The Amanda's Letter add-on for The Pig has been Kill Switched due to an issue with incorrect RBT count.
http://dbd.game/killswitch
An honest analysis from someone who plays Killer and Survivor and welcomes productive discussion
Just a little background info on myself and my reason for posting:
I'm a process analyst, and I try to help organizations meet customer needs as efficiently as possible. I have played DBD with a relative amount of consistency for around a year now. When playing solo, I almost exclusively play killer. My favorite mode is Kill Your Friends, where my friends and I rotate as the killer role. I have 500 hours of gameplay, and have watched plenty of Youtube content which has helped me understand the game.
My reason for posting is because I understand the complaints of both killers and survivors when they express their frustrations with the game. It seems to me that, in large part, that killers and survivors discuss their game feedback either one-sidedly in their respective bubbles (killer players siding with killer players' complaints, rationalizing ways to call the complaints of survivors invalid or vise versa) or as a way to vocalize their perceived personal skill (an individual saying that they don't experience the same problem because they are simply more skilled). I, personally, don't see these discussions as constructive or helpful, other than for the catharsis and validation which may be the primary reason some people post in the first place. I want to share my personal observations on the game and its community, and have an honest discussion on some potential changes that could improve the experience of the community.
I feel the 2-Kill/2-Escape average model for balance is reasonable. The issue I take with it, is that it seems like the distribution is bimodal, with more games ending in 4-0, 0-4, 3-1, and 1-3. It would not surprise me if 2-2 was the least likely outcome of a match overall. 4Ks would be more satisfying as a killer if they were more rare. 4 escapes would be more satisfying as a survivor if they were more rare. The game itself would be more thrilling if the balance were such that from the beginning, you knew it was likely some would die, while some were still likely to live, rather than it feeling all-or-nothing every match. More important than balancing around a two-kill average, the way I understand, is controlling the distribution to be either uniform (flat) or modal, with most games ending in 2-2.
A key thing to keep in mind in process analysis is how one change could potentially affect everything around it, so while some of these suggestions may sound outlandish if implemented in the game's current state, or all implemented together in the exact way I've describe them here. I believe they are direct solutions to some of the biggest challenges the game is currently facing. GEN SPEEDS/SLOWDOWN was originally going to be a subject I discussed here, but upon reflection I came to the conclusion that Gen speeds were a dependent variable. If the state of the game changes to where downs/kills are reliably more fast, gen speeds/slowdown would need to be adjusted to be faster in order to remain balanced. If downs/kills become reliably more slow, then gen speeds/slowdown would need to be adjusted to be slower for balance.
***On to the actual post***
**SURVIVORS** often complain about the following:
**CAMPING**, whether its face camping or proxy camping.
Understandably, this is not very interactive for survivors, as usually the optimal play is to just do generators and send someone to try to trade before the next hook stage (unless against an instant down killer, in which case you just do the gens and get three escapes). But survivor players don't enjoy doing gens all game while the killer merely stands under or patrols a hook. There's no longer a need to look over your shoulder for the thing that's trying to kill you, which is supposed to be core to the game as far as I can tell. Naturally, survivors often opt to try to rescue the person on the hook, which invariably leads to free hits and often downs, not as a result of a sneaky or cunning approach, nor a well-executed chase, but because you had to walk right past the killer in order for your teammate to have a chance to play this match. I understand the frustration of survivors facing a camping killer.
Personally, I don't see why the hook timer can't be paused while the killer is within a certain proximity (calculated by pathing, not being a floor up for example) of the hook, or has a direct line of sight to the hook. One argument I have seen against it is that survivors could just loop the killer around the hook, but I can't think of a scenario where the killer doesn't catch someone doing this more easily than they would have if more tiles were being utilized. Another argument is that when all the gens are done, the best play for the killer is to stay by a hooked survivor. I think this is totally fair, and the hook timers should not be paused once the gates are powered. Finally, I have heard that camping is a legitimate strategy, and it's not the Killer's job to make sure survivors have fun. True. It's not the Killer's job to ensure the survivors have fun. The Killer wants to win, just like everyone else. However, just because a way to win exists, does not mean it is healthy gameplay (healthy defined here as interactive with proportional skill). Many of my end game chats after these games have Killers saying "I was looking for people hiding near hook." That's fine. Killers should be able to do that. It's a good way to snowball pressure. They could still do that if the hook timer was paused, they are just disincentivized from doing this as an excuse to camp the hook. This change would completely disincentivize face camping, and further limit the effectiveness of proxy camping, which I believe would lead to more interactive gameplay (which translates to a more enjoyable experience overall, unless you camp because you enjoy making people upset, but that makes my point for me that camping is abuse).
