Killer is way too powerful (From a Solo Queue opinion)
After over 300hrs in this game playing a mix of killer and survivor I’m really on the edge of letting this game go.
now don’t get me wrong, a coordinated swf is very powerful but I mostly play solo queue like many others.
the problem is that in solo queue you have no idea what other people are doing, their is no coordination at all. Unless one of the survivors is amazing at looping or the killer is a newbie. You will die 10/10 matches.
playing as a killer for the last couple months I’ve never had a game where I didn’t get less than 3 kills. It’s just so easy to win. I enjoy survivor more because it’s much more challenging, albeit too much.
i think what this game lacked from the beginning was a way to communicate with other survivors. Having a voice chat even if it is just proximity chat would have been critical to this game being able to bring new players in for the long term.
swf can communicate and killers can still succeed? Why punish solo players?
anyway, just needed to voice my opinion. Would love to hear others thoughts.
thanks.
Comments
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I'm terribly sorry that you've always gotten two kills or fewer.
(Beware double negatives)
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I have to disagree. Killers aren't too strong, some of them are entirely too weak. The problem is MMR is such ass that matches are a complete crap shoot. Even without the constant DC/first hook suicides.
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the problem is that in solo queue you have no idea what other people are doing, their is no coordination at all. Unless one of the survivors is amazing at looping or the killer is a newbie. You will die 10/10 matches.This is already being addressed with the upcoming status Icons, its gonna be really funny after the next patch when the forum is flooded with complaints about solo queue matchmaking within the survivor team. Because the MMR is based on only escapes there are plenty of good players stuck with basement MMR ratings because of how bad their teammates are.
i think what this game lacked from the beginning was a way to communicate with other survivors. Having a voice chat even if it is just proximity chat would have been critical to this game being able to bring new players in for the long term.Adding communication is not what the game needs, if you want that you can already get it by finding a SWF.
There is a litany of issues that come with adding voice chat, first and foremost comes in the additional resources required to police it.
Its effectiveness is restricted by several factors as well, Language barriers, having to mute certain players because of annoying things (static, crying babies, music, double audio from non muted tvs, etc.), players deciding to sandbag teammates who dont use the chat or mute them, and the fact that many people will just turn it off without ever using it due to bad experiences in other games.
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I agree totally. Solo q is an unpleasant, punishing experience. In game VC would be an amazing way to improve it. I've made multiple threads on the subject. But a lot of people are worried about toxicity for some reason (as if there would be mute/block/report functions)
A truly coordinated 4 man swf on comms is a nightmare for killer. But only with tight tactics, above average personal skill on each surv, serious experience and map knowledge. Solo q suffers because there is little to no teamwork.
There is also the attitude of the people who play. Since we only have one playlist, sweat lords who optimise every build and tactic are plonked in the same pool as casual players who just wamt to enjoy the game without sweating hard.
Another thing I'm convinced would help the experience of solo q is to make a casual playlist separate from a ranked one. So killers no longer feel the need to sweat 4ks every game to keep building their rank.
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300 hours is still baby territory though.
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so? This is a symptom of DBD's major issue with the skill curve for new players. If a new player can't win games they will stop playing.
If dbd can't retain new players it'll decline. I love this game and would rather it doesn't go the same way as Evolve.
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Some killers are too strong like blight and nurse but most are fine if they don't hard tunnel at beginning of match which is usually gg in soloQ. Some games killers just dominate and everybody dies at 3-4 gens it's feel unbalanced but swf can fix all 5 gens in just minutes and killer only gets few hooks maybe one kill if lucky so that feels also unbalanced. Maybe this game should have some catch up mechanic if killer is stuggling he could get speed boost and gens could go slower. And if survivors are struggling gens could go faster. Better matchmaking would probably help too. Personally as killer I try to make some games balanced by playing fairly and pretend to be worser so survivors have chance to escape.
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I do the same thing if I am stomping at 5 gens, I will slug people on death hook instead of killing them 1 or 2 times, and if the killer is really struggling I will usually try to throw them a semi free hook.
