New game philosophy has me playing survivor a lot less.
I play both sides pretty frequently mostly leaning towards killer and although killer certainly has its frustrating moments (using current DS as an offensive tool/god windows still existing) I've been noticing a trend with how games play out in the past month.
On Hawkins every pallet is insanely killer-sided, if you dare load in to a game with a clown or snare freddy you may as well just walk into him and die. You won't be able to do anything interesting against any killer unless they are bad enough to break pallets on this map. It's not even fun when I play killer and stomp on it.
Sanctum of Wrath middle building is not only unsafe but NOTHING spawns near it for survivors. If you run here while injured and the killer isn't completely new you will die no matter what you do. The missing railing on the entrance stairs make the vaults on top useless. Both sides of the hourglass tend to have 3 very spread out pallets on each side (this includes shack) and one of them is almost always that awful Yamaoka structure that is easy for a killer to just hold W and bloodlust on or a 4 lane. I've played this map 12 times total as both sides and haven't seen a single gate get opened. Its small enough that killers without map control have a fighting chance against any kind of team, but that also makes Freddy and Billy a nightmare to deal with.
Dedicated servers have pretty much turned vaults and close pallet stuns into a gamble and I think I know why. I have the best possible residential internet you could ask for in Austin, Texas and I've hit survivors consistently through windows that look totally fine on my side, then right as they hit the ground they teleport 3 feet away from the window. It's become clear that to make the game feel like it did before for killers they receive extra latency compensation to make up for the extra distance of having to confirm with the game state on the dedicated server, rather than the survivor themselves. This is probably the most frustrating thing to deal with as survivor right now and EVERYONE has noticed it.
Huntress is a mess, once again, every other video game I play my internet is nigh-perfect but I consistently see hatchets explode in the air when I miss and still injure/down survivors. I've also seen hatchets go into a survivor, show a blood effect, and do no damage. Huntress has always had edge cases with her hitboxes but dedicated servers made them happen EVERY GAME YOU PLAY AS/AGAINST HER.
Dedicated servers was yet another buff for killers and it doesn't even work in their favor every time. Due to the new movement survivors have from the killer's PoV: I've gone for up close hits against a survivor and my camera will stop turning completely while they try to spin me/move around corners regardless of how much I move my mouse. It seems like my client knows I got a hit so it starts the end of the weapon hit animation, snaps my camera at them and takes away my input (auto-aim) but the server tells me they've moved from that position already so it whiffs. This doesn't happen too often but I've seen it from my side and several times on killer streams I watch a lot.
I refuse to comment on the Ruin change until I see how it works in-game, but it seems like killers with good map control like Billy are going to be unstoppable while killers without it are going to receive a hefty nerf on bigger maps.
The whole point of a PvP game is to feel a struggle between 2 sides and the struggle is either gone completely with newer maps or is a gamble with dedicated server netcode. I'd much rather go back to P2P and maybe get lagswitched 1 out of every 500 games I play than deal with this. Behaviour also needs to either hire a new map design team or the current one needs to actually see how their game is played at average-high levels because the game legit gets worse with every DLC they've added minus Clown.
Comments
Hawkins: This is fair enough. Hawkins is one of the best killer maps, for stealth killers especially.
Sanctum of Wrath: It is a rather large map and incredibly dark. Instead of going with looping, why not try and hide more often? The logs, bamboo, and foliage is more than enough for any killer to lose track of you. Fair enough, the middle of the map is relatively unsafe, but the loops on the outer edge should buy you a good amount of time. It is still large enough that M1 killers like Clown will still struggle on it.
Dedicated Servers: Servers are a mess. Hits connecting when they should/shouldn't, vaults not going through, grabs turning into regular hits, blah blah blah. Servers are a mess for both sides.
Huntress: Again separate problems for both sides, and mostly a byproduct of servers. Her hitboxes have always been godawful, either clipping the tippy top of some debris and not doing anything, or somehow phasing through everything and hitting you when the hatchet looks like it's 20 feet away.
TLDR: Lot's of problems are from servers. Maps have their own problems.
I'm hoping they rework maps with pallet setups like bahdam