BHVR, why is there a loophole around the DC penalty?

If there's a language barrier that is in the way, I absolutely understand and apologize if any of it doesn't make sense. The overall idea is that there would be systems in place to prevent people from spamming unhook attempts, as well as purposely ignoring or mashing to automatically fail skill checks in the second state. It is specifically designed in a way to not affect legitimate misses in the second phase, while not preventing flailing your arms or going for deliverance/legitimate self unhook attempts in the first one. The advantage of doing the skill checks vs purposely triggering the fail-safe is that you do not lose any of the time that purposely missing two checks takes off of the hook timer. The data is also held so that if the person decides to take it out on their teammates by sandbagging them or disrupting the game further, people will be able to report them without needing to record the interaction (while also not leaving room for people to false report each other and abuse it.)

My priority is on how people rage-quitting early on the hook both ruins the match for their teammates and the killer, but also how it corrupts BHVRs internal statistics tracking that they use to evaluate the state of the game regularly. The solution is designed in a way that prevents that while not preventing players from interacting with those mechanics normally.

Of course. When someone attempts an unhook, it is supposed to be because they either have tools to make it more viable, or because it is their only chance and they want to risk it. Thats the reason it's only a 4% chance, and the devs added additional feedback to make sure you know that it is reducing your hook timer. There are extremely few times where constantly going for self unhooks is anything other than giving up, and further considerations can be written into the check for them (like if multiple people are hooked on first stage at the same time due to a group slug, for instance.) Conditional checks for those types of variables are only limited by the game's ability to track them, so it usually only takes a handful of lines of code to create those types of systems.

With the skill checks there is a little bit more to consider, but not much. You can check for people mashing the button in an attempt to make sure it auto-fails the moment it pops up, and you can check for zero activity at all. The combination of the two gives you a pretty clear window on whether the person is actually trying or not, and the proposed sample set of 2 should usually be enough to make that distinction while not creating false positives in players who simply miss their timing in the skill check. These can also be adjusted over time without telling the playerbase, So that workaround methods rage-quitters attempt would be very inconsistent. At the very least, having it be on the first few skillchecks creates a situation where people who try to fail them on purpose are required to attempt at least a few of them, which creates a trap that either catches the quitters specifically, or at the very least inconveniences them and makes it more difficult to abuse.

The reason why these considerations on both system are taken is to minimize the potential of false positives, as in situations where survivors may been attempting the mechanics properly. Its also why there is no direct punishment imposed: The only thing that would be lost would generally be BP involved in the struggle phase. With the unhook one, You can only have a few unhook attempts per phase one due to the hook timer itself, so if someone is waiting before attempting to unhook they should only end up with a few attempts regardless. Its basically there to prevent them from going straight for the self unhook immediately while not affecting someone who goes for a last second unhook before going to stage 2, for instance.

As for people slipping through the cracks and still being able to ragequit, that is true, but it forces them to be in the game longer and to be more interactive to do it. Those are both deterrents to the behavior of trying to quit early and ruin the game for others, but also gives the other survivors time to recognize that and work on gens to progress the game further and minimize their penalty for the missing survivor. The game's balance shifts with each survivor dead or incapacitated, and the killer can only be at one place at a time: If the person ragequitting makes the killer take longer to get them out, the survivors who lost their teammate can at least even the odds during that time. The comment about storing the data to flag them as attempting to ragequit can then be used to corroborate if the other survivors report them if they continue to disrupt the match. People will always be able to quit by disconnecting their internet/closing the application/etc, but they put a disconnect button in there for a reason: By disconnecting early from a match, you are agreeing to the terms involving your DC penalty, while people use ragequitting on hook to bypass that penalty entirely.

