I really want to know
So among all the post screaming that Dbd is dead or that solo Q is unplayable, I really want to exactly why.
Firstly though I want to be clear on the things I think aren't the reason, the first being general killer buffs. Did they make killers like Blight a little unbearable? Maybe, but it didn't make killer OP as a whole. Then there's the slight nerfs to survivor but again, it's no where near big enough to have a meaningful impact.
The only real reasons I've heard are is the dead hard nerf and the slow down killer meta. I genuinely want to know what's causing this survivor strike
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So... I'm not a survivor main, but if I had to guess it is because of Dead By Daylight's biggest flaw.
Generators are not fun.
To be honest they've never been fun. But this update ran headfirst into that issue at full speed in several different ways. First, it just flat out made generators take longer to do. More time spent doing the not fun thing is not good. Second, it gave Killers decent slowdown at base with the initial damage when a gen gets kicked which indirectly forces more boring gen time. Third, I really like playing Legion... but because they and Plague exists, Thana should NEVER have gotten a flat buff like it did.
It also ran into it in an indirect way too. Y'see... gens aren't fun, so Survivors would go trying to find fun elsewhere in the game. The most common spot to find it is in chase. In chase... where the Killer got gifted half of Brutal Strength and 25% of STBFL. In addition to that, Dead Hard was really the only Exhaustion Perk designed to help you loop longer. All the others are much better at either preventing a chase or getting you out of one that's in progress, which if you were wanting to have fun getting chased, you don't want that but Dead Hard kind of got wrecked.
I like doing gens.
Have a long history of being the team's gen jockey, and always thought they were fun.
Killer main here.
They buffed Killers chase ability massively. They nerfed Survivors chase potential massive. They flat out made gens take longer, prolonging the game. They nerfed anti-tunnel perks for Survivor. They did nothing to incentivize Killers to not camp or tunnel immediately.
"Massively" might be embellishing a bit, at least on the killer side. I personally don't feel a huge hit on the survivor side, but I never ran DH. For those who did though, I imagine it feels like they have been kneecapped.
The nerf to the DS stun duration is really the only thing that feels egregious to me, that was just unnecessary. In fact, if you're going to shut it down in the end game (which I totally agree with), I might actually bump the stun duration to like 7 seconds.
And I though I might increase the basekit BT effect to 7 seconds also, I don't get the handwringing over it. It's not enough on its own, but you can just run regular BT (which is largely intact) to increase the overall effect to a pretty good level.
I'll be interested to see the data on how the gen changes affected overall game time because to me, it feels like the variables have changed, but the sum of the equation is about the same.
The gens themselves take longer of course, but passive slowdown has been nerfed hard and active slowdown (slowdown that involves going to and kicking gens) has been boosted. I don't feel like the time it takes to reach endgame has changed drastically.
Camping and tunneling is, well, camping and tunneling. The DS nerf is not nothing, but I don't think people who didn't camp and tunnel before woke up on the day the patch dropped and just decided to start tunneling because it's essentially a free pass. Things haven't changed that dramatically.
That's the problem. It wasn't just one thing. This update had several major changes to the game that made things easier for killers to win, while also severly nerfing two major crutches that a majority of survivors were using. Most killer mains won't admit it, but the past two plus years have seen a constant rebalancing to appease the killer mains. From my memory it started with additions of hooks, trying to fix totem placement, a revamp of the endgame (adding the collapse) entirely to the benefit of killers, the total annihilation of almost every single item that survivors use (they severly nerfed Medkits, Toolboxes, and using a key on the hatch is a joke now), and then, finally, they got around to the major buffs of this update.
So, what out of this patch specifically did they do that was overdone? They buffed how fast bloodlust is earned, how long it takes to finish generators, some aggressive slow down perks, and they took away the two things most survivors were using to escape the killer.
Again, this has been snowballing for a long time. People are only now hearing the avalanche in the distance. I love the change to bloodlust, it is fun to be fast as killer in a chase, and I truly hope that if they revert only the change to generator timers that they might reach a more reasonable balance.
This is where the argument comes into play because it's turned into another us vs them situation. I don't have as great a memory going back, but every change that you've mentioned, with the exception of the latest patch, all had a reason behind them that wasn't solely to benefit killers.
Firstly, the totem placements were downright garbage which made many hex perks useless regardless of how much power they had. It's been...better for hexes these days.
Endgame Collapse was created to keep the game from being held hostage by survivors. When the last survivor was standing, they'd sneak around the map and never been found for ridiculous amounts of time. This leads into hatch also being reworked to guarantee an endgame collapse or a survivor escape, thus removing the ability to take the game hostage.
