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Breaking down the facts: Killers are massively overpowered and the grim numbers aren't even telling

sinkra
sinkra Member Posts: 417

'll just drop the science right away so you get the idea. Killer is obviously overpowered. Overall, survivors only survive 40-43 percent, and killers kill 57-60 percent. Of course this is bad game balance that should be fixed, but the problem is much, much worse than the stats show. Let me explain...

The devs have admitted on numerous occasions that the DC matches are excluded from the kill-rate statistics. This is actually very misleading advertising strategy which artificially inflates survival rates heavily.

Survivors DC on a frequent basis, so this will have a huge impact on survival rates. But why do they DC? Survivors primarily DC because they will most likely lose the match, because the killer is winning, because killer is so overpowered. Most players, including survivors, will finish a match if there is a good chance of winning. This is just human nature.

This is also the same reason most survivors will suicide on hook - they do so when the probability of winning is slim. So most suicides on hook would be legitimate losses for the survivor team regardless, and do not actually inflate kill rate statistics. The amount of suicide-on-hook matches that would end in survivor's favor is very, very small. Since losing 1 survivor creates a snowball effect, most of the matches where that 1 survivor has slim chance of escaping, are also matches where the entire team would have a bad outcome, and the killer would "win" with a 3-4k.

Only a tiny minority of survivor DC's and suicide-on-hooks happen when the survivor/survivors actually has/have a good chance of winning the match. Why? Because most players want to finish games they believe they can win and won't DC or suicide-on-hook.

So what this means is that the game devs are leaving out a massive number of legitimate survivor losses from the statistics, which is actually inflating survival rates dramatically and deflating kill rates immensely. This means kill rates are actually much higher than the public stats above indicate. Of course the devs don't want you to figure this out, because it would spark outrage and protests from the survivor main player base. Of course, I see right through their ploy.

Public stats have kill rates at about 60 against solo Q. But if we adjust for the excluded DC's it is almost certainly closer to a 70-80 percent kill rate. This means killers are massively overpowered. It is already common knowledge at this point that DBD is killer-sided, but it is important to realize that it is far more killer-sided than the devs and killer mains have the courage to admit.

Why won't they admit it? Well, killer mains want to win, so they very naturally welcome balance changes in their favor. They also want to feel good about winning, so they will post hoc rationalize that their win is not because killer role is OP, but because they are just so good at DBD and the survivor mains are just so bad. This is called motivated reasoning, which prevents most killer mains from objectively assessing the actual fairness of the gameplay since it favors their preferred role. This is of course not their fault, it is just human nature.

But the far more interesting question is, why are the game developers hiding the real survival rates, that are far lower than the 40-43 percent above, and closer to a measly 20-30 percent? The answer is very simple: money. Dead by Daylight is first and foremost a business, and the developers have already shown they are willing to implement a pay-to-win model by locking so many essential meta perks behind a pay wall. Of course, for good PR they will give you the opportunity to grind your way to these perks just so they can technically claim it isn't pay-to-win, but they know damn well the average player doesn't have time for this. So the incentive to simply pay up for the competitive advantage in a game with skill-based matchmaking is enormous. You see, it is all part of their carefully crafted marketing scheme orchestrated by top executives.

Now, the game being so heavily killer-sided makes perfect sense. It is the killer mains that make the devs the most money. Why? Because killer DLC is far more appealing and interesting than survivor DLC. If you buy survivor DLC, all you get is a boring cosmetic change and unlock a few unique perks that you either don't care for or can grind for if a perk is really good. But if you buy killer DLC, you get this overpowered bad-ass new monster with unique abilities that make the actual gameplay itself fresh and interesting again, while allowing you to win more without needing much skill at all. This is basically a pay-to-win model, with some very shady and dishonest advertising PR to pretend that it is not.

So how do we fix this problem? Unfortunately it cannot be fixed. As a business, the devs primary motivation will always be money. They have to make a living after all, so they can eat at fancy restaurants, go on fancy vacations, and get intoxicated at fun parties while poor survivors are suffering miserably in solo Q. The killers' primary motivation will always be winning and so the devs will always give killer mains a ridiculously unfair advantage to keep them fat and satisfied and buying more DLC for more easy wins. It's a vicious cycle that goes on endlessly until the game itself is dead. I'd love to end this on a positive note but this is a horror game after all. So this story does not have a happy ending, well, not unless you're a killer main or a DBD dev of course.

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Comments

  • sinkra
    sinkra Member Posts: 417

    I have a simple question for you. Do you think survivors would enjoy the game more with the current 60% kill rate target or a 50% kill rate? (the enjoyment of 80% of the playerbase)

  • sinkra
    sinkra Member Posts: 417

    When you say terrible to play all I can assume is that you're saying killers don't want an equal challenge and want to win with ease.

    On the queue time topic, you are talking about BEFORE the BP role bonus was introduced right? Because after 6.1 killer queue times went up to 10 minutes but the BP bonus already solved that problem, so it's no issue.

