For killers, how do you maintain good mindsets when under stress?
Hopefully this question makes sense, playing killer is a very stress and pressure heavy role for many including me.
While generally speaking i am not competitive and dont typically care if i win or lose in games, while this is also true when i play survivor, killer is just different.
It is incredibly stressful to me. I think a good reason is that I am by myself and the only support i have is myself and i have 4 people who all view me as the enemy and are working together to stop me and i have tools at my disposal and so do they.
I feel constant pressure on me and if i feel i am starting to fall behind in the game or just facing people better than me even though it is a game I as a person feel a sense of failure and that brings me stress. or insecurities about being insulted or people thinking i suck(even if randos online that ill never knows opinion shouldnt matter it FEELS like it should to me)
This causes alot of games to feel unfun. Not in the sense that i am genuinly having a bad time playing the game except for the matches i do get fully frustrated but that in the enjoyment i am having is coming from the satisfaction of overcoming a challenge and winning but not having a real sensation of "fun" when playing.
Im unsure if that makes sense so to clarify a bit, lets say i am in a match and im against a group of loop gods soim just not ending chases quick and when i do end them there is a flash save and im justy achieving nothing all game. then i get a down in end game and i manage to secure a 2 or 3k at the end.
I did not have FUN doing that but it was satisfying and it did feel nice because i overcame a difficult situation but its not the same as just having a fun time to me.
i decided to start trying huntress a couple days ago. i had used her a few times 5 plus years ago but only a few times and i was bad at hatchets. I wanted to practice with her and i also love love love the baba yaga skin so honestly thats really why i started using huntress now.
I decided that my only goal was to practice throwing hatchets. thats it. not to win the game or kill anyone and no using the m1 at all. just land hatchets. and of course all i did was whiff at first but because im potato handed but when the gens were popping and a chase went forever it was fine because idc if the gens get done, i just need to manage to hit a hatchet after missing the last 15.
Doing this and pulling back from the mindset of winning and focusing on a different aspect of the game led me personally to having genuine fun. an experience i dont really recall having for ages in dbd. I like playing dbd but these were games where i was laughing to myself and having fun experiences with the players especially when they realised i just wanted to practice a loop with them, or throwing and a bunch of survivors have played along and we all had a good time. Meanwhile i am getting better and better at throwing hatchets and if i keep doing this i think ill eventually start being pretty dangerous with her. currently im able to win my matches if i really want to (partly because i think ive tanked my mmr into a playerbase of…..well at least they could figure out how to boot the game) but converting that into actually winning currently isnt very important to me with huntress.
That being said, im unsure how to generally have that mindset with other killers, especially ones that i play alot of and am good with. Like Twins, i am good with twins but ive never been able to generate the same kind of mindset as i have with huntress as i went into huntress expecting to lose because i had no skill with her yet.
So I guess my question is, I want to capture the fun ive found with huntress and experience that with other killers and overall care less about winning.
If there is any advice, what advice would you have on how to foster a better mindset that doesnt get trapped in the competetive quagmire that many of us players are stuck in?
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I honestly don't know what I can say to help because I'm in this same mindset myself. I personally don't mind losing all that much when matches are close or things don't go my way. I'm a pretty competitive person and so when I lose from the other side doing good and being skillful I just accept the lose and go next.
I think the main issue for me is the BM and immense toxicity that this community has the capacity for. I really dislike the feeling of loading up Twins (My favorite killer btw) and getting t-bagged when I miss a Victor hit and then waved at. It feels extra bad when the reason I missed isn't due to a lack of skill on my part but from some buggy collision or other thing that happened that my skill can't account for.
The EGC is also my worst nightmare. I don't care about the salt or toxicity after I win a match. If someone wants to mald because they lost, let them. It's funny and I'll just laugh at them. No, the part that is awful is when you lose the match. Whenever you load into a match, try your absolute hardest just to be t-bagged, waved at, pointed at, body blocked, and just BM'd the whole match and then you get to the chat. People just being the worst that humans can conjure. Calling you slurs, telling you to self delete, etc. just all of the hyper horrible things these people can think of.
This anxiety is tripled or quadrupled when playing a killer I enjoy like Nurse or Kaneki (Tokyo Ghoul is my favorite anime of all time) that people just really dislike and then you do bad. Then people get really nasty in the EGC when you do bad on one of these killers.
