A question for the devs about killer changes motivation.
I've watched a video about the high skill streak a streamer has on Sadako and how her kill rate at high MMR was better than expected. (It certainly surprised me.)
From your own statistics, she is at the top of the killers for all MMRs (with two others) and pretty close to the 61% mark for the top 5% MMR, along with : Oni, Cenobite, Blight, Nurse and Spirit.
And it reminded me that Nurse was apparently on the right spot for the high MMR and pretty bad for all MMRs. I understand that as she is way to difficult to use for many players.
So my question is this : why make her obviously even more difficult for these beginners?
I don't believe it will affect significantly any of the good players and will at most reduce the build options (and deprive me of my Franklin-only build, not that it matters in the grand scheme of things).
(As for the add-ons, I'm not too sure since I seldom used them myself so far. I've got an idea of how it will go but that's beside the point.)
So, what's the motivation? What's the goal when you modify a killer that doesn't appear to be over-performing?
Comments
Except we all know nurse is the best killer in dbd bar maybe alch-ring and iri-tag blight after the nurse changes. Regardless of what the people on the forums tell you, nurse is a skill issue for the killer bar a few maps. Nurse takes maybe 20 games until you get the muscle memory down and that's if you are untalented at video games. What's left is reading survivors and many other killers also do that. The simple answer is, people who play dbd are generally bad.
yes yes yes, I should have mentioned it's not really about the Nurse.
Oh wait, I did.
As for "we all know", well, in a given echo chamber it is. But the numbers tell a different story.
I will not reply to such comments anymore (not the point) but thanks for bumping the thread.
I have a feeling the top 5% kill rate chart was a bit misleading. They didn't quite explain it, and it leads me to believe it was just showing the stats of killer players at the top 5% of MMR regardless of opponent level. The numbers might be a bit different if they're sorted for "top 5% killer vs top 5% survivors". But those matches very rarely happen because queue times must take 0.00001 seconds.
That's a possibility, but then it would probably mean the numbers are lower, wouldn't it?
The real answer here is because balancing the game around a single statistic like 'kill percentage' is misleading. There are changes they can make that affect the highest tier of players far more than newer players.
One of the problems with nurse is her add-ons, which is literally the only part of her kit that's changing. Newer nurses will/should be using half of their add-on slots for plaid flannel to understand and see where they're going. This add-on isn't changing at all, and nurse players who rely on it still have it.
One of the problems at high tiers of play is with stacking double range add-ons, which cut down chase times even more than ignoring all terrain/obstacles already did. An inexperienced nurse could even be punished by using these, since any mistake gets amplified by the extra range. These add-ons are being removed completely.
Beginners should probably use Plaid Flannel (however controversial that might be) and Wooden Horse. I don't see how Nurse is going to be more difficult for them in that regard. And beginners should hardly use starstruck and similar anyway, so special attacks shouldn't be an issue.
In my opinion, the special attack change is way more annoying than the add-ons (Franklin, among others). As for the add-ons their power/counters can be debated on for days. Here I'm curious about the thought process, not this specific killer. It's just that it's her turn and seeing how low she is generally makes it a good subject.
What do you mean with the kill percentage being misleading? Is it imprecise? What (else) would matter in your opinion?
The Nurse nerfs are basically a slap on the wrist but they're still important changes because Nurse doesn't need easy access to Exposed perks, plus you can still use them with certain addons anyhow.
Also regarding kill rates, they're not really as applicable when it comes to Nurse. She's always statistically been low on kill rates while at the same time being the strongest killer in the game.
Probably depends on the killer. Nurse might not move at all while Sadako or others drop. It's hard to say.
Nurse was basically a free win button that would have to spend a few hours to unlock. The add-ons removed a lot of her skill expression because things like double recharge would remove the punishment for when you were making mistakes. Good Nurses would also be that much stronger when using add-ons.
I'm guessing when they looked at the numbers it was something like new Nurse players lost every game and then the ones that stuck around would have some stay with base-kit and other use recharge/range. The ones that used the add-ons had a way higher kill rate than the ones using base-kit. I would assume they can filter things like win rates with add-on and certain perks at different mmr brackets. So the general kill rate for her isn't an issue but when you look closer there is a problem. Just like how they said old Object was fine because players using the perk would only survive 40% of the time but they didn't look at how that perk change the escape rate for their team.
Nurse isn't even that hard. Put in a few hours, get a feeling for her power and you're good to go. She is a problem for the balance of this game. That's why they nerf her. End of story.
Indeed, and that's why the question is specifically aimed at the devs.
Kill percentage is misleading for a few reasons. Any stats I use are the most recent official numbers from BHVR, for reference:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/350586/stats-kill-rate-by-killer-and-mmr-september-2022#latest
Brand new players will have lower kill rates than more experienced players, and in this case it's the higher end of the spectrum where nurse becomes a problem. The easiest way to see why this can be misleading is the graph below.
All three of these lines have an "average kill rate" of 50%. The blue line is "perfectly balanced", which is unrealistic but there for comparison. The other two lines could actually approximate the real values given for the nurse by BHVR's stats: the total average is around 50%, but the right-hand end of the graph, the top 5%, is north of 60% kill rate. Not perfect to their numbers, but I didn't want to fiddle with graphs all day, and this gets the point across.
The curved line is what I expect is the closest to the real values for nurse, but I actually can't claim to know that for certain. I'm basing that off of experienced nurses being far, far more effective at high mmr, and the top 5% includes Nurse players like Supalf, who went on a 400+ game win streak with the character. Ideally, you would want to make changes to the character so that, hopefully, the curved line flattens out a bit more at each end. Bringing it closer to the blue line, and closer to "balanced".