Killer fundamentally is neither fun nor balanced
Why is it ok to for survivors to finish 2 or 3 generators with the first chase? This is 2/5 or 3/5 of their objective. Would it be fair for the killer to delete a survivor after the first chase? No. So why then is this allowed as part of the game?
"you didn't pressure enough" : There's nobody in the world who can chase 3 or 4 survivors at once unless the survivors allow it to happen. Most maps are too big to allow you to interrupt generator repair unless the survivors make a mistake.
Most pallets in the game are too safe and remove any skill the killer has in terms of a mindgame. This allows for the first chase to last way too long as the survivor to run to a strong loop - abuse it for 20-30 seconds and maybe use the pallet then go to a nearby loop and repeat.
Everything works at low levels because survivors hide when the heartbeat is nearby. They don't have gen rushing perks or really strong items+addons.Overall baby survivors hesitate and good players are fearless - and this is why the game is a farce at high levels. Fundamentally chases can go too long. If we even mention SWF the situation explodes and the killer has zero change of winning unless the survivors make several mistakes in a row or waste time.
You can finish the survivor objective in under 4 minutes without even really trying too hard. The only way that ever happens is if the survivors run into an AoE chainsaw or some other incredible blunder or meme nonsense. Watch whatever streamer you like and when they play a good team they will eventually get annihilated as killer. Sometimes SWF isn't even a factor. What is the average killer with a few hundred hours going to do when someone who has 4000-6000 hours has no chance of winning?
The problem is that the developers of this game balance low ranks and middle ranks and completely ignore the top 20% of play. This might be fair if killers had an option to just ignore the best 20% of the survivor player base - but isn't that absurd? Right now there is an event and killer numbers are skewed; immediately before the event there was a long queue for red rank play as survivor. At the end of the event things will return to that state.
How do we fix this: Make killer fun and fair to play at all ranks.
I. If we normalize chase time then the game can finally achieve balance. If we make a change that affects the top 15% of players and reduce their maximum skill potential it will have a very positive effect on killers wanting to keep playing killer. Imagine for example a very good survivor right now can loop for 40-60 seconds before being hit. If this happens the killer already lost the game. Is that fun? Should the killer just quit? This scenario is a waste of everyone's time. We need to have a return to the state of the game that after about 30 seconds the killer is going to hit you even if they are not making tight loops and you are the best looper in the world.
To make a long story short we need to have a return to super bloodlust. Kicking a pallet or being hit by one should not delete your bloodlust but rather feed it. An alternative would be to make 80% of pallets unsafe so they can be fairly midgamed (this is unlikely to happen because it would require tons of map reworks). Another unrealistic alternative would be to make generators take longer than they already do - which I think no one wants.
Or we could increase the survivor collision box to be the same size as the killer but leave their hitbox the same. If by any method we make the best players in the world only able to loop about 10-15 seconds longer than everyone else instead of an extra 40 seconds or more we can make the game fair for everyone. This would put an emphasis on team play rather than : I can win the game as an individual if I play really well. This type of change would make it more necessary to promptly save allies rather than let them sit around while you heal, repair generators for a moment or break a totem first.
II. There must also be balance between SWF players and solo queue players. There should be an equal opportunity or advantage to play SWF or solo. Right now the advantage is entirely in the hands of the SWF player.
When I play SWF I give at least 10 perks worth of information to my allies. I say when the killer stops chasing promptly. I call out active totem locations during a chase. I tell my friends when I see a non SWF player being chased. We call out one person to save instead of wasting time and have several people stop repairing. We call out generator repair % so that we know which gens to fix and which ones to skip. We always prevent a 3 gen and try to make the last generators impossible to patrol.
We can only do this because we can talk. We are rewarded for talking without any compensation to the killer or perhaps a 3rd/4th player who are in the game. The result of SWF is that swf ends up being like a cheat. I can run 4 action perks and still have the value of at least 10 information perks because my partners can talk to me. Once upon a time some killers found a way to run as many perks as they wanted - this was absolutely a cheat/exploit. Why is SWF just allowed to be better? (It's because they bring in the money)
SWF needs to be a choice that gives you the option to play better with communication but buffs the other players in the game accordingly or penalizes the SWF group to make the game fair.
