Could anyone explain how game is survivor sided?

It’s only survivor sided if the survivors are good and know what they’re doing. The vast majority of the player base is casual and therefore not good enough to win often.

Matthew Cote said it best almost a decade ago.

“At the lower levels the game is killer sided and at the higher levels it’s survivor sided.”

All you have to do is look at comp to see that. If the killer isn’t Nurse or Blight they will often be destroyed completely and survivors have an insane amount of restrictions to make it more fair for the killer.

Hasn’t changed since then. It all depends on who is playing lol.

It really isn't.

It hasn't been for a really long time.

I feel it's a bit disingenuous to generalize and say the game is "killer sided" when there are 37 (or 38, i lost count) killer with varying mechanics, power levels and skill / effort requirements. You wouldn't say the game is killer sided for someone like Doctor or Demogorgon, will you? And what about Clown, Hag?

I also wouldnt operate with the statistics you've given as undeniable proof of the game being either sided. This game lacks any proper matchmaking or incentive for either side to express equal motivation to play and win in all of their matches and most of the time skill/motivation are much more impactful factors than disbalance. Look at Nurse's killrates. If we looked at that alone, I'd say she's a D tier killer in desperate need of giga buffs and games are survivor sided against

Skill / effort disparity is way more evident on the killer side where you have much more full picture of the match due to higher engagement.

It's also not very objective to talk about lack of survivor winstreaks without giving context to them. Ive seen a bunch of KL's winstreaking attempts and they all boiled down to stomping 99% of the lobbies and then getting a draw / loss when they couldn't meet their unrealistic win con against a streamsniper playing stuff like Tombstone myers. They are also often challenging themselves by self imposed restrictions. They arent running same perks, high tier items or map offerings.

Win con is another thing. The game doesnt really show you that your teammate's escapes matter (as they dont for anything other than mmr where it merely lowers your mmr gains for dying teammates) and it doesnt care much whether or not you escaped through hatch or gates. The game is very frivolous with the idea of what a true wincon is for survivors. Survivor streaks often go for unrealistic win condition that isn't supported by the base game. As far as it really goes, out of 5 people and 2 sides in the match, 3 people can lose and 2 people on the opposite sides can win.

This game isn't symmetric and win conditions are not determined symmetrically. If we start doing that and treating both teams as equal, then it boils down to the variety of options they have, which takes us back to the wide array of differently balanced killers and various options survivors have.

Another issue is the fact this game is not designed for competitive play. Matchmaking, as previously mentioned, is not accommodated for competitive play and the balance of each individual match is extremely volatile in favour of whichever side brings more ######### / gets more lucky.

Even killer biased content creators like Otz don't say it's survivor sided anymore and will freely acknowledge that the game is at least moderately killer sided in 99% of matches. I assume it's just an ego thing for a lot of people. No one wants to freely admit that they play the "easy" role. What I do know is that my escape rate on survivor (53%) is significantly lower than my win rate on killer.

I was watching a team led by OhTofu trying to break the escape streak record and they got destroyed at 30 games by a LEGION. In another streak the best team in the world lost a streak to a trickster. If survivor is so EZ then why can no one manage to get a huge streak like killers are able to do? Why do they keep losing to "weak" killers that i've been told are not viable against good players? Are they all just bad at the game? If a bunch of 10k hour survivors can't do it then who can? Where are all of these unbeatable SWFs that people love to talk about? You'd think SWFs were escaping thousands of games in a row with the way some people talk about them. Knightlight said it best on twitter. You should never struggle to win against pubs unless you are on a bottom five killer like Freddy or Trapper. Pub matches are absolutely killer sided and there is no valid argument that says otherwise. I don't know why people even use comp as an argument when it's an entirely different game that only exists in private matches.

Pub DbD is decidedly killer-sided, and apart from the stats that prove this there's the fact that any non-4-SWF group is an essentially guaranteed win for a good killer player, and 4-SWFs make for around 5% of the public playerbase. Of those 5%, an even tinier portion are good, coordinated 4-SWFs on voice comms using good builds and trying hard to win, which are the only groups that can really challenge a good killer that is doing the same. This leads to killer winstreaks in the thousands, while survivor winstreaks even of the best teams in the world have recently struggled to hit even just 50, with the records being around 200-300. MomoSeventh (the guy with the almost-2000-match Blight winstreak) is doing survivor winstreaks with some of the best NA players currently, and they have lost one just earlier at like 6 matches in, for the 4th or so time. Against a Blight that was not tunnelling, camping, slugging or even using slowdown perks. There's just no argument, it's not even close.

