General Discussions
General Discussions
The "rat debate" in DBD
I feel like the changes to Wake Up have awakened some of the debate around players who hide a lot during the match, which in turn leads to their teammates getting killed off sooner. Personally, I just never had any talent for stealth in this game. It feels like the killer is always five steps away from me and I can't even fart in the wind without the killer making an immediate beeline for me from across the map....
Outside of some players doing challenges, I feel like some of what happens is that when people first start playing the game, they find looping extremely difficult, if not impossible, and so they adapt the "rat lifestyle" to be able to last in matches longer. It makes sense, because if you avoid the killer most of the game, you stand a pretty chance of not going into the endgame collapse on death hook. The problem is that while you're hiding in lockers and creeping stealthily away into some bushes, the killer is busy hooking all your teammates. And other teammates are having to go for the unhook, opening THEM up to be targeted by the killer.
Of course, just like with slugging or tunneling, I think an argument can be made that stealth does have a place in the game. Especially when it gets down to the final gens and it's a patrol heavy killer who is playing a solid game. But I think it works better if the whole team is using stealth on and off, and not just that one person. Because I think we've all had that game where everybody is getting hooked left and right except for that one survivor, who somehow manages to never get chased at all.
Of course if I'm dead and everybody else is dead, and that one sole survivor who played stealthily gets the hatch or escapes, I guess according to the game and the MMR, that really does make them the better player. Not that it means I'm not going to quietly mumble under my breath as I log out of DBD for the rest of the day. Because I am. LOL.
Comments
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Ive said this before, many times before but playing for yourself can be fine, there are many situations that call for such, and DBD is an incredibly nuanced game so and I think we should have perks that at least serve to help in those kinds of situations.
This being said most "rat" perks can be changed or buffed to provide benefits to the team progressively as the team dies, so they can still act as an inherent comeback mechanic while not losing their functionality.
- For example, Sole Survivor can provide it's Repair Speed buff by making it 25% per token (up to 75%), instead of it only procing when all Survivors are dead for 75%. The functionality largely remains the same, but now there is some benefit to the team and it can act as a comeback mechanic for games where a Survivors dies too early into a game (normally by tunneling).
With the Wake Up! changes, it doesnt strictly "prevent" rat playstyles, it also negatively impacted the perk in a team setting by providing a diminishing effect on an already niche perk. There were just better ways of handing it, and I hope BHVR listens to the feedback from the community.
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That part about escape being incredibly heavily rewarded is a really good point, and part of why the survivor BP gain can feel awful for newer players too, as well as ratting being as big of an issue. Why do you get 7000 points for an escape, while you get 0 if you die? It would be way, way healthier if you got 1000, or even 1200 survival points per generator completed globally in the trial, and 2000 for escaping.
Hatch is even worse at this, also giving away 2500 objective points for no reason. That should honestly just be removed. Hatch is a consolation prize and not a main objective and shouldn't give any extra reward other than the escape bonus.
When there's 2 players and 2 gens left, do you:
- Do 35% of a gen as the last person is chased, get like 500 objective points, get found after the last person gets hooked or runs by you, die
- Hide and wait for hatch, possibly getting 9500 points (7000 survival and 2500 objectve)
It's no wonder people choose to rat. With my changes, just finishing a gen would clearly be the best choice for everyone since you'd be getting 1000 points to survival.
Post edited by Rizzo on5 -
When has 'rat' ever been a problem that needed immediate fixing? It hasn't. Its never been a rampant issue. Its literally just the talking point to get things nerfed. Its all it ever has been. When asked for proof of this being an issue, its never given.
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If it's not 'nerf (survivor perk) because it's too strong in the hands of team-focused swf!' then it's 'nerf (survivor perk) because that solo player isn't team-focused enough!'
Edit to add that the post I was replying to appears to have been deleted
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I don't really care if people are scared and timid players, I was when I first started so I get it. What I do object to is those who will go so far as to actually not even save you off hook as they are that much of a rat. I also hate it how these people will not take hooks states and would rather team mates are sacrificed than taking even one hook - this often results in everyone dying so not only is it selfish, it is just plain stupid.
However I very rarely see this and I don't see it as a problem, plus the changes to Distortion really took away a big tool in the rat arsenal.
I think DBD has far bigger issues to sort out
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Yeah, I think stealth has a place in the game, but like any other mechanic in the game, it can be abused or used incorrectly. As far as I understand, BHVR's motive is to reduce the abuse of these mechanics. Not that they're going about it the right way or anything, or without opening a whole new can of worms.
