Do you think newer killers are dropping out?
The reason why I'm asking is that I normally play survivor during the daytime and killer at night. However, at night, when I want to grab some food or do a challenge I play a few survivor games as the longer survivor queue gives me time.
Normally, I only occasionally get stomped as survivor once or twice (and sometimes that's just a solo queue issue) and then the next few games are fine; a few escapes, a few I get sacrificed but I get to play and have fun. Recently, my waits have gotten longer though and when I do get matched with a killer it's not the intermediate level killer; it's the full gen slowdown build that's, honestly, kind of wasted since it's not a bug, meet windshield game due to the killer's skill it's more of a bug meet windshield and then get your remains thrown in a woodchipper type game.
Do you think this is more of an issue due to problems with the killer role causing killers to drop out? Are newer killers becoming discouraged and dropping out? Or is this more of an issue with MMR mechanics?
Comments
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What do you mean drop out?. Like are you referring to nobody playing weaker killers like pig, trapper legion etc? Survivor queue times have always been longer compared to the AM and it’s always been like that.. Meet windshield?
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Everyone new is discouraged because of the abysmal grind imo.
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That and they get matched with virtually anyone whose been waiting long enough. Fairness be damned.
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The grind is what keeps me playing at all. Take that away and this game will die.
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It used to take ages to people at rank 20 to find a match on both sides. That + when they realize the grind. Just not worth it.
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What keeps me playing this game is the fact that it's the only one who is still thriving of this genre. F the grind.
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I mean they're stopping playing killer. My queue time have gotten longer, both AM and PM, and especially with killer, after a long wait, I'm getting really advanced players. It could be because they expand the MMR ranges the longer you wait so the only killers left to match with are more experienced killers who have more progress to lose
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Less killers available to fill lower level responsibilities = survivors going up against sweaty killers more often. I like to compare it to the economy. Less workers to fill the demands of a society=a society with less filled demands. Hurts survivors in your instance because it makes your games overall worse as in your scenario putting you up against full gen slow down sweat in an MMR range that doesn't really call for it or need it.
I warned about this kinda thing before, but nobody really listens to killers outside of ignoring our feedback as "an excuse" or "git gud" or "just whining". End of the day all it does is upset the balance and you end up with situations like yours. Low level killers simply stop giving a damn at some point and either give up entirely or go play survivor.
- The sweat of killer role right now isn't appealing to new killers.
- The grind required to "git gud" involves a massive grind that gets exponentially longer every new patch to strive toward perks which pushes new killers away since every killer you play you need to get every single perk you used to use over again. Unlike survivor where you can just pick a main, and get everything in the game. All survivors play exactly the same so you don't need to grind over and over again.
- MMR handling for new killers puts them up against people with 1000+ hours for no reason and SWF's. Which, if you've never been bullied as a killer, depending on the severity, you can make a person quit the role entirely. And I wish I was joking.
Put all of that together and new killer retention rates drop, and survivors have to face the try hards who will not budge as killer and play RIDICULOUSLY SWEATY every single game, AKA killers who have thousands of hours, know every loop and counter etc, AKA you get to play against Marth or Angrypug and "pros" every game.
But yeah without a doubt newer killers are dropping out, I've watched them make quitting posts....
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It's not just newer players that have stopped playing Killer there seems to be more and more players not coming back to this game
I mean I get it though... who wants to play a game that has this level of Grind to it... being told that they're playing the game wrong by toxic players.... Dealing with players that use all 4 tier 3 perks against one tier 1 perk
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You don't play the game... because you enjoy playing the game?
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That's what I think is happening too and the first signs of it are just beginning to show. I started about three weeks before the switch over to grades and SBMM and I made it to where my color as killer just turned purple if I remember (8?) but the matches were fun, not sweaty. I don't want sweaty which is why I started dividing my time.
Now, if I'm going to get sweaty as both survivor and killer, that sucks even more. I don't run DH or most of the meta perks on either survivors or killers (possibly one on a character) because I just want to have fun.