**TUNNELING**, whether it's off the hook or just heavy prioritization to chase people who have already been hooked more.
I was very happy to see base-kit borrowed time added to the game (again, this is speaking as someone who primarily plays killer while solo. I did not find camping the hook or tunneling someone off the hook to be very interactive gameplay, even as killer. The idea that I had to consciously make decisions to play fair as killer never sat well with me). However, since it's release, I have lost count of the times I have seen a killer double back to a hook and down the freshly unhooked survivor before they could reach a tile, just as their endurance ran out. In terms of killing alone, the natural incentive is to hook the same survivor 3 times in a row as fast as possible, as it greatly reduces the amount of pressure on the killer for the remainder of the game. It does not seem interactive to me that the majority of a player's game was spent on the same hook, or futilely attempting to run from that hook to a nearby tile.
I don't see a reason for the endurance effect to be so short. Even if it were an entire minute (which would admittedly be extreme), as long as it's cancelled by conspicuous actions, there's very little a survivor can do to abuse it, save maybe trying to take a hit for someone else.
A more extreme solution, but perhaps still worth discussing, is a revive mechanic that costs hook states (whether it's one or two, or whether the cost is based on number of survivors remaining). If it took time for the survivors to revive, and costs hook states, it is still a net gain for the killer, without the game being hopeless as a result of the first 3 hooks being on the same survivor.
**LAG**
I have been playing videogames for a long time. In every game I have played, other than DBD and Dark Souls (where your "world" was locally hosted), if you were lagging it only affected you. It sucks to lag. It makes it very hard to keep up with people with better connections. But it has to be that way. Whether it's giving people the ability to use a VPN or Lag Switch to gain an unfair advantage, or just someone with a poor connection gaining an unfair advantage, if you're the one lagging, you're the one who should be lagging. I don't care if it's the killer or the survivors. I have so many clips of hits happening from the second story of a building to the ground below, through solid objects, while the killer is facing the opposite direction, 20 feet away etc. The only people who like it this way have poor connections.
**KILLERS** received a lot of much-needed love in the recent massive update. It will take some time to see what new sources of Killer frustration may rise as a result, but generally and historically, Killers often complain about the following:
**GEN SPEEDS**
One of the worst feelings as a Killer is when you're trying to down a survivor, or maybe even struggling to find one, and gens just start popping all over the map.
I mentioned in the intro that I believe Gen Speeds are a dependent variable. They only need to be as fast or slow as the killer can reliably get downs/kills. That being said, there are some thoughts I have that I would still like to share here. Currently, it is generally best for survivors to split up on gens nearly all game. At best, the Killer is able to pressure one person off a gen while 3 others continue the gens undisturbed (or two, if one is on a hook/injured, while another rescues/heals them, or one if another is doing totems etc.). There are two primary reasons for this: overall gen progress is faster when survivors work on separate generators, and only one survivor will be disturbed when a gen is found. I'm curious as to why solo gen speed is faster than cooperative gen speed when it seems like the less risky of the two.
**OVERUSED SURVIVOR PERKS**
The recent massive perk overhaul attempted address many concerns killers had about the overuse of certain survivor perks, which had resulted in a stale survivor meta. Dead Hard is a discussion in itself, but some I would like to mention are Decisive Strike, Unbreakable, and Borrowed Time. It is my understanding that the overuse of these perks were in direct response to the survivors facing camping, tunneling, and heavy slugging, and that adjusting these things with built-in game mechanics would have made the survivors feel less compelled to stick with these perks (as I'm certain the built-in Borrowed Time has resulted in a significant drop in perk use).
**IMMERSED SURVIVORS**
Every Killer has experienced it before. You killed a survivor with 3+ generators remaining. You patrol the remaining generators. You make a couple laps, and don't see so much as a scratch mark. Maybe one of the gens is no longer regressing, so maybe the survivor is still hiding nearby. Maybe not. Maybe one of them is in the basement. Maybe one of them is in a locker by a completed gen. Maybe one of them is crouch-walking from bush to bush. When survivors give up on gens, and all just want to play for hatch, the game becomes a slog. I believe the nerfs to Iron Will and Spine Chill were in response to this. Which is unfortunate, in my opinion, as these perks are now effectively unusable. Stealth, while annoying to the killer in its extreme, should still be a viable option for survivors, and these were the only perks considered strong for that playstyle.
I think it would be interesting for survivors to be on a timer to perform conspicuous actions (when not in chase). Similar to the AFK crows, a survivor just crouch walking around or doing laps around the basement hooks could, after some time, alert the killer. If you think about it, survivors who do this have basically abandoned hope and only seek to survive. It would be nice flavor for the Killer to be able to sense that fear, and it would incentivize survivors to stay active. This helps both Killers and Survivors. Killers, because survivors will be easier to find, and Survivors because they're teammates will be more active.
