Solo queue does seem pretty gruesome right now
I just came back to survivor after a few months break and it seems pretty gruesome. I'm not talking about the escape rate; that's super low for me (5% so far) but I expected that after a lengthy break but rather the tactics.
In 20 games, there were 12 Killers tunneling and 3 going for a 4 person slug. Prior to my break it was roughly 30 to 40% tunneling and I saw a 4 person slug attempt about once every two weeks with an average of 4 survivor games played per day (so roughly one 4 person slug attempt every 56 games or so).
It's obvious that a game played where hooks matter more than kills is more enjoyable for most players than one played where there are few hooks. Currently, however, the majority of games I've experienced are not played that way.
Granted of course I'm one player and I'm using only 20 games as my sample size but you (BHVR) might want to look into this more to see if this is a common experience. I don't think having the majority of games be hard tunneling and 4 person slugs will be good for player retention (especially new player retention who have very little invested in the game to keep them playing.
Incentivizing hooks over kills would be a better strategy in my opinion. You also might want to consider if your MMR changes are taking fun out of the game. MMR, by definition, encourages the most meta tactics available and by tightening it that encourages more meta. That could be a good thing if the meta is fun but when the most efficient tactic available is something that is very much not enjoyed by the opposing side it's not a good thing. Balance is a tool to acheive fun but it is completely possible to balance the fun right out of a game (eg VHS had an almost perfect 50% win rate for high level play on each side but ignoring how miserable it made one side overall killed the game).
DbD is a good game and you're a pretty responsive dev team but, from my experience, things are not going in the right direction. If my experience is the norm you need to incentivize hooks or do what you need to in order to make it so the game is fun for both sides.
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I never get camping or slugging. Tunneling is pretty rare in my games unless we are rushing gens and the killer is losing.
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Which region are you in? I'm NA West and getting it right at the beginning of the match.
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I’m playing with my friend who’s quite literally brand new to the game and in his first 5 games, the killer attempted/successfully tunneled him in 3…
Talk about good first impression…
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Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about. It leaves a very poor impression of the game and, if it's the majority of games, it'll drive a lot of people off. People expect to lose when starting up a new game or coming back but if it's fun or you can see what to do it can be a good impression. Tunneling is not fun and hooks should be incentivized.
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You can't balance a triangle. The devs created the triangle of Swf, Solo Queue and Killer. It's either they remove one side, or add a fourth side to balance things out
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I'm not clear on your comment as apart from saying that BHVR may be taking balance seriously enough it could be detracting from fun and that balance is a tool to acheive fun I didn't say anything else about balance. I did say hooks should be incentivized so it's the same or better to spread multiple hooks than it is to tunnel and that would make the game more fun. Could you clarify your point please?
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Tru3ta1ent has been saying for YEARS now to balance the game on hooks and not kills. But the community wanted to cancel him instead.
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It would be the best thing to do. It would improve the fun factor a lot. I had previously suggested that BHVR give a gen repair debuff for every survivor still alive to slow down the initial gens and then a gen repair buff for every survivor killed. My reasoning was that it would slow down the number of gens done at the beginning of the game so the Killer has a chance to do something and can't be blitzed at game start but make it so that losing one person doesn't make it a guaranteed win for the Killer at 3 gens left. So, in essence, it would delay objectives for both sides and encourage spreading hooks as the Killer would want as many survivors on death hook as possible before killing someone. Then BHVR could fiddle with the numbers to get the desired kill rate.
I don't know what happened with TruTalent as I don't watch streamers very often but that's a good suggestion of his.
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The way I see the "sides" in this game, it's Solo Queue, SWF and Killers and not Survivors vs Killers.
SWF has the potential to hit a higher ceiling in terms of teamplay and coordination which has led to Killer players calling for a nerf to this role.