- SWF could be made to have increasing penalties based on how many SWF parties are in the game. One of the most fair things I can imagine is to: Allow 2 man SWF parties to bring an item with at most one addon. Allow 3 man SWF parties to bring items with no addons and no map offerings. Allow 4 man SWF parties to bring no items or map offerings. This would almost instantly remove SWF bullying. Groups that want to use items with addons would likely need to sacrifice 2 perks (plunderer's instinct+ace in the hole) to have a chance for good items. Chill groups that just want to have fun would find the game almost exactly the same.
- People not part of the SWF team get free perks. Every player bound by SWF gives everyone else that many perks; a 3 man SWF would give the killer and solo survivor 3 perks each These would be picked ahead of time and only apply when the game started. Solo queue survivors would get information perks like Kindred, bond, empathy, alert, rookie spirit, etc. Killers would get any perk they desire. This option could potentially destroy "chill" swf parties but would balance the game well against SWF bully squads.
Comments
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Why is it ok to for survivors to finish 2 or 3 generators with the first chase?
Because if it was any slower, camping as a strategy would go from 'possible 2K or better' to 'guaranteed 2K or better'.
I think there's a solution that would make killer feel more rewarding and slows down survivor gens in an overall fair way, and it's to do with the co-op gen speed penalty. It's a problem that, at the moment, the lowest risk way of tackling gens is also by far the most efficient one. Survivors splitting up to all tackle one gen is just the best tactic, no matter what.
If this were changed so that solo gen speeds were a good bit slower, but the co-op gen speed penalty was reversed into a co-op gen speed bonus, Survivors will have to make a choice: Play it safe and split up, but have gens pop more slowly, or play it risky and get them done faster. This would also make the killer's acts more rewarding, as putting a survivor up on the hook would not only take down that survivor, but also their co-op bonus, slowing the gens down more. And during the first chase, you either have a bunch of extra time because all survivors are split up, or a gen will pop, but only one or two instead of three.
However, none of this can be attempted because camping still exists, and would be massively buffed by any kind of attempt to slow down gens. So as long as camping exists, you'll have to deal with getting genrushed. The two problems are intrinsically linked and as long as people on the forums keep defending camping, you'll get three gens done during your first chase.
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Gen speed would be easily fixed by fixing spawns. Right now there is chance for each survivor to spawn alone near gen and that is situation you are talking about and every killer's nightmare. They can easily finish 3 gens while you are searching and then chasing first survivor.
Survivors should spawn always together imo.
I agree that gap between SWF or solo is too big and should be changed, but it is not good idea to do it by nerfing SWF. Most SWF just want to enjoy game with friends and it would be dumb to punish them for it.
Way better solution would be to give all survivors information, which is easily shared for SWF, so it wouldn't affect them.
-let see other survivors when someone is on hook. (So only 1 Survivor will actually go for save)
-create HUD icon that shows what each survivor is doing (Gen / Totem/ Chase / Walking)
-let survivors see others perks in lobby, so they can adapt and prepare their roles.
You don't want to overdone it tho free perks like Bond etc., because don't forget that good survivors are even in soloq and with this approach you might create soloq teams stronger than avarage SWF. So killer would be ######### no matter who he plays against.
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"I agree that gap between SWF or solo is too big and should be changed, but it is not good idea to do it by nerfing SWF. Most SWF just want to enjoy game with friends and it would be dumb to punish them for it."
-The Problem here is that SWf is literally on the level of a cheat in terms of what you get for no cost. Buff the solo player in a game with SWF and buff the killer in the game too. Now SWF is a choice where it comes with a positive and a negative. Having it only be a positive is broken.
For about 4 years we have had the problem that chase time does not match repair time. At high skill levels repairs are too fast and chases are too long.
"Because if it was any slower, camping as a strategy would go from 'possible 2K or better' to 'guaranteed 2K or better."
-Somewhere in the mid point of first year development hook timers got changed so that survivors get an extra 30 seconds on the hook. So that means killer objectives just got 2 minutes longer. Just imagine if each generator took 104 seconds instead of 80 seconds. With 80 second generators we have 4 minute games before gens are powered.
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There are 4 killers in the game with the potential to absolutely demolish good survivors if the killer has the skill for it. The only tool survivors have is their own skill and teamwork.
We need killers to be more complex and to have tools that are only provide them with benefits if used skillfully by their players, meaning every killer can compete, as long as their skill allows them to. Both their macro skill and their micro skill.
