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Why Do People Say There's No Clear Win Condition In DBD?
I want to make it clear what I'm asking here, so bear with me.
I see this notion pop up a lot, that there's no win condition for DBD so players have to come up with their own. I cannot understand this position, personally, because the win conditions are so obvious to me (with slight ambiguity that does exist) that I can't see how anyone could think the game doesn't have one.
I'm not here to argue whether or not what I see as the win condition is correct, though. I want to know why people think it's not clear. Is there something missing from the game that would define the win condition for you? If so, what is it? If not, what led you to your position about there not being a win condition?
I hope it's clear, I don't mean to shame or lambast anyone here. This is a post made very much in good faith to try and understand the opposing position in this discussion.
Comments
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Is the win con the score board at the end meaning bp amassed or everyone killed for killers/ everyone out for survivors/ or just you out for solo survivor?
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I'm hesitant to give my answer for what the win condition is because it's very likely that'll just become what the discussion is about. I'm more interested in knowing what people expect to see for a clear win condition but aren't seeing in DBD.
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I think the community has a tendency to be deliberately obtuse in an effort to validate their playstyle i.e. "I slug for the 4k because my only acceptable win con is a 4k".
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4k= Win
3k= Win
2k= Draw/Tie
1k or 0k = Loss
This is the general consensus among many players I believe. Though I'm sure some would argue you need that 4k mori.
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I think it's partially a result of trying to arbitrarily define a 'tie', as well as the MMR system. To me, a 'tie' implies a stalemate. Both parties have exhausted all of their options and cannot progress the game/match, or achieved the exact same result. It's impossible for either party to win, or to lose, so it's a tie.
(forgive the train-of-thought style, i am "thinking out loud", so to speak)
With DbD, it's much trickier to define a tie, because of the opposing objectives. It's impossible for both parties to run out of options at the same time (aside from bugs), so you'd have to look at both parties achieving the same result. What would that even mean in the context of DbD? The survivors are trying to complete the gens and get out through the gates. If at least 2 survivors escape, that means they did just that. So, by all means, the killer failed their objective. Moreover, there's no obvious killer equivalent of only getting 3 gens done. Maybe you could argue it's the amount of hooks they got. But some players don't care about how many hooks they got, as long as they score kills, so that can't be our definitive answer.
In the case of a 2k, the killer completed their half of their objective, but failed the other half. But then, did the survivor fail half of their objective? I wouldn't say so, since they still got all gens done and at least one gate open. Still, it's the closest we can get to both parties achieving the same result. But then, it can hardly be called the 'same result', since it's still fundamentally opposed.
So do we then look at individual survivors? Again, in the case of a 2k, did the survivors win two times, and lose two times? I believe Patrick Harris was talking about this on a dev stream some time ago when he explained the MMR system. His answer was to not actually define a tie. They went with the killer winning/losing twice, and the 'win/loss' counting for each individual survivor. This is ultimately what the MMR system is based on, and what a good amount of players have adopted as their own metric, which had previously never been defined. But it's still weird, 'cause this system implies that both the killer and survivors can 'win', to a degree. How can a game with fundamentally opposed sides see both parties as a partial winner?
Ultimately, I think, it's determined by what you actually play the game for. If you only care for kills, you have the simplest metric possible. Do you only care for hooks? That gets much more abstract and personal. Do you only care for some good chases? I don't even know if you can define that with any kind of metric.
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Well I've talked about this with you in another thread, but I'll try to lay it out in more detail.
1: The fact that people disagree about it kind of proves the point. Even if I say I have a win condition, and someone else has a different one, that shows there isn't a clear win condition.
I played a lot more of Deathgarden before I got into DbD, and the lack of clarity was even more confusing there. How many scavengers (survivors) needed to be killed for a killer win? Did it matter if they just hid until the timer ran out?
Basically if the win condition is super clear to you, and the win condition is super clear to someone else, but the two of you have different win conditions, well than the game doesn't have a win condition.
2: DbD is unique in degree of victory. Most types games you either win or lose (second place is just the first loser for example). Winning by a lot might make a statement, and is sometimes used as a tie breaker, but the win is the absolute most important thing.
