Commonly cited killer main myth debunked.
I keep seeing the same argument from killer mains on here… "survivors are losing because the average survivor sucks".
Now I explain why this is blatantly false.
People who choose to play killer aren't magically better at the game than your average survivor. There are just as many mediocre killers as there are mediocre survivors, after controlling for the 1:4 ratio, obviously. Most players are average because they aren't professionals and shouldn't be expected to be professionals to have a rewarding gameplay experience. So if the escape rate is less than 50%, which it is by quite a large margin, this indicates that the game design itself favors killers, which it obviously does.
To turn around and then say the escape rate is low because most survivors are bad, completely ignores that most killers are just as bad, on average. But the OP game mechanics killers have at their disposal makes it far easier for mediocre killers to win against mediocre survivors. In other words, an intermediate survivor loses against an intermediate killer, most of the time. You need an expert survivor to consistently beat an intermediate killer in DBD. An expert killer will beat expert survivors most of the time, too. It is only a minority of elite survivors that can actually prosper against expert killers, and killers don't even face these teams very often because elite players are a tiny percentile of the player base. The balance differential is clearly evident in the absurdly long kill streaks that some killer mains have achieved, which is unheard of on survivor side, and unheard of in other popular PvP games that are sensibly balanced. The margin only gets smaller as you approach the very top of MMR, and even then, 4 man SWFs still escape less than killers.
So the complaints from survivors about the low cheese skill tactics used by killers, like tunneling, slugging, camping, etc, are perfectly valid. A game that doesn't reward skill expression for one side is poorly designed. In fact, neither side is rewarded for skill expression when the game is imbalanced, because even the killers are forced to win more by design, which renders their input as meaningless as it is for the losing side. For every 4K you get as killer, you know it could well have been a 2K or a 0K if BHVR hadn't given you an advantage from the outset. This removes the satisfaction of playing both killer and survivor.
The fundamental principle of game theory is that you have a balance of challenge and reward, which produces a flow state, and that is called "fun". But if survivors aren't rewarded for skillful input, because low skill cheese tactics are so effective, then the game ceases to be fun, and they rage quit (i.e. go next). This is not a skill issue on the players part, it is a critical game design issue whereby a large percentage of the player base doesn't even consider a match worth playing until the end, because the mechanics are inherently unfun. In fact I have never seen such a high percentage of quitters in any other popular PvP game, compared to DBD.
Likewise, if the killer is just handed one 3-4K after another on a silver platter, their input becomes meaningless, and the game becomes remarkably boring. At that point the only incentive for killers to continue playing is for the power trip fantasy, which is why so many killers hate that survivors are able to abandon. Many of them gain satisfaction that they are ruining the survivors gameplay experience, instead of being satisfied for playing killer role skillfully.
To make this concept clear, imagine a game where the outcome was determined at the very beginning. That is, the game told you at the beginning of the match, which survivors will escape and which ones will die. Obviously that would be a terrible game that few people would enjoy. Now obviously, this is an exaggeration. Dead by Daylight doesn't take it to that extreme. But it does do this to an extent, because the odds of survival are forcibly reduced through game design, instead of leaving it up to the players themselves, both killers and survivors, to determine the outcome.
If you're a really good killer main, you don't need BHVR to hold your hand to help you kill survivors. Your skill as killer will make you an intimidating presence all by itself. If the survivors aren't intimidated by you, then you're just not good at killer role. And if survivors don't consider the game worth playing, then the devs need to address their game design instead of blaming the survivors for "not working together".
Comments
The problem is your math is wrong because your underlying presumptions are wrong.
Here is the most simple of explanations:
Imagine BHVR made a change to game design when two survivors where left alive when the killer downed one the Mori animation would immediately start. Let's even go more extreme and say 3 hatches popped open while the animation was occurring.
Well what would happen to escape rates? They would increase.
What would happen to win rates? Absolutely nothing.
To put it in more of an equation form. If you believe KR * X = WR, if you can modify the KR without impacting the WR, then the equation doesn't work, which means it doesn't make mathematical sense.
You are grouping outcomes together (3k and 4k as a win, 0k, 1k as a loss). However without knowing how frequent the breakdowns are between these outcomes, you can't derive a win rate statistic from the kill rate statistic.