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Killers aren't too strong, definitively not.
I'm not sure how to say this but, 300 hours is not exactly a lot. Usually, one is considered out of the beginners group around 500 hours, and decent around 1000 hours.
The real issue is mixing different skill levels together (both killers and each individual survivor).
When I play against individually strong solos, they know how to act and be a PITA.
When I play with individually strong teammates, we "understand" each-other and we know what to do.
I consider myself an average survivor though, and I have more than 3000 hours in the game.
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This idea has been suggested many times and simply cannot work. Nothing prevents someone from sweating in the "casual" mode.
The only difference is that the worst jerks will go there to find easy preys.
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People bring up hours in this game way too much. If you have talent then you can be better than 99% of the player base in 1k hours in whichever role you are maining. This is not to spite you unparticular or in any way but this game is really not that complex.
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It's never going to remove the issue entirely. But it certainly won't be as relentless as the current single playlist. Look at any game with a casual/ranked split. My experience of those is that the casual games tend to be more enjoyable and have less salt.
In a casual playlist of course you will still get bad games, there will always be trolls and people who play deliberately to annoy other players. But there would certainly be less game where teams get roflstomped. Because sweaty players who only play to win and want that rank BP every month would mostly be on the ranked playlist.
And if surv teams are mostly solo q or casual swfs. The killers will be under less pressure and will be able to play less effective builds and killers without fear of getting genrushed and teabagged constantly. Won't be taking out frustrations as much.
There will always be issues with players playing like #########. But the general dynamic of a casual queue will be different, and generally more pleasant for players who want to enjoy the game without having to constantly run DH, DS, Prove thyself and hyperfocus or eruption, call of brine, bbq and franklin's. Some bad matches of course, but more pleasant even ones than people currently get.
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True dat. I have less than 500 hours. And as killer I have absolutely mangled survs with over 3k hours without too much difficulty. One who clearly had a high opinion of themselves judging by the messages I received afterwards.
There seem to be a lot of elitists in this game with way touch disdain for newer players. I.e. ones who haven't been playing since 2016 🙄
I think some people forget that they need these players to keep the game alive. And some of them actually play pretty well when they understand the basics.
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this illustrates what my impression of what the "skill progression needed to succeed curves" look like. Blue is surv, red is killer. Everyone starts out as a newb but once you leave the absolute newb area where no one knows what they are doing survivors very quickly have to smh make it past a wall-like increase in skill before they can deal with killers who have some idea of what they are doing. Once they have managed to climb that wall (few people do; very few people want to invest dozens, or more like hundreds, of hours into a game to be able to actually play it and enjoy themselves) however, only very few killers can take them on.
With your 300 hours total you're out of the "kiddie pool" and are at the very foot of that wall of a mountain. Your killer experience is alright for the foreseeable future; you won't run into survs who climbed that wall for a while - and even if you do: until you manage to beat them consistently you likely lose enough MMR quickly enough to fall out of that bracket again (after a handful of matches). - As survivor on the other hand.... you either climed that wall ...or you didn't. If you put enough effort in you can get the "game knowledge side" of it rather quickly: learn every killer perk and how they synergise, learn every killer's power and add-ons and how they change the game (aka how you approach the match as a whole but also how you approach certain situations). Then there's also the mechanical side; learning how to loop from scratch and by trial and error will be a long and frustrating thing (because for a good long while you'll get maybe ten or twenty seconds of chase per health state; which doesn't add up to a lot of practise). If you go watch videos and do an hour or two of 1v1 against each killer to focus on working out how they work you'll automatically get enough chase practise to significantly improve. ..... But seriously: how many out of 1000 new players go to those lengths?
That is I think also why you find a lot of survivor mains with a lot of playtime going up against relatively new killers; they probably never bothered to learn perks or add ons or do 1v1s. They're just there for the fun of it and never have and probably never will climb that mountain.
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Start point of that red line needs to start like a 3rd of the way up the chart lol. My first ever killer game was a solid 4k. Took a while for my mmr to throw a team at me who served me a 0k.
