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Why people choose killers over survivor and how to potentially fix it.
I'm someone who is aggressively average at the game so I don't really sway to either side of the dbd pendulum here. From my years of casual play and discourse with others about the game i find more people will play killer rather than survivor. The reasons given are usually the same throughout: "I like to feel as if I won when I play", "My teammates generally let me down or I do them when i play survivor", and "killers are just more unique to play".
That last one really sticks with me. Every survivor is no different from one another. Of course you can factor in how quiet and hit noise (looking at you bill) in saying they are different but none really play differently to each other the way that killers do. I will agree with BHVR that the incentive is good to have to get more people into the needed roll, but it's almost always for survivors. How would we go about fixing this? What could possibly work to make them more unique to each other while keeping balance in the game?
My idea(which may not even be good): have each one have a perk from their set be base kit on them specifically.
While this may be an absolute dumb idea I believe it would essentially create a playstyle from that particular character while still giving them the ability to build either with it or whatever they want. Some people may ignore such a thing, while others strive to min/max their character in a build.
What do you guys think?
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My idea(which may not even be good): have each one have a perk from their set be base kit on them specifically.
That's actually cool, and is a nice response given all killers unique powers.
But I'm just here to see the incoming "balance issue" posts.
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Do you like this kind of speculation?
...Survivors need 4 people, so they may be short more than killers.
...SWF is always 4 people, so you never play killer while you are in SWF. It is also the solo queue survivor player who plays the killer.
...Assuming those things, out of the current SWF>>Killer>>Solo Queue power balance, wouldn't you be tempted to choose Killer over Solo Queue?
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For me personally, the reasons I choose to not play or quit in frustration always boil down to the, how do I put it, BS gameplay elements that certain perks or killers have.
Take Legion for example. I will always stop playing for the night after encountering a Legion. I refuse to put up with that dogwater killer design. I can be working on a gen outside of their TR on a gen off in Narnia, but sucks to suck, I happen to be the 4th person in a frenzy chain and even though I've started running early, I'm the instadown and there's genuinely nothing I can do if the killer isn't a bot. I don't understand why you would add an incentive to frenzy more in the rework. That's literally the main thing players DESPISE about Legion.
Another example: Call of Brine/Overcharge/Eruption. I have zero agency to play around the regression stack+Eruption. The only way to mitigate some of it, like a 25 second Incapacitated, is to bring Repressed Alliance, a survivor perk that blocks a gen for 30 seconds. And even then, I have to completely guess when Eruption is going to proc if I'm in solo queue. Who is playtesting this internally and saying "Oh yeah very fun gameplay yes."?
People aren't playing survivor because we bring up things that are chronically unfun and it's presented as some sort of feature in a spooky horror game when players are trying to play a pvp game.
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If David had No Mither basekit, no one would ever play David again unless they were memeing.
Conversely, if David had Dead Hard basekit, there would be a huge influx of David players because you get DH and four other perks.
You can argue that the answer is to give him the middle strength perk of WGLF, but what about characters with three good perks like Meg? Sprint Burst, Q&Q, and Adrenaline are all very good perks (Q&Q there's an argument for being more niche but even so it's a net positive to have) - and she gets one of them for free on top of a full loadout? Or what about Ace who has no strong perks beyond meme builds? Why pick him over someone who got a good perk basekit?
Ultimately whenever survivor passives are brought up, I'm inherently opposed because it would kill survivor variety more than cosmetics and pain noises already do. Whoever had the best passive would skyrocket in pick rate, and the worst would be even rarer than the never picks already are. We already joke about Feng needing her equal attention cosmetic every batch of skins because we see her almost every game, but I'd rather have people picking the characters they like because they like how they look than because their basekit perk is good.
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TLDR; Because survivor doesn't have Wesker.
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This isn't the solution
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Great contribution to the topic. I really enjoy your well crafted ideas, and how you articulated your possible solutions.
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I would argue against this. When I play either side I see almost everyone on the roster anyway. A good possibility would be to change the base value for the select survivor to make them better/worse than the perk itself.
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I've always prefered that a survivor is required to run at least one of their perks.
It wouldn't really change anything from the survivor's gameplay, tbh, it would just give the killer a tip as to what kind of playstyle the player may be going for.
I don't think most survivors would like it, however, as it will ruin their emotional and financial investment into certain characters
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one additional perk or what
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I understand what you are saying, to an extent I agree. However I personally like that idea of No mither basekit. It would be niche sure, but I'd play that with Boon: expo, unbreakable, tenacity, and soulguard/boil over. Something like this is kind of what I was imagining, whether good or bad it gives a survivor an actual playstyle. Rather than everyone being the same and only choosing them for cosmetics.
