What exactly qualifies a tech to be removed? Why isn't there any consistency with the process?

They will eventually devs got a bunch of things to do new content and gamebreaking bugs to fix they will fix Wesker and Oni in due time

Doesnt billy even have a slide tech to? I've gotten it only to work like once on accident. (I rushed at a car and slid along it for some reason before hitting a survivor)

Hug tech can be argued but I really don't think 180's were ever too good or even good relative to blight for that matter, oni's near instant 180s are a lot better but even those aren't breaking his kit.

For the post: At this point I just want the killer to be a bit less sticky, you can't turn 3 degrees towards an object without colliding and it's quite obnoxious. I know the hug tech will never come back even if it was never that strong, I just want the killer to be fluid still.

A 'tech' is simply a bug/exploit spray painted over with a fresh new look/name. It doesn't stop being a bug/exploit just because people call it a 'tech'. It just basically signals 'I like this and think it should stay, so I call it tech'. The main difference between bugs and exploits, is that a bug is unintended behavior, and an exploit is an intended behavior used in an unusual or unintended way.

For an exploit example, healing prevents movement, so you can't be healed while holding the run button, so the intended behavior (can't heal a runner) is used in an unintended way (crawling isn't running, but also standing still while injured isn't running). That is what people call 'shift tech' instead of saying 'you can't heal someone running'. Since this is a mechanic working as intended (can't heal a runner), only the edge case scenario might need to be removed (running doesn't prevent heals while slugged).

The flicks and slides are (predominantly) bugs. They are unintended usages of the power, caused by programming errors. If they were intended, then you wouldn't have to jump through hoops to use them (frame perfect Wesker Slides/Hill hops), and the powers would likely be weaker to counter-balance (EG. Oni losing instadown potential). Since they are programming errors, they can be super hard to find, pin down, and fix. They can get fixed when the sufficient time or effort is put into fixing them, and should always be viewed with a limited lifespan.

One massive bug still in the game to this day (that was fixed at one point) was damaging Survivors through stuns. Due to lag, a Survivor could send the Stun message to the server, and the Killer could send the Hit message to the server, and both go off. There was a patch where the Devs put in lag verification (so whoever between Survivor or Killer sent the message to the server first, overrode the oppositions message, AKA laggy person loses), but that caused the client sided hits on Killer side to mismatch from the server sided 'you got stunned, you didn't get the hit', and it was too frustrating and confusing for most of the playerbase to deal with. Thus they added the bug back into the game, and we have laggy BS hits going through stuns to this day sadly. So this MASSIVE bug was considered too difficult for the playerbase to deal with, so this bug/'tech' is acceptable.

There is a line that needs to be crossed where what stands to be gained from the bug, is compared to what is lost from its removal. Similarly that line also exists with exploits and intended mechanics in unintended circumstances. If they removed the 'can't heal a runner' line of code, they might accidentally allow healing on the move with both players running in the same direction. That would be a far worse problem to have, so we are stuck with 'shift-tech', from that analysis. Since most Survivor experiences are hurt by these Killer extra potential bugs (IME 3/5 players), and the Killer and 1 Survivor enjoy them (2/5), they likely are all on the chopping block. At the same time, Blight finally stopped rushing through nerfs that instead landed against far weaker Killers, and his power level was finally hit a bit, as 'bug-tech' was finally fixed. At the same time most people enjoyed Billy's flick (IME 4/5), so it was considered to be up for basekitting.

There are certain surfaces that you simply dont bump into as Billy

Filler loops that have a car and truck on Autohaven, and the car on the side of the school on Badham are probably the most well known.

To my knowledge the syn cars are the only objects that have this issue though. I even managed to hit a moonsaw on accident because you literally cannot bump there. They could fix it by adjusting the car's hitbox slightly (just don't make them quite as punishing as the ones on Garden of Misery).

