Firellius
Firellius
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No. Stop making survivors use up all their perk slots to fix the game being broken.
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@Sandt1985 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3848103#Comment_3848103
Enlighten me. What "chunks of tactics" do killers have basekit that are broken?
Tunnel, camp, slug. Are you new to DBD?
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@Sandt1985 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3848098#Comment_3848098
I mean, are you asking for counters for most killer strategies to be built into the survivor basekit, so you can then use perks to counter the remaining of said killer strategies, so all your bases are covered, no matter the circumstance? I agree, "Fantastic design" 🙄
If the killer gets a chunk of these tactics basekit and they're as broken as they are, yes.
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@Sandt1985 said:
What you call abusing, we call working as intended.
If we use a totem protection perk, you can use a anti totem perk to counter it. Problem solvedhttps://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3848090#Comment_3848090
Pick your counters carefully. You're not meant to counter everything under the sun
Just spin a wheel of torture and hope the killer you get matched against doesn't use one of the instawins that fell outside your perk budget. Fantastic design.
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@sanees said:
how about using anti totem perks?
On top of the anti-tunnel perks.
And the anti-camp perks.
And the anti-slug perks.
And the anti-aura read perks.
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@Brimp said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3847561#Comment_3847561
Nope. It just how dbd is at its core when both sides are good and mid to low tier being used.
It's one singular match, as told by a person who really wants survivors to be OP.
@Devil_hit11 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3847135#Comment_3847135
it is, decisive strike can be strong because if the killer chooses to tunnel, the extra life is equal survivor having 4 hook-states because they need to be downed a 4th time in addition to 3 times required to die. with shoulder of burden, you can stack this up to 7 hook-states where decisive strike is artificially 1 hook-state. Killer is build around optimizing game efficiency and taking risk where necessary and avoiding poor risk that offer low pay off.
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3846734#Comment_3846734
killers need massive base-kit buffs to level of 2vs8 killers to be going around 12 hooking every single game. I don't see BVHR buffing Wraith in 1vs4 to the level of 2vs8. There is too much push-back whenever a killer gets significantly more powerful especially killer that they dislike. these tactics are balanced by current power-level that killer are at.
killers need massive base-kit buffs to level of 2vs8 killers to be going around 12 hooking every single game.
Killers were 12-hooking more before 6.1, before they were buffed. The real issue is that anti-tunnel got kneecapped in that patch, every forum killer crutched their way up, high above their MMR, and now they're stuck clinging to their broken OP toys while convincing themselves they have a good grasp on game balance.
Killers are winning the majority of their matches, massive killer winstreaks, killers winning without powers or any of the mentioned tactics, nah. 2v8 is what we're using to come up with a balancing standard now!
Every buff killers get just makes killer players worse, and in turn makes them mandate more buffs.
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@Brimp said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3847551#Comment_3847551
Once again different sides different objects. Survivor is overall easier than killer and can get way more done than killer so to keep up you need to employ different tactics which is skillful.
Thats why I said its not restricted to comp. Comp is the most extreme example but it doesnt have to be extreme to happen in normal games. I've had solo q games where everyone just… did the objective and we 3 outted because the killer didnt decide to camp or tunnel until end game. Was the killer good in chase? Yes he was but he was also running pig which CANT keep up with people doing the objective. So being good in chase simply isn't good enough to win games against good survivors. Which is crazy because being good at the game should be the average but the average of dbd is bad.This is literally 'I won a match as survivor, that's OP, nerf it now'.
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@Brimp said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3847487#Comment_3847487
If the killer got 8 hooks and 0 kills both were bad or the killer was playing way too nice if they wanted to win and the killer who got a single kill is just average DBD in a match where everyone knows what they're doing.
You call it cutting corners but in reality making the game easier for yourself believe it or not is an indication of skill.
And you guaranteed always play against solo q or some of the worst survivor teams if you can still "win" this debate is NOT going in your favor when comp dbd is good for one thing: showing the state and reality of the game. Survivors get MASSIVE handicaps in comp and they still can consistently 2-3 out against killers which rarely ever get handicaps. Except its not like these examples are restricted to comp, dbd survivor is just a WAY easier experience to get into and do well in than killer. Thats just the natural order of 2 teams having different objectives.If the killer got 8 hooks and 0 kills both were bad or the killer was playing way too nice if they wanted to win and the killer who got a single kill is just average DBD in a match where everyone knows what they're doing.
You're missing the point.
Choosing the path of least resistance isn't 'skill'. It's not some tactical decision that needs to be weighed against its alternatives. It's like asking someone if changing the difficulty setting to 'easy' is a skilled play, since it makes you more likely to win.
No, choosing to tunnel is not 'skilled'. The execution of the methods chosen is where the skill resides.
You call it cutting corners but in reality making the game easier for yourself believe it or not is an indication of skill.
No, it isn't. Not by definition, anyway.
And you guaranteed always play against solo q or some of the worst survivor teams if you can still "win" this debate is NOT going in your favor when comp dbd is good for one thing: showing the state and reality of the game. Survivors get MASSIVE handicaps in comp and they still can consistently 2-3 out against killers which rarely ever get handicaps.
They also ran a tournament with no holds barred once and it was still a 60% kill rate.
Besides, it is a catastrophically terrible idea to sacrifice the entire game on account of .5% of the playerbase's experience. You can't point to comp gameplay because you don't play comp. No one here plays comp. What you and I play are completely different from comp play.
What's much more comparable is Hens and four of his friends playing 113 total matches without camping, tunnelling, slugging AND using killer powers and scoring a 3K+ in 104 of them.
