FORUM KILLER POLL RESULTS (Finally)
Sorry this took so long folks! I wanted to do slides for every killer to make sure all your comments went to use and had a purpose, but it ended up being a much bigger undertaking than I thought and it was difficult to motivate myself to get it done. But I've finished the last of the work the last couple of days, just as BHVR announced the end of the forums LOL.
For those of you who simply want the rankings, here's a screenshot of the spreadsheet with those placements. SD stands for Standard Deviation, which I used to calculate (generally) how conclusive or divisive a ranking was. A lower SD score is more conclusive, higher is more divisive.
I've also included screenshots of the first couple slides, which cover the statistics of who actually contributed to the poll, including how many hours they have and how much time they spend on each role. I've also taken the liberty to do my best and average those statistics out!
For those of you who want a more in-depth view into each killer, or simply want to take a peak at your favorite killers, I've linked a Google Slideshow with slides for each killer. Each slide has attached the poll charts (as and against), along with all of their scores in one place, and a bullet point summary of common sentiments:
Enjoy!
Comments
Really love this, and looking forward to giving it a bit of a deep dive!
Looks like Ghoul, Twins, and Knight were all really close together on the bottom end of playing against.
Some interesting results here, thanks for putting this together!
Woo! I feel like my opinions are sometimes not consensus, so it's interesting to see a few bullet points match up. I'm honestly shocked at how low Jason was to go against though. I get that he was a menace early on but I actually enjoy a good Jason chase and I like his constant uptime.
Then again I also like facing Judgement, which I feel is borderline dangerous to admit sometimes.
I think it's interesting that the average enjoyment when playing as or against the various killers is sitting at about a 5.2/10.
18/43 killers in this poll were a "below average" experience for survivors, and 16/43 killers in this poll were a "below average" experience for the people playing as them.
You may also note that only about 1/4 of the killers (a little less than that) are considered an above average (slightly enjoyable) experience for survivors to play against (6/10+) and NONE of them are a very enjoyable experience (8/10+).
On the flipside a little less than 1/4 of the killers are considered an above average experience for the killers to play as (again, 6/10+)
and the very highest ranked killer for enjoyment is Jason who is at 6.52/10 (Very close to the Dark Lord who is 6.5)
Neither playing as or against any specific killer reached a "Very Fun" status. to me, this says maybe BHVR should focus on that aspect of the game, general enjoyment instead of perk balance. no matter how perks change if a killers design isn't drawing players who like to play as or even against them, maybe some work should be done to improve those experiences across the board.
I'd like to see this same poll extended to everyone in the DBD community in the form of a title screen poll and for BHVR to publicly release the results.
EXECUTIONER MENTIONED
I mean to be fair, I think a lot of that simply has to do with different people finding different things fun. I found opinions even more divided with killers to play as, as everyone has different preferences with their mains. Everybody enjoys different things and dislikes different things, so when you get a mush of all that in one place it kind of all gets squeezed to the middle.
I will say I would love to see the results of that poll from the anniversary that included questions about every killer's enjoyability.
I think it still points to a problem though, I get what you're saying, but half of the votes being a 1 and half of the votes being a 10 is still a problem isn't it because half of the votes hate a design and it's important to understand why. for a design to be healthy for a game a majority of people should like it, but it's also entirely unreasonable to assume BHVR could just magically make every killer likeable… some things are going to be liked more than others of course. it's the fact that so few of them are rated "enjoyable" on either side that points to a problem. many of them have shared survivor and killer opinions too.
Ghoul is below average on both sides, Clown is below average on both sides, twins are below average on both sides, skull merchant, Plague, Myers, Nurse, ETC… if so many of these killers are in such bad enjoyment state then don't players deserve better? I have no problem monetarily supporting a game that shows a real concern for player enjoyment regarding core gameplay…
I also understand that this specific poll was a very small sample size though, when you consider how many people really play DBD, that's why it's very frustrating that BHVR doesn't make their polls public, or really any other meaningful stats.
It's also affecting game balance, a large reason Vigil was just gutted was "because it has an effect on too many things" especially The Clown, and Freddy's killer powers, but neither the clown nor freddy are a compelling experience for people playing as or against them, and the Clown is just pretty much hated by everyone on both sides. if nobody likes them, change them.. I think these polls being public would help push BHVR in a more accurate discussion anyway, if everyone got one vote then the "loudest voices" wouldn't be able to win, it's genuinely a matter of these things are liked or disliked, and that should be public knowledge for a game like this.
I get what you mean, although I will say that especially for playing as a killer, every killer has some players that absolutely love them. There are definitely some that need to change, like Ghoul being so abysmally low is something to look into and look at the reasons why, and hopefully amend some of the most frustrating aspects of Ghoul while trying to keep his identity in tact for his players. I definitely don't expect BHVR to rework like every killer that isn't super popular, that isn't realistic and it also isn't realistic to expect that every killer will be liked, but I agree that the bottom outliers should be looked at.
Vigil definitely did need to go though, even if you dislike Clown or Freddy, having your entire power's level of functionality be cut down by a perk is also not fun, and the perk created a balancing nightmare. I do think it got nerfed too hard though.
I also wish we could see the results of these polls we take and stats that BHVR has and barely ever shares (and if they do, it's so little). I wish we could directly vote on things as a community more so the loudest voices (usually content creators) aren't the only ones being heard.
thanks for the hard work I've been curious what the results would be!
Atleast the first seems to be in a decent spot
Honestly not surprised seeing Ghoul being ranked the worst to face against.