DbD balancing for casual players is smart decision, VHS balanced for top 1%, current players at 39
Remember how Trickstershadow, and Dowsey, Jaee, hyped that game, and there is a big market for balanced competitive 1vs4 game.
Turns out that they were completely wrong, and in fact dbd devs are knowing what are they doing, also all of them returned to play exclusively.
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This is what I've been saying in different threads about how DbD needs to balance around all players instead of solely the top. Unfortunately VHS, which had potential, decided to make decisions based around the top percentage of their playerbase which is a disaster waiting to happen for games based on participation.
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Obviously. Balancing around the Top players would also not really be fun for Killer. I am sure that some will love the idea of winning 300 games in a row against SoloQ and casual SWFs and then losing the occasional game against a really strong SWF, but for most people it will probably be boring.
Balancing around the Top 1% is the worst idea ever and people who really want this have not much knowledge of the game.
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balancing wasn't the only or main reason that vhs tanked, people couldn't even get their foot in the door with all the server and discord hacks, as well as ddos attacks. and anyone who even managed to get in constantly faced regular crashes that was rivaled only by ow2's launch. so people eventually started playing something else and people forgot about it.
but the few people who did got in and did stuck around, it was a pretty hard trial by fire experience which was very frustrating especially for the monster players. who not only had to learn the controls and mechanics of their monsters as well as the maps, but also know exactly what the 4 teens and what they and their weapons all do.
which in turn turned people off from playing monster, which meant there were fewer lobbies for survivors to connect to, which caused queue times to get longer for the player base which was already small thanks to all the server and security issues.
dbd in 2020-2021 actually faced a similar conundrum where the killer experience was pretty awful with the second old ds, dh server validation, a year straight of bad, incomplete and buggy killers, awful map reworks that made them survivor sided, as well as a new map that bsod players systems. the killer population either switched to survivor or moved on to other games. until in 2022 where they started making big sweeping changes and actually communicated to players for once.
i didnt even know the vhs game was released on steam until like 3 months after the release, despite how much the community was talking about it and i only heard about it back because of all the hacking because there werent a lot of content creators covering its release. it probably didnt help that dbd around that time got better some ways.
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Always confuses me when people act like balancing around the top means making it so Killer always wins except against the very best Survivors.
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I concur. Killers shouldn't be balanced around the performance of the very top and neither should Survivors. Doing so is unfair to the players and saps enjoyment out of the role.
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That's not what I said. I'm saying people seem to think for some reason that balancing around the top means making the game heavily unbalanced outside of the top level.
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That's not why VHS is mostly dead.
All of the following happened between when streamers were hyping it up an when it released.
1. A DDOS attack.
2. A lengthy period of radio silence.
3. A rebranding.
4. Their Discord getting hacked.
5. No marketing push to announce that the game was finally out.
I'll freely admit that VHS is much more punishing than DBD is, but trying to make it out like that is its biggest problem is incredibly inaccurate.
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VHS isn't failing because they balanced around top level play. It's failing because the Monster role is insanely boring and they haven't made any meaningful changes to the gameplay loop since beta. Monsters are mostly copy paste and there is zero mechanical skill curve with them if you have even 200 hrs of DbD killer. You are at the mechanical skill cap of VHS Monster within 5 hours if you come from DbD. Players repeatedly asked for ways to make Monster more engaging and after almost 2 years they got "M1 vending machines".
A boring ambush meta has nothing to do with the level of play they're balancing for. That's just a bad core design choice.
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well if the mori rework/Ub basekit becomes ever a thing you know the DBD devs go the exact same route, balancing around better players, since the conditions for wins are more tryhard then.
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People act like it's impossible to balance for both lower skill and higher skill. Plus the idea that the game will completely die if we focus on balancing around getting good at the game is also weird, because it implies that people will only stick around if they can win games without being good at the game.
Maps are a good place to touch when it comes to high level balancing, because many maps are just too safe.
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The reason some streamers try to hype up another game is to get their viewers to watch them play it rather than the game the streamer is tired of playing. This is a huge problem with dbd and we do end up with some negative Nancy streamers who cant quit cause of money.
None of those changes are set in stone yet.
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Its misinformation from Dowsey, the game was extremely hyped with 100k+ views before release, and he thought it will be big, when turned out the game is tanking because its balanced for top level players , he returned to dbd, and released the video.
He even said that monster is fine and at high level the winrate is exactly 50%, so game is balanced, when he played in the eternally long closed beta and always defended that beta should be long to be properly tested for "bugs" and "balance".
To be honest no matter how you market a bad game, noone will stick around.
The other thing at lauch the game had like 5k players, yet after a month lost 60% playerbase, i dont think it was about marketing, again a good game would have made people interested. But outside of streamers noone was impressed with sweat fest that game is, simply wasnt fun at all.
