http://dbd.game/killswitch
Does DBD favor killers?
So normally I don’t think that DBD is survivor sided or killer sided, but I’ve noticed a running pattern that anytime killer mains complain about a survivor perk or mechanic it gets nerfed and when survivors and killers alike complain about something it gets delayed everytime… and I don’t mean the delay on the anti tunneling update cause I watched those lives and that would just be HORRID! But more so how anyone that’s not a Ghoul main complains about him being able to hit through stuff that is otherwise completely solid to all other killers that even have similar skills. I don’t expect any perk buffs because perks aren’t a problem nor his his skill itself- just the fact the skill is clearly buggy and they deny to fix it along with similar traits that are seen in other killers. Also the camping update is NOT what it should be. The camp meter doesn’t even extend past the huntresses BASE throwing range- meaning they can have the huntress base build with no add ons and when partnered with a perk like Insidious it makes it IMPOSSIBLE for a survivor to know that your teammate is being camped until you are actively being hit with her hatchet from NOWHERE. At that point it’s not a skill issue when the survivor has no way to counter the killers invisible aura or their incredible range.
I just want 1 overall mechanic change with anti camping counting when the killer has clear line of sight- not just when they are within your camp meter range, and for mutual requests to be taken into consideration even when a main whines about their favorite killer being buffed. And no, I’m not gonna deny that this has happened with survivors before because it has taken a while for some BROKEN survivor perks to be nerfed- but some of those perks have been nerfed now and there are some killer mechanics that even killers complained about around the same time that have STILL been delayed.
Comments
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I don't think they inherently favour one side overall.
The cynic in me could buy that Ghoul was left as is for so long because of licensing but then why are they only just getting to reworking Myers? We also have Pig, Ghost Face and Onryo who aren't in a great spot either. The only line of thinking that makes sense and doesn't attribute malice to BHVR's intentions is that fixing the Ghoul is more complicated than we think it is.
I like the idea of the LoS change to camping and I can't see much wrong with it. There's no way you could *accidentally* trigger it long enough for it to hurt killers who aren't actively camping.
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Or.. "fixing" ghoul makes his value proposition lower and him being new means more money. We see this with new killers all the time.
But the killer side is heavly favored but is it because of killers or people who play the role? Killers are over represented on the forms and as streamers And in groups of long term players that "prefer" the role.
So there is a lot of incentive for these big loud groups to "gate keep" or fight back against anything that takes a inch from them or a perk that is inconvenient. It really is a shame because issues on survivor sides are severely under reported which is why it takes literal ages for fixes or balance changes to come see camping tunneling slugging 3 gening and other issues.
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Or.. "fixing" ghoul makes his value proposition lower and him being new means more money. We see this with new killers all the time.
Yup, that's what I said at the start of my paragraph.
Killers are over represented on the forms and as streamers And in groups of long term players that "prefer" the role.
I don't necessarily agree that killers are over represented on the forums, most of the big prominent names I think of here make mostly survivor inclined takes (many of which I agree with) and looking at the voting (which, admittedly is flawed) you often see killer takes, including ones with a great point, get downvoted whilst survivor takes tend to have more upvotes- even if all they've said amounts to "killers bad".
When it comes to media though, oh boy, I strongly agree with you. I really tried to find any video talking positively about the anti-tunnel and slugging stuff and the closest I got was Scott Jund. Even creators who I had watched in the past for survivor content were negative.
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got an official source for that?
as for asymmetry: in a 1v4, the four survivors scale with coordination and shared resources, while the killer is a single point of pressure. If both sides play clean, gens finish unless the killer has extra agency (mobility/info/slowdown) to force downs—so balance must lean killer enough to prevent stalemates. “killer-sided” here means sufficient threat to punish mistakes and actually resolve matches, not “killer should auto-win.”
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Considering I'm still waiting for my favorite killer to stop being horrible. Merchant was left in a terrible state until the rework (which keeps getting delayed). Twins seem forgotten about….
absolutely not.
I could go on…
people just tend to focus on the negative.
