Ok nerf the overperformers but what about the underperformers?
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“More fun to play and verse”
There’s been a lot of talk on the forums lately about how subjective fun is and how you can’t balance around fun. However, since you mentioned it...
Two games of mine last night: Trapper on Lery’s against a confirmed 4 man SWF, and Nurse on Game against randoms. Both ended in a 4k for me. Both had altruism lemming survivors. Off of that knowledge, you would likely expect that I had more fun as Nurse since she got a favorable map and no comms, while Trapper got a terrible map and full comms.
You’d be Dead wrong. My Trapper game I only got one trap off but my knowledge of the map led to it being a solid sweep and i never felt useless.
Nurse on the other hand felt punishing and straight up unfun. I was pushed to my limits, forced to watch helplessly several times as a miscalculated double blink ended in a guaranteed end to the chase. Having to ignore survivors healing directly above me since I couldn’t angle the blink right for the game to accept it and wasting a ton of time recovering. I remember halfway through not moving at all after a double blink until the power came back thinking how awful this was. I wouldn’t have played her if I hadn’t had a daily and I certainly won’t be otherwise, and she used to be my go to for a fun game.
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it seems like many forum killers think that killer's need to be at 75% to be even slightly acceptable xD and 50% is just underperforming even when peanits says 2k is a victory.
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It's just a target. It gives us something to aim for when designing new killers. It would be very easy to make each new killer the next best thing, but that's not the goal. The goal is to make something that is more or less in line with what we hope the game to be (average of two kills and two escapes).
While the kill rates aren't everything, they can be a red flag if something is way above or way under what is expected. Say if one killer is averaging one kill per game, that's bad. That means that they're struggling. We'd look into it and see why people are having such a hard time with them. Likewise, if a killer is doing too well and getting three or more kills per game on average, that's also bad, so we'd look into it and see why they're getting so many kills.
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Are you taking all ranks into account? Like rank 5+ Legion maybe? I for one can't imagine that masked mess even getting more than 1 kill on a team of competent survivors you shouldn't look only at data and actually take the general feedback into account. Legion is no where near a decent or fun Killer he feels clunky and boring
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All ranks and high ranks (red ranks). We can filter for whichever ranks or rank range we'd like.
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If a 2k is a good spot for a killer to be in then why do you get punished for only getting 2 kills in red ranks? You rarely get a pip or just straight up gain a black pip it doesn't feel right at all if you get told that getting 2 kills is a good balance but then you don't get rewarded for actuall killing two survivors instead I need to pray to gain a pip or I'll just not gain a pip at all
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I would argue that your issue is then with the emblem system rather than balance. Although getting a 2k basically means it was a draw. Obviously massively simplified because there is no hard win/lose condition, but y'know what I mean. If you draw, you aren't meant to rank up. You're meant to rank up if you did really well. Once you get to a place where you're just doing okay, you should ideally stop pipping. You are playing with people of your skill level, that's the point of ranks.
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Yes this is what I mean. "Tweaks to base kit" include fixing the Snap Out before Mend and vault rubber banding.
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That is completely true fun is subjective and why one person's feelings of it never represents the whole playerbase.
What you are saying is Nurse change has ruined your fun of playing her. That is where good constructive feedback comes in to play as to why but most posts consists of just saying she is bad as she can't do as well which is kind of the point to the change.
A lot of what you stated seems more down to not being used to the change along with the bugs of not being able to blink in the right direction (I watched someone blink backwards into the basement when looking forward which needs seriously fixed).
The Nurse id bet took a while for you to learn to get to that place where you felt powerful with her. It's why there have been many posts in the past stating frustrations as many people didn't enjoy learning her when it felt like the survivors could counter her easily. It's Kinda the same scenario as a change like this has a lot of relearning from blink distance to making the most of using them in the right places. She has changed but it doesn't mean she is bad now it just means she is different and people do fear change over most other things and why every change made which affects something is met with the same for the first month or so.
Time will tell and I while I argued her base kit didnt need changed I am not privy to what information the devs had or why they felt it did. It's not on me to speculate and say it was wrong but to adapt and give feedback on what I feel could do with being changed but that's just my opinion.
Feeling pushed to the limit I don't see as a bad thing for any killers and I would say many feel this way. This is a game of player versus player after all and that means some players will be harder to play against.
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How powerful Spirit is doesn’t make Wraith or Bubba or Trapper any less doodoo at high ranks.
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Entirely fair in general. And you’re right, it took some time to pick her up but it didn’t take too long to get pretty effective. I still have a video of an end game chat log with someone accusing me of modding my # of play hours since there’s no way I was that good at Nurse with only 100 hours under my belt.
for me, the two parts that make her unfun to play are: the double wait system and the fact that issue has led to people saying she’s add on dependent now. I’m a broken record on that second one and I’ve said this opinion on a lot of Nurse threads, but for me part of the draw was not wanting add ons for her. The more a killer relies on their add ons to be relevant, the less interested I am in them (I currently have no plans to play Clown ever again). Nurse was the least reliant and I don’t think making her more add on reliant was a healthy change.