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Maps are a hard one. Tiles are either safe or a free hit in many cases. Even on a killer like Freddy or Sadako, I know I can get a hit at pretty much every filler pallet in the game unless that pallet is 100% safe.
High level survivor play has to be considered, but high level killer play also has to be considered when it comes to maps. Players tend to focus on the former and forget the latter.
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Yeah they really hoped that the game would be successful to finally play other game than dbd.
And turned out was biggest mistake to listen people like Dowsey and Jaee they all said is monster is fine during beta, yet most of the time they played teen. In fact the lesson is here dont listen to streamers, because they dont represent the majority.
However I liked that OTZ played few games in the beta, and said that monster is awful to play (remember the guy who enjoyed early dbd as killer) and liked Home Sweet Home survive as killer too. So think about it how bad the game is for more casual focused players
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VHS has a lot of things I don't like. It has a few I completely like. That said, the difficulty can be brutal. The monster being the target of the teens makes it so the monster needs to be ready to push aggressively or play hard defense at the drop of a hat. It's kind of playstyle whiplash. Also, tracking is much harder for the monster. Footprints only show up when a teen is injured, and are easy to miss if you aren't actively scanning for them. Combined with tons of LoS breaking and all maps being indoors, and you have a total hide and seek game with few hints. Teens turn corners and just vanish.
Monster powers often felt very short and blunt compared to other games. It always felt like they had no reach with attacks or abilities. Like everything had to be done while sniffing a teens back.
Teens either had a weapon and were fairly strong, or didn't and had to hide. Looping isn't as much of a thing. This made teen either feel powerful or hopeless based on what was in their hands. Jukes were much easier to pull off, though.
The customization and mini games were pretty good. I like that perks were not straight upgrades, rather playstyle modifications.
While the game may be balanced, it never felt like you could do much to turn a match. Early progress was what set the overall match. Upsets never seemed to be much of a thing when I played. Also, the match could totally stall if you had s monster that didn't want to try a play, and teens bunkering in a room with weapons.
I think the game had potential, but it's design limitations hurt its long term prospects.
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I disagree. None of that would have mattered in the long run if Monster had been fun and the skill floor difference between Monster and Teen hadn't been so staggeringly different. VHS had over 6,000 concurrent players on Steam when EA took place to a peak of 140 concurrent players as of yesterday.
If Monster and especially new player Monster had been a better experience as was said so many times in closed beta they would have stuck around and Teens wouldn't have had 20+ minute queues followed by any new Teens only meeting the sweatiest Monsters (who were the only ones left) which cratered the numbers on the Teen side.
It was the balancing around the top 1% and only really listening to a group of 50 people that sunk it.
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That's only part of it. While what you said about Monster play being boring and mechanically limited is true there is also the additional factor of Teens were easier to pick up than Monster. During the closed beta, I played both sides concurrently for 80 games and recorded the results. While at about 50 games my win rate as Monster equalized to that of Teen at the beginning my win rate as Teen was literally six times higher.
I pointed out that almost nobody would stick around for 40 to 50 games to have a decent chance of winning and the skill floor for Monster had to be dramatically lowered and I was far from the only one. This was ignored as it was balanced at the top.
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Pretty much, it was fun for Dowsey, Jaee, whose job and life to play games 12+hours a day, but the real playerbase who needs to work to live outside of games couldnt enjoy the game, because was balanced around top level players and streamers whose job to play games
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You seem to me like you are pretty set in your belief. That's fine, but do try to keep an open mind to alternate theories as well.
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I just edited the post instead of double posting. I think the edit clarifies my position a bit more if you'd like to see why.
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To me, it seems like your primary position is that you think the game being balanced at the top is the #1 contributing factor in the game failing, when other people are suggesting a host of other factors.
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Balancing around the top wasn't as much of the issue imo as the rest of the game design. It promoted not getting chased if you didn't have a weapon as a teen. It promoted not engaging a teen with a weapon unless you could get a clear drop on them as the monster. Despite the objectives seeming to promote more interaction between the two sides, it actually discouraged it unless one side had a clear and major advantage. I feel the power dynamics were too extreme, which stemmed from the core gameplay design. Every engagement felt tense and, often, one-sided.
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Balancing around the 1% is what killed Overwatch
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It is the primary but not the only factor. Without balancing for the top, the new player Monster experience would have been considered. If the new player Monster experience had been better then the new Monsters would have stuck around.
As they didn't, that led to longer and longer queues for Teens and the only Monsters being left being the top of the players who tried the role which eventually would lower the Teen win rates so after the 20 minute Teen queue they would be more likely to lose. This lowered Teen retention as nobody wants to sit in long queues especially to have a bad game after.
