lets discuss what is considered a fair game by your standards?

A fair game for me is just when both sides have options from the get-go.

When options are taken away, the game can become a chore or overly stressful. Options should be taken and given by how good or bad a player plays.

Another Billy main spotted.

But yea, I 100% agree, it's better to have a fun match than it is to be miserable playing for the win, games are made for people to have fun with, so I do not see the point in stressing over a win.

Simply put: Everyone got to do a bit of everything and had a general feeling of agency. - If that happened in a match then the match outcome doesn't matter at all (to me anyhow).

"a little bit of everything" is probably more relevant to survivors; everyone gets to do some genning, some chasing, some unhooking and being hooked, some healing, some stealthing.

"general feeling of agency" is probably more relevant to killers; feeling like you can't even decide who you go for or what you do next cause you don't even get a chance to catch your breath and assess the situation is a level of stress that at least I find very uncomfortable and exhausting (when playing a game. It's fun on the job when it's part of your job - but a game is a game and shouldn't be more exhausting than your job).

I'll preface this by saying that's the basics of how I play in those roles, not what I feel entitled to. I know in multiplayer games you get what your opponents give you and that smiling and moving on is always better than complaining for hours.

For killers : No tunneling and no camping (unless endgame, though I personally don't even then), no slugging for the 4K, no full gen slowdown

For survivors : No iridescent addons and no green or above items (unless maps), no full gen speed builds, no calling out my every move to my friend on discord (plus it's really funny seeing a Myers walking up to him and hearing him scream 5s later)

For both : No map offerings. I like things random ! =)

I have more situational self-imposed guidelines, but that I would not expect anyone else but a softie like me to use.

If we include good manners into fairness, then also :

Killers : No hitting on hook (even if the survivor was a great chaser that made you lost lots of time), no bleeding out, no waiting to close hatch in the survivor's face

Survivors : No teabagging throughout the game, no waiting/taunting at the gate once everyone is safe and healed, no waiting to teabag at hatch

Probably more situational things, but those feel like good basics.

Cant really say for Survivor, but for killer its 8 stages or higher

No face camping unless someone was tea bagging. Hatch for the last survivor if I saw him actually playing. Basically that's it for me.

As long as no one is cheating,afking, taking the game hostage or abusing a bug.

Everything else is fair game,the developers implemented said features and intended for them to be used.

Its silly to get mad a survivors for being efficient with thier objective.Why would a killer hamper their gameplay to satisfy your fun?Strong items and addons are added in the bloodweb for players to use them.

Its silly to take offense in intended gameplay features,blame the game not the player.

in some way it has to be by rules we all agree by

The most fair map in DBD is Wreckers yard.

1. The map is small.
2. The tiles are not super crazy linked (which makes Coal Tower unfair).
3. The pallets are strong but there are not many pallets.
4. The main building is not complete BS (but then again "shack" is the main building).
5. Most of the generator locations can be a viable 3 gen for M1 killers.

When you look at a lot of the maps they lead to a 3 gen or gtfo style of play. Dead dog and Azarov's are maps where the killer has already lost the game if the three gen setup is broken.

Garden of Joy has the most broken building in the entire game with 3 completely BS windows - only one should be open. Badham is an honorable mention with a BS main building too.

Large maps are just outright completely stupid. You will chase one person and everyone else is safe off in a corner on a generator. But on small maps (like we had on game launch) you run into people during chases. So you chase one person and interrupt another person mid chase.

Large maps also have stupid travel time from one side of the map to the other - meaning you have zero chance to guard generators across the map. Generally speaking most large maps are by default : 3 Gen or GTFO maps.

Then we have maps like "The Game" where you have 25 pallets for no real reason. Survivors send themselves to this map because it's a killer sided map right (/sarcasm)? They send themselves to that map because they know it will be a favorable chance for them to win.

By Comparison Hawkins was a pretty fair map. The map had a fair number of pallets but most of them were "unsafe". That is to say the killer had the ability to mind game the pallet. Most pallets in DBD now are : you have to break this or the chase is over.

Father Campbell's Chapel used to be a fair map and now it isn't. Why? They removed the 3 gen from the carnival side. Remember that for a map to be fair the killer needs multiple locations where the killer has the potential to hold a 3 gen setup. Overall this map has always been problematic because the Shack is almost always connected to a single/double gym that usually creates a near infinite loop when you get both. The middle can be a death trap or a near infinite depending on RNG.

I don't think Dead by Daylight, by its' very nature, is capable of being 'fair'. There are too many variable from items/perks/addons/which killer/which map/which random tile placement you get for there to ever be any level of fairness or competitiveness to it. That's before we get into the challenges that practically make you throw the game in their pursuit. Trying to make things reach some level of balance would require making things far too static. Maps would have to be completely pregenerated, set in stone, with addons, items, and killer powers all made relatively the same. Really, to balance this game, would be to kill it and make it something it was never meant to be from the onset.

Most games are a severe blowout one way or the other. Either the killer crushes, or gets demolished. It's very, very rare to see a game that feels like it was close and both sides fought well. We talk about this game as if it's a 4v1, but it's not really. Unless you're with a full SWF team, you are playing against your own 'team' as much as you are with them. Unhooking, helping, and assisting your team should certainly be incentivized and encouraged... but really, the way the game is designed, it should really lean towards giving every survivor their own goal within the trial in order to escape that's independent of the other three, as teamwork is nonexistent most of the time.

Nah I'm mostly talking about playstyles.

For fairness? Both sides bringing the same caliber of loadout. (With an exception for BPS, then you can bring something a little sweatier.) No getting hit immediately off of hook. (Unless they are intentionally trying to take a hit for their teammate.) No one bringing a map offering. (Unless you bring a map that is unfavorable for you such as Badham as Killer or Midwich as Surv, and Scratched Mirror Myers gets an exception to be allowed on indoor maps.) No survivor being intentionally killed before hooking each survivor at least once. (If I can't find the 0-hook Feng that unhooked the death hook Jeff though, that is Feng's fault and not mine.) No instadown facecamping with a perk build for it. No intentional bug exploits that give an advantage. (Space Billy is fine though, if he gets back his flight credentials.) No 2nd story boons. (Especially against 110 killers.) No auto-aim into a miss. No getting blinded into a shoulder save from off-screen (Rare, but does happen occasionally.) No getting grab cancelled into an M1 when the animation was more than halfway done, or the hand sticks out for at least half a second. (Other than hook grabs.) No hitting invisible walls with Killer powers. (Garden of Pain's invis wall to prevent Billy/Demo shreds off the second story even blocked a Huntress Hatchet for me once.) Also a similar issue, no bucket height debris blocking movement at loops. (The FOV is fine EXCEPT when you get denied a hit or distance because a root of a tree, or a paint bucket.) No excessive latency. (About 100 is the still tolerable range.)

Other things might not be fun, but still to an extent seem fair, at least off the top of my head.

Pretty much, although a couple maps can definitely affect the overall fairness of the game.

IMO, a match that's fair involves fair match-making between the players so that they're at about the same skill level, and (as much as possible) what-you-see-is-what-you-get interactions between the player and the servers. Meaning, for example, if it looks like your hit should connect from your POV, then the normal result should be that your hit connects. Stuff like that.

In terms of what makes a match that's fun, I think it's a match where there's a lot of back-and-forth, and it's not clear who's going to win, and everyone gets to participate and do whatever stunt they're trying to do, or pick up their challenge tokens or whatever.

While subjective as all hell, a fair game for me boils down to "A game I don't mind losing."