Should DBD be balanced around the highest level players?
Vote Now! [High level players] [Average players] [The worst players]
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Vote Now! [High level players] [Average players] [The worst players]
Please take the poll, trying to collect some data.
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Not really, I don't even think we should have mmr, because dbd would just become boring, unless they used map seeding, separate game modes, etc.
pretty much, also the fact that its an asymmetrical game, which means it simply cannot be perfectly balanced
No
Balance leaning the way it does currently already has horrible queue times for survivors. If killers don't want to play the game because it is unfair, they'll just stop playing. MMR will lead to that if they don't fix things.
No game should ever be balanced around high level gameplay. Most people who play video games are casual and doing that kills games so easily. That's exactly what they did with overwatch and now that game is dead as hell.
If we balanced around high level gameplay in dbd then nurse and blight would've been nerfed into the ground by now, and they'd be borderline impossible for anyone to learn if you didn't already play them.
Overwatch's problem is the exact opposite. High level play is extremely boring, you just dance around each other until everyone charges their ultimate, both teams blow all their ultimate's and whoever wins gets to gain ground. Rinse and repeat for 10 minutes. It's because they DIDN'T balance around high level play that it has a problem. High level play is boring. the same can be said with DBD where high level play is "hold w, drop pallets immediately" and killers just tunnel and camp.
wrong thread.
Personally, I hate high level survivors. They abuse the game. They've been trained to! It is so frustrating.
But, fundamentally, if we balance at the high ranks, then tons of survivors (the majority of survivors are bad and can't even do the basic loops) will die. The game will be fair for skilled survivors, but for the average survivor player who is not good (70-80%), they will suffer.
I wish there was a fix for this, but it isn't clear.
Can you explain how it is that it will hurt the "average player" in any way? Here is what i'm saying.
Lets say for example, you have a loop that is extremely strong in the hands of a high level player and they can waste minutes of a killers time. Now let's say another survivor who isn't so good, goes down in 20 seconds at this loop. If you nerf the loop to make it so the high level player can't waste minutes of a killers time at this loop anymore, it will be fine. The survivor who goes down in 20 seconds is still going to go down in 20 seconds. It won't negatively affect them.
Here as a bit from a video that explains this in detail, granted it is for TF2, the premise is the same.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1p42KtZOCw&t=203sThe majority is wanting the game balanced for average players which is a positive sign. But it is FAR from that. Average survivors are hardly ever seeing a win.
Sluzzy...
That is a bad analogy. Average survivors struggle with looping. If you say nerfed god pallets, or long loops with little to no counter play, then average survivors would not be able to complete all the gens and escape. Survivor sided loops allow average survivors to stall the killer. Thus, when I play with my casual friend, even he can run to the killer shack, drop the killer shack, and make it to another loop to at least try. Without these kinds of loops, average survivors go down too fast to destroy entire games. That's what I'm saying.
Balancing for the high ranks now would probably make the large majority of survivor (recall that only <15% of survivors have even made rank 1) have a less enjoyable experience and possibly leave the game.
Instead, a competitive mode and a casual mode should be created.
and then what? We already know survivors who play to win and are decent at this game crush any/all killers. When the stats come out/the queue time is insanely long due to nobody wanting to play a losing game do we make balance changes? I feel like you come back to the exact same problem of what do you do due to the fact that 'fixing' high level gameplay in this game necessitates a massive removal/reduction of resources available to survivors but doing that will make it awful for lower skill/average players and people who do not play that sweaty.
High level gameplay in overwatch was boring indeed. But that was the meta. The fact that they let the awful meta exist for so long made every dps hero (which was by far the most popular class in average players) unplayable.
Wait, people care about ranks?
They sure do. Ever gone up against red ranks? You'd be surprised. I wish I could stay at rank 20 forever because I have never and I mean NEVER had a fun match against a red rank killer. Most of the purple and green rank ones are about as bad too in my experience.
I think it should be balanced for above average but not the top. Hopefully leads to the best middle ground for both parties. So Survivors and Spirit and Nurse would have to be changed.
Where players are good-great but not amazing-comp level.
So like 35% away from the top or something.
The game should be balanced around average skilled players. Balance for the very top, and you get problems like in Overwatch where everything is about playing the game a very specific way and fun isn't a factor.
I personally prefer games to be fun than to be purely competitive. Nurse is fine, since there is plenty of room for counterplay because you are getting constant information off her.
Spirit, on the other hand, needs counterplay and shouldn't be left untouched. Especially Stridor Spirit.
