http://dbd.game/killswitch
Anyone Else Remember Almo's warning and insight?
"Disclaimer: after 6 fun years of working on DBD with an amazing team, I've moved on to another studio to work on something new. These opinions are mine, and not those of Behaviour Interactive.
First, it's extremely hard to set up an asymmetric game of any kind that works. From a game design perspective, you're not able to assume that any rule fair to one side is fair to the other. Worse, asym horror games tend to put multiple players against 1. There are a whole host of reasons this is difficult to get right, but that's a huge topic better left to another discussion.
With regard to games that set out to compete with DBD, they often start by saying "we're gonna fix X which is a deep problem with DBD". Why not learn from the competition, right? Well, sometimes it then turns out that X is something that makes DBD work.
I was a VHS (Video Horror Society) early adopter, and a Superfan (large DLC purchase); I'll use this one as an example. Much of the discussion of how this game works comes from my 110 hours spent with the game as well as discussions with my Twitch audience.
VHS failed in large part because the Monster couldn't tunnel or camp. It seems clear to me from the design that they looked at DBD and figured that the biggest thing its players hate is tunneling and camping, so they eliminated those tactics.
But that meant the Monster ended up fighting 4 Teens most of the match, and there was no way to deal with a particularly difficult Teen. You'd finally kill one, and then they'd get the book of the dead and you're at 4 again. It was miserable to play Monster, so few did. I am a DBD Killer main, and I even gave up playing Monster because it was so miserable to play. I'd rather wait in a 15-minute Teen queue and play something else in the meantime than deal with that.
The difficulty in killing one Teen early also made its 25-minute matches feel very samey the whole way. DBD matches have phases: 4 Survivors, 3 Survivors, do we try to finish gens or hatch jockey, hatch hunt. That results in large shifts in play style over the course of one match. There are issues with some of these stages, but that they are present adds variety to each match.
There was also the ping system, another response to something DBD is perceived to be lacking. It hurt the atmosphere and made it much more gamey. Also, it meant Teens had a much easier time learning to coordinate against the Monster.
Then there were the Journeys; these were sets of challenges for players to do to earn stuff. Nice in principle. But some of these encouraged VERY bad behavior on the part of the Teens. Imagine you're losing as Monster; the Teens have one more Sigil of the four to take to win. Instead, they keep chain stunning you with the other attack types in order to fulfill their Journey requirements. They're encouraged not to win, but to bully the Monster for their unlocks. We can't fault the players... they're just behaving in the ways that the systems encourage.
But part of this issue steams from another thing they wanted to fix from DBD: "We want more interaction between the Killer and Survivors, and we'd like to be able to hinder the Killer more than we can in DBD." One reason DBD works is that the Survivors try to do gens to open the gates, and the Killer tries to stop them. It's never about stopping the Killer, but delaying them until you can get the gates open and escape. In VHS the Teens want to kill the Monster and the Monster wants to kill the Teens. I would argue that the goal structure being set up like this means DBD can give the most important thing to the players: the sense of an unstoppable Killer. When I boot into a game as a Killer, I don't want to be afraid there might be a Survivor lurking around any corner with a weapon. I want to go in and watch them scatter like rabbits when I come near.
This brings up what's called "ludonarrative dissonance". When you see VHS or DBD advertised, you are being sold "80s movie monster runs around murdering civilians". What you get in DBD is largely that. In VHS, it's considerably harder to kill individual Teens, and so you're not getting what you were sold. You may have a difficult time actually completing kills in DBD as it's difficult to learn to play. But that's a totally different feeling than what you get in VHS where so many systems and rules are set up to make it systemically difficult to kill a Teen.
It's easy to give reasons like "DBD has the licenses", "it has more content", or "it's already established" as reasons for competitors' failures. Or that "they didn't market it right", or "their early access was not done well". VHS shipped with 3 monsters, 6 teens, and 3 maps. Over the course of their one-year early access, they released 2 new Monsters, 1 Teen, and 2 Maps. They tweaked a lot of things, and listened to player feedback. It was very impressive for such a small team.
