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Why excessive Stealth can't be nerfed...
I've noticed a recent trend in this forum, YouTube and reddit, and other places online that Stealth is maligned as a problem in DBD, and lots of discussion about needing strong perks to be able to counter it, and perks that facilitate it to be nerfed.
I'd first like to say, I 100% agree that rats are a pest in this game. Regardless of whether you're killer or survivor, nobody loves a rat... however the most important thing to remember is... rats cause survivors to lose. A player refusing to take chase, refusing to take risks and keep hiding, refusing to help a player on their team who really needs it, these players are a liability to Survivors, and will often get their teammates, and themselves killed.
There is a problem with trying to stop players doing this... there is no way to prevent players from excessive hiding, without also stopping legitimate hiding. I can already hear players getting ready to say "hiding isn't fun for anyone, chase is what is fun in DBD, so its a worthwhile sacrifice", and to that I would say, you are absolutely wrong.
It is important to remember, that DBD is a horror game. There are people who will push up their nerd glasses and say "DBD isnt a horror game any more", but that is more attributable to your time with the game rather than the game not being scary. Whether you still feel like it is or not after 3000 hours, it is absolutely a horror game, and you do not hold the authority on what people find "scary" or "fun".
Getting chased and just making it to dodge a hit at window, or juking to the side and just avoiding a chainsaw/hatchet/spear, or just breaking free of Pinhead chains to reach a pallet with a microsecond to spare, this is all exciting... however it is also exciting to juke into a locker with Q&Q and sit hiding/hoping the killer does not notice, it is nerve wracking to be crouching in a bush wounded while on death hook hoping the killer doesn't come close enough to hear you, it is heart pounding to sit at the gate as sole survivor opening the door and praying the killer guessed at the wrong one.
Stealth in this game has provided me with plenty of great moments in DBD, and stealth is an imperative part of the tension to Horror... and if you try to remove that by having perks that completely nuke hiding (such as Uliltimate Weapon) or nerfing stealth perks to the floor (such as Distortion), you'll do more damage to the game than good.
Rats are cowards... cowards tend to be selfish... and as frustrating as it is, selfish people tend to benefit at the expense of others. If you have a suggestion to punish cowardice without punishing tactical hiding in all scenarios, then by all means share... but be very careful of suggesting anything with the intent of removing stealth.
Thanks for listening!
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BHVR can nerf the perks that encourage excessive hiding, and give killers better ways to find survivors that are excessively hiding. BHVR can also nerf lockers so it’s not blocking auras and screaming. There are things BHVR could be doing.
Maybe the future reworks or mangled and hemorrhage can turn those status effects from anti healing to anti stealth. I’d be cool with that.
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but that is more attributable to your time with the game rather than the game not being scary.
That is literally the only thing you've said that I disagree with, but that is just because I think you're forgetting something important.
The atmosphere.
There used to be an effort by the developers to create an unsettling and horror-themed atmosphere, which heavily carried the scary aspect of Dead by Daylight. This was clearly seen in the older maps.
Of course, one can always argue that nothing is scary forever, and the game will lose that aspect with time. However, there is a very clear difference between having a horror atmosphere at all times, and having nothing at all.
Had the older maps stayed unchanged, and the newer ones designed with horror in mind, things would be better.
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However, remember that stealth doesnt have to mean selfish. I play stealthy if i can, but i take risks, i do unhooks, heal and do gens (most often more than my teammates). Yes, i dont like chases, and i dont go into them for free, and if i do, i wont buy you much time anyway (but i take a chase if the killer comes back after an unhook, or if you are nearby and on deathhook with the killer on your tail.)
The problem with stealth is, it used to work in chases, with the old iron will and lots of line-of sight-blockers, so you could go into a chase and then juke them with a mind game. Since the map reworks, those structures are mostly gone, because even if you have a line of sight blocker, often there is nothing where you could have gone.
That leads to one result: for a lot of people to play stealthy, they have to leave and hide somewhere before the killer is even there. They dont stay on a gen anymore if there is a heartbeat around them, but they leave as soon as they hear it, even if the killer is in a chase, and thus leads to much time wasted.
But it is a result of previous stealth nerfs, and stealth should be a valid strategy in a horror game.
So give is back ways to juke a killer in a chase instead of preemptively hidding, and you would get a lot less lost time.