There are a lot of types of data that the game can be tracking, but isn't. It was originally designed in a "P2P" environment, where it would base all of its core foundation of logic on the "host" of the match, which would be the killer specifically. In that type of system, there was no centralized server to maintain consistency for all of the data in a match, so it was more understandable that many integrity checks were not possible in the middle of a match. When they switched over to dedicated servers, many of these types of systems became possible but not implemented. To their defense, it takes a LOT of work to rewrite everything to use the potential of the new structure, so I'm not surprised they have not rewritten everything to use these types of solutions. It does remain a viable way to address fixes going forward however, which is why I wish they would use it more when it can be used to fix situations like this. If nothing else, I absolutely hope that using similar systems to remove video recording ends up being part of their reporting system overhaul they're working on for the future.

Issues like camping/tunneling/genrushing/etc are all a bit more tricky situations to handle, because they have legitimate causes and affects for both sides. They are a product of circular logic, if gens are too fast than killers need be more efficient to keep up with them, which means that survivors need to be more efficient to keep up with killers being more efficient, and so on. Many of those types of issues would easily be resolved if there was less of a potential shift each time a survivor dies, which is why any overhauls regarding those elements would best be directed at that issue in their center.

Also I know that I tend to type in run-on sentences that don't always translate well (especially with stuff like Deepl or google translate) so I again apologize for anything that seems off in translation.)

No problem, I'm always happy to help people learn or understand more. I dabble in some very amateur game development myself so sometimes I find myself explaining things in ways that might not be as apparent without any of that knowledge, but I'm glad I was able to explain things well enough. At the end of the day I always prefer when people understand each other better instead of finding details to argue over, especially seeing how many things we agree on :)

Edit: for the record, I should mention that no two environments are the same, so there can be real reasons for them to be unable to implement one or any of my suggestions. I tried to keep my suggestion as universal as possible, but there could very well be restrictions within the engine or systems already in place that could affect whether they're possible or not. All to be taken with a small grain of salt since its not from one of their in house devs, of course.

I agree.

It's one of the worse things to experience as Survivor solo queue - a crybaby player trying to suicide.

I'm always baffled by suiciders when I play KiLLaH. I don't even camp or tunnel... I'm just running Distressing, Thrill, Dark Devotion, and a random 4th perk.

What if you just started a match,but it just hits that you need to take a ######### ?

It's just a difference of balance philosophy.

We both just want what we think is best for the game.

That is one hell of a strawman you've got there. At least make it witty and fun.

Just get rid of the self unhook ability except in the case of deliverance, which would re-enable it with a 100% chance. Luck is a meme with no real use for 6 years, and 99% of the time "hook escape" is just "suicide button." Most self-escapes happen when the person is TRYING to kill themselves lol I am sure people will cry it's a massive survivor nerf, as if there were oodles of people genuinely going for hook escapes with their 4% chance. Just make it still function with deliverance, and give slippery meat a new effect (not the first time, I think?) There: Now people either stay in the match or DC and eat the penalty.

If you're worried about AFKers, then put something in to kick AFK players after a solid amount of time with no movement. Thus forcing them to at least move the character now and then to avoid a kick. Have kicks give a DC penalty.

"AFKing and sandbagging are against rules and can eventually lead up to a permanent ban."

Really? So If my child starts having a seizure and I rushed them to the hospital leaving the game, I risk being perma banned?

Do you think killers should have a surrender button, that bypasses the DC penalty, and they can use it whenever they aren’t having fun?

It’s not really a deep rabbit hole. I’m asking you specifically if you think killers should have a surrender button, that bypasses the DC penalty, so they don’t feel trapped in an unfun game.

And the killer can use this whenever they want. If the killers thinks they are playing against a SWF, they can hit this surrender button. If someone gets a flashlight save, they can press this surrender button. If they are on a map they don’t like, they can press the surrender button.

So you're basically saying that when survivors complain that the game is unfun, that BHVR should do something about it.... But if killers complain that the game is unfun, BHVR shouldn't do anything? This means your argument really isn't "BHVR should fix things that are unfun", but instead, your argument is "BHVR should fix things if survivors think they are unfun, but BHVR can ignore the things killers think are unfun"

Thanks, thats the correct answer

What about hook suicide to save your friend and give them a chance for hatch? I think that's a great opportunity and use of the HS.

