Competitive DBD: can it work?

One thing I've come to realize more and more about DbD is that its a guessing game. Bring distortion and if you hit a killer with aura reads, tons of value, if the killer brings no aura reads its a wasted perk. Healing skills become useless against a plague. Mindbreaker grows in power the more exhaustion perks there are. Etc.

The doesn't mean the game is unbalanced, that's a different issue, it just means sometimes one side or the other has a huge advantage over the other based on guessing correctly. If competitive DbD played a season of games instead of tournament, that would even out (not that a season of esports would be practical for other reasons). Thus because its tournament style they try and reduce the randomness of the game, which leads to knock on effects requiring more and more rules.

This game is already as competitive as it gets

Comp DbD can and does work (see DbD League), but it requires a very artificial environment and heaps and heaps of rules, bans, and restrictions to do so.

If it is introduced I doubt it will be as fleshed out as it needs to be to function

What specific things are banned from comp? What about them is broken? I’m just genuinely curious.

Agreed

It works as is. The game will never be balanced enough to avoid restrictions altogether.

I don't like to be over competitive in dbd but I do understand the player who like it.

I think dbd should have a competitive game mode. A 1vs1 mode and a custom game mode where you can restrict the perks and allow other changes for comp.

The last Community Cup format where a team of 5 take on another team of 5 at the same time, with the same map and choices of killers looks like it'd be a lot of fun for a proper ranked mode.

I have been secretly hoping players would be inclined to get a comp scene going, like the matchmaking tournament websites of Counter Strike...

It'd make a cool event at least to be able to enter a mini 5 game tournament with a team every now and again.

Sadly DBD became more and more about advantages and knowlegde.

Survs hold shift W, rush gens, pre-drop, bodyblock when they need to and killers just camp and tunnel their objective aswell.

Also don't forget the big RNG factor the game has. If i would want to show off my "skill", i def wouldn't pick DBD for it.

It varies from tournament to tournament and region to region. Hens just had a video up about this that compared the differences between Japan and European/US comp playstyles (Japan killers tunnel less, play more control playstyle, hug tech not a big thing, self care viewed as S tier perk instead of garbage).

Self unhooking, including AFC, not including deliverance, is banned (both regions)

Map is known by both sides

Killer is known in western tournaments (usually) but not Japan

Hatch is set in western tournaments

Japan bans emotes

Japan prohibits hex cleansing until at least 1 gen is complete

Western tournaments you cannot bring the same perk more than once on the survivor side

Both sides limit survivor items, Japan you are allowed to open chests

Western tournaments usually limit all killers to yellow or lower addons

Win conditions are different

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In terms of what perks are banned, I've actually looked for a list and been unable to find one that is recent. The problem is that what is banned changes as the game updates and each tournament has their own variations.

Because some people enjoy the competitive aspect of games? Comp dbd isn't hurting anyone i don't see why you can't just let people play it.

idk

Its not esports that is the problem. Esports was around a long time. It is skill based matchmaking that is the problem. And not just with DBD, its an industry problem.

Back in my day, there was no skill based matchmaking. You just joined a random CS server or Quake Clan Wars server or random WC3 DotA game, and your teammates and opponents were whoever they happened to be. You queued up for a match of CoD and you just got matched with whoever you got matched with. If you got destroyed by some really good player, you didn't complain, whine or cry about it, you thought "damn that guy is really good". If you were playing CoD and a guy was destroying everyone in the lobby dropping nukes every game, you generally WANTED to be in that lobby to watch what the guy was doing so you could learn their tricks, or you'd pay attention to the weapons he was using or what perks etc.

If you were that guy, people would compliment you on your skills and sing your praises for being really good. And if you got tired of losing to the guy? You just left the lobby and found another match. Maybe in that new lobby it would be you destroying everyone. Maybe you would take some of the things you learned from the previous lobby and put it to the test in this new one. Maybe you'd start unlocking all the attachments and perks that guy was using in that lobby so you could give it a try. Yeah, you'd probably lose a bunch of games because you never used the UMP before and you don't have attachments. No big deal, you'd grind out a few games and get them so you can start using it.

