The Current Pace of Matches Makes Slowdown Feel Necessary.

Then you realize that if you aren't on gens 99% of the time you just auto lose because maps are tinier and tinier and every killer has map travel + anti loop on loops that are getting weaker and weaker.

Additionally, totem builds are also pretty common too.



So yes, this does read as yet another 'Survivors are OP' thread.

I think generator speeds are fine - it would be even more boring repairing gens if time was longer - but I do think that something needs to be done to nerf coordinated teams a bit. Past stats have shown that SWF at high MMR has a significantly higher escape rate than the 40% target, and it sure feels that way playing against good coordinated teams. I don’t think this will ever happen because SWF will be in an uproar complaining about being “punished” for playing with friends, not acknowledging their unfair advantage.

How does buffing low tier killers (their abilities and add-ons) have any impact on the other killers?

We don’t know what the low-tier killer kill rates are because BHVR never shares the kill rates of all killers - just a select few. I’m curious what your kill rates are with some of the low-tier killers. Can you share a few? I’m curious to know how you came to the conclusion that they are “playable in the vast majority of matches”.

Maps were shrunk to accommodate immobile killers, instead this resulted in hyper-buffing mobile killers.

Survivors were changed to spawn together so that immobile killers could have an easier time initiating chase at the crucial part of the game. Instead, mobile killers are able to initiate chase within 20 seconds of a game starting.


Need I go on? If you play ten games and only lose three, the killer is fine, you should definitely not be losing the majority of your matches on killer, especially since people go on killstreaks with killers that aren't even A tier.

Except there are far more workable perk set ups for killers than survivors, and your suggestion of nerfing gens (again) won't stop people from running four slowdowns.

People run that because its easy and efficient, not because the game is unplayable without them. Its the same reason why good players still run windows of opportunity, but windows is definitely not a need.

The issue is that people are too sweaty. You can counteract by not being sweaty and playing quirky builds. Thats a motivation for other people to play funny sht too.

The part you are missing is that the very existence of slowdown perks results in them being required. You will notice that people will simultaneously claim that slowdown perks are weak but then run them in every match, proving they are strong even if they are not as strong as they have previously been. Since they exist and are strong the game will become at least partially balanced around their usage. If the game wasn't balanced around their usage while simultaneously being strong perks you would see kill rates skyrocket. The only ways out are to delete them from the game, nerf them to actual uselessness, or in some other way limit the number the killer can bring and then alter gen speeds to account for the change. Until something like that happens gen regression/blocking perks will feel necessary because to some extent they are.

If the answer was simply "killers need better macro," I'd expect slowdown perks to become less common as players improve.

So heres the main reason why id disagree with this. When the game was arguably easier for killer such as the eruptoverbrine era people still used tactics to make the games easier for themselves. There was less actual chasing, more camping the gens, still the same tunneling. More people will do what makes the game easier for them and usually that just means more time while they do whatever.

While i'd personally love to keep going the pessimistic route, you've also hit the more positive route explanation. Simply that they're also just generally useful but that also means that the players who get better wouldn't stop using them. They're generally simple to use, no complication for value beyond kicking or downing (sans 1 perk i can think of) why stop using them just because your good?

It's that slowdown perks provide consistent value in almost every match, which is why so many players choose them.

So i was under the impression that your arguing that gens speeds are to fast and gen perks feel necessary. Am i incorrect?

Slowdown is necessary, it always has been, it likely always will be. There's only one other alternative, and it's slowing down gen speed.

I was around when they added 10 more seconds to complete a gen but also nerfed a bunch of regression perks at the same time. Ruin got cut in half and disabled itself if a survivor died, Corrupt turned off if the killer got a down (aka how it works now, it used to persist if the killer got a down), Pop got nerfed and only dealt a portion of current progress instead of total, Pain Res had its ability to show you the location of a survivor who screamed removed.

This did eventually lead to the (rightfully) loathed genkick meta, but that wouldn't really come about for a few months. Just the 10 extra seconds on a generator nearly caused a survivor strike. If you think the current "go next" epidemic is bad, it was so much worse. It was legitimately hard to play out a match without several survivors giving up. I had friends who mostly play survivors quit the game over it and they never came back.

Quite simply, nobody wants gens to take longer, even if it comes with regression nerfs. The community doesn't understand that kind of nuance. They only know they have to sit on gens longer.

If you know of any solution other than mandatory slowdown or slower gens, I'd love to hear it.

Dimishining does work on these things, but only certain combos. Most popular builds are untouched. They intend to build on it so I'm sure we'll see more.

I agree that gens can fly by, but making them take longer isn't the answer. It just makes for boring Survivor gameplay. I actually think lowering gen repair times is the way to go, but it needs to be coupled with fixes elsewhere, because there are several compounding issues.

