Almo
Almo
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Doors in video games are actually surprisingly complex to implement in terms of game design. A designer I know who worked on several Splinter Cell games said, "in every new Splinter Cell, the big ######### is always how to handle doors." It's even worse when every moving entity in your game is a player as in DbD; Splinter Cell at least could push unseen AI characters around if they needed to. :)
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Ruin was changed for several reasons.
@Peanits said:
https://us.v-cdn.net/6030815/uploads/409/320VJA64405N.png
Welcome to our Designer Notes, a series of blogposts presenting the fine details of upcoming design changes. Today, we’ll be going over the first update of 2020, which includes changes to The Doctor, the Gatekeeper Emblem, and Hex: Ruin.
DOCTOR UPDATE
In the next mid-chapter update, we will be changing core elements of The Doctor's gameplay. He's been a polarizing figure since his release, and we felt it was time to revisit his kit with an eye to making it less frustrating to play against him. We will keep his core identity as a Killer who shocks people with electricity and causes them to go insane, suffering several different kinds of afflictions and hallucinations. Some of his abilities and most of his add-ons will get an update pass.
We identified a major source of irritation to be his Static Field. The problem is that The Doctor gets periodic notifications of Survivors' locations in his Terror Radius due to their Madness levels increasing passively. It's the lack of action needed on the part of The Doctor to find nearby Survivors that makes it feel annoying to play against. With that in mind, the update centers around removing Static Field and replacing it with another ability.
The new ability replacing Static Field is called "Static Blast"; this is mapped to the Active Ability button. After charging the ability for a short duration, it releases a blast of static electricity throughout The Doctor’s entire Terror Radius. Any Survivors caught in the area of effect are shocked causing them to scream and acquire an amount of Madness. If their Madness level increases, they also reveal their location to The Doctor as usual.
While charging Static Blast, The Doctor's movement is significantly reduced, and the ability has a long cooldown. The idea behind the design of Static Blast is to make it powerful as a location tool, but very difficult to use while in a chase, hence the limitations on its use.
As Shock Therapy and Static Blast are now linked to separate inputs, we've removed the different Treatment and Punishment stances to improve the gameplay flow. The Doctor's base movement speed is still 4.6 m/s (the "regular" movement speed for most Killers), but he can now use Shock Therapy more easily as he doesn't have to switch stances to gain access to it. So we've added a brief pause after using Shock Therapy before he can attack or use another ability.
One last thing we've addressed is the frustration of using Snap Out Of It to drop from Madness level III to Madness level II. After the update, missing a skill check during Snap Out Of It will cost the player 25% of their progress instead of resetting it entirely. Also, if they stop the interaction before it's complete, they will not lose their progress and will continue from where they left off on the next attempt.
HEX: RUIN AND GATEKEEPER UPDATE
The upcoming mid-chapter update will also include a major overhaul to Hex: Ruin, and an associated update to the Gatekeeper Emblem. Recent data show that Hex: Ruin is used in over 80% of all games in the red ranks, and across the entire userbase it appears in about 45% of all games.
We took a close look at the perk to identify what makes it so frustrating to play against. Three key issues were identified:
- Its punishment of new players or those who can't hit Great Skill Checks. Newer players trying to help veterans with generator repairs tend to make the situation worse rather than better.
- The passive nature of the gameplay pressure it provides means that there is a huge amount of potential with very little effort or risk on behalf of The Killer.
- Its inconsistency due to the random nature of the appearance interval of skill checks.
We also looked carefully to see how it functions as part of a Killer's loadout. Beyond the obvious desire to slow down generator repair, Hex: Ruin functions as one of the very few perks effective as slowing generator repair in the first couple of minutes of the Trial. This is important to Killers' rankings because the Gatekeeper Emblem highly rewards keeping as many of the 7 generators incomplete as they can for as long as possible.
Because Hex: Ruin is one of the few tools a Killer has for getting an Iridescent Gatekeeper Emblem, the update needed to respect that. Just a straight-up nerf without considering the consequences for that Emblem wouldn't be a good plan. So before getting into the Hex: Ruin change, let's go over the Gatekeeper Emblem.