So, tru3talent has posted many videos talking about how to counter the spirit and showing how well he can play against one, and often escapes against one. The answer the community gives, is that the spirit he went against was "bad". So i ask you. If it should be balanced around average skilled players, why do we need to nerf spirit, when she really is only good in the hands of killers who are good? You can't maintain both statements, they a logically in conflict with one another.
1. Running in circles is only an issue because of the different hitboxes. They could test it, by changing the hitbox size for a 24h test. Just like they tested turning bloodlust off.
2. Closing the windows in the house of pain would be changing 1 line of code (which arguably could open 20 random windows and cause other totally unrelated bugs, because of the spaghetti code). But it shouldn't be to hard to close down the semi infinites.
3. I never claimed anything else. Now the question is, do we balance around solos or SWF? Pre RE chapter, survivor queues were pretty long during prime time. People argued, that it's because survivors want to play with their friends. So if the number of SWF is so big that it severely affects survivor queues, then the game should be balanced around SWF.
4. The bloodpoint cap forces survivors to play differently. Instead of playing the way they want. Some people enjoy chases. Others prefer hugging gens and others love to rescue others. If the need to do all 3 things goes away, the game would progress differently. Be more enjoyable for everyone.
5. The killer bonus bloodpoint addons exist to make the game harder for killers. Why isn't there something similar for survivors? Shouldn't there be something similar? People always complain that WGLF isn't of the same level as BBQ. While they should complain that the bonus bloodpoint addons aren't.
Those are some small number adjustments that would make a difference.
I never understood why we went from Juking and mindgames to running in circles.
That's not horror related in any way.
Honestly dbd balance shouldn't even be a discussion when they can't release patches without breaking there own game
I never understood why we went from Juking and mindgames to running in circles.
Because one of those is clearly easier, and therefore would become the preferred strategy.
The game is only balanced at red ranks, below that killers can bully survivors
"strategy"
Thats why Nurse is deemed OP. Since most people don´t know anything else than running in circles. While the amount of actual god nurses is like 0,0001%
And on red ranks, survivors bully the killer.
Not solo survivors, killers still have an advantage if they’re playing an A/S tier, below that it’s mainly even unless it’s lowest tier killer. Can’t balance the game around SWF.
Since the amount of SWF players is so big, that it affects survivor queue times, i´d say yes, the game should be balanced around SWF.
dbd should be balanced around the top %. But we all know that’ll never happen..
That’s fine, just stop every solo survivor from getting to play a decent game…
You know, i´m a red rank solo survivor. Most of the time i have decent matches. Its only when people disconnect or suicide, because they don´t like the killer/map or whatever. That ruins the game for me.
But those happend like once or twice in ten matches before the RE chapter released. Now its way more. Is that because killers are OP? Sure not!
People are just salty and try to blame their own shortcomings on other players.
Spirit needs counterplay. I watched tru3's video, and I respectfully disagree with his opinions. You don't need to be a good player to do well with Spirit. A player of average skill can very easily 4k with Spirit since her power is basically an information blockout.
It's like that because DC penalties are off right now.
The core gameplay loop of Natural Selection is "FPS Kill"?
In that game, one team is a group of marines that use guns, another is a group of aliens that are generally melee/hit and run style things that can fly or climp on walls or teleport. On top of that, the marines have a commander that is playing an RTS instead.
Kind of?
The marines are supposed to kill the alien's heart, which is basically their "base" but they can have multiple hearts/expansions throughout the map.
The aliens need to basically kill all of the marines + the commander and their spawners (which are placed by the commander like an RTS building they can build multiple of).
Either way, i fail to see your point. Asymmetrical games can be balanced.
Either way, i fail to see your point. Asymmetrical games can be balanced.Either way, i fail to see your point. Asymmetrical games can be balanced.
Again, Asymmetrical games can be balanced though. It isn't an excuse.
2k/2e average at the highest level of play in games that last for on average 8-10 minutes.
Or, if the devs want, they can define a different win condition. But ideally it should start by them saying:
Then from there we can balance the game around the idea that survivors should "win" 50% of the time. they could also define a draw
Competitive. Because MMR is coming, and is not optional. If you want casual that is what KYF is for, or alternatively they could make separate queues, a ranked and unranked. They could even make unranked have different things like other games. For example in CS:GO you get free armor and other things in unranked play.
They should both require effort. Specifically survivors should be more about teamwork.
Think of it this way. I feel that asymmetrical games of 1v{any amount} are like an MMO raid boss fight.
