I cant understand what BHVR is thinking about Ghoul and its weird

I have to admit I don't think Ghoul is that much of a problem. If the killer player knows how to play him he can be oppressive but so can most killers when they are played by player who knows how to play them. I never had real problem of looping Ghoul but yes when you ran into the one that knows how to play or is more lucky of the leap placements you are going down but quite often the Ghoul's that I face are decent with him but you can still mind game and play tiles against him so he can't even use his power. In the end with most things its confirmation bias because you feel like or you do lose against him more or you just don't like playing against him is not most likely really the truth of what is really happening with others. As Mandy said their data does not correlate what OP is saying and they have all the data in the end.

if your data is showing anything other than the ghoul is op than you can’t trust the data and you should go back to the drawing board about how you gather and use said data.

I understand, but after a decade of the same problems persisting and the issues that affect our relationship with you guys (TWD stream, the issues on social media with moderation, etc.), what are we supposed to think?

One thing I would change would make it so that first leap you can't target survivors would remove the pallet standoffs he is known currently mostly but still give value if killer can chain the leap to do it. The other points AGM basically listed there. The locked in place not being fun is the thing I understand as people usually don't like when they lose control of their character.

You could send out a survey asking players what their issues with Ghoul are (if any) from a list of the most commonly expressed ones, and why.

The metrics being collected now might not tell the whole story, like when usage stats put a nerf target on an add-on but in reality that add-on gets used so much because most of that killer's add-ons are booty.

If the players at large don't have a problem with Ghoul, a player survey with publicly announced results would do some good towards getting people to move on from constantly asking for changes to him.

One of main main frustration as a survivor player is the effort the other side has to put in to get good results meanwhile survivors have to put in a ton of effort to counter.

As someone else mentioned the ghoul has a bunch of mechanics, much more then killers that are weaker then him, this is leading to situations where survivors don't feel like they where outplayed they just feel like the killer is playing a killer that takes little skill to play.

I have suggested in other threads that you should either remove the free hit and make him a catch up body block killer (higher skill floor, higher skill expression) or keep the lock on free hit but other parts of kits are going to be nerfed (Low skill floor, low skill expression) This would "nerf" him one way or another but would buff more fair gameplay such as bodyblocking and cut offs and nerf stuff such as Free lock on hits and Stupidly fast vaults leading to free downs in most cases.

We can compare to another killer people consider on top and also some have asked for nerfs, the blight. I personally don't like speed ad ons but with blight there is a level of respect for the other player skill when versing them (not all people do this sadly but alot do) even with drac you mentioned you like versing you can respect a drac who is goated at using his kit effectively and I love versing him too.

The same feeling is not felt for the ghoul and the opposite feeling for a lot of survivor players is felt due to how they require little effort to play with the current free hit fast vaulting ghoul plays. If ghoul was moved to a more fast, cut off body block killer with a high skill ceiling, people would feel the latter when versing ghoul rather then hating it and feeling like the killer put in no skill to do what they did.

on the killer side, survivors have low skill high impact builds with Finesse+ Exhaustion. playing m1 killer into this is excruciating. I'm not quoting you because I disagree I think we both suffer from the same issues I just don't know how to reconcile for both sides. The Henry had become a rare killer because people are sick of pre run gameplay.

@Mandy

One thing I’m sure both you and the development team are aware of, and this exists in almost every PvP game, is that feedback often includes a portion of unreasonable players.

In competitive games especially, balance discussions tend to get flooded with emotionally driven reactions. We’ve seen in other games what happens when developers overcorrect based on that type of pressure instead of long-term data and design philosophy. The game stagnates instead of evolving.

If the data shows Ghoul is a decent, mid-tier killer, then it’s worth asking: why are people still calling for him to be made worse?

If his counterplay were truly unclear, or if he were highly rewarding with little difficulty, that would show clearly in performance metrics — kill rates, high-MMR outcomes, matchup statistics, etc.

