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Why do nerfs cause people to stop playing the game?
alot has happened over the years with the community itself especially both sides of killlers and survivors. The game is more survivor sided for sure but also it depends on the type of killer that makes survivors go against which makes situations killer sided. Also think about map layouts which can be really bad for killer that makes survivor have the advantage. Also the perks on each side when there’s a thing called meta and both sides want a nerf just because it is getting used too often but reality the whole community use the same perks and tried to deny that they don’t when they do. The community is very hypocritical and also I want to blame content creators as far as pc content creators. They have a way of playing the new chapters for the ptb before live releases and the perks and killer powers sometimes either get buffed or nerfed to the ground way before console players be able to have the chance to test it out. But yes content creators do help the community when they notice a lot going on but at the same time it’s not fair at all for how toxic and hypocritical the community is. Also I want to point out there’s certain things you can’t do on console as much as you do on pc like the movements and how easily it can be on pc but not console gamers.
Answers
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The PTB rarely has impact when it comes to balancing. I think the only time in recent years where it had a significant impact was with the Twins-Buff which did not come live (or was changed, to be more precise, since they got buffed). But here it is baffling already that it made it to the PTB.
But in general, the Devs only have a few days between the PTB-Start and the time they have to push the Update to Live, since it takes a while to bring it to the Live Servers. I think it was like 3 or 4 days at best. So you will not really get good feedback on the PTB, unless it is absolutely obvious.
PTBs are not for real testing anyway. They are for hype and nothing more.
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get buffed or nerfed to the ground way before console players be able to have the chance to test it out.
That made me rather sad back when I first started playing the game. Plague and Oni looked fun on the PTB. By the time they were released live, they had been changed enough that I was no longer interested in them. And trying to use Oni on console feels awful, at least for me, I don't like how he plays on controller. I can use his power for distance but I can't use it in a chase or to get a down, so it's not satisfying.
I used to think "I'll get the game on Steam at some point and then I'll get to play the PTB, too," But that was back in the first year or so when I was playing. I couldn't be bothered, now.
I want to point out there’s certain things you can’t do on console as much as you do on pc like the movements and how easily it can be on pc but not console gamers.
Yes, I and some other people on the boards have complained about this to no end. Very little ever changes. BHVR finally got rid of the recoil on Trickster's blades, that was a nice victory there.
There's only so much that can be done, because a controller is simply not a mouse and keyboard and an analog stick will never have the control and precision of a mouse, but BHVR making sure killers feel responsive and smooth on controller would be a good first step. Another would be adding dead zone and response curve settings for controller.
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alot has happened over the years with the community itself especially both sides of killlers and survivors. The game is more survivor sided for sure but also it depends on the type of killer that makes survivors go against which makes situations killer sided.
Every indicator we have shows that the game is killer-sided. Every single killer is above 50% killrate right now, most of them around 60%, while survivor as a whole has 40% escape rate. The devs themselves stated their goal was to increase the killrate from 50% to 60% over the years. So no, that is factually wrong.
And before you speak about sweaty 4-man SWFs, this is not unique to the survivor side, on the killer side sweaty Blights and Nurses achieve THOUSANDS of winstreaks with them, something even tournament SWFs can't rival. I have yet to see a single other multiplayer game where such winning streak is allowed.
Yet, paradoxically, it is true that the game has become harder for killers. Do you know why?
It's not because of balance. It's because the casual playerbase has left. The game has almost 30% less players now than in 2021. So, before, the game was survivor-sided, but you were playing against 200-hour potatoes who were just enjoying a game and didn't care about winning. Now, these players have left, and what remains are only the long-time, dedicated players with thousands of hours and who often approach the game as a tournament. Even though the game itself is killer-sided now, your chances of winning are much lower than in the past, simply because you get tougher opponents.
This game's approach to balance & fun should be reconsidered completely. Our collective goal should be to make the game more casual and beginner-friendly, not necessarily more balanced.
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There was also the Final Mori system that got pushed back a year due to PTB feedback, and a Corrective Action buff got canceled due to it clearly being broken on the PTB.
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Disagree on the game being Survivor sided.
I thinks it’s rather balanced and only Survivor sided when it’s a Coordinated Sweat Squad on Comms going against anyone that isn’t a Sweaty Killer playing Nurse, Blight, Mr Baldy and maybe HillyBilly.As for why do people quit? Perhaps it’s not related to changes and they just had burnout? Or perhaps the changes to their character or preferred role was just the straw that broke the camels back? It could also be a loss of interest in the direction the Devs are taking the game.
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Players get used to something and have difficulty when it is changed.
