Visit the Kill Switch Master List for more information on these and other current known issues: https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/kb/articles/299-kill-switch-master-list
We encourage you to be as honest as possible in letting us know how you feel about the game. The information and answers provided are anonymous, not shared with any third-party, and will not be used for purposes other than survey analysis.
Access the survey HERE!
Since Blight, Killer design went downhill
Recently i had an interesting conversation with a former DBD streamer (Demogorgon main, Survivor main) and we had a long talk why he left the game. It basically came down to the following statement, and i realised it is completly true:
"Since Blight release in September 2020, so over 3 years ago, the killer design became worse and worse, with almost no exception."
Lets take a look at the roster:
Twins: Nobody plays the twins, and almost everybody hates them. The gameplay revolves around slugging and camping, usually something a killer wont enjoy, neither do survivors. Desperatly needs a rework.
Trickster: Extremly hated and not played much either. An extremly one-dimensional little counterplay chase killer. Not much thought into this one. The rework made him not better, for neither side.
Nemsis: Not loved either. For many a boring loose/loose killer. Very uninspired power. His wip is still buged in many ways (for example crouch tech).
Pinhead: Probably more in the okay category, they added some stuff that makes this killer a little bit interesting. Overall still a strange fella, that has little chance against strong groups but easy wins versus solo players.
Artist: Arguably one of the dumbest killers ever released. The beginning of the "leave the loop or get hit" killers. Very bad design overall. And also not many who enjoy this killer.
Onryo: The pub stomper. Cool license but overall a power weaker players can not handle well. Not bad for me personally but i can see why people dont like her. Overall an interesting concept, but wasted potential.
Dredge: Poor Dredge. Sounds so good on paper, but this killer plays.. how do i say this.. clumsy? Not to bad tho, but it could have been so much better. At leasted they nailed the "spooky" aspect.
Wesker: The radiant star and the only really great killer BHVR designed in over 3 years. Sure, not everybody loves him, but in terms of chase, he is the by far most interesting and most fair killer to play against since a long time. And he is super fun to play, easy to learn, hard to master. Everything i could wish for good killer design.
The Knight: L o L.
Skull Merchant: DC DC DC DC. Rework made a terrible designed killer even worse. How is this even possible?
Singularity: Overall interesting and fine. Cool design, but so much effort for the little you get back as killer. Yet, another survivor defense killer. I dont hate him, not at all, but still most downs feel way to RNG based and cheap.
Alien: Loose/loose killer. Nobody wants that really.
Chucky: Great potential, but so far we are miles away from a great killer. Most dont like Chucky because he is in most situations unfair. Many killer complain they dont like the power CD. Understandable somewhat.
Most killers i named have one thing in common: Little to no chase interaction. Looping/Unique pathing is often not possible and it is more effective to just brainless drop the pallet, run away and hope Capitno RNG is in your favour.
I want to see good killer design and less failed experiements. I beg for more killers that fullfill the golden standard. Powerful, but fair. In case you wonder: Billy, Blight, Wesker, Demogorgon, Huntress and Bubba are great examples. They are strong, potentially stronger then most unfun killers and still loved. Why cant we have more of them instead gettign flooded with crap?
The opposite of this golden standard are the recent ones i named: Artist, Knight, Alien, Skull Merchant for example. Stop pumping out more and more of those and find your way back to the roots. I beg you.
Comments
-
Absolutely agree with this post
really hope this is the year we get good killer designs
6 -
Weird, I'd rather play a killer from this roster than the ones that came before Blight.
8 -
I agree with you on the Knight the most.
2 -
You even point out that there were well designed killers that came out after blight, which shows that there isn't any point in this discussion even existing, but you then make huge generalizations about incredibly subjective things. You can't just say "Well Designed" and slap that title on only the killers you like when there really isn't any way to say if a killer is "well designed"
I honestly am half wondering if this is heavy bait since you also say that demo, the OG king of zoning is well designed.
On top of that you say "Stop pumping out more and more of those and find your way back to the roots."
