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Why is BHVR so afraid to buff weak killers?
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Here is an example that can be interesting:
In League of Legends, every match is tracked, and gives everyone who was in the match a detailed timeline of how the match went. Say for instance that one team completely steamrolled the other, but managed to throw the game, then it will show in a graph where the team's total gold lead is shown.
Now a similar tracking and summary could work in DBD as well, where it shows a timeline of the match, and which objectives got done (for instance generators, totems and hooks) at what time into the match. It should be a lot easier to keep track of how different killers and survivor teams deal with one another, if a system like this was implemented. Showing the players' builds as well could help determine the impact certain perks / perk combos have over others and so on.
I am pretty sure the real data would look a lot different than what it currently shows.
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There's a lot of killers who simply will never be good without making them extremely unfun to play against due to the nature of their power. Trapper, Trickster, and Doctor are pretty good examples of killers who are more victims of having powers that are missing aspects of what means a good killer power like map control/chase
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Myers, Pig....
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CLEAR! As in the statistics it says that he is the killer WITH THE HIGHEST KILL RATE, well THIS OP, please, use your head a little, it is like saying that Freddy is the strongest killer when his KILL RATE is also around 60% and it is the worst killer in the game xDD when his play rate has probably dropped a lot.
Statistics are not everything, there are many factors that many players do not know, and you only think about stats, when possibly, for example, sadako has killed all 4 because one of them has committed suicide, and one of them does not know how to play against sadako yet, but I assure you that putting 4 half-good survivors, tell me if you are capable of making at least 6-8 hooks...
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I respect your opinion, but the comment is ridiculous.
Freddy needs help, myers too, trapper too, PIG too, despite the stats, you know what's better than the stats? A player who has been playing the game for 7 years (ME) and I assure you that those killers are destitute, it is very easy to say that all the killers, despite the statistics, all have a good kill ratio, when really in practice I play a lot with them, and at least it makes me want to uninstall DBD, because I can't do much with them, the players I mostly get are good, and I assure you that catching a good player with a pig is impossible for me, Freddy has many lacks in its power, a power that is too outdated and quite badly planned where it can be improved in many aspects to make it more fun and more used, but hey, the community has an orientation on statistics and I assure you that it is not everything.
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What percentage of DbD's playerbase is "good"?
Should those Killers all just be buffed to compete with good players and just have them totally curbstomp average players?
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if a killer player is good, they'll go up in MMR to face better players so better survivor player will get more killer variety. The average players already get curbstomped/lose because they're average. with weaker killers, the stronger survivor player curbstomp the weaker killers so the killer player goes lower because their character is not that competitively good.
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Yeah they do those good players actually have to play to be good isnt it?
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That sounds like a fundamental problem with the design of the game that needs to be addressed. You need to look at, why do "average" survivors do so poorly against killers most of time? There are probably a number of factors but these are the things that i "notice" when i play against or with bad survivors (and/or my friends with 20 hours).
- They are too scared to work on generators when the killer is "nearby" but totally occupied.
- They tend to hide from the killer even though the killer knows they are there instead of running to a safe loop
- They are bad at looping
- Anything that isn't a trapper power gives them a hard time because they don't know how to deal with each individual unique killer.
- They are afraid to be injured
- They spend time doing things that aren't useful, cleansing dull totems, or looting from chests, or healing against a legion.
- When playing solo, it is nearly impossible to coordinate with their team.
- Camping and tunneling are extremely effective against them.
Now lets look at high level play and why low-tier killers tend to struggle against them:
- Loops can simply be too powerful, shack into cow tree into jungle gym etc.
- Good survivors know the power of shift+w
- They don't waste time doing useless objectives, and spend almost all their time on gens, or doing something useful.
- They know how to deal with camping
- They have the perks to deal with tunneling, and the looping skills to keep the match going.
