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Thoughts on “comp” dbd and would you watch or participate?
I personally think its pretty cringe and boring. Just involves alot of predropping, camping, tunneling, gen rushing…basically all the borimg stuff thats people dislike. Choy says the game is competitive and that honestly really sucks. I wish the devs would make this game more of a horror game instead of what we have today.
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Comps for dbd will never work, because there will never be any form of balance.
There are far to many variables for this game to be balanced.
1v4 adjusting a killers power for when 4 survs are up compared to 2.
perks, solo vs swf and the impact of stacking perks.
Item/addon on stacking again limits for comp play.
Until perks are put into groups and limits put on perks you can take in those groups it will just be a endless rotation of stacking the f.o.m perks.
From watching 1 comp match it was pretty boring, face camping with the twins, tunneling, slugging and noed. All the things survs hate.
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It already exists. I watch DBD League every week when it airs. Not live but I catch up on the games and see how the teams are doing, just like I used to watch Overreach League before it was 5v5.
I really like it and its fun to see how high level killers / survivors optimize their play. Is it the "boring stuff", yeah. But the chases still exist and the crazy plays survivors / killers come up with.
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Nah, it's actually pretty entertaining and there's quite a bit of really high-skill gameplay that goes on.
Definitely a rare choy miss.
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I have only seen a couple of “comp” matches and seeing contant predropping is just lame
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I wouldn't call it cringe, but it is an acquired taste.
Most e-sport versions of things are which is why games that are built with e-sports in mind try to make it as accessible and interesting to watch as possible.
DBD's issue is it isn't really a competitive e-sport influenced type of game. So there is a huge disconnect between what most players actually find enjoyable, what the average e-sports watcher finds enjoyable, and what comp players actually are doing usually. The most competitive ways to play are the ways that genuinely take the perceived fun out of the game when played in a natural state. Visually speaking if you're a casual watcher of e-sports you can generally get a feel for is happening, but DBD is a game that actually doesn't scan well in that setting unless you already play the game a fair bit yourself. Like people can jump into an OW league stream and pick up what's going down pretty quick even if they don't have experience playing the game. Same for LoL, Dota, R6Siege, etc. etc., but this game can look extremely dull and indecipherable to people who haven't played it or watched a lot of content around it.
Another issue is that DBD's gameplay is just not eye-catching. Survivors and killers outside of chase and even in chase don't really look super interesting. Again the appeal is actually there, but only if you're already in the space, but dbd lacks a lot of flash that draws people into E-sports. R6 has it's really tight, high tension clutch plays and clean designs, Fighting games have their insane combos, super moves, and highly stylized characters, moba's have their teamfights and trick plays. Heck even card games have their instant blowups and counterplays. DBD is much more subdued and while it has the same mental chess battle of a fighting game it isn't well translated to viewer.
Personally, I think it is fine that comp is very very niche as DBD has a lot more freedom since it isn't tied to confines of competitive play and e-sports needs. I think asymmetrical horror pvp can be done in a full on e-sports competitive form, but the horror would take a huge backseat to the needs of being both viewer and player friendly. I actually think Deceive Inc. is better suited to be a comp game than DBD as it is much easier to understand visually, has some very wacky blow up potential, and doesn't seem like you'd need to ban out much of anything from the looks of it. It also just looks cleaner so you're able to make sense of what is going on.
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Of all the e-sports out there, DbD is the only one I've ever watched more than one match of. Quality really depends on who the announcers are. It's very different than my soloq matches, but so were my amateur soccer games compared to professional play.
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Participated for years. Don't watch it as much anymore. Some of the problems with comp are self-inflicted and others are perceived problems that don't really reflect the reality of what actually happens in a typical comp game.
I think the biggest problem is the DbD community as a whole. The collective intelligence is low as it relates to DbD being played at an optimal level. The loudest voices i.e. content creators often have zero clue what they're talking about concerning high level survivor play. And it's reflected in how people perceive comp DbD. Viewers often go into it thinking "it's all camping and pre-dropping". Even if a match is 99% of a killer chasing a player, if they spend 10 seconds near a hook, the chat erupts with people saying "lol comp DbD is all camping". Camping might comprise 1 or 2 minutes of a 15 minute match, and people still think it is literally all camping all the time. This isn't a community with a nuanced view of the game. People think you're only good at survivor if you take unnecessary risks and stupid hits, and you're bad at survivor if you path optimally and play safely. Astoundingly wrong opinions. Like....they'd be a better player if they went down because they greeded shack pallet at 180ms ping at 5 gens and threw the game by getting hooked in basement instead of just throwing 1 of 25 pallets on the map? Hello?!?!?!?!
