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Community tried to tell devs SWF is OP. Everybody who plays this game knows that
And only after SBMM and half year of data gathering they find out there is *gasp* 15% escape rate difference between swf and solo at high level.
Better late then never huh?
I really wish we had devs who have feeling of their own game without needing of gathering years of data to make changes
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They knew all along. It's just now; it's most likely affecting sales.
So now they need to look like they are actively doing something to address it.
Nothing will change..
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All it tells me is that they just never looked at swf stats before SBMM came out.
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15% difference means that solos are bad as well, which OH WAIT THEY ARE!
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That depends.
If solo's at 50%, Swiffers are at 65% and thus OP.
If swiffers are at 50%, then solo's are at 35% and thus UP.
It's possible that Swiffers are OP and solo's are UP, it's possible both are UP, it's possible that both are OP, it's possible that one is perfectly balanced and the other is OP/UP.
Did they specify escape rate for either Solo or Swiffer?
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no, just difference
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That's a shame. That still tells us very little. Did they specify 15%, additive or multiplicative? Because that's also a huge difference. I would assume additive (For example: solo is 30, swiffer is 45), which would make it a considerable gap.
There's probably a few swiffer-oriented nerfs that you can make in regards to save tactics, while making some buffs that only help solos, like the action UI they're testing out.
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Just shows, with a kill/survival rate hovering just over 50%.
And SWF gets out 15% more than solo.
That solo q is the real killer and the hardest mode to reach win conditions.
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They said the difference is "as high as 15%" at certain MMR brackets. They also didn't say whether they felt that 15% rose to an escape rate that was too high. They said there was a difference, not that there was a power issue at the top end re: SWF
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Or... they already knew there was a gap, and attempted to figure out just how big that gap is?
Not to say they couldn't have done it sooner, but this isn't quite simply stating the obvious. We didn't actually know that percentage until just now, for instance.
Besides, they're acknowledging it now, and that's what we wanted, right?
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Its realistically much higher than 15%, but the stats are showing marginal increase because not every SWF is out to win or even focused on escaping even without their team. Theres no way stats can show only sweaty SWF teams and compare to the average solo queue experience.
Either way 15% is way too low to be an accurate statistic. It doesnt even begin to represent the # of teams that strictly play to win -- i.e slamming gens, copy and paste meta builds, will let someone die on hook just to leave.
If they could miraculously pull statistics from those SWF teams and compare them to solo queue experience, it would show much higher than 15%. So either they're cherry picking data or it's a conglomerate of every SWF game they've ever had data on.
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It's tough, because that same exercise can apply to killer too. Yes, an actual full meta sweat squad of top end players is going to win 49 out of 50. An actual top end killer with full meta is going to do the same.
Those things are hard to account for and it's hard to sort through all the noise when all play styles are in the same queue. Top end meta vs top end meta is going to be closer to a 50/50 depending on the killer choice/map
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Top end killers with full meta are not going to get 4k against sweaty SWF teams. You will not have a 3 gen to play off of for starters.
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Always a pleasure to see the forum misusing numbers to their own benefits.
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And both of these types of players make up a very small fraction of the entire playerbase. I doubt they look deeply at stats for either of those two groups, and we all know they don't balance around them and won't.
All their efforts go towards the newbies and the vast bulk of the players, those who haven't played for a thousand hours or more yet. We need to remember that.
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Well I'm not talking strictly 1% of players...high MMR games dont have to be tournament style sweaty games. We're not in that realm of sweat here. You can be in high MMR and not play tournament ready players. They just have to a good SWF team with meta perks, which most SWF teams have.
The issue is whether those SWF teams are playing to win or just having fun and messing around with the killer or farming points. The data from those games should be irrelevant but I'm sure they are included in that 15%
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Actually they have looked at swf stats in the past, they included a chart showing swf impacts on escape rates a couple years ago. The chart showed basically about a +3% escape rate boost per person beyond the first in the swf (i.e. about 3% for 2-person, 6% for 3-person and 10% for 4-person, something like that.) And they, for instance, revamped Object of Obsession a while ago specifically because it was having a disparate impact on games with swfs. So they’ve definitely had it on their radar a while.