**CONCLUSION**
BHVR has put in a lot of effort to address the concerns of the DBD community this patch. It is important for the community to be able to have honest, productive discussions about the state of the game in order to provide useful feedback to BHVR and improve the overall experience of all players, Killers and Survivors. This can be done by identifying the roots of problems, and distinguishing them from symptoms that arose from another problem. Whether you're a Killer or a Survivor, or even both like myself, it does not help the community to form bubbles and not listen to each other. Please keep an open mind, and trust that we all want a fair, fun, and interactive experience for everyone, so we can develop a clear path forward as a community.
Thank you, and see you in the fog.
Comments
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I double the Camping solution with both hands. Some people tried to convince me that is doesn't work (BHVR did it before) and survivors abuse it, but I still cannot see how it would affect me. Maybe add a little changes to it: don't show to killer hook progress + resume timer when survivor nearby.
Don't know what will help against tunneling (except making DS back to 5 and basekit), but maybe with camping elimination tunneling will wither as well, because it would be detrimental to loiter around the hook.
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Not showing the hook timers is an interesting point. Some killers, myself included, will come check the hook if survivors greed gens and let the timer get close to the next stage. I think it is important to leave some tools available to killers in situations like these, but tweak them so that they are less abusable. The general consensus about DS, as far as I can tell, is that it's now ineffective. Its role is to, if tunneled, allow the survivor enough time to reach a loopable tile and extend chase. It was being abused in end game for free escapes, so I can see why BHVR is playing around with it. I feel like you could disable it when gates are powered, and return it to a stronger effect, lasting until they perform a conspicuous action. This, along with a built-in mechanic to weaken tunneling or strengthen spread pressure, could find a happy medium where the perk can gain value, but is not overused.
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"The issue I take with it, is that it seems like the distribution is bimodal, with more games ending in 4-0, 0-4, 3-1, and 1-3. It would not surprise me if 2-2 was the least likely outcome of a match overall."
In a streak of madness I kept track of 50 (SoloQ) matches so far. There were 21x4K, 13x3k, 5x2k, 4x1k & 7x4E.
"(as I'm certain the built-in Borrowed Time has resulted in a significant drop in perk use)."
BT was equipped by teamies 22 times which is, indeed, a lot less than it used to be.
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This aside I don't really have anything useful to add. - I only disagree somewhat on the OTR-like endurance effect off hook for a prolonged time as a solution to tunneling. Maybe it's just me but you make it sound like people with endurance taking a hit is not a big deal. I'm generally inclined to agree but I have also experienced a handful of well coordinated teams abusing the OTR endurance by healing up inbetween and just making it a "who takes the most hits before it runs out" challenge (as far as I could tell in order to get Mettle of Man stacks for endgame). While it does mean they are not doing gens and are likely just delaying a hook stage without gaining much from it, I would also consider this a kind of gameplay that has great potential to be very unhealthy for the game.
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Camping and tunneling are the solutions to immersed survivors, and immersed survivors are often the reason camping and tunneling happens. Camping and tunneling can't really be addressed well, until BHVR also addresses immersed survivors.
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It looks like your data does skew a bit to the extremes, rather than clumping in the center. Pretty impressive kill rate though!
I can see your point about healing up while maintaining the endurance effect, requiring 3 hits before being downed. While, like you said, it does slow gen progress to play this way, it also increases the amount of time spent chasing, which is where the interaction happens. If this mechanic did appear to be overall favorable for survivor winrate (I dont know how many of your games had teams like these, or what your kill rates were in those games), then they could stand do be toned down. What if survivors lost the endurance upon being healed?
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That has not been my experience, nor does it appear to be the experience of most people talking about camping and tunneling.
If it is true that camping and tunneling are in response to immersive survivors, what if the proposed solution to immersed survivors were implemented? I believe that as long as camping and tunneling get kills, people will camp and tunnel. It's not the killer's fault for playing the game in a way the game permits, so it's a matter of disincentivizing camping and tunneling, the same way my proposed solution to immersed survivors was a disincentivization. If something works, people will do it. If it's bad for the game, you have to make it so it doesn't work as well.
I have also suggested a number of options on how to address camping and tunneling, and I'm sure there are countless other ways they could be addressed.
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I feel the 2-Kill/2-Escape average model for balance is reasonable. The issue I take with it, is that it seems like the distribution is bimodal, with more games ending in 4-0, 0-4, 3-1, and 1-3. It would not surprise me if 2-2 was the least likely outcome of a match overall. ...
The voluntary aggregate data site I've been perusing does have some evidence that backs up your guess that 2 kills is the least likely outcome. Over the last 30 days the kill rate brackets across all matches in the site have been
- 0 kills: 23%
- 1 kill: 19%
- 2 kills: 14%
- 3 kills: 15%
- 4 kills: 28%
(For reference the 4 kill number last month was 25% so the patch increasing the kill rate the last week is pushing that number up a few percent.)
