Seemingly glaring issues with the pip system
So, for context, I have about 50 hours in the game, I'm rank 10 on survivor and killer, so I'm approaching this from a purely logical standpoint, rather than an experience one. There are issues in both the killer and the survivor's pip systems that make no sense to me at all.
I'll start with survivor since there's only a couple issues here:
Why rank how long someone survives? This medal becomes meaningless if you go against someone who camps you and your team doesn't have BT, or you don't have DS, why would you rank someone based on a choice that isn't theirs?. You already have a category for looping/stealth, what's the point in this other category that, in theory, achieves the same thing, just in a way less flexible way. I've had games were I get gold+ Evader and Silver- Unbroken, just because I was tunnelled.
Evader as a whole is a bit strange, because it has an issue I'll bring up later, in rewarding perk choice over gameplay at times, this is less of a problem for survivor than killer, but still not ideal since it's less about how good you are and more about if you've spent the time to farm BP for that specific perk. Dead hard is the perfect example, able to buy you, at worst, an extra 2 seconds, and at best, can send you into a new loop, banking you anywhere between 10 to 40 seconds, or maybe even more, depending on the killer's skill. It just makes this perk feel mandatory, and judging from how many other people use it, I'd say I'm not alone in that feeling. Overall, this category isn't bad, just a few perks like MoM, DH, etc. kinda make it a bit wonky.
Onto killer:
Devout rewards you for sacrifices, not hooks. Yes, you get half a sacrifice for hooking everyone once, but if one person is stealth or just good at looping, you aren't going to get that very easily. The biggest flaw is this encourages camping, going and chasing someone isn't worth a sacrifice, especially late game, where hitting someone will just send them rocketing away to the exit. This makes perks like BT and DS (hello again, you two), insanely powerful.
Next, proximity to hook, I don't understand what this means, I've literally ran around in circles around a hook, chasing someone, and got no penalty, but another game, I'll be playing nurse, and teleporting away instantly, and get a minus, this isn't a bad idea, it's just not implemented in a way that actually works.
Gatekeeper, same question as in the survivor paragraph, why rank someone based on a choice that isn't theirs? Yes, patrolling gens is important, but ultimately this ends up rewarding perk choice more than actual gameplay, maybe instead something that checks if survivors stop doing gens around you, this would be more direct than just gen time, but still wouldn't completely fix the problem. Also toolboxes mess this entire category up entirely.
Lastly, why does survivor healing punish the killer? Again, patrolling is important, but again, rewarding perk choice (Nurse's calling). but the biggest issue here comes in the late game where you have 1-2 gens left to do, you hit someone, and they go into a part of the map with no gens. Unless you're nurse, or spirit, or maybe billy, why would you ever follow that person unless they're running into a complete loop deadzone? This leads to situations where you injure someone, they run away, get healed, come back, repeat. This wouldn't be a problem if the previous category didn't exist, or maybe even if hooking that survivor gave me any form of reward in the ranking system.
In general, a few themes pop up that I think really need fixing.
Rewarding things that just aren't fun to vs or do. I hate camping, it's boring to do, and frustrating to go against. If I have one main request, reward hooks more than sacrifices, it just encourages camping
Rewarding perk choices over actual gameplay. This is a massive killer issue, especially since BBQ and chilli is paywalled, but We're gonna live forever isn't, meaning that if you want to farm BP without spending money on a game you don't know if you like yet, you need to play survivor. This is also an issue since good killer perks are all over the locked characters (Ruin, BBQ, Spirit's fury, Starstruck, Monitor and Abuse, list goes on). Survivors still suffer from this, going against a camper without having DS or BT is just painful, and not having Dead hard is just objectively worse than having it.
Punishing you for something that someone else is doing. In other games, this is punished by losing, not by extra ranking tidbits. If I play a MOBA, the enemy farming doesn't directly effect my rank, it just makes them more likely to win. If I play a fighting game, getting hit doesn't directly effect my rank, just makes me more likely to lose. CS:GO, I don't get sent down a rank just because an enemy got a 40k. I get that there's no clear win condition in DbD, but cleaning up the pip system would go a long way to giving it one.
In conclusion, I find that Gatekeeper and Unbroken are majorly flawed, honestly, they generally end up as measures of the other 3 categories, or you can just have them ruined by what someone else did.
Again, this isn't coming from a 3000 hour rank 1 in both categories player, this is coming from someone who's played a lot of other competitive games, and sees flaws in this one's ranking system.
Comments
Thank you for this.
This, this, this, ALL of this. I'm not the most experience DBD player at 793 hours, to boot I'm mostly on the killer side of things, but a lot of this emblem system is quite ill-refined. Rewarding perk choice over gameplay is something evident in quite a lot of DbD videos by fog whisperers.
And I will give the arbitrary "The devs know the system is broken." But this doesn't really excuse it for being broken for as long as it's been since the emblem system has come out. It's been three years since the emblem system has been put in. THREE. YEARS. And we haven't seen hide nor hair of any adjustments to said system. One has to recognize the difference between knowing a system is broken and actively working to fix a broken system. This is especially true with how broken a lot of killer emblems feel.
This brings me to a a problem that I feel you missed in your original analysis, Chaser Emblems are especially painful for killers right now. Currently, chaser emblems on killers with instant downs or killers that end chases quicker are lower exponentially than ones without. One would think that a killer would be rewarded for having a shorter chase, but they are instead punished. This isn't just with instant down killers either. This problem exists whenever the killer player manages to get a quick down due to survivor error, or if they win the match too quickly. The killer is actively punished for finishing the game quickly.
Seriously. The emblem system needs to be worked on next lol