Their roots were legion, deathslinger, nurse, clown, freddy, and pyramid head.
BHVR makes characters; sometimes they're stinkers, other times their praised as the best thing that has ever been introduced to dbd in the history of forever until I play against them more than 5 times and then I find them annoying. There are no trends or "Go back to" they just make stuff
Post edited by BoxGhost on19 -
The golden standart....
Is this a joke?
Have you played Billy???
I main Demo besides Pig and he's in o e word: Awful.
He's extremely predictable. His shred doesn't work at most tiles and serves more as a pallet breaking tool.
Billy is literally unplayable on a ton of maps.
Killers like Sadako (original Sadako) gave the player another form of gameplay. Strategic over mechanical skill. That's not liked by some but liked by others.
Calling some killers failures just because YOU don't like their design, doesn't make them objectively bad.
There will always be peoe that enjoy some killer designs over others.
I love playing the pig and dislike playing Wesker (literally only had two games with him. Ptb and adept). There is no objective truth.
And that includes (even if it hurts to say this) Skull merchant.
In regards to the predrop shift w, I say this:
IT'S DONE AGAINST EVERY KILLER.
I play Pig. That's an m1 killer with a power you can literally walk away from. What do I see every game multiple times? Pre dropping pallets. Players do that against every killer. There are just some that encourage doing it more and some that encourage it less.
Dont exclusively blame certain killer designs for a boring playstyle that many players love to embrace.
20 -
Idk, twins are really fun to go against imho. If they're good, they challenge your coordination with your team (ofc if you're soloq you're most likely crapped, but I'm almost never not in a 4man). Same for pinhead, he requires coordination with your team.
Today we encountered 2 twins players, and I really had a lot of fun against them (I died on one of the two ga es yet it was still fun, just in case ur wondering if I had fun cuz "I won"). Also unreal, I had more twins today than in the past 2 months.
Nemesis and Xeno put you in lose lose situations only if you're bad at chases, or when the resources in the map start being less (but then any killer puts you in a lose lose situation). All other killers are just fine to play and to play against. Singularity has a huge potential but is extremely difficult, which is why nobody plays him except a few dedicated players. Dredge yeah sounds good on paper but kinda clumsy/weak and very map dependant.
Anyway, of the killers you listed, the only ones with a dull design are Skull Merchant, Knight, Trickster and Artist imho, and artist still allows for a few skilled plays in the hand of a good player. So not even a third of the killers listed.
Also of the "loved" killers you mentioned, only Blight and Wesker are stronger than those listed as bad design. The others are equally strong or weaker (artist is stronger than all of them), and billy is the weakest of all the killers mentioned and nowhere close to "potentially stronger" unless the survivors are just potatoes with grandpa reaction times
Post edited by BoxGhost on2 -
*noises of Billy colliding with the 10000th invisible hitbox*
Followed by:
*noises of a monitor being thrown out of the window*
3 -
But yeah not surprised to see billy as a "well designed killer", he's literally the most loopable killer in the whole game
But hey guys uwu it's billy haha he just bumped for the 44th time in a row while trying to get that curve on me he threw the game and got 1 stage total so quirky I had so much fun 😊 (golden standard btw)
10 -
Honestly had to chuckle a bit at the "origins" line.
Agree though!
0 -
To be perfectly honest, i dont care what your personal opinion on that matter or those killers is. Its totally irrelevant. I trust more in votes, done by thousends of people. And they say those killers ARE the golden standard, if you like it or not. Add Oni and it is almost certaint that they will be overall be in the top 10/top 15 at least. They are never near the bottom, completly in contast to the "modern killers" i named.
1 -
You and your strimmer aren't thousands of people
8 -
If you do t care about opinions of a smaller amount of people the why did you make this post.
If you dont care about my opinion, that's fine with me. But maybe don't ask for it them by making a post in the DISCUSSION section. Maybe put the post into feedback next time.
If Billy is your and a lot of people's golden standart my friend, I have bad news for you.
