Noob Thoughts: The Balance is a Joke, Right?

Wait, what? 30 hours and still using NOED?! Shame!

As interesting as your figures are it in no way shows any real data.

There are so many things that could mean that either killers or survivors have a harder time in a match.

For example:

What map did you play. Killers will find it easier to win on maps like dead dog (in my experience) than a map like The Game (as its pallet drop simulator)

were some matches containing more console players than PC players - This has a huge effect on the game as console players tend to have a harder time due to the limited amount of buttons they have on a controller (The classic healing instead of dropping a pallet issue)

It would be really interesting to see some real data on the killrates under strict conditions to ensure there was no swing in either killer or survivors favor but it would require a lot of work to do.

At 30 hours in this is a normal viewpoint and experience to have. Being a new killer is a lot easier than being a new survivor (assuming that matchmaking is pairing you with new survivors too). Even a couple of experienced survivors may fall to a newer killer if they have teammates who don't contribute much.

Killer does get harder. And solo survivor will still be pretty hard as well, at least both roles will take some degree of effort barring no throwing from the other side. But most of the weird nerds with no lives experienced players with a lot of hours will agree that with all players correctly using the tools available to them, survivors will win out. In standard, average MMR gameplay it'll usually fall to whoever is more skilled, got more lucky, played more brutally, and/or brought the strong stuff.

Yeah, pretty stock standard new DBD experience. The first 100 or so hours (at minimum) are going to feel very killer sided, from both perspectives. But that changes as your time in game increases and you rise in MMR.

The most important aspect of survivor gameplay is that ability of the fours surv to play together synergistically, and when you have newer players playing together, well, that isn't gonna happen much, if at all, especially in solo.

Now once you start getting teams of experienced players, who even in solo have a good idea of what is going on and what plays should be made, the calculus starts to change. SWFs, who you will rarely if ever encounter at the lowest ranks, are a whole other thing. Up until the recent patch, I would say that at higher ranks the game was actually skewed quite clearly toward survivors.

But at low ranks? Yeah, that's always gonna be a bloodbath.

And 30 hours isn't just a little in DBD, it's nothing. Might as well be 3 hours as 30, it's about the same. When I was starting out I remember hearing that about 1000 hours (per role) is where you start to get actually good at the game. It seemed absolutely absurd to me at the time, but I have found it to be true.

But one thing that is objectively true is that this game will never be balanced. It's a 4v1 with wildly different killers and matchmaking criteria that are exceedingly difficult to pin down. It's like an alphabet soup of variables, on top of the fact that we have a player pool full of people playing the game with their own agendas and ideas of what "winning" is.

So if you're looking for a game that you're going to get good at quickly and ever really get your arms around, you'd best cut your losses now.

We'll all masochists here.

It's not killer sided. Just no. And some of these claims you make after 30 hours is pretty ridiculous actually, lmao.

Let's be honest, it's not impossible for some people to be better at a game when they start, than most people are when they start a game. So maybe that's the case with you. I have a friend that has played the game for like 50 hours and can loop killers better than survivors with 100 hours or more.

DBD is however also known to be more killer sided, the lower in rank you go.

A big problem is that there are far more little extra aspects and nuances that survivors must learn and understand to play efficiently, than killers. As killer, you just play, and there isn't too much you need to learn to play effectively, at least at lower ranks. Obviously you want to get better at chases, and map pressure, but still. With survivor, instinctively you would think you want to play very careful, and avoid the killer at any cost. Playing afraid pretty much. But that is not effective at all.

It's hard to tell what exactly is the problem, but the game surely takes longer for surviors to learn how to play effectively. And I am talking about al the things you need to know in each role, not the actual gameplay, and mechanical skill. I guess it's maybe because it's the survivors job to not only evade and be chased by the killer, but also to get the objective going and done.

This one here is pretty crazy to lmao. You think you can make such judgements just based on 30 hour gameplay? What you call "handholding", in every case, is just vital information for killers. You really think people would still play killer if they couldn't see the aura of the main objective they have to defend, or if they couldn't see scratchmarks of survivors, so that survivors could just lose the killer all the time? What on earth?

Also, in general, killer mistakes are more punishing than survivor mistakes. If the survivor team is actually doin gens, that is.

Like I just said. This here has nothing to do with handholding, it's just vital information for killers to be able to actually have a chance to find and pressure survivors. You can not actually believe the game would be fine without this information, right?

This I also find quite baffling. I really hope this post here is even genuine. But if it is, you probably don't realise that this game is balanced around survivors wasting time of the killer during chases, so other survivors can do gens. It's not balanced around survivors being able to lose the killer easily. If survivors could do that, the game would be pretty broken. The claim of "you can just run them down" is not really accurate, because you actually have to down them in chase, and survivors have defenses they can work with to not go down.