But my experience as someone who was on the DBD team for 6 years and having played VHS and Evil Dead quite a lot is that these competitors just aren't as much fun.
Like it or not, despite its flaws, DBD is a brilliant game that's just fun to play and competitors have to beat that part to survive. Focusing on DBD's flaws and fixing those first is the wrong way to go about it.
I'm never happy when my fellow game developers slave away on a game for years (VHS was in the works for 5 years) and then fail and lose their jobs. They worked hard, they cared about their game, and it's clear they put everything they had into it. The studio behind VHS unfortunately appears to be gone now, and that's a shame."
The PTB is literally doing the thing…..
Comments
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Doing what thing?
What is even the point of this?15 -
What thing?
And I dont understand the VHS comparison. The teens had weapons and could actively fight the monster. The teens had a means of reviving each other. Both things that absolutely made monster feel bad, but both are things DBD lacks. Also his opinion on why VHS failed is simply that - his opinion. I've also seen plenty of former players blame the devs for dragging the beta on for so long to the point where the experience gap between beta players and new players created a massive imbalance.
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The comparison is that if too much of tunneling is removed from DBD, it doesn't really have a major component of horror anymore. Horror games are supposed to have tension… the threat that killers are dangerous throughout the entire game, and the threat that someone might be removed from the game early.
If too much of tunneling is actually removed from DBD, then survivors will go large periods of time not actually being worried about the killer. And the killer role won't actually feel like it's killing for large portions of the game.
That is what killed VHS, because the killer role didn't feel like a killer role. Most asymmetrical games like this, die when the killer population is way too low to sustain the queues.
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My guess is the OP thinks BHVR is not learning from their competitor's mistakes and going down the same path they did.
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We are going down the competitor's path by…addressing the most common complaint over the last five years?
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correct
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DBD is going down the same path as VHS, by making the killer role no longer feel like a killer role.
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We have a go next epidemic because this game refuses to buff the Go Next system to where it should be.
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I am sure that was the exact argument people said back when they removed old facecamping as well.
Oh yeah, like that. Weird how that happens even if they change is objectively good.
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Survivors can't bring each other back from the dead or kill the killers. Those are extremely different than anythjng in DbD. Tunneling can and still will happen. It already very often doesn't happen, so many--if not most--players won't even have to worry about these changes. Camping remains. If anything, it's about to become cheese strategy #1.
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A giant portion of the ragequits are completely unrelated to camping, tunneling, or slugging. So it won't fix the ragequitting problem.
-8 -
The omniscient one has spoken.
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When I started reading it I thought the point was this
From a game design perspective, you're not able to assume that any rule fair to one side is fair to the other.Given how many people have been complaining about this being a fairness issue, I thought that was going to be the takeaway.
DbD CAN be great on tension. Being on death hook, hiding out, losing the killer, getting caught when you thought you might escape, can be extremely exciting. The excitement comes from both the risk and the uncertainty.
Getting tunneled doesn't have that same tension, you know what is going to happen and you need a strong team focused attitude to get any sense of purpose out of it. And once a survivor is eliminated the game loses all of its excitement unless you're already close to end game. It's more like 'please let this pointless game end' kind of feeling.
Which brings me to something else he says
DBD matches have phases: 4 Survivors, 3 Survivors, do we try to finish gens or hatch jockey, hatch hunt. That results in large shifts in play style over the course of one match. There are issues with some of these stages, but that they are present adds variety to each match.The way he is talking about hatch hasn't been true in a long time, and hiding out for hatch is loathed. That 3 survivors only works if it hits at the right time, otherwise its pointless and the game loses the "ludonarrative dissonance" he is discussing (I think he is right on the concept of a game needing a feel). If anything, the patch gets us more towards those distinct stages of the match.
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Actually, my official (inflated) stats are 68% escape rate, and my actual is 34/66 = 51% escape rate.
Which means my survivor stats are probably way better than yours.
-8 -
that's just plain whataboutism. you're better than that.