I don't know how to overcome the anxiety and upsetness that comes with the BM and EGC nonsense completely. Most of the time I attempt to just ignore it and play the game the best I can. A lot of the time those people are just bad or will get very cocky and end up making a mistake that throws the game. I think it's just about trying to remove yourself from that mindset and focusing on doing the best you can and being content with that. If you lose, so be it. You did the best you possibly could that match and didn't go in your favor. Maybe you got a bad map or bad pallet spawns and you just couldn't control the way the match played out.
To deal with EGC nonsense I usually just leave as fast as possible. Play on Anon as well. It'll help you not get as many messages or steam comments. Consider making your profile on Steam private as well. I personally don't do this because I enjoy people being able to see my profile and if I get toxic comments, so be it.
I think going into each match with the mindset of you're probably gonna lose helps as well. I usually try to load in and not expect a win. If I expect to lose, then when I do lose, it doesn't hurt as bad. And when I win it feels that much better.
Bringing the fun into the game again is all subjective sadly. I personally have the most fun when I win. Some matches feel bad tho. Like those matches you hard lose up to exit gates being powered and you only win because the survivors are greedy for the 4 out. That feels bad because you didn't win because of your skill per say, you won because the other side made mistakes. You're just gonna have to find that fun for yourself. Maybe practice Victor snipes when playing Twins and seeing what places you can jump from and only go for that. If you play Nurse just focus on perfect blinks and nothing else. Try to find an aspect of the killer that you want to focus on and get better at and then do that with each killer. Fun is always subjective so I can't tell you what will bring back your fun into the game but hopefully this helps you figure out the proper path back to fun.
Its a hard mindset to get out of, I personally don't feel the need to win every one of my matches but it would be lying to claim a part of me isn't always thinking about and stressing over whether or not I am going to win or lose and what I could do to push the odds in my favor. We all want to win to some extent, its human nature.
Losses in this particular game are just frustrating and stressful. I mention this in many places but will here as well, the game just tends to snowball for one side or the other and when that snowball is going against you you feel hopeless. Its not a fun feeling on either side but that feeling gets compounded on the killer side because you are alone against four other players. I have pulled those matches back like you have but agree that they are often not fun matches even when you end up winning. The game would be funner and feel less frustrating if matches had a lot more back and forth and feel like anyone could come out on top at any moment.
The game just does a poor job of making fun the goal of the game. Now fun is different to different people and we have a mish mash of types playing this game. The real problem is that they all get thrown together and you feel forced to sweat regardless of if you think that is fun if you want to stand a chance of winning. If your opponent is sweating and you are not you will lose and it probably won't be a fun match for you. It particularly doesn't help that a loss will always feel dragged out, on the killer side because there might still be gens left you know you can't defend (plus exit gate stupidity) and on survivor you can just be waiting to die (you can sometimes still have a decent chase at least).
While some of it is changing your mindset and doing exactly what you did, going for cool shots, trying a totally new strategy, or finding something within a match you enjoy outside of just winning (jump scaring someone as a stealth killer will always be my favorite thing to do in the game), the game itself could do a better job of promoting fun. I think far more people would be in favor of "casualizing" the game than we think or a casual vs ranked split, so long as it gets done in a way that promotes fun for everyone and remains at least somewhat competitive. Another thing the game itself could do is shake up the meta more often than they do now so you feel like you have new toys to play with more often and not just new killers.
2v8 is far and away my favorite way to play the game. Getting two tapped isn't fun and the comeback mechanic has flaws but I still find it overall more fun on both sides because it is clearly intended to be a more casual mode and I care a lot less about winning when most things are insanely powerful (some killers could still use some more buffs). It can still snowball but its harder and I suspect those extremes will get smoothed out over time. I get that it harms killer queue times in 1v4 for those that don't enjoy the mode but having the more casual option gives players a place to go when they truly don't want to sweat. Its also a much better introduction to the game than 1v4 is, I wouldn't introduce someone new to the game in 1v4 but 2v8 is perfect for them. If 2v8 or some other casual mode was permanent we could funnel casual players over to it which would likely make solo queue a better time and more meta changes to 1v4 possibly become more viable than they currently are.