But more perplexingly, people pretending that the game is survivor-sided also always lie about comp DbD. It can be used to make an argument about what happens when the best players face off consistently (with the caveat as you rightly point out that that isn't really relevant to actual DbD at all, where the matchmaking (and the fact that the best survivor teams almost never play pubs) makes sure such matches essentially never happen). But if you actually look at comp DbD, killers outperform survivors consistently, most of always have. And this holds true even in tournaments where there are no restrictions whatsoever (restrictions mind you that always go for both roles: the comp scene is aware that killers too have imbalanced things). Here's a very recent instance of a no-restrictions tournament (some games can still be found on their YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DeadbyDaylightFrance):

In the 30 matches available on YT, the average kills came out to 2.3, with an average of 8.5 hook stages per match. What has to additionally be noted here is that the scoring system doesn't even only look at kills, but fresh hooks and stages and gens too, meaning that killers do not even always play merely for kills as hard as they could, regularly even playing to a specific win condition that doesn't require a 4k, then playing it safe for the 0/1/2/3k Xstages result that they need, or yet a wincon that requires a 4k at multiple gens left, therefore needing to adopt riskier strategies that can result in them losing when they could have much more reliably won were they free to employ other strategies, such as 3-genning to 4k at 1 gen left, or tunnelling someone out because you can regularly win in the 3v1 even if it took 4 gens to get that first survivor out… And despite that, they still come out killing more survivors than escape.

Sure you can say Nurse, Blight and Billy do the heavy lifting as far as winrates in this environment, but not only do you have to actually acknowledge that those killers are overpowered (they almost always win even against the best teams on voice comms), but it's not like the other killers here stood no chance, far from: even in the final match between Eternal and Elysium (#1 and #2 teams currently), we have 3 kills on Spirit, and 2 kills on Oni and Twins, with 8 and 9 stages respectively. We can also see 4ks on Chucky, Singularity, Twins, Plague, a 3k on Xenomorph, and various 2ks with 8+ stages, such as on Huntress and Pinhead. And that's just from this limited selection of matches. And this is with the best survivor players on comms and the best builds, using 4 BNPs and Syringes and so on as well. Something you will never encounter in pub matches, ever.

Some killers absolutely do deserve buffs, and I do think restricting SWF loadouts to one copy per perk (and item/add-on/offering) per player is sensible and even beneficial for the game, but there are also killers/killer add-ons that need nerfs, camping/tunnelling needs more balancing, and solo survivors deserve buffs too (although rebalancing camping/tunnelling would already go a long way to help).

If you’re honest you’ll admit the same is true for most killers; they’re also mediocre players. They also don’t know how to loop a structure optimally. What gives them an edge is bulldozing survivors via tunneling, camping, slugging, and capitalizing on inborn advantages like bloodlust, poor survivor reworks that come with map reworks, better perks, so on and so forth. To reduce this to “lulz survivors suck” is so disingenuous it’s almost a lie. It really spits in the face of the features killers can (and do) access to win their matches.

The game used to be survivor-sided years ago. But since then it is honestly only parotted that it is survivor-sided. Basically, whenever a Killer Main loses a game, it is because the game is survivor-sided. You see this from Forum Killers up to the most vocal content creators (some of them and luckily a minority).

Which is kinda sad, since you clearly see that some players just adapt this instead of looking for their own mistakes. Went against a Clown a few weeks ago who said that the game is so survivor-sided. He had 300 hours in the game and from the looks of his achievements, he was not playing for a long time. I was like "Mate, you are just starting the game. It is fine to lose more than you win at this point", since 300 hours is really not that much. But what to expect if people get fed this opinion from early on?

The game basically leans more into being killersided nowadays. The Killrate is at least 60% for almost all Killers. And recent changes to the game show that the Devs are heading in the direction to make it even more killersided - Map Reworks for example. Haddonfield is the most extreme example, what was once the most survivor-sided map is now the most killer-sided map and it is honestly really hard to lose a game as Killer on Haddonfield. The changes to Coldwind-Farm also add to this. Many Maze Tiles are now super-weak, but their number remained the same. When there was previously a Jungle Gym or a Long Wall with a Pallet, it is now one of those weird new Tiles, but the number of Tiles did not change.