It’s possible either the swfs discrepancy grew over the last six months or so or the data they got from the MMR is more compelling than what they had under the Emblem system. Or maybe it just took them a while to come up with a specific way to boost solos that they liked which didn’t break the game somehow. Who knows? 🤷♂️
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A tournament just happened where players were able to run anything on both sides. Kill rates were around 50%. Actual top end killers very much have a chance.
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I'm not talking just the sweatlords in either role, but all those near or at that mythical top mmr area. Altogether they're still not the chunk of all.
Too bad we'll never get a full breakdown of the playerbase.
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I'll start by saying that I'm not trying to throw any shade here. People come and go over the years, and I really don't expect anyone to catch every single thread we've responded to or remember every time we've answered something. I'm willing to bet there's a good chunk of people who weren't even around last time we talked about it, but we have indeed brushed upon this in the past.
First of all, I just want to clear up this idea that we are only thinking about this now that SBMM is a thing. I can safely say that it is not the case. Over the few years I've been here, there have been loads of conversations about not only this, but many other hot topics that for one reason or another have to get shelved for a while (whether that's time constraints, bottlenecks, bigger fish to fry, etc.).
We shared this statistic because it gives something concrete to aim for. Previously, we only had ranks 1-20 to work on, and due to the way ranks worked- and since there's not a whole lot of granularity when you only have 20 ranks to work with- players of wildly varying skill levels ended up lumped together. I think anyone who's reached rank 1 on the old system knows that it's not necessarily purely about skill. Just by virtue of playing a lot, many people would end up climbing to rank 1 even if that wasn't where they were most comfortable.
As a result, the data wasn't very reliable and the gap appeared far smaller than it really was. Does that mean the gap didn't exist? No, absolutely not. Sure, we could feel a difference playing matches, but I think we can all agree that blindly aiming for a target that you cannot see is not a good idea. Doing so makes any change we could do very risky, as it could be totally overkill and buff Survivors way too much, or not enough and still leave solo Survivors behind (as well as wasting development time that could be spent on other issues). Even after the fact, it'd be hard to say whether or not the change was effective because we don't have anything but our gut feeling to determine if it worked.
With SBMM, on the other hand, we're able to see much more accurate info on just how big the difference is at different skill levels, and more importantly, we have something we can monitor to see how effective any changes are. It gives us a tangible goal beyond "This feels a little better I guess." Now if we do a change, we can see exactly how much the gap has closed (whether it's gone, unchanged, or smaller than before).
But moreover, the main reason we shared this info- both the statistic and the mechanic- is to be more transparent. I think anyone who's been around for a while can vouch for the fact that we normally don't talk about mechanics like this so early on. It's something that people have been asking for and it's something we've been pushing for as well. We genuinely believe it's better to be open about it and frame the things we're suggesting with reasoning rather than dropping it as a surprise with no context.
On a personal level, I find it a pretty disheartening that when we do push to reveal things earlier like this, it's often met with conspiracies, fearmongering and passive aggressive jabs at the team. I always get excited when we're able to good news like this with the community, especially when it's a big topic like the SWF gap. But it's really disappointing to see something that people have been asking for somehow get twisted into something negative. Even still, I stand by the fact that it's better to be transparent and share these details than the keep them locked away until the last second.
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I definitely understand the disheartening point you made, and I appreciate it. That being said we have been told several things over the years that either take forever to get changed while one side is changed and the other is not or the changes never come. I.E. ruin was changed and we were told it was because ruin was in 90%+ of games so they were changing it to look at gen speeds. Also the massive time difference between mori changes and key changes. Especially on killer side it seems like we are always changed or nerfed so the balance team can look into something meanwhile it takes months to years to have the other side balanced. yes I know this patch was a lot of nurse recoding but that honestly doesnt have much to do with balance and nurse has a very low play rate so the large majority of killers do not feel the affect of the changes you made. meanwhile things like dead hard and CoH are still being allowed to run rampant. IMO the only time the balance team has changed something quickly was Metal of Man and that was because it was beyond broken by any standard. So while I do think you guys have some good intentions I do not think you have killers in the skill level needed to see the issues at high level of play. For example you base things on kill rates and yes freddy had a good kill rate and probably still does but is an easier killer to play so lower levels of play have higher kill rates than other killers but higher levels get 1-2k which skews his kill rate . meanwhile anyone with any number of time in the game (300+ hours)knew nurse is the best killer in the game but has really low kill rate at low levels due to massive skill cap. but freddy gets nerfed and reworked so his 6% slowdown with 2 addons doesn't even do that an now his best addons are the teleport cd reduction which isn't even that much. so again we feel like you have the best interest in mind but lack the skill to have the experience of what the balance has done at the high level. thank you for coming to my ted talk.
