Black Banquet Event SUCKS for Killers
I BELIEVE I SPEAK FOR EVERY KILLER MAIN HERE because I GENUINELY cannot understand how this event made it past playtesting.
The Black Banquet is one of the most one-sided anniversary events you've ever released. As someone who plays both sides, I don't even enjoy Survivor in this mode because there is almost no tension. Matches hand out progress and escapes far too easily. You honestly have to SUCK at survivor if you lose in this gamemode.
Survivors have access to absurdly powerful effects:
- Unbreakable pallets. (FOR TWO MINUTES????)
- Temporary invisibility with no scratch marks, no pools of blood, no grunts of pain, no aura reading, and almost no information for the Killer. (WTFFFFF WITH THISSS)
- Free endurance that lets them shrug off a hit they should have taken. (body blocking INSANE here)
- Speed boosts that drag chases out even longer.
- PORTALS?????
- Suddenly GAINING an entire health state for no reason
Meanwhile, Killers get a poison bottle. And the ocassional temporary Lightborn (which is just stupid).
A single projectile that survivors can often dodge, with a payoff that barely matters compared to what survivors are getting.
How did anyone think this was remotely balanced?
Dead by Daylight is already an asymmetrical 1v4 game. Every advantage given to one survivor gets multiplied across the whole team. Handing four players several powerful event abilities while leaving the lone Killer with almost nothing creates a miserable experience for the person on the other side of the match.
The frustrating part is that you already had an anniversary formula people enjoyed.
Twisted Masquerade gave both sides event powers that actually changed the match in a fun way. Killers had tools that gave them a real role in the event and let them interact with the map and survivors in a meaningful way. Both roles got mechanics that made the mode feel special instead of lopsided.
Why throw that away?
Why strip out one of the best parts of your anniversary events and replace it with this?
Instead, Killers are stuck watching survivors chain invisibility, endurance, speed boosts, and indestructible pallets while throwing a bottle and hoping it lands.
The result is a string of matches that feel exhausting for Killer players and dull for everyone else.
And this isn't just Killers complaining. I've seen the same reaction on Reddit, the official forums, and other community sites. I've asked survivors in post-game chat, including multiple P100 players, and even they admitted the mode is heavily survivor-sided. Some even told me they even stopped playing killer because of how unbalanced it is.
When both sides are saying the same thing, the balance is clearly off.
Anniversary events should make people want to queue up on every role. This one pushes Killer players away.
Replacing Twisted Masquerade with Black Banquet feels like a massive step backward. The anniversary should be the time when everyone is excited to jump in, and this version leaves one side carrying all the pressure while the other gets all the toys.
Please take another look at the balance. Tone down the survivor abilities, give Killers event powers that actually matter, or go back to the kind of design that made Twisted Masquerade enjoyable for both sides.
There is literally ZERO reason for killer mains to try this gamemode.
Comments
The banquet hasn't really turned the trial around for my Survivor games tbh. It might be different with a hyper coordinated team, but it's just been the strongest Killers playing for slugs while I grind the event by stacking plates on a table. Aside from that, given that events always tend to be one-sided and bounce back and forth, we have been overdue for a Survivor one. It's just not really engaging enough to do.
Yes, it's really disappointing for a milestone 10th anniversary.
In this event mode - the survivors have practically become superheroes,
while the killer has gained the ability to FART.
I was getting chased by a spirit and the random team managed to heal me mid chase over 5 times... and while playing dracula i had a bully squad that could heal everyone on the map constantly on command. With how busted that stufd is youd think poison would take a health state or deep wound atleast.
Look at the down votes lol
Its not that hard two or even one guy just spam dishes to the table. I had a match where the trolly was like five meters from the table so you could get it done very fast.
Still I have won matches as Hag and Skull Merchant. The Hag match was me playing with the waterlog shoe so no teleport either.
Yeah survivors having the ability to just portal away or go invisible while killer gets borderline nothing is not fun, which should've been obvious to the devs.
you mean the devs who don’t play their own game.
There's one thing I want to speak out against here and I'm only doing it because I think it being untrue (in my eyes) is a sharper criticism than it being true, which is the idea that the poison isn't good.
It is. It's disgustingly powerful. It basically guarantees a free hit in 90% of all possible scenarios after the bottle connects, its strength at stopping survivors running away is difficult to overstate.
What I think is more pressing is that killers only really get two things, three if you count the portals (which are for both sides and not a killer or survivor thing, so, debatable how it should count), and the only one of them that's worth anything is boring.
Survivors get some honest to god toys this event. Sure, the passive heal and the Haste effect are just boring improvements like the poison is, but the invisibility, the endurance, and the minigame of ferrying morsels to the table are all gameplay-changing effects that open up some interesting opportunities and situations for the player using them.
The bottles, though… outside of needing to aim them manually, which is something, you just get the survivor slowing down so you can hit them. The idea of the stamina bar could've been a bit more interesting, but the implementation is just that killer gets a basically free hit for a minor mechanical feat.
What this event desperately needed, in addition to some of the survivor effects being toned down (and removed in the case of the free heal, my god), is ways for killers to get toys as well. Even something as basic as Undetectable opens up more opportunities than the poison bottle does, and a bit of creativity could get killer something as unique as the invisibility as well.
I actually like the format and presentation of the Black Banquet, so I hope BHVR doesn't abandon it, but it desperately needs more active gameplay for killers. It's okay for killers to have less, because killers already have powers, but they shouldn't have this little.
So as a fellow killer main i thought i would drop my honest thoughts on this event
Originally i was not happy. first few games completely destroyed because of how much the survivor gets. but as the games go on there really is only one aspect that effects me as a killer and thats the portals and Invisibility. That food item should, if the survivor has even a few hours in the game, make every chase a free escape. simply run to a portal and boom you escape.
The unbreakable pallets and invincibility doesn't bother me. wait out the invincibilty and as Henry i don't care about pallets. The speed boost again doesn't bother me as i can predict them running straight line and get the hit with power.
I think the big issue is this event is only winable without really really sweatting for a handful of killers.
Any killers that rely on M1 might as well not bother and if you draw the version with portals and Invis then just grab some quick points and pray the game is over quickly because its not really winnable unless your willing to try and hardcore tunnel someone out to get a kill and hope you can snowball.
For me the issue isnt the unbalance of the event. at the end of the day devs would rather favor the many than the few (4 vs 1) but what bothers me the most about the event is the fun aspect. Survivors get to play around with the foods, banquets and have a good time. Killers get to throw poison which is only good if you are playing an insta down killer. There is really no new gameplay aspect from the killer and i would say this isn't any more fun than normal matches for killer arguably less fun because of the ballance issue.
Overall dissapointed with Behaviour. They have really shown that they don't care about the greater community with this event. Its one thing for us lot to complain on the forums but when all the top streamers and their own Creators complaining about the event they really need to open their eyes and realise that they messed up.
Very little faith left in new events
I noticed that you can tracj invisible people by the loud noise they emit when invisible, so it's fine for me, however portals + invis into item refills into free getaway everytime killer approaches plus the global heal feels too much. I disagree that killers wouldn't got powerfull tool, however it's quite boring for both sides and truly don't bring anything crazy. You become Clown, that's it. While I agree that last two years with the masquarade the event was insanely killer sided with all the remote break, remote hook, remote expose etc. this year the killer gameplay is just lacking everything. I'm not even mad that survivors have so many stuff, but that killers playing event feels nothing like I go Clown to bring one of the most uninteractive and boring power to every killer, feeling meh for both sides while having nothing else.