Skip to content

Community tried to tell devs SWF is OP. Everybody who plays this game knows that

landromat landromat
in General Discussions

And only after SBMM and half year of data gathering they find out there is *gasp* 15% escape rate difference between swf and solo at high level.

Better late then never huh?

I really wish we had devs who have feeling of their own game without needing of gathering years of data to make changes

Tagged: Community ManagerDev

Comments

  • Bardon Bardon

    What's of concern is the repeated statements that the clear intent is to buff Solo Q survivors but never any mention of addressing killers - given how long it takes to get anything positive done on the killer side (well done on the Nurse fixes after only 3 years!) if Killers aren't buffed at the same time as Solo Q then the current bad situation will only get worse.


    And by "buff" I don't mean "add 1% to addons that are not used because they're garbage".


    Just my 2c worth.

  • Vaimore Vaimore

    @Firellius said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2735371#Comment_2735371

    That depends.

    If solo's at 50%, Swiffers are at 65% and thus OP.

    If swiffers are at 50%, then solo's are at 35% and thus UP.

    It's possible that Swiffers are OP and solo's are UP, it's possible both are UP, it's possible that both are OP, it's possible that one is perfectly balanced and the other is OP/UP.

    Did they specify escape rate for either Solo or Swiffer?

    SWF is not just OP, its cheating imo. Do you think its fair that 4 survs who have a total of 16 perks between them and a hivemind against ONE killer is realistically fair?? No! They all communicate and act like ONE entity the entire game. Taking turns on hooks, flashlight bullying, and Tbagging at the exit gates at the end of EVERY match. Its broken and unfair. I honestly think with all the playing I have done in this game, that they need to balance it back out. Killers are 1 against 4 people who can crash Gens out of a game in seriously no time at all regardless of killer set up. I am running ( on Legion ) Hex: Pem, DL, Than, and ruin. ITS STILL NOT ENOUGH!! Games are too fast and survs no longer fear any killers at all. DH is OP, but SWF is over the top.

    Killers need 6 perk slots to make things a bit more competitive. Not every killer should feel like that have to be a pro/ veteran to get 1 kill a match.

  • Firellius Firellius

    @Vaimore said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2735373#Comment_2735373

    SWF is not just OP, its cheating imo. Do you think its fair that 4 survs who have a total of 16 perks between them and a hivemind against ONE killer is realistically fair?? No! They all communicate and act like ONE entity the entire game. Taking turns on hooks, flashlight bullying, and Tbagging at the exit gates at the end of EVERY match. Its broken and unfair. I honestly think with all the playing I have done in this game, that they need to balance it back out. Killers are 1 against 4 people who can crash Gens out of a game in seriously no time at all regardless of killer set up. I am running ( on Legion ) Hex: Pem, DL, Than, and ruin. ITS STILL NOT ENOUGH!! Games are too fast and survs no longer fear any killers at all. DH is OP, but SWF is over the top.

    Killers need 6 perk slots to make things a bit more competitive. Not every killer should feel like that have to be a pro/ veteran to get 1 kill a match.

    You should probably play a bit more to get a better grip on the game.

    Or play less, it seems to rile you up in a bad way.

  • MrPeanutbutter MrPeanutbutter

    @Peanits said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2735761#Comment_2735761

    I'll try to keep this shorter than my last post, but to touch upon a few of the points you've brought up:

    1: On the subject of The Nurse, using pick rates as a determining factor is very shaky territory. First, you've gotta consider the fact that part of the reason she's picked less often is due in part to the bugs with her power. Even if someone likes The Nurse and is doing moderately well with her, it's totally within the realm of possibility that the bugs were too frustrating for them to continue playing. Secondly, pick rate is not a universal thing. While it stands it reason that she may not be picked at lower skill levels (owing to her higher learning curve), she becomes far more popular at higher skill levels. I won't speak for everyone, but I'm assuming at least some people would like to see more Killers pop up regularly in the higher skill levels.

    But beyond this, The Nurse's bug fixes is also a prime example of something that has come up a lot over the years. Often times we're asked to focus on things like game health rather than content / balance, and The Nurse and her various bugs was often tied directly to that as a poster child of sorts. Fixing these issues did require a complete redo of her coding, but it's a prime example of us doing exactly that: Putting content / balance to the side to focus on fixing things. I totally understand if you're not pumped for this next Mid-Chapter, but it's a pretty shocking reaction to something that was asked of us very often (focusing on fixes/game health over content).

    2: To think point of Circle of Healing, I just want to say that this is absolutely not something we're ignoring. We make a point out of letting things settle before making rash decisions these days. Between PTBs & live these days, the changes we make are almost always fairly minor. We've been burned in the past by making rash decisions when the initial feedback was rough. Nowadays, we try to let everything have some time to settle before we start thinking about how it should change. This gives us a better idea of where it actually sits rather than making a knee jerk reaction and hoping it works out. Circle of Healing is an even trickier scenario since it came bundled with an entirely new mechanic (boons), so it's very important that we see how things work before diving head first into changes.

    That said, though, I can't reveal if/what will happen to Circle of Healing right here, just please keep in mind that there's always a cycle that looks like this:

    • Something releases
    • Wait for it to settle
    • Determine if changes are needed
    • Create changes

    3: On the subject of Freddy, I feel like this something that often gets misconstrued as well. In reality, kill rates only play a small role. You compared him to The Nurse, and I'm really glad you did because she's the perfect example of why that's not the case. The Nurse overall has a fairly low kill rate (well below the rest of Killers), but that doesn't mean she's weak. She's tough to play, and in the right hands, she can be hands down the best. But that also isn't necessarily a problem because there's a ton of skill that goes into playing her extraordinarily well, and there's also a lot of skill that goes into playing against her well.

    In the case of Freddy, on the other hand, you had a Killer that was very strong without needing much thought or skill. Dropping a couple traps at a loop would yield very strong results with very little risk or strategy. His slight tweaks aimed to make the strategy of spamming traps constantly while in a chase less viable.

    On the point of lack of skill, I won't delve too far into this, but that is a very loaded point to make. Many developers play the game daily (typically not with BHVR tags in their name, they don't want to be recognized). I myself used to stream this game three times per week, and I was playing at the higher ranks just fine. Sure, not every game developer's going to be ready to jump on an eSports team, but expecting everyone working on a game to be able to play it at a competitive level is a frankly unrealistic standard, even if some of them are pretty good.

    I appreciate you addressing Circle of Healing here. A lot of people (including myself) were really frustrated that it wasn’t addressed at all in recently developer updates. All the people who had been providing feedback about it felt ignored. I wish there would have been at least some mention of it in the dev updates - even something similar to what you just posted here like “we hear you, we just aren’t ready to make changes yet.” I think that would have gone a long ways in preventing some of the anger that’s popped up on the forums in the past couple of days.

    Anyway, thanks for providing some comments about it.

  • IamFran IamFran

    For me the most OP thing of SWF is not the voice coms (the most repeated reason of people complaining about SWF), is the possibility of having 16 meta perks equiped.

    That's the reason why in most DBD tournaments one of the rules is not repeating perks.

     ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  • Adjatha Adjatha

    It would've taken so little effort to just put in a line like: "And don't worry about all these possible survivor buffs, killer players; as solo survivors get more tools, we're also looking at ways to help you deal with highly successful SWF groups as well."

  • fengminenjoyer fengminenjoyer

    I mean in any PVP game that has teams if the team is in a party they will most likely have a higher chance of performing good and achieving the goal cause you know...they can organize and coordinate their plays lol I don't really get the complaints about it cause it's pretty obvious and for any team PVP game, I'm sure the devs have known this since day 1

  • Haddix Haddix

    @Peanits said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2735761#Comment_2735761

    I'll try to keep this shorter than my last post, but to touch upon a few of the points you've brought up:

    1: On the subject of The Nurse, using pick rates as a determining factor is very shaky territory. First, you've gotta consider the fact that part of the reason she's picked less often is due in part to the bugs with her power. Even if someone likes The Nurse and is doing moderately well with her, it's totally within the realm of possibility that the bugs were too frustrating for them to continue playing. Secondly, pick rate is not a universal thing. While it stands it reason that she may not be picked at lower skill levels (owing to her higher learning curve), she becomes far more popular at higher skill levels. I won't speak for everyone, but I'm assuming at least some people would like to see more Killers pop up regularly in the higher skill levels.

