http://dbd.game/killswitch
A Modest Proposal to Fix the Exit Survey
There's been a lot of discussion over the past day about the all important exit survey. There seems to be substantial concern that killers aren't getting the same opportunity that survivors are.
I'm going to change my tune. I think it is very important that we treat killers and survivors the same on this.
BHVR, please remove any survivor sided options and add a few killer sided options to balance things out.
Now, its very important that we be fair, please take no action on these issues for years. Even if the forums and other feedback methods are filled with detailed killer complaints, we need to be fair and give killers the same survivor experience. This issue can't be touched until people are uninstalling over it for a substantial period of time.
And, if after years of consistency, please announce you are going address it, of course a good 6 or so months before you actually do. Then, when you do, please release a PTB that does way too much to fairly evaluate, but actually gives the killers hope that it will be addressed, then listen intently to the loudest survivor voices on the issue, and when you do change, walk your changes all the way back to an extremely limited way to address the issue.
Oh, and if between the PTB and the second attempt if you could nerf a few key killer perks in anticipation, that would really cover the experience.
And it goes without saying, to be fair, even when you do address this killer complaint, survivors must get compensation to encourage them to play in a more healthy manner without forcing them. Let's say a minor, temporary speed increase and extra bloodpoints if they do the healthy thing for the game.
Now this obviously limits survivors to just their feedback, so please pay attention to those. And when you do, and you nerf something on the killer side, bonus points if you use the survivors' preferred word choice in explaining your reasons.
It is very straightforward, killers don't think they are being treated the same as survivors and if we did treat the sides the same, it would lead to a more healthy overall game. I agree, I really think it would help if killers got to experience the absolute wonderful way BHVR has taken to address survivors' main complaints about the game.
Comments
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Hear hear, I whole-heartedly agree. I think we can get them a good survey in place by 2037. Killers have been victimized for so long. The poor dears have no power at all. I heard the devs even make jokes about them! Can you believe it? The horror. All the while, day after day they tell us how hard they stuggle for their back to back to back 4ks, and how they almost lost a match. It's high time we treat them just as well as survivors are treated.
Post edited by cogsturning on15 -
So how much are we betting the ptb changes will get reverted yet again?
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We're going to get a 1 second increase to the basekit BT and anti-tunnel will be declared solved!
More seriously:
I think something has to go through. They've also pushed back other things on their schedule which is not easy for them to do and possibly impossible to do again anytime soon. And they've literally said their data shows people are consistently quitting over this issue, so not addressing it makes it sound like they are fine with people quitting and that they won't address their issues.
But BHVR has had a big issue on overpromising and underdelivering (reworking killers, new items for survivors, the go next system),. so getting anti-tunnel/anti-slug knocked back to 'sometime in the future' is certainly a possibility.
Will whatever version goes on the PTB probably be nerfed down (say shrinking the aura range)? Probably. Will what they nerf actually be the right call? Sigh, here's hoping.
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Regardless of the role you play, when a game relies on two opposing sides, it’s important to gather feedback from both perspectives. The survey would have been more effective if it included some of the common complaints about killers to better understand how widespread those issues are among players.
As someone who plays both roles, I see the challenges from each side. From the survivor’s perspective, most issues arise with specific killers rather than the core mechanics. On the killer side, however, certain base kits present clear imbalances, while survivors feel more consistent overall.
I believe targeted adjustments should be made—buffing underpowered killers and rebalancing those that are overperforming—to bring more fairness and depth to the gameplay. Survivors, in my opinion, don’t currently need major changes, but refining killer mechanics would help create a more balanced experience that reflects the advantages survivors have received in recent updates.
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Good luck to the devs. There has been already a huge amount of pre-ptb crying here and content creators are pumping out videos with DBD is doomed as the title, exactly like last time.
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I like to know how one gets the chance to fill out this survey. When you uninstall on Steam? I've never seen that with other games. Is it uninstalling on other platforms? Or does the person have to seek out this survey? If so, how do we know they uninstall or even had it installed to begin with?
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I believe targeted adjustments should be made—buffing underpowered killers and rebalancing those that are overperforming—to bring more fairness and depth to the gameplay.
I agree with this part, but I'm pretty sure they know this. The specific killer issues they'll already have data on, and it's not going to be many people quitting for that. Even here on the forum, the complaints about killers kits are endless, yet people either still play as them or switch to another killer. They still play the game.
I don't agree about survivors needing nothing though. You shouldn't be able to slug four people and end a match two minutes in.
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Sure, you should gather general information. But that's not the exit survey. It's a survey that is 'why did you quit the game'. None of the questions are in the vein of 'well, I think this is a little too strong'. The one checkbox that is clearly survivor sided isn't even asking them how they feel about the game overall, it is taking an issue that survivors have repeatedly said is a problem they stopped playing because of and BHVR has acknowledged they find 'excessive' versions of it to be a huge problem.
