Ok. This is unacceptable and just selfish now.
So I've been observing how the games being going with each update from an unbiased standpoint and I'm disgusted by the results so far.
The newer player experience is absolutely terrible.
It's disgusting. When I was new (I joined around July 2017), I had a lot of fun with the game and enjoyed it a lot. But now, I still love it. However, new players are not having any fun.
Please allow me to explain why.
Everyone in this community including me, want the best for their sides. These people also happen to be HIGH RANK and they are getting what they want. They're getting satisfied. But for the new players, it's becoming hell to play and have fun.
The key issue is Deranking. With everyone dropping down to low ranks, all they're doing is bullying the fresh meat. The killers absolutely ruin the survivors and the survivors bully the killers for 5 gens. It needs to stop. New players WILL quit and leave the game. Experienced players will eventually leave and this game will DIE.
But that's not even the only issue, the nerfs to survivors is RUINING the new survivor experience. All that they're getting is killers who have some obvious advantages. While these nerfs are justified, there needs to be some kind of help for the newer players.
I don't want them being buffed because it'll just send us back to step 1, I believe we need a secondary objective to make it more fun. I'm not very creative. But can you guys help me think of some ideas?
Also devs, please fix deranking this is not a joke anymore. New players are just getting bullied all day it's not funny. It's unacceptable.
Comments
Same as any online game that’s been around for a while - new players have to learn at the school of hard knocks.
You can’t de-rank below rank 15 anyhow so rank 20-16 should be a safe zone for new players?
If you don't play for a few months you can drop into the ranks below 15 via the rank reset. So its entirely possible to see really good players at those ranks.
I've been there myself. I don't recognise the experience you describe though - most of the player are potatoes.
I admit I do it, though it's only to try out new Killers, so it kind of makes things an even playing field. But there are plenty of Killers AND Survivors who do it purely for an "ez win" and to bully the yungins. Totally not cool.
The last two events seem to be test runs for a secondary objective. I think the devs are going to keep doing test runs like those until the community thinks that they're balanced.
Yea, the deranking is a serious issue but the fact that even those promoted "Fog Whisperer" can do it happily in front of their crowd kinda proves that it's not a big deal for the devs, at least to me.
It's difficult to balance the game around high skill and low skill at the same time. We all wish for a balanced playground in all skill brackets but to achieve this, they'd have to finally create a meaningful ranking system and matchmaking. As long as people with 1000+ hours can safely and more or less effortless play in low rank, no matter how much they balance the game it will always stay unbalanced when high rank players meet low rank players.
So, first steps:
Then try to balance the game for all skill brackets. Give low rank players more training wheels if that helps. Nothing gamebreaking, just to help them get used to the mechanics and stuff. Point out what they should do, for example if NOED activates, to prevent the same thing from happening again.
Then balance the game around high skill players. That's just my opinon but I believe that's the only way to truly balance the game so that skill becomes the deciding factor when it comes to winning matches.
As long as they didn't take care of those first steps, it seems pointless to try and balance the game. In most cases, the skill differences in each match are way too massive to provide an even playground and balance won't fix that, it will just screw it even more.
You might be right.
I would say Cankers was a failure and the lantern one was good for survivors but not killer (except when you could see them carrying the lantern!)
For new players killers are OP and over time that reverses, its a sad state of affairs.
The way forward I thought of is to make it so its a lot simpler at the new ranks and it gets harder with more objectives as you rank up in brackets of 3, 4 or 5 excluding the 20-16, the only issues is the current ranking system and the ease of deranking which means its very hard to implement, the whole system needs overhauled to accomodate such a thing.
They could give a lot more rewards for ranking up making it highly viable and something players actively want to do, maybe something like 4500 shards but you get them at reset, you can then chose a cosmetic piece or a new char every two months.
Give more bloodpoints for your rank 20-16 games so you get a start up bonus in essense.
Make it so you can never derank into the 16-20 bracket again no matter how long you dont play and make it so new players search widens down to rank 13 max if no one is there to get a game with.