All of that changed when skill based matchmaking came out. Back then it was called "Trueskill". People started really caring about that number next to their name when it was called trueskill. Before that, the number was just a number that you could grind out if you spent enough time on the game, because the number was usually just XP or some other mechanic. If you were good, it went up faster, but even if you weren't, it still went up every game. But now, people started getting upset when other players in the lobbies were really good and destroying them, because it meant that the number next to their name would go down instead of up. Now suddenly people wanted "fairness" to trump everything in terms of matches. Because if the match wasn't perceived as "fair" then they would start blaming the game for that number next to their name going down. And if they started blaming the game, they'd stop playing, and they'd stop buying. So now the developers honed on on "fairness" against all other qualities.

Once fairness reigned supreme, it meant that when some cool "thing" or "tech" (as we call them in dbd) was discovered, it had to be patched.

Gone were the days of playing MvC2, and having an Iron man do an infinite combo on you and thinking "damn how did you do that?! That was amazing!" Why? well because an infinite combo would be unfair, so we can't have those, gotta patch them out.

Gone were the days of being able to stack killstreaks together in CoD because people found out they can camp good spots, keep safe, and work themselves up to a chopper, and then be able to get a nuke if they focused on getting kills and not dying instead of going for the objectives. Why? well because someone getting 25 kills in a row was seen as "unfair".

Gone were the days of someone figuring out that the Model 1887 in CoD actually had some decent range, and if you dual wield them, it made it so the weakness of it being a single pump action shotgun was mitigated, meaning you could one tap someone if you had good aim. Can't do that because being one tapped would be "unfair" Now the TTK is significantly longer in these games and you have to spend half a clip to kill someone.

Gone were the days of playing Quake, and bunny hopping around a map and using rocket jumps to fly around and timing when the armor and health would spawn so you can show up at the exact right time and gain control of the map. That would be unfair, because bunny hopping was hard, and timing weapons was hard, so we had to add timers for you, and give you auto-bhop.

Gone were the days of playing Halo, and starting with the Pistol, the best OVERALL weapon in the game, that allowed you to take on anyone assuming you could outaim them. Despite the fact that, the shotgun was better at close range, the rockets were better at mid range, and the sniper was better at long range. The pistol could do it all, decently, but in the hands of a skilled player was a deadly weapon. But spawning with a weapon so strong is "unfair" after all.

Gone were the days of playing Halo 2, and having a ton of glitches and "techs" like BXR and BXBB and quad shot. Because those are hard techniques to pull off and not everyone can do it. Making it really "unfair" to those who couldn't.

And lastly. Gone were the days of Super Smash Bros Melee, where you had crazy techniques like wavedashing, and L cancelling that allowed combos to exist, turning this "party game" into a serious and viable competitive sport that was really interesting to watch. Instead we make it so you can just randomly "trip" in the next game for no reason, and remove all of those things so that we can emphasize the "party" game, because after all, wavedashing and L Cancelling are hard, and not everyone can do it, making it really "unfair" for them.

I could continue to go on, but i feel you should get the point at this point. The pursuit of "fairness" and skill based matchmaking has created a situation where games are stale now, everything is the same, and everything is a constant struggle-fest where everyone is doing everything they can to win. Instead of just joining a CoD lobby to have a little fun and mess around with a shotgun, or mess around with care package and maybe get a lucky chopper after only a couple of kills. At the end of the day, you didn't care if you "won" the match, because you still got XP, you still leveled up, you still earned attachments, you still earned perks, you still earned prestige and you still earned achievements. just a little slower than if you had won the match.

This pursuit of "fairness" didn't exist when your "rank" was just tied to how long you played the game for (I.E. CoD prestige) because you were just grinding a higher number and if you were really good, you got it faster, but eventually everyone would get it. Once that number started getting called "Trueskill" people took it as an insult when that number was low, and they started caring. Thus fairness became the supreme god that every developer would continue to push for, without realizing that they were slowly killing their games.

CS is one example, CoD you "queued up" and you just got put in lobbies with whoever you got put with.