On the killer side:

The biggest problem is that too many solutions are tied to underused perks, and devs just gesture vaguely at them whenever someone complains. They could cut roughly a third of perks from the game and fold many of them into weaker basekit versions. This would need to come alongside nerfs to the most-used perks, or killer strength just skyrockets. Deadlock and Monstrous Shrine are good examples: some version of both probably should exist basekit, with Monstrous Shrine's effect gated to basement hooks specifically. Beyond perks: being injured should naturally slow down action speeds, and being inside a killer's terror radius should have some mechanical teeth. Something like erratic skill checks, more frequent skill checks, or a cap on great skill checks could all work. Killers without a TR would need separate consideration here.

On the survivor side:

Make gens faster, but add a secondary objective like scavenging parts from junk piles around the map so there's still something to engage with. Anti-camp and anti-tunnel protections need to be meaningfully stronger, though the hard part is designing them so they can't be weaponized to harass killers. Injured survivors should have access to more reliable self-healing options baseline, since the current perk dependency for recovery is pretty punishing. Hiding and stealth play could also use some love: crouching and breakline mechanics feel underdeveloped compared to how much the game rewards killers for tracking, so giving survivors better tools for actually going dark would add a real counterplay option. Finally, the looping toolkit could use more variety built into the base game

The throughline is that gen speed is a symptom. The actual problem is that too many systems are held together by perk band-aids, and stripping those out while adjusting base timings is the more honest fix.

What the game really needs is a 2.0, but they've got too much tied into the current game to do that, and there are too many big concurrent fixes needed so they just keep putting band-aids on various things.

Something else that also needs mentioning here is that a lot of non-slowdown perks are just not very good. Killer perks need to provide a lot of value because you can only bring four of them compared to the Survivors' sixteen, and most Killers don't have a power that's strong enough to win games by itself these days. So you need guaranteed or near-guaranteed perk value that's going to either slow down Survivors' objective of repairing generators and opening gates or accelerate your objective of downing, hooking and ultimately killing Survivors. There are unfortunately a lot of Killer perks that don't do that very well or at all: 'if you do x 10 times then there's a chance that the next time a Survivor does y within 20 metres you get a slight buff to z for the next 10 seconds' type perks are never going to compete because they barely ever work and just don't keep up with the stronger options on either side. Even hex perks aren't as popular as you'd expect because there's a substantial chance the awful spawn logic of totems puts them next to the Survivors at the stsart of the game and you lose them in the first 30 seconds of the Trial before they even do anything. I'm not going to use Jason's upcoming perks if they've not been strongly changed because they represent that same unrealistic perk design: their conditions are too onerous, their effects too weak and too counterable by Survivors. So it's far safer to stick to the same handful of perks that everyone has been using since they released despite BHVR's efforts at meta shakeups. I would like to see the strongest Killer perks nerfed or reworked, but the huge morass of useless or underpowered ones would need substantial buffs and changes to make the build environment more diverse, while also doing something about the consistency of map size and density so low-mobility Killers have a chance to interact with the game before the Survivors complete 3 gens.

Additionally, there's something to be said about the fact that a lot of the best Survivor perks are free right now, while a lot of the best Killer perks are not. Sprint Burst, Lithe, Adrenaline, Kindred, Prove Thyself, Deja Vu, Decisive Strike/Will To Live, Dead Hard, and Botany Knowledge are all on free Survivors or general perks so anyone can use them, while the top Killer perks are still paywalled or timegated behind iri shard investments. In fact there's only one effective slowdown perk available to beginner Killers or players who haven't paid for DLC: Deadlock AKA No Holds Barred and that's only because BHVR lost the Hellraiser license. Dying Light AKA Cull The Weak(?) is too weak to count, especially with diminishing returns.

I think it would be a good idea to have a PTB or two where the 2v8 built-in slowdown/speed up is applied to 1v4 matches, just to see what the feeling is for both sides.

Diminishing Returns has affected gen rush builds due to the reduced skill check chance and progression, so even though it may be subtle, it will have an effect.

My matches vary wildly (solo queue) - however when teammates bring a "gen rush" build they often don't get to use it very well, and the last few generators go very slowly. That's how it is supposed to go once the killer is getting hooks and kills - the pressure builds and the last generators are the most difficult to get done.

It also depends how determined each side is to win, and both have to scope that out and adjust their tactics on the fly. Survivors have basically one way to move the match in their favour and that is completing generators, whereas killers have injuries, downs, hooks and kills which all can contribute to the slowdown.

From the stats last year they showed that basically only 50% of matches finish with all 5 generators complete. I think if this was any less, the match would become hopeless too quickly from the survivor side.

Yeah thankfully this is not every day! And Fast Track does not help anymore so that is a plus for killers. I also like running more interesting perks as killer.

I feel like DBD is at its best when games take longer than they do rn, because it gives both sides a chance to make their plays without having to worry about maximum efficiency every single time.