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how do we feel about all these balance recommendation posts on these forums?
this is a general question i have for the forum community purely out of interest. i noticed that there's a very large set of individuals on these forums that suggest all sorts of different changes and recommendations, primarily paired with strong opinions about their vision of the game. it made me wonder how we as players feel about these suggestions when we come across them and what our general beliefs are.
please share if you can! and please, if you are going to debate, do so in a constructive way and encourage conversation rather than trying to stifle it. <3
Comments
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I think the opinions are almost always very uninformed, usually stemming from a bias for which role or character they main. While there is some good feedback the community gives, like the outcry when they tried to nerf Billy's engravings a while back. Most of it is just begging for their overpowered crutches to return so they can abuse them. "Revert Circle of Healing, buff Dead Hard, buff Pain Res, buff Pop."
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Good perks fix generators at light speed, make me invincible, grant me omniscience, immediately teleport survivors onto hooks, blow up the exit gates, and nullify everything my opponent does.
Anything else just isn't worth running!
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I think that it depends on the amount of time spent playing the game. To me it seems that most of the vets 6k+ posts seem to have the most informed recommendations as they should theyve been around for a while and have literally seen the best and worst points of the game. The problem is when you get people that have only been around for a short span, those recommendations seem to be more skewed towards personal bias and us vs them mentality. Some people can't be happy for one side being balanced because it takes a crutch away or makes a perk less appealing but makes the overall health of the game better, kind of like can't see the forest for the trees.
I haven't been here long maybe 2 years at this point but I mostly try and offer recommendations on things that I've used heavily in that time and stay out of things that I haven't.
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i can agree on the statement of opinions feeling as if they're very uninformed. i'm unsure if the same can be said for the whole 'crutch' bit, though...
personally, i feel like there's an odd situation where people are unsure how to really optimize the game since there's a huge variance in playstyles and people are making suggestions based off of what they know, more closer to how they play in particular.
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your point is solid! i am one of the veterans of this game and i see precisely what you're talking about. in addition to my post above, i noticed too that the variance of personal experience tends to be a strong driving factor in a lot of these posts.
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Yeah I lurk here a lot like it's kind of embarrassing how much. But what I've seen is that the vets have done everything on both sides and can see the big picture, they've had to adapt different and new strats sometimes subtle other times drastic. Those experiences allow them to favor the overall health of the game versus they're particular killer or survivor perk/item. It also allows them to remember the things that were better in past. I always look at post count regarding game balance issues, for us newbies a balance recommendation that we have may have already existed in the past and didn't work out for whatever reason or has been talked about before I think most of us forget this game is 7 years old and people have been playing everybit of that time.
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Well, I cannot possibly have a negative opinion regarding the balance recommendation posts when I use the Forums to share my idea for what should be done to Freddy.
That doesn't mean I agree with everything that is said here, but I believe these Forums have their fair share of good suggestions. Like the option to play on old maps (I should really emphasize the word "option" here, considering what happened on my last thread about this topic) or giving BBQ, WGLF and Prove Thyself their bloodpoint gains back.
These are ideas that I completely agree with, and I've seen them being shared here from time to time.
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hit or miss! mostly miss. Some people be having decent ideas but let their bias views get in the way.
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I'm going to use a quote that I like from Neil Gaiman (an author):
when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.We are all experts on what we find fun. Game development (or any type of creative endeavor) is much harder than people make it out to be. Working on the game is the devs job, they spend a lot of time thinking about the game. Even those who play the game a ton are still limited by their personal perspective and desires, while the devs have a much larger community to think of.
This isn't to say they don't make mistakes, they do, frequently, as does anyone who does creative design. If the community (which is far larger than these forums) is telling them something isn't working, the community is right. Suggestions on how to fix it though are a much more difficult task than people think it is.
Which doesn't mean we shouldn't make suggestions, its always possible someone has an idea / point that hasn't crossed their mind, but the expectations that people put onto their 'how to fix the game' posts should be tempered down quite a bit (I say this as a person who has fallen into this and once got a warning for headlining a post 'the devs design philosophy is crazy').
I'll throw in another quote from Sid Meier (game Civilization series)
Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game8 -
When it comes to balance there are some things so obvious that most people can agree on them Ex: DH was far too strong, blight add-ons too broken and nurse has an inherently flawed design.
