2v8 and a Fix that Exacerbates the Problem

crogers271

This might be a vocal minority post, but I wanted to look at the 2v8 issue, killer queues, and how BHVR's solution might just be counterproductive (and not just in the 'survivors won't want to play with bots', which is true, but only part of the problem).

Background

Not that long ago, a former dev (Almo) made a post on reddit that attracted a lot of attention. One thing he said that struck me as the absolutely wrong mindset, was that the game need to attract Killer players to the game because "Remember that for every 1 Killer player that quits, that's 4 unserviced Survivor players."

I think 2v8 is showing why that line of thinking is a huge issue. Because the inverse of this statement is also true, for ever 1 killer player who joins the games, that's 4 survivor players that need to join to service that 1.

The problem

To start with the obvious: a game of DbD requires 80% people wanting to play survivor, 20% wanting to play killer. If the people joining the game break down along those metrics, great, no issues.

Okay though, let's say 90% of players want to play survivor, and 10% want to play killer. To balance things out, you need to convince (bribe) 10% of the players to move over to killer. One out of nine players has to go 'well, its not my preferred role, but I'll take the BP / lessened queue / etc'. With nine possible targets to convert, there's probably someone who was thinking about playing killer anyway.

If it goes the other way, and 30% of players want to play killer, again you need to convince 10% of the players to change their mind. However, you now need to convince 1 out of 3 people that its worth it do the other role.

And if you start getting into like a 50/50 split of the player base, now you need to convince 3 out of 5 killers that they actually want to play survivor.

How the problem gets worse

Everyone knows that playing killer with a friend has long been requested and thus lots of people want to play killer. That isn't the only thing though that causes the killer role to have the long queue times.

There are, in effect, 4 different survivors (the classes). They get boring quickly. There are 11 different killers that play in unique ways and create interesting combinations with each other, on top of the classes they have.

There is far more variety on the killer side, meaning people will have more fun playing that side for longer.

But even more, people playing survivor can get 3 to 4 games in for every 1 game a killer gets to play.

So you have one side, that needs a lot more players, whose players will get bored of it much more quickly while simultaneously being able to get more games before the other side speeding up how quickly they get bored of it.

The problem with the solution

Adding two bots

A) As has been covered by many players, this makes the game generally less fun.

B) What hasn't been covered is how people respond to queues.

Despite how we sometimes talk about it on the forum, there aren't killer players and survivor players, there's DbD players. Most people are willing, and wanting, to play both roles. As I covered above, the survivor role gets boring a lot more quickly, so even people who are inclined to survivor will want to pick up killers.

Queue times are a natural check against this. You have players who want to play killer if they can right away, then players who will wait a minute, then those who will wait 5, then 10, then 15, then 20, etc. The problem with the solution is that by adding bots to artificially lessen queue times, you just have survivors who are then happy to switch over to killer.

Maybe I wasn't willing to play killer at a wait time of 15 minutes, but if you drop it 8, I'm willing to jump in, and when others follow, we just knock it back up.

The two survivor bots aren't the same as adding two new survivor players, because it convinces some survivors to leave and others to go to the killer role.

What could be done to fix the problem

Long term, they need to make survivor more appealing (different post), but what can be done in the short term?

1: Give priority killer queue time to those who take survivor matches.

2: More bribes for the survivor side. Probably won't be done because of long term consequences and the bribes that might be needed would seem absurd.

3: Live with it. Not an attractive solution, but preferable to make the game less enjoyable. Eventually the killer role will diminish in appeal with the queue times and it will balance it self out. This might take multiple versions of 2v8 before it happens, but having a really popular role is less of a problem then making the game worse.

One other solution I considered was putting estimated wait times on the killer role. So if killers saw that the wait time was 20 minutes, they might just play survivor, making the problem better instead of worse. Though I suspect BHVR would worry lots of killers would just go AFK for 20 minutes, forget about it, and then the match is ruined for everyone.

I said vocal minority at the beginning, and maybe that is true. Steam had a pretty healthy play count this morning (West Coast USA time), though it seems to have dropped off and we'll see what the staying power is.

I don't think its going to destroy the game or anything crazy like that, but my gut feeling is that this time around 2v8 might not be extended (or, if the extension is already planned, much like band encores are planned ahead of time, this one will be met with a shrug).

I'll do my part playing survivor. I like the role, though 2 bots makes it less enjoyable than last time and the herbs really don't seem to have much impact on improving the game.