- They are not afraid to be injured
- Even while playing solo, everyone generally knows what they should be doing, so the lack of communication doesn't hurt them as badly
Now ignoring SWF for a minute, as well as nurse and blight (with dumb addons) because that's a whole different beast.
There are a number of changes that can be done, that would actually IMPROVE both the high level killer and low level survivor experience at the same time.
- Some loops are simply too strong, lets nerf some of them, Why does shack window need to spawn into a long wall jungle gym window. You aren't going to hurt the low level players by doing this, because they aren't abusing these structures and spawns to begin with, they are busy predropping the pallet on the wrong side and getting hit anyway.
- Camping should get removed (not in the way they are doing it). High tier survivors already know how to deal with it, and it is boring.
- Tunneling should get removed (preferably with the same mechanic as camping). High tier survivors tend to have the perks and loop knowledge to deal with it, so it won't hurt high level play.
- God pallets that are not mindgameable need to go, again, low skill survivors aren't using these pallets properly anyway, so removing or changing them isn't going to hurt them, and they are in low MMR so they aren't dealing with complex mind-games from killers.
This is what i don't understand about this community, anytime anyone suggests making any change to make high level play better, they immediately go "what about the 'average' survivors". The point is, you can NERF some of these extremely powerful loop setups that can spawn, and you aren't going to hurt the average survivors, because they aren't abusing those loops to begin with.
I post this video all the time, but it demonstrates my point exactly perfectly:
Yes, it is about TF2, but the premise and idea remains the same regardless of the game. I timestamped the section around where the maker of the video talks about the B.A.S.E. Jumper item in TF2 and when it was nerfed and how it affected high level play and improved it, without hurting the low level play. But the whole video is great and worth a watch.
The very next example talks about the sniper class, where a change was made that nerfed an item in high level play, but actually buffed it in low level play, because the change was made to make the item have multiple uses. The item specifically is made to counter spies. In high level play, you ain't gonna see a spy anyway, but in pubs you'll see them all the time where sniper has a harder time. But they made it so you couldn't "overheal" the sniper when using that item, so they would be countered by OTHER snipers because overhealing would make it so they couldn't die to a headshot.
DBD can totally make these types of changes, improving both high level and low level play at the same time. But for some reason this community is so afraid of change they cry out anytime anything is suggested.
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Do you actually trust the Devs to put that amount of finesse into it?
I'm for everything except the God pallet thing. There's really no need.
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I don't think the goal should be to adjust killers to be in line with different tiers of players (in terms of skill), but to bring them more in line with each other in terms of power.
Having killers vary so wildly in their viability isn't good game design, and it's not good for players.
That's not to say there shouldn't be any variance, but currently for your your average player, using a D tier vs. an A/S tier killer is almost like playing a completely different game.
Bring the killers into some semblance of a power baseline and then balance the game overall. I can't think of many games where you can juice or handicap yourself so much based solely on character choice/preference.
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To be fair to Trapper, he has to be simple enough to be a training wheels Killer also. I would say adjusting trap spawning to be open and touching loops would help him without altering him to be too mechanically difficult to learn.
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I mean, maybe so.
But you have to take into consideration that these Killers do seem to be doing well across all MMRs.
I'm sure some QoL and small buffs wouldn't hurt, addons passes as well. But you can't make Wraith or Trapper on par with Wesker.
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Again, the kill/win rates have to be taken in context with the pickrates. A tiny cadre of specialists who are really good with a particular killer posting similar numbers to a much better killer with multitudes more users isn't a sign of the weaker killer's health.
I'd like to see a situation where you could choose any killer and at least a have loose approximation of the experience you'd get with any other killer.
Obvs you can't bring all killers into total line (especially not in a world there Nurse exists), but killer balance could be worlds better.
And yes, this might also mean kneecapping the entire S tier.
