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This game is about running away from killers. So I do not see what's wrong with holding W
Would you rather be looped to oblivion or have to go half way across the map. Ether way this is a game about running from a killer. Not trying to sound disrespectful by any means, but their is always an exuse that people come up with that is "bad for the game"
Comments
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Nothing is wrong with holding W. It is just less interaction between Survivor and Killer, which makes it boring, but it is the most effective way to play. Same when Killers say that tunneling is a strategy, holding W is a strategy as well.
And with more and more Anti-Loop Killers being released, it will become even more prominent, because players realize that it also works against Killers who actually can be looped.
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Just a term used by certain people to try and put a negative spin on trying to escape killers.
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There is no interaction between killers and survivors while playing holding W game, I could say this is a survivor equivalent of facecamping.
Nothing to do, nothing to think, just plain time sink.
It's more like fundamental problem of the game, not like there is anything wrong with the act itself.
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Me as a Spirit main: what does holding W mean?
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When people complain about what you're doing in this game....that usually means you're making the right call/playing 'good.'
It's best to ignore whatever they say and play how you want to....
You want to hold 'W'?
HOLD W, BABY - YOU'RE ALL FREE, NOW!
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It more than just also works against loopable killers, it works even better against them! Further distancing the viability gap between killers.
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Its not about running away from killers, its about evading them, by losing them and not getting caught.
Issue is survivors will just W to the furthest corner of the map so you either can't chase them or can't protect gens, which eventually culminates into a lose lose situation where no matter what you do, survivors keep gaining time
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The issue isn't really shift+w itself as much as the game itself doesn't offer much outside of chases.
DBD desperately needs a survivor objective update. Like as it stands survivors are either being chased, sitting in one spot holding a single button, or moving to the next spot. There's not much room for interactions without forcing it such as flashlight saves or camping survivors who need to be rescued.
Personally I would like to see something like survivors need to collect parts around the map (close to the center) in order to repair 1/4th of a gen then the survivor needs to collect another part in order to do the next part. This way survivors have to constantly be moving around the map to get their objective done. Now a survivor running to the otherside of the map can be dropped more easily, because there's a better a chance the survivor might just encounter a survivor trying to grab another part.
Of course this would require overhauling a lot of perks and bhvr seems to be wanting to do the least amount of work possible so I doubt we'll see anything drastic.
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Nothing is wrong with holding W in of itself. It's just that it's interactive, and without mobility, a killer has no way to address it or do anything about it other than take forever to catch up. Same with uninteractive anti-loop designs (eg, Nemesis). Survivor either vaults/drops pallet and gets guaranteed hit, or they don't, and killer will hit them a few seconds later anyways. It gives no agency for either side to actually express their skill in any meaningful way.
That's why killers like Nurse and Blight are the two best designed in the game. They both counter holding W. You will have to actually try and loop/mindgame them. But everything about their chasing/anti-loop can also be mindgamed. You make the correct read/bait a fake read/the killer fails to make the correct read or bait, you avoid the hit. You don't/they correctly make a read or bait, you get hit. This way, chases come down to not "well, I can't do anything about this except just also hold W till I catch up, eventually"/"well, I get hit either way here and I can't do anything about it", but "I succeeded or failed this trade because I/my opponent played this more skillfully than I did."
Anti-loop/mobility is good design. It's just the anti-loop should be interactive, so that there is room for skill expression, not just "M2 for hit at animation lock".
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Holding W is an effective yet boring strategy that doesn't take any skill and isn't interactive at all.
Part of why I like blight's design is because it doesn't work against him.
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Killers CONSTANTLY get nerfed for being 'too easy.' Holding W to just run away and using every pallet to slow down the killer takes zero skill and is incredibly effective. With the speed gens go at, killers either have to abandon chases and let you go free, or commit to it, and lose 2-4 generators before they hit you for a second time.
Basically, the maps are built so poorly that the literal easiest survivor play is often times the best one. This is why it's seen as being 'bad.' Not that it's bad for you to do, but rather, that it is bad that the game has been built in such a way that the technique requiring the least skill is the most effective move. It's not 'bad survivor play.' It's 'bad game design.'
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*Looks at survivor name.
Uh...okay. I'll take this with a pinch of charity and see if I can respond properly.
It's not an all-or-nothing scenario. When people talk about the 'Hold W' meta, it's not just running away. This is more about using a strong loop up, then just dashing to the next safe loop. Some maps (Badham, especially after it got buffed (why?), Swamp, Eyrie and Game among others) are especially prone to this, where multiple strong loops can be chained together to form something pretty close to an infinite at times (the boat+log on Swamp is the easiest example of this).
It comes down to the fact that people are just...better at this game, meaning that killers need more tools to bypass loops rather than chasing people down, which survivor players don't seem to enjoy - which in turn is how we ended up with Sadako released in such a sad state.
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There's nothing wrong with "holding w". Just be careful doing it against nurse blight oni(while in blood fury) spirit(usually needs addons) and maybe billy.
Most other killers running in a straight line buys a lot of time. Be weary of killers that can teleport somewhere in front of you in the direction you're going. Sadako Freddy demo pinhead(rarely but you never know)
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In the same way that tunneling isn't the most engaging way to play for survivors, Hold W meta isn't very engaging for killers.