Our really only breakdown on how the games might come out is Nightlight. Their history shows killrates of around 60% to equate to a win rate of around 52% to 54%. That means killers are winning 12 to 14% more frequently than survivors. Even if we consider all 2ks as killer losses, and all hatch escapes as a survivor win, which is the absolutely most killer favorable (biased) way we can look at the data, the killer still exceeds survivor wins by a significant margin on a 40% escape rate.
killrate 60%… AT THE HIGHEST MMR. we weren't given stats for low mmr or average mmr
KILLERS WIN 60% OF THE TIME VS PRO SURVIVORS.
Now think about this for a moment...
You're playing survivor. You get killed off quick but shug it off and go into the next game. Do you mean to tell me you could "win" your first game while halfway through your 2nd if those other survivors lock in enough?
Kill rate is not win %…
And also… kill rate is a flawed stat to go after because survivors go next and kill themselves on hook. Do you know what stat that boosts when they do that?
I'll let you take a shot in the dark.
No, if you leave the game, you essentially would cash out and abandon any future awards you may have gotten. That being said, I dont see why getting rewards if you left once the original match concludes would be a problem - why not? I suppose that'd be tricky to program in, though.
Bruh, kill rate isn't win rate, lol. To put it into perspective, a 75+% kill rate is required to win a match (a 0k is 0%, a 1k is 25%, a 2k is 50%, a 3k is 75%, and a 4k is 100%). A 60% kill rate is on average killing 2.49 survivors a match which means a 60% kill rate equates to getting at least 3 kills slightly under 50% of the time. A 2.5k average would be a 62.5% kill rate which would equate to an even 50% chance to get a win.
highest MMR? Are you literally aware that the "highest MMR we are talking about is so easy to achieve that you can reach it with 200h only? This is like saying Gold-Platinum players in League of Legends are PRO players
I think you are misunderstanding the statement that "the average survivor sucks"
It is a true statement, and it is more about solo queue than anything else. If you queue in solo queue, there are 4 survivors, and 1 killer. That is 4 chances for one of those survivors to be bad at that game, whereas the killer only has 1 chance. All it takes for survivors, is for 1 person to be bad and for that to bring the whole team down. That is fundamentally how the game is designed. Imagine a world where we had a perfect bell curve of skill level for players. Even assuming MMR is doing its job, each player has about a 34% chance to be bad at the game. If the killer is bad, they lose. But if only 1 survivor is bad, it significantly increases the odds that the team will lose.
With a 34% chance of being bad, what are the odds a killer is bad? Well, 34%.
What about the survivors? Each one has a 34% chance of being bad, which would equate to a 71% chance that somebody on the team is bad
Now you see where the "average player is bad" makes such a difference in an asymmetrical game that is designed for one of the sides to work as a team.
What i generally prefer to look at, and it is true for any multiplayer game, is look at what the best of the best players in the world are doing. For some reason DBD players have this fascination with "we need to balance for the average player" which is just completley not how it is done for literally any other multiplayer game in existence. Sure, changes can be made that account for those players, and characters have been reworked in other games. For example, LoL reworked Xin Xhao because he was a noob stomper, but actually quite bad in high level play. But balance decisions should always be made with the top player in mind. Because the top players the ones who are able to exploit the imbalances in the game better than anyone, and they are able to help you, as a developer, find those imbalances.
Here is a video i post here frequently that i'm sure some of my hater will come in and insult me over. But i think it a solid video that explains my stance on balance perfectly. Its a solid video i suggest you give the whole thing a watch, but i timestamped the relevant section. They are talking about TF2 here, but the concept itself transfers over to any game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1p42KtZOCw&t=204sNow, looking at the best players in the world. Lets take the top 4 survivors in the entire world, and pit them against the best killer player for each killer in the world and have them play 10 matches, on a hypothetical perfectly balanced map with no RNG. What do you think happens? I suspect that nearly every killer would get maybe 2 wins tops? With ones like wesker, ghoul, and spirit locking in maybe 3-4. And nurse and blight managing to cross that 5-6 mark.
That is a big problem. And i don't understand why people don't care.