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@Brimp said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3847349#Comment_3847349
Ah there's your problem. Sure you choose to handi cap yourself by not tunneling and slugging. It's not a "delusion" when there was legit nothing someone could do better in the current position. That someone COULD have chose to play a better killer before hand or choose better perks.
Also you claim yourself as not a competent killer but then say slugging, camping and tunneling is a crutch to natural skill level? Would not taking the smartest play to win the game NOT be considered skilled? Because you can still learn to chase by tunneling and taking the option to spread hooks really isn't so much a "show of skill" more of survivors playing badly.How would you know that when you claim yourself you aren't competent enough at killer? Even in 2v8 if you chose wraith and trapper you're BEGGING for games to be 5 minutes because you get basically 0 gen pressure other than wraith which is just out classed by blight in every way.
Ah there's your problem. Sure you choose to handi cap yourself by not tunneling and slugging. It's not a "delusion" when there was legit nothing someone could do better in the current position.
I can guarantee you that not a single one of you lot that all claim that these tactics are required to win have ever played a flawless game in your lives.
Also you claim yourself as not a competent killer but then say slugging, camping and tunneling is a crutch to natural skill level? Would not taking the smartest play to win the game NOT be considered skilled?
Cutting corners isn't an indication of 'skill'.
Who's more skilled: The killer that gets 8 hooks and 0 kills, or the killer that gets 3 hooks and 1 kill?
How would you know that when you claim yourself you aren't competent enough at killer? Even in 2v8 if you chose wraith and trapper you're BEGGING for games to be 5 minutes because you get basically 0 gen pressure other than wraith which is just out classed by blight in every way.
Because I've still won matches without using any of those tactics. And if I can do it, you can, too.
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@Brimp said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3847162#Comment_3847162
I mean you can do the experiment yourself. Get some good survivors in a custom lobby that actually try to escape and try to spread hooks with a lower to mid tier killer. You'll find quickly that spreading hooks wont get you wins. Sure you might be aiming for more fun and dont care about wins but not every one thinks that way. They don't even have to know each other they just have to try and escape so no swf.
Hell even decent survivors will do with the right map.Ah, but the critical difference is: I am not a competent killer. I can play a decent match, but I've no delusions that when I lose, there was nothing I could've done better. I've won plenty of matches without slugging, camping or tunnelling though.
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Invocations aren't meant to help survivors.
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@Devil_hit11 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3846734#Comment_3846734
Considering the game is perfectly winnable with evenly distributed hookstates
you could not be more wrong. the game is balanced around killer taking shortcuts to win. The analogy of this perk for survivor is like if killer had a perk in the game which blocked every when any gen reaches 50% progression permanently. All gen are unblocked when all gens reach 50% progression. The perk grants you permanent wall-hack when you are 32 meters away from the killer.
A perk like this for killer would ensure that every survivor has to repair 7 gens before they complete a single gen making survivor play the least efficient as possible. Permanent wall-hack is great on killer but downside of needing to repair 7 gens before completing single one far out weight the upside of wall-hack. Regression perks elevate power of the perk.
Back to main topic, Shoulder of burden has nasty synergizes with second perks on survivor. For example, a singular survivor can use more then 2 dead hard's. Off the record can trigger more times on the same survivor. Decisive strike and hard-tunneling is more painful. Reassurance can make hooks take 100 second to regress adding extra value to the 6 hook. Gen progression perks are more likely to generate more value because first kills are going happen later due to 6 hook requirement to kill. Deliverence is stronger because one of the weakness of deliverance is that you can be first person to be hooked but this perk can remove first hook syndrome of deliverence.
The perk is far from useless and borderline game-breaking.
@Brimp said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3846734#Comment_3846734
"Considering the game is perfectly winnable with evenly distributed hooks" we are not in the same world. Try even distributing hooks as trapper or clown and you will easily get 3 outted if not 4 outted if the survivors know how to do the objective and run from yellow to yellow with windows.
"Its only if you tunnel/camp that this perk can ptoentially be a problem" No… just no this perk is gonna be MORE of a problem for killers that decide to play nice because someone who previously wouldn't have access to deli could then have access to deli.you could not be more wrong. the game is balanced around killer taking shortcuts to win.
"Considering the game is perfectly winnable with evenly distributed hooks" we are not in the same world. Try even distributing hooks as trapper or clown and you will easily get 3 outted if not 4 outted if the survivors know how to do the objective and run from yellow to yellow with windows.
I know this is a point that forum killers love regurgitating to one another, but there's nothing to prove this. It's always just forum killers pointing towards one another as sources without any kind of underlying logic or argumentation. It's always just a presumed consensus, with nothing backing it up.
You run the risk of confirmation bias, since every match you win with tunnelling/camping/slugging gets chalked up as having required it, without considering the possibility that you could still have won without it.
You mess up your MMR, since these tactics can crutch you above your natural skill level, which in turn makes the game feel slanted against you, when in reality you're just not where you're supposed to be matched.
You are relying on being an accurate judge of your own skill level, since you are the only one judging your own games and finding that there's nothing you could've done to play the match out better -without- tunnelling/camping/slugging.
Yet despite that, it is held as some kind of holy cow to the forum, and anyone that suggests these tactics need nerfs is committing heresy.
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@Devil_hit11 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3846292#Comment_3846292
the killer taking a minimum 6 hooks to kill 1 person is double hooks compared to before in which tunneling only requires 3 hooks. If a killer alternatives between two survivors and ignores other two survivors, this perk will artificially make killer to spread hooks evenly to be 1 1 1 1 instead of 2 2 0 0. It means you get worst start as killer every single game.
