I feel like the lack of empathy holds this game back.

I unironically think that this might be the problem, they shouldn't listen to the community because we don't even know what we want, the only thing we really want for the game is to be fun and balanced (and maybe not even that). We don't really know what is going to make it better and we are highly biased because we usually play one side more than the other, plus the people that make noise are a very small portion of the playerbase. They should use their data to balance the game and listen to some suggestions for inspiration. And do a lot more changes, they are sooo slow and feels like they are too scared to do big changes and more frequently.

Yeah, the lack of empathy in this community just creates an extremely toxic place.

I've seen soooo many people who just play one side and could care less about the other side. I've seen killer mains who think every single survivor is a toxic scumbag who will use all the meta perks and tryhard, likewise I've also seen survivors who think every killer tunnels and camps.

I also agree with you on the whole no matter what BHVR does they're going to get a lot of complaints about it. I don't think they're perfect beings who could never do any wrong but with how this community is BHVR could buff 40 mediocre/bad perks and nerf like, 2 meta perks on survivor or nerf a killer and the community would say "BHVR has a bias against X side!"

Its seriously annoying and saddening to see. If people would just play the other side and acknowledge the problems with their own side the community would be a much, much better place.

That perk has been in the game for almost 5 years

I'm sorry but i don't buy that excuse.

They could easily just ask the community for their ideas on how to change some perks and look and test what would be the best/easiest change.

Or maybe they could use their fogwhisperers for more than just marketing and try to involve them in their balancing.

They need to realize that balancing needs the company AND the community.

Like come on,they really needed 1,5 years to realize that Fixated should also work when injured?Sorry but that's just pathetic.

They just choose to not spend enough ressources on important matters.

They know that they don't really have to try because there's pretty much 0 competition and they abuse that.

That's pretty much it.

Well that's just speculation that they don't have time (600 employees btw). I agree they should focus on balance rather than on new content but i genuinly don't feel like they are getting overworked unless they got spagetthi code, in wich case they better start working on DBD 2 with better design from the ground.

Here's my 3 and 1/4 cents on the matter:

As a Killer Main, I actually empathize with Solo Survivors quite a lot.

Tunnelcamping sucks, period. It just does.

Sometimes it's unintentional, and there's just nothing you can do about it.

But on the whole, I feel like Solo needs a buff to SWF level, and then we can buff Killers across the board to match that new level.

The fact that they didn't even consider this still baffles me to this day.

The first fix to solo queue is a working matchmaking system.

As for the killer buffs. Apparently ppl consider clown a nerf because the add-ons were changed as well and the buffs that were given don't compensate.

Trapper is more of a neutral change but it really depends on the numbers they put.

Wraith is a net buff.

No argument here - solo queue survivors have it fairly rough. It's why while I personally do feel devs are survivor biased (mostly due to the reaction time to survivor problems vs. killer problems), I also recognize that non-swf also gets a raw deal, and the biggest change I lobby for is just putting voice chat in the game and balancing around it.

Killers aren't the only ones getting the short end of the stick when it comes to wishy-washy balance.

The problem to me lies at the core of the game's design. There's stuff for both sides to abuse, and there's nothing that individual players can do to stop it.

Tunneling, camping, and slugging are strategies that will guarantee you at least one kill if done against good players, usually two or three if you do it against mediocre ones. The game is poorly balanced for the 12 hooks goal that it presents during the tutorial (and in the upcoming UI), to the point that the three strategies that are mentioned above are usually more reliable to get kills. A killer can abuse any of these, say for example tunneling: they tunnel a guy out from the game and there's nothing that individual survivor can do about it. The other three might escape if they rush the gens before that first dude is dead, but that one first survivor is absolutely dying. And if the other survs aren't efficient enough (which is usually what happens in solo Q, because of lack of communication and poor matchmaking), the game becomes a 3v1 pretty quickly and there's little the remaining survivors can do if they didn't rush the gens early. The same thing applies to camping. As for slugging, it's a bit different (and the reason why I don't find slugging as scummy as the other two) but given that killers usually need to slug to slow the game down I think we can all agree that it's more reliable than going for normal hooks.

