Game is Broken

Looking only at skilled players - DBD has favored survivors at high MMR for 6 years. Literally everyone knows this to be true. Middle was mostly "even" and low favored killer. The problem is that low skill players quickly turn into middle tier and middle tier gradually turn into high tier after about 1000 hours.

So what's the problem with the old system? Nobody wants to play killer for very long. Killer was weak and something you wanted to be chased by because it was so fun/easy to lead the killer on chases where you were always in control. Well the killer chasing you was always supposed to not be a good thing. Now that it is a serious problem you don't like it. Now that the killer isn't a joke you can mostly ignore you don't like it.

This update was good for the game because DBD was heading to a point where literally nobody was willing to play killer.

But the reason for that was because of dead hard being broken(by BHVR) and the gens not being long enough. So all they ever had to do was make it so that dead hard would burst you forward but not give you endurance. So if a killer swung fast enough and hit you would still be downed. And the gens should have been moved up to 90s. That's all they needed to do to correct that meta, instead they boosted a great deal of killer perks, completely destroyed all the survivor perks and made it so that getting out is at best 5% of the time.

It's one thing to correct, and then there's this kind of overcorrection where it's so far beyond bad that it ruined the game completely.

That's the thing, though. I didn't want to be chased by the killer BECAUSE THEY WERE WEAK. I wanted to be chased because having chases where the killer is VERY GOOD and has good mind games is extremely fun. Actually, one thing I've been very vocal about with my community is even if it wasn't perfect, I miss pre-MMR where I experienced better killers more often. Going against a skilled killer was so much more enjoyable. I love getting out mind gamed. I love when a huntress yeets a flick around a corner and gets me, etc. As killer I loved having those chases. I'll flat out throw a game as Billy if the survivor isn't pre-dropping, so that I can have a fun interactive chase with them. Sometimes I don't even hook them, I pick them up, and let them wiggle, so we can keep going, because the most fun part of this game is the CHASES. After MMR was created I constantly destroy baby killers, and I don't mean to, but MMR bases my skill on if I survive or not, and I love being the hero in end game. I constantly die to save my team, so my MMR is horrible. Seeing Urban evasion and self care every match is not uncommon.

This patch though? It's turned the game into...you either bring prove thyself and slam gens as much as you can praying the killer doesn't stop you from repairing or you'll never finish a gen, or you stealth game with distortion, and play attrition until your team dies.

M1 simulator? Boring. Gen monitor simulator? Boring. Having good exciting chases from both sides, getting a realllllly good beamer save, winning a mind game against a very skilled survivor? So satisfying. The problem is now, I load into survivor and I feel like the gens take so long, and there is almost ALWAYS 4 slow downs, so I can no longer get a few objective points and interact with the killer. I feel I am actively throwing the game if I let go of M1. I want killer interaction. I want survivor interaction. Maybe stealth gaming was fun until 1k hours or so, but I'm nearing 5k hours, and for me the addiction this game created was purely from chasing or being chased. I've never cared about the 4k, and the game was a win if I had satisfying chases. As survivor did I die, but I had good chases? Fun game. I don't need to survive, but unless I'm in a 4man where everyone doesn't care about living, It's suffering. Especially since I'm almost always solo queue.

I'm all for killers getting base-kit buffs, they needed them, badly. But increasing the gen time while not limiting slow downs actively buffed the MOST BORING PART of survivor. This also is technically bad for both sides. For killers like me who don't run slow down, or run very little, they're getting absolutely destroyed right now, because almost every match has Prove Thyself in it, since almost every match has 4 slow downs. I've been tracking all of my solo queue games over the last 3 days, and there are 2 very common things

1. if there isn't a Prove in the match, I almost always die on 4 slow down matches.

2. The hard Tunneling people are experiencing seems to be "time of day" related.

For example, I stream starting at 6am PST and for the last few days it has been consistent the first couple of hours during stream...the games are very chill..1 or 2 slow downs, and no tunneling really, maybe one here or there. Truthfully, the games are so easy during that time that I feel bad, because everyone is tweaked out from the other painful matches so they're wrecking other killers. HOWEVER, about 9am PST that all changes. All of a sudden 4 slow downs appear, and hard tunneling returns. Out of about 60 matches the last few days over HALF of those have had hard tunneling. I don't count them if the tunnel didn't start till 2 gens, since I know sometimes that's when killers feel they need the pressure of removing a survivor. However, this update was supposed to SOLVE killers feeling the need to tunnel for pressure. Instead, it just let tunneling go unchecked with 5 second BT, and a new anti tunnel that if you aren't running the perk it has an obvious tell, so the killer will tunnel you. TBH, they still usually tunnel right through OTR, because it's easy to hit you right as you're being unhooked.

it just makes me sad. I've always been able to positive position most updates / changes in this game, but....this patch feels like they are out of touch with what keeps people coming back to this game. I don't know anyone with over 1k hours that only wants to stealth game, but they buffed it so much. Buffing lucky break so I can just lose the killer instead of getting chased? Distortion that instead of having to do things like WGLF required / fully heal someone / finish a gen....you just have to be in the killers terror radius...so Urban users can literally never be found if they want and don't have to interact with the killer. I don't know about you, but there are very few play styles as killer that annoy me, but HARDCORE stealth gamers frustrate me. I wish they'd tell me at the start of the match, "hey, we're going to urban everywhere, and hide"...I'd let them finish the gens and go next.