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To be fair, look how they buffed sadako. By nerfing her lol. Their reasoning behind leaving trapper the way he is, is because new players will gravitate toward him. Their mindset is to focus on new players instead of the experienced player. No other dev does this. This is why there's such a huge gap in power level between killers. The devs make bogus excuses like anyone really believes that story. They just want to pump out minimal content that people dont want, and will never want [hillbilly overheat] among other things, and sell their microtransactions instead of fixing gameplay
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According to Peanits in a thread a day or two ago, all Killers have about the same pickrate iirc.
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Older numbers I've seen don't reflect that, and tbh to anyone who plays the game much that assertion is just ridiculous on its face.
Post edited by Thusly_Boned on1 -
Well, I didn't recall correctly, so that explains that.
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You ever think that maybe the reason some of these killers have such a low pick rate is because they can't compete?
Look at Freddy's pickrate after the nerfs. He was one of the most played killers, now he is one of the least played even tho his playstyle haven't changed that much. Killers that are underperfroming make players feel powerless and frustrating, so they prefer to play something else even if they like the character.
Talking about Legion they are in a pretty good spot rn. I main this killer since 2019 and I remember him being 5.0 m/s, very slow vaults and it felt AWFUL. Look how much time it took for them to get reworked. It took definately way too much time. I'm not a developer in any way, but I think it doesn't take very much time to make some number adjustments in powers - like duration time, fatigue time, recharge time etc. I think you need to experiment, check how it could perform with some easy tweaks that community asks for. If something will be broken, not working, it can always be reverted. That's what PTB's are for :D.
I can't wait for you to show us some Nightmare tweaks. I hope you will make him a bit more intresting, cuz his character has A LOT of potential. Don't be scared to experiment!
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It's entirely possible to significantly buff killers and raise skill ceilings without making them oppressive at lower ranks, you can give them a more complex strategy required to win at high levels while making them simple to understand, something every professional game dev needs to know how to do.
The 3% figure is also misleading, sure you can assume 3% of the killer base plays that killer but every survivor they face encounters the issues that the killer brings. If you have a very unfun killer (like Skull Merchant according to most), you'll see very widespread complaints even if its just that one killer out of 30+.
Trapper being the poster boy doesn't warrant making him weak, again, killers can be designed to be simple to new players, and produce average results, yet still have an extremely high skill ceiling. A good example is Ghostface; as a 7k+ hour ghostface main, I can say his power is pretty straightforward mechanically speaking, but there's a ton of depth to doing well; you can theoretically beat any team through sheer foresight and cunning despite most of the community seeing him as a below average killer. You'd need a solid understanding of game theory (which will also separate the experienced players from the newer ones) to implement such a killer but it's your designers' job to understand how this works.
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as long as survivors dont have brains these killers are perfectly balanced
great job
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He was saying IF all killers had the same pick rate while discussing a hypothetical. He was most certainly not saying they did, and there's absolutely no way they actually do.
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My point exactly. It's a joke tbh.
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Average players can get better. And should get better. If they don't then that's their problem. This nonsense is what's killing the balance of the game. You don't balance the game around people that suck. Gen speed for example should be balanced around efficient players who do them, not survivors who never touch a gen.
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Hypothetically, let's do that. Who should be in charge of that balancing?
If we extend gen time to say, 120 seconds, would that be sufficient?
Now the VAST majority of players CANNOT win a match and are getting stomped every game.
Congrats, you've made DBD into a game nobody wants to play. Bad idea.
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There are ways to address gen speeds without just throwing bigger numbers on them. Having meaningful regression/progression blocking potential, rubber banding gen progress speed vs survivors in play, secondary objectives, we need more creative changes than just throwing extra seconds on top. Like you said, just throwing a bigger number at gen charges only hurts low level play, which is why solutions need to address the potential (specifically) of high level play more than anything. That kinda goes for most imbalance in the game, the extremes need to be addressed rather than just blanket adjustments and bandaid fixes.
