Venting on the division within this community between survs and killers
It is ridiculously sad to watch some of the people in this community who constantly adopt this tit for tat mindset, or who say "Killers OP" "No Survs OP" or who think the other side are all skilless and scumbags.
It is so tiring to try have a discussion in any part of this community without having someone from either side saying, well actually this is worse.
Worse yet, someone complains about an unfun part of the game be it facing a nurse, doctor, a bully squad, etc, and the other side immediately takes their own frustrations and says, well actually this unfun part of the game is completely fine because I find it fun/you need strong strategies to counter the other sides BS.
It's infuriating to go against a BS addon killer as a solo chill player, just as infuriating as it is to be a trapper against a SWF using full meta, playing like it's the grand finale of the tournament of their life.
So then killers say, well nurse/spirit/blight isn't busted, she's needed to counter these 4 man squads, and survs say well I need to use these perks and items bc nurse.
Anyway, rant over, I seriously hope this community actually can be chill and not an "us vs them" roundabout.
I seriously think the game would be so soooo much better if people actually just took it easy and could overcome tilt a little better, admittedly myself included at times, and if people could understand eachother and realise that fun should be had for both sides, so even if you liked 5 blink nurse or hug tech or 4 man hatches, they're gone for a good reason.
And for god's sake stop trying to say the other sides problems don't need addressing just because you think your sides problems are worse, both sides have valid problems, and "Well this is worse actually" only ends up in arguments and making this community a horrible place to be unless you love keyboard warrioring.
Rant over ig.
Comments
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You’re probably not going to like this comment, but I’ve been on these forums for about two years now and it’s always been pretty consistently killer sided which I think is what can cause a bit of animosity on sides sadly.
You can say I’m feeding into the ‘us vs them ‘ mentality if you want, that’s fine, but it’s just an observation.
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No you're right imo. I've noticed that the forums have what I think are the most toxic people in the DBD community. Obviously they're not just on here, but the amount of recent posts that have been complaining about one side or the other, or even complaining about the devs (who are just doing their jobs and trying to make a good game) is staggering to me.
I came into the forums looking for online friends that enjoy the game, no matter the side they're playing and no matter what the state of the game might be at a given point. But I've more often seen pure division and, honestly, a good bit of hatred between people who I bet would be friends otherwise.
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Want to help me make the forum as fun as possible?
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Yeah, I feel you. I'm not really concerned over who leans survivor-sided or killer-sided. You'll occasionally get people with wildly bad takes that you can't take seriously, but for the most part it's easy to understand where everyone is coming from and why they feel the way they do. For all we squabble, the bulk of us agree with more things than we don't.
It's the knee-jerk defensiveness that frustrates me. It's so common for people to take suggestions as a personal attack, and fabricate a whole slew of motives why the player making the suggestion actually wants [role] nerfed and an equal number of reasons why their feedback isn't valid. Instead of actually engaging with the suggestion or calmly explaining why in their experience they don't think that's a good idea.
And the whataboutism is really annoying because it assumes that a.) I don't care about the other side's problems, when of course I do, and b.) we're not allowed to fix problems in this game or improve anyone's experience unless some ultimate karmic parity is kept, when pretty much all of us are playing both roles of the same game and 'survivors' and 'killers' aren't actually two separate blocs of players with diametrically opposed needs.
Most the time I respond to a "well [x] has it worse" with "yes, that's also a problem and I want it addressed, now what's your opinion on the original topic", I don't get a response. Tribalism really doesn't help discourse. And it's tough, because we all think we're neutral parties and rationalize (and relativize) any bias we do have.
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The problem stems from the players' ability to hold the game hostage, which pisses people off and makes them play like their life depends on it because otherwise they will get the loser treatment a.k.a. "you will be humiliated for my amusement because if you lost, you deserve it".
- Survivors finish the gens and instead of leaving, spam crouch at the gate and make countless noise notifications — they won't let the game end for the Killer until the Killer comes to the exit gate for some extra spitting in the face. I've been around when EGC wasn't even a thing, so this hostage situation could last for hours.
- The Killer downs all survivors and lets them bleed out out of spite which leads to an unfun and boring experience for survivors (and can be partially negated by anti-slugging perks).
