Why the unbalance problem is so contestable?

@AlwaysInAGoodShape said:
@JohnTed

They can't familiarize all the details of each map.

Map familiarity
Correct. It's easier to chase a survivor in an unknown map then it is to optimally loop in an unknown map. This highly contributes to the unequal-learning-curve between killers and survivors.

Concept Versus Gameplay
Also, new survivors believe this game to be a different game than it is; They believe they have to be careful to not get found, which is why they often don't do Gens.
They need to learn that they shouldn't be afraid of being found and that they should just do gens, wait for the killer to come to them and enter standard looping procedures . The fact this is unnatural to what they expect the game to be for survivors is what also contributes to the gap. For killers there's no big deviation between concept and gameplay:
-A killer must kill.
-A survivor must rush objectives until the killer picks them for their looping procedure.

Team dependancy
A killer also doesn't have to deal with inconsistent teammates.
It takes time to learn how to manage such inconsistencies and building trust systems between strangers takes time to form and typically only form at a higher level.

All and all that unequal learning curve is what causes all the imbalance:

If you want to have a standard measure for balance, then the 2 lines should not produce a gap. Only then can you truly balance the game, but that's very difficult.

Even bigger companies like Riot Games with League Of Legends do not know how to properly deal with champions that are strong in the LCS. Typically they become weak enough in SoloQ in lower levels that they are no longer usable.

This largely explains it.

Player expectations
For new players, when they play killer, their mission and play-style is hunt-and-kill. When they play survivor though, their instincts tell them to hide and play safe, which almost always results in their eventual death since nobody is brave enough to do generators. In this demographic, the killer has a very high rate of ending the match with 4-kills.

Only deep into rank 1 will you find survivors who work together and make minimal number of mistakes for killers to capitalize on. However, since players have been conditioned since rank 20 that matches usually end with 3/4 kills, there is a sudden and unpleasant change in match results. Killers still expect to end matches with 3/4 kills more than half the time, which is difficult to do against well-coordinated survivor teams.

Because this expectation conditioning, and the developers' balance philosophy (explained below), players from rank 20 to rank 1 feel that killers are OP, and players deep in rank 1 feel that survivors are OP.

Poor balance philosophy

The power of survivors come from player creativity and cooperation. This is a moving target and as survivors come up with new strategies to deal with the current meta, the developers introduce new killers/perks that ironically have small impact on their intended players but end up being oppressive to the rest.

BHVR exhibits the balance philosophy of other games that typically try to make a name in e-sports. Namely, they try to balance the game for the top players. They sometimes address the core issues with game balance by targeting the specific game elements (e.g breaking infinite window looping, introducing Bloodlust etc.), but very often they address those issue by introducing new killers and/or perks. Often these killers/perks impact lower ranked players (i.e a big portion of the player base) far more than it does for their intended demographic.

For example, to deal with windows and pallets (or even just chases in general), they create killers that ignore these elements (e.g nurse, legion). To deal with body-blocking when carrying a survivor, they create the perk "Mad Grit" (no cooldown on attack and pauses wiggle timer when striking a survivor while carrying another survivor). To deal with gen rush, they introduce Hex: Ruin and NOED.

Such a balance philosophy is that the original issues remain issues unless players pick those perks/killers. And it disproportionately impacts newer players more than rank 1 players (e.g Hex: Ruin wrecks lower ranked players while does almost nothing against higher ranked players). This by extension, makes rank 20 to lower rank 1 a nightmare to play as survivor because of oppressive killers/perks designed to balance the game for higher rank 1 players.

Hence the above graph where killers are OP from rank 20 to halfway down rank 1, but then swaps over after that.