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Balancing around the top 5% of players destroyed Deathgarden. I think the devs learned from that so they’re much more cautious about overpowering killers in DBD.
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Baseline, goal should be killers are fun - being strong or weak, don’t care, is it fun to play a killer where you can’t keep up in chase or do anything with survs but watch gens be done? Is it fun to have killers that have to tunnel out a survivor to stand a chance?
if you’re a bit of a sweaty guy, then sure. But, it’s painful to reach a higher MMR of sweats when you just want to have some fun chases but are limited to a handful of killers to do that.
these Nic Cage perks are fun, they are incredibly silly, half the time useless but fun.
If you took a way the ability to kick victor, and instead gave him (maybe a longer) stun so you could bounce off houses endlessly trying to hit a survivor - that would be actually be hilarious for both sides.
you could make Trappers traps and adjust the spawn parameters so they don’t end up on the edges of a cold wind farm, reduce a little of the RNG, and suddenly the killer is more consistently fun.
Im fairly certain the majority of players don’t find it fun to gen rush while the other side tunnels one out immediately to stand a chance - that is the meta at higher MMRs unless you play the tippiest top of strong killers and it makes games repetitive.
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arbitrarily, killers should need to do well in the chase to gain longer gens. giving such huge gen increases for free may leads to killer winning when they do not deserve to win.
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The words “Chase better” would make more sense if most of the pallets in the game were designed to be mind gameable, god pallets were deleted + Bloodlust numbers toned down
If Killers are expected to demonstrate skillful play via chase to win, the same should apply for Survivors.
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Hit the spot
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right. generators are an ok spot. it is killer power in relationship to how looping works that could be more improved but apparently weak killer do not exist and everyone has great kill-stats.
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Nurse was top 5 I think in top MMR, so no according to his logic she should not be needing any buffs cause she's doing pretty well in high MMR, like many other killers who are "weak" (see Dredge).
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i don't think most pallets are meant to be mind game-able tho. There plenty of killers who force you to pre drop for one reason or another
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It also destroyed VHS. Balancing exclusively for the top is a game killer.
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"Something else that we need to consider are the players who already enjoy these Killers the way they are. Legion is a perfect example of this. There's no shortage of suggestions to rework The Legion's power to make them stronger. Yet in spite of this, The Legion is consistently one of the most played Killers. While they might not be the strongest in high end matches, there is still a large crowd who enjoy them as is. That raises the question, is it worth reworking a Killer that many people already love to play just to make the people who don't play them happy?"
you contradict yourself with the recent sadako "nerf"
you guys should stop focusing on data & analytic, on asymmetrical game that kind of method is not really effective..
maybe start with making a small team to actually looking into each killer weakness.
it doesn't really need to be super strong like nurse or blight, but make the killer at least can keep up with the current meta.
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VHS was destroyed because the devs wanted to much for the game to be fun for survivors, that the survivors got pretty much every player experience buff that DBD survivors wanted, and killers were usually ignored so that survivors could have more fun.
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How weak are they in reality though? Killers already dominate solo queue, which is the majority of the playerbase. You can buff them to compete with high level SWF's but it will result in even more one-sided matches for players in solo queue. Imagine if Doctor and Wraith were as powerful as Blight, but with none of the work needed to play them well. Solo queue would be even worse, and it's already an awful way to play survivor.
I'd like to see buff's to weaker killers to add some variety to the killers I face, but I feel like solo queue needs more work first.
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Casuals already get stomped. Balancing for them doesn’t matter. All it does is ruin the game for experienced players
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casuals are still important to the health of the game, they get alienated and the game dies. This coming from someone who also wants high level play to be better balanced.
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Other games don’t balance for casuals and still do just fine. BHVR released a statistic years ago when DS was first nerfed that showed literally no change in escape rate. Casuals aren’t good enough at the game for most balancing to matter.
