The survivor experience feels like it gets worse and worse with every update

Langweilig
Langweilig Member Posts: 3,222

Maps overall became a lot worse than they were before the pallet density. Midwich, Hawkins and lerry‘s have gotten a lot of pallets removed and it wasn‘t even mentioned in the patch notes. Skull merchant map (forgot the name sorry) and disturbed ward got shrunken heavily and got a lot of loops nuked. The other affected maps from the update got a lot of terribly bad pallets now, that are super easy to win as killer and as survivor they are just frustrating to play since there is most times no good way to play them. Then some maps have like almost no windows while the pallets are terrible. You drop the pallet the killer runs around and hits you. You vault it, the killer just hits you or runs around and hits you. Add ping and hit boxes on top and it feels ten times worse. It doesn’t seem like it really matters how you play as survivor. I would like loops that are fun to play and not just a struggle where one tiny mistake instantly gets you killed while the killer can make thousand mistakes and even gets rewarded with bloodlust.

From the promised anti tunnel almost nothing cane through, except those lousy +5 seconds of endurance/haste, that do not really help against tunneling at all and are annoying to deal with as killer in endgame. Tunneling got made even easier by nerfing/shrinking of a lot of maps. At least give us the elusive and no hook notification sound. It would make tunneling more annoying for the killer and give players more time before the killer notices an unhook happened.

Lastly medkits got a hefty undeserved nerf with the explanation that it would be too much with the anti tunnel and pallet density, but guess what got reverted + nerfed further than it was before and what didn‘t. The syringe is kinda pointless now except you wanna do a head on clip for YouTube and the styptic is the worst medkit addon and it lacks creativity, because we already have more than enough charge addons.

The other survivor items don‘t feel much better! Keys are pointless after the killing of the bloodamber addon. Maps are pointless after becoming a worse version of WoO and getting rid of their old function. Fog vials do absolutely nothing after their underserved nerf the second week of their existence.

Playing survivor feels like you loose content every update, like you get punished for playing this side and you keep getting nerfed while killers get buff after buff. Some killers are way too OP and are still untouched, which is so questionable to me.

Agree or disagree with me. I‘m just describing my frustrations with the balance decisions of this game.

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  • OrangeBear
    OrangeBear Member Posts: 3,787

    I feel like maps are better now with the pallet update, i don't feel like i'm ever running into dead zones anymore. Or i mean at least places where a pallet did not spawn there to begin with.

    I think fog vials have been handled very poorly. They have yet to fix the bug that affects it's consistency across maps despite it being acknowledged when they were released. Very bad item for the game overall.

    I think syringes and styptic did need changes but i do not like the reworks. Styptic is just straight up useless. Syringes encourage using exhaustion perks even more which is not what has been wanted at all. I don't think they should have gone through with the reworks when they aren't any good, i think i would have preferred they kept them unchanged until they can come up with better designs.

    I think keys are mostly okay although i think blood amber could do with a slight buff. Maps are pretty bad and really impractical. I only like them for totem revealing, however if ESP comes through, i won't need to be using a map again. A WOO effect that you have to charge the item for is just really annoying. They are terrible at finding gens.

    In terms of overpowered killers. Nurse definitely is still really boring. However it depends on how small the map is. I also still really hate Blight, it just doesn't feel like he has a turn limit when i play against him. I also just dont like him as a character and how many people him. Other than that i don't really feel like any other killer is particularly OP.

  • Abbzy
    Abbzy Member Posts: 3,072

    Its been nowhere stated that they would remove these pallets and happened some time ago so i guess its bug.

  • Classic_Rando
    Classic_Rando Member Posts: 570
    edited January 22

    ”Playing survivor feels like you loose content every update, like you get punished for playing this side and you keep getting nerfed while killers get buff after buff. Some killers are way too OP and are still untouched, which is so questionable to me.”

    What content have survivors lost recently? How have survivors been nerfed recently? How have killers been buffed recently? You’re listing very general complaints with no specifics.

    From an overall balance perspective, average survivor escape rate is exactly where the devs want it to be, unless of course you are in a 4-man SWF at high MMR then average escape rate is significantly better than the target 40%.