To be fair to the devs, I do think their goal has historically been to have 1-3 survivors escape but it's ended up being 0 and 4 kills being the most common results apparently. And when they say the kill rate was a bit low for their liking, it's quite possible that part of it is their design goal may have shifted to wanting the Exits to be opened closer to 50-60% of the time instead of being opened almost 75% of the time. That's just speculation on my part though.
**CAMPING**, whether its face camping or proxy camping.
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Personally, I don't see why the hook timer can't be paused while the killer is within a certain proximity (calculated by pathing, not being a floor up for example) of the hook, or has a direct line of sight to the hook. ...
The last thing you want is for the killer to have the ability to stall the timer indefinitely. It just opens things up for abuse.
Also based on how the game seems to handle hook proximity calculations during map setup I don't think the game is set up to do the type of pathing measurements you're talking about. Ranges seem to just be straight line distances or even just horizontal distances ignoring verticality. Anything's possible but it might be something that's harder to resolve in their engine than you think.
Additionally there's nothing at all wrong with so called "proxy camping", that's literally just zone defense in a section of the map. Face Camping is more problematic since if the game makes players think that standing doing nothing at a hook is a good strategy then everybody involved is bored when it happens. The devs have themselves said they want to find a way to mechanically steer killers away from actual face camping but the things they've experimented with internally either didn't have the desired effect or broke the game. And I could be wrong but I vaguely recall the devs actually saying they looked into your idea about tinkering with the hook timer when the killer is within a certain range and it didn't work out, but if so they'd have to comment on that. 🤷♂️ I also wouldn't be surprised if Pyramid Head's Cages were a back door pilot test of doing something similar with hooks but, again, they presumably didn't like how that works for hooks.
Finally I maintain that on the whole complaints about camping and tunneling are less rooted in those strategies and more in how mid-match player elimination causes problems since nobody likes being kicked out of a game part way through while everybody else keeps playing. If for example the game had no elimination, and instead killers just collected ritual tokens when they got hooks or survivors were left dying or on hook too long, and the killer won when they collected 8-12 tokens, there would be no reason to face camp at all and essentially no incentive to keep downing the same survivor multiple times since every down would be equally valid. It's the mid-match player elimination that drives the complaints about these things and also what makes downing and hooking a survivor two or three times in a row better than spreading things out. I seriously don't think we'll ever see survivors stop complaining about "camping and tunneling" since these are actually just transferences of complaints about being eliminated midgame and they're not going to get rid of player elimination.
**OVERUSED SURVIVOR PERKS**
The recent massive perk overhaul attempted address many concerns killers had about the overuse of certain survivor perks, which had resulted in a stale survivor meta. Dead Hard is a discussion in itself, but some I would like to mention are Decisive Strike, Unbreakable, and Borrowed Time. It is my understanding that the overuse of these perks were in direct response to the survivors facing camping, tunneling, and heavy slugging, and that adjusting these things with built-in game mechanics would have made the survivors feel less compelled to stick with these perks (as I'm certain the built-in Borrowed Time has resulted in a significant drop in perk use).
I seriously doubt survivors would have stopped using Decisive Strike and Borrowed Time pre-patch if, say, the hook timer was halted while a killer was nearby. Survivors aren't compelled to use them because of camping, they're enticed to use them because they were extremely effective at helping survivors ultimately escape. They are just as useful when the kill doesn't "tunnel and camp" as when the killer does. You could literally teleport the hooks away from the killer entirely like they do with the Cages and those two perks would still have been extremely popular.
It is true that if slugging weren't possible then Unbreakable wouldn't even exist in the game. Obviously if the only option were to hook a survivor Unbreakable would be totally worthless. But dying on the ground is in the game and not going anywhere, and even killers who don't do heavy slugging do occasionally slug simply because they want to chase another survivor off before picking someone up or because they downed a survivor in the middle of a pallet and need to make sure the area is clear and so on. And in those cases Unbreakable is like a free heal from the dying state that can turn things around. So while it does become more useful the more the killer slugs it has decent use against even average killers who don't slug as often.
**IMMERSED SURVIVORS**
I think it would be interesting for survivors to be on a timer to perform conspicuous actions (when not in chase). Similar to the AFK crows, a survivor just crouch walking around or doing laps around the basement hooks could, after some time, alert the killer. If you think about it, survivors who do this have basically abandoned hope and only seek to survive. It would be nice flavor for the Killer to be able to sense that fear, and it would incentivize survivors to stay active. This helps both Killers and Survivors. Killers, because survivors will be easier to find, and Survivors because they're teammates will be more active.
I agree that endgame stalemates where you have two survivors both hiding and the killer is unable to find them is problematic. Personally I'm for the game having an internal timer where, if no new scoring events occur for say 5 minutes, then the game either ends in a draw or the endgame collapse automatically starts to push things into a sudden death situation. Your idea would also be in the same vein, basically something to force the opposing sides to interact with each other when nothing of substance happens for a while. I do think the timer should be at least 5 minutes of inactivity or something similar, hiding itself as a strategy shouldn't be punished. If anything thematically hiding is more in the spirit of the genre than actively running loops.
