Developers cater to the minority of their player base
Survivors vs Killer. 4v1. always 4x more people than killer experiencing any given match. THESE are the players you should be catering to. The people who experience MORE of the game should be getting the 60% escape rate. The justification I have seen around the 40/60 killrate-vs-escaperate is laughable, at best. "We want the killer to seem powerful and scary"... Then make the game more scary and fun? Don't balance the game to be less than 50/50? Why is it that the majority of the player base is experiencing losses more often than wins? This makes no sense to me. This is the only game I've ever experienced where I have put in 1000 hours and my win rate is still below 50% (and will remain so, because the developers coddle the killer player base). Please consider balancing for your majority player base and get those numbers closer to 60/40. If that is unacceptable and you still need to coddle to solo-players with a power complex, then at least make it 50/50.
This game has gotten exponentially less fun for survivors, unless you are coordinated and playing with a team. I have been playing for roughly 2 years and I am so sick of each update making killers more and more powerful with no addressing issues that have been plaguing the game forever. Gen rushing, tunneling, map balance, vault speed, heal speed, slugging, etc etc etc. Not addressing core issues like slugging and tunneling (and even hook camping, still (proxy)) seems to be blatant disregard for the fun and majority of the player base. These are issues that could be at least temporarily resolved with simply adjusting some numbers (such as base kit BT, Base kit unbreakable, and base kit kindred).
These issues are annoying enough for seasoned players, but the fact that perks like bond, unbreakable, and windows of opportunity are not base kit is horrible for new players as well. The amount of times I have tried to introduce a friend to this game only to play for OVER an hour and not get a single escape is not acceptable.
The game has gotten so unbelievably frustrating to play for survivors (but even killers, from some community members, I hear), especially with this new update. Weaving spiders is a joke and a horrible perk design, the double pallets and main building on the new map are horrible, and the new killer is incredibly overpowered (speed, teleporting, etc).
I know for a fact this post will be called out by a bunch of mid-ladder killers who feel the need to "win" every game. 1 kill and 2 kills isn't enough. Gotta get all 4 and then leave the last guy to bleed out on the ground while tea-bagging him... That's the thing, right??? Look - When the killer gets to "win", it's dynamic. It's subjective. You could feel good about getting 1 kill if it was a guy who was really good in chase. But with survivors, every person who doesn't get to escape is a real player who is experiencing a "loss".
The inability to guarantee yourself an escape no matter how good you are vs the ability to get at least 1 kill no matter how BAD you are, is stark and easily observed.
The easiest thing to speak to this is how decent killer players can get 50+ 3k/4k streaks in a row, but there is no way to guarantee a 50 (or even 10) streak with 3+ survivors escaping, even with SWF.
Fix this! Most killer players seem to have an ego and power complex issue. I feel as though they are likely being coddled simply because they are the "powerful" presence in the community. They are the ones who have (more of) the ability to be toxic, dictate the sportsmanship of the game, and be a demanding, loud, and uncooperative presence on the forums.
I totally understand this post has a lot of "us vs them" language, and a lot of visible frustration. While some of this may be me just venting my feelings and frustration as someone who has devoted a ton of time to this game, I do believe some of it is also a fair critique. I hope readers can pick and choose what they believe to be a valid critique rather than writing off the whole post/discussion simply because I've been the victim of some really horrible games tonight, and I'm frustrated with the game, lol.
Comments
Believe me. If what you are asking was granted, you would only face Nurses, Blights and Weskers forever. People already prefer to pick survivor, specially when they have friends available to play with.
Being new into this game is quite harsh but it is for both sides. Try to learn a new killer to see how MMR works: you will be facing the same survivors on your brand new killer as you face with a killer you have hundreds of hours.
The SoloQ problem is quite deep and buffing survivors actions or simply giving them free perks will not solve the problem, unless survivors can face the killer in a 1v1 scenario, which differs completly from the assymetrical nature of this game.
TIP: For everyone that wants to play survivor and is frustated in SoloQ, try to find some friends to play with. I assure you your experience playing will be a lot better.
You are not going to play if killers don't want to play, just saying...
11 matches in a row is 100% skill issue. Period. And i would guess that you're below average if you're having that kind of experience. I have similar hours to you, I'd wager my mmr is a bit higher, I'm still averaging near 40% escapes. Maybe you could try new builds?
I play both sides, and my experience is that the game is severely survivor sided. Killer is way more frustrating. I do have painful survivor matches but more than not its due to being solo q and having bad team mates. When I'm matched with good survivors it's pretty much a guaranteed escape , and the killer is going to have a bad time.
There have been a lot of survivor nerfs, only because the role is that extremely busted. Dead hard, infinite loops, insta blinds, the game has a long history of being survivor sided. Even currently, for the people+buckle up is allowed to exist. It's insane. It's why I play survivor more than killer now, it's just less frustrating.
First paragraph response: Survivors are lucky to have a 40% win rate because of the many ways they can AND WILL THROW. You cannot factor game throwing behavior endorsed by the game itself in to balance. "Balanced" would mean 50% if people weren't throwing the game. You don't balance towards one group because they are the majority and we have seen how that turns out in REAL LIFE hundreds of times. Survivors had a 47% win rate in DH(god validation), IW, UB and CoH(Prime 100%) meta. How in the world can we expect survivors to be balanced around 50% win rate when they can't achieve 50% when their only competitors were 4 killers on equal skill level? Keep in mind that the killer queue was 1/4th to 1/10th or potentially 1/20th of survivor queue at that time. Survivor was generally more powerful no doubt, but the average killer was doomed vs human survivors. I don't have any empathy for survivors or killers. Survivors don't play to win and killers play like bots to the point of disgust.
