http://dbd.game/killswitch
Survivor Frustration
You mentioned survivor frustration as a reason for shortening the “deep hand” treatment time, but I have never felt frustration playing survivor myself, nor have I ever heard of it from anyone around me.
You have introduced systemic aids for frustration and other reasons in response to various requests so far, but do you still need systemic aids?
I think the unconditional nature of these aids has made people less inclined to practice Survivor, and this has led to more and more disconnections.
I'm not saying that we should give preferential treatment to either killers or survivors.
However, as long as it is a competitive game, you have to practice, and there are many things that can go wrong.
I think that the current miserable situation is the result of a system that has been subsidizing practice rather than encouraging it, so I would like to ask the management to correctly understand what the current environment is like and what the awareness of survivors is like, and to take action.
Comments
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May I ask what killer you went vs?
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it's not a competetive game tho
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It's a competitive game tho
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...no. League is a competetive game. SF is a competetive game. DBD is a casual game that some people sweat at
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OP is technically correct. Nobody's complaining about the "deep hand" mechanic. Which is understandable, as it sounds quite nice. Like an aromatherapy massage or something.
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Duality of Man.
In all seriousness, I really don’t know if DBD is competitive or not since the way it is structured it very “middle of the road”.
Like for example, we have MMR, which is used in competitive games for matchmaking to try and create a fair and competitive environment, but the way it is implemented seems to prioritize speed over quality, so having MMR really does not do much.
They constantly make balance changes that feel designed for competitive but then sometimes release perks or change perks to feel more outrageously designed for the sake of “oh, but don’t worry, we are still a party game”.
And here is the thing, DBD started as a party game, it was meant to be “le spooky horror game” from the start. But the way they are changing the game feels like the equivalent of the “class clown” trying their best to be taken seriously while still persisting to crack jokes along the way. Some will take them seriously. Some people wont. But they are just stuck in their own personal limbo.
My response, DBD is neither a party game nor a competitive game. DBD just is.
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Spot on. Always fun seeing people arguing about extremes while this game has evidently been in limbo since Myers released.
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My take on this, which is a personal take but I think might be reflective of the casual vs competitive argument.
I want DbD to be like a pick up style game. For example if I'm at the gym playing basketball (or when my knees could actually do something like that), we're just pairing up teams and jumping right into the game. And in the game I want to try, and everyone else to try. But I don't want to have to assemble a team and practice drills and call outs to be able to play the game.
That's what I think of as a casual game. Everyone is competitive in the sense of trying to win, but don't have rankings or records or organized teams that match against each other.
And that's where I want DbD as a game. During game everyone competes, but I don't want anyone to be in the position that they have to go and practice the game to actually be able to play the game. MMR should hopefully clean up those who either via lots of experience or practice match with each other, though that gets difficult to the needing 4 on one side vs 1 on the other. And for those who want organized matches, wonderful, not a problem at all, but its a separate thing.
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If you believe that about the game, then why do you care about it being balanced? That's an oxymoron, no?
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They basically said survivor frustration trumps all else. "Good design? Nerf it. Bad design? Nerf it." because the survivors said so.
But you're right. Struggle, and having to learn things, builds character and confidence. And what the devs have succeeded in doing is to take away all obstacles that survivors could possibly struggle against, and made it as easy as possible for them. Base BT, base anti-camp, making the killer surrender when THEY hide too long, nerf all gen defence, nerf the noob stomp killers, etc. But the survivors haven't learned or grown at all through that, so now they're just inadequate and rage-filled, DC'ing at the first sign of trouble until the devs nerf the thing they don't like. They haven't improved because there's no reason to, no challenge at all. That's why they can constantly go down and still have a crazy close game.
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Both sides are right and wrong at the same time. It's like Schrodinger's cat. It's everywhere and nowhere.
The only nuance in the conflicting sides.
The survivor side consists of casual people who are attracted by the fun. While the killer side consists of competitive people who play as if their life depends on it.
