Casual Experience will just get worse on both sides.
With the amount of people celebrating the nerf to windows for example I do want to say that I do hope killer mains understand that more encounters with sweaty survivors will only get worse right? Like personally Windows is not my favourite perk or even all that appealing to me, and I understand changing perks because they might be outdated or work in ways that could be considered unfair like adrenaline healing someone who was already hooked but Windows was never OP and whoever started that trend was most likely doing it for engagement farming on tik tok or twitter. Perks that don't progress the game but still are viable or are "crutches" as people put it are still fine to exist as they are in my opinion, but it seems like everyone is convinced that this perk was autopilot mode when, like with distortion, the person playing like that would still play like that regardless of whether or not they ran the perk. Rats are always going to be rats, people pre-dropping are always going to do so etc.
More casual players are going to be funneled into playing META builds and only run set perks, more frequently than they do now and the onboarding for new players will just be to buy or pay for characters that have powerful perks. Even with net gen speeds getting nerfed years ago as well now killer mains feel gens fly by too fast and that's because with stealth gutted and aura reading being more frequent the game is more of a race against time and you'll keep saying "git gud" or "adapt" and when they do? Complaints about the next possible OP perk when it has existed for years with no issue. Then the cycle repeats itself.
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I actually don't know who is bothered by the run-to-yellow crew. The survivors who give me trouble are certainly not running WoO. Maybe this is a problem for inexperienced killers? I don't know. StB is likely the only nerf the survivors I play against will feel but somehow I think they'll be fine.
But yeah, what you say about gens being the focus because everything else gets nerfed is true. When I would run SP I'd use it to get to a hook on the other side of the map unnoticed. With 15s cut it won't last that long anymore. So I'll just sit on my gen, and likely choose a meta perk instead. Nerfing these niche and non-meta perks is a stupid decision.
You have to realize if that happens they will just nerf gen speeds and give regression a love tap.
The devs seem very set on retaining the casual/mediocre killer playerbase as I imagine it's the bulk of the killer population, so this is the demographic they are catering to every patch.
That is only evident on the killer side. For survivor, they want it very unfriendly for new players and casuals.
We lost Pallets but gained vault speed. Considering Lithe is probably the best exhaustion perk now, it's not a bad trade. You can also run 5 Moves Ahead which is now more relevant.
I've seen worse guts to Survivor Perks. Not too worried about this one.
Im noticing alot of ppl using 5ma now. Considering that many ppl (myself included) were using WoO to keep track of which pallets were used rather than to see the locations of windows that dont change... it seems like an obvious swap to me. The only annoyance to me is I dont have the survivor nor the perk unlocked yet, but... thats an easy fix for me since its not a licensed character.
As if this game has a casual community to begin with, you gotta unlock fifty billion perks (most behind a paywall) you gotta learn over 40 killers, you gotta learn how to play against said killers, not to mention the toxicity that sometimes makes even League of Legend players go "dang that was little harsh bro" what casual guy would want to sit down and want to deal with that? We are all in for the long haul.
But even with the changes, you just pair new WoO with Lithe, 5MA and Finesse/Resilience and you have a fine build.
If you want the map drenched in yellow anyways. I don't really consider those perks for my playstyle, as the nearest yellow thing not necessarily always is the best yellow thing to run to.
I get that it might be helpful in solo q too see intact pallets, but for this usage 5MA is better at this point anyways and windows do not change position or get broken.
The fact that DbD is obnoxiously beginner/casual unfriendly doesn't play that big of a role I think. That's just a given and doesn't depend on buffs and nerfs of single perks.
As I said WOO is no skill free aura perk same to nowhere to hide, lethal or celestial + nemesis. I'd argue that while it will massively nerf solo q experience and kill rates will climb high, this will make maps more appealing and overall decrease frustration on killer end, which is good. Killer community should be trated gently now when playerbase is rising. In the end survivors can play swf to have fun, killer is left alone out of 2v8 and their fun matters.
I don't think they're nerfing WoO because it's OP but just because it renders other info perks in the same category obsolete. They want more options to create more build diversity and honestly even then I bet a lot of the people who run WoO now will still run it. Only now there will be reasons to run chase info perks other than WoO.