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Kind of.
It is relevant, because when we hear "Killer isn't Killer anymore" it is important to note how history has…not looked kindly on that phrase. We've been hearing it basically every time there's a broad adjustment to Killer, no matter how justified it was.
Ergo, it isnt about the specific change, just that the role you like is being touched.
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I mean tunneling never once created a feeling of tension or horror. It just created frustration and annoyance.
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I mean he's only played 66 trails. If he is a killer main bring in full meta perks by farming on killer vs baby killers and has really good game sense from his time on killer plus ideas on how to loop and mind game. I doubt low MMR killers can even touch him. Add in some natural talent for gaming and bam you have a mast of the low to early mid ranks. Even more so with friends.
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If too much of tunneling is actually removed from DBD, then survivors will go large periods of time not actually being worried about the killer. And the killer role won't actually feel like it's killing for large portions of the game.
Counterargument: All pressure all the time makes it wear thin. Tunnelling was never scary, it was frustrating and annoying more than true 'horror'.
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I don't think it is very relevant, as all it effectively boils down to is publicly asserting your assumption that X person is biased because your brain recognized a pattern, and furthermore deciding to (by conscious intent or no) publicly disregard their opinion/feelings on the matter just because of that observed pattern. When you could just…not engage with those people who you feel aren't worth talking to, and perhaps instead try to understand & address the actual subject matter in a meaningful way (the subject matter in this case being Almo's takes on player agency in VHS, and how some feel like his take is relevant with regards to the new changes).
Like if all we're doing is trying to point out others' biases, then I guess I'll throw my hat in the ring and say you clearly watch too much Jund based on my own pattern recognition. Not a very useful take in and of itself.
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Now the person Killer Mains have made fun of for years and who was (according to said Killer Mains) responsible for many bad changes for Killers is the one people should listen to?
Man, you guys really try to twist it as you need it.
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is the OP one of those people that directly made fun of him or are we just doing the "I assume you're biased and did the thing without recognizing my own bias/preconceived notions while ignoring the actual validity of the discussion at hand" thing like pulsar was doing earlier
-1 -
I'm surprised no one noticed the other really important fact from the screenshot….
It was 66 survivor trials during this tome, and 0 killer trials during this tome. As in, the only reason why we are able to calculate my official stats for survivor is because I played 0 killer games in that timeframe.
-1 -
Wasnt he said to be insanely biased?
On the topic of the new changes, they can be healthy if they aren't too obnoxious or restricting.
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The problem is he's wrong.
Tunneling and Camping are tactics that make killer easier, and arguably fantasy fulfilling but they come at the direct expense of survivor fun. This is unstable and will end the game, eventually.
Similarly, the killer needs to have fun for the game to continue and thrive.
In my opinion Behavior has been approaching the fixes in the wrong way. The antiface camp doesn't even work as intended. The killer just has to wander away from hook for 10 or 15 seconds and wait for the unhooking survivors to show up and then go right back to the hook to face camp that player to death.
They created a compicated set of rules that didn't even solve the problem. The tension for killers that face camp is that gens might get finished while they ignore the other survivors. This should have been the approach to fix face camping: grant the survivors a 5% gen speed bonus while the killer is within 30 meters of the hook and not in chase. Less complicated and encourages survivors to do the thing that makes it less desirable for killers. The killers are free to play this way when it is warranted, they just have to way the consequences. Plus the buff becomes less important as the game enters EGC. IT feels natural. The current system shuts off at EGC, doesn't really prevent the scenario that survivors don't like, and therefore does nothing to improve survivor sentiment.
Additionally, I think they should abandon the idea that DBD is a game of 1v1v1v1v1. That way if your role on hook, leads to a nice BP reward and team win, it makes the camping scenario feel less bad. Less like a waste of the players time. This is the biggest crime in a game and I'm convinced is driving the wave of DC's. Why hang on hook when you could be starting a new game that might be fun?
I think the tunnelling and slugging solutions feel a bit the same way, overly complicated and punishing to each side in different ways that aren't intuitive. I applaud the effort, this just ain't it.
