Why do killers think this game is survivior sided?

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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

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).

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.

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.

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'.

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.

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.

>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.

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 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.

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.

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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).

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.

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).

Aren't we forgetting that BHVR's target is 60% killrate? These numbers pretty much go in line with that.