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Dear Voodomancer,
Whilst I did not think that this needed to be expanded upon, I shall oblige your unspoken request for a better explanation and I regret that I did not do so immediately, I’m afraid I am suffering from a terrible migraine, although that is no excuse for my short and frankly unacceptable response.
Firstly, your assumption is most likely incorrect. Yes, Survivors aren’t very unique, that much is true. However, this wasn’t an issue prior to Patch 6.1.0. If their uniqueness was the issue, then why were Survivors Queues multiple minutes long and Killer Queues barely twenty seconds? The true reason is the state of the game for the casual player. For the casual Killer player, the game became much easier after the 6.1.0 Patch due to the numerous buffs to Killer’s base-kits. This included a buff to pallet breaking speed, a buff to gen kicking speed and a buff to successful attack recovery speed. Likewise, several perks were buffed that have become fairly strong, for example, The Nemesis’ perk, Eruption. The average Solo Survivor Experience (casual players) has become much worse after Patch 6.1.0 due to the general Killer buffs, base-kit Survivor nerfs and Survivor perk nerfs. Survivors were given less distance upon being hit and had THREE perks that ensured a decent experience taken away. Dead Hard, I believe, was fairly nerfed and is still perfectly runnable. Decisive Strike, on the other hand, is genuinely bad. Killers will not respect a three second stun and they will tunnel through it. Likewise, Iron Will was also nerfed a bit too hard. These perks, in conjunction with the state of the game prior to Patch 6.1.0, helped ensure a somewhat tolerable experience in the hell that is Solo Q. When those things were taken away, it exposed a genuine problem in the game and its community.
Secondly, this would cause some characters to skyrocket in pickrates whilst others plummet. David King, for example, could have Dead Hard as his base-kit perk. His pick-rate would skyrocket. Claudette may have Self-Care as her base-kit perk, which would cause her use to plummet. Nea may have Urban Evasion but Zarina may have Off the Record. Survivor passives have been discussed before and they have not been looked upon favorably for this reason. It promotes a meta of playing whoever has the best perks in their base-kit instead of playing who you like.
Lastly, I’d like to offer my suggestion to remedy the current Killer to Survivor imbalance. BUFF SOLO Q. Easily said, but not easily done. I’d start by adding indicators to let your team know what you are doing at any given moment. I’d add an optional voice chat. I’d add basekit Kindred and basekit Bond. I would nerf Nurse and Blight, along with re-designing Pinhead and Legion to be more enjoyable to play against and be stronger against SWF teams. I would limit Killers ability to use their powers when in close proximity to a hook (Bubba). I’d buff Reassurance’s distance requirement.
In short, I think that you have drawn the wrong conclusion about what is fundamentally wrong with the Casual Survivor player and how to draw them back in. They will not care about base-kit teachables when they get a facecamping Bubba, forever Legion or sweaty Nurse. They want to have a chance and feel like they are having fun. I hope my answer is satisfactory to you and that I have articulated my possible solutions and well-crafted ideas in a manner that is a credit to my teachers .
Thank you,
Pulsar
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No.
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In theory it's no different from a killer with their powers. Is that not the point? Is the power itself not like a perk for them to use in their own way? Do people pick perks that go with their killers power for an advantage, sure. Do people also go with whatever they feel like at the time even if it is sub optimal sure. Making a survivor a "5th perk" would be as easy as tweaking the base value to put them in a place they want to be. Either way people will play the same that they currently do. I believe unless we see it in practice we can't say for sure if it's a complete asinine idea for certain.
If you had a chance to make survivors more unique other than cosmetics what would you recommend?
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My brother in Christ I'm speechless. Very well articulated with references. You truly showed me who was just being a jerk and I do apologise. I whole heartedly agree with a buff to solo queue for information that a swf would generally have. It would make life a lot easier. I will say thank you for the time you took to type all of that out and giving a genuine response to the topic
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Stop trying to make survivors unique.
Don't mess with people's mains.
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Sadly in a min max environment all you'd get is this survivor has the best whatever it is and every game would just be against 4x that one survivor.
Killers are the draw card of the game, survivor is a survival horror team game.
Its the same in all games like this try playing a random group in among us, you start with 15 and drop down to 8 when all the people who didn't get to be the monster quit at game start.
Friday the 13th used to have the same RNG killer assignment and the same thing would happen again.
Just be glad you can choose a role in DBD, queue times may suck but you get the game you are looking for.
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Christ you gave the man an essay. I preferred the TLDR.
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But... there are more people playing survivor than killer.
