps, I don't deny that, but maps are in a better place than they were.
Why are you comfortable ruining the game for almost everyone else involved instead of being open to balance changes that would benefit the entire game and the community?
Because your upcoming suggestions would worsen overall game health. Speaking of…
I'd propose that SWF shouldn't be able to repeat perks in their loadouts [and] shouldn't be able to bring in any tools
This doesn't achieve what you want it to achieve. You're right in that it would expand the meta perk list into 16 perks, but it would also come with the implication that SWF are meant to be playing the game very seriously, as their loadouts come with heavy restriction. The game is meant to be for-fun, so restricting what a player can bring into the match sends a blurry message of the intent behind matches. No items starting out also outright kills a good chunk of item-focused perks (any 2v8 SWFs will confirm that sometimes the chests just dont give you what you want), which would further a stale meta for SWF of perks that are strong and guaranteed to bring in-match value.
But most importantly, only one player being able to bring one of each antitunnel, and only one player outright being able to have Unbreakable furthers unhealthy strategies for the killer, as a lobby with no items likely means they can slug and tunnel relatively unpunished. From the perspective of improving the game, throwing SWF onto a funeral pyre where they are for-free forced to eat unhealthy strategies seems like a terrible idea.
[SWF] should have their gen progression speeds changed depending on how many are in the SWF party
This is just outright punishment for playing with your friends, which you admit is the stated goal. And I want to pose a thought - that perhaps SWF is more important to the game than this would imply? If you punish SWF significantly enough, many groups are simply not going to have fun playing the game, and will quit, worsening the game's long-term prospects.
1 -
I don't really think they have a plan besides band-aid fixes with paid perks and constant IP DLC to generate them money. If they had any sort of actual sense for development, they'd be working on getting the core game to a healthy state. They're also backed up by some of the community who will just ride along with them no matter what or because those players don't want their specific advantages taken away.
For instance the person above me, didn't really add anything the discussion besides "This wouldn't work the way you want because I said so", which is just a fallacy created to undermine any critique and suggestions for actual change that would be beneficial. Like they drone on and on about how changing SWF mechanics would make the game too serious for them, meanwhile SoloQ is literally in a state of scorched earth lol Or how mechanic changes are punishments, but all the nerfs Survs have received because of SWF or somehow not punishements lol
3 -
Look, if you want to have an actual discussion, then we can have one. This response of yours though, is not that, it's not even an attempt at that.
You state that mechanic changes to SWF would be a punishment, that already tells me that you aren't here to have an actual good faith discussion. Every single nerf in DBD is a punishment then, but we know that logically it is not and is an effort to maintain a balance so that everyone can enjoy the game.
You obviously play in a SWF and don't want the benefits of that to be lessened in an effort to make the game better for everyone else, you should work on your bias and see past yourself.
I could break down how as you say, 16 meta perks, is better than the same 4 being used every single match. Or how SWF shouldn't be able to bring in tools and would incentivize them to bring in coin offerings or spend time on chests or bring in perks related to item rarity. How increasing SWF gen times is something every Killer would like since gens flying by is the #1 complained about issue that Killers have and SWF offers a type of coordination that DBD was never meant to have. Then you state that all of this would make the game "stale" for SWF, when logically it would do the exact opposite and increase the unpredictability of their match.
Overall it's giving that you enjoy bullying Killers in your SWF and you'd like to not give that up. That's not very cool.
1 -
It's a shame to see you presume malice in my words instead of just assuming that we disagree on the topic. Ad hominem attacks are all too common, but I will meet you at these accusations.
To do so, I'll provide some background. In the last 3 months, I have played 170 matches of SoloQ survivor - around two a day, albeit split into chunks of 3-5 games at a time. In that set of 170 matches, I've won 40% of them (0k, 1k) and drawn a further 8% (2k) - feel free to compare to your experiences to understand where I'm coming from for my SoloQ experience. As for SWF, I do play with friends from time to time, but I'm no bully. I run Object of Obsession, a perk I very thoroughly enjoy (and run in SoloQ as well), despite it being near-objectively a bad perk.
I consider your suggestions to be a punishment because they create two experiences of playing survivor - one where you play normally in Solos, and one where you play with many hands tied behind your back in SWF. You cannot run items, you cannot have the same taste in perks as your friends, and most importantly gen completion is made even more tedious, as you have to push not only through slowdown but also through a gen speed debuff limitation set upon you by the devs. Nerfs, by themselves, are not punishments. But creating an entire secondary, lesser experience for SWF simply for the sin of wanting to enjoy some matches with your friends is a punishment, especially when BHVR's own stats would imply that SWF outcomes are not hugely better than Solo outcomes are.
