Noob Thoughts: The Balance is a Joke, Right?
So I'm 30 hours into DbD and I thought I'd join what seems to be the true game: long rants about DbD.
So before I started playing I noticed lots of complaining between 'survivor mains' and 'killer mains' about the need to try the other side. So I thought as a new player I would give each side a go with no starting bias about who had the advantage.
I first played a series of games that I didn't track going back and forth just so I wasn't a complete noob. For reference I got the Trapper to bloodlevel 20, and Claudette to 30. As a further point of reference, I was enough of a noob that there were some maps that I hadn't even played yet. I decided to play 15 games as each and track the results (I also threw out any game where survivors were AFK or deliberately not playing).
I started with Trapper, build: Unrelenting (green), Thrill of the Hunt (yellow), Sloppy Butcher (green), No One Escapes Death (green) - makeshift wrap (common), trapper gloves (common) - offerings were just used to increase blood points
Results - average kill rate of 2.86, 67% of the time they didn't get the doors open. Not a single game did all four survivors manage to escape
Okay, I felt that a kill rate 2.86 was really high for a noob. Maybe Trapper is just overpowered? Nope, seems like everyone rates him one of the worst killers. Players I was going against? Yeah, there were some bad ones, but people who had far higher perks than me and obvious some of them were SWF. Am I some kind of natural savant at killer? Hardly, frequently my swings were just hitting empty air.
So let's go over to survivor and see how that worked out. Same as above, I threw out results if either a survivor or killer didn't play the game.
Results - Average kill rate of 3.33. Yikes, and of those games there was only a single time we all got out.
At this point I'm feeling that killers seem to have a pretty substantial advantage. But I decided to do one more test. I switched to Wraith, level 1, no add ons, only using the perk Bloodhound (to be clear, for all the games I played a base Wraith, no improvements)
Results - Average kill rate of 3.7. In ten games I got - 8 4k, 1 3k with a hatch escape, and only a single game were they got the doors open. In only two of the other games did they even get down to 1 gen.
Here's the kicker: In addition to being so new I was still getting lost, I was playing nice. I deliberately tried not to tunnel, after hooking a survivor I ran away from it like it was going to explode even if I knew others were in the area, and if I got off to a great start (multiple hooks before they even had a gen), I slowed down.
Noob verdict: The game is comically weighted towards the killer.
Now there is a couple of responses that might come to this:
1: My kill rate will drop when I get to 'high level MMR'.
Here's the thing, I'm not here saying I'm a great player. I'm new to the game, I should lose to players with a 1000 hours in the game (or a 100). But I'm mascaraing players who have more experience than I do.
2: I'm playing the 'easy' killers.
Yeah, sure, I imagine when I start trying Nurse there will be some comically embarrassing games, but easy should be about difficulty to learn the killer, now how much they butcher the survivor.
3: Survivors need to get good.
So there are a lot of answers to this, but I want to focus on one I haven't seen before. Killers don't need to get good. The game holds the killers hand in every way imaginable that it takes active effort to be bad.
Do you have to remember where the generators are? Nope.
Hooks? Nope, we'll tell you that.
Skills checks? Of course not.
Did something go wrong and you aren't sure where the noise came from? Oh, here's a visual icon as well.
Have trouble finding hiding survivors? Here are some perks that let you see them. Hah, of course we won't let the survivors know you have them.
Chases are another example of this. After you hit a survivor they get a speed boost. Cool, you can still run them down.
Oh, you lost sight of them? No problem, scratch marks.
No scratch marks? Don't worry, blood trail.
Oh, can't see the blood? We got you, we'll have them wine so loud you can't help but find them.
As a killer it feels like playing a child in basketball. You have to intentionally screw up sometimes to create the appearance that its actually competitive. As a survivor it feels like everyone on the team needs a perfect. Every mistake, missed skill check, mistimed vault/pallet, bad communication, has serious repercussions.
DbD has survived for a long time. It's a fun game with a cool theme. But a crazy design that things are so easy for the killer from the beginning while the survivors need to master multiple skills and, ideally, play in a group with chat.
Comments
First off, Welcome to the community. There are going to be a lot of ups and downs, but I can guarantee, as long as you're having fun, you'll fit in.
Second, that's to be expected. Personally, I'm at nearly 2,000 hours and survivors can be brutal. Killers job is pretty simple and you'll catch up no matter what if a survivor is just running around haphazardly. However, survivors that know what they are doing and where they are going are almost impossible to catch.
Stick with it and you'll see what I mean eventually. However, don't be discouraged when it happens, it just means you have more to learn.
I can tell my experience as around 1000h player:
As killer: it is still pretty easy games. Legendary 4man swf god groups exist, but they are super rare. Mostly you get average survivors and get at least 3k in 80% of your matches.
