http://dbd.game/killswitch
The Female Killer Phenomenon
The Female Killer phenomenon is the phenomenon that predicts that female killers are systemically picked less and have an increased risk of dropping to the bottom among the killers roster in terms of overall pick-rate
Let's first take a look:
Among the least popular killers are (ordered by least played to slightly more played):
- Skill Merchant f
- The Twins f
- The Hag f
- The Cenobite
- The Krasue f
- The Houndmaster f
- The Singularity
- The Nightmare
- The Artist f
- The Onryo f
For those of you who played along with:
You might've wondered, how could I have guessed who the least popular killers are.
There are a couple of interesting strategies to pick here:
1. Free killers: Free killers are more likely to be picked, since they are the most accessible to all players, even if they're weaker. This rules out killers like trapper since even though he is weak (assuming no strongest add-ons) a lot of players will still play this killer.
2. Licenses: Another great guess would be that killers from licenses might be popular. Though they'd cost money, they would have a certain userbase that might gravitate towards that character just based on the IP.
3. Strength: You could also assume that the strongest killers will always have players gravitating towards them purely because of helping them win matches, they are more likely to have a bigger userbase as well
4. Expired License: Killers that aren't purchasable would surely have a drop in play-rate due to people's inability to pick the character up anymore
However, sadly of all of these strategies, none of them would've worked as well as simply guessing the Female Killers of DBD would have the lowest pickrate of all the killers in DBD.
But how is that possible?
Among the 41 killers, 29 you could consider male and 12 you could consider female. Although there are skins that change the killer's gender, like with legion and now with Trickster, I will ignore that for this experiment.
With 7 female killers being in the lowest picked 10, that is the majority of the female killers joining the pool of least played killers in DBD. This means that only 10% of male killers are in the bottom 10 in pick-rate, yet 58.33% of female killers ending up in this bottom 10.
The only female killers that aren't in the bottom 10 are:
- Nurse (Free killer + Super Powerful)
- Huntress (Free killer)
- Spirit (Powerful)
- The Plague
- The Pig (Licensed)
So what does it take for beHaviour to do a Female Killer the right way?
Would it have to do with a simply bigger Male audience preferring and relating more to killers of the same gender?
What's funnier is that from the Survivor's standpoint, female survivors are picked at an alarming rate, with one of it's most successful and highly picked survivor being Sable Ward, a non-licensed survivor that requires iri shards or auric cells to be unlocked.
So what is really happening here?
Are they just picking female survivors for the competitive size difference? That somewhat falls apart when Male survivors like Ace are one of the most popular picks in Comp dbd, as well as nowadays, more female survivors are running around the map with shining outfits, or even transparent glowing tails.
So what's really at play here?
- Predominantly male killers simply sticking to the gender they relate to more?
- The survivor community being increasingly overrun by a ever growing Femboy sect?
- Is the DBD community secretly a community of freaky BDSM fans who come here to watch their male killers dominate female survivors?
Maybe we will never know the full truth…
But what we do know is that in order for beHaviour to release successful female killers they are going to have to put in the extra effort. With sadly already 2 female killer reworks being scrapped (Twins & Skull Merchant) we can only hope the future of Female Killers comes with great designs that help them succeed against all odds, and perhaps, maybe someday, we will see our older female killers finally get some well deserved love in forms of a exciting rework ❤️
Comments
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Or…
The horror genre, particularly the slasher genre, doesn't see a lot of female antagonists, so they're going to be underrepresented. By extension, there will also be less female killers who have strong powers. Besides, when I face a Legion, it's almost always a Susie.
Also what on earth does 'Femboy sect' even mean??
25 -
Yeah still you are using most likely the nightlight figures that are a fraction of the player base of this game. So would say there can be a lot of difference of real numbers when we are talking about 0.14% difference of pickrate between 10th last or the 11th last picked killers. I would not draw any indication of that small difference and without official numbers we don't really know if there is more females among the 10 less played killers.
