BHVR Favoritism
Before I even start this, I'm calling out all the people that will read this and respond "ur just salty cuz ur bad lol." See, you aren't original, I did it first so you can just chill with all that.
(Also Editing this just to clarify: I'm not salty, im not angry. This is simply a talking point between me and some friends that I figured I'd share, because quite a few people feel the same way it seems!)
I was having a conversation with a buddy of mine the other day about why it always seems like Killers get the short end of the stick. Yeah Survivors are constantly complaining about it, but playing Killer genuinely feels harder and harder to do ( we each play both roles 50/50). We determined that while Survivors (who outnumber the Killer and therefore shouldn't be getting as many 2nd chances) are getting more and more second chance perks, Killers are constantly forced to play at their best or risk immediate loss.
We statistically analyzed the past several updates, patches, and bugfixes, and what we found was honestly revolting. BHVR simply doesnt want you to play Killer. After running these numbers, it was immediately obvious to us that BHVR simply prefers the Survivors over the Killers, and aren't ashamed of showing it.
Now we're not sure if this is because the Dev Team is made up of more Survivor players than Killers (this is true, we checked the gameplay of as many Devs that stream the game as we could find), but it's a glaring hole in the blind balancing that a dev team should maintain in a multiplayer game of two distinct sides.
When you as the developers select a favorite, it will influence game balance and overall game health, even if unbeknownst to you. Think about the biggest things that were recently added or changed and you'll see exactly what we're talking about.
The Developers added Boon totems, a new perk type that is supposedly "shaking the meta." But the laughable over-poweredness of these Boons is staggering, which even my most Survivor-mainiest friends agree upon. And what was Killer given to combat these new perks that will continue to be produced? A nerf to Thrill Of The Hunt, an already underperforming perk.
The Developers adjusted the hit validation, specifically preventing hits through pallets and enforcing Dead Hards. Now i'm all for making sure that things work as intended, but Killer players will tell you immediately that almost half their hits result in them getting "dedicated" (a term used to mean getting screwed over by the dedicated servers). Survivors can Dead Hard at killers to consume their Killer powers and drop pallets on killers heads, all while running away scott-free as the killers are told their hit connected and are given a scream and blood to wipe. And what did Killers get to ensure the playing field remained fair? Tea-bagged at the exit gate. (Though how bullying is being treated as part of the gameplay at this point is a conversation for another day).
There are so many other examples, but I'm just going to end it here. The long and short of it is this:
BHVR if you somehow read this, whether you know it or not, you have statistically proven to Killer players that it's you against them. You try to win them back over each time you hurt them with a flashy new chapter, but you are hurting the health of your game, and alienating half of your player base. Survivors have 4 players to a Killer's 1, so they should NOT be given as much power as they have, let alone more power than the Killer does. I do not think Killers should 4K every game, that's not my point. But I, personally, have noticed more and more Killer players uninstalling the game, or playing Survivor instead, and if BHVR wants to keep this game alive for as long as possible, they either need to rid themselves of this bias, or idk, maybe hire more Killer players or something.
(or hire me, I'm in the market for a job I suppose).
Please leave me some feedback, or just simply upvote if you think any of these points are valid. Maybe we can get BHVR to see it and try to make a positive change!
~~Also pay attention in Stats class, I wouldn't be able to spout this without it! And I guess go to school for Game Design if stuff like this interests you, follow your dreams!~~
<3
Comments
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I remember that patch note where they said "You killer mains" :^)
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Idk I really don't have a problem with boons, ive been trying to play more killer, but at the same time you win some you lose some. But the amount of camping and tunneling I get in survivor matches is UNREAL, not to mention this "hit validation" ya its a joke. I throw a pallet, killer breaks it then swings and I get downed, ya no thanks, but stuff like that doesn't happen when I play killer.
Every side is gonna have problems no matter what, no one is ever going to be happy. I guess just take the game with a grain of salt, I JUST got back from a 6 month break. It was refreshing to play something else, and I have actually been SORTA having a fun time again, this isn't a game you can just play every single day.