So, for some of us this game is about hide and seek, for others its about the chase, but i dont think you should promote one playstyle by nerfing the other (although this is what was done in the past).
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i don't see stealth as a problem. in fact i don't see any stealth at all in like 80% of games as killer. my biggest problem with killer vs good survivor is gen-rushing. Not stealth.
even a singular perk devoted to tracking like nowhere to hide and ultimate weapon curbs stealth very easily. My only problem with stealth in dbd is end-game stealth. the stealth where two survivor refuse to die but there is 3+ gen left. I don't like these extremely drawn out games where they can take forever to end.
Stealth has considerable skill-ceiling from survivor to be performed well because the main skill of stealth is not being found while doing generators. Pure-ratting does hurt the team but efficient ratting can cause killer to search areas, waste time and in fact make generator faster because the killer is wasting time not applying any pressure in order to search for survivors.
in my opinion, i would like to see stealth more prominent in early game of dbd and removal/nerfing stealth in end game. currently only way to hide scratch marks is to walk and crouch but walking is so slow that very few survivors bother with stealth mechanisms in the game. Running makes you leave scratch marks and attentive killer will easily pick up your trail even with slightest amount of scratch marks. I'd like to see something like walking speed buffs so survivor actively try avoid the killer instead of aggressive loop and sometimes T-bag at pallets/exit gates whenever they win.
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they can improve afk crows. something like an invisible bar that fills as you stay useless and survs can recede it by doing gens healing (others) getting chased and unhooking. numbers should be rather extreme so actual valid stealth gameplay (especially in 3v1 or 2v1s) isn't punished.
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This would be my route, however the problem is very difficult to manage, it would need extremely careful thought to ensure it built up fast enough to matter, and decay slow enough that you can't tap a gen or a totem periodically to avoid the build up but be long enough to not catch legit play.
This is why I say you have to be very careful about nerfing stealth, because it's quite easy to be too weak to make a difference, or catch legit play in the crossfire. How long should it be before it goes off? 2 minutes? 3 minutes? 5 minutes?
What constitutes being useful? Conspicuous actions for a time might be a good for the 2vs1.. but how long? And how long does someone need to do an action for it to be considered no longer hiding to prevent tapping?? 5s? 10s? 20s?
Does being in chase stop it? What about pre-running? What if I'm going for flashlight/pallet saves? Does being in the killer TR disable it? What about if I'm being head trap stealth stalked by a Pig? Or breaking LoS on Myers?
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I think it's easy to forget that DBD was originally a "hide and seek" style game up until bhvr noticed people getting attached to Meg's perks, so there's a large selection of perks available to new players centered around stealth or at the very least avoiding chase.
I do agree that people sneaking around not doing anything is an issue especially if you're solo Q, and it's made worse when those are the players given the chance to escape. Maybe if something was implemented to draw survivors into the action more, or at the very least into doing objectives, it could reduce the urge to sneak over to the corner and wait till hatch
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There is something that can be done. If a survivor doesn't make X amount of progress in different actions in 3 minutes, they are revealed to the killer. The survivor would be notified beforehand, that they should progress the game somehow or risk being revealed.
The same could happen when the killer hasn't been able to get into a chase for X amount of time. Make it 3 minutes or even more, so it cannot be used to win the game but it would stop survivors from holding the killer hostage. I have had more than enough people trying to do that, when someone was already dead and I am not ok with either side being held hostage.
Both of these solutions are so weak, that they don't give the killer a competitive advantage but they do end hiding for the sake of hiding.
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Sounds reasonable, the numbers are important ofc. 3 minutes of progress seems a good way to do it... however I assume being chased or being in the killers TR pauses this?
If a player is getting tunneled and is on death hook hasn't had a chance to get any progress and now needs to be super careful not to get caught, this is where the idea starts to have issues.
Would the progress slow in this scenario?
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Being chased would reset it completely, on all survivors. That is important, of course. This solution does not aim to give the killer any kind of competitive advantage. It's just an idea to get around the crows' limitations in a manner that would actually help this whole situation. Thank you for notifying me on that potential issue.
Being in the killer's TR, would slow it down but not pause it. Imagine if you had a TR build on Wesker and this would not work because you are on a small map. I don't think that would be good.
