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The state of shift w in Dead by Daylight
Comments
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Larry is loopable if you have a window or good LoS blockers. You also cannot go for pallet stuns half the time. On top of that he is rarely played so people have little experience versing him. The other 2 are, well, maybe most of the times loopable, but as I and others said survivors are being conditioned to leave tiles at the first opportunity for a plethora of reasons.
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Survivors running in a straight line isn’t an insurmountable strategy for any killer in this game. I believe the devs are working on QoL for killers based on killer feedback, which is great, but I also know the devs have to give survivors some way to survive their matches. Maps are smaller (favors killers), loops are weaker (favors killers), and several survivor play styles have been nerfed (healing, stealth—favors killers). They have to give survivors something. And pushing the envelope with more survivor nerfs—eliminating the hold w strat—doesn’t mean survivors play with yet another handicap. It means survivors stop playing altogether (a la Deathgarden).
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Well they nerfed the pallets on a ton of maps and gutted dh. If there's not a safeish loop near a generator survivors are going to pre-run because otherwise its just giving a free injury. When DH was better I could greed and play a riskier loop because of DH. I still run DH though because its more fun imo.
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If I have a reasonably strong tile near I won't prerun, thats the answer. I am not going to stay at a generator if the killer is coming to me unless there is something playable within range.
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"Can there be anything done to make this playstyle less popular? Do you guys see it similarly or am I just whining?"
You're not whining there are ways to do this but it's going to have to be a slow process over time. You need maps to have enough to play with but not too much people can afford to consistently pre-drop while not being be too safe or unsafe because in one case there is nothing for the killer to play if its too safe but if its too unsafe the survivor is encouraged to take any distance they have and bank it W keying away from gens and hopefully for them to pallets.You also need killers that cannot enforce hits very easily like knight can but can close distance easily like blight/hillbilly with their movement or to a lesser extent clown/pinhead with their slows.
It's a big ask for BHVR because just saying make better stuff doesn't mean much and is easier said than done, you need better killers and better maps to minimize the issues your having. Everything starts there.0 -
Sadako has no in-chase mobility, no ranged power or instant down. The same is true for Pig. Pig is not a ranged killer and does not have instant downs. She does have ranged dash which might count for in-chase mobility but the pig dash is still somewhat weak. It doesn't go far enough or fast enough.
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That's what I said, didnt I?
Both are loopable. However, against both, survivors hold w the moment they can.
Also, Sadako has invisibility - Mindgames. It's not strong but it's there.
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But dh made the game too safe. Especially old dh.
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Did I say I want that?
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Yup. You’re complaining about survivors running in a straight line because it disrupts your ability to play the game how you want. You asked if it’s fun for both sides; surviving is fun for survivors. You said the strategy negates looping, I pointed out maps are being reworked so that looping really isn’t as efficient as a shift w strategy (more dead zones, more weak tiles). The only way it becomes boring for killers, because regardless of where a survivor goes you’re still in chase, is because it prolongs surviving and that is not fun for killers. That’s the gist of it.
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Every single one of those killers you listed save for Knight and to a degree clown, can be looped. Idk what people in here are talking about “we’ve been forced to hold w”… in what world??? I still loop my little heart out with Nea. I still achieve 2 and 3 gen chases consistently while traditionally looping. I don’t think it’s an issue of you being forced to hold w, but rather maybe not knowing how to loop efficiently.
Also a big reason why I main blight, hold w is so boring.
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The fact that so many people are upvoting comments about "smaller maps" are forcing survivors to hold w more just shows how many people don't understand the "hold w" fundamentally. Hold w is incentivized on larger maps because it allows it to work, hence "hold w", not hold w and "hold a and d". Hold w does not work on smaller maps because you hit corners. So saying hold w is encouraged by maps becoming smaller is antithetical and doesn't make sense.
Now if we want to get into hold w being encouraged by loop design lately, that's much more of a reasonable argument, even though I'd still disagree, but it's at least a debatable topic. However saying it's because map sizes are smaller is just objectively untrue at a fundamental level.