You gotta take breaks, I see where you're coming from tho, But survivors did get nerfed to the ground the past 2 years. So Im not sure what they are trying to do.
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Relax guy.
You may have noticed some changes to your game.
Don't worry about that, the changes will continue.
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This game is pretty close to balance-wise but I don't believe they're out to get killer mains. The problem with being a MAIN is that you don't experience both sides. You don't get to experience of being dominated by a killer who you can't do much against. The frustration of having to worry about others' giving a killer a free win. You should really play both sides and see how one affects the other. You might get some appreciation from it.
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Oh I'm in no way "heated" or "angry" this was just an analysis based on an observation me and some friends made. But hey, I'll still definitely play some Civ!
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You see what we have here, is a Failure, to communicate
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Of course, and my claim is not that Survivors never get nerfed or that they never get Dedicated or screwed over by the game or Devs, it just happens to Killers at a much higher frequency according to what we found!
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Yeah sorry, my bad. I already edited that out because it did make it sound like you were frustrated when your post doesn't imply it. I hoped you wouldn't notice before I could edit, but oh well.
I found a funnier quote anyway to go with either way.
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It's because boons aren't an issue. The only problem is healing perks/items stacking with CoH. The perks are fine.
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I agree with this so much I play both sides at high level I can literally eat a bag of hunky dory’s and checking my phone I will still escape as survivor but playing killer it’s a complete different story, I can only do a few killer games a day it’s actually so draining at high level dealing with efficient survivors gen speed dead hard and the boons it’s crazy
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As I stated in the original post, I actually play Survivor and Killer 50/50. The observation we made stems from playing both sides actually, and feeling that Killer is way more punishing that Survivor.
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But can you share your statistical analysis?
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I do appreciate the laugh! And no worries friend!
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This is excatly the feeling that lead to this analysis, so I'm glad other players feel it to and it's not just me lol
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100%. Maybe this is all simply because the Dev team used to inform us of their reasoning behind almost everything, and now that they barely do, we no longer have the luxury of that information. Maybe it's making us all a little paranoid lol
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Yes I can! I'll post the numbers we found tomorrow, I'm off to bed for tonight!
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Got your back fam I know the struggle had it a bit today 🤣
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See, I would have to disagree. I feel killer is much easier and relaxing than survivor. The amount of times where we are about to win and the entire team decides to jerk off for no reason until everyone is 2 hooked is enough to pull my hair out. I enjoy playing killer and causing the survivors to make mistakes then to capitalize on them. I hate feeling like I got punished by others, and not by my own mistakes. That leads me to get tilted hardcore.
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How is playing killer relaxing one mistake in high level gameplay and you lose the game survivors can screw up a few times and still escape. The only time I focus on survivor is in a chase that’s it
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You're correct. I play both sides as well and playing killer is a whole different level of difficulty. Of course, when it's one person versus four people that one person is already at a disadvantage. Playing survivor is a walk in the park and alot less "toxic". The reason survivor mains get the preferential treatment probably boils down to profit. 4 survivors buying cosmetics trumps 1 killer buying cosmetics.
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I just don't understand how the game is stressful as killer? I'm always Rank 1 before and now I'm always Iri 1 now. I play all killers randomly and I don't have a "Main" but I use to love Billy before the changes but now I LOVE Blight. My baby bouncy boy. I don't sweat during matches even when I'm recording. I just chill during and I usually always 4k and double pip without tunneling or camping until I'm down to 2 gens. I just don't see the big issue most of the time. I rarely feel like I'm losing horribly. I can say the opposite when I play survivor. I get very tilted lmao.
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For a serious response to this post by the way:
I think it is pretty clear that survivors are coddled quite a bit, and killers tend to get the short end of the stick in terms of balance. I can't think of a time in this game's existence where this hasn't been true honestly.
I don't think this favoritism is done out of malice for killers or ignorance to their treatment of them though.