I think Blight is an excellent example of a killer that allows that. He is an incredibly deep killer, he is not affected by cheap things survivors can do like holding W for an absurd amount of time. He is powerful at loops. His map pressure is one of the best, and the most limiting factor in his potential is the skill of the player using him. He's the epitome of player skill vs player skill. Also he's a great killer to manage the 1v4. Because W is not effective against him, he can use slugging very effectively and he can patrol an area around a hook and some 3 or 4 gens very effectively. Survivors need to play extremely well against a strong Blight player or they will die. A Blight player needs to be on point or else a strong survivor team will demolish him.
Imo, every killer should be like this. They should have abilities or tools that allow them to tackle any team, provided the skill of the killer player is up to the challenge. Then survivors should be given tools that can reflect their skill way more as well, instead of just having 1000 safeguard perks that protect them from mistakes, and their main mode of defense essentially gifted to them by RNG. One of the problems is that no matter how skillful an M1 killer player is, if a survivor holds W when they hear their TR, it will still take them ages to even catch up to the survivor. There's no skill involved in either party in this, and like this there are a bunch of situations where most of the killer roster just can't do anything, no matter the player skill.
I am not at all in favor or giving killers who cannot perform well safeguards. Safeguarding players from being outplayed is one of the biggest problems in this game imo.
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"There are 4 killers in the game with the potential to absolutely demolish good survivors if the killer has the skill for it. The only tool survivors have is their own skill and teamwork."
Survivors do not need teamwork. They can work alone and finish generators one by one and very easily pressure the killer so that one generator is done almost every chase - unless the killer camps a 3 gen or the survivors are so bad that the chases are too short.
Shift W only works because most maps are way too big. But this is more of a function that Killers with a way to move fast are good and those that dont pretty much suck. I can look at a new killer like Nemesis and I honestly have to laugh a bit. Why does he not have addons for +2 zombies (obviously because console players cant handle it). Looking at very simple zombie AI it does wonders sometimes to mess with survivors when they dont get geometry exploited (which hopefully will get fixed - not he will forever be worthless)
Every killer should probably have a universal "power speed move". Maybe these could be changed or enhanced with an offering instead of a useless Mori. Look at any Halloween movie and The Shape just appears walking around a corner when he was 50 feet a moment ago. Yes that is movie magic but it is essentially teleportation. It is one of the things last year did right because you never knew where the killer was going to come from. Even just an ability to teleport to a set location on maps would be a huge help.
Or we could always do the even more simple thing and make killers that dont have a move power gain 10-15% speed while not in a chase.
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"that's an opinion, a valid opinion, but that's an opinion."
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If ur having an issue with gens being popped at the start try fitting corrupt intervention into ur build.
it’s obvious the game isn’t perfectly balanced and has flaws in my personal opinion it is the maps that r unbalanced and god pallets with no play shouldn’t exist. Like pallets in hallways that give u no choice but to break have no play and suck.
but try running corrupt intervention into ur build it will help a lot at the start.
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I think something like a version of Corrupt Intervention would help. Have only three generators even accessible at the beginning of the match and then unlock another generator or two every time one of these primary generators is done.
Obviously, this would REALLY advantage the killer and you'd have to somehow avoid 'three genning' right out of the gate... or chalk it up to the oppressive rng of the game. I'd also like to see something like killers being slower near completed generators or something like that - to show the light starting to 'win' and give the survivors hope.
Anyway, I'm not very analytical, I'm sure these are terrible ideas but I think that trying to balance a game so that it feels balanced when you play against someone with a HUGE number of hours in the game is impossible. If someone has thousands of hours opposing your role, you will not generally beat them. That's just a fact in any game, really.
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corrupt intervention really needs to be basekit
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Comeback mechanics in dbd are trash. Any game worth there salt allows skill expression of a player to be rewarded should they struggle from behind and perform tasks that allows them to comeback into the game. 1 hook each unique survivor get a free mori for next down It gives the killer a chance when playing from behind. Survivors when they lose a player shouldn't be screwed they should have faster repairs and healing so rank 15 larry doesn't end up messing the game up because matchmaking inevitably failed again. But of course all these ideas would be god damn perks before they actually implement some baseline gameplay improvements. To improve the general snowball nature of dbd.
