Killers should be able to abandon when the gates are powered

Why are you trying so hard at arguing over a theoretical proposal for the introduction of the same option survivors have, but for killers?

Because these are not the same scenarios.

Let's solve this problem another way. Let's get rid of the "abandon feature" entirely:

Instead, when a survivor is downed they now have the base kit ability to injure the killer. And after a brief cooldown, they can also down the killer. In fact, doing this not only causes the waiting period to be shorter (the bleed out timer) and forces the killer to stop humping the survivor on the ground, but there's now also a possibility that the slugged survivor can turn this scenario into an escape.

That checks every. single. box. for what mirrored options the killer has available to them. And it doesn't even include the killer's option to ignore the bad behavior completely and go earn BP for a couple minutes.

So, while I think this is (also) an awful idea that shouldn't be put into the game, you seem to think these should be identical scenarios. So you have the burden to defend it: Why shouldn't survivors have the same options as killers in this scenario? Your entire argument is that these are the "same", so why don't survivors "have the same options" here?

(The answer is because they aren't the same, and they shouldn't have this option, which is my stance, and coincidentally BHVR's stance also).

If you also think this is a terrible idea, then maybe you should consider that killers in the EGC are not in the "same scenario" as survivors here. Not in the slightest.

I think they've indicated the current impact of the abandon option on MMR in all cases. If I recall correctly, we know what it does. A quick search on these forums might show what the option currently does in different scenarios. In the end though, whether someone cares about whether the button seems like a win or loss is really up to the player. How it impacts your MMR isn't though. I agree that that only works a specific way :)

That's interesting about wanting a challenge all the time though. There are a few games and activities where either now or in the past I reached a point where I expect to deal with people at the top of their game/field/whatever for said activities. I can understand that.

You repeatedly say things like “that’s up to the specific player,” “it doesn’t matter to me,” or “personally.”

And that’s fine — those are your values. But please understand that not everyone shares the same perspective.

DBD is a competitive game between real human players. Win conditions exist. For killers like me, a complete win means eliminating all survivors.
Camping and tunneling aren’t shameful exploits — they’re legitimate, high-risk strategies requiring judgment and timing. When people call them “cheap,” I wonder: are they playing a different game with the same name, or are they just absurdly good at killer?
Either way, it’s hard to take seriously.
You can’t expect to win by politely rotating hooks and handing out safe rescues. This role doesn’t allow for that kind of generosity. When the tactics you chose to employ are used skillfully and lead to a 4K, that’s when killers feel they’ve truly earned the win.

That’s why the current system — where even after downing all survivors, you’re forced to babysit bots or press a button labeled “abandon” — feels so hollow. It erases the emotional payoff. And the idea that the winner should press “abandon”? That’s not just ironic — it’s absurd.

I’m not dismissing your values. But no one should be mocked as “sweaty” or made to feel ashamed just for taking competition seriously in a PvP game.

As for MMR — I don’t care, especially when the devs deliberately hide the details and keep making inconsistent statements. What I care about is the clear, earned feeling of victory. If others care about MMR, that’s fine too.

But let me be clear: this “abandon” mechanic, which nullifies the final moments of a hard-fought match, is one of the most frustrating systems ever added — rushed into the game with little thought or understanding of player experience.

That's crazy! I never saw the second of those two messages. I'm going to look up the second one. Thank you :D

No. Killers are never forced to watch survivors tbag at the gates. The killer maintains agency right up until the survivors leave. A slugged survivor cannot hook themselves, nor can they bleed out faster. They're entirely reliant upon the killer choosing to hook them. Hence the Abandon option existing for them.

You have options as killer. Not liking those options is another matter entirely.

Thanks for the link to that thread!

Agree

1 min after gates are powered.

You wish the teabags were just at gate

Thanks for the well thought out explanation!

I think you make a reasonable point about the cleanup phase. It's pretty normal in most in-person games for an opponent to be able to concede, but there could be a more appropriate reward if the opponents aren't going to stick around.