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it's not necessarily whichever line is higher succeeds - more like what the curves look like in comparison. Surv learning curve is super steep until you reach a certain point from where it pretty much goes flat again. For killer the curve is not nearly as steep for the longest time -- only toward the end it becomes somewhat steeper (and at the very end is probably a very sharp uptick, depending on the killer, that determines whether or not you can take on those survs who climbed the mountain without relying on the most busted addons and perks the killer in question has)
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Most people don't understand how to play survivor well until at least 1000 hours. When you become efficient and always make great checks you are way more of a threat. When you combine that with good looping and a SWF you can win over and over again.
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Evolve died much quicker than DBD, and for much different reasons than a rough skill curve. That's why SBMM exists; it provides a safe environment for new players to learn until they get released to the adult world. There's plenty of very successful online games that have high skill floors (TF2, CS for some big ones) that continue to get more pop. DBD's numbers are fine, stop being a debbie downer.
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I recommend running aura reading perks in soloQ. i always run kindred and aftercare nowdays. I know what my team is doing and people can see me when i have aftercare on them. Dont rely on the 4 meta perks, in the end its pretty selfish way to play and this is a team game.
My issue in soloQ is that when we have people that are too afraid to take the chase when they have 0 hooks on them, or hide in corners self caring for minutes. This is usually what loses us the game.
If you see someone who is on deathhook being chased and you have 0 hooks or even 1 hook in you go and try to stop the killer. Take the chase and hook. Don't let your teammates die early because of selfish gameplay.
Had many really nice matches yesterday where everyone was working as a team. Took bodyblocks, hooks helped out. Didnt hide in a corner, didnt expect to be carried.
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Okay. Let me see if I can't explain this one a bit.
- You can't separate out solo from SWF like that. Every solo survivor has a choice whether to play solo or in an SWF.
- However, killers don't have a choice. Their next match could be an SWF.
- I've got about as many hours as you on survivor. You're massively exaggerating. I win about 55% of my solo queues.
- Can you imagine what VC would look like in this game?
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Killer is definitely not too strong, it’s actually the weaker role. It only seems the other way around early on when survivors don’t know what they’re doing. Once you get higher in mmr where you and your team know how to play survivor is definitely the easier role by quite a large margin. This skill curve tends to give newer players a very skewed perception of the game early on.
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I just want to comment on your comment on killer being so easy to win and survivor being more challenging etc …
Idk if we’re playing the same game, but I find this to be complete opposite. I started out trying to be a survivor main, and found myself more skilled and entertained as a killer. Idk about hours but I have about 1100 escapes and over 3000 kills. By dbd standards, idk if that’s a lot. I’ve been playing about a year…
I can’t take playing survivor seriously, because I think it’s very boring. And I hate that feeling of being hunted, I’ve also always played SoloQ.
As killer I have a lot of very skilled, very coordinated, SWF teams. I know I’m a good killer, but some days I’ll have teams so good that I’ll have 3 matches in a row I’m only 2k’ing. It’s definitely far from being un-challenging, and nothing feels better than a day of all 4k’s.
I can’t say for sure, but I feel like if you feel you are having easy 4k’s every match, you’re still facing babies. Even highly experienced twitchers get a lot of 2k’s because the teams are so good…
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I don't disagree that many Killers are simultaneously over-tuned for Solo Q and under-tuned for SWF.
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Killer is only hard if you make it hard by bringing meme builds while playing the weakest killers. It's a joke if you play to win. It's hard to lose if you bring the best addons and perks while heavily utilizing slugging, camping, and tunneling. It does of course require a basic level of competence. I think the dunning kruger effect is massive with the killer community in this game. A lot of people just aren't anywhere near as good as they think they are. Scott Jund was absolutely correct when he says you only get four truly good survivors in maybe 1/50 games. I want to see this server where everyone claims they only ever go against 20k hour SWFs every match. This definitely is not my experience in 3k hours playing this game.
