Does DBD favor killers?
So normally I don’t think that DBD is survivor sided or killer sided, but I’ve noticed a running pattern that anytime killer mains complain about a survivor perk or mechanic it gets nerfed and when survivors and killers alike complain about something it gets delayed everytime… and I don’t mean the delay on the anti tunneling update cause I watched those lives and that would just be HORRID! But more so how anyone that’s not a Ghoul main complains about him being able to hit through stuff that is otherwise completely solid to all other killers that even have similar skills. I don’t expect any perk buffs because perks aren’t a problem nor his his skill itself- just the fact the skill is clearly buggy and they deny to fix it along with similar traits that are seen in other killers. Also the camping update is NOT what it should be. The camp meter doesn’t even extend past the huntresses BASE throwing range- meaning they can have the huntress base build with no add ons and when partnered with a perk like Insidious it makes it IMPOSSIBLE for a survivor to know that your teammate is being camped until you are actively being hit with her hatchet from NOWHERE. At that point it’s not a skill issue when the survivor has no way to counter the killers invisible aura or their incredible range.
I just want 1 overall mechanic change with anti camping counting when the killer has clear line of sight- not just when they are within your camp meter range, and for mutual requests to be taken into consideration even when a main whines about their favorite killer being buffed. And no, I’m not gonna deny that this has happened with survivors before because it has taken a while for some BROKEN survivor perks to be nerfed- but some of those perks have been nerfed now and there are some killer mechanics that even killers complained about around the same time that have STILL been delayed.
Comments
As killer distortion was your i´maginary fried causing tunneling and getting you more time for killing other survivors exept the one rating away with distortion, dont get me wrong not everyone using was rat (it was popular perk with no counter) but many I have seen were and thats what gets me more angry then tunneling killer is survivor hinding in the corner because he is scared and not taking bodyblocks or chases if he can from other survivor who is dead on hook, such selfish and unlogical behavior is just brainrot that is stopping me to even think to play soloq.
Predator / I´m all ears stuff
Tbh this shines mostly on Nurse — aura reads erase distance because she just blinks to you. On most other killers? If your pathing + cam control are decent, you’ll live even if they see you for 4–6s (+2s if they burn a perk slot on Lethal). That’s why you barely see these perks outside niche builds.
And..
If you suspect Nowhere to Hide, play for it: don’t crouch behind a random rock near the gen — wait at a checkspot near a pallet or a tile you can actually take a chase from. If the perk’s confirmed, weaponize it: you know he wants the kick → free time to rotate and build distance while he kicks. Struggling with a 4–6s aura usually means a positioning issue, not that the perk is broken.Thats on you. Maybe this is a point where u can improve.
Also, these aura perks come with heavy cooldowns and/or conditions (lose chase, fast vaults, kick the gen, etc.), so mindgames and short stealth windows are still very doable — especially during those long downtime phases.
Ohh no you don't, no dodging what you said:
You think the "trigger" on these is hard? You think you can "hard counter" the likes of "I'm all ears" and "predator" on a whim? We weren't even TALKING about "in chase" we were talking about "good stealth". Your words, We'll highlight it in bold for ya:
Edit: the idiot hit post before we finished the whole thing
Yes cause those "conditions" we could ohh so obviously work around when trying to stealth. And no, not just chase, STEALTH. Want another thing to try? Phantom Fear. You look at the killer at the wrong time your revealed.
Well?
We envy your enjoyment
I'm gonna be honest, I think we've just been arguing against an AI.
Wild, yet valid response. Was reading this debate/dissuade and blinked a few times.
I'd like to see you try and stop a hard tunneller from doing exactly that. Let's see how good you are at making a killer that is intent on tunnelling, stop tunnelling.
The massive essay that follows this is one giant, unsubstantiated gish gallop that barely manages to construe a point more salient than 'hookbombing bad'.
Let me just pull the pin here and make your whole entire argument collapse: Nothing you've talked about so far puts any distance between tunnelling and regular play. Nothing you've talked about makes tunnelling less advantageous than chasing a fresh target.
ALL of this is simply you complaining about bad survivor plays and then acting like it is that, and only that, that makes tunnelling profitable.
Not the early 1v3 and the default much shorter chase given the survivor starts with one evaporated health state, but just… 'Hookbombing bad'.
Take this, for example:
You know how this differs from non-tunnelling?
The 're-spot' and finding a survivor actually exist and cost time here. They don't, with tunnelling. That's all basekit and free.
You get 10 seconds of extra gen progress, but in exchange, you go down to a 1v3 in one full chase and two half-chases.
No one is taking that trade.