Just a couple of ideas which may or may not work of course 8-)
You cannot de-pip to it, but rank reset can send you there
Also the amount of groups I'm seeing with a red rank and a rank 19 is astounding. Sure one could be the newbie in the group but with how common it is I'm convinced it's smurfing
The deranking issue affecting lower ranks is definitely a huge issue I agree. That said, other than that issue this game is balanced in a way to be extremely new player friendly. Which is what's causing a lot of the balance issues we have in the first place.
We need the deranking problem fixed, but we also need to stop balancing the game around rank 15-20 new players.
See it's weird. But I'm genuinely concerned for the newer players. It's going to suck for them. Finding parts might fix the issue.
At the moment, inexperienced players are getting matched with experienced ones. One reason is the rank reset, another the pipping system. (Pipping is way too easy. Survivors can play bad and still pip and therefore they climb to ranks they don't belong on yet.)
With every game, sport etc., beginners have to practice to get better. If people think practicing is too much effort and they leave DbD, then that's how it is.
It sucks that people who hold that title can't even make themselves a proper role model for the game.
I play both killer and survivor between ranks 12 and 9 and as soon I reach rank 13 as killer I face survivors that are way better than me when I play survivor (same ranks), the intentional derank is pretty obvious at times. and no, there are no high ranks players with low ranks friends most of the times, I usually chek the player ranks when a trial finish.
For me deranking as killer is way more legit than deranking as survivor.
As killer people do it to avoid survivor toxic and meta perk squads and as survivor the people do it for bulling low rank killers (generally).
You can also get below Rank 15 by DCing.
Well yeah.
BUT we will need the following:
High level gameplay needs to be balanced and fun (i.e. variety of killers, not only nurse+billy), there must be a proper ranking system that doesnt let everyone rank up AND rewards you for ranking up.
But lets face it, this will never happen I guess
You can't. I tried that back in 2.1.0 when the rank reset changes were introduced and I did not go past rank 15, 0 pips. My rank just stayed there when I disconnected.
I was under Rank 15 already when I had some DCs because my Internet Connection kept crashing.
But I am not sure when exactly this happened. So it might be possible that Rank 15 was not the lowest possible Rank for me and I am messing things up.
The sub-15 ranks only punish newer players with LONG queues. It needs to be outright removed at this point.
Rank resets need to stop happening so frequently as it is because it, again, only punishes newer players. That's all the ranking system does right now: artificially inflates queue times and gets newbies crushed.
The issue here is the game is a simple one dimensional kinda thing game play wise with a number of variables that effect the single mode of play. New player vs old player, solo vs SWF, Perk Grind, ect. There are so many facilitates you can't balance for one with out disrupting the other. Balance for SWF and solo pays the price. Balance for new players vets exploit the system. Though they really could do something about this de-ranking nonsense and tried to a degree (20-16 newbie lands) but dosn't help if there isn't enough newbie's to populate the rank consistently and end up with a lot of rank 15-10.
When I started it was the time when Trapper was the most common killer because traps under hooked survivors made saves almost impossible, the machine gun was a thing, the Hag got released and they trapped/camped everything and there was no way to not trigger a trap. As a new player it was hell and I died most of the times.
Newbies these days have it easy compared to then.
I agree that deranking is a problem though since it messes things up too much.
So when I play killer a week later, I should be getting easy games right? As all the good people have zoomed up the ranks away from me.
That's not the case though. In fact I'm getting hardee games now than I did in red ranks before reset. How is that?
The only thing I notice is that there are a hell of a lot of red rank players who have friends from level 15-18. A hell of a lot. Seems suspicious. These people hit red ranks in like 5 days too. I've never seen the gens go so fast.
Its obvious many derank too. You can tell from the way they play and the perks they use that they've consistently been rank 1. I.e. Iron will and genrushing while injured, that's a strategy less experienced players dont tend to use. Fact they always bring flashlights is what makes me think they're doing it on purpose. They always have noob3 inspired names too.
When I started it was really different, pallets were everywhere and I just wasted them and ran on. I used to face Billy/Wraith a lot and I was terrified of Wraith. I used to hide behind trees to avoid killers. One time a Wraith jumpscared me from there I shat bricks. But it was more fun. I was able to feel an immersion that new players nowadays don't feel. I eventually became very skilled and pushed to rank 1.
Compared to when I was new, they have it way harder and it's not even fun for them when they face killers who end games in 3 minutes because they're good.