Why do killers think this game is survivior sided?
Literally its always the same analogy
“I cant go 20 seconds without a gen popping”
Ive actually had to watch painstockingly gameplay on how they played and i will quickly jot down key points
-they get mad at 1st gen popping
-cant seem to get much value from power/perks
-to many pallets
To explain this, firstly expect the first generator to be repaired fast, the start of game is the strongest point for surviviors, it’s expected it will pop early. If you arent using a supressive killer expect it to be popped or something of equal value.
“”Cant get much value from power/perks”, if your power is skill based like spirit, practice it. If it is more reliant on surviviors input like trapper, casually pressure them towards that area, this can be accomplished by hooking in the region or chasing towards it.
“To many pallets”- this is the only way surviviors can fight against you, you do not have to break every pallet, and you arent required to chase anyone at any pallet. If its not worth it dont do it. Try to chase surviviors near other surviviors objectives to multitask. And the most basic rule is if a survivior juices you once, dont chase them again, it may seem impossible to kill them until you realize they have no protection against hook trades and having half their team dead
EDIT: Before the killer mains mention swfs, what happened to the game being balanced around the average player? And make sure to mention the official escape rate of swfs bhvr documented, will be very interesting
Comments
-
It's partly BHVR's fault for pushing the power role narrative.
You now have a sizeable chunk of killer players who honestly believe they should win 90% of their matches and the remaining 10% should be due to intentionally losing.
These same people hate being outplayed and survivor gameplay is heavily scrutinized, discredited, and reduced to being spacebar and W-key only.
You have people here openly and proudly admitting to playing emotionally and spitefully while being cheered on.
This forum and reddit are killer sided though and largely an echo chamber, cause whiny survivors exist too but are mostly on Twitter or talking to their swf friends.
The solution is to not take these people seriously.
82 -
It's just something people said years ago when there was actually some merit to the argument. Then they never let go of it even after the balance of the game clearly shifted in the other direction.
41 -
Cool story but the truth is that the grass is always greener on the other side. People will always say that the game is balanced against them. We had the same situation when the game was still objectively survivor sided. This isn't something new.
Also, the game swings wildly from survivor sided to killer sided depending on loadouts and maps. Oh, you play Doctor on The Game and have a build that helps you deal with these pallets? That's gonna be an easy win. Now do it with Freddy. Or Trapper. Or Myers. These killers are simply horrible on that map.
You can also play in a full SWF with optimised loadouts and send yourself to Garden of Misery. If you happen to play against a Nurse with her strongest build, you might still get screwed but against most killers this will be an easy game. Now look at what happens when you play solo queue.
So on Twitter, you don't take any survivor main seriously and in the forums you discredit what killer mains say? Sounds good. I can totally see how this leads to constructive discussions.
The way I see it, most human beings are capable of logical thinking, so you can present a point and support it with your arguments. Whoever disagrees will present their own arguments against it and eventually you find some common ground. I know it's hard but this is how a discussion usually works.
40 -
isn’t the general consensus still that noob mmr is killer sided and high mmr is survivor sided
34 -
Because most play a single role, killer. They see what is done in videos on survivor and think its so easy.
The best analogy I have, and proof that its not easy, is Nurse.
People say its the best killer in the game. See what she can do and…. welp, hate to break it to everyone.Not for the majority of people that play this game shes not, shes actually one of the worst. Why? Its not easy to play her.
And we have data for her now, 3 times being one of the lowest kill rate killers in the game. Yet it is accepted she is the strongest.As someone who used to main nurse do I defend that killer? Hell no, she is broken, its unfair how fast you can pressure, unfair on ignoring basic mechanics in the game…. The fact that anyone loads into a match with Bookmark these days, makes me laugh. As if you needed MORE broken lol…
I could go on about nurse but back to your post.
Like you pointed out there is no macro thinking happening, no big picture. Like if most complaints got what they wanted, their 80-90% win rate would only go up even more.
Ill never understand it, I win with Legion/Plague … around 80-90% of all my games (3-4k). And im no career streamer or anything either, just a regular player.
Its simply they had a bad 1/17 matches where a competeive SWF actually got 2-4 out against them, and they think the game is broken because of that. Or they had some bad map rng… or honestly they made a bunch of mistakes… or tried a playstyle that stomps uncoordinated survivors but not a team (camping/tunneling).
This only gets worse with streamers as well. You have people like TruTalent, saying the game is survivor sided at the high end.
Load up his stream vods, and LITERALLY COUNT, how many games he wins versus loses. Its around the 90+% win and -10% losses.
Its crazy to me that anyone would think survivor sided.17 -
It’s because the killer is supposed to be the stronger one, that’s why there’s four survivors. Nerfs are made for the 1v1 and can really nerf a killers ability to manage all four. That and the fact that unless you’re new, you don’t fear them, that’s an advantage killers are assumed to have when someone plays killer. There’s no power trip playing the big bad which is what most started killer for. In fact it’d the opposite, killers have to fear what they might lose and end up over worrying making every little thing survivors do over exaggerated
12 -
I’d say the game is more perk/intention sided than anything else. If you have a 4 man swf with stacked perks and addons who want to Gen rush (and have 1-2 people who can loop the killer for a least a minute at a time), the average killer will lose. If you have a killer with 3-4 slowdowns who proxy camps, tunnels, and has NOED, chances are the average survivor group gets stomped. But the reality that most people don’t want to acknowledge is that it’s way more common for 1 killer to out perk and playing to win than it is to find 4 equally perked and skilled survivors. In short, the game is generally killer sided because 4 man decked out swfs are not common.
4 -
Say it with me again everyone:
SWF > Killer > SoloQ35 -
“To many pallets”- this is the only way surviviors can fight against you, you do not have to break every pallet, and you arent required to chase anyone at any pallet. If its not worth it dont do it. Try to chase surviviors near other surviviors objectives to multitask. And the most basic rule is
if a survivior juices you once, dont chase them again, it may seem impossible to kill them until you realize they have no protection against hook trades and having half their team dead
Except that god pallets exist — and this is one of the reasons swfs looove sending Killers to the Game map or the Garden of Joy, where there is a ton of safe pallets to hide behind, and no choice for the Killer but to break these pallets.
16 -
I commented something very similar on another post but, I remain consistent.
From what I've seen in forums and discussions, many killer mains believe that the issue is that killers aren't good but that survivors are just bad. I don't agree with this perspective, especially when all available statistics show that killers are performing well, regardless of where they rank on fan-made tier lists or if they're primarily M1 killers. The majority of survivors are statistically losing more than they're winning, and dismissing low escape rates as simply due to most survivors being "bad" overlooks the fact that the survivor role is intentionally challenging. It's like criticizing someone for dying in Dark Souls or Elden Ring—it misses the point of the challenge.
Another common belief is that because SWF exists, the game will always be survivor-sided. But the same argument could be made about Nurse. Using a small minority of the game, like SWF, to justify or demand changes is flawed for the same reason it would be wrong to use Nurse as a benchmark for balance. Both can create unfair situations, but they represent a minority of the player base.
24 -
yeah but you're missing the point that every forum killer only goes up against try-hard swfs (and not simply 4 friends playing together because swfs can only mean meta builds and bnps) so the game needs to be balanced around this average match
5 -
DbD has a deeply insecure playerbase. It's inconceivable to players that they're average or not good, or had a bad game. If you give players no feedback about where their skill level is, they're going to make something up and move the goal posts whenever they need to.
What did many players do when BHVR released kill rates showing SWF in the top MMR bracket still escapes less than 50% of the time? They said the data was wrong, made up a reason why the data couldn't be valid, or assumed they must be in some unaccounted for Ultron MMR bracket on a hidden server.
34 -
Actually, the grass is greener on the other side.
Most killer games (9/10) i always win, regardless of the fact if im using my main or just a random killer, i usually always win, contrast this with the fact i win 4/10 of my survivor matches despite running the most meta and youll see the difference
And yes everything is rng based and i dont have a problem with that, inherently playing survivior should be a challenge and there should be some games that are pitted against surviviors, like a doctor on the game like you said. But the problem is the fact how every game seems like your destined to lose. Hypothetically even if i did play perfectly against a doctor in a neutral map, the doctor could obtain a 1k from internal game mechanics, and secure a 2k from camping endgame, im not discussing tunneling and camping but its so much easier to kill than escape.
9 -
It's easy to fall into the trap of assuming that the game must be unbalanced in favour of the opposing side, whichever side that happens to be, especially if you've had a rough string of matches.
In my opinion, though, this game isn't substantially weighted in either direction. That's not to say it's perfectly balanced, as outliers of strength exist on both sides and if you aren't prepared for them they'll seem impossible to beat, but it does mean that the fundamental mechanics and the majority of tools are generally equal across roles.
The most someone could say in favour of the game being killer sided is to point out tunnelling, which is an unbalanced element of the game, but honestly even with tunnelling in the state it's in I don't think the game is that killer sided. Not to say I don't think it should be changed, it absolutely should, but everything's prone to exaggeration when it's brought up in these contexts.
There's also an interesting phenomenon where some will bring up their experiences on both sides, saying "I win easily with Y role, but it's a struggle to get anything done as X role!", which I think is also a little misguided. To me, it just seems like those individuals are better at Y role than they are at X role- this is an asymmetrical game, after all, there's no reason to assume you'd be equally good at both roles. I'm not, I'm a better killer than I am survivor by a noticeable amount.
