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Windows of opportunity is damaging the game.

Windows use rate is now at 35% usage rate, meaning that it's guaranteed that minimum one survivor will have it and at worse every survivor will have it. But on average 2 to 3 survivors WILL have windows equipped. This somehow beats out pain res and pop as those perks have 28% usage rate.

you'd think all this perk does is give the survivor information how could this perk have 35% usage rate?
If you only play survivor the reasoning for this isn't going to be obvious and probably think how could it possibly be ruining the game.

Imagine for a second if every match you get into doesn't have a weak link, if every single match you get into every survivor knows EXACTLY where to run to the next resource, knows where the deadzones are and actively avoids them or runs past pallets to window vaults to save resources because they know they will make it to the window, even if it's completely obscured without ever even coming to that part of the map before.

THAT is what windows does, it single-handily raises the skill floor of every survivor you run into with it.
A survivor that without it would be running into the edge map and going down because they do not know where any resource is, since it was buffed has become a survivor that knows EXACTLY where every resource is and all they have to do is run to the yellow aura. If the killer is a hold W killer, like tapper, pig etc. This essentially means trying to break pallets in connecting loops to create deadzones is pointless and only starts actually helping when the distance between pallets becomes so great you catch up to them before they make it to anything.

Originally when it was buffed and even pre-buff the mood behind it was that if you're good at the game you don't need to use it, and most don't. the issue however is that it makes a bad survivor that should be going down quickly, last so much longer and all they have to do is look forward and hold W to achieve this.

(This is probably one of the single most frustrating things for me in the game right now, a clearly low skill player never looking back, only holding W, running me for a whole gen just because they know they will make it to the next yellow aura before I can hit them)
(The amount of times I'm chasing someone and they run directly to the edge of grim pantry and find the one pallet between the trees is starting to get to me.)

The knock on effect of this is that if you combo it with lithe (checks notes: is the second most used perk in the game, only beaten by windows) EVERY chase you start where the survivor isn't exhausted which will be the case most of the time. will run to a loop, vault a window and run to the next furthest away yellow aura, rinse repeat until either you mindgame them or they run out of resources. which just extends the chase by 10 - 30 seconds every single time it happens. which just translates into more gen progress.

And the knock on effect of gens getting done "faster" because chases are artificially being extended, is killers will bring more and more gen slowdown, play killers that have anti chase / anti loop and generally play sweatier and sweatier, which makes survivors play sweatier and sweatier with no end in sight.

In a world where survivors don't know where every resource is and isn't you could break a connecting / filler pallet of a good survivor who's gonna make it to a stronger tile, drop chase and chase another survivor into that area and get a hit because the next survivor wont know there isn't a pallet there anymore, until they visually see it.
However again, because lithe windows has such a high usage rate, half the survivors you chase will just run past areas they know the resource is gone and will always run towards where the resources still are, again and again.

And now that we're seeing nerfs for a bunch of the most used killer perks, especially anti gen perks without so much as a mention for a perk that has a 10% higher usage rate. Do people, including the devs not realize just how strong windows is? Gens are going faster because chases are lasting longer. Do people just think, oh it's a new player perk so it's fine if it has a high usage rate because it's "helping" low skill players?

That is the EXACT reason it is so strong, it's just so much more insidious because you don't hear a long gong when it's used, you don't see it from a distance. you only see it when you see a survivor holding W, not looking back, making it to every pallet on the map. every. single. time.

I don't want the perk gutted, it IS useful perk for new players. It just needs it's old cooldown back, or shouldn't be usable in chase after the first window / pallet. That's all I'm asking for, because as it is. I genuinely think it's unhealthy, chases are lasting much longer, gens are getting more progress because chases are lasting longer, low skill players are getting propelled into higher skill lobbies, and the only current counter to everyone running it is running blindness perks/ addons, which people largely consider the worst in the game, just to disable one perk for 10 - 60 seconds.

Even if you think I'm complaining needlessly, if the devs are nerfing perks with a 9% usage rate, because they're giving the killer too much extra time, they NEED to nerf a perk with a 35% usage rate for the exact same reason.

