Antiloop or Slowdown?
For killers to do be effective, they basically need to either be good in chase, which usually means having some form of antiloop, or they need to have some kind of built-in slowdown, usually in the form of a secondary objective.
With all the complaints about 'unfun killers', I'm curious what survivors like in their killers. Do you prefer going against killers who can end chases faster, or killers that can slow the game down basekit?
Or can you think of other kinds of kits that wouldn't require one or the other?
Comments
I would argue some of both is ideal. That's why Wesker is generally a very liked killer by survivors, except for his overpopularity.
Singularity is probably another good example, who has good chase potential, but also a good amount of counterplay. But he also has a bit of slowdown with EMP's, even though you could make the argument it's not enough.
I would also argue that instead of slowdown, giving killers a good balance of chase potential and map pressure is also good. I very much believe Blight would be a much liked killer by survivors if he didn't have all his oppressive addons for example.
Long chase is fun for survivor, long match is fun for killer. So Im always think Pig, Pinhead are good design. Alien to an extend.
You forgot mobility, stealth and area denial. I don't view area denial quite the same as slow down because it is a bit more than that, although it can have a similar effect.
From what I've seen people actually seem to enjoy the more chase oriented killers over the ones with side objectives, which is kind of ironic when you consider that before Sadako's release we had a time when people prayed it would not be another "boring anti loop killer". I guess the difference is that the anti loop power can't be too straight forward but must have some extra steps. Some mechanical skill you could say. Just look at Blight, Oni and Billy for reference.
In my opinion a good killer shouldn't be too focused on only one thing. Otherwise they need to be so strong in that field, that it's not really fun to play against them. Skull Merchant is pretty much the ultimate area denial killer and has little counterplay in that regard, which is why she isn't fun to go against for a lot of people. Artist on the other hand focuses on the chase to an extent that makes it impossible to really loop her.
For the killer to be fun for survivors, it seems they must have some kind of chase ability, though. Probably because the chase is the only interactive part in the game and looping M1 killers without a real chase power is a bit too predictable.
Neither. In fact the ideal killer according to polls are those who can zoom or teleport around the map. Many fair chases.
Oni, Hillbilly, Blight, Demogorgon and to some degree Wesker.
Their kit enables tons of chases and all those 1v1 scenarios are fair. I have never thought "this Billy won the chase because he has this and that". I missplayed.
You may ask "But Demogorgon does not, so why is he fun and Alien is not". Because Demo has counterplay and survivors dont run into loose/loose situations with windows and pallets all the time when played correctly.
virtually all killer have mechanical steps. the truth is that any time a killer is effective, survivor dislike it because they're losing. I think most killer just need anti-shift w mechanic. running forward and wasting killer time is biggest chase problem for killer. so in term of anti-loop, that is all a killer requires. The best anti-shift w mechanics are haste, burst of speed dashing or ranged projectile. Until pre-running hold-w is not auto-pilot win button for survivor, every killer needs these type of mechanics. in reality, this is unhealthy because it plagues game design for killer but that is where dbd is currently where survivors are too mobile compare to the killer with too many safe pallet with forced break mechanisms.
The killer needs base-kit game slowdown for hooking people. Right now, killer can do well in chases or as good as they can but they lose gen so fast because their chase has no meaning in relationship to gens for higher level. Historically they used perk for this but now all perks got nerfed so hard that they barely make impact.
I prefer the slowdown.
When I first started playing DBD, almost every single killer could be looped to some extent. The exceptions were Nurse, because she is Nurse, and Legion because of Old Legion being broken and awful.
But the rest you could loop. And I like things that way.
Antiloop usually can be translated to "hold W and pre-drop everything" which is often seen among the newer killers and is the most boring type of gameplay DBD has to offer.
What I meant by mechanical skill is not setting down a trap, drone, [insert other thing] but something that has some more extra steps. People do not particularly enjoy playing against Hag or Slog Merchant for example and Xeno, Nemesis and Pyramid Head aren't going to win any popularity contests among survivors either. With Blight, Oni and Billy you have a fairly good idea of what could happen and now it's up to you to play around that. These killers give you a chance to show off your own skills as a survivor too, outside of normal mind gaming.
I disagree with the second part. Take Blight for example. He is so strong that he can be played in a way that allows him to slow down the game naturally. The same goes for a lot of other A-tier killers and of course Nurse. These killers do not need any base kit slowdown (other than Wesker).
I play Hillbilly with only Shadowborn and Lightborn a lot and I can still win, if I am absolutely on point. Because the pressure and slowdown I create just by chasing, hooking, burning through resources and interrupting survivors is enough to buy me the time I need to win. Though, of course, with a weak build and a killer this "Billy", it's not hard to beat me. Play a bit smart and don't go down immediately, while also not wasting every pallet immediately and I will lose. I can do something similar on Blight with no addons and it works much better because he is less prone to small imperfections.
I disagree with the second part. Take Blight for example. He is so strong that he can be played in a way that allows him to slow down the game naturally. The same goes for a lot of other A-tier killers and of course Nurse. These killers do not need any base kit slowdown (other than Wesker).
that something i heavily disagree with. I don't think any killer has any game-delay whatsoever. it is survivor that are not efficiently doing the objective that is slowing down the game. It is everything to do with survivor team. The idea that your actually doing anything to gen is something that weaker survivor make you believe as killer. You didn't suddenly get better as killer from 1 game to next game. what changed is that survivor play went up or down. that is how little influence killer has game-tempo of the game.