Vast majority of popular mechanics started as exploits/bugs/glitches - I'm sorry this is ridiculous hyperbole. What, was jumping in its own right a glitch? Was damaging specific bodyparts (aka headshots) doing more damage a glitch? Did moving faster with a button/double input to activate 'running' mode start as a glitch? While there may be offshoots of these respectively such as bunnyhopping, richochets bouncing to multi-tap hitboxes, and wavedashing, the base mechanic was already enjoyable without the hyperspecific bug/exploit for the new 'tech'. To be generous, I would give a maximum of 10%, and that is far more generous than I should ever be. This gives far too little credit to all the mechanics put into games that we enjoy, as if a noise to cue getting a reward wasn't planned. Essentially you have to play a game that intentionally makes movement clunky and bad to enjoy good movement. the newer RE engine games are a perfect example of bad floaty movement, when we had Rev2 and Res6 with clean(er) movement, or even the OG RE games with responsive fluid movement, which is still used in games as late as OG4 and RE5.

Weigh pros and cons of remove or basekit - See my final paragraph of my previous post, already covered. (Short version being Billy flick was fun, basekitted, Blight flick+faceslide wasn't, thus removed.)

Fighting games/comboes, future revisions - The difference being here, is both versions exist at the same time. I can buy the OG Street Fighter, or the original release of SF2, or the latest remake/remaster. You can have your cake and eat it when there are different versions/revisions. Someone who likes the mechanic can play the version that they like, and someone who doesn't like the mechanic can play the version they like. Here, we have to pick someone to irritate, and someone to please (or more accurately try to figure out which group is smaller and irritate them). We only have 1 version of DBD, unless they allowed for greater customization in KWF. If I could roll back patches in customs, then I wouldn't have issues with this, and it would be even better if you could customize which version of various things are allowed (maybe 80s gens, with 5% regression on kick, with Blight flicks, with 200% Ruin), but we can't do that sadly.

Shooters with exploits and glitches becoming the norm - This suffers massive survivorship bias. How many of these bugs and exploits were patched out of future iterations because they caused negative backlash also? I remember glitching out of maps and shooting people from the outside (since outer wall collision was unidirectional), and that was fun for me, and bullschenanigans for my opponents. I remember glitching the physics engine to hop on top of a beam that couldn't be reached normally, and if I did that with a sniper, it was a free win. Both of these were fun for the bug exploiter to use, but weren't adding to the game at large to be more fun or fair, so they should be removed. Sadly people view many of these exploits as the 'good ones', and that IMO is what Blight/Oni bug abuses are/were. Oni shouldn't be able to 1-hit down with 180 turning (Left/Right, full 360 coverage), he should only be able to hit 90 degree turning (Left/Right, for 180 degree coverage). If his flick is basekitted, IMO he should lose the ability to instadown with Demon Dash, and only keep instadown on the Charged M1 without sprinting.

DBD flatten's skill expression by removing fun things - Again, fun for the exploiter, not the recipient on the other side. Should we remove the entity block on windows? That was a mechanic added to prevent fun for the exploiter at the cost of health for the game, just as Blight and Oni flicks did/do. Billy's flick on the other hand was fun enough for everyone to basekit, so not all exploits are removed. You can still see this infinite vault partially happen on Dead Dawg's infinite, and Hawkin's infinite (both against M1 Killers mostly). Should every map get an 'infinite'? Something 'fixed' that I disagree with is invisible walls added EVERYWHERE on 2nd stories. The 'problem' there is falling onto loops from above (which was hyper rare and too specific to matter IMO), and instead of fixing it on the problem's end (adding cone hitboxes onto loops so you would slide off), they just added invisible walls any and everywhere you can gain altitude, especially where it doesn't make sense (bug report I posted with YT vid of invisible wall). Essentially there was 2 ends of the problem, and they picked the wrong end to fix.

As far as people looking things up to have fun in DBD, there are more than enough core problems with the game that have gone unaddressed for nearly 8 years now that you don't need to pretend exploits are saving the game. We still have no method to deal with bleedouts other than "just wait 4m LOL". We still have no method to deal with 2 Survivors holding the game hostage other than "just record at least 10 minutes of gens being not worked and report them LOL". There are plenty more massive problems, and little to nothing is done to fix the worst of experiences for both sides. That is far more likely the cause of people being turned off of the game, and the direct cause of 4/5 people IRL that I know that have quit the game for any period of time (the last being "I play the first month of a cool Killer/Survivor/Perk then wait until the next content drop with something cool", invocation of spiders was his last 'cool' thing then soft quit again).

