One way to limit OP survivor builds
When you think about a video game which is balanced or near-balanced, what is it that makes it balanced?
One of the key things for me is that expectations within the game are clear and there are no "surprises" once you learn the game.
If I'm playing Age of Empires IV, and I see I am playing against the English, I know what the English can do, and know that they might go for a early longbow rush. I'll make decisions in my gameplay based around this.
If I'm playing Team Fortress 2 and I see a Sniper across the map, and I am a Scout, I know I will probably lose a shootout, as I know the capabilities of his class against mine, at range. If it is close range, I know that I'll probably win that engagement. I'll make decisions in my gameplay based around this.
With Dead by Daylight when you start chasing a Survivor, you have no such indication of what you are playing against, often until it is too late.
Sure some perks are a given at this point, I know when chasing someone who is injured I probably have to painfully wait 2-5 seconds before hitting them, as there's probably a 70% chance they have DH. I know if I'm approaching someone unhooking, I should go for the unhooker, OR wait 12 seconds before going for the person hooked, as they probably have BT protection.
Basically there is a correct way to play most situations, whether it is slugging/not-slugging, choosing which gen to pressure, and choosing which survivor to chase at any point. This correct way is determined by making judgements of which players have which perks and what perks they are likely to have hidden to this point. If the survivors are also all wearing the same skin, well good luck I guess?
Then you have perks which are used less, which might make a situation play out very differently. Don't get me wrong, I love seeing perk diversity, but sometimes these perks work simply because the Killer would not think you are running them.
I remember a hard fought game I lost on the Silent Hill map. The last two survivors were slugged, I basically had to just hook them at this point. I was still new to DBD, but I knew about DS, so I instantly knew to pick up the least recently hooked person. Well in this case they had soul guard, they stood up just in time, tanked a hit, picked up the other person, and they both ran out of the gate (of course, with a teabag and "ez clap" in chat for no extra cost).
In this situation, the correct play was to not pick up the recently unhooked person as they probably have DS. Up to this point I don't think I'd even saw Soulguard, so you can imagine my rage at the time. I think the correct play I guess was to leave the survivors slugged, or get to the soulguard player quicker. In the absence of soul guard though (i.e. most games) I feel my play was correct.
Another game I remember losing, another hard fought game on a farm map as a Huntress. I had a slug near a closed gate, and knew the location of the other 3 survivors. I think it was a correct play to leave the slug, as to this point he had not used unbreakable, and I wanted to pressure the other survivors. I chase the other guys, one of them has For the People, they get the insta pick up and everyone escapes. Again, first time I've ever seen this perk, so I was annoyed. Do I now have to play around this in the future, or should I basically continue as if no one is running this perk?
Basically my problem is that, due to the fact any survivor can run any perks, the "correct" way to play any engagement is always up for debate.
Making Survivors more predictable
I think that if Survivors had limitations on their potential perks, it would reduce this issue somewhat.
Imagine if each Survivor could only run 1 or 2 perks from other Survivors, and the remaining slots must be their own Adept perks. I feel this now cuts down on the OP builds any Survivor can run, and adds some element of predictability to the game.
E.g. if I see a David, I know he's probably going to have DH. If I see a Bill, slugging him is a risk (UB), and I can also assume he probably has BT.
You can still get some powerful builds, e.g. a Bill could run UB, BT, DH and IW.
But you can say goodbye to everyone running a meta build, and if you see a team of 4 Bills then you know you are probably playing a full-meta team and should probably play hard.
But like when playing TF2, simply by seeing a character, you know what tactics you have to use instantly, but the Survivor still has 2 perk slots to have creative builds and come up with some unexpected plays.
Comments
Head on that can literally save someones life or prevent a down is also a huge pay off, just use your brain to pull it off. Same goes to the majority of the other perks.
*Edit: I am not saying you have to play windows of opportunity but perks like Camadery, Inner streangth, leader, deception also have very powerfull pay offs.
It solely depends on the kind of game on if you can take hero shooter features into a certain game, dbd you cannot do that as then the game would become an unbalanced mess, moreso atleast
Not necessarily. Specific features being brought in could make things better, doesn't necessarily have to make things worse (just imagine if said feature/mechanic was implemented in a bug-free way by another developer lol)
Besides I never identifed a specific feature from TF2 I'm demanding in DBD, merely pointing out that it's more consistent and not necessarily just because it's symmetrical. The game design comes from classes rather than hundreds of perks.
I'm pretty sure there are asymmetrical games using classes (Ark or something? The one about hunting monsters) so it's not like I'm proposing the impossible
But for every Head On, there's three Red Herrings.
It was called Evolve and it's long dead. Not a good 'it can be done' example.
isn't Ark just a survival game? but besides that as someone else has pointed out, doing a class system would result in only a certain few survivors being played and others being completely forgotten about, the perks in dbd can be changed but the proper process would take a long time to do, being that perk tiers are removed from those perks
Yeah not Ark I meant Evolve like the other guy said.
Yeah it might lead to lots of people playing Bill and David, especially at high MMR.
And yes agree that due to the current perk situation, and people having invested money into skins and "mains", this probably won't happen. I guess this is a "what if..?" discussion.
yeah that one. lol I never even played it tbh, just remember seeing it had classes. There might be more examples of asymmetrical games with classes though, cba looking it up right now tbh
I don't think there's much to look up. Almost no asymmetrical PvP game survived longer than a year. For all its undeniable flaws and problems, DbD has accomplished a phenomenal feat by staying afloat this long.
I just looked and yeah the list is pretty pathetic lol, although Among Us was a popular game on the list which I suppose technically is asymmetric (although that is reduced as players take turns playing both roles. Maybe DBD needs a game mode which has quicker rounds, and everyone in the game takes turns playing each role, as part of a single matchmaking game. Would help the community a bit I think.