I feel like BHVR really doesn't understand Macro-play in DBD
This was a a thought I've had since reading Knight and Clown's changes with the upcoming Walking Dead chapter, and while everyone was busy overhyping Conviction and Last Stand (You cannot convince me they are anything other then niche at best) I was looking at the changes to Knight and Clown with a raised eyebrow and a "Why" on my lips.
For those who aren't informed on the concept, Macro and Micro play are a Strategy Game term meant to describe two things, your individual decision making, and your overall strategy, as an example, in a Battle in a Total War game, your Macro is your ability to analyse your army composition versus the enemy's army, as well as your formations and overall battle strategy, whereas your Micro is your ability to manage individual units and their abilities. It should be noted that you can absolutely get away with being deficient in either Micro or Macro if you're good with the other, I am pretty bad at Micro due to my tendency to fixate on one unit instead of keep a eye on the entire army, but my Macro is pretty good, I can make up a strategy on the fly and execute the plan fairly well, however, mastering both Macro and Micro will be how you truly master a Strategy game.
Why do I bring this up? Well, Macro and Micro are a part of DBD, if I was to put a numerical value on it, I'd say it's 70% Micro, 30% Macro. Micro in DBD is your individual performance, how well you can loop a Killer or how quickly you down a Survivor and use your power, whereas Macro is your strategy for the match, how well you as a Survivor manage the resources on the map, How you as a Killer deal with those resources and manage your chases, what perks and items you bring to the match, etc. While this is a lot of different things that fall under Macro, at the end of the day DBD's Macro-play is stuff you don't really think about, you don't load into a map like The Game and think of how you're going to handle things, you're going to load into The Game and immediately shut your brain off because it's just 30 God Pallets, A lot of DBD's Macro play is ultimately in the background and is stuff most players don't really think about.
That being said, there is a good chunk of Macro Play in DBD that players DO have to engage with, mostly down to what Killer they play, this is how I would split them
Killers that lean or are heavily reliant on Micro are the Killers who have minimal to do or think about outside of chases, Killers like Demo, Xeno, Springtrap, and Unknown have things to manage as part of their Power, but ultimately every one of these cares more about and focuses on ending Chases quickly, Killers that care more about Macro are those with a lot of stuff to manage, Sadako for example has to manage her TVs for her teleports, and keep a eye on how much Condemn each Survivor has as well as if they're using Tapes, Freddy has to try and force people to go into Dream Pallets to get value out of them and keep a eye on who's Awake, who's Asleep, and who's protected by a Clock, Dredge has to keep a eye on where he can teleport as well as how close it is to Nightfall, etc.
You might also notice that all of the very unpopular and most of the weak Killers are dependant on Macro and all of the popular and coincidentally strong ones are dependant on Micro, and the simple conclusion I came to is that the player-base just doesn't like Macro-based Killers, people care more about what a Killer can do in chase versus what they can do to win a game, and while I could very easily put on a smug face, push my glasses, and say it's because the player-base hates thinking and would rather play a Killer that ignores all decision making with 4 aura reading perks to minimalize required brainpower and maximise dopamine…actually no I'm 100% going to do that.
Look, lets be real here, the DBD player-base has had a pattern of disliking or outright hating every Killer release if their power isn't something that can ended chases in 5 seconds, and BHVR has seen this and acted accordingly, Trapper has been the worst killer in the game since launch, Hag has been left in the dust for years, Twins were almost turned into a completely braindead chasing machine, Skull Merchant got her legs cut off and has been left in the dirt for 2 years, and the most popular Killers have always been some variation of "Move Fast" because people like moving fast, which, by the way, is completely fine, I'd be lying if I said I didn't also enjoy the Dash killers or play with End/Fury in most of my builds because I just don't want to think when I get home from work. But at the same time…it is nice to be rewarded for putting in some brainpower, which is why the Clown and Knight changes just irk me so much.
Clown is not a Killer that requires a lot of effort to play, but the nerfs somehow managed to make him require even LESS effort to play, instead of making the Pink bottles the best choice in most cases with Yellow being used mostly for flexing, BHVR made the Yellow bottles the objectively best option in almost every case by making them give more Haste and making them activate faster, making Pink give less Hinder for less time, and then nerfing all of Clown's best addons, if you hated Clown because he just made you slower I hope you're prepared to hate him even more when the patch drops because now he's going to be running at 127% at every single loop in the game before even considering stuff like Rapid Brutality, STBFL, or Nothing but Misery.