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True, but I would say that the Corrective Action-thing was simply an Oversight.
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Oh yeah for sure, but it still did happen. They do listen to feedback in PTB even if most of it doesn't lead to massive changes.
Also, while we're on the subject (this isn't directed at you, Aven, you're cool). After they came up with and coded an entire new effect for CA between PTB and Live, but couldn't even do a simple numbers change for TotH, anyone that accuses the devs of favoring survivors owes me $10. I'm not accusing them of favoring killers, but I will not be gaslit
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I think the game is, overall, killer-sided these days.
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Simple cause people are tired of their fun being ruined by nerfs especially if said nerf was over nerf or not needed to begin with.
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The game is too killer-sided, and there's no reason to touch this mess outside of events because of how terrible it is. If the developers balanced their game, it'd be more popular, but it's downright pointless to play.
As a solo survivor, you can't afford a coherent build with the current game design as you need to run various perks to possibly counter a totem build, a slugging build, a camping build, etc.5 -
Oh sure, I did not mean that they dont listen to PTB-Feedback. Just that it will not be changed from PTB to Live, since one point from OP was that PC-players get to test things which Console-players will not experience when it is on Live.´
Most of the time the feedback they gained from the PTB-Feedback is implemented in a Hotfix.
And true on the last part, they were really fast to change Corrective Action, so saying that the game is survivor-sided is a bit odd.
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Nerf entitlement.
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You should have been here for the first 6.5 years of the games life, when it was undisputedly survivor sided. It got so bad that survivor cue times were 15-20 minutes during the tail end of that period. Only in recent years has the pendulum swung to the other
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How do you not see that that's a bad metric? A 50-60% kill rate means draws all day for killer, even if you personally don't escape a lot as survivor. You won't, but 2 of your teammates will. And we know that survivors feed the killer free kills all the time.
Those killer win streaks are another extremely misleading talking point people like to use. "So because some players, which I can count on 1 hand, have been able to do large killer streaks, killer is OP." They're an anomaly and a fluke. No other killer players but then have been able to get streaks like that because they don't have the astronomical luck these guys have. Forget skill. All it takes is going against 1 decent survivor team to take your whole streak away. So there's no skill to it, in the grand scheme of things. They just keep getting lucky to be matched with subpar teams.
I don't think it's the casual survivors that have left in droves. I think it was a lot of higher level killers who got fed up and quit, or switched roles. Without the top level killers, the mid-level killers became the new top, and had to deal with all the unbeatable/toxic SWF teams and really good solo teams. And soon, those killers gave up too, forcing the next level down to shoulder the burden. And so on. You see the issue? Killer isn't balanced at high level; you're playing to lose. The survivors who quit the game over mini little killer buffs, forget them. The only killers who are left in the game are a resilient elite who may or may not have a screw loose, myself included, so they're gonna beat most teams. They just won't beat most good teams. The survivors that remain, however, are low level, and some are still beating/almost beating these killers, because of how many base buffs and unnerfed perks they've got. They just keep winning and thinking they're good because MMR isn't shown, the gens go too fast, and the tools killers have are so much weaker than the tools they have.
I'm still aghast at how people can still insist that the game needs to be pushed more casual. It can hardly get more casual! What do you think has been happening these past 4 years? Making the decision to just not balance the game is the worst thing you could do. And what's funny is people who say that aren't even consistent with their views on the game. "Don't balance the game, but don't make killers too strong! Throw balance out the window, but make sure survivor is a fair!" It's people claiming to be casual but still caring about balance that gets me, because it destroys their own argument. And nobody sees it.
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I've been here since 2016 and have over 6k hours in this game. I'm not sure why some of you want to gatekeep discussion when the game is not what it was when it first launched.
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The game is more survivor sided for sure
What is this, a stand up comedy?
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I play this game less and less because of how devs treat survivor players.
- All map reworks are about making them smaller and replacing with weaker tiles
- Entire perk classes are dead (boons, teamwork perks)
- Some perks were nerfed only because someone was mad on forum and not for viable reason (for example: Prove Thyself)
- Survivors were left with 6 months of CoB+Overcharge+Eruption meta, devs did literally nothing about it
- A lot of perks are deactivated after Exit Gates are opened, because someone was mad on forums (literally, if I haven't used perk all match, why can't I use it then)? This is paired with treating killers like if they hook someone in endgame it's guaranteed kill, no matter what.
- Devs aren't doing nothing with slugging lately they introduced finishing mori, so hatch is even more rare than ever, also a lot of games are finished with 3rd player slugged and killer looking for 4th one, zero respect for survivor players, you don't have any chance to win this game, but you have to be slugged for 4 minutes because so.
