Official Dead By Daylight tournament rule set [by THESUICIDEFOX]

I have an answer for that one ;)

Rules can be enforced retroactively. Basically what I would do as TO is let the match continue until it's natural end, then decide later if breaking collision would have significantly changed the game. The rule is the to deter people from abusing obvious bugs, but since a TO can enforce the rule after-the-fact because 101 you can decide if someone did something on purpose or not.

This is a rule I included in all my tournaments.

First you don't change a rule and enforce it retroactively. The point of the rule is to allow a TO to add or change a rule if someone finds a loophole. The retroactively part just means that a TO can let a match finish and decide after if a rule was broken to prevent false terminations of legit matches. See previous comment.

The rule is there IF YOU NEED IT, which you shouldn't 99.9999% of the time. It's for fringe cases, because sometimes things happen you didn't expect and it's easier to make a rule about it than to just pick the winner.

Then that's on that TO. People will just stop playing in their tournaments if they do that. If BHVR officially sponsors a tournament, they would want people LIKE ME who have experience doing these things and wouldn't screw over players like that. It's called trust.

The point of the post is to establish a universal tournament rules. Joe Shmoe could run a tournament with whatever rules he wants, and nothing is stopping him from doing this there too. It's there to allow TO's the ability to make calls that would otherwise be impossible, even if the likelihood of a specific event happening that is not cover by rules is incredibly small you want this because something WILL eventually happen. It's to cover TO's, not to let people do whatever they want (which in theory they can do anyway), and if a TO does stuff like that they should be shamed by the community and no one will go to their events.

Trust me when I say that it's not there to screw over anyone, it's there to protect TO's, the HONEST ones.

Regarding your second point, no that's not correct. The amount of OP nonsense in this game is astounding. And you above all people aren't arguing that a killer can take on a coordinated SWF with perks? That's why there are limits, to make the game more fair, otherwise you get a very boring spectator event. If killers could mori, or survivors could stack MOM/DS/Adren/BT every game then the outcome would be VERY predictable, on top of not exactly taking a lot of skill.

But to do well as survivors when you can't share perks and have a timer takes skill. To 4k as a killer using 1 add-on that is not pink/purple is skill. These rules are competitive and fair, but you aren't limited in your strategical options. Killers can go for slug builds, game slowing, or anti-heal, or end game. Survivors can play risky with obsession perks or slow and immersed. There is a wide variety here, the only things off limits are the super powerful stuff. Not to mention, most killers builds with top add-ons are meme builds that wouldn't work in a tournament setting. Scratched Mirror Myers would NEVER do well in a tournament, even on Lery's (which isn't allowed here anyway). He just wouldn't, against good survivors working together he would get crushed. And body block Hag? No one will use that because it would be an auto-loss at this level, so the fact it cannot be used is irrelevant.

Your rules could be cheesed so hard by teams though. Let's break it down...

"People can use whatever perks, items, addons, offerings, etc that they want. Let people go all out, like pretty much all other competitive games do."

First, competitive games DO NOT allow anything goes. All the serious ones have very strict rules. I suggest you actually play in some tournaments and see this. There are EXCEPTIONS, like most fighting games are just the base game. But look at any shooter or sports game tournament and you will see that there are a lot of rules taking out the dumb stuff.

Second, if you do this killers will ALWAYS pick Omega Blink Nurse RUIN NOED pink mori. Like literally nothing else will be viable. Every survivor will pick MOM/DS/Adren and then probably some mix of BT, Deliverance, and Dead Hard. Every one will take a purple medkit with a pink needle, and every one will offer purple myst. That is going to be every game for your tournament finals. This is what we want to avoid, by limiting the super OP stuff you allow for more meta to develop. More killers become viable, more builds become viable, some survivor tactics become viable, etc.

"Two teams of 5. One Killer to each team, 4 survivors to each team. Each survivor group faces the opposite Killer."

This is how you would kill DBD esports. Spectators are a big deal, you want to make sure people are entertained by watching the game at a high level. Do you know what happens when one team has ALL the best players? They dominate the game, leading to very boring eSport scene. "Oh Team Red won again, what a surprise [confetti]". This would just let the 4 best survivors in the world team up with the best killer in the world and BOOM. Unbeatable team. Yes it's happened before. But say teams are 4 players and people have to play both sides, now you open up the door to more variety of players in the top ranks. You can't just have THE BEST on your team, at least not as easily (could still happen but if you are best killer and top 4 survivors in the world kinda earned it at that point).

"The team that gets the overall better Emblem quality is the winner. It's simple, let's people play how they want, and uses a scoring system within the game that isn't an arbitrary made up one."

This is just an awful metric to use. Besides the fact that KYF does not track Emblems, even if they did it's not a measure of skill in a truly competitive setting. We need another metric, which is why time is used. Time is the ultimate factor in this game, and the way the rules are designed is to put the burden of the win on survivors ability to best use their time. Most of the rules apply to survivors time, the only thing that doesn't is killer's time, and the burden of the win is only on the killers when BOTH get a 4k because you have to do it that way.

