Fairness, balance, and thoughts on salt and culture

From what I've been seeing on the forum, killers tend to by and large feel that the Developers spite them and the game is balanced and favored towards the survivor side. This is counterpointed by the fact that, on average, killers kill more than survivors survive on an average of a 60/40 ratio, and there is no map or killer that has less than an 50% kill ratio, except nurse. Rip nurse.

So, why? If the game is killer sided, as statistics appear to allege, why do killers feel so oppressed?

Based on my experiences, playing as primarily a red rank killer main and more recently a survivor after months of avoiding it. (Not upset to play killer, I love the new ruin. Ruin+Surveillance on Freddy is great. Survivor is just a change of pace and a bit more relaxing since that build is very apm intensive.) I believe I have an understanding of why this effect is.

The post game lobby. Specifically, survivors that derive enjoyment in the game from frustrating a killer emotionally.

Now, a 60% kill ratio can mean a range between one of two scenarios.

1: A killer 4ks 6 matches out of 10 and 4 escapes the other four. The killer "lost" four matches.

2: A killer kills 2 survivors and one more survivor about half the time, one to two survivors escape, every game.

In the first scenario, the killer is satisfied in 6 out of 10 games and the survivors gloat at the killer 4 out of 10 games.

In the second scenario, and this is speaking from extensive personal experience, the survivors gloat because the killer did not successfully kill all of them, and the killer is not satisfied in any of the matches, even if they were still killing more in each of them, on average, than the survivors survived.

The game is balanced well, a 60~70% bias towards the power role is about the best you can hope for in an intentionally unbalanced game. The question is why does the 60~70% feel weaker?

This is due to human nature and the way we derive value. "Value" as a concept, is very heavily skewed towards the acceptance and reinforcement of the larger group, rather than the opinions of individuals. We are more likely to think something with no intrinsic value in itself is worth more if someone else says it is worth something.

This is compounded by the majority role having a lower statistical success rate than the killer. If any individual were to try to derive value, and thus sensations of success, from individual survival, they would feel worse on average than they would feel good, and the activity would be unenjoyable. This causes a natural shift away from lower statistical goals, in this case individual survival, and instead skewing towards a more commonly achieved goal, "group survival" defined by one or more survivors escaping a trial.

To reinforce the perception that "group" survival is the bar of success, achievement and "good feelings" it is common practice for survivors to gloat in post game chat, even when they individually die, if any manage to survive. "I may have died, but because of me "we" survived!"

Killers are naturally balanced to kill a few survivors, more often than not, but not all of them as to not make the game completely unenjoyable for survivors. Killers should feel good and validated with every individual kill they achieve, but the "group", four of the five players in the post game chat, assert that individual kills have no value and only 4ks have value for the killer and otherwise it was a survivor victory.

This causes the odd dichotomy we have today, where killers are favored, but feel weaker, and survivors are weaker, but feel favored. Because survivors have defined what has value in the game and what are the success and fail states, which does favor them, and killers are not, and should not, be balanced around the states survivors have defined as an unconscious whole or the game would become completely unplayable. The killers were designed around different goals than what the community has set and accepts as what is "good" in the game.

TL;DR killers feel bad because survivors tell them they are bad, even if they are actually stronger. This aspect of the game's balance can't be solved with numbers and needs to be addressed as a community, for everyone to just be less salty and post game chat culture making everyone feel good, instead of just validating the majority.

Note to the Dev: Emotional feeling generally matters more than statistical balance in game development, as I'm sure you've been wracking your brain over why the community is so divisive despite the numbers saying everything should be fine. Look at the Ranking system, the pipping system, and how that feedback meshes against post game chat.

One suggestion I can think of are individual player kills for the killer being worded much more positively and visibly to both killer and survivors can make a world of difference. The Entity saying "you killed two players, you did good" rather than "you only killed two players, I am displeased" helps reinforce to the killer that kills are important and more kills are just better, rather than getting the most kills is all that matters and anything less is time wasted on failure.