The Devs Are Not Biased Against Killers

Except, kill rates ARE skewed. Case and point, when I play Freddy, I play with 2 perks. BBQ and Brutal Strength. No addons, no slowdowns. A pretty modest build, not overpowered, not game extending etc. Survivors STILL just die on first hook, or just point at a hook and want to be killed. They don't even TRY, despite the fact that Freddy, even with more powerful builds, is MORE than outplayable. He's just an M1 killer at the end of the day.

That's how kill rates are skewed, and that's why Almo's "but the stats lul" lingo is nonsense.

The last time DS was "nerfed", it was a buff. At least before this, there was counterplay. In fact, BHVR has actively removed any DS counterplay (the enduring nerf) since this change.

Exhaustion, as with Bloodlust, is a broken mechanic and shouldn't exist at this stage in the game. Dead Hard is the worst offender, because of what it offers, for free, with no earning or skill involved on the survivors part.

Undying is nowhere near as powerful as any of the survivor meta perks.

I actually agree with this. Here are the following points I agree with:

(1) If all 4 survivors are playing well, they will usually win. Depending on how well, they could win by a small or big margin

(2) Game is balanced around mediocre players. Meaning people who don’t have the time to sink into this game to become the best. People who have jobs, relationships and family to take care of.

I feel this is what the game is about, learning to cooperate, empathy for others, being brave, altruistic, standing your ground in intense situations. 4 (normally selfish) players are learning to do this, and one is threatening them with death for not doing so. The killers role isn’t actually to kill survivors, it’s to teach them a lesson. And if they learn it, they escape! And if not they lose friends or die, or escape with a bad conscience. It’s a great horror plot!

If the 4 survivors manage to cooperate and escape and learned a lesson doing so, I think we’ve all won, whether killer or survivor. If they escaped without learning a lesson, then I think we need better killers. And if they don’t escape then well, they probably didn’t learn the lesson and can try again.

To me this is the magic of the game, it’s a microcosm of life, a place to learn some valuable life skills through an entertaining genre. I think it’s what attracts many people to play this game. So no I don’t think the game should be balanced for competitive play. No I don’t think tunneling is healthy. No I don’t think killers should focus on killing in this game. They should focus on punishing cowards and greedy, selfish play. It’s a role of service, which many of the antagonists in horror films try to play. I think that’s what this game is about.

So yes I think the game is biased towards survivors when they play in a manner that is good for all. And it incentivises or limits the killer to doing what is necessary to teach them that lesson. And the most stubborn survivors who do not learn, die on the hook.

So I actually agree with your post. But rather, I think the premise that the game is meant to be competitive and pit the killer against survivors and that if the killer doesn’t 3-4K is not correct and not in line with what the devs envisioned for the game and for us. I see this actually as a 5 man cooperative game for people to learn to be cool to each other.

Prefacing this by saying you have given me reason to want to visit these forums for more than just the odd dev activity or update post. In the past whenever I ventured into the discussions subforums looking for conversations on game mechanics and balance, I was quickly put off by seeing completely unreasonable statements made by people with thousands of posts, causing me a fair amount of concern as to the general state of the forum and one's ability to have reasonable and constructive conversations in it. As you have also pointed out, usually those statements will unreasonably be biased toward killer gameplay, and so seeing well-reasoned statements to contest some of these ridiculous sentiments from someone that also has thousands of posts is reassuring.

I find myself in disbelief whenever faced with what on the one hand is my experience and view of the game, and what on the other not few people seem to think of it judging by various online outlets. When I can go from growing tired of watching some of the streamers I watch play killer as they genuinely almost never lose and are so rarely even challenged enough for it not to become mindnumbingly boring to watch them, to seeing people complain that the game is impossibly survivor-sided and that there's nothing killers can do and the devs hate killers and only nerf them and as survivor you can do whatever and still escape all the time, I am just baffled and trying to find ways to explain this disparity to myself, of how I am seeing a reality that players can dominate as killer in the vast majority of their matches and have done so for thousands upon thousands of hours, year after year, going on 4k streaks of hundreds of games in a row, and on the other people that genuinely seem to believe they can never even... what, kill a single survivor without the universe aligning to somehow make that happen? I have around 4000 hours in the game, with roughly 1500 spent on killer, and even after 500 hours I already grew tired of playing hard to win with the best characters, perks, add-ons and strategies. I regularly use more exotic perks and weaker characters, going out of my way not to employ the most effective strategies of tunnelling, slugging and camping, and yet I still comfortably kill two or more survivors much more often than one or less.