I tend to believe that the developers think of their game as a party game primarily more than a serious competitive one. They want to ensure the largest side has the largest opportunity to goof around and have fun, and give them ample room to do so. They're probably well aware that killer can feel miserable a lot of the time, but because it's such a relatively small role they don't like catering to it as much.
I found this theory supported in their last live stream Q&A when their Lead Game Designer, Patrick, emphasized that he knows people like to goof around and have fun in games and implicitly supported it through his behaviour. Then again when he shook his head furiously about the idea of increasing generator times, and said nothing else about the pace of the game.
Pair that with how long stretch res has pervaded the competitive scene and been in the game, and that's another bout of evidence that they don't want to pursue a real balanced or competitive aspect to this game.
All I think they care about is enabling survivors to play as half-heartedly as they are now, and coddling that play-style by balancing around it to ensure that no matter how badly they play, they'll still be rewarded half the time. This is especially true with MMR as it is currently implemented.
As long as they can ensure that kill rates are relatively stable while allowing the survivors to goof off and have tons of fun, I think they're content with whatever balance scheme they end up with using the noncompetitive statistics they have.
I can't blame them for it either, because I do have a feeling that if this game were balanced and treated more competitively that a lot more people would leave and it would be less forgiving to newcomers.
They could maybe balance around MMR to separate the competitive players from the casual ones, but I wouldn't be surprised if they just think the expenses don't justify it.
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In short, that does highlight some of the frustrations that come with playing killer and the inequality of their treatment. Sadly, I think they know already and actively don't want to act on anything.
And a side note, this is why I like joking around a lot on these forums.
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Sorry I may sound stupid, but what is CoH?
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Circle of Healing.
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Oh thanks, but really we kind of already had that with Farm forever, and desperate measures then if you wanna really heal quick throw on we'll make it as well. and instead of using 3-4 perks for quick healing its all into one, I mean they did make it so you could use more perks with it, But we already had super fast healing, I used to use that build ALL the time back when I actually had a swf group.
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I think that they are doing it
- Because as you stated people like to goof of and 2. because if you take this game serious, you will hate it. Theres to much I HAVE TO WIN, NO I HAVE TO WIN going around. If the killer doesn't get a 4k by 2 gens left they tunnel and slug, all means go for it, but then killers wonder why people just throw themselves at them. No one wants to play this game THAT serious. I get on to have fun, and let loose. Hard to do when you're tunneled and camped out of every single match.
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Yeah, exactly.
It took me a few years to accept this direction in terms of balancing, but I do think fun is important for the reasons you stated and eventually just agreed with it.
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Though, ironically, I would argue that tunneling and camping are becoming more common because of this balance direction and is counteracting their efforts in making games more fun and carefree.
I say that because I myself used to actively avoid tunneling and camping even when infinites were a thing in 2016, but now I advocate them as a killer to be as efficient as possible because of the time handicaps I feel subjected to lately.
Which is funny because you'd think I'd have been under more pressure when infinites were a thing and generators technically went faster. Maybe the skill level in players has just increased that much, or maybe I've just finally cracked under the pressure.
It's even more comical when you consider that when I get tunneled as a killer I still can't help but think to myself "oh a crappy tunnel killer" even though I do the same and understand very well why some would do it.
Thinking on it I'm actually really curious what, if anything, they'll do about camping and tunneling in the future. They'd have to throw killers a bone somehow to relieve the in-game pressure that's on them that motivates them to do it in the first place.
Or maybe they'll just leave it alone and hope everyone gets used to it.
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They already showed this openly a long time ago during a Q&A just before the doctor rework.
They had reworked/changed a killer (can't remember who, sorry) where 1 of the devs said "now that we have changed this killer i started thinking. Who do i also hate to play against?"
That being the doctor and the announcement that they were gonna rework him.
After that comment of him i started to get worried even more for killers, and it definitely proved to be something to worry about.
But hey, the more survivors, the more money the make right? 😉
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My favourite part was:
"Oops, we added super overpowered perks, and didn't even check that the mechanic to snuff them actually worked, so we're making it work but YOU BETTER BE GODDAMN GRATEFUL WE BOTHERED TO EVEN TEMPORARILY FIX IT."
