Game is WAY KILLER SIDED
it’s not even a question. I play both survivor and killer a lot, and EVERY time I play killer I am getting a 4k or a 3k if survivor camps hatch. When I play survivor, it seems the killer gets the same results I usually do and I die 4/5 times even though I am doing everything well. Not even sure how to fix this, maybe less heavy gen requirements in order to power exit gates? Seems like all my teammates refuse to do the one and only win condition…
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Maybe they should, then again, it's a competitive team's claim, so they very well could have been stretching the truth. I figured it had to be a blight or nurse, so blight it is. I always felt clown was unfair, but no one seems to ever agree with me.
"I die 4/5 times even though I am doing everything well."
You don't. I don't need to see your gameplay to know you don't do everything well.
Sure, your teammates inefficiencies will lose you matches. But If you're only winning 20% of the time, you for sure have things you can work on, I promise.
It's a horror based game, in what horror based game shouldn't the Killer end up winning more?
All BHVR has done in the past year is fix some much needed issues with Killers, make lower tier Killers more viable, tone down certain overly strong perks, and give Killers antigrief in the form of hook respawn (because people would overuse and abuse comp corners too much and no-hook zones). If that "makes it way too Killer sided" maybe it's a you issue because I still do fine in my Survivor games. I just don't win every round without thinking anymore because I slapped on a meta build.
EDIT: Downvote me all you like but it's the truth. Horror games need to have stakes. The Killers are the stakes in this one, therefore the Killer is intended to be a threat, so it makes sense to balance it towards the Killer winning a bit more on average. This shouldn't be up for discussion in 2025.
I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone claim that the survivor side is too easy and they escape a vast majority of their matches. Maybe I’m wrong and if you find any of these please point them out to me.
What I do see very often is people claiming that killer side is way too easy and they win a vast majority of their matches (or sometimes claim they win literally every single time), even though none of them ever answer the question if they actually play the killer side, much less ever post videos to prove it.
Most sane comment in the thread.
DBD is supposed to be Killer sided. The reality is that it's SWF-sided. If you're playing Survivor, you need to be okay with losing.
Wait, before you strawman, I didn't say (nor do I mean) that Survivors should always die and Killer should always win. It's called Dead By Daylight, not Survive By Daylight. The Killer is supposed to be a scary, oppressive force that you aren't likely to escape from. But you can if you're adaptable, smart, and have good gamesense.
I believe a lot of the game's inherent flaws and issues can be rectified by buffing solo Survivor up to the level of SWF (with more info, bsaekit info perks, ping system/text chat etc.) and buff Killer to compensate.
When comparing streaks like this, it's important to remember that it's also just easier to schedule playing killer alone vs getting 3 other ppl together. Its very likely the ppl doing the killer streaks were also just playing more games in general than the ppl trying to get the same 4 man team together. Anyone who's ever tried to schedule a game of dungeons and dragons knows the struggle of getting a party to show up, lol.
The scheduling thing is true. But survivor is always going to be the more unstable role, due to the fact that the killer plays alone, and survivors have to work together to win. You can find consistency playing killer, that just isn't feasible for survivors. Even players on coms make mistakes and screw over their teammates sometimes. That's just part of playing as a team.
I think that's why the game feels bad for survivors much of the time. The old BS we used to have helped compensate for how bad the average survivor experience is. Now that the game is more balanced at higher levels, the average survivor experience feels kind of crap as a result.
For sure. You also have to remember as survivor, you are going against different killers each game. That consistency REALLY goes out the window because different builds and playstyles are going to be significantly stronger or weaker based off the killer character you face. If you bring a medic build, it's gonna be completely ruined once a Plague shows up. I wouldn't say this is really a balancing conversation though. It just means survivors face more variety which can make long streaks hard.
Completely unrelated but I really like your voice! :D
I do agree with most of what you've said. I think where we may differ is only in regards to SWF, only because the survival rate of most SWF is 3% more than Solo, at a 43% escape rate. I personally don’t think thats a problem. The top 5% of SWF have an escape rate of 48% and an occurrence of 3 - 6% so while they escape more, they still lose more than they win, and they’re also a very small minority, similar to Nurse and Blight. Which is why I feel when it comes to SWF, like Nurse, many criticisms about them statistically don’t measure up, but I do understand the frustration behind them and am not opposed to some kind of changes to makes them less frustrating.
