The Rank 20 Experience [RAISING AWARENESS ON A MUCH NEEDED TOPIC]
Warning long post, no TL;DR if you can't be bothered to read the whole thing, don't bother to comment. Thank you.
First the obligatory...
I'm a rank 1 survivor and killer. I have been playing rank 1 on both sides for well over a year at this point (my earliest Xbox clip on my profile showing rank 1 for survivor is 7/2019 and for killer is 9/2019 but I have private clips that date maybe 6 months sooner). I've been playing the game since it came out on Xbox and I'm currently hovering around 3k hours between 3 accounts (main, alternate, and smurf). My alternate account is to practice with killers like Nurse and Huntress, and while I have gotten to rank 1 for both sides on this account I try to keep them around green/high purple ranks for chill games (ie. I don't bully anyone but I don't necessarily give freebies either). My smurf is a full on new rank 20 account that I got to play with the handful of friends I have that DO NOT play this game regularly, but I don't bully anyone. As killer I let everyone go and just play for BP and to be spooky or silly, and as survivor I avoid "gen rushing" the killer or doing anything that might make them have a bad time aside from making them chase me a good amount (ie. I will run until like 2 gens pop then let them catch me and do whatever). I'll even let them kill me after my REAL rank 20 friends have escaped!
Here is how things generally go down:
SURVIVOR
So today I hoped onto my smurf with another friend that is rank 1 and normally in my SWF group and a person who bought the game when it came out but barely has 50 hours and hasn't touch the game in over a year. We played maybe 8 games together. Three games in a row were basically this...
MP4 File
Yep, pure, unadulterated, unprovoked face camping. Now as someone with a lot of experience in the game this doesn't actually bother me. I don't care, especially on a smurf account where I was probably going to let the killer kill me anyway.
HOWEVER
I seriously pity any player that is ACTUALLY a rank 20 that has to deal with this. It is completely unfair. "Oh but they just need to GIT GUD Fox!" Yea, to some extent I agree with this. But the problem is... they will stop playing the game LONG before that happens as they lack both the tools and the skills/experience necessary to deal with it. It will take MANY MANY MANY MANY games of this before they are capable enough to punish it.
Like for the Bubba player maybe he's not very good. Maybe he's not too bright. Maybe he had some bad games and is venting. IDK, but it doesn't matter. To him, eventually this will stop working and he will start getting punished for it. On his end, the experience is different, he learns this tactic is not viable against better players.
In this game my other rank 1 friend got caught first. She was meme-ing a bit too hard and probably wasn't expecting a face camp. She just wanted to do something silly. Yes, her mistake. I made a play, as a level 6 Dwight with only Kindred 1 and Bond 1, and managed to save her off the hook. I baited him to chainsaw, then he hit the hook and went into tantrum. I mistimed the unhook by about a second and he managed to hit me with the next chainsaw. I did it in an attempt to punish him and maybe get him to see his tactic isn't a good one. I messed up. She messed up. None of that I care about. He proceeded to hook me, and I told the two of them to ignore saving me and do gens to punish the guy. The actual rank 20 did, my friend tried to make some baits but once I got to second stage she started to do gens too. The random was doing a gen but very slowly (probably because they would hide every time they failed a skill check, ie. another ACTUAL rank 20 player). They did 2 gens, I died, then my friend that was the ACTUAL rank 20 go caught, and that's where the video begins. The Laurie is my rank 1 friend, and the Claud is the random. They did 3 gens and guess what! The killer had NOED. Not a problem, my friend found and destroyed the totem before it was a problem. She got caught on the door and probably would have escaped if the random was brave enough to just do the door faster, but alas she was not. She took a long time to get the door open, at which point my friend had used half the pallets on the map and got herself caught JUST after the random opened the door. Again not a big deal, we are used to this.
