A compendium of suggestions to help fix the game we love

Angerydoge

As we are entering DbDs 10th year, I feel like it's time yet again for me to return to the forums. To be brutally honest I really don't feel like this is going to go anywhere, but I want to put my voice out there with some suggestions I believe could significantly improve the health in the short and long term. I hope that if anyone actually reads this, even if you disagree we can come together to discuss our beliefs and actually try and have a tangible good impact on the game. This is going to be a long post that covers many different areas, this is why I am not posting multiple threads With this in mind, let's begin.

SUGGESTIONS
MAP BALANCE:

I think this one will really resonate with a lot of players. From what I'm aware the devs have said repeatedly that they want maps to be unbalanced because they like underdog stories. Simply put, in this kind of game, this is not good design. If DbD was some kind of PvE game like Left 4 Dead then sure, make it unbalanced sometimes, but as a functionally competitive game this lack of balance fundamentally harms the game. Humans are inherently negative creatures, we focus on whats bad rather than whats good a lot of the time. As such we are going to remember games where we are robbed because of a bad map much more than games when we win because of a lucky map draw. For many players this experience simply drives them away. To stop this, all maps in the game need to be balanced as well a possible so that killers and survivors have an equal chance of winning in EVERY GAME.

A simple way to achieve this (thanks Scott Jund and others who have suggested this) is rather than a completely random map seed, only use a small pool of seeds for each map in the game, these seeds can be checked to ensure balance for both sides, it also guarantees that things like fat shames (which still shockingly) and other rarer oddities from the random generations can no longer occur. This is a low work way to achieve reasonably better balance in a short period of time.

Another thing I would like to note which im not sure on, but I have spoken with people recently and apparently there is now some sort of bias system on map selection meaning you get maps more frequently than others sometimes, at the very least devs please remove this, getting 3 indoor maps in 5 games is miserable.

SWF AND SOLO Q NEED TO BE MORE SIMILAR EXPERIENCES:

This is a fundamental issue with the game that makes balancing hard. The difference between soloq and swf is so great that it is often one of the single biggest deciding factors in each game. For example a mid skill team of soloq players might lose against a lower skill ceiling killer like myers or ghost face because they simply can't communicate the same information that a SWF can. Someone might be trying to use decisive if they are getting tunnelled but maybe a teammate tried to take hits because they don't know. This is just one example of many. To address this the distance between solo Q and SWF must be brought as close as possible.

To do this there are some immediate and low cost changes that can be done. First, show every survivor each others perks in the lobby, in the loading screen and in game. This would barely take any time but be so helpful in narrowing the gap already. A second change I would suggest is to immediately reveal which killer it is upon the first survivor being hit, this brings swf and solo q together on stealth killers. This would be a significant nerf to stealth killers in solo q but bringing swf and solo q together here allows for these killers to be buffed across the board to make up for it. My final suggestion is either some kind of chat wheel or voice chat, I know that BHVR does not want to add voice chat because of toxicity which is fair, but some kind of way for survivors to communicate with each other over long distances is desperately required.

These changes will close a lot of the distance between SWF and SoloQ allowing for much better balancing of the game as a whole.

FUNDEMENTAL QOL:
As many are aware the QOL initiative has not really gone to plan, basically nothing was added. There are some systems that need to be added to the game still. The primary one is some kind of counter for oppressive slugging, im talking at least 3 people down for a medium to long period of time, idk what but the system in place on the QoL ptb wasn't that bad from what I heard so maybe try working from there.

A minor thing that needs to be addressed in my opinion the the abandon system, the only issue that I have with it is that it's killer win coded, survivors can only surrender if the game is already over because the killer has won, (i.e- 4 man slug). I feel killers should also have some kind of way to get out of lost games early too. Im not saying let the killer dc if they can't get a 4k, maybe if no one has been hooked and 4 gens are done the killer can abandon. I suggest against adding something for survivors to do the same because there are circumstances where the killer may want to play late game (no way out, blood warden etc.).

SERVER VERIFICATION AND HITBOXES:
There are so many issues with the hits in this game and I don't think killers or survivors will deny that. Simply put, I think a combination of improving the games netcode and adding more representative hitboxes will do wonders for the game. Adding server side verification (or better verification) means that perceived unfair hit's and misses will become rarer, for people worried about this being survivor sided I would like to say that I strongly believe that a lot of the issues with aim dressing and robbed hits stem from the lack of verification.

Secondly I think more representative hitboxes are desperately needed at this point in the game. For clarification I think capsules are still fine for the most part when it comes to movement collisions and probably also m1 hits, but things like projectiles need more resolution to work in this game without feeling unfair. Cmon, hatchets hitbox is still a sphere, please devs, please. Adding some kind of collision tied to survivors skeletons would allow for so much more balance when it comes to projectiles and even other things too. Maybe Ghoul can only attack a survivor's torso rather than their capsule, maybe Iri Head for huntress can be changed so that if she hit's a head shot from over 16 meters she insta kills the survivor, idk lol but hitboxes like this would add a lot more potential to the game.

PERPETUAL BALANCE PTB:
I think something this game desperately needs in a perpetual ptb that can be used for balancing without shipping the game to live, update things on the ptb until the community is happy with them and then ship them to live, If something is not good enough, then keep it on the PTB until it is ready.



Honestly I have so much more I could talk about but I don't want to make this any longer so here are some suggestions I believe would significantly improve the experience in this game. If you have any of your own suggestions that you think you could add on or you have any criticism please feel free to leave it below. Thanks for reading

And to the devs, if you read this, while it's been a bumpy road, thank you for making this game. I hope that year 10 is the best year yet and I hope that the road to year 20 can be paved.