About Prove Thyself

@BOGUEINATOR said:
I don't think I need anything explained for me. I've been playing the game long enough to have a good understanding. If you weren't an idiot you would know that killers win more than survivors by a mile and have done so for a lengthy period and continue to. So why is there a need to cry over a change to a surv perk? Don't complain about something unless you're telling both sides of the story. In this case, the fact that gens are slower in groups now, etc. 

Well, I'll do you the favor of explaining it to you, since you think you know so much more than you do.

First of all, the dynamics of the game mean that survivors die, not because the killer does extremely well, but because the survivors make mistakes, or play less than optimally. An argument can be made that this doesn't apply to the Nurse or Legion as much as other killers, but even against Nurse and Legion, survivors have every tool they need to complete their objectives and escape.

The reason for this is because survivors control the pace and direction of the game, not the killer. An optimal survivor knows the maps, and knows where to expect pallets and windows (even if they haven't seen them), and the judgment to know which points of safety they can reach and which they can't, based on the killer they're facing. A killer, by contrast, cannot decide the chase shouldn't go to this jungle gym, or that safe pallet location, but is forced to follow the survivor's lead.

Survivors go down because they misjudge distance and speed, because they fail to drop a pallet in time, or because they don't know where to run to. Optimal survivors go down because the chase has lasted so long they've run out of resources to use in their defense.

This is combined with the fact that there is only 1 killer, compared to 4 survivors. So while the killer can only chase 1 survivor at a time, regardless of the length of the chase, 3 survivors are free to work on and complete objectives throughout the chase, and should be doing exactly that. Bad survivors spend time sabo'ing hooks, breaking totems, digging through chests, etc...

Furthermore, this is complicated for the killer by the fact that survivors begin every single match with all the momentum. Survivors spawn near gens, able to begin completing objectives immediately. The killer does not spawn next to survivors, but must find them before one can be taken off the objective. If the chase ends quickly, because the survivor makes mistakes the killer is able to capitalize on, the survivor can be put on the hook and a second survivor can be required to leave generators in order to make a hook save. But the pressure is minimal since the hooked survivor has significant time on the hook before entering stage 2 and being put at any more danger. This isn't true for the killer, who must start from the beginning again, finding a new survivor and initiating a new chase.

If survivors are so uncoordinated that multiple survivors immediately abandon generators in order to make an unnecessary fast hook save, it certainly isn't because the killer has an advantage, but because the survivors are uncoordinated. If survivors make unsafe hook saves, or farm each other off the hook, it certainly isn't the killer being unbalanced, but the survivors being stupid.

While chases are going on, optimal survivors are able to complete generators very quickly, even without perks, even if the killer has Ruin. Hitting great skill checks is far from impossible, and can be achieved the vast majority of the time with practice. So, even game slowing perks such as Ruin, Unnerving Presence, Overcharge, etc... are only effective against less than optimal survivors.

What all of that means is that there is a hard cap for killer skill. No matter how good a killer may be at the game, how well they perform in any given match is determined by the skill level and coordination of the survivors.

This has been demonstrated countless times from both perspectives. The DePip Squad is perhaps the most infamous, but they're far from the only good group of survivors who have been able to go through dozens, even hundreds of consecutive matches without allowing the killer to pip. Most recently it was on full display against TrU3ta1ent, who attempted to reach rank 1 as both a survivor and killer, with no perks, add-on's or offerings. While it was little different on the survivor side, it became vastly different as he had to abandon all other killers and only play Nurse after reaching rank 3, and even with 3k games, was sometimes unable to pip up. Even against his Nurse, coordinated groups were able to knock out 4 generators in under 5 minutes, while TrU3 was in chase or hooking them throughout the same time period.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP8t3FpriOg

You'll find TrU3 was able to get the first down in roughly 50 seconds, the first gen complete at 1 minute, the second gen at 1 minute 20 seconds, the second down at roughly 1 minute 30 seconds, the third gen at 2 minutes, the 3rd down at 2 minutes 55 seconds, the forth gen at 3 minutes 5 seconds, the forth down at 3 minutes 30 seconds, the fifth down at 4 minutes 10 seconds, the final gen at 4 minutes 12 seconds. At that point in the match, he had achieved only 3 hooks between 2 survivors. The first door open at 4 minutes 40 seconds.

Despite doing extremely well, and better than most other killers in both his ability to find survivors and end chases, he was unable to stop them because the survivors didn't make a lot of mistakes, focused down objectives, and recovered extremely quickly from all set backs. They were optimal.

You also referenced "winning," which is a subjective term. If you mean a survivor escaping the match, roughly 50% of the time they do globally, according to the dev's. If you mean advancing by at least 1 pip, that's far more common than escaping. Survivors don't have to escape in order to win a match in terms of advancing in rank. However, killers are required to kill most of the time in order to advance, just because of the way the emblem system works. Killers need multiple hooks and kills in order to pip, most of the time, or to secure significant bloodpoints.

For example, from TrU3's challenge, in the video above, he only safety pip'ed despite getting 2 kills. Another match at Rank 2, he killed two survivors, but still only barely safety pip'ed:

You can see the match here, and it begins at roughly the 5 hour mark:

So, why are killers upset about the changes to Prove Thyself? Because speeding up the rate at which generators can be completed means the survivors have to make mistakes more frequently which the killer can capitalize on in order to end chases and get kills. It's that simple. Prove Thyself is especially troublesome because not every survivor in a match needs to run it in order for every survivor to receive the speed benefits of the perk. Meaning, every survivor effected by Prove Thyself, who didn't bring it, effectively has a fifth perk slot. Killers do not.

Instead, killers can only attempt to counter Prove Thyself with Discordance instead of other perks which could be more useful in ending chases. And while Prove Thyself always means generators are done much faster with 2 or more survivors working together, Discordance is no guarantee that the killer is able to cross the map in time to pause the progress on that generator.

All of this is easily demonstrable by the overall player base and what they choose to play. If killers were so overpowered that they win matches "by miles" and always have, a higher percentage of the player base would be playing killer, but they aren't. For example, only 1.9% of the player base has earned the achievement "A Feast for the Entity," requiring 1,000 sacrifices. "Legendary Killer," or reaching Rank 1 with killer has only been earned by 2.2%. "Master Killer," or reaching Rank 5, has only been achieved by 3.1%. "Legendary Survivor," by contrast, has been earned by 4.1% of the player base. "Master Survivor" has been earned by 5.7%. Meaning, nearly twice as many of the players who have played consistently enough to reach rank 5, or rank 1, have done so as survivor without ever bothering to do the same as killer.

Now, if what you were claiming were true and recognized throughout the community, the opposite should be true. The rate of achievements should be reversed. Lobbies should be closer to what we saw during the Hallowed Blight, where so many people were playing killer that getting a lobby full of people willing to play survivor was a huge pain, but it isn't. Queues are reasonably fast for both sides, despite requiring 4 more people willing to play survivor than killer.

Now, I've used global statistics, and example after example of highly skilled players and what they encounter. By contrast, you cited your "long experience" of killers "winning by miles." May I suggest that the problems you encounter as survivor may be you, and the people you're playing with, and not indicative of the mechanics and nature of the game?