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The part about streamers isn't really true though. Streamers win so much that they are routinely accused of tanking their MMR off stream. Someone calculated the stats for Otz and he wins around 80% of his games despite regularly doing challenges with bad perks where he severely limits himself. If you can win 80% of your games at so called "high MMR" while bringing bad perks then how hard is the game really? You should not win that much in a game with a functional MMR system. You should maybe half of your games at most.
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Doesn't Otz also do some of his killstreaks without addons and perks? That helps show high MMR is a myth since there's no way anybody could get a killstreak like that if the system returned equally matches opponents.
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The game is probably more complex than you believe. Knowing each loops, being able to chain them properly, knowing each killer and how to verse them properly ... it's not rocket science, sure, but it's not that simple. If it was the amount of hours would be meaningless and, in my experience, it's not.
I didn't brought the hours. I only gave a ballpark of the general milestones I've read in the past and that seem to be accurate enough.
And of course you are right, some people have more talent than others.
That being said, I wouldn't say it applies when someone gives a blanket "killers are OP" comment. I mean, even when I read OP's text my conclusion is that the issue is unskilled survivors. When I play survivor it's mostly solo and my escape rate isn't that low, unless there is one drooling rage-quitting idiot.
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I think I understand your point but I don't think it would really go that way.
As killer I usually try to play casual myself and only go hard when I see the team plays efficient. (As survivor, since I either play solo, either play with beginners friends, casual is the only way I can do it)
But not everyone considers the same things as being casual or sweaty. When I go against a team that has no chance winning, I usually pace myself and slug a survivor once or twice instead of killing him. Some survivors really enjoy the match more and give me praises, some loathe it and insult me. Yesterday I was even called a cheater because, after having massacred a team for the first half of the match, I suddenly stopped being so dangerous and failed several chases (and apparently suddenly forgot I had to hook them, a detail that had escaped my accuser's analysis). The accuser had more than 4000 hours BTW, which was a surprise to me.
I believe the only way to ensure a casual vs harsh play would be a working and accurate MMR. And, believe it or not, but in my experience it mostly works. (The only reason I go against easy survivors is that I play nice too often)
Getting rid of most cheaters would be a prerequisite though. I've noticed that after I utterly "lose" a match because I'm going against cheaters*, my next few games are way too easy.
*) I go against way too many of these stains, I'm fed-up having to upload gigabytes of videos to report them.
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Before we go looking at Otz as the model bear in mind that for a long time his show had segments where he was playing ultra late for his timezone.
If I go play a game in my area during a weeknight at 4am the game is much easier than if I tried it three hours earlier.
I can only assume that since Otz is in Spain he get matched with smaller regions like Africa where the competition is about as stiff as wet spaghetti. In case you missed it - once upon a time we could change our steam download region to force the game to put us in whatever region we wanted.
This means you could get a killer friend to play against your SWF and farm points. Anyway sometimes you didn't get your SWF and it was like you asked a girl who had never played a video game on a controller to play DBD as her first video game ever. Needless to say it was like stealing candy from a sleeping baby.
Go watch Otz doing the 30 second AFK challenge and look at the difference in the caliber of his opponents compared to TrueTalent. The difference is night and day.
I want to ask a single question that the mods will not answer :
Do fog Whisperers have adjusted MMR to make the game look more appealing?
Ask yourself what purpose do the fog whisperers that play killer serve? They make you feel that you could one day rise in the ranks and play killer like they do.
Would the game seem more appealing if the Fog Whisperers who play killer have easier games because there is some MMR invisible wizardry going on?
The only reason not to show us MMR is because you want to hide "wrong doing". Guild Wars was one of the most open and honest games I ever played. They told you every single adjustment of everything with full transparency. I know many people who played World of Tanks and that company was kind of the opposite. They lied about changing a tank's stats so people would buy other newer and better tanks. That's just gross.
I am not accusing BHVR of lying but I am calling them out. Let us turn on a switch to see MMR after a game's conclusion if we want to. The only reason to hide it is because you're doing something shady.
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That's basically me. My playstyle often results in me dying while the rest escapes.