The funny thing is that you're actually right, looping itself was never intended, and it's something that only people who really know DBD history are aware of. Since it's "not fun for the other side" as @mizark3 argues, and that's all that matters regardless if whether the other side's reasons for finding it "unfun" are actually understandable or not (Hint: It wasn't in the case of hug tech. :P), we need to removing looping!

Key tech, FOV tech, heal tech, getting running/fast vaults on loops designed to prevent them, are also instances of unintended behavior. We need to remove them too, obviously, following this reasoning.

Check this out, it's pretty old but it capitalizes on the same things. It's a very interesting read that may answer some of your questions and has alot of responses, I think even a dev responded about a cj tech or smthin.

Yeah, so, hug tech was perfectly fine and Oni flicks are fine because Oni is M1 70% of the time, "exploits" should not be removed if one's reasoning for "not finding them fun" is because "you suck at the game" or "you have 10 hours total", not because it's actually uncounterable like shooting through the map.

Also, to add onto Reiko's point, Smash Ultimate off the top of my head has several techs that remained in the game even upon discovery like Bayonetta double witch twist, slingshot was also unintended yet is considered skill. You mentioned wavedashing but there's more to it. OW2 also had the Mercy jump tech that was made basekit upon discovery by the devs.

Also, since the reason why people really hate hug tech is because "it stops me from doing the same thing I do against every Killer aka hug an obstacle for gens, then teabag after I drop the pallet", people will complain about Billy flick and demanding he be nerfed next as soon as people switch to him after the top tiers are gutted. Huntress and her orbitals would also be considered a problem if it was more common.

As long as you frame everyone using a tech you don't care for as an exploiter you're going to reach the conclusion that nothing is valid tech.

A vast majority of popular mechanics did indeed start out as bugs and glitches, but that isn't to say that every basic function started that way. That's not even something I claimed yet you chose to argue against the hyperbolic statement you made. "Popular mechanics" isn't anywhere near all encompassing and I would hazard to say that when people think of popular mechanics they are thinking of something a bit more involved than simple running and jumping.

i also said that things that are legitimately problematic absolutely should get patched. Like if something is gamebreaking or so disruptive to normal play that there is no means to balance it out then obviously it has to go. In DBD's case we have precedent that shows that flicks aren't gamebreaking nor due they rise to an extreme level of disruption. That's why Billy got his back, that's why Oni continues to have his so why exactly is there a need for Blight and now Chucky to lose their flicks? Blight losing his isn't really going to affect him all that much most likely as strong killers tend to be pretty impervious to nerfs. It does make a group of people happy and flattens the game out.

DBD is in need of depth and generally fun little things for people do with their characters on both sides. Rarely does survivor actually get new tech and killers are starting to lose tech at about the same rate they gain tech. Rather than we as players constantly wanting this removed and the devs actually removing things it would be more beneficial to embrace some of this tech and find ways to apply it across the game in a balanced way. It shouldn't just come down to picking a smaller group to irritate because if that is the kind design philosophy at play then what's the point in anyone getting into this game if they gravitate towards the "smaller group"?

Tech is one of the things that can keep players invested in even a bad game.

Disabling gen regression after a kill instantly creates an inevitability scenario that would place too much pressure on killers. It's a reverse snowball that rather than causing the game to rubberband would just incentivize one side avoiding doing their objective in a timely manner unless they were already playing a killer who actually can thrive without gen regression. Basekit NOED is one of the biggest band aid fixes people have thrown around for years. It's lowkey kinda insane to get to endgame with zero kills and be handed innate NOED which as a base mechanic either has to be strong enough to truly be game changing or weak enough to only offer a bare advantages. It feels weird to place survivors is a situation where they can suddenly go from handily winning to being at an extreme disadvantage without some sort of investment of resource from the killer. It also feels like to trash to get what amounts to pity buffs that don't really help your situation if you're a killer who is losing. DBD has comeback mechanics already, but the design of the game doesn't really allow for a back and forth because the sides aren't meant to be on equal footing. So comebacks either succeed in grand fashion or they fail outright.