What I mean by this is that until such situations keep happening and as long as the sore winner mentality dominates the community, the division will exist. Locking survivors in the escape animation as soon as they step into the gate and removing end game chat might improve the situation. The less people interact with each other online, the better it is for everybody.
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It's easy to latch on too. Sometimes, you'll have the Weekend Spanner account appear, bringing up a contentious topic purely for "the lols". Another time it can be spurned by someone just having a bad trial against a particular opponent. You can even get people who will make a legitimate complaint over a mechanic or busted perk/add-on about one side and not meaning to start a war, but it becomes hijacked.
Alongside other reasons, topics can quickly spiral out of control into this neanderthal way of thinking, as suddenly everyone involved feels it's either some sort of personal attack, or simply had a bag of popcorn going spare and thinks: "I wonder what would happen if I..."
I'm absolutely on your side (pun not intended) by the way. This constant back-and-forth between those turnips is very tedious and unhealthy, not to mention damaging to anybody's IQ who is unfortunately caught up within it. I'd like it to end and people just to chill, but I'll just be wishing on a star, I'm afraid.
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Pretty sure it's just you being extremely biased towards survivor sides, most people with biased opinions tend to feel the place is biased towards something because they'll see a lot of opinion they don't like from relatively unbiased peoples
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I get your point, but there is a good side to it that I don't see mentioned.
The intense passion for this game is something we all share and if we didn't, the game would not be going on 9 years.
The comments get heated from forum members (myself included). But that's why we have mods to moderate and stop inappropriate escalation.
If there was zero arguing, that would actually be a negative sign for the health of the game.
At the end of the day it doesn't matter which side (if not both) you play. We are all still here because of our love for the game. Killers wouldn't exist without Survivors and Survivors wouldn't exist without Killers.
I've been here a year and I love the community that I'm a part of as much as the game itself. I think in the end it is healthy for players to vent and open discussion.
I've thought about mentioning this for a while and your post seemed like a good place.
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I mean it doesn't really have a side IMO, each post has people from both extremes if it's a hot issue, both sides make horrendous balance suggestions based on the animosity they hold for the other side.
Maybe killers are more vocal here, I wouldn't know, I was talking more generally about forums, reddit, even end game chats has people who'll go absolutely on one about something, but I would say for it to truly stop being such both sides need to have their vocal minorities calmed down.
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Oh, I totally follow this. I've been in all kinds of discussion spaces that ranged from highly aggressive (moreso than this forum is) to total hugboxes. Some places are so aggressively sanitized that no meaningful discourse can be had in them; some moderation is so kid-gloves proactive that it locks things down at the first hint of people disagreeing with each other. Like, I'm gonna out myself and use Archive of Our Own as an example, where if you say you enjoyed someone's writing for X Y and Z reasons but you think they could have improved W, you'll be called out for disrupting a positive space. Legitimately had people whole-ass flip out on me for unsolicited spellchecking before.
I don't mind things getting heated. I'm very guilty of it. But there's good arguing and bad arguing - longposts of reasoning and examples-counterexamples are good discourse that can contribute to understanding and improved game health, but on the other hand you get people responding to topics with "that's just because you're bad" or "you would think that, survivor/killer main" and "who cares about X when survivors/killers can do Y" and all kinds of ad hominems and strawmen that don't contribute to game health in any way.
Open discussion is good, but that doesn't make every part of it equally valuable.
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I do wish there weren't "mains" of either role, those who only play one side pretty much exclusively. If all players played both roles to at least a competent level, not only would they find themselves better at their preferred side, but also understanding, compassion, and empathy for everyone would increase as a result.
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and then theres me not really giving a damn anymore, meme till i die baby
sure survival insticts kick in now and then on both side but in general?
Meming or die trying.3 -
Exactly, when I saw the hotfix twitter announcement, the endurance bug fix specifically, I saw atleast 2 people say "If it was surivors getting endurance when they weren't supposed to, instead of the other way around, it'd be fixed immediately".
Which first of all, you're complaining that BHVR fixed a bug within 8 days of release? Kind of ungrateful, but also it's just not true, there was a bug with OTR where you could get endurance twice and I'm not sure how long it took to fix but I doubt it was less than 8 days.