    How often are you escaping? If it’s less than the 40% average, then it’s simply a matter of improving your own skills because based on the stats the average survivor can escape 40% of the time. If you’re at or above the target 40% escape rate, then this is not an issue of balance, it’s an issue of you not feeling like 40% (or better) is good enough. You’re entitled to that opinion, but BHVR has to balance around the overall satisfaction of players on both sides. We have seen what happened in the past when escape rates were higher. There were fewer people who wanted to play killer and consequently survivor queue times during peak hours were way higher than they are now.

    Edit: so great to see that, as usual, an unpopular opinion gets downvotes with not a single person actually willing to offer a constructive counter argument. Much easier to just lob downvotes anonymously.

    Post edited by Classic_Rando on
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  • Aeltere
    Aeltere Member Posts: 15

    When did BHVR change their goal to 40%? Their goal for kill rate was 60% for years and years and I never heard them state any differently.

  • Classic_Rando
    Classic_Rando Member Posts: 570

    ”They could honestly make the kill rate 90% and if they found a way to make the game actually fun for survivors to play while losing then people would likely not care about the kill rate stat.”

    No, “honestly” that isn’t true at all. People complain about the game on both sides because they lose more often than they think they should. You are trying to make this way more complicated than it is. I understand now why the devs have such a difficult time making the game “fun” for people when they are getting such nebulous feedback about what makes the game “fun”. People are going to have more fun if they are winning and not losing - it’s quite simple.

  • Classic_Rando
    Classic_Rando Member Posts: 570

    I said the target escape rate is 40%, not the target kill rate.

  • Coffeecrashing
    Coffeecrashing Member Posts: 5,740
    edited January 23

    The problem is when we try to talk about making the gameplay fun for killers, the conversation gets an overwhelming amount of pushback.

    Excessive hiding is unfun for killers, and we we SUPPOSED TO have a phase 1 update to address this problem, but survivors complained they are "just trying to survive", and got the entire thing nerfed so badly that BHVR might as well just revert the AFK crows to what they were before phase 1.

    Bully SWFs are unfun for killers, but if people try to talk about that, we get told it's not really a problem, or "at least they aren't doing gens"

    Gen rushing is unfun for killers, but if people try to talk about that, we get told "it's not real" or "that's not what gen rushing is"

    Being forced to slug isn't fun for killers, but if people try to talk about that, we get told "slugging is worse for survivors" or "it's not really a problem"

    Voice comms and SWFs aren't fun for killers, but if people try to talk about that, we get told "you can't punish people for playing with friends"

    So really, when people say "making the gameplay fun", the vast majority of the time it's really "making the gameplay fun FOR SURVIVORS ONLY"

  • drag27
    drag27 Member Posts: 243

    he's not, he's pointing something out that happens alot in this forum. your response is proof of that

  • diablo916
    diablo916 Member Posts: 38

    Well they keep nerfing every strategy killer gets so dont be surprised when survivor gets stale.

  • Coffeecrashing
    Coffeecrashing Member Posts: 5,740

    I did see people on these forums loudly complain when BHVR announced the kill rates are supposed to be 60%.

    Some people said it was proof the game was killer sided, and some people demanded it be moved to 50%. Some people threatened to leave the game because they didn't like a 60% kill rate.

  • Aeltere
    Aeltere Member Posts: 15

    This is just telling on the content you choose to consume. There are hours and hours of videos across platforms talking about the QoL issues killers face that don't mention survivor complaints a single time. Just because you don't see something from your very insulated perspective doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

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  • Coffeecrashing
    Coffeecrashing Member Posts: 5,740

    Do you think there is something fundamentally different from killer players and survivor players, where survivor players care about fairness but not about winning, and killer players care about winning but not about fairness?

  • Brokenbones
    Brokenbones Member Posts: 5,697

    OTR is still good though, no killer is waiting out 40s of endurance. The whole point of it as an anti-tunnel perk is to guarantee you get 2 health states if you're tunnelled off hook.

    Styptic/Syringes were just unfair, not saying they shouldn't be impactful or strong but there's a reason why Killer plays found them incredibly frustrating.

  • Classic_Rando
    Classic_Rando Member Posts: 570

    There are plenty of tantrums about the 40% escape rate. They show up on this forum all the time.