Hard-tunnelers get punished because entire team can gift 3 hooks to 1 person
Killers that soft-tunnel are punished because you will force killer to evenly distribute hook states
Proxy camper get punished because you can leave survivors for whomping 120 seconds and then gift hook-states so that the person after being unhooked is not punished for being on death hook. you can rush gens while killer sits around hooks doing nothing. typically leaving survivors on hooks to go 2nd stage only to unhook them before they die results in killer tunneling them because they're on death hook. this perk removes risk of putting people on death hook in early game and allows survivors to weaponize hook trading against the killer.
he killer taking a minimum 6 hooks to kill 1 person is double hooks compared to before in which tunneling only requires 3 hooks. If a killer alternatives between two survivors and ignores other two survivors, this perk will artificially make killer to spread hooks evenly to be 1 1 1 1 instead of 2 2 0 0. It means you get worst start as killer every single game.
However, this requires at least three survivors to all equip the perk, and to take turns doing the rescue, even if that's otherwise sub-optimal, and if the killer catches any of them at the hook, its value is immediately nullified since the user is brought from zero to death hook in one hit.
You're acting like this is an automatic feature that's basekitted in, as opposed to eating a big chunk of survivor perks, on top of the extra time required to coordinate a daisy chain of StBs. Leon's right next to the hook but has a single hook state? Gonna have to wait for Felix to trudge all the way over from the other side of the map, it's his turn to do an unhook now.
Killers that soft-tunnel are punished because you will force killer to evenly distribute hook states
Considering the game is perfectly winnable with evenly distributed hookstates, especially if all survivors have to drop an entire perk for it AND gift the killer a free extra perk (Make your Choice) on steroids, AND have to be sub-optimal with their unhooks, I don't see this as a problem.
Proxy camper get punished because you can leave survivors for whomping 120 seconds and then gift hook-states so that the person after being unhooked is not punished for being on death hook. you can rush gens while killer sits around hooks doing nothing. typically leaving survivors on hooks to go 2nd stage only to unhook them before they die results in killer tunneling them because they're on death hook. this perk removes risk of putting people on death hook in early game and allows survivors to weaponize hook trading against the killer.
Then maybe don't play AFK killer? If you actively go out to disrupt the survivors and spread your hooks yourself, this perk doesn't come into play at all. It's only if you tunnel or camp that this perk can potentially be a problem, though the exposed effect is there to reward you for tunnelling/camping anyway.
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@Massquwatt said:
I don't think the increased exposed on shoulder the burden is even worth complaining about at all. It's like everybody forgot what the perk was for. It's not meant to help YOU survive, it's meant to help the OTHER survive. You quite literally take a hook state away from someone, nothing else in the game even does that so spending a while being exposed for it? Fine by me. If it's really that huge of an issue for you just ruin vigil to cut a huge chunk of the timer.
Question though: what's the benefit?
Because taking someone else's hookstate, barring some altruism gimmick, doesn't benefit you unless the target is getting tunnelled. But a tunnelling killer is likely to return to hook upon unhook, in which case this perk gives exposed for a cheaper down, at which point you are on death hook.
It's effectively an anti-tunnel perk, but the exposed effect benefits tunnelling killers disproportionately, defeating the perk's purpose.
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@danielmaster87 said:
Because getting an extra hook state is the most broken thing in the game?! You're lucky the perk exists at all! If killers had the level of influence you imply, the perk would never be made.
You're not getting an extra hookstate, it just transfers one.
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@ImWinston said:
- we are forgetting "Clean Break"... why use this perk when "solidarity" already exists and does its job 100 times better (and faster)??? I'm shocked that Devs completely forgot about "solidarity" when they invented "clean break"🤣
Solidarity is not the same, and doesn't do the same job better.
Clean Break does not require you to be injured in order to prepare it, making it much more consistently usable, and it effectively gives you 100%, instead of 70%. It does add, as a drawback, that Clean Break is interruptible.
That's not to say it didn't need a buff, since it definitely could easily have gotten away with a timer reduction, but Clean Break is, for a change, an actually decent survivor perk. And I would much prefer it over Solidarity.
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@Devil_hit11 said:
i disagree on OP post. Shoulder of Burden is one of the most overpowered perk to ever enter dbd. The reason why this perk is overpowered is because when 4 survivor use the perk, they chain all their hook state in global hook state counter which 6.
Normally every survivor has 3 hook states. With this perk, every survivor gets 6 hook states. it takes twice number of hooks for killer to eliminate a single survivor from the game. that's absurdly powerful. A common known sentiment in dbd is that early game is strongest part for survivor because while 4 survivor are alive, the killer is on backfoot. This perk prologues the game to have 4 survivors in the match meaning that killer cannot leverage any advantage on hooks anymore.
It is strong for soloq, it is strong for swf and there is almost 0 reason to not select this perk on every survivor build. the perk single handily has potencial to delete all tunneling plays from killer.
Normally every survivor has 3 hook states. With this perk, every survivor gets 6 hook states.
Did you forget the hook state gets moved, not deleted?
It's not 'every survivor gets 6 hook states'. ONE survivor can get up to 6 hook states, getting one extra for every other survivor that brings the perk, but for every hook state they get extra, one of those survivors loses one.
So rather than 'every survivor' getting 6 hook states, it's ONE survivor that gets 6, in exchange for the other three going down to 2 hook states. (That, and it requires 3 perk slots)
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This perk is usable, has a benefit, and its condition is reasonably likely to present itself in an average match.
By modern survivor perk standards, that's really OP.
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It's to be expected. If BHVR makes a mistake, their next step is usually to double down on it.
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I don't really have anything on the killer wishlist, but I'll add Jesse Faden to the survivor list. In part because her being a para-utilitarian gives a ton of creative liberty to come up with interesting perks.
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@Vishlumbra said:
It tells you jack about balance, that's gameplay design. It's got nothing to do with balance.