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But I did not say to just straight up nerf it.
I suggested disencouraging it.
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That’s true, you did say that it should be discouraged. However, the only ways to disincentivize a shift w playstyle are to either buff other strategies survivors have (my initial point that you have to give survivors some way to survive), or weaken it as a strategy… which would be a nerf.
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Any Idea?
Making maps too strong punishes weaker killers more than stronger ones.
I genuinely dont know how to fix this.
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they're doing opposite. they're buffing DS stun so you can hold-w longer and more effectively. So when you take DS as Pig, you'll get shift-w'd more.
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It isn’t really something that needs fixing. Anything BHVR could do to affect it would just make the game worse for one side or the other. Best to just leave well enough alone.
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That's the easy way out.
Similar could be said about tunneling.
I think problems that make the game less fun should be tackled.
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Well... Luckily Pig is one of the few killers that gets punished for tunneling and rewarded for spreading hooks.
No ds for me. I usually don't tunnel. Ds won't be much of a problem for me.
This does not mean, that a licensed perk is the solution to tunneling though.
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In my experience in soloQ, once you are noticed and the killer comes for you, you are not engaging in a "fun chase" as part of your gameplay, but rather you are fighting to not get erased from the match by tunneling right from the start. Which means putting as much distance between you and the killer as possible.
You dont want to engage in loops unless you have to or you know it is relatively safe to do so for a while. Hence shift-w.
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So onoe solution would be to make tiles be mindgameable for survivors again?
What kind of tiles are these?
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I think a part of the problem is the chase mechanic simply not working. Even up close it can be buggy and break chase or not even start the chase properly.
If you could be following a survivor's scratch marks like bread crumbs and be considered in chase to start racking up bloodlust earlier, that would help. And of course, fixing the blatant bugs in regards to the chase mechanic would also be a big help.
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Not really disagreeing with you, but the devs have moved in the direction of only having filler pallets or unsafe loops. Not saying either way is right or wrong, but what I can say is the amount a survivor preruns is directly related to how close they believe the nearest playable pallet is. You can't count crappy filler pallets in that equation because we do not care to play those. They are more of a maybe I can add 10 seconds on to my chase than a I can actually get a meaningful chase. With healing nerfs, there's also an argument to made that health stages are more coveted. My willingness to give a free hit to get to the loop I want to get to decreased now that healing takes longer.
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The thing about "shift W" is that there is some logic behind it
Getting away from unfinished Gens
Getting to a stronger Loop
Getting the Killers attention for a chase
Remember that Survivors have the advantage at the start of chase
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Everything this flawless map had:
In all seriousness, though: the older a tile is, the more potential it has for mindgames.
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Do you think people just run away because they don't know how to loop? Maybe there's like a new player base that's coming in and they're just trying to experience this game in a way that makes sense to them. Maybe there's like a bunch of people that have under a thousand hours instead of everybody who brags about having 10,000 in the game and "I know all about looping and pathing."
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Id argue that prerunning is actually a sign of a strong survivor. The amount of free time you can waste by prerunning is incredible. It takes the killer to a part of the map that they don't want to be on to protect a 3 gen and gets you to a tile that is actually playable. Prerunning is the counter to patrolling generators and killers that will not chase you for a meaningful amount of time. let him get his kick in and just run back on the gen rather than wasting resources in a critical part of the map or giving up a free health state because there isnt anything playable near you. An inexperienced survivor would be more likely to either try and loop a very unsafe close loop and give away an injury or try and hide which would waste less time.
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I normally check hours if people in my games play like they are a lot better or worse than what I usually expect. The people holding shift w are all 1k hours or higher. Most people are around my playtime at around 3k hours.
Whats your experience?
I could be wrong.
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For the most part, I agree.
Some main buildings and old coldwind jungly gyms are the exception, but main buildings arent really tiles.
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I think some main buildings were changed unnecessarily, but overall the regular tiles were way better in the past than they are now.
There is nothing fun about a pallet you cannot mindgame.
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