Killer queues are on average 5+ minutes right now and Survivor incentive is only +50%?
Like really? I get bloodpoint incentives don't do a whole lot to change queue times but no wonder no one is even considering putting up with Survivor right now.
Comments
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Incentives have been broken or reduced for some time.
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The devs apparently aren't doing anything about it as that has been the case for months now, so at this point, we simply have to assume that the incentives have been intentionally reduced for some reason
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I knew something felt off with incentives since the Springtrap update, I didn't realize this was going on long before that though. Why the hell are they reducing incentives? Survivor is arguably at its most miserable atm because of everyone still spamming Ghoul, trying their absolute heart out every match, months later, so why in the world are we only getting +50% to put up with that??
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It's constantly x1.25 but survivor queue takes 5 seconds maximum it doesn't make sense, if you want real incentives it should start at 50% always, x1.25 is not helping queue times at all
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What they should really do is remove incentives entirely and balance the game sensibly. Making one side more powerful by design and then bribing the other side to play while punishing them for DC is kind of silly. It's like the game mode itself is rage bait from the devs.
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what did you expect in an assym? the power role not to be powerful? Escaping is meant to be a struggle. The real problem is we've had two survivorless licensed chapters in a row, with only Orela to give something to the survivor side. If they want the game to be balanced both sides need to gain equally.
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But this next chapter is giving us two Survivors and no Killer, so that should even that out.
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I mean you can live in fantasy land talking about what ifs that require 90 things that just aren't going to happen I guess, I'd rather spend my time thinking about things that are actually gonna happen though
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Pretty sure the incentives have been broken for a long time.
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I keep hearing this "asymmetry" excuse so I will refute it once again. The game has been asymmetrical since 2016, even when it was supposedly survivor-sided and everything in between. Asymmetry has nothing to do with one side being easier or harder to play. It has always referred to the difference in gameplay style between killer role and survivor role, not difficulty imbalance. Even if the game is balanced 50/50, it's still an asymmetrical PvP because one side players killer, and the other side plays 4 survivors.
Releasing new survivor cosmetics is a band-aid for survivor side. If you want a PvP to be fun, you need fairly balanced matches, which means bringing the average kill rates down to 50%, the average escape rates up to 50%, and updating the MMR system so that you get reliable teammates based on an accurate assessment of player skill. Survivors will still struggle against skilled killers. The difference is, skill expression will remain in tact for survivor side, which is what makes any good PvP feel rewarding to play in the first place.
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I highly doubt it. Unlike a new killer release, which offers completely new gameplay options, survivors are merely skins, so the only "exciting" thing about a new survivor release is the perk selection and none of them are offering anything novel or interesting gameplay wise.
Sure, maybe for a week or so people will want try out the new walking dead duo, but the hype won't last long as they are just survivors. There is no difference whether you're playing meg or michonne.
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Be prepared for the inevitable arguments that "winning vs 50% of my opponents isn't fair because I might not reach the arbitrary win condition I made up in my head in half of my matches. Therefore you have to lose 60% or more of the time or else you're entitled."
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am i crazy for thinking the change from +50% to 1.5x was to distract us from how mediocre the reward was? make us think 1.5x was +150% or something?
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hopefully
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You said making one side more powerful by design. By design, yes the killer is stronger. 1 killer is meant to be equal to 4 survivors, that makes the killer more powerful than any individual survivor.
I understand the argument you think you're having right now tho. I think 60% is fair-ish but that's just personally. I like to think of it like the game trying to manufacture a 'final girl' scenario like how in alien the xenomorph kills the majority of the cast but there's always a survivor. Whether you think that's fair is just a matter of opinion like everything when discussing game balance.
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My killer queues are short now that the event is over. Maybe a minute?
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I've noticed non-USA regions typically have better queues, but I am definitely waiting 3-5 minutes on average for a killer match.
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Strange. I'm US, but haven't noticed extremely long queues.
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EU 6 seconds? Yeah nuh uh
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The problem with this is that it's not equal currently, at 60%. That's basically what the 60% means: survivors are dying more often than not. It's not "the killer is balanced compared to 4 survivors", it's "the killer is designed to be more powerful than 4 survivors". They want it that way, but it's not "because it's balanced", it's because they choose an arbitrary number.
