Balancing Around Statistics Is Killing Variety (feat. Pallets)
Probably sounds like a dumb and blunt title but in essence this has to be changed for the health of the game. Currently, with the way that the last 2 years of the game's changes have been moving toward, the old problems like perks and addons are now gone. Funny perk combination that makes you unkillable in niche or rare scenarios? We now have diminishing returns and perk reworks, like for haste builds or old Buckle-up/For The People. So now the balancing is just around the survivors and killers themselves, and to an extent maps, thanks to pallet density changes.
To preface my explanation, I have played far more survivor than killer, but I like to think I play both pretty equally. And yet, I think survivors are the most powerful they've (almost) ever been. At least in the latter half of the game's life so far. Kill rates on the vast majority of killers are now below the projected 50-60 percent range that the devs like to aim for. So why is it that survivor matches feel so incredibly awful? Like, even more awful than they did when maps had like 25% less pallets, and killers had far more overpowered perk and addon combos? Its simple, the game is only balanced around 4 good survivors versus 1 top tier killer. And I doubt its even on purpose, but the issue is that statistics will always have extraneous, circumstantial factors that influence them. What I'm saying is, maybe The Nurse isn't non-problematic just because her kill-rate is lower than The Cannibal. Perhaps, the reason its so low is that she has double the pickrate, and thus newer players are lowering the win percentage. This is just an example though. The reality is more complicated. But playing killer has been awful because I simply refuse to play Nurse or Ghoul, they feel cheap and unrewarding. Meanwhile when I play a killer I legitimately find fun, half of my matches are torturous and sometimes last under 8 minutes, as almost every killer has to deal with there being 3 chained pallets next to 2 windows then also connected to shack/main, all to get one down at the start of the game. I main Cenobite, where I have to do all the hard work that a Nurse player does aiming, just to have my chain narrowly miss their hitbox, and they get 10+ seconds worth of distance. If I do hit them with the chain, I gain maybe 3 seconds I distance on them, which means nothing with current pallet density. The Cenobite's kill-rate is 42% right now on NightLight, where his kill-rate was in the top 5 or at least top 10 for ages. I have a suspicion that the only reason his win-rate is even at 42% is because of the amount of survivors that just give up against him since they don't find him fun to loop, or haven't learned to dodge his chains yet. Its at least a third of my killer games, and when I play survivor my teammates do it pretty often as well against other killers. The stats are overinflated, and somehow still below where they technically should be.
Back to my personal issue, I've been keeping track of my survivor matches, and a few days ago here was the breakdown of my 15 matches:
The Ghoul (5 times), The Nurse (6 times), The First (1 time), The Pig (1 time), The Animatronic (1 time).
Now, some days I get more variety, some days less. But the statistics, ironically, speak for themselves. What does it tell you that everyone wants to play Ghoul and Nurse? Is it just because they're fun? Or because there's a subset of higher MMR killer players that want to win, and now feel like they can only do that with the top tier of killers? I have to say, I haven't seen a single Blight since his movement speed nerf.
With the new pallet density changes, and the nerfs to different killers, I've seen less and less fun killers. Can't remember the last time I saw a Doctor, Ghostface, Xenomorph, and of course never a Trapper. Literally its been well over a year since I've seen a single Demogorgon, and the license has been back in the game for a while now. Anytime I see a rarer killer like a Pig or Onryo, its always with some kind of hex build that's just meant to hold the game hostage for half an hour. I seriously cannot find survivor fun anymore with this meta, instead of buffing survivors to "fix" the game, how about considering actual nerfs for the killers that get over half of the play time in high MMR? Not just adjustments, actual nerfs? People should be playing killers because they find them fun, not because they are better than other killers in every aspect. Who will play Legion or Chucky when Ghoul exists and has both of their abilities while also being able to fly straight up to people? Same goes for Huntress, I rarely see any Huntress players, can't recall a single one in months, likely because Springtrap can do the same thing in loops but with her iridescent addon basekit and has Onryo TVs he can teleport to that have no cooldown. I'm not saying you need to gut these characters, I'm also not saying all of them need the same level of nerfs. But its clear that the last year's worth of killers have powercrept everything prior so much that the pickrates are being ruined. Playing three Ghoul games in a row, broken up by a Nurse game, is not fun whatsoever. And its no fault of the players really, its the game. There needs to be incentive to play every killer, at least one playstyle each killer can appeal to and does better than the rest of the roster. Otherwise, when people play the game long enough, they'll only care about winning, which drives them to play in brutally unfun ways with zero variety. Which in practice, comes out to being three ghoul games in a row all of them running Pain Resonance and Dead Man's Switch.
