The Developer QnA, Killer Nerfs, Potential Double Standards and...Why I'm Worried.

They are obviously played so little, because people don´t feel good playing such a OP killer.

It definitely seems like double speak on their part. My suggestion is they just stop balancing around low MMR. We all sucked when we first started playing the game. You get better with time. We should treat low MMR like that, newer players who are learning. By nerfing killers who overperform at low mmr but underperform at high mmr, it makes higher mmr worse for killer players. And survivor players too b/c it limits the roster of viable killers. idk my personal mmr but when i play survivor i usually see huntress, blight, nurse, pyramid, pinhead, bubba. rare to see any other killer.

This is why balancing while relying solely on statistics can be very dangerous.

Here are 2 killers I hated (and against 1 still hate) to play against: Wraith and Bubba.

Why? Because They seemed too strong, especially when I was very new to survivor. As a killer main I did understand that they are not OP and their potential is actually very limited (especially Wraith). So how I see it: Unless the killrate is some crazy %, like 70%+, you have to not care about and focus on the higher Mid-high MMR. When I constantly loose against Wraith and Bubba, it's my job as a player to learn how to counter them and how to get better against them. Same against harder, more teamplayer testing killers like Twins, Plague, Cenobite or Hag.

Me learning how to play against them and getting much better results is what makes this game satisfying to play. And this is where listening to low MMR data may be very misleading. Now obviously, if you lose against Plague for 50th time in a row, then maybe BHVR should look at the aspect of "how do we make it easier for newer players to understand the power of the killer". And also let's be fair, to actually meet Plague 50 times you'd need a large number of hours in dbd.

This game is heavy with info. But if you want survivors to learn and actually enjoy. Remember, a person will meet Twins less than 3 times in 300 games (I'm pretty sure most of the 1% pick rates is on high MMR). YOu won't learn how to play against them even if you have a few hundred hours in the game, yet you can actually already be at mid-higher MMR.

Sorry for ranting. Just to summarize: blindly relying on stats to balance your game is EXTREMELY dangerous. Stats is a great tool, but you have to be cautious, how you use it. Imo, obviously.

thing is, we probably won't ever get killer bots.

Compare these two data. It's no wonder people are leaving from killers.

Considering the game's player count though, I think even killers with a low pick rate probably still have a solid sample size, one that is at least decently accurate. Twins might be the only exception, because 1.15% is very low, but even then, it's probably not that low either.

On steam, the average player count is 40K at the moment. Let's say about 7K people of those are playing killer. In Huntress Case, 8% of killer players play her on average. That's 560 people. With Twins, it's only 80 people. However, the average player count depicts how many people are playing the game at a given moment, on average. So you can kind of multiply that number with how many matches are possible in one day. Then you've got an approximate idea of how many times a killer is played in one day.

And that's just one day, and not taking into account the concole players, as well as the epic game store players.

Unless I am screwing something up here.

Regarding your main post, I always thought they said that they don't only balance around high mmr. I know there are people that think a game needs to be balanced mainly around high mmr, because people can just try to get better to get to the point where the game is balanced. And that's not something the devs agree with as far as I know, and me too personally. Optimally, the devs want to try and balance the game around all mmr levels as good as possible.

This, but also, Twins attract so few float players or new Twins looking to learn the killer (because their QoL is horrible and their skill ceiling is generally not considered worth the stress of playing them), so a few dedicated Twins masters can skew the data more than dedicated other-killer players can.

Also, they're really good at camping, which may drag up numbers semi-artificially (as they don't reflect how easy it is to win chases with the killer.)

I definitely think nerfing an underused and overall underperforming killer because the very top level has high kill rates is a bizarre design choice. And their philosophy of 'nerf heavily used addons, buff unused ones' often fails to address why some addons are used and why others aren't. It's often less of a numbers game and more of a 'this effect is not helpful or plausible to activate, and this other effect is helpful throughout the match, so I want that one.'

there balance philsophy has always cater to super casual player-base. how is that bizarre.

"This is already evident for people who play higher MMR survivor games - endless streams of Blights, Nurses and Huntresses (with the occasional basement Bubba), and if this balance philosophy carries forward - it's only going to get worse from there."

by your logic, you want them to buff nurse & blight when those killers already do well in comparison to the rest of the cast by the fact that we play against them so much. How would this be improving variety?

"Or am I missing the point?"

