What is your timeline on fixing this game's core mechanics?
Generator rushing, overpowered premades, map imbalance, tunnelling and camping. These are the core problems that make it so games turn unfun and are not won by skill but exploit. It should be your priority to fix these over anything else so this game finally becomes balanced and fair. Surely, after 7 years you must have a timeline?
Comments
My solution would be:
Not a single one of these ideas STOPS a bubba from standing in front of a hook and downing 2 survivors. None of them stops a Wesker from tunneling off the hook either.
Just like you add a secondary objective that survivors HAVE to do to escape, you have to give Killers a secondary objective that HAS to be done before they can hook and and re-hook someone. Maybe make some kind of hook preparation that needs to be done between hooks of the same survivor.
Camping is easy to solve....*Killer within 15m of hook+no survivor within 5m of hook=no hook progress* (disabled during EGC of course). Move away to start hook progress.
Devs just doesn't want to commit to a "no camping as part of normal play" policy though. Even though, someone progressing the game by NOT actively playing the game should not be possible. Imagine a survivor perk that lets gens keep progressing, just because a survivor is hanging out near it. Survivor does a nearby totem (gen progresses); healing near the gen while it progresses.
And it's not even a perk for killers to do this. It's built in gameplay that has existed (and been abused) since the games creation.
None? Double hook time? Thats 4 minutes till death. More than enough for 3 survivors to finish all gens. Also, I mentioned another health state off the hook. Combine that with OtR or any other Endurance perk and you get 3 health states off the hook. Solving effectively camping and tunneling.
I think Otz proposed change is the best solution for camping. If a killer is within 24 meters of a hooked survivor his power is disabled over 10 seconds and replenishes over 10 seconds of being outside the 24 meters.
Core issues are too deep in spaghetti to be changed.
Wait a few more years for Dead by Daylight 2...
I hope this is only if no other survivor is near. I see so many survivors that are in chase and run straight to the hook, or just run around the fresh hook. They shoulndt be rewarded for that.
That's the point of it taking awhile to lose your power, it only affects you if you have been camping for awhile.
Three of the things listed in the initial post are either completely make believe issues or things that are unsolvable by the very nature of PVP gaming.
"Built-in limitations for queuing as a group" sounds an awful lot like "Punish people for playing with their friends."
"All Endurance effects disabled in endgame to give the killer a chance" Sounds an awful lot like "Killers deserve free kills in endgame"
"Downed survivors are taken by the Entity and placed on a random hook unknown to the killer, while the killer immediately gets back to patrolling and chasing (no slugging, no camping, but also no flashlight saves, no sabotage)" Have we really reached the point that hooking is a core issue?
"Hooking different survivors reduces repair speeds" Oh goodie, built-in repair speed reduction stacked with plaything+pentimento. That'll be so fun.
Game need a real meta shake up 6.1 was not it, not just breaking perks until nobody use them but making more playstyle viable. Tunneling/gen rush meta is getting stale it leads to stomps on both side
They can sell DLC chapters forever and do nothing gameplay wise if they want to but it's lame, hope they take some risks
They are never going to make the game less stale than it is. Sorry.
Surely, after 7 years you must have a timeline?If I'm the devs, this line always creates a problem. Many people say they need to radically change their game. However, they've had an extremely successful 7 years which is rare in the video game industry. If I was in their shoes, I'd be very hesitant to enact any type of substantial change, even if I as a player have a few I'd want.
Gen rushAs long as the game is survivor escape, the goal of survivors will be to do it as quickly as possible.
Map imbalanceVery different killers and a desire for variability make map imbalance an inevitability. Everyone agrees about map imbalance, but people disagree about how. This is something they address, but its not going to ever have a perfect solution.
TunnelingAs long as it is an elimination game, tunneling will be the strongest tactic. I think they could make the off the hook speed boost longer, especially for early hooked survivors, but its always going to be part of the game.
CampingI believe the roadmap for this is fall.