And Knight? Knight's changes are not only completely unwarranted but also completely backwards, the basekit Call to Arms and better pathing is nice, but everything else? Carnifex does not need a Standard spawn time of 8 seconds because nobody ever uses him for Hunts, and nobody ever uses Carnifex for Hunts because his insta-break is more valuable for Commands and he moves at 105%, and Jailor? Jailor having a standard spawn time of 4 seconds is one of the dumbest nerfs I have ever read, Jailor's entire purpose is finding someone quickly and then Hunting them for a long time, he is designed to either keep a Survivor busy for a very long time or set up for a pincer attack, that is Knight's entire game strategy, use Carni for Commands in chase, Assassin for Hunts to score hits outside of chase, and Jailor for Patrols for Slowdown or pincer moves, That is how Knight is designed, that has been how he has been designed since his release, this nerf takes out all of the decision making of leaving a Guard to chase someone. The Carnifex "buff" is never going to come into play because leaving a AI that moves at 105% to chase someone for 8 seconds minimum or 12 seconds at most is not going to do anything, and Jailor might as well not be in the game anymore for anything other then dropping him in a loop and pincering someone, because all of his value for slowdown (Which, coincidentally, means more Knights are going to be running more Slowdown because they can't rely on Jailor anymore, meaning less build variety in favour of more slowdown) has been removed in favour of letting anybody with a braincell remove it almost immediately, the changes were supposed to make Knight less reliant on Pincer attacks, right? Because all these did was make him MORE reliant on it while getting rid of most of his macro-play and decision making.
All of this just leaves me a bit baffled honestly, while I have a good feeling the Knight and Clown changes will not make it off of the PTB just by virtue of how many people have complained about it en-mass, the fact that they were even considered and thrown onto a PTB in the first place just…why? That's really all I have to ask, why? Clown and Knight aren't even that particularly strong, they can do some pretty cool stuff but against a stacked team they struggle really hard, why change them in a such a way that completely removes most of the decision making behind how they play? Who were these changes supposed to appeal to? Because they aren't going to please people that hate these killers and they sure as hell aren't going to make the people who play them happy.
These changes to me at least demonstrate that BHVR doesn't really get what makes Macro-play in DBD special, and why removing it sucks, it's nice to having each individual decision work towards the end-goal of winning over just picking Kaneki and winning through nothing but raw chase power, what would be nice is having killers with more Macro focus, over having killers that do rely on Macro being either changed to have it removed or being bad.
G'night
Comments
I mean, you certainly can. And they've made chase so much simpler over the years that it's not even as hard as it used to be. I will readily admit that it's not easy, and requires you to be efficient at all aspects of killer: not just chase, but game sense, game knowledge, situational awareness, information, and effective use of your kit.
You're entirely correct with 1 in chase, 1 on hook, 1 going for rescue/recovery, and 1 on a gen. That's what effective map pressure looks like.
But compare that to hard camping and tunneling: one on hook, 2 on gens and 1 who can likely greed gen progress before going for rescue. So until you get that first person out, you're leaving the rest of the team largely to their own devices and they can do whatever they want.
If they are efficient, playing with experience, and even remotely coordinated (which doesn't necessarily mean SWF), they will use their time to "gen rush".
Which is why we see so many "gens fly" complaints. Because instead of having map pressure (and utilizing a wide variety of skills) and only 1 person on gens, people take a risk of using RNG and chase skill only to race 2-3 survivors. If you got lucky and found the weak link, and can get 3 hooks before the survivors finish about 4 gens, then you win. It's a simple formula, but doesn't rely on nearly as much mastery of the killer role.
To bring this back to what I said before: gens aren't the goal, and it's a resource the killer can spend. If you are just allowing the survivors to do whatever they want, then your only method of slowing down the game is things like slowdown perks or base kit abilities.
But map pressure by itself is already a huge amount of slowdown. Instead of 2-3 on gens, you have at most 1. maybe 0 if you can get a quick enough down to have 2 on hook, where the game is forced to stop for recovery.
That's at least 50% slowdown, maybe 67-100% depending on what circumstance we're comparing.
And even with the power of tunneling, if you aren't efficient at the chase part, you can still lose, and you basically have nothing to fall back on except screaming at the devs to buff you.
they got 4kd no matter what rhetoric you want to provide. those 4 gens took too long for any of them survive, let that sink in.
Okay well I disagree that the survivors in this game are "bad" or "low MMR" or "######" and the gameplay seems to agree with it.
The way you describe these survivors and the fact that 1 generator was remaining, 4 people were alive, and only 3 hook stages from the killer are not consistent.
These were pretty decent opponents in a otherwise great match
They also didnt even get 4ked too so I dont know why you are saying that either.