I am an unapologetic survivor main of medium skill. I don't want to spend minutes of the match watching the other players play while I dangle or bleed out. Maybe give me something to do while I'm up there…a minigame that helps me contribute.
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This is such a bad take. The survivors aren't enjoying the game, so let's punish them harder. Weird logic there but alright. You can have your sadistic approach, I'll just play something else. Let's see if that fixes killer queue times.
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The latter
-7 -
Almo's mind is an enigma and works in mysterious ways.
Like for Ruin he went "newbies wont know the gen is regressing" on reddit.
As for the new changes, they're easy to trigger unintentionally and as expected they activate on Condemned/RBT kills.
It needs fine-tuning
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It’s more like “survivors are purposely breaking the game rules, and therefore should be punished”.
“Not having fun” isn’t a valid reason to ragequit.
Killer mains aren’t a hive mind.
And this was the only person in the entire company that we knew was at Red Ranks. And people can say whatever they want about how easy it was to reach Red Ranks, but the fact was that every other BHVR streamer was hard stuck at like Purple Ranks or Green Ranks.
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I dont engage with much DBD media outside the Forums these days.
Likewise, ir is important to point out blatant hysteria when I see it, especially as someone who has been around and seen these things happen numerous times.
They were not giving valuable feedback. Saying, "Killer is not allowed to Kill anymore" or that "Go-Next has absolutely nothing to do with tunneling or slugging" is both incorrect and quite foolish. For the latter, there is no way to know what causes the majority of disconnects or suicides. It stands to reason, however, that addressing common player frustrations would help.
With the former, again, this is a huge exaggeration designed to incite panic from less experienced players. It has been happening every time Killers have been broadly nerfed since I first started playing. Old face-camping, old old mori, old mori, Ruin, Eruption, removal of hook grabs etc etc.
It is important to point out that the reactions are exactly the same and occur even when the changss are objectively good. This is also ignoring that broadly speaking, Killer is doing extremely well. Every group of Survivor is escaping under 50% and it has been that way for years.
This change will shake up the meta, but it is also directly addressing something, which BHVR has historically been reluctant to do.
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except your fun is not the Killer's job. you're responsible for your own fun. there are anti-tunnel/slug perks, use them, otherwise if you refuse and get tunneled or slugged thats your own fault. Also the killer cant tunnel or slug you if you never go down
Post edited by Balrog on-16 -
Perks should not be required to fix base-game issues. You should not need to bring gen regression or anti-tunnel in order to have an acceptable experience.
Likewise, saying "dont go down" in 2025 is absolutely crazy.
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And this is exactly why there will still be a Go Next problem after this patch.
The number 1 reason for ragequitting are people that think “not having fun” is a valid reason for ragequitting. And “not having fun” could mean so many things. Maybe the survivor didn’t like the killer, or the map, or their teammates, or something else entirely.
And the only way to fix that problem is by punishing ragequitters. People need to learn that ragequitting is unacceptable, even if the player is “not having fun”
Post edited by Balrog on-13 -
The whole 1v1v1v1v1 should be abandoned - I entirely agree. The survivors should all win, tie, or lose together. Plus it allows survivors to have a higher win rate without affecting killer win rates too much. Im also tired of having to explain to people that it's not currently a team game and that each survivor gets their own win condition and ties are literally impossible. If survivors were a team, then we could balance with ties in mind. I forget the math off the top of my head, but it could be balanced where both teams on average would win in the 40s percentile with a 30s percentile chance to tie (again, I forget the actual numbers, but I can grab them if needed). That means we could have it where teams flat out losing is the minority of outcomes where they otherwise more commonly tie or win.
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Is this not one of the main criticisms of implementing some kind of system like this? The frustration of killers with this new system, “being forced to play one certain way”. But in order to counter things like tunneling and slugging, powerful tools that are not balanced at all like perks, you are forced into playing a certain way, because you have to bring those counters.