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i think they went for it's the change right now because they are basically reworking Freddy, so why not entire chapter QoL changes overall
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I agree DBD has far bigger issues. Also, like I said in a previous thread, until now BHVR’s philosophy has been ‘survivors can play as selfishly or as altruistically as they want’. This is literally the excuse they give every time someone calls for them to remove death by unhooking. What’s the difference though? The former allows and escape for survivors whilst the latter offers a sacrifice for killers. That’s legitimately the only reason I can think of why they’ve done such a double back from a buff to double the perk to a nerf to half it. People were clearly stacking Wake Up and Sole Survivor in the PTB and opening the doors too quickly. But id argue by that point, if you’re the only survivor left it’s fair game.
I’d also like to point out that not everyone who takes a WU and SS combo will be a ‘rat’ but there are far more survivors out there who seem to think they’re better at looping and stunning than they are. Or ones that race across the map to unhook when they’re still injured and on death hook rather than allowing the uninjured team mate who has only been hooked once to take the risk. There are way more of these players than the ‘rats’.
I tried the SS and WU combo for a while for this very reason, but I always do gens, I always unhook and pick up even if there’s only two of us and if the killer is trying to proxy. I just took it off because really it’s so situational you’re only ever really going in with two perks.8 -
This, I don't particularly use Sole-Survivor in any of my builds (I do a variety of them) — but people seem to think that anything that gives you an edge seems to be a "rat" type of playstyle. Most of the time I see "rat" playstyle is urban evading randoms, but would I opt to nerf or do anything to Urban Evasion? No.
Urban Evasion can be useful if used properly (not constantly urbanning everywhere), but people, such as you are still pushing the game forward even with one perk that can be situationally selfish.
What I don't understand about Behavior is their needless decision to nerf that type of playstyle when most of the time these players will not be the last person alive to gain value from Wake Up and Sole-Survivor.
Most games get down to 2-3 gens unless survivors are constantly on gen progress. Some games don't even progress past 5, so nerfing perks for "rat" playstyles does nothing because people will still "rat" regardless of what Behavior does.
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I must be unlucky cause I never see people using these perks and people who use any perks apart from those two will still rat. My experience is its always urban, fixated and bond users who does it.
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Selfishness and rat behavior is the main reason solo queue is unplayable at times. Some players are so conditioned to play for themselves that learning even a little basic teamplay would change a lot. Wake up change is just bhvr tier balancing though odd choice.
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I know it’s part of a killer’s mantra to blame survivors for every failed game mechanic that unravels them but as a survivor main?
Survivors incompetence, overbloated killer buffs, aggressive killer playstyles, and survivor nerfs are the main reasons solo queue is unplayable. Stealthy survivors are the least of any other survivor’s concern.
No survivor ends a match thinking, “man if only that Dwight wasn’t hiding I wouldn’t have been tunneled/slugged/camped out of the match on Haddonfield. I would have won if only they’d been doing gens while the killer relentlessly pursued me across this shoebox of a map.”
Talk to survivor mains for a change instead of regurgitating trite killer talking points.14 -
To reiterate the salient points, since the post I made that @MrMori is referring to here got removed:
7K BP for escaping means survivors are heavily incentivised, score-wise and meta-progression-wise, to focus on escaping at all costs. It is a huge chunk of points that can bring any survivor really close in point count to an unlucky survivor that's trying their hardest. Other score events could be upped while escaping gets reduced and it might help.
(Also just remembered the old sidequest for WGLF, where you'd get up to 100% bonus BP for saving your teammates, which in turn made escaping less important. This, of course, got removed.)
I also mentioned that a BHVR dev doubled down when criticism was levelled at SBMM and said 'If you run the killer for five gens but then get caught and sacrificed, was it really a good play?'. BHVR has, in these mechanisms, very aggressively promoted the 'rat' playstyle and pushed the game towards that, so to now nerf low tier perks because 'it incentivises ratting too much' is inconsistent.
I also stated that I think the discussion of the 'rat' problem is disingenuous, as it feels to me like a 'how do you do, fellow survivors?' moment in the Distortion discussions, when people realised that 'this survivor perk functions to benefit the survivors and should therefor be nerfed' wasn't gonna fly.
However, thinking on it more, there's another thing that came to mind as a theory.
