When are we going to stop pretending that Crouch Tech is fine?

From what I've seen, you can counter the crouch tech by looking down while attacking.

Hardly a fair comparison. The killer literally makes the choice to use their power or not, survivors cannot freely choose where they encounter the killer.

Crouch techs 100% need to go. Crazy how I can bounce off of a survivor as Wesker, Billy or Demo because they press crouch. A zero skill move that nullifies a lot of power plays

The majority of survivors don't even know what crouch tech is, let alone when/how to use it. It also isn't always possible, depending on the location of the interaction. It should be addressed because it straight up robs the affected killers of hits, you'd be hard pressed to use unrelated statistics to address that. Its an exploit that needs to be acknowledged and fixed, much like many of the others have been.

crouch tech has little to no effect if you understand how to play around it. anticipate your opponents the next time you chase them.

Not fully accurate. Killers can (and should) “zone” survivors, which means they’re directing where the survivors go. Ideally you’re pushing them to dead zones or weak tiles.

Anyway how come when I crouch tech I still get hit.

Linking an older post of mine on the topic: https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3703831/#Comment_3703831

tl;dr: Billy and Blight are so strong that the existence of crouch-teching if anything is a reasonable balance factor. They not only both have winstreaks in the thousands, but even in tournament play against the best survivor players that are all too keenly aware of when and how to best use crouch techs against them these killers still 4k pretty much any match. Demo on the other hand isn't strong enough to warrant having to deal with crouch techs, although rather than try to remove them, they should simply buff Demo, as he deserves buffs anyway and the vast majority of players don't even use or know about crouch techs.

There is also some semblance of counterplay to it. Crouch techs rarely work out against Blight to begin with, they are far from consistent or reliable, but for different-elevation crouch-teching specifically, as someone else has already noted, on Blight you can counter this by looking down before you attack. Generally if you anticipate a crouch tech you can either hold the attack and end up potentially getting a hit due to them trying to crouch it to begin with, or adjust your attack direction, because crouching usually only works out if the attack is not meeting the survivor head-on.

You have a very different perspective on balance if an exploit is deemed "reasonable" simply because the top 0.1% of players can perform well with those killers, especially when the exploit is accessible to literally 100% of survivors. Doesn't quite add up, does it?

Different perspective on balance from what, or who? If you're trying to spin this in some "you're a filthy survivor main!" way, let me point out that I also argued against the removal of hug tech from Blight, Wolf and for more hug-techiness for Wesker. Among many other killer techs I have advocated for.

And while the argument was more so that top killer players dominate top survivor players with these killers despite the existence of crouch techs that those players will of course abuse to the full extent, it isn't only top 0.1% of players performing well on Blight and Billy. Far from.

The "accessibility" thing doesn't really make sense to me as an argument either. Techs are always accessible to anyone, theoretically. And even if I do entertain it as an argument to contrast the (also nonsensical) "0.1% of players are doing well on those killers", it's not like becoming good at a killer is not theoretically also "accessible" to anyone.

I also don't consider this an "exploit", but a tech. It's a gameplay interaction with these killers that works because of their unique hurtbox specifics (which more often than not help them get hits they wouldn't otherwise, at that) versus crouching changing a survivor's hitbox (which is intended, of course). Players can crouch under projectile attacks for the same reasons and that's deemed completely sensible, because there is interactive gameplay there - crouching costs you distance and the projectile killer may just hold, delay or cancel their ability and fake you out, or adjust it accordingly, in those cases potentially getting a hit due to you crouching that they may not otherwise have. The same is possible with these killers and crouch-teching, if to a somewhat lesser extent.

But regardless, whether something is an "exploit" or not is just semantics, I judge these things based on whether I consider the gameplay they yield desirable or not, and crouch-teching is a fun counterplay opportunity to two incredibly strong killers that however usually doesn't get you far, has its own counterplay such as holding, cancelling or predicting and preemptively adjusting the attack (head-on attacks will always connect even if the survivor is crouching, unless the survivor is on a lower elevation, but even then these killers can at times play around that), and also requires timings, predictions and risks to be taken by the survivor. It creates more depth to the gameplay.