The only thing I know of that I can compare DbD to is a board game called Diplomacy. In the standard version there are 7 players who are eliminated over the course of the game and the ultimate goal is to be the last player. However, most games don't actually result in a single remaining player, it usually results in a stalemate, a common one being where one player gets strong, but two players ally to match him in strength and the game cannot progress (quite literally the game deadlocks). In that case all three remaining players 'win', but they don't win as if one player had won the game entirely.
So in this game the conditions are clear - don't get eliminated, and eliminate everyone else. But what about all of the middle case scenarios that can arise? If you play over many games how do evaluate your performance? And how much risk/value do you put on trying to achieve a last player standing goal at the risk of being eliminated?
3: MMR confuses the issue more on the killer side. The killer has five possible outcomes (0k, 1k, 2k, 3k, 3k+hatch, 4k). 4k, 1k, 1k and 3k, 3k, 0k have the same overall MMR result even if a player might feel very differently about those mixes of games. The community definition would be a win and 2 losses vs 2 wins and a loss, but the MMR cares that the one win was a large win and the losses were small losses.
Win a lot and win a little are more statistically significant than the difference is in other games.
4: Win condition, singular, is different than win conditions, plural. We're back to degrees here. If there is more than one thing I consider a win condition, and I accomplish some, but not all of them, then we have an unclear thing.
5: On survivor side the way people play the game can not be boiled down to a single win condition. Survivors, who have a guaranteed escape will risk it to go back for a hook, but they also won't blindly run into a suicidal situation.
If the win condition was escape, nothing else, then the other survivor is pointless. If the win condition was total escapes at all costs, then survivors should try to rescue no matter the almost certain death (as happens in comp sometimes).
What we have though is not a win condition, but different things of value, your own escape and the escape of other survivors. Different players value them in different ways. This is a departure from most games, where players differ on strategy (how do I accomplish X objective), but here players differ on strategy and goal (how do I accomplish my objectives, and how much value do I attach to X and Y).
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In my eyes, survivors have a clear set of defined good or bad outcomes: for each survivor, an escape is a good outcome and death is a bad outcome. But I don't view those as wins/losses. As survivor, I also feel better if I do something to help the other survivors escape.
As killer, I usually see a good outcome as sacrificing a certain number of survivors.
I guess if we define good/bad outcomes as wins/losses, then we get a set of win conditions for each player. Even then, the win condition for killer will depend on what the killer player thinks is a good outcome. It seems clear to me that a 3k or 4k would typically be viewed as the killer doing well, and that a 1k isn't as great. Personally, I don't mind getting a 1k, I just want a good match.
Having said that, I think the killer doesn't have a win condition for the whole match. The killer has four 1v1 matches, and a set of good or bad outcomes for each.
But I also see all of those things through a lens of playstyle. If I feel like the match was cheap, like if a player decides to go next on hook in the early game, I'm going to feel like a rapid 4k isn't deserved and is more of a loss on my side.
If I had to define a set of survivor win conditions I think is defined by the current community, it would be escapes/sacrifices for each individual survivor. And for the killer, it would be that 0-1k is a loss, 2k a tie, and 3k or 4k as win. But those are a bit subjective.
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To comment on the idea of multiple people having differing ideas, how would you control for some people just flat out being wrong?
Take an example for another game that has an extremely clear win condition, something like Overwatch. If two people had differing ideas for what the win condition is on say, a payload map… one of them would just be wrong, and them being wrong wouldn't be evidence of Overwatch not having a win condition.
In that instance, we could clearly see that one person is wrong, but what's different between DBD and that game? What does Overwatch have to make its win condition clear, and that DBD lacks?
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To ask for a little clarification - why don't you consider those good outcomes wins and those bad outcomes losses?
If the game's geared towards one specific goal on either side, and either of those goals being met means the match ends… what is missing from that situation that would define those goals as the win condition?
It's the whys I'm most curious about here, rather than the whats, so to speak.
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When I first started playing the game, I thought the Killer lost if one of the survivors escaped from the trial. The entire purpose of the killer role is to prevent survivors from powering the exit gates and leaving. Back then, one survivor escaping meant that all survivors won, as it was a team effort to get that one body out of the trial.