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Comments

  • caligraph
    caligraph Member Posts: 359

    seems fine to me. If people really use it to see pallets their soloQ teammates havent dropped then this doesnt really change that. Removing the cooldown entirely was a big mistake.

  • Ohyakno
    Ohyakno Member Posts: 1,206

    I've come around on this. It really does need a slight nerf even though it's the only thing giving blindness addons value. Reduce the range or give it a small cooldown.

    "B-b-but solo queue...!!!" Don't care. People in groups don't share what map resources they use exactly, nor do they have perfect communication and memory. People in groups use it as well.

  • Ohyakno
    Ohyakno Member Posts: 1,206

    Blindness as a counter doesn't really work. Most killer blindness addons are bad on top of taking the addon slot of a mandatory addon. That being said I love yoichi's fishing net and the singu blindness one. Those are easier to justify than the pig one which only works when they're trapped and the Wesker on that kicks on.... When infection is fully reached? I'm just reading this. That's awful. Perks are also more miss than hit. You got third seal as your best option which is rather sad, considering that it's going to burst into flames in the first thirty seconds of the match. Unless you want to run noted powerful perk septic touch. The others don't really do much against windows.

    Comparing info perks to game slowdown is one of the farthest reaches I've seen. Technically anything that stymies your opponent is slowing down the game. Being able to find a dude gets him off gens and slows down the game. Running that logic to it's natural conclusion sort of dilutes the term as a useful framework for discussion. Windows is an information perk.

  • n000b51
    n000b51 Member Posts: 755
    edited May 16

    WoO can give to survivors indication about the killer position when he is breaking a dropped pallet as 'Alert' can do. Info about some vaults can be useful too because in the recent maps & reworked maps, vaults are not obvious…
    But with WoO you can confused a breakable wall as a pallet as well.
    This perk is almost useless against a freddy with the fake pallet addon in the dream world.
    And Oni has the same kind of aura reading…

  • Archol123
    Archol123 Member Posts: 4,634

    That would negate the secondary purpose of knowing which tiles your teammates already used...

  • Rulebreaker
    Rulebreaker Member Posts: 2,017

    Well we get A LOT of milage out of blindness. Most are actually fine for the purpose of removing windows in a chase and just about every killer doesn't need add ons (we admit some suck to play as without but a majority are fine with or without and all viable). We have seen an anti heal build including septic touch that worked well, but that aside as we said also there's also other ways to make windows useless.

    Hence the snark, but as they were comparing windows to the upcoming perks being nerfed, we showed the difference.

  • LapisInfernalis
    LapisInfernalis Member Posts: 4,218

    The real question is what do you rather want:

    • Survivors who are effective with their recources
    • 4 2nd chance perks and a lot of recources

  • ScytheIX
    ScytheIX Member Posts: 36

    Not necessarily. If you are close to a tile and scout it out and memorize what has been used I don't think that's a big deal. (WoO aura range is huge.) Maybe for fillers, but gyms in general can be used even without a pallet. Not to the full effect, mind you, but it's not unusable.
    It would actually force you to preplan and then execute instead of only execute and not think about it.
    And the latter is probably what people get frustrated with the most.
    No one says it shouldn't be a useful tool. It just shouldn't be a "turn brain off and hold W to what glows". (The majority of WoO players sadly play like that.)

    Imagine I had full aura read on the surv I'm chasing constantly. Just imagine it. It's not a real argument or comparison. But that's the equivalent of how it feels most of the times. Or the closest one could get.

  • Lixadonna
    Lixadonna Member Posts: 223

    Don't you worry. It will be Nerfed. The Devs have shown a penchant to listening to Killer Mains for Balance advice. Because you know 60% Kill Ratio is top priority to anything else.

  • Ohyakno
    Ohyakno Member Posts: 1,206

    Tell that to pop's bloated corpse floating facedown in the ptb. BHVR isn't anything sided. They just do stuff based on entirely arbitrary criteria. It's a mystery. To suggest they don't favor 70% of their playerbase is ridiculous.