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That happens because you do not know how to implement SFW well, but it does not matter, we will see how you fix those who play surv alone, because it takes time to find a match, either because almost everyone plays in SWF or because there are not many killers
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If you were trying to be transparent, you'd give more concrete statistics and context for those statistics. You're paying lip service to transparency and throwing out numbers randomly and at whim. Of course people are going to draw random conclusions from that. They don't have the whole picture.
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I personally find the whole “let’s close the gap between solo queue and SWF, then buff killers” topic extremely frustrating, because it still feels like we don’t have any idea at all what specific things killers might in compensation if solo queue is buffed, or if killers will “just have to deal with it”. I understand that the ideas to close the solo queue / SWF gap are still in the very early stages of development, but we at least know what some of the ideas are. We still have absolutely zero idea what specific things killers might possibly get in compensation, beyond the extremely vague “then buff killers” comment.
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The reaction to the stat by BHVR in the Developer Update was I think the correct response to this ‘issue.’ Give a little bit more information to all survivors.
Players already can know (killer and survivor) what health state each character is in and whether/when a player is hooked. So it’s already part of the game to have information on all the players without line of sight. We even get to know when an obsession is in chase.
My argument that SWF is not naturally overpowered, even in the face of the higher escape rate, is in my experience SWFs are collections of good players. It’s not that they coordinate so much better if they were together or not. Comms or not.
Good players have more positive results in their matches.
Players in solo queue who witness another player do really well will invite that player to join with them. There is the beginning of how SWFs are typically formed.
Taking in what I said above and how that rips apart the escape rate stat makes me realize how incredibly difficult it would be to try to balance an ‘issue’ like this and circles back to why I think the Developer Update response is the best step forward at this time.
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I wouldn't say SWF is op, it is just too high of a difference between SWF and solo. I hope they bring them a little closer to the middle so balancing is easier
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"the gap appeared far smaller than it really was." LOL. That's why you should either play your own game or listen to people like Otz. Than you won't need data for something that is obvious to anyone with experience.
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I'll try to keep this shorter than my last post, but to touch upon a few of the points you've brought up:
1: On the subject of The Nurse, using pick rates as a determining factor is very shaky territory. First, you've gotta consider the fact that part of the reason she's picked less often is due in part to the bugs with her power. Even if someone likes The Nurse and is doing moderately well with her, it's totally within the realm of possibility that the bugs were too frustrating for them to continue playing. Secondly, pick rate is not a universal thing. While it stands it reason that she may not be picked at lower skill levels (owing to her higher learning curve), she becomes far more popular at higher skill levels. I won't speak for everyone, but I'm assuming at least some people would like to see more Killers pop up regularly in the higher skill levels.
But beyond this, The Nurse's bug fixes is also a prime example of something that has come up a lot over the years. Often times we're asked to focus on things like game health rather than content / balance, and The Nurse and her various bugs was often tied directly to that as a poster child of sorts. Fixing these issues did require a complete redo of her coding, but it's a prime example of us doing exactly that: Putting content / balance to the side to focus on fixing things. I totally understand if you're not pumped for this next Mid-Chapter, but it's a pretty shocking reaction to something that was asked of us very often (focusing on fixes/game health over content).
2: To think point of Circle of Healing, I just want to say that this is absolutely not something we're ignoring. We make a point out of letting things settle before making rash decisions these days. Between PTBs & live these days, the changes we make are almost always fairly minor. We've been burned in the past by making rash decisions when the initial feedback was rough. Nowadays, we try to let everything have some time to settle before we start thinking about how it should change. This gives us a better idea of where it actually sits rather than making a knee jerk reaction and hoping it works out. Circle of Healing is an even trickier scenario since it came bundled with an entirely new mechanic (boons), so it's very important that we see how things work before diving head first into changes.