One issue I had with the 'distortion is a rat perk' argument is that the only thing a rat WITH Distortion can do that a rat WITHOUT Distortion can't… Is help the team. A rat WITH Distortion can do killer objectives like hunt down Pinhead's box. A rat WITH Distortion can sit on a gen. A rat WITH Distortion can heal another player. These are things that a rat without Distortion (A locker-hopper) can't do.
So to point at Distortion as a problem when it actually can only alleviate the problem seems like a swing-and-a-miss, but my theory now is that Distortion did introduce some people to the rat playstyle, and while they were happy to help their team as much as their Distortion allowed, once Distortion got gutted, there's a very real possibility that a bunch of these Distortion-born rats didn't actually go back to being daredevils.
In that way, it's possible that the Distortion nerf actually exacerbated the rat problem, because that Distortion rat that was doing gens all game, upon the Distortion nerf, didn't actually go back to fully engaged play and is instead now locker-hopping.
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Selfishness and rat behaviour is the main reason solo'q is unplayable at times.
Is this the new thing that will start getting pushed? I'll happily debate anyone over why this statement is just false.
Some players are so conditioned to play for themselves that learning even a little basic teamplay would change a lot
Oh, gotcha. I'd ask why you feel this way? Prefacing with 'some players' could be any extreme or just… 2. How much of this statement do you really think is accurate? Not trying to flame but I'm really curious why you feel that statement is true.
@NarkoTri1er Actually that makes sense. Its still really dumb imo. But it makes sense through a bhvr lens I suppose.
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There is a difference between mindless blaming from mean killer mains and obvious learned helplessness. There are not enough buffs you could throw at solo queue players to save them not knowing how to play the game unless they just make it a cinematic of you doing gens then escaping.
That dwight with 0 hooks can do at least help me last long enough that everyone else escapes whether that's taking hits or letting me eat time on hook. If you unironically just crawl up into a ball and break down when killer tries killing you on a bad map then I really hope I don't get you in my games.
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We saw the first hint of this during the PtB for Reassurance but it as a killer main talking point that came to a head with and following the Distortion nerf. All you heard then were killer mains saying Distortion is unfair for other survivors, they have to tunnel because of it, what if all four survivors bring it then they can’t find anyone, it’s selfish to other survivors, etc. I don’t recall any survivor mains actually complaining about Distortion though.
As @Firellius said in another conversation it’s too on the nose for killer mains to just plainly say they dislike perks that provide survivors with an edge in otherwise hopeless situations (effectively a chance against the 4K), so they’re coming up with weasely ways to say it without saying it.
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You’re dismissed.
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Unfortunately, it seems to be working.
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MMW: Exhaustion is on the block next.
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I touched on this in another thread, but I think the devs have the causation completely backwards here.
Players aren't playing like "rats" because it's effective or fun. They're doing it to salvage unwinnable situations. Wake Up or not, there is still ZERO reason for survivors to work on a generator or participate in normal gameplay during most 3v1 and 2v1 situations. It just prolongs a lost game. The gens are not going to get done. It's actively detrimental to your chances of survival to do anything but hide.
I have a hard time fathoming that the devs would be blind to that. You can nerf Wake Up, but that doesn't change how utterly pointless it is for me to save anyone or do 15% of a gen in a 3v1 with 3 gens remaining. This obsession with locking in results at the 5 minute mark and extending the game to 12 minutes has to stop.
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Here's the thing about killer main hypocrisy solo q= yall claim people need to work as a team and stop using what you claim rat perks such as distortion sole survvivor and wake up.
However = swf who will work as a team and is very less likely to hide and use said perks is claimed swf=op, bully squads and it should not be a thing, remove swf etc. So what do yall want?
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In my opinion, if the match becomes a 2v1 and theres 2 or more gens left, the survivors should automatically be sacrificed by the entity. It would help everyone
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I think the game should remove solo queue. Only possible to play survivor if you are queuing up with 3 other players from your friends list. That will address everything and the game could finally be balanced
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Survivors like this drive me crazy. Sometimes I'll be across the map on a gen and see my entire team go down in a matter of seconds and I just know it's because someone foolishly unhooked too early against a camping Killer or messed up a beamer / pallet save. And I know they'll also be expecting me to cross the map to try and salvage the situation and I'll likely get myself killed in the process. Most of the time I will, but can anyone really blame me if I sometimes don't feel like doing that and I decide to leave them all dangling on the hook?
In most of my trials, I'd honestly take a productive yet stealthy Survivor who doesn't want to take aggro over a wannabe Ayrun with a beamer who gets in the Killer's face, overestimates their abilities and then ends up dead.