Survivors would be notified, that the killer is about to see their location and they would also be warned to make some progress. However, progressing the game would not reset it immediately to prevent people from tapping gens and going back into hiding. Instead it would pause while survivors do any kind of action and it would reset, once that survivor has progressed enough. How much progression needs to be done is something that needs a lot fine tuning, so I'd leave that up to BHVR to test it out on a PTB. I personally think 30 seconds should be fine as it's very easy to accomplish (even in 3 gens) and would take a lot of time to activate.
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honestly i didn't think about numbers at all, but let's say you get 3 crows and killer instinct after 5 minutes of uselessness. cleansing dulls don't regress it at all, doing a gen/healing regresses it 3 or 5 times faster than it fills, and getting an unhook takes away 1/3 or even half of total progress since you need to be extra careful and sneaky for that. getting chased completely resets it.
the last paragraph is tough. pig trap stops it completely. pre running shouldn't fill it. idk about hovering for a save, hovering for 5 minutes straight should already tell you to stop and go do a gen instead i suppose lol or you can also get in a chase in the meantime so it gets reset. if a myers is trying to get stalk on you he already knows where you are, and you most likely aren't doing that peakaboo game for 5 mins straight.
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i think this is a sticky situation because stealth is a valid play style, and being stealth is very different than being a rat. if the devs were to nerf a bunch of stealth perks to discourage ratting, it would actually punish players who are stealthy but still active participants in the game.
as much as we all hate when we spectate and see a feng crouched in a corner waiting for hatch after not touching a single gen, hook, totem, etc etc, you have to admit there’s some merit to the player who hasn’t been hooked once yet cranked out three gens, two unhooks, heals, a totem, and a door.
i think it would be crummy to punish the people who aren’t abusing stealth perks, just because of a handful of rats. bc let’s be real, ratting isn’t THAT common. i think a better solution would be to incentivize NOT ratting. how? i’m not sure. maybe come up with a system that only grants mega hatch bp IF you actually did something during the match.
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I hear so often that killer is supposed to be the power role and people should be scared. If people are still scared and want to hide then mission accomplished.
Survivors, particularly solo, have been saying for a long time that useless team mates sucks. But this was also an issue back when barely anyone used Distortion. Killers have been given perks like UW and FttE, and it's simply cause and effect - survivors have adapted, including the useless ones. I don't use Distortion unless I'm doing an escape daily/tome challenge, but I don't care if team mates use it. Take it away and the useless ones will still be useless.
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Is good stuff folks, very good answers I feel. 😁
Sorry to test you, but it's all these subtle interactions that are gonna need thinking about. My goal is pointing out all those odd little scenarios that I'm concerned this wave of Stealth backlash doesn't account for...
I'm all for targetting ratting, but I have growing concerns a lot of the discussions around stealth right now need to ensure these kinda points are factored in, and pushed to the front of the priorities list. 😁
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Don't be sorry. It's good to point any flaws you find in these suggestions. It allows us to think about it a bit further and find ways to fix potential issues. That's great because it also means we can give the devs some ideas, that could actually work.
As far as I am concerned, you add to a healthy and useful discussion.
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these are constructive feedback and asking questions makes it only better, and devs definitely need to do something about this issue so hopefully such discussions make the solutions seem to them less "impossible" to implement. stealth is a core aspect of the game but so is teamwork, ratting is an issue and needs to be dealt with without harming overall stealth gameplay.
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Bad players will be bad, and selfish players will be selfish. It doesn't matter what you nerf or buff. It's the fault of people, not the game.
I find hiding more fun than chasing, anyway. I'm not good at chase, but successfully sneaking around the killer makes me feel clever.
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I know Survivors are use to demanding Killers play a certain way but you cannot do the same for your teammates.
Stop forcing people to play the way you want, it predatory. And it makes you no better than a Twitter user.
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oh sorry but i'm gonna judge people that start hiding for hatch and let their teammates die at any given moment they decide the match is lost. we can't force it but i wish bhvr would.
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If it's fine to demand for killers to play a certain way, then it should be fine to demand for survivors to play a certain way.
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I think "bad stealth" could be remedied by making idle survivors spawn afk crows more easily.
Lazily copied from Identity V: do not perform certain actions (conspicious actions could work) for 80 seconds and you get crows that ping the killer every 5 seconds. (google identity V crows for better description lol)
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