God forbid the game asks you to predict your opponent's actions
I find this a completely baffling thing in this community.
It's generally accepted in other videogames that the ability to anticipate your opponent's actions based on the character or faction they're playing, the specific context of the match or game and the specific player being played, is often a sign of a highly capable player who displays deep understanding of the game and it's players, to the point they can operate several plays ahead.
This seems to be true of DBD killers to an extend, because having the First Person FOV they inherently need to make plays predicting survivor's movements and actions.
This happens in some situations for survivors too for instance they have to predict if the Huntress is gonna wind up a hatchet at the pallet or keep walking. This is unreactable, if you wait and don't drop the pallet she keeps walking and smacks you, if you drop the pallet and she readied the hatched she smacks you. However it's a read that the Huntress needs to make as well.
However for the most part I see post after post of people, mainly survivors, but killers as well, wanting killer characters to be more like NPC bosses than actual players with tools to be deceptive and play upon their opponent's expectations.
"Deathslinger's ADS is too quick, Spirit gives you no info, Pyramid Head can m1 after m2 too quick... THERE'S NO COUNTER PLAY".... Never mind the fact that the player on the killer side needs to anticipate what survivors are going to do. Never mind the fact that survivors can anticipate what the killer is going to do and counter accordingly IF they understand how the killer is played and pay attention to stuff other than "boxes+pallet=circle around until press space". If you pay attention and know how the killer's power works, their timings, how far you are from the killer, what loops are safe or not against them, what info the killer needs, how the player is playing them, every single killer in this game has counters that you can use... Yes, some of them deviate from the norm and ask you to use that knowledge to predict your their actions. That's not lack of counter play, it's counter play that's harder to pull off which is exactly what makes stronger killers strong.
This is a bit of a rant, but i just find it hard to understand how this kind of predictive counter play is seen as high skill in other games but in DBD when a killer requires it from survivors, all of a sudden the character is too OP and needs a nerf because NO COUNTER PLAY...
More on the subjective side, I absolutely love going against Spirit, SPECIFICALLY because, if you consistently beat her at loops, you are 100% in this player's head. You know how're they're thinking and you know what they're trying to do and you're just messing with them. Same thing with Deathslinger or Pyramid Head... I can understand people may like a different kind of play style to this, but to actively suggest it's a sign of 0 counter play is a whole thing entirely.
Comments
Well I will leave you with this. Predropping pallets in uninteractive for both sides so I'll take your advice and go predrop pallets and see how much fun that is.
This post is really accurate. Its exactly the way I see the game. what people like LordGlint or DudeDelicious don't understand is that the game has certain time frame in which killer needs to win a bunch of chases, in my estimation, around 8 chases which is a lot of hits/health state loss. A lot of people don't understand this game has certain pacing to it, you need to win in around 6 minutes and that isn't a whole lot. It means that killers need to balanced around winning the game in 6 minutes. The survivor only needs to make a very small amount of correct reads to win the game.
A major reason to why deathslinger isn't a good killer is because he doesn't win the game in 6 minutes against good teams. In fact a major problem with him is that he doesn't really get rewarded for landing his first shot. There is more risk vs reward for missing his shot on healthy survivor than actually hitting it. I feel like a large reason to why this problem exists has to do with deep wound mechanic for survivor. Being Deep wound does not give any advantage to the killer and I think that is a kinda problem. When he does land his shot or he lands M1, you get massive sprint burst against deathslinger and it gives so much distance to the point that holding forward makes deathslinger lose and that doesn't feel good when the game mechanics compromise your ability to win as killer rather than skill of making reads. I think what would be good global change to deep wound is to make deep wound apply 5% hindered effect to give incentive for deathslinger to land shots on his gun and It would also help legion for what many people consider to be weak, a lot stronger in the chase.
I think a lot of people fail realize how powerful the entire looping mechanic is in this game and how overly aggressive you can be in the game as survivor and not really get punished for it. It is also impressive for how safe you can be/how little reads you need to make in the game to be effective at survivor and jungle gyms are just case in point in showing that. Most of the game can literally be played on just throwing pallets and running forward and if your team has good team chemistry on doing objective and healing, you'll win most of your games. I think the old conception of this game is that they wanted to make survivor indefinitely strong such that if the survivor was good enough that they could endless parry the killer but the killer would have tools to outplay the survivor. The issue being that most of the killers powers aren't reliable enough/exaggerated enough for that type of infinity reward system to put in place. The old system of map building and killer add-on creation vs new killer add-on/map building greatly converges on this problem. Old killers generally have good ultra-rare construction that gives killer a chance to reap infinity reward/power where as new killers have very bad ultra-rares, but the positive side is that maps are becoming weaker so it is reducing the survivor's skill expression and therefore the need for killer skill expression is needed less on their power. At this point, it becomes a question of whether less = more or more = less for little/more a killer power should influence the game. All I have to say about this topic is that the better your opponent is, the less opportunity you'll get opportunities to impact the game and the more required it is for your killer powers to be reliable to make a play happen in the heat of the moment. Often what is reliable yields to less counter-play and vice versa.
