A response to The problems with DBD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xe6Enj-FoU&t
This opinion is growing to become more popular on DBD and I think its important we address the problems with the arguments in his video. He is describing DBD as a casual game that has no competitive elements because RNG is a thing. which is fking hilarious considering hearthstone is a competitive game with massive cash prizes and has players use rng to find an out. He sums up totem spawns as simply bad RNG which is pathetic because in the words of monto my nephew could do better. He undersells perks like ds claiming it doesn't happen too often its not a big deal. Funny how his RNG worked out huh XD. He claims marths de-pip squad is an oddity and claims no group would play like that. Which is frankly untrue. He tries to explain that dropping the chase is a solution to a survivor exploiting a ridiculous loop and tells killers to target the weakest player that may not exist. Unaware that survivors who know what their doing will conserve their exhaustion perk to get to these broken heavily loopable locations.
As for the depip squad let me be clear what marth's team was doing was exploiting a glaring flaw in DBD's game design the gen rushing method. This problem is not easily fixed it requires a more nuanced approach to fixing this vulnerability in what in essence is bad game design. Survivor's have one objective get gens nothing else apart from ruin and maybe another totem. These gens are designed in a manner that is horrendously simple to complete and asks survivors to time a predictable skill check. No other objectives matter no parts for the door or banishment of entity's presence. Say what you will about Friday the 13th but its idea of gathering materials to escape the clutches of the killers was much more clever. The way it handled communication linking it to a radio is clever and brilliant.
His statement on asymetrical games is assuming that no other game genre struggled with balance despite the fact that games like dbd have only been established a couple of years ago even fighting games had serious imbalance issues when starting out. In the end i respect this persons opinion but ask the community "do you believe a game like DBD can never be balanced?"
Comments
Assymetrical game have to be unbalanced in favor of the power role ( the killer in our case). That is an inequivocal truth.
It wont be balanced for 2 live 2 die. It should be for 3 die 1 lives though /or towoards high level players.
And no offense to the guy but he only plays huntress( from what i saw) and self entitles himself as the best huntress of dbd. He should play other killers too( and not just billy or nurse too). And i dont like the guy too. And his advice is stuff that does not work versus the truly best survivors of the game either.
The "survivor mains" cry louder with numbers "the killer mains" cry better with logic and facts(most of the time).
I didn't say that most of the time the killer mains points weren't valid. Just being realistic. If the majority of your player base is survivors then you'll tend to make survivor friendly choices.
Survivors gen rush when killers camp or tunnel.
As killer the moment you hit someone, everyone else is on a gen. When you hook them they are still on gens, but looking to see what you are going to do. If you sit by the hook, they keep doing gens. If you go chase another one, now you have 1 in chase and 1 on a hook, with 2 on gens. When you hit that person, now 1 of the 2 on gens (or both) will go for the save. If you chase an obsession other survivors now see this and treat it as a hit. You have to leave the hook to get others to waste time saving/healing.
If you come back to the hook and chase the guy that was just on the hook, now other survivors know you tunnel too, so they also won't make saves. They will let the guy sit on the hook and do gens. Put on MYC though, and now when you come back to the hook you go for the other guy. Now they know you have MYC and won't tunnel, they will still make saves but then the MYC guy will either take the chance you don't come back or play immersed for a while until Exposed wears off. Both are good for you, the former let's you get a one hit on someone and the latter slows the game.
I just had a game as Freddy with MYC, Ruin, Clouro, Nurse's, Class Photo, and Z Block. This build is devasting because you don't chase people until you get a bunch asleep. Then you hit someone, then go after another one that's asleep. If you can hit 2 of them and go for the third guy, that is a HUGE time sink right there. At most 1 is on a gen, 2 have to wake THEN heal, and 1 is hooked. I bodied 4 teams in a row, would have been 5 but this last game I made a huge mistake and it cost me the game. It was on Resting Place, I spawn ON my totem (in a great spot), with shack, hill, 3 gens I can protect with a 4th just at the start of the middle section, AND both doors. I saw this and was like I can win this, and I would have had I not walked away from a gen on my side at a critical moment and let them split the map (2 were on the gen and I slept them, they tricked me to make me think they ran to another gen on that side that was barely running so I ran over and kicked it quick and they were both back on the other and finished it in DW, it was a lot closer than I thought). I had full control over them, I had a hook on everyone by this point, but then I messed up and they took advantage of it.
Most killers can't admit this though. They blame the game saying it's unfair. Well it's unfair when you can't escape a perfect killer. This is why people hate Nurse, because if she plays perfect there is no way to escape her. Killers love that, but it's really bad design when you consider that the game should really be up to the survivors if they escape. If they make mistakes against a perfect killer they get punished for it. If they don't they escape. But if the survivor plays perfect and still gets caught, that makes the game really lame after a while. If you just die all the time.
The best games I've played, as killer or survivor (dead or alive) have been long 2k games against killers that don't camp or tunnel/survivors that gen rush but will punish mistakes you make. Like recently with my NM-BT I yolo'ed saved someone that was being camped and the killer smacked him to give him BT, then came for me. After the game I said GG as usually, and he said something to the extent of "GG good you had borrowed time because I punish people that make unsafe hooks". I didn't reply, but it's like dude, if you never leave then it's never a safe hook. Survivors will go for a safe hook. They will ignore an unsafe hook and rush gens, which is why the guy got gen rushed. My team saw the BT guy take the hit first and knew the killer was camping AND tunneling. I was the only one to die but I was running NM and when I use that I play to die so w/e.