As survivor: after patch 6.1 it's pretty bad because survivors just give up a lot of times. I see a lot of first hook sucides even if game is basically already won, like we at 2 gens and it's a third hook for killer. No idea why people do this so often? Aside from this frustration, games are still pretty rough. I'd say 60% of matches is blights and nurses, two of the most powerful killers in a game and usually it's a complete massacre. Some killers are so bored they 2 hook everyone before killing and we still at like 3 gens by that point of game. You feel completely hopeless and just turn off the game after few of these matches and go do something else. We beat so many coop games with my friend after patch 6.1 dropped because we don't want to play dbd anymore. It takes two is next, heard it's good!
Oh yeah, the new player experience is awful. Beginning at how everything is locked, followed by heavy grind and ending with the rng or wallet factor to be even able to unlock the wanted things.
I probably wouldn´t start playing now.
i feel you....as a survivor main....if you dont find someone with large amounts of skill to teach you things you need to know. you probably wont make it. find people to play with and the game will definitely become a more entertaining experience. and just learn to be patient with your growth
Well the thing is that you made it sound like you are judging the game's overall balance after just 30 hours. If your argument is that the game may have a problem at low ranks, that I can understand. But to conclude from that, that DBD is extremely killer sided, is just false.
Now I do understand that at low ranks, the game is rather killer sided. I honestly don't think it is as killer sided as you think it is, because I don't think the game would be doing so well in that case, but it is.
But that's less because of balance, actually.
The thing is, at the most fundamental level, the chase depends on the survivors skill. That's because it's up to the survivor to use resources in order to get away from the killer. And then the killer's skill comes into play, having to outplay the survivor. And the better the survivor is, the more challenging that becomes for the killer. But if the survivor does not know how to loop at all, the killer won't need any skill to begin with to down the survivor fairly quickly. Obviously skill will still matter a bit, but not as much.
I think that is one of the main problems as to why killers have a higher kill rate at low ranks. Then there is also the fact that, yes, at the lower level, survivor takes longer to learn than killer. That's because survivors have to learn about many different tricks and tipps, and killers not as much. With killer, you just play the role and become naturally better. Obviously you will want to learn and get better at chases, especially mind games, using the killers power, and applying map pressure. But those stuff don't matter as much at lower ranks.
With survivor, it's harder to learn that role naturally, because instincts tell you to be very careful, and hide as much as possible. Which is very ineffective to do. That's why I really believe a better tutorial for survivors would be one of the most helpful additions to low mmr, a tutorial that teaches survivors a bit on how to use resources well in chases, and how to loop to an extent. And it should also teach how to play survivor more efficiently.
I do think that saying killer is incredibly straight forward, while survivors have a lot to learn and master, is a severe exaggeration however. Especially because you are talking about mastering. People have just as much to learn in order to master killers, as with surivor. Maybe even more if you play a bunch of different killers.
I also really don't think you need 1000 hours of experience to start having a good chance to win. That surely wasn't the case with friends of mine that started playing DBD. If you only gain somewhat experience in DBD, you should definitely be able to win against killers that are also not crazy experienced yet.
Now if you say that the game could need some improvements to balance it out more for lower ranks, without affecting average or high mmr, then I would definitely agree. But I am not sure what that would look like, at least for the most part.
I guess that's one of the reasons why it's so important to nerf camping and tunneling now. Those tactis in particular take much less skill to pull off, than to counter. Especially camping. So the devs really need to nerf camping soon at base level in some way.
Finding gens is vital for survivors. Knowing the location of the killer is vital for survivors. Knowing where your team is is vital for survivors. But, unless you burn perks, none of that is shown in bright colors; its things that need to be learned off sound ques, remembering spots on the map as you run around, and harder to pick up visual signals.
So yes, I'd call that handholding.
That's also something that could be fine. Just say: for game balance, the killer role needs to be much easier than the survivor. That would probably be an ego hit to killer mains, but it seems to be true.
If you are arguing that people don't want to admit that killer is much easier than survivor because of ego, than you are just being dishonest here. I get it, it's a classic argumentation strategy, but it's simply not true. The informations killers have are vital, they surely aren't handholding, and that's because the game is balanced around killers having those informations. If killers couldn't see where gens are, and if they couldn't see scratchmarks, the game would have serious balance problems, and queue times for survivors would be insanely high. The game is not balanced around survivors seeing the killers aura, or being able to see the aura of gens for example. The latter though wouldn't be much of a deal. Could actually help lower mmr survivors out, without helping higher mmr survivors, but I don't think BHVR is to keen on overusing aura abilities for survivors.
One other note to add, I don't think I'm anywhere close to a good killer. I mistime swings, run into walls, and forget about my special power. Even with all of that, and even if I hit a good team, I still feel like its competitive. As a survivor the game frequently turns into a rout.
Ok, something I definitely have to say here, and I am sure you won't take this personal, but if you walk into walls, mistime swings, and forget about your ability, then you are not winning against good teams. You simply aren't. Of course it depens on how often you make mistakes, but in general, you shouldn't be winning against actual, decent survivor teams.
Also, based on your reply to the other comment, you seem to already have a good understanding of how to play killer effectively. I do feel like you have already more knowledge than most people at low mmr to work with. It would be at least my guess. Which again circles back to one of the issues I have mentioned. Because it is true that for beginners, there is more to learn for survivors, regarding basics, than for killers.