Short sighted balance decisions
So we all know post complaining about changes are quite common and there’s a lot more views to this then one person can include in their own view or opinion.
This will be mainly my personal view on things regarding the patch and general issues over the last 5 years I play this game. I don’t wanna start a discussion about skill, play time, platforms, preferred role to play or anything in that regard. Mostly it’s about the dev team and why there’s such a fundamental flaw to any balance patch they do.
That being said I’m really confused about this long running issue Behaviour has with balancing and why they’re not able to create a work flow that actually does what it is supposed to.
A lot of the upcoming changes sound nice and look shiny but really aren’t about the meta of the game. I’m not even sure anymore that the devs really understand their own games meta. Or so to say if the higher ups ever considered listening to the people that do have a clue.
Yes, perks are part of the meta but so are maps and killers. With the upcoming Iron Will change the surv you’re playing and his cosmetics might be more a meta pick too, which I find a frightening thought tbh.
What most of these changes do isn’t really shaking up the current meta but doubling down on it and I really see an issue with dropping player coming from that.
We all know that is prophesied all the time and the game certainly won’t just die, but there will be a point of no return and I really thing Behaviour need to change sometime internally if they want to keep this game up and running behind luring new players in for a bit and keeping the long time addicts somewhat engaged.
There’s more players groups to engage with and a lot of missed potential.
Back to the meta though. If we focus on actual gameplay high mobility killers and those that can slow games while also applying pressure through quick downs/ hooks tend to be most efficient and also popular amongst players of all skill levels.
Mobility and lethality are the most popular and strongest tools a killer can have tho.
On top of that getting someone out of the game fast is a really common and efficient playstyle on most killers, if you can actually get a quick down and good tile spawn to prevent long chases after the first unhook.
This is a big part of the killer meta that isn’t addressed in any capacity with this patch or at all for a long time.
Nerfing DS’s stun duration as an example will do nothing good for the game, as it was never an issue in the meta. Nurse, Blight and even some other killers couldn’t care less about a 5 second stun to get someone out within the first minute or two.
A 3 second stun is basically just a blink recharge for a Nurse after downing you, so why would they care? Same goes for Blight.
All the base mechanic changes are really nice on paper but getting faster downs on weaker killers is also discouraged with the update as they nerfed PgtW to be more efficient when taking longer to get downs, which is such a weird idea on it’s own that someone could probably just make a thread about this.
Nerfing Scourge PR is nice, but only necessary because of what they did with Deadman’s Switch, a change I can’t and don’t want to understand. Imo the most unfun perk design they ever came up with.
This leaves the issue with Deadman Switch being able to drag matches on for eternity unsolved and pushes that perk more into the meta. Especially on the killers that already used it to great success and didn’t really need it in the first place.
The 5 second endurance effect for survs after getting unhooked is nice on paper but often will do nothing for you. Killers can easily block good escape routes if they want to and 5 seconds isn’t that much in the middle of the game or when hooked far from an exit gate.
Borrowed Time will stay as relevant and meta even with that change.
The need for second chance perks or chase extenders stays and gets filled by one new perk: OtR. Why this perk got a duration is beyond understanding for me.
80 seconds is such a unrealistic long time frame that they could’ve just made it that the perk gives you the endurance effect till the killer hits you or you do an action to cancel the effect. This is a great example of a perk having numbers just to legitimate the perk tiers in 2022…
All the other perk changes for survs aren’t that noteworthy if we’re honest. Well buffing Lucky Break is an interesting choice and I see SWF’s abusing that with taking hits for each other and then vanishing, but it’s still niche and no new abusive mechanic after all. It just got the potential to be infinite.
Nerfing Selfcare might be worth the talk as who doesn’t enjoy teammates siting in a corner selfcaring for a full minute you’re in chase trying your best against the 8th Nurse today. This time could even go up because that Surv might get scared because of the TR and stops healing so sloppy can regress the heal….
At this point anyone using selfcare basically is a secondary killer perk.
Ever since introducing CoH they seemingly can’t make up their minds about self healing, so expect more weird changes to perks and maybe Medkits down the road.
While we at that buffing Botany and in term self healing builds is also weird. It’s obviously nothing meta but already close to being broken. We all know the “I healed during chase” videos.
On the killer side we actually got some good perk changes.
Mainly Ruin, as it created a really stale meta the last years I think.
Corrupt being less effective is also nice if we think about Nurse’s or Blight’s using the perk. Which they just won’t anymore, but wait doesn’t that open up a perk slot for a better perk to use?