My problem though, is that... this is totally a buzz kill for new players. Like imagine being my rank 20 friend. If he were playing solo he would have likely gone for the rescue. I had to explain to him WHY he should just do gens and literally tell him "just leave me on the hook, don't even try". He has no idea what he is doing. In a solo experience (or even an SWF experience with other legit rank 20's) he would have gone for the save and died. This would lead to EVERYONE dying because 2 survivors cannot finish 4 gens, and then deal with NOED. Rank 1's could, but they are not rank 1's. They are rank 20's. They are lucky if they even SEE a totem all game, let alone the lit NOED at the end of the game. For these players, the initiation ritual into DBD is absolutely brutal.
If you got this far bravo, but there is more...
I want to make this clear. I AM NOT COMPLAINING ABOUT FACE CAMPERS. Not even close. I know how to deal with them, and honestly at red or even purple ranks it's almost a non-issue. Majority of the time other survivors are good enough to punish it, and therefore it gets punished, and therefore not many killers do it unless they are seriously tilted.
We had 3 games like this. The rest were pretty standard affair, and again if the killer didn't catch us we let them kill us once the gates were opened. One killer we even farmed with at 1 gen left when it looked like he just gave up. We are not bullies, we smurf because it's just completely unfair for our actual rank 20 friend to play red rank killers (heck even green rank killers).
What I AM trying to do here is point out the NEW SURVIVOR EXPERIENCE. Stuff like this is why the devs are changing Ruin. Stuff like this is why survivors appear to get a lot of hand outs from the devs (though I disagree they actually do this but I digress). It's because when you are the new blood THIS GAME IS HARD FOR SURVIVORS.
The game doesn't need to be made easier for survivors, but the devs need to do a MUCH BETTER JOB of encouraging survivors to take some risks AND discouraging killers (at least at low ranks) from using seriously cheesey tactics.
Now onwards...
KILLER
Unlike survivor, being a rank 1 killer among babies there is not much survivors can do to bully me. In fact I bully them. Not on purpose, I actively try to avoid it. But just the mere ACT of being NEAR A RANK 20 SURVIVOR, I feel like I'm bullying them. It is literally like having a full grown man go on a killing spree inside a hosptial nursery (PLEASE DEVS DON'T BAN ME I'M JUST MAKING A POINT HERE!!! I LOVE BABIES!!! SEE 😘👶). Really it's not contest. I could win the game in less than 2 minutes with any killer perkless, 5 gens, no need to even slug.
Here's what usually happens.
I walk around, see a survivor or maybe a few survivors in a group. THEY RARELY IF EVER SEE ME! At least not until I am within a good 16m of them. I'll walk up and chase one, even when I could EASILY have landed a hit. Maybe I'll smack them, kick the gen and flat out walk away. If the gen was at 50%, I could come back in 2 minutes and it will be at ZERO. Yep, even though I didn't even care to watch the gen OR chase the survivor they were so scared they just flat out left it to regress completely.
I'll eventually get a hit on everyone. Now I really feel like a meany. So I down a guy. Look around and I don't see any survivors so I leave them for now. Usually someone will get them, but it takes a while for them to get up. They bleed out for a good minute before someone saves them.
IF AND ONLY IF I see another survivor nearby will I take a hook, AND ONLY ONE HOOK FOR BP. I will straight up leave the hook and run to the other side of the map. Legit following rule 72-85B section 9.1 of the SURVIVOR RULEBOOK. Sometimes the guy gets saved. Other times... they don't.
Then I feel really bad. Usually as long as I make it obvious that I'm letting the guy get saved (as in I see the other survivor, sometimes even NOD at him like "yes I see you", and leave) then they get the save. A few times they didn't and that was upsetting to me. Again I don't want to bully. Most times it's because the player struggles on their first hook, not realizing this is a BAD THING. I blame the devs, YES YOU BHVR, for this. It's your fault these survivors die because it's not made clear AT ALL that you should NEVER struggle in first phase unless there is no other option (or you have Deliverance/Luck).