But to the community's defense, people don't really understand what playing against a cross region killer is like because it doesn't happen normally in a public match. Comp DbD is normally cross region. That VPN Huntress you ran into that you complained about? That is genuinely most of your comp matches. There's a reason people are pre-dropping every pallet. You are on NA East and the killer could be in Poland.
I also think there's a massive amount of cognitive dissonance with the community as it relates to competitive vs casual play. People say they want a casual experience, but lordy do they care about wins and losses. People say they want faster queue times, but the matchmaking better not give them sweat squads. People say they don't want to have to sweat every killer game, but they'll post their 50 game win streaks. I could keep going. For a "casual" game, people are awfully competitive about it. People need to genuinely ask themselves if they're just parroting a braindead 2016 DbD hivemind opinion. I think people just want all the highs of a competitive experience but none of the lows or commitment to improving.
It's not all on the playerbase though. So many of the biggest DbD tournaments have had issues that stemmed from not involving people who are heavily involved in the comp scene. It's a really weird one to me. Someone will decide they want to have a huge tournament, and the first thing they'll do is have someone who played comp in beta make the rules, or they'll make up their own rules to make it "fun", and it's a mess. The last thing they ever do is get in touch with the moderators of DbDLeague, COTF, etc, and have people who actually run successful leagues help them. I really, truly don't get it. The teams complained about this a lot in the lead up to BOTB. You guys should have been in that Discord. Whew.
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Absolutely not comp dbd is the most boring dbd gameplay
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I've seen some competitive matches on youtube. I do find it disappointing that camping/tunneling has been proven to be the most effective way to play killer. But I get it. The game is vastly different as killer when you are playing against 4, 3, or 2 survivors. If you have to give up a couple gens to get it down to 3 survivors then it is often worth it. But it doesn't make for the most entertaining thing to watch. On the other hand, you do get to see some incredibly impressive gameplay if you are familiar with the game. I don't think it will ever be appealing to the masses though.
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Agreed.
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Mm don't think dbd is well suited to esports or competitive play. An asymmetric game is by it's nature very difficult to balance, so all of the preset rules competitive dbd games have to use seem pretty stifling.
The few competitive games I have seen seem pretty boring compared to halo esports matches which I really enjoy. Dbd just doesn't lend itself to that kind of viewership. It can be interesting sometimes to see the tactics survs will use or watch good killers make plays I haven't thought of or tried, but I get that from streams, esports doesn't add anything to it.
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At least it tells how this game will be boring af if you look for "winning", so there is that.
Works as a counter argument for "you don't need to do XXX to play the game".
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I am not a fan of pro-DBD games. They do come across as dull and predictable much of the time. Of course the guys who play it are great at the game, but every game essentially boils down to the same flow of chase, hook, tunnel, hook ... it's just very unentertaining to me.
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By definition the game is not competitive and I don't think it should be pushed in that direction.
I think those competitions are not a good thing because then regular players look at the rules and are like "BuT LoOk At ThE bAn LiSt SuRvIvOr Is OvErPoWeReD pLz NeRf" as though the game should be balanced around literal comp players instead of the mean skill & coordination of the actual playerbase.
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I have not seen a single comp player in my own games or in streamers I watch have anything but massive egos to the point of me not caring. KAZ being a retired player into retired coach for team eternal, I guess we know why now.
In general though comp dbd is not entertaining.
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Not really interested in it. But whenever someone brings Comp DBD into a discussion about Public DBD, they disqualify themselves from that discussion. They are basically different games and whoever thinks that a comp match proves that something in DBD is imbalanced is simply wrong.
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Dbd is competetive but not really esports material.
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I did comp dbd for a few years in lots of different tournaments and leagues. Honestly it was fun going against killers who wanted to face sweat teams but it was almost always nurse, blight, spirit.