Second paragraph response: The survivor objectives you mention are not progressing the game. Cleansing totems with no purpose is throwing the game. Self care standalone(non med-kit or a build centered around it) is throwing the game. Rifts are out of game bonuses that end up just throwing the game. You call them "playstyles" but they are still just pressing the m1 button anyway. At some point you have to consider playing the game properly more than the "side objectives" that aren't really side objectives because they only put you at a disadvantage for doing them.
Could side objectives be more worthwhile? Yes. Could we limit the ways in which survivors could single handedly decide the games a loss? Yes.
Survivors hinder themselves more than killers, that doesn't mean pop+PR+2perks on a competent killers player isn't op. I'm just saying if every single survivor player went into each game trying and without options to instantly throw the game they would be at 45%-50% instantly.
You lost a game because the kate booned 2 times for 0 reason and you think that's ok? You think that ash cleasing 3 totems in one game(so they did 1/2 a gen) is fine? You think it's fine to win a game after the first survivor to go down gives up on hook(leaves the game without penalty)? I want it to be a 50/50 but survivor players aren't actually trying.
BTW I am a survivor main for the last year. I hated how survivors acted when I mained killer and it's even worse as a survivor.
Personally I want my teamates to try and very much so at least know what to do or CARE what to do. A part of survivor is coinflip but it gets so bad one person insta loses you the game on purpose regardless of whether they understand or not.
You don't have a problem with what I said you have a problem with the current game design for survivors.
Edit: Killer being a power role is worthless to me, it's a gimmick created by the horror fanatics' that make up the player base. I don't want to win for free, but survivor's don't get to be buffed to an absurd degree just because 33% of survivors aren't playing to win.
I feel disrespected as survivor by all the agressive nerfs we got and all the useless survivor perks we’ve been getting. also I think it is really unfair that we only have 39% chance of winning
Those were the days. Us poor killers. 😮💨
This is still relevant! BHVR is still catering to the killer base, and has officially made it to where the majority of their player base (which are survivors) still have no perk to counter tunneling — unless you count that ONE that slaps the obsession on them and can only be used once the entire match? I still don't understand why we cannot use DS as many times as DH.
Usually new killers take some time to learn how to counter and such, but Ghoul has sparked the end of solo que for me. I fear that the Krasue will be the same for others — Why do we need another S-tier killer when we have neglected killers ready to be fixed up? Why not do an overhaul and make survivors unique as well?
Another idea is to create an emphasis (or a reward) on any kill rather than glorifying the 4k.
+Make it more rewarding to get hook states rather than tunneling out one person. +Make teamwork more rewarding than hiding out for hatch.
Unless you have numbers, I would assume the majority of the player base play both roles. Maybe not equally, but still play both roles regularly.
OP thinks killers are the 20% minority when the real split is closer to 40/60 if not 50/50.
OP also thinks devs are playing favourites with sides instead of dumbing down the game for casual players on either end.
cute.
I feel like a lot of problems with the game come from the devs being obsessed with band-aid fixes, instead of tackling the real problems. They love to tackle symptoms, but not the actual disease. Which just aggravates problems in the long run.
Remember when BHVR nerfed Billy's engravings (prior to his rework), because of the symptom being: most Billy players just using those 2 addons? The devs saw something (that was a symptom), proclaimed it as a problem/cause, and nerfed the addons. When in fact, that was the symptom, a symptom of other Billy addons being bad or subpar, and Billy being weak in general, to the point where he arguably needed the addons to be a decent killer. This was the cause/problem. This is what needed to be tackled. And thankfully, they have managed to do it eventually.
Ok, but what about the rest of the post?
I agree that neither side should be screwed. I’m not asking to go back to the days when all 4 survivors can escape hatch with 1 gen left. That was awful. Now that you say that about polls and debates, I don’t recall seeing anything either.
This is what exactly what I’m arguing for. There needs to be higher rewards for not tunneling! there’s a reason it exists, and those issues need to be addressed. However, while perks are not the greatest solution to tunneling - i think they can be for anti-slugging. I find slugging a better way to play around. Just my opinion on slugging - i don’t care too much about that.
>Most killer players seem to have an ego and power complex issue. I feel as though they are likely being coddled simply because they are the "powerful" presence in the community. They are the ones who have (more of) the ability to be toxic, dictate the sportsmanship of the game, and be a demanding, loud, and uncooperative presence on the forums.
I am going to have to respectfully disagree, friend.
Uhhh we don't have everyone playing Nurse with iri add-ons because the game literally fosters no-skill wins so there's no reason to when Nurse takes more skill than any of the last five Killers that have released combined. As we can see by the playerbase, they will do whatever is the easiest and most rewarding, no matter what.
A year has passed and this post is still truer than ever
I agree with everything except the Lobby Dodging/Prestige point. There was nothing "wrong" with removing Prestiges from pre-game lobbies. The amount of lobby dodging I've seen due to visible Prestige was insane, and Mandy confirmed that they had seen a decrease in dodging during the testing phase (when they released the Prestige removal to only a fraction of the players). And even when people didn't dodge, the Killer would relentlessly tunnel the P100 Survivor. There have also been countless comments on the forum from Killers admitting that they would sweat their hardest against P100's, and/or wanting Prestiges to be kept so they knew who to dodge. So hiding Prestige in the pre-game lobby was absolutely the correct move here.
The reality is that you cannot just cater to one side, because it will create an obvious imbalance. Sure, more survivors are needed for a match, but if you cater too much to them, it will lead to less killer players, and that will affect queue times. Same thing applies in the opposite scenario.
What about it?