Will the devs ever do anything about removing self from game on first hook?
I realize that this topic has been brought up on this forum countless times, but have the devs said anything yet about addressing the issue of people offing themselves on hook and ruining matches for the other survivors? Solo queue was greatly improved with the new UI and additional information provided, but survivors who give up on first hook remain by far the biggest problem in the game and BHVR continues to do nothing about it. The DC penalty is in place to discourage people from ruining others' games, but offing self on first hook ruins the game EVEN MORE than DC's because at least DC's will give you a bot to help (which is better than the useless crybaby quitter teammates). So why are the devs apparently OK with this type of ragequitting, but not OK with DC's?
I'd love to hear from the devs about not necessarily "how" (there are lots of ways to address it), but even IF they plan to do anything at all, because it's the #1 reason why solo queue is so miserable to play. I'm convinced that the only way to curb it is to institute time bans similar to DC's or just get rid of the self unhook feature (unless you have Deliverance) and get rid of the skill checks on 2nd hook. Either solution would make a HUGE improvement to solo queue.
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I believe they should remove self-unhooking. Only allow it if you have Deli activated. Unfortunately I doubt BHVR would ever remove it simply because it's been a part of the game for so long.
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We definitely see the frustration it causes and have shared it with the team, and we agree that it doesn't feel great to have teammates abandon you. I'm afraid I don't have anything more concrete to reveal at the moment, but I'd like to be open about it regardless.
It's a tricky problem to tackle since even if the option was removed, there are other ways to quickly get out of the match, such as running to the Killer after being unhooked. Ultimately if someone refuses to play the rest of the match, we can't force them (in a literal sense, they could walk away from their system and still leave the team one player down).
That's not to say that it can't help, of course - making it more inconvenient can be the nudge some people need to finish out the match - though it wouldn't get rid of it entirely.
Hopefully this sheds a little light on it, and please by all means keep the suggestions coming!
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They can't control the behavior of players per se. Look at how much they've done to discourage tunneling, and we still do it. Reason being, it's not worth it to play otherwise. But the survivors who rage quit over every little thing are just entitled, and so we can't do anything except hope they leave the game so our matches can quit getting ruined.
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but isn't running at killer to get yourself killed ASAP/staying AFK all match - bannable offenses?
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The best thing you can do to make tunneling less attractive is to add incentives to play by hooks. Base slowdown in some form when hooking unique Survivors, increasing its effect for every unique Survivor. Add score events when playing by hooks, awarding with bp.
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If the devs wants to get rid of tunneling and all these unhealthy and unfun things, we can't still have the 4% in the game. Why should there be a tiny chance the Killer can be screwed for literally no reason? This is a thing that maybe worked in the past, I don't know. But the game has changed so much over the years and stuff like this should no longer exist.
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They're just risk takers trying to unhook themselves; I don't see the issue 🙃1 -
How do you verify that they intentionally ran at the killer to die and weren't just confused/unlucky/tunneled/bad at the game/etc.? This is exactly what people mean when they say there are other ways to leave the game that can't reliably be tracked by a system.
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It's pretty obvious when the unhooked survivors runs at the killer stopping just in front of them and then emoting at the killer to hit/kill them. People can open support tickets to supply videos when needed. Though would be nice for in-game reports to be better in general without needing to go through the support ticket system.
At some point, if you are spending so much energy trying to work around systems to not get punished for rage quitting, then maybe you should be playing a different game.
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It's obvious to a human, but it's not something that can be read from the match logs. You pretty much described the problem yourself - players have to be recording their matches themselves and submitting tickets offsite to actually catch this behavior in a way BHVR can quantify and punish, and the volume of players who jump through all of these hoops to report people isn't nearly enough to deal with the volume of survivors who abuse game mechanics as a free DC button.
