Deeply concerned with the state of the game right now.

Ill start by saying Im a 50/50 player, I like playing survivor with a friend or 2, and i like playing Killer when i have no one to play with.

My concerns come from both sides because to me right now, DBD as a whole is rather disgusting to play. At least for me but having read forum posts here lately, i know it is for many of you too.

Survivor Issues

The game has turned into a toxic tunnel and camp fest. I would say im medium to high MMR. Ive always considered myself maybe an old purple rank survivor. Every single game has turned into a game with endless tunnelling. I wish that was an exaggeration. When im playing solo, quite frankly i dont care, ill pop on with gens, ill save as and when i can. But when with friends obviously you want to save them and to see them tunnelled out of the game, even when i put myself in the way, or go down for them. (Sometimes the killers dont even pick me up and continue the tunnel and i get out)

What pains me to admit it is, because i play 50/50, i understand why killers camp and tunnel. It is a viable way to play imo, but it shouldnt be.

A joint problem to this seems to be the new SBMM. Im not sure why but when im solo or playing with a friend, At least two other survivors are quite frankly...bad. I try to check hours before and most seem to be at least 600 hours but they just go down so quickly, they cannot loop, They dont do gens, If they hear the slightest hint of a terror radius they run 50 yards away and only come back when the killers downed the person they were chasing.

One horror story recently was on a springwood map. The killer managed to kill my friend when we had 1 gen to go. 1 other survivor hadnt been hooked yet, the other on 1 hook. Me with no hooks. Im on a gen upstairs in the house, the killer had tinkerer so knew id got it close to popping, i managed to get it to maybe 90%. He chased me, and i looped for around 4 minutes. The killer wasnt that great, was obviously triggered and even stopped using his power because i could mind game him too well. He managed to hit me once. But not again. All the time im wondering...why is that last gen not popping. The killer finally gave up, maybe they wondered what the hell was going on aswell. But they gave up and left. Still injured i ran around to the first gen. 0% Progress. I thought ok lets go to the house gen cause the pallets here were broken. On the way i passed the 2nd gen. 0% Progress. Made it back to the house, was around 70%. The killer didnt kick that gen when chasing me and obviously went back there first so it regressed while i was making my way back to it. 2 other survivors did NOTHING for 4 whole minutes. Everyone ended up dying because i gave up, i wasnt going to loop anymore for these people with a combined 1.1k hours between them. And this is not an anomoly anymore. This has happened at least twice a week since SBMM came in. Survivors are now so terrified of not surviving they resort to doing nothing and hoping they can get the hatch. Total BP for that match at the end was me on around 25K, my friend who had died 10 minutes earlier on 18K and the other 2 around 10K. Im a game that lasted around 20 minutes.

SBMM seems to have caused so many issues and yet i am still in favour of it as a MM system. We just need more clarity. What constitutes a win? What makes your MMR go up? Do you get better MMR just for escaping than doing gens and totems? This IMO needs to be addressed because im so bored of being put with survivors who just refuse to play the game and care so much about escaping with 10K BP than anything else.

Killer Issues

This may just be my experience but im constantly put with survivors who gen rush endlessly. If i play anti gen rush perks, they have that countered. Ruin/Undying? They have small game & counterforce. Corrupt Intervention? Hide for 2 minutes in the corners. < (This happens a lot, i patrol the open gens yet not one gets started until the 2 mins are up) Every game becomes a 3 gen game. Theres no variety. If i dont tunnel or camp, i have to 3 gen and hope they dont have a toolbox.

Safe pallets are a huge issue atm. There just seems to be far too many safe pallets on a map. As a survivor i usually prefer to run a loop using windows so the pallets get saved, but as killer, its just pallet drop over and over because the meta atm is hold W against any killer that isnt Blight, Nurse or Spirit.

Again, may just be a me issue but i am consistently put with 3 or 4 man SWF groups. Im fine with it now and again but these are the reasons so many killers just tunnel and camp now. I've resorted to this quite a lot lately, sometimes it works, usually it doesnt because the survivors are too good for me. Yet SBMM does not put me with people on my level. Before SBMM id average a 3k per game. Now its a 1k...if that sometimes.

I honestly believe the devs are out of touch with their playerbase on the whole "what constitutes a win" topic. Its generally thought that its balanced around 2 kills and 2 survive. Yet very few killers think this is the case. Especially when the games have been extremely stressful.

Closing Thoughts

The game right now is pandered to a 3 or 4 man SWF group. Everything favours this. Solo survivors are at a huge disadvantage atm because they will usually be put with potato survivors. 2 man SWF's usually get put with 2 others who care more about getting out at any cost, than helping their team. Killers are at a disadvantage because its just too stressful to play against 3 or 4 man teams without resorting to tunnelling, camping or slugging, which usually then resorts in insults and toxicity post game.

Survivors wont like this, but ive always liked the idea of survivors not relying so much on their perks so much as their gameplay. Me and 3 others used to do a challenge for ourselves in which we couldn't use a perk if someone else was using it, and it was actually fun. It made us think outside the box and use our heads more. Killers also noticed it and asked why we wasnt all running DH/DS/BT and they said it was refreshing to see. There are over 100 survivor perks in the game now. Yet we see the same ones every game from every survivor unless they're trying to do a challenge. So a suggestion here is, if you're in a group, you need to work out who gets what perk. (Though this will not count for solo survivors and while were at it, make kindred baseline) Its varied, adds more challenge and makes people not rely on the same meta. I know this will never happen though.

Another idea is less perk per SWF. If you're solo, you get 4 perk sots. if a 2 man , 3 perk slots, in a 3 man, 2 perk slots each, 4k swf, 1 perk slot each.

An argument against that from survivors will be that it ruins their fun and experience. Well, being in a 4k will 9/10 ruin a killers experience, so if you dont care about that, no one should care about you.

I honestly believe there would be a lot less tunnelling and camping than there is now if there was some nerf to 3/4 man SWF. I didnt notice much of it pre SBMM. I even stopped taking DS since 2020 because it just didnt happen that often.