That said, though, I can't reveal if/what will happen to Circle of Healing right here, just please keep in mind that there's always a cycle that looks like this:
- Something releases
- Wait for it to settle
- Determine if changes are needed
- Create changes
3: On the subject of Freddy, I feel like this something that often gets misconstrued as well. In reality, kill rates only play a small role. You compared him to The Nurse, and I'm really glad you did because she's the perfect example of why that's not the case. The Nurse overall has a fairly low kill rate (well below the rest of Killers), but that doesn't mean she's weak. She's tough to play, and in the right hands, she can be hands down the best. But that also isn't necessarily a problem because there's a ton of skill that goes into playing her extraordinarily well, and there's also a lot of skill that goes into playing against her well.
In the case of Freddy, on the other hand, you had a Killer that was very strong without needing much thought or skill. Dropping a couple traps at a loop would yield very strong results with very little risk or strategy. His slight tweaks aimed to make the strategy of spamming traps constantly while in a chase less viable.
On the point of lack of skill, I won't delve too far into this, but that is a very loaded point to make. Many developers play the game daily (typically not with BHVR tags in their name, they don't want to be recognized). I myself used to stream this game three times per week, and I was playing at the higher ranks just fine. Sure, not every game developer's going to be ready to jump on an eSports team, but expecting everyone working on a game to be able to play it at a competitive level is a frankly unrealistic standard, even if some of them are pretty good.
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You had one of your team a few years back making fun of people on this forum because the gap between swf “wasn’t that big.” It should not have taken your team 3 years to come to the conclusion publicly that SWF is too strong, when people who play could have told you that. Nonetheless, I am glad you will take action.
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I mean, personally, I feel a lot better about changes that get made step by step after gathering data than I do about someone who tears up the code based on instinct. Getting the game onto MMR was a big milestone and one that they told us was the foundation for future data analysis around balancing issues. Now they're doing the data analysis around balancing issues.
I'm glad about that. I get that it's slow, but doing something carefully usually takes a long time.
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"In the case of Freddy, on the other hand, you had a Killer that was very strong without needing much thought or skill. Dropping a couple traps at a loop would yield very strong results with very little risk or strategy. His slight tweaks aimed to make the strategy of spamming traps constantly while in a chase less viable."
Why don't you guys just admit that you start nerfing killers when they become popular noob stompers?
You say that Freddy was very strong and required little skill, but have you stopped thinking that a lot of survivors who went against him ALSO didn't really know what they were doing? It's the same reason why you gutted Hillbilly and still get a lot of hate for that; many survivors were just free Pop and BBQ stacks who always went down in 15 seconds so it made it seem like he was unstoppable, and thanks to your "slight tweaks" no one plays them these days. Hillbilly for instace, has been completely replaced by Bubba and Blight in the meta.
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Ok but why Pinhead was nerfed? He didn't had a 70% kill rate like Freddy back then, only 59%.
His skill cap is even way higher than nurse, since he must succesfully double aim to get use of his power, that is very lowely rewarding. Meanwhile Freddy was very and is very easy to learn, he doesn't have such a complex power like Pinhead. Why not wait a longer 'till making some changes to him? Now he's pretty much unfun to play as and even against, because of the unnecessary changes.
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I am for a peaceful resolve to this game in 2022 and that all opinions should be welcome here. That way we can MEND WOUNDS and move on with life. The world has not been pleasant lately and the escape from everything around us, is video games. We can live in a world and enjoy it
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There's a few reasons why the community gets skeptical and falls into theory swapping, at least from where I sit.
You point out that topics get shelved. That also applies to some of the ideas put forth by the devs that could help the game in the long run. Remember the early match system that was talked about a few years back, that would give killers a bit more control in the early game when they're at their weakest? Accepted by the community, then it was never spoken of again. Or when Kindred was released, and it was stated that that was the start of brining solo Q closer to SWF. . . and then nothing ever came of it after. Or when additional perks were added to the bloodweb to decrease grind, with the promise (and more promises over the years) that more would be done to decrease the grind, only to be followed with more empty promises? It's great that the devs wish to share ideas for the future, but when so little actually comes of it, it gets disheartening, as it feels like empty promises.