    But beyond this, The Nurse's bug fixes is also a prime example of something that has come up a lot over the years. Often times we're asked to focus on things like game health rather than content / balance, and The Nurse and her various bugs was often tied directly to that as a poster child of sorts. Fixing these issues did require a complete redo of her coding, but it's a prime example of us doing exactly that: Putting content / balance to the side to focus on fixing things. I totally understand if you're not pumped for this next Mid-Chapter, but it's a pretty shocking reaction to something that was asked of us very often (focusing on fixes/game health over content).

    2: To think point of Circle of Healing, I just want to say that this is absolutely not something we're ignoring. We make a point out of letting things settle before making rash decisions these days. Between PTBs & live these days, the changes we make are almost always fairly minor. We've been burned in the past by making rash decisions when the initial feedback was rough. Nowadays, we try to let everything have some time to settle before we start thinking about how it should change. This gives us a better idea of where it actually sits rather than making a knee jerk reaction and hoping it works out. Circle of Healing is an even trickier scenario since it came bundled with an entirely new mechanic (boons), so it's very important that we see how things work before diving head first into changes.

    That said, though, I can't reveal if/what will happen to Circle of Healing right here, just please keep in mind that there's always a cycle that looks like this:

    • Something releases
    • Wait for it to settle
    • Determine if changes are needed
    • Create changes

    3: On the subject of Freddy, I feel like this something that often gets misconstrued as well. In reality, kill rates only play a small role. You compared him to The Nurse, and I'm really glad you did because she's the perfect example of why that's not the case. The Nurse overall has a fairly low kill rate (well below the rest of Killers), but that doesn't mean she's weak. She's tough to play, and in the right hands, she can be hands down the best. But that also isn't necessarily a problem because there's a ton of skill that goes into playing her extraordinarily well, and there's also a lot of skill that goes into playing against her well.

    In the case of Freddy, on the other hand, you had a Killer that was very strong without needing much thought or skill. Dropping a couple traps at a loop would yield very strong results with very little risk or strategy. His slight tweaks aimed to make the strategy of spamming traps constantly while in a chase less viable.

    On the point of lack of skill, I won't delve too far into this, but that is a very loaded point to make. Many developers play the game daily (typically not with BHVR tags in their name, they don't want to be recognized). I myself used to stream this game three times per week, and I was playing at the higher ranks just fine. Sure, not every game developer's going to be ready to jump on an eSports team, but expecting everyone working on a game to be able to play it at a competitive level is a frankly unrealistic standard, even if some of them are pretty good.

    I was told by the designer who was in charge of adjusting Freddy that him being easy is not the reason for his high kill rate, but I could not agree. The reason why the Nurse is so low is because human error is an extremely common factor in how successful player are with her, as you said, whereas Freddy, who was weaker than a Nurse at her MAXIMUM potential (and that may or may not be something indicated by your data collection), was performing the best out of all characters because of his power level and ease of use.

    Wouldn't the objectively better solution for "too easy for the level of strength" be to make a character harder, not weaker? If you make more room for error, then a killer will always be weaker on average statistically, which would allow for more interaction between survivor and killer and force players to improve at the character to reach his maximum potential. That's not what happened, though.

    Why directly weaken rather than introduce more room for error? Changes of either nature can be mutually exclusive.

  • IamFran IamFran

    @JPLongstreet said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2735921#Comment_2735921

    Please, everyone try and not focus on expert badass gameplay in DBD, the so-called high level play. They've proven time and again their intention to consider all players of all skills in proposed changes, not just how it would affect the best players.

    Whatever changes you have in mind, please always tag onto it "How would this affect a brand-new player? Or one with less than 200hrs?" Because that's the biggest portion of the playerbase.

    What chance do we have of keeping players longer if changes immediately become frustratingly noob-stomping? The grind is already rough, the tutorials (imo) still unsatisfactory. Now add on something only aimed at the top 5,000 or so best players we have? No one would stick around to "git gud".

    Maybe balancing considering the high level players is not good, but balancing considering only the noobs (as they seems to do) is even worse.

    The results of balancing considering only the noobs:

    • The pig and Freddy being gutted (the two classical noob stomper killers) someone can say Billy, but he's still good with proper addons.
    • Broken maps, some with an huge amount of pallets (Mostly Gideon meat plant) and others with overwhelming loops and chained conections between loops, pallets, jungle gyms, T-walls, infinites... (Badham, Haddonfield, Mother Dwelling, Eyrie of crows sometimes, Fractured Cowshed and Ormond mostly) The noobs need a lot of pallets and pallets conected with structures and windows for not being downed quickly, but any survivor with ONLY 200-300 hours already know how to exploit them, and a survivor with that amount of hours is not exactly a pro, imagine one with 2.000+ hours.
  • Ghouled_Mojo Ghouled_Mojo

    @Peanits said:

    I'll start by saying that I'm not trying to throw any shade here. People come and go over the years, and I really don't expect anyone to catch every single thread we've responded to or remember every time we've answered something. I'm willing to bet there's a good chunk of people who weren't even around last time we talked about it, but we have indeed brushed upon this in the past.

    First of all, I just want to clear up this idea that we are only thinking about this now that SBMM is a thing. I can safely say that it is not the case. Over the few years I've been here, there have been loads of conversations about not only this, but many other hot topics that for one reason or another have to get shelved for a while (whether that's time constraints, bottlenecks, bigger fish to fry, etc.).

    We shared this statistic because it gives something concrete to aim for. Previously, we only had ranks 1-20 to work on, and due to the way ranks worked- and since there's not a whole lot of granularity when you only have 20 ranks to work with- players of wildly varying skill levels ended up lumped together. I think anyone who's reached rank 1 on the old system knows that it's not necessarily purely about skill. Just by virtue of playing a lot, many people would end up climbing to rank 1 even if that wasn't where they were most comfortable.

    As a result, the data wasn't very reliable and the gap appeared far smaller than it really was. Does that mean the gap didn't exist? No, absolutely not. Sure, we could feel a difference playing matches, but I think we can all agree that blindly aiming for a target that you cannot see is not a good idea. Doing so makes any change we could do very risky, as it could be totally overkill and buff Survivors way too much, or not enough and still leave solo Survivors behind (as well as wasting development time that could be spent on other issues). Even after the fact, it'd be hard to say whether or not the change was effective because we don't have anything but our gut feeling to determine if it worked.

    With SBMM, on the other hand, we're able to see much more accurate info on just how big the difference is at different skill levels, and more importantly, we have something we can monitor to see how effective any changes are. It gives us a tangible goal beyond "This feels a little better I guess." Now if we do a change, we can see exactly how much the gap has closed (whether it's gone, unchanged, or smaller than before).

    But moreover, the main reason we shared this info- both the statistic and the mechanic- is to be more transparent. I think anyone who's been around for a while can vouch for the fact that we normally don't talk about mechanics like this so early on. It's something that people have been asking for and it's something we've been pushing for as well. We genuinely believe it's better to be open about it and frame the things we're suggesting with reasoning rather than dropping it as a surprise with no context.

    On a personal level, I find it a pretty disheartening that when we do push to reveal things earlier like this, it's often met with conspiracies, fearmongering and passive aggressive jabs at the team. I always get excited when we're able to good news like this with the community, especially when it's a big topic like the SWF gap. But it's really disappointing to see something that people have been asking for somehow get twisted into something negative. Even still, I stand by the fact that it's better to be transparent and share these details than the keep them locked away until the last second.

    Aside from the negativity, it was obvious something was needed to close the gaps between solo survivors and groups. Have any devs expressed a concern that elevating survivors, even a tiny amount, could put more stress on the killer role? I’m all about helping solo q as I play solo but I’m worried the ability for all survivors to inherently know what the others are doing could put more strain on an, at times, already strained role.