5 -
"The horror genre, particularly the slasher genre, doesn't see a lot of female antagonists"
This would only explain why there are fewer female licensed killers in the game, which we indeed see, but this wouldn't explain their significant disproportional pick-rate, because less antagonist should also means a lower chance of ending up in the bottom 10 in terms of pickrate-4 -
I mean, you are discounting Nurse, Huntress and Spirit here. All three very popular, and all three at least A-tier.
It's not exclusively women in the bottom pickrate either.
You're putting WAY too much stock into the idea of people playing men because they are men. People play what works for them, and generally speaking, that's going to be the stronger killers.
Look at the list on a case-by-case basis, and you'll know way more.
6 -
Not just from nightlight, but you can see it from personal matches too. When it comes to the reporting of numbers, even though they represent a smaller portion of the total games played (and can have a slightly higher chance of an error margin), there's no reason to assume that the real numbers would somehow have a bias towards more female killers picked.
-2 -
The fact that 2 of the female killers that aren't in the bottom 10 are free is already a bad look, since that kind of guarantees that they aren't a bottom pick. Needless to say, it's not like the other elements don't affect the pickrate at the same time, but if the bottom 10 has 60% of the female killers in it, and of which 2 female killers by being free are nearly guaranteed to not be bottom picks, the odds are really stacked against the Female Killers.
Especially with 1 of the killers in the bottom 10 being literally one you cannot buy anymore-2 -
Sorry put you personal experience is drop in a sea it will not make the needle move at all over the nightlight figures when those are at least minorly decent size of a player base.
3 -
So if the Devs released the official stats and we would still see the same disproportionality in Female Killer pickrate drop-off, would you then concede your point, and agree that the Phenomenon is real?
-4 -
Atleast we feel special now playing Artist
4 -
Lmfao. One of the real ones for sure ❤️
0 -
And your point is?
You're just stating numbers.
Also, you still haven't elaborated on whatever a 'femboy sect' is supposed to be.
4 -
Well in my case it would be like this playtimewise (in places):
Huntress (1): Love her Power and theme with the humming.
Pig (4): honestly don't know? I kinda like her power, but it's most of the time really not that usefull. I guess I just like her character and looks?
Artist (8): Also love her power, but she's pretty exhausting to play because of the need of constant predictment (I play her with crow shooting while I chase, so I basically use her as chase huntress through walls).
Nurse (9): Was the killer I started with - still pretty fun, but also exhausting.
Sadako (13): Love her as a character. The tape system itself is fun, but they changed it too often. I never know how she works at the moment - also besides that she's pretty dull to play, because she simply has bad stealth and a teleport that have a few killers by now.
Spirit (20): I can sometimes hear injured people in lockers through 3 walls or someone breathing behind a wall, but I'm simply not able to play her.
Twins (32): actually pretty fun, but it doesn't keep me playing her for some reason? Love her theme and weapon though.
Hag (35): Really not my cup of tea, it's pretty boring to play for me. But I admit that that's the general case for trap-killers for me.
Plague (37): I hate her power with a passion, or rather how it hits. You litterally have to hit 2 seconds straight for it to register in one case, and in another it's enough to hit the smalles drop of puke ever. It makes me agressive to play. (Still have to admit that her power is a monster in the open and against multiple people).
Houndmaster (39): Power not that interesting, also her dog seems to lag braincells. It's so stupid to play sometimes.
Skull merchant (41): her power is the most "meh"-thing I know in this game. Also I don't like her skins accept 1-2.
Krasue (42): Incredible braindead to play most of the time. It's not really a nagative point for me, but makes it so I only want her to play for a few rounds sometimes.
So you can say:
My mainpoint in a killer I like to play is almost always the power, the theme of the killer is also important, skins are nice but not required.
1 -
I'm just stating numbers and explaining a phenomenon indeed. It's not a mandate or guilt trip on making you play more Female Killers. Just on observation indeed.