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I don't necessarily agree that killers are over represented on the forums, most of the big prominent names I think of here make mostly survivor inclined takes (many of which I agree with) and looking at the voting (which, admittedly is flawed) you often see killer takes, including ones with a great point, get downvoted whilst survivor takes tend to have more upvotes- even if all they've said amounts to "killers bad".
- that’s why anything in favor of survivors always gets tons of upvotes — even if it’s short, kinda one-sided and unreflective — while anything in favor of killers gets a pile of downvotes, on principle.
?
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I don't want to spend my lunch break tracking down the specific post it came from but BHVR have said they balance for a 60% kill rate / 40% escape rate.
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all i know is soloQ get absolutely defiled in this game when i play against a team of full solos i feel really bad cause you can tell from the lack of information and u cant expect them all to run kindred and other info perks when they're already weaker than premades
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Statistically yes, as they want killer to be in the power role, wanting killers to win more than they lose and survivors to lose more then they win. Hence the goal of 60% killrates and the 40% escape rates. I personally think that’s okay though, because I believe it’s a fair trade off and offers incentive for playing killer.
In my opinion, If killer is always forced to be solo, then they should win more. We need killers to be in the power role, because that’s one of the only ways to have incentive to play that role. That’s the trade off. You can’t play with your friends but you win more often. And vice versa, you get to play with your friends but you will lose more often. Though to be honest, there aren’t really many incentives to play solo survivor over SWF, something I think is very unfortunate as solo does make up the majority of survivor and yet despite how hated SWF is .. I don’t really see any kind of benefit of playing Solo over it.
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I think they’re referring to the 60% kill rate target. A lot of people believe this is “unfair” and “favors the killer side.” It’s subjective and everyone is going to have a different opinion about what is “fair”.
BHVR’s job is to get the most number of people playing and in the right ratio to reduce queue times. They’re not going to please everyone and it’s just a reality that no matter what they do, some people will quit or threaten to quit.
Like it or not, 60% kill rate seems to be the sweet spot for accomplishing the above objectives. I remember how long survivor queues were during peak hours back before killers were buffed in the 6.1 patch. Survivor queues are still longer than killer queues during these hours, but it’s much better than it used to be. Playing killer feels a lot less frustrating as well. And as someone who plays both sides, actually survivor a bit more than killer, the 60% target feels pretty fair to me.
I’ve seen many opinions here that the target kill rate should be 50% instead of 60%. Just consider for a moment what that would mean. The current average kill rate for killers going against 4-man SWF at high MMR is still over 50%. So these people want the average game for average killers of average skill going against non-premade teams to be even more difficult than that. Doing so would likely mean a mass exodus of killer players across all levels.With that said, I’ll now happily open it up for downvotes 😉
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i’m still of the opinion that the killer role—no matter the killer—should have a real chance to win vs any group if played well, independent of kill rates and without relying on major survivor mistakes. by “win” i mean a 4K. balance should let skill → 4K even vs stacked comps. if the killer role needs throw-level survivor mistakes to win, that’s not agency.
right now the game’s basically balanced so coordinated survivor groups (esp. SWF) get a big safety buffer, and killer has no realistic 4K path without major survivor mistakes. the global kill rates hide it, since soloQ inflates killer numbers while strong premades only lose when they hard-throw— which, yipp, they often do. net effect: killer agency feels optional, not systemic.
cool, but does that 60% include DCs, hook suicides, intentional throwing/memeing/playing badly, over-aggressive saves that feed the killer, and groups that refuse to accept a death and overcommit (lots of strong SWFs do this)?
is it split by solo vs SWF and this by MMR? (i mean, most a lot of swfs are not good , a lot swfs have 1-2 "not so good" player in it) if not, it’s just an average that can hide where a role lacks (or has too much) agency.
even if BHVR aim for 60/40, that aggregate doesn’t prove fairness—soloQ can prop it up while coordinated SWFs are nearly unpunishable. depending on how DCs / “let’s have our fun with this killer” moments / suicides / inefficiency are counted, the metric is noisy anyway. what matters is agency: can a well-played killer threaten a 4K vs any comp without praying for throw-tier survivor mistakes, and can solid survivors consistently convert smart macro into escapes? publish segmented stats (MMR brackets, SWF vs solo, map, region) and design to those—not a single headline number.