To explain "killer mains" as they're presented in this thread, though, I honestly think a lot of players have absolutely no perception of what the macro game looks like in this game or how to efficiently pressure their objective. This is true of both roles, but it's more obvious in conversation from the killer side.
6 -
This
and This
Matches can wildly differ pending on so many factors that you can see on this very forum "Killers are OP, plz nerf" and "Survivors are OP, plz nerf". It's not that one side is lying while the other is telling the truth, it's that people can have very different experiences in this game pending on SWF v Solo (as your team or as your opponent), the killer being used, the map you're on, or hell, even just the region of the country you are in (for example, as someone in Midwest America, I rarely run into tunneling/camping but you talk to someone in a different part of the country or another country, they'll say it's tunnel city).
10 -
But the stats show survivors lose more than killers at all ranks… from newb to pro.
14 -
If both sides are of average or above average skill and higher (as most killers) its survivor sided. The thing is a majority of the dbd community has shown to be around below average to average.
7 -
because it literally is 🙄
7 -
According to BHVR, most killers and survivors are average (not below average or above average). And at the highest MMR the game is killer sided. This is based on stats BHVR has given us. We don’t really need to speculate or guess or approximate. They gave us the stats and it shows that the game favors killers at all levels.
16 -
Asymmetric gameplay or not, this is a game. A PvP one at that. They can't balance the game around the killers never having any fear of losing. You're supposed to lose if you play badly. As long as you want to win, the worry is always gonna be there.
Otherwise, what you're asking for is for 4 players to queue to a lost game where they're your plaything and you can do aaaaanything you want to them.
17 -
Simply put, it doesn't feel that good to win a game you were supposed to win in the first place. It's not the players themselves, its just a defense mechanism we have as humans.
This is enhanced by the 4v1 nature. It creates a trick where it seems like the killer player is overcoming the odds and thus winning is a great accomplishment. To have that turned around and be like 'no, you were always the favorite to win' is pretty deflating.
From what I've seen in forums and discussions, many killer mains believe that the issue is that killers aren't
good
but that survivors are just
bad
I agree with this and its one of my pet peeves on the forum. I'd add this is usually accompanied by that when the killer loses it not because the survivors were better, but because the game/map was broken. It's strange that's its so hard to say: 'I'm good at the game, but sometimes I meet people who beat me'.
12 -
I agree with both you and @hermitkermit It's okay to lose games; it happens. It's okay to not be the best in the world; it's a video game. There are far more important things in life to worry about than a video game. However, even suggesting that a tactic might be broken or the odds might have been in their favour to some people makes them incensed. It's not a personal insult but all of a sudden a bunch of people act like it's the Age of the Vikings and people need to turn to a holmgang to restore their honor.
7 -
It's not about losing the game. It's about the cost of losing the game. It's about losing being not fun — and people being able to actively contribute to it.
DbD makes it clear that you lose the game = you are beneath you opponents and you deserve to be ridiculed and literally forced to stay in the endgame until the victor decides they're done gloating. In many games, it's not enough for players to just leave the gates — they stay, either noise spamming or tbagging. It's not enough for players to just hook someone and be done with it — they need to go back and forth, not letting already downed survivors go from the game they've lost. Nobody wants to be on the receiving end.
The sad thing is (and why people say this game is "survivor-sided") this issue was partially fixed for survivors: staying too close near hooks now grants a free kobe, there is Unbreakable against slugging, DS against tunneling, and even a limited amount of times the Killer can regress gens (which prevents them from stalling the game for hours). But, if gens are done and the gates are powered, Killers have to contend with either a walk of shame to the exit gate for a final spit in the face, or basically waste time they could have spent playing other matches, waiting for the timer to run out or for the players to leave. In addition to actual issue with maps that are basically a safe pallet haven for survivors and hell for Killers, it's not surprising that Killers would consider this game survivor-sided. And I find it hard to disagree because my games as a Survivor have been much less stressful compared to playing as Killer — in most cases, I knew that even if I lose, I'll be out of the game and ready to go next. I won't have to stick around for the endgame chat or until every survivor leaves the gate.
The "Just break pallets" or "Just tab out and watch some YouTube" advice is kinda part of the problem: as someone has already rightfully stated, if you're encouraged to tab out of the game you're supposed to spend time in, this is bad game design and it would only led to frustration piling up.
I think that either issue with sore winners holding the game hostage for Killers would have changed their perspective. For instance, giving Killers an incentive to do something else during EGC (if survivors have powered the gates and Killers have no endgame perks to get a chance) — either increasing the amount of bloodpoints they get for breaking pallets and walls during the EGC or offering them an alternative activity. For instance, the Killers could be given the choice to go to the Void dimension to farm points with spirits or to pick a random challenge for the next trials that will increase their BPs— yes, it means they lose their final chance to hook survivors, but they get more points without BM. Heck, even scattering small surprises (like with the Entity racoon thing) or initiating glyph hunting would have been a good touch — it would have given the Killer something interesting to do instead of trying to come up with the ways to occupy themselves until survivors finally decide to leave.
10 -
There's so much survivor bias in this thread, I'm not even gonna address it this time. They know.
13 -
pretty much it.
so many people think they're hot ######### and yet they`ve barely scratched the surface of what the survivor role is capable of (in particular, killer is way more conventional to get good at).
there's a reason why comp players ban so much stuff for survivors compared to killers unless it's nurse/billy/blight in question.
11 -
efficient survivors win because majority of maps can support with enough resources. against sluggers campers tunnelers and 3 genners communication wins so it's generally swf > killer > soloq. assuming both parties want to win and have their strongest cards.
5 -
If you're saying people should not BM and it's a terrible thing to gloat at the exit gates I 100% agree. It's childish. It shouldn't happen. I have stated multiple times that BHVR should, in my opinion, issue a statement regarding good sportsmanship and how to follow good sportsmanship and teabagging, while it is viewed by many as harmless, does not change the fact that many people view it as the digital equivalent of a middle finger and that should be respected. I think a significant chunk of the us vs them discourse would disappear (not a majority but a significant chunk) if survivors stopped teabagging as a taunt.
However, that doesn't change the fact that Killers have access to tactics that give a disproportionate advantage for the effort and have a disproportionate skill floor. They are two different issues.
Teabagging and wasting time at the Killer's exit gate grates on me. Unfortunately, a lot of people do it and now we also have humping on the Killer side which I also find annoying and grating. However, the people doing it are specifically trying to annoy you so I just ignore them now if I see it on the Killer side. If I see a survivor doing it while playing Survivor games and the Killer did not camp or tunnel I make sure to tell the Killer gg, gl next match or something similar.
As I don't camp or tunnel when I play I don't experience that much BM to be honest if I win or if I lose. It does happen still but not frequently. I see it a lot more in games where the Killer is tunnelling and camping. The survivors do stick around at the gates so I come over and take a few hits for BP if I'm down anyway but really I just do it to save time (another option is breaking walls). I also almost never get hateful messages in chat. I'm not saying any of these behaviours (gloating and messages in chat) is justified (it's not) but people that have had a miserable experience are more likely to vent their frustration and, unfortunately, that happens more frequently online than it would in real life.
If you lose a game, though, it might help to keep in mind that it doesn't reflect on you one way or another in real life. You lost a video game; it's not a personal attack nor anything that you'll care about or remember in the future. Losing a video game is trivial. It is annoying and grating to deal with sore winners and your frustration at that is completely justified; sore winners suck. and they should show sportsmanship instead. But it's not a reflection on you in the slightest.
(Also, I like the idea of activities for Killers to gain increased BP once the gates are open. It's still annoying that there are sore winners but there might be less of them if they realized that, instead of annoying the Killer, they're giving the Killer increased opportunities for more BP. Good idea).
4 -
Ignoring the fact that comp is a completely different beast entirely and even in your statement you include exceptions, there is no secret gameplay that the drooling masses can't grasp, it just boils down to coordination and intent.
There's a reason why even comp players trying to winstreak can't even break 400 mark while we just had a Blight streak end in a draw due to player error despite playing against a comp team with no restrictions after +2500 games.
If the killer player is good and plays with the intent to win, they will destroy most opponents due to the fact that killer only has to pass a single skill check (no pun intended,) survivors have to pass four which is way harder to pull off.
Team Eternal literally almost lost to a Skull Merchant that was way worse than them and that was only because the killer was careless.
This doesn't mean survivors are weak, but the game is still killer sided in all brackets and the data supports this because it's just way more fruitful to be good at killer. It's rare for me to say this but BHVR has done a good job with balancing as of late, there are still some outliers that need to be addressed but I'm perfectly fine with the game being slightly killer favored if it means I still get to retain engaging aspects of survivor.
People just have a weird victim complex when discussing the game from a killer angle which leads to grossly exaggerated disadvantages that almost never reflect reality. Idc if it's us vs them but survivors are told to deal with crushing defeat after crushing defeat while people complain that they occasionally 2k.
20 -
>Ignoring the fact that comp is a completely different beast entirely and even in your statement you include exceptions, there is no secret gameplay that the drooling masses can't grasp, it just boils down to coordination and intent.
Comp isnt entirely different. The main obvious difference in comp is that it has player enforced balancing and matchmaking which results into a genuine competitive environment. That doesnt disqualify it from being an evidence to the power disbalance in the game and, on contrary, makes it as the fundamental proof of lots of balancing and design issues this game has.