Only having the option to 'abandon' the match once all opponents have given up could feel a bit like the experience of the game itself was abandoned. It does feel like renaming the button to fit the scenario might help with part of that since it could at least give a sense of the outcome of the game, which is often all that can be asked for in an online game.

Personally, I usually give hatch to my last survivor. There are times when I end up downing two or three in quick succession though, and so they just all abandon. I don't mind so much, but it's true that I can't give hatch in that scenario, so that little joy is missing. But I find that usually doesn't happen, and I very much appreciate the abandon option. But if it were labeled 'Accept Outcome', 'Accept Victory', or or even changed its label for each player, given their outcome, I imagine that might add something in that might otherwise be missing.

"I believe many players would agree that a well-designed competitive game must provide an ending that properly reflects the outcome."

Except DBD is not a well-designed game, does not promote fair and balanced PVP, and has been bugged for years, so lets stop with all the purist PVP it should be like this nonsense. I'll believe that once Huntress' hatchets and Kaneki's grab isn't getting hits around corners and walls i'm well behind, or when I down a surv who perfectly timed a pallet stun and the swing doesn't fully go through, but it still registers and downs them on the other side. They abandoned, just move on with your life instead of feeling so sad and crushed that they moved on with theirs. This just sounds like a dude who can't get over rejection.

I understand and respect the view that each player interprets the game through their own values and judges whether a match was good or bad accordingly.

However, since DBD is a PvP game in which real human players confront each other with opposing objectives, it’s entirely natural that many players — especially killers, who are outnumbered and bear sole responsibility for the outcome — seek a clear sense of victory and defeat.

Two points:

1: A game cannot both have firm win conditions, and also let everyone have their own standards. For better or worse, BHVR chose the latter path.

2: The game is going on its 9th year. This isn't a game currently in beta development. These things are pretty thoroughly baked into the design at this point and they've had a lot of success with their model.

My frustration with the current system doesn’t stem merely from the inconvenience of having to deal with bots. Rather, it comes from the emotional disconnection — the sense that the fulfillment of victory is suddenly cut off.

After carefully making decisions under pressure and finally achieving a 4K, you’re told, “The players you were facing have already moved on to their next match. Please handle the rest against AI.”
That moment of triumph is rendered hollow.
Can you imagine how demoralizing that feels?

We're on perception issues, but

1: It's demoralizing for survivors to just sit on the ground waiting for clean up. Same for a killer when the survivors refuse to leave. Just because we can fix one more easily than the other doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.

2: I am surprised by saying things like hard fought about the last down.

When the killer wins the game is almost always over well before the last chase. Frequently the last one or two chases aren't really relevant. Usually I spend the last minute or three as killer just hoping the game can speed up in some way (even if the survivors were really good).

The idea of the loser vanishing while the winner silently packs up the board — that’s not a proper competitive experience. It lacks closure, dignity, and respect for the match that just took place.

It's strange that chess keeps coming up being its a game where its very normal to end in one side conceding the game.

Yeah, that's what I remember too.

I think the abandon option is great for the game's health overall since once the match is essentially done, it provides a way to cut short or avoid some of the most annoying/obnoxious things that happen in the game. In that context, I support the killer being able to abandon once all survivors are in an open unblocked gate.

Having said that, I also think the MMR impact needs to be tweaked. It sounds like a lot of people see the MMR result as a defining feature of their match. I don't share that opinion, but it's probably healthier for those that do if the MMR result could more accurately reflect the result of the match.

Also, if abandon is a draw for survivors, there's an obvious exploit: I could bring Plot Twist and try to use it to abandon any time I think I'd lose to avoid my MMR going down.

The logic that “ambiguous win conditions justify any kind of ending” simply doesn’t hold up. If anything, the lack of clear definition makes it all the more important to carefully design how victory is felt. From that perspective, the current implementation—where the winner is left to clean up alone, or else press an “Abandon” button—feels inexcusably careless.

Sure, the system that lets survivors go next immediately after being downed does a fine job of erasing the sting of defeat.