It's fun at first but it gets tedious and repetitive really quick. The best games I remember are the ones that no one took seriously, just messed around and that says it all really.
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I say let ppl play how they want and if they find comp fun then so be it. Comp matches ive watched were entertaining. The mind games, teamwork, and collective passion for the game make comp an enjoyable experience. I think the only problem is when comp players bring high expectations into pub matches and expect the 500 hour jim bob to have “optimal pathing” among other things.
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What do you mean "tedious"? I had a blast sitting in scrim discords for hours looking for games, very clearly stating I was NA East, finally getting a game against an Eastern European team, and then having them d/c 1 minute in because "this ping".
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Sometimes I watch tournaments when I accidently see it airing, however it is not something I would seek to watch on purpose.
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I believe that DBD can be both... a horror game and a competitive game
Adding in a unranked mode, a free spectator camera, opening up maps (picking the seed of the maps), Also incorporating some of the ideas Choy did suggest
Unranked- would be more like QP from most of the other games (would sperate those players whom don't like the competitive gameplay...
A Free Spectator Camera- so viewers can see more from both sides
Opening up Maps- by allowing players to pick the seed of any Map would be a good thing removing the RNG of the maps
I can't remember what ideas and how he explained it
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I remember when tru3 tunneled this one survivor early and they asked in the endgame chat why he did it and he said “do you watch comp?” Like what does that have to do with anything lmao
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Wanting a casual experience doesn't mean that wins and losses stop making a difference. People still want to feel like the things they do in game are worth doing. People want faster queue times because waiting to get into games is always a worse experience than playing the game, but DBD is one of the few games where people who are looking for hyper aggressive competitive play are permanently mixed into the wider casual player populations. When the energy levels and skill levels between players is too wide the only thing that happens is the weaker group just simply don't want to play with an opponent/s that overwhelm them to such a degree. People who are posting huge win streaks are content creators making content cause that's their job. The average player isn't spending thousands of hours and putting up those kinds of numbers. They may want to, but it is rare that regular ol'joe/jane/jaiden dbdplayer is doing that.
It's a pvp game so there is a baseline level of competitiveness to be expected, but generally speaking most players just don't want to play matches where everything feels like you need to be extremely serious and precise. One of the biggest complaints you find on the forums is that right now the game often feels like it is going too fast and that you can't make more than one or two mistakes before the whole game is thrown. That sort of personal tension would be great in a highly polished e-sports environment, but it just ends up being nerve-wracking and stressful in the pvp jumpscare murder simulator.
The community is clear with what it wants, but the issue is how do you translate that to actionable feedback? That's the breakdown point, how do you best meet the needs of a community that is intrinsically divided. What truly competitive minded players want and need is different than what casual minded players want and need. What killer players need is different from what survivor players need.
You said you played comp DBD for years so you're deeply aware of the technical aspects of playing at that level. Ask yourself though, if you didn't know about any of the technical aspects that make high level play as engaging as it does for you, would you still be interested in engaging with e-sports DBD? Put yourself in the shoes of a casual viewer or player and ask yourself would you find it exciting or even just understandable at a glance?
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Comp DBD? 😂
I don't have the time nor the patience to write a manifesto on the many levels DBD utterly fails as a "casual" semi-balanced "PVP" game, much less people trying to pigeon hole it into being a viable "competitive" E sports game.
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I like to watch dbdleague sometimes, but who is casting really makes or breaks it for me. I do watch tofu's scrims too (side note, I love his casting), not that those are really truly the same as tourney's or whatever.
I've debated whether or not to try to join because I feel like my brain is rotting in public killer matches after game after game where I get most survivors and teams are bad no matter what time of day I try to play, and then I get sprinkled in a few teams here and there that know what they are doing which is really fun for me, but then it's back to the bad survivors again, and the entire process just makes killer not even fun/exhausting to play because I'm not challenged or stimulated enough because matchmaking is just not that strict.
But.. I feel too old mentally to do it, and have a lot of stuff going on in real life these days and can't consistently dedicate time to do it, and don't know if it's even worth trying to anymore. Big sigh.
