State of the game

This is something of a rant that is going to encompass a lot of topics that are controversial in DBD but its just how I feel about the game after playing it for years consistently.

The game is getting worse, and I don't mean to say there haven't been any good changes along the way because there definitely have been, however tons of major problems have existed since I have played and there has been no satisfactory fix, and so they continue to exist alongside new problems.

The first, probably most talked about problem is Killer Bans, I am well aware of the common topic points like "Bans wont work because killers choose before matchmaking", "Some people would never be able to play", etc… the alternative is that players continue to be forced into games against killers with mechanics that they hate and do not want to see at all, these mechanics arent even usually totally busted ones. For example, the Michael Myers rework is AWFUL. I used to play myers more than any other killer but his kit is soulless and uninteresting now, he just walks at you and then hits you with yet another basic instant down dash that wasn't even animated well. or the ongoing hatred for knight, weak as he may be, etc. the problem is that "Can't ban Killers because not good" is effectively the only answer people give besides that it would require a change to matchmaking. none of that does anything to address that a huge part of why people still quit in solo queue and why people will never stop doing that, is because they don't want to see a killer at all and they dont enjoy the game when they are involved, and there's no solution to not playing against them except to quit or to mindlessly run around destroying totems.

As we know people don't DC entirely because its a killer mechanic they don't like, sometimes they're just having a bad time in general and keep queueing and have extremely short tempers, but in general the "Solution" to preventing people from doing it was to make it impossible to suicide on hook which IS a solution to people actually quitting that way, what it isn't, is a solution to a game full of toxicity and mechanics that feel awful and arent changed.

I'll say it, if DBD is supposed to be a competitive game by nature, then Killer Bans, Comms, Perk Bans, Tunnelling, Gen Camping, and various other mechanics casual players (both Killers and Survivors) don't like should be in the game. and if DBD is supposed to be a casual game then extreme changes need to be made to a lot of systems that don't feel like they are being changed, and some systems need to be changed regardless. but it feels like DBD has taken the part of the fanbase that wants to be purely casual and thrown them together with people that want to do the things that are going to make them win no matter how uninspired or uninteresting they are to deal with. this has created an extreme and realistically unaddressed problem of people being perpetually unhappy with the gamestate, because two groups of people that see the game as something different are constantly being thrown together. sometimes killers with fun, very bad perk builds are just trying to mess around and experience the game and they get put against a SWF from hell for no reason that do everything they can to make the killer players game worse, and sometimes its the other way around and killers are going out of their way to abuse systems in the game to win against players who are just trying to play casually.

DBD has a massive playerbase and people always resort to "They can't add bans or Ranked in earnest because it will split the playerbase too much" but when the events are going on theres plenty of people playing both regular and events. DBD has a playerbase much larger than many games that have both ranked and casual play and instead of finding a way to appease both camps of players, they just add ways to make the game torture for people who are already being tortured. the response to these kinds of points tends to be "If you don't like X or Y about the game, then it sounds like you should just play a different one" and at some level every game suffers from people who do this. refusing to admit there are super obvious problems with a game is why it gets worse and worse over time.

Another issue that DBD is experiencing an increased amount of is convoluted or outright bad/counterintuitive killers, many games have this problem after a time, I played League of Legends for a long time and its easy to look at the trend of when new champions started being added that had more and more ridiculous kits that had to be nerfed into the ground in order to "balance", The same is becoming true of DBD Killers, Vecna is a prime example of this, as is the Knight and Skull Merchant. of course killers like the Nurse have been in the game for a long time that do this to some extent to but Vecna provides the ability to hit through walls, pallets, and windows like the nurse without a nearly as high skill ceiling, nevermind that he can absolutely fly around the map in addition to this, The Knight and the Skull Merchant have mechanics that force players to just hold W most of the time and removes the point of a great majority of the core gameplay of DBD. and I get that neither the Knight nor the Skull Merchant are "good" right now, but its not a matter of good, its that its not interesitng to play against them and on top of that, because they are nerfed after release for having awful kits that are terrible to deal with, players that want to play them well have to play in ways that make the game feel worse for everyone like tunnelling and hook/objective camping.

FInally I will say this, and theres a ton of other problems that could really be addressed as well; but the issue, if it were to be condensed into a single issue, is that Behavior is "solving problems" by not solving or even addressing them, it seems to be the easy way out every time: "Oh, too many people are killing themselves on hook? Remove the feature", "Oh, Camping isn't fun?, add a bar for auto unhook for survivors being camped" never mind the fact that high tier mobility killers can (and will) just immediately return to hook and down unhooked survivors. "certain perks are being abused by SWFs? Nerf them so that they're unviable in Solo Queue instead of just making a ranked mode or a squad queue mode where perks have different values." and the list could go on for a long time. I am aware that its not as easy as just changing the way the game is and that no matter what there's going to be toxicity and system abuse in a game that has a core premise of evading death or killing the opponent but it feels like we are rapidly approaching a point where the whole game really just needs an overhaul or a change to restore freshness to a ton of mechanics that people are getting tired of dealing with.

Thank you for attending my rant.