If people keep saying they are quitting because of a particular issue, it shouldn't be a surprise when that's the issue that winds up on the survey.
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I've been tempted to uninstall just to see if it pops up, but how are we going to argue on the forums if it ends up being a completely different survey?
I do find it funny that no one has actually verified the issue, though I'm part of the problem on that.
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(I did it now)
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Thanks, looks like some things have been moved around that could be randomized. I've spent so much time on this, let's dive into the differences-
'Character perks are unbalanced' has been split into survivor and killer options (so we have the option for each, I'm sure complaints will die down)
None of the above and clearing storage space get more clearly separated.
'Too many bugs and cheats' has been split into two options.
The collecting currencies choice has disappeared, though I think this has been changed to 'the progression feels too tedious'
The introduction of new features has been removed
'Player communications are unfriendly' got 'in game' added to it for clarity.
Changes to existing features has been removed
Verifying files was made its own in step 1 (though I feel like I saw that might have been true before, in which case it would have been redundant)
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So a couple of things that had two parts got split into their own section, some options got separated for clarity. But we have a survivor and killer option, so I guess the survey must be good now.
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what did you do to get this?
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Wrong!
Both sides of the game should have their most popular complaints on the survey.
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Wrong!! (does that make my argument better?)
Anyway, because I think arguments actually need reasons and not just explanation marks, I'll continue
1: If its known as the most popular complaint, why do you need an additional survey for it? As I said in the post, if we're truly being fair, killers should wait around for years for this survey to verify what was being said everywhere else before any action is taken.
2: You've gone from arguing a few days of the last PTB was plenty of data, to saying data is not valid because of 22 questions there is one that leans toward the survivor experience more than the killer.
3: You continue to insist that the game is made up of two sides of players when that is not even close to what the survey is doing, nor do you have any evidence that is even what the player base is made of (compared to players who play both sides).
4: You have no evidence or argument that there is a killer complaint anywhere close to the popularity of camping and tunneling.
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I you would be surprised, they whole point is give some antislug mechanic and make tunneling less of the problem but what we get will only do the antislug thing and survivors will have better antitunnel but tunneling will happen because now killers that arent b+ tier will get nerfed hard with these survivor changes and get nothing as compensation or reward for not tunneling (dont tell me more bp or 15 seconds of bloodlust are good reward, they arent its joke) which is kinda needed if you want to see tunneling less.
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They arent wrong its biggest nerf to all killers in history without any compansation or reward for not tunneling that is valid.
Take like this "The biggest pig nerf in DBD history" only problem is its not only for pig but all other killlers and the weakest will be the real ones that get punished not the blights,nurses,ghouls you hate to face which is wrong.
Buffing weak killers well devs are doing it from beginning but look on trapper still worst,clown kinda meh, bubba still needs his beast marks addon like todler needs his pacifier, demogorgon still outdated, slinger still needs reload addons and now is worse than before (he cant shoot like through half of the holes he could few years ago, only good buff is like vecna and pyramidhead, reworks well best rewok for mechanics and power scale was now billy,mayers,freddy probably others arent bad but super weak like doctor and buffs it takes the devs whole eternity to buff some killers they havent touched for years but buffing the ones they profit from or want to like krasue isnt problem.
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I mean, if we are talking fairness for both roles then this all seems reasonable.
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The survey was invalid because it wasn't properly representing both sides of the game.
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Perchance you didn't see the post above: I agree! Let's not treat changes to killer issues as valid until they've been verified by the same type of survey. For example, we have an upcoming nerf to syringes and styptics. Now I think there is ample evidence that killers don't like these, and BHVR must have data on them for balance purposes, but let's throw it on the exit survey for a few years to be sure!
More seriously:
Adding one question, even if it is a question they should be asking, would change nothing about tunneling and camping data they received. It wasn't a vote and people seem to be confusing those concepts.
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Yeah but to say anything about killer issues you had to post them in the area below and bhvr had to actually read them. Thats harder I guess than just clicking a button and bhvr pulling up a data spreadsheet saying "which one of these was picked the most" of course thats gonna win over bhvr having to manually read each killer player putting it in the text bar in the survey below. Because I doubt bhvr even read half of them. They just did the spreadsheet stats and that happened to win. Because of course it did lol. They only counted for that part. So if they wanted to be truly accurate. They woulda put killer usual issues in there as well and counted them on their spreadsheet. But they didnt.
Trust me I dont like to say biased either. But this sounds like they are.
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They just did the spreadsheet stats and that happened to win. Because of course it did lol. They only counted for that part.It wasn't a vote. Nothing won. People could choose as many as applied. BHVR didn't even say this was the top chosen reason, they said it was consistently in the top three to five reasons chosen.