Ok, so I get a few hooks, a few survivors have died because reasons even though I was never intending to kill them. I message the survivors that die and tell them I wanted them to get saved and I would let them go and that I hope I didn't ruin their experience. So far all of them have been cool about it, one guy died because he struggled and the game lagged so he immediately died on phase 2.
All the other ones get some spooks and I hit them. If I got a hook or am not sure if someone will save (either from dying or the hook) I pick them up and carry them around until they break free. Usually by the end the survivors realize I'm not going to kill them. Well except this one Kate. I was Wraith, did spooky things, smacked them around a bit. When they finished the last gen I opened the door. Three ran out, I was apparently between Kate and door and she panicked and ran BACK into the map with EGC countdown active. I actually had to chase the B-word, down her, and carry her to the exit to make sure she got out. Poor thing almost died to EGC. Afterward she messaged me "were you letting me go??" Yes sweetheart. I was letting you go. I was gonna let you just run past me as I rang my bell but she was too scared. I explained to her that if you are that close to the door and healthy, and the killer doesn't have something to down you in 1 hit, that you should just run out the door. She thanked me for the advice.
So for killer the experience is way way different. I know new killers won't be as nice as me, but they also aren't going to be as good as me either. They will lose survivors easily. They won't know what every perk does. They won't always be aware of what to do next. In some ways it's fair. Mind you... no perks no add-ons, I played SUPER nice, in pretty much every game I get gold or iri Gatekeeper just because the survivors are so incredibly slow on gens. To the point I eventually max my BP and them I'm like "I wish I could do this gen for you guys and end the game sooner, I'm hungry."
For killer the game doesn't really become difficult until about green ranks when you get survivors that know how to play. And I get killer players are frustrated with the state of the game at higher ranks, I don't blame them. But remember what it was like starting at rank 20. REMEMBER that it wasn't easy for those survivors to get to where they are now, especially if they didn't have a high rank friend to help them along.
I want the game to be better for everyone. This thread was made to bring attention to what it's like to be a new player in DBD. It is way WAY different than being a high rank.
Keep all this in mind when you try to talk down to someone just because they are new to the game. We all had to start somewhere.
If you got this far thank you for reading. Here is a cookie. 🍪
Comments
I agree with what you said.
Being a decent killer and playing agaisn't baby suvs (low ranks) feels like I'm torturing them, so most of the times I'll just start farming and playing around if I notice they're babies.
However, I also believe that balancing the game around newbies is not really good because on red ranks, if all 4 suvs are GOOD, they will torture the killer instead, and the killer will ONLY capitalize on survivor errors, if they're perfect , then oh well.
I have no idea honestly how they could even balance the game for low ranks AND red ranks, because its clear that if they buff killers thinking about red ranks survivors, the low ranks survivors will suffer, and if they balance it around low ranks, high rank killers will suffer.
Maybe change % speed of "stuff" across different ranks? Faster gens, slower killers on green, yellow/gray ranks.
Slower gens, faster killers on red ranks? I don't know either, DbD is hard to balance and takes bigger brains.
At high ranks, ruin is already useless, I see it as extra points if I happen to stumble upon the lit totem.
At low ranks, survivors literally won't touch gens while ruin is up.
At high ranks, killers won't run ruin anymore, so many of them will HAVE TO "git gudder" and if they can't, they'll also quit or switch sides, thus making queues longer.
Again, I don't know how to balance it for EVERYONE , but I guess no one really does.
I blame match making and rank reset. a rank 2 among a group of rank 12-20 shouldn't put them against a rank 1 killer, it should go back to scaling, maybe a bit higher like they'd be matched with purples or greens and change rank reset back to what it was, red ranks are really starting to feel watered down and will make red ranks stats worse than they were.