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That depends on how the balancing is done, which is why Its important to consider both high and low level when making changes, and not just ignoring either one. Other games also have features specifically for beginners/low level play, even street fighter 6 came with a simplified control option.
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I mean, hey, if you WANT the game to die because you've killed off casuals, you could just say that.
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No. I want the game to be balanced in a way that doesn't screw over solo queue players. Buffing killers whilst solo queue is such a mess just makes solo queue even worse. I'm not sure why you think it's unfair for average Killers to struggle against SWF, but it's okay if solo queue (the majority of the playerbase) gets made even weaker. I personally think both situations suck.
Solo queue isn't weak just because the matchmaking prioritises speed over matching players appropriately or survivors rage quitting. There's just stuff that is inherently harder to deal with. Try breaking a 3 gen in solo with no communication, it's a miserable experience even after the gen regression nerfs.
SWF holds solo queue hostage, but there's no way to nerf SWF directly. All you can do is water down survivor tools or buff killers to compensate. But that screws over solo queue in it's current form. At no point should you harm the majority of players who already play the weakest role in the game just to harm SWF.
I think they need to keep improving the solo queue experience. That way they can buff average killers without making solo queue increasingly unplayable.
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For the 1000th time, other games are profitable because of casuals, yet cater to higher level play. You and the other people on this forum literally made up the talking point that the game has to be balanced for casuals to keep it alive.
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Yeah, because 99.99% of players are casual.
Makes ZERO sense to balance around a .01 percentage.
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Did you not read my other post? Balancing barely affects casuals. If MFT and most survivor perks were deleted, it would barely make a dent in casual survivor escape rates because they don’t understand how to play the game at a base level. Likewise, if pallets were reduced (a change that should happen imo) it still wouldn’t affect the escape rate. You still see a shocking number of players wasting the speed boost off a hit.
Play or look at the community of any other game and you’ll see what i mean
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I doubt those games are asymm.
It's absolutely impossible to balance DBD around top players while making the game fun for regular players.
Why is that? Because top players optimize the hell out of the game. Tunneling, actual gen rushing, optimal looping, optimal pallet dropping, etc etc.
The average player needs like 30 pallets. The top player needs 8. You cannot reconcile the two of those if you balance around the top.
You CAN reconcile them if you balance for the average player and balance specific things for a higher level of play.
Ultimately, it really would kill the game if they decided to balance around the top 1% of players. Zero goofy fun perks. No strong perks. Everything optimal all the time.
No thanks.
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Its funny how good survivor players use bad survivors as a shield but killers exist as an amorphous blob of 1 skill level.
Why cant we tweak the game for casual players on the killer side? *the crowd gasps*
Why is the balance goal for survivor: "buff survivor character till 4 random bad survivor players can perform exactly like 4 teammate good survivors on comms"?
Whereas our community takes out the torches and pitchforks for any killer above B-tier. Even those who agree with "lessening the difference between killers aproach it from the opposite direction they use for survivors. "Lets buff solo to swf" "delete/nerf the strong killers down to B tier.
Same with our community not wanting comms in the game but having the results of good comms usage added to the basekit/game UI. All the results without any input. Cant wait for a map/radar to be added because the pros have an clock system lol.
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I agree that some killers do still need help.
Disagree harshly that one player who has 7 years of experience is worth more then stats
According to steam right now there was a avarage player count of 46,366 players. Even if we assume half of them are in the lobby there are an avarage of 4,636.6 matches being played at any moment in time. That's 231.8 matches with the top 5% of players at that time. And that's only pc, console not included.
I hate to say it but your personal experience would only be a deciding factor if you would be applying for a comp team. It pales in the grand scheme of DbD.
That's not to say it's completely meaningless ofcourse. A veteran is going to have a lot more detailed and accurate feedback then a beginner.
But at the end of the day you are one human who is going to have biases cause that's what humans do. One day of stat gathering is going to be able to tell so much more about the game as a whole then your entire 7 year experience.
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