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I’ve noticed a running pattern that anytime killer mains complain about a survivor perk or mechanic it gets nerfed
You think it doesn't work both ways? Not that I need to look far into the past for it:
Skull merchant?
Ultimate weapon?
Sloppy butcher?
Save the best for last?
Chucky?
Basically difference is how quickly they are willing to nerf something. They usually don't want to nerf quickly paid content, that's why killers were also dealing with MFT for some time too…1 -
- Devs have been saying for at least 3-4 years that they want "to favor" killers, I don't think it's a secret to anyone. The example of the fog vials literally shocked me.🤣 Killers complained and the fog vials were destroyed within 7 days🤣I literally haven't had time to try the fog vials as they were originally intended.
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I feel like they are forced to make survivor adjustments quite quickly because they are struggling to balance alot of weaker killers properly. When the survivors get a good item/perk into the high tier killers (nurse, blight), it feels good because they have more options into them. But those same options completely shut down the gameplay of weak killers (SM, hag, dredge) which struggle to play as is. You cant create a good oppositional force to killers if the power levels of the killers are so different in the first place. If all the killers were more balanced to one another, these survivor changes would probably last alot longer or atleast be able to be adjusted without completely killing the original idea of the perk/item.
For survivors if theres a busted killer loadout, atleast they have the chance to face a different killer, or they tend to have perks to counter the meta. For example, DMS + Pain res pre-nerf popular at the same time as prove thy self. Killers queue into the broken ######### every game though and for the weaker ones it could completelty counter their powers making them useless.-1 -
some updates look a bit killer-sided because that role needed catch-up. The goal is balance, not favoritism.
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It's not subjective they have said many times they prefer the game killer sided around 60% killrates, the last time they posted stats spirit, nurse and blight had between 65-70% winrate at high MMR so it's not just low mmr and low skill survivors
their balance philosophy is flawed because really good killer mains don't sit at 60% winrate they can hit 80-90%, and at that point the game stops being interesting it's too predictable… if the game was balanced 4 kills would be just as rare as 4 escapes, and the best top players would win 60-70% of the time, this is the standard in well designed PVP games
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nah..
the killer—should have a real chance to win vs any group
if played well, independent of kill rates andwithoutrelying on major survivor mistakes. by “win” i mean a
4K. balance should letskill → 4Keven vs stacked comps. if the killer roleneedsthrow-level survivor mistakes to win, that’s not agency.Independent of kill-rates. Good balance means both sides can win when played well — not ‘killers only beat top teams if they throw a major mistake
That’s what a well-designed PvP game looks like to me.
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Thing is this:
should have a real chance to win vs any group
if played well, independent of kill rates andwithoutrelying on major survivor mistakes.
is currently true now.
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I have a source that might help with this. It's from "New Stats! [Pickrates, Killrates & Escape Rates] (January - March 2025)"
This showcases the intended higher killrates, the lower escape rates, and further specify "which largely falls in line with our intended Killer balance" along with providing average vs. high MMR. I also have this:
Basically saying it is their goal to improve the overall kill rate, specifically. (this is from 2022 as well, as it's been the goal for a few years now). They've been pretty open about wanting killrates to be higher for awhile now, and to keep survivor around 40%. This "imabalance" is the intended "balance".
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Good balance means both sides can win when played well
They can't both have it. Demanding that a killer can -always- get a 4K must necessarily mean that survivors can get their 4Es denied no matter how they play.
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the game is killer sided from low to mid and when you go fron mid to high it's survivor sided
dbd is balanced on survivors being terrible and not figuring out they can easily win by rushing gens and reading a hud and because a killers objective is not equal to the survivors objective a nurse or blight can get a down every chase and still lose because rushing gens is faster
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Note that because it's a 1v4, the killer has to be more capable than any individual surv.