Please do not skip over that last part. Solo and SWF outcomes, according to BHVR, are not largely different. When we recieved stats on this last year, it was clear that only a tiny fraction of players experience major outcome changes playing in Solo vs playing in SWF. Balancing around this tiny percentage would cause more harm than good, as it would bring down SWF escape rates for All MMR.
To sign off I'll confirm that I would happily break down that bigger paragraph, but I want to wait for your reply to this message first, if that's okay. Given you have dedicated both a full response and an aside to making disparaging comments about me, I would prefer to minimise my wasted time if this conversation proves unsalvageable.
Post edited by kit_mason on1 -
Hopefully they do something before all surviviors decide to stop playing
0 -
I don't think all will, but at a certain point it'll just be mostly SWF's and then Killers will hate the game even more. Rn SoloQ Surv is unplayable and when it's not unplayable, it's just a completely awful experience.
Look, the Stats that BHVR release don't really matter, they don't count DC's. SWF don't DC because they stick out the match together, meanwhile almost every SoloQ match has a DC, so it doesn't count towards any Stat; most SoloQ matches that add to the Stat are ones that go incredibly well. BHVR should release stats about the DC rate between SWF and SoloQ vs what Killers.
Also, it's just ironic that you stated playing SWF with the mechanics I suggested, would be like playing with your hands tied behind your back lmao Like read the room bud, SoloQ is an awful experience that is worse than having your hands tied behind your back, the majority of the time there's literally no gameplay. Or considering my suggestions as "creating two experiences of playing Surv" as if SoloQ and SWF already don't do that with SoloQ being severely nerfed in the current game.
That's precisely why you come off as completely biased and aren't here to have an actual discussion. You keep refuting my suggested mechanics with your feelings, not based on anything objective. I also don't care about your personal stats, you already have shown you're biased. If the mechanics I suggested would somehow make the game not fun for SWF, then they are bully squads, why would anyone care about any of what suggested if they wanted to have fair matches with their friends that weren't at the complete detriment of everyone else? There is no reason.
0 -
6.1.0 was annoying, Dead Hard a perk beloved by many coz of what you could do with it was taken away from survivors, new DH I'd argue is more unhealthy for the game 0.5s endurance which is actually 2 seconds coz of the awful server tick.
But tbf I like the game still, it's just with all the buffs/nerfs and the ######### servers it feels awful, they need to fix the servers and networking and it'd be a much different game.3 -
Nah they need to start actually putting effort into balancing out SWF, which in turn would make overall balancing easy and then you wouldn't have the majority of the playerbase hate playing this game because SWF makes every other gameplay aspect, miserable.
The severs do feel awful though and hitreg is insanely bad in this game.
0 -
you are absolutely right. since the killer ping is shown you can tell that a lot of strange hits / stuns happens even if both player have an ping below 50ms.
that means it has to be the server that is the problem.2 -
They fixed it once, killers didn't like that.
So revert happened.
2 -
Oh yeah, I tried solo que for past 2 weeks and it's terrible experience that I don't want to be part of.
I don't play without 3 people in my lobby anymore.
I am literally shocked why bhvr doesn't work on solo que experience, that should be really a priority because at that point bot filled lobbys will happen soon.
2 -
There is no way to buff SoloQ that SWF also wouldn't benefit from, which is why SWF needs to be mechanically changed so that it affects SWF and not SoloQ.
Longer gen times makes logical sense. Gens fly by in general, but especially with SWF coordination. Not being able to bring in tools and having to scavenge for tools, makes sense. It would entice SWF to spend time opening chests/bringing in perks for chests/offerings for chests. Not being able to repeat perks, makes sense. No more bully squads and all running the same 4 meta perks to slog the game down for Killer. All changes that would be quid pro quo for the advantage of being in a SWF. Killers right now are overtuned for SWF, if SWF would get changed, Killers should be reworked to balance everything out.
There are more Killer and SoloQ players than SWF, it makes no sense to ruin two out of three sides of a video game. The least BHVR could do is make some changes and release it on the PTB to see how it fairs.
0 -
I also don't care about your personal stats, you already have shown you're biased.
This conversation has proven unsalvageable. Bye.
1 -
I tend to play the same way on both sides as you mentioned. Usually just bringing an altruistic healing build and helping people out where i can, barely ever touch flashlights unless im playing alan wake. 90% of the soloq survi or rounds are exactly as described, it gets quite tiring when the killer just mows someone down off the hook (usually me) till im dead and then its prettymuch hopeless and over and everyones bored and mad except the guy that caused the situation. And then on killer im either wiping the floor with people all the time or getting a swat team that might as well be playing for some championship and everyones experienced those by now lol the only in between would be an incompetent bully squad. But yea, its getting pretty sad that you only ever enjoy about 5% of your matches (in the entire day of playing). The soloqs blame the killers for playing how they do, the killers blame the swfs for playing how they do, the swfs just have fun while the other 2/3rd arent having a good time. Would be nice to see them change just something about swf so that its not causing this chain reaction. ill admit i play with my friend for about 2 days of the week, but they are kind of newer to the game and we end up with the soloq experience anyway.