- Recent Distortion Nerf and doing nothing about aura revealing perks, literally perks like Nowhere to Hide or old Ultimate Weapon totally crushed being sneaky in match. if killer has Nowhere to Hide, he can cancel my Iron Will, Bite the Bullet and whole other perks.
- Recent situation with Thrill of the Hunt, still waiting more than a week for revert so I can play this game, like, at all. I don't care and I don't believe about "devs didn't have time for this" as I'm also working in IT and changes like this are hotfixed immediately, imagine waiting a week for broken functionality for example in your bank to work properly.
- Also something like this is unpatched for days, literally how can you not implement simple rule "if your match after match is taking less than x seconds, then player is banned"?:
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You misunderstand, and I apologize for not being clearer. I'm not trying to invalidate your opinion. What I was getting at was that the game balance and which side seems "stronger" is always a pendulum that swings back and forth. in an Asym game, there is NEVER gonna be a real 50/50 balance. Its always gonna swing from one side to the other. Thats just how Asyms are
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nerf are not fun →less fun → less people want to play the game.
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Because some people only want to play if they can abuse and use their uberstrong meta perks, they don't want to play if they can't crutch on a strong build. This applies to both sides.
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A 50-60% kill rate means draws all day for killer, even if you personally don't escape a lot as survivor. You won't, but 2 of your teammates will. And we know that survivors feed the killer free kills all the time.
There's no such thing as "50-60% kill rate".
60% is completely different than 50%, due to how percentages work. A 50% means both sides are equally likely to win. A 60% killrate means one side is 1.5x less likely to win than the other, ie. extremely unfair. In almost every other multiplayer game that I play a 60% winrate would be considered a massive imbalance.
Neither 50% or 60% killrate implies "draws all day", for either side. Nightlight shows in fact, that draws are the least likely result (7% of matches). Killrate can be 50% without draws, it just means both sides win and lose as often.
Those killer win streaks are another extremely misleading talking point people like to use. "So because some players, which I can count on 1 hand, have been able to do large killer streaks, killer is OP."
I have to mention streaks because you ignore every single indicator, including official and Nightlight statistics, plus the various statements from the dev themselves saying the game is killer-sided.
It's not the fact that killer players reach long winstreaks that is a problem. It's the fact that these streaks are incredibly more common on the killer side, and last a lot longer. There are 4x more survivor players than killer players, so statistically we would expect survivor streaks to be extremely common, yet we haven't seen one team reach even half the amount of wins achieved with Nurse, Blight, Oni, Twins and even Onryo.I don't think it's the casual survivors that have left in droves. I think it was a lot of higher level killers who got fed up and quit.
There is not a single experiment or statistic that proves or even remotely implies that. At this point, it's clear you'll forever claim the game is survivor-sided no matter what the statistics show.
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The game is definitely not Survivor-sided, nor is it intended to be. It's Horror themed after all.
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Eh.
The game was Survivor-sided from 2016-2019.
It was pretty even from late 2019-2022.
Post-2022 has been very Killer-sided.
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I think, having played in all three versions?
I would rather the horror themed game be balanced to Killer-sided. It feels weird if the Game has a Survivor sided bias, like it's scooby-doo, not a horror experience.
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I would argue that the game was still survivor sided during 2019-2022, just not as survivor sided as it was during 2016-2019. While killers started getting their fair shake of the tree during 2019-2022, they didnt really become "strong" as we know them now untill late 2021 to early 2022. Remember, it took multiple revisions of nerfs to perks like DS and DH to finally get them in a state where they weren't overwhelmingly powerful
Then again, I acknowledge this is my own subjective opinion0 -
I dunno if the casual base left as opposed to their attitude just changed. Prior to update 6.1 you could play casually. Then we had the gen kick meta, which BHVR completely dropped the ball on by letting it go on for several months. During those months you literally had to be glued to a gen or you were throwing. When it got taken away, survivors had already adapted and the concept of "gen rushing" became more prominent. Particularly because alot of killers keenly felt when the gen kick meta was taken away and they weren't getting the same results anymore. Since then the game has been on this sort of see-saw fueled by 'us vs them' rhetoric, when the reality is BHVR didn't handle the game well after 6.1 and they're still trying to fix it by slapping band aids on wherever there's a leak. IMO of course.
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You have to remember that it's a game, it is not intended to be reflective of real-life.
It's supposed to be fun for both sides.
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2019-2022 was where most of the egregiously OP stuff was removed.
