http://dbd.game/killswitch
Killer Design Philosophy needs to change and I think existing killers need to be looked at.
I had a realization about what I really dislike about this game from a fun perspective and game health perspective. Most of these issues are with the current game design decisions (especially for killers and killer perks). This is not a survivor sided rant but a subjective take on what I find unfun.
With that out of the way, here are just some of my issues with killers specifically. I will break down further what I believe makes these unfun next. The first one will not be broken down simply because I feel like it would make this post too long. There are other issues I have too but feel they are way less of a problem for me:
- Chase strong killers with potential for downs in under 10 seconds outside of normal chases
- Chase strong killers with potential for gen control without direct interference or proximity to gens to protect them
- Chase strong killers that have strong resource depletion rates
Chase strong killers with gen control outside proximity:
Usually this type of killer exists because their strong chase indirectly bleeds strength into their gen control leading them to be overbearing. Examples of this include Artist, Knight, and Singularity.
So, what is the issue with this? I believe killers like this make the match feel like a marathon instead of a 100 yard dash. Instead of being in an adrenaline filled, fun chase for a short duration, you never stop being pressured when the chase gets focused on someone else. This leads to fatigue for me during the match as I am constantly looking out for Artist to snipe at random gens for the full match duration, Knight to send his fastest guard to interfere for the full match duration, and Singularity to spread infection and even potentially switch to me the entire duration. I feel like matches need breaks in the action to feel fun and some parts of these designs are unhealthy for the game overall (i.e. allowing 3 gen control playstyle for two of these killers before the anti 3 gen mechanic was added)
Chase strong killers with high resource depletion rates:
This one is more of a blanket statement of what I don't enjoy than game health whereas the other two felt like they had some elements of game health in them. I also need to specify that I don't mean killers like Leatherface or Hillbilly as windows act as a useful resource against them. A lot of other killers do not care about windows with their powers. I specifically mean killers like Blight that can down you without breaking pallets very easily but have a power for them to just run through the pallets on low resource maps. I don't think the combination of strong chase potential and ability to break dropped pallets in the same ability should exist. Blight's power base kit shouldn't break pallets. I feel very strongly that the ability to break pallets in a strong killer power should only exist with a sacrificed add-on slot.
Wrap-up:
To sum up, I don't like killer designs with a clear extreme strength in chase that can then bleed that strength into other major areas. I feel that killers with strong chase powers should only be strong in other minor areas instead of things like gen control and resource depletion. Otherwise, I believe they are an unfun design. This covers most of the killers I hate going against when I look back on my fun with the game going down over time. The part that bothers me is that most of these are more recent additions to the game. Sorry for the long post and thanks for reading!
Comments
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If you don't like killers that are good in chase, good at controlling gens, or good at dealing with pallets, then you find all "strong" killers unfun. If you only have fun against weak killers with no mobility or chase potential then why play at all
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none of this need changing. there is simply what you dislike playing against. I dislike playing against fast-zoning killer & killers with mori mechanics that feel unearned.
What killer are these? Michael Myer's Tombstone add-on's, Pig and Nurse. Pig is unfun because you get punished for a single down. a single down can result in you dying to reverse bear trap in which you have little to no control over because your reverse bear trap can be 4 search trap. a pig can camp last two boxes and you'll die with no agency. Tombstone Myer's moves at 130% m/s with PWYF. He can force stalking by stalking little bit by little bit until he immediately kills you. He also has some of the most notorious hooking camping in the game with his Mori. Nurse zones by sheer existence. Nurse can miss like 3 times a row blink in a row but in such a way that you get cornered into the map. Most zoning in the game is highly preventable or skill-based. For nurse, it is not preventable if nurse plays it right and when your in close proximity of her blinks, it takes very little charge time for her to blink on top of you where it is hardly possible to avoid her blink. This issue is further exaggerated by nurse's ability to utilize aura reading perks such as Predator, Flood of rage, Darkness revealed, Human greed.
Should Nurse, Pig and Myer's get changes because i find them unfun? Likely not
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I never stated this. If you fully commit to reading my admittedly massive feedback post, you will realize I stated I hate strong chase killers that have bleed over effects into being too strong in other areas of the game. For a killer to be fun for both sides, they need to be strong at chase or strong on gens not both.
