Survivors and the Loss of Agency
To be blunt, Survivors are to blame for the game's toxicity.
That is a bold, very killer sided statement but one that can be backed by two main points
- Survivors make Killers Toxic because Survivors can rob the killer of their agency
- Survivors make Other Survivors Toxic because Survivors rob other Survivors of their agency
I think the most effective way to create Toxicity is the feeling of being screwed over by something out of your control. You did not lose because you are bad, you lost because there was nothing that you can do. It is already well known that DBD functions off a sort of nuclear war style balance where certain options are so strong that if the other side brings them they immediately get a huge advantage, and many of the strongest survivor perks do so by robbing the base kit killer of some form of agency.
- BT means you can't camp on hook
- DS means you can't tunnel
- IW means you can't hear injured survivors
- CoH means you can't split pressure
- DH means you can't hit a survivor
- UB means you can't slug survivor
- Prove Thyself means you can't know exactly how long a gen is going to take
- Spine Chill means you can't sneak up on survivors easily
All these perks can be played around, but this wastes time, a resource that killers are always low in. This is also why the most meta killer perks center around slowdown. Killer tend not to need more lethality, they need more time to breathe, more agency.
Comparing the base kits also reveals this power gap. While survivors base kit is nothing when facing a nurse, against a legion or a ghostface it is more than enough especially when coordinated. A Basic M1 Killer gets smoked by a group of no perk survivors with the slightest bit of planning.
This leads the next point, which is that survivors are their own worst enemy. Any one who has played solo q has had the frustrating experience of running the killer for 5 minutes only to have no gens pop. Or the time where they died on hook after the first hook when the killer was not even camping. While camping and tunneling are incredibly frustrating, they also get you out of the game quicker so you can do something else. Camping in particular is also very boring so you won't see that often. Hopefully. Either way, the response to both cases is to go "they're camping/tunneling!", and take some satisfaction from forcing the killer to resort to such tactics.
But when your teammate sandbags you or mess up a skill check and runs away or leads the killer to you or just self cares in the corner for the whole match, it sticks with you. Getting downed by a killer is normal, but losing a match because of a teammate is maddening.
So in order to make sure you survive and can always get heals because Meg sprints away from you, you bring CoH and IW. In order to never get tunneled because Claudette refuses to take the chase, you bring DS and DH. In order to never get left behind because Dwight found a really cool locker, you bring UB. In order to make sure gens actually get done, you bring Prove Thyself.
Survivors don't bring meta perks because they want to win, they bring meta perks because they want agency, they want to have a chance to win regardless of what team they have. But this cause killer toxicity because killers lose agency.
While survivors are to blame for causing toxicity, I can't really blame them. As long as the game is balanced in the way it currently is with both sides have certain nuclear actions, the toxicity will remain. As long as survivors get agency at the cost of the killer's, the game will continue to have toxicity problems.
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Was honestly one of the best posts I've ever read on here and I agree with all of it. Gens pop way to fast for the time it takes to deal with the perks you listed why most killers have quit since boons came out.
Truth.
Yeah, its all true.
This is an incredibly stupid take, sorry. That last paragraph is a huge problem with the community in general. Survivors who play optimally with strong perks are toxic, yet killers who do the same are just doing it to get by. That is not the case at all realistically, and there are a lot of experienced players who will tell you that. Whichever side brings the strongest builds and plays the most efficient with no care for the other side will generally win.
“Survivors” are not the reason there is some perceived toxicity, just because someone played a way you dislike does not make it toxic. Not addressing core game issues for years and bandaiding said issues with perks is the main problem in game balance. Instead of addressing core design issues, let’s pick a side and blame the other for the core issues with the game, productive.
This would be true if survivor perks and killer perks were equivalent to each other, but they are not with one very noticeable exception. When looking at the most powerful killer perks, almost all of them require some sort of activation clause, in most cases a hook. The four that don't are Ruin, Undying, Devour Hope, and Corrupt Intervention. Three of them can be disabled before they do anything if the killer is unlucky and the fourth only effects the early game. NOED is a blatant exception to this rule as it lets a killer down someone for free but even it can be disabled. The most meta killer build robs the survivor of their agency less than the most meta survivor build.