I think the point your missing is that casual player-base keeps asking for negative killer changes like... "Alchemist ring is too strong on blight", "All-seeing blood is unfair on wraith", "Pinky finger clown instant down". Its almost like the game needs two different versions of killer, one that is weak and that casual players can play against in which it is balanced for low MMR and strong version of a killer for people that can actually handle stronger killers and embraces challenge in trying to defeat challenging killers.

I kinda wish that killer add-on were locked by MMR so that lesser skilled players would never face stronger versions of the killer and the higher MMR you go as survivor, the more powerful add-ons get unlocked so the killer player has actual chance against better players because he can use stronger add-ons vs stronger survivors to actually compete. this allows you to have multiple versions of a killer that is both strong and weak at the same time. I'm sure high MMR players could handle old all-seeing blood wraith which let say would be usable if you get to max wraith MMR if this add-on was iri add-on.

yeah, i honestly think their philosophy when it comes to creating Perks is flawed.

IMO a Perk should be a sidegrade, something that is not necessarily stronger than your basic loadout, but different.

a Perk should buff you in one specific way, but then also nerf you in another, so you specialise on one thing at the cost of being weaker in another - a great example for that would be Shadowborn and Lightborn in their original form.

in case you dont know, Shadowborn used to make the map you were playing on significantly brighter (so you get a buff in tracking due to it being easier to see Survivors) at the cost of it being significantly easier to flashlightblind you (so you got nerfed in your defense against altruism and save attempts) and Lightborn did the exact opposite. I even think using those two Perks together cancelled both out and just gave you the normal brightness and flashlight resistance.

i dont really like Perks that come with all upsides and no downsides, they just end up being a direct upgrade to your character and are therefore going to be used by anyone that can use them (The MetaTM is born) - and in DbDs case its even gone so far that you directly rely on having certain Perks, as the game has been balanced around them at this point (Survivors need exhaustion Perks and Killers need gen defense Perks).

but thats another one of those things that will most likely never change, unless the devs decide to redo the game from the ground up.

also, thanks for reading my other comment - glad to hear i didnt utterly waste my time typing all that out! most people see a wall of text like that and instantly skip it, so i was a bit anxious that it might just end up being a ton of time wasted for nothing. and i'm glad to see that i'm not alone with that stance on the game ^^

Let's hope not -- that will be the end of the game. If the devs are, even in the back of their minds, thinking that implementing that bots would solve bigger issues regarding queue times and the number of people playing each role rather than addressing the actual issues in the game, then that's a scary thought.

They will NEVER be able to make an AI for this game that could replicate the play of an actual human on the other end of the game. No fancy cosmetics, no BP incentives -- nothing -- will get someone to play survivor if the equivalent of the tutorial Trapper is what they're going against in anything resembling a majority of their matches (this isn't discounting a practice mode -- that should definitely be a thing -- but AI, either as survivors or the killer, for the main experience of the game is a recipe for disaster).

There would be no challenge in it, no real satisfaction in winning that type of game, no real fun -- and for the more juvenile members of the community, no opportunity to troll or bully someone who isn't actually there. People would abandon the game in droves if that ever came to pass.

The developers SHOULD understand that all players, even those playing the minority or more unpopular role, need to be placated if the game is going to stay strong. Then again, I've lost count of the number of companies I've worked for in my life who had obvious paths they should have taken to be successful and ignored them to plunge headlong into ruin to think that BHVR would be any different.

I think a smart way to do buffs or nerfs would be aiming at the unnecessary strong or frustrating things a killer has.

If i had to nerf Wraith because he was too strong at lower rank, i would have probably reduced his mobility..not the uncloak part which made him playable at high mmr.

For Blight, i would probably reduce the power charges to 3 or 4 so he would stay the same but wouldn't be so damn strong. He has that power way too often.

For Trickster ane Twins i would simply do quality of life changes.

Make the Trickster throw knives automatically already...you would only have to hold m2, but the delay stays.The constant switching he has to do feels as bad as the old Doctor(for those who remember how frustrating he was to play).

Twins probably needs a full rework. Make the switch instant, Victor's jump attack instant like Demogorgon. But remove his ability to down people so slugging wont be abused

Wraith is 4% below the highest kill rate. How is that very low?

You can't say "the stats are meaningless" and also say "as you can see, the stats show Wraith has a very low kill rate."

It makes balance exciting, you never know what will happen next! Well, other than Pig getting nerfed every other patch. They should mix that up a little bit. Getting predictable.