BHVR - Can we just focus on making sure the game is fun?
Accept that this game is never going to be perfectly balanced.
Accept that both killers and survivors will keep complaining on the forums no matter what you do.
But please stop listening to people complaining for selfish reasons, and start listening the to the people who are having the fun sucked away by a game mechanic or something the other side does. Sure having fun is subjective, but consider both sides and make a judgement.
Example 1: "I hate dead hard, it's no fun to deal with and it's in almost every match." <-- Perfectly valid complaint, and I say this as a survivor main. I don't mind dead hard when I play killer, but i still think the complaint is valid because most people aren't having fun playing against it. Ignore the arguments about whether it's overpowered or balanced for a second, and consider how fun it is to deal with. But some people have fun using dead hard, what about their fun? Yeah but they're having fun at the expense of ruining the fun of someone else. So 1 person having fun, 1 person being irritated.
Example 2: "I hate decisive strike, it's no fun to deal with and it's in every match". <-- Not a valid complaint. ... But wait, why? The only difference in this example is the perk. It goes back to having fun at someone's expense. Or in this case, someone having a bad time because of your behavior as a killer. You can completely avoid triggering DS by not tunneling someone, and tunneling is a behavior that makes your opponents not have any fun. So in this case, the perk exists to prevent a behavior that sucks the fun out of the match for someone. It's not just to be annoying for you, and you can choose to avoid it by being more sportsmanlike.
What I want to say with this topic is, can we try to make having fun the main concern?
And more importantly, trying to not only consider our own personal fun, but whether or not our complaints/suggestions would be at the expense of someone else's fun.
I'll repeat this - having fun is subjective! But it's possible to imagine it from an objective point of view as well.
Comments
I'll repeat this - having fun is subjective!
That sentence is the reason why they can't make sure the game is fun.
you chose to completely ignore the sentence following it. you can look at something objectively.
Extreme example - but someone could say "i love punching people in the face!". Most people will understand that for a majority of people, receiving a punch to the face is not a fun experience.
A lot of things i see complained about on the forums can have a similar view applied to them. And as I've said, consider if your idea of fun is at the expense of someone else's enjoyment.
Fun for who?
And who determines what is fun?
I think getting hit by pallet is unfun experience and should be removed, I'm pretty sure all survivor would hate it when they got hit by pallet too.
Making others miserable as possible is fun for some people.
Form a group to bully a player.
Or making survivor unfun with tunnel and camping
The first you cant fix, the second, you can change with core gameplay
I am quite sure this game is just an experiment in human behavior. They purposely create frustrating situations and observe our behavior.
Each of us has a choice to be a saint or a devil. There is mercy and ruthlessness in each match.
I should have known better than to think these forums would be mature enough to handle this kind of feedback 👌
Agree with you... it seems like they're trying to make this into an eSport instead of a fun game.
You also chose to ignore it.
None of what you put here is objective it’s still all subjective.
You created two arbitrary scenarios and qualified one as fun and one not fun in a completely subjective manner.
Many elements of dbd are zero sum because the goal is objective denial of your opponent. This doesn’t make them inherently ‘unfun’.
Right as others said Fun is totally subjective. That's why they can balance the game around fun because what's fun for one isn't fun for others and no amount of changes can fix that.
By objective I mean distance your own opinion and consider how it's perceived by the majority. Don't just go "i enjoy this therefore it must be a part of the game". If the thing you enjoy is annoying to 90% of people who are on the other end of the stick, then from an impartial standpoint, your enjoyment causes irritation in other players. (i suppose impartial may be a better word choice than objective?)
For example, in my case, I personally think Dead Hard is fine, but I am aware that a majority of players hate going against it, therefore I understand it needs to change. It's not a necessity to play and enjoy the game, and due to it causing so much grief, it's not worth letting it stay the way it is. As with my example on DS, it's a perk for countering something that's widely considered bad behavior, and you can avoid it completely by avoiding that behavior. In this case, the source of grief is the tunneling, and DS is the solution and only causes grief to the people who were willing to cause grief to others. You with me still? Yeah this is difficult to comprehend for some people.
Remember the questionnaire where we had to introduce our bloodpoints and rate how balanced and fun the match was?