  • unknown unknown
    This content has been removed.
  • KFChris18 KFChris18

    Just wanted to add my two cents into this discussion. @Peanits I really like how in depth you responded to questions around the patch notes. This is the kind of engagement the community desperately needs from folks such as yourself. I can only speak to my own experiences, but a common thread in patch note complaints seems to be "they are ignoring X, they don't care"! Posts like yours included in the patch notes themselves would go a long way to help people feel like they are being listened too. Your posts feel like they are from an actual person, not a paid spokesperson. We need that, on top of more communication. Something as simple as showing the actual numbers behind why you changed something will go a long way towards restoring community trust. As it is right now, Behavior seems to be insisting that the player base trust them, when that trust has been betrayed in the past. Looking back, there are a litany of things that were promised by Behavior via employees that were in the know, only to have said promises be seemingly forgotten. Further more, things that rankle the community, ie. DH, DS, NOED, genspeed, map imbalance etc are rarely even acknowledged. You don't have to "fix" everything the community labels a problem, but at least acknowledge that you are listening to them. This isn't even going into things that are actively harming both players and your bottom line, like hackers modding in paid dlc.


    I know that there is only so much you can do about the many challenges that come with running an asymmetrical game like DBD. Behavior has created something truly special here. The amount of vitriol you receive is proof of how much people care about the health of your title! Even if you cannot disclose exact details or solutions in development, just saying that you brought it up to the folks with the power to make an impact will help massively.


    Good Luck in the Fog


    • - a DBD player
  • Laluzi Laluzi

    @Haddix said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2735806#Comment_2735806

    I was told by the designer who was in charge of adjusting Freddy that him being easy is not the reason for his high kill rate, but I could not agree. The reason why the Nurse is so low is because human error is an extremely common factor in how successful player are with her, as you said, whereas Freddy, who was weaker than a Nurse at her MAXIMUM potential (and that may or may not be something indicated by your data collection), was performing the best out of all characters because of his power level and ease of use.

    Wouldn't the objectively better solution for "too easy for the level of strength" be to make a character harder, not weaker? If you make more room for error, then a killer will always be weaker on average statistically, which would allow for more interaction between survivor and killer and force players to improve at the character to reach his maximum potential. That's not what happened, though.

    Why directly weaken rather than introduce more room for error? Changes of either nature can be mutually exclusive.

    Ehhh... I'm skeptical of that design philosophy, because the 'this power is too easy, make it harder' changes lead to things like Billy's overheat and Deathslinger losing ADS. Maybe even Twins and their giant mound of stuns, though I'm less certain what exactly was behind that. Still. It's historically translated to anti-QoL that made the killer much less attractive and I can't say I want to see any more of that.

    Some mechanics are simpler than others and are going to be easier to use as a result, and you'd have to majorly fiddle with a character's identity to introduce room for error at all. Wraith will never take as much skill as Huntress because he doesn't have to consider throw arcs and predict survivor trajectories, he just runs up behind you and uncloaks. There's only like two ways he can screw that up and he'll figure both of them out the first time they happen, because they're binary 'don't do this when the survivor is doing that' situations. Plague's power is a constant jumble of decisionmaking dependent on survivor playstyle and her current info and she can fail very badly if the player doesn't know how to react to what's happening. Trapper's skill cap involves predicting not only survivor movements, but the direction survivors will come around structures and what their field of view will be in order to place the traps that will be most likely to catch people off guard - but at the same time, he doesn't do that much worse if you just trap the obvious windows and doorways, and his performance is always going to be marred by RNG and the X-factor of survivor attentiveness. Blight requires a great deal of experience and map-specific hitbox familiarity to be able to bounce and hug when he wants to and where he wants to. Then you've got Bubba, who just needs to learn how close he can skate to a wall before he hits it and he's good to go on most maps.

    I don't see how you could make all of these killers' skill ceilings anywhere near each other. In theory, what you're suggesting sounds nice, but in practice, I'm not seeing it.

  • Johnny_XMan Johnny_XMan

    SWF isn't OP.

    Just because they perform better than SoloQ does not make it OP. Just means that they are actually doing gens/being efficient and not wasting time crouching and hiding the whole game.

    Way to misinterpret data given to you.

  • Flimflam Flimflam

    Honestly glacially slow obvious changes are kind of this dev teams MO. I'm not sure if the company is too bloated to make quick and nimble decisions or if the skillset required to code and design games overlaps with being an alien but whatever it is it has been 6 yrs with no signs of speeding up.

  • PigMainBigBrain PigMainBigBrain

    @Haddix said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2735806#Comment_2735806

    I was told by the designer who was in charge of adjusting Freddy that him being easy is not the reason for his high kill rate, but I could not agree. The reason why the Nurse is so low is because human error is an extremely common factor in how successful player are with her, as you said, whereas Freddy, who was weaker than a Nurse at her MAXIMUM potential (and that may or may not be something indicated by your data collection), was performing the best out of all characters because of his power level and ease of use.

    Wouldn't the objectively better solution for "too easy for the level of strength" be to make a character harder, not weaker? If you make more room for error, then a killer will always be weaker on average statistically, which would allow for more interaction between survivor and killer and force players to improve at the character to reach his maximum potential. That's not what happened, though.

    Why directly weaken rather than introduce more room for error? Changes of either nature can be mutually exclusive.

    That would involve having killers keep their high skill ceiling. Or skill required for the amount of reward on return. IMO more killers need to be like nurse. Where it requires a high amount of skill to get the maximum potential and just shred the hell out of people. But they keep nerfing those aspects. Not only that, but for killers who actually require a decent amount of skill they find ways to nerf them so the time you spend learning the damn thing and fine tuning it doesn't pay off. If I spent 500 hours learning nurse. And then spent 500 hours learning Pinhead <---I've literally cut my life short for no reason spending all that time learning pinhead when his skill cap is high, but they keep nerfing his payout. And the guy just came out not too long ago..... same thing with blight, players learn a skill, spend 100s of hours to learn and perfect a killer then they go...."nah"...and then just drop their skill cap outta nowhere. They did it with Blight, They did it with Oni, they did it with Hillbilly, they did it with Pinhead, and did it with Slinger and spirit repeatedly. So they don't want you making precision turns with your mouse, they don't want you quick scoping, they don't want you mind gaming, it feels like they don't want killers to think. They just want us to walk around in this cage of limitations like robots waiting for cooldowns like we're playing some mmorpg with global cooldowns between casts. GCD when you miss, GCD when you hit, GCD to kick a gen, GCD when you hit someone but didn't actually hit someone cause hit validation says no and you get stunned anyway.

    Wanna be stealthy and use your brain to come up with witty ways to capture survivors, NO. Survivors need to have all the information in the game. Devs apparently think, survivors need to know where you are, need to know if you're using your power even if you aren't anywhere near them, need to know that a hex is in play, etc. Its too much hand holding, both on killer and survivor side. And because of all that free information and hand holding we get garbage for horror elements. It literally kills the mood. I haven't even been able to put together a jump scare compilation in over a year because people just aren't immersed into the game. Its all UI and huge Tells. They even tell you what killer you're up against in the loading screen. Theres no mystery, theres no high skill caps, its just info leaks and survivors running around not feeling threatened in the slightest to even hide because the game gets dumbed down so much. If I had one wish for this game that would be it....just increase killer skill caps so it doesn't feel like we're running around hamstringed all the time by mechanics and bad hit validation and give us the payoff for actually learning and improving our skills. We only get 7 minutes in most cases to make 24 hits (32 for Nemesis) and 12 hooks to completely 4k a game. But given the games current state survivors complete damn near 50% of the objective in the first 2 minutes. Then you have killers who just can't perform because their kit only allows so much pressure. Its a mess and its been a mess for years. It used to be, "oh you can get away with running just 1 generator protection perk and be fine. Now people are running 3 to 4. Theres more second chance perks than ever. More healing perks than ever even after they did a pass to balance healing. And we still have to deal with perks and add ons that have little to no impact on a games outcome...

  • AnchorTea AnchorTea

    @Peanits said:

    I'll start by saying that I'm not trying to throw any shade here. People come and go over the years, and I really don't expect anyone to catch every single thread we've responded to or remember every time we've answered something. I'm willing to bet there's a good chunk of people who weren't even around last time we talked about it, but we have indeed brushed upon this in the past.

    First of all, I just want to clear up this idea that we are only thinking about this now that SBMM is a thing. I can safely say that it is not the case. Over the few years I've been here, there have been loads of conversations about not only this, but many other hot topics that for one reason or another have to get shelved for a while (whether that's time constraints, bottlenecks, bigger fish to fry, etc.).