Thing is, if we're talking DbD 2, we need to throw out all our presumptions about what that game would be. Who knows if they'd even keep the hook/generator mechanic or go for a different idea.
TournamentsGiven the variability in region and playstyles (SWF vs soloq), this would be a really hard thing to give preference to.
Gen slowdownI didn't think the total nerf of the perks was really needed, but with the existence of SM and Knight these have to be out of the game. Also, never really prevented the other game problems.
Hook timerI'd take it, but would worry it wouldn't put enough pressure on survivors to actually get an unhook.
Different health stateProbably too complicated a mechanic to address tunneling.
Secondary objectiveIt might be more interesting, but you're also adding more randomness/map knowledge into the game. Finding generators can already be annoying on certain maps, add in the prospect of having to search for a gas can and the game very well might come down to whether the survivors guessed right or not on where to look first.
I'd try it, I think this could work, but I also think it creates a lot more problems than most people anticipate.
Instant DeathKeeping people in the game longer than they want to be is unlikely to be a workable solution. I think they should just make it easier for people who are on a hook to leave, but be replaced with a bot instead of dead.
Last second switchingAgreed on this, silly that its in the game.
Even with its errors - the games core mechanics is one of the best around at the moment.
Otherwise the game would not have been lasted for 7 years...
Some things just cannot be balanced for all player skill levels which they try to do.
And that it isn´t an easy thing at all you can clearly see with all the not very long lasting competitors.
Only One Solution : Stop Pushing This Game Into Tournament-Like Games... This is Not A Competitive Game.
Balanced Balanced, talking about balanced in a 1 vs 4 asymmetrical horror game, what a funny mindset
This wouldn't stop exchanges unless the whole team is there to block, which is worse because that's no gen progress anywhere.
The game is already competitive. The game should be “fair” by default for those that play the game semi-competitive (which is the majority). Hence the change to core mechanics so everyone gets enough playing time per match with still a decent outcome for both sides depending on how well you’ve played.
People that want to goof around still can. Making the game fairer doesn’t hinder that.
Making a game fairer will only incentivize more people to play it. The game puts off a lot of new players due to camping and tunneling. Changing this will make the fame more balanced, nothing more or less. FOS shooters also don’t allow spawn camping for exactly the same reason. A lot of killers drop out currently because of the speed at which generators fly. People are forced to run only 1 type of builds. Finding a way to slow down the match will lead to people having a better experience and adding variety in their loadouts. Not changing your game is a standstill which ultimately leads to decay. The game has already been balanced from its inception. I am asking for a fairer game, which is not that weird of a request. Nobody enjoys unfair plays. It is weird that people have design flaws such as camping to fall back on if things don’t go their way
It's more fair than "punish killers because people want to play with their friends"
majority not always right.
Take an example: when they "balance" a map, what is the next problem that pops out? Generator spawn too close. Remember, we need 7-gen spawn location. If we follow the majority opinion that "a balance map is a smaller map size," then this will be a circle of problems.
Since when we keep talking about balancing? since dev going crazy about how dbd can become e-sport game. what they do? introduced SBMM for matchmaking, do you having fun after being matched with "balance teammate or killer"?
Overpowered premades - devs can't stop good players with good co-ordination from playing together. If they removed SWF I imagine half of the survivor player base would stop playing, which would be a disaster for the devs.
Generator rushing - they just nerfed Brand New Part and Prove Thyself to slow down generator work. And as above, devs can't stop good co-ordination, multiple survivors with perks and toolboxes and add-ons might still work together to get a gen done quickly, devs can't stop this, and they can't slow it down to a point where it takes a solo survivor with none of the above 3 minutes to do a gen, otherwise nobody would ever do them, bceause solo gen work is very boring.
Map imbalance - is pretty vague, they have just made changes to some maps to improve them.
Camping - they are doing something about aren't they with the anti-face-camping feature.
Tunnelling - possibly some kind of survivor bloodlust, where the game can recognise that the other three survivors have not been chased during a certain timeframe or something, and it gives the tunnelled survivor a bit of extra speed.