It's not so much about balance, it's more about teaching the players what they should do. Killer is very straight forward and the tutorial does everything to explain what you should do. The devs just need to implement something to encourage them to NOT face camp or tunnel as much, because it is a very easy thing to do that works amazing for low ranks but is punished hard by high ranks. Like you eventually learn as killer it's a bad idea to do this stuff, but it doesn't happen until you start getting those better survivors. There just needs to be something to say "hey, yea sure you can do this, but if you DO NOT do this and chase another survivor you get this piece of candy". What that ends up being I can't answer.
As for survivors though, the tutorial honestly does a piss poor job of explaining the game to them such that they understand that it's better to take risks and die, than to take no risks and live a bit longer but then still die because nothing got done. I get it's tough to make a tutorial, especially for this kind of game, but they really need to emphasize the point that "hey you will die a lot, but if you take some risks they can pay off!" Again IDK what this would mean. It's just, for new survivors you have to kind of prod them to take action, and show them that NOT doing something is far far worse than doing something wrong.
MM needs a fix, but it's not even that.
This Bubba was a rank 16. He ended up depipping to 17 because he got 3 kills, 4 hooks (ie. silver Devout at best), 0 Chaser due to camping, almost 0 Malicious due to not hurting/hooking enough survivors, and no better than silver Gatekeeper because we did the gens pretty quick (all 5 in about 6 minutes? not sure) AND he never bothered to protect them or kick them for more GK. That's only 4 or 5 emblem points when you need 6 to safety pip at this rank.
So this guy, a legit brown rank killer, is being put against legit brown ranks and doing this and getting rewarded for it. Yes, it's the survivors' faults but they don't know what to do and even if they did they lack the tools to do it. I only managed to make a save by baiting a chainsaw. I had not BT and no Deliverance. I knew I was likely dead if I messed up (which I did, it's not easy to do that and both get away). I'm willing to bet that was the FIRST time someone did that to him and it worked. He also had NOED as insurance, and against legit rank 20's they would all be dead even if they rushed gens on the first hook, because a rank 20 rushing a gen is like a rank 1 taking a nap. He would have easily been able to camp 2 to death before getting NOED and getting potentially the last 2 that would have no idea where the totem was unless they got lucky (and even then I doubt they would be brave enough to cleanse it once they saw the notification).
In this case MM works as intended, it's more that the survivors are vastly under-prepared for this situation. Which goes back to my point in my previous comment that the devs need to discourage killers from playing this way and encourage survivors to take more risks (though in this case the risk is just sitting on a gen until it's done and not stopping for any reason).
You said he depipped and camped so he probably didn't get many bloodpoints since he didn't do much and he got 3 kills it seems like he didn't get much out of it than the smug satisfaction of killing 3 people who probably pipped or black pipped at best. It doesn't really sound like that player got rewarded, don't know how he get those 3 kills unless they were trying to save but you said the gens got done in 6 mins so it sounds like someone was playing into his camp which is fine cause new players are gonna know next time not to do that against a camping killer.
Well he only depipped because we did what we were SUPPOSED to do. But I doubt he's ever had that happen. Chances are most games reward him with a lot of BP, pips, and a 4k.
For him he might realize his tactic is not as viable as he thought. For actual rank 20's though, they have to struggle through multiple games like this before they realize what they should and shouldn't do. If that threshold is too high, they just stop playing altogether, which is the problem.
The game shouldn't encourage killers to do this things because it pushes new players away. Then as this killer ranks up he faces tougher and tougher players, eventually maybe coming to a similar conclusion from a killer perspective.
Either way we are losing players.
Again I'm not saying he SHOULD NOT be doing this. He can if he wants. I'm saying he needs to be discouraged from doing it sooner rather than later, as sooner means less survivors quitting AND helping the killer improve themselves for when they face more competent opponents. Otherwise he hits a brick wall of frustration when it just stops working one day and now he is at a point where he has to struggle to learn the game to catch up.
Alternatively, maybe encourage him to leave his comfort zone in the sooner phase so he doesn't feel overwhelmed later and gets a more rewarding experience while providing a better experience for his opponents.