Sadly each person is different. Would say try to find another goal when playing making actually killing survivors secondary. Look at any and all positives. Like for an admittedly, poor example, in a kyf my goal was to just chuck spears at my friends as Jason. I get practice chucking spears (I'm on controller so necessary), they get some practice against Jason, and I impale friends on sharp sticks every now and then.
For what it's worth, for me and my siblings we generally are just apathetic and looking for a fun time. We don't care about the outcome as much as the journey. There's no real stakes, we know the limits on what we can do with most killers and the builds they run, and we don't really care what a random dip head that we'll end up forgetting the name of has to say in the end. It's just pure "I don't give a ****" energy.
Roleplay. You're an evil killer, a foot soldier of The Entity, an instrument of pain and suffering. The post-game salt I get in chat sustains me, as it sustains The Entity. I used to have killer anxiety until I changed my perspective on playing killer in this game. It's not a social experiment, it's not a popularity contest, and it sure as hell isn't an HR meeting. It's a game of Tag with extra steps, and you're IT.
Speaking of being IT, hey BHVR, could we get a game mode where you choose your Survivor + Survivor Loadout, and your Killer + Killer loadout, and then when the lobby launches, someone is chosen killer at random? Just a thought.
I never play dbd unless I'm half comatose and severely medicated so that helps. I also run builds that make it easy to pin the blame on.
For example, I love EndTrap so I can always blame lack of regression for my own failures. Instead, I make a goal I try to achieve on a match, such as getting a delicious Rancor play. Sure, I may go many matches without a Rancor kill but trying is part of the fun.
I only got 1 Rancor kill on the weekend, poor girl thought she was juicing me but I hid my aura. Last gen nearly popped, so I played dumb and let them do the gen since a Cheryl was fishing for a flashy save. Gen pops, I mori the Obsession and Cheryl clicks at Me and tbags my mori. I love that silliness in dbd! Little did she know I had Noed+ None Are Free so she was just a free kill in a situation where that was a free escape. Those moments are what keep me grinding to farm more of.
Killer can be uniquely stressful like that, it's mad performance anxiety. Personally I just try to remember how many games go badly for me as survivor. People deserve to get a 4 out every so often.
Plus when I'm playing a new killer or one I'm actively bad with I'm ususlly just doing challemges or learning to play them so that helps me keep the mental pressure off.
Are you sure you really don't care if you lose or win? Because I don't care I just play for fun and feel no pressure that I must get a result and feel no stress. If I would play to win then sound of a gen being finished or a chase taking time would be very frustrating I used to play like that before. I think it's about the mindset just take a step back and think about what is really making you feel stress. At any time you can put the controller down and take a sip of coffee or whatever and then continue to play. Relax! 🙂
Same at peope being toxic just learn to laugh at that, it can be done just think that they believe it affects you and do all that for no reason while you smile at their behavior. Again it's about mindset I really don't care this happens now. Before in 2019 I wrote down names of people being toxic so I could target them if I faced them again. So yes I have been there being stressed and having others affect my mood lol but not anymore 😎
I get really stressed by Killer these days. It's honestly not fun anymore. Either I play nice, get bodied and the Survivors teabgging in the Exit Gate send me a bunch of GGEZs, or I try to win, maybe achieve something by not having any fun in the slightest and then get called slurs for being a sweaty tryhard tunneller/camper/slugger/meta perk abuser/whatever perceived breach of the rulebook I committed. I don't really try and learn new Killers anymore because I know I'll never be able to compete with Survivors when I'm picking up a new skillset and I don't want to be stuck in an unwinnable match. It doesn't help that I consistently get matched against players with more than double my hours.
SpookyLoopz released a video about Killer Anxiety the other day and it really resonated with me. Especially with the event right now being so godawful for Killer, I'm seriously thinking about giving up DBD. I don't have any friends who I can consistently play Survivor with, and solo queue Survivor is terrible as we all know, so if Killer continues to be this unenjoyable I'm not sure what this game has left for me.
I had a similar experience as yours when Henry came out. I had no intention of buying him but I loved the red sky and audio cues, and the Henry Creel skin's voice lines, so I went for it. I'm on controller and so had never really tried a ranged killer and I knew I'd be bad, so maybe that helped, but for awhile I was sitting at a 55% KR yet still still having a blast. Every successful vine attack was a dopamine hit. Every World Breaker was an accomplishment. It was the first time in a long while that I was just having fun for fun's sake, even as my stats slightly dipped. It was probably the only time since the stat page came out and ruined my mindset that I didn't mind bad numbers.
