The problem I see with DbD and why it's hard to balance.
Hello everyone. How's it going? I hope you have a great week ahead of you.
So... from under the sea of complaints, here it comes an actual thread. Beside the obvious... meaning this game being asymetrical. What are your "this is why it's hard to balance" thoughts?
For me, I think one of the most problematic things to balance around is looping. But wait, don't scroll down and type the "git gud" answer yet, listen out.
Looping is the most optimal way to play around tiles, that's underestandable BUT, Why aren't all killers equiPped to deal with looping? That's because looping was not in the mindset of devs to begin with, that's why the first killers mostly rely on the "chase and hit" or as we call it, M1 gameplay... and why it's a problem? Most survivors don't know how to loop and if they do, they end doing it poorly, which even if you might find hard to believe, it's the way the devs intended the game to be played.
They wanted for it to be a classical experience of "it's the killer, run away" that we see in the horror movies that we love. Think about it, if you see a movie with Michael Myers running around a table to catch Laurie for an hour. Would you watch it? I think that we can agree that it won't sell well. Now, looping, as the most optimal way to use resources, is indeed, not fun, not for the one being the killer and I think you as a survivor don't either.
Again, this is not a complain about looping but what do you think? Why it is so hard for this game to be balanced? and also. SHOULD this game be balanced at all?
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DbD is hard to balance cause of the large amount of varriety and rng that is in the game.
But that's also it's biggest strength. It's the reason why this game is still going strong after 6 years despite having the same gameplay loop
They need to trim the extreme outliners a bit but overal a perfectly balanced dbd would die very quickly.
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This is a terrible idea, and would gut the survivor community on both solo queue and SWF ends.
Looping may not have been originally intended, but it's indisputably a major part of the game now and is also the best part to a lot of survivor players. It's the whole reason people complain about anti-loop killers, and why killers like Wesker and Blight (minus busted add-ons) are generally well-liked.
A lot of people claim change x y or z would kill DBD, but I truly think something like this user's suggestion would be what actually did kill the game.
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To answer your question, the simple fact is that balance is not really achievable because a) it means something different to everyone and b) the game is too RNG-based and something unexpected or uncontrollable is always at play. Devs can try their best to make perks, powers, and items as fair as they can - but the human element of the player is simply always going to be at odds with balance.
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This is off the top of our heads but overall, we think it's because there's to many variables to keep track of.
First is the point you went over so we're skipping that.
Next the veriety of killer powers, perks and maps. Some maps are fair for certain killers while others make it oppressive. Same with perks. Everything is a chaotic stew (which we like) with everything taken into account.
Skill levels of each player. What is oppressive to 1 may not be to others and often when you get a majority to agree on something, it's because of annoyance, not balance (though it's good for the health of the game)
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The problem is this:
The game was made to be hide and go seek, with hit and run being an important part of that, and skill checks making generators take unreliable amounts of time as it's expected that the tension and spooks will cause them to fail checks in the course of the game.
As survivors played the game, they found that hiding was less effective than just running around corners, because their smaller Collison box let them loop killers (who have a larger box and take longer to go around corners). Additionally, survivors got so good at the skill checks that they both never failed them and ended up hitting the bonus slot so often than generators got repaired faster than ever.
This was not seen as a bad thing by the devs, who decided to lean into it. Emergent gameplay re-crafted the whole scope of the game and optimal survivor strats became key to the whole thing.
However, when killers found that hit and run didn't work very well, gens flew too quickly, some killers can't handle loops, and all the other issues killers have, every single aspect of killer emergent gameplay got slapped down (to various degrees).
Too hard to down all the survivors? Just take out one as quickly as possible with tunneling and camping and then the remaining three will be easier to manage. Some killers can't handle loops? Just play killers who don't have to loop or whose powers help negate loops. Gens go too fast? Just use all gen slowdown perks/addons.
And we see how all the killer powers that make them strong on loops get slapped down. How new killers are being designed to actively underperform every time, for fear that they might actually be good for once. How all the slow down and regression perks get nerfed to oblivion. How more and more and MORE survivor perks/passives get added to defeat tunneling and camping.
Because, when survivors abuse game systems, that becomes core to the game itself. When killers do it, it's seen as a problem that needs to be removed.
The problem (and why it's hard to balance) is because both sides aren't treated evenly.
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Game balance can mean 2 things: whether every game should be balanced or whether across a lot of games it should be balanced.
The first one I think is no. The has a lot of RNG and I think that makes it interesting. Sure, any particular map/setup might be killer/survivor sided, but I think the variability keeps it interesting.
I think it should be balanced long term, ie if you are an average player across 100 games you should have equal wins and losses.
As for looping, while the game is well outside the devs original design, I don't think it is a major factor in balance at this point. The devs are well aware and have transitioned to it with game design. The balance issue comes from all the variability in the game - a ton of perks, very different killers, and that survivors can be uncoordinated or on constant coms. On top of that the games add-ons really factor into how a game plays - a killer with two iri add-ons is considerably stronger than one without - 4 survivors running spare part will finish gens a lot quicker than 4 without.