HE'S AWFUL!
9 -
It's so sad.
0 -
I think its mostly because of the difficulty of creating something new, in a game where what you do is chase survivor hit survivor hit gens there isn't a ton of space for character design after having 20 of them under your belt much less 30. Its hard to create something new without making it something complex and its hard to make it something simple that ends up being complex enough to be its own character that isn't just the same as something else. Id still rather have 10 more blights than anything else we have gotten besides wesker recently but yeah the well is tapped pretty dry for how simple the base game is.
1 -
You even say it, that this is not neccessay my opinion. I agree with most killers beeing bad designed, but i also added that i have no problem with a few of them, where many others actually have. If you criticise this list is not really important, you criticise the opinion of the majority of people. Thats fine tho, but it does not make it less true.
0 -
I'm not criticizing the list, I'm saying that your entire argument doesn't even exist, that's how bad it is. Clearly you wanted people to share their opinions, kinda seems like you're getting defensive rather than discussing now that you realize your thread didn't turn into what you wanted
Post edited by BoxGhost on1 -
Gotta love how Artist was the first to make survivors leave a loop... because Trapper and Hag can't do that...
12 -
But criticizing the majority is good!
We should search for an objective truth. Not follow blindly what others say.
If there is no objective truth, the opinion of the masses isnt automatically made the objective truth. It's still just an opinion. An opinion, that, as you say correctly, can be wrong.
1 -
What is there to discuss? Its a call to the devs to please stop releasing stupid stuff. If stupid stuff is fine for you, good for you. I mean i doubt you disagree the recent killers are well designed, but if you really think that way, great! You might be the one.
1 -
It is true in many ways. Politics would be a great example. But fun or pleasure is hard to critcize, right? We can argue that an album of this and that rockband is bad, and we may be on the same page, but if millions disagree with our opinion, and only a few agree, its rather pointless apart from finding a person that agrees and have a nice talk about that. Thats at least how i see it.
0 -
That is completly true in my opinion. It is hard to create something new, sure i give you that. Because of that, they failed. So i say, rather create good killers that have a formular instead of creating one fail of a killer design after another. They actually created a top killer with Wesker, in 3 years. Instead of making more of that, we get Knight, Skullmerchant, Trickster and other failed designed killer.
It is perfectly fine to have different type of killers, but why do they have to make the worst and copy them over and over again instead of the fun ones? And again, in that case it is also my opinion, but i share it with the overwhelming majority, that Oni, Blight or Billy are WAY better designed then the garbage (sorry) they released since years.
0 -
This is really all just a matter of opinion. I have a different opinion on a number of these killers.
2 -
You like to mention the "Thousands of players" who agree with you, however there are actual real numbers that show that people don't actually care that much about "Stupid stuff". Even if you had the numbers, they probably wouldn't mean anything since, I'm willing to bet, most players aren't engaging with the social media aspect of dbd.
The steam charts have been the same for years, maybe that "stupid stuff" is actually just stuff you don't like.
Lets not forget that there were horribly designed killers before blight. Skull merchant wasn't even close to peak crap in dbd, that all happened way before blight released
Post edited by BoxGhost on0 -
I think he is actually talking about Old Billy, my friend.
For a very, very long time Hillbilly was widely praised as DBD's golden standart of killer balance. Older players like OP, myself and many others like to refer to that version of Billy, before overheat was even a thing.
And trust me, he was magnificent.
0 -
I mean record shows interesting movement killers are usually the ones people like more than a half ranged attack or area denial spam. Id like a few more takes on blight / oni than another take on knight
0 -
I think Billy is still a great killer. No where near as great as he used to be, sure, but still much better then any of those killers i mentioned.
It is also important to say that a great killer is not only great because he plays good. It has to be the whole package.
Twins for example is probably the worst killer in DBD because almost nobody likes to play them and almost nobody likes to play against them. When we look at Billy, he is top 5 for survivors and still in the top 10 / top 15 for killer players, which is why i think he still belongs into the "golden standard" category.