If a lot of players selected 'excessive tunneling' and a lot of players selected 'too many cheats', you have to deal with both. It doesn't matter what option "won", if a significant portion of your playerbase is quitting over the same reason, you need to explore ways you could solve it (which gets into lot more nuanced portions depending on the issue).
But like I've been saying, if killers would like their obvious issues to be addressed extremely slowly by this survey, have at it.
Edit to add because the bottom part either didn't load for me or I missed it:
Trust me I dont like to say biased either. But this sounds like they are.Did they respond to the issue when survivors complained about it repeatedly on social media?
Did they address it after it was brought up on other surveys?
Did they even address it when it became an issue or only when it consistently was repeated as an issue by players uninstalling the game?
When they finally tried their first attempt at addressing it, did they only listen to survivor voices?
Yeah, it sounds like they are biased. It sounds more like they are saying 'we made absolutely sure this was an issue before actually addressing it in a way we haven't for any other issue'.
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Something is always better than nothing. If Dead by Daylight is the only game someone plays, they’ll likely keep playing despite the issues — whether it’s killer balance, bugs, or matchmaking. But that doesn’t mean those problems aren’t driving players away.
From what I’ve read here and elsewhere, the majority of people quitting seem to be killers, not survivors — which would also explain the longer queue times. If killers aren’t quitting because of their kits, as you mentioned, then it’s likely because of their experience with survivors. Still, for players who main a specific killer rather than the game as a whole, it’s understandable they’d stop playing if they feel their favorite killer can’t perform at the same level as others.
Take The Unknown, for example. There’s been a ton of discussion on here and Twitter calling for buffs. Even Otz recently posted a video where he struggled to secure kills as The Unknown and said himself that the killer needs a buff. Compare that to Michael Myers, who has received several buffs lately — now he tears through pallets, moves faster, and is much tougher for survivors to deal with. That’s a massive gap in killer strength and highlights how uneven some kits feel right now, especially given the many tools and advantages survivors have received in recent updates.
On the topic of slugging — survivors already have a variety of perks and mechanics to counter it. If you’ve played killer, you know certain ones are naturally better at slugging due to their kits. So when slugging becomes a problem, it usually comes down to two things: either someone’s using a killer designed for that playstyle, or the survivors are a weaker team. BHVR can’t fix player experience levels — they can only adjust killer kits.
That’s why, when they nerf killers that excel at slugging, they should also buff the weaker ones to maintain overall balance. Giving survivors even more advantages just pushes players toward a smaller pool of viable killers. Eventually, new players will only pick killers like Michael because they’ll feel the others simply can’t compete.
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That’s a fair point — the exit survey’s main goal is definitely to understand why players quit, not to gather broad gameplay feedback. I don’t disagree with that purpose. My point was more about how contextual questions could make the survey results more insightful.
For example, if a large portion of players select “killer imbalance” as their reason for quitting, it would be helpful to know which killers or what kind of imbalance they’re referring to. That extra layer of detail could help Behaviour prioritize fixes more effectively rather than just identifying the surface-level reason.
I completely understand why BHVR included questions based on the most frequent quit reasons — like issues survivors have raised — and it makes sense that those would appear. I just think expanding that approach slightly to cover both perspectives (killers and survivors) would paint a more complete picture of why players are leaving and how both sides are being affected.
In the end, gathering exit data is valuable, but pairing it with balanced context could help drive better, more targeted updates for the whole community.
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Again, I agree some killers need buffs. But that's a slow, lengthy process. How long do survivors need to wait for a little help? If they get that help, we'll have a clearer picture of where things stand and more targeted adjustments can follow.
The forum discontent goes in waves. We're in a killer wave right now. We'll be in a survivor when this inevitably gets cancelled or nerfed. What I've noticed, overall, is survivors mostly feeling like beaten dogs that feed other's egos, and killers feeling like persecuted victims who deserve the world. I get it, because I also feel these things occasionally. I'll lose 10 survivor matches in a row, many to cheese tactics, and I'll still ready up yet again even though I feel like crap, because I'm used to being a punching bag. On the flipside, I've been winning a lot as killler lately and I'm starting to feel that nasty entitlement. I played 10 killer matches the other day. Eight were 4ks, one was a 2k, and one a 0k. I had a brief but severe crash out about that 0k that was totally unlike me, despite wining almost all night. Then I sat back and thought, "ah, so this is the problem." Killer is easier to win but it's more stressful, which is why I think the emotional responses from killer players are so much more intense, hence all these I QUITs we're seeing, even over something as minor as pallets. I think most of the survivors who leave will quietly drift away. That's what I've seen with my own friends, who I'm losing rapidly.