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You bring up some interesting points. The stalemate mechanic you mentioned would itself be a solution to the hook pause abuse by a killer to hold the game hostage.
My statements about borrowed time and decisive strike being less staple were more that they were a response to tunneling off the hook, not camping. Slugging, in the case of Unbreakable, to me is less of an issue.
As far as proxy camping goes, it's a sliding scale. If you "control a zone" that is too small, it's face camping. It's really a matter of opinion where the line is between face camping and proxy camping. It even varies by killers, who can be more mobile, or who have built in mechanics that already allow them to control an area.
It's a fair point. I don't mind, and I even encouraged in my post, that killers check around for survivors going for a fast save. I just dont think that should be an excuse to constantly be around the hook while it ticks down.
I agree that there will always be survivors who complain when they get eliminated. I don't think elimination should be removed from the game. However, I think the vast majority of people complaining about camping and tunneling right now are complaining because it does not feel like the time they spent in the match was interactive. Against a camper or tunneler, their match is likely spent on a hook, running away from the hook and being downed before you get to a loopable tile, sticking a generator, or giving free hits and downs away trying to get the killer to stop camping/tunneling. That's how most of the people I have seen and spoken with seem to feel anyway.
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When a survivor is hooked, the game needs to make it much more reliable to find a different survivor to chase, and much more reliable to start a chase with that survivor. It needs to be a better game decision to chase a different survivor than it is to camp the hooked survivor. The whole concept that a killer could leave a hooked survivor, patrol the map, and find 0 other people because they are all hiding, needs to be prevented because that tells the killer they should camp and tunnel for the rest of the game.
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So your friends don't get mad killing them? I never kill my friends cause they always get so upset If I would and I have to play very fairly too. But bhvr really didn't try to fix camoing and tunneling as they are now much more viable. I would give survivors basekit ds but killers would need buffs to compensate for that in higher mmr. Probably best way to would rework some maps to be more killer sided.
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It is a pretty impressive killrate. Between Survivors trying to figure out their future builds and getting used to the basekit changes I think the kills have been above average. - Since kill rates are somewhat off topic here I won't elaborate but I am hopeful that things become less extreme in the near future when players have adjusted. However, there is another reason why the 4K number is much higher than the 3K number. And that is slugging for the 4K and how hell bent killers as a whole seem to be on refusing to even allow the chance of hatch. I didn't expect it to be this extreme so I didn't keep track of the number of matches where it happened. But I'm pretty sure it was nearly every 2-man-left situation where the killer kept slugging until he eventually got both (notably there was hardly any hiding; the last two pretty much always kept up the fight - or signalled to just end things instead of dragging it out by going to a hook so the other could try and find hatch). Much like camping, crawling around on the ground is neither very interactive nor fun gameplay.
True, time spent chasing is usually one of the most fun aspects of the game to many players. So yes, I guess I agree - while it does not progress the game it does add fun time which, at the end of the day, is what we're all starting the game for.
And there were only very few teams who did the "endurance abuse". The Mettle of Man stacks for endgame caught me off guard - but regular OTR is something you can play around. Sadly, the best strategy to not be surprised a good while later seems to be to not allow healing up, aka to tunnel even harder, once you know OTR is in play. If being healed made you lose the endurance state there would be very little to no room left to abuse the mechanic, I agree. Then it's essentially just allowing you a "normal chase" (aka one with two health states). Though, iirc at least for OTR the devs have stated that they have no intention to add "being healed" to the list of conspicuous actions because it's not always something you have control over. Maybe "going to the healthy state" would be a solution there; a not-asked-for syringe or For the People aside you should be able to cancel any heal in time.
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I second the "finding an alternative survivor has to be made easier". While I don't think it's a "root cause" for camping / tunneling it is something that has (involuntary) "tunneling" (or something that is perceived as tunneling on the survivor side) as a consequence. I do a fun thing sometimes where I take one slowdown perk and three info perks (Lethal, BBQ & Murmur or Spies) and it is a lot of fun leaving a futile chase/turning around after a hook and being able to lock in on the next target right away. Basekit BBQ would be great, tbh. Maybe even with 30 instead of 40 meters minimum distance.
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Also one thought on the "mid game elimination": I do think while it doesn't apply to all cases, it accounts for a lot of dissatisfaction/frustration - but not just in a "I'm out early so this is no fun" kinda sense but also since my experience has been that "One down, one dead, team dead" is a very common occurance; if a survivor is out mid game and the remaining three aren't very well coordinated the outcome is usually already decided (swf have a solid fighting chance - but SoloQ is pretty hopeless) and fighting a fight you know you gonna lose isn't fun (except you have side objectives / play your own little game within the game that makes it feel like it's worth the fight).