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People mention Otz and other streamers here, but if you actually watch him play his challenges he plays as nasty as possible to make the win happen. Also i'm not sure but when i watch streamer from NA i feel like the survivors are way more casual there than in EU. A lot of them are from console ( not sure if that matters ) but a lot of them don't watch behind them when they run. A lot of them run from pallet to pallet drop run. in EU i feel like i see more comp minded people. So yeah maybe NA killers have it easier who knows its just something i've noticed :).
Sure killers can win by turbo tunneling 1 out of the game instant, make it 3vs1. Just always tunnel the injured person and yeah games are easy. Proxy camp so people can't get hook saves easily.
This isnt something survivors enjoy though, and some of us don't enjoy playing like that when we are killer. Playing fairly can cost you the game quite easily if survivors are decent.
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Fair enough,makes sense.
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I feel like it is not fair to say Killer is too powerful when you realize that statement is covering both Freddy and Blight.
We have 30 killers and they are not all on the same level.
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But those aren't asymmetric games they still have balance and for the most part, casual playlists, dbd does not have that. That "safe environment" doesn't exist. A new, inexperienced surv has the worst time of it rn. And I'd know, I started back in august.
My early surv games were extremely punishing. Surviving a match was extremely rare and usually a product of thebkiller deliberately letting me go. My second ever surv match was a farming wraith who got us all to 2 hooks in before we had 2 gens done. Then spent the rest of the game just keeping us injured and just let us do gens and chased us out of the exit gate. Remember sitting there afterwards thinking the learning curve was going to suck.
Maybe I'm a masochist for sticking with it idk. But not many players are willing to put up with that. I know so many people who quit after 100 hours or straight up won't try dbd because they know it'll be punishing.
You sure you're really happy with the game being that offputting to new players? Because I'm certainly not.
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We'll have to agree to disagree on the solution. Problem with accurate mmr is you'd be waiting forever for a match. High mmrbplayers would always see the same people in matches. At least with 2 different playlists people will generally be pulled in the right direction.
I tend to play the same way. If I sweat killer I usually win. And it's gotten boring so I also play hard to start with and chill out late game if I have control of the match. I'll usually let 1 or 2 survs escape. More pleasant experience all round.
I usually get GGs from the ones I release but the ones I kill sometimes get salty because I spared someone else and not them lol.
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I think that is a good idea. Let us compare the mmr after a match so we could reliably see if that match was somewhat balanced right from the start.
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I'll give you some of my matches, then we can talk again on that matter...
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If killer is only to powerfull against solo's then thats more of a case of solo's being too weak rather then killers being too strong
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I dunno, the games generally get way sweatier over in Europe at those times of day, not easier. If I want more relaxed games and not to spend half my time against the strange combination of crossplay and extreme meta (and the occasional steam player who wants to be an ass in end game chat), I need to play before 11PM or something.
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I'm not sure we are even disagreeing that much. The queue length isn't factored for me. I only look at "fair" (for lack of a better word) matches.
As for the prediction on how a casual/ranked queue would go, it's only a guess, from both of us. There isn't really anything to defend there.
I've stopped letting two survivors (or more) escape, even when I crush them. The MMR was trying to balance the outcome and it wasn't pretty. (I still do it if I get the pretty rare early double-rage quit.) The nicest outcome in my opinion is to give hatch. Usually who to doesn't matter.
I also get the ones ranting about who I've chosen, obviously. It's kind of funny because I seldom really "chose" and the ones ranting tend to be weaker (from my point of view) than the one I let live.
It's a bit like when I lose (because of course I do, even as a Nurse) the ones making noise and being obnoxious in the chat are usually the incompetent ones.
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Yh i almost always give hatch. It's hard to please survivors isn't it? 🤣 someone will always complain. It is nicr to know that other players let survs go fairly often. So many always try to force the 4k so hard
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It's not so much about pleasing them. It's kind of hard to explain why, now that I try to. When I know I've won, I don't see the point going further.
Bullies, bullies now get wiped out, if I can, which is most of times. I find their elimination particularly satisfying if I'm on a killer I don't use often or if I'm using no perks.