The general sentiment I see around here about SWF is that this group cannot be nerfed because "You can't nerf people for playing with their friends!" Fair enough, then how about buffing Solo Queue? The devs tried that with the HUD, however SWF indirectly still got buffed with the HUD. When I play with my SWF, instead of having to ask where the gen my teammates are working on and the gen progress, I only need to ask where the gen is because I know the progress.
Add on tome challenges with some Survivor challenges being akin to throwing the game and the average solo queue player probably not communicating this which leads to more frustration overall. A winnable game could become a loss because one player decided to cleanse some totems for a tome challenge instead of doing a gen. At least in a swf, the person would probably communicate this beforehand to manage the expectations of their teammates.
While giving ingame voice communication sounds like a good idea to bring solo queue up to swf level, people on this forum have also spoken against it citing language barriers, toxicity etc.
When looking at all the hurdles that the devs have to go through just to buff Solo Queue, is it really any surprise why devs seemed so unenthusiastic on improving Solo Queue QOL in the recent AMA?
Attempting to buff solo queue without positively or negatively impacting swf is a difficult task to achieve. Devs also have to avoid buffing Survivor overall too much or Killers would get frustrated with constantly losing and switch roles/quit the game leading to longer queue times as Survivor. It has happened before pre 6.1.0.
I suspect even if the game becomes centered around hooks and not kills, the issue of swf and solo queue disparity would still remain. The game having a casual vs competitive identity crisis even after all these years is another huge issue, but that's a conversation for another time.
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buffing Solo Queue?
No, it's not necessary.
Just fix MMR.
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That is with the assumption that there are enough players of each MMR bracket on both Killers and Survivors constantly.
If there were enough players to go around in the first place, there wouldn't be a need to sacrifice strict MMR matching for faster queue times. Given that devs have not reverted the matchmaking to be much more strict, it implies that the playercount has not stabilized. "Fixing MMR" would just lead to long queue times for certain groups of people.
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My first game today I, no exaggeration, ran the killer for at *least* 2 gens. No one touched a single gen. I then managed to follow that up by completing the one and only gen (from start to finish) that got done that game, all on my own. At that point I decided I was just gonna get bp. I unhooked, I healed, I did totems. Didn't bother playing properly anymore since my team wasn't bothering. Everyone dead with 4 gens to go, I had 21k points and the second highest survivor had 8k points. I also had the honour of getting smacked on hook repeatedly for some reason.
I get that BHVR can't control the way solo players choose to play, and everyone has their own agenda when loading up, but in the past majority of the folks I was matched with at least tried. Now it's rare to get those team mates. Is it that those same people no longer care? Do they no longer play so there's a bigger pool of newer players to distribute? I have never called myself a great player. I've always said I'm average, so i dont expect some godlike loopers or sweaty team mates. I'd just like team mates who try. Outside of joining a swf, I don't know how to get those team mates anymore.
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so basically a normal day of solo q
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Please provide evidence that queue times increase.
Is there anything more stupid than guessing?
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I genuinely think it’s the mmr vs fast queue times. When I play on weekends, I get solid teammates. Weekdays… it’s varies.
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I think they're referring to the testing that BHVR did in 2022 (?) over the course of a week. They found that the stricter the matchmaking, the longer the queue times. However, there was still plenty of grey area between what we had then vs the strict matchmaking that had some folks waiting for up to an hour (high MMR folks specifically). I think alot of players would tolerate slightly longer queue times for better games. It doesn't have to be 30s or nothing.
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You can not buff solo q without buffing SWF players because at the end of the day the game is survivors vs killers. I've been saying this for years and it bears repeating, Solo Q players do not have to face SWFs, you're on the same team and you're all facing the killer. Calling for buffs or nerfs against yourself makes 0 sense contextually. You can not separate yourself from them, ask for them to be penalized, and think that somehow this will magically undo the problems of solo q which aren't mechanical in nature, but behavioral. Like it isn't even like the communication and information aspect hasn't been handled pretty well via perks, but survivors en masse often choose not to run them. Often making the argument that they shouldn't be "forced to run info perks".