"As soon as I read your "Olly olly oxen free" stuff, I was like, this is just too much. "

You need the Olly Olly Oxen Free rule or else a survivor who's killer got a 4k in the previous game can just hide and stall the killers timer resulting in a guaranteed win. It's to prevent survivors from cheesing the rules, they should always be playing to escape not to stall the game. This rule does not punish survivors either, they can enact this rule to no detriment to them. It's just there to protect killers from getting cheesed through the timer rules because a survivor just hides the whole game. People WILL do this if you don't say that doing it doesn't hurt your opponent.

It can be done Scott. The problem is really what metric do we want to measure tournament results, and then how much of the current game do we have to limit in order for it to be balanced and skillful.

I feel like I've accomplished this with my rules, and it's honestly a tad disappointing people aren't supportive of it.

I play on Xbox. But I don't see a problem with how this would work for PC. I understand the meta and I watch streamers/YT'ers that play on PC, there isn't much difference in terms of what is balanced and what is skillful.

If the player has DS the TO can see this and if a killer decides to slug it's not wasting time, it's wasting DS. The rule is there to enforce at the TO's discretion. So in this case the TO can let the killer slug. BUT if the killer slugs for an extra 30 seconds, the TO can enforce the rule because now it's wasting time. This rule is there to discourage killers from attempting to cheese the timer, it's not there to limit killer actions deemed acceptable play.

Because we want the burden of winning to be on survivors that means we want to limit 4k's wherever possible. As it stands, if a killer with NOED closes the hatch they will almost definitely get the 4k. It MIGHT be possible to still escape, but it will be rare. You make a killer reconsider using NOED for this reason, and as such more options become available.

NOED, Ruin and BBQ are all the top killer perks in the game, and with the way survivors are limited according to the rules it only makes sense to put some risk on these perks. Ruin is most reliable and likely to be included in every killer's build, so to say you can't use it with NOED adds risk since now survivors will KNOW you do not have a NOED. If you bring NOED, you are more limited in your options when hatch spawns. If you bring BBQ you run the risk of giving the survivors bounty time if you never get a hook on them. Outside of Ruin + NOED there are no other perk restrictions on killers, only risks for some.

Both teams would play on the same map, and the maps are pretty much universally considered the most balanced in the game for both sides. The point here is to take out the broken maps and even the playing field. There is also no reasonable way to let players choose the map, so it makes the most sense to pick from a random selection, and as long as both trials are on the same map RNG impacts are minimized.

I did come up with an alternative idea but I think the random selection is better. Basically the other idea is to add more maps to the official list then teams take turns striking maps until only 1 is left. The problem with this is that most maps will get a strike every time. Shelter Woods is considered the most balanced map, and therefore survivors will always strike that first. Corn maps will always get strikes from killers. You end up with a situation where only like 2-3 maps ever get played. Random selection adds more variety, but limited selection keeps it fair.

Trust me, I thought long and hard about what would happen, and random map selection from a limited list where both trials use the same map is ultimately the easiest and most fair way to do it.

IKR? Not sure why I bother. Scott said the game wouldn't work, it definitely will. What would make it not work is the community and the way they react to things.

I agree to an extent, but we have enough control over the starting parameters to minimize or nullify RNG.

That's why we have a limited selection of relatively balanced maps that both trials of the round are played on. That's why we have rules against the use of keys because it's basically RNG that gives an instant win to one side. That's why we limit the character selection. Limit it enough and it can add variety to the game without negatively impacting results.

Poker is random but there is still balance in the game and it can still be played competitively, and it's BECAUSE of the rules. So I don't see why we couldn't do it here.

And full disclosure, I KNOW that my rules need improvement. I'm not sitting here saying everything is perfect, because it needs testing. Most communities develop tournament rules over time. They naturally progress from just using the random nonsense in a tournament setting and eventually rules get made and changed until you have a very solid set of rules that make the game work competitively.

DBD needs a bit of a booster to get to that point, because no one runs tournaments (or at least, there's no consistency to it). Hence why I wanted to make this post, I'm dumping my tournament experience into a rule set for a game that has potential, especially if we have more content and positive changes in the future.

One reason I didn't release this like 2 months ago was because of hatch. It's just very difficult to come up with a fair way to resolve hatch standoff. I originally had a rule that was basically Olly Olly Oxen Free but for hatch, and it wasn't ideal at all. OOOF isn't ideal at all, but as I point out above you need a rule like this to deter survivors cheesing the timers. But if we get something that prevents survivors from just hiding for long periods of time we don't need the OOOF rule either.

Or you guys are just super critical of literally everything on the forums. Just look at this place dude. Like yea any idea can be bad, but you guys aren't even giving it a chance. It's just, always immediately negative responses unless someone says something like "buff this killer".

