State of solo survivor, and the killer echo chamber.

It seems to me that everywhere you go where there is any discussion to be had about DBD, it is entirely killer dominant. Whether it be here, the dbd discussion channel of the discord, the steam forums, they are all an echo chamber of mainly killer mains and survivor opinions are nowhere to be seen.

That being said, I would like to talk about what I think is going on with the game, the direction the game is going, and what I think will fix the game.

First I'd like to say, like most games online games that captivate people, whether that be call of duty, world of warcraft, overwatch, dead by daylight, league of legends, csgo, they all have one thing in common: they all take alot of time and grinding to get good at.

My personal experience in gaming is achieving grand master in overwatch AFTER having clocked in around 900 mccree hours, 700 genji hours, 1200 doomfist hours, 400 pharah and soldier hours, 300 zarya hours, and hundreds of hours spread across other heroes. I have played world of warcraft since its inception and have achieved gladiator multiple times with all my time spent on the game adding up to around 20k hours. I have also reached pretty high ranks in csgo in which i have about 2k hours. I say this because I think I have a generally good idea of how to get good at most video games, and that is to look up any resources, whether that be talking to other players better than you, youtube guides, even recieving coaching to guide your learning/ grinding along the way. but the one thing we cannot get past to get good at these video games is the grind. spending countless hours getting repititions and minimizing the mistakes you make.

Why do I say this? because I don't think that is what 90% of the player bases do. If you look at a game like overwatch, it literally took over gaming when it first came out, it was an amazing gaming experience that I personally have never experienced up to that point and I dont think alot of other people have. It had so much hype, so many pros playing from csgo pros, to old tf2 pros and so on. But with the hype comes the casuals, the ones that come for the skins, the lore, the playing 3 hours a week when they have any free time between the wife and kids and 10 hour a day job, kids playing the game, the people who this is their first game and they have no game sense to apply and run around like a chicken with their head cut off. And what do they do when the game is too hard? In my experience, they take to the forums and call for nerfs, they call for heroes that can counter these other heroes that they hate because what they currently have in place is too difficult to use, and they refuse to seek out answers to their problems because it involves watching a stream, and "why would i ever watch someone else play a video game" etc. I think alot of these people dont have that grind in them, and I think it is a problem when we cater to that.

So what eventually happened in overwatch is they started adding hard counters, first it was soft counters, slowly getting harder and harder til they ended up adding brigitte, (mind you, this game is a hero shooter, most of the heroes require lots of skill, mechanics, aim, game sense). What this hero did was heal the entire team in an aoe radius as long as they did damage with their m1, which was a very fast swinging flail in a big frontal cone. she also had a shield that she could use to stun people, and she also had a ranged heal ( armor packs ). and her ultimate was that it gave everyone insane armor in a big aoe radius. this character brought every dive hero (the most fun/ most mechanical skill needed/ highest skill cap/ flashiest heroes that brought many eyes to the game) to a screechign halt, and held the game in a vice grip of a meta for over a year where we only saw one comp which was 3 healers 3 tanks. it was a horrible time for the game in which it bled viewers and players. How blizzard handled this was FORCING the game to be fundamentally changed to ROLE QUE, meaning you can only have 2 of each role on the team, 2 healer, 2 tank, 2 dps, this brought many more problems, and instead of just nerfing/ reworking the hero, the game as a whole took a hit, because god forbid we remove a skill-less hard counter from the game to appease the 5,000 (tops) people that need her instead of just improving.

(edit: i'd like to point out, in a solo survivor situation, with mmr being the wacky thing it is, when i have 2 baby survivors with me and i have to play vs 1 of 10 anti looping killers, it feels very hopeless when youre 25 percent into the first gen and someone goes down instantly).

the point of me saying this is, I feel like this is precisely what's happening to this game. We see otzdarva and other killer mains go on 100 win streaks, no perk, no offering no addon bla bla bla, and yet the entire community discussions on every platform has been killers non stop asking for nerfs, buffs, etc. Why? if otz and others can play killer in any state of the game and succeed, what do you think the difference is? why do you think you shouldn't have to grind to be good at the game?

I look at this new, frankly disgusting version of dead hard, iron will etc, and i cant help but have contempt for bhvr and the people who complain on the forums endlessly. I hope this post will maybe help you reconsider the vocal minority and take a more objective look at the game when you make these changes in the future. I quit overwatch as soon as they fundamentally changed it. and I almost had to quit when i saw how my favorite perks such as DH (which i think is such a cool way to outplay a killer), bt, dh, iron will have been completely gutted.)

also before you get this image of me being some SWF discord using rat player. I want to assure you it's quite the opposite, I love solo queue. (well not really) but in any game, I hate playing in a party, I think the best way to get as good as possible is to play by yourself, develop the instincts on your own, be able to make plays and get info via game knowledge and game sense etc. I have about 1500 hours of solo q exp, I get iri 1 every reset when i am consistently playing.

this brings me to my next point: Solo queue.

You need to do something to solo queue. Often times i see my teammate sitting in a corner with birds on their head while im on hook after getting like 3 flashlight saved and doing 2 gens, then I die and maybe they die, maybe they get an undeserved escape. it makes 0 sense. Imagine having a way for them to be able to hear me and I can help them understand what to do. It's happening in the dbd discord and other discords anyway, why not just add it to the game? I know you won't remove SWF, so why not just add it to the game? seems like the logical next step, your solo players are suffering, and I think its important not to neglect them because IMO they are the ones playing the game correctly/ organically. I completely understand how annoying SWF can be to a killer, but that is 100x worse on a solo survivor. i get 1 good game like every 5 games. so please, do something

I really like this game, i don't want to see it go down the overwatch path.

edit: I wanted to add one more thought, the casuals that come and make demands are like termites for lack of a better term, they come, get the changes made, continue playing their 3 hours a week til the next big skyrim game or whatever the casual hype is about comes out, then they move to that, and the hardcore players are left with a bed post instead of the mansion of a game they had before. Games dont need to be accessible to everyone (meaning all skill ceilings dont need to be lowered, they will complain and still play, you dont have to cave to these demands.)