One Of The Hardest Things About Billy... Toxicity.
A few things to get out of the way:
- This involves an incredibly small portion of the community; this does not represent the community as a whole.
- While it is a small portion, they are insanely vocal, and I think this topic is 100% worth addressing regardless of the consequences that may follow (such as potential in-game harassment for talking about this).
- I have dealt with this topic personally, Ive dealt with it for years as per being a Billy main; a lot of this is involving my thoughts over the years but also my thoughts on recent events.
Billy is honestly a really unique character, rather it be the core design, their history in the game, their lore, or even how their power fundamental functions in relation to other characters.
There are dozens of little quarks and techs you can learn with Billy that hinder or enhance their gameplay, which leads to Billy being tricky for new players to learn; veterans will often recommend not touching Billy until new players have a very fundamental understanding of the game.
However. My intentions here are not to explore the issues involving the learning curve of Billy. Instead I am addressing one of the hugest things to overcome... toxicity.
How can such a character be surrounded by toxicity?
Well, it mainly has to do with a hold-over from older DBD History, as per most things.
For those unaware, Old Billy was incredibly busted, mainly in regards to certain addons and perks. Old Tinkerer use to increase the effectiveness of Charge Speed Addons for most Killers; when paired with Old Billy's Charge Speed Addons, you could basically use your Chainsaw to down Survivors with minimal effort.
Because of this cheap addon combos, people who ran anything other than these combos were shooting themselves in the foot by doing so, and considering how clunky the game was in general, people who were/werent running these combos would often need to perform a Basic Attack in order to actually deal with Survivors.
And so, the nickname M1lly (or Milly) was born. An act to make fun of people whom may not be skilled enough to M2. An excuse for toxicity. An excuse for harassment.
In 2023, you might know that those addons are gone. In fact, most of Old Billy's addons got gutted over the years. They even got basekit nerfs. And as map designs changed, Billy was also left in the dust, a husk of what they were years prior.
Despite all of this. The nickname still persists, regardless of how difficult Billy is to learn, play, and/or master. And I consider this to be the hardest thing to overcome, is the community's toxicity revolving around when (or even if) a Billy uses their power... If you M1, you get made fun of.
On Twitch, Ive seen streamers harass and attack players just trying to learn the Killer for M1ing instead of using their Chainsaw. Myself, even receiving such harassment, being forced to clear my Steam's -reps or close out of the post-game chat because of visceral comments being hurled my way, even dealing with DDOSing at one point.
One of my friends who is rather new to the game has tried to learn Billy, but gave up when dealing with the toxicity because it was too much for them to handle. Which is why I decided to write this.
To be frank, I dont have a reasonable solution to such, since this can only be fixed by a certain part of the community (that is rather small). There is one thing though. Maybe we can be a bit more positive?
If you see someone struggling, doesnt matter if it is Billy or some other Killer or Survivor or anything, just give a word of encouragement. Be kind to your fellow gamers.
Comments
People get toxic when a Killer uses M1 instead of their power?
That’s pretty silly.
No offense my man but how is dealing with shittalking children on the Internet harder than learning the hardest killer in the game? XD
I wouldn't even necessarily call it toxicity, it is more some sort of shaming for, in their mind missing skill I playing the killer, and shaming is a form of social control to get rid of some forms of behavior seen as unhealthy or unwanted. Generally speaking shaming is a good thing in the sense that it has a big impact on prevention of anti social behavior, and in criminology it is sometimes used to explain why certain neighborhoods stay saver than others.
So in summon the shaming people as Milly's might lead more often than not, at least that's what some criminological studies on different subjects, but also unwanted behavior, show us, to people not continuing to do said behavior.
Don't get me wrong I do agree that sometimes you need to m1 because you will just get a hit with the saw at some tiles, so there is nothing wrong with that, but to get better a Billy you should try to use the saw at every tile just to figure out what can curve and what not.
It is not about stigmatizing, but more about calling out unwanted behavior, the same when someone sees a person throwing his cagarette away instead of putting it in the ashtray calling that out is a form of social control same as here. I would not call that outdated thinking.
The whole reason some cases with minors go to court is because the calling out of this unwanted behavior by the judge has an effect on the person and sometimes that is all that's needed to change the minor for the better.
I had my criminology course like two years ago in University and I don't think that much changed since then.
