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

landromat

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

JPLongstreet

@IamFran said:

https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2736028#Comment_2736028

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.

I am not saying solely balance around any player experience level, just to include all of the playerbase in decision-making that's all.

JPLongstreet

@PigMainBigBrain said:

https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2736028#Comment_2736028

A common misconception in pvp games in general is that balancing around high levels of play will some how inhibit a noob from entering the game or find success. This is demonstrably false. When you balance around "end game" or experienced players, you're balancing the entry level by default. The end game sets the pace and the goal, the early game is literally just a tutorial. If an end game player with 1000s of hours can know with pixel perfection how to exploit a system <----YOU BALANCE THE GAME AND FIX THAT SYSTEM. Because at the end of the day that same experience is going to be used AGAINST a new player, and a new player will have no way of combatting it. At the same time, Skill caps, should stay high. To avoid end game players running into walls that their mechanical skill can't cover, and to give new players something to achieve INCREASING their skill. If you only balance around new players, and noob entry level gameplay NO ONE WILL IMPROVE. So that things that can be solved with skill <---Are instead replaced by the game auto driving itself to make up for lack of awareness and lack of skill. <---This hurts everybody, its hurts competative play, and it hurts noob play. Noobs end up never learning how to deal or cope with anything and get blasted by simple things that can be adjusted with a bit of learning. Meanwhile Competative players have to deal with a completely unbalanced, unfun, and uncompetitive game because they get restricted by brick wall skill caps.

^ League of legends already tried the concept of balancing for noobs, or balancing for entry level players to "get more people involved with the game" It literally destroyed an entire season of ranked games because the balance was completely broken (AKA anybody remember tanky dps meta?) Tanky dps back in the day had low pick rates because they required more skill and more item knowledge than grabbing a mage and picking up a death cap (or 2 if you're familiar with season 1) So what did the devs do... Buffed the everloving christ out of tanky dps characters so people new to the role wouldn't have such a hard time.....

^ The end result.... ^ HIGH LEVEL competative players picked up these same tanky dps characters and were basically invincible. Literal gods. Literally cannot be touched after having like 6k gold it was over. Wrap it up if you're a mage, leave the game if you're an AD ranged carry, if you're a support just roll over because tanky xin xao is going to 5v1 your entire team and walk away with 10% hp and a pentakill. Probably the worst season I and many other have ever experienced in that game. There was no % hp damage, and penetration items didn't give you much damage so you had to just sit there and take it.

Now if you were a noob during that time, the game was great....low elo games, people that weren't level 30 had an amazing time I'm sure until someone who knows the system goes "Oh...they buffed tanky dps for this elo, I'm gonna go Garen+a few tanky items and literally 1 dps item and just 1v5, once noobs figure out the exploit its what happens all the time. But anything you add to "Help some noob" is going to in tandem BUFF THE EVERLOVING HELL out of high level players. Which is why so many people in competitive scenes say "Balance around the end game" "Balance around high level play" Because the alternative means bricking competitive play and end game so that the meta is stale as hell and nobody has fun games because of some BS noob helper you added in.

I am not saying solely balance around any player experience level, just to include all of the playerbase in decision-making that's all.

PlayTwink

@Bullettimegod said:

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)

They behave like a robots dude, it's like in every company. When your boss tells you that SWF is balanced, you need to listen to them or you'll get fired. Idk maybe Mathieu or Dave finally learned about the gap between SWF and solos or they're get bullied in games.

Sludge

I don't believe for one second that it's only a 15% difference

Barbarossa2020

Still find it amusing that for all the things that get complained about on the forums, you go and change things based upon small amounts of data rather than pressing issues.

I.e a clown addon change? a killer that you never hear about on the forums get's a "fix" which affects 1% of the player base yet major issues like Coh, Swfs, dead hard, that get mentioned daily get put on the back burner.

P.S Civilization is fun, thanks Matt.

Synzicle

@Barbarossa2020 said:

Still find it amusing that for all the things that get complained about on the forums, you go and change things based upon small amounts of data rather than pressing issues.

I.e a clown addon change? a killer that you never hear about on the forums get's a "fix" which affects 1% of the player base yet major issues like Coh, Swfs, dead hard, that get mentioned daily get put on the back burned.

P.S Civilization is fun, thanks Matt.