Game design sets the rules and mechanics, while balance ensures those rules are fair and fun. Balance is part of game design—they work together to make the game enjoyable. Survivors often want an easier time because bad teammates can be frustrating, but at a decent skill level, survivors already have a huge chance of winning, especially against 34 out of the 37 killers in the game.
But, like I always say, nothing ever feels good enough for some survivors unless it’s the most extreme, overpowered buffs imaginable. Hell, there are even people asking for survivor buffs in the 2v8 mode—it’s ridiculous. At this rate, they might as well make killers incapable of killing—wouldn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, right?
Survivors often want an easier time because bad teammates can be frustrating, but at a decent skill level, survivors already have a huge chance of winning
I suppose 40% can technically be considered a 'huge chance', yeah. I mean, there is a realistic chance that survivors win a match. But if that's the hill you want to die on, it's not the survivors that are expecting the other party to play for their amusement, is it?
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@Vishlumbra said:
I say let’s make killers incapable of killing, remove hooks and just have them running like bots chasing survivors. That would make it fun, keep survivors feelings untouched.
Btw, every single point made is not about AI, is about facts. When you can finish 70% of your objective by holding a mouse button and pressing the space bar in the first 3 minutes of a game, that should tell you something about balance, suppose that’s not enough, let’s just make killers puppies chasing cars, a nice utopian arcade no challenge dumb game so it dies.
God. This forum makes me sick. I’ll take another break from it.I say let’s make killers incapable of killing, remove hooks and just have them running like bots chasing survivors. That would make it fun, keep survivors feelings untouched.
Killers are winning the majority of their matches, certainly winning more than they're losing, killrates over 50% across the board, but whenever someone suggests that maybe we don't need to buff killers further, or could do something to make the game more playable for survivors, you come out swinging as though people are demanding a third health state.
Btw, every single point made is not about AI, is about facts. When you can finish 70% of your objective by holding a mouse button and pressing the space bar in the first 3 minutes of a game, that should tell you something about balance.
It tells you jack about balance, that's gameplay design. It's got nothing to do with balance.
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@Vishlumbra said:
I think it gives a perspective. There’s a lot of evidence in how’s the game balance atm.
Competitive? Rules that favor killers, forbidden perks for survivors and still if a killer gets a kill with a normal middle tier killer is a miracle. You can go check right now the final played yesterday.
Swf? Still favors survivors. By a lot.
The new perk? Insanely strong when used with good players that are trying to win.
2 vs 8? Map wide aura read, no regress, instant heals, no hooks, unbreakables, unlimited pallets.
3 killers that are stronger than the rest by a lot.
What? About 10-15 outdated killers that urgently need reworks and / or buffs?
Fun part is this calculation did not consider items and add ons.
I think the dumb thing is trying to buff survivor further cause you get Johnny “I’m doing challenges” or Jenny “I give up on hook immediately”.
If game balance is not founded in whats possible, at some point the competitive aspect dies.
I think it gives a perspective.
No, it reinforces your bias.
Fun part is this calculation did not consider items and add ons.
I can guarantee you that it didn't consider anything. The AI does not understand DBD nor anything about macro play unless it has, itself, played enough matches to incorporate those things.
Because for all of this doom talk, no one has ever been able to substantiate any of these claims about disparagingly low kill/win rates, and every time the stats get released, killers are doing fine or better.
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@Vishlumbra said:
What I learned from this forum is that Survivors mains want the killer to be a prop. Just a bot chasing them, but making sure they can escape every trial.
It´s not hard to see how a decent group of survivors can win a match easily. With the new perk coming tomorrow, is just borderline insane expecting more buffs to survivors.
I actually asked AI to calculate the chances of a killer getting a 3k (a win) vs a group of survivors using good perks inclusing shoulder the burden.
- Hits Needed for 3K: ~25-30 hits across the match, accounting for resets and hook trades. NOTE: 25-30 HITS.
- Chance for 3K: ~20%-25% against top-tier survivors with Shoulder the Burden, healing perks, and strong coordination.
- With a high-tier killer and optimal play: ~40%-50%. Nurse, Blight and Hillbilly. So 34 killers have lower than 30% chance.
Lower-tier killers like Trapper or Onryō might struggle, with their chances falling below ~15%-20%.
If you are FAIR and understand that a good looper can take 1-2 minutes to drop with 2 hits, well, imagine doing that 15 times and still win.
I actually asked AI to calculate the chances of a killer getting a 3k (a win) vs a group of survivors using good perks inclusing shoulder the burden.
The only thing dumber than trying to compress DBD into a quick equation, is AI.
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@danielmaster87 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3843700#Comment_3843700
No. I think you're arguing in bad faith. You're critiquing allegedly "feelings"-based thoughts, and say stats matter over everything, but then argue that killers' subjective (feeling-based) arguments are worth less or none at all compared to survivors' subjective arguments. And you're making the same mistake as the devs by looking just at the stats. The devs need experience-based input as well, to figure out what's wrong with the game.
Killers have not had control of this game at all, because the gameplay loop and meta that survivors engage in has not changed. Virtually all benefits granted to killers in that "game ruining" 6.1.0 patch have been done away with or cancelled out. There are loops where, if the survivor knows how to run it, a killer has to waste a guaranteed amount of time to catch up to them, with no chance of mindgame shortcuts. When time is what the killers are fighting against, because the gen speed is too fast for them to physically stop, and they can't be in 4 places at once, a single chase like that can be game-losing. I could go on, but the point is that stuff like this isn't subjective; it's a matter of fact. I'll start questioning the average killer player's skill or game sense as soon as a somewhat even playing field has been established, but we have yet to see that in this game, because the math says gens are faster than the combined chases. Despite the handful of gifted killer players who manage to defy the odds, and win very consistently, it doesn't dispute that math.