As for the double waiting...Nurse’s power is a very strong blink at the cost of fatiguing every time she uses it. This negative alone turns some people off from playing her, and I’ve watched new players decide that the fatigue makes the blink not worth it and try to M1 her. Now, post rework, you will have either a 1 second long wait after a 2 second fatigue or a .5 second wait after a 2.5 second fatigue on base nurse to blink again. That alone isn’t bad. The issue comes in where blinking twice means you need to wait 3.5 seconds after a double blink to get that blink back. And if you just so happen to wait 3.49 seconds before blinking you have now wasted 2.99 seconds of your time because the bar freezes and progress towards a charge is lost. I think that change is absolutely horrible. It makes her a one blink Nurse for 90% of the game because you can’t afford that wait time if the second blink reveals a survivor while scouting, and if you EITHER get your first hit on a survivor after a second blink OR miss a hit after a second blink, congrats, you’re a 1 blink killer for the rest of the chase.
Old Nurse already had to keep in mind blink charge duration, chain window duration, lunge distance, and fatigue in mind while playing. Now she has to keep in mind charges too, and only use the second blink to get a guaranteed down, because otherwise you’ve realistically burned it for the rest of that chase.
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You said rework, not tweaks, in your comment.
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Wait until you realize that the average desire is a 2k yet red ranks demand a 4k and better.
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The devs seem to believe that everything is more or less balanced, and they generally use their statistics rather than the feedback of the community or good players instead, which causes more problems than it fixes quite often.
And second, they seem to think that the only way to bring these killers up is to completely rework them, when it wouldn't take much time or effort at all to simply give them some balance changes. It's just ridiculous.
The worst killers? Sure, rework them. But killers like Trapper, for example? A few minor changes and he would be in a much better spot. A default bag, more consistent trap escapes making a trap be meaningful? Wraith, even removing his ability to be burned, or allowing him to pick survivors up and do other things invisible. Just, so many things you could do that would have an impact on killers that wouldn't make them much stronger but would make them better.
Well. x has y killrates so therefore they're more or less fine. Like, clearly there's something wrong if you guys really believe that. There's no point in bringing up those statistics repeatedly if you don't base the majority of your balance on those things.
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I think spirit is in a good place aside from prayer beads. All killers should be on around that level and survivors should be balanced toward that level of play.
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That is just nitpicking. I stated exactly what I thought should be changed, whether you consider that a rework or tweaks is subjective.
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They didn't say anything about buffing doctor.
They said more fun to play against.
Please don't get your hopes up that doc will become viable.
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Do you count 2 kills per game after or before the 5 gen are done? Every killer can get one kill in the game and a second if they camp at the end so i ask this because a killer with 2 kills per game can be " i kill one survivor before the gen is done and with noed one more at the end.".
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I know he will not be. Most likely he will get one small buf that change nothing in the game and they will remove all the thing survivors don't want to see.
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I agree with the bigger picture principle of what you're saying here, but @Drazen has a point. It was, I dunno, MONTHS between when the Freddy rework was announced and when we actually got him.
It feels like the developers don't have a functional pipeline in place, like they literally only ever think about or work on one major balance issue at a time. We only see the end result, the fruits of their labor on the PTB. But internally, a reasonable live service developer would have multiple things they're iterating on, all at various stages at any given time. With how much time it takes for anything to get to a PTB, though, it's as if there's just one person handling all balance design or something.
Their process perceptibly has no agility, at least to the end user. I bet if we compared the timeline of major balance changes in DBD to other multiplayer games like League of Legends or even Fortnite or something, we would be able to draw the conclusion that Behaviour moves exceptionally slowly on improving Dead by Daylight.
Also, preemptively: No "Oh but Behaviour is some small scrappy developer" retorts please. They aren't, they employ 550+ people, and they tout themselves as Canada's largest independent game developer. People somehow still believe this "tiny lil company" thing when it's simply not accurate. They have the resources to move faster, which is why it's so frustrating when they don't.
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It is a sort of catch 22 as they initially looked at making the fatigue longer but it already causes some to feel nauseous and it meant looking at the ground for longer so not seeing where survivors went in a lot of cases.
I completely understand where you are coming from and your detailed explanation on how you feel is great feedback for the devs. This is the sort of feedback I feel they read and listen too as it's highly constructive.
I would like to see some changes to the cool down. Maybe it should only come into play after an Initial hit and lasts for a duration or time rather than being permanent. I feel this may help stop chases from being over prolonged and allow her to have the same map pressure as before while hunting. It should give the counter play the devs want and promote want to lose the Nurse as she is a killer you don't want to try and run around.
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Ok, then maybe you would love to implement the changes for these killers? :)
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I never got why 2k is the target. It doesn't seem to lead to the optimal results when properly balanced. Personally I think somewhere between 2k and 3k average (like 2.5k) would be better.