Currently, Gatekeeper's underlying points are scored as a number of points per generator remaining to be repaired multiplied by which minute the match is in. Additional points are scored for any remaining generators at the end of the Trial. This provides much less of a reward to a Killer who loses three gens quickly, but then doggedly keeps the last few until the end of the match.
The new version of Gatekeeper is simpler: one point is scored per generator remaining to be repaired per minute for the first nine minutes. At the end of the Trial, if both Exit Gates remain closed, additional points are scored. With less focus on keeping seven generators up, we can move on and change Hex: Ruin without making it significantly harder for Killers to do well in Gatekeeper.
The new Hex: Ruin is simple:
All Generators are affected by Ruin; if a Generator is not being worked on, it regresses at [1/1.5/2] times the normal regression rate.
The Hex effect persists as long as the related Hex Totem is standing.
This version of the perk has many benefits:
- Survivors who are working on generators are unaffected as the perk no longer affects Skill Checks.
- Killers must be active in pushing Survivors off generators to get value from it.
- It is less useful in the early game, but very useful in the late game. Survivors now have a more interesting choice about when it is necessary to find and cleanse the Hex Totem.
The changes outlined above, along with the Lery’s Memorial Institute rework, are slated for the mid-chapter update and will be available to test on the Player Test Build (PTB) starting tomorrow. Please be sure to let us know what you think once you’ve had a chance to try them out!
- Its punishment of new players or those who can't hit Great Skill Checks. Newer players trying to help veterans with generator repairs tend to make the situation worse rather than better.
- The passive nature of the gameplay pressure it provides means that there is a huge amount of potential with very little effort or risk on behalf of The Killer.
- Its inconsistency due to the random nature of the appearance interval of skill checks.
These are not in order of importance.
Well after the update, we were playtesting a new Killer before their release, I think it was Blight. It was forked from a much older build, and had old Ruin in it. Every person in the playtest was either a game designer or QA, and we all agreed that it was a big improvement to the game overall that it was changed. And not just because of new players.
Ruin was not changed just because of new players. It was changed for several reasons, and the hideous experience new players had with it was one of them.
Ruin was not changed just because of new players. Ruin was not changed mostly because of new players. Ruin was changed because it was unhealthy for the game.
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@JawsIsTheNextKiller said:
There is no better way to guarantee getting found, downed and hooked first that running Deliverance.
This has been my experience. 🤣
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We tried removing 99ing gates in various ways. They all sucked really badly. This is why the Killer can open a gate if the Survivors are being hoseheads about not starting EGC.
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Wraith. I switched to Pig soon after. :)
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Server-side hit validation does not affect grabs. It's purely for melee hits.
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Legion's performance is average; right in the middle of the pack.
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@C3Tooth said:
I feel bad to kill any Survivor if I let Toxic one able to escape.
Agree with C3. Also, the last one after the other three disconnect.
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We don't know the difference between a crash and someone pulling out their ethernet cable.
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@Hoodied said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/1849549#Comment_1849549
Its fake, that was a joke
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/1849537#Comment_1849537
its fake, just a joke
I thought it was pretty funny anyway. :D
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Legion's performance is average. It's right in the middle of all the Killers at all ranks including among the very best players.
This guy's a Legion main; I'm pretty sure checking his YouTube content and Twitch channel can help you learn better how to play Legion. :)
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@[Deleted User] said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/1847464#Comment_1847464
Tbh I already think I know the answer, but someone is going to ask so I'll just go ahead with it:
"Why not just have an option then, that is only available to people in countries where it's not an issue. Things like visual elements and such that are not too connected with gameplay; like how some games have gore/blood sliders in their options menus"
Our opinion is that development time spent supporting such a feature would be better spent elsewhere.
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I think I should just keep this link on a hotkey.
@Almo said:
You earn NOED's effect by playing with three perks during the beginning and middle of the match.