Again, all you are talking about are things that are even between tunnelling and non-tunnelling, failing to construe any meaningful difference between the two.
You can get as verbiose as you like, you can say 'macro' as often as you like, your argument still falls flat because the game simply doesn't work the way you have conjured it into your head.
None of what you have mentioned makes tunnelling work less than non-tunnelling.
Hey, remember how there's three other survivors that get no pressure?
And how there's one survivor that doesn't get a normal chase?
Tunnelling doesn't teach anyone anything. Normal play teaches them significantly more.
And what have you brought to the table if not exactly that?
Everything you have spoken about has been presented without a single shred of supporting evidence, it's all just been whatever you feel like.
But you don't have those numbers, do you?
Because you're going off of, guess what?
Pure vibes.
Then give better stats. Give better numbers. Stop whinging about your personal anecdotes and put something better on the table.
Because so far, all you've presented is, guess what?
Pure vibes.
That's a straight up lie. There were plenty of threads complaining about Distortion and demanding its nerf.
Hey, stealth becomes bad if you're only and exclusively looking at the wrong application! What a surprise!
This is like saying that doing gens is ALWAYS the wrong play because you can 3-gen yourself.
I will reiterate again, because you keep switching tracks:
There are situations in which stealth is the absolute correct play, and it still got removed. So why would tunnelling be spared the banhammer for being 'the correct play'?
Don't pull up another situation that we are explicitly NOT talking about to skip around the topic, and answer the question.
Yeah, I hate to be that guy, but it reads like someone is just feeding an AI with the contents of this thread and asking it to make a response.
I think this topic may be the greatest 'Post and Ghost' in forum history.
So, first of all, do you just use AI to generate your posts? Insane over use of em-dashes, bullet points like you got a good deal wholesale, and bolding everything for no reason.
Secondly, I never said op. You're right, it's a thermostat, and it went from 50% to 60% over those same 3 years you're crying about. And yet you seem to be also claiming that it went down at the same time.
Which means that for all of those changes, some of which are genuinely laughable, the overall balance of the game was decidedly, objectively more in the killers favor. That's exactly what that thermostat means.
lol thanks for the compliment. kinda says a lot about the mentality these days → people can’t be bothered to format and keep posts readable. and funfact: you can look up every single change yourself
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/kb/categories/1-patch-notes
not this hard.
and before that there were some killer-leaning changes, sure : but they sit outside this 2-year window. we’re talking map reworks plus nerfs to overtuned survivor stuff (boons, etc.). those were necessary to bring and buff killer up to a baseline that they can keep up.
and it wasn’t a one-way ticket. survivors benefit from smaller maps too: faster resets, shorter rotations, teammates easier to reach for bodyblocks, yada yada. the biggest nerf was cutting pallet density —> and that was needed, come on .. the old maps were broken af. especially after MMR made it crystal clear how insanely survivor-sided the game was at the time. I’ve said this earlier already: Smaller maps are good for survs too.
DBD was never meant to be a pure stealth game. Back in 2016 the core loop was actively escaping the killer, with stealth elements — not full stealth. Maps and structures were designed for chases,even more than today. Stealth was always meant to be used during a chase to lose the killer, not to sneak off early and sit in a bush all match. That got abused, which is why grass got reworked, maps were made brighter, and certain offerings were removed. (bye bye full moon) So no, I wouldn’t call that “good stealth” — it’s a playstyle survivors abused to drag games out, and it was never the original idea.
and phantom fear.. come on.. 2 sek aura with 60 sek cooldown. noone plays this perk.
it’s not intended that someone can completely avoid killer contact — everyone has to get found at some point. thos chance has to be there. if you can’t accept that, maybe this isn’t your game. if 2 seconds of reveal into a maybe insta-down is a problem, there’s a lot of room to improve. you can’t balance the game around that, because some players turn a 2sek aura into a 60s chase and don’t go down instant. and there are plenty of short stealth moves to briefly break los, buy a few extra seconds, extend a structure, or just create (sometimes ´huuuuge) distance.