Just let the killer know facecamping is a losing strategy
The game doesn't help teach killers how to play. It throws them into the deep end against four survivors and is like, "Here, your objective is to kill them." Okay... any help with strategies? No? Well, the most intuitive thing to do is grab one survivor, make sure they die, and then move on to the next one.
The game has no structure and no helpful tutorial, so there's nothing to guide killers to play in an optimal manner and/or play in a way that's fun for survivors.
This lack of any guidance for new players negatively impacts everyone.
Very few killers face camp like that. It is a tremendous waste of time, and just an asinine thing to do. It's not the typical rank 20 experience.
Many killers are very cool to new players. I remember in one of my first games, I was working on a gen. I often failed skill checks and i was extremely nervous...and knew almost nothing about the different killers. I also didn't know you could move the camera to look around, and the skill check would stay in the middle of the screen. I thought you had to look right at the gen.
After a bit, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a player crouching next to me. Not on the gen, but to my side. I thought they might be doing something, so I just kept working on the gen. However, when they didn't move, I turned to look and it was Pig, just sitting there next to me. I jumped up and ran, and they didn't even chase me. I'm sure that they were laughing their ass off, but I thought it was pretty cool of them. I've also had killers carry me to the hatch or gate and let me crawl out.
The killer was rank 16, so not a new player, and may have been higher before a rank reset. So not really a level 20. And keep in mind that killers rank up slower, so he may have had more play time than his rank showed.
I mention this because you dismiss a similar problem for new killers. A rank 20 killer getting infinitely looped, pallet stunned, and blinded with flashlights is an equally bad new player experience. In fact, I think it's actually worse for killers. A lot of survivors are happy getting their altruism points for rescues, even if they are bad ones, and even if they get downed and hooked. Once they are killed they move on to the next game. The killer is in till the end, has a bad experience, all the survivors get away, and then tell the killer how much he/she sucked in the end game chat. Now that is a bad experience. My new killer experience was far worse than my new survivor experience, by far.
That said, I think that kind of face camping is bullshit. I also think that survivors on the hook, and those that get killed via mori should get a decent amount of xp. Especially those that stay on the hook for a long period of time. The longer they hold on, the more xp they get. It might encourage fewer suicides or DC's, and less frustration overall.
I have no idea how they could discourage the killers from doing that without negatively impacting those that stay in the area because other survivors are already there trying to get the rescue. Ultimately, that person would get far less XP if the other survivors worked on the gens and escaped while he was camping one survivor on the hook. The worst thing the survivor on the hook can do is reward him by suiciding on the hook. I run Kindred and will stay on the hook till the very end, just to spite the killer, while the others work on gens. I'm ok with that, but wouldn't mind some extra XP for doing so. :) Eventually any killer that does that will realize that it isn't worth it.
It happened 3 games in a row out of maybe 8 total. I'd say it's a pretty common thing.
"A rank 20 killer getting infinitely looped, pallet stunned, and blinded with flashlights is an equally bad new player experience."
This isn't going to happen if the survivors are legit rank 20's though. This only happens if people smurf like us but are toxic, or if MM screws them over which is a different issue altogether.
Also it's WAY easier to rank up fast as killer at low ranks. For survivor you basically have to do everything by yourself. You're not going to double pip if everyone does a gen. If the killer camps or tunnels you are likely not going to pip. If you get camped or tunneled you are DEFINITELY not going to pip. As killer I basically go out of my way to NOT TRY and still pip quite easily. If I actually went and killed everyone I could double pip pretty much every game up to maybe rank 10 when I start to get good survivors.
The Bubba had BBQ 1 or 2, and NOED 1. That was it. He was indeed a new player.
Killer's objective is pretty simple. "Catch and hook survivors". They don't get punished for other players mistakes, in fact they get REWARDED. And rank 20's make a lot of mistakes. Like, all they do is make mistakes. You might as well just have the Entity take all 4 at the start of the game if they are legit rank 20's.