Then I discovered Twitch.TV and downloaded my new opinion from the Internet. :)
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Why do I think there's no clear-cut win condition?
Usually, a win or loss is clearly indicated by the end screen. All survivors escape, the killer is told "The Entity hungers." Okay, so that's clearly a loss.
Sacrifice one, it's still "The Entity hungers." So, still a loss.
Sacrifice two, "Brutal Killer." Okay, two sacrifices is a draw, right?
Sacrifice three, "Ruthless Killer." Is that a win? The killer doesn't get bonus points for it. The survivor who escapes is better rewarded.
Sacrifice four, it's "Merciless Killer." There we go, that's different from the previous screens, so that must be the win condition. The killer gets bonus points for no one escaping.
Then why does everyone keep saying a 3k is a win and killers should let the 4th one go? Why did the devs say 2k is a draw if the killer isn't rewarded for "winning" with a 3k?
Then take into account SBMM and MMR. A killer's MMR increases for any kill, not just sacrifices. A bleed out counts as a kill which increases the killer's MMR. But the end screen will not count a bleed out as a sacrifice, so you'll get "Ruthless Killer" for three sacrifices and a bleed out. No Adept Killer achievement for the killer in that situation. I think the killer does get the bonus points for no survivors escaping, though. Mixed messages, there.
So… ??? It's hard to say there's a definite win condition when different scoring systems in the game treat an outcome differently.
Edit: I think I mixed up two things, so I fixed it. The end screen remains ambiguous and the point system does not reward three kills in a way that suggests three kills is a win.
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That's a good question. I think I see DBD more as an experience in a way somewhat similar to survival mode RPGs. In games where the entire goal is survival, I see the outcomes more like the outcome of a dangerous situation in life: I wouldn't say I won in a terrifying life or death situation; I'd say I lived.
And as killer, I don't have equivalent life experience since I'm not a murderer, but I see killer matches the same way: I don't feel like I'm winning or losing; I'm sacrificing or not sacrificing. So as killer, I just feel like I'm doing a job. I can do it well, but I usually don't think I win or lose at my job. And honestly, from my perspective, my most important job as killer is to give the survivors a good match. If they escape and feel like they didn't have to work for it, I think I didn't do my job.
As a result, I don't see most of the game in terms of winning or losing. That's why sometimes on these forums, I'll put 'win' and 'loss' in quotes :)
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you can make irrational win conditions for yourself that do not apply to how other players perceive the game. a great example is hooks.
you can say you win if you get 6 hooks and lose below 6 hooks.
Survivors can make irrational win conditions as well such as, you win if you complete 1 gen, gain 8000 boldness points and unhook & heal two people.
a win is whatever you want it to be but there is standard global win condition.
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I think the clear win condition for Survivor is to power all the Generators/Exit Gate and escape. The clear win condition for Killer is to stop that from happening at all costs. Do new players know these things?.. Probably not.. BHVR needs better tutorials to show newer players how to go about those things. "When" is it a good time to hide/unhook/do Gens/Heal. "Why" should I do a Gen/Heal? "Which" Gens are more beneficial to do at the moment? Those kinda things.
The problem is DBD still just throws everyone in expecting them to know what to do, because if they like the game enough, they'll just look it up themselves. I've always hated that developer mentality.. The "we want it to be crazy and you never know what's going to happen" answer is another way of saying we don't want to put any more effort into it than we absolutely have to.. :/
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For me its all based on hook stages.
0 - 7 is a loss
8-10 is a draw
10 - 12 is a win
Though if there is one survivor remaining who manages to escape without getting hooked, I still count it as a win
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Cause there is no clear win condition. Proove your point.
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What I'm mostly asking here is, what would you expect to see that would make the win condition clear? What do other games have that DBD doesn't?
I'm not trying to win an argument, I'm trying to understand a perspective that I currently don't.
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Its an elimination game on the survivor side, while having multiple "degrees" of winning and losing on the killer side. Survivors can have their win con be determined by how many survivors escape regardless of themselves, just themselves, just their SWF, hatches do/don't count, etc. On killer side if you go off of MMR strictly, then anything less than a 4k is at least partially a loss since each survivor that escapes won in the individual matchup. Pips and SBMM's implementation do not directly correlate, so even that becomes nebulous as well (dying while pipping, getting a 4k while not pipping, etc.) People can make up their own down to even just completing a tome or daily challenge, if thats all they set out to do and they accomplished their goal.