    We shared this statistic because it gives something concrete to aim for. Previously, we only had ranks 1-20 to work on, and due to the way ranks worked- and since there's not a whole lot of granularity when you only have 20 ranks to work with- players of wildly varying skill levels ended up lumped together. I think anyone who's reached rank 1 on the old system knows that it's not necessarily purely about skill. Just by virtue of playing a lot, many people would end up climbing to rank 1 even if that wasn't where they were most comfortable.

    As a result, the data wasn't very reliable and the gap appeared far smaller than it really was. Does that mean the gap didn't exist? No, absolutely not. Sure, we could feel a difference playing matches, but I think we can all agree that blindly aiming for a target that you cannot see is not a good idea. Doing so makes any change we could do very risky, as it could be totally overkill and buff Survivors way too much, or not enough and still leave solo Survivors behind (as well as wasting development time that could be spent on other issues). Even after the fact, it'd be hard to say whether or not the change was effective because we don't have anything but our gut feeling to determine if it worked.

    With SBMM, on the other hand, we're able to see much more accurate info on just how big the difference is at different skill levels, and more importantly, we have something we can monitor to see how effective any changes are. It gives us a tangible goal beyond "This feels a little better I guess." Now if we do a change, we can see exactly how much the gap has closed (whether it's gone, unchanged, or smaller than before).

    But moreover, the main reason we shared this info- both the statistic and the mechanic- is to be more transparent. I think anyone who's been around for a while can vouch for the fact that we normally don't talk about mechanics like this so early on. It's something that people have been asking for and it's something we've been pushing for as well. We genuinely believe it's better to be open about it and frame the things we're suggesting with reasoning rather than dropping it as a surprise with no context.

    On a personal level, I find it a pretty disheartening that when we do push to reveal things earlier like this, it's often met with conspiracies, fearmongering and passive aggressive jabs at the team. I always get excited when we're able to good news like this with the community, especially when it's a big topic like the SWF gap. But it's really disappointing to see something that people have been asking for somehow get twisted into something negative. Even still, I stand by the fact that it's better to be transparent and share these details than the keep them locked away until the last second.

    Mad. Respect.

  • Gwinty Gwinty

    @PigMainBigBrain said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2736600#Comment_2736600

    That would involve having killers keep their high skill ceiling. Or skill required for the amount of reward on return. IMO more killers need to be like nurse. Where it requires a high amount of skill to get the maximum potential and just shred the hell out of people. But they keep nerfing those aspects. Not only that, but for killers who actually require a decent amount of skill they find ways to nerf them so the time you spend learning the damn thing and fine tuning it doesn't pay off. If I spent 500 hours learning nurse. And then spent 500 hours learning Pinhead <---I've literally cut my life short for no reason spending all that time learning pinhead when his skill cap is high, but they keep nerfing his payout. And the guy just came out not too long ago..... same thing with blight, players learn a skill, spend 100s of hours to learn and perfect a killer then they go...."nah"...and then just drop their skill cap outta nowhere. They did it with Blight, They did it with Oni, they did it with Hillbilly, they did it with Pinhead, and did it with Slinger and spirit repeatedly. So they don't want you making precision turns with your mouse, they don't want you quick scoping, they don't want you mind gaming, it feels like they don't want killers to think. They just want us to walk around in this cage of limitations like robots waiting for cooldowns like we're playing some mmorpg with global cooldowns between casts. GCD when you miss, GCD when you hit, GCD to kick a gen, GCD when you hit someone but didn't actually hit someone cause hit validation says no and you get stunned anyway.

    Wanna be stealthy and use your brain to come up with witty ways to capture survivors, NO. Survivors need to have all the information in the game. Devs apparently think, survivors need to know where you are, need to know if you're using your power even if you aren't anywhere near them, need to know that a hex is in play, etc. Its too much hand holding, both on killer and survivor side. And because of all that free information and hand holding we get garbage for horror elements. It literally kills the mood. I haven't even been able to put together a jump scare compilation in over a year because people just aren't immersed into the game. Its all UI and huge Tells. They even tell you what killer you're up against in the loading screen. Theres no mystery, theres no high skill caps, its just info leaks and survivors running around not feeling threatened in the slightest to even hide because the game gets dumbed down so much. If I had one wish for this game that would be it....just increase killer skill caps so it doesn't feel like we're running around hamstringed all the time by mechanics and bad hit validation and give us the payoff for actually learning and improving our skills. We only get 7 minutes in most cases to make 24 hits (32 for Nemesis) and 12 hooks to completely 4k a game. But given the games current state survivors complete damn near 50% of the objective in the first 2 minutes. Then you have killers who just can't perform because their kit only allows so much pressure. Its a mess and its been a mess for years. It used to be, "oh you can get away with running just 1 generator protection perk and be fine. Now people are running 3 to 4. Theres more second chance perks than ever. More healing perks than ever even after they did a pass to balance healing. And we still have to deal with perks and add ons that have little to no impact on a games outcome...

    Now first of all I agree with some points you make.

    Removing difficult mechanics that are rewarding to learn (Oni, Blight, Billy) is just bad. The goal should be to get you to play more to learn those mechanics and get better with them. However then you have survivors crying about how this mechanic is "unfun" like with the Artist now. Her crows allow some very fancy stuff and you as a survivor can make quit some fancy plays to evade them. What do the most vocal survivors say: Broken Killer, just hold W, no need to adapt.

    And yes, there is too much handholding without any investment. If you invest in something via a perk it is okay. A Killer using Discordance makes an investment and gets to see how this plays out. Survivor can even figure out you have Discordance by your behavioure and try to play around it. This is good design in my opinion.

    Same with boons: Survivors make an investment and get a reward. The Killer can make an investment to negate that reward. This mechanic in itself if no problem for me. The problem comes from the investment both sides have to make and that is does not add up.

    Second change perks are also fine, depending on how you do them: Lithe is amazing if used correctly and can extend a chase for quit some time. A Dead Hard through the Killer to bamboozle him or to safe your friend with a flashlight might feels bad for the Killer but is a very cool situation for the survivor and honestly a great moment in the game. Dead Hard for distance on the other hand is pretty lame.


    But please consider that many design choices need tons of time to be implemented. Devs can do stuff but they need time. Look at the new wiggle mechanic: Good stuff, you get a reward for good skillchecks, it is more interactive than button mashing and looks fancy. Yet it took them quit some time to get it ready and they were only able to announce it a day before they released it. This show how much work needs to be done in the background.

    This difficulty makes it hard for fast changes to occure. The players are now way better than back then. But they are fast than the devs in exploiting new things.

    The devs already removed tons of bad stuff from the game. Remember true infinites, old Deceisive Strike, the feeling of being exhaused on the ground after Dead Hard? Gone for good and I am not mad about it...keeping up with us as players is just hard because we are fast.

  • ThiccBudhha ThiccBudhha

    @Johnny_XMan said:

    SWF isn't OP.

    Just because they perform better than SoloQ does not make it OP. Just means that they are actually doing gens/being efficient and not wasting time crouching and hiding the whole game.

    Way to misinterpret data given to you.

    I honestly agree, SWF just increases the likelihood of coordination. Good survivors are good. Bad survivors are bad. I SWF and get destroyed because we aren't coordinating, we are just playing together for fun. I do better solo because I know I have to do so much more if I want to escape. Lol.

  • AGM AGM

    @Peanits said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2735761#Comment_2735761

    I'll try to keep this shorter than my last post, but to touch upon a few of the points you've brought up:

    1: On the subject of The Nurse, using pick rates as a determining factor is very shaky territory. First, you've gotta consider the fact that part of the reason she's picked less often is due in part to the bugs with her power. Even if someone likes The Nurse and is doing moderately well with her, it's totally within the realm of possibility that the bugs were too frustrating for them to continue playing. Secondly, pick rate is not a universal thing. While it stands it reason that she may not be picked at lower skill levels (owing to her higher learning curve), she becomes far more popular at higher skill levels. I won't speak for everyone, but I'm assuming at least some people would like to see more Killers pop up regularly in the higher skill levels.

    But beyond this, The Nurse's bug fixes is also a prime example of something that has come up a lot over the years. Often times we're asked to focus on things like game health rather than content / balance, and The Nurse and her various bugs was often tied directly to that as a poster child of sorts. Fixing these issues did require a complete redo of her coding, but it's a prime example of us doing exactly that: Putting content / balance to the side to focus on fixing things. I totally understand if you're not pumped for this next Mid-Chapter, but it's a pretty shocking reaction to something that was asked of us very often (focusing on fixes/game health over content).