Honestly it just sounds like you aren't very good at the game judging by your complaints
That's kind of how the game is designed though. The idea isn't to completely stagnate the survivor objective, it's to apply enough pressure to slow it down. One person on a gen should be the best case scenario. Last time we had a stagnate survivor objective was during the old Eruption gen kick era, and the devs stepped in to fix that. Probably why the devs are also currently looking to implement anti-tunnelling, for the exact reason you just stated. Probably why they first implemented anti-stealth and anti-go next and tightened the AFK crows to ensure survivors engage with their objectives before seeing how far they need to tackle tunnelling.
yeah, thats great but this should go both ways.
if killers arent meant to stop surv objective in its tracks until the very end, then survs shouldnt have a period when their objective can be done at triple speed.
so far we only care about killer's side of the snowball and about their ability to gain momentum and preserve it, but somehow no basekit changes to tune down survivors' ability to abuse their early game momentum.
and dont bring up spawn changes, not only they can be bypassed with a single offering, they are also disproportionately less efficient against high tier killers than low tier killers who struggle with keeping up with survivors even despite having all the ways of stopping their objective. before most killers reach survs on most maps, they would've scattered around already.
it's really disheartening how every concern like that killers have is answered with effectively a nerf to solo q and buff to high tier killers neither of which are what killers struggle with and would rather have tuned down / equalized instead.
I'm a seasoned veteran with thousands of hours, been playing since 2016. in basically a killer mains worst night mare cause I tell it how it is 😂
Isn't Arinad also the player that made a 200-page guide for Clown and wins like 98% of his matches but instantly calls survivors OP and busted when they win?
Going into micro oriented killers is imo not a bad decision, as they are widely loved compared to macro oriented killers. Dont get me wrong erasing the already macro killers is bad yes, but why would you as a bussiness make a product that you know will sell badly and that your customers have already told you very vocally they dislike?
Thats like having an ice cream shop and seeing that almost all your customers love fruit flavors, however 4 people really like exotic flavors, while you can still sell those people what they like, investing on creating exotic flavors rather than fruit ones is bad for bussiness.
Not having too much to say about the changes as i'm not in the loop right now, but just wanting to say your list doesn't really work for me.
Wraith: Definitely not just micro, a good Wraith doesn't commit to chase unless he wants to lose the game. You have to keep an eye on their injured states, find good ways to approach to get a hit without having to run through pallet city. Its not just braindead cloak-find surv-uncloak-hit-repeat. He is a very versatile killer but i would put him in micro-leaning at least
Spirit: In order to win with her you need to play territorial. Find a good 3 gen and hook people there. She is really dependent on that because she has low mobility (you need your power to chase, otherwise they mess around with you). Besides that, you need to recognize stealth perks and remember the survs with them, also some survs are quieter then others. You can't just turn your brain off and chase like some people think. Could still be micro heavy, but i would say micro leaning, because her power is chase-based in the end.
Ghostface: definitely macro leaning or macro heavy. You have to manage your stalks, stalk people for later and leave them, try to stay in power etc., not a micro killer! You don't want to chase with this killer, but approach from behind.
Plague: She is definitely macro. Not only do you have to infect gens, pallets, vaults etc., but you have to manage your fountains which can make or break your match. You also have to decide if you want to chase or just infect someone. Many decisions to make.
On the other side - Dredge, Artist and Freddy are not macro heavy (or at least not more macro heavy than others). Looking out for nightfall or blocked lockers isn't really that much of a task and happens on the fly. Artist? She can send birds far away to gens or hooks but what is macro about that? She doesn't need to manage much and 90% of her power is pure anti-loop. I dunno much about new Freddy, only played against him so far but i wouldn't say he doesn't require that much macro either, as his powers are chase/stealth/stalling focused and mostly passive.
Well, friend, I think then it comes down to a matter of preference. It is good for those who enjoy micro-oriented killers and bad for those who prefer macro-oriented killers. It is still very unfortunate for those who prefer macro killers, as very few new releases, if any, will be enjoyable.
However, just like you said, the killers who are already macro shouldn't get their identity erased. Freddy went through it. Skull Merchant is risking it, though thankfully the disapproval is being demonstrated loud and clear. Trapper and Hag have yet to be targeted, but they could be. And, honestly, I don't think this is acceptable.
This thread came to mind when thinking about the Streetwise bug and how it hasn't been killswitched. Apparently gens being done twice as fast due to infinite/near infinite toolboxes doesn't completely screw with the game at a macro level enough. Or maybe the OP was right.