The length of time it takes for any changes to come about. This personally is a big one for me. Again, great that you share ideas, but when it can take literal years for anything to be done about it? It's not like it's a one time deal, it's just a fact of life at this point that any major changes take years to be implemented, be it god loops, EGC, or even the latest in matchmaking. t I don't deny that development takes time, that hurdles don't need to be crossed, but it seems that the team takes an excessive amount to do just about anything, and when it does drop, it's in poor shape.
Devs vs playerbase. I think we can all agree that there's a lot of back and forth between the two. Just use the latest PTB notes as an example, specifically perk/addon changes. Where did those changes come from, and why? Why those particular changes, what data backed it up, and why were more those picked over more obvious choices? Which brings me to my point on this. You, the devs, share some ideas from time to time about what you want to bring to the game, and then come up with changes in other areas with little explanation. This creates a disconnect, between what you want, and what we can actually get. SBMM, for example. What is brought to the game vs what is thought about added in the future. That early match mechanic as an example. You talk about the gap between solo Q and SWF, but then give an update to Boil Over, which can be abused by SWF (rare, maybe, but we know it'll never be used by solo Q).
Nobody is against transparency. But it seems to be cherry picked. Hopes are raised for actual quality of life improvements and mechanics, but between what comes of it, and how long it takes to be done about it, leaves much to be desired. If there was more transparency, so we could see where the ideas and changes are coming from, it would probably be better in the long run.
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"2: To think point of Circle of Healing, I just want to say that this is absolutely not something we're ignoring. We make a point out of letting things settle before making rash decisions these days."
I'd just like to point out that Pinhead was released in September and his best addons were nerfed in November. A three month turn-around for a relatively innocuous set of addons that made his passive power stronger.
Circle of Healing was released in October and has remained intact up to this mid-chapter point (and therefore probably intact until the next chapter in 2-3 more months).
So, it's important to let things settle when it's a survivor perk used by at least one member of the team in an overwhelming majority of all games. But when it's limited use items for one killer in a small fraction of games that provides a noticeable improvement for their power? That's gotta be jumped on. Totally not a rash decision at all.
I'm sure it feels crummy to announce things and have people jump down your throat about every little detail. But you have to remember: Parity. You've stated "SWF is objectively more successful than Solo, and we want to do something to help Solos." That's great. You've been doing that. Remember the hook counter? Remember the universal Obsession? Remember changing killer powers to announce across the whole map? There's been a lot of "give solos more info" already and here's another one on the docket.
But if you're stating that SWF is objectively better than the default game type, and killers are balanced around the default game type, it seems - ah - let's say CONSPICUOUS that there isn't any mention of the "buff all killers later" half of the equation. It feels like that half isn't even on the radar. There's little, individual tweaks here and there, but nothing that universally improves the play experience for all killers.
It feels like you haven't even started brainstorming about what you're going to do when solos and SWF are all performing with 2% of each other.
As anybody with kids will tell you: if one kid gets a toy, the other one will not stop crying until they get a toy too. Even if it's just a promise of a toy. And let me tell you, one kid has been getting a whole lot more DbD toys than the other.
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@Peanits Don't let negative comments ever put you down.
I just wonder how these negative killer changes bridge the gap for the killer player facing SWF? Awhile back, It was said that there would be improvements for survivor to bridge gap between solo survivors and SWF survivors between killer.
It was said that when survivors would become as strong as SWF. Killers would become too weak as result. Will killer ever be changed to be able to go against SWF at higher-levels of play?
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I really do appreciate you taking the time to respond to my reply. Yes I think you guys did a lot of work on the nurse to fix her and I really think its a great thing. Her low pick rate at lower levels wasn't IMO because of her bugs but more of because she has such a high skill cap and when you first start her you get your tail kicked repeatedly unless you start with her and even then its rough. It takes a very rare individual to push past losing over and over to develop the skill on a killer that has such potential vs just grabbing a killer like freddy or leatherface. Honestly balancing the game around high level of play IMO would be a better option simply because it will allow killers to not get frustrated when they are getting better and better but some how losing more and more. I am decent ( i was rank 1 killer a few times but took long breaks) and even where i got to i would get 1-2 kills a lot of the time. I knew i wasnt even going against the best survivors but i was getting stomped. but honestly the game punishes a play style of going for hooks instead of kills with the current meta. I can get 9/12 hooks and it still counts as a loss. due to gen speeds killers are pigeon holed into having so much gen defense you dont get a good variety of builds.For example my build on freddy is thrilling, bbq, pop, and discordance. I build mine for information to know where the survivors are but in todays meta my best option is to find a survivor and tunnel them out in order to "win" i dont like playing that way its not fun for anyone but if i play where i go after the unhooker and roam gens I will get penalized and then BM'd at the gates ( i wont go into how its encouraged to be a bad sport in this game) so it's logically better to go tunnel the first survivor i find get the 1 hook kill and move on.