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I know what you mean. I enjoy the challenge of proving I'm better than a team of survs. But I don't need a 4k to do that.
I'd like everybody to enjoy the game if possible. And if I know I could have the 4k? I'm more an happy to down a surv, go to a hook, shake my head then carry them to a gen and let them get on with gens or if they're last one alive take them to hatch.
They know I outplayed them and they get more BP for gen work and surviving. Since I don't care about BP or my rank anymore I find the game much more enjoyable. And I love those interactions where a surv realises you're being nice and you get offered gifts, have slug races etc.
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Same for a newbie killer, he Is going to lose many games at the beginning but,for me, here Is the beauty of this game, you Will learn from your own mistakes. I have 1000 hours as killer (i have almost never played as a Survivor) and my early games were pathetic.
Then i start to record my own game, analyze my mistakes, learning the basic tricks a survivor can use and i start to improve over and over. I still do lots of mistakes,i still see some brillant gameplay or trick i never seen. This game has a very difficult learning curve, It Is required on both side but if you dont give up, if you dont cry for Nerf over any perk or such well, you can do Better
After 100 hours you are Just terribile, you Will be terribile in a single player game too ! Try civilization 6 and tell me how bad you are after 100 hours on diety difficult level, thats the same
It you want to Learn the game, try to ask to someone in your lobby to have a custom game, maybe ask a couple of killers to have a custom match with you and your Friends, you Will have a much Better experience
Instead of vomit toxic message in the post game chat, try to say something nice like " you have outplayed me, well done. Care to run a private match again just for fun ?" i'm sure many players would love that
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It's always nice when you get a gift 😄.
I'm wondering what's the proportion of players approaching the game like this.
I think the "nicest" I've ever been to a survivor was in a game where one courageous Meg was the only one who didn't gave up immediately and tried to do the gens. (A beginner, that was too cute) I've done everything to give her the "Left for dead" achievement and she got it.
I know killers aren't supposed to be babysitters but ... sometimes ... 😅
I'm kind of bummed when I think the new Mori mechanic will probably make playing nice way more difficult.
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God I hope they mothball that mori change. I'd straight up stop playing if I have to sweat a 4k just to get a mori.
The proportion of nice killers seems small but they're out there. Feels like I get deliberately released rarely but as a whole seeing teammates get released isn't uncommon.
Be the change you want to see I guess.
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I play "night" dredge with nurses, franklins, boon shatter perk and sloppy with add on which powers the night meter when people are injured. In lots of matches, don't really count, I had only few matches with more than one escape. And all of it on eyerie or badham unsurprisingly. And I can't even be bothered to learn add on names or perk names. How's the person gonna do with this build who's really into dbd? Even when team is doing great when 1 gen is left everyone gets terrified and gets into mindset "I did a lot, I'm gonna hide let other sucker die doing the last gen" and usually that last gen never gets done until 3 people dead and 4th one searching for hatch.
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I don't like TRU3 at all but I do agree he gets better survivors compared to OTZ. I love otz and he's ana amazing guy BUT.. i watch a lot of his games and in almost every game there are some survivors playing like they're total new to this game, it never happens when i play killer...
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That may be true in your region but it is definitely not the case if you watch two streamers who are in the same region : Truetalent/Otz.
The sweatiest games you will see are earlier in the evening not later (on average).
The thing is that you can play the bad killers at low MMR just fine. But low skill ceiling killers don't have a MMR cap (and they should until something changes). The best doctor in the world using the most powerful addons will be humbled by a mediocre Blight with no addons. That's messed up. There should be no more than 15% difference between the best and worst killers. Right now there is much closer to something like a 55% difference.
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The sub 1600 MMR cushion period IS the safe environment. Baby killers against baby survivors. You know what I did when I was bad? I watched online videos and got better bit by bit, and that's what everyone does.
You say you know people who quit at 100 hours, I know people at 100 hours who are motivated to play than ever. What do both of our anecdotes have in common? Neither is an argument. If we start putting the opinions on balance of baby survivors on a pedestal, we're gonna have even less balance than we currently do.
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