http://dbd.game/killswitch
Why are survivors giving up so fast?
There was no solo q game where its normal. survs just give up..
Comments
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I mean, as unbalanced as the game is, I'm surprised this is a question.
The question should be, how does anyone even want to play survivor in the first place.
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I want to play survivor but nobody else does.
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but nobody else does.
Therein lies the problem.
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Then why are they playing survivor when they do this? It doesn't make sense.
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Probably they hate survivors so much, I suppose
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The game is just full of all killer players so it is most likely killers trying survivor because of the incentives and queue times. They realize they can't play survivor and win.
I don't anyone devoted plays survivor. The game doesn't allow that.
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It's like gambling. They've possibly tasted winning before - even little victories, and are chasing that feeling of empowerment and giddy fun.
You play a killer that you don't like and receive an undesirable outcome, but you hope the next game is similar to one you think fondly of where you ran well, it felt tense but fun, and you managed to pull off some plays to get more people out.
But that game never comes so you're rage queuing over and over again waiting for the fun to start.
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play ghoul they go next
play vecna they go next
play perkless SKULL MERCHANT and they still go next
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And here is a plot twist: play perkless trapper and they somehow still go next
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clears throat~ things I’ve heard survivors say on why:
Killer is op
Map is too small
Bad teammates(big mistakes, or just not doing anything)
Too many anti-loop killers
Horrible gen spawn
Horrible pallet spawns
Tired of seeing ghoul
killer already tunneled someone out, no chanceKiller slugging just to slug(not tactful slugging that creates pressure)
They realize they’re absolutely boned due to xyz circumstance why finish a match that you know is going to end horribly anyways.
Pig and trapper op please nerf
Did I miss anything? Feel free to the list if I did. This is just what I’ve heard.
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Because a good chunk of trials was already decided in the lobby before the actual trial even began.
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I feel like its being willingly obtuse at this point.
There really is no mystery as to why people go next.
I still think the abandon feature was the best survivor change the game has added, especially for those who play in SWFs. Saves so much time.
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I play survivor and some are terrible while some are lots of fun. The ones that are terrible are almost always due to bad teammates, not game balance. I have no problem escaping on a fairly regular basis when I have competent teammates.
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I still think the abandon feature was the best survivor change the game has added, especially for those who play in SWFs. Saves so much time.
The end game screen loads so much faster, at least on console, if I use the abandon feature as survivor. It's great for that reason alone. I don't care so much about leaving the match quickly, but the load time for the end game screen can be very annoying and it'll sometimes even do a "server disconnect" error and lose all the points and progress from the match. So, yeah. Abandon ftw.
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Most of them just don't want to make any effort. I've had games where I've hooked someone and completely left the entire area and no one even bothered to even unhook them. Then I'd go over to a gen and the person would just keep working on it and not even attempt at evading. Ocne hooked, they'd just give up on hook.
They essentially just want the game to be played with zero resistance, and the moment they feel any, they throw up their arms in the air.
Here's an example. It's only about 5 minutes long. I pretty much just halted the match after how much 2 of the survivors weren't even remotely making effort.
To put in to perspective, I have over 2000 hours, get a lot of stacked p100 squads, a p100 ghostie. Regardless of this, I'll still randomly get matches like this occasionally. These are the kinds of survivors who come to the forums and demand killer nerfs because it's "too hard" that they can't just hold m1 on a gen without resistance.
Edit - a couple are crying toxicity from the thumbnail because someone has a slug icon. Why don't yall bother looking at the context before spewing out insults and accusations. It'll save you some embarrassment.
Post edited by RpTheHotrod on4 -
This is it, completely.
The narrative that “solo queue is the hardest role” has poisoned a lot of people’s perceptions, I think, and that has led to people just giving up super fast because “well, it’s impossible” as soon as a single thing goes wrong. I have over 5000 hours, the vast majority of it as solo queue survivor, and I just don’t think it’s nearly as helpless or difficult as that narrative claims.
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Those matches are so rare you are speaking of that it is a bad feeling leaving the match knowing you accidentally won because the killer was so bad at the game and probably threw on top of that. It isn't competent teammates, it is incompetent killers the reason you may win.