There's a reason why even comp players trying to winstreak can't even break 400 mark while we just had a Blight streak end in a draw due to player error despite playing against a comp team with no restrictions after +2500 games.
The reason why comp survivors dont get streaks is because they set unrealistic wincon for themselves since the base game really struggles to define what is a win condition for the survivors.
In my opinion, since most killer streaks (including the aforementioned blight streak) follow "no exit gate escape after 5th gen" logic, then survivor streaks should to. However surv streakers believe they only win if they get at least 3 out which is pretty much the same as expecting to 4k3-5 all games in your killer streak. Or just expecting to 4k every game (including hatch).
It doesnt help that gathering a team for a streak is more difficult task than having one player decide to choose violence.
If the killer player is good and plays with the intent to win, they will destroy most opponents due to the fact that killer only has to pass a single skill check (no pun intended,) survivors have to pass four which is way harder to pull off.
You dont take into account the difficulty and quantity of the "skillchecks" killers has to pass. Killer needs to make great plays to beat survivor's mediocre plays. Extraordinary plays to beat good plays. Killers dont have downtime like survivors do and they constantly have to make crucial decisions throughout the game, while survivors have noticeable periods between being forced to make different choice.
The only part of the game where it's not the case is the chase where most killers have the dynamic shift (most noticeably antiloop m2 killers who flip it and start requiring survivor to make way better plays to beat mediocre performance).
That's obviously depends on every killer, but you get the idea. Most killers have to put way more skill and effort to win the game than survivors do. That alone proves the game is survivor sided.
And don't get me wrong, Im not saying it shouldn't be ultimately survivor sided. That's simply fair for the 1v4 game to lean towards the "4" side, however what is not fair is how this is achieved. That is achieved through artificial mechanics that ensure that survivor team is allowed to make a scarily generous amount of mistakes against the killer for as long as the skill gap between them can still be measured.
You cant unironically say that the game is killer sided when survivors are to win or at least break even against killer players with ten times more experience on a particular killer than the survivors have combined.
9 -
Comp isnt entirely different. The main obvious difference in comp is that it has player enforced balancing and matchmaking which results into a genuine competitive environment.
I watch a good deal of comp and there is a lot different. Survivors always know which killers they are going to face, both sides know the map they are going to play on, they play for hooks, not kills. They try to minimize the randomness of a game that is designed to have a lot of randomness.
This isn't even getting into SWFs. Not only are they four person SWFs, already rare, but these are players who have come together because they are good players, not just a group of friends.
Comp players are excellent players, no doubt, but there are so many elements of the game they don't even engage with it feels strange to argue that it can be somehow reflective of the state of the game.
In my opinion, since most killer streaks (including the aforementioned blight streak) follow "no exit gate escape after 5th gen" logic, then survivor streaks should to.
Where does the most come from? Maybe its true, but the killer streaks I come across seem to be the standard kill 3 survivors.
However surv streakers believe they only win if they get at least 3 out which is pretty much the same as expecting to 4k3-5 all games in your killer streak.
This really sounds like admitting the game is killer sided. You're just saying the survivors should radically adjust their expectations. Because if a 3e is on the same difficulty as a killer 4king before 3 gens are done, the game has a serious balance issue.
Killer needs to make great plays to beat survivor's mediocre plays. Extraordinary plays to beat good plays.
I'd say this is the reverse.
Killers only need to match the survivor skill. If a survivor doesn't know how to hug a loop, neither does the killer. If the survivor doesn't have the game sense to break the 3 gen, the killer doesn't need the game sense to protect it. The killer, by design, always has the advantage in the 1 on 1, so they only have to match the survivor skill and they'll win the chase.
Most killers have to put way more skill and effort to win the game than survivors do. That alone proves the game is survivor sided.
Effort part, maybe.
Skill, no. The game is pretty straightforward for killer. You see the gens, you see the hooks, you see the scratch marks. The killer has important decisions to make, that's true, but that's most of their game. The skill floor is relatively high As a I mentioned above, the burden is on the survivors to learn skills before the killers need the counters.
Soloq survivors have to play the game with multiple mysteries hanging over their head. They have to guess at their teammates strategies and respond on the fly with extremely little information.
Even if we go to SWFs, it adds a whole new skill category to the game, communication. That can give them an edge, but if we're just talking about skill its something that has to be practiced and developed over time.
On the skill front, the killer has to improve their game sense and mechanics. Survivors have to improve those as well, while also learning to predict what the other survivors are doing and/or communication.
That is achieved through artificial mechanics that ensure that survivor team is allowed to make a scarily generous amount of mistakes against the killer for as long as the skill gap between them can still be measured.
I never understand this point. Survivors seem to make one mistake and its game over. Get hooked in the 3 gen, hooked in basement, screw up a chase, caught stealthing, screw up a flashlight save, one mistake and pressure swings around immediately to the killer's side.
12 -
I watch a good deal of comp and there is a lot different. Survivors always know which killers they are going to face, both sides know the map they are going to play on, they play for hooks, not kills. They try to minimize the randomness of a game that is designed to have a lot of randomness.
This isn't even getting into SWFs. Not only are they four person SWFs, already rare, but these are players who have come together because they are good players, not just a group of friends.
Comp players are excellent players, no doubt, but there are so many elements of the game they don't even engage with it feels strange to argue that it can be somehow reflective of the state of the game.
They dont engage with random elements of the game and focus to get good at actual skill dependant interactions. Again, that not only doesn't invalidate it from being evidence, but makes it work better as such.
i dont think it's fair to consider severe lack of basic skill as a balancing factor as you suggest.
Where does the most come from? Maybe its true, but the killer streaks I come across seem to be the standard kill 3 survivors.
Momo7 blight streak, the one that the other guy brought up as evidence to something, is using "no exit gate escape after gens are done" wincon. I mean, we can use just 3k wincon, then survivors JUST have to get 2 kills to win. Still very much possible with all the stuff survivors have access to. Maybe not consistently against S tier killers because they offer enough agency to the killer to match survivor meta & skillful performance.
Though again, there's nothing concrete here. The issue with streaks for survivors is that the game is incapable of defining proper win con. Its' the game that took "both sides can win simultaneously" approach which leads to the insanity.
I'd say this is the reverse.
Killers only need to match the survivor skill. If a survivor doesn't know how to hug a loop, neither does the killer. If the survivor doesn't have the game sense to break the 3 gen, the killer doesn't need the game sense to protect it. The killer, by design, always has the advantage in the 1 on 1, so they only have to match the survivor skill and they'll win the chase.
Effort part, maybe.
Skill, no. The game is pretty straightforward for killer. You see the gens, you see the hooks, you see the scratch marks. The killer has important decisions to make, that's true, but that's most of their game. The skill floor is relatively high As a I mentioned above, the burden is on the survivors to learn skills before the killers need the counters.
Soloq survivors have to play the game with multiple mysteries hanging over their head. They have to guess at their teammates strategies and respond on the fly with extremely little information.
Even if we go to SWFs, it adds a whole new skill category to the game, communication. That can give them an edge, but if we're just talking about skill its something that has to be practiced and developed over time.
On the skill front, the killer has to improve their game sense and mechanics. Survivors have to improve those as well, while also learning to predict what the other survivors are doing and/or communication.
See, that's the fundamental difference in our mindsets.
You consider skill floor and I consider skill ceiling.
If we talk about skill floor, game is killer sided because killer doesnt have to even think about a response to anything survivor isn't attempting to do. On contrary, when survivor has enough knowledge and skill to apply all accessible options, the killer needs to put much greater skill input to deal with that. And that starts being problematic when killer's aforementioned skill inputs are being cancelled by mechanics that exist to artificially level survivors with the killer. The game is getting survivor sided even earlier than they near the ceiling due to that factor.
You also equal having knowledge of your surrounding with not requiring skill which isnt really true as killer's skill is in applying that information correctly which has much higher punishment to it if it's not done right.
Someone here said something how killers are ignoring the skill and effort survivors have to put into winning and it's a bit disingenuous to say that when killer skill&effort is diminished if not more, then no less as evident by your reply in particular for instance.
I never understand this point. Survivors seem to make one mistake and its game over. Get hooked in the 3 gen, hooked in basement, screw up a chase, caught stealthing, screw up a flashlight save, one mistake and pressure swings around immediately to the killer's side.
The issue with your understanding is that such mistakes are usually very avoidable and killer can be easily punished for trying to punish these mistakes if they dont make a correct call based on the information they don't have access to.
If I hook a person in a 3 gen and try to camp them, I can easily get hit by reassurance or/and deli trade and then lose the game to taking a gamble and getting outperked.
If I hook a person in basement and try to play around it, same will happen except I'll also expose myself to losing 3-4 gen and ending up in a terrible position for 3v1.
If I try to punish a flashlight save, I might lose a slugged person to them having a perk or just waste time and not get necessary value.
Of course, that's usually not the case, because average survivor player will more likely throw the game by expecting the killer to be nice and let them have the unhook/save/etc which will only further worsen their position, but Im going to assume we are not considering cases of people making basic mistakes / not being successful at their one-sided skill input that they must be consistent with because in that case I'll start asking for nurse buffs.