Back to the nurse update, yes it was really needed to have her bugs fixed and it is amazing you guys did it. we will still be hesitant until we really see it fixed because bugs have been around so long ( silent dying state bug) that it is a shock when its actually fixed.
When it comes to boons the fix to boons would be easy. I and most of the killers ive talked to would be fine if boons had one of a couple changes. 1. tokens: dont change anything except add tokens once you use the 2 or so tokens that perk is gone. this way it is treated more like a hex's risk reward option. right now there is no risk to bringing a boon other than a fellow survivor breaking the totems because you can just replace it. or 2. reduction of heal self care is a perk that is literally useless right now because a boon just gives everyone super self care. why not just have the boon match self care speed that makes more sense. even then self care would never get used so now in the future self care will get buffed or reworked to be stronger and more viable. 3. give killers the option to destroy the totems 1 to cleanse the boon and again to destroy the totem. this would allow killers a way to actually counter the boon. because right now there is nothing a killer can do to have lasting effect on such aa strong perk.
back to freddy, there wasnt small changes at first. his first changes were massive nerfs to his addons you went from 17% slowdown with 2 addons to 6% slowdown with 2 addons (both if the survivor is asleep) freddy now has no really good option for addons. his strongest ones give 20% cd reduction of teleport IF all 4 survivors are asleep. the rest of his addons are meh at the very very best. the only other one really worth mentioning is the black box which is only valid for 15 seconds for asleep survivors at the end of the match. meaning IF the survivor you are chasing to the exit gate is asleep and they open the 99'd gate it will come into effect.
on a advice note. ( i know i dont have all the information) but as someone who plays the game I would feel better about changes you guys made if you made the info behind the change public such as the reason. Like why did you nerf the twins? or change the one thing that made a killer viable ( pinky) but if you said hey we are changing the pinky finger because without pinky finger kill rate is _____ at ranks _-__ and kill rate is ___ for ranks ___-____ but with pinky finger the kill rate is ____ at ranks ____-____ and ____ for ranks ____-____ so we pinky finger is performing too well. this would make sense and give us more transparency of why you guys are making the changes.
like for example freddy for these ranks had a kill rate at 85% but at higher rate has this kill rate so we will change him to see what it goes to so we can balance further to make him more fair. ( i use freddy because hes the one i play that is the most contested so i have the most insight into him) I think this would have made the wraith change more accepted if you presented this info to why you made the change.
AGAIN THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR REPLYING IN THE FIRST PLACE.
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More than a month its enough to know that boons are not right and that it almost killed the game for killers alongside with DH validation. Now if the team is taking time to properly find a solution and working on it i can respect that, coding takes time.
But what you cannot do is wait a month or more and THEN start working on a solution. Literally the whole community was telling you guys that this was non-sense, waiting so much time instead on working on it sooner, only damage the game and makes players leave.
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You shouldn't let the negativity bring you down.
There have been content creators who straight up made a living bashing you people. Pretty much 95% of their video's were spreading negativity towards you. Luckily the biggest offender has left but the damage is still there.
Sadly there is a vocal minority of this community that has been quite literally brainwashed into hating you. It will never be good for them.
I for one am extremly pleased you learned from the kneejerk reactions like original freddy week 1 nerf and now take the time to see what exactly needs to change and how much.
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I only have one question which shouldn't be that hard to answer
Why have fog whispers if you don't listen to their advice?
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Re: the point about Freddy -
It's not JUST that he slows down to set snares, as was mentioned above (which, by the way, feels terrible from a player stand point, regardless of if they think it makes his power more balanced), and it's not JUST that they gutted his addons, as you mentioned.