The right question we can ask is. Why do only competitive types of people find playing as a killer attractive?
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Which is not their fault since DBD clearly has elements of a competitive game.
BHVR was leaning into both sides, casual and competitive. Can't blame the players for following up with this.
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People who play video games casually deserve to have fun too
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The down vote on the post above me is flippin wild
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I really like this point! I think it has to do with both the teamwork element, and the intention of the power role.
If you’re super competitive, you don’t want to suffer from a mistake that someone else made— and that’s what most of survivor is. It’s a lot of collective punishment.
Also, if you’re super competitive you want to be the one who sets the pace. Picking your killer, your playstyle, and your perks will dictate what the survivors have to do to win, and seeing their items can also help you tweak that control. It’s kinda like you’re the one setting up the obstacles and also competing at the same time.
Whereas the survivor role is about reaction or adaption to the kind of game the killer is playing. Success comes from how well they can do those things.
Although to be honest, I think it’s strange how so many casual players pick survivor considering the knowledge required to be good at survivor right now is quite extensive. As a killer you have to learn how to counter looping, killer perks, survivor perks, maps, and get to know your killer. But every match you play as your killer you get better and better in understanding them. While in survivor you have to learn how to loop, killer perks, survivor perks, maps, and how to counter all 38 killers while having no control over which ones you face or how often you face them. There’s a lot of time and knowledge required to be somewhat competent against every killer.
I think it used to be very causal friendly, but modern DBD is anything but, I believe. At least not without some kind of ability to practice against bots similar to how killers can.
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Fully agree that the deep hand treatment should not be given preferentially to killers or survivors. Both sides already give it to each other, regularly.
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ikr? I'm just sitting here cackling trying to imagine the thought process
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The answer is outrageously simple. Friends, team and a sense of community. If you are familiar with such games as UNDERWARD and Lethal Company. You will understand. It is the same as DBD, only without the player killer. 4 players united by a common goal that they have fun. The path itself is important, not the final goal. Survivors who strive to be in a team, having felt a sense of community. Here are some killers who are trying to suck out all the fun like leeches.
While the killers are loners who have been staring into the abyss for too long. Let's say that playing DBD for too long can make you not the most pleasant person. When the killer reaches the survivors who understand how the game works. The place for mercy in your heart comes to an end. After all, you are alone against everyone, and the price of defeat will be the pain that the survivors will bring you. From this, completely different priorities appear in the spirit of the end justifies the means. Any sacrifice is acceptable so as not to feel that pain again.
I already said in 3 sides of the conflict Killers, Solo Survivors and SWF there is one constant. When you load into the game someone will definitely experience pain. The only question is who wants to be that very victim? Here everyone decides for themselves.
If we discard all this nonsense us against them. We all want the same thing. The question is only in the price and the means to achieve the goal. We can not agree because they do not understand what the other side is saying. Too different value systems. Probably, unfortunately, no one is ready for mutual sacrifices for the common good. Everyone is trying to bargain for a bigger piece of the pie. No one is ready to sacrifice something on their part to get something in return.
DBD is rotten in all aspects. It is like filth that corrupts natural things. I will never invite my friends to DBD. I'd rather trust their taste in co-op horror and play with them there. At the same time, we ourselves got very deeply involved in the DBD as part of the ship, part of the team.
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I have noticed this pattern too, survivors are far more inclined to be goofy and meme while killers are often hyper focused on winning.
I think it comes down to the nature of the roles:
Killers: They're the power role and their job is to hunt and dominate. Competitive people have this inherent desire to be that, to dominate and be the best. They control the pace and mood of the match. They have no teammates so a victory is all on them and greatly reinforces ego. Of course some people play killer due to general unhappiness and they can take out their frustration on survivors. Essentially both versions of the killer seeks a feeling of validation from their victory and victory is a prerequisite for fun because a loss threatens that ego.