It's a valid strategy, but it like tunneling and camping it removes what little skilled play aspects exists in this game and replaces it with the most efficient way to waste a killer's time. The honest problem isn't that you're running it is that killers don't equal ways of dealing it extended chase scenarios.
A lot of killers have no way to augment their movement outside of perks and even then said perks are highly situational as certain conditions needed to be met. When both sides do the most efficient things they can the game simply isn't particularly engaging for either side. People like committing to chases, but don't like dealing with people running to the further corner they can without even remotely caring about looping. Looping for a lot of killers is where people actually play the game with them even if the killer tunnels you, mind gaming a loop in the process is more fun than following someone to the edge of the map in a straight line.
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Would rather be looped to oblivion, yes. Getting survivors who run in straight lines and instantly drop any pallet is what I expect from survivors with either 3 or 3000 hours thankfully I usually get the ones somewhere inbetween
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And then running to a boon on the other side of the map and getting endless heals from it.
You snuff it out, go back to gen and it's back up again.
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Every time somebody says "holding W" I replace it mentally with "running" and it's pretty funny. Because that's what we're talking about here.
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Bingo.
Just W away from the gens being done while putting whatever you can between you and the killer and get downed as far away as you can. The killer just wasted at least 40 seconds hitting you twice and will take another 20-25 seconds to get back to the gens.
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idk about "wrong" but its stronger than it should be and unhealthy for the game. Like tunneling, no one likes when its happening, but its the best way to win.
It also puts the killer in a lose-lose where they either leave the survivor or waste way too much time chasing them, either way the survivor gets what they want.
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"Hold W meta" is just a pretentious way of saying "running".
Which is what you are supposed to do.
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I mean theres nothing wrong with it, think of it like camping/tunneling
Perfectly fine to do, but can be VERY unfun for the opposing side
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Pro tip, if tons of people are whining about it, it is probably powerful and you should abuse it if you want to do well.
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Doing that is completly okey, just like camping and tunneling.
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The difference is survivor loses nothing by doing this as opposed to camping/tunneling.
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The difference is, you're forced to run from a killer (or you die and lose), camping & tunneling is a choice that may help you in some matches but absolutely isn't always necessary.
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Survivors have plenty of way to counter killers, holding W is just easiest and strongest.
You are simply not correct.
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I don’t have a problem with people holding W to run from me any more than I have a problem with people trying to use safe loops or chain tiles together. Whatever, they’re just trying not to get hit for as long as possible, nothing wrong with that.
Literal Facecamping where a killer just stands around doing nothing while a survivor is hooked next to them can be problematic if the game is somehow making players feel encouraged to do it because it’s really boring for everybody involved. The killer is doing absolutely nothing but standing around, the hooked person is just hanging there, and the other survivors if they’re smart are ignoring the face camper and just sitting on gens for a little less than two minutes to finish them before one of them does a hook trade. That’s why the devs have explicitly talked about how they have experimented internally with ways to reduce occurrences of actual face camping in order to further encourage killers to be proactive in looking for other survivors after a hook. (And note that I don’t think it’s good strategy, but people are often irrational and if face camping -feels- like something that is effective to an average player then it is a problem even if that feeling is wrong.)
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That has been suggested and even was one of the Questions for the Q&A but was down voted so hard by the trolls and those who don't want valid questions asked that it was never seen. Having Survivors search for a part at the 25, 50, and 75% and having a BNP could be used as a replacement for one of the sections.
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Any secondary objective for survivors would crush low Mmr players. They can already barely last 2 seconds in a chase let alone having to do something before fixing a generator.
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You have no reason to care about low mmr survivors as game is already broken at low MMR, adding another objective or even buffing killer a lot doesn't change anything because they are already dying within first 3 minutes.
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Killers have plenty of ways to counter survivors, tunneling/camping is just easiest and strongest.
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...Yes? I didn't said it's the only way to play.
I'm just stating killers tunneling/camping lose pressure while survivors holding W usually doesn't lose anything.
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Nothing is wrong with it. Play however you want.
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Low mmr players can’t even do pinheads box
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It's not about criticizing "holding W", it's about how effective this can be in certain maps, against certain killers.
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As long as the focus is on where it should be (map design/generation, how different killer powers work and so on) it's fine. It's just another example of how a lot of the time optimal play in DBD is pretty much all about minimizing player interaction as much as possible, the part that most players find the most fun.
But yeah if someone blames players for doing it and they try to shame them for it they deserve nothing but bad matches. I want megascrubs like that to get so mad that they uninstall the game permanently.
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Ok, killer finds you, tell me what you do to counter him besides pressing W and running away?
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Whats wrong with it? Objectively nothing its a valid strategy and against certain killers/on some maps its pretty strong.
A better question is why do people dislike it? For most people it's just ######### boring man. I don't see the fun in hold down 1 button as survivor and I don't enjoy holding 1 button as killer.
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the problem is its effective aginst the majority for the killer roster. even the new killer is very w keyable with those crazy tv cooldowns.
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Like i think that facecamping is probably the closet thing you can compare it to like it takes some skill to get a down but after that is just unskilled and uninteractive. Most of the killer roster cant do anything about it either a lot of the time it takes 20 seconds just to start the chase at a loop then 20 seconds to hit then 30-40 seconds to down that's a full gens worth of time and that's saying the killer was efficient.
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