Despite that it's true that survivors are the role that hinges the most on not making mistakes or having them punished which is how they win. The game, especially without player imposed limitations to make it fair. And if they do make those mistakes, it's only a matter of how many of them they can cover up with perks which is pretty much what defines the skill difference in favour of killer that would still not matter. Which is what, again, should lead to a natural conclusion of the game being survivor sided.
And god forbid survivors are ever so slightly better. Killer is not winning the game even closely because they arent getting any chases fast enough. Their best hope is cheesing kills through party game mechanics.
As the game that still allows to win despite being worse than your opponent to a particular degree favours that side.
Good thing most people in this game actually don't care that much about winning and just don't want the other side to act like douches when they win or lose.
2 -
Because it is…….."technically". That's the big takeaway. If you take a survivor team that makes no mistakes, they are guaranteed to always win. If you take a killer that makes no mistakes, they can still lose. When survivors get enough experience to take advantage at the multitude of tools they have to use against the killer, matches essentially come down to killers capitalizing on survivor mistakes. In general, the game is absolutely survivor sided…BUT…when you take the whole population of DBD, very little survivors have that much experience to "make no mistakes".
TLDR; Survivors have the potential to always win, but reaching that level of "no mistakes" is nearly unachievable. The survivors have ALL of the tools to always win, but it's incredibly difficult to properly use those tools at the right time. Killers, on the other hand, win by taking advantage of survivors failing to use those tools to their max potential.
There are some exceptions to this - a couple of killers are fundamentally broken (they bypass all the rules that keep killers in check by design) where even the best survivors will fail. This is a killer specific issue on those particular killers and not killers as a whole. That's why in tournaments you almost always see just nurse's and blights. At high level play, those survivor players typically have more experience to understand the tools survivors have against killers, so standard killers just aren't viable at high MMR. Many tournaments acknowledge this issue, so many of them put in rules that survivors have to play by (for example, only one deliverable per team allowed) in order to try to nerf survivors enough where other killers can be picked (no one wants to just see nurse and blight only every game). That's right, at high level play, survivors are so broken, they get restrictions applied to them in tournament play just to give killers a chance to win.
7 -
They dont engage with random elements of the game and focus to get good at actual skill dependant interactions. Again, that not only doesn't invalidate it from being evidence, but makes it work better as such.
i dont think it's fair to consider severe lack of basic skill as a balancing factor as you suggest.
That's not even close to what I suggest. You leave out all of the points I made about the difference.
Comp is like a game of poker where every player is guaranteed to get cards from one of ten possible combinations. It still might be a game of skill, but its not a reflection of what poker actually is.
This doesn't even get into what comp scene we base it off, with different leagues having different rules and the Asian comp scene having different metas on what they think is actually strong in the game.
Momo7 blight streak, the one that the other guy brought up as evidence to something, is using "no exit gate escape after gens are done" wincon.
Okay, so its not most, its that one.
I mean, we can use just 3k wincon, then survivors JUST have to get 2 kills to win.
Only if you presume the game doesn't have draws as a possibility.
Which most people think it does. If survivors and killers, both doing a win streak, hit each other, they both could lose it at the same time. It would be as easy for killers to say a 2k should be a win because they broke the survivors streak.
You consider skill floor and I consider skill ceiling.
I'm considering both. I'm just not throwing out the floor.
On contrary, when survivor has enough knowledge and skill to apply all accessible options, the killer needs to put much greater skill input to deal with that.
How? As I talked about and gave examples killers only have to match the survivor skill on game elements. What exactly does the killer do that needs to exceed survivor gameplay?
And that starts being problematic when killer's aforementioned skill inputs are being cancelled by mechanics that exist to artificially level survivors with the killer.
Such as?
You also equal having knowledge of your surrounding with not requiring skill which isnt really true as killer's skill is in applying that information correctly which has much higher punishment to it if it's not done right.
I had a longer response here, but later you say that survivors are punished more for making mistakes (
Despite that it's true that survivors are the role that hinges the most on not making mistakes or having them punished which is how they win.)
So I 'm not sure what the overall point is.If I hook a person in a 3 gen and try to camp them, I can easily get hit by reassurance or/and deli trade and then lose the game to taking a gamble and getting outperked.
If I hook a person in basement and try to play around it, same will happen except I'll also expose myself to losing 3-4 gen and ending up in a terrible position for 3v1.
If I try to punish a flashlight save, I might lose a slugged person to them having a perk or just waste time and not get necessary value.
Of course, that's usually not the case, because average survivor player will more likely throw the game by expecting the killer to be nice and let them have the unhook/save/etc which will only further worsen their position, but Im going to assume we are not considering cases of people making basic mistakes / not being successful at their one-sided skill input that they must be consistent with because in that case I'll start asking for nurse buffs.
Quoting a lot, because I think this is the important part.
I'll start by saying, yes, the killer has to make important decisions. That's true. I just don't see how its different than survivors. More frequent (edit for clarity: on a 1 killer to 1 survivor basis)? Probably, but that's a different thing. This goes back to something that was talked about earlier in the forums, when killers win they attribute it to survivors being bad.
If you set up a defensive zone you get hit by a reassurance / deliverance / etc., you lost the guessing game. If they don't have it, or you make the decision not to play defensive because you think they have it, congratulations, you won the guessing game.
But survivors are having to do the same
You chalk this up to people making basic mistakes, but its only a mistake because you are giving them extra levels of knowledge that they don't have. Each side is trying to make guesses at what the other side is doing, a wrong guess can look like an idiotic play, but it is very different than a mistake.
5 -
That's not even close to what I suggest. You leave out all of the points I made about the difference.
Comp is like a game of poker where every player is guaranteed to get cards from one of ten possible combinations. It still might be a game of skill, but its not a reflection of what poker actually is.
This doesn't even get into what comp scene we base it off, with different leagues having different rules and the Asian comp scene having different metas on what they think is actually strong in the game.
You've failed to establish your point then. Because from what Im seeing you're essentially suggesting that we shouldnt consider top tier performance of survivors (though why do we consider top tier killers either even though they're the ones doing those ridiculous winstreaks) because these are 1) rare 2) excluding rng elements that mostly boil down to a possibility of survivors running same perks / off meta build or playing on a map that will favour survivors more than maps usually do in comp (as maps are usually picked to favour the killer or at least not make them unplayable & vulnerable to lack of mobility cheese).
That is irrelevant to the subject because these are the factors that boil down to rng throwing the skill out of the window or survivors not being prepared to face the killer they go against due to them not having enough experience against that killer.
Okay, so its not most, its that one.
Oh yeah, just "that one streak" that people believing the game is killer sided run with like it's a definitive proof of god existing they brought to an atheist convention.
Either way I've addressed most other killer streaks and their relation to survivor streaks.
Only if you presume the game doesn't have draws as a possibility.
Which most people think it does. If survivors and killers, both doing a win streak, hit each other, they both could lose it at the same time. It would be as easy for killers to say a 2k should be a win because they broke the survivors streak.
I presume that this game has no definitive win, loss or draw condition and it's a wide spectrum that people randomly point finger at to determine what is a win con to them. Therefore rendering streaking entirely subjective unless your goal is 4k / 4 out which is obviously not entirely skill dependant for obvious reasons and that, however, only further makes streaks meaningless in my eyes. Not even counting poor matchmaking for both sides alongside lack of proper competitive mindset. Streaks are not indicative of the game's state on either side.
I'm considering both. I'm just not throwing out the floor.
You are since you dismiss the examples of the skill ceiling and base your argumentation on the cases where survivors dont have knowledge they should have, dont avoid things they should always be able to avoid due to one-sided nature of prevention of these things, dont play with a correct mindset and so on.
How? As I talked about and gave examples killers only have to match the survivor skill on game elements. What exactly does the killer do that needs to exceed survivor gameplay?
Which side depends on the other side's mistakes more than they rely on their own skilled plays? Killers do.
In chases, a lot of killers (even the ones with antiloop powers) are forced to rely on survivor's mistakes and can only attempt to make plays that ultimately depend on survivor making mistake in dealing with them to result in a hit. Any hits that solely depend on killer's personal skill are not enough by themselves to let killer win the chase due to how long it would take to get an opportunity for these hits, assuming survivor is doing their one-sided part of the chase right. Again, a spectrum, but the general rule is like that. Survivors always have some kind of consistent counterplay that delays the killer from getting an opportunity to use their ability and / or they are the ones whose decision defines whether or not killer wins the chase. (And winning the chase doesnt mean simply downing the survivor, it means downing the survivor fast enough to not lose the game).
There's very few exceptions to that and they're what bottlenecks killer balance and are universally considered overpowered and problematic by the community 👩⚕️.
I had a longer response here, but later you say that survivors are punished more for making mistakes
We're talking about different skill expressions here even though they're from the same game sense field. In one example that you brought up killers receive bigger punishment, in the other, survivors do due to having more agency in avoiding that mistake or refusing to utilize options to cover up for the mistake.
The side that has more agency than the other is the one that receives bigger punishment for the mistake, that's how it usually goes. Survivors, naturally, have way more agency as a team than killers by themselves do, which leads to them having way more control in chases or in overall match. Which, again, is another example of the game being survivor sided.
