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BHVR Almo on why ASYMS fail
Comments
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I don't think killer role agency has much to do with why VHS died, given how scuffed early DbD was in terms of the sheer amount of bullshit the survivor side had. I think the VHS team just completely mishandled the game (and the community) from the top down. The first and biggest mistake being that they were in closed beta for so damn long, never got out of early access, and never released a console version.
A lot of the other asyms died due to IP restrictions and/or unremarkable/one note gameplay that didn't lend well to the live service model.
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If you honestly look at the state of VHS through it's ENTIRE lifetime, and see ALL the VHS streamers, with 1/40 of them queuing up for monster. Looking at 90% of them queuing up as Teen, swearing up and down that Monster is "fine and fun to play" but would rather wait nearly an HOUR in queue to play Teen…and you think it had nothing to do with the Monster role?
The evidence is screaming, and you're simply incorrect.
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I didn't play much VHS so I have no input on it's failure, but I do feel like the elephant in the room that wasn't mentioned in that post is how much of DBD's success can be attributed to the influence of crossovers with other classic Horror IPs. What other asym game can you play as characters from titles such as SAW, RE, Silent Hill, Hellraiser, NoES, and Halloween all-in-one place? Have the whole RE squad up against a Xenomorph?? It's been echoed before, but the IPs in DBD do a lot of the heavy lifting for it imo. People will turn a blind-eye to ######### in the gameplay if it means getting to play their favorite movie and videogame characters.
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It wasn't the opposite. The reason why Teens, even new Teens, stomped new Monsters is because Monster had a higher skill floor. Once you made it past the skill floor Monster was pretty good.
One of my most significant feedback points as a beta tester was, in my opinion, although high level Monsters did well and, at the high end, the game was very well balanced it was unrealistic to expect players to get stomped repeatedly and want to play. Although I was winning most of my games after getting past the skill floor my first 40 games had a win rate of single digits and it took 100 games before I had even a 33% win rate. I pointed out that this was a game, not a professional competitive event, and that those type of odds would cause new Monster players to find another game instead, this would cause queues to lengthen, and then Teens would also start dropping out due to queue times and this would create a death spiral for the game. I even had a conversation with the lead about this but my advice was politely discounted and ignored.
History proved me 100% correct. However, the developers put a far greater emphasis on a select group of high end players and their feedback and tuned their game specifically for the top end. That's why there were no changes to low end Monster play; it was considered unnecessary as the entire focus was on the high end. For a competitive sport such as soccer that's a good strategy as the revenue comes from spectators. For any game that relies on participation such as most video games that's a death knell. As such, I pointed out that if VHS didn't make Monster entertaining enough that at least 15%, and preferably 20%, of the players queued were for Monster the game would fail.
It wasn't high end Monsters leaving; they were the only ones who stayed. There were Teens complaining about how they had no chance as the only Monsters left were the grizzled, masochistic veterans and that there were no inexperienced Monsters so inexperienced Teens started leaving as well. By that point, there was no return and it was only at that point that the developers introduced Danger Sense which did even out the skill floor. However, it was too late at that point.
But it was balancing for the top exclusively that killed VHS and ignoring that if new players don't have fun they won't stick around for the hundreds of games necessary for the average player to get on an even footing with the Teens. People won't stick around if they think it's a hopeless struggle. They'll just leave and find another game they have fun playing.
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Thank goodness coordinated teams were rare in Evolve. That should sound familiar too.
One of the issues Evolve had that led to its downfall (not the only factor as you know so let’s not pretend here) was that no one really wanted to play as the hunters. Monster was the more popular role. At a high level of skill, yes, you could win most of your matches as monster.
I actually think if both the hunters and the monster were highly skilled, it was a balanced match with the edge going to whomever had the better early game. If the monster broke up the hunter team by focusing down one of their players (Wraith and Kraken were really good at this; Gorgon wasn’t bad either) it was a wipe for the hunters. If the hunters worked together and cornered the monster without ceding ground then they stood a good chance at winning. Hunters couldn’t sleep through matches and win. Neither could monsters. And frankly, that’s how it should be.