You're critiquing allegedly "feelings"-based thoughts, and say stats matter over everything, but then argue that killers' subjective (feeling-based) arguments are worth less or none at all compared to survivors' subjective arguments.
That's not what I said at all. My observation is that the opposite is true in the attitude some forum killers have on here. Their subjective opinion is decided to be the objective truth or consensus, and anyone that speaks against it must be acting in bad faith, or must be bad.
That's also why these are often couched in pressuring language. "Everyone knows that…" "If you're not lead-tier MMR…" "Even you should agree…"
Killers have not had control of this game at all, because the gameplay loop and meta that survivors engage in has not changed. Virtually all benefits granted to killers in that "game ruining" 6.1.0 patch have been done away with or cancelled out.
If that was the case, we'd see a return to pre-6.1 figures, and we didn't. The reality is that, no, they haven't been done away with or cancelled out, people just forgot a bunch of the buffs that got included in 6.1. And honestly, that happened within like two months of the patch dropping.
When time is what the killers are fighting against, because the gen speed is too fast for them to physically stop, and they can't be in 4 places at once, a single chase like that can be game-losing.
And one survivor being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time can swing a 0K to a 4K. This isn't a hardship that's unique to killers.
I could go on, but the point is that stuff like this isn't subjective; it's a matter of fact.
Oh, we'll get to these 'facts'.
I'll start questioning the average killer player's skill or game sense as soon as a somewhat even playing field has been established, but we have yet to see that in this game, because the math says gens are faster than the combined chases. Despite the handful of gifted killer players who manage to defy the odds, and win very consistently, it doesn't dispute that math.
If killers can consistently win under any variety of restrictions and conditions, what would it take for you to declare a playing field 'even'?
Because right now, you're positioning yourself as the sole, subjective arbiter of when a playing field is 'even', and anything that doesn't fit your judgement is disregarded.
@danielmaster87 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3843810#Comment_3843810
What choice? To lose? I've already explained this:
Whether you're talking about high level players, or even average players at this point, if it's not a mismatch (one side knows what they're doing while the other doesn't), then the survivors should win by default. The math says that killers need to be hooking someone every 30 seconds or so, to kill them before they do the gens and get out. You can only come close to that time efficiency by tunneling and camping, meaning that just chasing without tunneling and camping, mathematically, should be an automatic loss. I can't explain it simpler than that.
The math says that killers need to be hooking someone every 30 seconds or so, to kill them before they do the gens and get out.
And this is where we get to the 'facts' that you prop up.
How do you math this out? How do you account for a survivor circling a different way around an obstacle to stay out of killer sight? How do you account for a survivor not doing this because the killer went a different way? How do you account for a skillcheck popping up when a survivor lets go of a gen? How do you account for the killer happening upon the person going for the rescue? How do you account for the time it takes for two survivors to find one another so they can heal? How do you account for the time it takes the survivors to find the right hex totem? How do you account for a chase being brought into the area where gens are done?
You -cannot- math out DBD. It's not a game of maths. It is WAY too complicated to be reduced to something as simplistic as 5 x 90 > 12 x 30.
This isn't 'facts'. This is desperate guesswork.
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@Vishlumbra said:
Which killers, though?
Because this seems to be a sentiment shared by a handful of killer players who seem to consistently complain about how hard the game is, and immediately attributing it to game balance.
As opposed to, perhaps, their own competence.
If the game's difficulty were purely about individual competence, why do lower-tier killers consistently underperform at high MMR? Shouldn't they all be equally viable if it's just about skill? Also… comp.
The balance issue arises because survivors have access to tools and teamwork that scale exceptionally well when used efficiently, while killers often rely on strategies like tunneling or camping to stabilize games. These strategies aren’t about incompetence; they’re about compensating for the pressure that 4 survivors can generate when objectives are completed in 80 seconds with optimal play.
And although streamers can't be taken as representative of the player base as a whole, they do represent some fraction of the spectrum of players, and everyone gets to see them perform at whatever level they can manage. And there's one streamer I watch who regularly dominates nearly every match I've ever seen them play as killer without resorting to tunneling or camping, which suggests that it is definitely possible to do that. It might not be possible to do with all killers, and there might be a fraction of survivor players who can dominate every match they play, but it appears there aren't a large enough number of these super dominant survivor players to prevent some killer players from winning at an extremely high rate. From my own experience in game, I've also never reached a level where I thought the survivors were so good that I couldn't get a 3k in at least some of my games if I just kept improving.
It’s important to recognize that what a skilled streamer can achieve isn’t necessarily representative of what the average or even above-average killer player can consistently accomplish. Streamers often play with thousands of hours of experience, near-perfect map knowledge, and optimized strategies. Additionally, they may benefit from survivor behavior that isn’t always optimal due to the casual nature of many public matches.
Moreover, not all killers are created equal. The streamer you mentioned may dominate with specific killers or under certain conditions, but weaker killers require significantly more effort to achieve the same level of pressure. The same applies to map design—killers without mobility can struggle on large maps, even in skilled hands. The difficulty disparity between killers is an acknowledged design choice, but it does mean that balance issues affect different killers unequally.
It’s also worth saying that survivor skill scales differently. A single skilled survivor can loop a killer for an extended period, but a coordinated team with voice communication exponentially increases the pressure on a killer. This creates scenarios where tunneling or camping becomes less about lack of skill and more about adapting to overwhelming survivor efficiency in the absence of coordinated teammates on the killer's side.
If a small fraction of survivor players dominate matches, as you suggest, shouldn’t we also consider that a small fraction of killer players can dominate without tunneling or camping? Wouldn’t it be fair to focus balance on what’s feasible for the majority of players rather than a few highly skilled individuals?