  • Archol123
    Archol123 Member Posts: 4,634

    The question is under what condition does it deactivate? As soon as I enter chase? After a specific amount of time? Sure you know what is like 30 m around you, but that does not help you when you are currently in a dead zone working on a Gen or only have tiles around you that are low height and you need to pre run...

    The problem with jungle gyms is that depending on whether or not the pallet is still up you need to walk into the gym in a different way... So it gets majorly effected by being able to rely on a Ressource still being there.

    The only thing the perk tells is you where the resources you can use are, not how to use them... You don't turn your brain of and suddenly know how to loop a killer... You can only pre plan if you know what is around you and when that information is still fresh, because otherwise it might have change already.

    Why is it a big issue if the survivor reaches a resource? Do you just want a free down because the survivor ended up in a dead zone? A survivor that only runs to a tile and then has no clue how to use it is still an easy hit, so where exactly is the issue.

  • Archol123
    Archol123 Member Posts: 4,634

    Are you telling me that only 10 % of the survivor players also play killer? That is ridiculous.. How do you only ever play half of the game…you could barely take the opinion of those guys into account if they have no clue how the game works for the other side...

  • LapisInfernalis
    LapisInfernalis Member Posts: 4,218

    I am one of those 7k hrs players you talk about.

    I only started to use the perk when they gave survivors less distance after getting hit and also placed the pallets further away. It is one of 2 perks I never used before that (the other is SB) but by nerfing the distance, as well as other perks I used (IW, Spine Chill and DS, of which I only used IW because my main Jeff is so loud) made the build I had unviable. Additionally killers started to tunnel and camp massively. Therefore I swapped to chase perks. Very simple.

  • Lexidoll
    Lexidoll Member Posts: 30

    ? the most recent update nerfs the top 4 most used killer perks, blight was gutted and wesker finally had his hinderance nerfed and old DS was brought back. WoO has been like this for actual years. What do you mean the devs only listen to killer mains.

  • Nick
    Nick Member Posts: 1,237

    What are rank 1 players? Players who completed their Grade rewards for that month?

  • Lexidoll
    Lexidoll Member Posts: 30


    It doesn't need to tell bad survivors how to mind game, if they reach a pallet or window they extend the chase. Yes I know you can mindgame them, I said that but that's not the point. the point is windows lets bad players extend their chases without even having to know where pallets and windows are because it just tells them, through walls.

    Sugma man, I didn't say I was losing to windows players, thanks for instantly assuming that. I'm saying windows isn't fun to go against because it lets low skill players extend chases well beyond what they should be able to, and bold of you to assume I'd even have an "m2", if i'm playing trapper, pig or hell even xeno to an extent. it doesn't matter what my M2 is, if i'm not playing wesker, nurse or any anti chase killer. my M2 isn't going to stop people from running yellow aura to yellow aura.

    And yeah, I'm aware bad players waste pallets, but if you read what I said, even if you create deadzones the other WoO players will avoid those deadzones because they know a pallet isn't there. they will ONLY run to a place where they can see a pallet, or a window, they won't think they will just hold W.

    And cool yeah, people get sweatier, again aware of that. but A: this game having an MMR system at all isn't healthy. and B: WoO is making this worse because it's sending low skill players into high skill lobbies because they're getting longer chases and thus escapes that they'll end up in matches where they're going to get slammed and be a useless teammate for the survivors and just frustrating to go against for the killer.

  • ScytheIX
    ScytheIX Member Posts: 36

    Back in the day it deactivated after a rushed action if I remember correctly.

    Also no. You are reading things into it. It is not a big issue a survivor reaches a resource. It is an issue that people inflate their skill by running from yellow to yellow without thinking about it.
    It makes it incredibly dull to play with and against.

  • Archol123
    Archol123 Member Posts: 4,634

    Could be, I don't remember how it used to be back then.

    Why does it make the game dull? Isn't the chase interaction at tiles the reason why we play the game? I mean sure many things in this game inflate skill and make people last longer in chase despite them having no reason to do so base on their skill. I mean sure, it is kind of stupid that people don't put thought into, but I don't think the perk needs to change, because its main effects are still healthy, and that some bad players appear better than they are because of it is not reason enough to diminish the good effects it has. If they are really as bad as you think they are you will get the hit regardless, whether there is a tile or not.

