Why is looping the only acceptable way of playing?
"Acceptable" in that you are always considered bad and a no-skill when you can't loop. As a survivor I can do basically anything besides looping, and I do get called bad all the time because "other things require no skill".
Are there really no other skills involved in this game?
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Originally the game was hide and seek and the maps were a lot darker. Looping was actually not intended and only came into being once people figured out survivors had smaller hitboxes than killers. People bad at hide and seek had to do everything they could to stay in the game, and slowly over time the people good at hide and seek suddenly weren't good anymore.
So if you want to get technical people that can't hide would be considered unskillful by original game design. Kinda funny how that happened.
I'm terrible at looking myself, so knowing this I tend to do what I can for my team to make up for that (running healing builds, staying dedicated to gens, cleansing totems, etc). I usually go down pretty quickly, and if it's end game and I'm getting hardcore camped, I tend to just suicide on hook so that they can escape. I consider it a win for me if I can at least get my teammates out or pretty far progressed before I die.
Looping wasn't something that happened gradually and took its time to set in, even in beta people realized that being chased was a lot more rewarding and less risky than just hiding.
Being stealthy is good but with powers and information perks, this isn't something that will work all game. You will eventually get chase and need to loop.
Being able to waste the killers time is a sign of skill since it gives your teammates time to heal, unhook or do gens.
From the killers pov if you can't loop, your a good survivor to tunnel and proxy camp. Since your no able to loop the killer gets a free kill with only 1/2 gens completed, making the game a lot easier for the killer.
There isn't and that's the only thing skill based thing you can do when you're playing Survivor.
Maybe flash light hence pepegas use it all the time to get some sense of satisfaction that they did something 'skillful' it's all timing really.
Yeah, looping and flashlight saves are the only things in a survivor game that take even a semblance of skill. Even those are probably more on the learned strategy/timing end of the spectrum than pure skill.
This is a lot more complicated than you might think.
The intended way to play when the game was first released was that this game would be more of a hide-and-seek sort of deal. Looping was something that didn't happen immediately, but survs began to realize that was the better way to play as keeping the killer busy was more effective than just hiding. More than that, it was also a lot more engaging as both sides were interacting with one another.
Lately, things have been getting... messy. With looping in mind, killers have been made to combat them. Look at Demo and Neme who are masters of zoning and shredding through pallets. Spirit was meant to be mindgame central to deal with loops. OG Legion bypassed them completely (to horrendous results).
What this has caused is that survivors realized there's another strategy. Just hold w and drop. Don't both looping. There are enough safe pallets and the maps are so large that this is both safer and more effective than actually looping. The stigma comes from... well, you're holding a button. There's no skill. There's no interaction. You're just holding a button to get the guaranteed time and tossing a pallet the killer can't play around.
But to answer your question, the chase isn't the only thing you need to know. you need to read a situation and know what to do. Know when to go for an unhook or finish a gen. Learn to take the aggro off a teammate (EVEN if it means you'll go down) because they may be on death hook, and it's better to lose a hook state than an entire teammate. There are a lot of things to learn/do, but most people play this game for the chase which is why killers that tend to be very strong in the 1v1 chase (OG Slinger, Pyramid Head, Clown, etc) are more often than not hated by survivors. Conversely, loopable killers (Billy, Huntress, and Pig) are the more liked ones.
There are other skills, but that usually doesn't even matter unless you know your teammates are good too. Good survivors know when and how to save, and when to go down so the team can reset. Good teammates know how to bodyblock WHEN it counts and know how to shadow injured teammates for protection hits. It really goes on, but most of it requires the right team.. that said, people that know how to do all that already know how to loop because it's the one skill you can have that doesn't require anyone else.
The best thing you can do is not get downed in the first place and if you keep going down 10 seconds into getting found because you never learned to loop, you're just giving the killer a lot of pressure and that's not good for the team.
At the end of the day, play how you want-- it's you're game. but it's really the only way survivors on the other side of the map can tell if you're good or not, especially if the match just started, so don't be surprised if they call you out at the end of the match.
