At BHVR: Look at fighting games on how to balance a game
We all know that DbD isn't balanced on skill and the possibilities a characters (Killers & Survivors) have using their accordingly. The best thing to know how to balance a game is how it's done in fighting games. Of course fighting games aren't perfect and you come along some super strong characters, compared to the rest of the cast. But overall these games are balanced towards the best. Characters like Akuma in Street Fighter 4 are extremely strong and can wipe the floor with anyone. But he requires skill to utilise his power. That is something the developers of DbD should look into, because balancing a game around low skill is just wrong and hurts a game much more then a high skill cap. In some way The Nurse is one the most balanced characters in the game. Yes, she is! She has a very high learning curve and once mastered, she is extremely strong. Though some of her add-ons might be a tiny bit too strong. The we have Billy... Low skill cap, high rewards. This makes him unbalanced.
Same thing with certain Survivor perks. Old DS, MoM come into mind and show how badly these perks have been made. But there was a light of hope and the devs have listen to the community and adjusted these perks, which is very welcome :)
So what do you - the developers - say about this? Will you change on how you balance this game or will you continue to balance around low levels
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Comparing DBD to Fighting games...
Did you smoke something? :/
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They will continue to balance around "low levels".
It's no secret btw: They said they balance around the majority.
Given that only 10% of the players earned the rank 10 achievement on Steam, it's safe to say the majority is "low leveled".
It's not like i agree or anything.
It's like making a toddler feel as comfortable as possible instead of making the toddler grow.
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I take it you didn‘t understand the reference. Fighting games are balanced around high level play. Something the devs here don‘t seam to understand or ignore.
Will balancing make things harder for low skill players? Absolutly. But as many people here love to say ‚GitGut‘, it‘d be actually be the right thing.
So my dear devs, time to change your approach on how to balance DbD 🙂
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At least someone has been listening to me.
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10% of all survivors and 5% of all killers have managed to reach Rank 10. This is why Behavior's balancing their game based upon the lower ranks of play, because there's where the players are.
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I feel once the rank system is reworked, along with the map changes, we'll be in a better position to balance.
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This isn't really a great excuse.
Once more, Smash is played mostly by casual people. The devs even insist it is a casual game. But it is still balanced around the top 1%.
Because if it wasn't, then the broken beginner friendly stuff ends up getting abused by the higher end players to effective levels that were never intended.
Kinda similar to what happens at DbD high ranks.
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I have some kitchen scales at home which you can balance things perfectly on. They should aim to balance the game by looking at my kitchen scales. That makes about as much sense as this thread...
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Where can i check those % ?
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You can just check Steam Global Achievements.
This number is super bloated. You need to consider that many people who have played this game have played during a free weekend, and did not purchase.
These players are counted in achievement totals I believe. As such, this can kinda skew this number.
Basing it off of Steam achievements isn't really accurate. Im sure the devs have released figures somewhere at some point though.
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They are based on the steam achievements. Need to be taken with a pinch of salt as doesn't really consider the active player base. For example how many people got a couple of trophies then binned the game off.
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Really? I got rank 1 on both survivor and killer around the first 2 months when I started playing.. I don't think it's that hard to get past rank 10 as long as you put in effort each game.
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Thx guys!
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@weirdkid5 I'm going to have to disagree with that statement smash balances for both sides of the spectrum, while it takes in consideration their competive side to some extent the main focus they have towards balance is for their casual players. Example: when sm4sh came out on 3DS the vast majority of the casual community complained little mac was unbeatable so they nerfed him pretty heavy even though little mac was very weak and had many countermeasures and flaws as a character he was still nerfed for the casual player base.
If you look at little Mac now present day Sm4sh and Smash ultimate he is considered the lowest tier he's even worse in Ultimate than in 4. Another example is the King K rool nerf they did a few patches ago even though King is low tier the player base had trouble getting past his super armor.
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Little Mac legitimately had some pretty nasty stuff when he first released, even though he still had things like a trash recovery. However, every single update after the first one buffed Little Mac, so the initial nerf doesn't really mean much when they did nothing but buff him the rest of his life.