Personal thoughts:
Statistics from platforms like NightLight demonstrate that survivor escape rates generally range from 40% to 52%, depending on factors like skill, perk usage, and teamwork. These stats often combine all survivors into one category, as survivors fundamentally share the same tools and objectives. However, for killers, this kind of amalgamation is impossible due to their vastly different power levels and mechanics. Balancing killers is much more nuanced, as some killers (like Nurse and Blight) have extremely high skill ceilings and dominance at top levels, while others (like Trapper, Clown, and Myers) are considered borderline unviable due to their outdated mechanics, reliance on RNG, or inability to apply consistent pressure.
Many killers urgently need reworks or buffs to make them competitive. Trapper, for instance, is heavily dependent on map RNG and preparation time, which modern survivor tools and perks nullify with ease. Killers like Clown or Myers lack the mobility or utility necessary to keep up with high-pressure survivor playstyles, making them extremely challenging to play effectively even at average skill levels. This discrepancy highlights a fundamental issue: while survivors function as a relatively uniform group, killers face a balance spectrum so wide that some are effectively excluded from competitive play.
Balancing Dead by Daylight must address the unique struggles of both survivors and killers. Survivors' universal tools and shared mechanics make balancing their stats straightforward, but killer balance requires addressing the glaring disparities between strong and weak killers. Ignoring this reality risks alienating a significant portion of the player base who enjoy playing less viable killers but feel left behind due to outdated design.
If balance continues to cater to survivor preferences—such as nerfing strategies like camping or tunneling without compensating weaker killers—it risks reducing the game to an unchallenging experience that undermines the satisfaction of victory. The developers should focus on making all killers viable, balancing the game for achievable fairness rather than appeasing demands for ease, ensuring every match retains its tension, challenge, and sense of accomplishment.
The balance issue arises because survivors have access to tools and teamwork that scale exceptionally well when used efficiently, while killers often rely on strategies like tunneling or camping to stabilize games. These strategies aren’t about incompetence; they’re about compensating for the pressure that 4 survivors can generate when objectives are completed in 80 seconds with optimal play.
Killers relying on tunnelling and camping are self-fulfilling prophecies. Every win with those tactics gets chalked up to that without exploring what the killer could've done without it. And as others have mentioned, crutching your way up above your MMR without expanding your skillset to match that new MMR is going to make the game feel slanted against you.
@danielmaster87 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3843512#Comment_3843512
Most of the killer cast. Basically anyone but top 3, S tier.
We're attributing it to game balance because it is the game's balance that's at fault. I have confidence that most of the experienced survivor players, as many biased survivor mains as there are, would agree with us. I'll say it but hopefully others have thought of it: Of the complaints that we killer mains had 4 years ago, or 2000-3000 hours of playtime ago, a lot probably had lack of experience/skill as factor. I'm no longer an ill-tempered recruit, but a seasoned veteran on both roles, at least by the average player's standards (some still don't know doing gens is how you win). And yet, I'm still having the same issues. We all are. The gens are too fast, good loopers waste too much time/are near impossible to catch, and killer keeps getting nerfed while SWF never gets touched. I'll dedicate some of my losses to my platform and my compatibility with it. A joystick just isn't the same as a mouse, and neither are the sensitivity settings compared to PC, so I'll genuinely miss an attack, maybe even 2, in a match. But I practically trained my chase/game sense alone for the last year or 2 where I continually said, "Gen defense isn't worth it against good survivors. Use chase/endgame instead!" I got better at chase, at camping, at tunneling, at slugging, at dropping chase when necessary, at letting a gen go when necessary, at settling for a draw rather than a loss, and at knowing when to take the big risk to get a 4k. I stay away from Nurse/Blight/Spirit because I just don't want to rely on them always. I've become good with many complex/weaker killers like Wraith, Clown, Demogorgon, Deathslinger, Unknown, Alien, and I've 4k'd with them many times, through hard work and force of will.
The survivors on the other hand have never felt more mediocre, and they're seeing better results. I feel it as survivor. We're losing a match, and all of a sudden me and 1 other hop on a gen, and now all the gens are done, when before they were going at a snail's pace. "Wow, so we could have just done that at any point!" I sarcastically say every time. The average survivor player really isn't that good compared to the average killer. They prioritize heals over everything, won't do stuff until healed, hide when they have no hooks and their teammates are on death hook, do chests and dull totems, don't know how to run no-mindgame tiles like shack and jungle gyms, waste pallets after getting hit. I see them more and more all the time, no matter how much I escape and push my MMR up. It's as if 90% of ladder is MMR hell, because it's so simple to escape as survivor that so many do it, not knowing some of the most basic game knowledge on how to beat decent killers. They give up constantly too, something I almost never see killers do. And eventually they do die, and me with them... because of them.
It comes down to MMR. That's the X factor that runs this whole machine. When MMR first launched, it was perfect. You knew exactly what you were going to get in 95% of your matches: teammates and/or opponents who were of your level. But the devs have screwed it up hard. What it does now, as an end result of counting just escapes and kills as a measurement of your caliber, is it puts you and 1 other good teammate with 2 potatoes, up against a decent killer. If the killer realizes they're the weak link and tunnel them out, you're done. The killer doesn't even have to play well at that point, because you've been playing a 2v1 essentially. If the killer chases you instead, most likely y'all escape, as long as teammates know "Do gens = win." And yet, if you're good with killer, you get non-stop tough matches. They don't have to play well. Just as long as they do gens, you'll have a major uphill battle. Against a good SWF, it's basically impossible to win. They have too much control, too many tools and not enough pressure on them. But we don't see this imbalance with the naked eye. MMR hides it, and I believe that's what it's designed to do. It orchestrates the 60/40 kill/escape rate. It forces mismatches on ladder (90% MMR hell), and gives good killers constant tough, gen-efficient opponents at high MMR, to manufacture that 60% kill rate. And people look at that state, recite it, and that's it. No in-depth discussion of any kind. Just "That's what the stats say." The stats are garbage, and don't tell you the story of a match, and we've always known this. A killer getting 2 kills could have got 2 hooks, and was getting destroyed the whole match, or he could have got 10 hooks, put in a ton of work and got a draw by default because gen speed.
