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Can somebody please explain me why 60% killrate is ballanced?
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You continue to conflate KILL rate and WIN rate. Peanits already did a good job of explaining why they differentiate the two.
The difference between solo and SWF isn't the topic here and while teamwork is one of the primary counters to killer powers, a solo team still has all the tools they need available to achieve good teamwork.
Of course a PUG group will not perform the same as a pre-made that's true of any online setting PVP or otherwise, its not a revelation to make that point. Its also not a counter my point, that the intrinsic threat of elimination is what makes the survivor experience what it is and that intrinsic threat is represented in an expected killer bias in KILL rate.
Whether people find that fun or not is up to the individual but I think DBD has a pretty good take on it with the current KILL rate stats.
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10% is absolutely not a lot.
It is less than the difference between an extra kill/escape. To feel 10%, you would need to play at least three games, and instead of an average of three 2Ks, it would be two 2Ks and one 3K.
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Skull merchant is the most unfair killer ever released imo. Not surprised at her percentage at all.
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She is unfair, sure but not even close to how crazy Mega Blink Nurse was.
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Not a lot? For a competetive game?
Look for example LoL, which is by no means perfectly ballanced:
Or remember Starcraft when Protoss was considered overpowered because of less the 1% edge overall?
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Quote Peanits: "If we're talking about solely kills, kill rate and win rate are equal."
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ooh "here are stats on a vaguely similar topic but from a completely different system unrelated to the concerns here yet somehow directly equivalent to them."
I'm not saying there isn't a comparison to be made but in the context of DBD 10% Kill rate swing is not as big as you think and the stats from another system don't really refute that point as directly as you're claiming they do. That not exactly how data works.
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Yes in terms of numerical measure sure, but we are talking about fairness and how much of a bias in outcome is unfair?
So if what is considered a win by the community is highly subjective, (as Peanits highlighted) then the measure of kill rate is what we have to go on to assess "fairness" numerically.
I still maintain that a slight killer bias in kill rate is not so unfair as to undermine the survivor player experience. In fact the excitement level of playing survivor, because lets face it the mechanics of survivor can be pretty dull, is contingent on there being tangible threat from the killer.
This state of effect is a precursor before you even consider player skill, given the theme of the game and perfectly acceptable for DBD.
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Since we're bringing other genres in, how about how it works with fighting games, where 60/40 is considered a fair match? There are also 70/30 and even 80/20 but those are much less common in balanced games, and there are still people crazy and stubborn enough to roll those dice.
DBD has too many outliers to hammer down what any overall advantage is, stuff like maps/loadouts/swf/etc all change your chances in one direction or the other. What on paper can be a 55/45 could end up as 40/60 based on the impact of said variables.
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Modern Fighting games are, at least those which are very cometetive, overall very well ballanced. Just look at SF6 for example. The most powerful Character is at +2,08%, the worst at -2%. If you play random vs random character, winning chances are on average almost exactly 50%.
Sure, there are everywhere some stinkers. But that does not mean DBD has to be one of them.
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Have you played DBD?
I shouldn't need to explain how there is no comparison here.
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I think that is a highly subjective POV there. It might be true that some considere a frightning killer that dominates most of the time exciting, but there are many who dont care about that at all and would argue a fair outcome of the match is what should be aimed for. Others cant stand if they even loose at all and are very biased towards that nonsense. So it is not really a very good argument unless a poll (which is impossible) clarifys that.
It is funny how the conversation has been changed. In the old past, survivors were often considered the power role and killers were complaining about that how unballanced the game for them is. Now, it is pretty clear that this has overall shifted and same people come with this argument, that the killer actually SHOULD be more powerful. A little bit hypocritical, dont you think?
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Sure both our views are subjective you don't have to agree with my point as I clearly don't agree with yours. That's not the purpose here.
You asked how is this balanced and is that fair? and I gave the answer it isn't but that is entirely ok in this asymmetric horror environment. Like that answer or not its a valid answer.
Hypocrisy has nothing to do with it. Can't you see how the perception of survivor being the "power role" is detrimental to the theme of the game?
The whole premise of the game, even how its promoted by BHVR, is that of a horror/slasher experience being played out. Drawing heavily on the themes and characters of 80's-90's slasher film craze.
Now conceptually who is the "power role" in a slasher film? I'll give you a hint its not the survivors.
So my point again, the one you can't seem to fathom, is how much of a bias toward killer is too much that it undermines the survivor play experience?