  • Lexidoll
    Lexidoll Member Posts: 30

    As the last thing I said on my post, if the devs are nerfing a 9% usage rate killer perk because it gives them too much extra time. why aren't we nerfing a perk with 35% usage rate that does the same thing but for survivor.

  • Ohyakno
    Ohyakno Member Posts: 1,206

    I agree completely. Check DBD twitter or tiktok sometime. There's a lot a lot of people that exclusively play survivor

  • Archol123
    Archol123 Member Posts: 4,634

    A. because we should not nerf perks based on usage rates B. A major part of the perk is that it is supposed to be a help for beginners in learning new maps and C. it effectively does not give you much what you could not already have known if you a) were a more experienced player or b) were in a swf with comms where you could have known which tiles got used to begin with.

    The difference is that Windows is a great soloq perk and nerfing it for that would be ridiculous.

  • Archol123
    Archol123 Member Posts: 4,634
    edited May 16

    I mean fair it their game they can do what ever they want… But I would assume they lack understanding of the other side to come up with good balancing choices, as balancing always involves both sides. If they make good arguments I don't mind, we should judge the argument and not the person that makes it, but it would be quite hard to hit the sweet spot when you only look at one half of the full picture.

    PS: I don't think I will check out that chinese spyware app, but thanks for the intel :D

  • Archol123
    Archol123 Member Posts: 4,634

    Or do you think it is more about knowing which tiles already got used?

  • Archol123
    Archol123 Member Posts: 4,634

    Sounds reasonable. I don't think those would be comparable, especionally on indoor maps killer would be terrible if you didn't see generators.

    I mean windows does not really mitigate it, but at least help you not to get fooled by it… the map might still be terrible, but if there is a deadzone somewhere you will hopefully at least not run into it.

  • ScytheIX
    ScytheIX Member Posts: 36

    There is no chase interaction at tiles if people hold W from yellow to yellow.
    Drop pallet, vault window, next tile rinse and repeat.
    That's what the majority of players use it for.

    I don't mind good players using it to elevate chases.

    And here we are back at the question of what is healthy for the game.
    People complained about Pain Res and Pop not being healthy. I agree. Gen regression is frustrating on both sides.
    The usage rate was high as can be.

    But you (as in a person, not you in particular) can't have these kind of double standards imho.
    If PR has a 30% usage rate and gets nerfed and WoO has 35%+ there is obviously something that perk does extremely well and that needs to be looked at.

    And it is not about getting the hit. It's about how the game feels. I don't really enjoy feeling like I play against bots 9/10 matches.
    But thats an mmr issue so yeah. Things go hand in hand.

  • Lexidoll
    Lexidoll Member Posts: 30

    In what reality should we not nerf perks based on usage rate. if a perk is overused that means it's outperforming perks less used than it, like for example pain res dead mans.
    If it had a cooldown new players would have a better time learning maps because they'd have to actually pay attention to where the yellow auras are before it goes on cooldown. Instead of what we have right now which is hold W autopilot the perk.

    and no, being an experienced player doesn't give you the ability to see pallets and windows through walls in areas you've not been to yet. or see that the pallet on the long wall is gone without having seen someone else already use it.
    and even if you're in a SWF unless your in a tourney you're not getting clock callouts for pallet drops.

  • Archol123
    Archol123 Member Posts: 4,634

    But just because they drop the pallet does not mean you cannot still get the hit… so I still don't really get your point here. It is not like all maps are "The Game" with 28 god pallets that you need to kick… So even if they reach the tile you can just mind game them at the tile or use your power and get the hit… So what does it matter that they are already intending to go to the next tile?

    But I would not say it is a double standard…Pick rates alone are not a viable stat to have to look at something, just like for example killer pick rates of the 5 base killers being higher than expected based on whatever criteria is not necessarily a reason to be looked at.