Now to the survivor items. Tool boxes were quite powerful for a certain amount of time, especially with brand new part. It made gens take only a few seconds with a certain combo of perks. Medkits are still...medkits? Everyone knows by now that they are the strongest item in the game while a green medkit gives you three heals over the course of a match. Then there's keys. Currently keys can only reopen the hatch in endgame collapse if it had been closed. Before that entire teams could escape midgame regardless of how good the killer was and regardless of how many gens or work was out in.
Some of these things were made or changed to remedy bad game design that was easily abusable. Others were simply overtuned mechanics that gave a bigger edge than wanted. Moving to this patch, why were killers catered too more? They were quite literally underperforming and needed a lift that didn't come in the form of a bandaid fix perk or chapter.
Solo Q only sucks when your teammates give up or DC immediately and that isn't any different from before, that's always been a problem.
Survivors are just upset that they can't clicky clicky teabag and troll the killer in his face as easily anymore since their Iron Will, DS, and Dead Hard all got dumpstered.
Doing gens is boring as hell supposedly and getting chased is the only fun thing in the game, but survivors whine and cry and throw huge fits when you keep chasing them over and over. LOL
Just to be clear, you read into what I said as me saying these things were not necessary. Some of those changes were absolutely necessary. First and foremost the murder of dead hard. Decisive was overkilled though, as a three second timer isn't enough to escape.
I hated standing at the hatch for nearly an hour most games, waiting for the survivor to finally find it and hoping that I pressed the button to grab them fast enough. Totem placement is still trash. I almost never bring hexes to a match because I almost always have the beacon totems or the out in the middle of a field totems even after the 'fixes'. The purple addon to medkits was actually worth bringing into a match, it was reworked liked dead hard. The usefullness of the toolboxes was nerfed into almost uselessness. The four man hatch escapes with keys was infuriating, but now they've almost entirely eliminated the use of the hatch completely.
The point of what I was saying is that it wasn't just one thing. They have been drastically over-doing it when it comes to survivor nerfs and killer buffs for years. They keep on doing the same thing, taking something that is a little bit unbalanced and smashing it with a sledge hammer fix. It is a long time coming and just too many swings of that sledge hammer all at once.
I don’t know what you mean by added hooks. A lot of maps still have terrible hook placements, Midwich for example, and they even removed some really good hooks like the basement one on Badham.
Totem placement is just as bad as it ever was. They made totem spawns great on Dead Dawg then decided “screw that” and then went back to placing them next to gens or out in the open next to a random tree. All of the new and reworked maps have terrible spawns.
EGC was needed to stop people holding the game hostage. If this community weren’t so toxic it wouldn’t have been needed.
Medkits are still the strongest item in the game and with new perks like CoH and Built to Last they’ve gotten stronger. Not to mention Emergency Medkit was actually BUFFED with the medkit rework and is now the strongest item in the game.
Toolboxes are still really powerful, even BNP.
Keys I’ll agree with, but Mori’s were also nerfed just as hard so it’s not really a “killer sided change”.
So, read my post above yours and you'll see what I was talking about. The point that apparently I didn't make obvious enough and will say simply here again. BHVR tends to overdo it, and we are still to this day playing a game where they have overnerfed things that needed a slight precision change, not a bludgeon.
They literally added so many hooks that the struggle option only works if survivors body block and sabotage directly in front of the killer as a team. Before, you could sabotage one hook and it would mean if the killer picked you up you could wiggle free before they could reach another hook. Now, it is the other extreme.
Yep, totem placement sucks. EGC was needed.
Medkits are the only useful item left, even though they were much much much more useful before, unless the survivor is good with a flashlight or they have spare part or repair item perk.
Toolboxes are nearly worthless without a spare part or the perk that repairs them. Even more useless because the killer can just bring one perk that gets rid of them, and if more than one player brings a toolbox most killers will bring that perk because they are still so afraid of the overnerfed toolbox or the chance of a spare part. Imagine the uproar if survivors had a perk that destroyed a killers hard earned blood bought add-ons with one pallet drop. The killer mains would be begging for that to go away.
The mori nerf was too much, but I will say this is not a trade. Moris can be nerfed or fixed exclusively, they weren't a combat to keys or vice versa in my experience.
These things needed slight changes, but were instead so drastically overdone that in many cases they broke other parts of the game completely. Right now chase is broken. Doing anything besides gens is broken. We have the worst rewards in a tome so far. The worst grind they've ever imagined. What good does the game have going for it? Playing killer is fun, if you can handle the half an hour queue.
The nerf to iron will has caused me to not want to be playing much bc that perk specifically kept me invested into playing a lot. Audio is important to me in gaming so important that the appeal of playing a game is determined by my control of it.
That and well nurse and hackers, pretty much.