The game isnt competitive at all. all torunaments are based on several made up rules to have a competitive feeling, which isnt even fair in itself too. this game will never be competitive, and it cant ever be balanced around competitive.
Killers aren't being punished though. There are no limitations placed on killers. Placing limitations on all SWFs is punishing people for playing with their friends, which most certainly isn't fair.
Dead by Daylight, and by extension Texas Chain Saw, are party games. They're meant to be played casually. Yes, anything that's PvP is technically competitive but it's not competitive in the same way Overwatch is. It's more akin to how Mario Party is competitive.
In your original post, you specifically mentioned "Overpowered Premades", how would you go about making them fairer in a way that doesn't punish people for playing with their friends? Think carefully about your answer, because not all SWFs are 4-man bully squads. The majority of SWFs are duos.
Oh, but it is competitive. Not tournament style but most people play to win and thus play efficiently as possible.
I said it before somewhere else. I believe the team should detect premades and they should not be able to share perks. It would not hurt premades just goofing around because they could care less about having 3 adrenalines. It would nerf the amount of meta perks premades have to play with.
Fixing of core mechanics can only begin after the devs decide if they want to make DBD competitive with straightforward win conditions or casual party game with more emphasis on fun and commit to that vision.
It's actually hard to fix some of them. Not as easy as it seems.
Camping or tunneling for example can't be "fixed" without making the killer a bit. If the player wants for focus one survivor you would have to give them literal god-mode for the killer to not down them again. Not possible. You are playing against a human.
The only thing that can be done is to make other playstyles more effective and appealing and then punish tunneling and camping accordingly. This however would have to be a huge appeal for the killer because it would have to be a stronger effect than the slowdown from removing a player.
A very hard problem to solve.
Also... Bhvr is trying to tackle this problem for almost 7 years now.... Ds, bt, deliverance, reassurance, basekit bt and now the upcoming anti-facecamp.
Only problem I see is that they only punish the playstyles without giving an incentive to play differently, which encourages these playstyles even more.
You really have no idea how bad that idea is. You're painting all swfs as these evil meta-slave 4-man bully squads whose sole purpose is to make the killer miserable.
The reality is most swfs are just people enjoying a game with their friend/s. Even amongst casual players, there'll be a degree of overlap in perks. Not all perks are equal.
Why not "simply":
IF:
AND:
THEN:
[hook progress / second] = 0
Tournaments: regional tournaments shouldn´t be a problem at all. Some streamers have been holding them on a regular base for quite some time. Usually heavily restricted. I´d say make official ones without restrictions. See what both sides actually are capable off. Playstyles might vary depending on the region, but this shouldn´t be a problem as perks usually also get buffed/nerfed based on global stats. Otherwith SC wouldn´t be still in the top 10 most used perks.
Gen slowdown: apples and oranges. You can´t base such a decision only because we have 1 problematic killer. SM needs a rework. But that isn´t a problem of the slowdown perks. Since she is just as annoying without slowdown.
Hook Timer: everything proposed is meant to be used in combination. Fine tuning can happen afterwards. But the pressure is meant to come from the slowdown perks and the secondary objective.
Different health state: people understood quite quickly the 1 second immunity after unhook. Just turn the basekit BT timer into a different health state. Maybe something without collision. So people stop abusing the mechanic to body block like they do now.
Secondary Objective: this opens up a whole new meta of items and perks. They could introduce gas cans as items you bring from the lobby. You could find the parts or gas cans easier with the map (which currently has little usage). Devs could test this on grand scale during a prolonged event.
Instant Death: thats what the dc button is for. You´re not having fun? No problem! Just leave, the rest can continue to play normally. The dc penalty keeps getting larger and larger? Maybe its time for a break. Everyone who isn´t enjoying the game should take a break from dbd from time to time. After a couple of months the game might be enjoyable again. Better than ruining the games for everyone else.
I am not painting them as all being evil or bully squads. But most premades I meet play hyperefficient. If premades play “casually” they should not mind using off meta perks. The only people who are “hurt” by not being able to perk share are people who use meta perks.