In that sense, keeping hook suicides actually makes it easier to track (in match logs) whether or not a player is intentionally killing themselves. It can still be mistaken for legitimate gameplay, but you're looking at much simpler and more consistent variables on the whole. Players who are not newbies and not using Slippery Meat do not try to unhook themselves 3x in a row immediately upon becoming the first hook of the match. The case where this is legitimate gameplay is so rare it's nearly nonexistent. It gets muddier as the game goes longer and when fewer survivors remain (the 2nd-last player hook suiciding is a courtesy to the last player, for instance), but it's pretty clear-cut when it's at the start of the match.
But yeah, I'm in camp 'I hate people suiciding on hook but I don't think removing the 4% would actually do much to deter players who want to give up as soon as something happens they don't like.'
Actionably, I think the best thing BHVR can do (besides better tracking and punishing this behavior, ie if a player is frequently killing themselves on hook on their first hook within the first two minutes of the match, they should be flagged for DC penalties. Maybe add a little grace zone for new players who don't know how to play yet. Or... y'know… match replay and fixing the report system) is, if a player fully kills themselves on hook early enough to meet certain parameters, replace them with a single-hooked bot instead of leaving the team a full player down.
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Thanks @Peanits for the reply! Glad to know that it's at least acknowledged as an issue. I fully agree that you can't force people to try. But I do think there are things that can be done to discourage the behavior that haven't been tried yet. One would be getting rid of the self-unhook (on 1st hook, except for Deliverance) and skills check (on 2nd hook) mechanics. The 4% chance and the skill checks are outdated and unnecessary mechanics. While not a perfect solution, it would be a big step in the right direction. Even if the player wants to run back to the killer to purposely get downed, at least they are wasting some killer time and helping the team. Another thing to consider: sometimes I see when the survivor does this, the killer will just slug the person, making them bleed out and not be able to do anything while they sit in "timeout", which also helps to discourage the behavior.
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Unfortunately, you’re not going to force people to play out a match they don’t want to play, no matter what you do. Removing self unhooks just means they can run around the map chasing the killer, they can totem hunt and open chests to waste time or just alt tab out and let the killer take them out.
I agree it can be discouraged but removing self unhooks is not gonna fix the issue.
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This might not go over well for me but here is a more off the wall suggestion. Instead of removing the self unhook chance mechanic, how about making it a guaranteed unhook. Except unhooking yourself in this way will not activate any borrowed time effect, ds, endurance, or any other mechanic. They could also be given the broken status effect. Deliverance could stay how it is, as it still allows all of these things. It could also be deactivated in the endgame and even deactivate other perks.
This would stop first hook leaving while punishing the survivor for unhooking themselves. It will also be "something" for when survivors are left on the hook by their teammates.
I know this could be bad for killers who play nice but at the very least the survivor will be severely hindered for self unhooking.
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That would punish the killer for not proxy camping and force every killer to hang around the hook or otherwise have no pressure on survivors. You really don't want to punish players for playing in the way that's most fun to the other side.
Broken is the only meaningful mechanic here - you don't need Endurance or Haste if the killer isn't near the hook.
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Not necessarily, I just threw out suggestions but those suggestions could go another way. Such as having to mend for 30 seconds after unhooking yourself, a hit to action speed progression for a certain time, etc... Going this way could allow the survivors to keep the anti tunnel perks but still be punished for self unhooking. There are many different things that possibly could be tried and tweaked.
I wouldn't want survivors to just hop off hooks and be able to slap out gens. As someone who plays extremely nice, I know how that would go.
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Why can't you just do what other games do and ban/punish players for doing that?
LoL, DotA, CS etc all ban people for "feeding". You even have an option in the report menu for "working with the enemy" already. Why can't you just enforce that?
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The only real solution requires a playback feature for matches, so that people could actually view the game through the perspective of the accused player, and check if that player really was ragequitting. And BHVR would also have to be ok with the giant avalanche of video reports being sent their way.
Perhaps the video playback submissions would only be valid for a ranked mode, since it would be a more serious mode, that actually encourages survivors to work together, and discourages the lone wolf stuff.
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ban and punish players for playing badly?