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That role has gotten its fair share of catch-ups already. To the point where power creep has gotten out of hand. Just look at killers like Ghoul, and the buffed clown. Is that the kind of power level you want from all killers?
Hint: that would be incredibly unfun and unbalanced, aside from the competitive scene, where certain perks are forbidden.7 -
Statistically, yes. (60% kill rates) but that's something where since there are 4 survivors, and survivors rely on each other, one persons mistakes hurt everyones.
As long as survivors are able to help each other, they also need to pay for each others mistakes, otherwise they only benifet from each other.
If the game was 4 killers vs 4 survivors, than I'd say expecting around 50% kill rates is more reasonable, because both sides can get screwed by mistakes/misplays.
This all said, that's not to say none of the things killers can do to win are unfair, or shouldn't be reworked. I'm just saying the win rate should be skewed in favor of whichever side of an asymertical game has fewer players.
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Nah. It doesn’t mean killers should always 4K — it means killers should have a real shot at a 4K vs ANY lobby. Hitting Ready isn’t an auto-lose against spezific lobbys. The outcome comes down to map/RNG, spawns, perk synergy, tiny (very little) misplays on both sides, and a couple won/lost 50/50 tiles. Even vs stacked top teams, killer should be able to win — without turning it into an auto-win for survivors the moment they make not huge missplays.
And? I
know that. Cool, but does that 60% include DCs, hook suicides, meme games/throwing, over-agg saves that feed the killer, or SWFs that refuse a death and overcommit? If that stuff isn’t filtered, the number is noisy.Is it split solo vs SWF, and then by MMR? (A lot of SWFs aren’t great, and many have 1–2 weaker players.) Without that segmentation it’s just an average that can hide where a role lacks—or has too much—agency.Even if BHVR aims for 60/40, the aggregate doesn’t prove fairness. SoloQ can prop the rate up while coordinated SWFs are nearly unpunishable. Depending on how DCs / “let’s have fun with this killer” games / suicides / inefficiency are counted, the headline stat tells you more about player behavior than role balance.Balance is about capability, not a single outcome metric: can a well-played killer actually threaten a 4K vs any comp without praying for throw-tier mistakes, and can solid survivors convert smart macro into escapes? Publish segmented stats (MMR brackets, SWF vs solo, map, region, time of day, killer pickrate) and design to those—not one glossy number.Otherwise all this shows is that many survivor groups are sloppy, inefficient, too aggro or too passive—and sure, that inflates kills. But what about groups that play clean and efficient for the win? At that point the game swings survivor-favored, and your killrates won’t reveal it—they’ll just average it away.
true..
and.. the downvote ratio every time someone says anything even slightly pro-killer is wild.
but.
.. its so funny. xD
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Ghoul isn’t OP; he’s poorly designed. Same with Clown. If changes are already confirmed, why are we still litigating this?
Live-service 101: fresh releases/reworks get tuning. You can’t extrapolate two brand-new outliers—that are already being adjusted—to the entire killer role. BHVR often ships a bit overtuned, watches data/feedback, then dials it back.
So why generalize the whole role from two edge cases that are about to be fixed?-10 -
It doesn't include DCs (which incidentally eliminates games where someone DCs because the game is already lost)
It does include those other things you mentioned, but it also includes the games where killers are farming. Also, many of the things you mentioned were just "survivors made mistakes" and it feels wrong to say that games where players made mistakes shouldn't be included in stats.
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The whole portion that you've written on the camping feature being useless makes sense because it's not designed to stop camping, it's actually an anti-facecamping feature.
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Players rarely DC now; they "dc" "their way." and soft-throw: camp under hook, AFK-gen for a grab, meme/drag feet till they die.
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Sadly this is a harsh truth, only killers allowed to dictate games balance here, they barely listen to survivors only if it's a real imbalance
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Anyone who actually looks at the upvote/downvote ratio between killer and survivor posts sees the exact opposite.