It doesn't translate to many other games because most games are very clear, like your overwatch example. Many games are explicitly clear whether you win or lose, and both teams have symmetry for a zero sum game: All wins are balanced by losses to create a perfect whole regarding outcomes. If DBD had something where survivors won universally based on how many escape (group based outcome result) then it would be a start toward a more structured win condition definition. Same with if Pips/Emblems were removed, degrees of winning for killer were removed (which many people do in their personal wincon definitions, ala the win/draw/lose based on kill totals) potential draw variables removed or reworked (like hatch,) and shared agency in outcome were introduced those would be steps toward making it more solid. Elimination games are hard to define in this manner, as are asyms, so a game that has both while half dipping into two systems that don't directly correlate is basically asking for confusion among the userbase.
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From the looks of it, it seems that a lot of people only look at outcomes when it comes to defining a win condition, would you say that's accurate?
As in, they only look at what gives you feedback after the fact, and don't take into account any of the game's structures and systems before that point?
That'd go some way to explaining the position, if so.
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Kinda, yeah. The biggest point of confusion comes from the game having three different systems that work at least partially different all giving conflicting feedback: Pips, Survival/entity approval, and MMR (which has pretty much none, aside from assumptions based on the previous info paired with fringe cases like hatch or DCs.) You can have all 3 line up, but when they don't the unifying concept of a singular win definition becomes split.
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Got it. That definitely explains where other people's confusion comes from.
For the sake of clarification I might as well explain why this position was so alien to me- my first instinct when thinking about a game's win condition is to look at how it's constructed overall, not just what it gives you feedback for.
Each side has one specific, bespoke goal that every mechanic is designed around them trying to achieve and their opponents trying to stop. The game is asymmetric so those goals aren't the same, but are contradictory per player (as in, if you are sacrificed, you cannot escape, and vice versa- as well as if a survivor escapes you can't sacrifice them). A player's participation in a match ends when either goal is reached.
I don't see any interpretation of these facts that could possibly lead anywhere except those goals - kills and escapes, obviously - being the game's win condition, hence me being so confused about this argument. It's a discussion that makes as little sense to me as if someone tried it for any other game that obviously had a single intended goal per role.
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Its not something you have to think about with most game design, since the outcomes are usually much more both binary and mutually exclusive like you surmised.
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DBD needs to have VICTORY or DEFEAT, in giant letters. That's literally it.
Because the post-game screens we currently have in DBD, aren't the same thing.
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Payload is a good thing to use as a comparison, though I've never played Overwatch I'll go off payload modes I've played in other games.
Payload, especially with ranked, gives each side a turn to push. The win condition is not to push the payload to the end, that's the objective, the win condition is to do so better than the other team does. That win condition cannot be applied to DbD because its asymmetrical, both sides aren't doing the same objectives, there's not as clear of a line where one side outperforms the other.
Which is a huge difference between 'winning' and 'having objectives'.
Additionally, its how the game is laid out. Imagine if a game had payload, but when entering the player choose to play attacker or defender and each side had unique characters. Further, let's say pushing the payload to the end was a relatively rare feat, and that the game creators assigned varying MMR totals based on how many checkpoints where past. At that point players would begin to ask 'how far do I have to push the payload for it to be considered a win'.
To comment on the idea of multiple people having differing ideas, how would you control for some people just flat out being wrong?Community, creators, singular goal.
1: Community - if like 95% of the people were playing the game toward a certain goal, and the other 5% where doing something different, easy to say they are outside the norm. But when they split into a variety of groups and desires, you don't have a win condition.
2: Creators - If they literally say 'this is a win, this is not a win' sure helps, but BHVR has explicitly avoided doing that.
3: Singular goal - If the game has a goal that only one side can achieve. Comp has this, win objectives are clear, which team outperforms the other along stated metrics. Payload - who pushed the payload farther or faster. Team Deathmatch - who killed more of the other team.