A slight killer bias maintains the theme, makes playing survivor exciting and 1v1 is a counter to the 4v1 team nature of survivor. To achieve that thematic balance you would expect a slight killer bias in kill rate which is what we see.
You might see this as a problem or an affront to the fun but I say it checks all necessary boxes to emulate the kind of slasher flicks that DBD is trying to emulate and that is part of the fun.
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Based on the matchmaking data from professional players, there is more of a split than that:
It is much less than games in the past, but the point still stands that players can go into a significant advantage/disadvantage just based on their matchup. In terms of DBD, you can pile all the other factors in and get a similar skew away from 50/50.
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You can argue that there are a few matchups that are not ballanced, but look at the average. Its on pretty much exactly 50/50.
In a competetive game, no matter if we are talking about the very low or the very high skill level, 50% is ballanced. 2-3% is unpleasent but might be okay but definitly not 10%.
Is or should DBD be a super competetive game? Probably not, but i would argue that has nothing to do with that. Fairness can also be achieved in a less competetive game.
Anyway, i leave it by that.
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You're missing the point. Are you saying a Lily has an equal chance against a Dhalsim? It's a lot more of a difference than 2-3%, hell its more than a 60/40 split. I'm not arguing that there are no 50/50 matchups, just that people who play characters with poor win rates have to deal with bad matchups anyway. And again, there is a lot of randomness and unknown variables to each match of dbd to be cut and dry with a final ratio.
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All we say here at this point is very subjective again.
Should the game killer sided because of the theme. You say yes, i say no. Bottom line.
To answer your question: None
A reason why ballance is more important then having a theme "fullfilled" is simply the nature of the game and how it changes over time for most persons. When you start playing DBD, it can be very scary for survivors and the usual outcome of a match is that the killer gets you, until you get a grip on your role. After a few hours, the game looses its fright factor. It becomes a duel and less a horror experience. The duel makes the game good, not the scaryness. You had that in your first hours, so therefore, the theme is fullfilled by that point, and no killrate will ever change that.
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Yeah and that's a fair point that the scare factor wears off, but that only makes it more important to have the innate killer bias.
How do you maintain player tension for survivors when players are no longer scared of the game? By maintaining a base line of reasonable threat. That baseline is the killer bias in kill rate.
You've said it yourself survivor play can be really boring. What makes it exciting to even play DBD is the threat of elimination. There is very little that's rewarding in survivor play without that innate threat of elimination.
As I've said before if there is nothing to fear from the killer why flee in the first place? At that point its no longer a survival horror its just a safe game of loopy chase which gets really dull and "same'y" really fast.
Why is it exciting to interact with the killer, because it matters to interact with the killer. It can be game ending to interact with the killer, the moment that interaction doesn't matter neither does the game.
I think you're underestimating the importance of this as to the very motivation for people to play. Annoying, frustrating, unfair people can call it all sorts of things after the fact. But why do they keep coming back even when its "annoying" etc, because there is an innate thrill and that thrill relies on the killer being dangerous.
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That is what i tried to point out already in the recent post. There is no way the killer will become more scary because of more power. It has nothing to do with that.
Once the player reaches the point that the game wont be scary anymore, not even 100% killrate will change that. Have you ever seen a single person say "This killer has such a high winrate, i am scared to death!" No, its just annoying and frustrating but not more scary.
The thrill has nothing to do with how scary the killer is. The thrill comes from a chase, and this chase has to be ballanced. Sure, i give you that if the killer would be super easy, it wont help the game either, but a killer with a 50% winrate is not a joke and not to powerful.
We wont agree i suppose, but i think we both understand each others arguments by that point. Thats good enough for me.
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Yeah I get your point. I mean I think we've both made a clear point. That's why I'm still engaged its been an interesting discussion.
I think your wrong on the concept of scare factor because do you sweat more fleeing from a good killer or when running circles around a bad killer? That sweat is tension, that tension is a good part of the game... it means the chase has meaning and losing the chase has consequences. Very important concept for DBD.
I just think its a shame that players would find that aspect annoying or frustrating. It strikes me as a mindset that is more focused on outcome than game experience. As the challenge should be fun and the higher the challenge the higher the fun.
Escaping from a good killer is so much more satisfying than running circles around a weak killer. While that comes down to player skill in the end, a small bias in kill rate doesn't undermine the impact of that skill while still maintaining the horror theme of the game.
If thematically appropriate, I don't that bias as unhealthy, providing it can still be played around by the survivors and it very much can be.