An observation I've made over the nearly 3 years I've been playing is that there are two types of killers. Those that win when survivors make mistakes, and those that win when they don't make mistakes themselves. The First, The Nurse, The Ghoul, they all do not react to survivor input almost at all in the majority of chases or scenarios. There is no dodging Ghoul's first hit like you can with the Legion sometimes, Nurse cannot be dodged like a Cenobite chain, and The First's ability doesn't move toward you like Freddy's snares. The majority of killers in the game, with the current balancing, rely entirely on survivors to make mistakes. You can literally run from pallet to pallet with basic looping knowledge and as long as you don't stick around too long on the same pallet, you basically win. I had a clown player who was actually pretty good chase me for 3 minutes straight on the main building of Suffocation Pit. All because there were two windows that spawned right across from each other with a pallet loop only a 3 second distance away from the pallet positioned directly next to the first window. I ran around that main building probably 15 times in that one chase, no matter how many times he slowed me with a pink bottle or sped up with a yellow one. I would like to brag and say it was all because I've gotten better at the game, but for some reason I don't remember the main building on this map being so powerful. I remember it being a deathtrap after the first or second time around it. It was basically impossible for him to catch me so long as I didn't pre-drop both pallets and then run out in the open. Also shoutout to the Walking Dead map, its even worse, like idk if its an RNG bug but I legit had one match as killer where FIVE of the double-pallet Greenville square tiles spawned which meant I had to break like 20+ pallets that game just to lose with a 3-man out anyway. You know that the pallet density is bad when The Cannibal can't break more than half of the pallets on the map before the last generator is finished, even with survivors pre-dropping every single one.
*TLDR: Balancing off of statistics alone has left very few killers that can actually win in typical scenarios, on top of reduced perk variety. Looping with the majority of killers is so painful now that everyone is picking the same three killers, and I face them every time I play survivor. I only see three possible solutions, and I'm curious to hear what others think. The first one, and the one I think would be an almost impossible feat and has the most potential for backfiring, is to buff and rework every single underperforming killer until they're just as playable as Nurse or Ghoul. Secondly, like they did for The Blight just recently, they can give a substantial but suitable nerf to the few killers that have tremendous pick and win rates, like The Nurse or Ghoul. Third and lastly would be just to work on fixing the pallet density and spawn locations on every map until they're actually spaced and paced properly, as to not leave every killer that has to respect pallets completely disadvantaged.
Comments
I would like them to give survivors basekit windows of opportunity to also tune solo q and remove x amounts of pallets to compensate.
Showing survivors where every single loop connects to another for free is an insane buff. Do you think swf calls out every single filler pallet they drop that connects to every other loop? Of course not. This is just a gigantic survivor buff that frees up yet another perk slot for gen/second chance perks.
Did you miss the second part or not?
kinda pointless tbh, windows is more than worth the perk slot for most players. Stuff being made basekit has only ever been for things legitimately problematic to the game, like aggressive face camping in the case of Borrowed Time. All they need to do is adjust the pallet spawns. Dare I say I don't think there are necessarily TOO many pallets, just that they're spawning in TOO many places. Playing Bubba I shouldn't have to spend 5 minutes of the entire 15 minute match in the pallet break animation because my .5 second animation gives them enough distance to reach another pallet 8 consecutive times, to the point that their express pre-drop pallet tour lasts until 3 gens pop.
I don't actually believe they balance based off of statistics. What we see tends to be so random that it wouldn't add up if that were true. There's also a considerable amount of "feel good" balancing that enables the power role to feel oppressive and any attempt to change that is quickly squashed.
Personally, I think all 3 options are surface-level. Buffing all Killers will only exacerbate the problem, nerfing the top 3 does nothing to mitigate the issue of camping/tunneling/slugging (at most, we'd see a shift like when Stridor Spirit was nerfed), and map changes last until they release a new one. I think the most important thing to change the entire game balance would be to implement a strong and fair scaling difficulty, like the one in 2v8 but actually effective. Next would be to rework gens and hooks. Finally would be to emphasize fun again once the game is in a stable state once more. Anything less is a band-aid and unfortunately, BHVR is only willing to do even less than that.
They balance according to statistics and bureaucracy. BHVR is an incredibly bloated company and it's obvious that any changes have to go through a slew of middle managers. That's why a handful of very mid changes get pushed through, they have to satisfy several layers of mediocre people.
I obviously know that buffing all lower tier killers won't fix much, and obviously nerfing the top 3 killers will just cause players to migrate to other strategies or characters to get their "gotta win every game" fix. But honestly, if fixing pallet density directly isn't an option, because statistics show that with these density changes the top 3 killers have normal killrates now, then how is behavior supposed to tackle this? Their stats say the opposite of what people are experiencing en masse. The only realistic options are to make every killer suffer equally by nerfing the highest performers, or to somehow bring every pallet-vulnerable M1 killer up to par.
Ideally, in my mind, the best option would be a mix of fixing the pallet density and slightly nerfing the top performing killers. That way, you don't need to go and find ways to buff every single outdated killer, and the lowered pallet density won't cause the top tier killers to go back to stomping 60% or more of their matches consistently. But that's just my 2 cents.
I agree with that. But I still don't think statistics play a very significant role. They say they do, but if everything gets smacked down during that bureaucratic stage then it's a mere suggestion at best. The "year of health" proved that beyond a shadow of doubt.
I'm not saying you're wrong. It's more that I think this is a distraction or a pet project. They create a problem, let it stew, make it worse, and then fix it and in the end we accomplish nothing. That's why I suggest we cut the fat and go right to the heart of the issue—the core gameplay. But with the other quote above taken into account, that'll never happen and it's tragic.