The facts are kill rates have shown very clearly time and again that the game for public play is actually killer-sided. There are things that skew the statistics, but they do so in both directions, and there's no reason anyone has brought up that would suggest that these things should skew the statistics more so to inflate kill rates. In fact, the only thing I can see could significantly skew the rates are disconnects, and when these statistics were taken there weren't even disconnect penalties in the game. And yet, not only were disconnects actually excluded from them, meaning the reported kill rates are actually deflated, but even disconnects only amounted to a ~5% difference in the statistics, as stated by the devs. So if even those are not nearly impactful enough to make up for the difference, it is only even more unreasonable to think those other vague factors could not only amount to more than 5%, but do so disproportionally in either direction. Hell, there is the argument that these factors should not even be excluded to begin with. These things all do affect the rates, they are for better and worse part of what shapes the gameplay experience of Dead by Daylight. And if they happen frequently enough to non-negligibly affect global statistics, that is precisely why they are something that has to be included in evaluations on game changes. E. g. back when these stats were first released I saw quite a few people arguing that Moris would be inflating the kill rates. But is it really "inflating" if they are an item in the game that players can use as they please? It's actually part of the game and does affect the global experience and balance, as are many of the other factors that are usually being brought up.

And then there's of course the fact of the trend of the stats, as you state, which has to be even less affected by any such factors. And anybody that has been around for a couple of years in the game and has taken an honest approach at evaluating the balance patches would have no reason to doubt that trend. There have been a lot of substantial changes to shift the balance more toward killer gameplay. Furthermore, tournament play shows that the game is in a rather reasonably balanced state even at the top level. You have some of the best and most experienced players in the game competing against each other consistently, and while yes some of the killer characters do average only between one and two kills, others average between three and four. Also to be considered is that various add-ons and even perk combinations are banned for killers in those tournaments, and that survivors are using voice communcations. So, we have video evidence of players that showcase that they can kill around 80-90% of the survivors they face in matchmaking, in the form of streams. We have game data provided by the devs. And we have video footage of tournaments showcasing that even at the very top level killers absolutely stand a chance to perform well and can even win decisively. What is there that has led so many people to assume as self-evident the idea that killers are completely underpowered?

And going even further than that with the idea that the devs are somehow biased against killer is only even more ridiculous. For one thing, there have been the many substantial survivor nerfs and killer buffs throughout the years, which as you correctly say, if there had been an actual bias those things would have not been changed to begin with. Then there is the fact that while killer players get an entirely new character with every chapter, with engaging new mechanics, a learning curve and new ways for strategic approaches and perk synergies, survivor players get pretty much nothing new. Survivor gameplay has barely gotten any new mechanics whatsoever in the game's entire lifespan, no new possible actions or even just items. Firecrackers as a borderline joke item, that's about it. Hell, even the best survivor perks are still mostly the same old 10-or-so they have always been, whereas killers have gotten a variety of highly viable perks while in general already having more variety in perk usefulness due to how they harmonize with different killer characters. And then on top of that as you again also state, BHVR is a multi-million dollar company, they have a clear bias and that is making money, and the idea that they would be biased toward either "side" in a way that is detrimental to their money-making is childishly naive. They have hundreds of employees getting paid a salary every month, that somehow such a petty bias could survive through the many real-world practical and financial functionings of a modern-age company is laughable. If the game were as unattractive for people to play as it is regularly being made out to and actually lead to the game suffering because of it, you can believe that the devs would be the first to notice and change this - and they have, that's where those substantial pro-killer balance patches in the past came from. If anything, the fact that this company with much more ways of analyzing and evaluating the game, as well as quite literally an existential interest in making the game as attractive as possible to as many people as possible, is choosing to nerf Undying and Moris should tell you that internally they have reason for concern that the game currently is not attractive enough for survivors to ensure its longevity.

I think many of the survivor nerfs and killer buffs were healthy for the game, and even necessary for its longevity in a few cases. I think a fair few of the killer characters are absolutely deserving of buffs. The pool of viable perks for the killer side is also too small. There are legitimate balance concerns left in the game from a killer perspective. I do see various issues in how BHVR handles the game, including the balance approach. But one has to be reasonable and sensible in how these things are framed, and just factual with regards to the realities of them. The game is in a more balanced state now than it has ever been, and its nearing a state where even at the top level an overall balance of two kills and two escapes is entirely feasible, with both killer and survivor victories happening frequently and a few of the killer characters arguably even being more on the side of too strong. Killer releases for over a year now show a trend of competitively highly viable designs. In public matches a competent killer player will more often be successful than not (and I think the game on average favouring a killer in public play is a good thing).