With femboy sec I'm just referring to a disproportional group compared to the overall human population that finds pleasure on a more feminine appearance (either in real life or just digitally)-5 -
there's no reason to assume that the real numbers would somehow have a bias towards more female killers picked.Two weeks ago they released stats showing Huntress to be the most picked killer.
2 -
Huntress: I completely agree. Due to her gameplay design, she is going to be absolutely solid
Pig: I think she has a lot of popularity among the Meme Killer community who loves her for being a cute pig with funny traps
Nurse: I believe this killer, due to her reputation was going to be a success no matter the gender, or even if they were free or not, due to their reputation as one of the best killers in the game
Spirit: I think she's significantly helped by her power level, but is also strongly supported by her Asian community imo that disproportionally picks Spirit and Kenaki
Houndmaster: Though being buggy didn't help her, this is one where I think I kinda disagree. Her power is kind of a remote dash, which I think could've been incredibly popular when it comes to play style. I think she is one of the few characters where the pirate like theme itself had so little appeal that people didn't play her despite the great gameplay design behind it-1 -
Yes, huntress is free. Huntress is carried hard by that fact as well as excellent gameplay.
That in no way disproved my thesis. It simply shows that she had enough to compensate to be succesful against all odds.
However, huntress, due to the benefit of her being free is worse of an example. A better example of a great designed female killer would be the Plague, as she isn't insanely strong, nor free, nor licensed.-3 -
Gender is basically the least relevant indicator to pick a killer. Killers are least picked cause of a "subjective" low powerlevel, unfun playstyle or due to sluggishness. So trying to make up a female killer phenomenon without making any causality calculations is really ridiculous.
4 -
No as there is no Phenomenon. You are trying to create a thing from a thing that is not a thing. If people don't play a character they don't enjoy has nothing to do with the sexuality but how they play. Skull Merchant is currently weakest killer in the game and some people don't like the minor rework they did that made the Undetectable to happen when she recalls the drone instead when she placed one. Hag has not got real update for a long time and is most likely lined up for update at some point and she is maybe the most outdated character. Twins originally was really buggy and I would say most people don't enjoy the double aspect of her and the fact that either you play slugger or you have to walk long distances to get to hook survivors with her. She is not really weakest just not the most interesting to play. Houndmaster has reputation to be buggy and her dog is not the easiest for people to aim as you usually have to aim forward of the survivor to hit. So clunky to use so people don't want to play her. Krasue I would say personally she feels really not fun to use at all. She is not again weakest but again I understand why people don't play her and after the reworks she got weaker and harder to get benefit from using her power. Artist hard to use and most people don't want to put that much effort to learn how to play her and lockers just delete her power most of the time anyway. Plague is quite boring to play you walk around puking on stuff and survivors until they are hurt most of the match when nobody cleanses. Then there is the fact that her puke does not always hit even if it plays the animation of it. So makes her frustrating to play.
So in short most of the main reasons why they are not played that much is the bugs, power usage difficulty, nerfed after being stronger, boring gameplay loop etc. It has nothing to with their sexuality but if they are fun to play. I myself play all killers and I understand why some of the killers don't get that much play time because you get more fun out of most of the others. You can ably the same reasons why the lowest male characters are not played Cenobite has really complex power even if he can be really strong if you know how to play him, Demogorgon his shread attack feels really clunky compared to most other killers with similar powers and his portals take time to set when other killers have auto teleports on to something already in the map, Singularity really strong killer but power is harder to master than most and takes time to set up, Executioner also has nice power but its again is not the easiest to learn to use well etc.
We look at Huntress most people enjoy her because its fun to get cool hits with her axes, Nurse is a powerhouse and the strongest killer in the game and Spirit has very good mobility and easy to understand how she works.
2 -
When it comes to lower power-level, we don't see a bias towards female killers in any significant manner. It's quite equally divided
-4 -
Yes, huntress is free. Huntress is carried hard by that fact as well as excellent gameplay.Three of the five killers in the top five list are not free, casting heavy doubt on the idea that being free equates with high play time.
