Why does Bhvr. Interactive always approach adding content with a Knee-Jerk reaction?
No, I'm not trying to say "Screw BHVR interactive!", because there are a lot of hard working people in game development teams (Heck, I am studying to become a game developer) and I've never met them in person. However, I am trying to say that I am concerned with the disconnect between the community and the development team.
Instead of having people provide input on updates and changes to the game, why does Behavior seem to release changes and then adjust/ignore content change suggestions from the community? I think there's so much frustration on the forum because there is a honest disconnect from the community and the developers.
For instance, the Nurse. Most people I've seen wanted Nurse's nerf to just be her addons, not her basekit. But there never really seemed to be a connection between what the community wanted and what the developers wanted.
And I get it - Bhvr Interactive is a small team. But as a game scales upwards, usually adding more team members to support the growing game and long term vision of the game usually is a healthy move.
Comments
Because most suggestions from players simply isnt that good.
When it comes to balance BHVR do better than any of the players as they look at many factors.
The player only see if it gains them something in a match and not how it may affect the other side.
The Nurse while a subject highly debated had the cooldown added as she was the strongest killer even without add-ons. While I thought she was fine at base along with many others that doesn't mean she was. The change did make her less fun to play while her strength is still there for those that can play her well.
I think the Nurse needs to be more fun so personally id still say remove the cooldown but make her lunge out of blink a lot less and test that as its more about being skillful with blinks and allows better map pressure.
THing is there, we have a thing called the PTB, they could...and SHOULD, make that a sepperate download and just let us test the crap out of everything.
People suggested many subtle changes that would make freddy more viable, changes like letting the dreamstate transistion interrupt actions etc.
What does BHVR do? complete remove Freddy as he was, sorry for those who enjoyed Freddy, tough break, and just made a completely new character out of him....
That just leaves a sour taste tbh.
They are able to react to feesback from the community. 90% of the players think that the nurse nerfs made her very unfun to play. Screw killers, not screw BHVR.
Now she requires a tad bit more skill to play, leveling the playing field a bit, its better for everyone.
The problem with the ptb is hardly anyone plays it compared to the userbase unless it's a patch which highly affects the side they play or new content. It's why it isn't always in as there isn't enough players who want to participate. They need a lot of player to gather data as 100 wouldn't tell them anything.
Freddy was badly designed from the start. Yes some subtle changes may have helped with the likes of I'm booking but overall he was a character that wasn't played much and quite universally disliked. The changes made have increased his use and its a change most agree was better. It's not a great example to use one of the best reworks of a killer BHVR have done to try and have a poke at them.
It tells them a lot more then just some internal testing, and again, players not playing the PTB heavily has to do with the annoying have to re-downlaod the entire game, and then again just to get back to the normal game.
If it was a sepperate file, hey np, just fire that up.
Next to that its not that hard to incentive participating, especially now with the ermm token stuff, the stuff you hang on your hook/side of your character, you could totally reward one for playing and judging the PTB.
You call freddy the best rework, I call it the worst, fundamentally content was lost, players who bought freddy and enjoyed the way he worked (cough me cough) now lost that and I dont like the new freddy one bit. (though even if I did, does not matter, does nto change anything).
You're a part of the 10%. You're rare!
Nearby, ever played nurse against a 4man swf on r1? Just askin.
Your looking at this one dimensionally as much as falsely
Of course it can give more data but you also have to balance the ptb incentive v the normal game. Too much and it affects the matchmaking and too little and again its worthless to have it open constantly.
I doubt anyone would play for a long time for some skins or shards as progress doesn't transfer to the normal game which can't happen in reality as it would split the playerbase.
It also has a lot of people not playing normally and testing things out so they can catch some bugs but it doesn't always reflect how the change has made things for better or worse. If people don't play normally then the data itself will always be skewed and cant be used for balancing.
What is good for the game cant take one persons view into account. The majority do prefer the new one and while the old Freddy was fun for some of course but the number of players back then compared to now reflect that the players prefer the rework as a lot more are playing him.
Players have bought many things that have changed in the game. It's part of buying DLC in any PvP game. Changes can and will happen for the good of the game.
We don't respond with reflex reactions often at all. The upcoming Doctor update has been in the works for months. :)
That’s supposed to give us hope? The Nurse was in the works for months and is almost universally agreed to be a disaster. She probably has the worst set of add ons in the game, and that’s after bhvr had time to remake them. Forgive us for being skeptical.