True instant heals, old DS, old BNP's, instant blinds (kinda), busted maps, etc etc. It's also when a lot of Killers started trending towards a more competitive mindset.
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I dunno I think it's fine right now. Both sides. I just think BHVR has made decisions that have led Killers to play in an unfun way more often. Unlike a lot of people I don't need to win to have fun.
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When I last played, Survivor was miserable and Killer lacked any real challenge, until you got an increasingly hard to find good team.
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I wouldn't stop playing for perk nerfs. I will get annoyed, when I consider it underserved, but just use something else. There are options on both sides.
Nerfs to specific killers can definetly make me drop DBD for some time, but depends how big impact it has.
I didn't really care about Blight nerfs and still play him, but Skully and now Chucky on other hand… That's a hard no from me.
Well, I have fixed it by starting to play Nurse again. Survivors didn't enjoy playing against Chucky, so good luck now.1 -
Probably a mix of both. Steamcharts actually shows a clear player count drop from 2021 to 2022, from 50k average (2021) to 38k average (2022). So either people have adapted but started playing a lot less often than before, or they genuinely left.
But yeah I'd agree the game really went downhill after 6.1. But to me this is not so much due to balance changes and us vs. them, but rather due to a bunch of objectively stupid changes for both sides that nobody asked for, like the Self-care nerf or Barbecue BP rework that were both extremely hostile to casuals.
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Yeah, definitely a lot of factors at play. It's rarely ever so black and white.
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Why do nerfs cause people to stop playing the game?
People quit because the game becomes less fun. Everyone has a different definition of fun. For some players, it's steamrolling the opposing side with an oppressive build; they like low-stress wins, and adapting to change is not low-stress to them, so when something's nerfed they quit rather than leave their comfort zone. For other players, fun has nothing to do with strength, but a nerf can have a ripple effect that takes away a fun element.
No nerf has chased me away from playing the game, but nerfs have caused me to stop maining killers. I was having a lot of fun for quite a while playing no-add-on infinite Tier 1 Mikey, just creeping up on survivors. It was all about being spooky and maybe getting some jump scares, I rarely hooked anyone. Then BHVR changed Mikey to make him 'more consistent with other killers,' which translated to not being immune to Spine Chill in Tier 1. That was the end of sneaky Mikey; I tried to continue memeing with him, but survivors were always long gone when I got to a gen. (Maybe it's doable now, I don't think quite as many survivors run Spine Chill anymore, but once I stop doing something I often lose interest in it. Tier 1 Mikey remains shelved.)
If BHVR ever takes the strafe away from Nemesis, the one killer who has a feature that helps when console performance is screwing me, I doubt I'd quit the game but I might quit killer altogether. I have to use the strafe to help me kill zombies, for god's sake. Now, if BHVR removed the lute, then I'd probably quit the entire game.
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I feel like the gen kick meta was the first time killers across the board felt "strong." I acknowledge that the gen kick meta was super unhealthy for the game, but it was the first time killers went from being mostly on the weaker side to powerhouses almost overnight
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The gen kick meta was the first time Killers like Trapper were stronger than competitive 4-man SWF's.
It was the beginning of the end for the casual player.
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yep especially on maps like RPD which had the gens super close to eachother
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Well, there's a bunch of stuff in this post.
Title - Nerfs cause people to leave
1: No evidence the game is on the decline.
2: People are always coming in and out of the game. If you have 1000s of hours its normal to move on. You're just waiting for a trigger.
Survivor sided - That's not true.
Meta - The goal of a live service game is to shake things up, keep things different. BHVR's success on that is mixed.
Content Creators - They give their opinion, like a lot of people. Ideally BHVR should be taking in feedback.
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If you take pro killers and survs into consideration the game is indeed surv sided.
The only argument you need is the restrictions survs are put through in tournaments just for the match to be more equally fair for both sides.1 -
The game is now killer sided up to the high end where it switches to surv sided, the thing is most survivors are low skill casuals so it is making solo queue particularly miserable at present.
I don't know if it is nerfs that make people stop playing but rather bigger game changes as a whole. I feel like BHVR has released unfun killer after unfun killer and there are too many perks and addons in the game now that suck the fun out of it.
I also feel that the prevalence of anti loop killers or killers that are just unfun to verse such as Chucky or Trickster have added to the misery of modern DBD. I spent thousands of hours learning to loop but that fun style of play is rendered obsolete by Knight etc and it takes away the fun part of the game for many of us.
Also mechanics like flashlights etc being made infinitely easier takes away skill expression for a lot of people and I know a lot of people who left the game due to unfun metas, unfun anti-loop killers and the dumbing down of the game play.