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Perhaps you should bother looking before speaking about it. I slugged him because he JUST got on unhooked and immediately ran to a locker right in front of me. I grabbed him, then dropped him so someone will heal him and get him back into the action because I hate double hooking people and tunneling in general. No survivors came to pick him up, so I literally grabbed him and dropped until he wiggled out. So how about not being presumptive and accusing me of being toxic and actually bother looking at the context. I refrain from tunneling, I refrain from double hooking, I refrain from just camping hooks, I don't multi stack gen slowdown, and you STILL stomp your feet screaming that I'm playing toxic.
This is why people are stopping to take survivors who complain about toxicity seriously when a lot of time in context there wasn't any toxicity at all. People are just complaining for the sake of complaining, and people just give up instantly for the sake of giving up because making any actual effort is unbearable to them.
That's the biggest problem - same issue you have. A lot of survivors just immediately jump to conclusions and immediately toss their hands up and scream "toxic killer!" at the top of their lungs. You already had immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was toxic simply because of an icon on the screen without even actually looking. Even with the evidence to the contrary that I was in fact trying to be fair and help them get back in the match to the point where I LITERALLY took my time to pick them up over and over so they can wiggle out since their team refused to heal them, your hands goes over your eyes and ears, and accusations of toxicity start rolling out.
Post edited by RpTheHotrod on21 -
DCing was so rampant years ago they had to ADD the DC penalty to try and stop it. The game didn’t launch with that.
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Do you actually believe today is the time where DC and giving up is most common?
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Yeah I know - he's a prime example of what we are talking about. Didn't even bother to watch the video and immediately accusing of toxicity when zero of it was going on in the match. If killers exist, they'll immediately accuse them of being toxic.
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no, but it’s the survivor version of when killers used to do it when they felt helpless to circumstances the game balance had created. Killers used to dc in mass too until changes started being made.
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I think a lot of it really boils down to the game's fundamental nature of it being a casual game as well as the fact dbd's game mechanics are designed to be frustrating on purpose. No matter what role you play, killer or survivor there's things that'll annoy and frustrate you even on matches where you're winning. For survivor at least you have to understand that your success (escaping) is largely determined by your teammates since it's the teamwork focused role, too many people have this strange idea that somehow just because you're a good survivor that somehow should translate to more escapes which isn't how the role works. You either have to temper expectations or go by alternative win conditions (how many survivors in total escape) rather than your own.
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what do you mean by that?
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It’s not rare. I literally just got on to play a few matches and escaped all three (third one via hatch because it was against Legion and teammates spent the whole match healing instead of doing gens). The escape rate for solo queue is 40%. Stop blaming everything on “killer is OP”. If you never escape, maybe consider that it might be a you problem and not game balance.
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I got surprise ambushed by a hag earlier. I wiped one trap then they spotted me so panicked and ran into building that was trapped in a few spots. Almost instant down then put in basement. I stayed on hook not really wanting them to come. They got down to 1 gen whilst I was camped.
I didn't cry like a child. Was it fun? No.
I didn't ruin everybody else's game by doing myself in though.
So I won in my book.
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I think a basic penalty system should remain in place, at the very least people shouldn't just be allowed to disconnect freely. I don't want my matches to have bots if it can't be belped and neither do you or anyone for that matter. Outside of extremely egregiously bad situations, I don't like to DC or sacrifice myself on the hook but being on the other end of that behaviour is not fun and can completely tank your chances in the match. If it gets to the point where I'm just simply not enjoying myself then I just get off the game and go do something else for a while, which would be my advice to people here. This game has a pretty low commitment threshold all things considered so why not take advantage of that? It's not like Fortnite or Overwatch where you have to be constantly on that BP grinding because of fomo nonsense.
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The decision to base the game's core design around looping mechanics becomes questionable when many killer powers either trivialize or bypass this element entirely—often reducing gameplay to little more than "holding W" to reach the next loop. Granting killers tools that effectively shut down the only engaging and skill-based aspect of the game for both sides seems less like thoughtful design and more like a band-aid solution. It's a reactive approach aimed at securing quicker downs to compensate for how swiftly survivor objectives can be completed. This is emblematic of Dead by Daylight’s ongoing tendency to address the symptoms of flawed design rather than confronting and resolving the root issues.
