BHVR: fix your killers already!
If I ran the company I’d find 1 person, pull them aside and say: “ this is your new job: fix all of our underperforming killers so that they are all viable, fun to play, yet not too annoying or OP.”
Tired of this BS.
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And I would reply.. what do you want me to do after that... Solve the Israeli Palestine issue too? Fun to play but not too annoying or op is a lot to ask
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According to their stats Nurse is under performing. Should they buff her?
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Yeah, that's definitely a job for just one person
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Name one game where every character or deck is viable enough to be run in competitive play?(yugioh, MK, Tekken, leauge, magic, soul caliber, street fighter, pokemon,etc) We gotta accept some things as they are. You gonna have a good spread of characters in every tier. Some characters will be WEAK sorrrrrrrrryyyyyyyy!
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i thought you are talking about the innumerable bugs that killers have.
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A nice post showing that most people complaining about the game don't know how a company operates
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Only 1 guy? Poor dudes gonna have to rebalance half the roster on his own without making them OP or unfun which is something the entire balance team can’t figure out
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I’m sure nobody has thought to do this yet 🙄
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And then watch them have an immediate breakdown because you’d be a terrible boss.
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Maybe instead of pushing one person to do it they get it right the first time
Just look at the changes to the Skull Merchant
And it's going to take time before anything gets done on that level... cause they make new chapters every 3 months
Maybe they could go from 4 a year to like 2 a year for a couple years... it'll save them from creating something new every 3 months and give them time to make the changes to the other Killers
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Some tweaks here and there would be nice. Let the Trapper start with his traps. Give the Clown an extra default bottle or give pink and yellow separate supplies. It’s not unreasonable to try stuff like this an see how it goes. Might make the PTB worth something.
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Your intentions are good, and I don't think anyone would disagree that making underperforming Killers more competitive is a good idea, but there's a lot more to game development than simply telling someone 'fix everything'. I'll give a quick and simplified example of what this actually entails.
You're told to buff any underperforming Killer. Your first step is to do an analysis on which Killers require your attention. While doing so, you're going to find that most Killers seem more or less where they should be, but if you start to dig into specifics, you might find that some are performing really well in some skill ranges and poorly in others.
And so you'll need to dig deeper and find out why that's the case. Why are some people doing better with them than others? Is there something that more skilled players are taking advantage of that average players aren't? Have good Survivors mastered playing against a certain aspect of their power while average Survivors struggle? This alone is a lot of research, sifting through countless threads, video, streams, and even working with our data team to draw data from thousands of matches.
Once that's done, you'll need to figure out how to change them. What is a change that will make them more competitive in the ranges where they're struggling, but won't make them frustratingly overpowered in the ranges where they're already doing well? The Nemesis is a great example of this. Shortly after he was released, we found that he wasn't doing so hot in high skill lobbies, but he was doing very well in low skill lobbies. Upon further research, we discovered the high skill players were more likely to mutate his Tentacle Strike. And this was the key: We could safely buff the third tier of his power to make him stronger for high skill players without making him too strong for average players (where he was already doing well).
Next, you'll need to find the time to actually slot this update in. This is a very complicated part since every department has only so much bandwidth for each update. If your changes require animation support, for instance, you might not be able to squeeze your rework into an update that already has a bunch of other animation work required (such as a new Chapter).
When you find a spot for it, you need to playtest it and see how everything feels with a wide variety of players. Is it too strong in some cases, or too weak? Does this solve the problems you've set out to solve? Is it intuitive? Are there any control or feedback issues that need to be resolved? Depending on the complexity of the changes you've made, this can be a back and forth process that requires a lot of iteration.
And finally once all that is done, it needs to go through polishing and QA before it can finally hit the PTB, where you may have to iterate on it some more depending on how people feel about it.
All of this is for one Killer. There are soon to be 31 in the game. Meanwhile, you also have problematic perks, maps, mechanics- you name it- that people are giving feedback on which also require your attention.
Thinking, "Hey, let's buff weaker Killers" is only step 1 of the process, and it's a thought that everyone has had. If it were as easy as that, I promise you we would have done that already. Balance changes like these can take anywhere from weeks to months of work depending on their scope, and while we would love to be able to snap our fingers and do this for the next update, we're talking about literal years of work for this alone, let alone Killers who may be too strong or perks.
So yes, the intention is very good! But the TLDR is that it's not as easy as you think.
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I don't disagree with the difficulty of the matter. But this is where i think development cycle comes in. I don't work for yall so i have no idea what it is like, or why things are the way they are. But honestly it feels like the development/release cycle is very long.
Many live service games, release patches very often, usually every 2 weeks or so. But generally DBD is relegated to 2 big releases every 3 months, and then a few bug fix patches here and there. But the changes don't actually happen until those big releases most of the time.
Where it gets very disappointing, is when you make tweaks to things, most of the time they are very minor changes to only a handful of perks. Rarely do we get updates on killers.