Fast forward to now. The KR is higher; the fun is gone. The desire to not look like a crappy p100 is intense. I'm angrier than ever. Good survivors who prerun or are using more efficient hardware than me destroy me. I don't have killer anxiety, I don't care about tbagging, but I do have imposter syndrome. Playing both roles allows me to see that my opponenets on both sides are better than me. I'm in an MMR bracket I don't feel like I belong in for either role but my results are always above the goal (sowehow) and so it never goes down, and the stress never ends.
I dont know what the cure is. The solution is trying to do cool stuff without caring about winning, like you did, but it's easier said than done. The only time I really have fun in this game nowadays is in non-serious customs.
I'll play some practice games against bots, especially if its a killer im inexperienced with. After that... just kinda try your best. Some matches are gonna be significantly more chill than others while some are gonna be stressful. If it becomes too much and your carrying stress over to your next match, just play something else for awhile whether thats a different killer, survivor, or even a different game. Personally, ill unwind for abit by playing solo mode in warframe for abit.
I don't which is why I've pretty much stopped playing killer entirely. I want to like playing killer but it's not worth putting up with all the BS and BM just to occasionally get a satisfying game.
For me it's just the fact it's a game. There's just no point for me to be upset by the game. If I lose it's not like I lose any money or I get banned or my pet gets sacrificed. I lose, go "oh well", load up to another match and just how it plays out.
First off fellow Huntress enjoyer here and also lover of the baba yaga! When I first started and finally got proficient enough to compete I had that same mindset of draining fun no matter the win or loss. I eventually just stopped cRing to an extent because the more I played the more I realized DBD is a buggy mess that is more times than not rng based. I also got to the point that at the end of the day no one in real life cares whether you 4k every match or get tea bagged at the exit gates. Now I play far less but it's due to the game being stale for me, I did make into the top 100 huntresses at one point though. This game can be very stress inducing if you take it seriously and think of it as a super polished game with a working super strict mmr system that gave you consistent fair matches but we all know that's not true. The very fact that someone can have 1k plus win streak with any character let's know everything you need to. All I do now is try and perfect my skills no matter the win or loss, if there's I loop I constantly get cooked at I'm throwing the game to perfect it, if I want to play a new killer I'm solely focusing on the power, yeah I'll get tea bagged but who cares I don't know how they work lol. You gotta take the game for what it is and nothing more, find your fun zone and stay there if it's huntress then stay a hunty. I have 4k hours and about 2.8k are all on hunty even though I p100 my nurse first. Those hatchets are just too fun to let go of.
I don't stress at all (honestly, i wouldn't play if i did as I have GAD and panic disorder irl). I'm very switched on while playing killer, but never stressed.
Best advice i can give is to learn coping mechanisms (eg deep slow breathing (plenty of guided meditations you can find online to help learn this), an elastic band around your wrist to snap on occasion while playing (distracts your brain)), but ultimately i think actually understanding that the match and outcome have zero impact on your life, and these people you're playing with don't know you from a bar of soap and will forget about you by the time their next match loads up. It really is insignificant, not worth the physical stress you are feeling. It's easy to say that but actually understanding it can take time. I'd start by changing your mindset regarding how your opponents view you (ie their "enemy") because chances are they're not thinking that hard about you at all. You're just a faceless person they're in a match with, it's not any deeper than that.
I am in the pit of bad mindset for killer right now. I seem to have gotten it into my head that it's not something I can play to unwind, and with work killing me lately, the heatwave keeping me from any kind of consistent sleep and the attitudes of people in the game being worse than usual, that's kind of nailed on.
My killer gameplay lately has been loading up my killers, getting some cakes onto a couple that I played regularly, staring at my loadout for a few minutes, then deciding to go play survivor. I've been on a massive losing streak on survivor too, but at least I don't get stressed out there.