    2: To think point of Circle of Healing, I just want to say that this is absolutely not something we're ignoring. We make a point out of letting things settle before making rash decisions these days. Between PTBs & live these days, the changes we make are almost always fairly minor. We've been burned in the past by making rash decisions when the initial feedback was rough. Nowadays, we try to let everything have some time to settle before we start thinking about how it should change. This gives us a better idea of where it actually sits rather than making a knee jerk reaction and hoping it works out. Circle of Healing is an even trickier scenario since it came bundled with an entirely new mechanic (boons), so it's very important that we see how things work before diving head first into changes.

    That said, though, I can't reveal if/what will happen to Circle of Healing right here, just please keep in mind that there's always a cycle that looks like this:

    • Something releases
    • Wait for it to settle
    • Determine if changes are needed
    • Create changes

    3: On the subject of Freddy, I feel like this something that often gets misconstrued as well. In reality, kill rates only play a small role. You compared him to The Nurse, and I'm really glad you did because she's the perfect example of why that's not the case. The Nurse overall has a fairly low kill rate (well below the rest of Killers), but that doesn't mean she's weak. She's tough to play, and in the right hands, she can be hands down the best. But that also isn't necessarily a problem because there's a ton of skill that goes into playing her extraordinarily well, and there's also a lot of skill that goes into playing against her well.

    In the case of Freddy, on the other hand, you had a Killer that was very strong without needing much thought or skill. Dropping a couple traps at a loop would yield very strong results with very little risk or strategy. His slight tweaks aimed to make the strategy of spamming traps constantly while in a chase less viable.

    On the point of lack of skill, I won't delve too far into this, but that is a very loaded point to make. Many developers play the game daily (typically not with BHVR tags in their name, they don't want to be recognized). I myself used to stream this game three times per week, and I was playing at the higher ranks just fine. Sure, not every game developer's going to be ready to jump on an eSports team, but expecting everyone working on a game to be able to play it at a competitive level is a frankly unrealistic standard, even if some of them are pretty good.

    Miss your streams man. Now that you don't stream and McLean isn't a dev I feel like we don't have a place to have productive discussions with devs on things like game balance and bugs that didn't devolve into the garbage that the forums are known for like "devs are trash, devs are x sided, personal attacks against the devs, etc." In the interest of transparency, it might be worth hiring someone to stream who can clarify the devs' positions, and priorities and explain processes to people who might not know them, and get direct feedback on balance ideas and bugs that the team may not know about. I'm not sure that the forums are really all that productive anymore...

  • th3 th3

    @Adjatha said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2735950#Comment_2735950

    Re: the point about Freddy -

    It's not JUST that he slows down to set snares, as was mentioned above (which, by the way, feels terrible from a player stand point, regardless of if they think it makes his power more balanced), and it's not JUST that they gutted his addons, as you mentioned.

    They ALSO reduced the number of snares and pallets he could have at once AND gave alarm clock wake ups a 60 second immunity to falling asleep (not just delaying the passive but also making you immune to his M1 sleep. That just straight up makes survivors immune to his entire power on top of gutting his addons, reducing the setting speed, and taking away 40% of his available snares.

    The only part of Freddy's kit that WASN'T nerfed was his 'teleport to a generator,' which was overwhelmingly the main part of his kit that survivors complained about. So not only did they make him worse in every way for killers to play, but didn't fix the thing that survivors didn't like. So now he's not fun to play as AND not fun to play against. The whole thing was a massive overreach of nerfs across the board for the sole sin of "a killer who is easy to play as."

    Designing killers to be a pain to use is not good game design and it's even worse as a 'balancing' mechanic.

    Clarification: It's 30 seconds of immunity if woken through an alarm clock, not 60 seconds. 60 seconds is the total duration a survivor is awake until they fall asleep.

  • hezekiah hezekiah

    Give me a Survivor SWF sweaty Meta team clicky clicky team any time. Awesome fun - Pinhead Red cube and broken tooth, even more fun.

    I'll get 32,000 points, even if a couple actually escape. Pinhead can be really OP again any sweaty SWF. The sweatier the better, get em on a scrouge hook, explode a gen, pickup the Cube, and rinse and repeat.

    Last survivor - if I can't locate them, I go to the bathroom lol they can leave. I still get my +2.

    And then there is the Artist - Hex pentimento, and three other Hex totems, keep em busy with totems while I Hi-jack the gens (with the 4 crow addon) SWFs have no chance.

    I normally get over 30,000 point and good SWF get over 25,000 - everybody is happy.

  • Smuk Smuk

    By the end of the day. Will SBMM actually provide steady matches without fluctuations on either side.

    Skill cannot be measured by MMR.

    Therefore one match can be 4K and the other 4E. And there will be a limbo

  • Dr_Loomis Dr_Loomis

    I only started playing with more than one person I know in actual life in the last month or so.

    We aren't toxic and don't go out of way to antagonise the killer and make their experience miserable...like many of these tiresome "LiKe AnD suBsCribe!" streamers do.

    That being said, I am fully behind the belief that SWF salt squads have ruined DBD as a killer.

    Honestly, I only play killer to get Adepts and other challenges. Majority of the time it's a painful experience.

  • GoodBoyKaru GoodBoyKaru

    @Vaimore said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2735373#Comment_2735373

    SWF is not just OP, its cheating imo. Do you think its fair that 4 survs who have a total of 16 perks between them and a hivemind against ONE killer is realistically fair?? No! They all communicate and act like ONE entity the entire game. Taking turns on hooks, flashlight bullying, and Tbagging at the exit gates at the end of EVERY match. Its broken and unfair. I honestly think with all the playing I have done in this game, that they need to balance it back out. Killers are 1 against 4 people who can crash Gens out of a game in seriously no time at all regardless of killer set up. I am running ( on Legion ) Hex: Pem, DL, Than, and ruin. ITS STILL NOT ENOUGH!! Games are too fast and survs no longer fear any killers at all. DH is OP, but SWF is over the top.

    Killers need 6 perk slots to make things a bit more competitive. Not every killer should feel like that have to be a pro/ veteran to get 1 kill a match.

    SWF is not cheating and please stop saying that it is, because it has been confirmed by the people that confirm what is/isn't cheating that it is not, in fact, cheating.

  • Lemonwolf Lemonwolf

    @Peanits said:

    I'll start by saying that I'm not trying to throw any shade here. People come and go over the years, and I really don't expect anyone to catch every single thread we've responded to or remember every time we've answered something. I'm willing to bet there's a good chunk of people who weren't even around last time we talked about it, but we have indeed brushed upon this in the past.

    First of all, I just want to clear up this idea that we are only thinking about this now that SBMM is a thing. I can safely say that it is not the case. Over the few years I've been here, there have been loads of conversations about not only this, but many other hot topics that for one reason or another have to get shelved for a while (whether that's time constraints, bottlenecks, bigger fish to fry, etc.).

    We shared this statistic because it gives something concrete to aim for. Previously, we only had ranks 1-20 to work on, and due to the way ranks worked- and since there's not a whole lot of granularity when you only have 20 ranks to work with- players of wildly varying skill levels ended up lumped together. I think anyone who's reached rank 1 on the old system knows that it's not necessarily purely about skill. Just by virtue of playing a lot, many people would end up climbing to rank 1 even if that wasn't where they were most comfortable.

    As a result, the data wasn't very reliable and the gap appeared far smaller than it really was. Does that mean the gap didn't exist? No, absolutely not. Sure, we could feel a difference playing matches, but I think we can all agree that blindly aiming for a target that you cannot see is not a good idea. Doing so makes any change we could do very risky, as it could be totally overkill and buff Survivors way too much, or not enough and still leave solo Survivors behind (as well as wasting development time that could be spent on other issues). Even after the fact, it'd be hard to say whether or not the change was effective because we don't have anything but our gut feeling to determine if it worked.

    With SBMM, on the other hand, we're able to see much more accurate info on just how big the difference is at different skill levels, and more importantly, we have something we can monitor to see how effective any changes are. It gives us a tangible goal beyond "This feels a little better I guess." Now if we do a change, we can see exactly how much the gap has closed (whether it's gone, unchanged, or smaller than before).