Pallet and windows are the only defense for survivor
No, it's not.
I'd rather have a stealthy team mate who doesn't get into chases but still helps the team (does gens and goes for saves), than a team mate who goes go a loop right away and gets downed in 10 seconds.
Basically people just don't enjoy the other two ways as much. To a lot of survivors, playing stealthily/immersive isn't fun- I do not speak for all survivors, I know for a fact there are some who love being stealthy- and it's easiest to blame the one survivor who who hides when the killer is near (even if it isn't for very long) for the team's loss, or take credit if they won.
Also, a lot of killers dislike stealthy players because they're stuck with the very engaging task of patrol generators then hope and pray when you look around you aren't on Autohaven or Coldwind and so can actually see the survivor somewhere nearby. For a lot of killers, the interaction between survivor and killer is the fun bit, even if they enjoy dominating this aspect (a la Nurse), so having this taken away isn't particularly enjoyable either.
And again, it's easiest to blame the stealthier survivor for the loss than the more chase-heavy ones.
Where there is dogma, presence cannot thrive.
I want a middle player, a player who is stealthy enough to avoid the killer as long as possible, and good enough in chases sp they waste the killers time even more.
Looping in a lot of tiles required only two skills.
dead hard for easier vault reach and being able to hug wall as much as you can.
Half of loops are with safe pallet so you can do 40 circles before dropping pallet, abuse the double window, etc.
Been there, done that.
Haddonfield, backwater silly maps, well almost all naps are silly
So tell me what else requires skill? Iam realy curious on your answer.
How I want to phrase this? A lot of influential voices believe that the only valid survivor skill is looping and the only possible way to have fun is in a chase.
The reality is that just because something *can* be looped doesn't mean it *should* be looped. The killer is playing the game too, and the survivor has made a pretty awful play if they take a hit at a safe tile. Risk mitigation, positioning, and game sense are very much skills.
There's obviously some nuance to this. The crouching survivor who fears a terror radius and is allergic to generators but escapes is also probably responsible for the other three deaths in some fashion. It's why I have a lot of issues with basing survivor MMR solely on individual escapes.
There's so much context that goes into survivor play. A pre-dropper isn't bad because they're pre-dropping. If 3 gens go in that chase, then that's a great chase. Someone who loops near a gen in progress is pretty unaware of the situation. But congrats on the loops
Immersion is an art. Making a Blight or Nurse waste 40 seconds looking for you is absolutely valid. You know, providing you don't get caught and give them a free health state as a result.
Looping is just much more objectively measurable skill, and the community tends to give it more credit for several reasons.
The true problem with immersion is that if you're really good at it, it still requires your teammates to be good at looping (or immersion, themselves). If you're good at looping, your teammates don't need to do anything but gens.
Because looping is fun and it is a huge aspect of DBD, whether people like it or not.
That is why many Survivors, myself included, dislike Killers who have anti-loop powers, as they completely remove a very important aspect of the game and force you to play in a very boring way (holding W and pre-dropping every single pallet).
Many of us here, once again including myself, are from a time when the absolute majority of the killer cast could be looped in the regular manner.
And I would've liked if it had stayed that way.
The problem with non anti loop killers is they are map dependent. If they get a very survivor sided map against survivors who know how to loop very well they will always lose.
I had a game on the new map and looped a plague for 5 gens since everyone stayed broken.
In my opinion, looping is the most skillful thing about survivor. Although, at a certain level it's literally just going through the motions. You know, you run a tile the right way, the killer can't get you. It beats hiding and holding forward by a long shot, even though those strategies can be used wisely as well.
Well because looping technically is the most skillful part of survivor. Holding m1 on gens? Doesn't take much skill. Hiding and letting your team die? Not loads of skill. Unhooking, healing, etc. isn't super skillful either. If you can do the objective and heal, etc, you aren't bad, but if you go down in chases super fast without using all the pallets then yeah, you aren't super good
I want to address the latter half of your post. Particularly regarding MMR: This isn't a team game. It's 4 individuals vs 1 other individual, not Team Killer vs. Team Survivor. As a Survivor your goal is and has always been to escape; therefore your win condition is escaping. Same as the Killer's win condition is Kills. This is as it should be.