How do you balance around deliberate decisions to not use the tools provided? You don't.
How do you balance SWF vs Solo Q play when you're legit in the same player pool often on the exact same team as you are all collectively treated the exact same? You can't really unless your goal is to emphasize a specific style of play, but no mechanical changes will ever fix lackluster team play. Even with MMR tweaks you're still not gonna get much better teammates.
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Early 2022 before 6.1.0, the norm for Survivor queue times was 10 minutes in my region. Matchmaking prioritizing queue times had yet to be implemented yet and I was not aware of any widespread complaints about beginner players going up against much more experienced players during that time period. Streamer vods from that time period can prove if I was "guessing" or not.
I'm not sure if I'm following your point but are you saying that the disparity between swf and solo queue cannot be bridged?
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Thanks for explaining. I get your point. I don't feel that incentivizing hooks would change any of the disparities between solo queue and swf. That's not my intent in suggesting it though; my suggestion is that BHVR should do something to reduce the incidence of tunneling by incentivizing hooks over kills. That won't do anything to change the balance disparity you mentioned though; it would just reduce incidences of tunneling.
When I took a break my games were roughly a third of the time I'd see a tunnel strategy from the start. Right now after my break the incidence of seeing it has pretty much doubled and it's the majority of the games.
I think there are multiple reasons for that such as MMR changes, no incentives to spread hooks, Killers having a lot of their tools to slow down matches weakened, etc and it's not a healthy development for the game.
Personally I'd like to see something that slows down gen progress in the early game so Killers have a better chance to find their feet and not get blitzed at the beginning and speeds up progress after a survivor is killed so losing a teammate is not an insurmountable obstacle and survivors still have a decent chance to escape after losing one or two members. That won't reduce any disparity between swf and solo though; that's a different issue BHVR has to figure out.
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The problem with the disparity as you call it isnt different game mechanics.
Literally, both "solo" and "swf" are the same character: "survivor". And the devs have decided zo explicitely not split that character. Any mechanic added to "help solo" will be available to swf too. Free bond gotta be more useful to swf than solo for example.
The differences between solo and swf are player behavior and maybe 3rdparty comms the community doesnt want added. You cant force randoms to care about each other as a group of friends does.
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How many hooks should happen in a match in average?
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They're balancing the game for top-tier SWFs.
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And when i ask how, nobody is answering. How we will balance game around hooks
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Its just an excuse for killers who play 4 hooks 4 kills to drop MMR and play against easier teams. While I play 8 hooks before killing is punished to play against strong teams.
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Yeah, i am guessing same.
It's fine to make comp killers play against same level survivors. They asked for it, they should.
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I'm of the opinion that MMR is the only change the devs have made in several years that has actually been a punishment to tunneling.
Killers in general only want to win and use nearly every tool they can to win. The secondary effect here is that they inflate their MMR to the point where they are in way over their heads and have no idea how to compete. This currently applies tunneling and camping, but has also included cobruption meta and 3 genning in the past year and a half.
But I agree with the devs: the part of MMR that works decides that if someone is winning too much they are getting games that are too easy for them. It's just that killers can choose tactics (or sometimes busted meta) to just outright convince the system to inflate their MMR and they go against players much better than their opponents. The part of MMR that doesn't work is when backfill turns off matchmaking and pairs players with 'fastest match' instead, which is why people are so in love with keeping lobby dodging in the game. It's the only way to manipulate the system to give them easier games.
Killer is a 'choose your difficulty' role, especially because there's no team to rely on. You can pick 'play chill, and win about 60% of your games', or 'tunnel for easy wins for a while, until the matchmaker inflates your MMR to the point where you sweat every game, and still win about 60% of the time'. Most people choose the latter option and blame the game.