But survivors are having to do the same
thing, except with less knowledge than the killer. Let's say the killer hooks, goes to apply Pop to a gen, and then returns to the hook. If a survivor stayed on gens and missed his window for the unhook, he lost the guessing game. On the other hand if he rushes the unhook because he thought the killer was farther away than he was, again, he lost the guessing game.You chalk this up to people making basic mistakes, but its only a mistake because you are giving them extra levels of knowledge that they don't have. Each side is trying to make guesses at what the other side is doing, a wrong guess can look like an idiotic play, but it is very different than a mistake.
In this particular example killer making an incorrect call and going for riskier play means losing the game right on the spot.
Survivor however will have the game still going regardless of whether or not they make a correct call on killer staying / not staying and pop'ing the gen.
These are bad examples because the required play and consequences of the decisions are incomparable. One is an example of an extreme play with high risk and the other is an example of a mundane game sense decision that people are allowed to fail reasonable amount of time on both sides.
Survivor can make a bad guess and have their 99 gen popped but that's just + roughly 20 more seconds on the gen which while painful is not something they cant recover from.
It would be more fair to compare that to killer losing a 50/50 in chase because that's something that killer can generally allow themselves to happen multiple times throughout the game. It's not something where they have enough agency to suffer extreme consequences.
2 -
You've failed to establish your point then.
I don't think you've established your point either, but I'll go back to the beginning. Here is your original statement:
Comp isnt entirely different. The main obvious difference in comp is that it has player enforced balancing and matchmaking which results into a genuine competitive environment.
My argument is that comp is radically different from a non-comp game, here are all the ways:
-Survivors know the killer they are facing
-Teams can ban killers they don't want to face
-Both sides know the map
-Always 4 person SWF which at the upper levels have things like try outs to make it.
-Perk and addon bans on both sides
-Perks limited to a single instance on the survivor (obviously) side
-Playing for hooks and gens
-The games are, usually, played sequentially. That means the first killer generally takes safer strategies. Hooking and camping out the first survivor means getting at least five to seven hooks is close to guaranteed. The second game killer strategies will vary wildly based on what they are trying to accomplish. If the survivors need to only do a few gens, camping and tunneling go out the window because the killer needs to spread a ton of pressure.
-More recently, AFC ignored
That seems like a substantially different experience than the non-comp game. I'm not even talking about MMR levels, it's just a fundamentally different game.
All the above is based off Western comp games. If we say that comp is somehow reflective, we also have to address why the Asian region plays under a different ruleset and which one is more reflective of the game.
That is irrelevant to the subject because these are the factors that boil down to rng throwing the skill out of the window or survivors not being prepared to face the killer they go against due to them not having enough experience against that killer.
Dealing with RNG is a skill.
Being able to adapt to situations on the fly is a key component of the game. Its also not unique to this game by any means, lots of games (both video and other) have high variability between plays and expect that players who win over time will be the ones who can best adapt to the situation they were given.
The only reason comp needs to reduce these elements is because they play a small number of games. If comp played seasons (which would not be practical for different reasons), you could allow a lot more random elements into the game and they would balance out over time. This is another reason comp is not similar to normal gameplay.
Oh yeah, just "that one streak" that people believing the game is killer sided run with like it's a definitive proof of god existing they brought to an atheist convention.
Here's what you originally said:
In my opinion, since most killer streaks (including the aforementioned blight streak) follow "no exit gate escape after 5th gen" logic, then survivor streaks should to.
Here's what I replied:
Where does the most come from? Maybe its true, but the killer streaks I come across seem to be the standard kill 3 survivors.
If you want to say that you didn't mean most that's fine. That was just an inquiry on my part.
But being we're on the subject, I'm trying to find what portion of the game you are looking to for how its sided. Because if we take the absolute best record on both sides, the killer blows away survivors. If we take the game as a whole, the answer seems to be that survivors are bad and shouldn't be counted.
I'm just trying to find out where the range is you think we should be looking to gauge the game off of.
I presume that this game has no definitive win, loss or draw condition and it's a wide spectrum that people randomly point finger at to determine what is a win con to them.
Generally agree that win is not clearly defined, though I think that is different than not being defined at all, but this argument is totally different than everything else you say. You're saying here that the question is moot. Do you believe the game is killer sided, survivor sided, neither, or the question has no possible answer? Because if its what you're saying here, I'm not sure why you are even typing all of the other paragraphs.
You are since you dismiss the examples of the skill ceiling and base your argumentation on the cases where survivors dont have knowledge they should have, dont avoid things they should always be able to avoid due to one-sided nature of prevention of these things, dont play with a correct mindset and so on.
The topic of the thread is 'the game'.
On the issue of knowledge they should have: I can say the exact same about your examples. If you hook a survivor who you or have reason to believe unhooked someone, and no one seems to be coming for the rescue, and you continue to camp, and then they use deliverance, yeah you should have known that.
You're just putting a lower burden on the killer players for when they do make a mistake or get outplayed.
Which side depends on the other side's mistakes more than they rely on their own skilled plays? Killers do.
I agree, but that sounds like evidence that the game is killer sided. It actually seems to agree with what I said about the skill expression on both sides, killers have to match what the survivors do, survivors have to outplay.
The side that has more agency than the other is the one that receives bigger punishment for the mistake, that's how it usually goes.
I agree, but this seems to go against what you said earlier:
You also equal having knowledge of your surrounding with not requiring skill which isnt really true as killer's skill is in applying that information correctly which has much higher punishment to it if it's not done right.
-
These are bad examples because the required play and consequences of the decisions are incomparable. One is an example of an extreme play with high risk and the other is an example of a mundane game sense decision that people are allowed to fail reasonable amount of time on both sides.
All examples are going to be bad because the game is asymmetrical and never going to line up perfectly. if we want to just throw out possible extreme examples we could talk about survivors trying to guess whether a Myers has tombstone or not. This is more equivalent to the camping on a deliverance player. You could make the safer play and give up some ground presuming he does (like a survivor jumping in a locker and losing chase time), or make a higher risk wager and camp on it hoping he doesn't (like a survivor taking a longer chase).
8 -
My argument is that comp is radically different from a non-comp game, here are all the ways:
-Survivors know the killer they are facing
-Teams can ban killers they don't want to face
-Both sides know the map
-Always 4 person SWF which at the upper levels have things like try outs to make it.
-Perk and addon bans on both sides
-Perks limited to a single instance on the survivor (obviously) side
-Playing for hooks and gens
-The games are, usually, played sequentially. That means the first killer generally takes safer strategies. Hooking and camping out the first survivor means getting at least five to seven hooks is close to guaranteed. The second game killer strategies will vary wildly based on what they are trying to accomplish. If the survivors need to only do a few gens, camping and tunneling go out the window because the killer needs to spread a ton of pressure.
-More recently, AFC ignored
Great, you acknowledge the difference, but you don't acknowledge WHY some of these differences are a thing which is what I'm talking about.
Why are some perks and addons banned? Why are same perks banned? Why is AFC (the most prominent example of them literally patching out a strategy) ignored?
That's what Im talking about. The reason why survivors are not allowed to use pretty much all meta or mildly meta perks or resort to using a system specifically created to patch certain playstyles in competitive is because if survivors were allowed to play with all that, pretty much all killers would be unable to even get close to winning the game due to how many resources and second chances survivors would be allowed to use.
You're also insisting on survivors knowing the killer / being in 4 man being a major factor in dismissing the example yet it's the factor that determines this example being valid in the first place as, as I said multiple times, that removes a huge element of skill issue in the contest, ensuring that there's no such situation where survivors simply deal with the killer they have no idea how to properly play against.
The WHOLE balance talk must be based on the assumption that skill difference & lack of it is not in the picture. Comp dbd does that the best it possibly could be.
The differences between asian/western comp scenes are also irrelevant to my point because both scenes feature the aforementioned qualities determining their validity as an evidence to my thesis.
Dealing with RNG is a skill
.Being able to adapt to situations on the fly is a key component of the game. Its also not unique to this game by any means, lots of games (both video and other) have high variability between plays and expect that players who win over time will be the ones who can best adapt to the situation they were given.
The only reason comp needs to reduce these elements is because they play a small number of games. If comp played seasons (which would not be practical for different reasons), you could allow a lot more random elements into the game and they would balance out over time. This is another reason comp is not similar to normal gameplay.
Not with the kind of RNG you're talking about. Comp sets essentially one of the worst RNG scenario for survivors in terms of map / killer balance, since survivors are not only not allowed to use universally strong meta perks unless it's the best killers in question, but they're also forced to play on the best or one of the best maps for the killer.
Both sides still have to adapt to RNG - tile spawn RNG which is a huge variable on most maps played and which can affect the outcomes to a degree, even though that would be irrelevant should player imposed limitations on survivors be lifted.
If anyone that's allowed to not have to adapt to RNG, it's the killer. Everything in comp dbd makes KILLER'S life easier and yet people still struggle on that level simply because how powerful still survivors are. Killer is given almost best case scenario map for them. For instance Singularity plays almost exclusively wreckers yard / DDS - arguably the best & strongest maps. Ghostface always plays on lery. Dredge gets midwich. I can't recall a single killer that's forced to play on their BAD map. Best case scenario for your point - killers are not given THE BEST map possible (haddonfield) and instead play on more balanced azarov/mac. Yet that still leaves 40+ maps that are going to be a detriment to the killer should they get selected.
You say survivors have to adapt to RNG in pubs and not in comp, yet if we were to add that RNG back, it would always favour survivors. They would have access to best perks possible from the start, they would have incredibly high chance to get a map that doesn't favour the killer as much as it could be.