The sad part is, it doesn't even matter that they were wrong, it's just slimy ungratefulness born out of some idea that BHVR and the dbd community is out to get them, I'm sure you can find examples of killers doing similarly if you care to look.
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The sad part is, they had a PTB (the one with the finisher mori where the game auto ended with 4 downs, the same PTB as the one with basekit unbreakable) that completely addressed these issues AGES ago, but just the way it was implemented didn't sit right with some people (complaints about motion sickness with fov changes for killer, killers complaining about how strong basekit UB was given it had no limits on uses, and probably a lot more) so BHVR just boxed these amazing ideas up, that only needed a couple changes to give a second, slightly better tuned attempt (slightly longer before you could pick up yourself alone, no FOV changes, a few other changes I will have missed), and never tried them again.
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I have many times wondered exactly how many people are in it for reals and how many actually believe in the things they say, go to any reddit post with the flair "discussion" if you dare, you'll find most of the people there who are saying the stupidest ideas and complaining the most just have a default reddit name (two random words followed by a string of numbers).
Atleast here you need an email (which could be faked easily) but with reddit, you just register with a username and password and need no further verification.
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Valid points.
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That is optimistic, but I am weary as others have mentioned about trolls and the like, some people just like stirring the pot, I also particularly think that passion doesn't need to be expressed by people in the way it often is, with endless whataboutism, people saying "Are you dense?" if you say something they don't think is quite right.
Perhaps it's idealism, but I'd much rather a community of people who don't feel the need to be so childish and rude at times to express their views.
It sure is a passionate community, and that's amazing, but the passion hardly ever goes to thanking the developers who have actually managed to do some rather good things despite people seeming to think they're useless or lazy.
Today we got 8.1.1, fixing the gen bug and the endurance bug (not receiving endurance on unhook) and I saw someone on twitter reacting to the announcement by saying "if it were survivors getting endurance when they weren't supposed to instead, it'd be fixed in heartbeat" or similar.
For a patch that came in 8 days, some people seemed to only think that BHVR was some sort of biased and malevolent company, for fixing a bug for them?
Anyway, you have raised a good point though I am more sceptical than you, and I appreciate you for trying to raise the mood of the situation! :)
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Actually, this forum is the more civil parts of the online DBD comunity ^_- Reddit is basically fully survivor sided, and the Steam Forums is an utter cesspit of toxicity.
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Ironically, in my just under 900 hours, I've only ever reached like rank 12 in survivor, whatever that would translate too today (Gold IV or Silver I, I think) and find myself rarely playing survivor, except when I'm bored, doing solo q chest roulette runs (Ace in the hole, appraisal, plunderers and the new perk specialist).
But I just thought about it and watched videos of people ranting and what not and came to the conclusion that it's just childish bickering and I've seen people from both sides be completely unreasonable, I would much rather a community that can speak without insults or thinking they're better/more important than one another.
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There's definitely more than a couple of these people here from a glance, but I'm glad to hear it, first post here (atleast since I logged back into this account in years, currently fearing what horrible take past me decided to run my mouth on), I was sick of reddit and everywhere else tbh.
EDIT: Yup just looked back at my old discussions, wouldn't recommend it, and I was definitely quite a bit like I was describing on this post.
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Ominous but go on.
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I see this mostly with Reddit and Steam Discussions more than these forums, but it's always going to be there due to the nature of a 1v4 game.
What's important is we try to be as non-biased as we can so the right changes are made. Imagine if we just let that gen glitch that was patched today slide? Or the time Merciless Storm took chunks of progress of gens?I myself hate that Lampkin Lane got changed for the worse in terms of loops and main building strength, but don't condone potential infinites it used to have with the windows. Or how Forgotten Ruins promotes mainly keeping the outside gens regressed since going into the dungeons can lose most killers the match. Or a better example being one of the new variants for Sanctum's Wrath having no lockers in the extended areas around main and shack, for both locker related perks and Dredge.
And one other gripe I have with the community that most don't take into account is overall perk synergies and killer power disparities. We're not all like this, but people tend to forget how drastically different killers have to be played and what effects them, and why certain aspects can't be overly buffed or nerfed due to this.