Also, your idea would force people to play the "meta" survivor instead of the one they like.
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Bad idea. This would be an indirect nerf und kill some survivors. It is far too late for such an idea for a game played since 2016.
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He did, literally, ask for it.
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Not your MAIN point, but I want to address the "Why play killer" part.
I play Killer because I know if I lose, it was ACTUALLY my fault. And not some game throwing Nea.
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Just a correction: SWF is always 2 people, sometimes 3 and sometimes even 4. A full four survivors SWF aint as common as you might think, a lot of times its two or three friends running together and some soloQ randoms to fill up.
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I proposed something like this every now and then, but balance always seems to be the issue and people fear (somewhat rightfully?) that certain survivors might turn out to be meta, while maybe their own main becomes "unplayable" or "the suboptimal choice". People really don't like those, for some reason.
My idea was to either give survivors one perk as basekit (buff) or have one slot reserved for one of their perks (nerf) or have their best perk only be available to them and thus being their sort of power (also nerf). Another option would be to give each survivor some sort of passive ability that acts like their most iconic base perk, but this would be tough to balance and again shoehorn survivors into roles, if they want it or not. At least peeps will feel like they have to do so or else they would be squandering an advantage.
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If there are more ppl playing surv than killer why are the incentives a permanent 100% on the survivor side?
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I mean this is me. Why the hell would i play solo queue survivor and survive like one match of out 10, even when i perform well. When i could play killer and have a more fun experience. I'll get the odd game where I'm against a 4 man sweat squad that is just frustrating and i can't get any hooks. But most of my games as killer are either walkovers where i can have 4ks before the survs have finished 4 gens, or a hard played game where i get 1 or 2 kills and the others escape which is fine. . Definitely preferable to the experience of solo q which feels like banging my head against a brick wall and bhvr has to give people double bloodpoints so they actually get some progression.
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Because you need 4 survivor and 1 killer for a match?
If there were more people playing killer than survivor, then killers would have a queue of an hour or more.
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I wrote four people, but I meant to say that two or even three will never have a killer played while they are in the game and VC'ing and playing at SWF.
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Thats why they had to give incentives to play Survivor... because Killer queues just after "The Patch-ening" I was sitting for an upwards of a half hour in North America at 6pm with Crossplay ON. I don't understand your logic thinking people aren't playing Killer more. More Killers = Less Survivor pool = Longer Killer Queue Time.
Since the incentives it has drastically dropped thankfully. However, Killer queues are currently still too long during non-peak times. Anything beyond 1-2 minutes for a Multiplayer Online game literally loses casual players. BHVR needs those casual buyers.
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I haven't played killer since December and have little reason to go back. I notice very little difference in my survival rates compared to pre-rebalance. Helps I didn't totally rely on the nerfed perks and only one perk I used actually got a nerf. The thing killing me in most matches aren't OP killers. It's survivors who decide that they should kill themselves or DC early on, because things didn't go their way. I have had numerous games where victory would have been possible if someone hadn't just given up for no reason. I wonder how many people who do this are also the ones complaining about solo queue, not realizing they are why survivors are doing poorly. The tomes also make it really bad. You have tomes asking survivors to massively gimp themselves, which in turn hurts their whole team and the entire match. It's not the killers fault that Bill went around saboing every hook he could find because the tome asked him to. Remove the tome challenges and figure a way to make it undeniably awful to die early or DC. And no, I have no idea how you'd do that. I'm also not paid a living wage to figure that out, like the devs are.
The amount of games I have had "ruined" by tunneling and camping pale in comparison to the ones lost 30 seconds in because Meg went down early and decided she is taking her ball and going home. Buffing survivors in a way so that you can solo carry a game despite 3 players not playing would effectively mean the killer auto loses any match with more than one player trying.
Also doing this would create an immediate survivor tier list and you'd start seeing many a game with 4 of the same survivor. Others would get pissed that they now have to ditch their main survivor so as to have a better chance of survival. At that point you may as well make it so hitboxes match models and characters like Feng are superior to David due to smaller stature. A change like that should not happen 6 years in. Great idea for DBD2, though.
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The incentives aren´t survivor exclusive. They are there to increase the amount of players for the currently most demanded role. Killers can also get the 100% bonus, when there are not enough killers.
I repeat, you need 4 survivors and 1 killer per match. Per definition, there are more survivor players than killers.
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Justvwish bhvr would give solo q vc. It would stop killers stomping solo q games. Swfs certainly don't need anyhelp. It's new players in teams that have no co-ordination that are getting stomped. VC would help with that and make survivor more appealing to play.
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I already heard about this idea.
