http://dbd.game/killswitch
Is it a spooky party game or a sweaty comp?
Curious how the developers view the aim of game design. And how the community views it.
I see people organize tournaments that play by a completely different set of rules. Limiting much of the Perk and team composition.
I see Killer's play against solo's like their life depends on it.
What the heck is this game?
Comments
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Devs balance around the majority of players, which they will know from their data.
It can be whatever you want really, there is enough player agency to make it competitive but there's nothing stopping you from using meme builds.2 -
I want the game to be balanced, but not because I think it is or should be a competitive game; it isn't and shouldn't.
I'll let you in a secret: as a killer main, I'm fine losing games if I feel like I'm able to be a threat and provide a tense, nail-biting experience. I want to be able to scare people and make them feel dread— this is why I love stealth killers and trap killers; this is why I think global-condemn Sadako was her best iteration. And when I play survivor, I also want that tension; I want matches where I CAN win if I play well, but I never feel safe.
Unfortunately, with the game balance in such a bad state, survivors are being coddled for their mistakes and allowed to feel safe far too much. (Keep in mind, all a killer is capable of doing is punishing survivors for their mistakes, and perfect-play survivors will beat a perfect-play killer every time.) As a result, the tension is gone, and survivors feel bored and killers feel helpless and non-threatening.
This is in largely the fault of a small number of extremely overpowered killers with a stranglehold on the meta. As I've said elsewhere, the game is balanced around Nurse, Blight, Ken, and one or two others. That's not a lot of killer variety, and they're so overtuned survivors HAVE to sweat their brains out to stand a chance. Fear goes away when the fearsome thing is constant and repetitive, and for having to go up against the same overpowered killers every time, I'm not surprised survivors complain about being bored in matches.
A caveat to that last part, though: It's also the fault of— I'm gonna say it— a certain group of survivors who kinda just want free wins, don't want to have to interact with the killer beyond clipworthy instant-gratification sick dodges and loops, and complain when the game makes them think. This is what got Sadako and Merchant nuked, and it's why BHVR keeps pumping out dashslop while neglecting stealth and trap killers. Of course killers like Blight are as common and overtuned as they are; they're very microplay-intensive and give you a dopamine rush akin to nailing a Call of Duty trickshot.
Regardless, this leaves a lot of killers feeling defanged and useless. When I try to play someone like Trickster or Artist or Ghostface or Sadako or Merchant or Pig, I feel like I'm just being bullied, because the game is balanced around microplay-heavy high-speed hack-'n'-slash killers, and half the roster has been essentially forgotten. And when I play survivor, I don't feel threatened; I feel totally content to just sit on a gen and not worry about what to do if the killer comes by because I'm running Windows and I know where all the safe tiles on the map are.
All this means the game just isn't tense anymore. I want the game to be balanced in service of tension. I want survivors to never feel safe; I want killers to feel like a threat; I want that skin-of-your-teeth escape to feel that much more rewarding for it.
DBD should be a horror game.
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Nobody really knows. It was designed to emulate a playable horror movie, and has changed priorities so much over the years it's kinda impossible to call it a wholly casually game. Still, it's also insane to categorize it as a comp title imo.
There is and always has been such a massive difference in the power dynamic depending on the killer, map, perks, addons, etc. that regardless of you or your opponents skill level, your chances of winning the match can change wildly before it even starts.
That makes it very different from a game like Chess where there's always an even playing field before the match starts, and even unlike a more modern example like Overwatch where the maps tend to be more neutral and the characters are swapped on the fly to encourage adaptability. A DBD match is stuck with it's imbalance and it's up to the side handed the short end of the stick to beat the odds. This happens in pretty much every asym game and I'd wager it's why they don't tend to get taken seriously competitively most of the time.
On the other side of the token though, who on earth analyzes a casual game to this level? Tier lists, strategy guides, patch notes, concept pitches. There exists hundreds of thousands of hours analyzing DBD because every second in a high level DBD match matters. You can't say that about Mario Party.
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It's a spooky party game a large portion of players will DEDICATE THEIR LIVES to ruining for as many people as possible.
Edit: HA! I thought this was about HBD.5 -
It will never be a party game in my eyes outside of "kill your friends".
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survivors feel bored and killers feel helpless and non-threatening.
We must be in alternate realities because this is the opposite of how I feel.
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I see survivors complain about being bored ALL THE TIME. And like I said, if you play killers other than Nurse, Blight, Ken, and Krasue, it's shocking how often you get into matches where you're comically helpless against how fast the gens fly and how many pallets and second-chance perks survivors have.
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I wish I was bored but I'm just dead a whole lot.
I think I played Nurse once or twice when i first started maybe? I've never played as the other three. My KR is about 75% for the last 30 days out of nearly 200 matches. No regression perks either. Idk I'm just not having this problem.
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It's both and will always be both. It's why the game isn't balanced very well. Without any clear direction of what the game is being balanced around, it's a total mess.
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I'd say it's definitely marketed as a low stakes casual horror game, but a very significant part of the community treat as more like an e-sports title.