On some maps, he might have its issues, but on the majority, Billy feels fine to me, especially running Doom Engravins. The overheat never bothered me. In fact, i think i overheated a handful of times so far. I am not a master with Billy tho, only Prestige 9 so my personal argument is not to important.
0 -
True, it would rather belong into the feedback section.
0 -
Exactly. And thats why i complain. Instead of getting the killer type you discribed, we get Artist, Knight, Skill Merchant, Dredge. Four within eight killers that throws random stuff at a loop to get a free hit. Imagine pumping out the most disliked form of killer half of the time. And then some come and defend that stuff.
Before they killswitched The Knight, i played him all the time to get used to his power more and learn him. I want to be decent with every killer, so also Crap like Knight has to be played. After many games, my conclusion is the same: An extremly bad designed killer, completly braindead on both sides.
1 -
agree except nemesis, crouching is fine even if it's considered a feature, decent balanced counterplay. his sound bug needs a fix though where he silently pulls out his power. in my personal experience and perception, artist and knight are also fine-ish. i used to hate knight, but not anymore. you can't counter if he hits the patrol, you gotta dodge the patrol and if he is going for m2 taps, that's free hold forward. artist is... you can't go for edge map loops where she can zone you out. different playstyles for different killers apply to them, yes that's generally hold w but it still depends on how they play and use their power. similar to another controversial topic, if you are facing an oni that can flick, you can adjust your playstyle. i chased that ash in the helicopter area in rpd and missed my flicks like 5 times because he took it wide, for example (yes that's a major skill issue on my part but my point still stands).
also sorry but no way billy and bubba should be considered the "golden standard" for killer design, especially billy. i like facing those killers... because they are so easy to play against.
0 -
not every discussion here has to be the most valuable balance argument devs should take into account, chill. even if they wanted to hear others' opinions about said killers, what about it?
1 -
It's not so bad. I mostly get 2 hook stages.
But you're right that he wouldn't be considered that fun to play against, if he was actually strong. Or at least not quite so easy to counter.
What votes? The votes of how fun killers are to play or to play against? Billy is a perfect example of a killer that is fun to play against but miserable to play as for most players.
Why do you think, you don't see any Billy players other than total beginners and the few Billy mains out there? He is not fun for the rest. Indoor maps counter your mobility and have few curvable loops. Outdoor maps nowadays have so much clutter that his mobility is still pretty bad compared to other killers and curving requires at least 1 Engraving because the survivor always makes it around the next corner otherwise. Even with an Engraving all a survivor needs to do, is to step out of the way. They can easily react.
The only reason why many players like to play against Billy is because they can counter his ability in their sleep. I had an Adam not so long ago, that went on about how fun the match was for him and how the chase was so close, when in reality it was all a bluff. I knew I couldn't hit him, if he played somewhat alright (not even good). But he didn't. So he was under the illusion that both of us played really well and he just outplayed me, while I knew that I could not hit him around shack, jungle gyms, the main building and a good amount of filler pallets simply because my power didn't allow that. It's even worse when you have survivors that actually know Billy's weaknesses. Like how he can be countered at the press of a single button.
Billy is a killer that looks dangerous more than anything else at this point. His mobility is pretty mediocre, his chase power doesn't work without engravings, he feels awful to play (incredibly loud, no room for mistakes, addon reliant, perk reliant and map reliant), has about the easiest counterplay of any killer in the game (one step to the side and you're safe), he can't play around many loops, he can't play around dropped pallets and he can't do anything unexpected. But he does have an insta down, mobility and faster pallet break, so it feels as if you actually were in a dangerous position in chase.
2 -
so running fowards quickly = good design?
3 -
Oh yes, definitely better than all of those you've mentioned. Typically, older killer designs are far superior than anything modern DBD has to offer.
