http://dbd.game/killswitch
The Major Flaw with DBD Competitive
For anyone who's familiar with Comp DBD, it's a great place to view the highest level of survivor gameplay. That's some that I always find exciting. Personally I love knowing what the maximum skill-cap of any game would look like. Whether that's AI playing Chess vs Chess grandmasters, or AI playing Trackmania tracks at the minimal achievable times. For DBD survivors, you can find that at Comp DBD.
There is however 1 problem…
To find the highest level of Killer gameplay, a comp DBD tournament isn't necessarily where you're going to find that. What you will find instead is very foundationally solid and macro aware gameplay, but in some sense, mediocre at the high level as well. Instead, to find the highest level of mechanical killer gameplay, you'll often have to look for a true killer main. Where that killer main isn't just maining that killer but is absolutely great at that killer as well. And even then, some of these true specific killer mains will lack the foundational macro knowledge that the comp players have.
Now all of this sucks, because in finding the best survivors gameplay, all we need to do is look at a comp match, but for the best killer gameplay, you will often not find those in a typical comp team. Though it is technically possible to play comp and also be a true killer main, we more frequently see that the people playing killer aren't true masters of that character, but just very foundationally solid. For someone who enjoys watching the highest level of gameplay versus the highest level of gameplay this puts me in a predicament…
This is also why I find competitive matches not nearly as interesting as seeing a comp survivor team queue up in public and stumbling upon a true specific killer main as only there we can view the highest level versus the highest level.
It is the failure here, with how Comp DBD is structured, to be able to organically provide these types of matches where true specific killer mains are facing truly competitive survivor mains. Though comp DBD has intelligently solved a lot of the unbalanced aspects of the game, by making it match results vs match results on the same killer, making it mostly irrelevant what the power level of that killer is compared to survivor, as that issue is self solving.
Where Comp DBD currently largely fails is in providing the truly high skilled mechanic expert killers that push Competitive to the next level.
Whether that is an issue that Comp DBD will learn how to solve, or cannot be solved as long as the scene is too small to provide enough such specialized players will to be seen in the future.
But for now, all we can hope for is have Competitive teams stumble upon absolute mechanic masters of killers in public lobbies to see a true display of maximum skill~
Comments
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the problem with comp dbd is you have to nerf survivor heavily for killers to have a chance even with current blight and nurse since you still find them camping a hook to secure a kill so a loooot of perk combos or perks are banned for survivors are limited to 1 strong perk per person
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blight and nurse i'm jot sure if i agree on . Those are the only two killers that deserve complaints . Any other killer then yeah a comp swf has the leg up always .
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The actual major flaw with DBD "competitive" is that people cling to the belief that there actually is such a thing as "comp" in a game like DBD.
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I mean there evidently is. Though not organized by beHaviour itself. Whether you acknowledge it or not
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I think this is a bit of a misconception since in Competitive DBD it's actually quite irrelevant how strong a killer is related to survivors, since teams aren't competing for 3/4k's, they are just competing by outperforming the other team with the same killer. So whether the killer is weak or strong, it doesn't matter, which is actually quite the creative clever solution to solve that aspect of DBD competitive, so killer balance has been largely solved.
There are of course also other issues, like map balance issues where some maps sometimes have disproportionally stronger pallets, which is also partially solved through map bans.
The point covered in my post however isn't solved just yet.1 -
Having been a part of the scene in the past, I might be able to shed some light on it.
Specialists are nice to have, but it's someone taking up a roster spot as a one-trick. They're great when the set features that killer, but you need killer players that can cover a lot of the roster. It's why macro becomes so prevalent. That translates across killers. And you might have situations where that killer player needs to play survivor.
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Definitely.
I think that ties in with how Teams in DBD are inherently formed. It is this structure of team forming that prevents most matches from being true displays of highest skill vs highest skill.
If competitive ever wanted to solve this issue, they should inherently change how team formation works surrounding the killer part of the team and the survivor team in quite revolutionary ways0 -
You can watch showcases (for example Hens), but they are kinda rare.
Even the rare public matches have many problems. Many comp teams, even on winstreaks, underestimate the opponent and will lose bc of that. And what makes comp survivor player extremely good is their experience. So they need time to adapt to the gameplay of the true killer main. They will never be at their full strength in the first encounter and a second will probably never happen. Depending on the killer some no restriction loadout could also make the match up quite unfair.