And to be honest, every time posts were made about the criticism of tunneling or slugging the answer was always to: don’t like it, bring perks. But now, with tunneling no longer being as efficient and has downsides, the answer is not: don’t like it, don’t tunnel. Which seems inconsistent. As then the position seems to be: survivors being forced to run anti-tunnel perks to counter tunneling is fine. But killers being forced to change their play style with tunneling is unreasonable?
Also telling people that they won’t get tunneled if they won’t go down is like telling killers they won’t lose the match if they kill all survivors before a single gen pops. It’s not reasonable. Not to mention that it is possible that you can go the entire game without going down and still lose, because if the killer closes hatch and starts EGC, you can die without being hit one time.
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That's one of the things I never understood about this game. If survivors are a "team" why are they not treated as one? When there are 2 people left the unironic correct play is to sacrifice someone for the other to try to find hatch, that doesn't sound like "teamwork" to me. If it wasn't a reportable offense for griefing sandbagging other survivors would be a correct play in almost all scenarios as well. I can understand that its a "horror" aspect. But it is completely counter productive for this being a long term game people are suppose to play.
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except your fun is not the Killer's job.
Doesn't mean killers should go out of their way to ruin it.
And if you think 'but it's just the most efficient way to play', that brings us to this patch.
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I dont engage with much DBD media outside the Forums these days.
Fair enough. That's why it's bad to base our arguments on unfounded assumptions and flimsy correlations. And to that end…
They were not giving valuable feedback. Saying, "Killer is not allowed to Kill anymore" or that "Go-Next has absolutely nothing to do with tunneling or slugging" is both incorrect and quite foolish. For the latter, there is no way to know what causes the majority of disconnects or suicides. It stands to reason, however, that addressing common player frustrations would help.
…these things aren't being said in this thread. You can argue that Coffeecrashing in particular is placing a lot of emphasis on the go-next prevention system's integrity and failing to see the PoV of how much tunneling/slugging/camping has caused the go-next issues in the first place, but assuming that means they think that "go-next has absolutely nothing to do with tunneling or slugging" is a blatant, hyperbolic, bad faith assumption on your part. And the "killer is not allowed to kill anymore" is an oversimplification of the issue and failure to address the actual words that are being said to express the broader concept of killer agency, again…on your part. You want to talk about the people actually saying those exact things (because yes, there are, and yes, I also think it's a bit hysterical when taken at face value), go for it. But that's not what's being said here, in this thread, in particular (unless I missed one comment in which case flay me).
And as a side note I'll state what I've stated before about Almo's overall take on VHS: I think he's just wrong about the primary reason why VHS failed. I think monster agency and not feeling like the big bad was a part of it, but I think they just screwed up by not letting the wider public play the game for as long as they did, and then the whole hacking situation that happened near the end. Maybe they still wouldn't have retained their playerbase because of the monster issue, but they didn't even attempt to pull in enough players to begin with. Hard to grow a playerbase that doesn't exist.
With the former, again, this is a huge exaggeration designed to incite panic from less experienced players. It has been happening every time Killers have been broadly nerfed since I first started playing. Old face-camping, old old mori, old mori, Ruin, Eruption, removal of hook grabs etc etc.
"Designed to incite panic from less experienced players" as if this is some coordinated effort being put forth to push a narrative and not a mass gut reaction to changes to killer agency that people don't like but don't have the words to describe why exactly they don't like it.
The people who were reacting to all of those old changes are by and large not the same people today. I'm sure some of them are, and I'm sure there are some that are doing it just to troll or because they're miserable IRL, but again…not very relevant to the topic unless you really value finding those specific individuals and publicly shaming them. Otherwise it's just narrative pushing on your end.
It is important to point out that the reactions are exactly the same and occur even when the changss are objectively good. This is also ignoring that broadly speaking, Killer is doing extremely well. Every group of Survivor is escaping under 50% and it has been that way for years.
This change will shake up the meta, but it is also directly addressing something, which BHVR has historically been reluctant to do.
