Returning player, the game is in the most unhealthy state I have seen
I used to play quite a lot of DBD from both sides, I would go for top rank (whichever rank system it was in) in both survivor and killer each reset. I took a break to play some other games I gained interest in. I recently returned and in my opinion, the game is in the most unhealthy state it's ever been. I will list my reasonings and personal experiences below:
Firstly, the perks. These just seem to be power creeping over time. Take the healing boon, for example, I have played on the solo survivor side where people hardly use my boon and it gets almost no value, except for my own uses. Then I have been on the killer side where unless I am running nurse with calling, I literally have to tunnel for a full down because healing is insanely strong as SWF.
To add to the above, in my opinion, the best direction for the game is to introduce a voice chat and/or ping system. That way there isn't such a big difference between 4 solos and SWF, therefore, the game can be balanced to the survivors having comms at all times.
Then we have the matchmaking, my god is this bad. So I am at the very bottom of the ranked system, with at least 6+ months since I last played but because of my previous ranks, I am being placed against 4 stack SWF, all with flashlights and meta perks. I'm playing some janky wraith build whilst getting full body blocked, hit traded, looped from pallet to pallet. Now don't get it twisted I want a good fight for my kills/wins but I really didn't expect to be in what feels like a major tournament finale my first game on.
Then on the flip to my killer experience, I play survivor and either get someone whose life depends on winning the game and has 3000 hours on nurse or I get a Leatherface saw down me (first down, 5 gens up) and face camp me until death. How has the system of rewarding kills not been changed yet? It's fundamentally flawed, incentivizing bad and unenjoyable gameplay.
Anyways, I'm going to stick with it a little longer to see if it's either something I'm missing or as I get through the ranks it gets better because right now is the least amount of fun I have ever had playing this game.
Comments
So first of all, welcome back.
Yeah, the game is not in a great spot right now. Circle of Healing as you pretty much already said is a huge power creep. It’s actually getting its second nerf (third if you count the PTB nerf) next week, but it’s still going to be ridiculously strong as it’s not really being nerfed in the right way.
Idk exactly how long it’s been since you played, but in case you missed it, ranks (they’re called grades now) aren’t used for matchmaking anymore, there’s an MMR system now and they actually recently made some tweaks (and by recently I mean just a couple days ago) to the system.
As far as facecamping goes, the devs have said they are working on changes to facecamping but we do not know yet what this entails or when it will be implemented. Some form of basekit BT was sort of hinted at in a Q&A stream but nothing is confirmed.
Perks - especially on the survivor side - don’t suffer from power creep. The healing boon (Circle of Healing) is the exception here and the only real addition to the Meta since David/Dead Hard. And the Midchapter will bring a nerf for CoH. On the killer side, there have been added new viable perks - but still not really power creep.
Matchmaking just got further tweaks and isn’t in the best state. But rank based matchmaking wasn’t good either (and didn’t even work as intended). further adjustments for SBMM are planned though (currently there is the backfill problem - if a killer dodges a lobby those survivors will get matched with a killer who might be completely out of skill range; also your hidden rank doesn’t go down when you don’t play for a long time - both these issues have been acknowledged by the devs).
both sides have plenty of players that only play to win - or only play to make the game as unenjoyable as possible for the other side. But that has been the case for a long time and is definitely nothing new. I am playing since Curtain Call chapter and haven’t really noticed that kind of shift and always wonder how some people are so lucky to just get bad matches since MMR was introduced….
facecamping is btw another issue the devs try to tackle - they had several internal ideas that as of yet didn’t make it to a PTB because it was mostly abusable by the surv team or for other reasons.
the game itself isn’t in its worst state - though the community kinda is and is making the game as unhealthy as possible.
Basekit BT would be fantastic imo. That and basekit kindred? The solo Q / SWF gap would be closed quite a bit. Then they could start buffing some of the dumpster tier killers to be more competitive
It's awful right now. I'd say 1 or 2 in every 5 killer games I play is fun. The other 3 being against teams that own my life full of meta perks and tournament looping.
Play solo survivor and I escape maybe once in 10 games due to team mate incompetence or just overall failure to do gens as a team. The matchmaking is absoltley horrid.