But I think the worst aspect of the community is the sheer toxicity and planting their flags on survivor side or killer side and never relenting their views. I can't say I've been entirely non-biased myself, but I tend to keep it in line with certain perks or killers I've had good experience with, while the ones I'm talking about seem to write off entire aspects of the game because "x is bad, so-" and it's a mindset I'd love for this community to get over. Though, this is the internet and it's not going to just go away overnight because some of us are tired of it.3 -
Whenever me and a bud get Plague I instantly know they're going to spend the rest of the trial just following me around and puking on me.
This is the same person who when they feel like it have incredible looping skills, the astonishing ability to hide in plain sight, and butt wiggle their way out of wayyyyyyy too many lunges.
But if we get Plague? Yeah I'm getting puked on all match. DBD is a strange beast, it really does things to ya! 😜😂🤮
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I agree, it's exhausting but unfortunately, I see it in all of the pvp games that I play. I feel like this is pretty much just how the world is now (as pessimistic as that seems) and I see so many people that don't take other players into consideration when they make their comments. I've also seen posts where the discussion starts on one topic and then gets dragged into another topic entirely.
As for myself, I often come on here after a series of frustrating matches and try to see if anyone else is having the same problem and I will admit that that often skews my view on things. Lately, though, I've seen an increase in the toxicity bleeding into the in-game chat as well. I think I've been told to off myself 3 times in the last week for doing things that are fairly normal in games like trying to block LOS on a huntress in chase and trying to take hits for a survivor that's obviously being tunnled.
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The only real solution would be for all players to play the game at something approximating a 50/50 split to they have a balanced perspective. Asyms are just different than other PvP games because the very nature of how you play varies so much depending on your role, which makes it harder to empathize with a role you rarely or never play.
But since everyone going 50/50 isn't about to happen, I don't foresee the "Us vs. Them" dynamic abating anytime soon. As far as the vibe/alignment of this particular forum, I think there's an ebb and flow as users come and go. It is often killer leaning here, but I have seen long stretches where the general discussion forum was like 80% survivor complaints.
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Well said. I believe it is important to remember the developers' overall theme for this game: To imbue chaos! Horror isn't just about scaring people, it's also about stirring a bevy of emotions to achieve that chaos. In that vein…mission accomplished 💪
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funny enough i hate playing Nurse, but i love facing a good Nurse. Prolly the most enjoyment i get out of playing surv is facing a good Nurse
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The division is caused by people who refuse to play killer or survivor and don't play both roles. You all know who you are. You are the ones who are always posting "killer is OP" or "survivor is OP" stuff. If you don't play one side or the other, you have no idea how the things you are suggesting to make the game more fun for you (for instance, the post where someone suggested that the gen bug should be a feature) will make the game more miserable for the other side. If you don't play both roles consistently, I cannot take your opinions seriously.
Post edited by I_Cant_Loop on1 -
This is 💯 true. I'm a Bloodpoints main. I play whichever side has the incentive. It helps me understand both sides and get better at both sides. I've expanded my Killers that I'm playing over the anniversary. Having a lot of fun.
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Agreed. My first 700 hours or so were almost strictly killer, then I started playing surv more because killer got me stressed out (this was back when the game was pretty surv-sided), to the point where my hours in each probably balanced out. But since the BP incentive was introduced I just play whichever role has the BP bonus at that time.
Like during the anniversary event the bonus was pretty much stuck on 100% surv. I don't think I played more than 4-5 killer matches that whole time.
Now I'm kind of a slave to the bonus; I'll play one when I really feel like playing the other.
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Just don't engage in it. Honestly, it's the only way to stop it bothering you because it'll never stop unfortunately.
I don't play at night and that's when killer switches to 100% incentive on my end. Usually around 9.30pm. I usually play from 10am to midday and it's always survivor 100% so that's what I tend to stick with. I'd play killer more if the incentive was there during the day but at the moment it's really only the Tome/Rift that incentivizes me.
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Just being silly here on the forums and trying to be positive.
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Yup, I play Survivor by day and Killer by night. It's always 💯 Killer incentive for me at 8pm est.
Tonight, I'm playing Onyro, Chucky (his daily ritual is impossible for me!) then some Freddy and Wesker.
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Indeed, nothing builds empathy for the other side, then walking in their shoes regularly. These days I play closer to 60/40 killer and there are evenings where I just play survivor with my DBD friendgroup. Getting tunneled in 3min really isn't fun, but neither is getting BMed or facing unsurmountable odds as killer.