But for example, lets look at old clown, before when he slowed down while using his bottles. Why did it take so long for something like that to change? If you had a more frequent release cycle, why not just try changing it see how it works out for a few weeks, and then if it doesn't, revert the change. It would be a very easy thing to change, just remove the slowdown he gets when throwing his bottles. And i say "easy" knowing that it probably is. Regardless of whatever memes go around about "spaghetti code". I'm a software engineer, so i know that such a change is easy. Likely behind the scenes is more politics/product decisions happening that make these things take a while.
But one of the main things i noticed is, that you are all very reluctant to be wrong or to "overbuff" things. Generally, most things in this game are actually quite weak. Both sides maybe have a dozen perks that are any good. Only a handful of killers can compete with the best of SWF and you seem very reluctant to buff things. In recent memory in fact, the only thing i can think of is eruption. You buffed it, then later decided it was too buffed, then nerfed it, but then before it goes live you all recognized on the PTB that you overnerfed it, so you buffed it back up a bit. This is actually GREAT! I think we should see more of this type of thing.
Why not experiment more with changes? Remember when you did the experiment where you removed bloodlust? Why not do more of that. What if we had a weekend where you did some major buffs to trapper and see how it goes, then turn it off, and look at the data and see what happened.
I think in general the couple of things i see is:
- You all are not "data informed" you are "data driven" to the point where if the data says "this is fine" you accept that as fact, rather than thinking about how frustrating something might be to play against or with.
- The development cycle is too long, waiting 3 months between new content, is totally understandable, you often make a new killer, usually pretty unique, new survivors, new perks, often a new map. These things make sense. I even accept the lengthy time it takes to look at things like the end game mori thing you tested a while back. Those things make sense. But why does it take so long to just do number tweaks? If you see a perk is underperforming or overperforming, why not just tweak the numbers a bit and see what happens? Then, if it turned out to be the wrong thing, revert it.
- For example, does anyone even use Hex: Ruin anymore? It was probably overnerfed. What if yall changed it back to 200% but kept the (it goes away when a survivor dies) aspect. Changing it from 100% to 200% should take someone maybe 30 seconds to change. Maybe yall have some kind of crazy testing suite so you got to update that, but it certainly shouldn't be something you can't squeeze a small amount of time to just try this kind of thing?
- Even if these types of things didn't go live all the time, why not put them on PTB and have more frequent testing?
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so let me get this straight... you want 1 person... to be the almighty final word on what's viable, fun to play, and not annoying or op.
and you want that one person to fix EVERY killer that's underperforming?
so... several thousands of lines of code, several months worth of animation, model frames, textures, and lighting maps, a couple novels of text and a ton of calculous and arithmetic just for a singular character that has to be playtested. not including any new or redesigned mechanics, animations, or models that will have to be built from scratch.
40 hour work week it would probably take several years and if the meta changes or there's an oversight it's all a pointless effort and waste of money.
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This might sound fine and logical from a customer standpoint. Even from a development view.
But there is no way in hell anyone is going to convince the decision making board of corporate overlords that this is a good business idea. It's like telling them that you want to cut profit opportunities by half for a couple of years without it translating on proportionally greater income at any point.
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Fill out an application then
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True... but at some point they need to realize that there would be more benefit then not doing it
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Survivors find the maps annoying, perks annoying, hooks annoying, chases annoying....the list goes on and on.
If they catered to every whine and complaint about what's annoying to survivors all killer players would have is a lungless trapper with no addons or perks.
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absolute W peanits i feel like this needs to be pinned so everyone knows how BHVRs workflow actually works before commenting on how much they're not doing
I love reading through all of the bug fixes and changes to see that yes. you guys are clearly hard at work on several problems and new features at a time, we appreciate you:)
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its not like they dont have enough people to do this, why not?
make a balance team
It dosent even have to be devs it can be people who have a lot of knowledge about the game
the devs clearly don't play their game, just watch some of their gameplays
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This guy could at least ask the balance team stuff like:"why are there only two maps with denke gras for Trapper-kun to hide his traps, and why is one of this two maps basically he biggest map in the game? Why does out poster boy basically plays without a power on the Eiry?"
Maybe this guy would get a satisfying answer, most likely not.
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Sadly I don't think that would be the case. And they likely already realized that.
It's not like the current player base is gonna give them 2 chapters worth of income to fix the game.
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I mean this with respect. I understand your plight, but the answer is to play the game more! I've put 1000s of hours into this game and I genuinely enjoy it and have always seen the love that goes into the game.
Recently, in the last year it feels like you guys have lost your passion for the game and are just churning out content for the hell of it. It got to the point where I just genuinely was not having fun anymore. It's like going to a cafe, ordering a coffee and it comes half full with a fly in it. Yes its coffee. Is it acceptable for that to served to someone? Of course not. It's the same thing here.