Saw a streamer rate the most toxic and unbalanced matches as fun.
So the devs might get mixed signals here.
Objectivity does not mean side with the majority.
Also the forums are rife with confirmation bias which severely limits objectivity.
You want an objective approach to perks then look at how often they are run and how they are applied in game, is that application in line with their intended use and what impact does it have game outcome.
Rational objectivity in a nutshell, observing measurable outcomes within established guidelines without preferential bias.
After looking at that then you can ask does this make things more or less fun and take player feedback into account.
But the ‘fun’ is completely subjective. Just like your two examples. Both are built on the highly subjective ideas of annoyance and player behaviour perceived as bad.
There is nothing wrong with empathetic thinking I.e. I can see why this annoys someone else but even that doesn’t make it an objective approach to game mechanics.
uh-huh, so you throw the point of the topic out the window because you get stuck on the use of a word? I even said that seeing it from an impartial standpoint may be a better word choice than objective standpoint. Like, you understand the point, so why write a wall of text whining about the use of a single word?
I didn’t throw the topic out the window, I provided a critical review of its weakness.
I’m critical of your point because arbitrary definitions of what’s fun don’t do much for working out game mechanics.
There was an objective example of assessing perks and that appears to be what BHVR are doing while at the same time taking player feedback in to account.
I’d hate to say it but you are getting defensive and losing your your objectivity over the topic at hand.
You are 100% right and dh, ds, and bt make this game annoying as hell for most killers. I get that people dont like tunneling and camping but it is the only option for some underpowered killers and killer mains up against 4 swf.
Focusing on removing camping and tunneling will just make less people play killer
Nah camping is far more obnoxious than eating a 5 seconds DS stun because you tunneled someone a bit too hard, I don't even care if they delete DH, DS and BT but then you also need to destroy facecamp for good and remove every toxic perks like NOED
The least bias killer main
Just make whiffed attacks make fart noises. Problem solved.
You need to realize killer is a player too and having too many protections for survivors is just not fun or compelling gameplay. Killer already has too few options to choose to counter 4 swf. Honestly, even without perks 4 swf will win against 80% of killers just from looping and flashlights
I agree about NOED but they need to fix core gameplay before removing killers last chance
The OP’s two examples are based on players being annoyed and examples of bad play. Neither of those things are good metrics to base changes on.
What some people find annoying or bad play is completely legit to others.
Some of the core elements of DBD people keep saying are annoying or bad play but really they are just in game mechanics and people are just pissy about losing.
So do we completely rework the game so that the whiners always win… no that’s just stupid.
The point they made about “think what the majority want”also falls flat because there is an inherent bias in the forum majority because it’s made up predominately of the complainers.
So it goes back to my example of objective perk assessment, which the OP didn’t like.
Well that explains why they're called Behaviour Interactive
Oof, my tiny brain just imploded, I need to get off these forums for today.
None of what you have written counters my point.
You mixed up the examples the OP made as to why DS needs changes and DH is fine. Both are still arbitrary.
Extreme examples are often pointless examples, no one is advocating for punching people in the face being fun but loss of license is part of the game it’s a core mechanic. Do you get pissy when you get shot in COD?
Objective assessment is often based on raw stats but it also involves expected outcomes and takes into account player feedback (guess you missed that part).
lastly writing a lot doesn’t mean you write well, re-read my post then the OPs and you’ll see what I wrote was sound and what they wrote is still subjective.
The reason this game is fun is the interactiveness of chases. Killer vs survivor in a chase. That is the main reason why this game become popular.
It is baffling that the devs don't focus more on that. Hard camping should not be the best strategy for a killer. But it is. And that‘s pretty bad balance. Killers hard camp because of map imbalance, possibility of an SWF, playing low tier killers, and survivors go super hard on the gens, predropping every pallet because they know as soon as they get on the hook they are probably going to be hard camp/tunneled to death.
The fun is the chase, not whatever this meta is.
Yeah its a nice ideal to follow, but quite unrealistic.
I've witnessed enough people disregard the others fun too often. It's also more often the survivors doing so.
"Remember to dont camp or tunnel or you're playing scummy."