You see the effects of it in nearly every post on these forums: killers claiming they 'have to tunnel' to win because they've inflated their MMR to a point that's all they can think of to do, getting better isn't an option for these 'killer gods'. Or they'll target the flavor of the month perk and blame that for a lost game.
And when there's no 'outlier' game mechanics, you'll see a huge increase in cheater posts. Because, for most people's egos, it can't possibly be that they aren't the literal best killer the game has ever seen... there's absolutely no way they can ever improve their own gameplay. It *must* be something else: game balance, perk is OP, recent nerf, or someone is just cheating. Introspection or personal skill can't ever be on the table because of ego.
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Although i think the tunneling issue should be addressed by BHVR rather than expecting the community to follow an honor system, I think we're in a situation where players crutch too much on certain playstyle/tactics, so in the case of tunneling you got killers who climbed the MMR to the point they face survivors that are way more experienced then what the killer should be facing, then said Killer goes out of their way to tunnel because they feel they can't win without it and sticking themselves in a vicious cycle where they keep getting better survivor and keep having to tunnel.
Of course there's also the basket cases that tunnel people to bait frustration but these types dont care about winning.1 -
I literally gave an idea twice above on how to incentivize hooks. Have a gen repair debuff for every survivor left alive and give a gen repair buff for every dead survivor. Tweak the numbers so it's better or the same effectiveness as tunneling. Killers don't get blitzed in the first two or three minutes and Survivors aren't facing an insurmountable obstacle escaping once a teammate is gone and three survivors with three gens left escaping becomes feasible. Make it so the best strategy for Killers is to get multiple Survivors on death hook before somebody is killed.
Anyone who thinks that suggestion would only make matches easier for Killers is not displaying critical thinking skills.
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Since it was TrueTalent who said that, the number is pretty certaint 12.
Not even joking.
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I do agree with your post but I don't think it's giving 100% of the picture. I say that because high MMR, by definition, encourages meta strategies. Unfortunately, tunneling is one of the most efficient tactics available which is why, despite it making matches harder if you tunnel and punishing it that way, tunneling has risen. It's not the only reason; there are a plethora of reasons why in my opinion but it is a contributing factor.
Anything that, in order to discourage behaviour among video game players, relies on introspection will not be very successful. Children play video games and they may not have developed enough to have the skills necessary for introspection and there are many people who place their egos in their video game skills and put the blame on anything else like you described above. They're not going to realize losing a match isn't a big deal and doesn't matter at all so it would be better to not tunnel and just take the loss for more enjoyable games.
In order for MMR to successfully discourage tunneling the game mechanics need to change so that tunneling is not one of the meta strategies. Until that occurs, MMR will encourage tunneling. The game mechanics need a change for MMR to not encourage tunneling as well as punishing it at the same time.
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That still does not fix all issues. Because it does not matter how much speed bonus survivors gets, when one of them dies it's gg. Because one survivor will be on hook, one will be in chase and the other have to go for save. So nobody is doing gen.
Killers are tunnelling at 5 gens for a reason.
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I have the same idea, but depends on how faster remaining survivors can do Gen need to be looked at. Even if 3 survivors have 150%, it does not make up for 1 death teammate that can be useful on healing, hook securing, since 3 survivors remaining is a loops of "On hook - In chase - Secure" and no one does Gen.
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It makes it better and numbers can be tweaked.
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They definitely would need to look at numbers. Numbers can always be tweaked though so whatever kill rate BHVR wants to balance for can be achieved.
It also creates a psychological effect. If there is a change in mechanics that favours a certain playstyle people will switch to that playstyle just to try it out. It won't eliminate it completely of course but it will reduce it.
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It would need to be around 300% to make up for the loss of a teammate. Even then the killer isn’t idle after one survivor dies. So theoretically you’d have two survivors potentially completing up to 5 gens. Once the third survivor is hooked, now you’ve got one survivor attempting to complete those remaining gems. That is still a hopeless situation. I can’t see any killer mains supporting a system like this, even if the penalty is like 300% or some such before the first survivor dies.