And I totally understand what you're saying about new killers. I started my PvP gaming with Shadowbane where play to crush was the motto and griefing was a legitimate tactic, which I didn't like or do but it was very present (and, also, killed the game) so I have a pretty high tolerance before something makes me want to quit but my first few days as killer were hellish.
If SBMM has made that even worse, that does not speak well at all for customer retention.
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Tbh, the grind plays a fair part.
And maybe bad MMR.
But new killers shouldnt have it that hard, cause killers are dominating low ranks. And when you are new, you start from scratch.
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I dont play certain killers if I dont have certain addons. The grind doesnt keep me playing.
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It does for me. Having no goal to work toward will make me stop playing a game instantly; I want progression. DbD currently has enough and also, the idea that you must have certain perks and addons and such is in and of itself a problem. You can make great builds without having every single perk, addon and offering. I've been doing it for years; so have many others.
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The grind doesn't need to necessarily go away, but you do have to admit it is kind of getting out of hand at this point.
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I dont think that is true. Some builds just do not exist without addons and perks. Some killers and play styles absolutely do not need this, like your average Blight, Nurse or camping Bubba but things such as Scratched Mirror Myers absolutely need perks, addons and map offerings.
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Starting as a new killer in September was really, really bad for the first few days. After, it became a lot easier once I had the game mechanics down. If it has gotten worse than September I totally understand what the other poster is saying; I might have quit as well.
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DBD's progression is all sorts of badly implemented.
If you ever really hit a point in your grinding that someone can buy a new character (whether with actual money or by having saved up in-game currency), and then... find themselves not playing it because the game just isn't based around the idea of having no perks, then you've got a problem.
You also have a problem if most of your "progression" is essentially a waste of time. Oodles of pointless offerings; offerings to give you bonus BP to be vaguely insulting; random map offerings you'll never want but have to take; too many junk addons... and then a perk! But you can't control which perk. Nope, got to RNG it up. Also, it has three levels, because, so RNG it more times. You want to play X combo on X character and you already unlocked all the parts elsewhere? No, play a lot of games with the thing you don't want to do and hope you RNG into it.
You can have progression and grinding for something without this repeated buy new character -> start again -> prestige -> start again -> buy new teachables on someone else -> make all future characters harder to get a specific combo on also unlock 9 bloody RNG nodes across everyone -> buy new character... loop.
It's not a fun experience to be a newish player right now and have one character with a decent selection and then anyone else you might want to play might as well not have a loadout screen. Bonus points for things like BBQ RNG, so playing new characters even if they're fun delays being able to really get into them more because you get less BP.
Bonus points if Prestige ever gets upgraded to be actively useful. That's going to really exacerbate it.
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Yes absolutely.
MMR may have changed this somewhat, but let me briefly go through my experience as a beginner killer.
After my initial cycle of trying out the 5 starting killers, I settled on Huntress. I played her a bit and had... honestly pretty easy games until I hit rank 16. Once I got there I simultaneously hit Survivors who both started dodging my uncharged hatchets and started being able to find and break Hexes. At the time, I didn't realize that the point of charging hatchets was to make them harder to dodge and didn't have anything to replace Huntress Lullaby + Thrill of the Hunt with because the basic set for Killers sucks. In short, I hit a massive difficulty spike.
So, what happened? Well, I realized I neither had the perks nor skill I needed to compete with the Survivors I was getting so I decided to branch out. See if I could handle other killers better. The other free killer who interested me was Nurse. Yes... Nurse. I'm guessing you all probably realize how that went.
If another killer player went through anything even remotely similar to what I did starting out, I would not blame them even a little bit for quitting.
I didn't though... for 1 simple reason. Legion. I had watched a Legion game played by a friend and was very interested in their play style. So... I saved up shards and got them. They kept me playing Killer for the following 5 reasons, though I didn't realize it at the time.