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While dbd is skewed towards killer right now, them balancing towards a higher kill rate rather than a 50/50 is simply because of how survivors play themselves. At an average of 47-48% escape rate survivor was blatantly broken, and now that we are at an average of what 43% killer is overtuned. They have to balance with these odd numbers in mind because 5% of all survivor games are auto lost because of a single survivor or more playing to lose in whatever facet you make of that. In the current system with no consistent emphasis on survivors playing to win, 45-46% is probably about even between the two roles. In a world of a well made ranked queue, that could be balanced closer to 50/50 because you wouldn't have to think about random survivors hiding, playing chest builds, trying to steal chase while doing absolutely nothing, ect…
Statistics in this game simply don't reflect the actual state of the game atm because of all these factors.
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I don't necessarily agree that killers are over represented on the forums, most of the big prominent names I think of here make mostly survivor inclined takes (many of which I agree with) and looking at the voting (which, admittedly is flawed) you often see killer takes, including ones with a great point, get downvoted whilst survivor takes tend to have more upvotes- even if all they've said amounts to "killers bad".
I wouldn't base much on the voting. I'm positive there are people who will downvote someone because they see a name they generally don't agree with and just autoclick down. Same for the other way around, seeing a friend or someone you usually agree with and voting up, regardless of the content. A lot of people don't seem to engage with the voting at all, so you're not getting a genuine overall opinion on a view. I've also noticed that the tone of your post can dicate how people react more than what it actually says or what side it favors.
I don't think they balance the game around upvotes and downvotes on the forum.
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It's a flaw of players more aligned with the Killer role to see Killer get negged and othered every time they speak their mind. It's not something that can be taken seriously. But what I can say is that I think being the 1 in the 1v4 scenario gives them a complex and that's always on full display.
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They are not favoring anyone. In 6.1.0, killers got many buffs.
Then they released anti-camp.
Recently they released anti-go-next and anti-afk.
Now, it's anti-camp, anti-slug and anti-tunnel.
They are trying to improve the game, and it's simply that they are doing it in waves, and sometimes one side gets more during one update.
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Firellius said that the devs have openly stated they do favor the killer in terms of balancing, and you asked for an official source. I was giving you the official sources you asked for, that’s all.
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No, It favors SWF and then Killers, but only some of the roster, others are left to rot.
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By design, yes.
Obviously, there is individual variation. There is a large difference between how Killers like Blight are treated, where it took years to nerf Alc Ring, versus how Killers like Pig are treated.
But broadly, yes, the game is designed to favor the Killer. Whether or not that's a wise choice is up for debate.
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I'll say what i always say in these types of posts.
It depends.
When you are newer to the game at what we call "low MMR" the game is massively killer sided. When you are the "average player" the game is slightly killer sided. When you climb up to "above average mmr" the game becomes slightly survivor sided and at the "highest mmr levels" the game is massively survivor sided.
This seemed pretty clear to me as i started playing the game as well. My friends got me into the game to play with them, and for the first 50-100 or so hours playing games with them, we rarely ever escape, most of our games we were lucky if we ever even completed a single generator.
Then after a few hundred hours, you start to get better, and games start getting more even. In those types of games it starts to depend on the killer you are playing against, or the killers strategy. If they tunnel or camp (which is a hard strategy for inexperienced surviors to deal with) then you probably were gonna have a bad time. Same if it was say a nurse or a blight or w/e. But sometimes you'd get those games against a wraith, or a trapper and win pretty easily.
Once you start getting into the thousand hour mark you start to really understand the game, now it usually doesn't matter what killer they are playing, it ends up being less about what the killer is doing, and more about what your team is doing. If you have good teammates, you probably win, but most of the time, you won't because matchmaking is a joke. But, when the killer chases YOU, you can often take them on 1-2+ minute long chases, sometimes with them even abandoning it.
Then of course you hit the multiple thousands of hours mark, and thats when you aren't even playing solo queue hardly anymore, and all your teammates are really good at the game, also with thousands of hours. And unless you are playing against the best killers in the world (I.E. comp players) you probably win almost every game.
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Yeah, for sure re. people just auto deciding based on a username. I'm not sure about the tone part though. I don't think I've said anything remotely controversial in this thread nor phrased anything in an inflammatory way and yet I've nearly 3X as many down votes to up votes on my first comment.