And taking Dead Hard, realising it had a server-based issue for survivors and going "well, let's just move all the issues to the killer players instead of fixing them. Done!"
Anyone who plays both sides knows Dead Hard is still as broken as it was before, except now it's the killer player that has to deal with the bugs, and apparently that's their idea of solving it.
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Mm yes.
Conspiracy.
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Over the years I've come to see all of this as more of a consistent incompetency sort of a thing, rather than favoritism, especially if you take the SoloQ experience into account, which doesn't even get a stick to begin with in order to have the short end of it.
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It's impossible to play for the killer lately. It's too hard players constantly take an offering to the gideon meatplant. I don’t like camping and tunneling, but the developers don’t give me any other way out.
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In regards to Dead Hard validation: it didn't 'move the issue to the killer side', it just stripped the killer of preferential treatment.
The server is now the solitary arbiter, as opposed to the killer's client. The killer no longer gets a benefit off their own latency.
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Yep, devs care mostly for SWFs who are bored but don't want to watch an horror movie, so they come play this instead. Devs then remember killer and SoloQ are actual players too and not bots, and might give them a little buff to keep them in the game. So, the role of the killer isn't to kill the survivors, but to entertain group of friends on a friday night. I can't wait to certain asymmetrical horror game to come out so I can finally play something that's not biased.
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The Dead Hard validation gives killers false positives for hits, similar to how pre-validation Dead Hard gave survivors false positives through exhaustion.
It's fine and dandy to say "it was just fixed, no preferential treatment was given." But while it was fixed in the sense of having the server make the call, it did shift the burden of false positives to the killer side.
On the subject of fixing issues, one could also mention that killers have been waiting for grab validation to be a thing since pallet hit validation. They've also been waiting years for the sound bug on downed survivors to get fixed.
So to be fair, it's understandable to have some thought of preferential treatment towards survivors overall and even in this case in some regard, even though the change itself was justifiable.
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OP didn't say Boons were the issue. They just used them as a example to what they were pointing out.
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That's a misunderstanding of how this thing works. Dead Hard giving a false positive to survivors is still possible, it's just that it's hardly ever going to happen because survivors were never -that- greedy with their DH.
I will say though that the false positives are a critical issue that needs to be addressed immediately, since it is a server issue that can fully impact the game in unfair ways, like a Nemesis tentacle not shattering a pallet that it would've hit if it didn't hit the survivor.
Grab validation also doesn't work that way, because the killer is always last-to-act. And if you act fast enough to where the server receives your grab before it receives the survivor's interruption of said grab, it won't look like a validation on your end, it'll just look like a clean grab.
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Before the issue was being exhausted on the ground. Instead of fixing that properly, they moved the problems to the killer's side.
Now the killer has screaming and blood flying off people who don't take damage AND quite a few killers have extreme drawbacks from powers that SHOULD interact one way around Dead Hard, but instead react as though they got a hit and punish the killer more highly.
This includes Nemesis' tentacle not breaking pallets if Dead Hard gets validated as it will only break a pallet if a survivor wasn't hit, but the game thinks you got a hit, therefore doesn't break the pallet, then undoes the hit.
This also includes Twins, where Victor is meant to pass straight through a survivor using Dead Hard. Instead, he hits the survivor and stops his pounce, Dead Hard gets validated, then it plonks Victor at the survivors' feet instead of where he should have pounced to, making him a free kick on top of already not downing the survivor.
There are also many other killers whose powers don't work correctly when they get validated.
The perk has not been fixed, they took the issues it already had and shoved them onto the killer instead of the survivor.
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Not really.....I used to play both Killer and Survivor 50/50, to do dailies or tome missions...but now no matter what time I'm on the wait times are around 10-15 mins and that's not a exaggeration I timed it one day and that's the average I got. The less and less Killers there are the more broken the MMR will be. Tonight I played a total of 8 games as killer pit of all those games I got a total of 5k. I kept getting matched with high tier SWFs usually running all tool boxes or a mix of tool boxes and flashlights.