Survivors: By design a survivor is supposed to die majority of the time. So survivors are used to losing, meaning they have grown past victory being a prerequisite for fun (for the most part). So many survivors go into the game just looking for fun expecting to lose anyway. Being a cooperative role it also allows for relationship building and goofing off with other players on the same side. Now there are survivor groups who take the role super seriously similar to that of many killer mains, and they usually ruin the vibe for everyone.
Essentially competitiveness boils down to an external vs intrinsic response with killer having a more external focus of motivation. They look for external validation via rewards or recognition with a desire to be the best and stand out. Killers/competitive people have a strong sense of rivalry where they view others as an obstacle of their success rather than a collaborator. Competitive people experience more stress and anxiety with losing than non-competitive, and sense survivors generally lose (by design) that doesn't bode well with their emotional response.
As for me as a killer main. I am not even remotely competitive. I play it for the jump scares and the opportunity to meme. As survivor memeing is dependent on if the killer is chill like that. While as killer If a survivor isn't vibing with the memes I can just play normally and still have fun. I love the meme opportunities and perks for survivor but…I usually just end up being slugged, tunneled, and humped on the ground so i tend to stick with killer where I cant be robbed of my opportunity to play the game.
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All my friends left DBD, they come back to play 2v8 but only briefly. They'd often be taken out of the game early via tunneling or slugged, and that's not fun so they left. We went on to more coop horror games rather than versus. Weve been playing a lot of R.E.P.O lately. DBD has so much opportunity to be goofy and there are videos showing that, But the game is being swarmed by hyper competitiveness and content creators are justifying certain gameplay for the sake of victory, justifying all of the behavior of these people.
God forbid video are for fun and not social dominance
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I'm more interested in this question, how to attract 12 hook killers of fun. Because it always causes a very strong dissonance for me. You look at the forum, most seem like noble knights who think about the rights of survivors. You go to play as a survivor, you play against people who play as if their lives depend on it. This makes me think that something is very wrong with DBD. Words diverge from deeds, which means that for the most part, the wrong people play as killers. Why do we have so few killers of 12 hooks of fun?
The only option I see from this is to destroy the old community of killers. In exchange, raising a new generation of killers of fun or creating bots with the three laws of robotics. Because survivors in their short-sightedness never look at the consequences. They do not understand how a person who sees the game as a constant struggle, where you have to go through another obstacle, perceives all the nerfs.
I'm honestly afraid of what kind of monster will meet the survivors at the end of the road. A simple example of anti-face camping. Did it fix the killers' behavior? No. The killers got better at tunneling by improving their tactics. Eventually they started considering slugging as a tactic, although they couldn't even think about it a year ago.
The option I see when they start fighting the three sad tactics is someone like Scarecrow from Batman. A killer who literally tries to get into your head and suppress all your will to win.
For example, I'll take survivors first, who make t-bags, destroy hooks and are warriors of light. If we put aside the issue of toxicity. This is a psychological attack that is designed to break the killer's will to win. A tactic that tries to defeat you mentally, and not by repairing generators. If the killers adopt these tactics in relation to survivors. You can imagine what will happen.
Now let's take tunneling. Our survivor advocates are taking this issue too amateurishly. What can people know who have never done it seriously? True tunneling is when you create the illusion of safe escape for survivors, but there is also rough tunneling where you try to break the survivors' desire to win. If you have played some strategy games, you know that there is such a stat morale. Even a strong army can be defeated if their morale is broken…..
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You dont even have much gameplay that even relates to skill as survivor. The issues are clearly on a different side:
First, matchmaking is clearly useless. I would say that since MMR has been implemented i have to play 90% of the time with other people that clearly have no basic game sense as teammates. And then there are those games I get killers like "most rush hits on blight" … how am i even supposed to play against them with such a team?