There are so many words in this thread wow
nah. when I pick someone and decide to tunnel, I full commit — but survivors gotta give me that window first. why would I proxy in a (for me) dead zone with nothing there (no important gens), with no clue on unhook timing, no gen info, and zero side pressure while i proxy?? especially if they’re milking the hook timer. once I’ve rotated across the map into the zone I wanna hold, it’s not worth the efficiency to run back just to force a tunnel. so yipp : if I tunnel, I tunnel — that person ain’t getting out. do I want to tunnel every time? hell no. if they go down in smart zones and actually play macro, tunneling nukes my tempo. why would I grief my own pressure?
nah. tunneling puts a totally different kind of pressure on the team. said it a bunch already. as long as people still have hook states and don’t feel tunnel pressure, they laser-focus gens. it’s not about “one less health state” — plenty of survivors stay injured and keep pushing gens anyway. the real pressure is you pushing someone toward dead hook.
and when the killer isn’t tunneling and folks still have hook stages, there’s way less reason to play safe: no need to reset, no avoiding dead-zone gens — “i’ve still got a hook stage.” that’s the difference. this difference is huuge.
you act like only cuz re-spot just vanishes when you tunnel. it doesn’t cost— you pay it in a different currency: while you hover, 2–3 survivors are doing gens, resetting, or setting up cover/bodyblocks.
choosing to tunnel (especially early, not on dead hook) is a macro loss — it drags you off your gen cluster. that’s why tunnel often isn’t worth it once survivors play smart: they go down in good zones (nothing for you there) and actually play macro.
once you’ve rotated over, running back to keep the tunnel is inefficient. a fresh chase at a hot gen usually protects more progress than hook babysitting at this moment.
i already explained verything.. you can tell you haven’t even put 100 hours in since 2021. can’t help you there — go get your own experience. I’ve already laid out the differences; if you don’t see them, that’s a game sense gap. i cannot help u there to get more gamsense.
and yup, tunneling gets way less attractive when people go down in bad zones for the killer — places with nothing to proxy, no hot gens to guard, no easy side pressure. if they milk the full hook timer (those extra 10s are huuuge), pull last-second (trade if needed), and layer in the right perks, you lose tempo a lot by choosing to tunnel there. that’s the difference. you lose the game.
tunnel is a tool, not an auto-win. pick it in the wrong spot and you grief your own pressure.
it does, just not the lesson you prefer. survivors learn hook-timer discipline, trade calls, bodyblock timing, off-hook routes, when to reset vs. better slam this damn , and how to play smart and not to aggressive because its a threat to get found. and how important it is to use ur time during this match.
not even about how I feel ehw?— this changes.. it’s about how survivors feel. this is a change that isn’t technically needed for balance; it’s there to reduce newbie frustration from players who don’t want to learn the game and get overwhelmed by a tunnel. (better info + better MMR would be the real fix.)
i don’t put much stock in these rates, but here are the latest numbers. like I said, imo they’d skew harder against survivors if people actually played macro. but this is what BHVR has published — and it’s the target they balance toward. idk.. my pov:this stats dowsnt say much and do not show what happens ingame.
This is actually not true.
The advent of some of the later killers added that has crazy map traversal, and certain killers that rely on terror radius builds has seen a MASSIVE gain in power level from shrinking the maps down to a postage stamp.
As someone who plays Doctor quite a bit, it has become WAY TOO EASY, thanks to the shock blast being able to cover almost the entire map if you get to the center. Combine that with passive gen slowdown perks (like dead man's switch), and you are guaranteed to get survivors off of the gen they are working on. And the first hook usually comes pretty fast.
Then you have killers like current Clown, Wraith, Blight, Ghoul, Billy etc, who can traverse the map fast, and put a lot of pressure on the survivors.
Maps needs a balance between small and large. Not super-huge like the old maps, but not as small as many of the current ones. Also, back before The Realm Beyond, there used to be a lot more ambient fog on maps, that also made them look bigger than they actually were.
A good example of a well-sized map is Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, or let's say the Shattered Square (which is completely square). Not small enough for Ghoul to instantly traverse from one side to the other in a single power use, or too large for Trapper to have a fighting chance on them.
Larger, or more medium-sized maps are generally the best for survivors to use, since more space allows for more tiles, but it can also benefit killers, by spacing out tiles more, as to not make them too easy to chain.
What we really don't want to see are maps that are too small, and has way too many deadzones in them. Think Haddonfield and Rancid Abattoir here.
15k hours, some tourneys back the days, and way too many VOD reviews — yep, definitely AI. Appreciate the compliment. xD
When I get Haddonfield as Doctor I feel like I struck gold lol
Exactly the kind of killers like Doc needed those changes. Doc isn’t strong — still isn’t.
Dead Man’s? good players clock it: tap some throwaway gen, let it block for ~50s, move on. i mean, not a waste perk, but counterable in most of cases.
The issue isn’t just map size, it’s layout/design.
Smaller maps have survivor upsides: I’m fast there with a flashy for a pallet save, quick bodyblocks, faster resets; downside is the killer rotates quicker.
Billy specifically: there’s so much clutter and invisible stuff now that you stuck on everything — again, not just size.