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Pips, achievements, blood points all should be given for multiple hooks across multiple survivors. Two hooking two different survivors should give the same rewards that a 4k does. Eight hooks should give double.
Kills should just be bonuses and a natural way to keep the game from going on forever.
Conversely,
Getting chased and escaping chase as well as completing generators/unhooks/heals should give survivors the bulk of their points/pips/achievements as well.
Hatch and Exit Gates should be a bonus and a limiter on how long a trial can be.
Once killers and survivors are not absolutely wrecked for not hyperfocusing on escaping/killing then BHVR can start balancing a lot more aggressively.
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300% sounds very hyperbolic. If that were true then 3 survivors left at 1 or 2 gens would be impossible and a guaranteed 4K. That's not the case at all.
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same, camping rarely but not so rarely, and slugging is actually really really rare to happen
nonetheless, the worst part of solo Q is when your teammates never try to help you at all
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First of all, we have to establish how it currently is:
- Basement Bubba that gets 4 hooks and 4 kills is going to get a higher mmr rating than a Huntress that gets 9 hooks and only 1 kill.
- A Meg that runs the killer for 4 gens, but then gets tunneled will get a lower mmr rating, than the Dwight that just sat on the gen for the whole match, but escaped.
Now we need to know, where we want to go:
- Giving killers an incentive to keep survivors as long as possible alive, while also rewarding them for getting hooks. Original BBQ was a step into the right direction. 100% bloodpoint bonus for hooking everyone once.
- Give killers a way to see who they hooked. Currently only survivors see who was hooked how often. Killer has to memorize and sometimes even take a wild guess. Show killers who they hooked and give an incentive to not hook that Meg, thats about to die. But instead go for Dwight, that hasn´t been hooked yet. Including a improved recovery for the downed Meg, to prevent extencive slugging.
- Killers tunneling someone out, is applying pressure. Having only 3 survivors to worry about is something that makes the game more manageble for killers. So to give killers an incentive to spread hooks evenly, gens should slow down, the more evenly hooks he gets. Just by a couple % per hook. Enough to reward the killer for hooking everyone once before going for the second hook. Hooking everyone the second time, before going for the kill. At the same time, give survivors a repair bonus if the killer kills someone early. So reward killers that keep the match going for every as long as possible while also punish killers that want to tunnel.
- So to increase the mmr of the killer. He would need to get 10 or 12 hooks. To stay unchanged, 6 to 9 hooks. Lower the mmr 0 to 5 hooks. Doesn´t matter how many kills the killer got. Just the amount of hooks count for the killer. Numbers might require some fine tuning.
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I think those are good ideas with the caveat that MMR should be visible or some other form of visual recognition should be included.
Currently I'm opposed to showing MMR but that's only because showing it would ratchet up not only elitism but also incidences of tunneling since kill based MMR is so simplistic. However, people like to know or have something to show they're doing well. With Emblems, for example, 4 hooks 4 kills usually meant a depip so you couldn't reach Red One. As such there were more games played for hooks instead of kills and, on the other side, the Meg who carried their team during the 4 gen run got a reward by most likely pipping up instead of the MMR drop they get now. If people could see their MMR go up and it went up by spreading hooks that would encourage more spreading hooks and/or strategic tunneling versus the default tunnel at the first opportunity we have now.
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It does not make it better at all.
For killers?
Yeah. They won't lose gens so fast at early game now. But this still does not fix the issue with tunnelling. Because you still can tunnel one survivor out and then rest of game is walking in park and chilling.
If they nerf tunnelling and punish killers really sooooo badly, then system like that can happen because killers will be scared of tunnelling. But if we keep everything same and nerf survivors like that, this won't end with good way.
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Those are not bad ideas but there is still 2 problem:
- Camping is not biggest issue survivors have. Especially after BHVR nerfed it fair enough. Tunnelling is issue. So this Bubba instead of camping, he just decided to tunnel Meg out. He got 3 hooks from her. And now his mmr is not go to up even he played pretty annoying way.