- Legion is going to stab you with Frenzy. It almost doesn't matter how good the Legion is or how good you are... you are almost certainly not going to successfully loop a 130% killer who can vault just as fast as you can for 10 seconds. It just isn't going to happen. That means that Legion is one of the only killers in the game where it is impossible to make them do literally nothing all game. Let me tell you that feeling like you accomplished something even on a bad loss is huge. Especially when matchmaking keeps screwing you over.
- Legion can actually function with the easy to get garbage on offer to the Killer side. Prior to Jolt being added to the Killer's base set... the only decent gen Slowdown perk available without spending Shards or Money is Thanatophobia. Legion is one of very few Killers who can use that perk well. Meaning that other than the cost of getting Legion, getting a functional Legion perk build off the ground is actually doable. I really can't say that for the majority of other Killers.
- Legion has natural slowdown in their kit. Remember how I just said that getting decent slowdown as a new killer was damn near impossible? Well Legion's got it baked in. If you're on Legion with Thana, getting gen rushed and all Survivors getting out in 5 minutes just isn't going to happen. You still can lose. You can still lose badly. But a 5 minute 4 man out isn't happening. That gives you more time to chill out a bit, relax a bit, and actually learn and think about how the match went.
- Legion's power makes them more resilient to Survivor shenanigans. Not immune to it mind you, but more resilient to it. Most annoying shenanigans that can ruin a newbie killer's game require Survivors to group up, stand around for a bit, and are usually much more difficult to do while injured if not impossible. Everyone knows grouping up vs Legion is a very bad plan. Standing around while deep wounded flat out doesn't work. Healing vs Legion is also a bad plan. So... just on the whole, a newbie Legion is going to get less flashlight, pallet, sabo, and head on saves and less body blocking hooks than your average killer will. Just because their power frequently makes doing those things impractical at best and impossible at worst.
- While Legion does have a lot of little techs and strategies you can use to make them and their power better, none of them are absolutely crucial to letting their power function. Like charging Huntress's hatchets, like feathering Billy's saw, like the entirety of Nurse, like body blocking while uncloaking as Wraith, like the massive amount of knowledge of how Survivors think and play that makes Trapper useful. This makes Frenzy hands down the most approachable power in Dbd.
To be honest... it is my opinion that the best thing Behavior could do at this point to help newbie Killers is make the Darkness Within DLC free like they did with Nurse and Huntress.
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Honestly the best thing they can do ... is just stop letting survivors hold the game hostage Id say if the match goes on for longer then 10 min or so ... or what ever the reasonable amount of time it is ... the killer can just end the game by opening the gate and to force the game timer to countdown. I mean give the killer the means to end the game rather then letting survivors holding the cards to that means ... often time i get frustrated and then open the gate for them cuz i respect that i lost and they have won ... i want to Surrender the match so i can do another match ... but often time they do pity card and try to troll ..
if the killer open the gate ... Just go over and juke him and leave ... most time killer are frustrated with your group and doesnt want to play anymore
IF any suriviors are seeing these toxic plays do us killer a favor and shame your fellow team-mates ... Less killer mean more Que times for you ... but respecting killers and giving us a positive Reinforcement goes for a long way ... If any suriviors feel the need to be mad that they died to killer ... wait til the match end and ill be willing to give pointers ... I main Huntress because i love her playstyle its simple and its fun.
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I wouldn't want to be a newbie at the moment dealing with CoH.
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Now here we can have a conversation. I agree the progression sucks, but not having any would be worse. Trimming the fat from bloodwebs, a rebate system so you can sell back useless addons and offerings and lower prices for cosmetics in the store so grinding a new Killer doesn't take me 3 days of playing for 8 hours would be welcome. But what I don't want to do is to basically hand out all perks to every new player.
Or maybe we should? I'd still grind for cosmetics, just not as often. Cosmetics don't motivate me as much as tangible mechanical benefits.
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If I was newbie I probably wouldn't understand what boons are.