To again get into the math discussion: The various outcomes are not evenly distributed. The extremes are the most common occurrence in DbD. This means that if you are seeing more 4ks and 0ks then the other results, and you have a kill rate of 60%, you are going to need the 4ks (the wins) to outweigh the 0ks/1ks (the losses).
Let me guess, it only counts as high mmr if its the dozens of cOmP dBd pLaYeRs that no one watches or cares about?
This is just another "us vs them" post.
How would you get additional rewards AFTER dying?
wait a sec a 4 man swf has a 48% winrate they're almost escaping 50% of the time
Some games do that. If you get eliminated, you can leave and do your next match. Once the match concludes, it sends out the match results rewards to everyone. I'm just saying it's possible, but probably too complicated\complex to be worth doing for such a change to DBD.
no, nobody is talking about "dozen of comp players" (which aren't really just a dozen, gotta disappoint you) but about poor matchmaking yall are constantly weaponizing to talk nonsense about balance when the problem is literally MMR mismatching <3
I said "dozens" as in plural. If you're going to quote me at least do it accurately. It could be a couple hundred and it wouldn't matter. It's an insignificant fraction of a fraction of the playerbase that doesn't represent anything positive for the culture of the game and shouldn't be looked to for guidance on balance. Winstreaks and comp mentality are killing the game for the average player that just wants to have a fun semi-competitive match.
When we had somewhat accurate matchmaking winstreak killer streamers whined until they got what we have now. That is, 95% matches where they don't have to break a sweat while reading chat and 4k'ing at 5 gens some poor players that just wanted to hop on for a couple matches after a long day of work.
Peddling this should be bannable at this point.
Run this model with a 50% killrate, what happens to the winrate? Instantly proves how dumb this 'calculation' is.
This kind of math is a similar confusion to Zeno's paradox, where if you travel half the distance an infinite number of times, you never arrive at the destination. Sure, in a single match, a 60% kill rate is not a 3K, but this 60% is an average, which means over the course of thousands of matches the killer will get more 3-4Ks than 0-1Ks in order to maintain that average kill rate, which leads to a 60% win rate.
The number of "chances" a killer or survivor team has to be good or bad is completely arbitrary. You could say the killer has a thousand chances because every moment is a new opportunity to make a good or bad decision over the course of the match. You can define a survivor team of 4 players as a single organism that functions as a whole unit, with the entire match being one single, continuous event. Defined in this manner, the survivor team has only 1 chance to be good or bad and the killer has thousands. Your definitions are simply biased in the opposite direction of what I have just described. Basically, you are confusing yourself with motivated reasoning like in Zeno's paradox.
Only 4 man SWF at high MMR. 4 man SWF overall does almost as bad as solos and high MMR overall does almost as bad as solos too.
Only 4 man SWF at high MMR. 4 man SWF overall does almost as bad as solos and high MMR overall does almost as bad as solos too.
or if a 4 man swf and a solo are similar that means survivors are not escaping slightly less than half their games which is actually a lot
Who's everyone? Lol
Killer mains constantly spamming how survivor sided the game is against SWF doesn't make it true, especially not when we have official stats to confirm they are lying
30k+ players is not just some "fraction of a fraction" but let's move on.
1. those people literally want the game to be as balanced as possible for both sides so that none of the sides gets stomped, but your logic is that game getting more balanced is somehow...less fun?
2. Many winstreaks are not even done by comp players at all and it literally isn't comp mentality that is ruining the game, it's literally people that want the game to be as easy for their side to win as possible to the point where they don't need to invest any time into learning due to game being on full autopilot. Not to mention people who simply play to cause frustrations to other players (bully squads, killers bleeding people out for no apparent reason).
people who were complaining about MMR system bring too "loose" were the ones made fun of and community was massively pushing narrative that MMR shouldn't exist. Yall think it shouldn't exist and then complain about people making winstreaks pretty much thanks to bad matchmaking.
Ohh and btw, i also have a full time job, also hop on the game for couple of matches and i still find it more fun to have an actual match where everyone gives their best rather than stomping some random soloQ squad with fresh install in their team.