Explain what is arbitrary? I ban the stuff that is ridiculously powerful and limit survivors so they have to make up TEAM builds. If you let anything goes people will always just pick Omega Blink Nurse with NOED/Ruin and a pink mori, or MOM/DS/Adren/BT with purple instaheal medkit and purple myst. There would literally be no variety to the game at the highest level. And like, literally all of you would agree if I say "4 stack SWF > killer", so we obviously need rules in place to limit AT LEAST survivors. Then all things considered, it's only fair to limit killers slightly to keep things fair.

Everything I limit is either to balance the game or to make it impossible to cheese the timers. I didn't just arbitrarily pick stuff to be in the rules. I sat and thought "what is a good metric to use as a win for a tournament"... Time... "Okay how would we set up rules to make time the metric"..."okay now how can someone cheese the rules?"...then..."okay so what would the average tournament match look like"..."oh all Nurse's and survivors with full OP meta builds, that's bad because there is no variety, how can we add variety"..."let's limit each side a bit at a time and see what would happen". Rinse repeat until you have something that allows variety in the meta without making it unfair for either side.

Like I'm not putting "No Ruin + NOED" because I don't like it, I put it because with all other rules considered this would potentially be way too powerful for killers AND AS SUCH every killer will run this combo every single game. No variety and it unbalances the game for tournaments. Better to just take it out.

Halo 5 is the first game to really be just the base game since CE. Every other Halo had to change the game settings and have rules in place to make it tournament viable. Halo Reach is the biggest one here, they had to change almost every setting to make the game competitive.

Like I won't deny that having a developer put the time in to make the game balanced for competition would help, but not having that doesn't automatically exclude the game from being played in tournaments competitively. You can make it work by changing game settings and having certain rules in place. It might not be ideal but it's playable.

Cheap tactics ruin eSports. Any time something excessively cheap is found they make a rule to address it, specifically when it comes to time out or stalling. NO ONE wants to sit and watch a game where nothing happens for 30 minutes.

And it's pretty clear you didn't even read the rules, because OOOF isn't there to disallow a win through time out, it's there to prevent survivors from cheesing the killer's timer in situations where they know it will end in a 4k so they just hide all game. You really want to sit and watch a 30 minute game where a killer just searches the map looking for a survivor the entire time? It's not even something that could happen often, the rule is there for those fringe cases where it could even happen in the first place. It discourages survivors from dragging out the game, but doesn't explicitly punish them for doing it. They CAN trigger OOOF and it would mean nothing if they escape. It puts the pressure of winning on the survivors not the killer because the metric we have (time) is mainly focused on survivors not on the killer.

And it's funny you bring up Smash because that game actually does change the rules a LOT. The normal game is a free-for-all with items and every stage and in time mode. Tournaments (Melee) play 4 stock 8 minutes, no items, 1v1, all but 7 stages BANNED, Dave's Stupid Rule (if they still call it that), and hell they have had rules or considered rules to BAN STALLING. You try to defend time outs then mention a game that actively tried to ban them, BECAUSE IT RUINS THE GAME. I'm OG Smash Melee, I was part of the back room that made the community rule set. Stalling was a serious concern but it was ultimately decided that any rule we came up with was too arbitrary to enforce*. It wasn't much of a problem in Melee, only Peach could do it on Fountain of Dreams, but in Brawl it was a big problem because a lot of characters could do it with ledge stalling. I left the community after Brawl came out, so I honestly don't know the details of how they resolved it, but it was something that was definitely talked about a LOT in the back room. The thing was, unlike the DBD community, most of the Smash community hated cheesey tactics and as such no one would really try to do it, so it became this sort of unspoken rule to not do it because it's lame.

*This is why I don't have rules that say "no tunneling or camping" or "no looping" because you can't enforce that. I can however enforce "no keys" because I could see a key in someone's hand and if they open the hatch with anything more than 1 survivor left it's obvious a key was used. I can enforce perks/add-on/offering pick limits.

"As it stands most killers would just use Nurse or Billy anyway"

Yes which is why they are limited to a selection of 3. And then why survivors are limited because 4 stack SWF >> Killer.

It's one thing when you have a fighting game where only maybe 7 characters are viable, or this one combo is the best, or this one weapon is the best. It's another thing when there would only be exactly one way to play the game in a tournament setting.

The difference is that DBD with no limits would have ZERO variety. You want enough variety in tournaments that it's good for spectators, but you don't want that variety to hurt the competitive nature of the game. Smash allows the stages that WORK. There was a time when people discussed the idea of FD only, and it fell out of favor because no one wants to play or watch games on only 1 map. That, and it was realized that some character match ups actually change dynamically when you allow stages with platforms.

All I'm trying to do is avoid the obvious outcome of what a no limits rule set would allow. Limits are necessary, if only to balance SWF against killer. Again none of you would disagree with that, so the fact you push for a no limits style tournament baffles me.