If "griefing" is bannable (which it already is) they could just run around the game doing nothing and not even dropping a single sweat during chases. Good luck proving they are throwing the match
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I have a solution for this. Pretty sure I have already talked about it here but here we go again
REMOVE HOOK SUICIDES
New mechanics:FIRST HOOK
-Survivors have 2 different timers. 1st timer is 60 seconds and its the normal hook phase timer. 2nd timer is also 60 seconds and goes down along the first
-Each survivor has 3 4% attempts of self unhook. These attempts only decrease the 2nd timer, exactly how it works at the current state, however it doesnt change the 1st timer.
-Even if all 3 self-unhooks attempts are unsuccessful, they still remain at the first hook phase until someone saves them or the 60 seconds timer pass
SECOND HOOK
-Remove skill checks
-60 seconds until death as well
SURVIVORS ON THE HOOK WILL RECEIVE A "DIE NOW" BUTTON WHEN:
-The exit gates are opened
-There are 2 survivors left in the game
By pressing the button they immediately die regardless of which phase they are onAll perks related to self unhook still apply, such as Slippery Meat, Up The Ante, etc
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Plus this already kind-of-but-not-really even exists in the rules: targetting the same player across multiple games is bannable.
If for example another Survivor wants to specifically ruin your fun then the easiest way for them to do it would be to disconnect or kill themselves on hook when you are in their game. Targeting other players to ruin their game experience is explicitly against the rules.
I am not saying that everyone who dies first/dies on first hook/goes down early is doing that! They should also not be reported for just that!
Make feeding (= killing yourself on hook, running at the Killer, ...) against the rules. Discard reports if the player being reported is new (they may not yet know how the game works) or is low MMR (they may just be bad at the game). If a high playtime/medium to high MMR player is dying on the first hook in multiple games in short succession then ban them for ruining four other people's game.
This needs some more details (if it happens at most X times across Y games discard the report, …) but in general it should be possible to implement.
This could likely be automated to some degree - automatically flag players who are potentially doing it and discard reports for unflagged players. The automated ban idea that was mentioned during an anniversary stream (and then thankfully was never implemented) remains bad but it's fine if there is a human making the final decision. Automated flagging as a prerequisite could reduce the additional load on support staff handling the reports.
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Regarding the self-hooks issue, the simplest way around that problem is to keep the unhook attempts, but a failed unhook does not result in a reduction of the timer.
Of course, it's been said many times in this thread, but if someone doesn't want to play, they'll find a way around it somehow. Best thing you can do is report anything that looks like the player is throwing the game with video evidence. If people dod that then - sure - one report isn't going to do much, but if the same person is repeatedly having reports against them with video evidence to prove a pattern of behaviour, the BHVR may be able to do more about it.
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The best way to approach this is to mitigate the reasons why players do it. It won't completely get rid of it, but it will lower the occasions of it. There are some killers in this game who are just not fun to play against. There are many loadouts of killers that people don't want to play against. When killers have addons that serve as basically additional powers for the killer its going to make people not want to play against that. The most common occurrence of people giving up on first hook I see is against leatherface. A killer who can instant down you with the press of a button is overpowered. Myers and Ghostface both have conditions to their instant down. All leatherface has to do is press a button and he can literally down an entire team with one use of it.
The point is, the more entertainment and fun value survivor players see in playing a match the more likely they are to play out a match. Don't go after the players for doing it. Go after the reasons why they do it. Also incentivize playing out matches more.
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The quickest way to lower the number of ragequits is to remove unguaranteed self unhook attempts in stage 1, and don't have a timer penalty for missing a skill check in stage 2.
This would push the message that if survivors wanted to ragequit, it is much more efficient to DC, which has DC penalties to help limit it.
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What people dont want is the removal of the "kobe" attempts. These need to stay
Most of people demanding suicides to be impossible in DBD are the same that also ask perks such as Slippery Meat and the luck mechanic (Up The Ante) to be reworked
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One of the biggest problems with ragequitting is that it's so easy for survivors to bypass the DC penalty and quickly get out of a game. Removing a survivor's ability to quickly go through hook stages, makes it much less convenient to bypass the DC penalty.