I had a month break and came back in the last week and it seems the same issues are still present. In the few odd years I've been playing I don't think I've ever seen a chapter release that wasn't filled with bugs and gamebreaking issues. Much like the dead hard buff, which looks amazing on paper but in practice it looks and feels silly, average human reaction time is what? 250ms? So its only consistent in practice at windows and pallets. I can go on but I'd rather focus on the positive.
I really really really want to love this game again. It's in essence the most raw form of PvP.
Simple mechanics and skill expression is displayed with mind rather than reaction (in most cases)
Please don't take this as me trying to tell you how to do your job, I wouldn't be able to. I just want to love the game again.
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Sorry but the fact that the entire playerbase has to endure another 3 months of this meta along with this killer release and then you hired more people to create more cosmetics. Who is gonna buy your new stuff when the game is literally unfun to begin with?
Alot of data and information is needed sure. But what is the reasoning in not making constant changes to all perks in general? you can't have half a year of this meta and come out and say "we can't balance too often because we need to see each case individually" by doing this then it turns into an excuse at some point. You're opening yourself to come and use the "we simply dont have too much hands on deck or time for the amount of killers the game has.. sorry" then either slowdown the killer/chaper release from 4 to 2 and stabilize this mess otherwise hiring more people for cosmetics isnt gonna do much in the long picture if the game is unfun for both sides.
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If you guys do take a look at killers, I hope you guys start with the Knight. His only counter is holding W when he places one of his guards and that only works if you aren’t cornered. Nothing makes me want to stop playing DBD more than facing 3 knights in a row
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10000 analyses, reflections, analysis of options, discussions and implementations
VS
Traper sucks, it's obvious to everyone, let's buff it, guys (injured iri basekit)
(jk <3)
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But then again.... if they do 2 chapters a year it'll give us veterans a reason to tell our friends and get them to play the game
There are ways to bring in newer players... without constantly begging the player base with new stuff
Remind me how bad the past 4 chapter releases were
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Skill. Issue.
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I understand, and not trying to argue, but… it’s the company’s game.
I would think that the owners/devs and everyone involved with the thing they own would KNOW what needs to be addressed.
Like … if my house has leaky pipes, mold, mice, yadda yadda yadda and my parents say “when are you and your partner gonna take care of those problems” yet we insist on ignoring them and spending money on shiny new car parts.
So yes things take time, resources, etc., but c’mon (being nice here) it’s your product. You should know it inside and out.
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There are no underperforming killers even weakest killer in the game Trapper has 56% killrate
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Great! While they're on it, can they solve the issue of world hunger and famine, oh and the energy crisis, too please? Thanks. Absolute star.
(Hopefully) obvious sarcasm aside, I honestly think this is a much harder job than People think. Firstly, because it would already have been done if not and secondly because someone will always want more.
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Peanits touched on that. When people want “underperforming killers buffed,” they mean strengthened against higher-caliber survivors (less than 5%* of the playerbase, per BHVR’s stats). But the problem with that is by buffing these “underperforming killers”, they become too oppressive for average players (around 95%* of the playerbase). So while it feels good to be able to compete with your favorite killer against really good survivors, you’re actually ruining the experience for people who aren’t in that top percentile. And no one speaks about that because no one is going to complain about their own guy being too strong. Additionally, most players here are self-serving & self-absorbed, so “balance” is always “what feels good to me.” Anyway, that’s why they don’t make balance changes like players want. Really, no game does.
*These percentages are based on MMR ranking. Less than 5% of players have high MMR, indicating great skill. Most players have low to average MMR. All killers have killrates above 55% across MMR levels, meaning they average a 2.5K per match.
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This goes way beyond the top 5% of the players. There are many killers that are high MMR (BUT NOT NECESSARILY AT THE MMR CAP), that many people feel underperform at high MMR, and aren't worth playing. A killer doesn't need to literally be at the MMR soft cap, in order to get matched against coordinated SWFs that are miserable to against when over half the killer roster is being used.
We often had "nerf killer" posts, where the same killers were listed over and over, which coincidentally were the most popular killers that people actually felt were still good at high MMR (AND DISCLAIMER AGAIN, HIGH MMR DOESN'T LITERALLY NEED TO BE THE MMR SOFT CAP). And instead of thinking, "maybe there needs to be more killers, that were perceived useful at high MMR", the solution was "we should release more killers that aren't perceived useful at high MMR, and multi nerf some of the useful killers if they get enough complaints".
The absolute worst part of this, is some people still played the lower tier characters, and relied on eruption to give them enough time to win, and now they are being told that eruption needs to be nerfed into the ground, but dead hard can still stayed untouched? And the lower tier character still have to deal with the uncompensated game advantages SWFs get when they use voice communications, and they still have to deal with the new survivor HUD? I personally will just stop using the lower tier characters when the eruption nerf happens. I'm not going to suffer through overtuned dead hards on lower tier killers, when my best gen regression perk is getting nerfed, and pain res is getting nerfed, and I'm getting absolutely nothing in return as compensation.
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im glad you arent on the dev team
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Me too! I probably would’ve quit though if I was 🤣
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