Do we need map reworks? absolutely. But that’s mostly about other problems than “too small.” On Coldwind and Haddonfield they overdid it; I don’t even see size as the main problem there — it’s missing filler pallets between some structures + bad RNG on certain layouts… and we need less totallydeadzones
and rng is sometimes a mess:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqbL9CVnYQg&t=3s(already made a vid about this)
Reads like it, these most recent comments are wildly different in tone compared to the previous.
I've been following the discussion and have been tempted to point out the same thing
Look at that…trying to dodge yet again. Its sad we're not surprised. Remind us again:
What were you suppose to answer? How these triggers are hard right? How its ultra limited? Not some random freaking tangent to try and distract. Not what you think the core loop of the game was. Not the strength or use rates. Not more assumptions. What. We. Asked. Ya know, since we're so new and don't know?~
So can tell us? Pretty please?~
You also cant apparently comprehend any stealth other than chase or rats, as seen here:
…
Really?
You complain about KR being a bad metric and when challenged to provide better stats, you answer by posting KR?
This is just plain trolling at this point.
I only know my lobbies. I have no idea about the new player/mid MMR lobbies in the current state, it hasn’t been my touchpoint for too long. like I said: stealth is usually not a thing in my lobbies, or only super situational. don’t know why stealth is such a huge topic here -> for me as killer it’s always an ez win, as survvior I get these people too rarely. if necessary, take a few chases nd go next. so yup, I don’t see the problem
The game really just favors coordinated squads above everything else. Bhvr keeps adding strong survivor perks that pretty much only function with a team of survivors who are coordinating.
Killer tools more often then not are being nerfed because bhvr refuses to make adjustments to the best killers in the game and focus on changing weaker killers in a way that makes them more brainless to play but not any stronger.
Mranwhile nurse's existence pretty much guarantees every new killer perk that releases is rather weak so she can't break the game with it.
You don't know, or you don't want to know?
Because I've posed you the same question multiple times and every single time you play dumb.
You've posted a bunch of times complaining about how the forum is survivor sided and showing your downvote numbers as evidence.
I need you to understand that the reason you get downvoted is not survivor sided bias, it is because you frequently will make arguments like this - you will say kill rate is a bad metric of balance, but then use escape rate (which is directly a function of kill rate and literally no other confounding factors) as a "better" alternative. You want people to agree with you, argue better.
I keft the game 4 years ago, because the Devs favored survivor so hard, i was unbearable. I hope your right about the new and better tumrs.
You can’t really argue with someone who’s played 100 hours since 2021 and ~500 total. Different lobbies, different experiences. and we only can share our experieriences. i mean.. : I play this 100 hours in two weeks. I’m just asking: should we balance the game around people who barely boot it up over 4 years / or complete newbies? All we can do is share our experiences. and his is just as valid as mine.
and my goal is to share that (my) reality, not win a popularity contest. So yup—whatever the devs do with this is on them. (and my reality may be a waaay different from his: different mmr, different lobbies, I guess.)
and .. its not about my posts: I just think it’s funny that anyone speaking from the killer side—unless they add buuuut I play sooooft—gets mass downvotes. Just kinda funny to me; it speaks for itself. xD (for me)
and also for me, this game is pvp. Most people in this forum don’t like that mindset, but it exists—same as the folks who go full meme with a full meme loadout and don’t really care, like “I just want to have fun.” that’s what I don’t like on the flip side.
so yup, different playstyles, different lobbies, different opinions, different playstyles, different experiences.
this is my experience from my matches yesterday:
https://imgur.com/a/fBzVblv(my matches yesterday - duo q only - no full swf )
and this has been my experience most of the time—unless we make massive mistakes on survivor side—against most killers in the roster. Even without the killer using the full kit (slugging/tunneling), it’s often an easy 3-4-man out if there’s no pressure. If the killer hard tunnels at 5 gens, you end up with like at 2 gens .. one person dead and two gens high. Once it’s a 3v1, that’s exactly the state the killer role needs against an efficient team that doesn’t give insta-downs. everything else is basically gambling on survivor mistakes—a coin flip that they mess up or are just bad—not really the killer “playing” for a 4K.
sure, you can get unlucky—bad rng, a fast down at the start—but on average my games go like this once survivors make few mistakes and the team knows their macro. Just my experience.
The game is balanced primarily around this and trying to make the game more attractive to new players. It wouldn't be the end of the world if it worked, but it doesn't. More players feel left out if anything, and it doesn't seem like the high kill rates are actually pleasing Killer players. It makes me wonder who actually wins out in the end.
70%