BHVR are trying to have their cake and eat it too by appealing to both the casual and competitive crowd, ultimately satisfying neither side entirely. I think the current balance leans more competitive, at least in the sense that they allow "tryhards" on both sides to adopt strategies / bring stuff to trial that will help them dominate their opponents more often than not. The game's definitely a bit unusual for making zero attempt to keep these two different types of gamer away form each other the way other live service games do.
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Don’t talk about killers without acknowledging the other side. Survivors have been bringing Gen rush builds and slamming gens. God forbid I take blight off and try to do the event stuff.
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I will always take this game as a goofy horror game, all my good memories are when silly stuff happens like the killer whiffing or a survivor making a silly mistake in chase after BMing me.
I don't care if I "Win" or "Lose" i just want to stand a chance, which is why powerful options (S-tier killers) and snowball perks/tactics (gen regression and rush and tunneling) need dealt with.2 -
This is a "serious" game that pretends to be a party game. It's serious because the amount of information you need to know to play a game and "understand" everything that's going on is HUGE. "Mario Party" is a party game... you can even have never played a Mario Party game in your life but understand EVERYTHING in 5 minutes and have fun with your friends. DBD is a serious game because 90% of the time, players want to win and not have fun (for some, ONLY winning is fun). This applies to both roles, but (in my experience) killers are a bit more interested in winning : it's easier to meet a survivor with a "meme" build than a killer (taking into account only perks and not the other game mechanics).
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It's neither but any PvP game will be competive by nature. The game is not designed for both sides to have fun at the same time. One side will be frustrated by the end of a match and being that energy to the next one.
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It’s not party, not competitive. You and your opponent choose what it is supposed to be every match
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My read on BHVR's intentions is that they fundamentally balance it as a casual game (not a party game- I'd argue there's a pretty important distinction between those two terms), but they're aware of and encourage the comp scene as well. So, most balance changes aim towards the middle, players just enjoying the core mechanics and gameplay without trying to optimise or sweat their ass off to win, but they'll make some adjustments and additions to help out the comp scene where it's possible to do so without harming the casual playerbase.
I think the fact that this game is completely lacking anything that even halfway resembles a ranked mode should be the biggest indication that this is fundamentally supposed to be a more casual experience. Nothing wrong with trying to win within that framework, obviously, but there's nothing but self-directed incentives for any kind of approach.
No ranks to climb, no rewards for doing well, no ability to equalise the playing field prior to a match (think map bans, that kind of thing), no restrictions to keep loadouts fair. People sweat in the current landscape, sure, but the game isn't doing anything to encourage or reward it.Certainly, a casual game can form a competitive scene without that being the intention or overall balance philosophy- hell, so can party games, Smash Bros has huge tournaments. That existing doesn't really tell us much about what priorities the game's developers have, though.
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I don't think its necessary to slot it into a single category. It's a game with a lot of randomness where every trial is its own unique experience: whether you want to approach it with a 'neat, cool' mindset or 'maximize everything!' is really up to the player.
A DBD match is stuck with it's imbalance and it's up to the side handed the short end of the stick to beat the odds. This happens in pretty much every asym game and I'd wager it's why they don't tend to get taken seriously competitively most of the time.That's a pretty accurate description.
I tend to think of DbD as like a card game instead of a game like chess. Card games still have a lot of skill, but also huge amounts of randomness that players have to deal with in game. Sometimes you get great cards, sometimes really bad cards, but its about making the best of the hands you get. In DbD sometimes you get a map / setup that favors you, sometimes its a really hard situation, but the key is in trying to make the best of what you have.
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It's never been a party game and PvP games can all be sweaty by nature.
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All we need is anti-tunnel system and it won't feel that bad
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It's whatever your opponent/s decide it's going to be.
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I bet you would face swf in 1 from3 matches especialy if you would pick m1 killer to show you why you play blight.
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I love how I'm being downvoted for the notion that the horror game should be tense. You're literally proving my point.
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who says it has to be either of these
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Look at this this way both meta bs is on both sides but strongest from killer are s-tiers (overpowered killers created to be balanced in maps like from original DBD from 2017) and from survivors swf (playing with coms which is the way survivors wasnt meant to be played at all and countering many objects normal soloq must deal with like trap killers and strategies or coordination).
Now devs are buffing weaker killers to match the good higher b-tier but still they mostly buff stronger killers more than weaker or make global change that effects very little to almost none effect stronger killers and nerfs,hinders and cripples mediocre to weaker killers. Just like now pallet density uptade, they should just add more on few maps but instead added pallets on maps where they werent needed at all and so buffs to weaker killers like pig are again nerfed by pallet uptade so its just one step foward and two back just like drunk man trying to get on pavement from the road which is something devs are doing since the start and I sometimes wonder if the balance team is migrating ground or are there some people from the old times like from 2017-18.
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Once you play for a few weeks, that feeling inevitably goes away. It's natural and there's nothing that can be done about that. People don't stay scared of something forever, they outgrow it. At the end of the day, this is a game and people play games for the dopamine hit that winning gives them. When theyre not getting that hit they move on to find it somewhere else. It's as basic as that.
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