If the Survivors do gens too fast for you and you get them, it's their fault; they had time to do totems.
If you keep so much pressure on that they don't have time to do totems, you're still earning it.
If the Survivors try to unhook someone while exposed by NOED, that is also their fault.
Ordinarily, a Killer shouldn't get more than one kill from NOED.
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@NoelleMina said:
The swearing does count. To an extent.
There’s blood, murder, executions, abuse in the past of some killers, one killer that regurgitates at will. You can leave survivors to die, you can choose to kill, or be a survivor running away from a murderer. For a game that can be silly at times, there’s also a lot of triggering points in this game.
That being said, I do agree with you that there should be a bit more uh, detail.
There are definite limits across which the game would be banned in some countries, and we don't want that. The amount of detail in the game is carefully controlled to keep us from being illegal in those markets.
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Please rate your matches. I've already done a few studies that included these data.
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You earn NOED's effect by playing with three perks during the beginning and middle of the match.
If the Survivors do gens too fast for you and you get them, it's their fault; they had time to do totems.
If you keep so much pressure on that they don't have time to do totems, you're still earning it.
If the Survivors try to unhook someone while exposed by NOED, that is also their fault.
Ordinarily, a Killer shouldn't get more than one kill from NOED.
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@[Deleted User] said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/1841101#Comment_1841101
Wasn't nurse in the bottom half before?
That means more and more people are learning how to play nurse....so I mean as more people learn her, and there are less newer players to her losing....we're gonna be seeing her slowly going up and up tbh.....
I mean they already rose through the ranks quite a bit in just one year.....
Nurse is on the bottom for all ranks averaged. Nurse is on the bottom for ranks 1-4. Nurse is in the top 25% for killrate across Killers when considering players who are in the top 1% for killrate with their respective Killers.
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@konchok said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/1840860#Comment_1840860
What do you mean that Nurse is in the top 1/4?
Is it the top quarter of killers or the top 4 killers?
Top 25%. Sorry that wasn't clear. :)
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Among the very best players (top 1% with their respective Killers), Freddy is #1. Nurse is in the top 1/4.
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Blinking at the ground in front of you does shorten the distance travelled. But the time it takes to travel is fixed as a function of how long you've been holding the blink before letting go. So once it's fully charged you're committed to a full-duration blink.
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@TWiXT said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/1835102#Comment_1835102
Corrected it, sorry, had PoV in the post, but was tired when I originally posted it at around 1 am and wrote FoV in the header.
Easy mistake! :D
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@GrimReaperJr1232 said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/1835102#Comment_1835102
Err... I don't want to assume anything, but I don't think you read the post. That, or you really wanted to clarify that. I can't tell.
I did read it. It's just easier for everyone involved when people use the right terms for things. :)
Another common error in terminology is "lag" vs "dropping frames".
Lag: delays in player action due to network latency
Dropping frames: delays in player action usually due to GPU load
Yes, it's a slow day at work today. But I am writing some design docs for not this mid-chapter, but the next one after that.
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Blight's FOV (field of view) is the same as everyone else's. It's the camera's position that's different.
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@Mozzie said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/1830586#Comment_1830586
Again, very anecdotal. The longer people or, even animals for that matter..... practice anything the better they get at it, in nearly all cases. I don't think that's a very controversial statement. Especially since a mountain of evidence can back up that claim. But out of curiosity Almo if you were in charge of the matchmaking system what changes do you think should be put in place?
If people all got good at even remotely the same rate, we wouldn't need complex mathematical systems to rate people based on their performance. The only place play time figures into real ratings systems is in how many points you get per match won or lost. They do this because your initial rating is completely unsure, and the system wants to find your level as fast as possible to get you where you should be on the curve.
I gave an anecdotal example because it illustrates the problem in a way people can understand. Experimentally, it is well-known that playtime is not a good measure of peoples' skill.
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@Greatamygdala said:
Only thing they need to change about devotion is that dumb thing when it prestiges and resets to the lowest amount of shards you can get per level again.