I was on a killer that hasn't unlocked Lightborn yet and kept getting flashlight stunned when i was locked in a animation. (Another thing that the Devs should stop). I decided to just run to the basement and do nothing for the rest of the match because how the map was generated there were pseudo-infinities everywhere on the map and they kept pre dropping every pallet on the map....(extremely frustrating when you are getting a ton of notifications over and over again)
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If you paid 'attention' in stat class, you wouldn't miss out of factors, such as killers having more variables which increases the likelihood of changes being direct at killers over survivors.
As a killer, you have killer perks, you have a power and you have killer SPECIFIC addons.
Killers in the game have the most influence in how a game swings because the killer role literally demands the player to play around the specific killer they are running against - so why would the 'passive' side be nerfed more?
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I wasn't talking to the OP.
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Good points, I clearly wasn't thinking about this topic well enough. Though I do want to partially blame my frustration with false positives for my clouded judgement here too.
I'm sure the survivor could still have a scenario where they input Dead Hard in time on their screen, but the server retcons it with its own decision against it. I wonder how that looks now actually. I doubt they'd have exhaustion on the floor since the server would deem they didn't use Dead Hard if they got hit beforehand.
Similar on the grab, you're right there too. What I'm experiencing is probably false positive grabs I've been canceled out of which are similar to Dead Hard validation hit reversals due latency. If I got what I was aiming for here (no false positive grabs), it would either be from the overall fixing of this issue or making these action decisions based on the killer's client again - which is not what I'd want.
Here's hoping a fix to these false positives comes sooner rather than later.
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Imagine... if Dead by Daylight was actually BHVR's own idea and not a game they got contracted by Starbreeze to make. Maybe then we would see real balance patches instead of these half assed ones.
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Winning and loosing some is fine, really
But playing killer feels over time more and more "tryhard to get at least à 2K" pver time when surv feels more eaqy to play you know?
Boons range from bad to stupidly crazy strong depending the maps and spots and you only need 1 guy carrying Boons per squad for it tp be effective
But all of the latest patch notes only result in killer using one of their last viable starts, tunnel and camp
Gens still fly, they get dedicated over DH now,CoH makes the hit n run strat bad, the new Boon will make slugging bad (in the case you need to make à mass slug)
Over the past years the games only got shorter and more intense, but this only feels to the killer side as i said,
And this is the result of BHVR prefering to balance the game through Perks, add ons and killer power rather then changing the core mechanic (see killers still say the gens fly and what do we get on the next killer? 3 damn perk with some gen slowdown inside, and à strong anti loop killer again)
I can tell you when the running in a line meta will be the strongest for surv, the killers will comz out with powers to catch the surv quickly as a result saddly
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Thrill of the hunt was also buffed.
28 seconds to bless a dull totem is no joke. 56 seconds to bless a hex is straight up game throwing.
People didn't bother to try cause of the notification removal but it counters boons just fine.
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Its funny i feel and do exactly the same as you hahaha (but i really tunnel the least i can in my games)
And for tunnel and camps... wait till the devs bring out Boon: better DS and Boon: better Camaraderie
Since its the direction they are going actually lol
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It dosnt counter Boons Killers remember cant track where totems are.the only thing that made Thrill good was the notification of when they were messing with a Hex.
Killers also dont have time searching for Boons when there are 4 survivors possibly doing 2 or 3 gens at once while a 4th is doing a Boon.
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Ranks don’t matter anymore only for blood points it’s when u get to high mmr you notice try and play someone like pig or trickster you will see
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there will also be boon slippery, chance to get out of grasp by 500%
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I feel pretty much the same, I have so much more trouble in the survivor role because I feel so powerless a lot of the time, and I get way more stressed out because there's 3 other people I can let down. Whereas with killer, I can unclench my anus because the only person I can mess the game up for is me so I get to have fun and not worry about accidentally sandbagging teammates lol
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