Survivors, on the other hand, can take advantage of the poor balance around gen speed + map sizes. If they split up and are efficient enough they can get all five gens done in like 6-7 minutes, even less if they carry toolboxes + perks like Built to Last or Prove Thyself. Many killers lack the mobility to stop this, and even high mobility killers can't be in 3 places at the same time. If you hook someone and BBQ shows you 2 survivors in 2 different gens, you usually have to gamble. Let's say you are running PGTW, you go to one gen in hope that it does not pop right before you get there, and also leave the possibility for the other gen to pop as well because you can't go to both of them at the same time. Which is the reason why many killers choose to disregard gen defense almost completely and defend their hooks instead. The game encourages you to protect gens in the tutorial, but many times this can't be done in the actual gameplay. Specially on low mobility killers (but not only).

Survivors can also abuse perks like DS, UB and BT to make the killer waste a lot of time. These perks are necessary for the three strategies I mentioned above, DS is slightly useful against tunneling, UB is useful against slugging, and BT is reliable against camping. These perks exist to stop the killer from abusing strategies that wouldn't be a thing if the game was balanced around 12 hooks. However, they can be easily abused: survivors will aggressively unhook their teammates in front of the killer, and the killer won't be able to take advantage from such a move because the unhooked survivor will have BT + a whole minute of DS protecting them. They can instead go for the unhooker, but it is unfair that, in a situation where the killer is literally gifted with the presence of two survivors in the same place solely because they chose to unhook safely, they can not take advantage from it immediately. Not to mention the unhooked survivor abusing BT to bodyblock, and the 59 secs DS the killer may get stun with without even tunneling.

However, how can this be fixed? I don't think it's that easy. You could nerf the survivor meta perks, and then the tunneling and/or camping would be rampant. You could buff the killers so that 12 hooks is actually feasible against equally good survivors, but this should be done with extreme care because it would be make tunneling, camping and slugging even stronger. If killers become so strong that they can actually 12 hook, it's only obvious that their current strongest strategies would become even more reliable, too. At the same time, gen speed + map size is a difficult subject, because making survivors hold M1 for longer is not a good idea, since it would make the game boring as heck and most survivors find chases the most enjoyable part of the game. I'm in favor of survivors having a different objective during the early game, so that gens don't pop that crazy at the start of the match, but this should also be implemented with care because it can make currently strong killers insanely deadly, and the above strategies mentioned even more reliable.

Not to mention that the devs try to fix core design problems through perks; this is a statement that I read someone make long ago when I just had started playing, but it took me a while to figure out how true it actually is. Gen speed is a problem if survivors split up, so they introduce slowdown perks (such as Ruin, PGTW, etc) to compensate. Pressuring multiple gens at the same time is not feasible for most killers, so we got Oppression, maybe Surge, also Ruin. Totem spawns are #########? Have Undying and Thrill of the Hunt. Killers camp? Use BT or Camaraderie (lol). Killers slug? Have Unbreakable, Soul Guard, etc. Killers tunnel? BT and DS can help you. And so on. Perks should not be there to fix design problems, imo. The design problems should be addressed themselves, and perks should give the players... perks. Small buffs, information that they don't have basekit, etc.

And then there's what you mentioned: many players lack empathy. Many killer mains don't give a ######### if the survivors are having an awful time because of the strategies they abuse. They don't care if the survivor being tunneled has a ######### time because "it's not their duty to make the game fun for others", because "survivors do not care to make the game fun for the killer either", because "the game allows it, the devs have said that tunneling is ok", etc. Empathy goes beyond any of these, it's looking at the situation from the other person's perspective and understanding how they feel. The same thing happens the other way around: many survivor players don't care about the killer's experience of the game. They will click click their flashlights, teabag, abuse the perks that they can abuse, rush the gens, all for pretty much the same reasons I mentioned above: "the game allows it", "it's not bannable", "most killers are scumbags anyway", "I don't care about the killer's fun".

But then again, the problem lies at the game's core. There is stuff that both sides can abuse, most of it being part of the core game design (+ the mentioned perks for survivor), and as long as that game design remains unchanged, there's little that either side can do about it. One can choose how they play, I usually try to be polite and not do to others what I do not like being done to myself. But I get people telling me that I shouldn't care how the other side feels and just play how I want. To some extent, it's a philosophical matter.

You've just described every competitve multiplayer game ever - and the exact reason why whoever decided to turn it into "esports" deserves to be hunted by a pack of rabid chihuhauas