However, I have to disagree about Billy still being fit for the "golden standart". He absolutely deserved that crown in the past, but now I don't think it can be associated with a killer that got unnecessarily changed. Billy stands side by side with Freddy, as killers who get reworks when they didn't need one. Oni seems to be a better fit for the title, at least for now.
I think Billy needs a full reversion.
1 -
Then I'm sorry for you. I think everyone's opinion is important and valid to grasp the whole picture.
1 -
Oh, don't get me wrong, I know what old Billy looked like. I do understand why people loved him.
But he was the golden standard of another time, another era in dbd. A time (sadly) long gone. Playing Billy right now is as much of a pain train as playing Singularity for the first time.
Nobody plays him for a reason. More multiple reasons, regarding the 10000 invisible hitboxes you can randomly bump into these days.
It's very sad. He is probably the one killer that has fallen the hardest.
I would definitely not call him a golden standard of killer design anymore. There's a reason that almost nobody plays him.
0 -
And that is why he has to be reverted. Or better yet, I believe the "long gone era" has to return, and Billy is a good place to start.
As for the current golden standart, I think Oni has it. For now.
0 -
I absolutely agree with you. But at this point, Billy isn't the problem anymore, it's maps. Similar to Trapper, they'd need to rework how hitboxes on most maps work for Billy.
I would love to see that happen, but km not getting my hopes up.
I'm optimistic in many regards, but this is a bit if a stretch, even for me.
Agree with Oni though!
0 -
I never said anything else? Your opinion is in the pool of opinions and not excluded. But just because you scream the loudest does not make it more important then the others. Like i said, the majority disagrees with what you say about Billy.
0 -
I don't know about you but most of killers we got last 2 years was amazing.
Trickster and Twins are garbage killers, boring play-styles.
Nemesis is amazing, he just needs some better add-ons.
Artist is strong but boring? Not my style but i can see why someone likes her.
Pinhead boring to go against, especially for solo survivors. But his design is not bad. He is fine.
Sadako and Dredge are very fun teleport / stealth type killers. They are not maybe so strong but they are fine. Not all killers need to be on Blight's level.
Wesker - Even you agree'd he is good killer lol.
SM & Knight - Mistakes. They should never happen again.
Singularity - Best M1 killer in game. That's tell good enough about him. Also only people who is bad with his power thinking he is not getting value. When you master him, he is real monster.
Xeno - This killer is not lose / lose for survivors. Use turrets smarter and he is fine. Xeno is amazing killer we got.
Chucky - Shorter Wesker. He is fine. His cooldown is long but it's not the only power he got. His pov and size also good powers. He is best mind-game killer in game. And he has fairly strong anti-loop as well.
5 -
That isn't true. Because @radiantHero23 didn't disagree that Billy is great to play against. He stated, that he is not in a good spot because he is horrible to play, which is correct.
The golden standard should be killers that are great for both sides and that is just not true for Hillbilly. Not anymore. He has about 3 realms where his power is actually good and even then he is extremely addon and perk reliant. All of this leads to a lot of frustration when playing as him.
4 -
I didn't mean to trash talk billy or billy players btw, but mostly people who say billy is their favorite killer to go against, because most of the times this is the reason
These are the kind of people who'd get mad if you M1ed at a TL wall for example (oh god not a m1lly!). Deadlynaya made a very relatable tweet about it a few days ago too that basically sums this up
0 -
I got that it was a joke. 👍️
But I can say that I used to be able to get much better results playing M2 only Billy only a year ago. By now, you just don't have the time anymore. An insta down isn't worth much when it takes longer to land than 5 M1s. His remaining decent maps are few and far between (I miss old Red Forest), invisible collisions become more of an issue and most maps they released over the last years are terrible for him.
It really hurts because he doesn't just become weaker but also a lot less enjoyable. Why would anyone play Billy, if his power doesn't work most of the time anyway? You have many alternatives, that are also less punishing to play.
But of course many don't realise it because on paper Billy didn't change much since his nerf. He even got a nice buff, that in theory should make him a lot better to play. However, a killer with that many issues (in desperate need of qol updates, extreme map dependency and a power that on a good day is decent but not great) needs more than that.