From my own standpoint I'd rather log into a survival horror like DBD safe in the knowledge that there was some kind of intrinsic threat that would make the game exciting to play as a survivor over mere mechanics deciding whether or not a game was thrilling. Because in the perfectly balanced environment the team element of survivor gives them the edge and that is the horror tension going in the wrong direction for the theme.
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And yet in all these years of SBMM, you have not even once released stats on how many games end up as 1k / 2k / 3-4k.
Interesting coiincidence.
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Just making sure you're aware that it's a 60% kill rate, not a win rate. 75% kill rate would be a win in a match.
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And solely kills don't compare to a win. Not even sure why they brought it up. If that were the case, killing a single survivor would be a killer win which obviously isn't the case.
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53% kill rate translates to 46%/13%/41% win/draw/loss rate so I suspect winrate at 60% kill rate may be well higher than 50% (7% increase in kills will translate to probably more than 4% increase in wins)
That's also before accounting for draws
Post edited by ratcoffee on0 -
A 62.5% kill rate would be the killers getting a 3k or 4k in roughly half their matches. In other words. Killers with a 50% win rate would need a 62.5% kill rate.
If it was a 50% kill rate on average every match would result in only 2 kills (not a win). Considering a killer needs 3k+ to win, in order for a killer to win every match, they'd need a 75% kill rate (which we obviously don't want). So to get an even ground of losing every match (50%) and winning every match (75%), you'd take the middle ground of 62.5%. This would put them at winning half their matches on average. Since the desired kill rate per BHVR is only 60%, this means that killers should be winning roughly half their matches but with an occasional extra loss on top of that since they are 2.5% short of it being a 50% win rate.
As for draws, there is no actual draw in dbd, as BHVR stated that survivors win or lose at an individual basis. It's a 1 killer vs 4 individuals game, not a killer team vs survivor team. If 1 survivor escapes and 3 survivors die, then the survivors had 1 winner and 3 losers. Draw requires both sides to neither win or lose which isn't possible with a 1 vs 4 individuals system. You either win or you lose. However, for MMR, BHVR does treat a 2 kill as neutral for MMR adjustments even though it's not actually a draw in reality.
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Thanks for this post, I've been meaning to work on an intro to stats video based on this exact argument and seeing yet another person make it gave me some motivation to get work done on it
edit: also, with regards to your claim that "there is no actual draw in DBD" that's just plain incorrect:
Post edited by ratcoffee on0 -
If the killer is at 62,5% killrate, the killer wins on average a 50% of the games, draws like 20% and looses 30%. It is definitly extremly unballanced.
Trapper is at 50% killrate and is at 42% wins 15% draws 43% loss. Thats ballanced.
I dont know what else is there to say. You can look it up all here: https://nightlight.gg/
And yes, there is a draw. When the killer gets 2 kills, it is a draw. Everything else, whatever the survivors are doing, is totally irrelevant for the killer. Very simple concept.
But, for the last time:
0+1 Kill = Loss
2 Kill (the middle) = Draw
3+4 kill = Win
Sorry, i cant do this anymore and i dont know what is so hard to understand. Anyway. Lets leave it to that please.
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I already stated that those comments about win loss draw is in regards to MMR adjustments only, not actual win or loss rates. They even highlight the fact its only referring to MMR adjustments. They even made it in big bold letters - I'm surprised you missed that. MMR adjustments are entirely separate from a win or a loss. Some games even reduce your MMR level even if you win - depending on how you won. For a DBD example, a survivor might afk the entire match, then come back at the last moment and get out the door. Should they go up in MMR? That kind of example, the devs could consider someone with extremely low points despite escaping be reduced (or neutral) in MMR regardless if they won. Not saying they do, but im pointing out MMR adjustments does not equal a win rate in the industry.
BHVR is the ones themselves that stated survivors do not win/lose/draw as a team. They said each individual survivors gets their own win or loss condition. A draw requires both sides to neither win nor lose, and there is never a situation where the killer and each individual survivor never wins or loses. It is impossible to actually draw a match of dbd (unless the server goes down, ha). However, they need to still do MMR adjustments. It would be better worded that they say the MMR increases, stays neutral, or decreases.
I'm not sure why you don't understand this concept. A draw requires ALL players neither win or lose, and that is fundamentally impossible unless the server crashes. It's 1 killer vs 4 individual survivors, and each survivor per BHVR's own words get their own individual win or loss condition. The survivors side will always either have at least one winner or all losers (and the killer wins obviously). Those are the only two outcomes. Neither outcome do all players neither win nor lose.