Crouch-teching is not very reliable at all against Blight altogether, it almost never works out in the open unless the Blight gets flared or spun which however is only possible if the Blight messed up and would have usually not connected regardless of crouching or not. It's only on elevations and at pallets that it can sometimes work, and again, even then usually only delaying the inevitable hit by mere seconds.

Not true at all. Only Billy can look down while using his power, and even then, only during the first half-second of his sprint. Any sprint longer than that can be countered by crouching.

"Not true at all" right back at you: Blight can look down during rushes and before swinging, but more crucially, he can look down before rushing, which is how you will reliably hit someone crouching on elevation. Obviously you need to bump somewhere around them first for that, but it's possible. Plus often you can also simply rush past them, bump behind or around them, and rush at them from the other sides where they can't crouch-tech you.

Billy can also hit someone crouching on elevation by starting his chainsaw attack closer to them while looking down. Obviously you have to delay the attack for that at times, but it's worth pointing out in general because otherwise a survivor would just be able to force an M1 in some cases (such as at the slight elevation differences at shack doors where they can bodyblock him), which would be silly.

It’s also pretty amusing that you acknowledge crouch teching as unfair for Demogorgon, yet claim Blight and Billy should have to deal with it simply because… they’re strong enough? Are we really going to start justifying exploits based on personal preferences or because top streamers and competitive players perform well with those killers? The double standards here are honestly laughable. The whole discussion isn’t whether these killers are strong or weak due to crouch tech, it’s about an obvious exploit that shouldn’t exist, one that affects not only skilled players but also those trying to learn, and which takes literally no skill to execute.

These are just the same points reworded. Yes, I don't see what's so amusing about arguing a counterplay mechanic (call it tech or exploit or whatever you want, these to me are again merely semantic distinctions) existing being warranted if it's not adversely affecting the other side's ability to win, and on the contrary, that side still being favoured to win even against the best players that are utilizing that mechanic (as well as anything else they can do) to the fullest extent of their abilities.

It's again also not only "top streamers and competitive players" that perform well with those killers (and winning most of every time against the best survivor teams in the world and having winstreaks of thousands of matches in a row in the actual game is a little beyond "performing well"). There's countless competent Billy and Blight players out there winning most of their matches, and even on average they have 60+% killrates.

What double standard? It's completely reasonable to me to say crouch-teching is fine because the killers are more than strong enough despite its existence and it therefore if anything constituting needed counterplay. And if it's about Demo, that's not a different standard being applied, but the same standard of comparing the killer's strength to the efficacy of this counterplay, and concluding that it isn't in a reasonable relation for him. Although my solution as I've noted even then is to buff Demo generally (which he deserves anyway), not remove crouch techs. Call it personal preference, but I like crouch-teching because it's fun and adds depth to the gameplay interactions, and does so on both sides at that (while any survivor can crouch, you need to know when and where to do it, time it right, weigh risks, consider the killer's potential of playing around it, know what to do afterwards as it only buys you around two seconds before the killer can hit you again, and do all of that in split-second scenarios against fast and threatening attacks).

I get that you seemingly think anything that can be labelled an "exploit" should not exist no matter what, but not only would we then get into issues with deciding what to label as such as well as the fact that tons of things in the game could be labelled as such, but personally I just don't have that stance: even things presumably entirely unintended by the devs are fair game to me as long as they in my mind enrich the game and are good for it, labelling be damned. This goes for hug techs for one example I brought up, but also flicking on Oni or Pyramid Head, or Nemesis strafe tech, or shift tech on survivors, or the many Wesker techs (who I as I've mentioned even think should be a bit more "slidey"). All of these and more are just cool, game-enhancing tricks to me that increase the skill ceiling and that I readily and gladly use playing both killer and survivor. So if your "double standard" thing is meant to hint at some supposed bias or whatever, thousands of players that I have strafe-teched as Nemesis would like to have a word with you. And even more that I have 180°-flicked as Oni, something BHVR specifically said they wanted (and tried) to remove from the game (i. e. it's basically the closest thing to a confirmed "exploit"), and yet it is well and alive and most people are glad that it is, including myself.