  • Aeltere
    Aeltere Member Posts: 15

    Completely failing to understand that it's a 1v4 game for the killer. If each survivor has a "fair" game with the killer, then the killer has zero chance to play at all. We've been there before, look at what's been happening in the game when the survival rates dip above 50% and you'll understand why things are the way they are. Hell, look at matches against killers with sub-50 kill rates right now and understand that that's what you asking for as the killer experience . . . across the board. You won't get queue pops anymore because your victims, err, the killers will all quit.

  • Philscooper
    Philscooper Member Posts: 677

    The only strat i can tell from the past notes to be nerfed.

    Is hit and run and unable to punish survivors healing on hook.

    Undetechable is unchanged.

    Aura got buffed, distortion is gutted

    Oblivious got buffed.

    Some exposed perks got buffed like friends til the end (which only s-tiers obliviously, so thanks bhvr).

    There is nothing else that has been nerfed besides that unknowns window vault, gaining a hatse boost if you injure, vault window and you vault aswell....which supiror anatomy exists as a replacement.

    The only hex perk that got nerfed was pentimento.

    (Which you wouldnt be winning against a cordinated swf anyway).

  • Classic_Rando
    Classic_Rando Member Posts: 570

    I play survivor more than I play killer. I think 40% escape rate is perfectly fair. I’m making this judgment based on almost 3,000 hours playing both sides. Escaping 40% of the time feels fine to me. 60% kill rate also feels fine to me.

    I remember when average kill rates were lower, closer to 50%, and the game felt pretty miserable on the killer side unless you were playing S-tier killers with the sweatiest builds. Survivor queue times were super long because killer sucked to play. I was playing with a friend tonight and he, oddly enough, made a comment about how nice it is that survivor queue times during the evening when we play are only a few minutes instead of the 10-15 minutes that they used to be.

    Killer players need to feel like the game is fair too, because otherwise we just go back to the time of super long survivor queues. Most of the complaints on this forum about the game being “unfair” are coming from survivor players who don’t play killer at all or don’t play killer very much, certainly not enough to consistently go against skilled survivors.

  • Crowman
    Crowman Member Posts: 10,171

    The reality is that the experience of the game as a whole is degrading and it's not just a survivor or killer thing. The current state of game balance is both sides speedrunning their objective and trying to avoid as much interaction as possible.

    Not to mention this community is trying to rival the peak toxicity of LoL.

  • Classic_Rando
    Classic_Rando Member Posts: 570

    I guess we’re done arguing here because the only resolution for you is “we just that the game was fine before”, which translates to “everyone just agree with my personal opinion”.

    I’m not trying to get everyone to agree with my opinion - in fact I’m very well aware based on downvotes that my opinions that come from the perspective of someone who plays both sides of the game are often not popular. I’m simply stating what has happened to queue times in the past when game balanced was titled in more favorable way for survivors than it is now.

    There’s actually not much point in arguing anyone’s personal opinion here. All we have to do is look at queue times and I’m guessing BHVR probably does this to make their balance decisions. Survivor queue times during peak hours when the largest number of people are playing used to be atrociously long, and now they are actually reasonable. That’s exactly what BHVR are trying to achieve. Balance around this, not individual opinions from people who are either performing below the average or people who don’t feel like the average is “fair”. This isn’t coming from a “biased killer main” point of view. For example, I will argue very strongly for further survivor buffs/killer nerfs in 2v8 because the queue times are telling us that it’s still not enough fun for many players to choose the survivor side.

    A lot of people were not enjoying the game back when it was “fine before” and that’s why we had 15 minute (or longer) survivor queue times during peak hours vs the much shorter survivor queue times we had now. I played quite a few survivor matches with a couple friends last night and we all had a great time. Stop insisting that everyone who plays survivor is miserable, because it’s not even close to being reality for many players.

  • Classic_Rando
    Classic_Rando Member Posts: 570

    Here to support the unpopular opinion that balance needs to be based on the queue times because that is the most objective way of measuring how much relative fun is having. The only opinion that seems to get you upvotes in this thread is “I’m not having fun playing survivor, so please nerf killers and no I don’t care how it affects the experience of those players”.