All of this occurred because VHS focused on the top and didn't consider the experience of the newer Monster players. As soon as the number queuing for Monster fell to less than 20% of the playerbase the match making systems broke down followed by increasing queue times. This led to the extreme loss in player numbers. VHS had a decent amount of players at the start of EA; they lost them after.
This was then exacberated by what @edgarpoop mentioned; for the those that did stick around Monster was mechanically simple (although very strategically complex), not that much fun, and involved a lot of downtime which is boring. Not that many people stuck around though as most new Monsters just left before realizing this. This pattern was seen multiple times in the closed beta.
It's a bad idea to focus on balancing for the top if you need participants. People play to have fun and all sides and levels need to have fun if the game is to be healthy. If the sport is a spectator sport like professional sports, yes, focus on the top but for a game that's participation based focusing on the top is usually harmful.
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Killer is absolutely miserable to play on VHS, because every survivor has voice communications and map pings.
That is the lesson DBD should learn from VHS.
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I will say I agree that balancing across the range of spectrums is the way to go.
It feels like VHS became what it was because they were trying to make a competitive game before they made a fun game and then kind of forgot to make the game fun.
My personal experience playing VHS was I played the teen tutorial, the monster tutorial, and then just found it to be too similar to DBD except with more anxiety, more motion sickness, and less fun. The "ambush meta" for VHS makes monster just seem like a complete chore and the lack of visual cues for teens makes it very beginner unfriendly. Then there's just the unnecessary "monster stares into the sky each time they get a hit" which is extremely disorienting. It then just feels like the proper way to play is to use your power and, if you don't get a hit, hide behind a wall until your cooldown comes back.
The problem is all of these seem to exist for "balance" reasons and the fun seems to just be missing. I'd say that VHS's problem isn't that they balanced for the top therefore it's not fun, but that their intention was to make a competitive game before making a fun and unique game because of their desire to make a perfectly balanced game at the top level.
One thing BHVR understands well is that the fun part needs to be a priority and then you can balance it afterwards. Sometimes this makes balancing at all different levels is harder.
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Yeah really the main thing that devs get lot of negativity, however they are doing really good job, because no matter the problems, the game is still fun, and they dont listen to streamers only.
As for VHS they just copied things from DbD without knowing why they are even there.
Like monster looking up after a hit, which might makes sense in dbd because in dbd killer is immortal cant be killed, while monster in vhs can be killed thats the teen objective. So they took the mechanics from dbd, and decided to change the formula, but these mechanics didnt made any sense in vhs gameworld.
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Vhs is dead because they never marketed themselves after they close their beta for security reasons, and the monster experience was boring.
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The only thing holding DBD above water is the licenses they have in the game, if another game dropped tomorrow that had all these licensed killers/survivors, DBD would probably die because variety is what's helping it draw in players and stay running, many people who weren't here from the start probably found the game because of a licensed character being in it
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I mean that's exactly what it means. Balancing killers around the top 1% means making all killers able to hold their own and do well reliably against good 4-man SWFs. This in turn means that anyone he isn't a good 4-man SWF gets rolled.
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I know it will never happen but I wish BHVR would copy the emoting from VHS. I had some fun times dancing with my team in the courtyard of the Hotel and seeing Wart do a jig before leaping at me was just precious.
I think the closest DBD has gotten to that kind of fun is when the pig mask for Meg came out and everyone crouching around pretending to be Amanda. Or seeing a bunny Feng and have her nod fast to get the ears to floop.
Also I think people forget that VHS and DBD are asymmetrical. Things can't be perfectly balanced.
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Balancing for the top 1% means taking out all the things that get broken when the top 1% uses it. It means things like Hyperfocus would need to be nerfed into the ground, because we would evaluate the perk based on what would happen if a survivor could reliably hit every great skill check.
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But if only the top 1% could actually use it why spend the resources creating it and maintaining it when the other 99% won't use it (and who will provide, roughly, 99 more times gross revenue than the 1%)?
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Because there are a lot of average people that will still use the perk, and it wont be overpowered when the average person uses it. I see optimal hyperfocus builds in my games, but I also see a lot of people using it without a toolbox, or using it without the optimal supporting perks, and they aren’t getting a lot of value from it.
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That would mean taking out Starstruck for Nurse too, in fact that could even mean removing or reworking nurse,because when played by a godly player, no counter, even a 25k SWF god like survivor squad would lose to it, unless they are playing the restricted version.
This recently could have been seen Hens's SWF 25k hours Vs Alf's Nurse
they played 3 games
2 games where perks were free to pick, Nurse won
1 games where they played by tournament rules then SWF won.