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It does lower occasions of ragequitting, and ragequitting is paradoxically useful as a metric of when something is so unfun that nobody wants to play against it. See: Skull Merchant, but also plenty of other offenders in the past - Boil Over no-hook builds, Legion, Forever Freddy, etc.
But that still leaves behind a pretty big problem. There are many players in this game who quit games not because they're going against broken mechanics, but because they don't like how their match started. I see people suicide on hook because the killer didn't fall for a dumbtech or brought Lightborn against their flashlights. I see people suicide on hook because they went down really quickly in their first chase, or because they got found in a hiding spot, or because they didn't see a stealth killer come up on them and they got grabbed. Deliverance users are serial first hook quitters. I don't even know why people are killing themselves on that first hook half the time. The killer will be Freddy or Trapper or Ghostface, and the killer isn't camping because I see them headed towards my gen, but that person is out of there. Once I saw someone kill themselves on hook against non-tombstone Myers, on The Game, on the very first hook of the match, at 2 gens left. At that point, fun means nothing. It's a problem with the player, not the game.
And it's frequent. Right now I'd say a teammate suiciding early happens to me about 15-20% of my survivor games, though I'd have to count to take proper statistics.
These people may claim they're going up against broken mechanics, and actually believe it, but their metric is so out of whack that it isn't worth considering - or it contains so many justifications that they'd be better off not playing the game, because they only find small fractions of it acceptable. I've had players explain to me why it's okay to DC against Wraith and Doctor. Others are just entitled and see no problem with match shopping for a better start, better teammates, a weaker killer with an easier build, and don't care that they're ruining the game for other players as they do. Others think it's fine to DC if they're not having fun, but their idea of fun is mostly limited to 'I'm winning.'
So. To an extent, the game has problems that increase instances of ragequitting, and those heightened rates need to be examined because they indicate areas of poor game health. But that's only part of the issue. By and large, the players who suicide on hook at five gens are the problem, and BHVR does have to go after them because they currently have no incentive not to keep bailing every time something inconveniences them. You couldn't satisfy them by fixing every widely held problem in the game, because it's an attitude issue. And they're more of a problem for survivors than they are for killers. Killers get a boring game but an auto-win unless they actively take pity on everyone left - survivors get a bad game and they auto-lose.
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When those things, getting grabbed or going down quick, happen early in the match, that often is the match ender.
So many Killers either tunnel or snowball out of control from an early down. This causes Survivors to want to go next because, well, let's be real they aren't going to lose any BP.
There needs to be a Survivor comeback mechanic AND Survivor BP gains need to be addressed.
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You can't call a match on the very first killer down unless it's Mikey with tombstone piece, though. Saying a match is lost because someone went down 30 seconds in is just pessimism, and it's especially pessimistic to do that before you even have a chance to see how the killer plays.
If three people have gone down in the first minute, we have a problem. But I've seen plenty of very early downs turn into a perfectly serviceable gate escape - today, even. Giving up because the match didn't start out ideally is a self-fulfilling prophecy and also very much part of the problem.
Won't argue about survivor BP gains, though. There are few things more enraging than survivors bringing 4 cobblers and all dying with four-digit scores while the killer swans out with 25k x4 on their offerings.
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I think they've seen enough games play out that way to understand that their chances of having a decent game have plummeted.
Especially with stacked slowdown, that's crippling in the early-game. One person hooked, one on a gen, one chased and one for the save. Only have a single Survivor doing gens THAT early is a death sentence, and whether or not people are conscious of it is largely irrelevant.
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Systematically nerfing every map to the point the average chase time is 20 seconds while buffing every killer to require as little skill as possible couldn't possibly have anything to do with matches feeling like a lost cause early on…
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I cannot and will never agree with this. This is just people ragequitting because they've had bad games, expect more bad games, and now they're passing those bad games onto me.
I've had fun in matches where someone went down early. I've had 4-man escapes in matches where someone went down early. I have not had fun in matches where the first survivor to go down decides the match is lost less than a minute in and proceeds to forcibly lose it for the other three members of the team.