The lower levels take less XP to get. If you check XP per shard, it's not so bad.
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I saw a player on LoL who had played 4,000 games and was Bronze 4. Some people just don't get better, regardless of why. They might not be capable, or they just might not care. People who do learn and get better do so at different rates. Devotion would be a terrible thing to use for matchmaking.
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I'm really liking getting better at PH Punishment attacks through walls. With a little help from I'm All Ears. :)
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@shalo said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/1825001#Comment_1825001
Your data also says Nurse is the weakest...
They do not. Nurse is weak averaged across all players, even across ranks 1-4. But when considering the very best players, she's top tier. Not quite #1, but close.
Keep in mind I have access to way more information. The periodic snapshots we share are because they are interesting, not because they are the sole criteria by which we balance things.
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@Shirokinukatsukami said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/1823072#Comment_1823072
That probably why Legion keeps killing you!
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/1823079#Comment_1823079
Or you can run to the other side of the map outside Legion's terror radius and do the gen there.
You can play around Legion's power. It's definitely annoying but it's fine Legion needs his detection to get his kills. Legion is the least deadly killer in the entire game but at least he excels at finding survivors.
Legion is right in the middle of the pack in terms of kill efficiency, even among the best players. There's no way I can construe Legion as "weakest" given the data I have.
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OINK
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@HellDescent said:
More like Lmao 😂. Now are see what they balance their game around
There's more to game design than just "what I think is cool". It's a discipline that requires careful systemic thought about everything you put into the game. Being able to maintain a live game's design over time is just as important as putting cool things in. It's both possible and necessary to do both.
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@bjorksnas said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/213568/almo-why-did-you-nerf-huntress-lullaby
it was changed to be consistent, 2 killers have extra skill checks, id didn't affect the pigs so it shouldn't have affected doctors, that said it was also a bit of a buff because the hex no longer reveals itself until you get your first stack
This is correct. As long as HHL affected some powers and not others, we'd have to make an independent judgement on every new mechanic involving a skill check. If you allow that kind of design, the number of perks that need individual judgements as you add more features slowly grows. It's not maintainable. You want as few exceptions in your design as possible. This is also why Kindred lost its "trumps all Killer stealth abilities".
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This doesn't exactly address the OP, but it's on-topic, and I felt there should be a concise explanation of where we feel camping sits in the game.
It's up to Survivors to punish camping. When I camp, if nobody comes for the rescue, I stop because I'm losing ground. But when they come running, even if they don't rush the hook and just hang around and they're not repairing while the one on the hook is dying, I'm still profiting.
It is true that the Emblem system does not look favorably upon camping... but the best way to stop it to not to reward it.
I know all the arguments and counter arguments about it; I've heard them over and over. :)
One of DbD's core values is "player agency". We want players to have as much input on what happens in matches as possible. Eliminating camping as a strategy removes choice from both the Killer and the Survivors; it limits gameplay possibilities. Deciding to do gens instead of rescuing the one being camped is a moral decision: choosing the good of the many over the good of the one. Sometimes, the Survivors choose the good of the one over the good of the many; when they do, they often suffer dire consequences. But all of that arises from player choice.
I will not say "camping is good gameplay in DbD" as many construe my comments to mean. But the possibility, the choice leading to it, and the choices it requires Survivors to make are all part of what makes the game great: player agency. Removing those choices only reduces the range of decisions to make, which isn't good in the long run.
We have experimented extensively with anti-camping measures. In the end, the result was always that the camper just camped harder, or we had to break fundamental systems to accomodate the anti-camping measure.
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It doesn't. He's not "Killer Traps".
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@OBX said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/1808878#Comment_1808878
Because if the “amount of work necessary” is slightly inconvenient, it’s far better to have a worthless perk that helps the survivors (hoarder).
bhvr motto: If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing as shoddy as possible with very minimal effort. (Aside from skins of course)
There was not enough time left before release to implement this. If we want to shove this work in now, other features have to be bumped. We have to decide which features are most important to implement. I'm sorry if you think that's lazy, but it's just how software development works.