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Yes, balancing for the top 1% would mean removing starstruck from Nurse. But the game isn’t balanced like that.
Balancing for the top 1% would also mean dead hard would need a super nerf, because we would evaluate the perk based on what would happen if survivors could use the perk absolutely perfectly, every single time.
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That would also suck the fun out of the game for many of the players and is another reason to not balance around the top 1%.
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I've never played, but from what seen it never was about the top 1% balance. As listed from others they've had problems with marketing, server security, over hyping the game before official release.
The biggest problems I've noticed myself the teens had a lot more things to do and far more enjoyable to play as. Monsters were the opposite, dull, boring more stressful, very high learning curve for new players and if the teens were way above your skill the role just flips. The monster noob wouldn't feel like they're a threat and they just hide while the teens are the ones hunting the monster.
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VHS died for many reasons and balancing wasn't even in top 10.
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what... idk if your keeping up with the DBD player numbers but since killers buff dbd player base dropped off hard RE2 DLC couldnt even save it we are back down to 21k-26k but in the year of RE1 DLC player base was on a concurrent 60k+
and im just talking about steam of course, survivors were a lot happier waiting in queues talking to friends casually compared to now.
sure its more balanced now but at what cost, killing solo survivor killing casual swf with killers sweaty 4 stack slow downs?
on top of all this there is more DC/suicide on hook more than ever compared to when penalty was ever implemented.
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From a purely logical standpoint the only way to balance the game is if 4 survivor's working perfectly together win 100% of the time, any other metric skews too heavily in the killers favor, it's either only SWF wins every game or Killer wins every game against solo & SWF.
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How is VHS balanced for the top tier with it's one sided terror track mechanic, teen hand holding with mechanics like rift and book of the dead?
It died because the AI tier play style of monster is beyond boring. "Stand in a room and wait for cooldowns -> move into next room using cooldowns so you don't insta die -> rinse and repeat and never get greedy" is awful.
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I mean Monster in VHS is absolutely awful to play as, as many people have already pointed out. Tracking is much harder, monster-attack hitboxes are a lot smaller and precise, you get punished much harder for mistakes, literally miss an attack and you lose a stigma.
All of these things were constantly brought up as issues throughout closed beta and early access but the devs didn't prioritise it enough, and longer-term players in the Discord hand-waved any criticism away with "Well it's not an issue after you've played enough". I'd say monster being miserable for newer players was and still is THE biggest issue VHS has and many other issues are a direct result of it, but it'd take a complete rework of how monster works to fix, and they don't seem to want to do that.
Really it seems like they wanted the game to be all about Teens having fun, and then figured "Oh we need someone to actually play as the Monster". Should have just made the monster AI at this point.
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VHS is fundamentally flawed. By making it so that survivors can kill the killer, they made playing killer vastly unpleasant to play as. All teens do in that game is corner up, ambush and bully the killer. When your nascent online game has 20 minute queues for the most popular role and the other role is actively hostile it's probably not going to last long.
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Yeah but anytime that issues was brought up Dowsey just said he has over 90% winrate as monster thats why he playing as teen.
Later when Dowsey stopped playing, devs said that Trickstershadow has 50% winrate against the very best teen squads, so the game is perfectly balanced, remember that guy played non-stop for months as monster, and he was really good.
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yeah but even with highly negative responses from BOTH sides they keep pushing for at least 2 other PTBs instead of just scrapping the whole thing
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which is not what we want. I dont want to get rolled just because i dont have 4k hours in this game. And this accounts for both sides.
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No it doesn't. It means that games are more likely to be determined by which side is more skilled. Also, I'm not arguing "balance killers among the top 1% of Survivors." I'm arguing "balance the game among the top 1% of players." The goal is not "make sure Killers can consistently win against the best Survivors." It's "make sure the best players can win regardless of which side they are on." Note how I am not referring to a specific side, unlike you.
That doesn't make any sense. When players are of roughly equal skill, the win rates between them SHOULD be close to 50/50, which some minor variations between killers (since all Survivors play identically). Obviously perfect balance is not achievable, but doesn't mean we can strive to get close to that.
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If that is your stance, i'll be waiting for my nurse buffs then, since she is consistently the "worst" kill the in the game based on the "average" player statistics.
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I don't know enough about VHS to know if they were actually balancing around the top 1% or not, but it doesn't make sense to balance a game on such high level of play, when the game is about bringing people in. People won't join if the game has been balanced at a non-entry level. It has to be more accommodating.
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But here is the thing, if one survivor isnt skilled then the game is lost for survivor team, because killer only has to rely on themselves, while survivors are a team. So if you balance around that top tier killer player vs top tier survivor team has about 50% winrate, that means all survivor has to be very good in order to stand a chance.
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