Making one-tricks more common in comp would be interesting for the viewer, but also kinda problematic for the teams. Its not easy to acquire such a deep roster and to manage it. Even with smaller teams there is often some drama between players. But that aside its not easy even as a killer-expert to acquire the neccessary macro-skills. So even if the killer master ends chases some seconds faster, a comp killer will get better results. So we would still see mostly one-tricks on strong chase killer like FallenArt. And even if you have a one-trick with strong macro knowledge, the opponents probably will ban the killer. Or they have nothing to do if the regulations dont allow the killer (not that important bc different tourneys with different regs) or the killer is too heavily bugged.
The best scenario would be more killer players per team (every top team started to use two killer player anyway), so they split the rooster more and have the time to adapt skills from true killer mains.
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If you pay much attention to the pro scene you'll end up seeing that some of the most talented players are actually the all-rounders you're talking about. The very best Killer players like Xeno, Knightlight and Zata are exceptionally good at a wide range of Killers and are also very talented Survivors too. They have extremely good mechanics but also strong macro game sense and map knowledge, which are important for both sides.
The main impediments to competitive DBD are that the devs aren't particularly interested in encouraging it (probably because of the notoriously disastrous attempt at managing a pro tournament in-house) through improving spectator mode and custom matches, and also partly because of the silly balance state of the game. Half the Killer roster is unplayable in comp because they simply cannot stand up to high-end organised gameplay, and the perk meta for both sides has been almost the same for years because there's not been a meaningful attempt to shake it up since Project W.
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Really good takes in general! Definitely agree with a lot of the points you're making
One Tricks will often lack the macro knowledge, but will have the technical mastery of that killer. Therefore, having those 2 on 1 killer is even more rare, and I do agree that com survivors aren't even properly trained to force killers at their highest levels.
As for a personal idea, I do think that it could help if big tournaments told survivors way ahead of time which killers were going to be in the roster, so that during that "season", only those 4 killers would be played (One for each player in the comp team) so they could all specialize playing as and versing that killer. The only step they could take, out of the top of my head, to excel the level of gameplay to another level.0 -
There is definitely talented all rounded killers, and being flexible and able to play a wide variety of killers in itself requires a lot of talent too. Though looking at gameplay, especially like that when they play high skill ceiling killers like Trickster, it'll quickly become apparent that they aren't masters of the character in the slightest. Nowhere near the levels of mastery you'd see at really competitive games, like League of Legends (which ironically have a wide character roster too)
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Even against blight and nurse survivors still have massive restrictions placed on them such as no duplicate perks, no duplicate items, and the anti-face camp is not allowed to be used. As for all the other killers there are other restrictions like, eliminating certain perks or playing on the killer's best map (I.E ghost face plays on lerys and nurse plays on midwich).
There are some restrictions on killer perks as well, but generally they are removing the more "RNG" type perks, as well as free aura reading like nowhere to hide which basically eliminates stealth as an option.
Perks in general (on both sides) are usually banned in comp to deal with RNG (which is bad for comp) or just completely eliminating an entire playstyle (like nowhere to hide) which makes it hard to have interesting games.
The game is a mess for comp in general TBH, too many unfun things that lead to skewing game balance too much.
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Not all killer play on their best map. Only the weaker ones like Ghostface, Midwitch on Nurse would be a massacre.
But for the mainpoint: Hens no rule tourney highlighted which killer can deal with survivor on which map.
The results are not perfectly clear bc comp team strength varies + some comp player have little experience with things outside of the comp ruleset.
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I don't really like hens that much so i'm not going to comment on any tests or anything he has run. I don't want to get into it as i don't want to break forum rules.
As for exact map choices, i don't follow the scene that closely, mostly just lurk in discord, so i'm probably wrong about the exact maps and perks but i follow closely enough to see the philosophy behind their chocies. But the point is that the restrictions on survivor are much larger than the ones on killer because generally "no holds barred" against most killers is going to result in survivors winning.
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Yes, correct. For most killer thats the case. But Nurse and Blight (soon nerfed anyway) are an exception. But yh there are still nerfs on both sides bc comp is a very clean (no rng/focus on skill expression) environment.
The point is (doesnt matter who did the tourney) that the best comp teams did hold a competition and it had interesting info. For example Fast Track was really strong, even when a lot of people on the forum say its not good.
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if you watch comp dbd survivors even with blight and nurse can't keep up and have to camp hooks since if the survivors and the killer are both good the killer loses since there are 4 good survivors not to mention doing 5 gens with no gen progression perks can be done faster than 12 hooks
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