  • Toystory3Monkey
    Toystory3Monkey Member Posts: 760
    edited July 10

    devs dont exclude all the games where survivors die on hook on purpose and even so most killers are within 50-60% killrate

  • Halloulle
    Halloulle Member Posts: 1,334

    Tbf, I don't see it a lot - but there's a subset of situations where I pretty much always see it. That's usually when one surv manages to stay uninjured for the time it takes to repair a gen - if they so happened to be the first in chast that means three gens are completed and the surv still uninjured. Chases don't usually last that long, so on the whole it isn't that often. - But I'd say on 9/10 occasions it happens the killer DCs. - And you know what? I absolutely don't blame them. The ones who do stay usually just stop caring about gens and hooks and practise whatever M2 their killer can do / whatever tile there is they want to practise playing around.

    Which I suppose further strengthens your point.

  • sinkra
    sinkra Member Posts: 417

    There's a reason why every other pvp game aims for 50%, because it creates an equal challenge for BOTH SIDES. How on earth did you conclude that a 50% kill rate means the game would be too easy for survivors, when killers currently win with ease with the 60% kill rate target? Many experienced killers even have kill rates in the 70-80% range. One thing is for sure, if the game was balanced around a 50% kill rate then you wouldn't see these killer main streamers going on 1k win streaks. They would have to face the fact they aren't as skilled as they think they are in a balanced game.

    Also bringing up queue times is a moot point since BP bonus was introduced. Your idea that that a 50% kr would mean long survivor queues is a moot point, because the past showed that the BP bonus solved the survivor shortage which happened after 6.1 was released.

  • appleas
    appleas Member Posts: 1,126
    edited July 10

    So Killers should give Survivors more handicaps or people should play Survivor less? I see your point but I don't see what your solution is OP

    Tbh all these arguing about % kill rate and whether it's " fair or not" is moot since the devs already have their own vision of what is fair for their game and I highly doubt a few forum posts would dissuade them. They could say 90% KR is their goal for the game and no one can stop them save for their shareholders. That's the reality of the situation

  • Shuma
    Shuma Member Posts: 55

    There are 3 other survivors though. Just because one survivor DCs, doesn’t mean that game shouldn’t count for everyone left.

    Plus, let’s not forget all the friendly killers that deflate kill rates by playing nice. There’s a lot of killers who play nice, instead of trying to win the easiest way possible, massively deflating kill rates.

    And I know the common “but what about suicides” rebuttal. 1st suicides are pretty rare. 2nd a person committing suicide probably is doing it because they see the game is lost.

  • Phantom_
    Phantom_ Member Posts: 1,347

    The Devs have stated that they want a more 40~60% win rate for killers. They do balance/change the meta around it, but that's what they said at one point in time. As for the Lich, he is the same as Chucky and Xeno were, new killers with new abilities and it usually takes time for players to learn how to play against them/counter them. So they usually tend to wait before they make any major changes to a killer.

  • sinkra
    sinkra Member Posts: 417

    Except that's not what happens. 50% kill rate does not mean all games end in a 2k. And even if every game ended as a 2k that would still be a 50% win rate because in sports statistics a draw counts as half a win.

  • tjt85
    tjt85 Member Posts: 946
    edited July 10

    I don't understand why BHVR have seemingly decided that nothing can be learned from trials that include a DC.

    You'd think they would be more interested in finding out why such things happen with the regularity that they do and why such a large chunk of their player base is so unhappy.

    I'd be willing to bet that after a string of poorly matched up trials, the chances of players DCing out of frustration increases dramatically (many seem to frame this as a "Survivor problem", but I've seen plenty of Killers do it too). How could BHVR ever discover if this is true or not if they discard every trial with a DC? It's as if they don't see frequent DCing as an accurate reflection of the experience of playing DBD (we all know it is).

  • Azulra
    Azulra Member Posts: 504

    I just want to mention that the devs intend the kill rates to be 57-60% because of the fact that it's a 1v4. DBD isn't like TCM where the teams are more balanced and to balance out completely unbalanced teams you need to tip the scales in favor of the smaller team. There's no other way to balance that aspect out realistically nor reasonably. As for the new killer, Vecna, having a higher kill rate it's because of the fact that they're a new and complicated killer who just came out meaning that everyone is still learning how to play against him and will be dying a lot learning how he works.

    As for a part of your original post the real reason why a lot of survivors suicide on hook is because they don't want to stay in the game(for varying reasons) and they don't want the DC penalty since you can get stuck at a penalty of 1-2 hours after just a FEW match DCs. This problem is just a part of the controversial decision to keep the DC penalty which, ultimately, promotes hook suicides and doesn't allow the bots to help out.

  • Paternalpark
    Paternalpark Member Posts: 663

    It's not solely. But with the other numerous buffs with tunneling and camping being still very strong against uncoordinated soloq...

    Anti facecamp nerfed one killer and tbh should have been in the game long b4. Killers say it's a survivor buff and say then it's not supposed to do anything about camping.

  • tjt85
    tjt85 Member Posts: 946

    Fair point. There's a lot of stats BHVR don't share, so perhaps they do track DCs rates internally and it does to an extent inform their decision making more than they would ever publicly admit.