Again, I just don't see it as all that helpful. You're not going to convince people who are critical of the changes that they're wrong by making blanket statements about perceived hysteria/bias. All you're doing is essentially virtue signaling for the people who already think like you do. And if I may be frank, implying that these anti-tunnel changes are objectively good (or perhaps you're referring to something older like swivel hook or whatever change you want to pull out of a hat, but this point still stands) just because you agree with the general idea that something must be done to target the issue of tunneling (which I tend to agree too, but I think these changes suck) is foolish. There is no objectivity here. "Good game design" is not an objectively agreed upon thing, clearly.
And yeah, killer on the whole has been eating good in terms of kill rates, I'll agree. Personally I'd look at the 6.1.0 gen charge change (a lot of killer mains here would disagree evidently since we still have people complaining about gen speeds) and go from there (focusing on reducing the variability in how fast/slow gens go) instead of messing with killer agency, but that's me, and I don't work at BHVR.
And I completely disagree with the idea that BHVR simply trying stuff is a good thing. I think the particulars of what they're doing matters a whole lot more, perhaps to the point where it's the only thing that matters in my mind. I'm not going to give them a mental participation medal just because they made changes when those changes actively make the game worse in terms of what I find to be good design, or otherwise removes texture from the game like Myers being turned into another goddamn dash killer with horrible animations and seemingly no thought put into preserving the fantasy of playing as the character. I don't think BHVR needs coddling, I think they can take the harsh criticism as long as it doesn't devolve into them being personally attacked.
-8 -
In all honesty i feel like if they keep majority of the changes and do touch ups here and there before it goes live as well adding mini corrupt that still allow further gens to be repaired but at slower speeds and it cant be influenced by perks until 90s timer runs out.
The downside is you wont know which gens are blocked with the aura white reading.
Corrupt perk will still exist fully blocking the gens and it deactivates upon down, mini corrupt would go off as soon as u land a hit injuring a first survivor or downing too.
They also serious need to remove pop and add pain res instead.
4 hook states needed before u can kill is faar better than miserable 6 where it feels like general limitation of killer capability.
The haste is fine by me it allows 4.6 killers to traverse 6 to 8meters extra which isnt much but still helps 1s of time for anything including abilities.
Bbq is a bit quite limited and very conditional same as pop…
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What else am I supposed to take from this comment and their general attitude? Is this not a complete denial of a possible cause? Later on, they double-down and reiterate that they know that camping and tunneling has very little to do with ragequitting, which is a bold statement, imo.
It is either that they are claiming to know the root cause, which is very arrogant and that's coming from me, OR they have conflated their own personal experience with the game at large.
Not the same people, but the same type of people. People don't like seeing their role taken down a notch, I get it. It's basically human nature, we don't like the things we enjoy being negatively impacted. However, there's a difference between saying, "Hey, I know these changes need to happen, or will happen, but here's how we can make them better." Or, "Hey, this is what needs to happen immediately after these changes go live" or "Hey, these changes come from a good place, trying to improve the player experience, here's how we can do that better."
Instead, we see, "Killer isn't allowed to kill" which plays into the idea that the Devs dislike Killer or are otherwise biased against them, which is something particular users have been trying to push, along with a denial of KR stats, for quite some time.
If I can show one of the new players here that they are incorrect, then it is worth it. The point I was making with the comparisons is that it wouldn't matter if these changes were objectively good, there are things to work on, for sure. However, even changes that were objectively good, like swivel hooks, were met with the same derision simply because BHVR touched the role these players liked. Basically, it wouldn't matter how well BHVR made this patch, it would've been met with the same level of vehement resistance.
BHVR modus operandi has been to fix issues with perks for…well, literally the entire games lifespan. This is a large shift, where we see them attempting to address multiple issues with game mechanics rather than paid DLC. Slugging an issue? Boom, Unbreakable. Tunneling? DS. Camping? BT. Gens go too quickly in the early game? Corrupt. Gens pop sequentially? Deadlock.