We've had our differences, you and I, but I think you can agree with at least some of what I've said. I simply combine the facts with my experience and others' experience, to conclude that killer is bad off (due to balance), solo is bad off (due to matchmaking, not balance), and SWF remains the untouched power role. You may have had different experience and interpret the information differently, but that's the point. The feedback loop of bad balance and MMR skewing results is what has deceived and confused us all.
But as usual, this entire wall of text just comes down to 'feeling'.
'I feel like the game is unbalanced, therefor it is'.
There is nothing to back any of that up. Kill rates are higher in high MMR than low, and even with 4-man swiffers at the highest ranks, the escape rate doesn't touch 50%. All of these notions of how unbalanced the game is all stem from a few killer players feeling overwhelmed, even if they are still perfectly capable of pulling off a win. Heck, that right there is probably the reason for the trend of 'Look how overpowered X survivor thing is!' + Screenshot of a 4K. There's plenty of killers out there that consider the match lost by the time the third gen pops, with no regard for diminished resources on the survivor side, or the gradually constricting playfield.
There's a lot of fingerpointing to competitive level play, of which the balance continues to be unproven, but then there's silence about average play where certain streamers have shown more than once that killers can perform outrageously well, even with a bunch of extra restrictions. But despite that, a couple of killer players that feel that the game's unfair will demand more buffs for killers.
You can have your subjective opinion, and that's fine, but it's really tiring that the subjective opinions of survivors keep getting bowled over by those of killers, while the stats back up the survivors.
There's an uphill battle for ya.
It also feels like killers aren't really moving to address anything swiffers do, just pulling out the 'swiffer is the power role somehow despite still not hitting 50% winrate at high MMR' card whenever there's a discussion on balance. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one that's ever suggested basekitting some kind of defense against rampant unhook denial. Everyone else mostly keeps their mouth shut until it's time to defend tunnelling and camping.
And if we're going to talk about how the game feels, it genuinely feels like killers have been in charge of balance practically since 6.1. So if these issues are still flapping around, maybe there's a problem with the killer community's ability to read the game.
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@Vishlumbra said:
Camping and Tunneling Are Necessary for Killers to Win
High-level survivors complete generators so efficiently that killers often resort to camping or tunneling to regain control of the game. While criticized as "unfun" tactics, these strategies are sometimes the only way killers can compete against well-coordinated teams.
Balance Favors SWF Teams Over Solo Players
Solo queue survivors frequently struggle compared to coordinated SWFs, who can share information, strategize, and counter killer tactics effectively. Meanwhile, killers have no equivalent teamwork mechanic, leaving them at a significant disadvantage in SWF-heavy matches.
The Game Balances Killers at Their Peak and Survivors at Their Weakest
Balancing is often based on killers performing at their maximum potential and survivors playing solo or with minimal coordination. This makes killers seem disproportionately strong in theory but doesn’t account for real-world factors like survivor coordination in SWF (Survive With Friends) groups, which greatly tips the balance against killers in practice.
The 40% Escape Rate doesn’t mean a 60% Killer Win Rate
Behavior Interactive has stated that survivors escape 40% of the time, but this doesn’t translate to killers winning 60% of matches. For killers, a "win" typically means defeating at least 3 survivors out of 4, which is more challenging than the flat percentage suggests. This discrepancy often leads to misinterpretations about the balance between roles.
Killers bear the responsibility for Game Pacing
Unlike survivors, who can focus on a single objective (generators), killers must simultaneously manage multiple objectives: chasing, hooking, preventing rescues, and patrolling gens. This disparity makes playing killer far more stressful and demanding.
Updates feel reactionary
Many updates are driven by community outcry rather than long-term strategy. Some changes address vocal complaints but lead to new issues or unbalanced mechanics.
To the developers:
Balance should strive to reflect the realities of the game, not merely the desires of those who want an easier survival experience. Making the game easier for survivors risks removing the core challenges and sense of accomplishment that make Dead by Daylight rewarding. A game without tension, stakes, or the potential for failure loses its heart.
Survivors often feel powerless because they are dependent on three teammates whose skill levels or willingness to engage may vary wildly. This isn’t a flaw of killer strength—it’s a natural consequence of teamwork mechanics. On the other side, not all killers are equally powerful or capable of handling high-level survivor play, which further complicates balancing efforts.
Instead of balancing based on extremes—killers at their peak performance or survivors at their lowest—consider practical solutions that acknowledge these nuances. Encourage fair play without over-penalizing strategies like tunneling or slugging, which are often necessary responses to coordinated survivor efficiency. Design changes should reflect what’s feasible and fun for all players while maintaining the core asymmetrical challenge that makes DBD unique.
The goal should be a fair, engaging experience for killers and survivors alike, where skill matters, but the game remains unpredictable and thrilling.
High-level survivors complete generators so efficiently that killers often resort to camping or tunneling to regain control of the game. While criticized as "unfun" tactics, these strategies are sometimes the only way killers can compete against well-coordinated teams.
Which killers, though?
Because this seems to be a sentiment shared by a handful of killer players who seem to consistently complain about how hard the game is, and immediately attributing it to game balance.