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One thing that hasn’t been mentioned but is kind of implied above, and is a reason I don’t like playing as survivor, is there is I think too much downtime as survivor where you’re not actually interacting with the killer. A lot of time as survivor is spent either doing a generator, dying on the ground, or hanging in a hook. The moments you can see and hide from the killer or run away from them are cool, but there’s probably a good 1/3 of your time being spent doing neither of those things. And since the game allows for people to be eliminated it means whoever is eliminated first had even more of that time cut short.
Again, if there was no elimination, and therefore no reason to do zone defense or focus on downing someone twice in a row, then that would also increase the interactivity by further encouraging the killer to proactively seek out survivors who are working on the generators. That obviously will never be the case in DbD though, even if the devs thought it was a good idea it’s something that would have to be baked into the game from the beginning. (And on a side note this is actually how the official boardgame version of DbD works because the designers of that recognized the issues inherent in player elimination in a game that takes 30-45 minutes to play. Video games are shorter so elimination is tolerated a bit more but the issues still remain just muted a bit.)
You’re correct about the range from the hook being a sliding parameter that can adjust the hook stall idea from doing literally nothing to making the hook simply never time out no matter how far the killer goes away. Which does imply there’s a sweet spot zone where it encourages the killer to move around to generators but still allows for the survivor to time out if their allies do nothing. So maybe by playing with that parameter and also implementing a sudden death timer with it to prevent stalemates it would address things like the Bubba facecamp and also stalemates with two living survivors or an abusive killer preventing the game from ending by bodyblocking someone in a corner and/or staying near the hook to stop the timer. There’s still potentially the technical factors of how the game calculates ranges, but if that could be addressed maybe it’s a solution worth experimenting with?
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I think that's what information perks are for, right?
Even without information perks, there are several points i already covered in my original post. A killer could take a quick look around to intercept a survivor coming for a fast unhook. A killer is likely to patrol generators. If survivors aren't on generators, then the killer is under no pressure. They have all the time in the world to find another survivor to chase. If survivors are playing immersed, I have addressed it in a separate section of the original post, as it is a separate issue.
If it works, people will do it. Camping an tunneling are existing tools, and providing new tools, while i would totally welcome, will not prevent people from camping and tunneling. In order to discourage uninteractive gameplay like camping and tunneling, or in your case immersed survivors, disincentivization would be required. E.G. revealing survivors who remain passive for too long etc.
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Not at all. My friend group prefers KYF to SWF because we get bored with camping, tunneling, and lag/vpn abusers. We have everyone, including the killer, in the call, so I can hear the screams brought on by my scratched mirror Meyers 😄. Our only house rule is that we don't burn oaks, because for a while that just seemed like the best offering in KYF and it was just 4 of them every game 😅.
Other than that, we use everything. The games are more interactive and feel fair and balanced throughout, with more build diversity because you don't need to build solely around not being camped or tunneled. In our games, it was by choice. If it were built-in, then matchmade games would be more interactive on average.
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I believe the bulk of what you say here are solid points, but I still don't think the mid-match elimination is the core issue, but rather how interactive and varied your experience was, and to what degree you had the ability to influence the game.
It largely appears to me that when a survivor likes being chased, and takes chases early, once they are on death hook they have had their fill and will often do gens or totems. So it's not necessarily true that only direct interaction with the killer is what people enjoy. It's also making decisions and influencing the course of the game.
A survivor on a hook has very little agency, limited to whether or not they should try to kobe at 4 percent, or kill themselves to spawn hatch.
A survivor on a generator may not be interacting with the killer, but they are progressing the game in a way that favors their team, and have the agency to decide whether to stick the Gen, go for a rescue, go heal, do totems, take chase etc.
HOWEVER in the case of camping, a survivor on the Gen hardly has as much agency, because the gens need to be finished before someone dies on hook. The only other option is to go trade, which is not achieved with an interactive chase, but a couple of free hits gained by simply standing there, then that survivor is on the hook/floor.
I think if you could manage balance the game in such a way where limiting the effectiveness of keeping on person on the hook indefinitely, while providing additional incentives to pursue fresh survivors (maybe improved bloodlust on survivors you have not seen or hooked, scaling up with time, and resetting it on downs... however you do it, there are countless ways if you're sufficiently creative) you would have overall more interactive games with varied experience where people are more able to influence the game, all while making it far more likely to yield a 2-K because focused pressure is increasingly disincentivized, while spread pressure is increasingly incentivized.
If providing this game state puts too much pressure on killers, then give the killers tools to be able to perform well under that pressure. The game has yet to come out with any true comeback mechanics for either side. NOED is probably the closest thing, but proved disproportionately powerful depending on totem spawns, so the recent change seems fair enough to me (increases ability of survivors to interact in NOED endgames).
Any solution that disincentivizes interactive gameplay is a problem in itself. And the force driving the interaction is the Killer.