Anyways, obviously just my opinion, but these changes to fix camping/tunneling/gens/slow down are hurting both sides. The only people that are REALLY benefiting are the people who are very bad in chase, and usually run 4 slow downs. It honestly reminds me of old Ruin Undying meta....The amount of losses I had against people that I thought were literally licking paint, because the game took ages....they could mess up 500 times...didn't matter. It's like the killer has multiple Dead Hards a gen right now. I'm happy with the nerf to Dead Hard, before that gets brought up..this is purely about gens, etc.

I agree with you on most of what you said, just want to add a counter point to the gen slow downs / thanatophobia. I realize they nerfed most perks, but right now (ESPECIALLY SOLO QUEUE), if you are chased off a gen at 98%, and the killer has 4 slow downs, Pain Res/Pop/Overcharge/Call Of Brine, before you ever have a chance to get back to that gen, even if you quickly lose the killer it will be almost at 0% when you return to it. Don't underestimate new Overcharge combined with Call of Brine, it's bonkers, literally 400% regression once it gets going. That's only two slow downs and you're usually in a chase for at least 60 seconds if you're not just running into a wall - It feels defeating. It feels very much like old Ruin Undying where you had to cleanse all 5 totems. The games feel like they last just as long if there isn't a Prove in the match, and having to redo the same generator multiple times, especially if you can't communicate is mind numbing. I've had multiple matches this week (I may start clipping these things to show what I mean), where I'm literally one second from finishing the gen, and I'm stopped by Pain Res or Eruption, and the killer will come, kick the gen, chase me off and I get back to it as quickly as I can and it has less than 10% progress. I think we can both agree you need pressure on both sides to keep the game progressing / feel like it's a challenge and not a slaughter. Right now the killer is usually at a minimum 2 hooks in by the time the first gen finishes if they're running full slow down. Usually the first gen is most important, because it either gets you pressure as survivor, or for the killer it starts your snow ball and pressure over all as people now have to constantly be unhooking/healing/repairing, instead of just repairing. But in retaliation for those two hooks, you need to have a gen pop. The thing is, that gen isn't popping due to the 4 slow down stacks.

Also, I think a big part of the Thanat complaint - noticing from my point of view and others is - it was NEEDLESSLY buffed, it worked perfectly on the killers that used it well (Legion/Plague), but on that same note, the buff came with the overall gen length increase, so it FEELS like it's a lot worse than it is. Not only that, but sitting on a gen and permanently seeing a RED progress bar? It hits different. Something about it mentally tells your brain, "My god, this is never ending". When I finally had a match that wasn't running Thanat, I felt like I was gen rushing even without prove, just because it visually felt so different. However, I agree and disagree with healing perks solving this. In a SWF, you can make sure a boon is brought, or someone has We'll Make it, etc...you can't really in solo queue, but alas those are more solo queue problems. I don't bring CoH, because it is not uncommon to watch my teammates massively over prioritize healing if I do. Not only that, but solo healing in it is such a huge time waste if it's not done tactically, so it's just a huge amount of extra pressure for the killer. I cannot stress how I had a Sloppy/Thanat/Overcharge/CoB Mend+Pin Legion, and watched my "equally skilled teammates" edge map with urban until they could heal with self care. LITERALLY watched one do this multiple times - got to end game and saw it was TIER 1 SELF CARE. We'll Make It is great, but I just don't have the perk slot, because of the crazy amount of tunneling that is still happening.

Right now this is the build I usually run

-Bond (To find / help teammates / avoid looping near in progress gens)

-Borrowed Time (To help with most killers taking advantage that BT is only 5 seconds)

-Off The Record (Because my teammates no longer bring BT)

-Sprint Burst (for map mobility mostly, so I'm able to stick to a gen and still get an unhook if it's possible)

I used to almost never run Exhaustion, but I feel like I need it not even for chases/being out of position, just to make sure I can take care of my teammates, that's it. I liked not running exhaustion, because I enjoyed having a good chase that I didn't NEED that to win, I could rely on my positioning / mind game potential, etc. That's the only slot I could swap out for a healing perk. I could try and swap out Off The Record, but I have only seen 2...maybe 3? BT gamers since the update.