There is a thing called labeling approach which you maybe tried to quote here, but that works a bit differently and is more about a person internalizing a certain picture other people have of them. Same example from above with the cigarette, but this time the person doesn't get called for doing it told to not do it, but the other person just says like "bah this guy is a delinquent anyway, obviously he d do something like that", and then the guy internalizes this thinking and might think of himself more like that.
My point in mentioning all this is that calling someone out to be a Milly is not necessarily toxicity but could be a form of social control.
I would say it depends on the person what exactly their reaction is, maybe they will do it when nobody is watching, maybe they will do what they were asked, maybe out of spite they will just continue doing it in sight.
The labeling approach itself only explains why people continue doing the unwanted behavior. Also I would like to add that no theory is complete in criminology but only gives you some reason why people might act a certain way.
On the other hand social control is a thing that happens every day in many part of society and works for sure in most parts. Think of certain rules that are not the law but being treated as such where people will get called out on not behaving that way. For example smoking in public in front children,hard to do that when nobody is watching.
Or even in specific communities when parents teach their children certain things, family is also a social structure in which social control is applied. And like I said before social control is a good thing as it allows a community to outlaw certain unwanted behavior. For example when we as the dbd community don't want people to be bled out for no reason we do the same thing.
The Billy example in the beginning is a bit different in the sense that is based on perspective what you make of it. I would say when you call someone a Milly you want them to use the chainsaw more because it provides funnier gameplay, you could also see it as shaming them for missing skill.
I would see it is the first, but that might just be pma ^^
As for outdated theorys, as far as I'm aware my professor used to say that certain theories are older and may be doubted these days but they still provide some insight into why crime/delinquency is committed. And since a theory that explains it all in detail doesn't exist we should not neglect older theories just because they are old.
As for the "let people play how they want to", I don't agree on that, there are certain playstyles that are just not necessary and should be avoided and we as the community should try our best to somehow eradicate such behavior. Sure there is no law against bleeding people out on the floor, but is it something we as the community want in the game? Or are we trying to outlaw it, and this basically goes for everything you can do but some people don't like. Basically the same social control I talked about above, we decide that we do not want certain behavior and therefore we are taking measures to prevent it, eg call people out on it.
Guess it just does not work as well in the internet as in real life...
you are a good person so i read it all please tell your friend that we are not all like that and he/she could try some survivor to learn to counter billy to play billy better its what i do all the time with all killers
"I wouldn't even necessarily call it toxicity,"
*proceeds to describe toxicity and toxic behaviour...
the quality of being very harmful or unpleasant in a pervasive or insidious way
Toxic behavior definition refers to a person whose behavior and ongoing actions cause harm to other people by physical or mental means. These are the people who spread negative or toxic stress or traumas on others behavior.
ok then...
This entire games is a joke at this point bro what isint silly?
Ok so would it still be toxic if he was constantly told that he maybe should use the chainsaw more in chase because otherwise he is only playing M1 Billy? I don't think it changes the message overall. If you get called a Milly that is mostly because you don't use the killers power, is it toxic to get called out on it? No why would it be? Would be the same thing if you called it toxic if someone hides the entire game in bushes to call them a blendette, which isn't toxic either.
Weirdly enough, everytime I play Billy (and I'm terrible at it) survivors are always nice in post game chat and often point to the hook to give me kills in endgame, and when I tell them to leave they sometimes die to EGC anyway. It's also the same thing when I go against a baby Billy, I've never witnessed my teammates being toxic to them, and there's usually at least two of us pointing to a hook and offering them a sacrifice.
And this isn't just the case for Billy, in my experience survivors are almost always nice to baby killers, more so when they're learning a difficult killer, the only toxicity against baby killers I've seen was always against Nurse, and even then it's not rare for people to just say "nurse is hard you did well".
Also, it's my first time hearing about "Milly", but that's probably because I started playing after Billy got gutted.
how you deliver the message is potentially what makes it toxic.
calling people names is toxic behaviour. even if you individually don't mean it that way, doesn't mean other people using the same word aren't.
depends on the name, is it descriptive? Not toxic then... As wel all know Milly is basically M1 Billy which is fairly accurate if it is used like that.
Revving your chainsaw to make a survivor move in a manner that makes an m1 easy?
I call that a successful mind game my friend. 😉
Well then I guess I just disagree on that, completely fine with that. I don't think it matters how the word is used... I can call you a potato or a flower all day long and I don't see any reason to get insulted over it. It is just not what the word means.
Well then you might wanna read about other languages, try spanish maybe ^^ There are many others as well. I mean you somehow did compare them but whatever.
I speak 3 languages...
but dropping the subject now.