The community often exhibits a strong "us vs. them" mentality, particularly with killer players making remarks such as, "If playing survivor is so unenjoyable, why play at all?" This perspective ignores a key reality: the game's ongoing success is less a reflection of its quality and more a result of its addictive nature. Players continue engaging with Dead by Daylight not because it consistently offers a well-designed or enjoyable experience, but because it taps into the kind of compulsive engagement that keeps them coming back, even when the fun is long gone. Many seem to have lost sight of the fact that games are fundamentally meant to be fun. Instead, they find themselves trapped in a cycle of chasing that rare enjoyable match amid a sea of lopsided stomps—outcomes often predetermined before the trial even begins. Whether it’s a well-coordinated SWF steamrolling a killer stuck in 2016 mechanics, or a Solo Queue team of bots and one decent player facing an overpowered killer, the imbalance swings both ways, and it’s exhausting.
Given the current state of the game, can anyone truly be surprised when survivors opt to immediately queue for the next match? The fact that survivor queues are instant just reinforces how miserable the role is. Everyone’s rushing to escape bad matches and hope the next one’s better.
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I think people consistently underestimate how difficult and chaotic SoloQ actually is—until they get thrown back into it and are forced to remember. While the game has gone through massive shifts over the years, the struggles of survivor players, especially in SoloQ, which are the majority, are often written off or minimized.
Many remember when killer was in a rough spot before the big change, so much so that many stopped playing the role entirely. Survivor queues were painfully long because there just weren’t enough people playing killers. That was seen as a serious balance issue— which it was— and adjustments were made to shift power back toward killers. And it worked! Killer play became more rewarding, and player numbers recovered.
But now, many survivors are feeling what killers once did: powerless, frustrated, and burned out. But rather than seeing this as another balance red flag, it’s often chalked up to survivor entitlement or poor attitude.
Statistically, survivor is a harder role (fitting for a horror game, as escape should be tricky) This is true across MMR brackets, killer tiers, and even regions. Whether the data comes from BHVR, Nightlight, personal match histories, or just consistent player experience, it paints the same picture. Survivor is intentionally designed to be harder. And I think that fact is too often forgotten, ignored, or deliberately dismissed/belittled. Survivors are quitting for the same reasons killers were quitting before— just unhappiness and dissatisfaction with the role. I think many survivors haven’t accepted this yet and still expect more of a 50/50 win and loss rate. I think the QOL changes will help with a lot of the frustration, and the harsher penalties on giving up will certainly help as well.
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If you don't think the HUD update was huge for solo queue then you don't understand how to process that information. Its been an absolute godsend for filling in missing information that you would otherwise have with comms, all it takes is a smidge of deductive reasoning to fill in the blanks. It was an extremely helpful change for solo queue especially.
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I don't know that I'd say survivor is designed to be harder, just that its designed to share agency. The reason thats an important distinction is because a lot of the player base seems to be unwilling to do so. The more people get left hanging by their teammates (either through how they play, sandbagging, or abandonment) the more likely they are to slink into the same apathetic stance toward their future teammates. The only way I consider killer easier is that your agency is only impaired by how much time you have, rather than being dependent on up to 3 other people in tandem. When all the survivors are in sync (this does not require comms or even SWF, just efficiency and prioritization) I do not think most of the killer roster is designed to have an easier time (arguments could be made for S tiers, of course.)
The big issue is that a lot of Solo Q's woes come from other Solo Q players, in one way or another. The more people accept shared agency and stop letting each other down, the healthier the role is. The unfortunate part is that the pattern you mentioned regarding many survivors feeling the pinch that many killers used to feel is real, but that its self (by role, not necessarily by individual) inflicted. Every time we give up/throw/sandbag/basically any time not pull one's own weight in agency, we are being the thing we complain about and further cementing the situation we lament.
Its interesting how people react to the agency difference between the roles, as its a somewhat unique dilemma to asyms. Some other types of pvp games have concepts like hypercarries to manipulate the shared agency distribution, but for the most part team games generally tend to have equal parts individual and shared agency, but in this game one side has it while the other essentially does not. This leads to wildly different perceptions of concepts like difficulty and even the grievances.