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I think it's because this game is simultaneously an asymetrical 4v1 co-op and essentially a free for all, all in one.
If I sabotage every game for every other player but make sure I escape at least 75% of my matches, have I won? Has the killer won? Are my matches counted as killer victories and survivor defeats, or as "killer win, survivor win, survivor defeat x3"?
Is hatch a victory or a tie? Are hatch pities just a way for killers to artificially buff survival rates? What exactly is a "win" here, and how many can win at the same time?
For the purposes of forum discussion, I pretend a 3K is a killer win and a 1K is a killer defeat, with 2K being a tie. Most of us run our discussions under these assumptions. That does change, however, while I'm playing the game. 3K is a victory if I'm the one escaping, and 1K is a defeat if I'm the first one dead because I'm not lingering long enough to see the full result anyway, and if I'm the one killing 2 people I'm satisfied enough that I consider it a "partial win" of sorts.
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The generic DBD goal is Survivors have to escape while the Killer has to sacrifice them. This is how the game is generally advertised.
Going any deeper then that and it becomes debatable on so many factors that it becomes very opinionated. The most generic one many people use is,
0-1k a loss
2k a tie
3-4k a winThis is based on killer sacrifices and team escape. Individual win conditions can be a huge variety of things from bloodpoints, challenge completion, hooks, fun, etc. Comp also has it's own rules.
There is no real in-game win condition. Just a generic goal to work toward.
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Judging by how many survivors make me walk over and watch them leave and how much they teabag me before they go, it seem the survivor win condition is just to get the hatch
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If the entity tells me it doesn't "hunger" on my screen than I feel like I did well. Its a win for me haha.
However, I have matches where the survivors all escape, but I had everyone on death hook. I dont beat myself up over that either.
Send 3 survivors to the entity. Its a win. I do think the entity wants all 4 though.
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Because the devs have never stated what is a win or a loss as a killer, only for survivor that the only thing that matters is escaping. After all "kills equals skills" (which is a bad idea but its what they say)
Yes, we can probably assume that 0 kills is a loss, and 4 kills is a win, and arguably 2 kills is a draw. But what about 1 kill? Is 1 kill still a draw? After all the game says "brutal killer"? Is 3 kills still a win? What about 3 kills plus a hatch? What about 3 kills plus one out the gate, there are too many factors in play to determine what is a "win" vs what is a "loss"
Why is that? Because MMR treats this game not as a 1v4, but as 4 1v1s. So if you kill 1 survivor, you "won" that 1v1, but lost the other 1v1s. But, what if the survivors were actually way higher in MMR than you? That could in theory mean that the 1 you killed actually gave you more MMR than the amount you lost from the other 3, so would such a match actually be considered a win?
And that is just based on how the devs treat it, some players count hooks, or count more survivors escaping. What if, i as a survivor die, but i help 3 of teammates out, personally i consider that a win even if BHVR doesn't. I also tend to go by hooks and not kills where i see 0-4 hooks as a loss, 5-7 hooks as a draw, and 8-12 hooks as a win. Because i feel hooks shows more skill than kills and is more relevant.
This is actually why i think they SHOULD show MMR, because it would make people feel a lot better about things if for example a crazy SWF team went against you but you still managed to get one, meaning your MMR actually stayed the same. Or working in the reverse, where the killer was a crazy MMR above you, so actually you only lost like 2 MMR for dying that game. It would make the losses hurt less, and the wins feel better.
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Take this with a grain of salt because im killer biased.
In the first two years of dbd, killers only considered 4k a win ( like you said, only a 4k gets rewarded and lesser results got mocked by the game: "prtty killer" etc).
Then survivors started a constant stream of downplaying killer desire for 4k and conditioned/gaslit killers into considering a 3k a win too, even if the game doesnt reward it. (Similiarily in current time, survivors keep telling killers 2k arent a loss.)
Now as for topic tax:
3-4k are wins for killer, other results are losses. 4k still more desireable due to actual rewards.
Survivors is easy: escape = win, death= loss
Survivor team rating doesnt exist, so there arent ties or draws. A 2e/2k isnt a tie, but 2 players winning and 3 losing. Theres no survivor team to tie with the killer.
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