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Rarity doesn't change the fact that its a problem and led to the games eventual downfall and likely will lead to DBDs as well.
Just because something is rare doesn't mean it is balanced. My question to you is, are you one of the ones who thinks killers like blight are too strong? Do you think nurse is too strong? After all, it is rare for someone to go against a killer that can just 4k at 5 gens with these killers. So they are fine right? Is nurse fine? Is she balanced? After all, in most games, she's actually below average in terms of kill rate when you look at the average games played. Its only in the hands of that "rare" 4k hour nurse main that she's able to destroy everyone while trolling.
Watch a tru3ta1ent video some time. I know he gets a lot of flak, but look at the caliber of teams that he constantly goes against. This is also the kind of thing i see, almost every game, all p100s, bringing in crazy medkits, instaheals, bnps, all survivors with DS/DH/Hyperfocus with cracked toolboxes almost every single game (on my main killers anyway)
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I don't think it has "nothing" to do with it. I just don't think the game would've magically took off if they fixed that issue anyway. They screwed up too hard in too many other ways for it to matter in the long run.
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Lack of agency and the general weakness of the killer side in particular is what ends of killing asym games. This has very notably happened with the game Level Zero Extraction. And while it is true that game has other issues as well, including the developers caving on core design elements like maps being dark, and has a serious problem with cheaters, I can, as someone who has played since the full release attest to the serious player agency and balance problem present where alien can feel very weak and have very little agency.
I never played it but VHS had similar problems where the teens were just so much stronger than the monster role and it could feel like as the monster role you just had no chance to do anything.
DbD has managed to avoid these issues by allowing a variety of play styles, regardless of how survivors may feel about them individually, to exist. This makes the killer role feel as though it is more dynamic. You can actually react and adapt the way you play and effectivly counter a variety of stratagies from survivors. This is SUPER important to the health of the game, as we have seen time and time again what happens when this agency is denied to the killer role.4 -
What turns me off the most from killer gameplay is how flat it is. Find survivor → Chase survivor → Hook survivor → Rinse and repeat. And I don't buy for a second that camping, tunnelling or slugging do anything to make it feel less flat.
TCSM, I've only ever played killer, and it's so much more dynamic. Chase sequences are a lot more dynamic in and of themselves due to a lot of subtle differences, what with health bars and stamina systems and the different types of escape methods the victims have.
But on top of that, most killers have some kind of 'set-up' thing they can do. Bubba can break barriers, the Cook can put padlocks on doors, Hitchhiker can place down traps… So even if you're not in chase, you can strategise on where to place your tools to try and catch the victims off-guard, or which areas to deny.
And then on top of that there's Grandpa. With victims having much better stealth in TCSM than survivors in DBD, Grandpa is actually added as a fantastic additional way for the family to put pressure on their opponents. This makes it worthwhile to not just chase victims, but also to go around collecting blood from the self-replenishing blood-buckets and go feed grandpa to improve his ability to highlight victims.
With the constant shift between patrolling, setting up, chasing, and blood collection/depositing, gameplay for the Family feels a LOT more dynamic than killer does in DBD. And I think that's what is hindering killer the most in DBD, there's just nothing to do. The higher level you get, the more methodical these chases become, too, resulting in them becoming more same-y.
Instead of band-aiding everything with perks, BHVR should start brainstorming ways to expand on gameplay for all parties involved. We've had glyphs for ages now and they're ONLY ever being used for challenges, not as a substitution for band-aid perks, for example.
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I agree with the TCM game having a better Killer experience in terms of how much you can actually do. The part where TCM fails is the Victims can F with you way too much. DBD can reach that point, but it has 0 competition from a rival game studio.. Competition breeds innovation and ever since EGC we have never received any other massive changes to the mechanics of DBD. Adding perks only goes so far unfortunately.. BHVR has all the power. I suppose they're just holding off on doing any more broad mechanic changes until they absolutely have to, which I have to say is extremely complacent.