The issue is that some people aren't exactly looking for balance or simply don't understand the balance or are far too biased.
It takes people with a certain mindset that don't just favor one side to have objectively good consistent takes on the state of things in this game. A solid portion of players aren't actually that experienced with other competitive games which dbd is now.
You need to view both sides objectively without bias, have the right mind set, have a large understanding of the power level of everything in the game and also be able to view what is unhealthy for the game.
Tunneling should just be outright removed because majority of survivors find it frustrating and then balance around the power loss for the killer role. You can't just numbers buff a lot of the weaker killers because their design does not facilitate a higher power level. You could make clown bottles 30% stronger, he'd still be mid at best overall but just abysmal to play against.
A good chunk of people come into dbd with a horror mindset as well, that itself highly impacts the way they view the game.
The two sided nature of dbd also skews people opinions a lot. My first year of playing dbd was only on the killer side and I was for sure immensely biased about what I said. Most of those opinions were just obvious things like DH is so unfair, IW is far too good. But I also didn't like bt at all and that comes down to just not understanding the game enough and only one sided.
Anyway all of the most said things are generally true on this forum but anything that's not obvious is up in the air.
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i wouldnt pay attention to em, maybe the fun to unfun killer tier list are more accurate but believe it or not i say about half of killer players dont know how to play the specific killer and rely on slow downs to carry them.
But in the end there is many killers you can try to find the one that suits you can you can main.
Any killer can be deadly on the right hands
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I think it's fair to say that players visiting the forums probably represent the more "dedicated" elements of the player base. So discussions can be a good way to sound out what these players might be thinking and feeling about the game. I have relatively few hours of play time compared to many veteran players, but it's still probably 100s more than a very substantial chunk of the player base. So I think we all have to remember that DBD probably has players who might play for only a couple of hours a week. These gamers probably aren't so interested in discussing strategy, the meta, balance or even reading the patch notes. They just want to have a good time and BHVR need to take the experiences of these players on board when making any balance changes. Whether a player has 80, 800 or 8000 hours of experience, we are all playing the same game and BHVR has to make decisions for all of these players. That's not an easy thing to do, by any means.
In the end BHVR are the ones who need to take those impressions and take the game in the direction they feel is best for the overall health of the game.
A good example would be the nerfing of MFT. I didn't have a problem with perk. I hardly ever saw it in my Killer games and I didn't get so much value from it in my Survivor games that it felt over powered to me. Obviously, that's just my experience. Others on the forum made it clear they felt very differently about this perk, so I have to concede that it needed nerfing. So BHVR nerfed it, but not in a way that I personally would have nerfed it. Having made a grand total of zero video games in my life, this is probably for the best. Because like the majority of the forum, I don't know the first thing about designing or coding a video game. While I may disagree with BHVRs decisions, I know that doesn't make me qualified to come up with anything better.
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Most balance suggestions on the forums are selfish and one sided and don't respect the devs reasoning for why changes were made in the first place. That's how i feel
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Most of them are incredibly misguided, including my own (especially my own)
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It varies like the people who post them. Some are cringe worthy, some are odd or creative, some we just flat out disagree with, others irrational. Atleast most are amusing and give us a more "standard" view on other players, which is why we poke our nose in every now and again.
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I dont know how "we" feel about them (i hate all of you anyway). I like the ones that give details or at least spark some discussion, i despise the ones that go "waaaah nerf this" without any description of what cause them to think it should nerfed or even at least how they believe it should be changed. Its not constructive and makes it hard for anyone to take the topic seriously. There is nothing wrong with having an popular or an unpopular opinion but at least try to sound like you have something to say.
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New perk
Demolitions Expert
Upon spawning into the trial, 1/2/3 exit gates are blown up.
-let's see those pesky survivors try to get through the rubble
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I would pay money for a perk that caused the survivors to explode if they stayed in the exit gates for longer than 30 seconds.
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Call it "Teabag THIS"
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This is probably the most constructive way to look at it. I can add a little bit from my own experiences.