I wonder if the gen progress comeback mechanic they implemented into 2 Vs 8 might one day make it into the main game? If BHVR want survivors to fight to the bitter end as a team, they're going to have to do something to help Survivors to make a comeback in those hopeless situations when the Killer has 1 dead and 6-8 hooks at 3-4 gens remaining. Plus maybe give Survivors extra communication tools like a chat wheel. I bet a lot of Killer players would absolutely hate that.
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Could be a 'mode'. We could call it… 'Ranked'
I support this!
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With double the amount of XP and BP
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They could nerf wake up and sole survivor as much as they want. "Rats" will still hide and wait for hatch/gate. If they die, oh well next game.
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I'd prefer a sort of showdown scenario. One survivor is randomly selected and teleported to a place along with the killer that's similar to the void from the Halloween event. The other survivor has to repair a 60 charge gen or do some other mechanic while the survivor in the void has to survive a chase. Completely eliminate the hiding aspect from a 2v1 and introduce an interesting way to end the game.
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Encore Maestros say it again.
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Eh, I wouldn't say that the team should just be sacrificed to the entity. At that rate, most people would just group with SWF and not play as much solo-queue.
I've seen people talk about the hatch mechanic but that was introduced as a form of incentive. Outright removing end game play and forcing the entity to kill the last two would be a bad move. If a survivor is slugged, what is the other survivor to do? They simply just wait until the other dies for a chance at hatch or gate and removing that would be boring as I like to get hatch escapes or gate escapes if I happen to be the last alive.
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Whenever I see people discussing 'rat' behaviour and how this affects survivors so much in comparison to all the other issues I get a sudden compulsion to watch this movie.
No idea why.
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I feel like the changes to Wake Up have awakened some of the debate around players who hide a lot during the match, which in turn leads to their teammates getting killed off sooner. Personally, I just never had any talent for stealth in this game. It feels like the killer is always five steps away from me and I can't even fart in the wind without the killer making an immediate beeline for me from across the map....
I felt this in my soul
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I hardly if ever play stealth unless a survivor is hooked right near my gen or if I'm maneuvering for a save and the killer is proxying.
Wake Up isn't a stealth perk at all. It just allows the user to open the gate faster — sure, the last survivor needs to stealth around to get the gate open but that's because they're the last alive.
I'm against it as I'm someone that values perk synergy as I like to run different builds and it directly affected my Quentin build that I had. I'll adapt regardless, but it sucks to see a net-nerf to a perk that hardly saw the time of day. I was excited to see the buff when it was announced, but did that mean I'd play my Quentin build all the time? No. I like to run different builds, but I feel for people who enjoyed the perk and had it in their rotation for what they enjoyed.
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You'd think that something has to change at some point. But I don't think the developers view this as a PVP game, so any comeback mechanic for the survivors is probably viewed as "brainless competitive stuff".
It's really unreasonable to think that survivors will essentially complete more gen charges per person at half the speed in a 3v1 (1 fewer person on gens). But here we are 9 years later.
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Who is "y'all" ? DBD really hasn't changed at all I guess people still think each role is some sort of monolith that gets together to create narratives in secret. SWF only seems op because solo queue is horrendous and bully squads are not a real thing.
The majority of my first few years playing this game have been killer that's fact, but 70% of the last 2 years have been survivor. This will shape my opinions in different ways to someone the other way around whether it's for better or worse.
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whats the point of even worrying about rat builds? while I'm not one for those kinds of build I don't see the problem with players trying to still survive in matches where you have quitters constantly around. people constantly will call a match where a survivor is dead at 3+ gens a hatch game and often those are flat out unwinnable normal ways for one side.
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this is literally avoiding to see responsibility of you and your team for killer winning and acting like balance is the very big reason why your experience is so bad. Let's mot pretend that giving up prematurely, playing for whatever challenge while ignoring your main objectives and continuous refusal of average player to learn from their own mistakes are not the biggest reasons why survivor role sucks so much.
Talk to survivor mains for a change instead of regurgitating trite killer talking points.
there is no point in talking to "casual" players from any of the two roles in this game, since those players have not reached the skill level to actually be competent enough to actually talk about balance.
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It's a complex topic because in some matches, if people just stuck to gens in the 3v1 and one of the survivors manages to hold the killer in chase for a long time, you may be able to barely get the gens done and still get a 2 man escape. But that's assuming everyone plays perfectly. If it's a 2v1 at 4 gens, then it's totally impossible to run the killer for like 6 minutes while the other survivor does the 4 remaining gens.