Arguably, going by game health, 55% is a better target.
I like to think of it like the game trying to manufacture a 'final girl' scenario like how in alien the xenomorph kills the majority of the cast but there's always a survivor.
I always find it interesting that people use this kind of "it happens in horror movies, so it's a good idea in game" to justify killers being the power role. But clearly haven't thought through the implications of applying this logic to a game instead
Do you remember what happens in that scenario? It's not just that the "final girl" survives, but she also kills the killer. And that's a pretty common horror trope, especially with some of the killers you can even play.
And that's why we shouldn't just blindly apply "it works in the movie" to the game.
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that's a nice theory but incentives were added to replace BBQ and WGLF for bloodpoints.
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As I said, it's just an opinion. we haven't seen the alternative therefore I have no evidence that 55% target wouldn't be better. I was purely just trying to rationalise part of why 60% is their chosen target. The other part may just be to make survivor more of a challenge. Although, I feel like if the game was balanced so that survivors were getting around 2 players out every time then the Killer would loose a lot of its bite.
I like 60% because its neither a guarantee of a 3k or a 2e but in the middle. Forgive me if I'm wrong but for a 3k to be guaranteed we'd need a 75% kill rate since each survivor is a quarter of the team (25%). At 60% we're actually closer to that 50% than the guaranteed 3K. In this, we see that the survivors still have a decent chance of escape purely looking at the raw numbers but the power role is still given the necessary wiggle room to be a threat.
However, the issue with just looking at a percentage like 60% and saying 'Its balanced correctly' is that the power role can kinda sway their chances if they're willing to play mean. This is why I make clear that it's just an opinion rn based in a few statistics and a horror film trope. Once anti-tunnel, anti-go next and anti-slug have been introduced properly in phase 2, then we'll properly see what needs changes imo and I will then develop an actual position beyond 'I think I like 60%'.
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we haven't seen the alternative
We have… kinda.
For quite a long time, DBD was explicitly balanced around the desired outcome of 2 kills and 2 escapes, on average. I'm sure there are records of this out there.
However, eventually there was a concern that killers weren't dangerous enough, and changes were made to make them more lethal. 6.1.0 and many patches after that, basically.
What is really interesting though is the fact that, by the time patch 6.1.0 happened, survivors had already lost many of their strongest resources. There wasn't one specific overpowered perk or item that was drastically reducing the killer's lethality.
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I dont know what times you play but killer queues have been 2 minutes max at peak hours. Also the incentive is slowly starting to shift to killer getting it which I can imagine will only get worse when the Walking Dead chapter gets released.
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There is a difference between a Survivor experience and a Victim experience though, and casual gameplay often is the latter rn.
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Dead Hard.
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Yeah, that was probably the best perk survivors still had back then. Overpowered, sure, but most killers were used to it, I'd say.
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If by "used to it," you mean "was forced to alter their entire playstyle to account for a perk that the survivor may or may not have," then yes.
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I agree, which is why I think the anti-tunnel and anti-slug should be more of a priority than overhauling the entire balance philosophy of the game. The killer should feel like an insurmountable opponent, but the survivors should have a chance to enjoy the game a bit more and a shot at escaping.
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The issue with DBD ultimately is that you either go for what feels natural for the genre or what's fair for a PVP game. The two clash too much for it to do both at once successfully.
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The problem with a 'final girl' scenario in an asymmetrical game, is that if only one can survive then your team mates become your opponents
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Well, I actually mean they, myself included, knew to expect it. It wouldn't catch you off guard, and I don't think it was causing kill rates to drop substantially.
It wasn't fair though.
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Incentives have been broken forever and apparently aren’t going to get fixed
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I, for one, am happy I no longer have to run behind survivors for 5-10 seconds flicking my camera to bait DH every down.
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Oh you mean like how every time a teammate gets picked up, everyone has to alter their entire playstyle by letting go of all gens being worked on to account for a perk that the killer may or may not have?
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Do you remember what happens in that scenario? It's not just that the "final girl" survives, but she also kills the killer.