Obviously an above 3k average is still bad but like, why 2k?
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The devs said in the recent Q&A Halloween interview that doctor is going to get look at. You must also think about how long it takes the devs to nerf or buff a killer (for example the nurse). Also, we should remember that killers such as recent Freddy have been buff who was without a doubt under performing. So you must remember it takes a long time for these type of things to happen.
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It's not. Devs clearly said that there is a difference between tweaks and a rework.
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So far they are doing it slow and poorly (most of the time). Freddy was good, but his addons are now trash exept the very best ones. Nurse is worse with worse addons overall than before. And spirit is going to be worse with worse addons. So id rather take fast and poor/mediocre than slow and bad.
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Problem is we haven't heard practically anything when it comes to buffing base killer. If they are trying to do so, they should really recognize why the strong killers are strong and use those tips for the others.
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If they were to buff base killer, they would need to weaken the very strong ones. I think they're trying to make all the killers basically equal, but different.
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Like they haven't made positive changes to killers like Wraith or Trapper in the past, give me a flippin' break.
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That's not necessarily true. Again you have to find out what makes the strong killers strong and what makes the weak killers weak, and balance around that so it gives every killer a sense of power (as the power role should) and a sense of balance. Good example, Map Pressure. Nurse and Spirit are very good at applying map pressure with their high movement, while killers like Bubba and Pig suffer from little map pressure.
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The optimal result is totally subjective, is the thing. To the killer, the optimal result is more dead than escaped. The the survivor, the optimal result is more escaped than dead. Two is the most middle of the road no-favourites number. If the killer plays well, one extra kill means they win. If the survivors play well, one extra escape means they win.
Though we tend not to mind if things are a little stronger (e.g. 60%) as long as it's still fun. We aren't rushing out to nerf a killer the moment they pass 50% or anything. There isn't a single killer below 50% right now, even in red ranks.
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Not once has anything been said regarding a buff. More fun to play against has literally nothing to do with buffing the killer. Also come again why do strong killers need to be nerfed in order for weak ones to be buffed? What is that logic?
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Yeah, but they aren't the best at communication. Honestly what's most likely to be happening is that they're attempting to get all the killers on the same level so people don't feel like a god playing as one character, but a maggot as another. The theory (and i'm not the only one to say this) would be that if all killers are getting a buff at base (like longer gen times), the stronger ones would benefit largely from it while everyone else would be normal. I think the spirit nerf has more to do with it not feeling rewarding or fun to go against her since it's a multiple guess sort of situation for survivors. Still, I don't know why people think it'd be okay to give all killers a buff, but not attempt to put them on the same level first. You're going to create a situation where a certain killer is win by default while the others take into account the player's skill.
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You can't put them all on the same level first because every killer works differently. For example Hag and pig they have completely different playstyle.
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You can rework them so that they're as good as each other, though. Hag did get a buff a while back. Pig needs one.
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maybe their standard requires average survivors so killers can do more than 2kills without any patrol everytimes but thats one bs rank up with survivor much easier, even both consider as easy jobs
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Wait what, why the hell would they nerf Spirit, she's not even remotely OP lol.
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Next PTB, let's just give Trapper an extra trap at the start. Lets see what happens. How much coding is involved in turning a 1 into a 2? Be honest. Would this change make him the new Spirit? Even the new Hillbilly?
If this does turn Trapper into an OP killer that 4Ks every match. Turn that 2 back into a 1.
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Hag can down survivors faster than nurse and spirit If you place your traps right pig will never do that. Pig is the only ( so far) aggressive killer with a slow down power in her power ( tap head) maker one of the few killer that don't need ruin in the game hag can't do that. Now if we try to put them on the same lvl one of two thing will happen ether every killer will be unfair and maybe unbalance or they will play almost the same way.
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Well every time they change anything they break the game so i don't know ( once the put skins and we lost the sound us killer ).
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I agree that Spirit needs changes and counterplay, but a target of 2 kills is not a good idea.
2 kills is a depip/saftey, means that all the gens got done, a 2k game feels like a loss.
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If anything I hope they make Doctor even more obnoxious.
Also with how janky grabs are, M1 treatment mode spam is pretty much the only reliable way to get grabs these days.
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While at it nerf their respective perks too
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They will make him so that you can't shock they surviors and is you have mandess and DW you will snap out of thoes two at the same time.
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Can we buff swf pls? They are so left behind.
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Yeah its a must, they are so weak /s
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Let's give them some infinites back, how about double window shack without entity blockers?
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How about 2 shacks with double window?
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Nah man make every killer like the way there was in beta
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I say they should rework the OP killers and then balance from there.
That being said, I thought old nurse and current spirit are fine (apart from prayer beads).
Doc on the other hand, is IMO the second strongest killer in the game, right behind Plague, due to them having little to no counter on their base kits.
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