When that doesn’t show up in the data, it suggests something else is happening.

This goes back to the idea of unreasonable feedback. It wouldn’t be fair to balance around players who refuse to adapt, especially when other players are willing to learn matchups and adjust to new mechanics.

If Ghoul’s kit were genuinely “toxic,” the community wouldn’t just be asking to make him weaker. They’d be asking for a rework, redistributing mechanics to reduce frustration while maintaining his intended strength and difficulty.

But that’s not what’s being asked.

What’s being asked is a straight reduction in his effectiveness, particularly in the areas where he actually secures downs.

That doesn’t sound like a design toxicity issue. It sounds like resistance to adapting to mechanics that punish autopilot gameplay.

If the only real complaint is that he disrupts overly safe looping habits, that’s not inherently unhealthy for the game. Sometimes adaptation is part of competitive balance.

legion is loopable and his power is avoidable.

kaneki is honestly, what og old legion was like.

@Mandy i think the main issue is lack of visual information.

There is no way to know how a killers kit works outside of plain text. (unless you watch third party video's or play the killer itself) So in my opinion the BIGGEST help for such issues would be a tutorial not only the base game tutorial (to explain perks, new basekit features etc.) But also killer specific tutorial for both sides. These "killer"tutorials would have like 3 parts or so depending on the depth of the killers kit. (Basic/Intermediate/Expert).

For example lets take Wesker:

Basic survivor info: explain how his grab/throw works and how the infection mechanic works at its base value. (grab = infection wich gets worse over time. If red = insta grab).

Basic killer info: Explain how the hitbox of the grab work and how that interacts with the envoironment. Also explain how survivors get rid of the added effect (infection) so the new killer player knows why the effect goes away.

Intermediate survivor info: Explain some "techs" (rebound for example). And give tips on how to counter these "techs.

Intermediate killer info: (same as survivor but with tips on how to perform them)

Expert survivor info: explain the more "obscure" techs in depth and how to counter those.

Expert killer info: (same as survivor but with tips on how to perform them)

As for ghoul's "situation" he's a killer a newer player can pick up play and get consistent results with for minimum effort. BUT this is also due to the lack of information a survivor gets about his actions. You only know your getting grabbed because of an icon that switches constantly and since its hitscan might only appear for a split second.

And then his vault. This is yet another situation with lack of information a survivor wil only know how to counter it with trial by fire by dying to it. The only way someone knows hes about to vault is because of his kagune changing position. I suggest maybe adding some form of VFX to the pallet in question (similar to vecna's (dnd) pallet "grab").

Then we get to add-ons another big issue for ghoul basically every ghoul i know uses 2 addons: red headed centipede (block vaults when vaulting over them while enraged) and black coffee). These 2 are basically mandatory if you want good results with him. Because without coffee for example he would be too slow to skillfully body block a survivor after cutting them off (for example leaping in a way to block a shack doorway). While red headed centipede free's a perk slot (otherwise you would have to bring bamboozle to deny windows).

Now the issue with nerfing these 2 perks: If these 2 addons were to get nerfed then the ghoul would have less variety in their addon selection wich would kill variety. A good example of this is unknown and knight.

As for the high spike usage of these addons lets take deathslinger who basically always run reload addons.
Now while the data might show a huge spike in these addons the reality is that without them he simply loses too much distance (basially a free chase escape) if missed or even hit (since they get the speed boost too ontop of slinger having to: cleaning animation press reload keybind reload and then walk back to the survivor at 4.4ms.

So i think the best course of action would be a multi week PTB Where the dev team changes most if not all killers, addons, etc. (from community feedback for example a survey) and then after a week or so release a survey or another option to gather information to then make another PTB for the next week with changed stats for the main pain points. (for example PTB #1 would have tricksters rework at 4.4ms while the second would have him at 4.6ms)

In the end I think i can confidently say regardless of how the community might… react… we all want the best for Dead By Daylight.