The 1 guy, is the raid boss, and the other people need to work together to bring the raid boss down. In essence, this is what these types of games are. The individual guys by themselves, are not able to take on the raid boss. You can't solo a raid boss, it'll just kill you, you need a healer. But you can't just DPS them down, you die to fast, you need a tank too. But also the boss has adds, so you need some sort of crowd control element to keep the adds under control, busy, or killed. Plus the boss has many different mechanics you need avoid. If a person on your team goes down, you probably are going to lose the fight, unless you are lucky and one of the DPS went down and the healer can rez them, but often times that comes at a cost to the healer, like a large amount of mana, so now you have to be extra careful.
This is DBD. The problem with this is, in the case of the raid boss, you are playing against an AI controlled opponent. There is no human on the other side. So, you come up with a strategy as a team to fight that raid boss, you execute it, and as long as you do, you win 100% of the time. DBD has the same problem. If you get an organized team of survivors in play, they execute their strategy, and they win 100% of the time. This is without any sort of input from the killer. The problem of course, is that the killer, unlike the raid boss, is NOT an AI controlled opponent. There is a human on the other side of that.
Now what if the raid boss could at some point just say "i'm not going to attack your tank, i'm going to go after your healer". THAT should be how DBD works. The raid boss can be like "i see what you are doing there taunting me tank, i see that healer is keeping you alive, i'm going to go after them instead" Now you need some way to deal with that, maybe the guy who CCs can slow down the boss, and the healer can kite him around, maybe the raid boss sees that, and sends his adds after the guy slowing him down. Its countering the counter of my counter of your counter and so on. A back and forth, tug of war that allows both sets of players to exert their will and plan and strategies and execute those strategies.
As it stands now, dbd has the same strategy for every killer. Hold Shift + w, camp and immediately drop pallets. The handful of killers you can't do that to "Nurse/Spirit/Blight" are the ones survivors complain about that need a nerf. Why do you think that is? The current state of DBD is such that the raid boss is too weak, its like you are fighting the raid boss from the last expansion when the max level was 60 and now you are level 70. You don't need to execute a good strategy anymore, because you outlevel the boss and it's mechanics, you can just execute the same boring "tank and spank" strategy and ignore everything they do.
In these games, the difference between teams is so minute that it can barely be called a difference at all and are essentially identical.
I guess DOTA 2's an asymmetrical game because Roshan's spawn is slightly closer to Dire and that's why we should balance DbD the same way.
That's not what i said though, survivors should require teamwork. In your situation, if killers don't want to play the game because it isn't fair, you have 4 people sitting in queue doing nothing. You can't have it both ways.
If the survivors using teamwork and killers would be equal, then survivor would by necessity be the harder role, because the killer doesn't have to rely on the good judgement and coordination of randos to perform well. The Survivors do.
If nothing else, you can't get a Dwight crouching in the corner the entire game as your teammate when you play Killer.
Not necessarily. In our example, if a killer makes a mistake, it is 4x more punishing than if an individual survivor makes a mistake.
In our comparison to MMOs. Let's use FF14 as an example. Generally if you stand in a mechanic or get hit by something you can avoid, you take damage, but you also get a debuff that makes you take 10% more damage. The first time it might not be so bad, your healer heals you up (which makes them spend mana a diminishing resource as the fight goes on). But, if you make a second mistake, now you take 10% more damage, and it hurts a lot more and you get another stack so you take 20% more damage. Healer now has to spend even MORE mana, and more than the first time to heal you. The 3rd time, now you take so much damage from the debuff that you just immediately die, now the healer has to spend 25% of their mana bar ressing you, then more healing you. Now you are starting to really get the pressure on. Another mistake might cost you, the healer might run out of mana and then the tank dies. They might not be able to res the DPS the next time they make a mistake, meaning that you have less DPS, and the boss has an 8 minute enrage timer where it just 1 shots your whole party after 8 minutes. So you need that DPS to happen at a certain rate.
On the flip side. If you use that mechanic/ability which has a long cooldown and all of the party members avoid it, it now is on cooldown for a while and you can only auto attack for 30 seconds. This gives the party time to get some damage in on you safely without worrying too much about mechanics. In fact during this time even healers will often DPS.
Now factor in that as a raid boss you usually have 5+ different abilities and mechanics. As a human controlled one, you can change the order you use them, you can change how you use them, which part of the arena you target, which player you send stuff out to etc. This is where the teamwork should come in play for the party in our case, they have to work together to overcome these elements which, unlike an MMO raid boss, are not always the same every time because they are controlled by a human opponent. This further gets messed with due to the introduction of perks which even if you are the same killer you might run a different build.