That's because they ONLY care about the survivor experience. "Hey clown juice have 3...survivors no like them having 3.....me get rid so survivor happy." Same with Nemmi, how was zombies moving faster at all broken when the AI constantly get stuck in walls? They also nerfed Marvin's blood so that Nemmi can just not exist at all early game and have to pray for a good 3 gen. There's a reason these 2 were picked.....they were the only 2 that had ANY impact on game play. Now they're only slightly better than his other options....because that's how you make build diversity. Also glad how he only talked about nurse and Freddy.....Freddy easier so we nerf it....what? I'm not game designer but that makes 0 sense.

Hex_Llama

@LoneSlinger said:

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

I only have one question which shouldn't be that hard to answer

Why have fog whispers if you don't listen to their advice?

There's an element of Fog Whisperers where the fog whisperers give feedback, but 99% of it is about marketing. That's not a criticism -- this is an arrangement that lots of game companies make with content creators. The creators get some perks like free game content, giveaway codes, etc as well as increased visibility for their channels (which is a bigger deal when they're just starting out) and, in exchange, the devs get lots of free publicity and engagement around their game.

The content creators who participate aren't, like, a special task force assembled to solve design problems. They're people BHVR can rely on to put eyes on the game and showcase new content.

TheOptimiser

And ladies and gentleman, Peanut's 2 replies were the entire amount of replies DbD staff was allowed to do for the entire of 2022, we will hear them giving us more info in 2023. Apart from the announcements made, we will never hear from them again this year.

And those replies were a laughing stock tbh, sorry Peanuts, that's the truth. It still doesn't say the reason the changes you're making are so random and useless, instead of solving actual huge problems everyone is complaining about and that needs to be done.

MeneLaw

@landromat said:

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

Bruh its easy and profitable to please 4 than 1.

Pulsar

Just for the record, the reaction to Peanits is probably precisely why we get very limited Dev interaction anymore.

Firellius

@Pulsar said:

Just for the record, the reaction to Peanits is probably precisely why we get very limited Dev interaction anymore.

That's a bit of a vicious cycle though, since people get more frustrated when they can't communicate their frustrations or they feel they aren't being heard.

If Devs only communicate once every few months, reactions are going to be worse than when devs communicate weekly.

Not saying they're under any obligation to change their approach, but just giving some advice.

Pulsar

@Firellius said:

https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2738927#Comment_2738927

That's a bit of a vicious cycle though, since people get more frustrated when they can't communicate their frustrations or they feel they aren't being heard.

If Devs only communicate once every few months, reactions are going to be worse than when devs communicate weekly.

Not saying they're under any obligation to change their approach, but just giving some advice.

It's been like this for years.

The Devs used to be very active on the Forums, but it slowly dwindled. Activity didn't seem to make much of a difference and I feel they are very much caught in a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' scenario.

TheOptimiser

@Firellius said:

https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2738927#Comment_2738927

That's a bit of a vicious cycle though, since people get more frustrated when they can't communicate their frustrations or they feel they aren't being heard.

If Devs only communicate once every few months, reactions are going to be worse than when devs communicate weekly.

Not saying they're under any obligation to change their approach, but just giving some advice.

This is the perfect answer! If we vouch our frustrations here and not a single reply by the Dev team has happened, it feels that all our complaints are for nothing and we are talking straight to a blank wall, rather to a team of developers who care about their game. And when I see the illogical changes they're making, it feels even worse to be heavily ignored...

Leonardo1ita

@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.

Ok, I believe you about this 100%, for real.

Just the fact that you came out in the open answering this post gives you so much credibility, I wish you did this more (you devs in general)!

On this you're far superior compared to those who only want destructive criticism and troll.

gilgamer

@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.

To the point you made about Freddy you say that he was very strong without needing much skill, which i don't disagree with but how does blanket nerfing him help facilitate more skillful play, he already doesn't have a very high skill ceiling like Nurse or blight so a blanket nerf like he received would just make him generally worse without giving some kind of reward for skillful play

gilgamer

@LoneSlinger said:

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

I only have one question which shouldn't be that hard to answer

Why have fog whispers if you don't listen to their advice?

They're a promotional tool

km66

@landromat said:

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

Yeah and solo que is under powered which also needs to be addressed.

AnchorTea

@Pulsar said:

Just for the record, the reaction to Peanits is probably precisely why we get very limited Dev interaction anymore.

The devs can do better, but the community can do better also