"killrate 60% = winrate 50% (2k on average). With the current matchmaking, this basically means the game is balanced (even though with improved matchmaking killrates would surely drop by significant margin).Escape rate of 50% would mean 50% killrate, which further means killer winrate going somewhere around 40-45%.With this fact, average killer wins 50% of the time."Are people blatantly lying? We know for a fact that MOST matches either end in 0k or 4k. Having a 60% KR while knowing that CAN NOT translate to ONLY 50% Winrate.
Let's break it down.
If most games end in either 0k or 4k, it means kills are not evenly distributed across matches. The system is polarized. In such a system, even reaching an average of 2.4 kills per match (which is 60% killrate) would already require a large chunk of your matches to be 3k or 4k outcomes. It’s mathematically impossible for a killer to average 2.4 kills per game while only winning 50% of the time if most of the results are either full kills or full escapes. The only way 60% killrate equals 50% winrate would be if every match had very balanced outcomes like 2k, 1k, 3k evenly spread…
which is simply not how Dead by Daylight actually plays at any real MMR.
In a polarized environment, a 60% KR suggests something more like 55–65% winrate depending on how skewed your distribution is. Anyone claiming otherwise either doesn’t understand basic probability or is just repeating nonsense they’ve heard without thinking.
Can't edit, but the winrate would be closer to 55-65%. Got a bit over the top with the 75%.
High MMR doesn't mean pro level. Its very easy to get to high MMR in DBD considering the ceiling is so low. High MMR just means a level where they have enough experience in the game to know how the game actually fundamentally works. Someone at 200 hours could easily hit High MMR. In other words, once everyone has the fundamentals down to the game, 4 man SWFs have their members at an average of a 48% escape rate.
This isn't some weird or usual math, it's literally basic math. A 60% kill rate means on average over thousands of matches, the killer would get a 3k+ sliiiiightly under every other match which comes down to roughly 50% of the time. 62.5% would be on average 2.5 kills per match.
According to your "math", kill rate is win rate. That is realized to be flawed pretty quick with this example. If kill rate is win rate, then let's put it to the test. In this example, let's just say the killer plays 1000 matches and only ever gets a single kill. That puts him at a 25% kill rate on average. According to you, he wins 25% of the time, or 1 out of 4 matches. Please explain how the killer, with a 25% kill rate over 1,000 matches who gets a single kill every time somehow won 250 of those matches? Its incredibly clear that kill rate does not equal win rate. Now of course a killer will not kill the exact same number of kills every match, but in math, the model would work in every example situation, and im providing an example that points out the failure in logic to claim the kill rate is the win rate.
It's not basic math, it's a complete abstraction of something that… Well, I don't know what it is, but it absolutely isn't DBD.
No, it doesn't. Not by a long shot. That is an obscene oversimplification that completely divorces your 'maths' from reality.
In fact, if you check a real dataset, like Nightlight, you'll see that it doesn't adhere to your 'maths': You claim 60% KR means they get a 3K+ slightly less than every other match.
Well, Freddy's on 60.8% KR, and his 3K+ rate is roughly 55%. In other words, he get's a 3K+ slightly MORE than every other match. So if your math is correct, how is this happening?
It's pretty ironic that you set this challenge to him but fail to respond to mine.
And if you're going to accuse Nightlight of being a statistical anomaly, this one's gonna be even more ironic.
Like how your model asserts that a 50% KR killer can never, under any circumstances, ever win a single match?
And if you're going to accuse Nightlight of being a statistical anomaly, this one's gonna be even more ironic.To add on to this:
There's lots of plausible reasons why Nightlight might be off (Higher MMRs, English centric, PC over console representation), but they all fall when talking about distribution.
To discount the Nightlight distribution would mean that the Nightlight data set is reporting lower killer rates than BHVR's data, but somehow those players are somehow managing to report higher kill rates than people are saying must occur. It requires an absolutely impossible scenario to be true.
This isn't some weird or usual math, it's literally basic math. A 60% kill rate means on average over thousands of matches, the killer would get a 3k+ sliiiiightly under every other match which comes down to roughly 50% of the time. 62.5% would be on average 2.5 kills per match.It's the wrong math, the complexity doesn't matter. You're confusing that when people discuss stats they say things will normalize over a large sample size. For example if you flip heads three times in a row that will be irrelevant if you flip it another 100 times.