I wouldn't say its the only acceptable way to play. Really its just a subskill of the overall game that you'll acquire over time as you become more comfortable. If you are wanting to get into looping I would strongly recommend Windows of Opportunity from Kate, I still run it after 1500 hours just because you can't replace the information given in solo queue over the course of a match.
Even if they get absolutely destroyed, the match isn't really fun.
You could loop if you just tried a few times and get familiar with it. You can also watch some videos to see how to loop certain tiles in optimal way.
I don't consider it skillful at all especially against killers who can't do much about it at some places.
But it helps your team if you can survive at least 40 seconds without going down. When you are working on a gen always plan your route and distance in case the killer comes. Woo is really a good perk since you don't even have to check which pallets are broken.
And yeah looping is not the only thing of course. Making right decisions, doing the right gens, bodyblocking for teammates on death hook etc etc etc. Lots of things you can do to help the team. Just don't stand around doing nothing and you are good.
I don't really think this is accurate re: people bad at hide and seek. Looping (as opposed to just running the killer) gained popularity originally as the more fair and interactive alternative to just running full-on infinites, not hiding. The hide and seek playstyle was mostly detested by killers, not other survivors or people "bad at hide and seek".
Stealth requires game sense and awareness to pull off;something most people are weak at.
Poor use of stealth is equivalent to equipping Bond and running the Killer into your team.
Most of the time, stealth is best used sparingly as it tends to have diminishing returns but it can be very powerful and rewarding.
A lot of people look down on stealth, however good use of it can waste a Killers time just as much as a good looper.
Take Dead Dawg for example; your intuition tells you that the killer approaches. Sometimes the best play you can make for yourself and your team is to crouch in the Bush in plain sight of the killer.
To be fair, Stealth play isn't really rewarded or measured in this game unless you're basically staying in the killer's TR most of the time. The game has never really rewarded being super stealthy even back in 2016-2018 DBD. You can tell they wanted it to be a bigger factor, but never really made it worth while to do because you still needed to do gens and engage with and escape the killer.
In a mechanical sense, no. Learning to run loops and string tiles is the biggest mechanical and tactical skill survivors pick up over time. The only mechanically difficult thing you could learn is how to hit great skillchecks consistently, but since you can't really practice skill checks in a controlled setting where you can focus on timing without harming your team it isn't something you should aim to do all that often. There was more of a reason to learn it when old Hex Ruin existed and great skillchecks were the only way to progress the gen efficiently if the hex was up.
Survivor is designed to be mechanically less difficult, but if you aren't good a looping then get good at holding W and just generally figure out what you can do to make the killer waste time trying to down you. Going down isn't really an issue if you can get keep the killer busy for at least 35+ seconds.
As a killer who never plays survivor, I definitely think being able to loop well is a very important skill to learn as a survivor. Essentially once the killer spots you there’s a few basic ways to prolong how long you can stay alive, and looping is one of those. (The others are “holding W” to just extend the distance, transitioning between tiles in sort of a figure eight “loop”, and using deception to make the killer lose sight of you and go the wrong way).
People shouldn’t be insulting you for having trouble looping, that’s just rude. But don’t underestimate its potential value, if you can loop really well you can live significantly longer on average than using the other techniques alone. (And transitioning tiles is really a pretty similar skill set to looping a single tile, just a bit more advanced probably since you have to recognize when tiles are linked in an advantageous way.)
if you always down in 20seconds from any killers its right situation to call you bad
but hiding is very important tactic depends on timing
if you see someone in second phase near you killer might looking for them,
than you have to show yourself for go chase or do bodyblock at least before killer find them so borrow some time for more gens before you lose omeone
after someone dead time is killer sided
I don't think looping is the only acceptable way to play Survivor, it's just the most skillful thing. Playing stealthy is also a thing, it's just that most players who play stealthy are bad teammates and don't touch gens when they hear the first note of the Terror Radius