Winning with shadowborn and Lightborn billy has nothing to do with your skills as billy. It has everything with survivor's inefficiency at objective. All that being good at killer is that you kill survivors in quicker time frame then another player. For example, if someone really bad at billy, they might take a whomping 10 minutes to get 8 hooks as billy because they're making mechanical errors while a billy that is good should hit a higher % of chainsaw that instead of taking 10 minutes to get same amount of hooks, they take 7 minutes to do that.
Billy A can still win games because he might face Survivor team A that is so bad at gen efficiency, healing and looping that they take like 12 minutes to finish all gens but any time billy A faces efficient team, he has no chance to win because his killer skills are inadequate for better teams. Billy B wins faster and he can win more teams at higher-levels but as soon as he faces team that is doing gens in say 6 minutes then Billy B physically cannot win anymore.
stronger killer have more consistency in devaluing survivor's skill-level in looping and they supposedly win "race" to hooks faster then survivor finishes 5 gens.
That argument is very flawed. A survivor that is on a hook, cannot progress their objective. Survivors that are busy healing, don't do gens either. Slugged survivors also don't progress the game and need to be picked up. This is what I consider natural slowdown. All of these things give the killer a lot more time in a match.
You may find survivors that end the game in 4 minutes, if you look hard enough. But you will never find a group that does that to a Blight, that gets 6 hooks throughout the match. There is just too much stuff going on for the survivors to solely focus on gens. When you play in a hyper aggressive way (something that I feel only killers with a very strong chase power can do), you threaten to progress the game so fast, that the survivors have no choice but to slow you and themselves down by healing, hiding, avoiding, pre running etc.
You are right though, that for this strategy to work the killer needs to be quite strong compared to the survivors. You either play a lot better or you play something so strong that it can make up for that lacking skill difference. Otherwise you will not be able to build up enough pressure to stop the gens from flying. This is also where I disagree again, that me winning with these weak perks has nothing to do with my own skill. Will I win a tournament like that? No. I could have 6 perk slots and 4 addons and probably couldn't manage. That goes for most of us. But assuming MMR works, it should put me against survivors that are about equally strong to me. And when I suddenly nerf myself like this but play more concentrated and still manage to win, I'd say this is because I play well, because the survivors I play against don't suddenly become a lot weaker than normal.
Play a difficult killer for the first time (Billy, Blight, Singularity etc.) and you will not perform nearly as well as someone that knows the ins and outs about that character even if your build is significantly stronger. Otherwise, it would imply that anyone with the best perks and addons on the strongest will reach the highest level of play. Strong builds can carry you quite far, but it's your own skill that really makes the difference in that regard. If you compare both sides, you will always be able to point that someone is less efficient. Does that mean they are inefficient overall? No. It just means, that their opponent is operating on a higher efficiency.
If you struggle with Billy's mechanics, you will be happy to get 4 hooks in 10 minutes. At least against good survivors. Because M1 killers aren't that strong, his map mobility isn't worth much, if he can't end chases anyway and breaking some pallets slightly quicker will not get you very far. Someone with more experience might just end up killing them all in 4 minutes. This is also how it works for every other killer (maybe not SM and definitely not Freddy). This basically my entire point from before.
You progress so fast or play so smart, that the survivors will not be able to keep up that pace for long. This forces them to focus on slowing you down, instead of rushing gens. Before 6.1.0, I feel this worked a lot better because the meta on both sides made this a more accomplishable play style. But even now, it still works. Just not as well.
With your second to last paragraph you have pretty much confirmed what I said before and this closes my argument. So I am not sure where you disagree now. It seems though we have drifted a bit off-topic, so I would prefer we continue this dicussion in private rather than doing that in a thread that isn't really about this specific debate. Or we make a thread of our own, if you'd like that.
TL;DR: It is possible to delay survivors naturally by giving them more to do than just sitting on gens. Like healing, rescuing etc. This is what I called natural slow down. If you perform well enough, this will alow you to slow down games by quite a bit and buy you enough time to win.
definitely not Freddy
Worst of all is that you still can do well with him., but it is incredibly boring due to his current power still existing in the game.
Like, I still play him because I love Freddy Krueger. He was the very first killer I played, all the way back in 2018, and I'll never stop being a Freddy main. But if I had no connection to Freddy, if I was judging by power alone, I would never even think about playing him.
What is the point of getting a 3k or a 4k if you don't have fun?
Either is fine.
I personally dislike facing option select / free zoning type powers. Maybe this is a hot take. When killers like pyramid head or demogorgon just hold M2 near any window and force a lose/lose option select (wait for animation, if you see it, use power, if not cancel into M1), that is not fun because there is no outplay potential or mindgame. It's why deathslinger got his scope time increased so much. Same complaint with skull merchant and knight are the worst examples. Place power down at loop, you are forced to leave or take free damage, repeat process until you reach edge of the map and can't make anything. There is no skill expression or mindgames involved, it feels even worse than facing a tournament nurse.
I don't have any issue with anti-loop that can be mindgamed/dodged at one tile like dredge or pinhead and I'm fine with chase powers that don't force brainless option select. Someone mentioned blight/billy/oni and I think one of the reasons those killers are seen as so fun is because not only do they not do what I've complained about above, but they also transform some areas/obstacles that are useless against normal M1 killers into spots that you can use as potential counterplay.