And very recent - there was a Bug which let Breakable Walls spawn in almost every Opening on the Asylum-Map. This got fixed, now there is no Breakable Wall anymore. Including the one next to the Window Downstairs, which now renders this Window very weak.

On top of that, if we look at the past year of Killer releases, they are all strong without any exception. Nobody can argue that Xenomorph, Chucky, Unknown, Vecna and Dracula are weak Killers, all can be considered at high B-Tier AT LEAST, most likely mid to high A for them. And even Singularity released before was not weak, just a pain to play before the Buffs/QoL-Changes.

So overall, who nowadays says that the game is survivor-sided is pretty wrong.

DC's are already thrown out and not counted in kill rates to begin with.

So the 68% stat means that if you completely ignore every game with a death on first hook and ignite every game with a disconnect, the killer is still managing a 68% kill rate.

That also means that the player experience is going to be higher than even the 71% because most of those games with a disconnect (that aren't included in that number) are going to be survivors losing.

Trying to spin these stats in a thread about the "game being survivor sided" is showing an insane level of bias and mental gymnastics.

Killers are the marketing point of DBD. So it makes sense to keep them in the power role. The game is not survivor sided, nor should it be because the horror icon should be stronger. That being said, it is still a game. And if you want people to be okay with losing a game more often than winning, it needs to be fun. And solo isn’t fun right now.

This may very well be simply just my opinion, but I do believe that DBD's success hinges on the appeal of its iconic killers. The ability to both play as and against horror legends from across various media is what truly sets DBD apart. If the game were purely about surviving against these killers, without the option to play as them, I doubt it would have reached the same level of popularity. Playing as Laurie, for example, is fun, but playing as Michael Myers creates an entirely different kind of fun. The focus on iconic killers is what maintains the horror identity of the game and keeps the core experience thrilling. I'm not saying survivors in horror movies can't be iconic, but people don't typically watch horror movies to watch the survivors, they do it to watch the killers. When we look at DBD marketing—trailers, events, and new chapters—the killer is almost always at the forefront. It’s clear that the killers are the selling point. Players are drawn to the opportunity to be the terrifying force they grew up watching on-screen.

In my original reply I did not mean to suggest that the side generating more revenue should be the one made more powerful—that would be a gross oversimplification. But the game and horror in general, fundamentally relies on the killer being a force to be reckoned with. DBD operates on a 4v1 format, and if the survivors were just as powerful as the killer, it would upset the entire balance and diminish the horror aspect. The point isn’t that the survivors should be significantly weaker, but rather that the killer needs to remain the dominant force in the game for the horror element to be present. After all, the essence of horror is the fear and danger, not an even fight.

Just for reference, I primarily play solo Q and I get the frustration. I've had losing streaks in the 20+, and some of my very old posts when I first started playing this game like 2 years ago were questioniong why killer was so much stronger than survivor because I was struggling so badly. In fact, I hold the unpopular view that the balance should be closer to 45% survivor win rate rather than 40%. It also feels unfair to require survivors to run specific perks to counter killer tactics that can be done without any perks at all. I don't agree that WoO should get a nerf, because the criticisims of WoO could apply to killers aura reading of generators at all times. Etc. So while many of my opinions and views lean toward a survivor perspective, I can still acknowledge why killers need a higher win rate to keep the role appealing.

Ultimately, just because survivors make up the majority doesn’t mean the game should cater to them at the expense of the killer role. If survivors were balanced to win more than killer, it would undermine the horror foundation of DBD and remove the incentive to play the killer role. Part of what makes survivor role appealing is the option to play with friends, something the killer role doesn't have. So if you had to pick between the 2 roles, one you win more often and you get to play with friends and the other you lose more often and you're alone- I don't think it's unreasonable to believe not many people would play the killer role. But as it stands now, one role you can play with friends or others but you lose more often, versus the other role that you're still alone but you win more, which is an incentive to pick killer over survivor- because of the higher chance of success. The balance needs to ensure that playing as the killer remains both rewarding and intimidating, while also making victory as a survivor possible. By keeping the killer role powerful, DBD maintains its identity and ensures that the game still functions because people need reasons to play both roles and winning more is the reason to play killer, take that away and I'm not sure what they still have.