    But moreover, the main reason we shared this info- both the statistic and the mechanic- is to be more transparent. I think anyone who's been around for a while can vouch for the fact that we normally don't talk about mechanics like this so early on. It's something that people have been asking for and it's something we've been pushing for as well. We genuinely believe it's better to be open about it and frame the things we're suggesting with reasoning rather than dropping it as a surprise with no context.

    On a personal level, I find it a pretty disheartening that when we do push to reveal things earlier like this, it's often met with conspiracies, fearmongering and passive aggressive jabs at the team. I always get excited when we're able to good news like this with the community, especially when it's a big topic like the SWF gap. But it's really disappointing to see something that people have been asking for somehow get twisted into something negative. Even still, I stand by the fact that it's better to be transparent and share these details than the keep them locked away until the last second.

    You are genuinely surprised that there are people who dont react well to this new revelation?

    Your lead game designer told people years ago to go play Civilization as a response to someone bringing up general balancing problems.

    Another Dev literally acknowledged on video that the game is unbalanced and he didnt care about it AT ALL.

    He event went as far as to mock the person who brought up the issue.

    Both instances are on video and can be found with a simple google search.

    THAT is why people react the way they do. Think about it.

  • hailxsatanxeveryxday hailxsatanxeveryxday

    @Firellius said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2735376#Comment_2735376

    That's a shame. That still tells us very little. Did they specify 15%, additive or multiplicative? Because that's also a huge difference. I would assume additive (For example: solo is 30, swiffer is 45), which would make it a considerable gap.

    There's probably a few swiffer-oriented nerfs that you can make in regards to save tactics, while making some buffs that only help solos, like the action UI they're testing out.

    When did they ever say the new UI changes were only going to apply to solos? My understanding is that they were going to buff all survivors. (Meaning, they're doing something about the escape rate difference, not SWFs being overpowered.)

    They can't really do anything about SWFs being overpowered without ruining it for solos or else getting rid of SWFs altogether, which isn't an option. But they're going to buff solos so they're just as hard to deal with?

    My prediction is that a lot of killers try to intentionally derank. And that'll stop working eventually, because there will be too many high-ranked survivors and not enough killers at the same level, which will just lead to a lot of killers ragequitting or switching to survivor.

  • WretchedElk WretchedElk

    @Peanits said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2735761#Comment_2735761

    I'll try to keep this shorter than my last post, but to touch upon a few of the points you've brought up:

    1: On the subject of The Nurse, using pick rates as a determining factor is very shaky territory. First, you've gotta consider the fact that part of the reason she's picked less often is due in part to the bugs with her power. Even if someone likes The Nurse and is doing moderately well with her, it's totally within the realm of possibility that the bugs were too frustrating for them to continue playing. Secondly, pick rate is not a universal thing. While it stands it reason that she may not be picked at lower skill levels (owing to her higher learning curve), she becomes far more popular at higher skill levels. I won't speak for everyone, but I'm assuming at least some people would like to see more Killers pop up regularly in the higher skill levels.

    But beyond this, The Nurse's bug fixes is also a prime example of something that has come up a lot over the years. Often times we're asked to focus on things like game health rather than content / balance, and The Nurse and her various bugs was often tied directly to that as a poster child of sorts. Fixing these issues did require a complete redo of her coding, but it's a prime example of us doing exactly that: Putting content / balance to the side to focus on fixing things. I totally understand if you're not pumped for this next Mid-Chapter, but it's a pretty shocking reaction to something that was asked of us very often (focusing on fixes/game health over content).

    2: To think point of Circle of Healing, I just want to say that this is absolutely not something we're ignoring. We make a point out of letting things settle before making rash decisions these days. Between PTBs & live these days, the changes we make are almost always fairly minor. We've been burned in the past by making rash decisions when the initial feedback was rough. Nowadays, we try to let everything have some time to settle before we start thinking about how it should change. This gives us a better idea of where it actually sits rather than making a knee jerk reaction and hoping it works out. Circle of Healing is an even trickier scenario since it came bundled with an entirely new mechanic (boons), so it's very important that we see how things work before diving head first into changes.

    That said, though, I can't reveal if/what will happen to Circle of Healing right here, just please keep in mind that there's always a cycle that looks like this:

    • Something releases
    • Wait for it to settle
    • Determine if changes are needed
    • Create changes

    3: On the subject of Freddy, I feel like this something that often gets misconstrued as well. In reality, kill rates only play a small role. You compared him to The Nurse, and I'm really glad you did because she's the perfect example of why that's not the case. The Nurse overall has a fairly low kill rate (well below the rest of Killers), but that doesn't mean she's weak. She's tough to play, and in the right hands, she can be hands down the best. But that also isn't necessarily a problem because there's a ton of skill that goes into playing her extraordinarily well, and there's also a lot of skill that goes into playing against her well.

    In the case of Freddy, on the other hand, you had a Killer that was very strong without needing much thought or skill. Dropping a couple traps at a loop would yield very strong results with very little risk or strategy. His slight tweaks aimed to make the strategy of spamming traps constantly while in a chase less viable.

    On the point of lack of skill, I won't delve too far into this, but that is a very loaded point to make. Many developers play the game daily (typically not with BHVR tags in their name, they don't want to be recognized). I myself used to stream this game three times per week, and I was playing at the higher ranks just fine. Sure, not every game developer's going to be ready to jump on an eSports team, but expecting everyone working on a game to be able to play it at a competitive level is a frankly unrealistic standard, even if some of them are pretty good.

    Did you know the creator of Space Invaders can’t get past level two of Space Invaders.

  • Smuk Smuk

    @Peanits I find the excuse about boons invalid.

    Both sides agree that boons, particular coh needs number tweaked.

    Yes you added boons as new mechanic to waste time on. More time was wasted by wounding survivors and making them regroup.


    Bigger issue than reblessing or anything is, that the boons work as a sphere or cylinder or which ever shape.


    Where boons in indoor maps or in as example badham basement create boon radius way to strong.

    So going down to basement to destroy boon and head upstairs it looses too much time regarding gens. It will also be blessed in a next minute.


    So what is more effective than searching the boons? Tunneling out Mikaela, no more boons and pinch of salt in endgame chat


    Tweaking boon range, removal of multi level effect and reducing or removing bonus % to healing would not be harsh but realistic tweak to monitor onward. But leaving it in broken state and brainstorming how to nerf twins addons even more. Is just funny. I dont honestly know which spirit animal represents bhvr

  • JawsIsTheNextKiller JawsIsTheNextKiller

    @WretchedElk said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2735806#Comment_2735806

    Did you know the creator of Space Invaders can’t get past level two of Space Invaders.

    Typical noob shooting the invaders at the bottom instead of the sides.

  • GoodBoyKaru GoodBoyKaru

    @hailxsatanxeveryxday said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2735379#Comment_2735379

    When did they ever say the new UI changes were only going to apply to solos? My understanding is that they were going to buff all survivors. (Meaning, they're doing something about the escape rate difference, not SWFs being overpowered.)

    They can't really do anything about SWFs being overpowered without ruining it for solos or else getting rid of SWFs altogether, which isn't an option. But they're going to buff solos so they're just as hard to deal with?

    My prediction is that a lot of killers try to intentionally derank. And that'll stop working eventually, because there will be too many high-ranked survivors and not enough killers at the same level, which will just lead to a lot of killers ragequitting or switching to survivor.

    It may be an overall buff to all survivors, but solos will feel the effects substantially more than SWF will. SWF already have this information for free, and therefore giving it to them in a slightly different format means nothing,

  • megagoast megagoast

    Abstract: few player base and fast matchmaking


    I've playing matchmaking games for like 15 years pra so and experienced both nice and awful situations.


    The most balanced game o experienced was Dota2 between 2015~17

    Average Queuee time was 30 minutes and there was lots and lots of players. It was the "Golden age of dota 2"


    There is a specific reason why mmking sucks, its because que dont have players enought.

    Of course dbd has high absolute player numbers but its Very hard to match combine 1,2,3 and 4 players players party at similar skills.

    And dbd is not a game that wellcoming for New players, the game os imbalanced by definition.