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Exactly, so good luck dealing with CoH.
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The beginnings stages of killer are honestly pretty easy. Noob survivors don’t know how to loop, don’t know the tiles, don’t know how to use pallets don’t all have BT and DS. Some even don’t realize that trying to get yourself off a hook is a bad idea.
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Look up the other thread. Brand new account on Epic. Got red SWF in his third game as rank 1 killer...
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BHVR dug a massive trench by kicking the proverbial can down the road for years between the obscene grind and learning curve, and now they're scrambling trying to play catch up. MMR implementation has been...poorly received to say the least from what I can tell.
The game still does an awful job of teaching killers how to play the game at an overall level. You're given zero information on basic structures, patrolling, perks, etc. "Here's how to swing your weapon, kick a gen, and hook. You're good to go!"
And then MMR was supposed to be matching these new players with other less experienced players. It's doing literally the opposite of that. My usual SWF duo and I have around 6k hrs between us and had 3 killers in a row last night with default cosmetics, not even tier 3 perks, who all got less than 3 total hooks in each game. So...good job MMR. Outstanding system.
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This kind of gameplay shouldn't be happening in the first place though. There shouldn't be a reason to just quit in the middle of a match because things are going "poorly" if anything the incentive should be to "Play until we all fall down". The fact that they even had to add an anti hostage measure for killers speaks mountains on the direction of the game. If it isn't exciting and engaging for people to play all the way through regardless of whats going on.....then its a bad game.
I'm not gonna sugar coat it, devs don't need a pat on the back or us to make excuses for it. If the overall goal is to make a great game, let it be to make one of the greatest games of all time. Checking out for mediocrity just....sucks. The game should be engaging from the time you press ready to the time the score pops up. Those two sections should be the most boring experience you ever have in DBD, but instead, we get "the most boring experience in DBD" while playing DBD...Survivors walking around bored from just holding M1, killers walking around bored from impossible match ups to win.
Between bad balance, bad matchmaking, and poor quality of life decisions with the grind, its a set up for disaster.
If this games only problem was "Oh man theres some glitches, and the characters skins and models sometimes look ugly" NOBODY WOULD BE UPSET. But it can't be that simple. Instead we get core fundamental processes of the game that are borked that can't be ignored as easily as "aw Claudettes hair looks like trash".
IMO just on the grind issue, they should scale up your BP rewards based on how many chapters are being released over the course of the games lifespan. Everytime they release a new chapter, your default blood points max per game should shoot up to match all the new stuff added. For MMR, they need to ditch their current implimentation and actually sit down and do the math on every single aspect of what can happen during a game and tally up totals that go toward your ability to do those things in game. Doesn't matter if you're chasing someone or being chased, doesn't matter if you're hiding, doesn't matter if you're hooking people or being hooked. Every aspect needs to be charted, not just "the most significant" <---cause you can significant your ass into a brick wall and tunnel vision yourself into the worst MMR system ever devised because you left out all the information that lead up to that significant point. Just some things I wish BHVR would handle.
But I've checked out already for the most part. I reserve my faith in them till I see results.
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I don't know, but I wouldn't blame them if they are.
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No new player, survivor OR killer, looks at the grind needed to get tier 3 of every single perk on every killer and at least one survivor, and says "Oh boy, this is something I WANT to do!"
Not......a single.......person
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Maybe if the killer opens the gate with a gen or more left both doors open.
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I've noticed this. I don't know what my killer MMR is but I am Iridescent rank 3. I've been going up against alot of Ash and Bronze survivors recently and a few Silvers. Not complaining too much as playing against Iridescent SWF survivors gets old after an hour.
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"Unlock the same perk up to 78 times through RNG Bloodwebs" for the Killer side of things is too far in the not-giving-people-perks thing.
Both the structure and the repetition need to be looked at. It shouldn't be total RNG which perk is going to pop up next level, and the multiple perk levels serve no purpose except padding; tier 1/2 perks don't do anything except delay.
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