One can realize that the game does actually have a considerable skill ladder, and before blaming the core game balance, one should evaluate one's own gameplay and accept that there are things that can be improved upon. And that acceptance should be something positive, that adds to the experience of the game. Learning from mistakes and improving at a game mentally and mechanically is what makes playing games worthwhile to me at all, and so I have an even harder time understanding all the people that are so eager to complain and blame the game. Where is the "gamer" mentality? Where is the drive to improve, the ambition to see a streamer dominate their games and to want to be like them? Do people just accept themselves to be mediocre and unable to learn and improve? I doubt that is the case. Maybe much of it ultimately is indeed an emotional response, an outlet to vent after tough games, to not be alone with any frustrations one might feel stemming from the game.

Either way, I would encourage anyone to give themselves a chance and believe in the possibility that they can improve at the game and elevate themselves into a position where they too can succeed in most of their matches. That's not to say there won't be games where it can feel almost impossible to win, some of the characters, maps, items, add-ons and perks can certainly combine to yield games that are arguably too challenging, especially if a group of survivors is playing together and even communicating with voice chat, but not only will those games be rare, but even then you can still have engaging chases, get a few hooks, a kill or two, and be on your way to more reasonable experiences for the next 100 or so matches before you get another team of 4 survivors that are actually good at the game and abusing the strongest things in it. Just like a very good Nurse or Spirit player will completely take you apart whenever you meet them in public matches, but that also doesn't happen very often. Take every other challenging game as a learning experience.

I hope MMR will even out the playing field a little in the future, creating more consistent gameplay experiences with more evenly-matched players, and that there will be adjustments made with SWF in mind, potentially then based on new statistics arising from those more evenly-matched games.

Yeah, even a disconnect between the "sides" is not necessarily a bad thing or something we have to "get rid of", just a reasonable disconnect would already be desirable. Ideally everyone would play both sides and "see" both sides quite literally in that way, but that's not something we can expect or effect, of course. And to villainize the developers over any such disconnect is of course the most unreasonable thing. There's fair criticism, and then there's making it out as if a team of hundreds of people that literally spends their days constantly working on ever-new killer designs "hates killer players". Just baffling. Especially after the streak of engaging and viable killer releases we've had for more than a year now. Is the playerbase for this game really this young an age group for that absurd sentiment to gain as much traction as it has?

I am cautiously optimistic about MMR. As you point out, the first time around it was quite the mess, and I have my reasons to doubt whether the devs' ideas on what constitutes "skill" correlate as closely with mine as to yield matches made in a way I would prefer, but certainly after months of working on improving it I don't doubt the rating system will be a step in a better direction than the ranking system we've had so far, where the disparity in skill and experience can be ridiculous from game to game. For an easier solution than coming up with a complicated rating evaluation, I have often thought it would already be nice if the game paired players of more similar total playtime. Pools of players below 100 hours, 100-500 hours, 500-1000 hours, and 1000 and above hours, preferentially matched as-available. Anyway, for the MMR system that is coming I hope kill and survival rates as well as chase times will factor majorly into the player rating. And how diligent a player is about doing gens, lol.

Looking at kill rates is a really bad way to look at balance. Why?

Low ranks miss skill checks.

Low ranks throw down pallets early and waste them.

Low ranks run when the killer approaches.

Low ranks farm one another off hook.

Low ranks don't know what perks are good.

Low ranks hide rather than do gens.

Low ranks don't loop.

Low ranks run into nothing.

Low ranks don't understand which gens to prioritize.

On the flip side low rank killers also make lots of these mistakes but as they don't get punished as heavily for chasing into a bad area if the survivor doesn't know how to use it and actively profit from survivors running into dead zones and missing skill checks that doesn't matter. They also don't really need top tier perks because the gens won't be done in 3 minutes, they have no need to pressure specific areas for a 3 gen and chases won't be difficult.

Once you reach green and purple ranks this changes dramatically and the game becomes much harder but for the majority they will never get to that level.

Okay, this is a little too out there for me to further want to engage with. All power to you if you can provide a shred of proof for any of this though.

But killl rates actually go up as ranks do, so this argument doesn't hold.