They need to be strong at chase or strong at deleting resources, not both. Take Hillbilly as an example of good design that is an exception to this, he is strong at chase, can destroy resources, and can instant down too but there is something that you can do outside of chase with pallets to avoid said instant down. You can use windows, trees, junk, barrels, etc. to have some opportunity to avoid said instant down. His resource destruction is limited as, while he can destroy pallets, he has no direct counterplay to windows. The other resource destruction killers I have a problem with can dominate you at windows.0 -
Whether or not it needs changed, it should also be known that it is unliked so the philosophy of brand new strong chase killers overtuned outside of chase isn't expected to keep being common. The game is slowly drifting away from fun and I feel that this particular set of gripes of mine are likely very common.
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"I feel like matches need breaks in the action to feel fun."
Sounds like the killer’s entire match. Hooking a survivor, moving into the next chase, keeping generators in check, tracking everything survivors can do, etc. Any breaks for them? Also, sitting on a gen while waiting for a guard to appear or a crow flying isn’t "being pressured." You still have plenty of time to react, and you don’t have anything to do anyway. If your argument was about watching for a Ghostface, constantly rotating your camera 360° to cover every angle—sure, that would be pressure. But even then, you only need to do that when nobody is in an active chase.
"Blight's power base kit shouldn't break pallets."
Sure, let’s just hold W, wait for him to start rushing, and pre-drop the pallet. I agree that Blight is far stronger than most other killers, but this should be the last thing they touch. It would limit his power to just zoning and using two rushes into a hit. No more rushing outside of loops, except for traversing the map.
"I specifically mean killers like Blight that can down you without breaking pallets very easily."
You don’t play killer—especially Blight—do you? Sure, let’s "outplay" gyms, safe loops, god pallets, and every round or crooked tile with his ability. It's as easy as holdin' Shift+W, let me tell ya.
"I feel that killers with strong chase powers should only be strong in other minor areas instead of things like gen control and resource depletion. Otherwise, I believe they are an unfun design."
Your examples of gen control don’t make sense to me. Artist, Singularity, and Knight all have to sacrifice their chase power to "control gens". Survivors, on the other hand, can both chase efficiently and passively progress the game through teammates sitting on gens. For them, chase time = gen progress.
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Somewhere on the Internet, the developers have decided what the expected killrate for each killer should be. Due to this killrate, there is a fine line on what the developers can and cannot do to make an impactful difference, and not just an empty change. The issues you identified in the game would reappear elsewhere, as the developers have to straddle the line they created.
According to NightLight, Blight currently has approximately a ~60% kill rate. Pig has a ~59% kill rate. Plague has a ~59% kill rate. In my eyes, all three of these widely different killers appear to be equally balanced. For Dead by Daylight to be "balanced", 40% of Survivors must die, or changes will be made to the kit to ensure that around 40% of Survivors will die. I know how you feel about playing against killers you do not specifically like, but I do not think you consider that if 40% do not die — the killer will be buffed.
Things that you perceive as oppressive in the game are in place to keep the numbers where they are supposed to be. I strongly believe the argument I just shared is how the developers think when they review the statistics and try to figure things out. If you disagree with me, that's totally fine and I encourage you to continue posting, but you would have to craft an argument that addresses how your unique perspective tells a different story than the numbers they are looking at. Solutions are encouraged. But I don't really think it's worth the time and effort to nerf one component just to buff another in order to keep the killrate stable.
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singularity sucks. his 3% haste can be shift-w'd because his teleport put him too far away from the target. learn to pallet vacuum and outlast his overdrive. use windows effectively.
Knight is unfun to play with guard exploits & long cooldown on his assassin. Survivors can outplay his assassin guard with exploits.
His carnifex guard can be pallet-chained like on gideon's. pallet spawn too close.
His jailer guard became more add-on dependant on Dried horse meat because of the 2x depletion rate.
both killers need buffs but likely won't get any because of survivor moaning.