But on the other side, killers who down all survivors — a clear objective win — are left alone in the match, robbed of the most essential part: the subjective experience of victory. For me and many others, the issue isn’t simply about “winning” — it’s about the absence of feeling like you won.
Perhaps that’s not a problem for you. It is for me.

And as you pointed out, DBD is entering its ninth year. This is no longer a game in experimental stages. Which is precisely why it’s disheartening, as a killer main, to see such a fundamental flaw in the competitive design introduced at this point in the game’s life.

“Please handle the cleanup yourself.”

“Your opponents have already gone next.”

If this bizarre outcome of the ‘Abandon’ system was unintended, then it speaks to a failure of foresight. But if the developers understood this dynamic and still saw no issue, it suggests they’ve already written off those who care about competitive integrity, as if we’re just inconvenient noise best ignored.

Perhaps players like you—who can adapt to such a system without resistance—are exactly the kind of ideal customers the developers had in mind.

As for me, I suppose I was never meant to belong on that side.

I personally love being there as a killer to get one last goodbye in. Idk why but the t bags are just hilarious. I'm prepared for the downvotes; do your worst.

I must've missed the part where slugs can injure the killer to force the bleed out to go faster. Or even turn that situation into an escape.

Since the killer can force survivors out, possibly get an extra kill, and clearly you think these are the same thing.

I'm not opposed to it but I think a killer abandon should result in a bot taking over instead of killing the match right then and there.

If I see someone TB even once that kills my motivation to play any further

It's only humiliating if you're so insecure you can't handle the idea of losing a match.

I'm not against the idea. It makes no difference to me. I just think that it's not humiliating to accept that you've lost and push the survivors out.

A forced act of submission is a humiliation ritual. It doesn't matter how it affects either player, it's unnecessary false agency. Hence the gameplay comparisons.

Survivors don't have the same options as killer here.

Are you actually saying you want survivors to have a base kit option to injure the killer while slugged? Have a chance to turn that into an escape, even if it's a small chance?

That's insane, but hey, since they don't have that option and you're so hell bent on giving everyone equal chances here, then that has to be the conclusion here.

You should really follow the conversation if you're just going to blindly say these are completely equivalent scenarios, when I'm demonstrating, with examples, to show why the killer has gameplay options here, and survivors have nothing but crawling around.

I 100% agree. And that's not taking into account that Mandy on a thread about Phase 2 literally said that when all the anti-everything patches come through that:

"Killers who've reached a higher MMR by using these strategies, will slowly adjust to an MMR where they're more able to compete without them, same for Survivors with the extreme hiding. Their MMR will all balance out."

Read: Yeah, you're going to get pummeled over and over for weeks on end while getting bagged at the gates every match, but eventually you'll lose your way into an MMR that more suits your level. Except our matchmaking is so lenient that you'll still have to go against those same juicer squads at your new, "proper," MMR, you'll just have fewer tools to do so. Because there aren't enough Lilith Omens or comp Nurses to go around, and we can't have survivors sitting in a queue lasting longer than a minute or two, can we?

Between the lack of a satisfying win, and repeated humiliation ritual at the gates, and the fact that wins will apparently be way less common than before, "until my MMR settles," if things play out the way I think they will, a lot of killer mains are either going to swap over or just drop the game.

She claims to "play both sides," yet when the topic comes up of who she mains, she'll say Claudette(?) with the zebra pants and the dev badge.

Haha. I play both sides and I totally disagree with your strats/tactics where you try and get the 4k doing whatever you can, including tunneling. I play for fun and not stats or sweat. I don't camp or tunnel unless they ask for it.

I do agree however with the other notions of being able to actually feel the victory and not having to spend an eternity only to walk around and push them out.

I have to mention that sometimes (although really rarely these days) a 4-person slug is the only way you can do something as a killer when facing so-called bully squads. Not just those who try and do things like fl saves, but really experienced swf's with fl's who always go down in pallets. Against them, you either down all of them unless you're absolutely sure the rest are at a fairly long distance, or get pallet/fl/fb saved nonstop, and when you actually make sure you can at least try and hook someone, they're free to dc just because bhvr let them, rendering the whole thing frustrating whatever you do.