I completely disagree about perks though. You shouldn't have to devote your build to someone potentially slugging everyone. If you could see that you're going against an Oni or Twins then it might be different. As killer, I can see if survivors have flashlights and bring Lightborn. Survivors lack that info. And I don't need any particular build as killler just to be allowed to play, or to even have hope.
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I just think expanding that approach slightly to cover both perspectives (killers and survivors) would paint a more complete picture of why players are leaving and how both sides are being affected.I said this elsewhere, but, if BHVR is missing any reasons from the survey, they are missing important information. That could be a general reason, a different survivor reason, or a killer.
But, if they add too many options, and people don't take it, its also a failure.
There's a challenge to doing a poll like this in an asym (well there's a challenge to doing any poll, asym makes it harder). Not only do survivors outnumber killers 4 to 1 (or alternatively people play 4 times survivors as much as they do killer), but those killer experiences are split between very different killers. People who love stealth killers and those who love ranged killers are going to have different feedback. There's really no issue on the killer side that rises to the consistency of tunneling in complaints, and some of the biggest ones BHVR is almost certainly never going to touch (SWFs).
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I'll lose 10 survivor matches in a row, many to cheese tactics, and I'll still ready up yet again even though I feel like crap, because I'm used to being a punching bag. On the flipside, I've been winning a lot as killler lately and I'm starting to feel that nasty entitlement.I do think this will be one of the hardest things about making any significant change. There have become built in expectations that might be impossible to shift.
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Just click uninstall on steam
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Like I mentioned in past posts:
- If the current issues with tunneling/camping/slugging etc. gets rectified, then
- Killers could be better balanced, but this will undoubtedly be a long process, with possible reworks, and or serious add-on passes. Now …
- When that is done, and properly tested, then a full overhaul of the maps, or more specifically, the spawn logic of pallets, filler loops and windows needs to be looked at, to not create loops that are too strong, or too easy to chain together. Alternately, this needs to be done before looking at killer balance.
- Once all this is done, survivors could be properly balanced as well, with a solid perk and item + add-on overhaul.
Long and tedious process indeed, but this is the hard reality of how things are, and why people are leaving.
But don't worry @cogsturning I will not leave that easily. I will still be available whenever I am at home.
And I am sure the friends who has taken a break will eventually return someday in the near future.
Oh, and I forgot to mention the matchmaking. That would be a different chapter altogether, considering how random it has been.2 -
This process is ideal, yeah, but between the constant caving on anything big that benefits survivors because of outcry (much of which seems distressingly coordinated), and the resources devoted to the endless pushing out of new content, it just seems unlikely. But I guess I just feel run down and pessimistic. The war for change feels endless and the disappointments never stop.
I hope so. I've lost a lot of people, some I was playing with every day. They never quit, they just come on less and less, or started playing other games. Some are playing killer instead. Some show up here and there, get frustrated and DC, and don't come back for awhile again. It's just really disheartening.
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It really is disheartening. I used to have a lot of friends who played regularly too. I haven't seen some of them on for years now.
Hopefully, it is temporary, but considering the direction the game has taken over the years, most notably since 6.1.0, I am not holding my breath. Call me a pessimist for thinking that, but reality tells us that players are getting burnt out.One more culprit is that the game has become a bit too predictable, thanks to the removal of many past things that kept the gameplay more engaging and varied.
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The patch 6.1.0 that just buffed killers action speed and cooldowns by few percents but its irrevelant now because perks that helped m1 a lot after that patch like save the best got nerfed, pallets are so spread that m1 killer would still strugled if the simular patch came for them now and there is another patch that will bring another nerf just to m1 killers ( if you think ghoul or blight and other strong killers will get effected by stronger antitunnel well then you are to much optimistic here, it will make tunneling harder and gives you more chance against them but their strong powers will deal with that without struggle but for weaker killers and m1 killers its just another nail into coffin that they dont need right now, devs buffed pig but then released patch that made her worse by addong multiple pallets between loops so survivor has less way to do mistake and is safe even when he plays the loop wrong by another pallet 10 meters away leading to another pallets that lead to strong structure like shack or main and now the patch 9.3.0 will nerf her futher by making survivors more harder to kill with no benefits if she is going for hooks, ghoul,blight,billy,spirit they can go for hooks but pig cant always her power is weak compare to stronger killers so logicaly she needs to tunnel more to gain preasure like other weak killers but that will be harder for her).
All what I see from upcoming patch is just “if you cant keep up play another stronger killer” solution that wont keep survivors in game too if they face just more blights and ghouls and killers like pig become even more rare (just hard dedicated mains who like her plus few casuals playing on lower mmr and others that try it against better decent survivor teams will find out fast playing her was mistake).
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Really? I've never seen that for other games. Thanks.
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