Every logical part of me knows this is a dumb ritual. It's just a game. It doesn't impact my life. I play anon mode anyway, so if I embarrass myself it's not like the survivor players are going to show up to my place of work and bag me from the car park IRL. None of it leaves the confines of the single match, but I still stunlock trying to play killer. What's worse is I know I generally enjoy killer more when I play it, but somehow that knowledge does nothing in the face of queuing into a game.
I know this comment isn't really providing advice or helping OP. Just venting that I feel the same way at the moment.
The obvious answers are:
find your niche, enjoy said niche, and don't let anyone tell you how to have fun.
If you enjoy trickster, but it requires you to sweat/bring a sweaty build do it.
If you enjoy basement trapper do it.
If you enjoy ghost face but need 4 slowdowns to make him viable do it.
Do whatever it takes to have your fun, find your killer/build you like and run with it, Put on music and blast through having a blast, ignore end game chat and go next. This is how I have fun, its how I always have had fun (I've played since 2018). Huntress and deathslinger with doom music in the background just loud enough i can hear it but not loud enough I can't hear audio queues. I run whatever build i feel (usually 2 slowdown perks, 1 info perk and 1 killer dependant perk, e.g deathslinger: Corrupt, Pgtw, spies and either forced penance or bamboozle depending on how im feeling).
Don't focus on your kill metrics, focus on how much fun your having. If your fun is based around winning however, remember the better you are the better the survivors you face, and its a downwards spiral to only playing A+ killers to keep up.
Outside of that, happy hunting.
I don't sister 💀
I only get tilted when I lose to perks and not skill like if a survivot can loop me well and I lose because they are just a better player i dont feel bad but when the game itself says you lose because of strong perks or perk combos I tilt hard because Im losing to bs and not skill. Like ds plottwist is so frustrating I have had it happen so many time and I dont even tunnel ds is just way to strong and plot twistmakes it so I have to pick up for them to stay injured because the pallet they dropped under will let them not get hit. Also survivot rubbing in they won by bming at gate or just hiding to waste my time sorry I only have an hour to play game a day if that and the extra 2 hits stacks up making me play less games sense I have to get off for classes and taking care of my mom dogs and cat.
There is a lot of hesitation when it comes to me choosing to play killer over survivor. I do play both sides a lot and have big mains and i'm confident enough with every killer on the roster as i've gotten all the challenges and achievements and basicly have nothing left to do except prestige more 100s. But yea i more often feel like just loading in as survivor despite how miserable it very often gets.
But when i do play killer (especially on my mains like xeno or dracula) i decide to take playing killer - with a survivor mindset. What i mean by that is when you play survivor, you kind of expect to lose alredy and you are really not that worried about winning. All it takes is stepping in the wrong spot or a random team mate throwing or tons of other things, and you will simply lose. But if you go to play killer with the mindset of survivor where you expect to lose, hope to win, it seems to feel less stressfull when the game starts to go south and you feel hopeless because there isnt much you can do and remember survivor often feels the same way. Because no matter what side you are on, you are not supposed to win every time. You 'Can' win everytime but it requires throwing sentiment and morality out the window, along with going with the same boring tactic and meta build (like those horrible winstreaks).
I do tend to hesitate even further when it comes to playing xeno, because he has a unique counter that swf teams love to maximise the use out of, even creating "safe zones" with turrets all over an area that they all run to the second they hear your terror radius. But when i push through and decide to play them anyway, 50% of the time i don't get the elite swfs and end up against people that don't know what to do with the turrets since xeno is rare to see.
Another thing i do, is i go into some rounds using the killer i find most comfortable to play, in this case The first. And after a couple rounds in that comfort zone i will ease into playing my mains.
Lastly, another stress free way to play killer, is to choose any Trapper movement speed killer, and play the entire round with no perks, no power, no addons. Just raw m1 chase and mindgames. Suprisingly you can still win even without tunneling / team slugging / camping. (Doesnt have to be a trapper speed killer if you really want to play someone slower, it just helps being faster as the slower ones will really feel the speed difference since they mostly rely on m2s.) This may sound MORE stressfull, but its quite the opposite. As you are doing the same thing as you do with the huntress hatchets, this time just playing the whole game with an arm tied behind your back so you have absolutely no worries about winning or being outplayed, but it is very satisfying when you do win that way.
yeah its funny coz in event queue where there is no MMR I feel like I have much funner matches, the current mmr model is deffo the issue here.