The 2v1/3v1 scenario is just badly designed in general. If they wanted to encourage players to not hide for hatch, at least give lots of objective points for doing a gen when there's few people left, remove the huge BP bonuses you get for getting hatch, etc. They've done nothing to reward players that despite the odds at least try to get the objective done even when the game is probably unwinnable.
Why take a huge risk with little reward, when a much smaller risk with much larger rewards exists? I've always thought it was dumb almost all your survival bloodpoints come from escaping itself. Why get 7000 for escape, instead of 1000 per gen done in the trial, and 2000 for escape? Why does hatch even give 2500 bonus objective points on top of that? It's no wonder people choose to rat, the game rewards it heavily.
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Well you should speak for yourself, some survivors clearly complain about their teammates.
My main issues in solo Q are in order of importance :
- Teammates that kill themselves on hook for a minor inconvenience, when the game is winnable.
- Teammates that barely touch gens while another surv is in chase.
- Teammates that refuse to take at least one chase in the game (stealthy), or go for a hook trade when a teammate has already been hooked twice.
- Getting hard tunneled or camped by a high tier killer.
Point 2 can also be put to the detriment of stealth playtstyle, when a survivor hear the Terror Radius or think the chase on the other survivor is about to end, they stay away from gens.
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there is no point in talking to "casual" players from any of the two roles in this game, since those players have not reached the skill level to actually be competent enough to actually talk about balance.
You make a lot more sense now. So you want the opinion of only like 5-10% of the playerbase? And of that, 1-3% of those who are on this forum?
To each their own. But this is disgusting.
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I am one of those stealthy survivors but I try my best to play the support role as well. I take healing and distraction perks (pebble and Adam’s healing perk) cause I can’t loop at all. I figured playing stealth and doing all the small things to make the team better would help more then me getting hooked and taking people off gens.
However I will take chase if the team needs it. I’m not going to hide in a bush for the entire game.
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i don't think only opinion of small portion of dbd playerbase should matter necessarily because they are "gods of the game", i think it should be that way because huge majority of the playerbase wants to be trained through a casual way in casual environment, while expecting top-tier competitive results (victory).
Average casual dbd player lacks critical thought and self awareness, two things that are very important in order to engage balance discussions.
Average casual dbd player believes they are casual while deep in their mind, they are competitive, but they are too shy to ever admit that to anyone. Truly 100% casual players don't even care about winning, nor they engage balance discussions at all because they are aware that game is a lot more competitive by nature than average player would ever believe it is.
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This is precisely the problem with DBD in general. DBD at first glance seems like a "survival" game where its every man for himself. But the devs designed the game in a way where the survivors are a team, but at the same time MMR makes it so that the team doesn't matter, its about whether YOU escape or not.
I always wonder what the game would be like, if it was designed to be like a 1v10, or something, where it was expected that some survivors are going to escape every game.
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I cant say you're wrong because I dont have any data on it. Why is this your view of the 'average' player? What has brought you to this conclusion that 90%+ of players have no real insight to 'top tier' comp knowledge?
You're probably right in the mindset. But if someone wanted to learn these things, there's enough info out there and tools in discord to get this going. But… they probably dont most of the time. So this is why I think you're probably more correct than not. Which makes things kind of sad in a whole picture way, imo.
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I cant say you're wrong because I dont have any data on it. Why is this your view of the 'average' player? What has brought you to this conclusion that 90%+ of players have no real insight to 'top tier' comp knowledge?
my view of average player is that they view any kind of insane macro skill expression as "sweaty" gameplay and they are refusing to try approaching to that skill level because they think they are "not obligated to", but will still continue to complain about game being xy sided and blame everyone else for a lost match.
You're probably right in the mindset. But if someone wanted to learn these things, there's enough info out there and tools in discord to get this going. But… they probably dont most of the time. So this is why I think you're probably more correct than not. Which makes things kind of sad in a whole picture way, imo.
there is a lot of info online, exactly, but there is also a lot of "corrupted" info many players are picking up, the very recent being True3's videos about "god builds" that revolve around Knock Out, where people are blindly following his tips without ever realizing how Knock Out will never make them a better player, it will only help them obliterate soloQ.
On the other hand, you also have survivor streamers that also don't teach you anything actually productive for macro knowledge. All in all, it's very easy to find "bad" info in terms of learning the game where you won't actually learn anything good.
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Interesting perspective! Has made me think over a few things and shift some views. Appreciate the convo :)
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glad to be able to help <3
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