BHVR need to get out of their comfort zone and make big changes before they are forced to. That point will come eventually. The game won't survive forever in it's current state.
Post edited by biggybiggybiggens on1 -
So DBD needs to be killer sided by default because it can't lose killer players
But what about losing survivor players?
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The solution is adding survivor bots… oh wait
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The part where TCM fails is the Victims can F with you way too much.
That, and how extremely powerful rushing is.
As in, DBD killers complain a lot about genrushing, but TCM rushing can crack an exit in under a minute and have everyone out.
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I see lots of people talking about different asymms and arguing over high MMR.
I've only played DbD and Deathgarden really, but looking at the Steam charts for these games (Evolve version 1 I couldn't track down), lot of these games saw extremely quick player count drops.
VHS went from 6k to 2.5k in a month, and was in the hundreds within three months.
Level Zero Extraction went from 2.6k to 500 within a month.
Evolve Stage 2 went from 51k to 13.8k in a month, and was within the hundreds within six months.
TCM, which has done much better than other asymms, went from 17k to 4k within 2 months, and then was in the low thousands/high hundreds after that.
It is normal for games to drop off, but the reason I cite how quick these games went is saying the problem was high MMR doesn't make sense. You aren't losing 90%+ of the player base within a month because of high MMR issues. For more likely explanations are:
A: the game just isn't that fun (or just fun for a short while)
B: mastering the game was quick enough that everyone got to the high MMR level really quickly, which is a bigger problem than balance issues
For comparison, DbD kept a player count of 10k+ its first few months (before Myers was ever introduced), only seeing relatively minor month to month changes. It kept that player count for years, before seeing sustained jumps in 2018 and another in 2020 (when people seem to agree the game was significantly survivor sided).
Looking at the data, it sure seems like those games just weren't as fun or enjoyable for players in the long run as DbD is.
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Survivors in DBD are powerhouses at the high end but incredibly weak at the low end. It's pretty much the opposite issue with the same problem here. Survivor is far less of a fun experience for newer players.
I honestly wouldn't mind the devs putting in some sort of crutch safeguard for the lower brackets, a weakened crutch for mid, and then have all crutches removed for the high end gameplay.
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I play both roles in TCM but I've played killer way more than victim there. It just feels more fun to play killer in TCM than DBD. I get bored with killer in DBD because like you said it falls flat and for me it doesn't feel rewarding.
Each match of TCM feels different because of the maps, the different ways to escape, and what characters your teammates choose v what characters the other team choses. Are you going to be more of a chase killer in the match or a support killer? In DBD, unless it's 2v8, you are the chase killer all the time. Survivor in DBD you can have the gen jockey, the rescuer/healer, and the runner - you aren't necessarily limited to a single role, although with the game becoming more and more competitive survivors are getting pushed into focusing more and more on just gens which is a bummer.
It's a shame the devs in TCM dropped the ball on fixing issues/bugs in a timely manner because it is such a fun game for both sides, even DBD brought in ideas from TCM - 2v8 survivors get an ability and the ability is on cool down at the start of the match just like in TCM.
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I recall que times being absolutely bonkers as well like 20-40 minutes to get into each match. Thats the part that drove me away other than the way the game was set up so that the monster prettymuch has to do thinga that make you unable to do anything - in order to get you down. So most of the teens fighting was either ganging up or camping around corners which made it seem like everyone had to win through cheap shots on either side.
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I found a lot of parallels between the Monster experience in VHS and the solo queue experience in DbD. Monster was incredibly frustrating for new Monsters as the Monster was similar to playing the Lights Out modifier in DbD but less dark and only the Monster has the disadvantages; the Teens were in regular mode. So the Monster would have to learn to track by audio which took far more time to learn sitting at a corner or ducking behind a door and zapping the Monster from behind.