Wait are r you really trying to say that you think that those "reasons" are validating the necessity of an option to leave a trial for survivor?

1-6 are nothing more than selfish, childish cherry picking arguments, 7 is debatable and 8 could solved by setting a hard timer, of for example 15 minutes, after which the trial ends in a draw for everybody still in it.

But none of them are a good argument for a good reason to allow free exit out of a trial, 1-6 especially not.

Thats why I called out a while back you were conflating my arguments with other people. Your oversimplification ignores the fact that there is no parity between roles, killers do not have an "easy out" that bypasses the DC penalty. I already posited that either a solution that gives killers a way to forfeit in a non-abusable way, or one that prevents hook suicides bypassing DCs, would be acceptable approaches to parity. Obviously I would prefer the latter because hook suicides affect both the devs stats negatively, while also only really discouraging them and minimizing their impact on the rest of the game.

You're allowed to disagree, despite the implications your "jackboots" comments create.

You're kinda doing it again. You are trying to dismiss everything, even a uniform solution, because of a personal bias and de-prioritizing something that affects people other than yourself. You think that the problem is only "survivors can have unfun games" when that is literally how the game works for every player who agrees with the EULA in order to connect to its servers. You are ignoring the fact that people using the soft-sanctioned ragequit method are making those games unfun for other survivors, and trying to disregard it as a symptom. You're also going back to implying that I am forcing anyone to play anything, which I still am not: They just have to take the penalty of their fickle nature like everyone else who plays the game.

And one last time, the amount of effort I proposed is less than either of us have spent typing in this thread. Considering its their job that they get paid to do, I would think that little effort would be well within the potential of a team that is organized, educated, and directed.

I also have to mention that you have said absolutely nothing about the other idea that I have mentioned multiple times, in regards to giving killers a forfeit option as an alternative way of achieving parity. It is consistent with your logic but your bias prevents you from even entertaining the thought. If you are unable to prioritize the causes and effects of game issues on both sides, you aren't seeking balance, just advantage.

Do you think I want to lord over other people?

Not so.

I am consistent in my thinking that selfish DC should not be done in online games.

Isn't the reason this discussion was erected because you saw a problem with people killing themselves to DC for the purpose of avoiding a DC penalty? I believe so.

For that matter you seemed to be affirming that if you didn't enjoy it you would ######### without incurring the DC penalty.

I wanted you to imagine how I would feel if someone other than you did the same selfish DC & suicide, that is like a dictatorship.

Ok, in your opinion both selfish DC and suicide should be affirmed and it would be more fun to do so in general.

So you're just arguing and not actually reading any of my ideas, then clout throwing to try to dismiss them. You say you are a programmer as well and I have no reason or evidence to doubt that claim, but you should certainly know how easy it is to write simple conditional checks and apply them to all relevant dependencies within an environment through means of an event handler. The game was originally written in Blueprints so you should understand how absolutely simple my recommendations would be if that is their base (they have since upgraded away from it, thankfully.) Also "addressing toxicity" is an extremely unfocused goal because not only does it have no clear definition, but it is focused around human behavior as something that can be "fixed" instead of damage controlled through (de)incentivizing behavior accordingly. Kinda exactly like the ideas that I have put forward.

The most important question for me... Are hook-suicides statistically significant enough to warrant spending time on adding a punishment for.

Not only are they due to how they create a one sided shift to one of their core statistics that they use as a metric for balance, it has a disproportionate effect where 1 event determines the outcome of matches for 4 people other than the user that instigates it. Due to both its statistical relevance and its impact having a ratio of 4:1 in determining both outcome and quality of matches, it absolutely has enough statistical relevance. You should also know as a programmer that anecdotes are completely meaningless when discussing relevancy of statistics. And for the thousandth time, the punishment is already in the system and hook suicides specifically bypass it, making it an exploit that circumvents existing measures and bypasses existing failsafes, yet another reason why it would be addressed from a programming perspective. Leaving known vulnerabilities in logic is not exactly high on the list of best practices either.