You might see a suggestion to buff a Perk in one thread, then a suggestion to nerf that very same Perk in another. Both will be filled with comments arguing why the idea is right or wrong. Even if everyone on the forums agrees, people on other platforms (Reddit, Twitter, Discord, etc.) may not. And then on top of that, various regions around the world will have their own metas and discussions, so different opinions will be dominant elsewhere.
Who's right and who's wrong? Nobody. Nobody is wrong for feeling the way they do. Everyone has different experiences, and each of them perceive the game and what is fair in a different way. And for every person who takes the time to share their thoughts, there are thousands more quietly playing who feel the same way.
It's hard enough to get everyone to agree if something is too strong or too weak, fun or frustrating, fair or unfair, and so on. When people don't even feel the same way about something to begin with, it's even harder to come to an agreement on how that thing should change. Someone might propose the perfect solution for them, but rarely is that the perfect solution for everyone. It may address the issues you have with it, but it might ignore or even exacerbate the issues someone else has.
That doesn't mean that suggestions are pointless, though. Quite the opposite in fact! Suggestions and the reactions they create are incredibly helpful. The discussions help us confirm what people consider the issue(s) to be, gauge interest for or against changing something & how it should be changed, get a better understanding for conflicting POVs, and so on. Even if the suggestion itself is ripped to shreds in the comments, there are still incredibly helpful nuggets of wisdom we can pull out of it which will help the designers find a compromise. For example, people may disagree on whether X Perk is too strong or too weak, but we may find that nobody disagrees that it lacks counterplay. This is an actionable piece of feedback; we can make changes to that Perk that leave it roughly the same in terms of power, but make it feel more fair to play against. Those are what are most useful to us, and suggestions help draw them out.
If I could offer one takeaway, try not to get overly attached to any one particular suggestion. There's so many different opinions & possible solutions out there, it's very unlikely for the one you have your heart set to be chosen. We'll do our best to address the issues you have with something, but it may come in a different form!
Post edited by Peanits on11 -
I like most of them
Balance discussions like 3 years ago were some of the most biased things possible
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Some can be good, some are fun and some you wonder where their head is at.
At the end of the day, no matter how good a suggestion is, there will always be some people who will shoot it down.
There will never be perfect balance, only differing opinions of subjective balancing.
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Some are good, some are bad, some are meme-y and others are bait.
Half the fun sometimes is trying to figure out which type they are and then go from there.
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i came back to this thread tonight to read through all the posts and i wanted to take a second to thank y'all for discussing this with me. i was genuinely curious to see what the general consensus was.
a lot of these points are very agreeable and helps me see through the eyes of other spectators of these forums. it makes me wonder exactly what could be done to promote a better overall approach to these suggestions that could help them be more constructive and organized.
a good statement! at the end of the day, a suggestion is exactly that its namesake is. it's not meant to be an end-all-be-all take. sometimes it's even fun to discuss the possibilities of something if its taken that route.
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The ones I dislike the most are the ones that act like they speak for the entire playerbase, brushing off anyone and everyone who plays in a slightly different way than how they think the game should be played. Usually the most competitive opinions who scoff at the idea that people play this game casually.
People should speak for themselves. I hate hearing "I don't like it and neither should anyone else."
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The game doesn’t have a clear idea what kind of game it wants to be, be it a party game for casual players or competitive game for optimized players. That’s why the devs have to take both sides into account when doing their balance.
However like the saying goes, jack of all trades, master of none. This has led to a some balancing decisions that do and don’t make sense depending on which side people advocate for. AFC not utilized in comp because camping and tunneling is accepted while for the casual players, it is a step towards being able to play the game longer albeit not a huge one.
When people argue, it is not solely Survivor vs Killer. Some people on this forum base their arguments around the average gamer (casual) experience while others argue around balance at the top level (competitive).
Balance can’t be achieved until the game decides what it wants to be and commits to that identity. For example, if the game wants to be a casual party game, unfun playstyles like camping and tunneling can be bannable offences and strict mechanics being implemented to shut down such playstyles. If the game wants to be competitive, nerfs to 4 man groups such as perk choices or debuffs could be implemented. Satisfying one side is a much more achievable goal as compared to both.
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There are a lot of uninformed opinions, but usually that opinions get few upvotes and a lot of people quoting them with arguments against them, so I think that kind of feedback is not taken seriously by BHVR, at least I hope so.
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