The attempt to address this using game mechanics over perks is a good change from BHVR's part. There are issues, there will always be issues when BHVR doesn't really understand the game (Myers), but a shift in design philosophy away from band-aid fixes is a net positive.
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Thinking it's mostly due that the teens had to much power to fight against the monster to the point the monster role no longer felt like monster role and the teens were the hunters. It got to the point all the monster players quit.
This update is a massive buff for survivors and the same time punishing killers for just doing their objective. Killer role won't be feared anymore and good survivors would have a lot more tools to abuse. The anti slug is mostly good with a few more tweaks needed. The anti tunnel needs heavy changes to it only affects the early game when tunneling is a problem and not late game when it becomes a more viable option that the killer needs.
Give survivors to much to fight back against the killer's and chances are the killer players will likely leave.
-2 -
You are right, I am responsible for my own fun in the sense that I don't have to play a game that I don't find enjoyable anymore. Which is why I hardly play Survivor outside of limited time game modes and rift quests. Though if most of this update goes through, I will probably be tempted back into playing the role.
The average player probably plays maybe 5 trials in a play session. For me, it was getting to the point were at least 2 of those trials were dead lost because the Killer tunnelled someone out, making the rest of the trial just miserable play through to the end. Hatch may as well not be in the game anymore for how often Killers slug for the 4K. So for me, the role stopped being fun to play.
This patch isn't perfect. Some changes I think are maybe too strict (the 6 hook rule and double hooking a death hook Survivor being penalised with only 1 gen remaining) and I'm not 100% onboard with the base-kit BBQ. I like using my game sense to figure out where Survivors might be and it's also a direct nerf to my sneakier Survivor playstyle of evading the Killer for as long as I can. But it's clear to me that the aim is for there to be a more consistent flow of action across a the whole of the trial and to get all players involved in it fairly equally. People can argue this is oversimplifying the main game to 2V8 levels and removing player agency and I agree with this point to a degree. But this is all part of a logical progression towards a more chase orientated game play loop and the recent changes make more sense when you take this as a starting point. Killers are rewarded for spreading pressure and chasing/hooking multiple Survivors and Survivors are easier to find and expected to take chase more often.
Besides, I don't remember too many Killers arguing that the Distortion nerf was Killing Survivor agency and reducing their options for Survival but I do remember lots of Killers arguing very strongly for an immediate nerf to Fog Vials (which would have opened up more viable possibilities for Survival). We can't have a game where there is a variety of strategies available to one side but not for the other. It's "rules for thee and not for me" thinking and wouldn't be fair. I like variety yet DBD is being streamlined towards a very specific chase focused playstyle for both sides. I'm not totally in favour of this but it is what it is. It seems to be what the player base says it wants.
I would hazard a guess that the planned MMR changes will be more focused on rewarding team play. I kinda like the option to be a bit selfish if things go south and to play for hatch and a "win", even if the team loses. But most Survivors probably want teammates that play for the team and not just for themselves, so I think changes are coming soon to MMR to reflect that.
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a lot of this is still just reiterating the same narratives & assumptions so idk what to say anymore. i feel you just don't get it or care to get it, and that's fine. know that i acknowledge and understand your viewpoints, but disagree with their effectiveness when applied with the specific goal of getting people to share said viewpoints. i'll address some particular points, but i don't want to spend all day replying today (silksong)
However, even changes that were objectively good, like swivel hooks, were met with the same derision simply because BHVR touched the role these players liked.
swivel hooks were not an objectively good change. again, subjectively good (or really popular) game design =/= objective. objectivity would be more along the lines of "does this game function at a base level or does it blow up my computer/console" or "does this thing do the thing the developer intends it to do or does it function improperly because of a coding error". the game still functioned when killers were able to facecamp with no chance of rescue, just like the game will still function even if they pushed these anti-tunnel changes through with no other changes. would most people consider it unfun to be on the receiving end of the facecamp? of course, that's why it was changed. but it was not changed because it was actively causing the game to not function as intended.
i know it's semantics but semantics really matter. if we stray from the hard definitions, the meanings of words, our ability to communicate (let alone formulate) basic ideas crumbles, which is something this community (and perhaps gaming communities on the whole) desperately struggles with.