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Most of the time I despise comp. I don't like the mindset. I don't like the pace. I don't like the comms. I don't like the over-optimisation. --- But I sometimes do like watching some of the cracked comp players play killer. What Knightlight does with Wesker, Hens with Slinger, Zaka (?) with Nurse and some players I don't know the names of but that had me be really impressed at the stuff they manage to do with the killer mechanics wise.
Unfortunately, I know some people who are really into the comp stuff (esp. Eternal... who would've guessed...). On survivor side at that. - Have you ever played with comp people as a chill pub player? Everyone involved in that match is miserable 😂
What I do give the comp players though - at least the ones I know - is that they are pretty cracked.
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i think competitive dead by daylight is very interesting!
what makes dead by daylight so loveable is that there's always an on-going sense of innovation that these players bring to light when playing at a high level. it's amazing how such a simple game can be extremely intricate and have a very high skill ceiling if played a certain way, even with RNG in play.
the psychology, the in-game techs, predicting, individual skill, micromanagement and macromanagement, knowing the inside and outside of a game to the point where you maneuver like its a part of you! its all so cool and it makes me want to play competitively myself, i just find myself being too anxious to do it sometimes. not to mention i dont feel nowhere near as skillful enough for it yet.
maybe one day i can bring my demogorgon to the comp scene!
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Lol I never understood why people didnt get that the ping was going to be bad on cross country stuff. Playing on 300 ping definitely made it more interesting!
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The only thing I actually learned from comp dbd is using lockers vs nurse and blight. Other than that, total snooze fest gameplay on both sides
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Should probably try to watch it with an open mind then.
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I have tried to. Otz and hens have videos on it. But the gameplay is boring. There is nothing interesting about watching a survivor just predrop everything at 5 gens. Or seeing a killer camp and tunnel hardcore.
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If you’re a chill pub player, then why do you care about winning? What you and people like you are actually saying is that you want to be able to kick back and beat people who are better than you. The game taking a time investment to be able to win is a good thing. You shouldn’t be able to beat people wbo are better at the game.
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The thing is, the gap between casual and competitive players and how they approach a game is not a unique thing to DbD. It's not a problem that can be solved by painting in broad strokes. I think the devs are more or less spinning their wheels trying to do it. It's not a solved problem by any means, but there's a reason games have casual and competitive queues. Is the playerbase not big enough to support to queues, or is it this size because there aren't two queues in the first place?
Because if we accept that the differentiation between a casual and competitive player is the amount of energy being put forth into a match, and not the winning and losing, how are we separating those players from a matchmaking perspective? Because it's nigh impossible to factor player effort into balance in a 7 year old game.
To your last question, I was drawn to comp because I was interested in optimizing DbD in the first place. It wasn't necessarily the other way around. I wasn't aware of it until someone asked me to join their team. It's hard for me to say if I'd agree with a casual viewer because I'm often baffled at the conclusions they're arriving at. Like I said, I'll watch a killer chase for 90% of a match, and viewers are hung up on 30 seconds of camping. I'm not trying to say there's no way people couldn't like it. I get that everyone has different tastes and a lot of people just genuinely don't like comp DbD. Nothing wrong with that. But I also think many are completely disingenuous about it and made it part of their gaming identity in a weird way.
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I'd watch, and I'd love to participate sometime
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I don't think it's for me. I had considered it when I had about two months or so of Artist games (I try to play Artist once a day) without a single loss just because it didn't feel challenging at all but I took a break from DbD instead. The deciding factor for me was that there are a lot of over-enlarged egos in the comp scene and, based off my interactions with at least one poster here who played competitively, that's not the type of energy I want around me.
I also don't think I would enjoy it as people can get super dedicated in a comp video scene. Seeing that always reminds me of when Arena Junkies was around for WoW and, when one gladiator was announcing their departure, another gladiator poster asked them how they felt about having spent so much of their life into something that had no benefit at all for them in their regular life.
That's kind of how I view it as well. Video games are entertainment and fun and nothing else (barring content creators and professional eathletes). There are people who like climbing ranks and are attracted to things like league rankings and that's good for them. They find it entertaining and that's great for them that leagues exist but it's not what I find entertaining.