The recent changes to the game have further cemented the fact that having a back and forth style of gameplay isn't seen as desirable. Caps to gen regression means that killers are hard limited how much they can impose their will on the game in regards to undoing progress. That's a direct statement that no matter what after a certain point the survivors will complete their objective and preventing it can only be done by kills. It makes sense to do this with the issues for 3 gens and general game stalling, but removing gameplay whether intended or unintended by design further sets the game in stone. Having more modes would be great, but the gameplay loop is still largely the exact same as it has been and we're now 9 years into the life span of this game with little to show for it in terms of mechanical depth and skill expression. New intentional mechanics are rarely added to the game and when they do get added they usually get absolutely decimated or they're too clunky to be with the time investment. Things players figure out for themselves and get a lot of value out of using either for fun or competitive advantage get removed as well.

So what are we gaining? 2v8 is still more of the same DBD, but with an extra killer in the mix. That isn't a substantial addition because the base game is still losing depth rather than embracing it in any meaningful way. Tech can keep players interested a bad game, but it can also keep players interested in good yet stale and flawed game as well. DBD is at its core a good game, but it has grown very stale and is taking too long to iterate on its formula. SF2 had around 28 iterations of itself by the time Capcom finally moved on from it to work on the Alpha series of SF. Each one keeping the core gameplay, but adding something to it or adjusting the balance. In DBD we get regular balance changes, but we also get more subtractions of things than additions. Even when intentional mechanics get handicapped or outright cut post introduction to the live game. If the expectation is that this sort of philosophy is going to make the game better then time hasn't proven that to be true. 9 years in and we have less overall freedom within the game than at any other point in the game's history.

Even truly exciting new additions like Vecna's mechanics are hard to get excited about because we've seen how the devs handle things that either perform too well or allow players to get too creative on their own. I also agree that survivors need a more dynamic objective and have been suggesting for years that they should have at least part scavenging mechanic to repair gens rather than just holding down a button for a minute.

Trying to balance killers around tiers is bad way to approach design. Tiers are something that players derive based on their subjective experience with the game. Dbd is one of the few games where due to the nature of its gameplay there is rarely any natural shifting of perspectives on killers. Nurse isn't ever going to be a mid or low tier killer through nerfs as her base power is the absolute best power to have in this game. She's legit not playing the same dbd as any other killer because she can ignore terrain. Freddy's probably never going to be a high tier killer through buffs alone because his power gets weaker over the course of a match and losing mobilty/map pressure is one of the worst traits to have baked into a killer kit. That's why the best killers in the game all tend to have high mobility on demand as a key feature.

Like even Billy at his worst was still like a solid A tier killer imo due to the fact he was very fast on top of an instadown. The power a killer ships with is often very set in stone and then you get a bunch of number tweaks mainly to addons that ultimately doesn't change the overall inherent strengths and weaknesses of a power. If the powers aren't going to just go through sudden drastic changes on a regular basis then you need changes to basic universal gameplay.

The Final Challengers isn't well liked because it commits the cardinal sin of being a shallow cash grab that has even less features than original version of SF2 and adding things no one likes. It was a lackluster switch port all in all, I think the "newest" revision of SF2 Turbo pro players actually play with some passing regularity is maybe Turbo HD Remix which has its own set of issues. Most just play classic ST when they want to play ST. DBD on the other hand hasn't even made it to its ST era after 9 years and we've the benefit of being able to patch games without making a whole new arcade board or game cart. We've got plenty of new characters over time, but most actually share mechanics which isn't necessarily a bad thing. What is bad is that the core gameplay is a hindrance to innovating the ways in which players can engage with game. Hopefully the new mode menu will help with that, but this is something we should have been seeing experimented with years ago.

I wouldn't be so dead set on seeing weird janky pieces of tech held onto if there was a historical precedent in this game for things trending towards being fairly innovative. Yet, it's the opposite where players finding interesting things is tamped down and the game trends towards long term stagnation rather than some sort of reinvention. Number tweaks and slight effect changes can only do so much and the same loop/gen/chase structure can only be so fun. When we do get novel mechanics they often feel and look hamstrung by the basic gameplay if they fall outside of the couple handfuls of mechanics that we recognize as "known goods" in dbd. For me I've been engaging with the game in some way or another since just a few months after it launched till now. The last time I was dedicated to playing was when Skull Merchant released and stopped when she got reworked cause I think the rework solves none of her core issues and playing matches isn't fun when no matter what I do people still just give up the moment they see a merchant.