The attempt to address this using game mechanics over perks is a good change from BHVR's part. There are issues, there will always be issues when BHVR doesn't really understand the game (Myers), but a shift in design philosophy away from band-aid fixes is a net positive.
agree to disagree. i have no faith that BHVR's new(ish) design philosophy going forward is going to consistently be a net positive for the game given the severity of the problems that have cropped up with these anti-tunnel changes, their scrapping of the original finisher mori system, the needless complexity/downright entropy of new killer designs/killer reworks, and their implied stance of "oh we can screw up because the community will tell us when we're wrong" (E: i suppose that's making assumptions and coming up with a narrative on my end, though it's not like we can confirm or deny this stance given that the devs don't really speak their own minds anymore). i would have faith in a BHVR that has sense on their own merits (which they did for awhile, even though yes, the bandaids were real), not a BHVR that has to waste a bunch of time developing for systems that bozos like me or ex devs like Almo can pick apart instantly.
we're stuck with what we're stuck with and if current BHVR is better than old BHVR in your eyes then that's chill.
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That last point is something I totally agree with. It's not all doom and gloom for Killers, either. Like, how long have players wanted base-kit gen regression that's way better than just dry kicking a gen? This change alone has already buffed my Billy because I hardly ever use any gen regression on him. I'm already thinking of what perks I could use instead of regression on some of my Killers. It might actually lead to more perk variety on both sides, if players don't feel the need to run so much regression and anti-tunnel.
Besides that, players are acting like BHVR are just going to dust their hands off and say to themselves, "that's it guys, we've solved DBD's game balance problems forever. Time to down tools everyone, we'll get that labour of love award this year for sure!"
Obviously they're going to make adjustments if kill rates start to dip below 60%. Like you say, maybe Killers could even get a mini corrupt that lasts until the first chase begins to stop Survivors getting on the first gen they spawn next to or maybe it could be something else. The point is, it opens up a new way to address some long standing issues and that's got to be a good thing, surely?
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That is the way I felt as well.
If they commit to this way of development, then I think that's a much better way to go about things than constantly locking solutions behind paywalls.
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I guess the OP was TL;DR. Here's the relevant part.
VHS failed in large part because the Monster couldn't tunnel or camp. It seems clear to me from the design that they looked at DBD and figured that the biggest thing its players hate is tunneling and camping, so they eliminated those tactics.
But that meant the Monster ended up fighting 4 Teens most of the match, and there was no way to deal with a particularly difficult Teen. You'd finally kill one, and then they'd get the book of the dead and you're at 4 again. It was miserable to play Monster, so few did. I am a DBD Killer main, and I even gave up playing Monster because it was so miserable to play. I'd rather wait in a 15-minute Teen queue and play something else in the meantime than deal with that.
-6 -
I wonder if the OP considered that teens actively had weapons and could fight the monster.
To date, Survivors have no weapons. Unless you count the foot that you kick Victor with as a weapon.
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Have you not seen the last few batches of PTB? PTB has nothing to do with actual testing, it's a glorified preview where little to no feedback is accounted for unless the biggest streamers threaten to pull the plug. Now even they're just outright ignored for anything killer related.
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Thats true, but protection FROM tunneling can kill any sense of threat. If you know the killer won't bother chasing you until they get another hook or 2 from someone else... all of a sudden, your not too worried about that approaching terror radius. Thats why DS was so effective before conspicuous actions were a thing. You could sit on a gen and the killer was punished if they did anything about it.
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You have the glass shard thing from DS and I'd include locker doors with Head on. They can ALSO use explosives with blast mine and chem trap. My head has caught plenty of pallets, and you can also drop kick killers with last stand. Can we toss in Steve's aggressive screaming as a weapon of psychological warfare?
Alot of this kinda just makes things more reminiscent of Home Alone than a horror movie slasher, lol.
Here's our next licensed killer
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