Shape, Bubba, Freddy, Pinhead, and Sadako all survive their respective movies. I didn't see the Saw sequel with Amanda in it, but the killer definitely "wins" in the original.
I wouldn't put "Survivors can kill the killer" into the game any more than I'd put in "Survivors can eat a mushroom, grow big, and stomp the killer."
But, like, you see the difference between those two suggestions, right? They're both bad for very different reasons, but you're acting like trying to maintain a horror aesthetic is dumb.
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i could be wrong about this so someone from BHVR might need to comment for clarification (or not if it's a secret) but the survivor incentives may not be uniform for everyone. for example, if you have two people on the same server and one is in low mmr and one is in high mmr they might get different incentives depending on what the game is looking for. there may even be more nuance to it than that but i know people on the same servers have compared their incentives before and have seen very different numbers at the same time.
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Every time? You couldn't tell the first time if they had DMS/Pain Res?
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You couldn't tell in the first chase if someone had dead hard?
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Yeah, the perk did need a nerf.
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Yes, but then I had to guess if the second one had DH. And the third. And the fourth. And then I had to remember which specific survivors had DH, and sometimes I would be wrong because they simply misused it in the first chase and actually ended up having it for the second.
DMS + PR makes itself known after one hook. If you get hit by it after that, then that's on you.
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Mine has been stuck at 25% since the last version of Lights Out. It was like someone flipped a switch and it never went back to normal. Then Mandy claimed that nothing had changed which I think is obviously not true. The lack of survivors is higher than it has been in YEARS and we never get big incentives. I was getting 25% even when the killer queue was like ten minutes long. Something is definitely wrong and they need to actually do something about it.
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Actually no, if PR doesnt pop on the first hook, it could be because the killer didn't have a scourge hook within range or chose to save it for later. Then if it is PR I have to remember which specific survivors had their PR used and sometimes I would be wrong because it wasn't used on their first hook and the killer ended up having it for the second.
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I kinda agree, however my second comment explains more why I like 60% outside of the horror trope.
Although, side note, there should be an among us game mode.
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they cant balance the game like that.
average killer winrate is already below 50% with 60% killrate if we go off mmr metrics (anything below 3k is a lose).
what needs to change is how they design the game because it genuinely feels too hopeless because of how snowbally it is.
edit: look up what devs themselves define as a win in MMR system instead of yapping with the most pretentious tone imaginable
Post edited by SpringMyTrap on-11 -
That's wrong and your arbitrary win condition is irrelevant. The killer's objective is to kill, and the survivor's objective is to survive. The game is balanced around kill and escape rates, not "win" rates.
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the game is dying. In all my years playing dbd, I hadn't had queues so long for so long without events.
BP incentives are basically gone because BHVR is greedy and they dont want people getting BP for some reason ( last bloodmoon event was a clear indication of it), so they reduce all the free BP we coudl get (the reason is obvious, they want the new players who came in thanks to springtrap to get frustrated with how slow progressing in this game is and buy the things with actual money). I havent seen the 100% incentive or more in months....
Then there's the gameplay itself. The game is rotten to the core. Playing survivor is misserable. There's like 1/20 games when the killer doesnt tunnel or slugs, they all run the same 3-4 perks, and it s just horrible overall... And playing killer basically demands you to play the same 3-4 perks everyone else does and tunnel and slug if you want to have any chance to win. It's basically a self-fulfilling prophecy sending the game down in a spiral to unplayability...
The worst thing is that BHVR sees it, knows about it, but they don't care.
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Get better, pick other perks to play. And please don't act like you are voice of majority. Game is so "dead" currently there are 60K players on Steam. Add other platforms and it will be over 100K
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"arbitrary win condition"
what was the last time you looked up what developers themselves define as winning the match and which by extension is what they consider a metric to increased player's MMR?
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It's 4 survivors against a single player. If each survivor had a 50% chance to escape, then the killer player would be winning in the low 30's percentile. If you want every player to have a 50% chance to win, you're needing something more akin to a 1 on 1 game or a game with an odd number of survivors due to how majorities math works.
Post edited by RpTheHotrod on-7