    So se cant have both fast Q and good mmking because of the number of players + possibility of 1,2,3 and 4 players party

  • hailxsatanxeveryxday hailxsatanxeveryxday

    @GoodBoyKaru said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2736950#Comment_2736950

    It may be an overall buff to all survivors, but solos will feel the effects substantially more than SWF will. SWF already have this information for free, and therefore giving it to them in a slightly different format means nothing,

    It'll speed them up slightly.

  • landromat landromat

    @Peanits said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2735761#Comment_2735761

    I'll try to keep this shorter than my last post, but to touch upon a few of the points you've brought up:

    1: On the subject of The Nurse, using pick rates as a determining factor is very shaky territory. First, you've gotta consider the fact that part of the reason she's picked less often is due in part to the bugs with her power. Even if someone likes The Nurse and is doing moderately well with her, it's totally within the realm of possibility that the bugs were too frustrating for them to continue playing. Secondly, pick rate is not a universal thing. While it stands it reason that she may not be picked at lower skill levels (owing to her higher learning curve), she becomes far more popular at higher skill levels. I won't speak for everyone, but I'm assuming at least some people would like to see more Killers pop up regularly in the higher skill levels.

    But beyond this, The Nurse's bug fixes is also a prime example of something that has come up a lot over the years. Often times we're asked to focus on things like game health rather than content / balance, and The Nurse and her various bugs was often tied directly to that as a poster child of sorts. Fixing these issues did require a complete redo of her coding, but it's a prime example of us doing exactly that: Putting content / balance to the side to focus on fixing things. I totally understand if you're not pumped for this next Mid-Chapter, but it's a pretty shocking reaction to something that was asked of us very often (focusing on fixes/game health over content).

    2: To think point of Circle of Healing, I just want to say that this is absolutely not something we're ignoring. We make a point out of letting things settle before making rash decisions these days. Between PTBs & live these days, the changes we make are almost always fairly minor. We've been burned in the past by making rash decisions when the initial feedback was rough. Nowadays, we try to let everything have some time to settle before we start thinking about how it should change. This gives us a better idea of where it actually sits rather than making a knee jerk reaction and hoping it works out. Circle of Healing is an even trickier scenario since it came bundled with an entirely new mechanic (boons), so it's very important that we see how things work before diving head first into changes.

    That said, though, I can't reveal if/what will happen to Circle of Healing right here, just please keep in mind that there's always a cycle that looks like this:

    • Something releases
    • Wait for it to settle
    • Determine if changes are needed
    • Create changes

    3: On the subject of Freddy, I feel like this something that often gets misconstrued as well. In reality, kill rates only play a small role. You compared him to The Nurse, and I'm really glad you did because she's the perfect example of why that's not the case. The Nurse overall has a fairly low kill rate (well below the rest of Killers), but that doesn't mean she's weak. She's tough to play, and in the right hands, she can be hands down the best. But that also isn't necessarily a problem because there's a ton of skill that goes into playing her extraordinarily well, and there's also a lot of skill that goes into playing against her well.

    In the case of Freddy, on the other hand, you had a Killer that was very strong without needing much thought or skill. Dropping a couple traps at a loop would yield very strong results with very little risk or strategy. His slight tweaks aimed to make the strategy of spamming traps constantly while in a chase less viable.

    On the point of lack of skill, I won't delve too far into this, but that is a very loaded point to make. Many developers play the game daily (typically not with BHVR tags in their name, they don't want to be recognized). I myself used to stream this game three times per week, and I was playing at the higher ranks just fine. Sure, not every game developer's going to be ready to jump on an eSports team, but expecting everyone working on a game to be able to play it at a competitive level is a frankly unrealistic standard, even if some of them are pretty good.

    COH is obviously a big problem for this game. We know it, you know it. But bigger problem is you waiting for perfect solution, leaving game in unbalanced state for months or even years. Gathering data is great but we need quick changes for obvious problems. You can change COH based on you feeling of the game and then gather data and make perfect change later.

    I understand Freddy fiasco made you afraid of making quick changes but we're talking about a single perk, not a whole killer power. That shouldn't be a problem

  • DontNerf DontNerf

    @Peanits said:

    I'll start by saying that I'm not trying to throw any shade here. People come and go over the years, and I really don't expect anyone to catch every single thread we've responded to or remember every time we've answered something. I'm willing to bet there's a good chunk of people who weren't even around last time we talked about it, but we have indeed brushed upon this in the past.

    First of all, I just want to clear up this idea that we are only thinking about this now that SBMM is a thing. I can safely say that it is not the case. Over the few years I've been here, there have been loads of conversations about not only this, but many other hot topics that for one reason or another have to get shelved for a while (whether that's time constraints, bottlenecks, bigger fish to fry, etc.).

    We shared this statistic because it gives something concrete to aim for. Previously, we only had ranks 1-20 to work on, and due to the way ranks worked- and since there's not a whole lot of granularity when you only have 20 ranks to work with- players of wildly varying skill levels ended up lumped together. I think anyone who's reached rank 1 on the old system knows that it's not necessarily purely about skill. Just by virtue of playing a lot, many people would end up climbing to rank 1 even if that wasn't where they were most comfortable.

    As a result, the data wasn't very reliable and the gap appeared far smaller than it really was. Does that mean the gap didn't exist? No, absolutely not. Sure, we could feel a difference playing matches, but I think we can all agree that blindly aiming for a target that you cannot see is not a good idea. Doing so makes any change we could do very risky, as it could be totally overkill and buff Survivors way too much, or not enough and still leave solo Survivors behind (as well as wasting development time that could be spent on other issues). Even after the fact, it'd be hard to say whether or not the change was effective because we don't have anything but our gut feeling to determine if it worked.

    With SBMM, on the other hand, we're able to see much more accurate info on just how big the difference is at different skill levels, and more importantly, we have something we can monitor to see how effective any changes are. It gives us a tangible goal beyond "This feels a little better I guess." Now if we do a change, we can see exactly how much the gap has closed (whether it's gone, unchanged, or smaller than before).

    But moreover, the main reason we shared this info- both the statistic and the mechanic- is to be more transparent. I think anyone who's been around for a while can vouch for the fact that we normally don't talk about mechanics like this so early on. It's something that people have been asking for and it's something we've been pushing for as well. We genuinely believe it's better to be open about it and frame the things we're suggesting with reasoning rather than dropping it as a surprise with no context.

    On a personal level, I find it a pretty disheartening that when we do push to reveal things earlier like this, it's often met with conspiracies, fearmongering and passive aggressive jabs at the team. I always get excited when we're able to good news like this with the community, especially when it's a big topic like the SWF gap. But it's really disappointing to see something that people have been asking for somehow get twisted into something negative. Even still, I stand by the fact that it's better to be transparent and share these details than the keep them locked away until the last second.

    Since you're being transparent (thx btw) could you shed some light on how you determine someone's skill in game?

  • Pulsar Pulsar

    @DontNerf said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2735729#Comment_2735729

    Since you're being transparent (thx btw) could you shed some light on how you determine someone's skill in game?

    Pretty sure it was confirmed to go off of Kills and Escapes exclusively.

  • Gigante Gigante

    Killers are the fun toys of survivors, do you really think Behavior cares about killers?

  • SOULWARRIOR71K SOULWARRIOR71K

    @th3 said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2735998#Comment_2735998

    Clarification: It's 30 seconds of immunity if woken through an alarm clock, not 60 seconds. 60 seconds is the total duration a survivor is awake until they fall asleep.

    But it ends up being 90 seconds minimum before they fall asleep again. That is way too long considering the average game lasts about 10 minutes or less.

  • Tigernutz1979 Tigernutz1979

    Hi, I've been playing for a while, mainly killer due to the fact that playing as a survivor in this game is so hard.

    Please note I'm only speaking from my own perspective when I say this.

    SURVIVOR: I don't play with friends except for very rarely, as for me it actually ruins the immersion factor. For me, playing a survivor, I'm supposed to have the information available to me from my perks and that's it. So having a friend telling me from the other side of the map what the killer is doing is just wrong! I actually discussed this with the people I do occasionally play with, and we don't do that any longer, which everyone has found to be an improvement in the level of enjoyment. Does it make things harder? Absolutely, but I'll take fun over an easy win any day. In fact, I think I've managed to escape only a handful of times from the last 50ish matches, whether solo (95% of the time) or as a duo.