"Competitive" i. e. tournament DbD already is a thing and has been for years, and it works well and attracts thousands of viewers. It has in fact only been notably growing and improving in recent years, in terms of viewership, organization and viewing quality, level of competition, prize money, and more. That doesn't mean there aren't problems left, but we don't need to have a debate on whether it can work, it already factually does. And to note, the biggest problem it has is that BHVR - despite past assertions to the contrary - does next to nothing to improve or promote this sphere of their game. Not even the very essentials such as better spectating features are being implemented, not only neglecting to improve anything about it for years and years but constantly introducing new spectator bugs that can at times make it downright impossible to follow a match, and then taking ages to fix them, if they ever do.

Without going into the competitive viability of DbD much (I have done so plenty in the past, and most of the words would be wasted here anyway; it suffices to say that there is an impressive consistency with which certain players and teams excel and succeed in the competition and tournament scene of this game which proves that the people who proclaim that the game is too RNG and luck-based have no real clue what they're talking about), I will echo a simple truth that @Neaxolotl has brought up earlier in this thread and that is one of the most blatant things people tend to gloss over: both teams play both sides, this establishes an inherent competitive balance and symmetry in the format, the game does not have to be symmetrical or balanced in terms of the "sides" because both teams equally benefit and suffer from any such potential imbalances. The primary reason why tournaments tend to ban and restrict so many things on both sides is that they want to promote certain more engaging gameplay, that is more compelling to play and watch. Of course some things are banned because they would increase the luck factor of the game (attempting to unhook yourself, for instance), and others because they could hamper the competitive viability (either because they are so oppressive that they would be expected to yield a lot of tied matches (e. g. Background Player, Power Struggle and Flip-Flop for survivors, which can too reliably deny hooks), or because they don't promote skilled gameplay (e. g. Ultimate Weapon on killers, which replaces 50% or more of the need for "game sense", among other issues)). I will say that I don't agree with all bans and restrictions we have in popular tournaments (annulling the anti-facecamp mechanic, for instance), and it can be pointed out that the competitive scene is still a pretty insular community, with a really rather small club of "comp royalty" that have too much of a sway on how things are handled, which is also in some senses holding back the scene. But that's to be expected because the people playing in the scene are also literally the ones creating it, as there is no support from the developers.

I think tournament DbD is at a turning point or threshold now where it has garnered a critical mass of people interested in both playing and watching, as well as attracted more and more content creators as notice has been taken that some of the stand-out tournament players have been able to grow their streams significantly off the back of their reputation in the scene. Big streamers like Otz, Hens and Tofu have also been driving forces behind the growth. I think if ever there was a time for BHVR to try and light a fire under this development (or to provide sparks that can ignite explosive developments), it would be now. Hens is currently organizing a tournament with a lot of hype behind it, as recent shuffles in the top teams have created a really exciting field where while there are one or two clear favourites (Eternal being the #1 favourite), there are at least 5 teams all of which can realistically take it home. The prize pool is also around $4000 or so. Imagine if BHVR had matched the prize pool provided by the community, as well as promoted the tournament on its social media and maybe hosted its twitch stream from theirs. All of this would have been easy and effortless for them, and yet it could have been a monumental occurrence for the tournament scene. They wouldn't even have to be associated with or responsible for anything to do with these tournaments and as such not risk any brand damage as they might have with that Space eSports tournament, they would just act in a promoting fashion, highlighting the community's efforts.

When ever I see competetive DBD I cant help but laugh. I dont know how these people can take this game this seriously. Some things are hyped up for no reason, making the whole thing seem to be more than it actually is.

The reality: some of these teams and killers give a worse performance than public players. Sure, saying that based on one or two matches would be disingenuous. However, I htink I have seen and played against some of these people enough to have a reason for that opinion.

Comp in DBD is not really something realistsic due to the game being in the state it is in since it came out. Its, as others have already mentioned, an RNG-fest with a ton of unbalanced stuff. That there even is something like a competetive scene just shows how desperate these people are to play this game on a higher level, when realistically there is none.

I know this is harsh.