And they didn't nerf him very heavily. All they did was mess with his landing lag a little and make his jab do less damage, because it could lead to some pretty cheesy stuff, regardless of his weak recovery.
Also, they haven't changed King's Super Armor at all according to his changes on the wiki. The only significant nerfs King has received is to his down throw, otherwise King has been pretty much only buffed since Smash Ultimate came out.
Just cause a character recieved a nerf doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot. There legitimately can be some pretty cheesy stuff, such as King's Down Throw. It was way too effective at low percents, but now, it is MORE effective at high percents, so it balanced it out. https://www.ssbwiki.com/KingK.Rool_(SSBU)
Anyway, the point is even low tier characters can receive nerfs depending on the nature of the game. This is part of the reason why Mac was pretty much exclusively buffed after the Wii U version came out, because he hit a wider audience and people were able to see how weak he was. It wasn't just casuals that had problems with Little Mac when Sm4sh released. It was a knee jerk reaction, one Nintendo mostly learned from.
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Fighting games are probably the easiest to balance of all genres..
Rather go take a look at that:
https://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/2019/05/dev-champion-balance-framework/
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I would disagree that they are the easiest to balance.
Changing up just one character's matchup with another one is enough to change the meta into different counter picks and such. When you adjust a character in a fighting game, you have to make sure that you adjust it correctly for the matchup you are balancing, without destroying the rest of the character.
Just changing a single frame on any animation is enough to make or break a character in certain instances.
I will say though I do like LoL's new balance philosophy.
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The problem is all the players are put into one huge pool.
Any other game separates the userbase so a player with 3k hours doesnt get matched with someone with 50h but DBD doesnt do this as ranking up is easy until you get to the red areas where you must play a set way and forget about quickly killing or escaping more akin to farming.
Unless they fix the overall system the balance will be kept as is or the majority will lose most matches and the best players will become bored as it will be too easy for them.
This is why I think they need to seperate the ranking into sets of 4 or 5 brackets and each one is balanced seperately.
Once you hit the next bracket you have to play 25-50 matches to set your mmr which should help with deranking.
Your mmr is not just set on if you kill or escape but how well you do in the game so chasing, hunting, killing, hitting, protecting gens, quick kills etc for killer and evading, healing, saving, gens, totems, quick gens etc for survivors, more can be added but it's an overall performance and moves players away from those they shouldn't really be matched with.
Since the game is about bloodpoints it makes sense to include more than just emblems and what rank you are as to derank the players would have a much harder grind at the end of the day.
Each bracket can then give more rewards in terms of vloodpoints and shard so the incentive to get better is there and you will want to move up for the rewards.
That's just my opinion of course.
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the fundamental issue with balancing around high level play is: what do you define as high level play?
people who are consistently rank 1?
people who have ever been to rank 1?
hours in the game?
If we truly want a system in which the game can be balanced around “high level play” the games needs a competitiveness mode. Tournament results to draw from, where everyone is playing on win and hasn’t an idea what they are doing.
that way it isn’t easier to know what change should would affect high level gameplay, what changes would not, and what changes could be implemented to improve both experiences.
very much like they do in MOBAs, which dead by daylight is most similar to (a class based objective system putting 2 teams against each other)
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I didnt say it was easy. I mean, you have the least factors which you have to consider while balancing the characters.
Its a 1v1 where you have 1 character vs 1 character.
So if you have 10 fighters. If you are adjusting 1. You only have to consider how that change affects the matchup with the other 9. (in different ranks as well, thought I believe balancing in low skill gameplay doesnt really matter too much in fighting games. But im not really expirienced in fighting games.)
In league as an example you have a lot more factors.(combination of champions, summoner spells, items, blabla)
Same in dbd. You have killer powers, perks, maps, lighting, sound, the SWF factor(which would be easy to minimize though..). Also items and addons. These are, in my opinin a lot more factors which make it quite harder.
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Billy is not unbalanced and he does take skill. On console at least, not sure about pc.
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