But if the coin is weighted in favor of heads, the bigger your data set, the more the discrepancy will be obvious. In DbD the outcomes don't have the same probability, we have both logic and data to back that up, which is why your basic math doesn't work out.
Haven't you watched any proper pro matches? The ONLY hope a Killer has at high level is to camp and tunnel.Comp DbD (mainly DBDLeague) gives numerous advantages to the survivors, but severely restricts them on their use of anti-tunnel perks.
if you have 8/12 hooks BEFORE anyone is killedThere is a massive gulf between arguing for 12 hooks and tunneling a survivor out on the first 3.
unless you're an S tier Killer, which is a small portion of the roster4 person SWFs running meta builds are a very small portion of the survivor player base, but people seem quite happy to base the discussion of the entire game around them.
Why would anyone intentionally shoot themselves in the foot?That's a fair enough point. Play how you want. That's why people are usually arguing that BHVR should make changes to tunneling, not just rely on killer goodwill.
You're looking at this wrong.
There are four survivors in a match, and matchmaking is virtually nonexistent. One bad survivor is enough to throw the game. If they go down quickly and the other survivors need to expend resources and time helping them, or taking hits and downs to get them off hook or keep them standing, then that survivor is why you lost the game. If that survivor is off crouching in the bushes because they're on death hook while the rest of your team is running around massive dead zones because that one bad survivor pre-dropped every pallet against a Bubba or Billy, that survivor is why you lost the game.
If that bad survivor gives the killer a free down because they tried to sabo right in the killer's face or went down trying to body block the hook when the other survivor had no chance of wiggling, that survivor cost you the game. I've snowballed an entire game off of one survivor, while injured, stubbornly trying to flashlight save their teammate through Lightborn. She just stood there while I marched right up to her and knocked her down. Boom. Two basement hooks at four gens. Game over, I win. It doesn't matter how well the other guy looped, or how well the other two can play. I can just camp the basement and win the game.
That's how team games work. You're only as strong as your weakest link. It's part of what makes SWFs so powerful. It's not JUST comms. If you know each member of your team is good and will do gens, on top of bringing a decent build, then you have a much better chance of winning.
That's why killers say that "bad survivors are the reason solo q sucks." Four decent to good solo q survivors can win, even against a decent killer that's tunneling. It's not guaranteed, but there's a fair chance of winning. Three decent/good survivors paired with a bad survivor is probably going to lose. That's what happens when you prioritize speed over accuracy in matchmaking. Sure, sometimes you and your squad get to stunt on some baby killer. Other times you get paired with a Sable who runs to the basement to self heal every time they get injured by Legion.
isn't comp entirely separate and don't they shackle survivors hard since they're too strong?
comp scene is separate from pubs and is played in customs yeah, but nah, they don't really shackle survivors as most killers average 6 hooks at most even with strict rules and hard restrictions on survivors.
Not to mention that some of the most obnoxious survivor perks like OTR, Reassurance and Babysitter are generally banned across all killers + it's strictly forbidden for teams to have more than one of the same perk. Addons are strictly limited to green ones too, meaning stuff like Syringes and BNPs are strictly forbidden to use, same on killer side with some exceptions (e.g. Billy is allowed to use iri engravings because majority of his green addons are terrible)
You say "lets put it to the test" and then ironically provide a hypothetical example completely out of touch with what is actually going on in games. In the actual game, killers are getting 3-4K more often than they get 0-1K, and so the average "win" rate is well over 50%. Though, how you want to define a "win" is frankly irrelevant because it is the rate of kills and escapes that define the actual balance of the game. After all, the killers primary objective is to kill and the survivors primary objective is to survive. There is no need whatsoever to even talk about what it means to win, as we can just look directly at kill and escape rates to determine game balance.
I provided an example that shows how flawed the idea is that kill rate is equal to win rate. You're response is that win rates doesn't matter anyway? Come on, man.
You're telling me you believe that someone with a 50% kill rate wins half of their matches in average. If someone is only getting a 2k every match on average, they arent winning half their matches even with variants like occasional 0ks or 4ks. Someone with a 25% kill rate isn't winning a quarter of the time. Conversely, Someone with a 90% kill rate is winning every game on average, even someone with a 75% kill rate is.