So, again, competitive DbD doesn't remove any RNG that would be making a difference that disproves my thesis. It puts survivors into worst possible scenario where they have nothing to rely on but their own skill, while untying killer hands completely. Comp dbd is definitely a different game because it lacks all the second chances and emergency mechanics that exist to carry bad teams and ensure great teams are unwinnable unless they run into kill cheese.
If you want to say that you didn't mean most that's fine. That was just an inquiry on my part.
But being we're on the subject, I'm trying to find what portion of the game you are looking to for how its sided. Because if we take the absolute best record on both sides, the killer blows away survivors. If we take the game as a whole, the answer seems to be that survivors are bad and shouldn't be counted.
I'm just trying to find out where the range is you think we should be looking to gauge the game off of.
None streaks are evidence of the game being either sided due to the conditions players set and how the game itself determines win conditions and what tools it provides players to achieve it. Survivor streaks in particular are a pain because killers have access to some options to cheese kills with no effort, yet these options do not indicate the overall state of the killer side or of the normal gameplay.
Generally agree that win is not clearly defined, though I think that is different than not being defined at all, but this argument is totally different than everything else you say. You're saying here that the question is moot. Do you believe the game is killer sided, survivor sided, neither, or the question has no possible answer? Because if its what you're saying here, I'm not sure why you are even typing all of the other paragraphs.
MMR system defines win for killer as getting 3 kills, while the win for the survivor (a single one) would be an escape through exit gates. That, as far as my understanding goes, implies that players from both sides can win in the exact same match. Which is why I personally dismiss 3k+exit gate streaks as complete wins due to survivors being successful in completing their objectives in regards of using survivor streaks as evidence. Hatch, obviously, does not count due to it being evident as a cheap escape mechanic that ignores the main objective.
If we go off by that definition of win con which is what I personally believe to be the only correct way of defining it: do not allow any survivors to complete their objective of escaping through the exit gates after completing five generators; then the game is survivor sided due to the fact it's less likely for the killer playing normal way (AKA not resorting to cheesy strategies like tombstone myers, rancor roulette) to accomplish that goal in more or less equal skill conditions & performing with a reasonable degree of mistakes on both sides.
We can count hatch as either draw or loss for the survivors, depending on what criteria from MMR system we use (it's defined as a draw, yet results in MMR loss) but either way it's not related to survivors' success in completing the objective and only works as a motivation to keep playing, therefore can be dismissed in this context.
So the range we should be looking at is the normal intended gameplay where both sides' goals is to complete their objective and / or prevent the other side from doing that which results into both sides being unable to win at the same time under any circumstances. None of the survivors win if none of them escape through exit gates, killer does not win if any of the survivors escape through exit gates.
In that case, killers past certain point are unable to properly compete or stand a fighting chance because survivors simply possess too much agency and resources to consistently beat the killer. That by it self is fine, however the problem arises with how it's achieved or compensated for the killers. Survivors are given resources that allow to recover from the mistakes the killer is supposed to capitalize on. Even though punishing those mistakes is recognised as unhealthy and undesired gameplay, killers are unable to match survivor gen speeds without resorting to such strategies unless severely outmatching them which is simply not possible at a pretty realistic point.
On the issue of knowledge they should have: I can say the exact same about your examples. If you hook a survivor who you or have reason to believe unhooked someone, and no one seems to be coming for the rescue, and you continue to camp, and then they use deliverance, yeah you should have known that.
Nah, you don't get it. The thing with deli is that you have ALREADY lost by the time the trade happens. If survivor dives and trades, it doesn't matter what you do if they have deli. You either pursue the unhooked survivor (risking DS/OTR/BS) to get them to 2nd or you hook deli and leave / stay with them, it doesnt matter because at this point your otherwise correct play of defending hook in a 3 gen was completely negated by the perk simply existing. The only conceivable way this is preventable is if you play one of those problematic killers that can down the deli trader before they reach the hook.
And it's pretty much like that for a lot of plays you've mentioned. It's not a mistake, it's a valid play for survivors.
All examples are going to be bad because the game is asymmetrical and never going to line up perfectly. if we want to just throw out possible extreme examples we could talk about survivors trying to guess whether a Myers has tombstone or not. This is more equivalent to the camping on a deliverance player. You could make the safer play and give up some ground presuming he does (like a survivor jumping in a locker and losing chase time), or make a higher risk wager and camp on it hoping he doesn't (like a survivor taking a longer chase).
We cant get exact examples but we can see when the difference between them is too drastic to ignore. You are comparing an extreme risk and extreme reward play/decision that is completely counterable by the other side if they play meta with something that poses no extremes due to its mostly uncounterable nature and therefore not resulting into a grand shift in match dynamic.
2 -
Great, you acknowledge the difference, but you don't acknowledge WHY some of these differences are a thing which is what I'm talking about.
This is a funny sentence because literally from the beginning I've been arguing they are substantially different. That was the origin of why I responded to you.
The reason why survivors are not allowed to use pretty much all meta or mildly meta perks or resort to using a system specifically created to patch certain playstyles in competitive is because if survivors were allowed to play with all that, pretty much all killers would be unable to even get close to winning the game due to how many resources and second chances survivors would be allowed to use.
You're just ignoring though all the bans that killers have. Looking at the DbD league ruleset from the Spring Invitational, the bans on the killer perks seem just as powerful as the ones on survivor.
The WHOLE balance talk must be based on the assumption that skill difference & lack of it is not in the picture. Comp dbd does that the best it possibly could be.
I'll go back to my poker example. If you take a game that has a huge level of randomness and you pull that randomness out, you don't prove anything about the game, because you've made a different game.
We're not talking skill levels, we're talking multiple core elements of the game.
Everything in comp dbd makes KILLER'S life easier and yet people still struggle on that level simply because how powerful still survivors are.
What do you base these statements on? You just make these claims without any evidence.
Let's take your assertion of struggle and look to the Spring Invitational, which I think is the last major Western tournament to be held. There were 12 games between Elysium and X9. The end game results: 4 4ks, 1 3k, 2 2ks, 2 1k, and 2 0k. That doesn't seem like the killers were struggling.
And not related to anything, but I just realized they basically hit BHVR's 60% kill rate perfectly.
You say survivors have to adapt to RNG in pubs and not in comp, yet if we were to add that RNG back, it would always favour survivors. They would have access to best perks possible from the start, they would have incredibly high chance to get a map that doesn't favour the killer as much as it could be.
Earlier you said everything makes Killer's life easier in comp. The thing is, I'm willing to point out things in comp that favor the killer, like always having maps that generally benefit them (some of the S tier killers don't play on their best map), but you're ignoring the things that favor the survivor, like knowing exactly who the killer is or that knowing the map also allows them to make plans on how to counterplay the killer.
then the game is survivor sided due to the fact it's less likely for the killer playing normal way (AKA not resorting to cheesy strategies like tombstone myers, rancor roulette)
So to show the game is not survivor sided, we have to eliminate entire elements of the game that killers have access to.
Also are there any 'not normal' things we should be throwing out on the survivor side?
We can count hatch as either draw or loss for the survivors, depending on what criteria from MMR system we use (it's defined as a draw, yet results in MMR loss)
Unless something has changed, hatch is MMR neutral.
None of the survivors win if none of them escape through exit gates, killer does not win if any of the survivors escape through exit gates.
I mean if that's your definition, the game is very killer sided. If we throw out everything in the middle, 4ks way outnumber 4es.
In that case, killers past certain point are unable to properly compete or stand a fighting chance because survivors simply possess too much agency and resources to consistently beat the killer.
Based on what? BHVR's stats don't make it look like that, Nightlight doesn't, win streaks don't. There are multiple sources of data which show the game to be killer sided, I'm asking what supports the idea that that is not true?
Survivors are given resources that allow to recover from the mistakes the killer is supposed to capitalize on.
I've asked this before, what specifically do you mean? I can think of some possibilities, but I don't want to guess.
it doesnt matter because at this point your otherwise correct play of defending hook in a 3 gen was completely negated by the perk simply existing.
Then it wasn't the correct play. Though if you're defending a hook in a 3 gen, you've still maintained the 3 gen, so the idea that the game is completely lost seems an exaggeration.
Then we have examples on the killer side: NOED, Devour Hope, etc. where the correct play changes based off trying to guess what perks the killer is running.
And it's pretty much like that for a lot of plays you've mentioned. It's not a mistake, it's a valid play for survivors.
Of course its a valid play for survivors. That's the game, trying to make guesses about what the other side is doing. Sometimes you don't, regardless of the role you are playing.
9 -
Right now, the game favors the killer in terms of outcome. If that is the only metric you use, then of course you'll come to the conclusion that the game is killer sided. This still doesn't discredit my point though. Survivors cried that the game was killer sided when it clearly wasn't and now killers cry that the game is survivor sided. Neither side ever has stopped or will stop. That is a clear case of "The grass is always greener on the other side." and it's the sole reason why the complaints about unbalance will never stop.
If you win 9/10 of your killer games, that's pretty impressive. My own win rate is not too bad but nowhere near 90%. Either you're just very gifted or you play killer too little for the game to put you against adequate survivors. MMR is a very important factor in who wins. You could go into the game and lose a bunch of matches on purpose and then start a win streak. But you could do that in pretty match any game with SBMM no matter how balanced the game might be.
