PTB 9.2.0 Consequences and conclusions
It’s time, in my opinion, for developers, to understand that they don’t need to mess around with bullshit in their own game and create crutches with anti-systems, but to make the gameplay interesting. To make objectives in the game so that playing them is fun. Because what’s happening now is a fight against negative experience for one side, meaning the survivors’ side.
Because if we look at the killers’ side: when perks are built in that create situations that limit you in gameplay, that’s normal. But when survivors are limited in gameplay, that’s bad. And the fact that survivors are actually supposed to SURVIVE in this game, stall for time, while other survivors are supposed to repair generators and leave the map—we’ve apparently already forgotten that, right? That if you three dummies aren’t repairing gens while one teammate is getting chased and trying to buy time, then YOU LOSE if you don’t do that, you probably forgot that that’s how it’s actually supposed to be. That’s actually the core of the game, that’s the MECHANIC. Survivors are first and foremost a team, not each one for themselves. Just the simple fact that you need to understand in the moment that if you play differently as survivors, meaning you don’t do the direct action for victory, which is genrushing, and the killer doesn’t do the needed action for victory, which is tunneling, then you’re turning the game into playing-for-lose and some kind of circus. Right now our game looks exactly like a circus. Killers can’t do first, second, third—how many anti-systems do we have? A survivor is unhooked, he gets endurance from hits + gets haste, then the anti-tunnel system, the anti-camp system, we get the anti-gen-break system, we get the anti-slag system, we nerf perks that could in some way counter genrush and buff perks that give that genrush. I just have one question. You restricted killers 5 times, and at the same time you buffed genrush. At the same time you built into the systems that restrict killers perks that are the meta for survivors. My question is: why should one side be restricted at all, why can’t you make gameplay interesting for both sides? Give survivors tools that in teamplay work against tunneling, give survivors the ability to coordinate properly with something and just make it so survivors use it. So there’s interesting gameplay. If survivors don’t use the tools given to them, they lose because they don’t know how to play. And the killer knows how to play and uses what he can. Because show me at least one survivor squad that understands what they need to do and how to counter tunneling, and that still loses the game. If they don’t make mistakes.
That’s the whole concept of the game—you don’t make mistakes and you don’t lose, you make mistakes and you lose. Survivors’ placement of mistakes is always bigger than the killer’s placement of mistakes, because survivors are a team. They have to counter one killer with four people and do the right actions. If they do the wrong actions, they should lose. Yes, winrate will be low for solo survivors, yes, you need to buff coordination for solo survivors so they can use tools, build in auras when someone is hooked, build in quick messages so they can understand who is going for the save and who is doing what, who has how much of what, etc. Who is how healed, so others understand that this survivor is at 99%. To have more opportunities for communication, so people can think with their heads: how they move, how they spend and use time—the MAIN RESOURCE in dbd. The most important resource.
Voice is not mandatory, but the fact is: for solo survivors you can just build in such things so they can coordinate between themselves. How many coordination systems for survivors have we built in over 9 years? We once made Kindered, we made showing gen progress. But we don’t know when a surv got off a gen, where he’s going and what he intends to do. That is, in 9 years we can’t make it so that this gap in solo survivors that distinguishes them from squads is closed, we just can’t add those people a little bit of coordination. Do you seriously not understand, are you really that short-sighted? Are you really such dumb people that you really don’t understand the basic concepts of what your own game consists of? That it consists of TIME, which the killer has to maximally break survivors’ coordination so they can’t genrush and leave the map. You seriously in 9 years can’t understand this, is it really that hard? About the fact that we have imbalanced killers, about the fact that they can create situations on some maps that survivors in a team cannot overcome—YES! You need to work on maps, you need to work on gamedesign, not churn out 60 maps on a “don’t care” basis. Is that so hard? Incredible.
