So if we are aiming for 60 percent kill rates:

A fundamental problem with Dead by Daylight lies in the disparity between what the community desires and the direction Behavior Interactive (BHVR) continues to take. Players consistently advocate for balance—specifically, an equilibrium reflected in a 50% kill rate and fairness across gameplay metrics. In contrast, BHVR appears to pursue inflated kill rates.

Rather than addressing systemic design issues—such as the speed at which objectives are completed or the growing irrelevance of older, underpowered killers—BHVR frequently introduces overpowered killers. These new additions are not created to enrich the game's depth but rather to artificially compensate for existing shortcomings.

One of the most glaring consequences of this approach is the diminishing importance of the chase. The traditional mechanics of looping and outplaying the killer are being phased out in favor of simple "hold W" gameplay. Players no longer engage in skillful evasion; instead, they are often forced to run in a straight line until they are inevitably and rapidly downed.

This direction undermines the core of what made Dead by Daylight engaging in the first place—tension, strategy, and outmaneuvering. If not addressed, it risks alienating a player base that values depth and balance.

No player genuinely wants to queue into yet another match where a killer like The Ghoul (as an example) is capable of flying across the map, landing a free hit on the first survivor they see, gaining an empower state in the process, and then closing the remaining distance faster than it takes someone to walk into their kitchen and forget why they went there in the first place.

This kind of design does not foster engagement—it undermines it. The encounter shifts from being a tactical exchange of skill and mind games to a preordained sprint where survivors are punished not for poor decisions, but simply for existing within the killer’s line of sight. The moment-to-moment gameplay devolves into passivity, with little room for meaningful interaction or counterplay.

When killers are designed to skip entire phases of interaction, it stops feeling like a match and starts feeling like a cutscene.

an equilibrium reflected in a 50% kill rate and fairness across gameplay metrics

I think only people who have no idea what outcome this would have want 50% kill rate, which is not really a majority imo.
In reality 50% kill rate would mean killers are losing most of the games.

I think you have a bit of recency bias showing here, personally.

Ghoul might fit into the model that you laid out because that killer is genuinely kinda messed up, but most recent killers have been geared more around punishing hold W and promoting actual looping, on top of not many really releasing anywhere close to overpowered.

Houndmaster released absolutely terrible, and while her dog vault is pretty nasty, you get much more from looping her traditionally than you do from holding W, where she can just throw the dog at you easily.

Dracula is a top tier, but again, his power is more geared around you dodging his two mid-chase cooldowns in a loop then making distance, which is actual looping. If you hold W against him without looping, Bat form and Wolf form's Pounce can easily punish you for it.

Lich is only decent, and again, is more geared around dodging his (much more impactful, mind you) cooldowns. Flight of the Damned and Mage Hand are mid-chase tools, yes, but they're tools to be played around, whereas Fly can rush you down for attempting to hold W.

Unknown, too, only decent and geared around dodging in chase via breaking LoS. Holding W just gets you hit, very similarly to Huntress.

Chucky started overpowered, but every nerf he's received has been targeted at letting you loop him easier, which I would argue pokes a hole in your argument on its own; a recent killer has been changed to move away from the model you've laid out.

Xenomorph and Singularity both need you to engage with a map prop before you loop, but once you do, again, that's how you counter them, not hold W. Xeno has less to punish you for holding W, but Singularity can just flat out teleport to you if you try.

I won't belabour the point with more examples, that's already a fair ways back on this list anyway. I just think you're mistaken that the game's promoting hold W over traditional looping, I think recent killers have been designed for the exact opposite.

As an aside, it's a little questionable if a 50% kill rate would be balanced, since that could very easily result in killers actually losing on average. I won't pretend to be a mathematician, I don't know all the specifics, but it's not really cut and dry what kill rate number would automatically be balanced and fair.

I agree. We need to start nerfing the high mobility killers and bring them down and start bringing the no mobility killers up. If something is a decent amount above 60% let's fix that. If something is below 60%, let's fix that. Lets also stop making every new killer with some sort of dang mobility power. I'd like to see the game going back to m1 killers but with an interesting twist to them that doesn't involve a dash.

A 70% kill rate is bad. Thats almost a 3K every match on average (75%). A killer shouldn't be winning almost every single match.

Do note that 50% is too low. A 62.5% kill rate would on average be a 50% win rate for killers. At the moment, the devs aim for 60% which is slightly under winning half the killer matches.