Then the other killer on there is Legion, as others have mentioned more frequently associated with being female.
3 -
Pig: I'm normally a player that gets his fun from winning, so it's actually interessting that I like her so much. So I don't even meme with her. Although 65.78% killrate are pretty good for what she can do xD
Nurse: I agree, would have played her too no matter what gender she would have. Although I forgot to say that her theme with the screaming also pretty interessting is. She's probably one of the killers that has the most pain to use her power.
Spirit: I mean they also could pick sadako then. That's not the american but original asian version, so I don't how much that really makes a difference that she's asian xD
Houndmaster: Let me say it differently - I don't dislike the dashing and correcting itself. But I hate that the dog only holds the survivors or drags them away from you (at least it feels like it). The path to walk faster is simply awful because of the lack of braincell of the dog regarding drawing a remotely usable path xD
2 -
I honestly don't think it runs that deep.
If I had to engage in a little conjecture:
There are fewer female slasher archetypes in pop culture > Bhvr has less inspiration for a potential female killer > Bhvr concepts something more unique as a result > Unique is more challenging to design > Many female killers end up unique but janky as all hell.
However, gun to my head, I'd say this is a case of correlation ≠ causation.
As for female survivor pickrates?
I can speak as a male guy with masc appearance IRL and no interest in looking pretty. I play Mikaela because I like her hat and glasses. I enjoy how the female cosmetics look over the male ones. I'd also staunchly resist being labelled a femboy. My beard is almost a foot long.
I also feel like DBD has a more diverse playerbase than most PvP games.1 -
One big thing you're missing is that for many male survivors, they will play the character even if they're buggy, weak or even if their power is unfun. Ghostface and Myers are prime examples of weak killers that still saw a lot of play despite being very weak killers. Killers like Deathslinger saw quite a lot of play despite being buggy and having his shots bump off of survivors, as well as Knights with summons that get stuck / fail in pathfinding.
If anything, there seems to be a little something that keeps people playing buggy and weak Male Killers despite their flaws, but are not willing to see through those same flaws when they apply to Female Killers if they don't have a disproportionate amount other benefits to compensate for it-4 -
Ghostface and Myers are played because people enjoy them and both are cult classic characters even if Ghost Face is Behavior creation and not from the Scream franchise. Deathslinger is literally the only character with a gun most FPS players are going to enjoy playing him I myself love playing him and have to admit I have seen that bug happening very rarely and I count it to do something with latency does not make him still unfun to play. Knight's power is good if you know how to use it and them getting stuck is minor and not that common either. I know I have played him a lot too.
It has nothing to do with the sexuality but if they are fun to play. If the character is not fun people will not use them thats how it works in most games.
2 -
"Ghostface and Myers are played because people enjoy them and both are cult classic characters even if Ghost Face is Behavior creation and not from the Scream franchise"
And yet one of the most iconic killers; being Onryo, being a beloved icon in the horror genre has managed to make it to the bottom 10.
Which is what I'm hinting at. People are willing to see through the downsides of these Male Killers in ways they aren't willing to do the same for Female Killers, when they have the same things going for them. And therefore, these Female Killers require a disproportionate amount of positives in order to compensate and see equal levels of play to male killers-5 -
Skull Merchant, Twins, Hag, Krasue, and Houndmaster are pretty obviously on the list for different reasons related to the actual powers they hold and how the community received them.
This honestly to me feels completely arbitrary. Wouldn't Trickster and disproportionately Legion be the most popular killers in the game because they have multiple genders? That isn't a thing.
2 -
This is a thread of speculated pickrates that posits a gendered conclusion that is also somehow influenced by a heretical group of "femboys".
6 -
That is indeed a very good observation, and you might even be correct with that in some sense. Killers like Legion are extremely popular overall. And it could very well help that both male players and female players can play as that character and feel like they fully relate to them, making that character relate to everybody more, adding weight to my first prediction about selection based on similar gender
-7