Thus we get to the crux of the problem. By necessity in game design, to be balanced, the 4 players by themselves must individually be weaker than the 1, other wise the game isn't fair. But in order for that to happen, they need to have solid teamwork and work together to make things happen. The thing i don't understand is, this formula works perfectly fine for MOBAs. MOBAs require significant teamwork in order to execute things effectively. A single player can't win the game for your team, however, a single player CAN lose the game for your whole team.
Those games work fine and are some of the most played games in the world.
At the end of the day though, this game NEEDS to be made fair. Research has shown that even in monkeys and rats, if the games they play aren't fair, they just stop playing the game with the other monkeys and rats.
Because it's a completely different game, in a completely different genre, with the two sides playing completely separate games with so many different factors as to whether or not you lose or win that any comparisons have some 5 layers of separation.
The game does need to be fair. But that's gonna require a restructuring of the entire game in a way that isn't just "do it like those guys".
Which would require effort. And time. And a level of understanding and sheer competence I just don't think BHVR has.
So, if we can look forward to anything, it'll almost certainly just be bandaid fixes.
Balancing at the top is one of the most basic tenets of any 'vs' game design. It doesn't matter how asymmetrical a game is or whether they are played competitively or not. There is no such thing as 'balancing for the average players.' Good game design is ALWAYS balanced at the top.
The reason why a game must always be balanced at the top has nothing to do with the top 1% players - they themselves are not special in any way. It has to do with what those 1% players can provide in assessing the game itself.
The idea is to simply figure out what the 'role' is capable of at its maximum potential - if all players make no mistakes in their provided roles, and make the best possible move they can in each moment, 'is the game fair for all players?' Basically, 'balancing the game' means to determine the skill cap (or ceiling) for the roles provided by the game, and making sure they are equal (or close enough) on average number of matches.
Let's say that the skill cap for a role 'Character A' is 100. This means that no matter how much players may master that specific role, they cannot improve beyond 100 because they are restricted by the game structure and game design itself. So if Character A's skill cap is at 100, you also want Character B, C, and D's skill cap to be 100. This simply means that when A faces B in a match, they both have an equal (50%/50%) chance of winning on average.
But let's say that the role 'Character B' has a maximum skill cap (ceiling) of 200. This means that when 'Character B' is played at its maximum efficiency and potential by a player, it reaches 200. So when a player is even half decent (50% of 200) at playing Character B, he already has the same chance of winning against a player who has fully mastered Character A (100% of 100). And players can further improve upon their skills playing Character B (past 101-200), to have bigger and bigger advantage against anyone who has fully mastered Character A (cannot pass 100). In fact, it's even possible that players who have completely mastered Character B have a 99% of winning on average against players who have completely mastered Character A. ...does that really sound like good game design to any of you?
So 'balancing for average players' is simply nonsense. As in, it doesn't make any sense, and those who are advocating for such nonsense don't seem to understand the actual PURPOSE of balancing games at the top level.
Does balancing at the top affect 'the average players' games in any way? No, of course not. Why would it matter to a player capable of only producing 50/100 skill cap what the maximum skill cap is? It doesn't affect his matches because with a good matchmaking, he'll only be facing other players who are also able to only produce ~50/100 skill cap level. It has nothing to do with whether it would make the games 'more tryhard' as some of you keeps whining about.
However, having an uneven top potential in games will most likely also provide bad matchmaking. For example, let's say there are 5 players of different skill level (evenly spread out) wanting to play Character A (100, 80, 60, 40, 20). Ideally, each of those players would find players that matches around the same skill of 100, 80, 60, 40, and 20. However, if there are roles that have a much higher skill cap level, say 200, even this becomes much more difficult. Let's say there are 5 players of different skill level (evenly spread out) wanting to play Character B (200, 160, 120, 80, 40). In best case scenario, only 2 of these 5 matches (80,40) will have a good fun match - the other 3 matches will be absolutely devastating. Uneven games at the top would ultimately provide uneven matchmaking. Furthermore, notice that in this scenario, even if three of the five players of Character A had mastered the role (100, 100, 100), they would still likely lose against Character B players (200, 160, 120).
Does that sound like good game design to any of you?
Learn WHY games are balanced at the top before you start complaining about it.
Best thing to do? Just get rid of ranks and MMR entirely. If you won't embrace any kind of competitive balancing, just make it a free for all like most casual games do. Add VOIP so randoms can talk to each other (survivors can hear each other only).