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I definitely think the amount of antiloop Killers has ruined a lot of the fun of the game. It's way more fun to me to mindgame in chase with a Myers or a Skurchent (gasp!) or a Houndmaster or something than it is to just get hit over a pallet or vault by Xeno or Huntress.
Instead on introducing a bunch of antiloop Killers, BHVR should have fixed maps and nerfed the loops heavily from the start so we never NEEDED all these antiloop Killers.
I definitely think a lot of the skill as Survivor has been automated, particularly certain perks and stuff like Flashlights. it doesn't feel like you have to try, it doesn't feel risky. It just feels like if I put this thing in the right spot or do the right thing with the right perks, I get free second chances and easy wins, and if I don't do those things? Well, then I just get smacked around.
That's also why I disliked this version of 2v8 - it felt stripped down, too automated, and not as much fun as before.
Post edited by SidneysBane1996 on2 -
I'm glad I'm upsetting you as much as you do a lot of us.
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My take on it is a person has invested so much time and resources into learning the nuances of their killer that when they get changed, it is usually to the detriment of having learned that killer before the changes.another reason is a lot of the dbd community is pretty toxic. The tbagging, bm, and hatespeech, etc. If a person needs help on a very particular subject, it's often met with hushed tongues and side-eyeing. So I can understand why people don't play anymore... my reason came very involuntarily, but I'm glad I can't play anymore.
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Agree with all of this!
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Whenever a survivor is matched with a killer they don't like, they immediately start screaming on the forums to nerf it.
Why don't they think of countermeasures or find new ways to counter them by combining different perks?Even as Killer hones his skills and counteracts Survivor's powerful perk, a group of survivors on the forum say, 'Nerf it! Save the Solo Q!"
the killer's efforts will soon be for naught!I would argue that it is not the nurses, the brights, or the hard hits that are breaking this game, but the group of survivors that inhabit this forum!
That and the solo Q's who often whine about it should join a community where they can make game friends.
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If you believe the game is killer sided it just means you are a solo survivor player, like me.
The game has core issues with what’s possible to achieve, yet gets balanced by community complaints.
No one is asking why strategies emerge, like slugging. They blame the player instead of the game design.
There are at least 25 weak killers by all standards, a few of them borderline laughable and even 2 completely killed switched waiting for reworks.
Spreading hooks is the worst strategy if you want to win.
There’s a plethora of second chances perks, regression perks are nerfed every patch, chase perks too. Killers good at chase get nerfed then forgotten.Stats are not the end - all. How many games you lost as survivor because of people giving up first hook, being afk, being new or just messing around? And the chances of getting those players is higher due the nature of the 4vs1. Those all add up to the survivor stats. If you get a group of decent, not even swf, just competent survivors with good perks, having DS, Unbreakable, Shoulder the Burden, etc, the game becomes impossible to win as a killer. That’s it. That’s how it is.
So to answer your question, is because the lack of questioning of why gameplay and meta evolves into “not fun strategies”. They just perk patch the flavor of the month strategy, proceed to forget about the nerfs and never actually consider the reason.
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Totally agree!
Yesterday I was talking to my friend (who is a Wesker/Dracula main while I'm a Nemesis/Vecna main) about how less frustrating and fun the matches with our second mains are. Why? Because they are better anti-loopers. The amount of loops and stuff that are in survs's favor in almost every map is ridiculous. Instead of giving killer players more anti loop killers BHVR should properly balance the maps so survs wouldn't get a considerable amount of advantage.Also have to say I agree with this.
Imagine that you end up ran over by a car, broke your leg and had to use a cast in it for 3 months and now you need physiotherapy. First sessions feels like hell because you didn't used your leg in so much time that it now hurts to the point of crying.
Same thing with most survivors in this game and that whine so much in this forum. A new killer enters the roster and now they have to use a part of their body (the brain) that they barely use to learn the counterplay and while doing so it hurts SO MUCH that their cries make BHVR nerf the killer.1 -
This game isn't survivor sided nor killer sided.
It's meta-sided. Who ever brings the strongest items,perks,killers,skill, tactics will usually win.
A viscious cycle since one side sweats the other will sweat even harder and-so-forth…
I broke that cycle myself a long time ago and took this game in an extremely casual way, which in return gave me a game that is acutally fun and pleasant to play and I will see myself playing for quite some time again.
But hey those are my own 2-cents, I ain't gonna tell y'all how YOU should play though :)
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This is what I have started doing and need to do more. Fortunately I'm doing all the Surv adepts now, hopefully I'll be able to do the same with Killer Adepts and get the babiest easiest Survs.
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