The only difference between someone with a 75% kill rate and a 100% kill rate on average is that one on average kills 3 survivors and the other on average kills all 4 survivors. However, both on average are winning all (100%) of their matches. No matter how you view it, the idea that kill rate is win rate doesnt hold any water. Putting it to any real tests or thoughts reveals the holes in the idea.
comp scene is separate from pubs and is played in customs yeah, but nah, they don't really shackle survivors as most killers average 6 hooks at most even with strict rules and hard restrictions on survivorsYou're the one who told me where DbDLeague posts their stats.
They posted stats on the 9th. The absolute lowest is Unknown at 6.5, then there is a jump to Houndmaster and Slinger at 7.42 and Slinger at 7.5, but after that all the killers are in the 8, 9, 10, and even 11 (Blight, 11.3) range. The total average is 9.04 on hooks which really looks like they've over nerfed survivors.
Not to mention that some of the most obnoxious survivor perks like OTR, Reassurance and Babysitter are generally banned across all killers + it's strictly forbidden for teams to have more than one of the same perk. Addons are strictly limited to green ones too, meaning stuff like Syringes and BNPs are strictly forbidden to use, same on killer side with some exceptions (e.g. Billy is allowed to use iri engravings because majority of his green addons are terrible)Sure, but the thing most people don't mention is that the survivors know who the killer is going to be. That's a massive advantage that never exists in pubs. On top of knowing the map, the survivors can craft a strategy ahead of the game which gives them a substantial advantage.
Its why you see things like No Mither against Hillbilly. That would never happen in a pub.
There are lots of perks / strategies on the survivor side that are strong against certain killers. DBDLeague eliminates the natural balancing mechanism of never knowing the killer that exists in pubs, so they have to make additional changes.
It's why other leagues / tournaments (Asian / Community Cup) didn't/don't need to have anywhere near the same level of restrictions (they have/had some on both sides, but not as much as DBDLeague) because the survivors didn't know the killer they were going to get matched with (usually they played that each round there was a pool of killers to choose from).
I'll just keep trying on the math talk.
Someone with a 25% kill rate isn't winning a quarter of the time.This is an extreme scenario so let me respond with an extreme killer hypothetical.
Imagine there was a killer like a Super Infinite Tombstone Myers. He's even worse out of power than current Myers (i.e. slower), but once he fills his power not only can he insta kill survivors, he can kill them in lockers, he moves at 150%, and gets aura read.
What would a 25% kill rate look like for such a killer on your win rate? Probably close to 25%. Most games the survivors finish the gens and leave before he can fill his power, but when he does, its almost always a 4k. You'd still have a few games in the middle scenarios (1/2/3 ks), but they would be underrepresented (representations is something you don't get to in your scenarios) compared to the others.
The only difference between someone with a 75% kill rateLet's say BHVR takes the same killer above and buffs how quickly the stalk fills but otherwise they are unchanged. They jump to a 75% KR. What's the win rate? About 75% because we still have the same killer designs, either the survivors complete the gens and get a 0k, or the killer fills stalk and they get a 4k.
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While this is an extreme example, Infinite Tombstone is a good example of why your math doesn't work. His games are going to heavily swing to one or the other side of the equation.
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Putting it to any real tests or thoughts reveals the holes in the idea.Except you aren't putting it to any real tests. You aren't examining existing data or actually walking through possible scenarios. You will say 'on average' without actually examining why that might be wrong
Here is another way to look at it because I'm going to keep trying.
Imagine another asym came out. It's a totally different game than DbD, except it is a 4v1 elimination game with a 60% kill rate and survivors win if they escape on an individual level and killers win if they kill 3 or more survivors (so same as you are discussing).
You are saying that from the 60% KR we can derive what that games win rate would be. I, and others, are saying that you have no idea what the win rate is without having more information about how the game is designed.
That is why we can't talk 'math' without talking about the game itself. The design can not just be ignored, its critical to the outcome. The design, and all the data we have about it, shows the snowball nature of DbD and that the killers win rate at 60% (and even a fair deal less) greatly exceeds the survivor win rates even under the most killer sided possible view of the game as we can get.