I am often the killers voice in my survivor matches, explaining why he might be mad, while also taking a good portion of the survivors frustration into my killer matches. But my bias will never go away completely, I can calmly getting BMed by the killer and explain his frustration, but 3 bad killer games in a row with survivors who just play extremely efficient without BMing me might drive me to tunneling for a couple of games, till I clear me head and sacrificed a cute survivor and then feel bad and appologize in chat
^_- This game can be so weird.
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Unfortunately, being without bias is probably not possible due to the way humans in general work. I don't mind if you're a Killer Main or a Survivor Main, bias doesn't bother me, it's the lack of empathy, that bothers me.
I've said this in the past and I'll say it again, this community absolutely insists on playing the game however you want regardless of how it makes others feel. And so that's what players did. And now people wonder why the community is so "us vs. them". We did this to ourselves.
You can't just stop caring about how other people feel and expect peace to exist. In any capacity, game or not.
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it's just a microcosm of today's society in general, fueled by social media. Some people must have a strong opinion on everything and pick sides, whether it's political parties, sports teams, cultural issues, religion, global conflict, etc… with no empathy or understanding of the other side. Social media just amplifies the loudest voices and makes things worse. DBD is no different. There are a lot of DBD players who aren't like that and appreciate the challenges of playing killer and survivor, but their voices get drowned out.
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More people should play the different "roles" this game has to offer, it would definitely broaden perspectives of the game.
When I play Survivor, I play Solo Queue and Swf with casual and comp wannabe friends. Each has their own take of how the game should be balanced. Some nights I fail to escape consecutively, some nights I barely even see the Killer by the time 5 gens are done. If someone only plays one side especially solo queue or killer, I would take their opinions with a grain of salt tbh.1 -
Honestly, pvp games and empathy never matches in slightest, especially when it comes to what strategy to use
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The problem isn't that players "insist on playing the game however they want." BM and griefing aside, this is a ridiculous argument.
There are playstyles that are clearly more efficient than others, and typically the most efficient ones are the least fun for the other side. This is not the fault of the player choosing the playstyle, it's the fault of BHVR for creating a game where the most efficient playstyle is so much less fun than less efficient playstyles.
The fact that people play to win is not problematic. Direct your frustration at BHVR, not other players.
IOW, don't hate the player, hate the game.
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I only play survivor (it’s not a conceptual thing, but only because I REALLY don’t do handle First person FOV games well) and it’s only after I made killer friends and came to the forums and hearing their thoughts that I’ve been able to empathise more than I could prior.
I understand there is a whole different world from my own with different issues and challenges - I’ll never truly understand because I don’t play killer but I always try to bear this in mind even when I’m getting stomped (a lot and often lol).
Whenever I feel very frustrated after being tunnelled or camped, I’ll try to contextualise this. When I get bm’d, I try to come back to the forums and hearing (mostly lol) rational and fair voices amongst killers like you and others that helps me remember it’s not all killers like that - and that not all survivors are toxic either.
It is a game where someone has to kill and the ones being killed will feel disheartened if it happens often and the ones who have to kill feeling likewise when they don’t. But it’s nice to see the personalities through conversations and viewpoints - even if both sides won’t always agree on a perspective, it can provide a holistic view of something.
😈🔥←demon fire
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Horror shouldn't be conjured by making an intolerant and frustrated community, that's how you make a horrible game, not a horror one.
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Instead of pointing fingers at each other we need to look why the things are how they are.
1) Win conditions are bound to be sweaty in this game. A killer is conditioned to kill all survivors, to make things easyer they will resort to rush it and get 1 out early,
2) Survivors are conditioned to do the gens because.. well what else they gonna do? In soloQ you barely escape because you compete with 4 other people to survive. Agains the killer but also the teammates, a killer WILL gett one or even 2 kills, period. Because if it were less than that, it would mean the balance is highly in the survivors side, but from the single survivors perspective its a loss even though 2 or 3 other people escaped.
