Why removing the ability to die on hook and punish for DC is bad for the game

One alternative to ragequitting or forced hook suicides could be a personal killer opt-out system integrated into matchmaking. Each player could be allowed to exclude one specific killer from their matchmaking pool… the one they personally struggle with the most, whether it's due to mechanics, frustration, or just playstyle incompatibility.

This would give survivors a constructive outlet rather than disengaging entirely. It also respects individual boundaries without overhauling balance. To prevent abuse in SWF, the opt-out could be limited to just one collective exclusion per group, ensuring it remains fair and doesn’t overly fragment matchmaking.

It won’t solve everything, but it would reduce burnout and give players back a sense of agency… especially during events or meta shifts where one killer becomes disproportionately dominant.

And no Blight, Nurse, Ghoul, or Skully would ever get a match again. The matchmaking system is already ragged enough as it is, but as much as I like the idea (especially regarding accessibility issues like phobias or neurological issues, since many still remain in the game) even a single ban per lobby would make the matchmaking system even worse than it already is.

I understood, thats why I gave the perspective of even a single instance per lobby, not even per player.

This means even if a killer is widely disliked, they will still find games… just not with the subset of players who genuinely struggle or burn out against them.

Anyone who has played a MOBA knows where this goes. The term "perma-ban" would be used regularly over the years I played LoL, usually referring to whoever were the current hypercarries of that particular ELO that season. You saw it the most with the lower end, as the characters often had an increased ability to make up for their teammates, hence the name. That was in a much more competitive oriented game with many more characters, and ban targets weren't even consistent among ranks. What was "OP" at low level might have barely been able to carry its weight at higher ranks. The result? You likely would not even be able to play the character you want until you got to a certain matchmaking level, and even then, the one you liked at low level might be considered busted at high level and you would then have to switch your main until the next balance patch switched people's ban targeting off of them.

The reason I bring this up is because DBD would be a terrible candidate for a type of ban system like that. It only applies to one side, DBD is a loadout based game where a significant part of (dis)advantages are decided before the game even starts, it is wildly unbalanced regarding the best and worst on either side, there is no ranked system, honestly there are a slew of reasons why it simply wouldn't work. But one of the most important ones is just simply being able to play as the content you bought. Thats a big part of why killswitching is such a precarious concept.

And yes, as the original post suggested, this generates valuable indirect feedback. If a specific killer receives a high volume of personal bans, that data could act as a non-verbal protest signal… very much like how ragequits or hook suicides once indicated frustration levels. But instead of disrupting games, it quietly informs future balance without damaging MMR integrity or punishing others in the match.

How does this not disrupt the game for players of said shadowbanned killers? Never getting matches and having absurdly long wait times prevents them from even getting into games, let alone ones that players then ruin. Again, I want to like the idea, but the exploitation and disruption implications are massive. Not only that, its basically introducing a sanctioned way for players to refuse to interact with content in the game. That type of power should only be reserved for accessibility issues, and even then, should almost always come in the form of replacement of offending elements and not entire removal.

Plus, fallback logic would return players to normal matchmaking after a short time to avoid excessive wait times.

Which loosens the matchmaking, thus making it worse. We already have backfill issues as it is, this would only make them even worse, unfortunately. And thats not even getting into its impact on MMR rankings, which we don't even know, let alone how well (or not) they're even working with every match.

The words of a Dev years later publically said the changes to Legion reduced the DC rate by "x" amount and said they were proud of that result.

BHVR really need to do on here with killers what they did with maps and their mapping the realm section, let us give feedback on specific killers en masse and through polling in more detail so they have a better idea on who to work on.

It's sad, but it's true. Does anyone else remember that it took negging a developer to the point where they started screaming at people on stream in order to finally implement accessibility options? It was getting nowhere before then. Unfortunately, a lot of changes with this game only happen when things get extreme.

Granted, we don't need go next to make that happen. It's a successful method historically, but the queue is also effective; kill rates are effective; player retention is effective; etc.

Skull merchant didn't get nerfed because of the DCs. She got nerfed because behaviour realised her unhealthy playstyle and her extremely high killrate.

if behaviour starts nerfing killers due to DC rate then well.. i guess every killer is screwed, because i see dcs happen against pig and trapper too. Survivors DC against everyone and because of everything.

That being said i still haven't had anyone dc against me when i play ghoul… and i play her a lot.

Dying on hook is not a disconnect. The difference in DCing and going next is the killing of themselves on hook or allowing the killer to kill them. And like you said, most of those games end up as 4ks.

Well as I have said countless times, it keeps them in the match but it cant make them actually want to put their heart and soul into a match and in many ways a bot would be better.

I guess the problem for BHVR is they cant just let the go next epidemic continue but the problem is, how do you make people play matches they don't want to play?

I am not sure this can really be fixed

Skull Merchant had a high kill rate because of people throwing games against her. If you think otherwise you just weren't paying attention or you just don't want to believe it. Either way it is still the truth. Her unhealthy playstyle had already been dealt with long before the nerfs she got.

Backfilling would never work in a game like this

Would they take over the bot the previous person left behind? Would they have to use their perks? Would they have their hook states? I can't imagine anyone would opt in if any of these are true.

This is BHVR we are talking about. Swapping killer assets would cause the game to implode.

Still nobody is going to opt in. Survivor queues are always basically instant so there is no incentive for them to opt in to back fill and killer queues are always long which you would think would give them an incentive to do it but because most killer DC's tend to happen when the match is lost I can't see killer players wanting to wait what would still be longer queue times than survivor just to get into a lost match.

Go next prevention is the best solution here.

Yeah the bots are there for a reason and while ideally you want someone to play a match, DC penalties encourage the worst option of the two where the rest of the team gets left with nothing instead of a bot that will at least try its botty best, which is more than someone who wants out will do

my only dog in this race is noting that skull merchant was absolutely a flop in every direction including game design and nobody cares if the ghoul is op or not they hate that his power feels like BS to play against, it's a gamefeel discussion more than anything else

i dont play survivor that often but i personally love disconnecting in protest instead of being forced to play against skurchant or nurse because they're awful

even now (i mostly play killer) so many survs either give up and let me kill them as soon as they mess up a loop, or just dc as soon as i down them even though there's still plenty of game left

im not saying that the new system is bad or anything but people are just going to give up if they want to and if a notable number of people would rather consistently DC against a certain killer maybe there's just something wrong with how that killer was designed

At this point, I think it's much more that new Killers are emphasizing the core issues with the game and balancing. Hence why you hear petty reasons being listed as the primary motivators to go next. Players are beyond fatigued. It's one thing to expect that you won't survive (which isn't good but I digress). It's another to expect that you won't get to play or have fun, which the balancing across the entire game promotes.

People should have the ability to DC but that doesn't mean that disconnecting shouldn't be discouraged either. Sometimes life happens and you need to get off the computer or the console and that is all fine but if that is what happens then surely the DC penalty doesn't matter then right? Cause it isn't like you are going to be coming back to the game soon anyway?

All getting rid of the DC penalty would do is enable people to basically shop for their preferred matches. Ones where they are going against a preferred killer or on a preferred map, etc. and that just isn't a healthy thing for the game.

When life happens I'm not taking time to hit escape and clicking leave match. I'm rushing to take care of what happened and come back later to AFK crows or an end screen.