The funniest thing about the Blight's 69% kill rate is that this is after they throw out games with a DC. How high is his kill rate actually? 75%? We can't know for sure but it would no doubt be at least slightly higher. Also think about all of the bad console Blights who are holding him back. Imagine how high it would go if you only counted PC Blights. Same thing could be said about Nurse. I feel like the only thing stopping these killers from reaching 80% is the fact that they aren't console friendly. We know we're getting Mouse and Keyboard support on console later on in the year. After that what is the excuse for not toning these killers down? I have yet to see an argument that doesn't boil down to "survivor bad git gud lmao".

ah yes, noted S tier killers the Twins, Freddy, Sadako,…… lmao

Twins is pretty strong but not Sadako or Freddy of course. Kill rates though is hard to go on they could simply just tell you what killers the most skillful players play the most.

I disagree, because Nurse, Blight, Ghoul are all currently overpowered, we aren't looking for EVERY killer to be overpowered. Solo queue would suffer even more in that case.

"Old news"

About 5 years old to be exact. All evidence points to the game being killer sided now, both by the devs statements (flawed game design philosophy that has lead directly to the current miserable survivor experience) and available statistics.

60% win rate for killers vs 40% win rate for survivors.

= survivor sided XD

A 60% kill rate is slightly under a 50% win rate. You're confusing kill rates to win rates. If someone had a 25% kill rate, would you say they win 1 out of 4 matches? Of course not. Thats only getting a single kill. In case you're still confused, a 75% kill rate in a match is a 3k.

At 62.5% kill rate, killers would have an even 50% win rate on average. However, they balance around 60%, so it is more like 49%. At the moment survivors have anywhere between and 40% - 48% escape rate on average according to the official stats (48% being SWFs).

Essentially, killers have an intended 49% win rate (60% kill rate), and swfs currently have a 48% escape rate (at high MMR meaning everyone has experience in the game). With 4 survivors being in play, and to keep killers at around a 50% win rate and survivors at a 50% chance to get a 3+ escape match, each survivor would need to have an escape rate of about 38.5% (since there are 4 survivors facing the killer). As an example, if it was 1 v 1, then obviously both sides would want a 50% win rate, but since one side has 4 team members, they each need a reduced escape rate to maintain a 50% balance of both sides.

Long story short, survivors are overperforming IF we wanted to keep killers at a ~50% win rate and survivors at having a ~50% chance of getting a 3+ escape.

Now bear in mind, that's with a 60% kill rate. For killers not at 60%, whether below or above, adjustments should be made.

After reading a lot of the comments about kill rate, it is whatever you want it to be. It‘s not rational at all. If you argue about team vs team, they argue with 1vs1vs1vs1vs1, but in both situations killers are winning way more than survivors.

In 1vs1vs1vs1vs1 the kill rate equals win rate and in team vs team draws don’t count towards win or lose, which means if draws count towards it killers shouldn‘t have 50% win rate. With 10% draws, it needs to be 45% win rate for both sides NOT ONLY ONE. I would even say that draws should count as half a win.

I see where you're trying to come from, but a 2k is a failure to win and is not a tie, it's a loss. The reality is that the game isnt a team vs team game. Survivors do not fully win or fully lose together. Each survivor gets their own win condition - they escape and win or they do not. MMR adjustments are disconnected from win rate, as thay just cares about trying to balance future matches...but thats an entirely different discussion. There are 4 different 1 v 1 matches going on every match. This makes a tie impossible, as there is no way for a killer and survivor to neither win or lose their 1 v 1 unless there's a server disconnect. That being said, there are 4 survivors the killer is facing in total, so while each survivor has their own win condition and wins or loses entirely on their own, each survivor has to have a reduced escape rate to make it fair for the killer. While survivors don't win together or lose together, each survivor having a 38.5% escape rate would put having at least 3 survivors escaping on average half of the time and killers getting at least a 3k half of the time.

To put it into perspective, if each survivor had a 50% chance to escape, that would put the killer as having a 32% chance to get at least a 3k.

In a 1vs1vs1vs1vs1 kill rate equals win rate! Only in a team perspective it doesn‘t.

If you want to look at it that way, sure let's do that. That means every match the killer can have anywhere between 0 and 4 wins. Amongst the survivors, there can be anywhere between 0-4 winners. It still comes out to the same. The survivors can have up to 4 winners and the killer can have up to 4 wins.

It's a very odd way to look at it, but by all means go for it. I believe that's how BHVR views it, as one of the BHVR representatives actually had suggested this before. In the end, it works out the same due to it being asymetric. Each side can have the same amount of wins in a match (up to 4). It's easy to misunderstand why at an example 50% chance to win from both sides that the killer wins 4x as much as survivors until you consider that its 4 players going up against 1 player. Thats probably why they never dictate a killer win but only refers to kills.

In the end, you are correct and i believe thats how BHVR views it based on their previous comments. It's just an overly confusing way to say the same thing- while it's accurate, many will misunderstand.