The main reason why I still think the survivor side is to blame for the games balance problems (not the actual players, the tools they have at their disposal), is that killers have to play the game like everyone has those perks. Every survivor is running DH until they use another exhaustion perk, every survivor has DS so you have to wait it out unless you want to get hit.
Then there also the problem that the survivor's base kit is better than the killer base kit. When this imbalance comes into play, it is maddening. A good example of this is body blocking. Its a mechanic that goes directly against the "unstoppable force" fantasy of the killer. Is it broken? No. Is it balanced? Yeah. Is it incredibly frustrating when it happens? Also yes
The problem isn't that a particular survivor was mean and started a chain reaction, its more so that the survivor side has tools that make playing killer too stressful.
The reason why I think this distinction matters is because BHVR tends to focus on killers rather than survivors when it comes to changes. Legion got reworked instead Deep Wound, Cenobite got his addons nerfed rather than improving the communication of solo Q.
I do agree with you, that people who play survivors are not to blame and that the source of toxicity is fundamental core problems that need to be addressed but most of those core issues are about the survivor side.
Solo Q is pain, SWF are too strong, all of the second chance perks, all of the exhaustion perks, and etc. While there are killers that definetly need a look at (cough Spirit cough ), most of what needs to be fixed is on the survivor side of things.
And some of those things that need to happen is things like making Kindred basekit or even BT basekit. Honestly, I think a possible approach to fixing alot of DBD problems is raise the floor of what both sides have.
what
This thread sounds like it was written by someone who has never played instadown killers or Pyramid Head. Or even just Nurse/Spirit/Blight, all who can power through BT/DS/DH easily
M1 killers suck but nobody says you ever have to play them. Most of the new antiloop killers are extremely strong and are more than capable of taking wins off even sweaty SWFs if you play them well enough
I wanna say pretty much every single killer before the red line has ways to deal with the survivor meta. And even many of them after it still do.
As for the last part about raising both sides floor I agree with that 100 percent, everytime something comes out for either side the other cries until BHVR caves in and gives them what they want when in reality it's starting to make this game a snooze fest and it's too rinse and repeat, I've always said I think killers should have 3 unique abilities instead of one power just so you're interacting in different ways and not spamming the same thing over and over, also on top of that I would give survivors each a unique trait that is related to their character that would make them more than a skin alone
So either the half of the killers that don't have a answer need a buff to have a chance or a general rework needs to happen
I get the point you're making, but I feel like you can just as easily argue the opposite side of it as well.
Regardless of what perks are used in a match by any of the players, if one side is toxic it makes the other side more likely to want to do the same regardless of who started it first, which can then also carry forward into future matches with completely different players. The same goes with perks, neither side may want to run a particularly sweaty build, but they will if that's all they see most players on the other side using because they feel the need to try to keep up. A survivor may start using BT and DS more often if they are consistently camped and tunneled. A killer who tries to run a less sweaty build and then gets destroyed by a full-meta squad will likely consider using more slowdowns and/or tunneling more.
The game's toxicity towards opposing sides is a never-ending cycle and I don't think it's really fair to blame it on one side more than the other.
I do agree with your assessment of the power gap between killers though. The difference in power between the strongest and weakest killers in the game is far too big.
There is perk imbalance, but that isn’t the main cause for the games imbalance to me. Dead hard is by far the most bs perk in the game, but it isn’t the reason for imbalance. There are too many random variables to just make blanket statements like survivors tools are the reason for the games balance issues. Heck, even SWF isn’t a real problem, if you look at it objectively.
The problem is map design, and how a lot of killers powers were designed. For a good long while every killer was anti loop with poor mobility, and the maps are mostly huge. So the meta of hold w and predrop every pallet became the most efficient strategy for survivors. That in turn increased killer camping because the time investment of chasing a hold w survivor became less efficient than just proxy camping first hook. Those had nothing to do with perks at all, just the design of the game and players adapting to killer design, which I would argue is the reason the balance of the game is in such a poor state.