Your suggestion is based off your own subjective experience then, rather than concrete evidence. When you are at high MMR, survivors play hyper efficient. The only way to win at that point is to also play hyper efficient.
Premades do play casually, but you aren't going to find them at high mmr. Your suggestion does nothing to reduce the hyper efficiency of the premades you play against, and only harms premades at low to mid mmr. A duo, for instance, would be limited to only one instance of Off The Record, or Botany Knowledge, or Self Care.
I would have no issues were toolboxes and flashlights limited to one instance per lobby. This wouldn't really bother survivors below high mmr, but would make it that much harder for high mmr premades to genrush.
Okay, but that also applies to Mario Party, or Jackbox, and I don't think those are considered competitive.
Most players are in “high MMR” with a low soft cap
Only those games draw a completely different crowd. And in Mario Party you do not have tunneling/camping or an equivalent. Comparing apples and oranges
I've seen a lot of people very confidently state this, is there anything that it's actually based on?
If there's some proof that most players are at the soft cap, I'd love to see it. Otherwise it sounds kinda like people hear the cap seems low and assume that most players must have reached it.
I agree with the generator part. We need a survivor objective rework! Minke powering the games more exiting. Pls BHVR I’ve gotten carpal tunnel for holding M1 for so long
What about our poor Booba mains
Google it. It has been datamined. From what I remember you start out at 1100. The soft cap is at 1600. You go up 10 per win.
The cap itself was datamined, yes, but is there any hard proof that most players are at that cap?
I know we got confirmation from the devs that the first soft cap had very few players at it, comparatively, so if it didn't lower that much presumably not that many more players would be there now.
Either way, if all we know is what the cap is... that means people are looking at it, thinking "that seems low", and then deciding it's an objective fact that a majority of players must be at that cap because of it.
I would argue that the game is still won by skill in almost all of the playstyles that you mentioned.
Genrushers only win by default if the killer doesn't have enough situational awareness to harass survivors off of gens. Even running quad slowdown will only get you so far with some groups of survivors, but those survivors have a much harder time if you harass them off of gens, hit and run, and then catch them when they're off guard. They can't do gens if they're healing, on the hook, running to unhook someone, or desperately trying not to be hooked themselves. (I don't think "hit and run" is a good playstyle in general at all, for the record, but it works on genrushes because you always know exactly where to find them, and they're unlikely to waste time healing.)
The real sweats that you almost just can't do anything about (the real "overpowered premades") are few and far between. The ones who are highly coordinated with a full set of meta perks and BNPs. But those survivors really are highly skilled and had to do a lot of practicing to get to a level where they can pull off some of their more complex plays, and you can still secure at least a 2K against them if you're running a broken enough build yourself.
As far as "skill" goes when it comes to tunneling and camping, just doing those things mindlessly without any game awareness or skill in chase will mostly just lose you games. Knowing when to do those things and how to apply them is important.
I mostly play Myers and, as of the recent update, Sadako, and just try going on "skill" and attempting to win games by 12-hooking everyone with those killers and see where it gets you. It can take both skill and a little bit of ruthlessness to win the majority of your matches on certain killers. So I tunnel, camp, spam teleport until someone dies early, run DR+M&A, hit that T-bagging survivor with the Tombstone Piece. I still have to have some amount of skill in chase to get away with that ######### at all.
Where exactly did you get that from? Last time BHVR gave us statistics on that, there was barely anyone in high MMR.
Great proposals. You’re not an individual working for the game and you can “fix” these problems in one evening. My point proven.
Well, if you need 50 escapes as a survivor to get there…you need to play max. a couple of hundred hours and you’re set. That also explains why in my games I see anything from people with a couple of hundred hours to 10K under their belt.
It's not quite that straightforward. Were it truly the case that the majority of players are at high mmr, the escape rate would be much higher.
You're trying to argue that DBD is a competitive game because people try to win, I'm just pointing out that that is not a valid argument because it also applies to tons of non-competitive games.