Killer bans is an idea that folks have been asking for, but it's a feature that would a poison pill for the game.

One of the things that DBD has going for it is that you can play whoever you want whenever you want. If you want to only get good at playing one killer then you can master that killer and comfortably know that you'll always be able to play that killer. They may not always have the same balance points that you like about them, but their general features will be there barring a few exceptions. Bans would force more killer diversity, but not in a good way. Bans in MOBAs work due to the sheer number of characters and the expectations that since you're filling a role within a team you will learn multiple characters who can fill that role. DBD doesn't really have roles which is something that in a way holds the game back on the survivor side, but is extremely pronounced for solo killers as well.

It takes a lot of time to learn killers in this game and the process of picking up a new killer is actually pretty bad for the average player. You immediately have to go into matches geared more towards your skill level with your main killer rather than lower tiered competition or just straight up bots. Like you can go to customs, but you don't gain any progression that way which ultimately is one of the most important things in DBD. Killer bans would just make people who play popular, strong, or hated killers not be able to play the game comfortably. A solo killer player would be eating 4 bans every match being allowed to pick or they would queue up only to discover they have huge waits between matches because the killer they play is getting mass banned. It's a quick way to drive a wedge between an already tribal playerbase.

Skull Merchant's stealth used to depend on her passing through her drones' detection field which made things much more fair in that regard. If you saw the drone you knew it was a place she was most likely to pass through if she was playing stealth builds. Merchant by default isn't really a stealth killer, she's a weird hodgepodge of mechanics and stealth just happens to be one she can make use of without as much hassle as relying on others. She would be more balanced as a tracking/stealth killer that was purely focused on only those two aspects, but the devs seem to want her to be a weird toolbox that only Pixelbush enjoys. Then again my main killer before SM was Legion so I've been through the hellscape of DBD reworks gone wrong a few times at this point so perhaps I'm overly jaded about the whole situation. Either way it's been a breaking point for me really engaging with the game on top of everything else.

I would argue that while each Killer may be unique, they still often have heavy similarities for a 'class' of Killer, like 'Stealth', 'Ranged', 'Mobility', 'overwhelming chase presence', with some overlap in all of those categories. Nonetheless, the vast majority of Killers can fall back on the 4.6 M1 standard. With that, you would only pick a 4.4 Killer if you had the confidence, or wanting to learn how to play them (just like now).

I highly doubt bans would significantly impact queue times, and even then, it would help prevent false start games (where one of the Survivors Kobes on first hook and dies at 5 gens). It may take the 4 minutes instead of 2 to find a match, but it will also mostly remove those false start games which cost you ~5-10 minutes of wasting time before you can even queue up for another match. Since the way I would implement bans is an option menu before you even click 'Play', it would never impact the pre-game lobby like other games' bans. I do agree it might hurt 1-tricks on off-hours, but if the opposing team wasn't going to even try against them in the first place, it means they were never denied a 'real' match, and only a 5-gen Kobe match that would waste their add-ons and offerings. That would be more useful, as it would let them know 'maybe you should play a different Killer, because no one wants to deal with that right now'. The only thing that player loses is fake matches, and I don't think that is a loss at all. The 'heal tome into Plague' is definitely something that should be addressed, either by fixing her kit, or in a universal way like bans. I've had sooooooo many teammates give up against Plague, and it usually is when a big heal tome is in the rotation (probably my single most frequent Kobe at 5 gens situation I've experienced, but that's anecdotal [hard DCs are taken by the 'Nurse blink at 3am']).

Overall I feel bans would significantly reduce the number of these 'false matches', which appear all too common now.

SM's OG stealth was fair with no sound cue, as keeping an eye on the drone boundaries was the counterplay. Current SM gets 8s/10s or 9.6s/10s of Undetectable uptime, or 36.8m/44.16m of silent walking distance per use, without even including perks for added confusion. SM is just a bad example though since it is probably the single worst designed Killer, even including old Freddy.

This is all getting off-topic though, so if you want to reply more on bans you can have the last word here or ping me in a new thread. If it is related to the whole tech/bug/exploit conversation then I'd be willing to continue this here though.