I also don't watch competitive DbD. I might be curious enough to check out a game and probably would watch a game I knew someone playing in or a match-up sounded really challenging in but other than that why? It's sort of like when I watch content creators like Otz, SpooksNJukez and CoconutRTS. I occasionally watch their stuff because I find the content creator entertaining but not necessarily the game. But a game of people I don't know just playing DbD led by a host who I don't know is entertaining? That's not my go-to option.
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Nobody said anything about it being boring. I don't find it boring at all.
You specifically said you didn't learn anything from it.
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huh? Where did I say I care about winning?
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I've been in some of Tofu's scrim nights, played against a couple comp teams in pubs and competed in the Community Cups.
I think it's quite fun.
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DBD is at its best when its chaotic. When everyone is playing serious and using the meta, the game loses what makes it special. But that's just my opinion.
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It's not for everyone, and unfortunately there isn't a way to not watch or participate in comp matches :(
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You could just turn off Twitch or Youtube
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I know, I was being sarcastic. Could've used a "/s" I suppose, my b
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You were clearly talking about comp DBD in a condescending way. The implication is that people shouldn’t try to win and just “chill.”
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Dbd shouldnt even be considered comp to begin with😭
Its not balanced enough to even watch because RNG is standing in the way.
Unless they made a tournament only map that only tournament players would play than maybe it would be interesting but a tournament is legit just a regular match but 10x sweatier.
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Condescending? Clearly condescending at that? You sure you didn't mix up posts? Where did I give you the impression I was being condescending?
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Comp DBD is boring to me because there's terrible observer tools in DBD. Compare any E-Sport or competitive game that's popular and the most notable thing is they have good spectator tools, Freecam, aerial shots, replays, a demo and playback system, relevant on screen information that can be toggled. Comp DBD relies too heavily on who ever is the one casting the tournament if it's even a tournament and not just a scrim. Commentary needs to do all the heavy lifting and they need to be able to show the right perspective at the right time or else it's boring and might as well just be viewed through one players POV the entire game.
It could work if it were a occasional automated tournament thing in DBD and we had a proper spectator system in place but I don't see it happening. The actual gameplay is interesting watching people play in a more competitive environment. The thing is with that with comp DBD I never see a consistent set of rules so I lose interest. Every corner of COMP DBD is hard to even get into for the average player because the information you find on it is obscure and again there's seemingly no consistency with a lot of players on how they view COMP DBD.
tl;dr - Comp dbd will never be a mainstream thing for this game or even relevant until good spectator tools are in place, information about it is easily accessible and everyone can have a consistent set of rules. I'm not going to factor in game balance because every game with comp has their own balancing per season and honestly I don't find it to be a relevant issue for this game.
Also why is having consistent rules important? This is purely subjective but personally I won't invest into any sport or series only for it to "change things up" halfway through just to change. The best example of a worst case scecnario is that tournament that was hosted by Space Esports. Rules changed multiple times throughout the entire tournament.
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I've watched it in the past and although SOME matches are entertaining, most of them don't hold my attention for very long and I end up just tuning the audio out, muting it, or leaving the video/livestream altogether to go watch something else.
No I don't think I'd ever play comp, unless there was an actual ranked mode. Besides that, dbd league? Nah I don't care that much.
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Huge agree on the accessibility portion. Observer tools are minimal and buggy. Custom lobbies are awful and cause event pacing to suffer. So many restarts happen because loadouts get bugged, players fail to load in, maps fail to set, and you end up having to implement so many compensating controls with the tourney admins that you're jumping through hoops for 20 minutes just to get an all-clear to start a match.
It makes the level of play suffer. People made fun of the players in BOTB. We had to be in the lobby in-game and in the discord 1 hour before our match time. But the stream was on a 30 minute delay so we had no idea when we were actually playing. Players sat in lobbies for an hour and were then suddenly told to start a match within 1 minute, so everyone was playing ice cold no warm up in front of 10k viewers.
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DBD is a casual party game, it is not, it has never been, and it will never be a game made for any form of competitive play, not E-Sports, not big tournaments, nothing like that,
Can we stop trying to add or even suggest something that fundamentally misunderstands what DBD is like for the love of all that is good in this world? Especially when every single ######### attempt at "Competitive" DBD has gone up in flames?
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