I think it's a good idea, but it may lead to people only playing "the best survivor/s", and then there is a counterpoint. if survivors get a 5th perk, why not killers ?
So yeah, the only difference between survivors is their sounds, looks and character build. I mean it's honestly enough really.
If people want "Diverse survivor gameplay" just make an interesting build o_o. Or maybe try a new strat, make yourself a sideobjective. The uniqness for survivor comes from playing the game as a team of 4, and outplaying the killer (atleast that's how i feel it is)
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no because i dont need more toxicity in this game and giving people a way to be more toxic is not the solution also this doesnt fix bad players.
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Yeah, you can't fix bad players but adding an optional VC would allow people who, ya know, actually want to win to be able to communicate.
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Then you’re going to have people who are toxic because you don’t want to participate. Also I’d love to get vocally called slurs in vc and have 0 way to prove who said them so I can’t even properly file a report. Lets just not bother with the option all together. The game isn’t unwinnable without voice chat.
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Every game with VC has a mute function. That can be used in seconds. Toxicity is only a problem for 3 seconds unless you're too lazy to press a button.
As for not helping bad players it wouldn't help in every single solo q match obvsly. But conversely you can't say it wouldn't help any match. I've given people advice after matches via xbl DMs, both as a survivor teammate and when I've played killer against the player. And it's often been well recieved and appreciated.
A lot of solo q games would massively benefit from a single player saying "hey I'll get the unhook, I'm running perks for it, you can keep working gens" it would stop these situations I see frequently where 3 players go for unhook and end up getting 2 players hooked to unhook one. Or "don't do that gen, we'll end up in a 3 gen situation" would also benefit a lot of games for unorganised solo q survivors. Even with language barriers and players not using mics, just hearing callouts like this would be enough to give more low mmr solo q survivors a slightly better chance of not getting 4Kd as is the norm right now. Atm the only way we can communicate is to point, beckon and spam the crouching/torches. Hell I'd even love to see a universal ping system with a rotary wheel and a few basic pings like, i will unhook, killer chasing me, do gens. Or even just a system that lets you see the perks your team mates are running so you don't double stack things like kindred and you have an idea of how they'll play.
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Why would bhvr design, test, and implement a feature to “help” survivors when most of them are going to outright ignore it whether due to toxicity or because they just don't care. I think a big thing to help solo queue and the game health as a whole is to get away from this competitive mindset of wins = fun. People giving up on first hook, dcing on first down. That crap is what really needs solving. Not only that but i would never bother playing survivor again if everyone all the sudden became an overwatch squad ready to treat every game like a tactical comp match. The most fun I’ve had in dbd is as solo survivor where me and 3 others pull off great plays without even an ounce of communication. Thats the fun, not escaping.
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Like i said before, i don't want to win all the time, that would be boring.. I don't mind dying, what i dislike is repeatedly getting rofl stomped in 80-90% of my solo q games. I don't have a hissy fit every time I lose, but if i can play 15 games with no survivals (13 of those games being 4ks or 3 k hatch games) it's a pretty ######### experience.
Plus it confuses me that you say on one hand that vc would be useless and toxic, then on the other hand say you're worried that it'd turn soloq survivor teams into a sweaty seal team 6's, which is it?
Because the reality in my experience of online gaming with vc, is a middle ground, maybe 10-15% of players utilise VC properly in most games (not screaming, singing or mouthbreathing down the mic) and for people who do use it to make callouts, everyone in their team can hear them.
All i want to see is for solo q games to have some kind of basic communication so the entire team doesn't run arpund like headless chickens because atm solo q games feel like 1v1v1v1v1. Passing on a few basic bits of information wouldn't suddenly result in solo q being equivalent to sweaty swf groups.
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i come from csgo, league, and overwatch, you can have both trust me. Just like i said people will be toxic if you don’t participate, they will be toxic if you do participate. You’ll have people who throw because you dont wanna play by their stupid rules and people who rage quit and throw slurs around because you made a single mistake. Hell there are people on this forum who literally say they leave lobbies if there’s a survivor below prestige 3. If you really want to be able to communicate with your teammates, just find a swf. Its not even a matter of how many friends you have, there’s a dozen if not hundreds of discord’s dedicated to dbd streamers who have L4G voice chats. Wanting to communicate with potentially everyone all the time is not feasible or a good use of Bhvrs time.
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It would be kind of neat to have something to differentiate survs from each other in game, but that would really complicate things for the killer. Killers are unique in same way, but there is only one killer in every match. If this were implemented, the static perk would have to be in place of one of the perk slots, otherwise the killer would essentially have to game around 20 perks instead of 16, which is hard enough.