3 -
You seem to be basing a lot of these examples on popularity, rather than the quality of their design. Twins, for example, have a pretty good design with a ton of potential, and all you mention is that they're not popular, not even that their implementation was flawed and that they're buggy as hell.
Similarly, there are killers on this list where you hyper-focus on one specific flaw rather than the quality of their design. Artist and, I assume, Knight are examples of this: Artist has one of the best designed powers in the game, and also, an annoying flaw with the "drop bird at loop and force them to leave" tactic. It doesn't seem fair to throw out the entirety of her design, a very good and interesting design, because there's one annoying aspect to it.
The bigger problem is how much weight you're putting on popularity, though. If your point is just that modern killers tend to be less popular, that'd be one thing (probably not correct, Trickster's pretty popular for example), but the idea that a killer's design is bad because you can see some people disliking the killer as a whole just doesn't hold water.
3 -
I said that Billy is horrible to play as.
Who disagrees?
1 -
I really enjoy playing as Knight and Nemmy. Onryo and Dredge are also pretty fun and I like playing them on occasion.
Wesker I actually didn't like playing all that much, he's not awful but he's middle of the road for me. Also plenty of the 'great' killers like Blight, Billy and Oni are awful to play as for me and are among my never played killers.
Everyone has a different opinion on what 'good' killers are.
1 -
Most killers are amazing? You personaly dislike half of them and even calling them mistakes #########. How low is your standard?
Cool.
Check out any relevant vote with many participants about which killers are fun to play. Billy is almost always top 10 or at least very close to that. If you personally agree or not is your thing of course and i respect that opinion. How i see it is that a killer who is in the top 1/3 to play as and against is extremly rare, so i think it is safe to say we can considere Billy still one of the best killers we have.
I agree tho, he is not as amazing as he used to be. But that is just my opinion.
0 -
So what does hold water then? If a killer like Twins is very unpopular and disliked by the majority on both sides but not over or underpowered, something might be problematic with the design. They might be creative, but that does not make the design good.
I am putting everything into account, and i hoped the devs are too. Ballance, popularity and how people feel about them. Unfortunatly, i have a strong feeling they lost track on what is good for the game in many ways. Killer and Map design are two major problems these days.
0 -
What holds water is actually talking about the design. Using popularity instead of the design, only talking about whether they're strong and whether people like them, is going to be pretty misleading.
Using popularity here has a few major flaws, in my opinion.
The first is that we don't actually have a good sense for popularity. The closest we've come is BHVR's most recent top-ten list for pickrate specifically, but that's only part of the picture and has pretty obvious flaws even for the part it shows, such as Xenomorph being new at the time and therefore represented very highly. Any popularity poll you point to is going to be a heavily restricted subsection of the actual playerbase, to the extent that it's not super fair to use it to try and represent that entire playerbase.
The second is that popularity is going to be very contingent on a lot of extra elements. Killers like Singularity, for instance, might rate low in popularity polls that have a lot of console players, because he's very hard to play on controller. That's part of his design, but it's not the whole story- much like your example of Artist, too, people will rate killers low if there's something annoying about them, even when the rest of the design is perfectly sound. Part of the story, but not the whole picture.
The third and most important is that literally nobody ever votes on a popularity poll for the design of a killer. They'd be rating the implementation of a killer. For this one, I'd point to the Twins again: a good and interesting design held back by flawed implementation and a whole ton of bugs, neither of which are necessary elements of that power. Another good example is Legion: if you'd polled people on how much they liked Legion on release, they'd be bottom of the pack by a wide margin, but their design was totally fine - which is why they still have that design now, when they're much more popular.
Trying to use popularity skirts around actually trying to think about and discuss game design, and it stalwartly refuses to acknowledge the difference between design and implementation. It's a shortcut that doesn't even lead you to the right destination.
2 -
How so ?
I only called mistakes Knight, Trickster, Twins and SM. Rest is fine.
0