Does allowing hook-suicides benefit or harm the game as a whole.

Does this stance apply to all players regardless of role? or just the ones you decide it does? It currently does not have pairity in both sides having a workaround to avoid the DC penalty, only one side does. This means that if this was an actual valid consideration, you would be equally willing to explore ways to achieve parity in either direction depending on your answer.

You said it would only take 100 lines of code to fix this issue, but there are some problems here.

Despite that string of excuses, the game was originally written in Blueprints and updated to C++. All of its code structure damn well better have the ability to have an event handler that does simple conditional checks while being able to plug in the dependencies for all relevant actors, you don't need to be the person who wrote the source to do that, especially if you're working directly within that environment and releasing content updates to it every 3 months and adjustments to it every 1.5. This isn't trying to reverse engineer something to create a source port due to lack of source code, they're looking at the same code they do every day they walk into work.

Also direct profit from direct labor is not how projects like this work. Thats how the cosmetic and DLC portion works because they are designed as avenues to increase revenue specifically, but game health and maintenance is a profitless but necessary aspect of maintaining a game as a service over an extended support duration. Its the reason you're even able to discuss anything about how you feel about the balance of the game, and the reason why biased complaints like the ones you've given are even able to see the light of day. This very board does absolutely nothing to directly churn out profit, but it is an example of the necessities that come with maintaining a game like this.

If I was the project manager for BHVR (I've never done game development so I'm going to try and think like a BHVR project manager here and use my knowledge as a system admin to supplement my thinking), I want to keep players but I also want to continue making money from players by making content and so far, I haven't seen significant enough drop in players to indicate to me that this is a worthwhile endeavor.

I'm sorry but this is completely dishonest. Did you not recently make a doompost about steamcharts numbers decreasing in another topic?

You're more than happy to frame it as survivors being dissatisfied with the game, yet suddenly those issues don't matter? Especially when a single ragequit has a 4:1 ratio of impact? Please don't be disingenuous with your concerns. But to address the point directly, yes, due to the actions of 1 affecting the product quality of 4 other people, it is an important consideration. Just like how you prioritize "killer toxicity" as important since that, too, has a 4:1 impact ratio. Notice how the prioritization of one specific side vs the userbase as a whole makes the difference.

If I coded 100 lines of code, that would probably take me about an hour per 10 lines of code, plus testing.

Absolutely not how it works. 1 line of code can literally be just brackets depending on your coding structure for one, but giving the benefit of the doubt that you're not using Allman indentation (despite the fact i'm pretty sure i've seen devs comment in topics expressing to prefer it) each definition does not use large amounts of information per line unless it is required to specifically as additional data to the contents before it (namely as args.) Lines of code can be literally just a word, value, and appropriate syntax. From my personal amateur experience, you can do testing in stages which means you're not testing it with every new line or anything that unnecessarily inefficient. You create the base and appropriate nullchecks to make sure all necessary casing is accounted for to prevent runtime errors or other aborts, you test the foundation, then you apply each dependency and test those. Your main limitation shouldn't really more than the time it takes to compile after each change.

And, lastly, you keep de prioritizing the issue as much as humanly possible to try to get it to fit into your logic, instead of being logically consistent with your approach to the situation. Still no mention of a forfeit option for killers even though I have offered it as a potential common ground solution multiple times. You are purposely limiting your scope and it prevents you from being able to be unbiased in your outlook on the situation.

Clarification Edit: I have mentioned it in other posts, but to reiterate, I have acknowledged that my information regarding how easy or difficult any aspects of my change are to incorporate specifically into the code of DBD is incomplete. It is all going off of the assumption of common application, which is why much of it can require additional considerations to be able to fit within existing 6 year code that I do not have access to. My point is mainly focused around emphasizing that even if the process ends up being different than my assumption, it should still be well within a reasonable degree for game health changes and updates as are currently worked on and released.

Uff, when the pot calls the kettle black. (On being biased)