The only actual draw is a server crash. MMR adjustments are separate from wins or losses. BHVR could keep someone with 0 points by AFKing the whole match and then escaping at the same MMR or lower it if they wanted. They have to do SOMETHING to adjust fir MMR, and the easiest way is to do 3k+ goes up, 2k stays the same, and 0-1 goes down. It's ineffective, as proper MMR adjustments are far more complicated than that, but that's what they go with.
Let's try this logically. Killer got a 2k, and 2 survivors escapes. The killer gets a draw, and those two survivors won. Two survivors lost. No survivors draw. Now it sounds silly to call it a draw, no? Exactly. This isn't a killer team vs survivor team situation. If a survivor escapes, they don't all go up in mmr. If 3 survivors escape, they don't all go up in mmr. It's 1 vs 4 individuals with their own separate win conditions.
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I didn't miss it, I simply agree with the MMR system's way of classifying what is a win, draw, or loss because it makes the most sense, and your "it isn't a draw in reality" just seems fairly ridiculous. "Yes, it makes sense for someone who defeated exactly half their opponents and was defeated by the other half to have a neutral result, and yes the in game ranking system considers that to be the case, but actually that's wrong, just trust"
I will make the caveat that for gameplay statistics it only makes sense to compare escape rate to kill rate stats on an individual level or to analyze total number of escapes vs kills within a match on a team level, so MMR isn't the exact perfect way of determining game balance, but you won't convince me that a 2 out isn't a draw for killer, no matter how much you appeal to "the industry" (what industry???)
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What industry?
You keep ignoring the basic fact that dismantles your entire argument. What is the definition of a draw? Now compare that to DBD where it's one player vs 4 individual players, and each individual player gets their own win or loss condition? NOBODY wins or loses in a draw. Can keep conveniently ignore that fact as long as you like, but it's still there. Someone ALWAYS wins in a match of dbd. You keep bringing up that half the survivors dying and the other have escapes means the game was a draw, but if it's a draw, then why do 2 of the survivors go down in mmr and get a loss and 2 of the survivors go up in mmr and get a win? That's not a draw, silly. A draw means no one wins or loses, period. You can't have one person drawing while all other opponents either wins or loses. That's not how draws work.
Now personally, I think the whole individual win condition for survivors is silly. I think it should be team based. That helps stop situations where you have one survivor just hiding all game and then gets to escape at the end while everyone else dies. They should not get a win. The survivor team should win or lose as a team as a whole. BHVR disagrees though. It does make more sense for the survor team to act together in one win lose or draw condition, but BHVR doesn't feel that way, and they make the call. I'm not defending BHVR'a decision here, I'm merely pointing out what their decision is. You don't have to change my mind about it, you have to change THEIR mind to make it a team vs team game instead of a every man for themselves system where each get their own individual win or loss condition.
Every survivor will have a greater chance at winning if they work together, but at the end of the day, it's 4 separate people dropped into a match each with their own win condition pitted against a killer.
As for the industry, basic game design 101 involving multiple people on sides rarely has mmr adjusted solely on a win loss or draw. For example in call of duty, you can be on the winning side with 1 kill and 50 deaths, but you'll be taken down a notch in mmr. On the other hand, you can be on the losing side but go 50 kills and no deaths and go up in mmr. MMR adjustments are entirely separate from a simple win or loss. BHVR takes the same idea, while each individual player gets their own win or loss condition, MMR is treated entirely separate for the killer on determining how their mmr should be adjusted. This has no bearing on if the killer won or lost but is simply based on the amount of kills they get. 0-1 it goes down, 2 it stays neutral, and 3+ it goes up. That's why BHVR goes out of their way to say for MMR adjustments, it considers 2 kills a draw. It considers it a draw for MMR adjustments only. It would be more accurate to say 2 kills keeps it neutral. It has to consider it a draw because they recognize its not actually a draw since you cant have a draw in a 1 vs 4 individuals with their own win conditions game. Despite MMR remaining neutral, the killer still lost.