"This lack of any guidance for new players negatively impacts everyone."
This is true, however it is disproportionate. New survivors get bodied for a while until they learn the game. New killers don't start getting bodied until they meet these level survivors. It sucks for both sides, but it especially sucks for survivors because they are more likely to quit before even trying to make it that far. And then killers get an over-inflated sense of skill due to crushing babies for so long that they get mad when they meet players that understand the game better than them.
The game would be better if BOTH sides started off equally and grew equally. This is currently not the case.
The problem is twofold, A) ranking is absolutely terrible and completely unintuitive right now, and will actually punish you for playing at your most efficient. B) This problem goes both ways, I came back fairly recently after a lengthy hiatus, and was going against greens and purples at rank 17, no real way to fix this other than a matchmaking overhaul
Supposedly ruin was nerfed to help rank 20's however matchmaking is the biggest issue rank 20's face.
Again this is a separate issue. The MM currently hurts everyone, high ranks included.
This thread is SPECIFICALLY about new players against new players. When the MM works properly, there are still issues that need to be addressed in order to prevent players from just walking away after a series of early bad experiences.
I wasn't talking about easiness or difficulty; I was saying that, because the game doesn't provide guidance for new killers, they're often going to play in a way that sucks for survivors because they're going to try to complete their objective ("kill") in the most intuitive manner, i.e. tunneling and camping. Pressuring gens isn't intuitive. So, survivors in the low ranks have a bad time because the killers don't play in a manner that's fun for them. When those same killers rank up, they stop having fun because their strategy of camping and tunneling is easily countered by survivors who know to pump out gens.
It wasn't about how easy or difficult the roles may be, just how the lack of guidance leads to a killer playstyle that negatively affects the players on both sides.
There's zero way to actually alleviate this because of the game's core design, if objectives are more straightforward and intuitive, then the issue would be solved, instead it's ambiguous, so a lot of new killers camp because they presume the current objective is to kill rather than be a punching fun bag for survivors in later ranks.
Killers can level up faster, but are much slower at ranking up. Again, he was not a level 20, he was 16, and that could have been after a reset. And, yes, matchmaking makes it much worse.
Survivors don't just get points for gens, they also get it for hooks saves, healing, and so forth. Even if they don't double pip, they will likely get at least one pip per game. Killers have a much harder time getting pips. There will be a lot of no pip games early on.
More importantly, new survivors are not ridiculed for playing poorly. When they die, there is no one else there. They leave and move on to the next game. Not so for the killers, who get mocked by the survivors that escaped.
The perk that anyone runs is not an indicator of their rank. I have seen lower rank players running with one, or no perks....or he may have just started playing that specific killer and didn't have the slots or perks to use yet.
There are certainly rank 16 and up survivors that loop, blind, and stun, with the best of them. I don't think it matters one bit if someone is a "legit" rank, or not. Their rank is their rank, as far as the game goes, and it makes for a bad experience for new players. Does it really matter how they got that rank? It certainly doesn't matter to the new player.
I already acknowledged that that type of face camping was bullshit, and I certainly didn't say that there wasn't bad experiences for survivors. Why do you only care about the new survivor experience and not the new killer experience? I'm not the rank 1 survivor and killer that you are, which is why you don't see me telling people how the red rank experience is. I have experienced both of the "new" experiences fairly recently, so I think I am a little closer to the true, current new player experience than you are.
Maybe the game needs to do a better job of explaining things but when you look at early early dbd it was much the same killers camped and survivors would hide and not do objectives. Makes me wonder how we stuck around in the first place. It's probably because it had no meta until survivors found out about looping and then word of mouth reached everyone but now it's more sectioned off between old players and new players. New survivors probably think they have to interact with the killer when really the killer is just there to stop them from doing the objective that is not related in anyway to the killer.