I just miss doing memey builds, and having fun, but I feel like I am 100% throwing if I do that now, or if I take the killer for a chase, and they don't down me instantly, I'm probably getting tunneled off hook. (That second part was a thing before, but at least gens got done while it happened, so my team survived)

I've also been keeping stats for all my solo games over the last few days, and I have not been bringing Prove simply, because I want to see how much having it or not having it greatly impacts the match. Unless the killer gets Gideon, gives up, or runs one slow down - if prove wasn't in the match I have rarely survived. Again, I don't care about survival, but I'd much rather they completely rework prove, then change slow downs to compensate for it's requirement right now.

I do want to say one more thing. I fully agree with you on MMR. Old match making WAS NOT PERFECT, but for the most part, if a teammate was in Red Ranks, they had a grasp on the game. They had learned to MOSTLY unhook before you went to second. They had learned when to prioritize gens, etc. If I got baby baby teammates it was...cute almost...like I wanted to protect them, because babies were pretty rare. As killer, I on average went against survivors that were decent to very good to cracked. I was okay with this, because it made every game not a constant sweat fest, or an absolute baby massacre. If I got babies, I gave them good chases, got 8 hooks and let them live, because it wasn't their fault they got screwed over. That happened like one in every 20ish games, and I had wholesome interactions from it. Now, though? Yeesh. Almost every game is like that as survivor, and I can't be "nice" to a killer paired against me and let them kill me, because 1. I get more teammates like that, and 2. I can't let them kill me, or I just push them higher up to get destroyed. As killer? I could be nice and let them live, because they shouldn't be going against me, but then 1. I keep getting babies, so I can't have a regular game 2. I slaughter them, so I can not have babies, and feel miserable about it 3. I get sling-shotted into REALLY good survivors if I do that for a couple of games, and then maybe 8 hook / no kills, because I haven't had good survivors in such a long time. Which I wouldn't mind, bbuuuuuutttttt the game says, "Oh, instead of giving you slightly less skilled people, we're gonna throw you all the way back to toddler town"..so the cycle repeats. There is no middle ground, I can't slowly increase my skill anymore. It's feast or famine. So frustrating. It's the same as survivor, too, just in different ways.

Whoever thought that MMR should be based off kills vs survival......It's just not how you can accurately tell how good someone is. Blows my mind how often I'll have someone say I'm tanking my MMR to destroy babies. Trust me...I don't want to, I just can't avoid it unless I'm cold-blooded. My entire thing is that I'm the "Wholesome Gamer", I miss being able to constantly be that while still having a challenge in the game.

I've said this before, but you're right, we've had the same game mode for so long, with no changes basically. What I'd give for a 1v1 type mode where 4 survivors and 1 killer spawn in. It's a smaller section of a map with reduced pallets + no anti loop killers. Each survivor competes for the best time against the killer, and after each turn the pallets reset, so the next survivor starts fresh. Whichever survivor does the best gets double BP, and the killer gets a large chunk, too. I'd permanently never leave that as Billy or survivor. Could have so many neat progression things with it, too.

I know this game was originally intended as a hide and seek game, but it grew well beyond that. Sure, people that are newer still view it that way, but people that aren't come back for a reason...the chases.

Yeah, again most of what you said is true, and I agree with it. I use bond for a lot of reasons, though. It's my "comfy perk". Often if I'm not running it, I have a grasp for where my teammates are, and I do track them by their blood, or if I heard a random whimper. But if there is one thing I've learned...never understimate how crazy weird baby survivors are. A lot of people say they hate running bond, because they see their teammates being useless...honestly? It's like the only bit of humor I get out of seeing my teammates be bad. I call it Bond TV. It does also help a lot on multi level maps to know if the killer is headed to me or in chase above me. Allows me to have more pressure on a gen if I'm injured/on death hook that I probably wouldn't hard commit to if I wasn't sure of their positioning. I'm also a bit of a gremlin, so even though I can't actively seek gremlin activities, it's nice to know when someone I could possibly beamer save is headed straight to me, or if I'm LoS and could take a clutch protection hit. I never realize how much value Bond gives me until I don't have it. I get made fun of for running it even in SWF sometimes. The amount of times I don't have to go "Wait, did they go this way" and I just go straight to them is huge. But yeah, I get that some people don't fancy Bond, but man is it one of my favorite perks. Especially when I have that teammate that is too scared to do anything unless healed, because I can see them from the beginning and know that's how they play, so I can at least go quickly heal them so they'll touch a gen again, etc. Baby survivors hide in the weirdest of places..every time I unhook someone and they don't want to stay there when it's PERFECTLY safe, or at least stay near a pallet close by, but they instead run to a z wall or rock edge map and teabag for me to heal them.....Yeesh.