We never really had a meta where people actually started countering Corrupt, as in just hiding and sitting it out. Which is boring but also quite efficient.
Personally I’m certain we will just see more Nurse’s with Starstruck, which weirdly enough Nurse survived another balance patch without finally removing insta downs from her blink hits. Like how devs do you really think she should have that available to her? Why don’t give all killers the ability to instadown with their abilities and perks?
I just really don’t see how the strongest killer in the game needs that in her disposal.
Most of the other stuff will mainly find use in meme builds which have nothing to do with the meta.
Going over to the game mechanic changes we have a wild swing at it all. Those small numbers changes to most cool-down reductions will surely help the weaker killers but also the stronger ones. Devs you will never create a more diverse meta by applying changes to all killers. That’s not how this works.
BTW indirect Blight and Nurse buffs…
But the biggest issue with this change is not the change but what it implies.
Again we ignore the core issue of map balance and more importantly map spawn rng. It’s time to switch random generated maps for handcurated seeds. Some maps already have this anyway so just do it for all.
The wide vary of map tile strength on a lot of maps can make losses and even wins feel really cheap.
I would really love to talk to that person at Behaviour that is so hard headed on actually changing core design issues, as I’m sure there’s a lot of smart people in their teams that are aware of the real issues.
Well this rambling went on for quite some time and congrats if anyone made it that far down, but one last thing:
This patch really does nothing to improve the overall experience of any player group.
High MMR matches will again get more sweaty, as survs will rush gens even more and killers will use the extra time to tunnel the first one out.
Average and low skill matches will end in survs dying more and casual and newer players getting frustrated over bad matches.
As time goes on tunnelling will spread further and further through all mmr brackets as Content Creators share new strategies and the most efficient playstyles with their communities.
Changing the perk meta is great and all but really not the meta change the game needs the most right now.
Again I feel like it’s sad for the wasted efforts that went into all that without changing anything about the flaws that make so many matches unfun for both sides.
Ohh and still nothing about MMR changes and more transparency with it.
Like let us know what type of opponents we face and our own MMR.
You can pretty much write of any loss by saying your opponent was better then you and never try to improve your own skill. Which I always experienced as a severe issue within the DbD community…
This system does nothing for the quality of matches right now.
It only makes it really easy to hide all flaws with it. Btw I’m still not over what little they actually made in almost two years of announcing a new matchmaking to implementing it. The over all quality of matches dropped significantly for me on both sides and even after over a year nothing changed or my issue was ever even properly recognised by their support or anyone from the team.
This is actually a topic that I know a lot of players experienced and dropped the game because of.
You know there’s this quote in the anniversary event loading screen and I really hope the best years are still to come Jérèmie, I really do….
Comments
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I 10000000% agree! I think IW should be 80-85% and not have the exhaustion part.
Behavior here some ideas to avoid frustration between players :))))
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Killers should 4k most of the time and reward Survivors for doing things, then extra if one - by luck - manages to escape.
But the design is the opposite, hence the problem. No Killer is powerful.
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I think I’m personally fine with how they nerfed Iron Will, even though I’m a Sprintburst gamer myself, but I hope they consider adding an option to mute the grunts of the surv you’re playing just for yourself. Iron Will is in my builds for ages and it always was mainly because I hate the sounds a lot of survs make when injured.
Obviously I still enjoyed all the benefits it gave besides that but I switched back to Adrenaline already and it’s such a fun perk to use with Soul Guard, which is my main crutch perk ever since it came out haha.
I think I still got it better then all those mediocre players that relied on DH to get decent chases. For them it will be tough after the Mid chapter
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I actually know that this proposition goes through the community ever since the game came out and I just don’t have a strong opinion about it.
Personally I enjoy the game for the chases and the team play when unhooking in end game scenarios or when the killer is camping mid game and often choose to die for others to escape. So I think I would find DbD as interesting if it was based around dying more, but I also think a lot of people wouldn’t be so into the game if that was the main premise.
But I do think there’s a lot of powerful killers in the game these days. Especially because of all the perks we got over the years. Thinks like Starstruck Nurse or Ruin in it’s current form with Deadman’s Switch probably would’ve killed the game if they were a thing during the first few years.
I feel like the game is out too long to make that drastic of a change anymore and I also believe it’s not needed to change things that drastically when it comes to the core gameplay loop.
Obviously I could start talking about all the things that they should change imo, but that’s not what I’m about tbh.
I really believe they have a great team doing good work, but I’m also certain that parts of the work chain hinder these in doing good changes for whatever reasons.
Also a lot of great content creators made plenty of well know content regarding really good changes that the game actually needs.