I think Nurse add-on's are fine they should revert her base-kit that they said "they wouldn't change"
Wrong. God Nurses before are still God Nurses now. That hasn't changed and they will still wreck your ######### with no effort. However. The point is, she feels like ######### to play. She's clunky and ######### gross to control especially during map traversal. Do you understand now? I don't care how strong she is if playing her feels #########. Why do people not care how a killer feels to play? Game feel > strength. Nobody will play a strong character if playing them is like pulling teeth.
God. I'm so sick of every nurse discussion boiling down to "killers want easy wins" when the ######### character isn't easy to play.
And thats the scary part because nothing announce of the rework seems like it is going to be any less annoying to play against.
Firstly, thank you for your response. :)
I get that. I'm just more concerned with the balancing aspect of killers after release. I tried to title the thread to grab attention, since it seems that the more bold titles get better publicity on the forums.
For instance, if the doctor turns out to be a super competitive killer (which is great!) people will inevitably complain playing as the survivor role since he's going to be played so often after the rework for a while. He's new, he's exciting, and of course people are going to want to talk about him.
Secondly, you all did a great job on the Freddy rework and I as well as others applaud those efforts, albeit there will be some that disagree and liked Freddy's old playstyle - which is unavoidable with a large player base. I also strongly like the fact that after release Freddy wasn't changed around that much which gives people time to get used to him - something I hope is also the case for the Doctor.
In regards to the reflex reactions, all I'm worried about is if people complain for you guys to change the Doctor to become weaker/stronger fresh after his rework release. Instead of waiting a while and having players get used to his new capabilities, it could be easy to overcompensate adjustments, nerf or buff. I'm sure you are all aware of this already, but I just wanted to reiterate that.
Just asking for a bit of time for the community to get used to him before adjusting one way or the other (unless something's obviously broken.) I understand you all are riding out the storm with the Nurse before making changes (albeit we can see with some consistency that her map traversal potential is the biggest qualm players have with her).
Thanks again for your response.
Cheers and happy holidays.
To be honest, I don't see a way to make Nurse's kit work without giving her a completely different power. At its core, her power involves bypassing all of a survivor's normal defenses and ending chases instantly. Fundamentally, her power is near-impossible to balance. The devs didn't have much to work with.
Stridor and A Nurse's Calling effects on the add-ons for the Killer that teaches said perks is beyond lazy.
This is a false narrative that people always spout on here. Just because she can’t be looped conventionally doesn’t mean the survivors have no defense. You play against Nurse differently, both by breaking line of sight and making her guess on if you will keep running or come back at her.
Nurse has counterplay, survivors refuse to learn
You realize that some of the highest-ranking Killer mains agreed that Nurse lacks counterplay? Good Nurse players can accurately predict where you are and where you will go most of the time. And even if they don't guess correctly the first time, you'd only have a few seconds before they're ready to blink again, and they're not going to fall for the same trick twice.
To paraphrase one such Nurse player: "A decent Nurse main has counterplay. A great Nurse main doesn't."
EDIT: Actually, here's the full quote: "Survivors can beat a bad Nurse almost every time. Survivors can beat a mediocre Nurse almost every time. Survivors can generally beat a good Nurse. Survivors will never beat a god Nurse".
I am myself a good Nurse player and main of the character. Personally, I think other killer mains have been bullied into saying she is broken. Even if they haven’t, they’re wrong.
I feel like people will never be satisfied with nurse. Either she is clunky to play but easier for survivors, or smooth but nigh impossible.
Here's how I feel about it: https://youtu.be/olT9kj1VFeg
Well, I think it's far more likely that the Killer mains were simply intelligent enough to see Nurse's game-breaking power for what it was. And it's not hard to see why they're right.
High-ranking Killer mains already know how to counter juking. They can accurately predict where survivors will go, and how they'll attempt to juke a hit. So when Nurse can nullify all of a survivor's defenses except for juking, it was inevitable that she'd rise to become the best Killer in the game.
Hold up. So nurse is still as strong as before?? and the only thing changed is the fun factor being reduced to be super unfun? Uhm yeah, sounds like a reasonable change lmaoooo
That’s a blow up of the game though. How many structures force m1 killers to waste time and break the pallet? Nurse just evens it out and makes the survivor have to outplay you. Survivors don’t like her because their go to autopilot mode doesn’t work. They have to think against her.