Than there those game when the killer has basically no game sense besides how to abuse "killer strategies" to their fullest, no matter the actual character. Thats the second big issue: killers have by far too many handolding mechanics that are NOT related to skill. Cause playing killer should actually require skill as they have powers to use unlike survivors. Neither of those mechanics have been affected by any band-aid-fix BHVR provided through out the years, in fact it got even way worse with how they decided to favor bad killers.
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Because it makes no sense. People are always trying to do mental gymnastics and redefine what "casual" means in this game. No other game's community says, "Balance for casuals." Because it's silly. You're going to pretty much abandon the most skilled, most dedicated players, so that the ones who have no clue and are liable to drop the game a week after buying it... "can have fun." What?!
And the most of the time, the argument only goes one way. That's the infuriating thing about it. "They deserve to have fun." What about the competitive ones? They're supposed to make all the sacrifices, and the noobs don't have to make any? Because that's literally what this game has been for like 4! years! And where are most of the noobs? On survivor.
So killer has to pay, most of the time. Solos, too, but matchmaking is deemed "fine," so nobody talks about that core problem either. Their view of balance is so skewed, because they will not or cannot think about how the average match plays out... when everyone's playing well. At most, they just chef mumble their way through hypotheticals, like "Eh, the survivors' always got weak link, so killer tunnels em out, gens don't go, people go down too quick, killer wins easy," and they never question what the survivors are doing wrong.
I mean, you literally get survivors who don't go down, or might as well have wall hacks, at a certain MMR. What's their secret? Playing well, game knowledge, experience. In all other games, those are things expected of players before they even think about speaking on balance. Not here though. Everyone is weighted equally, so that a 10-hour player has just as much of a weigh-in as a 10,000-hour player, except the 10-hour is "more equal" because more people (other 10hr players) agree with him, and he's a casual so his requests take priority, because his fun matters over everything else.
You know what I'm saying?
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This is surprisingly deep, and accurate.
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I don't know how you can see that your teammates not know what they're doing is what makes you lose, but then talk about imaginary killer handhold mechanics? What and where are they? The tactics killers use are only as effective as they are at exciting them. You can't "just tunnel." First you'd have to be really good at chases, know when you can get a quick hit and then continue the tunnel (or if that's too costly), know how to play around anti-tunnel perks, know which survivor is best to go for, know how much time you have, etc.
I don't see them favoring bad killers, full stop. They've given survivors sprint bursts off every hit, base BT, base anti-camp, hatch when there's 1 left (even if exits are powered), temp off-the-hook immunity to Pinhead chains, god windows that never break, silent footsteps/breathing, chests overrule killer item spawns, etc. A killer can not be good at tunneling, camping, slugging, whatever, without being good. And yet I've only seen band-aid fixes to those strategies. Killer has received nothing but crumbs in return.
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"Game is fun to play, for all sides, at the low level" and "Game is fair and balanced at the high level" are not contradictory and in fact must coexist for a game to be successful. If you only care about balancing for people who have 10k hours in the game, you will never retain anyone long enough to build up the hours required to enjoy your game.
You seem to suffer from the false impression that people are ontologically either a 10 hour player or a 10k hour player, like they spawn into existence with a certain number of hours played. A 10k hour player was once a 1k hour player, was once a 100 hour player, was once a 10 hour player. If that 10 hour player doesn't enjoy the game, they never become a 10k hour player.
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Which is not their fault since DBD clearly has elements of a competitive game.
The problem with that is, that any game that has any level of PvP in any way, shape or form, technically has 'elements of a competitive game'.
This stretches from obvious picks like League of Legends, Marvel Rivals, and the like, all the way down to hide-and-seek and trivia quizzes. Heck, even things that do NOT have any innate form of PvP elements will get competitive elements, like seagull cry imitations and making beds.
To declare that DBD is a 'competitive game' is jumping the gun. It's more accurate to say that DBD has a competitive scene, not that it is, itself, competitive.
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As survivor frustration dissipates, the killer's range of strategies diminishes. The reverse is also true. Regardless of which camp you play in, it seems that there is less and less to think about in building and playing the park each year.
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