Post edited by EQWashu on0 -
I like how you say something to the effect of "Because some survivors MMR goes up and other survivors MMR goes down it can't be a draw, we need to consider how the MMR calculates the result" and then later say, effectively, "We cannot consider how the killer's result affects their MMR because nobody in the video game industry uses the MMR system that is being used by BHVR, a company within the game industry." Never mind how DBD uses the system you say nobody in the industry uses, neever mind how IDV, the closest viable competitor to DBD, very explicitly calls a 2-out a draw for both teams (thus proving you very explicitly wrong about your "in the industry" argument), those contradictions really put on full display the internal inconsistencies in the position you're trying to hold. At this point it's fairly clear you're just holding whatever position advocates increasing killer strength with no regard to what you said one paragraph ago, so I see no point continuing this conversation.
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I think you completely misread my post. Try re-reading it. I'm saying BHVR is adopting the industry standard of MMR adjustments being entirely separated from a win/loss system. You just claimed I said the opposite which shows you didn't bother reading what I said, or you're having trouble understanding it. Let me know if I need to break it into simpler terms. What I DID say is I think BHVR needs to get away from the industry standard in this game because I feel it SHOULD be based on a team vs team win/loss condition (and then we could have a legitimate draw this way!). They should encourage the team to want to win together as opposed to the every man for himself how it is, now. Would csuse for less players to just abandon each other so they can get their own win. However, BHVR doesn't agree, so it is what it is.
Since you're new to gaming, I'll at least explain this. MMR systems typically are not supposed to care about wins or losses. MMR system's solely are designed to try to pit you against similarly skilled players. Wins give you rewards, points, etc. MMR cares about performance. That's why in the industry you have games where you can win but go down in mmr, or lose and go up in mmr. If someone is getting their butt kicked and the other team feels sorry for them and allows them to win, should the mmr system go up so that they get their butts get kicked even harder next match? Of course not. MMR are supposed to be graded on performance. BHVR tries to mimic this for killers based on just kills in the match, but it's certainly flawed. They do however have some semblance of grading the concept with pips. You can literally win but get 0 pips. There's an understanding that wins just give rewards and bp, but performance at some level is what matters. The whole point is that they have the game set up where every single player gets their own win or loss condition, but they have to make MMR adjustments which by design are NOT simply tied to a win or a loss...that's supposed to be measured by performance. BHVR just makes their adjustments for killers of negative neutral or positive based on the amount of kills. It's far from perfect, but even that doesn't have a direct connection to a win or a loss. There is no draws in dbd. They just treat 2 kills as neutral for the purposes of mmr which...again...does not connect to winning or losing. MMR system's are independent from that.
MMR adjustments are not a reward or punishment. They are to try to put evenly matched opponents against each other. That's all.
Post edited by RpTheHotrod on1 -
I am certain that you genuinely believe your long-winded condescension makes you right, but I fail to see how your acknowledgement that a win-draw-loss system is the most intuitive way of understanding killer performance does anything other than reaffirm the original point of the stats I posted, red herrings about how you're totally a games industry insider aside.
Need I remind you that my entire argument has been that looking at 2k as a draw, more as a killer win and less as a killer loss (the criteria you seem to be saying you agree with) demonstrates that the current kill rate of 53% results in more killer wins than losses, and that MMR was only an aesthetic point in that argument? Surely you wouldn't have forgotten something you could so easily scroll up to remember
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I'm not being condescending, I was just explaining how MMR systems work since youre unfamiliar with gaming. Only two people would ask what the gaming industry is, those not experienced with gaming or someone just trolling. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt.
I'm saying I don't agree with BHVR. We SHOULD have a draw system, but we don't. I'm just pointing out that people keep building certain viewpoints on the incorrect assumption that there are draws in the game in regards to win loss ratios. We don't. We should, but we don't because BHVR had decided to build the game around 5 player individual win conditions instead of a killer vs survivor team. I'm acknowledging their thinking on this isn't a good one, but im clearing up that despite that opinion, BHVR has set up the game where there are no actual draws. They can adjust MMR however they like, of course, since MMR adjustments are independent of wins/losses.
Look at it this way, a survivor wins by escaping the trial. The killer didn't kill them - they escaped to see another day. However, considering that escaping via a hatch is an undeserved/handed out by rng/whatever you want to call it win, BHVR realizes that it's probably bad to boost their mmr, so although the survivor escaped, for purposes of mmr, a hatch escape is considered MMR neutral (doesn't go up or down) despite the survivor successfully escaping the trial. It's a consolation/undeserved/handed out/rng or whatever you want to call it win...but a win nonetheless. Yet another example that MMR adjustments are not related to wins/losses. They are in fact independent of them as MMR adjustments only seeks to pit similarly skilled people against each other.
Post edited by RpTheHotrod on0