  • Archol123
    Archol123 Member Posts: 4,634

    Should we not rather look at performance? Instead of taking usage rate as an indicator for performance? With pain rez and DMS for example.. The question is at first do those perks overperform? Yes/NO. Yes→ Why do they overperform? Are they just better than everything else, are they more accessable? Is their performance still ok, or is it not balanced… Only if we come to the result of the perk being not balanced aka too strong then we would need to look at it for a nerf, otherwise we might just need to buff weaker perks to be at the same level as those strong perks.

    If you are new to the game you already need to think about enough things, why also make them think about what their aura reading just showed them before it diesappeared, the perk already had a cooldown and basically nobody used it…

    I disagree to some degree… Because experienced players tend to know where filler tiles usually spawn, if you look at the farm maps for example you have quite big deadzones between tiles and you already know for sure that nothing spawns there. So while you correct about the part of them not knowing what tiles have been used, you might have an idea, based on your game sense and maybe crows in the distance or which gens just popped where the killer chased the survivor and therefore where tiles might have been used.. But I don't think that this is something a new player even thinks about… So while it is not as secure as having aura reading, you have an advantage because you probably have an educated guess.

    It is not about what you get, but what you could have… If you have an aura reading perk you can see many things, that does not change just because you don't look around.. It is about potential not the actual result.

  • ScytheIX
    ScytheIX Member Posts: 36

    If you don't get my point I don't see the reason in discussing further. Let's agree to disagree and leave it at that.

  • Devil_hit11
    Devil_hit11 Member Posts: 8,770

    i'd like to see window get nerfed to be only 16 meters but for survivor to gain UI in red where every time a pallet is dropped, the aura is shown for 5 seconds in red.

  • VASRIO
    VASRIO Member Posts: 18

    Windows is the most fair and balanced survivor perk in the game for me. It's great for newbies, alright-ish for decent players, and unnecessary for teams of coms who already communicate and know where everything is. I'd rather have windows every game, than second chance perks, which are ACTUALLY what broken means. Plus windows can be countered with blindness. Windows usage alone, is why the Blindness status effect is actually useful nowadays.

    You wanna know what broken truly is?

    A perk that gives you auto 3 perks passively - Guaranteed Dead Hard, Better Iron Will and better Distortion for 160 seconds in total (2 unhooks). You already know which perk I'm talking about. THAT'S broken.

  • Nazzzak
    Nazzzak Member Posts: 5,629

    Until they stop removing pallets in map reworks, or at least stop giving us rubbish pallets like the new edge map ones, I say keep it as it is. There's a reason it's so popular, and it's not because it's OP. Maps are full of deadzones nowadays.

  • tayfresh123
    tayfresh123 Member Posts: 2

    I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks like this. First starting the game in 2020, never in my life had I never used Windows. Mostly because I’ve watched a lot of streamers to know and what to do to get around. And still, till this day in 2024, I haven’t used Windows ever. It might be pride, or considering it’s too meta, boring, or very distracting to look at quite literally everything in sight (Breakable doors? Sure, I’ll loop that. Ugh.) it’ll never come to mind whenever a new map drops. Learn it by playing it how many times I get there, and after that, learn where gens are to prioritize not getting a three gen. (Sorry Deja Vu users, I don’t use meta perks, but you better get use to not spawning immediately next to a gen the moment you’re in the match.)

    Anyways, I tried to stay on track talking about Windows but I just had to rant. Couldn’t help it. Regardless, I wholeheartedly agree. Nerf Windows, make it have a cooldown.

  • Halloulle
    Halloulle Member Posts: 1,336

    On Painres: there was an important small word: "and". It has high usage numbers AND is one of the strongest perks in the game. WoO has high usage rates but isn't one of the strongest perks in the game.

    Why is that? Because no matter how much some people want it: having information on resources doesn't magically enable you to use them correctly.

    Though, all that being said: I do think changing sth about WoO would in some paradoxical way improve the situation since there'd be less matches where some bot-player pathes from yellow to yellow, getting rid of all resources in under five minutes and leaving the map bare for any subsequent chases (usually of other people).