4/10 wins as a survivor isn't too bad either. The game is not balanced around a win rate but a kill rate. If you win 9/10 games, you could still have a 67.5% kill rate, which is higher than what the devs aim at but it's nowhere near that 90%. And if you win 4/10 games as a survivor that could still mean that in your games there is a 55% suvival rate. And that's assuming there are no draws. Judging the game's balance by how many games you win doesn't really work that well because win does not equal win. Your team still wins if you die but everyone else escapes and 3k < 4k. That's probably why the devs don't try to balance around win rates.
Wins are just too inconsistent and subjective. Some killers only consider a 4k a win and some survivors only consider 3-4 escapes a win if they themself make it out alive.
Hypothetically even if i did play perfectly against a doctor in a neutral map, the doctor could obtain a 1k from internal game mechanics, and secure a 2k from camping endgame, im not discussing tunneling and camping but its so much easier to kill than escape.
That is an unfortunate truth and it will remain the same way as long as the game is balanced around kills rather than hooks. It's simply a core issue. Someone can (in theory) die on their first hook and there is very little that can be done against it as long as the killer has an ability or perk that helps them defend that hook. The same issue comes in when the killer actually does tunnel. This is what comp killers use to win their games. They target the game's core issues just as the survivors they play against do.
In public lobbies however, it is much easier for the killer to do so simply because it doesn't require 4 experienced players on comms but only 1. I doubt this is something that will ever change though. BHVR probably aren't all that interested to change the very core mechanics of the game and a band aid solution à la AFC probably won't work.
The only other way to achieve a more constant balance is to make tunneling, camping and slugging the norm and balance around that. I'm very much against this and I believe most other players are too.
2 -
The truth is, there is never going to be a real Balance to the game. And this is primarily because it’s two different games trying to be balanced as one.
In one version of the game, you have a team of one versus a coordinated team of four. In this version of the game, the killer needs to be buffed to be on par with a 1v4 scenario.
In the other version of the game you have 1v1v1v1v1. In this version there is no coordination, or at the very least, it’s expected to be rare for that to happen. So a buffed killer who was buffed for version one of the game will be too powerful here.
That’s really what it comes down to. A game with communication and a game without communication are two very different games. Creating and balancing a third party (killer) between two very different games is never going to work. The killer is always going to end up too strong for one side and two weak for the other.
It’s like night and day.
Like having a football team with the playbook, coaches, and a planned out strategy.
And then you have a team of people who are just handed jerseys randomly and told to go win.
It’s quite obvious which team is going to perform better.
1 -
You're just ignoring though all the bans that killers have
Looking at the DbD league ruleset from the Spring Invitational, the bans on the killer perks seem just as powerful as the ones on survivor.
We can address and compare those bans. I assure you most of them have way different nature than survivor bans.
Killer bans are aimed at crutch perks or cheesy perks. A lot of aura reading, perks like PWYF that outright allow to remove skill from chases by rushing down ppl with 15% haste. And of course, aforementioned kill cheese mechanics that dont necessarily allow to get good results, but almost guarantee you'll get a kill or two. Grim/DMS/Deadlock and with no AFC system you'll get the most exciting and skillful gameplay of killer facecamping survivor for free with no counterplay to it.
I dont think this should count as an argument towards the game being killer sided. Again, as I've previously established, we aim to ignore bypassing normal gameplay & objective through cheesing game mechanics on killer's end. Nobody plays like that, nobody enjoys playing like that and nobody should play like that to have to win.
I'll go back to my poker example. If you take a game that has a huge level of randomness and you pull that randomness out, you don't prove anything about the game, because you've made a different game.
We're not talking skill levels, we're talking multiple core elements of the game.
DbD isnt poker and poker isnt DbD.
None of the RNG factors we are considering are the major contributors to the balance due to them not tilting the scales to the other side in any meaningful away apart from the aforementioned cheesing kills example.
And, as I've said, if you think that killers should have to play like that to always stand a chance at winning, you're very wrong.
You say that comp makes it so survivors know what the killer is or that they can choose which one to face. So survivors in pubs dont know / cant ban the killer? Are you trying to argue that the fact that survivor can be ignorant to how to deal with a certain killer makes the game killer sided? Is that your argument here?
What do you base these statements on? You just make these claims without any evidence.
Let's take your assertion of struggle and look to the Spring Invitational, which I think is the last major Western tournament to be held. There were 12 games between Elysium and X9. The end game results: 4 4ks, 1 3k, 2 2ks, 2 1k, and 2 0k. That doesn't seem like the killers were struggling.
And not related to anything, but I just realized they basically hit BHVR's 60% kill rate perfectly.
So, killers had 10 games and lost 5 of them by our definitions and you argue killers aren't struggling? Are you sure you have provided the data you wanted to? Or maybe you wanted to say 4k4 as in 4 gens 4 kills instead of 4 games where killer got 4 kills. Though even if I look at provided data like that I still have 3 games out of 5 being 2 kills or less which is even worse. Top tier killers, literally the best known players in the world, facing best known survivors and still not managing to achieve our established win con in half of the matches.
Earlier you said everything makes Killer's life easier in comp. The thing is, I'm willing to point out things in comp that favor the killer, like always having maps that generally benefit them (some of the S tier killers don't play on their best map), but you're ignoring the things that favor the survivor, like knowing exactly who the killer is or that knowing the map also allows them to make plans on how to counterplay the killer.
Because these things don't make much difference unlike being restricted from using resources and options the game provides. As I've said earlier, survivors DONT HAVE to adapt to any killer they face if they can take 4x4 second chance perks with 4 top tier items. That is the thing you keep failing to understand.
Survivors are allowed to know the killer beforehand alongside map because the game is being individually balanced for each killer. If that was not the case, survivors would be running UNIVERSAL VERSATILE meta that works well enough against ANY killer. Look at the stuff Eternal ran in their streaks.
The only thing survivors truly cannot prepare for is killer deciding to cheese kills on them by taking stuff like tombstone. Then yeah, truly, they might get caught so off guard, they might not win. Though it still would merely depend on what they'd define as winning because Eternal got 2 outs vs that myers and counted that as a draw. That was definitely the kind of games we should be lookin at in the context of such discussions.
So to show the game is not survivor sided, we have to eliminate entire elements of the game that killers have access to.
Also are there any 'not normal' things we should be throwing out on the survivor side?
A very disingenuous way of rewording what I said.
Again, DbD played normally, where both sides play the game and try to complete objective without cheesing it, is survivor sided. That DbD where you chase people and use your braincells is not worth considering because any skill is thrown out of the window. People are exploiting cheesy mechanics to get cheap participation awards shouldnt be considered in balance / design discussion other than examples of things that are wrong with the game.
I mean if that's your definition, the game is very killer sided. If we throw out everything in the middle, 4ks way outnumber 4es.
So you're comparing the extremes without considering the data in the middle that is just as important because that suits your narrative. Who said that only complete wins/losses matter? Who defined that? You? That's a big hypocrisy here.
Based on what? BHVR's stats don't make it look like that, Nightlight doesn't, win streaks don't. There are multiple sources of data which show the game to be killer sided, I'm asking what supports the idea that that is not true?
So let me get this straight. In a game where it's super easy for the whole team to throw, where survivors are so lost they dont know even basic counterplay to half of the killers they encounter given they're more rare than not, where they have no comms, cant be bothered to run proper meta half of the time, get bad rng half of the time, etc,etc killers only score 57% average killrate (according to nightlight) and you actually think the game is killer sided?
In that particular stat, killers LOSE ALL GENS in 48% of the matches.
ALMOST HALF OF THE GAMES. RESULT IN GENS BEING DONE AND 2 OUTS. 2% LESS THAN HALF. OF. THE. GAMES.
and im being ULTRA generous here because not all 3ks (18.69%) & 4ks (32.93%) are done before gens are completed. It's not uncommon for the killer to get 2k by the time last gen pops or just get a lucky snowball in the endgame.
you cant unironically say the game is not survivor sided with these stats given. all that while devs claim to balance for 60% killrate (which still would mean the game being survivor sided at any high level, but nonetheless).
sure you can change your shoes and claim nightlight isn't a reliable source, but then please provide a better one. oh wait, official stats are no better and provide functionally the same info. even full solo qs, poor lost children in the dark forest still have generous chances to complete all gens and escape.
also, streaks don't count, im tired of having to repeat the reasoning to you. You failed to prove my logic being incorrect, you just said nuh-uh and moved on.
I've asked this before, what specifically do you mean? I can think of some possibilities, but I don't want to guess.
So deep into the conversation and you don't know the answer? Deli, unbreakable, decisive, babysitter, camaradiery, otr, meta reset perks, sub meta reset perks, exhaustion perks for lower tiers (oh yeah, they do count, especially when we're talking about killer like ghostface), the list goes and on and on and varies slightly depending on the ruleset and particular killer.
Honestly, I dont think I want to continue this conversation. I'm getting a progressively growing impression you are arguing for the sake of arguing since you misinterpret what I'm saying, ignore previously established or agreed upon points and generally make it move in circles and that's very tiring. Was fun while it lasted, I dont consider it worth the effort anymore.
Feel free to think what you want to think, I said enough of what needed to be said on that subject. If that's not enough to convince you and it clearly isnt, then nothing will, so good luck with dropping arbitrary "you dont have anything more to say" petty last word and have a good day.