They ALSO reduced the number of snares and pallets he could have at once AND gave alarm clock wake ups a 60 second immunity to falling asleep (not just delaying the passive but also making you immune to his M1 sleep. That just straight up makes survivors immune to his entire power on top of gutting his addons, reducing the setting speed, and taking away 40% of his available snares.
The only part of Freddy's kit that WASN'T nerfed was his 'teleport to a generator,' which was overwhelmingly the main part of his kit that survivors complained about. So not only did they make him worse in every way for killers to play, but didn't fix the thing that survivors didn't like. So now he's not fun to play as AND not fun to play against. The whole thing was a massive overreach of nerfs across the board for the sole sin of "a killer who is easy to play as."
Designing killers to be a pain to use is not good game design and it's even worse as a 'balancing' mechanic.
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Please, everyone try and not focus on expert badass gameplay in DBD, the so-called high level play. They've proven time and again their intention to consider all players of all skills in proposed changes, not just how it would affect the best players.
Whatever changes you have in mind, please always tag onto it "How would this affect a brand-new player? Or one with less than 200hrs?" Because that's the biggest portion of the playerbase.
What chance do we have of keeping players longer if changes immediately become frustratingly noob-stomping? The grind is already rough, the tutorials (imo) still unsatisfactory. Now add on something only aimed at the top 5,000 or so best players we have? No one would stick around to "git gud".
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I mean, i feel like it's fair to assume SWF are higher on the list than solos
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I love how for once the dev team decided to be open about an idea but have just got ######### for it. The haven't always been transparent and unfortunately this thread is the reason one of the reasons why.
This isn't a defense of their lack of transparency since I personally am still hurt we never found out why the early game idea they were thinking about never happened.
The saying "damned if you do, damned if you don't" is the core theme of behaviours transparency.
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I'm for one joyful about this announcement, because when SBMM was announced, I was hoping that stratifying the data among clearer skill brackets instead of the muddy rank 1 area that could contain anywhere from semi-competent players to 10,000-hour gods was going to lead to you guys addressing some long-standing balance issues that were largely centered around emergent top-level play. The announcement about looking into increasing solo queue's information game was potentially the best news I've heard since joining DBD, both for planning balance changes I strongly agree with from both a survivor and killer standpoint, and showing that the data is being looked at in the way I'd hoped it would (which sounds promising on a couple of other angles.)
Not sure if you were watching then, but the forums were overwhelmingly positive on the 3rd when the news was dropped. The mood just got overshadowed by the Leatherface mask controversy and the seemingly underwhelming patch notes next day, and I think everyone's back to their usual cynical self at this point. But addressing the solo-SWF gap was received very positively and the major concern was that there might be a long waiting period between solo buffs and general killer buffs to follow - not the move itself. People are happy about this.
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Yes, I've seen great reaction on streams as well (English and French ones) about the solo Q changes. Even if we don't know yet when it'll be coming, I think most of us are happy it's being adressed.
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The post is talking about top end skill-levels. how are we suppose ignore what the post is talking about? If your good at killer, you will be facing these teams as killer. Their goal for survivor is to bridge gap between solo survivor and SWF survivor at high MMR because this is where there is largest difference. Why is the killer getting punished for being good at the game such that he faces SWF when the killer is not balanced around playing vs SWF?
Why would new players be affected by the changes. First of all, new players are not playing the game properly. They should spent time learning the game first. Due to large amount of grind, It will take around 2000 hours to acquire perks on both sides and many killer games & survivor games to become acquainted all the killers powers and survivors in regards to maps. Balancing around players that play the game poorly in short term might be good but in long-term, when you play the game long enough, you will end up playing an imbalanced version of the game. Secondly, players of lower MMR will face weaker opponents that do not optimize their gameplay so their skill-levels naturally balance themselves out. Lastly, players of lower mmr skill-level are typically casual players meaning they play the game for fun and do not care to improve their gameplay therefore do not care about outcome of winning a match. they are not competitive. It is like playing League of legends and being silver rank for 3 years. Do you think they care to improve? Obviously not if they've been playing for long time, they're just looking to have fun in the game.
so when you get statement like "We should balance around 200 hour players", its like saying we should balance league of legends around silver rank. DBD logic.