In the end I’m just some random guy without any platform, so I don’t expect to be heard personally. I’m just wishing for them to listen to the people that have the platform and agenda. Be it intern or extern of the development team.
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I honestly dont mind DH rework.
Mostly IW ,I will never play Jill,Leon,Haddie,Yui,and less feng.I hate their grants .Especially Jill's. 80% would be a good thing on both sides i believe.
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Alsooo The changes u mentioned are balanced for soloQ too and it makes me wanna play dbd. Upcoming changes as they are,make me so scared of touching soloq ever again
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Here's the thing I'll say this like many others have said in other posts.....DS...the change of the stun time isn't a Nerf they are bring it back to it's normal stun time like they promised they would do after Enduring was fixed. Before Enduring was affecting the stun time of DS so the Devs increased it until they fixed Enduring.....they fixed Enduring but forgot to dial back the DS stun like they said.
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That might be because most of the time I play this game I played what I consider solo q or solo. Like playing with one friend as a duo for years is still pretty much solo queue if we’re real.
This is always the biggest issue I have with people saying SWF is too strong. Like not everyone is playing as a 4 stack and not every 4 stack actually is great.
4 actually good players wouldn’t even need communication often to win matches and for mediocre players talking in a party could also play worse because of the distraction friends can bring.
DbD needs to start giving every survivor way more information about the teammates prior to the game and during the game.
We need to know the perks of all players in the team. They can just show them in the Lobby, like put a little load out under the player character. Not that complicated to implement and fixes a big flaw of SWF vs Solo.
Show Ingame what a surv is doing right now in the hud. They have a team for hud design so give them something to do besides changing the main menus.
If they close the gap between solo and swf they can start balancing killers around swf without making solo or duo players experience completely miserable.
Like my personal experience with the matchmaking is actually quite insane but they don’t care. Me and my duo mate went from having good to really good teammates against top tier killers, when MMR started, which was quite fun often.
Even though it was a lot of Blight and Nurses the overall teamplay and tension between all players was great.
To having teammates with 50-1000 hours against full sweat build Nurses or completely new and inexperienced killers. We have like 12 or 13k hours combined and should be match accordingly. Dying because of bad teammates lowering your mmr and sending you down a spiral is such a flawed design.
Personally I think they need to at least add the devotion levels as an extra layer to the matchmaking before applying the mmr ratings, as they by themselves are just too simple and in my experience worse then the previous matchmaking.
Optimal would be way more variables to the mmr, but after how long it took to make the initial System I don’t see that coming into the game. That’s why the devotion levels would be an easier solution for them to implement.
Tbf I could go on about thousand of small things to change, consider, balance, buff, nerf and so on in this game. Like it’s my favourite game ever but it was a rough year since mmr came into the game and all these changes really just make it worse from my perspective.
I do hope they at least help the players they aim these changes at, even though I don’t see that happening
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That’s not how that was though lol. The original DS, that’s gone for years at this point, was affected by Enduring and that was intentionally. We’re talking about a time in DbD with double pallets on all loops and pallet vacuum. Being downed was hard enough as it is and the short stun was still way too strong, but ds was a whole different perk back then and never a anti tunnel perk, even if they already used that term lol.
This DS was initially 5 seconds too btw and got nerfed to 4.
When DS got changed they made it into a Anti tunnel perk and removed any effects to make the stun shorter, but also allowed it to be used even when doing a gen or anything within those 60 seconds. To balance it they reduced the stun to 3 seconds.
People really started abusing this stronger version of ds though, as it had even less counterplay then the original version and forced really boring playstyles onto the killer, that combined with other survivor perks crated unwinable scenarios.
So the devs decided, luckily, to change it up again. We now come to the current version of the DS with the original 5 second stun, that still isn’t affected by any perk that reduces stuns, but also will get deactivated when the Surv would do anything that normally isn’t pet of being chased by the killer.
This version is really fair as it actually only punishes tunnelling and doesn’t give a any extended invulnerability beyond that but there was one last flaw with it and that’s the end game situation where you’re basically free to go after an unhook, as the killer can’t pick you up and you often just can crawl out the gate.
This will be addressed with the upcoming mid chapter, which I and a lot of people actually think is fine and not the issue. Also reducing the stun makes no sense though. The duration is just not an issue with DS. The killer should be punished for tunnelling, as it’s really unfun and the person being unhooked not always in charge of preventing it.
What they did with the mid chapter is basically encouraging tunnelling, while also talking about addressing that issue in their dev update. This is again a situation where they send really mixed signals with the stuff they say and do.
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