2 -
No, that's just your contribution, not the actual discussion. There's plenty of people on this thread and on the forums that are open to actual discussion, instead of just trying to shut down every single conversation because of their own personal bias.
You've stated not only actual counter argument to how adjusting SWF mechanics would negatively impact the entire game and instead deferred to "It would just make me feel bad. Punishment bad :(".
Exactly! If SWF was changed, then Killers could stop being buffed and overtuned to deal with the most co-ordinated SWF as they exist in the game right now. That would in turn make balancing easier and more fair so Killers, SoloQ matches and bad SWF groups wouldn't be "punished", as some people like throw that word around lol
The entire game rn revolves around a very very very small percentage of the community and it's abhorrent how that's been allowed to continue ruining the game.
0 -
The problem is Dead by Daylight is balanced for Solo Q and SWFs with coms break most of the mechanics of the game. SWFs can relay information like Killer location, perks, Killer Add-ons and more. This is information SOLO Q teams dont have or have to waste perks to get to the same level. This is why Gen-rushing with SWFs is so dangerous forcing Killers to play very Toxic gameplay like Slug 4k.
0 -
Yea! Which is why I suggest multiple game mechanic changes to SWF that would balance out all the information they get just by playing together.
Also I firmly believe that tunneling/camping/slugging should be highly punishable, with the Killer receiving not only little bloodpoints, but in ways that the game mechanics heavily punish it. That can't happen though in the current state of DBD since SWF are insansely unfair, which again just ruins the gameplay for everyone else.
0 -
Slugging for 4k isn't related to SWFs. By the time a killer is able to slug for 4k, the match is already won. That's a decision made independent of whether the survivors were in a SWF.
It would be possible to argue that SWFs on comms make killers feel the need to tunnel or proxy camp. But honestly, that just ruins the game for the people the killer is sharing the game with. The target becomes unable to do anything other than be chased for as long as they're in that match; they don't even get to play the game they should be expecting to play. If my opponents are better than me, that doesn't justify me making someone wonder why they bought the game. Instead, I play it out, take my loss, and get better. And if there's a balance issue, that's for us to come here and talk about so BHVR can solve it.
My opinion is that the only justification for tunneling, camping, or slugging for 4k is if the survivor has decided to bm first. Then the killer can decide if they want to reciprocate. But I think there are also certain mechanisms that could be coded into the game to diminish the amount of teabagging or other bm that players have to deal with. And don't get me wrong, I do on rare occasions see a survivor teabag, then do it again at a pallet, and so I'll decide that bad manners beget bad manners… though I'll also say that I usually just ignore the bait.
However, you're not wrong that external comms create a game balance issue. We can do things like increasing MMR for SWFs, and implementing comeback mechanisms or other solutions, and I think that's the discussion we should be having. What's the way we make most matches worth playing for most people?
0 -
It is regarding Sabo or bully squads they are one MASSIVE reason why Killers resort to slugging but the problem is once Killers got used to that strategy they never stop.
0 -
I think that could be correct about people getting too accustomed to slugging as an acceptable approach. I thought you were talking about slugging for 4k.
Just about everyone slugs bully squads since you can essentially count on them having someone around the corner or next to the nearest hook once you get one or more down. There's often not another option. Only a fraction of the SWFs I see are bully squads, but honestly it's not even fun to 4k them.
I remember a specific one I got a couple days ago that was just super frustrating. They didn't come close to getting all the gens done, and I got a 4k against them, but the game was super annoying. I'd think the area was clear, have two downed and two injured, then go to put someone on a hook, but they'd have someone at the nearest hook, and they brought an oak offering to space hooks out.
Still, while the match can be frustrating, they usually don't bother me since I can take the 'win', then go next and play a normal game. But I can imagine if someone got five bully squads in a row, they might just quit playing for a while though, or start adopting an annoying playstyle. If I got two or three in a row, I'd probably just do funny stuff instead of trying :/
0 -
regarding everyone talking about slugging, they literally had the perfect solution to it on 2v8 that didn't take away killer agency, just didn't let them abuse the ability to slug to get pressure. So much in 2v8 could be used for 1v4 and refined, I just don't understand why they just pretend to not see or try to test it.
0