"What chance do we have of keeping players longer if changes immediately become frustratingly noob-stomping"
they end up playing vs weaker players and if they win a bunch, they go up and if the level becomes too high, they lose. This is often refer to as Elo-hell where the player is consistently sea-sawing backforth. there is no noob-stomping unless smurfing is possible which could be possible in the future if they implement that change where MMR degrades over-time. you might have some player that decide to make 20 DBD accounts like Epicgames where the game was free, and they play on 20 accounts to purposely degrade their MMR so they face weaker survivor/killer players on purpose and than they don't play and let degrade happen. as of now, there is no such thing as noob-stomping. Your either good or not good.
If new player dislike playing DBD, than they'll leave regardless of the games state.
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The only impression I've received so far from this talk about SWF and their powerlevel is that the devs want to buff solo survivors to be on a more equal footing with these premade groups, there isn't a single mention of killer buffs however. All of these balance decisions are made with the success of survivor players in mind, not even once did you show the willingness to consider what killers have to go through on a regular basis within the environment you've created. It's beyond me what kind of data you still want to gather if it's blatantly obvious how broken Circle of Healing is at this point. You need to act immediately, any further delays on this matter will only make it worse.
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BHVR fixes a buggy, broken Killer after years and now they want a cookie. OK.
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SWF escape rates may be at a level that is considered balanced and non-SWF is just lower. In which case no Killer buffs are necessary.
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A common misconception in pvp games in general is that balancing around high levels of play will some how inhibit a noob from entering the game or find success. This is demonstrably false. When you balance around "end game" or experienced players, you're balancing the entry level by default. The end game sets the pace and the goal, the early game is literally just a tutorial. If an end game player with 1000s of hours can know with pixel perfection how to exploit a system <----YOU BALANCE THE GAME AND FIX THAT SYSTEM. Because at the end of the day that same experience is going to be used AGAINST a new player, and a new player will have no way of combatting it. At the same time, Skill caps, should stay high. To avoid end game players running into walls that their mechanical skill can't cover, and to give new players something to achieve INCREASING their skill. If you only balance around new players, and noob entry level gameplay NO ONE WILL IMPROVE. So that things that can be solved with skill <---Are instead replaced by the game auto driving itself to make up for lack of awareness and lack of skill. <---This hurts everybody, its hurts competative play, and it hurts noob play. Noobs end up never learning how to deal or cope with anything and get blasted by simple things that can be adjusted with a bit of learning. Meanwhile Competative players have to deal with a completely unbalanced, unfun, and uncompetitive game because they get restricted by brick wall skill caps.
^ League of legends already tried the concept of balancing for noobs, or balancing for entry level players to "get more people involved with the game" It literally destroyed an entire season of ranked games because the balance was completely broken (AKA anybody remember tanky dps meta?) Tanky dps back in the day had low pick rates because they required more skill and more item knowledge than grabbing a mage and picking up a death cap (or 2 if you're familiar with season 1) So what did the devs do... Buffed the everloving christ out of tanky dps characters so people new to the role wouldn't have such a hard time.....
^ The end result.... ^ HIGH LEVEL competative players picked up these same tanky dps characters and were basically invincible. Literal gods. Literally cannot be touched after having like 6k gold it was over. Wrap it up if you're a mage, leave the game if you're an AD ranged carry, if you're a support just roll over because tanky xin xao is going to 5v1 your entire team and walk away with 10% hp and a pentakill. Probably the worst season I and many other have ever experienced in that game. There was no % hp damage, and penetration items didn't give you much damage so you had to just sit there and take it.
Now if you were a noob during that time, the game was great....low elo games, people that weren't level 30 had an amazing time I'm sure until someone who knows the system goes "Oh...they buffed tanky dps for this elo, I'm gonna go Garen+a few tanky items and literally 1 dps item and just 1v5, once noobs figure out the exploit its what happens all the time. But anything you add to "Help some noob" is going to in tandem BUFF THE EVERLOVING HELL out of high level players. Which is why so many people in competitive scenes say "Balance around the end game" "Balance around high level play" Because the alternative means bricking competitive play and end game so that the meta is stale as hell and nobody has fun games because of some BS noob helper you added in.
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