It's very similar with tunnelling and camping as the skill floor to counter tunnelling and camping is far higher than the skill floor to counter it is just as the skill floor to kill Teens in VHS was far higher than the skill floor to kill Monsters. I suspect that DbD has an unrecognized problem with new player retention because of this but the issue is masked by tunnelling and camping has only reached significant proportions in recent years (my recorded games showed a roughly 5% incidence of hard tunnelling roughly two years ago versus a roughly 25% incidence now in my matches) and the percentage of hard tunnelling is still significantly less than 100%. However, Monster faced the issue 100% of the time which is why the player retention rate was in the single digits. As well, BHVR's licensed Killers help bring in new players. However, as the incidence of tunnelling continues to rise less and less new players will stay.
It is definitely possible for devs to treat a problem at the bottom without severely affecting the top. One of my suggestions for VHS was to give armed teens scratch marks. Anybody who was already winning most of their matches as Monster was tracking effectively anyway without scratch marks and the tiny polychromatic effect after a Teen was hit wasn't enough for inexperienced Monsters to not just get zapped next after hitting a Teen (a successful hit caused the Monster to look up so as to lose sight of the Teen).
For DbD, I think the best solution is to base repair speeds off of survivors left alive. Nobody is claiming a 4 person SWF that's decently experienced is having issues doing gens quickly. Similarly, nobody who's being serious is going to claim a group of 4 solos, especially if inexperienced, have a chance of getting anyone out if a survivor dies at 4 or 5 gens still up.
As such, I think a repair speed nerf at 4 Survivors still up would slow down the early game enough to allow Killers to get a foothold and spread hooks at higher levels while a repair speed buff once a Survivor dies would give Survivors at mid and lower levels a shot at getting someone out after a Survivor dies. Hopefully, it would also reduce the go next problem that DbD has since people go next since they don't perceive themselves as having a chance (regardless of whether it is possible as people react according to perceptions and perceptions don't always match reality). At the very least, knowing there is a repair speed buff could encourage people to stay.
It would probably also reduce the number of 4Ks and 4Es in favour of 2 or 3 either out or killed but I consider that a good thing. I find those type of matches more entertaining than a cycle of stomping or being stomped and think most people do as well.
Post edited by TheSubstitute on1 -
BHVR tiers its killer characters but that isn’t unique to them: pretty much every multiplayer game does this, assym or not. Blight, Nurse, Hillbilly, Spirit—these kills occupy a particular echelon of power & that’s fine.
Every killer has a kill rate above 50% (including Nurse) so not a single one of them is struggling to win more than survivors any percentage of the time. They’re all winning more than any configuration of survivors; solo, 2, 3, and even 4-man SWF. But I do think it’s important to have killers with a range of strength. There need to be killers that are as strong (or weak, if you believe it) as… I dunno, Trapper and the current version of Nightmare too. And yes there should be killers as strong as Nurse and Blight as well.
Otzdarva is a more skilled killer than tru3 and he doesn’t face that kind of stuff. He’s likely at the same MMR bracket as tru3 as well. So why is it just that tru3 constantly faces these things while his cohorts do not?
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"VHS failed in large part because the Monster couldn't tunnel or camp. It seems clear to me from the design that they looked at DBD and figured that the biggest thing its players hate is tunneling and camping, so they eliminated those tactics."
I think VHS failed not for a lack of camping and tunneling, but from a lack of what Almo mentions later: "the sense of an unstoppable Killer".
In DBD's gameplay loop the Killer is always "finding/chasing the Survivors" and Survivors need to "hide/run from the Killer", but in VHS the Monster must "find/chase/run away from Teens" and Teens are actively incentivized to "hide/hunt down the Monster".
The inclusion of the Monster needing to run from Teens and Teens needing to hunt the Monster changes the core gameplay loop significantly.