Hell, in the game I played between starting this post and finishing it, a Huntress brought iri head and a Sable went down in the first 20 seconds, and when she got unhooked, she went into the basement and started doing an invocation. The game looked goddamn awful. Then the Huntress started chasing me and it turned out she was actually pretty bad, and I looped her for two gens around a single medium pallet loop. That early down meant nothing to how the game played out.
When anyone's feeling that negative about the game, where they're sure their game is going to be terrible unless everything goes perfectly? They need to take a break, not continue and force those bad games into existence.
Edit: Next game. Camping Artist, gens went awful at the start and everyone kept running her into each other's gens. 3 downs before first gen popped, two on one survivor who got downed 15s after being unhooked, and she was snowballing hard. Turned into a 3-man escape. It's not over when the game starts bad, but it is over when you choose to give up.
Post edited by Laluzi on5 -
I have way too many games that are over at multiple gens left and if there's two of us left I like to let go to give the last person a shot at hatch (and not stay anymore in a game that is over, obviously. I want to go to my next one). If i can't let go in that scenario then chances are the killer will linger and I'll get unhooked, then slugged, and have to wait on the ground while the last person is chased. Or the survivor opts to hide and I have to spend that time hanging. Either way, I'm putting my controller down and walking away.
I get that it can be used with bad intentions, but it can also be used with good intentions. I've said before that I'm totally fine with perks being used for controversial actions, so maybe more perks around luck? Or a team wide Slippery Meat perk? Or buff Salty Lips and other luck offerings and try force those team mates to stay if you're seeing it alot? I played 12 games a couple days ago and had one team mate let go in all those games so hasn't been too bad on my end. I saw it a fair bit during the event though.
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Usually when I see a 'most people' style post I expect the next claim to be pointing out something hypocritical.
Remove hook suicide, rework slippery meat, and the luck mechanic? Yeah, why not? The latter two things could use being reworked anyway.
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Like I said before, the "kobe" needs to stay
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Why? Especially if we limit this to early game, why do they need to be there?
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I played a game with my duo partner about a year ago (before I got tired of beating my head against a wall on survivor). Wesker on gas heaven.
Our randos were Claudette and Meg, no idea if they were just awful, or throwing, but it didn't matter. Claude went down in the first 2 minutes, and Meg was apparently lurking nearby and went down as well. First two hooks were in main basement, right next to where they both dropped, and wesker just stood camping at the top of the stairs with 5 gens remaining.
That game was over almost immediately. There was no chance of recovery.
This is an extreme example, but it's not that hard to tell when the game is over. The HUD basically means every survivor knows what gen progress across the map looks like at all times.
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It doesn't need to stay. It's healthier for the game to have these removed, to reduce the amount of ragequitting.
If it's totally ok to make killers deal with an anti-facecamp mechanic and anti 3gen mechanic, then it should be fine to nerf survivors with this anti ragequit mechanic. New mechanics don't always need to be killer nerfs or survivor buffs…. it's fine if a new mechanic involves a survivor nerf.
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How about a give-up-option with a vote system? If one survivor doesn't want to play the match they can ask the other teammates to leave the match. If two or all three agree, this survivor gets replaced by a bot without any punishment or penalty. The main reason why survivors give up on hook is because they know there is no punishment for them and this is what they want and why they rather die on hook than dcing. Bots are not perfect but more helpful than a survivor with the idea of "I will die on hook and leave you here alone." I know this system has it's own problems but could it be something that we can work with?
If I play killer and I have a bad match, I have no other choice than dcing to leave the match while survivors can just die on hook or run to the killer to get killed in order to avoid the dc penalty and to leave earlier. I am not implying killers should have a sneaky way to leave the match without any consequences, it's just your statement that I don't like. You say you cannot force players to play the game that they don't want to play but at the same time you already doing this with one role. It is also not fair that one person can ruin the game for the other three/four players just because this one doesn't want to play the game for personal reasons. I know the system of an asymmetric game is the problem and I am not blaming you for that (I think you are aware of this and dislike it too) but it is still such a contradiction.