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Yeah the tone thing isn't 100%. Depends on the topic. But there are some people who are consistently diplomatic who usually land upvotes. Then they're are those who are always spicy who will consistently get downvotes, even from people who might have agreed with them if they knew how to phrase things reasonably.
Your comment is, indeed, pretty soft, but people probably don't like that first sentence. They're determined to believe one side is favored over the other.
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Tone is notoriously difficult to ascertain over text.
Personally, I usually give people the benefit of the doubt and take what they say at face value UNLESS I know them.
As to your comment, realistically, its because of the money. Ghoul is insanely popular and likely a huge sale driver. They aren't going to be quick to nerf him.
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Yeah, I'm just hesitant to attribute malice towards BHVR's decision making. I don't think they've ever made changes with the express interest in making one side, one killer, etc. miserable to play. Even Skull Merchant's nerfs I feel were more about removing an issue more than deliberately messing her player base around.
Are they perfect? God no. Are the changes they make always for the better? See last answer. That doesn't mean they hate people who play certain roles or characters though.
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100% with you on tone being hard to gauge, I usually use tone tags online (/s for sarcasm, /jk for just kidding, etc.)
On John Ghoul, I don't want to agree with you but I do. As I said in my response to Cogsturning just now, I don't want to attribute malice towards decision making but when it comes to things like Ghoul, overtuned DLC perks and such, I have to really jump through some mental hoops to come up with any other justification that isn't simply "money".
Communication, I feel, has consistently been an issue especially when it comes to survivor and lower strength killers' issues.
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You said "I don't think they inherently favour one side overall" I think people just disagree it's not that deep, if I agree with you i'll upvote.. I often get 15 upvotes for one comment and -15 in the next
honestly I think they've been oddly biased in favor of killers since 2022, this whole sequence of events with: ghoul, clown, fog vials and anti tunnel PTB is the perfect example. They fix killer issues asap for the most part, they only take one side seriously, they just don't care unless popular killer main streamers start crying about something
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I definitely can see your side of it because it does seem as if everytime something new is introduced to the survivor side, it gets gutted or removed.
I dont think it has to do with bias though. I think it has to do with the corner the devs have backed themselves into due to how the game is balanced. A lot of the very fun things that were added tipped that balance too much and therefore had to be nerfed or changed.
If they would actually buff the lower tier killers massively, the role itself, or rework them to be in line with the top contenders, all of those fun things could be added back because the killer kits would have the tools to deal with them, however they can't do that because they then they would unintentionally buff the very unfun strategies that some killers utilize such as tunneling and camping.
I think what it comes down to is them being afraid to actually shake up the game, not necessarily bias.
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I think the malice is really only present in their PR. 😵 That's gotten better over time though, thankfully.
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This is why I said what I said in my earlier post. The forums might be more Survivor-heavy, though I still don't agree with that, but you see across most platforms that opinions are skewed. Favor changes with the wind. A lot of it is down to timing as well.
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Oh yeah, I'm not cut up or anything about whether or not what I say gets up votes or down votes, it's just an observation.
The pendulum has certainly swung in the balance department, although survivors have been getting things during that time too (ignoring fog vials which were handled way too heavy handed IMO). The problem is that it doesn't matter what you give survivors when Blight, Nurse and now Ghoul exist and see as much play as they do. Even the anti-tunnel stuff on the PTB wouldn't be able to prevent these killers dominating the regular survivor base. I don't envy BHVR, trying to find solutions that don't disproportionately impact certain players whilst reining in overperformers is not a job I'd want.
I didn't touch on Clown because it seemed as though pretty much everyone, survivors, killers and BP mains alike agreed it was a bad idea. Maybe in a world where they commited to removing haste stacking but that's another topic altogether.
Post edited by CorvidXCVIII on2 -
Oh I certainly don't think they're malicious. That just wouldn't make sense from a business perspective. I think, as mentioned above, they do a lot with money in mind, and that causes a lot of in-game problems. I also think the sway of certain content creators is far too strong. It's a lot to juggle. I don't envy the devs.
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