But I do agree with the core of what you’re saying, as I too, want the killer to be scary and oppressive and am okay with survivor being challenging. It’s not as if games where you’re designed to die a lot aren’t successful or fun. Dark Souls games are famous for that and wildly popular. I think it’s just the difference about losing in Dark Souls often feels justified as it’s your own mistake while in DBD you can die very often from mistakes that you never made, or things that feel very bad to lose by (like being bled out or something).
Thanks for your perspective! :)
I think this is true, but just reinforces the point @AmpersandUnderscore is making.
An elite 4 person SWF, that being 4 players who are all great at the game, have played together, and practiced clock call outs, are extremely rare. They are a subset of an already small group of players (general 4 person SWFs).
Because they are so incredibly rare it seems really strange to use them as the balance metric. One of the things that makes the killer role "easier" is the fact that you don't have to coordinate with a group to maximize your ability in the game.
My point was specifically towards the streaks that they were talking about and why killer streaks are generally higher than these 4 man survivor streaks. Its not really a balancing issue like ppl here like to claim it is.
don’t talk about how the game is “killer sided” when you and many others on this forum bring up “I play both sides” as if that helps your argument in anyway because you automatically lose that argument.
Maybe if you try to look at this is a vacuum, but when you look at the whole the bigger picture is pretty obvious.
Killers have much larger win streaks is one piece. The devs have been pushing for a 60% kill rate, which is already a bit odd. They've flat out said they want the game to favor the killer.
Balancing more toward killer vs SWF, when 4 man SWF is only about 10% of the player base, and 40 ish percent when you factor in all group sizes. Solo queue, the 60% is left in the dust with a few scraps that "are supposed to make up for it".
Sacrificing the fun aspects of the game supposedly in the name of balance, is a competitive mindset. And I've never seen a game deliberately and intentionally go a competitive route, while at the same time saying "killers win about 51% of the time, and survivors win about 35% of the time, with the rest being draws". That's not balance.
All of those things, and more, is the broader picture that the game favors killers, by design, and by intention.
I'm not debating balance. It's about as effective as beating my head against a wall. The only thing I was pointing out was that it's easier to do streaks if you only have to manage your own time vs if your relying on 3 other ppl to log on. The ppl playing killer more than likely are playing significantly more games and making more attempts than the ppl trying to wrangle a 4 man SWF together to do THOSE streaks.
Sure you can.
In all seriousness, what?! Killer easier than SWF?! But you literally have other people with you to bail you out! Imagine all those solo games where you're about to to be dead. "Sure could use a body block now." In SWF, you get one. Then the next time you get close to going down. "Sure could do with an instaheal/BT in a bottle." In SWF, you get one. You need fast gens so you can hurry up and escape? In SWF, you get that. No other role comes close, man.
Because it would be the usual. People picking apart the gameplay, aggressively critical, all in hindsight. And that level of analysis, 1000 IQ, only gets applied to killer gameplay. Because with survivor gameplay, as long as they say* they're playing at high level, people believe it without question. Just look at the "best survivor team in world match vs 3-gen Skull Merchant- for almost an hour!" I've debunked that one so many times, I've lost count. But in essence it was very mediocre efficiency and team play dressed as this really high level match, when they made so many mistakes they should have lost, and yet they still won. But because they took so long to do so, "that killah is so OP!" So if people can buy into that hoax, showing them proof with their very eyes of our gameplay being solid and still getting kicked around like a noob... It's not gonna change their minds. They are completely narratively captured.
its very killer sided for average to low mmr solo Q
high mmr + swfs or even solo Q is so hard and somehow due to the killer or maps is just unplayable
How does the killer crossed the map before a survivor can get to a pallet?
Yeah, like what exact killer change was made to where it's "EZ turn your brain off mode"? I'm having close matches every time, no matter how quick the survivors go down. A lot of decent killer perks destroy themselves after 1 use. Pain Res, Grim, Deadlock, Machine Learning. A lot of the rest aren't even worth bringing. Survivors have tons of options. All the anti-momentum (anti-tunnel) perks, all the exhaustion perks, all the healing and psuedo-instaheal perks, the killer stunning perks. But I really cannot see the leagues of power these people claim that killer has gone through to get here. Here is mediocrity, not overwhelming might. You sometimes go against survivors who basically don't go down. 5 gens have popped, and you've got like 3 hooks, because they just yo-yo at god loops and take you on chases that will cost you the remainder of the gens. There's no sense of control in the slightest. Only for the survivors, there is.