Dbd has always had trouble retaining players both long and new and a lot of that is on the game snowball nature. Imagine your core game turning players off because they lost so bad that 5 or 3 gens were still up. Getting hit by basement hag or losing a game where you only got at most two hook or three hooks. I know yall don't give a damn about the noob struggle but at least practice some self awareness here. The best part about addressing these snowball areas is they don't even need to be forced into the main game. You could introduce alternative game modes that messes with the dbd formula risk free. Number tweaks objectives changes all alongside the normal trial experience so people can actually see dbd from the different perspectives. Map focused game mode's that reward specific builds for survivor and gives consistent killer experiences. Wouldn't it be nice to have a open map focused queue, or stealth orientated queue rotation style game modes. No they don't all have to be up just one variety every two or three weeks.
This is baseline in a lot of games I don't understand how dbd which was the 8th most played game on steam can't add alternative game modes. Freaking halo has less then half the population and it can still run a variety of queues what's dbd's excuse?
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The game most certainly needs some changes such as...
*Survivors not spawning next to Objective like totems and Generators separately, and how they need to spawn together right next a Exit Gate; while the killer can spawn far away from the Survivors! Sure Survivors can work together and knock out the first gen they see; but risk the killer coming close and have the potential to snowball, hencing it would be better to split up and explore the map!
Survivors in general, especially Solo Ques need buffs in information to other Survivors; when certain situations are happening; such as notifying others on what gens, totems, healing, saving, chest searching, being chased, etc.
Nerfing SWF, is not best idea; but the meta perks need some tone down, as well as many other perks needs massive buffs and Reworks!
And finally, many killers needs some massive buffs and Reworks; to help them in either 4v1 and 1v1 or both at the same time! I feel in the high level of ranks; it sort of boring and hard to have to deal with Nurse, or Spirit; as they are very amazing at both situations; while the other killers are lacking and not good enough with their power to be capable of getting more then 2 kills on average! I do think; there needs to be balanced in killer having the capabilities to win in the hands of good players; but not so much in bad players!
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"If ur having an issue with gens being popped at the start try fitting corrupt intervention into ur build."
- Using corrupt is a gamble much like Ruin - except it is guaranteed to be gone after 2 minutes. It's great some of the time but can easily cost you the game if you spawn in the center of the map as it makes the most distant generators unworkable. This gives the survivors a near guaranteed win if they work some of the middle generators. Furthermore it encourages more survivors to be on one generator as soon as you start the first chase. This can have horrific consequences if any of the survivors have Prove thyself.
Furthermore I think you need to realize that Killers needing 2-4 slowdown perks is a reflection that chases are too long and generators are repaired too quickly. Imagine a game where the killer gets 11 hooks and the last survivor escapes by hatch. Assume there was no tunneling and every chase started with a healthy survivor. The average killer then will hit the survivors 22 times and this costs 3 seconds (66 seconds total). Each hook event is going to be about 10 seconds to pick up the survivor and carry them to a hook. So that means 11 hooks will average out to 110 seconds.
With no time accounted for map movement, finding survivors, chasing survivors or kicking generators the killer objective is sitting around 176 seconds with just these two elements. Bear in mind the survivor objective is easily completed in 240 seconds.
Corrupt Intervention is not going to magically change this equation even if I could wriggle my nose and suddenly have a 5th or 6th perk.
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Chase time is not the issue. The issue is map sizes and gen speeds. Most good killer players can get quick downs yet still lose due to the fast gen speeds. Do I want gen speeds reduced? No. Survivors need another required objective than just slamming gens and opening gates. All of your "suggestions" just punish good survivor players for playing well.
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If we look at red and purple rank play most killers do not get quick downs. Realistically you have Nurse, Spirit, Freddy and Blight for quick downs across map. We have 24 killers right? Is that good design that 4 of them are viable for red/purple ranks? Players can loop very safe tiles for 20-30 seconds before ever being in danger of being hit. Survivors can run away from a 110% speed killer with a 10 second warning thanks to SWF radio (or spine chill) and cause the killer to run for 20-30 seconds before a chase starts.
How can you not see that chase time is also a function of map size? Compare a chase on coal tower to one on Midwitch. You can just run on the elementary school and are very unlikely to move past a survivor on a generator. This is most definitely not the case on coal tower. But at the same time I hope you can see that if longer chases happen then the survivors are more likely to win. Long chases that force a killer to cross the map before the chase starts make the game impossible for killer against good players.