    KILLER: Playing against swf teams becomes apparent very early into the match, and certainly lowers my enjoyment of the match. I also find the swf teams engaging in toxic activities far more often, unfortunately. And I use that term based off what I've seen on Discord. It certainly is very disheartening when it happens, and when it happens a few times back to back I go looking for a different game to play.

    My personal opinion is that swf is massively detrimental to the game, both from a solo survivor and a killer perspective. An interesting suggestion which I made to my friends and who also thought it was a great idea, was that if survivors were communicating with each other, then the killer should be able to listen in (but not communicate back), so the communication becomes the survivors "shouting" to each other, which the killer can obviously hear.


    Thanks 😊

  • Kurri Kurri

    @Peanits said:

    I'll start by saying that I'm not trying to throw any shade here. People come and go over the years, and I really don't expect anyone to catch every single thread we've responded to or remember every time we've answered something. I'm willing to bet there's a good chunk of people who weren't even around last time we talked about it, but we have indeed brushed upon this in the past.

    First of all, I just want to clear up this idea that we are only thinking about this now that SBMM is a thing. I can safely say that it is not the case. Over the few years I've been here, there have been loads of conversations about not only this, but many other hot topics that for one reason or another have to get shelved for a while (whether that's time constraints, bottlenecks, bigger fish to fry, etc.).

    We shared this statistic because it gives something concrete to aim for. Previously, we only had ranks 1-20 to work on, and due to the way ranks worked- and since there's not a whole lot of granularity when you only have 20 ranks to work with- players of wildly varying skill levels ended up lumped together. I think anyone who's reached rank 1 on the old system knows that it's not necessarily purely about skill. Just by virtue of playing a lot, many people would end up climbing to rank 1 even if that wasn't where they were most comfortable.

    As a result, the data wasn't very reliable and the gap appeared far smaller than it really was. Does that mean the gap didn't exist? No, absolutely not. Sure, we could feel a difference playing matches, but I think we can all agree that blindly aiming for a target that you cannot see is not a good idea. Doing so makes any change we could do very risky, as it could be totally overkill and buff Survivors way too much, or not enough and still leave solo Survivors behind (as well as wasting development time that could be spent on other issues). Even after the fact, it'd be hard to say whether or not the change was effective because we don't have anything but our gut feeling to determine if it worked.

    With SBMM, on the other hand, we're able to see much more accurate info on just how big the difference is at different skill levels, and more importantly, we have something we can monitor to see how effective any changes are. It gives us a tangible goal beyond "This feels a little better I guess." Now if we do a change, we can see exactly how much the gap has closed (whether it's gone, unchanged, or smaller than before).

    But moreover, the main reason we shared this info- both the statistic and the mechanic- is to be more transparent. I think anyone who's been around for a while can vouch for the fact that we normally don't talk about mechanics like this so early on. It's something that people have been asking for and it's something we've been pushing for as well. We genuinely believe it's better to be open about it and frame the things we're suggesting with reasoning rather than dropping it as a surprise with no context.

    On a personal level, I find it a pretty disheartening that when we do push to reveal things earlier like this, it's often met with conspiracies, fearmongering and passive aggressive jabs at the team. I always get excited when we're able to good news like this with the community, especially when it's a big topic like the SWF gap. But it's really disappointing to see something that people have been asking for somehow get twisted into something negative. Even still, I stand by the fact that it's better to be transparent and share these details than the keep them locked away until the last second.

    Can you give some insight on the Killers fun? It seems like you're only focusing on Survivors ability to face certain Killers (Nurse and Freddy), and Killers skill level playing Killers, but not about the real issue everyone is talking about. That playing Killer isn't fun even when you are doing well.

  • Smoe Smoe

    @Lemonwolf said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2735729#Comment_2735729

    You are genuinely surprised that there are people who dont react well to this new revelation?

    Your lead game designer told people years ago to go play Civilization as a response to someone bringing up general balancing problems.

    Another Dev literally acknowledged on video that the game is unbalanced and he didnt care about it AT ALL.

    He event went as far as to mock the person who brought up the issue.

    Both instances are on video and can be found with a simple google search.

    THAT is why people react the way they do. Think about it.

    fyi, it's a game director who said the civilization response and he also apologized for saying it afterwards in a blog post on steam

    https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/381210/view/4040248138379018832

  • tak47888 tak47888

    @[Deleted User] said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2735431#Comment_2735431

    A tournament just happened where players were able to run anything on both sides. Kill rates were around 50%. Actual top end killers very much have a chance.

    Camp one to death and get another one with Noed. That is how the 50% happen lul

  • Sluzzy Sluzzy

    If SWF is the only way to possibly escape, then SWF is not OP. Perhaps SWF is actually balanced and Solo is brokenly underpowered.

    You know this because the devs are actually trying to buff the solo gameplay, when it has never needed that previously.

    Furthermore, if a solo lobby directly depends on a very low skilled killer making many mistakes in order for some to escape, then there is a huge problem with balance. Killers need nerfing or survivors in general need buffing. I'm sure devs looking at stats and anyone playing a few games of solo matches will confirm this.

  • DontNerf DontNerf

    @Pulsar said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2737138#Comment_2737138

    Pretty sure it was confirmed to go off of Kills and Escapes exclusively.

    Ahhhh so not actual match performance. Glad to see my tunnelling noed face camp bubba makes me extremely skilled

  • Pulsar Pulsar

    @DontNerf said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2737144#Comment_2737144

    Ahhhh so not actual match performance. Glad to see my tunnelling noed face camp bubba makes me extremely skilled

    Yes, just like the Claudette who did nothing the whole game but snuck her way out the Exit Gate door is rewarded.

  • Advorsus Advorsus

    I love how split this conversation was once a dev commented lol

    There was half the people who were like, "Aww, a little dev, let's be as nice as possible."

    And then the other half was like, "kill it with fire!"

    😂😂😂 Like there was very little in between. There were a few who were like, I respect your opinion, but I'm gonna keep mine. But the rest just started blurting out all the stuff they hated like @Peanits is gonna magically solve their problems because they're complaining.

    I don't mind complaining, but give the guy a little slack lol

  • DontNerf DontNerf

    @Pulsar said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2737538#Comment_2737538

    Yes, just like the Claudette who did nothing the whole game but snuck her way out the Exit Gate door is rewarded.

    Bruh thats a sick skilled legendary claudette.....


    -_-

  • Bullettimegod Bullettimegod

    You know what is crazy tho. A few years ago i mentioned it in a stream of a dev. Peanits laughed at me. Its actually very amusing that he is having to post this. Ha. (He may have forgotten. But i never forget)

  • Ravenlord4711 Ravenlord4711

    @Advorsus said:

    I love how split this conversation was once a dev commented lol

    There was half the people who were like, "Aww, a little dev, let's be as nice as possible."

    And then the other half was like, "kill it with fire!"

    😂😂😂 Like there was very little in between. There were a few who were like, I respect your opinion, but I'm gonna keep mine. But the rest just started blurting out all the stuff they hated like @Peanits is gonna magically solve their problems because they're complaining.

    I don't mind complaining, but give the guy a little slack lol

    hey i was grateful while trying to make valid points. lol I understand how hard design is. just wish they listened to killers more.

  • unluckycombo unluckycombo

    @PlayTwink said:

    https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2735806#Comment_2735806

    Ok but why Pinhead was nerfed? He didn't had a 70% kill rate like Freddy back then, only 59%.

    His skill cap is even way higher than nurse, since he must succesfully double aim to get use of his power, that is very lowely rewarding. Meanwhile Freddy was very and is very easy to learn, he doesn't have such a complex power like Pinhead. Why not wait a longer 'till making some changes to him? Now he's pretty much unfun to play as and even against, because of the unnecessary changes.

    To be entirely fair to Peanitus, I believe he was talking primarily about basekit strength vs skill in the point of Freddy vs Nurse. If memory serves correctly, Pinhead has only recieved a few add-on tweaks, and not a major, base-kit nerf like Freddy recieved. I don't think the two are entirely comparible in this instance.

    (Pinhead's changes actually fall in line with how they've been balancing a lot of Killers recently where they'll usually go for a few add-on tweaks at first and change things later down the line as needed.)

    Also, unrelated to your response specifically, but man I'm hapoy they are finally fixing some Nurse bugs. Tbh, it's my favorite part about the patch.

1 2 3

Categories