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All multiplayer games become imbalanced in time because there's a split in every playerbase between "Sweats" and "Casuals". CSGO might be an outlier in that it only attracts competitive-minded players, but I've never played it.
For DBD, you could create separate queues. One for pub matches and the other for competitive. Competitive queues could earn rewards and cosmetics, or something. It probably wouldn't do much, though.
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…. 0_0
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It needs to be a bit of both. Otherwise you end up with scenarios that are either a certain win for the killer, or a certain win for the survivors. They might occur an equal amount and thus be balanced over the course of 100 games, but if those extremes make up a significant or majority of your games, then no one is going to enjoy any of them.
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This game is impossible to balance fully. The blessing and curse of asymmetrical.
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No it's cause we as gamers learn the game either really fast or really slow
Also it's "boring" to just hold M1... for the whole game
Lets take your example....
Looping didn't exist at first cause nobody saw the benefit to do it... why would we show ourselves to the Killer
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If it was not designed that way, it became reinforced by the devs as new maps were added and new looping spots as well.
Because there just isn't a way to win otherwise. If a survivor was just running in a straight line until hit, and killer running after them in a straight line until they hit, not only would it take very little time for killer to catch up and they would 4k every time before gens could be done, but it would also be very boring. There would not be any expression of skill on either side. Once we could say "just stealth and don't get caught then!", but the devs are frowning on this playstyle and nerfing it. So looping is all survivors got.
I'm not saying there's nothing wrong with the game or that there aren't issues with looping, but I just... respectfully disagree with you.
And for the record, I'd pay to see Laurie loop Michael around a table. It sounds goofy as hell ! X)
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Game is not balanced because
- no real match making system, because queue time is valued as more important than balanced matches
- survivors are split into solo and swf, a gap that’s been ignored for over six years and simply cannot be closed, no matter what kind of mechanics are going to be implemented
- killers are not equally strong: Trapper - Nurse. Another gap that was not solved in over six years
- RNG: this is the one flaw I could live with
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I’ll add that, at this point, how many perk combinations are possible? It has to be a lot for each side and they can be of any sort. Though many are weaker than others.
I enjoy discovery synergies. Seeing weird triple exhaustion perk builds and the like. But maybe adding perk slot types is an idea to make balancing easier, choose only one info perk for example but equalize their power.
Map wide spies from the shadows for example against discordance could be interesting.
Just spitballing though, I like the explanations in the thread of hiding being more integral before than looping is now. It still is in the end game I think, or intended to be with perks like low profile and sole survivor.
I just wish the stealth masters were rewarded during main gameplay more. They can’t even stealth unhook without a blaring two people over here notification.
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The game is so hard to balance owing to so many variables in each trial. For example: map RNG, 4-perk choices for 4 survivors (16 in total), killer perks, and specific powers, not to mention individual player skill and game knowledge.
If you balance for new, inexperienced players, the game becomes too easy for the higher MMR brackets. Conversely, if you balance for more experienced players, the game becomes too hard and un-fun for new players.
There's no way to truly 'balance' DBD owing to these factors. No matter what the devs try, a certain percentage of the player base will say the game is unfair and killer/survivor sided.
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There are:
- bad players and good players
- 1 survivor character
- Solo and group players
- A lot of killer characters at different strenght levels.
Were trying to push bad solo survivor players to be par with good group/comm players by buffing the same character used by both.
One of the problems is that one side gets adjusted upwards and the other downwards.
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A limitation to looping for minutes on end isnt bad. the game must go on somewhat give other survivors a time to be chased
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I think it is even more nuanced than that. The game itself is pretty balanced in my opinion. However everything varies so much that you could go from an easy 4k to a 4 man out in just one match. This is partly because we have 30 killers with overall very different powers, 219 perks, more than 650 addons and 40 maps. Think about what a good Nurse (currently) with her best addons and perks on Midwich can do to a group of good survivors and now compare that to that same Nurse playing with mediocre perks and addons on Coal Tower against the same survivors. Now think about how the best Trapper in the world with his best perks and addons performs on (current) Eyrie against a verystrong SWF.
The best BHVR can do is balancing individual killers, perks and addons and tone down the extremes a bit.
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That user's suggested limitation wouldn't be productive for either side:
- A good SWF would just take turns shuffling through their limits while the other 3 work on gens.
- Solo queue would be decimated as usual, which is against the devs' current intentions of giving solo queue some love.
- For the killer, it would further encourage tunneling, but if you get a good looper and finally down them, you're wasting even more of your time by focusing on that one person just to wait out their limit.
At the end of the day, if looping is going on for minutes on end, chances are there's a skill discrepancy. Or even if there's not, it's up to the killer to know when to break chase.
There are 4 survivors, you are not required to continuously chase the same one until you down them.
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- That is fine.
- How would SoloQ be decimated?
- It would actually prevent tunneling cause it would not allow good loopers to keep going forever. making that aspect less impactful.
I think there is value in limiting the unlimited energy that Survivors have, you cant just put it all on the Killer to be the entertainment. This game is already incredibly safe for Survivors despite, setting a maximum would make even games with a skill discrepancy, pleasant for both sides.
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Balance the game? Get rid of bloodlust and gen rushing perks. BOOM. done.
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