Solo Q fun is limited. If someone get's downed within 10s and then someone with flashy 5s later then the game is over and no really fun remaining.
Making solo q fun is impossible, however tweak swf to not be too strong is possible.
I guess survivors must get better.
Your buddy was correct, there are a lot of players that refuse to accept the reality of the stats we have been given. There are survivor winstreak squads that have insane escape rates and win 99.9% of their matches but we also have killer players that win 99.9% of their matches as well, with a specific blight player reaching almost 2000 wins in a row on three separate occasions. The person stating this is scapegoating swf for their losses instead of looking at their own gameplay and trying to improve.
That being said, there are gaps in those stats that I would love BHVR to fill and I wish they would release stats more frequently as well.
Fair point is that with killers being much stronger you simply have to be efficient as possible. Back in a days you had average chase over minute. Gens fly isn't that true as most gen perks being nerfed, except for hyperfocus, which imo shouldn't be touched now when you can't stack it with stake out while it being one of the most skilled perk. Most of the time when the killer lose too many gens is because they don't know when to abandon chase. If you see someone running into shack at 5 gens and you are Trapper or Skull Merchant you should instaleave. Now when killer gets quick down it's mostly impossible to recover from because there will always be someone ignoring pain res dms or mindlessly stay injured at gen decreasing odds of winning.
Yeah, you can see in real time right now with the Halloween game how fast the play to win no matter what mindset ruins an Asym games enjoyment. Launch weekend was incredible and everyone just enjoyed the setting for what it was, but it didn't take very long for people to find out what can be abused and start doing it, the good news is Illfonic seems to be intent on punishing that mindset over ruining the fun of the game for everyone else…
I have found BHVR is the opposite these days, BHVR is ruining the experience of the regular player for the sake of the people who have to be the best at everything and abuse every abusable mechanic to win all of the time even though DBD has no incentive to do that whatsoever, if BHVR had just put their foot down and stopped catering to those people and instead focused a lot more time on the excess of individual killers in the game as well as the horror atmosphere we might have a much different and much more enjoyable game for everyone right now.
Totally curb stomping perks is not doing anything but forcing people into running a narrower and narrower scope of perks and for what? obviously egregious things have to be dealt with in any game casual or not, but especially this latest patch just kind of showed a ton of random nerfs to things that were really in a fine state of being and did not need a nerf much less a total gutting… it's just hard to understand the mentality behind that.. "the top 0.5% of players is good with these things so the other 95.5% cant use them anymore? weird.
I don't think Windows making 5MA ahead obsolete is a good reason to nerf WOO. No one was asking for 5MA to have a similar effect as windows. People don't even use 5MA ahead for the aura reading. That's why 5MA will be fine while WOO is a dead perk. It does the same thing as resilience except on a cooldown.
How high do you want kill rates to climb? Average is already at 60%. Any higher and you will start seeing extremely long killer queue times.
There have been efforts but this community resists change, and the loudest CCs with the most followers usually dominate the conversation.
Window nerf yeah ends playing soloQ for me. The information that you get from it is just neccessary to make matches somewhat bearable for me. Swf I can just communicate which pallets are used and where teammates are getting chased. Now I would need to put on bunch of other info perks and can't run build I want.
I don't know about that. Your take is the obvious one: if it's bad then fix it. But you're in a room full of people who can longer see the forest for the trees.
The devs have lost the plot. By optimizing and balancing over the years, they have sucked much of the fun out of survivor. Many perks nowadays are very conditional or limited use to be worth taking over a meta perk. If you want variety and pick niche over meta, you will regret not having meta perks as you get tunneled or camped by a tryhard killer. The upcoming perk changes are supposed to fix this on paper, but I don't know how much of that will impact the meta when the live patch happens. Also, just in general, survivor got nerfed too hard while killer became generally easier, that you need 1000s of hours to start "getting good". Doesn't help that there's nothing similar to dbd's looping in other games so you there's basically no transferrable skill from other games.
