Queue so bad I can play other games in the meantime

Well that's simple killers are quiting the game.

Less killers means less queue times. Wait are you playing killer? If so on killer it just means you have a bad connection.

3/4 lobbies are either SWFs, key users, or some combination thereof. So you end up spending longer and have to actively participate in your queue if you want to actually play a game of Dead by Daylight instead of "man with knife assaulted by telepathic bees simulator."

I've found that I can play survivor through the day (US Central time), usually from early morning to mid-afternoon queue times are a minute or less. I've honestly had a lot of days where I can survivor queue in under ten seconds. It's amazing, but it can happen.

I've also noticed though that as the day goes on, the survivor queue steadily gets longer. By roughly 8 or 10 pm my time the queues are a couple of minutes. By midnight, maybe 1 or 2 AM, playing as survivor is all but impossible. I don't even necessarily mind waiting up to five minutes to play a single match. I may not like it, but if I'm really itching to play as a survivor it's sometimes worth it. In general though, I've found that queue times at night are FAR faster for me as a killer. Those "minute or less" daytime survivor queues are just as fast when I'm playing a killer at night.

I wish I didn't HAVE to alter which side I play depending on the time of day, but doing so at least eliminates combined hours of waiting to play at all.

Is that actually the consensus? It is actually common for survivor groups to start gathering up in the evening and killer mains to start dropping out because of it? If so that WOULD explain the timing on my side.

Huh, okay, I wasn't aware of that. Makes sense though. I guess it's around the time that people in some of the more populated parts of the country get out of work, they go home and meet up with their friends to play SWF.

I myself prefer to play as survivor because I prefer the gameplay style, I enjoy the sneaking and assisting and the fear of getting caught more than the seek-and-destroy aspect of the killer side) but as I'm new I don't find it particularly rewarding. I regularly get matched with killers who wipe out all survivors for 25,000 or more BP while I and the others average anywhere between 8 and 18. Like I said though I'm new, I guess when I get better I'll start making more BP. Which of course is going to take a while because it's hard to get better when matched against people much more experienced than myself.

I like people who enjoy playing both sides. I wish I saw more of it. There's way too much needless hate between the two "tribes". Both sides are fun and this really is a great game.

Fear of being observed, chased, and harmed in some way by a superior force is something that I really enjoy. It stems from some real life experiences I've had (nothing I would claim to be supernatural but certainly some things that were spookily hard to explain, as well as some clearly human yet potentially dangerous situations). My cousin and I used to go into a forested park by our homes in the middle of the night in our 20s, just hanging out talking about our favorite horror movies and whatnot, and even though it was a closed park in the middle of the night and it was utterly silent without anyone else apparently being around, we had situations like a flashlight beam suddenly turning on and pointing straight at us from somewhere in the woods, strange loud bangs that we couldn't explain, the unexpected (and unexpectedly bright) beam of a police spotlight sweeping right towards us from hundreds of feet away, etc. It's a very primal fear to be in a place you're not in control of, yet feel safe in, only for that safety and certainty to abruptly be stripped away and find yourself forced to jump up and run from whatever's coming. It's an adrenaline rush, like waking up from a horrible nightmare - you're glad that you're safe, but feel that much more alive for having had the experience.

There's a single-player game that is, in a way, very much like DBD called "Monstrum". It takes place in a cargo freighter on the middle of an unknown sea, at night. There's one of three randomly chosen entities wandering the ship, you have no way to defend yourself against them, if they catch you once it's game over, and the ship's floor layout is completely randomized every time you play. All you can do is sneak, hide, try to keep out of view, run for you life when you're spotted, and hope to find the (randomly placed) objects that you need to escape before the creature gets you. I've played hundreds and hundreds of games of Monstrum because I just can't get enough of that tension that comes from essentially hiding in the closet or under a desk, watching this murderous threat walk (or crawl, or float) by, hoping that it didn't see you. DBD replicates that same fundamental experience, the experience of helplessness in the face of uncertainty. For those who particularly enjoy and are looking for it, anyway. I mean none of the killers "scare" me, but the tension of trying to not get caught by them, the sudden startles that they're all capable of, and the creepiness of something like watch one creep by the locker you're hiding in is a really cool feeling.

On the much more pertinent point that you made though, yeah, there's actually a very real learning curve to this game that I didn't know about and, to be honest, don't really like. I don't enjoy looping, whether as the killer OR the survivor. I think too much of the gameplay revolves around it. I was dismayed to learn from a new, incredibly skilled friend that there's all this science to learning the tiles and when to loop, when not to loop, etc. So you're right, I'm thrown in the game with killers who are way better than I am and know all the tricks that I don't, as well as survivors who probably think that I'm just a dumb or lazy ######### because I don't know all the intricacies that they do. I don't fault the game for being a bit more complicated than its concept makes it first appear, and I certainly have no problem learning and improving, but you nailed it: When you're with people who are mostly better than yourself it's difficult to learn beyond just replicating what they do to the best of your ability and having no idea why it worked for them and not for you.