DBD isn't "fair" but I don't think it should be. I think it makes sense for the Survivor role to lose more than win. (by how much is debatable) Losing doesn't always feel bad, it's more about how you lose that can feel bad. And that's what should change.

I was a killer main during that time, when survivors where at their strongest and at times I asked myself why I was subjecting myself to this selfimposed torture? DH for distance, 4 DS to eat through, easy 3-4 fast selfheals out of any medkit, sometimes even midchase on the other side of a dropped pallet — it was truely madness! And still people defended DH all the time, claiming that it was a fair and fun perk and killers were just bad and had skill issues for not anticipating it and for struggling and that "good killers can still get 12 hooks without camping or tunneling". In this regard the game was always the same.

Then 6.1 happened and pulled a GIANT rug from under the collective survivor population, exposing how many were huddling under their multi-layered safety net of second chances. The first 2 or even 3 days of post-6.1 were like the shock and awe after a big catastrophy: everyone was running around in a stupor, it felt like everyone had forgotten how to loop (because most never learned how to do so in the first place), no one touched gens (beause the +10s meant that it was pointless to even start) and the game felt like a true "all you can kill" buffet, with survivors offering basically no resistance at all and the killers abusing this mercilessly, tunneling and camping and getting 4Ks at 4 or 5 gens every game, playing with 4 regression perks and never taking them off.

I remember how bad I felt during some of this games with the game being unsalvagable even if I let the same survivor multiple times go instead of killing them off. I tried my hand at survivor myself at that time and I got killed so many times after I personally finished 3 or even 4 gens from start to finish. It was really a drunken stupor that kept survivors from even touching gens, it seemed.

But once this shock and stupor faded, most survivors got their stuff together and stroke back with a vengeance! Backed against the wall, most survivors learned "okay, I can't fool around all game like before, I need to contribute" and "working on this gen together feels nice - but I think I will leave you and work on that gen over there … no, not the next, I will skip that and work on the next after that one, as to not 3-gens ourselfes".

This time lead to the great efficiency boom on the survivor side: splitting up, being somewhat mindful of what gens you were tackling, prioritising main building gens, and at least working on gens - all of this became a staple and all of the sudden the survivors were back in action and gens started flying off the shelves as if they were on clearance.

The Eruption and Overbrine meta gave the thing a small bumb, but after that was cleared, along with timewasters such as CoH, the survivor population as a whole was as lean and mean as they get and knew that they had one objective and one objective only: slam gens! Gens before friends!

Somewhere along this times the killer population, while undoubtedly stronger then before, feld the change on the wind and 4 regression and camping and tunneling became more and more prevalent. Over the course of the following year most regression perks were nerfed more and more into being unviable, Eruption get hit so hard that I don't even know what it does anymore (just kidding, but I deam it unviable), and camping got shut down with the somewhat effective somewhat failed Anti Facecamping Feature. It does what it said on the lid, ie proper facecamping was impossible now, but real camping was still possible, if the killer was a little bit mindful of their actions.

Still, with camping being shut down and "3 gens pop first chase" killers were funneled down the only road that offered success and redemtion from the constant harressment of the survivors on all sides: Tunneling. The strengthening of OtR and later DS, helped a little bit, but the loss of Haemorraging and Mangled full power also also breed it into killers that to stand a chance, they got to turn this game 3v1 FAST and HARD!

So, this is where we are standing now: both sides experienced tremendous ups and downs and both sides tools of trade have been changed and taken away and reluctantly been given back over the last two years, that all the fat is trimmed off and both sides are as lean and as mean killing/genrepairing-surviving machines, as they have ever been - and they need to against the opposition they expect. So when MMR throws them a "casual" of either side, they just eat them for breakfast and ask for more. And thats why DBD can never be a party game anymore, it totally and irrevocably lost its playfulness and innocence and you can't convince me otherwise. There might be short glimps of its former party DNA here and there, when both sides meme around during events, but for the most, the game has been cooked down to be as efficient in its respective roles as it has ever been.

Dude, you are so full of vitriol and don't give the other side even one second of consideration.

I humbly asked to to take 3min out of your life and read the long commend I typed up just above yours, which gives a pretty comprehensive look of why we arrived at the game we have now. I would be interested in your thoughts on the matter, if you took a step back and looked at the big picture.

Thanks for contributing to more "us vs them" toxicity and adding nothing constructive to the discussion