To be fair, this also might be one of the reasons why killers are stronger at low ranks. In the end, at first place, the chase is dictated by the survivor. Because they are the ones running away, and have to use defenses against the killer. That's when killer skill comes in to play, with which they can then try to outplay the survivors. But if a survivor has no clue at all on how to loop and waste a killers time in chase, then the killer doesn't really need skill to begin with to down them.

I guess tutorials are one area where the game is still lacking big time. The devs really need to add better tutorials that properly teach survivors how to play more effectively to win matches.

Not exactly, but it's meant to be balanced around players near the top, because anything else means that good players get bad matches. Matches should get more balanced the more skillful you get, not less.

You're not meant to be escaping easily at low MMR, you're meant to be learning how the game works. Good teamwork is required to escape in this game, and you won't have good teamwork at low MMR. If the game weren't balanced around good teamwork, then groups of players who do have good teamwork would be absolutely untouchable.

I agree that your experience is pretty normal for a new player. I'm sure you've seen lots of comments here cautioning you to wait until you gain more hours, face different play styles, perks, abilities, etc. Rather than go further into that, I'll request this.

Make a few more posts on here, giving updates, as you progress. Your perspectives are likely to change and get more finetuned. You might feel certain Killer perks/add-ons are incredibly OPl, or maybe that some maps are too broken for certain Killers to be competitive. Just keep playing, and then update.

You're not wrong a lower levels of play, however, last time I checked the game is balanced around the top players. So unfortunately you have a more inaccurate finding than you might think.

When I first started out I didn't think I was supposed to escape much as a survivor and the first time I did it felt amazing. Feeling powerful when I started getting to grips with killer also kept me interested. I actually like this new player balance but I would hope new survivors don't get put off because they feel they've lost just because they didn't escape.

100% it's a sad game now, 4Ks are way too common a lot more than 4 escapes, survs have to stay glued to gens and play with perfect efficiency at all times, all the fun is gone, vast majority of killers are tunneling too because it's both easier and stronger than ever, solo Q need more than a few seconds of basekit BT

Im sorry, but i have to disagree with everything you said here. Killer need that information bc as a killer you need to know where to go at all times. Time is precious when you are playing killer, you can literally lose a match bc you got stuck for half a second in a box, the survivor reached a window and the chase that was a guaranteed down now is extended for who nows how much time. In a game that lasts 10 minutes, a killer has 10 minutes and survivors have 40. I'm not saying survivor is easy, when i play survivior is mostly solo, and i know how frustrating solo teamates are. As a survivor, you only need to worry for one generator at a time, as a killer, you need to worry about all of them. You said you tend to priorize a area and ignore the other gens, and it is a great strategy, but smart survivors know how to take advantage out of that, SPECIALLY if the have circle of healing or any other way of healing themselfs

The early game favors the killer because there is a minimum threshold survivors need to reach to be competent and the game doesn't have a bot system to actually teach you what you need to know (the updated tutorial is still woefully lacking in basic, core concepts).

Once survivors understand the rules of the game, it is wildly in favor of survivors. 4 escapes are incredibly common, killer perks get overwritten by survivor perks across the board, and more than half of the killer options struggle to get even a single kill. And that just gets worse and worse the higher up in the skill ladder you go, until there's really only Nurse and Blight who can compete at the highest level.

The issue is that a killer's task revolves 100% around survivors, whose skill increases over time. So the whole game gets harder as you play more.

Survivors, on the other hand, have basic tasks which are the exact same no matter what level you're playing at. Skill checks never get harder, gens never get harder, locating spawns, navigating stages, memorizing pallets/loops... on and on. Once you know it, it doesn't get any harder. The ONLY part of the game that gets more difficult for survivors is the chase, which only occupies a single survivor at a time. The rest of the team breezes through elements that used to be hard but have become trivial.

Its not true that survivor have more things to learn. You just dont need to learn most of the killer skills yet, bc survivor have not learned their skills.

For example killer are moving faster as survivor. So you dont need to learn how to chase if survivor dont know how to loop. Right now its enough to just follow them.

Normally you cant just chase survivor of gens and deplete their ressources. They game would be lost before they run out of them. It only works bc right now some survivor dont do gens at all, bc they are scared and hide, dont find gens, bc the go down too fast etc.

The problem is that the game doesnt show the basics for new players and in a 4vs1 game, the one player needs to have the higher base stats. So he wins if noone uses the mechanics of the game.

An asymmetric game is just hard to balance.

And im not telling you that you need to play against a swf to experience balnced games. Im only playing solo and im doing fine most of the time. But to be fair you cant know the skill level of your opponents and your teammates in this game, so maybe thats the reason. But i wouldnt say im really good as survivor, only above average.