People say things like : If I am skilled enough I should be able to run the killer forever. This fundamentally breaks the game. You are supposed to be caught and hooked. It's a team game for a reason. Being able to run the killer forever would only be fundamentally fair if he could have 4 perks that make the skill checks almost impossible and fundamentally change them in a way so that you as the survivor on a PVE element had to play against the killer somehow. Imagine for example if the killer could press a button : let's say "R" on the keyboard and every 10 seconds and he could scramble survivor controls for a skill check. Imagine as a survivor needing to press the correct scrambled key instead of the one you normally have assigned to hit a great skill check or the generator lost 5% progress. Example : you play with M+K and you normally need to press spacebar to make a check. The killer presses R and your controls get scrambled so you as the survivor have to react at the proper moment for the skillcheck to press "E" because your controls got scrambled. You wouldn't know you need to press E until the skill check appeared.
Would that be fun for the game? No. Would it be more fair for the game? Absolutely.
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This game is impossible to repair because you will always meet someone who is either very strong or weak and you also need some luck. Like Shelter woods huntress which is lucky as hell or hillbilly in Lery's which is really unlucky.
But right now, some maps MUST be smaller like ormond or mother's dwelling. And maybe some of them a bit bigger like Dead dawg saloon.
But yeah, it's all about luck, just like in ludo.
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"Because the trial is not constant in how it goes. Less generators left = more pressure from the killer."
-This is fundamentally not true unless the survivors make a mistake and leave generators very close together. Also if the survivors run far away from the generators that are left it is easy to make the killer lose the chase by completing the generator while he is gone with the remaining survivors. Furthermore this equation you posted only applies if at least one survivor is dead and another is on the ground or on the hook.
"The time needed to do the first 3 generators is meaningless, what is important is WHERE they are done. The game is geographical, if you end up in a 3 generators situation, the end game will last forever, especially if you secured some hooks at start."
Again this is just false.The time it takes to finish a generator is relative to how long the chases take. Imagine if generators took 20 seconds but the killer could run across the map and down you in 5 seconds. A realistic example is that the first chase usually takes about 80 seconds to find and down the survivor. If the other two survivors wasted no time then three generators will be finished. This is 3/5ths of the survivor objective by time. There is no way a killer can come back from this unless the survivors make many mistakes or a very large blunder. For the killer to win they must do something like hook the downed survivor on a 3 generator setup. He can simultaneously prevent no work on generators and prevent the hooked survivor from being rescued.
This is also exactly the reason why killers resort to camping/tunneling and 3 gen tactics. Here is the logic :
IF chases ended with survivors downed faster across all ranks THEN killers would not tunnel or camp.
Why? They can afford to go after multiple survivors in different chases because the chase will end quickly. With the exception of infinite windows this is a reflection of how chases were in the first year (on maps that didnt have a billion pallets). Gens went by insanely fast but chases at red ranks often ended in 30 seconds.
Imagine a different scenario where the killer was a rank 1 player playing against rank 20 baby survivors. The survivors take 80 seconds on a generator because they dont have items or perks or work together at all. The chases are all short : something on the order of 20 seconds - hit - and a second hit follows in under 25 seconds. There is no way the survivors win.
The problem is that the game mechanics are setup so that the killer will lose when you consider high skill survivors vs high skill killer.
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Blight has ice skates on currently
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Blight has a few object with weird collision. If you dedicate enough time to learning what he collides and what he doesn't collide with consistently you will be able to use his slidiness to your advantage at almost any loop. Butter shack is an example of where Blight is insane because he slides on it, if you know how to use it.
But either way, the point is, tho, that Blight gives the killer player the tools to compete against survivor skill and their tools as a team. Something that all killers should have.
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I'm sorry but if Blight power being inconsistent is the most infuriating thing to happen I tried to play him and many times I was robbed if a hit/down from sliding to the other end of the map if ridiculous I noticed that the swamp maps are impossible to play him and from what I understand the devs already said they "fixed" him so they won't do anything with him again.
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I feel like most people don't understand the flow of DBD when playing killer at red ranks. The game isn't balanced for it and you feel it when you play killer.
"But either way, the point is, tho, that Blight gives the killer player the tools to compete against survivor skill and their tools as a team. Something that all killers should have."
Killers that dont have high movement, anti loop capabilities or high lethality are not worth playing. This needs to change.
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