Should DBD be balanced around the highest level players?

Yes, I was wrong in using the term "red ranks" due to the ranking system being far to generous. The skill average I was referring to was a match where all survivors are semi skilled loopers (good camera control, with decent map and killer knowledge, but still make a multitude of mistakes that the killer can capitalize on) and all killers are semi skilled killers (good chasers by knowing basic red light mind games, decent map awareness and killer knowledge but once again still make mistakes). The point of my original comment was that in a casual game such as dbd the game should be balanced around semi skilled players rather than a tiny fraction of the player base.

A lot of games aim to balance for the top levels and succeed very well. The issue is when low level and high level play is dominated by different characters.

So the best of all scenario would be both high level balance AND an effective ELO-style ranking system.

If DbD were ballanced around highest players that will mean... first, the game will need rewards.

Second, the game wouldn't be played casually which is the largest amount of player base, the sweatiness will increase a lot since the new comers, as they're perkless, they'll want to climb up to get each perk... easier, the game will need a ranking system... an accurate one which is indeed very hard.

I know some people would say "if you want to chill then stay in low ranks" but since the game will be competitive, even staying in low ranks will mean that someone will play as sweaty as possible.

I don't think it's a good idea... at all.

Balancing for average players just make high level players stronger tbh, so do that I suppose, let's the ecelebs make better montages for youtube.

Should the game be balanced around the highest skill rate? Of course it should.

Or could you imagine a R6, LoL or CS getting balanced around bronze or silver ranks?

I think top down balancing works if you want a competitive game. But as far as I can tell, this game is really casual. People get mad at you playing win conditions which is a big sign that top down balance would disrupt the community too much, in my opinion. We are 5 years too late to head that direction.

Generally speaking though, I prefer all games to be balanced around tournament play.

Define what you mean by high level players?

Top 0.1%, 1%, 5%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%...

Where is the cut off point?

People like talking about this as if the choice is the top 100 people in the world or everyone else...

Balance should be strived for the higher experienced players, yet more in the ballpark of top 30% of all players than the top 1% that people talk about. For a balanced approach you need enough of a diverse group, but also one that actually knows how the game works.

Just a few examples that would make the game better for everyone:

• adjusting killer hit boxes to be the same size as survivor hit boxes. Which would reduce the running in circles meta.
• removal of bloodlust (bandaid that was only required because killers have a bigger hitbox)
• introduction of additional objectives like refilling some gens with gasoline (including new items: gas can) and repairing some gens with parts. For balance reasons, this should be best applied to the strategic gens. Preventing at the same time that killers lose 2 or 3 gens in the first chase while also avoiding that survivors 3 gen themselves accidentaly
• removal of the 8k point limit per category. People shouldn´t be punished points wise, when the specialize on chases, gens or healing.
• introduction of bonus bloodpoint items for survivors. Which give more points in exchange of gimping certain things. Like applying the Oblivious status effect while the item is equipped. But giving 100% bonus points for every action while holding the item. Just like the addons that basically remove the killers ability. On top of that, all bonus point items/perks/addons should apply those points after the match. No Mither should also receive bonus bloodpoints.

Those are just a few things, that come right into my mind and would help both sides.

None of the games you mentioned are asymmetrical though, so can really compare them to dbd?

I recently saw a post about R6S on Reddit, where a common complain was, that Ubisoft only cares about comp and doesn't fix things, that suck for the casual players, so even in symmetrical games not everybody likes the balancing around the top.

The average player should be the point of balance. This is a game that will have many casual players, amd balancing it versus the top 0.01% would be an extremely bad move - alienating many players.

Instead, there should be more rewards for players who dare to be different. As an example, perhaps weaker-tiered perks would offer a much larger BP total, endgame. Maybe even throw in some Iridescent Shards or something. Make variety a very real option, and incentivise players for more experimental builds.

Balancing about competent players is always preferable to balancing around incompetent players, because the former would learn to abuse/exploite/exquisitely use the advantages given by balance around the latter.

The same applies to the solo-swf problem. We could add all that fancy aura reading and UI help for "solo", but SWF will just use that crap too PLUS their voicechat.

I mean, in some ways it is? Nurse, Spirit and Blight can take on any team if played well (and we recently had the weird thought of suggesting giving these three their own qeue, they don´t even play the same game as the other killers that´s how strong they are). In my opinion people need to realise that they´re bound to get juiced if they decide to play one of the many trash killers and face a good team.

Let me first clarify that when I say "high level dbd" I'm referring to competitive matches with teams such such as Oracle. Now I don't believe you need to be at the level of high level dbd to make Nurse and Spirit overpowered, especially not Spirit. The reason Nurse's stats are so low is because the bare average (Top 50%) of the community even at red ranks are bad at the game. I'm not saying we should balance around this average. I think BHVR should balance (like I previously stated in another comment) around the semi skilled portion (Top 20-10%) of the community, because this point of skill is achievable with a decent chunk of time and desire to improve by any average player.

So my point would be to not balance around the top 0.01% of the community because of how sweaty and serious matches are at that level but also not balance around the average top 50% of the community because the average player is pretty bad at the game and doesn't make strives to improve at the game. Instead I think BHVR should balance around the semi skilled portion of the player base. And at this level of play Nurse and especially Spirit are still way too strong while offering very minimal counter play.