Thank you for reading and with kind regards,

XDgamer018 - a very happy TCoFS Fan (TCoFS = The Casting of Frank Stone)

One of the factors that players also tend to not enjoy about the ghoul is the amount of people playing as them. They are probably one if the easiest if not the easiest killer to use on a controller which probably makes his usage rate very high among console players let alone pc. Its one thing to play against a nurse or blight and get stomped, or the occasional legion round that you just have to slog through, but to play against ghoul every 1-6 rounds gets fairly frustrating. I have ghoul prestiged to 100 as a big fan of Rize from the anime but i completely avoid using the character simply because they are overplayed and everytime i go to use it im like their 4th ghoul in a row so they just stand there at a hook and wait.

If he took more skill to use even on controller his numbers might drop to more manageable numbers and he wouldnt be as annoying to face. (not hard to face as ive won against just as many ghouls as ive lost to) hes currently too fun/easy to use while not fun to play against. While something like legion is fun to use not easy, and not fun to play against but atleast that keeps their numbers in check.

(Also please add Shanoa as a legendary skin for Trevor Belmont :D)

I'll take advantage of your vantage if you'll forgive it. I'm sure we're all curious what sort of data you operate off of versus which datasets you treats as unreliable or throw-away data. This isn't asked in accusation, as you said balancing an asymm is a misery, but that being said there's alot of bickering over tiny pedantries on the forums. This could help us have a point of solidification on at least one point.

What data are you employing use of? Just win statistics, or is the data subcategorized and pivoted to reflect MMR, application of perks and mods, etc? In example, would you look at the win-rate of say, Trapper, and call it done or do you look at the win-rate when using double iri and categorize that data as it's own set? You mentioned other aspects you balance off of, could you provide a little clarity into what other aspects you consider?

I recognize this feels a bit rude and I apologize for that, but I genuinely do feel that some more transparency could potentially go a long way. Or, rather, it could for a while before we all find something else to get up in arms about.

couldn’t have said it any better

👆

ghoul is buggy as heck right now and anyone who says he has counterplay is only half right. Many ghoul enjoyers probably don’t even know that they can unintentionally break animations so survivors can’t determine whether the kagune is activated or not. Making it so there isn’t any actual counterplay.

He has so many glaring issues and his skill ceiling is none existent because of his auto aim free hit that the skilled kaneki’s want removed so they can truly play skillfully.

His bugs make him op with no counterplay, his auto aim makes him skillless. His vault back hit is unreasonably massive.

if it can’t be done manually then it should be removed.

If I may...

Ghoul is one of those characters where he may not be imbalanced/OP, but he's pretty insufferable. If I had to pinpoint frustrations (not all of which are necessarily a problem)

1. Free hit with DW: this is something he shares with Legion. While it may not be imbalanced, it's not a good feeling when you're injured with little you could have done with his ability to DW being extra annoying in tunnelling scenarios.
2. Elephant in the room: enranged vaults. His vault is very similar to Wesker so the issues aren't readily apparent. The two biggest differences I've found are 1) Wesker has a much longer windup (1.5 vs 0.35), with Ghoul's significantly shorter one even allowing him to vault a pallet in reaction to a drop. 2) Ghoul physically locks a surv in place until he starts vaulting, while with Wesker, you retain freedom of movement. Even if the distance is the same between them (i haven't done the math on that; I'm being hypothetical), having your control outright stripped from you feels bad.
3. Map presence. Especially when Enraged, he's as mobile (or moreso) than even Blight. This means you're effectively never safe from him. Again, not a problem by itself, but when combined with the other two, it just makes those games grating. You're constantly getting injured, he's mobile so he's hard to gain distance on, and looping is iffy at times since if you drop a pallet in hia face, he'll just vault and hit you. And if you pre-throw, yes, he has a cooldown but he's still able to cut you off pretty well.