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It feels like a lot of people are a little lost in the fog when it comes to what DbD is. You see 'Dead by Daylight' isn't designed to give you a proverbial shoulder rub, the matches are referred to as "trials" for a reason.
You're sort of looking at killer designs like they're horror-themed rides at a carnival when you're meant to view them as different challenges in a game.
The dev's intention is for you to find fun in trying to overcome the challenge that each killer brings to the table.
So word to the wise - Walking into a dbd trial with the expectation of receiving a prepackaged rollercoaster-style "fun" experience is a great way to set yourself up for disappointment. Instead, walk into your next trial with the realistic expectation that you'll face a challenge that will test your knowledge, cunning and resourcefulness.
Respect and keep in mind that the game is a challenge, and you'll be able to have more fun with it.
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In what universe does Singularity suck? If played correctly he can be a menace. Not saying he is overpowered or anything but he surely doesn't suck either.
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too easy to counter when survivor is veteran looper. only good if the survivor has nowhere to go where you can utilize the shadow tech where if survivor does zig-zag, you can teleport on top of them them because the way teleport works is that you will teleport where survivor was 4-5 seconds ago. so if a survivor zig zag back & forth, he will teleport directly on top of you.
even in this lose/lose scenario, EMP from allies+bodyblocking can bail out the survivor.
Most hux's are sluggers because many survivor still don't understand on using an EMP when picking up a survivor from the floor. So what you get is a person healing another survivor, they become infected and than hux goes into a camera's and then begins teleporting onto them. in other words. hux is a pub-stomper. he is good when survivor doesn't get how to loop him or deal with his 4vs1 slugging
Post edited by Devil_hit11 on0 -
Its okay to like some killers and hate others, but I don't think BHVR should stop making Killers of certain designs.
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Personally, Trapper, Nurse, Spirit, Blight seriously need to have their kits revisited.
Trapper isn't good and has a luck based power, thats dumb.
Nurse can teleport not once, but twice. And her only downside is her basekit speed when her tps are faster anyways. 9 years and she hasn't been reworked yet somehow.
Spirit can go completely invisible for awhile, on open fillers you're kinda just ######### since your not winning any loops against her fast invis you can't react fast enough.
Blight for some reason has 5 rushes when a killer like wesker has only 2 and then some niche hinder infection. Blight needs a complete rework, his kits boring, its only good on pc with higher sensitivity and super weak on console.
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I do play killer or rather used to play exclusively killer. I got tired of the constant tiresome information to track, infer, and manage as I just do not have a good mental capacity anymore for things like that. This is a result of dealing with information overload on a daily basis in my everyday life. I want to play games to decompress and I don't feel like I can do so while tracking too much information that ultimately doesn't matter. I then switched to survivor exclusively about a year ago because I want a relaxing experience from what I consider my party game. The only exception where I play killer anymore is when I stream it to my friends as the social aspects of not being killer otherwise are too great and enjoyable. The things I mentioned distract from what I consider to be the fun of the game. I enjoy being chased, I enjoy sitting on gens afterward to settle down, and then I like to be chased again.
I dislike feeling like I got chased, tunneled until they leave me, and then getting on a gen looking for any killer power to find me to be tunneled again by a chase heavy killer on their own merits outside of this. Then the cycle starts up again with less resources on the map because they can tunnel me out with less issues. By the time I am dead, sure 4 gens are done but so am I with playing the game because I never decompressed between chases.
Chaotic swings in down time is fun. Constant pressure isn't fun.0 -
Singularity most definitely doesn't suck. If I wanted to, I could go on a massive win streak the likes of which are only seen on Blight. The problem is that I don't enjoy Singularity as he emphasizes my most hated parts of being killer. Mind you, I don't even play killer much anymore. The problem is that people don't know how to properly utilize his ability to control at least 2 survivors at once similar to knight but more directly involved. He requires a high amount of information processing to do well with, I will give you that. His skill ceiling is extremely high BUT he was extremely strong before the buffs. The buffs just raised his skill floor.
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How about I rephrase, they need to make more of other design philosophies. Designs that are straightforward, healthy, and people want to play to bring back some variation and fun to the game.
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