I think there needs to be a realization that most survivor players are solo queue, and most arent even good enough to take real advantage of a full premade like the comp squads do. In my opinion, they need to make the game easier in some way or another and less punishing for solo queue survivors. It takes one tryhard killer to stomp a lobby with ease and there's absolutely nothing the average team can do against it, they'll just go through the motions until the abandon option appears.
Otz and Hens make money off this game. It's their jobs. They're bias is the most extreme. They have a stake, and they have pull.
I believe the game stopped being casual as soon as they brought in Kaneki. After him its like the bar was raised for minimum killer strength and everything thats casual in the game is now severely power crept by whatever comes out. If they were to come out with a new m1 killer, say terrifier, all the streamer community would put him on a strength tierlist the second they see how his power works and if its not strong enough the whole community is told hes weak and easy to counter - which would diminish sales. So bhvr is now kinda forced to make every new killer A tier or above to start and adjust based on complaints.
And there was atleast 1 map where windows of opportunity was a big problem especially on all 4 survivors, which was the saw map - the game. It is nicknamed "the pallet factory" and pallets are all in such close proximity that someone with windows of opportunity could predrop pallets for over 20 minutes. Otherwise on other maps it wasnt often noticeable
I feel the same way about Ghoul. That was the turning point. I think he was the worst decision they've made and there's likely no going back.
I'd rather they just take back the extra pallets and leave WOO as is
I want to point out that BHVR has been listening to these people for a few years now, and the general sentiment has not improved. Survivor experience keeps getting worse and there's zero noticeable improvement in killer attitudes towards the game.
So judging just by results, I'd say we should change course.
I would be all for making the game easier for solo queue survivor if there was an actual problem with solo queue survivors not escaping often enough. But the numbers tell us there is not. Solo queue survivors are escaping on average 40% of the time. Some are doing better and some are doing worse. But if you are average skill level, it’s probably around 40%. Everyone has their different opinions about what that target number should be, but history tells us that if it goes over 40%, then you start to get a deficit of killer players and the survivor queue times become very long. I remember periods in the game’s history when it was like that.
You also have the problem of SWF getting further getting buffed when I think most agree SWF does not need it.
So many people like throwing around SWF this and that but running in to a SWF is rare and running in to a good SWF is even rarer. The 2000 Win killer vids just prove this point more as some SWF mid way but the only one he cried about was the lose cause it was a good SWF.
SWF isn't as much a problem as people like to make it out as it's more the people that make that SWF. 4 Jobob's and Sally's form the office you wont care if are a SWF, but if a PRO team is a SWF you'll cry like a baby about them.
Tell any other player in any other game that. Tell them that you are supposed to lose 60% of the game per the devs design. Especially in a game in which losing is very "bland" and leaves no room for fun. In my opinion, even SWF could get buffs. Killer is doing extremely fine in the higher end. One mistake from the survivor squad can cost them the game. This notion that SWF stomps killer these days is simply not true.
Anyways, there's no need to get subjective here. The game reached a peak of 170k players just 3 months ago on the anniversary update. Now it's at a shocking 37k count (steam numbers only). How does such a big game with so many licenses lose that many players that fast? Because it's not fun, that's why. Do you think that if you told the average dude, who bought the game and had a terrible experience playing survivor, that "you are actually supposed to escape only 40% of the time", he would care?
All these licenses and the devs still havent figured out how to retain players. Nerfing the fun stuff from survivor and giving killers back to back buffs and abhorrent, toxic designs isnt gonna help.
imo it was Nowhere to Hide that changes everything. To a lesser extent, the Lethal buffs. Ghoul woulda worked fine in old dbd vs OG Dead Hard and old maps like Haddonfield and Mothers Dwelling.
This one Knight perk killed casual play overnight and began to reinforce mobility/aura creep. This in turn creates Laras who just pre run. We have just nerfed NTH, but the damage is already done as we've nerfed Distortion and added other insane aura perks like Weave Attunement. Being as fast as Ghoul or Billy but seeing everything is just too much for newer players. Just to clarify though I'm not disagreeing with anything you two are saying about Ghoul.
We need a spy survivor that has 2-3 stealth perks for anti-aura in different ways