My Journey from Killer to Chiller

BigStan

I knew DBD was special when I saw it on twitch on day one. I really regret not immediately buying a copy. I was such a noob at the game, I thought you were suppose to camp hooks. As I figured out the game, I did as a lot of us did. Camp, tunnel, slug, anything I could to secure the 4k. I was really terrible not just in etiquette but in skill. Survivors would chain flashlight me. Flashlight saves were so deftly performed against me that I had no choice but to bring lightborn. I was so salty that I often brought Franklin's demise. I preferred killers that were the easiest such as Bubba. I was pretty scummy.

I also struggled with the community. I had no friends so I played killer. I loved having the power of ruining four other peoples' game in the palm of my hand. That in turn, made survivors toxic back to me in the aftergame lobbies. I got mad and quit the game several times because it was THEIR fault that they got upset. I was clearly at no fault of my own. Or so I told myself. Sometimes it really was their fault, but not as often as I use to believe, I'm sure. I think I even posted complaining about the community before on here.

I am not a very skilled player at games in general. I have a friend who is pretty much consistently the best of us in any combat game our group plays together. He's our garbage man because he's use to carrying trash like us. Not to toot my own horn, but when I find a game I really sink my teeth into, I will perform a task in it thousands of repetitions until I hammer out the flaws and increase my skill to a significant degree. I mention it because when our garbage man watches me play, he complains that I always wins and it's no fun to watch.

I sank my teeth into DBD. I can't boast to have anywhere near the game time clocked of a lot of dedicated players. But after a couple thousand hours, I am better than most. In the last couple of years, I made some online friends and one of them is truly a nice soul. She first introduced me to the concept of a "chiller" (chill + killer). People who despite it being their job to kill you all, was cool about it. They would not use scummy tactics and wanted the game to be fun for everyone, not just themselves or just win.

Armed with skill, experience, friends, and the lust of wins tempered by thousands of victories (and definitely more loses), my viewpoint on what was important to me started to shift. I would play games without scum tactics. Often lose without the crutch that such tactics were, I had to reacquire skill and swallow my pride when I just wasn't good enough to secure the dub.

After a while, I met someone who eventually told me they don't like to play survivor with me because I wouldn't play the meta. I just did whatever brought me the most joy from the game and that bothered them fiercely (I like to cleanse totems. If it glows, it goes!). I was insulted and blocked them for months. A friend got us to try again. He was different than before. He was a kinder soul that didn't care so much about winning and just wanted everyone to have fun. He had changed, just as I had. He's a very good friend now.

Seeing someone having changed in a similar way made me realize some people just need more time to bake in the oven. They either needed more experience as a gamer, or time to grow as a person. That someone I find annoying, rude, or as a bad person really might just need my patience to become something more. That realization carried over to how I interpret the actions of others in DBD.

Communication between killer and survivors has always been horrible. Increased communication would spoil the atmosphere so I am pretty sure it's a design choice. Personally, I would love prox chat, but I get it. The trouble is though that you have to take their extremely limited communications and try to translate them into what they are actually trying to say. And we often get that wrong, woefully so. A lot of perceived toxicity is just that, perceived.

Nowadays I do my best to get each survivor to two hooks and then get them out of the game alive. My friends tease me as they will listen to me try to remember which survivor is safe to hook without killing them. Or how I carry someone downed to a hooked survivor to save them. How I feel bad when I accidentally do a murder. When the game feels under control enough, I'll do 2 hooks each, then down all four, then help them reset so they realize I am friendly. Sometimes I am accused of trying to slug for the 4k. But it doesn't make sense for a killer to try and slug four when he can slug just two. But some people are so salty from other killers giving them a hard time that they don't see the logic in heat of the moment.

I do want to lob the small complaint of not seeing the number of hook states. Not telling the killer hook states never has and never will stop a killer from tunneling. It does, however, make it really hard to keep survivors alive by comparison! Please let us see the states!

I think being a chiller is almost required. The issues of killers using camp / tunnel / slug is ridiculous for existing after YEARS of it being a problem. The game is broken, most likely will continue to be broken, so it's up to us who are fans to either vote with our wallets or at least have a sense of community to not abuse the state of the game so we all have fun.

I "win" almost every game now. I play almost only Myers. I use undetectable perks just to cancel out all the different ways we can detect each other. It makes it feel like the early days of DBD when things were scary and we didn't all walk around with x-ray goggles on. I want to encourage others to try and grow into chillers (and chillvivors? Surchillers?). I find myself enjoying DBD more not killing than when I was a tryhard. That said, survivors often get themselves killed despite my efforts trying to keep them alive, lol. You WILL still get kills, even if you don't want them. I also deal out a little street justice when I see someone being too scummy. You will also still rank up, just more slowly.

It's just nice to have evolved to a point where I am trying to contribute to the match instead of just taking away a win to boost my ego. That said, you still get to stroke your ego, but in a bittersweet way. The worst part is when you get your eight hooks, but there are still five gens to get done. Tab out to some YouTube, wash a few dishes, etc. I snack a lot and talk to friends. It's okay to afk and do that mid match if they are struggling too hard. Give them a chance to catch up so you aren't bored at the end. I don't think you're really holding a game hostage if you're just trying to give them a chance to catch up. It's okay to accidentally afk a little too long and actually lose the match as a result. You just obviously can't spoil the game by being gone so long there's no fun. Balance and patience are key. Try to enhance the match with a handicap to balance out the skill difference instead of just dunking on people.

We all play games as a source of entertainment. We play PVP games because we want to go against one another and see who comes out on top. It's perfectly fine and natural to play with victory in mind for that sweet, sweet dopamine. Games can gives us other experiences. Scares from horror, strong emotions from a tragic RPG story, satisfaction of accomplishing an objective or doing something that most others would never try to do. I just want to open up to others the joy of building one another up instead of just tearing each other down, even in pvp. I hope the positivity that opened my eyes does the same for you.