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I would counter that being eliminated from the game is the ultimate loss of interactivity and hence the key driving factor in many complaints about the game. How many people do you see complaining about camping and tunneling that are doing it following a game where they or their friend weren't eliminated because of it? I know I rarely see complaints like that, it's almost always involving players having been ousted from the game by being tunneled out and/or camped out.
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The problem is the survivors will be super immersed and wait for the killer to get too far away from the hook so they can get a free unhook. If the killer patrols generators, the survivors will just hide super early. Or the survivors will click their flashlights from 40 yards away, being fully aware just how long it takes to chase a survivor that has a 40 yard head start. The survivors aren't giving the killer a fair chance at starting a new chase, so the killer doesn't have to give the survivors a free chance to unhook safely.
Voice communication often makes it a poor choice to go too far from a hooked survivor. The hooked survivor will just relay the killer's location via voice communication, to make it easier for survivors to leave the generators before the killer gets there. And if the killer tries to patrol the generators, the survivors will continue to tell each other where the killer is located, and sometimes this results in the killer patrolling all the unfinished generators, but not finding anyone. If the killer suspects anyone on the survivor side might be in a SWF, it's best to just camp and tunnel, instead of risking a loss because of voice communications.
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I don't think that really counters the claim. You may as well say the game having an end ruins the interactivity for everyone. I know plenty of people, and have seen plenty of people complain about camping and tunneling even when it happens to a teammate. I see viewers of streams complain when it happened to a streamer, or someone in a streamer's game. I am irritated when my teammates get camped or tunneled, even if it's a 3-man escape. If it weren't so satisfying to get a 4-man escape against a tunneler or camper, I'd consider those games unpleasant, There's more to it than simply being eliminated. It's my stance, and the stance of many others that the bulk of the frustration is from camping and tunneling themselves, not elimination.
It's important not to conflate super immersed survivors with stealthy survivors. Stealth is an important tool in the survivor arsenal, and while it can be abused in a manner that forgoes progressing the game, the alternative would basically be the killer knowing where survivors are at all times. Information perks are there to help you find survivors if you struggle to find them by patrolling, or playing a killer with built-in information like Doctor, Legion etc.
I have already made this point myself, but if it needs repeating, if disincentivizing camping or tunneling truly left the killer at a disadvantage, then other tools could be offered to killers to make up for it. My arguments about camping address it as a problem fundamentally, not whether it is sometimes necessary in the current state of the game.
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Note that I said above “where they or their friend” were eliminated early. Elimination is nearly always involved in the complaint. I don’t think I’ve ever had a game where someone complained they got camped or tunneled but they also escaped.
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BT lasting longer would be abused in the EGC... there are times where tunneling is the only option.
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You could still hook not 3m away from the gates. With the huge DS/OTR nerfes in the end game longer BT would still be a killer net advantage compared to before as not everyone uses BT.
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I've seen it numerous times from streamers. I do it myself. I have camped just to see if it was easy, and had salty endgame chats where everyone got away.
It simply does not appear the case at all that it's the elimination rather than the gameplay. I have many games, and have seen many games, where survivors have fun even if they die.
Dwelling on this particular point seems unproductive, because as you've said, elimination is a core mechanic of the game, and should not be changed. I see no one calling for it to be changed. I see countless people calling for camping and tunneling to be changed. It just sounds like you're injecting bias at this point.
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Already discussed.
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Survivors sometimes having fun when they die doesn't mean there's no correlation between dying and their feelings toward the match. And I might argue that your opinion that elimination isn't having an impact is injecting your own bias. 🤷♂️
Also I didn't say it "shouldn't be changed", I said it "wouldn't be changed". If they ever did a sequel to DbD I'd advocate for no mid-match elimination I think.
And the whole point of your thread was to discuss the underlying root causes of complaints. Hence my bringing up mid-match elimination since I still feel it's the main root reason for complaints about tunneling and camping.
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That's a willfully disingenuous representation of my point.
I could just as easily say "survivors sometimes complaining when someone dies doesn't mean there is no correlation between camping/tunneling and their feelings toward the match." What a snide thing to say!
You refuse to take massive amounts of complaints from a massive amount of the community in face value, and instead choose to believe that all of them are secretly just mad that the game has elimination when none of them have said so?
To your point: Do people like to win? Yes.
If you boil specific complaints down to "people only complain about it because they don't like losing," it just screams bias toward the community. It's moot, dismissive, and unproductive.
I don't see this particular point going anywhere, as you're just reasserting it without supporting evidence at this point.
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If you down someone near the exit gates, they wouldn't let you be dragged to the basement. Would they?
Besides, even if you don't. An extra health state is the difference between escaping and getting killed. That's why DH was nerfed.
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Regarding camping and tunneling, I believe while good anti-tunneling measures have been put in place, it has never been more effective to camp survivors.