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@Hoodied said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/1808878#Comment_1808878
Hmm, isn't it possible to do kinda what Plunderer's Instinct does but in reverse?
Cause Plunderer's Instinct increases item rarity, while Old Hoarder was intended to decrease this, why not make Hoarder do a considerable decrease to item rarity?
This is precisely the technical issue. There is a list of tables, and adding to the list at the end is fine, but at the beginning breaks things.
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@Crowman said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/1808878#Comment_1808878
Wasn't that Hoarder?
Woops, yeah got confused a moment. Sorry about that! I'll leave the post there as it explains what happened with Hoarder. :)
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EDIT: got confused about which Perk we were discussing. Will leave this here since it's still something players might want to know.
Hoarder's loss of the changing of rarity on items found was a technical issue. The loot tables are buried deeply in a bunch of systems, and adding a new loot table below the current lowest caused problems elsewhere.
Whether this feature will return is under discussion, and is affected by the amount of work necessary to adjust the loot system to support it. We've seen the feedback and consider it "high on the community wish list".
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This requirement will stay. There are things we don't want, like someone going into dying state due to a Bear Trap with Honing Stone triggering stuff like Surge. The alternative to the basic attack requirement is making exceptions. For example we could say Surge works for Demo Shred, but not Trapper BT/HS. Now every time we add a new Killer, we potentially have to through and update every perk with these exceptions. It's just not a maintainable design with the vast amount of perk/addon/power combinations available.
Since every Killer can basic attack, we can create the perk, and know exactly how it works with every Killer without having to check a ton of different interactions. If this means some perks don't work well given some Killers' powers, then that's just the way of it. Not every perk is exactly as useful on one Killer as it is on the others. Learning to choose your perks well to synergize with your chosen Killer is one of the important skills in DbD.
I have heard it said that this answer means we're "lazy"... that we're not willing to "do things that take work". Whole programming languages and paradigms have been based around preventing the same thing in code as we're trying to prevent in design with this strategy. You don't want a ball of yarn of a design where tugging on any little thing pulls a whole ton of others.
In a game as complex as DbD, there will necessarily be some of that. But minimizing it through smart design is still a worthwhile endeavor.
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Nurse is a special case because her skill cap is so high. The very best Nurse players perform on par with the very best players of other top-tier Killers.
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@TAG said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/1746189#Comment_1746189
We've heard the song and dance before. :P
If you guys ever wonder why there's only one designer who interacts with the forums...
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All of the data I have on Pig indicate she is in the top third of Killers for performance.
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I recommend "brother". It's the term we use internally.
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Learning Nurse at Rank 4 was pretty painful.
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@The_Krapper said:
I wonder if the licensing cost would be the same either way , a question for a developer I guess? @Peanits @not_Queen @Almo ? But I think it would be great to have in the game as a legendary skin if it wouldn't cost the same...
If the cost is the same I would rather have a whole new killer to be honest, so that way we could make the most of it and be able to enjoy more than just the skin for the same cost and have a better experience for Chucky.
This stuff is completely not my department. I do game design; skins are managed by other teams. :)
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My first match out on PTB for the Legion Update way way back I got in a match with Morf. Got a 4k. Was awesome. :)
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@Grum_P said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/1735208#Comment_1735208
It's 25% I think.
@Grum_P said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/1735208#Comment_1735208
It's 25% I think.
Correct, it's 25%. Used to be 33%, we reduced it at some point.
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I was fortunate enough to be streaming my best-ever Survivor move.
https://www.twitch.tv/almo2001/clip/NastyImpartialTruffleSoBayed
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@TheStabbiNAngeL said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/1732944#Comment_1732944
Hi Almo I reviewed my actions in the pass weeks and just wanted to issue an apology. I get caught in the hype sometimes.
Apology accepted. :)
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None of them. The Killers are delayable, but not stoppable.