TL:DR both sides tend to find it frustrating when they lose to things beyond their control, but the survivor role only gives you control over 25% of your role, leading to morale erosion from losses.
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All I really do as survivor IS solo queue. With SWF, you have a blatant and obvious advantage, as solo-queue I feel it's more fun as you have to work together with strangers to try to outwit the killer. SWFs it's just more of a given where you only lose if you make mistakes. I feel the whole solo-queue "it's impossible!" is just overblown. Is it more challenging? Sure, but I feel that was the intent - overcoming the odds. SWF just feels too "safe".
Here's one of my favorite solo-queue saves just as an example:
With experience, solo-queue can be a lot of fun. It can be a mixed bag on the quality of your survivor teammates, but that's just a part of the game.
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I mentioned in an earlier post about survivors "going next" being an issue that became more prevalent after the introduction of MMR, since the losing streaks often end up being unbearably long.
That really kills your will to play out matches if you feel like things are going bad from the beginning.I have had a few matches of SoloQ lately where I had teammates who started actively trolling as soon as they got caught.
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You have to be some kind of masochist to play solo queue in its current state lmao
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I've been lucky in the recent past with this. Every time I see a teammate starting to give up on hook and I get to the hook in time to stop it, I'll pause to shake my head at them before the unhook. So far in the last couple months, every time I've done that, I got that person out through a gate. Trying to show people they can survive if they stick it out :/
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They're chasing that dopamine hit. It's why video games are so addictive in the first place. It lights up the reward centre of our brain when we win. When you've played survivor long enough you generally get a feel for how a game is going to go, and I suspect a big part of people letting go is because they've had game after game after game of disappointment and they know no satisfaction is coming from the current game. Whether it's because of the way the killer is playing (tunnelling, slugging etc) or because they're hanging on hook and can see no one is on a gen, instead they're got 3 team mates crouching in different corners of the map in the opposite direction of where the killer has just run.
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I really don't understand this argument. If SWF is so strong then why do SWFs in the top 5% of MMR only escape half the time? Like i'd get what you're saying if they had some sort of absurd escape rate like 75%. Where are all of these unstoppable SWFs that constantly win at?
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That's actually a very fair question. SWFs on average are just buddies hanging out and "usually" are fairly casual - they aren't really the ones people are talking about. When people "complain" or talk about how "strong" SWFs are, they are talking about SWFs that specifically work together and coordinate together and make an actual effort to win (as opposed to friends who are silly and just sandbag each other for the lulz and such). So when people say "SWFs", they don't really mean the casual SWFs. They are talking about the SWFs who put some effort into communication and coordination. For the majority of the killers, SWFs can just stomp them, though nurse\blight are broken enough to give even the more coordinated a run for their money.
There's crazy potential with organized SWFs. Some have gotten hundreds of wins in streaks, though some blight\nurse streaks are even more impressive (one person had a 1,947 win streak with is just silly). I really do feel nurse\blight needs to be adjusted.
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Survivor is awful right now. You have a 90% chance of running into the most braindead easy to play S tier killer on the roster (Ghoul). The first killer they've released where having your monitor turned on is optional. I actually convinced my friend to play. They haven't played in 3 months. We played 4 games tonight and they promptly uninstalled.
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wanna hear something absolutely wild? Every time I play with someone that’s a killer main they’re a better survivor than all the survivor mains I know, and “bully” killers harder than the survivor mains I know do. No joke the best survivors I’ve ever played with are killer mains.
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I think this is really well thought-out and well written.
When nearly every killer on the roster has anti-loop at this point, your success is heavily determined by RNG. That's ridiculous in a PVP game. Did I get a few tiles that connect to buy me time? Is there a massive dead zone with no pallets that covers 25% of the map? Are there a ton of tiles rendered unsafe by bloodlust 1? Are my teammates doing anything? The list goes on. Your individual skill is like the 5th or 6th most impactful thing in a solo queue trial. Again, this is a PVP game.