Lets take 2 killers for an example, Nurse and Trapper, a high tier killer vs a low. They don’t even play the same game, and trying to balance both vs the same survivor load out will never happen. A good nurse can down a survivor in 15 seconds regardless of their input, trapper is lucky if he can end a chase in less than a minute if he’s not set up, and even then he can lose traps or just never have survivors run to his web.
Matchmaking is also bad, but it just once again builds onto bad base game balance.
TL;DR: The game’s issues in balance stem from poor map design and the gap in killers powers, not survivor perks or load outs. Survivors bringing strong builds just exacerbate the base game issues.
is that some sort of community made tier list? It's just.... beyond inaccurate
Yeah it's just a site people vote on. And I don't think it's really that inaccurate. Hag a bit higher, Legion a bit lower, Billy a bit higher and I agree with it
I really don't agree with you at all. If you wanna blame something for toxicity, thank the map design. If survivor resources were more thoughtfully balanced, killers would perform much better on average. Map design enables the perks that survivors and killers use to great (or terrible) effect.
The only time I feel like I'm losing any sort of agency in the game is when I get downed in the beginning of a match and face camped to death by a killer that you can't rescue from, which isn't uncommon unfortunately.
I must firmly disagree that meta perks are only typically brought to place an emphasis on individual power, choice, and/or some level of in-match enjoyment.
Flat fact is, some perks are more generally useful and impactful than others.
The perks you noted are meta perks with major impact to the game, they are taken into matches to maximize impact.
The reason the vast majority of perks are ignored by survivors is not because they lack the ability to empower individuals, but because they lack general value or reliable impact.
To suggest that meta perks only exist in the meta because they empower survivors to 'play how they want to play' - that alone suggests that there's only one 'correct' way to enjoy the game as a survivor.
People aren't forgetting about Lightweight, Diversion, Urban Evasion, or Dark Sense because it doesn't let them play the game 'how they want' - it's because the perks are lame, end of story. They're flat bad. If you compare the raw, unbridled power of DS, DH, or BT against the likes of Lightweight or Dark Sense - there's a massive disparity in general value and reliable impact in matches.
The point being made here is that 'Survivors are toxic because they want to win'
Survivors don't bring meta perks because they want to win, they bring meta perks because they want agency, they want to have a chance to win...
"Survivors don't bring strong perks because they want to win. They bring strong perks because they want to win."
Kind of a silly way to word it, but it's true enough.
The meta perks are the most reliable and highest value perks in the game. Survivors take them because it offers the greatest chance to escape the match.
Ultimately, what is being said is that players want to win, and meta perks grant them the greatest opportunity to do so - which drives a stale and frustrating playstyle.
Right?
I don't think saying "Meta is meta because players want to win reliably" is new territory. And I certainly do not think it constitutes as a valid stepping stool to cast blame for community wide toxicity on survivor mains, which is unbecoming in all forms.
Toxic players are toxic, and players generally want to have fun and win in their matches. Strong perks grant them the greatest chance to win their matches.
They are two separate bits of information with no true correlation. Wanting to win or have fun in a game does not, by virtue, elicit a vector towards toxicity.
This post is 100% true. I was trying to have some fun the past couple of days running the Power Struggle build (Power Struggle, Flip-Flop, Tenacity, Unbreakable). The amount of times I got tunneled after I pulled it off once is astonishing. Like killer mains complain about full meta survivors, here I am running something different and most killers seem to feel attacked on a personal level after pallet stunning them once.
Its not only that but also since my teammates don't know what build I am running, they keep trying to come for pallet saves, messing up my build totally cause they drop the pallet I am downed at or they get downed as well, resulting in a 4man slug etc.
After two days of trying I went back to my "meta" build (DH, DS, BT and either IW or WGLF). I just wanna play the damn game and not get tunneled out of the game 2 minutes in or get ######### over by teammates (who simply don't know what perks I am running cause the main game can't have this information like the mobile version has for whatever reason) which results in the same outcome.
I do not understand how people can blame people's behavior on MAP DESIGN.
The game would not stop being toxic because maps were done differently. People that wanna play like jerks don't do so because of the freaking MAP.
If gen regression was a thing the game could be more balanced.
The regression needs to faster and the time to stop it needs to be more, for now the way for killers to slow down gens is to kill survs, not kick gens.