I really REALLY think killers need to play more survivor SOLO AT HIGH RANKS. Killers always say survivor is easy, but if you know how to mess up survivors as killer you can make the game a LOT harder for them. Smart killers come into the game with a good build and a good plan, and punish mistakes but also know to give survivors some chances, because when you do then they take more risks and waste time. If you make it look like you will give survivors no chance to escape, they play REALLY HARD to escape. If you make it look like they might escape then they pace themselves and take risks. This is why I always say good killers and bad killers, because bad killers don't try to mind game survivors at all they just do the same thing over and over. Then get mad when they get beat by survivors that know exactly what they are doing. Part of being killer is not showing your hand and letting survivors figure out what you are up to. If they see Ruin and here chainsaw, they KNOW you will have BBQ and will dodge it or bait you to chase them. It's obvious. Survs have told me Clouro is scary on Freddy, because it makes his lullaby basically DW, and if you are inside his TR there simply is no healing (it's 100%, SC would take 48 seconds). That icon on their screen scares them to make mistakes.
Killers need to accept that, due to RNG and chance of survivor mistake, that they might not kill anyone in a trial. They might also easily kill everyone for the same reasons. And survivors need to accept that they will die sometimes and escape others. It comes down to the mistakes you make, how good the killer's build/plan is, and how many mistakes the killer makes. If it's a strong build and a perfect killer, you really can't make any mistakes or you die. If everyone in the game plays perfect, then it should be 2-2 which IS BALANCE. That's a fair game, and if it's a long and fair game then EVERYONE wins, killer and survivors. This is why I run NM, if I can do 2 gens, get 2 saves, and escape 1 good chase I pip every time. The killer can kill me IDC, and if they don't catch anyone all game AND PLAYED FAIR I let them kill me, because it's being fair to the killer. I know normal survivors don't ever do that, but killers/survivors that understand the outcome of the some games are beyond their control won't play like jerks with other players so long as they can just pip.
@Hillbilly420 Adding more objectives isn't the right choice. When killers have a good build with good RNG, those extra objectives can be really unfair to survivors. I think that there needs to be more ways to force saves and rescues.
Like, if the killer gets a hook on someone maybe that should lock gen progress for something like 10 seconds or until they make a rescue. Then killer would stay by the hook for a short time to make sure no one saves right away, and survivors would be forced off gens if even a little bit forcing them to rescue, get into a chase, or hide.
I never said you didn't suggest other stuff. I'm saying that secondary objectives is not a solution. Buff perks, mess with numbers, but no more objectives. It should be gens, heals and saves as the objectives unless killer uses a totem in which case it's also a totem. I will say totems need something to make them more of a priority.
I was thinking it would be better if the totem applies to every totem, and the killer would need to keep 3/2/1 totems up to keep it proc'ed (number of totems needed depends on tier, the effects should just be flat across the tiers eg. NOED just puts Exposed on everyone, Devour just let's you mori after you 1 hook everyone, etc.). So when you have Ruin or any totem it can't just go down right away. If killer has an ACTIVE totem (which Ruin shouldn't be active until first skill check, Third Seal before first hit, etc.) they will all be lit, so as a group of totems they are easily to find but then totems overall are harder to just body at the start of the game. Then make TOTH a perk that isn't a totem but just meant to protect totem perks (with aura reading), give survivors the explosion when any Hex totem goes down and killer the explosion when the last totem goes down (with aura on last totem), and that would make totems that secondary objective like everyone wants. And if they do this they can add special effects if you have 5 totems, so then maybe Ruin with 5 totems has no great skill checks, so they have to do AT LEAST 1 to start doing gens, then work on the next 4 over time.
I would also say that if you cleanse a dull totem it should give you a notification of NOED, so survivors will want to at least do 1 totem themselves to check. That slows them down a little even if you don't use a totem, and if you have NOED they will spend all game looking for totems. Obviously this makes NOED less of a surprise tactic but I think it's main goal is to just scare survivors to slow down, and punish the ones that rush. It sucks as a solo survivor to be the first one hit with NOED, but if you know it's coming that's different. If I'm solo I'll try to do totems but if the Hex icon is still on my screen when the gens pop I will know to expect a NOED. I'm rewarded for doing something other than gens but if the killer is chasing me and hits me I still go down. Alternatively I know killers hate when their totems are shown to survivors, so maybe if you clean any dull totem and the killer has totem you get the Hex icon but nothing else. If you want to find out what it is you have to play through the trial. Then killers can use other totems beside Ruin, like Third Seal which has potential to slow the game because it makes it harder to do saves if you weren't paying attention to the hook (and beats all aura reading) but is awful simply because it gets bodied long before you can even get it going. Do this and killers can use a totem, just 1 totem, to slow the game and won't have to worry about losing it right away.
The nurse is the best example of a proactive killer she can blink in and out of positions forcing survivors to play less around pallets the doctors stun would count too if it wasn't so damn buggy or as I said before pallets were more mindgameable. The pigs dash could be that too but it's heavily reliant on you having certain add ons. Once they run out you have to go back to basic killer pallet mechanics praying survivours mess up.
Not only that but the devs are too slow on correcting killer issues. May I bring up the classic Freddy problem. Self care hard counters him and considering every survivours build runs this perk it's frankly unacceptable. Meanwhile they release a killer with a mandatory perk oh I don't know bamboozle to cover up their ######### map design then ds this perks has been left untouched despite the ridiculous advantage it provides survivours.
This is not even incompetence this is negligence. This person's opinion doesn't Stoke proactive changes it just apologises for terrible map and perk designs. His attitude to keeping it casual and claiming that optimum killers can never compete against optimum survivours is bang out of order and negatively impacts current and future killer kit designs.
Killers like the clown are a step in the right direction someone who can force survivours into poor positions and rewards good aim and solid map knowledge its only a matter of going over older weaker killers and bringing them up to a decent standards moba's do this all the time uprooting a characters kit and giving them a fresh similar kit with greater depth and nuance. Whats stopping DBD?