And I don't see people being okay with that.
I think the survs essentially all being the same with minor variation is feature and a bug. What if you really like a surv's lore and appearance, but hate their base "trait"? Or vice versa? I like the fact I can pick a surv I like, and outfit them (perk/addon wise) however I want.
I see merit to the suggestion, but ultimately I think survs are they way they are because it keeps things from being over complicated, and allowing for maximum customization, which I think is a big reason surv players are surv players.
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I agree with this. I am a big fan of adding some more info into the solo equation, but VC would be too much, and lead to increased expression of toxicity, which is the last thing this game needs.
Not to mention that I don't think BHVR would have any desire to code that in.
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HAHAHHAHAHA
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So literally 3 hardcore competitive games with the very toxic reputations for their respective communities. I have a slightly wider experience across more games, from mw2 to halo, evolve, destiny. There will always be toxic players, that's part and parcel of online social gaming.
But my player experiences on dbd have been 80% positive. I've had maybe 3 serious instances of hatemail in the month. But ive had at least 8 interactions that have ended in adding the person as xbl friends and playing survivor together. Several of which were after I'd been playing killer against them. And many more where ggs have been exchanged with no salt. Again mainly when I've been killer, often having smashed a 3 or 4k game.
Just have to agree to disagree but something really needs to be done to help solo q. I practically refuse to play it anymore because it's such a frustrating experience, thankfully I've made enough friends on dbd to have a decent little community of people to play with. But many more casual players will be put off by the initial experience. And this game needs casual solo q survivors 4 times as much as it does killers. Be it VC or something else, the awful solo q experience is going to damage the game. They already have to give survs double BP to incentivise them to play.
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Other companies can monitor VC, I'm confident BHVR can as well.
If you aren't trying to win and help your team, then that's kinda throwing.
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Are you laughing in agreement or are you laughing at me?
The OP suggests giving every survivor one of their teachables for free. Feng is one of DbD's most popular characters. I can already imagine all the little Feng screams echoing around the world when they all get saddled with Technician or Alert.
BHVR doesn't even bother monitoring post-game chat. If they did they would hand out chat bans rather than adding in the most obtuse censor ever seen. Hell, they have zero cheat detection. You think they could be arsed at all to monitor VC? It is far easier to just not add it to the game.
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Um... Yeah? Who said they were exclusive? How did you deduce my train of thought leading to these being Survivor Only exclusives?
The match making incentives were one of the first suggestions i gave to BHVR, about 3 months before these forums were finalized and it was still solely on steam. I'm fully well aware of how they work. I've been here a while, just not in an official capacity to post on the forums, because up until recently I haven't had much to say.
For the last 3 months i've been shopping for PC parts, waiting to ship, etc etc. so i've been unable to play. So I opted to watch Streams. Not just here in north america. i branched out to all parts of the planet, both small and large streamers. From what I've seen, i have to base my judgement. In other words, "IME".
Survivors clearly have the BP Incentive buff far more often than Killer, regardless of the time of day. However, plenty of times does this shift because people want Blood points.. so it does what its supposed to. Its balancing.
Right now, Survivors constantly getting the incentive means the Killer role is over populated. I'm not quite sure what you are missing.. Why do you think Killer Queue times aren't instant anymore? Survivors went either to playing Killer or just stopped playing all together. This is the 2nd or 3rd time BHVR has created a patch that has caused a "Survivor Exodus". I said it would happen too. Stats prove it too with Survivors having a 39% survival rate.
I also predicted more Survivors leaving SoloQ™ and getting into SWFs, meaning even harder games for newer Killers, on top of people tanking their MMR on purpose. You think the game is in an excellent spot too? 85% of their Fog Whisperers complain, on stream, "this sucks".
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They have cheat detection and banning people from end-game chat happens.
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Although i don't have any counter idea to offer but yours was stated multiple times and it will not work for one big reason.
Yes, We will make each survivor unique but on the other hand many survivors will literally retire from matches due to their mediocre perks. So am guessing over 50% of your matches will have Claudettes, megs, David & Zarina for their basekit perks.
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Oh?
Well they still appear to have zero cheat detection or very easily circumvented cheat detection. Blatant cheaters can fly around, instantly complete objectives or instantly regress generators, they can have complete control over the game and end it in an instant or make the game last 2 hours. And these cheaters can do this for weeks or months before they get banned if someone takes the time to record and report it.
Many subtle cheaters have probably been getting away with it for years now using stuff that only give a speed boost when the killer is carrying a survivor and other almost undetectable cheats.
As for post game chat bans I'd need to see an example to believe it. I can't just take your word for it.
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