3) This game is involving alot of RNG, is not symmetrical (no equal big teams) and has far too many random factors that can be out of your control, perks seem to overwrite skill in this game and maps can do this aswell. Hence why "loosing" feels especcially bad when you know you played well but you dont get rewarded because now the killer had NOED and got a surprise attack on you, or because the hatch opened right in front of the last survivor, why killers do 'the slugging for the 4k' thing.
4) Add MMR in a limitted player pool on top of this and now we know why there is so much frustration around at times.
So my general message, if you want to blame, pls dont blame the other player. They are just adapting to the environment that has been created by the developers. Obviously give them (the devs) constructive criticism, this is not a call to flame the developers, before anyone puts words in my mouth again. But its objectively true that the game has been pushed into a certain way by the devs and it will remain in this way for now, until we find a diffrent solution.0 -
I don't use social media (other than snap, but that's just a messaging platform, not exactly social media imo) so I wouldn't know the general internet state rn or other game's state, but historically this community has always been particularly bad imo.
Just sick of people coming from biased sides, not realising, the SBMM basically makes the objective of the game to win or survive by any means, so the fact tunneling, the same 4 perks, camping, blight, sabo/wiggle builds (which all are common causes for frustration for the other side) is essentially (though hopefully not intentionally) BHVR's fault.
Boring metas can only be solved by the devs or by gentlemen's agreements in private dbd playing communities like the comp community, but unfortunately BHVR doesn't do anything, and you'd be lucky to be part of a bigger sized community of KYF players in this game, given how small comp is.
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Reddit is not survivor sided. It's less killer sided than here but it still favors killers. Twitter and TikTok, on the other hand, good lord.
I sorted by "most popular, last week" and the second-top post was a near carbon-copy repeat of a one-sided "don't you hate how all survivors are all toxic hypocrites" thread that was on here a couple weeks ago.
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I do understand your point, and I agree there are more things BHVR should do to change certain things, but I think the issue with this mentality is that it removes any form of responsibility from the player themselves, using BHVR as a scapegoat to justify playing selfishly with the defense of, "Well, it's allowed." There are plenty of things that are allowed and legal, but they still make you a jerk: interrupting people, rummaging through other people's garbage once it's on the street, filming others if they're on public property, etc.
This mindset takes all the agency away from the individual, which again, circles back to a lack of empathy. Refusing to change regardless of how it makes others feel because it's not against the rules is problematic. Of course, BHVR can and should implement measures to discourage certain playstyles/tactics, which they have done, but I think the fact that people still take advantage of a system that many people agreed is flawed, says more about the individual than BHVR themselves. At some point, people have to take accountability for their choices.
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It all stems from bad balance. Why you gotta make it to where 1 side has so much power over the other? It's not completely the devs' faults though. We've been asking for a game balanced around hooks for years, a swf debuff for years, accurate matchmaking for years. And we still don't have any of that, in part because the community apparently doesn't want those things. They want to balance off kills yet don't realize that means tunneling, camping, and slugging. They just want to play casually with friends yet are offended about a debuff because they'd win less. And they want to have random matchmaking with teammates and opponents of all different skill levels, yet complain when that results in their loss. So there's a select few who play or make this game who actually know what they themselves want.
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Agreed with this & I think most people can easily identify that this forum is killer sided for the most part. My observation too. Not trying to make it a us vs them though cause I actually love discussing things on both sides, as long as blatant bias isn't shown (but it is a lot of times). I get OPs point, though.
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There's no fixing selfish, tribalistic division online. Don't even waste your energy trying. Just remember to disengage from it when necessary. This place is basically a dumping ground for people's complaints. As a result this place often has a very negative armosphere. Many posts are poorly thought out, and posted immediately after a bad match. So they are full of insults towards the other side and lacking in real feedback that the devs can use.
As soon as the game or this place starts to sour your mood, disengage from it for a while.
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The very first comment here being an "actually it's the killers!" comment proves your point perfectly haha.
You are right, especially the part where some people don't want the other sides issues addressed because their side is "worse". Everything needs an equal chance on the opposite side for some reason. "You can't nerf X unless you nerf Y".
Unfortunately there's not much that can be done about it and most asymmetrical games tend to be like this. These forums have gotten a lot better recently though and I think that there is a lot of good discussion here now as opposed to a few months ago. As long as you avoid the obvious bait posts then the community here isn't actually too bad overall.
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