Yes they do. There's been so many games where it was competitive, and the "fun, fun, fun" people didn't suffer for it. Look at any fps game, any fighting game, any strategy game. Balance changes were made, and there was little or no outcry from casuals, because they either understood their step in the learning process, or they didn't pay attention to things like balance. I played Smash Bros for years, and I came up with opinions like, "This character needs a stronger X" or "This character is OP." But I never once went to a forum or the game reviews and listed those complaints, because I never dedicated myself to playing competitively. I mean, I was competitive, but in scrub kind of way. And I joke that I'm like that in DBD too, because of controller limitations, my apm, my hand-eye coordination or whatnot. A miss here, a distance misjudge there. But I know I'm good. You shouldn't have to play at the absolute peak of gameplay the be somewhat able to compete, but that's what killer feels like. My survivors are doing 20-second chases, and the matches are always close.
I really don't care about the kill rate. It's always been deceiving, and a fat load of confirmation bias. It has nothing to do with how difficult the game is for killer or survivor, or what skill is required. It doesn't tell you anything, especially with how skewed matches are with this MMR. Other games have competent MMR. Maybe that's why they're better at doing balance. DBD's devs are incapable of sound balancing so long as this MMR problem exists. You can't balance around anything if you don't even accept that noob killers are getting crushed by high level teams, and good survivors are dying because of their teammates' lack of basic game knowledge. They act as if skill as a factor does not exist, like everyone's just playing at the same level, so that if 1 side is doing bad, you simply buff them and that's the end of it. There's no nuance at all.
I especially disagree that the devs intend the game to be killer sided. Every patch note, killer has taken a hit. I don't care how many placebo buffs/changes they got in exchange. Like the recent Legion changes: so you're telling me he might be playable now. Great. Doesn't make up for the fact that Wraith, Deathslinger, and Twins have been C tier since their respective nerfs. And they're seen as fine, being in that state. They couldn't buff Freddy without dialing him back in basically every area of his power. Even in the wording of the patch notes, especially all the ones that nerfed Chucky, "We feel that survivors needed more time to react/dodge, so we made him slower." Good players weren't even complaining about that. They just did the same thing with Alien, who I'm never playing again after that disastrous change comes in. He was already garbage, because his ability was not consistent, and the free flamethrower turrets were too strong, which are also getting buffed btw. Pain Res was nerfed because the killer "simply* puts the survivor on the hook." as if you can just will it and it happens. So at most, killer has been 1 step forward, 3 steps back. The survivor meta has stayed the same (except OTR's introduction) for like 8 years. Killer's meta has been changed like 20 times, all the result of nerfs. I don't see how the devs have killer's best interests in mind.
Killer-sided, meanwhile SM got gutted to the ground. Killer-sided, riiiiight.
I'm not trying to debate every point you made. I asked a question... that's all. How does a Deathslinger who is 4.4 m/s cross the map before the survivor can reach a pallet? It NOW sounds like they didn't. Being in the middle of the map already isn't "crossing" the map. It NOW sounds like they were pretty close already since once again... the survivor couldn't get to a single pallet.
Sidenote though... if a chase is going on in a strong structure like the main building of a map, it's not that crazy for the killer to drop chase after awhile. Try to do things like heal up in a relatively safe positionand not out in the open away from pallets.
"Seems like all my teammates refuse to do the one and only win condition…" You've said the reason. If your teammates doesn't cooperate, you will lose. Its not on the game balance, but on the survivors you play with.
I do believe the game is survivor sided today but far less than it was in the years before. Its much more closer to being balanced than ever. But if you get a 4 good solo players or a medium SWF you will have a hard time as killer, specially if you are playing a low tier killer you get a bad map.
I just wish the devs game more attetion to SoloQ. Although i believe there is a good amount of players that don't understand macroplay in survivor, sometimes is not that people don't want to play better, its just the lack of information that hinder the choice for the best course of actions.
This is a versus game. You can lose a versus game. This game has "sometimes the side you're on loses" baked in, that is true of both sides. Because that's FAIR in a versus game. No Killer is unbeatable, perhaps you just struggle against that Killer. That's fine, I suck against Trickster and Deathslinger, it's part of the game. Losing is part of the game. If you want a survival horror game you can never truly lose, go play Resident Evil. If you want a survival horror game with the possibility of losing, here it is. It really is that simple.
To be fair that greatly depends on the Killer. I don't see a lot of Trapper Mains calling this game Killer Sided, is all I'm saying…
Anyways holds down W