The thing is, I understand that if you remove all the systems that exist now, survivors won’t be able to play properly, they’ve already sat on the needle of this hell we have in the game. I could understand when they added the unhook system so you don’t get hit in the back. But I see: our entire game just hangs on crutches. Fully. I just don’t understand why not close the main problem of solo survivors—not by throwing resources at them, but just by giving them coordination tools. Oh right, because that will kill the so-called "enjoyment".
So, another question then: should we look at the aspect of enjoyment of one side, or at the aspect of enjoyment of ALL players in your damn game? I just mean, isn’t a developer supposed to look at the aspect of enjoyment of all sides of the game, meaning all players? So that killer players understand what they need to do and why they play the game and with what purpose, and survivors do the same. What do the developers do? They just restrict one side’s gameplay. As soon as developers start restricting one side with their gamedesign in a game like this, that’s called idiocy. We don’t know how to fix our game, we do what we do because we can’t handle our own concept anymore, we’re bloated with 11 pages of survivor perks and 10 pages of killer perks of which maximum 2 pages are usable.
All I can say is this update doesn’t show that survivors are bad or play the game badly, doesn’t show that killers are weak or strong in this game. This update shows that the developer of this product completely does not understand what they are developing and doesn’t know how to satisfy both sides. And doesn’t understand how to do it. So they make it so they satisfy the majority. The only ones guilty are the developers who simply can’t optimize gameplay so that each side can play comfortably and feel fairness. But for players to start feeling fairness, maybe you should at least fix the game so that the basic mechanics start working? Maybe that’s worth working on. No, we’ll add systems, we’ll add new DLC, new killers, we’ll get ddosed on our own streams and deny that we need to fix the backend side of our game, we’ll deny a lot of things and ban people on reddit and other platforms. But we won’t do only one thing—actually work on our game, we’ll just farm money—that’s correct, I agree. That’s right, that’s what needs to be done. Well, fine, your choice, then we’ll wait until the survivor gets extra endurance when standing up from the ground and the anti-camp system teleports the survivor to the other side of the map. And in the end we’ll wait for survivor resurrection <3<3<3
I’ll repeat again, I’m not saying survivors are guilty or the survivor side is weak—no, I’m saying I understand what solo survivors lack. And developers just don’t do what’s needed to close that. Meaning close the problem of communication and coordination. It just doesn’t get closed.
Just understand, the main problem is that developers try to fix problems that exist, but they don’t fix them. They create frustrating experience for killers and still don’t close the frustrating experience for survivors. They just pit both sides against each other as much as possible. Like, slugging is a problem, tunneling is a problem, you could never counter these things. In fact it’s impossible to counter them as solo survivors, because they don’t have coordination tools.
In fact solo players sucked, and they will keep sucking. Considering this patch that just came out with all the anti-systems, what will it solve? It solves nothing. Solo players will keep losing games because they don’t have coordination tools, they won’t be able to use those resources properly, and squad players will keep destroying killers, because they have coordination and can use resources properly.
All these actions are aimed at improving survivors’ experience who can’t play as a team and shielding them from tactics that may seem unfair. Do the new systems shield from tunneling? No. I still can stand near hook and wait 'til the survivour gets unhooked to start chase him instantly. Do the new tactics shield from camping? No. Do the new tactics shield from slugging? NO. They only shield the killer from normal play and from using the tactics they can use to achieve victory, meaning to kill all survivors. THAT is what is being shielded.
Just the simple fact of how developers try to come to shielding someone from frustrating experience and close problems—in the end the frustrating experience only grows, and the problems don’t go anywhere.
And the funniest thing is that for 9 years developers, in my opinion, simply cannot understand this simplest concept, that our game has long since stopped being horror and that it’s time to add those tools that will smooth out gameplay from both sides, not just one. For example, the buff of Dead man's switch was just something insane, that perk should not have worked like that. What did developers do? In the end they just nerfed it. Meaning they showed that “we don’t understand how to work with what we’re supposed to work with.” They just move toilets, they just move numbers instead of working on the real problems.
Disappointing, truly disappointing