There are several problems I see with this game overall and discussing all of them would be very complicated. The problem is that since everything is interconnected, talking about one problem specifically as if it existed in a vacuum becomes reductive and ineffective.
I honestly wouldn't be opposed to survivors having more tools and mechanics at their disposal to defend themselves from killers if gen times weren't as strict. Then we could also have stronger killer mechanics and it would allow for skillful expression on both sides. Unfortunately that is not the game we're playing.
I think looping is mostly too strong and too easy to execute against most killers, so having killers that require you to be on your toes makes it at least require a lot more skill, quick thinking and prediction. Chases are massively in favour of survivors, which is why killers that are strong at it or can bypass it are way more lethal.
Your deep wound idea is interesting but i dunno if it'd be too strong. It'd definitely make legion stronger. And if applied only on hits to speared survivors and not on chain breaks, it might be an incentive for Deathslinger to always land shots he can reel in. However it should not apply this hindered effect on borrowed time. Deep wounds is pretty lackluster atm... wi sh they would do something about it.
the difference is, with deathslinger, spirit, and pyramid head (PH only has this problem in certain situations) you dont need to read the survivor. the only thing you have to do is hold/press m2 and the survivor is only given lose-lose options, which isnt really fun to play against. Also, in these options you mostly just have to hope the killer just messes up, which has nothing to do with skill, theyre just guesses in the killers favor
with huntress, she actually has to read the survivor while the survivor reads her. you ready a hatchet and they drop the pallet? you get a hit. if they dont, you have to holster the hatchet, and the survivor doesnt get hit. With her, the survivor is given 2 options- one win, and one lose.
huntress is WAY different from the dslinger, spirit, and PH.
What I don’t like about Spirit is that she is easier to predict survivors’ moves, than it is for a survivor to predict hers.
It’s not that the mechanic is busted but when you simply “stand there” in an effort to “confuse” the survivor that isn’t skill to me. That is simply using a brain-dead concept and calling it “prediction”. It’s time to start calling it what it is.
Guessing is not predicting.
Yes but why should Spirit know exactly where I am yet I have to predict? That already puts me in a losing situation.
I feel like the chain breaking and deathslinger getting rewards feels off in general. he is suppose blueball(be unsuccessful at hitting confirming gun hits) but when he gets the hit, its suppose mean be really impactful. Its like opposite. your incentive is to walk up to people as 110% with 16 TR with M&A, hope that survivor doesn't notice your great tall cowboy hat and does not switch on when tr music turns on and M1 them and only than begin shooting but given that every time you hit them, you give them sprint burst, they're bound to make to a loop and depending on safety of the loop, you have to make decision to play loop out or break pallet for more distance that inevitably leads to long chases, no kill pressure and fast gens. I just feel like he should be rewarded more for hitting shots with his gun on healthy survivors and not rely on his M1 as much. He relies M1 a lot right now which is why some people think he should be 115% but he is suppose to rely on his gun, that is why he is 110% and not 115%. This change would be like hybrid to that where you become a better at M1 for using your gun effectively. I think it would improve his chase time by making it more difficult for survivors to run forward for prologue period of time ahead of him without him being in range to take any shots and as result, his generator pressure would improve ever so slightly.
I think he is fine as he is, but i would tweak some of the numbers. I feel a lot of his addons could be base kit.
His cooldown on missed hits could be 1 second instead of 1.5. His reload could be 2.5 seconds instead of 2.75. His reeling speed at full range could be 5 seconds instead of 6.8 and chain charges could be a bit slower on certain scenarios. Like, i find it ridiculous how a survivor can just block you from reeling another survivor, while they are completely safe. There should always be some risk for a survivor blocking another.
I have saying for that, If you can put an add-on into base kit and it doesn't break the killer, It probably isn't a good add-on. In deathslinger case, every add-on he has can probably put into base kit and you probably wouldn't notice a difference in playing against him. he has like total 3 add-on that impact his gameplay which is iri coin(which is terrible) and warden key/grey add-on that affects reload and everything is else is meaningless.
Cuz spirit doesnt know exactly where you are?
You are
Oh and the most recent actual knowledge of your position is "your location 2 seconds before the spirit can actually move in phase"
I can definitely agree with that. I wish his base kit was just strong and his addons changed the playstyle rather than add simple buffs, cuz then you just think, oh why is this not base? XD
I dunno, I wouldn't say clown is the only killer who can direct a survivor (although I understand what you mean), to an extent huntress can do that too, if your in a chase and want a survivor to go left rather than right there are certain times that's possible-although it's not something I can personally pull off every time haha