5 -
If you're saying people should not BM and it's a terrible thing to gloat at the exit gates I 100% agree. It's childish. It shouldn't happen. I have stated multiple times that BHVR should, in my opinion, issue a statement regarding good sportsmanship and how to follow good sportsmanship and teabagging, while it is viewed by many as harmless, does not change the fact that many people view it as the digital equivalent of a middle finger and that should be respected. I think a significant chunk of the us vs them discourse would disappear (not a majority but a significant chunk) if survivors stopped teabagging as a taunt.
The thing is, people are going to BM if they can because sportstmanship is kinda dead when it comes to multiplayer games. No amount of reminders and guidelines will suffice (Behavior has enough problems with their Fog Whisperers). The only working way to reduce BM is to incorporate it gameplay-wise by either limiting player's options to do so or to provide a way not to interact with sore winners. IMHO, removing endgame chat entirely and reducing the ECG timer would help. After all, The Journey is considered one of the most wholesome games about friendship and helping each other — but only because the developers have removed every option for players to BM and grief their partner during beta testing (when they realized that people spent more time pushing their partner down the cliff or bodyblocking them rather than working together). I think, DbD would have benefitted immensely from limited interactions.
Teabagging and wasting time at the Killer's exit gate grates on me. Unfortunately, a lot of people do it and now we also have humping on the Killer side which I also find annoying and grating. However, the people doing it are specifically trying to annoy you so I just ignore them now if I see it on the Killer side. If I see a survivor doing it while playing Survivor games and the Killer did not camp or tunnel I make sure to tell the Killer gg, gl next match or something similar.
As I don't camp or tunnel when I play I don't experience that much BM to be honest if I win or if I lose. It does happen still but not frequently. I see it a lot more in games where the Killer is tunnelling and camping. The survivors do stick around at the gates so I come over and take a few hits for BP if I'm down anyway but really I just do it to save time (another option is breaking walls). I also almost never get hateful messages in chat. I'm not saying any of these behaviours (gloating and messages in chat) is justified (it's not) but people that have had a miserable experience are more likely to vent their frustration and, unfortunately, that happens more frequently online than it would in real life.
Well, people sometimes have a very wide definition of camping and tunneling. If they start swarming the hook even before the Killer leaves the area, is Killer a camper for smacking them and capitalizing on the fact that survivors refuse to leave the hook zone? If the Killer is inexperienced and/or keeps finding one and the same Survivor while steadily losing gens, is it tunneling when they are just trying to score a kill? I'm not even mentioning the Killer protecting their only Kill during the endgame collapse — they don't have other options, but they're still called a camper and BMed. So, it's very easy for survivors to rationalize that the Killer was tunneling or camping (I was called a camper for phase-walking from the hooked Survivor as Spirit, because they could see Rin's husk standing next to them) — and therefore, it's easy for them to rationalize that this Killer deserves to be bullied. Not to mention that even playing by survivor's rulebook ends with "haha ez" or "you're so bad, how did you even manage to prestige" — we have also had cases of people going as far as finding the player who lost to them on Steam and social media and harassing them there. People BM because they can — it's a cheap ego boost and they will pretend that it's their sacred duty and God given right to ruin other's people mood. Some of them would even excuse their BM as tough love and "motivating" the players to improve until they are worthy of respect.
If you lose a game, though, it might help to keep in mind that it doesn't reflect on you one way or another in real life. You lost a video game; it's not a personal attack nor anything that you'll care about or remember in the future. Losing a video game is trivial. It is annoying and grating to deal with sore winners and your frustration at that is completely justified; sore winners suck. and they should show sportsmanship instead. But it's not a reflection on you in the slightest.
It doesn't, but the problem is that in the game people are given tools and means to make loss humiliating and punish the player for losing by wasting their time and rubbing their helplessness in. The latter is particularly frustrating for beginner players, who don't yet have the sense of the game, but already see that the community is cruel and unforgiving to new players — so they either drop out or become hellbent on not being on the receiving end (this is one of the reasons why V/H/S didn't make it: there were too many ways to harass the Monster, so the only remaining players were absolutely merciless and played like their lives depended on it). They also learn that the only way for the player to be in control and avoid this, is to win.
This is what I mean — despite the fact that a loss in a video game, where skills don't matter (and which should have never even leaned into "competitive gaming") shouldn't be a big deal, this is not reflected in the gameplay. Sore winners can't be taught good sportsmanship, so the only way to reduce their impact is to limit their options and provide their opponent with something else they could spend time on and actually gain value.
3 -
Correction: You dont just see Nurse and Blight all the time since most tourneys (at least DbDLeague) uses preset killers. (I think at one point it was a sort of pick and ban system, but I havent been keeping tabs as of late) Meaning specific rounds were dedicated to specific killers. So you would see Clown, Wraith, Doc, Legion, etc. The higher tier killers were usually reserved for later in the tournament.
EDIT: Here's the DbDLeague channel which shows comp matches, youll see just by the thumbnails a variety of different killers are played
4 -
In a very general sense yes, because survivor skill expression scales exponentionally when you factor in coordination.
Survivors have the capacity to improve much more as a group than killer as a single player can.
4 -
What upsets me the most is the selective acknowledgment of stats and evidence. We all have biases, and that’s okay as long as we're respectful and open to hearing the other side. But it’s hard to ignore a bias if the opposing stance consistently picks and chooses which data to accept. For example, rejecting stats showing how often SWFs win but will gladly accept stats showing frequent perk usage if it aligns with certain views. Dismissing claims of frequent tunneling or slugging as exaggerated without proof but then argue their matches are all Top MMR and filled with 4-man SWFs, also without proof. This selective acceptance makes it hard to have a balanced discussion because it feels like evidence is being cherry-picked to fit a narrative, which undermines a fair analysis of the game.
9 -
It's not really either role sided but underlining issues on both sides. It seems like the easiest way to fix things is by nerfing perks but it doesn't help people get good at the game. People have no idea how good or bad they are because those stats are kept hidden. The focus is more doing whatever helps you have fun than developing skills.
0 -
survivior bias yet
low mmr favors the killer
medium mmr favors the killer
high mmr favors the killer
and swfs (which are suppose to be the outlier which justifies all these “nerfs” also has less than a 50% escape rate)
you can call it survivior bias when you play 5 games as a killer and 5 games as survivior and see which one you consistently win on
7 -
I think it is called Apex Fallacy. The general assumption is taken from the highest subset group, instead of the mean/median/mode, or any other normal metric. Anyone claiming that it is such a free win for Survivor, should just show 10 games back to back as Survivor getting a 3/4 out with randoms. They would quickly backtrack their claim and recognize that they are falling under this Apex Fallacy, or lie to your face and make up excuses.
When 4-SWFs in High-MMR can't even break the 50% barrier, the game clearly isn't remotely close to Survivor sided (especially when ~50-60% of matches are soloq, and that is less than 40% escape rate).
14 -
Exactly. The data might be imperfect, but it's all we have. It's like the movie Idiocracy where everyone in the future was giving the plants Brawndo because it's what plants crave, and even though the crops wouldn't grow, they still kept using Brawndo, because it's got what plants crave. The game is survivor sided, but neither solo or SWF escapes higher than 50% in the aggregate at any MMR bracket. But the game is survivor sided.
The argument usually shifts to some permutation of "Well, if the survivors make no mistakes against an M1 killer…". What are we even talking about at that point? 3 pointers are broken in basketball if one team makes every single 3 pointer and the other team only shoots 2s.
10 -
Aren't we forgetting that BHVR's target is 60% killrate? These numbers pretty much go in line with that.
5 -
i mean, it literally is survivor sided, just not in a way average pub killer presents it.
Why not in a way average pub killer presents it? Because it isn't really about some imaginary "genrushing", but something completely else.
And the whole MMR system basically manages to shove the true state of the game under the carpet, but the issue is so severe that MMR system is also at the point of no return because you would need to have serious rebalancing of the game in order to make it playable at high skill levels, especially for the killer.
Actually, the grass is greener on the other side.
Most killer games (9/10) i always win, regardless of the fact if im using my main or just a random killer, i usually always win, contrast this with the fact i win 4/10 of my survivor matches despite running the most meta and youll see the difference
And yes everything is rng based and i dont have a problem with that, inherently playing survivior should be a challenge and there should be some games that are pitted against surviviors, like a doctor on the game like you said. But the problem is the fact how every game seems like your destined to lose. Hypothetically even if i did play perfectly against a doctor in a neutral map, the doctor could obtain a 1k from internal game mechanics, and secure a 2k from camping endgame, im not discussing tunneling and camping but its so much easier to kill than escape.
have you analyzed your matches and actually noticed how survivors play? I am barely having any problems winning, but i clearly notice my average opponent teams:
- at least one player giving up extremely fast into the match or griefing their team by doing absolutely nothing during match;
- players having close to zero chase knowledge getting two-tapped;
- SWFs focusing on saves and never touching gens;
etc.
The major problem is skill issue, and due to the fact MMR system won't be tightened up anytime soon, people will still have biased views of the game, such as:
- this game is so survivor sided because genrushing;
- this game is so survivor sided because flashlights;
- this game is so killer sided because tunneling and camping;
- this game is so killer sided because i 4k very often
etc. etc. etc.
3