Removing self unhooking and skillchecks leans into the problem that you have no real chance to give the other person the hatch quick. There are also these matches which are just done and do a hook kill helps you to go next quicker.
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I mean, yeah, that game sucked. Not denying that the killer will often snowball hard from the start, and not denying that 2 people basically dead (or unrescuable without equal hook trades, against a killer who can throw you out of position) at 5 gens is a game over. That's my experience often enough. But I just edited in the opposite scenario I played a few rounds ago, where a terrible start led to a 3-out. I'm not saying a game can't definitively be called at 5 gens, but calling how the match is going to go on first or even second down is always going to be premature.
Tombstone piece being the exception, because there's no realistic walk-back from someone being dead at the start. But same goes for when my teammate kills themselves on first down, because it's functionally the same thing.
I don't appreciate my teammates giving up instantly. I give others the courtesy of playing out rough matches and I expect people to play the games they queued up for.
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Peanits already acknowledges that removing the 4% won't stop people from giving up in a match, so I don't get why people are still suggesting it.
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Why remove? So another nerf to survivor, no chances to come back at all
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No, it needs to stay
I already brought a solution a few posts back
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While ragequitting is annoying, and changes could be made to make it more inconvenient, you can't really force someone to stay in a match they don't want to be in. They'll find ways to get out of it if they want to. Deliberately seeking out the killer, or afking are both things you can't really stop them from doing.
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Removing the 4%, and the missed skill check time penalty, won’t stop people from giving up, but it would make it much more inconvenient to give up without an actual DC.
As in, the purpose is to discourage ragequitting, and not to completely stop it. DC ragequiting is better than non-DC ragequitting, because survivors can only do this a limited amount of times in a short time period, and it replaces the survivor with a bot.
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"It's okay that survivors can ragequit without penalty"
PPeople are weird. Imagine if killers were free to just rq like sirvivors, no penalty, no bp for survs, just game ending. This community would instantly riot and demand the dc penalty back.
IIts baffling that suicide-to-ignore penalty is still a thing.
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As Peanits said, you cant force people to stay in matches they don't want to stay in no matter what you do.
I honestly don't see how they can fix this
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You can’t force killers to stop facecamping, but BhVR still made an anti facecamp mechanic. You can’t force killers to stop making 3-gens, but BHVR still made an anti 3-gen mechanic.
Similarity, you can’t stop survivors from ragequitting, but BHVR can still implement an anti ragequitting mechanic.
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I think minimizing the worst of experiences would prevent people from reaching that breakpoint at this frequency. I can't tell you how many soloq teammates I've seen afk or DC or Kobe on hook against Nurse/SM just because they don't find the Killer fun.
I honestly think Killer bans are the best solution. The lobby leader has their ban list setup (so SWFs just has to tell their friend which bans to use), and prevent the worst Killers for that group from showing up. Some people hate laggy ranged Killers getting hits through walls. Some people hate Stealth Killers or Spirit because the only counter is audio cues, and they might have hearing damage/deafness. Some people hate whatever the current patch's sweatlord Killers are, because those are responsible for 80% of the bleedout for the 4ks (despite being only 5 Killers typically). Personally, I dislike Killers that punish you for other Survivors failing to use the counterplay correctly, like Myers/Plague/Oni/Xeno.
When people have their 0/10 Killer not show up, they have far far far less of a reason to reach that breaking point to give up on sight. The exception being a quit on the last game of the night, which this solution doesn't address.
I detailed a more complete version 2 years ago here on the forums, and the funny thing is, many of the previous suggestions I made from that overarching document (of 10 different major categories) were adapted in some shape or form.
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"you can't force people to stay in matches so it's pointless" is objectively wrong, implementing DC penalty immensely helped the game health
The more difficult it will be, the more people plays the game normally, and ultimately we can just ban those who grief repeatedly after all
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Suggestions on how you make another human play out a match they don't want to play? You can add all the mechanics you want to but if someone does not want to participate, there is literally nothing you can do to stop that.
You can however create mechanics to deter someone from actively participating in ways that negatively effect the game for others, you can do this when people refuse to participate.
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