- That repair bonus is pointless when your teammate died. Because let's say Meg died at 2 gens left. Now one survivor will be in chase and if killer is good enough, he will get down fast enough. He will slowdown game with anti-gen perks. Now Meg is dead, Dwight is on hook, Jake is in chase and Claud have to go for hook save. So it really does not matter how much speed bonus you are getting when your teammate died.
If you have solution for those problems, i am all with you.
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I don't think you understand my suggestion. There would be a gen repair debuff for every survivor left alive. As survivors are killed the debuff disappears and is replaced by a gen repair buff. The ability of both sides to snowball has been reduced. You're focusing on one side, the repair debuff, without acknowledging the other (the repair buff).
It becomes more effective to get as many survivors on death hook before killing anyone.
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If what you were suggesting about one in chase, one on hook, one healing was 100% the case all the time then nobody would escape when it's a situation of 1 or 2 gens left and no survivors. The reality is that escaping at 1 or 2 gens left with three survivors is doable.
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I'm saying that the disparity between Solo Q and SWF is can't be bridged by mechanical intervention by the devs and that the way people approach arguing for the devs to do something is flawed. I do not see SWF players as being distinct from other survivors and find it weird that Solo Q complain about SWF as if they are an antagonistic force to them despite being on the same side. I also believe that Solo Q players already have all the tools they need to give them the information they are often wanting, but simply refuse to use those tools or fail to use them effectively.
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What do you think is a fair number? Remember, it needs to give survivors a good chance at completing all gens after one teammate has been tunneled out.
Since you used an edge case example I’ll do the same: 3 survivors alive with 4-5 gens remaining. One is presumably occupying the killer so you really have two survivors working to complete 4-5 gens. If a second survivor is hooked now you’ve got potentially one survivor responsible for up to 5 gens at best, one going for the save (or dealing with the killer), and at worse not one of those three survivors able to work gens because one of three is now hooked, one is in chase with killer, and one is going for the save. And that is a very real scenario.
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Killer mains don’t want to play 12 hook games.
If they did, then they would be calling for survivor hooks states to be pooled together, so it requires 8 hooks before you can killer a survivor.
its that simple and it would make the game better. The game would need to be rebalanced, but that takes care of tunneling and camping.
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It's not an edge case in the slightest. I've only escaped four times in the last week and each time we were down a survivor at 1 or 2 gens. That was also pretty common before I took a break and had a roughly 45% escape rate. You're exaggerating the one in chase, one on hook, one rescuing scenario.
As for what number is fair that's what testing by BHVR would be for so they could change the numbers to acheive their desired kill rate.
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That's another suggestion I've heard which would also work. I don't think BHVR makes changes solely on the opinions of self-professed mains. They're (mains) not a monolithic group but, by describing oneself as a main of one side or the other, being a self-professed main implies a certain bias towards your side. While, in my opinion, input from self-professed mains should be considered they should in no way be the deciding factor.
I haven't seen any evidence BHVR favours one side or the other. DbD wouldn't have lasted this long if they did. What I'm hoping is that the substantial rise in tunneling as a tactic leads to is a change in game mechanics as losing is to be expected but not having fun playing isn't.
I'm not blaming players for tunneling; it's normal to want to win and tunneling is very effective. It's not fun being tunneled though and, while there always has to be compromises, the fun of both sides has to be taken into account. If a tactic that is pretty miserable for one side becomes too popular I'm hoping BHVR will step up and change it. They've done it multiple times before so I'm hoping it'll happen here too and we'll see a rebalancing focused on incentivizing hooks.
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Am I though? How can you know—because you escaped 4 times in the last week and each time you were down a survivor with 1 or 2 gens remaining? Interesting… What do you think my experience has been? Does it count or is yours the litmus?
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