I'd argue that camping and tunneling are not core pillars of DBD gameplay, just paths of least resistance. I think methods could be introduced to alleviate some of the pain points involved while still maintaining the Killer as an unstoppable force (Example here)
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It’s been proven time and time again that Behaviour alters the matchmaking of popular content creators (Fog whisperer's), ie giving them easier matches, it’s better for their content having easier games and makes the game look more appealing to those watching streams/youtube videos, I’m no fan of Tru all he does is complain, but his games are far more difficult then Otz, he goes against organised players that actually know what they are doing, Otz seems to go against mediocre players despite the fact he has over 10k hours and wins a lot, Tru was a Fog whisperer at one point but he no longer receives this special matchmaking privilege.
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Proven where? By what? There’s anecdotal evidence at best, and we’ve all had games against people who are significantly worse than us.
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Thinking about it more, the more irked I am about this.
From a core gameplay perspective, VHS isn't a game about Teens against a Monster, it's a group of player-hunters against a solo player-hunter. At the end of the day, both roles end up trying to kill the other (and arguably the Teens have the flashiest hunting tools, checkpoints, and collaborative capabilities).
Which is why yes, he's absolutely right that no hyper lethality/Power fantasy for Monsters made it an unattractive choice for player hunters to choose, as there's little incentive to pick the less attractive version of player-hunting (especially when you can player-hunt with your friends).
But DBD is different, and he points out exactly how:
The Survivors aren't playing PvP: their win-condition is sourced entirely from co-op completion of Environmental objectives and actively trying to evade/delay the Killer. (You could argue that flashlights and flashbangs are PvP enabling components, and I'd agree, such tools need to be carefully monitored).
The Killer is the only one playing true solo player-hunting PvP.
Two different game-modes in the same game, with players typically choosing the game-mode they prefer at the moment over what is statistically the easiest/hardest (Or the one in which they're able to socialize more in, regarding SWF). This helps keep queues healthy so long as those roles provide an attractive enough experience to maintain their respective audience.
But it's also because of this difference, that I think the stance that "not having camping or tunneling ruined the game" falls short to a degree in DBD.
I agree the Killer needs to be an unstoppable force. I like that the Killer catching a survivor is more or less inevitable (once they understand the game/burn through enough survivor resources). I like how the gameplay dynamics can shift over the course of the match (Kills just being a staple tool that causes this). I wish that getting a Mori was a bit more dynamic and not tied to the end of the game so I could be more like an actual slasher during the match.
But I also think that Survivors need to be able to actually play the game-mode they queued up for. If the Killer is on a Survivor, they will get them down (ideally within a reasonable amount of time). If the Killer then sits in front of the hook the rest of the game, that player doesn't get to play their game, and the rest of the survivors don't get to engage with the evade/delay aspect of gameplay. If a Killer immediately downs a survivor after they got unhooked in front of them, and rehooked immediately, repeatedly, they just never get to play that game. Not because they didn't have the skill to, but because the system is setup in such a manner that there was nothing they could do.
That stuff just serves to make players jaded and miserable under the assumption that if they get caught even once their game is over (and on the flip side it'd be like letting survivors be able to indefinitely run from the Killer, or the feeling of the game being over if you've only gotten a few hooks and three generators got finished).
That being said, presentation matters. And I think the mention of "But that's a totally different feeling than what you get in VHS where so many systems and rules are set up to make it systemically difficult to kill a Teen" might be a slight dig at DBD's anti-camp features.
To which I agree, the current anti-camp features feel less like the Survivor was being crafty, or they were aided by an ally, or leveraged an unnatural force in a Faustian bargain with The Hunt resuming, and more like the system just says "no, you can't do that". (causing some "ludonarrative dissonance")
But If you want those rabbits to flee from you, well, it's hard for them to flee if they're just stuck hanging in place, and there's nothing to flee from if nothing's chasing them.
Post edited by AssortedSorting on4 -
Right that seems like a total lie.
Did tru3 tell you this? It sounds like something he has said on stream before.
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