You also touched on pre-determined outcomes before the trial even begins. This absolutely has to stop. A lot of the going next stems from players determining that the game isn't worth their time to play. They're never going to be able to eliminate that behavior, but they need to understand that a lot of it comes from matchmaking that doesn't respect the player's time. The devs keep thinking of this as an asymmetrical survival horror game while the veteran playerbase thinks of it as a PVP game. They have to come to grips with the fact that a lot of players don't see this game as an asymm that should be lopsided anymore.
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That's typically true in my experience. The player has made the effort to play both sides and knows how to counter the other side. As someone who plays a lot of killer, they know the weaknesses and pitfalls of killers, so they can effectively utilize that knowledge as a survivor when they play against a killer. They realize how much control survivors actually have over a match and play with that in mind. Conversely, someone who plays mostly survivor who plays a killer generally know how survivors tend to loop, so that play can be a bit stronger knowing "mindgames" and try to counter them. Long story short, the best way to be an effective player is to play DBD as a whole - not just killer and not just survivor. Knowing how the other side works is pretty important. That's one of the issues here is a lot of people just play survivor so just assume the entire game is killer sided, but if they made the effort to get out of "newbie MMR" on killer side where survivors start actually putting up a fight and get into the real game, they'd realize a lot of what they feel is "impossible" is very manageable - you just won't get that knowledge on how to manage it quickly just playing one side.
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Not to mention everyone gets mad that people who go next are 'ruining' the experience but don't acknowledge the fact that the devs willingly put in perks and items that incentivize ratting and not doing gens for a solo escape.
This is one of the only games I know of where the devs balance around teamwork but you're allowed to have a loadout and playstyle that involves never helping your team once.
Solo-queue will never improve as long as people can just do three chests with their chest builds while someone is being chased and another is on a hook. Probably the biggest reason why my 'friend' goes next on hook often.
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From my experience its several things that could cause them to give up.
- they see the killer has no problem with tunneling right off hooks and they don't want to bother trying when the killer just wants to win at all costs.
- Its myers and he brought an indoor map for a 45 minute poke and hide match and they either don't have time for it or find it extremely annoying.
- A killer theyve seen for the 4th time in a row and theyd rather see who they get for the next round.
- They had a challenge for something, maybe red emblems and since they got found first and downed there goes one of their red emblems so they are alredy fed up with trying for (2 red emblems in 1 match) and decide to get a fresh start on the next round.
- A killer they really don't like or associated them with hard tunneling in every round theyve ever seen them (like wesker)
- Some people even hate specific maps enough to quit sometimes
- They may have been sandbagged by a teammate and their way of getting back at them is throwing the round.
- They don't like the way they got hit, like for example how ghostface often ends up marking you weather you are staring right at him or not and then hits you through a pallet or something.
- They just decided they aren't enjoying the game anymore and leave to go play something else.
- They are being targetted by the killer and don't enjoy being tunneled or harassed so they just leave with what they have.
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I know I will probably get some hate for the following sidenote but In my experience, and I've put in many hours of this game(4k+), I have to say that the average console player gives up more often and more quickly than the average PC player.
Of course, each situation differs from the next, but there's a clear trend.
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This game is always been a RNG because tile strength has been so variable to the point of ridiculousness
In a game you can run whatever killers for 5 gens without using any brain, in a game you have no way to do anything at all because pallets or windows just doesn't exist, this is what happens when you forfeit actual map balancing for the sake of randomness
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Not that wild, I think that playing both sides gives you the best insight into both roles.
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If you don't want to play, don't. I mean if survivor is so miserable for people that they know they'll want to go next multiple times, what are they even doing queuing up? Are they masochists?
It's just mind boggling how many people cry and wail and whinge about how playing surv is worse than being waterboarded, but yet they still queue up in survivor, just to go next and perpetuate the cycle of dumbassery. The solution here seems pretty straight forward: don't play at all.
And I play both sides extensively, and in my experience, the vast majority of people bail in the first minute or two, and without clear cause.
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I think when it comes to survivors giving up, it's less about what happened in that match, and more about what's happened in the matches prior. Players that have a string of bad matches, tend to be more prone to giving up due to small things. That's why it's hard to understand in the moment sometimes.
Some players are just bratty and entitled. But I tend to assume that a survivor who goes next immediately, probably had some lousy matches before, and just doesn't know when to stop playing, and go do something else.
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