Wait a minute, i need to tell you that on point prediction is a skill. If you as a survivor is predicted, that only shows you're outplayed by nurse player, and she deserves a hit.
As for now, only few killers can capitalize on these kind of prediction (nurse, spirit, huntress..). They're also heavily rely on prediciton.
On the other hand, other m1 killers cannot really do anything even if they predicted your movement besides continually play the looping game and hope survivors mess up badly. Do you really want all killers to be like this?
Survivors have 3 methods to extend chase times: Pallets, windows, and juking. Good survivors will use all 3 methods to extend chases for a very long time, especially against Killers who don't know what they're doing. Good survivors will get a lot of mileage out of windows and jukes before needing to drop the pallet, then using the pallet to reset the chase and move on to the next tile. Bad survivors will have to drop the pallet immediately against even a mediocre killer, and will often be tricked by a simple mindgame into taking an otherwise-avoidable hit.
Nurse takes away 2 out of those 3 methods for survivors to extend chase times and evade the Killer. And once the Nurse player has learned how to counter juking, the survivor's skill becomes almost entirely irrelevant during the chase. The survivor is usually just forced to pray that the Nurse player makes a mistake.
It's not really an outplay when the survivor's skill is mostly irrelevant during a chase. God-tier survivors and mediocre survivors will both get hit all the same against a god-tier Nurse.
Killers should have powers that reduce chase times and make looping more difficult, but they shouldn't force the Survivor to play a guessing game that renders their skill mostly irrelevant. Otherwise, why would anyone play as a Survivor?
That is usually the plan. When new Fred first released, some responses was very negative. But over the coming weeks as people learned to use his snares, they realized he was quite good and the uproar died down. Sometimes we do need to make a quick adjustment, but that's more the exception than the rule, for reasons you point out. :)
There isn’t such a thing as “countering” juking. It’s literally a guess. Survivors want something that shuts her down every time, which is why m1 killers suck.
Haha, thanks. It would be a fun experience working on a game that I have really enjoyed playing, although I have not seen any internship postings for Behavior Interactive for the upcoming summer, and I'd have to brush up on my Unreal skills since I've mostly been using Unity for development. But who knows - maybe in the future :)
That's not what I said. I said her strength is still there in the right hands which means she is still strong.
Of course the change made her weaker but not as much as people would like to think.
If not much, then it still wasn't reasonable bud. Imagine you make her slightly weaker but so unfun that noone plays her anymore. What a trade.
Honestly, you can ignore this community when they are talking about something that was not tested before.
They are all crying.
Some examples? Sure.
Spirit Nerf-->People crying. Turns out: Spirit is still more than solid, even tho her biggest problem was not changed at all (no telltale when using the Power). Nerf of Bullshit Add Ons, making it a little bit more skillful to play. Currently not really played because of Soundbugs. But turned out fine.
Freddy Rework-->People crying. No reason to be awake. Freddy will still be a very weak Killer. Turns out: He is one of the best Killers, and nobody can say that he is not a solid Killer.
Rift/Archives-->Too grindy, nobody will be able to complete the challenges or the Rift. Reality: All Tomes got done by people in two days each (not everyone, sure, but also not a small amount), people have the Rift completed and are now wondering what to do with the Tome Challenges.
This community will cry when they hear something will be changed. Devs should not give a ######### about that, at least not at first. LIke, people do not test something, when they have tested it, their feedback is way more valuable. You cannot just say that something is bad when it is not even introduced. You can say that something is bad, when it was implemented for a long(er) period of time, because then you have actual evidence about what you are talking about.
Bvhr could take everyones input and fully destroy the game. You think something is a great idea and balanced perfectly until you push that slider and wham everything goes over board. How do you know they're not sitting there playing with those sliders non stop trying to make you happy? If they need to do anything it needs to be an opinion button with credit card processing. That'll keep em a little less hateful and in everyone's face.
I never said it was. If you look at my post I stated I didn't think it was a needed change.
That's not up to you nor I though as how we perceive something isn't the reality of things its just our opinion based off of personal experience.
She always had the lowest number of players but yes it has dropped off more.
That itself doesn't necessarily reflect the change is less fun for the majority just the vocal minority on here but instead that they can now win easier with other killers. Players tend to move to whom they can win with its always been the way.