Least to say the buffed slowdown meta is in place with Thana and Gift of Pain and percentage-based regression perks, making generators take longer than the already longer 90 seconds. Killers can face camp or proxy camp hooks - especially easily those with instadowns or already are very strong killers (Blight/Nurse) and the old "stay on generators" trick doesn't work because the hooked survivor will die before generators get done. And many survivors in solo queue don't know who's doing what anyway and may attempt the save, allowing this strategy to succeed.
With the increased successful hit cooldown, it has become easier to guarantee a hook trade by face camping. And 5 seconds, especially in an area where resources have likely already been used since (in this scenario) the killer has been camping and getting hook trades, is nothing in terms of can a survivor reach a safe tile.
Overall, all of these factors have compounded. The "unfun playstyle" of tunneling was targeted, however all of the other buffs to Killer have inadvertently made camping and tunneling not only easier than before, but more effective in securing wins.
I have a proposed change to de-incentivize camping, at the least. If the hook/killer is NOT within X distance of an objective (generator), and there are no survivors within Y distance of the hook, and the killer is within Y distance of the hook as well, to pause or slow the hook timer. Maybe in response to the information of knowing whether a survivor is within distance by whether the timer is paused or not, hide the hook timer from the killer so they can't tell. I believe a solution like this will keep the game interactive, discourage unfun playstyles, while still enabling a reasonable and effective strategy when the time calls for it (Like when a hook is next to a nearly done generator).
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Yeah, with longer gen times, the killer is under less pressure to go patrol hooks (which, as some of the other commenters have mentioned, isn't appealing to killers who opt not to run information perks, because they may not find a chase while the hooked survivor gets away). I wonder if something like basekit information of the gen with highest progress after hooking would help? Not necessarily a free BBQ for example, but it would give a killer a soft lead, and something to do if camping was disincentivized.
I'm trying to see if there is some way to compensate killers in a way that encourages engagement, so both parties can have more fun. Killers should be cognizant of how camping and tunneling affects the experience of survivors while survivors should be cognizant of the complaints of killers. We're one community, and neither group would be able to play without the other. Maybe I think this way because KYF is my favorite game mode, but I want everyone to have fun, and it seems like the community has too much infighting right now because they're only focused on the things that frustrate them personally. The stonewalling from either side makes it unclear how to progress since all the devs really have to go by is data, and this is more of a subjective issue.
These things are not a matter of how viable a strategy is. If a killer face camps, the remaining survivors CAN rush all the generators and leave. Yet they often don't. They get bored. If every game played that way, I don't think we'd have a community for very long. The tired argument "it's not every game, so don't worry about it," doesn't track because you could say the same thing about hackers.
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As somebody who has played DBD since early 2017, I wasn't there at the beginning, but I've played it on and off for a long time. Here is how I feel about DBD.
Killer is always a work in progress. There will never be a point that killer is "fixed" and this is normal for any game. However the devs have made countless attempts to lower the potential of what a survivor can theoretically achieve in a match by a massive amount. This has given far more power to the potential killers then years ago, however you would think that with so many changes, killers would see the constant consideration for them and appreciate how serious the devs are to improving the killers experience, even if it can be slow. But we see this isn't the case. There is this push for killers to hold a negative mindset when playing killer and basic things that any game ever people would say "Don't do that.. you're ruining the enjoyment for others." Yet DBD is one of the few games where people go out of the way to defend people who actively sabotage fun. Killers as a whole I notice tend to feel more isolated, due to their matches consisting of themselves and as a result will feel "bullied." by people simply playing the game. The biggest issue with killer is that massive push (largely by content creators) to treat killer more seriously was mad years ago by many of the dbd streamers and the killer experience has never really reverted. This has made killer feel harder, yet objectively has gotten easier.
Survivors suffer from stagnation. The devs have refused to listen to survivors for a long time. The new patch is extremely divisive, but I think survivors could accept a lot of the changes if the devs at least made a meaningful attempt to address camping. But they don't want to. The devs are reluctant to give survivors anything strong, lest they create something that is the next massive outcry from the smaller killer main community, and are scared to take risks that may make it smaller. I think survivors are tired. They are unmotivated to play and this transfers into the solo Q experience. Players feel unmotivated and will often do a challenge and quit, or have a chase and quit. Its hard to feel excited for survivor, especially those who have played DBD for a long time, when most survivor perks are jokes. The last real meta defining perk was COH and that was nerfed twice. I'm not saying these nerfs were not justified, but if that wasn't enough they then introduced an anti boon perk, which can shut down any boon totem, despite all of the others being jokes. Shadow step is the only really decent boon perk, and that perk now has a massive counter. The biggest issue for survivor can be summarised as "why bother." So much of survivor has been toned down that survivors tend to wonder why they bother, and those that do are treated like they are game throwing.
In summary, most of the issues form DBD have stemmed from one factor, the game philosophy changed from fun, to competitive and this has had a serious negative impact on both sides.
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