As opposed to, perhaps, their own competence.
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@Vishlumbra said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3838687#Comment_3838687
That's on the players though. We had little trouble and if we could do it, those better than us can as well. We asked a similar question in the previous post that's relevant here: What could the devs reward that would be acceptable? What would be worth it for people to follow this gameplay?
Halloween event (Haunted by Daylight) gave a nice bonus to bloodpoints in the form of pumpkins, opening portals and even using the void crystals, each of those rewarded the players, also extended the matches and they granted an extra advantage to both sides if they did such sidequests. I think that we need to take a look at interactions between perks, generator repair time and in general, extend the game a bit.
The fact that some skilled players manage to recover doesn’t mean that every killer can, especially without support or incentives. With the wide range of player skill levels, any gameplay adjustments need to work for the broader player base, not just the elite few. Balance isn’t about what some players can do; it’s about providing a fair baseline for everyone. By offering rewards or adjustments that encourage certain gameplay styles, developers could create more positive experiences for both sides, regardless of skill.
Survivors are naturally rewarded for cooperation, healing, and unhooking—things that make the game more fun for everyone. Killers don’t have the same incentives for spreading hooks or going easy on certain tactics. Adding rewards for these styles of play could really balance out the experience.
And here's where our point is proven. See one of us actually tried a competitive tournament back in 2018 (don't remember exact date) and there were a different rules than what you stated here. Then you point that survivors being handicapped which brings multiple thoughts such as "why are people worried enough about that to install a rule?" and "these people camp this much and are supposed to be the best?" and the like. If the killer camps it's no wonder gens go fast, the killer isn't being a threat.
Well first of all rules have changed because the game has changed and evolved.
The need for camping or tunneling often reflects the balance issues within the game. Competitive players may use these strategies because they’re effective, but if killers feel forced into these methods, it signals areas where DbD could provide more tools for killers to play effectively without limiting survivor interactivity. When survivors complete gens too quickly, killers often feel they have no choice but to camp or tunnel to have a chance at catching up. It’s not that killers want to play this way—it’s a response to survivors speeding through objectives. If survivors weren’t rushing as much, killers could play more strategically across the map
Maybe it's because those players rely on said strategies to much and are bluntly unable to do much else? It shows what works best for them as each and every player is different. It's a similar vein to how many killers have a "main" who they excel with and suck with others even if they're considered "high tier".
The competitive meta has naturally adapted to survivors working in teams with efficient coordination. Survivors have access to perks, items, and strategies that can make them significantly harder to catch or eliminate. Tunneling and slugging counteract these advantages, rebalancing situations where survivors may be trying to outpace the killer entirely by focusing solely on generators or using "second chance" perks like Decisive Strike and Borrowed Time. You are also implying that profesional players that get paid to win are bad?
League is different than DBD. League is an actual competitive game, DBD is no where close. DBD has much less players than League. DBD has more ways for players to straight up make others miserable for no practical reason than League (League to its credit can make players miserable but it's atleast in a practical sense).
Balancing a game isn’t about preventing players from having fun; it’s about ensuring that both sides can win if they use effective strategies. Riot Games balances League of Legends based on the highest potential of each champion, which creates a fair playing field, even if it sometimes results in certain champions or strategies being less enjoyable for some. This type of balancing would make sense in DBD, too, so killers and survivors each have a fair shot at success based on skill rather than relying on “feelings-based” changes.
Tunneling and slugging aren’t about making the game “miserable.” They’re responses to how fast survivors can complete objectives, which is often faster than killers can reliably manage without these strategies. If DBD were balanced purely around “fun” feelings without considering practical in-game needs, killers would have to rely on suboptimal tactics and struggle to succeed consistently, leading to more frustration on their end.
Extra necessary objectives would be fine with us but as we've seen how much gens can possibly regress it's would be unwise to implement. Some of these can be flipped to the killer. They might have had that idea with what happens when killers utilize the strategies you say are necessary with multiple perks that make things a pain (side note: what makes survivors truly unhookable? We can only think of temporary). We thought we weren't balancing things based on "an utopian concept of people acting by the approved norms of niceness." So why add a slowdown that can be used regardless if said strategies are used or not (disregarding the fact that people sadly only did pumpkins when effectively forced and currently totems work under this same idea)
Balancing based on strategic effectiveness isn’t the same as balancing around “niceness.” Killers who tunnel or slug often do so to control the game due to the pressure they face, not to be disruptive or “unkind.” Rather than enforcing “niceness,” balancing around alternative objectives allows for fairer strategic choices that can diminish the necessity for killers to use these tactics as frequently.
So we're unsure of what specifically your addressing here so if we missed the point we'll apologize and ask for specific things. When perks change they affect each killer differently yes but we ask why on occasions that's not enough? Since reworking takes more time and effort why not use these as stp gap measures?
Reworking perks frequently introduces new meta cycles and forces players to readjust, which can be disruptive. While perk reworks can be useful, they’re best when supporting a solid foundation rather than compensating for underlying balance issues.
We don't repeat this to be mean, we repeat this cause it seems true to us: your arguments are not doing a good job of what you're trying to do.
We're ignoring this next paragraph cause "impossible to win" is heavily untrue.
As for the math, we've stated to others that clean numbers don't work in DBD because of one important element: the human element. Humans are prone to errors, which adds unknown variables in those clean numbers.
Asking to attend both sides equally? My only argument is that if you end up implementing perks that try to counter complaints, could be useful to ask yourselves why such strategies began.
The math was released by BH, not me, and it´s "shady" at best, people believe that the actual win rate across the board for every killer is 60% which is not correct, each survivor has a 40% survival rate, variables, "human element" (as you mention) so I am a bit lost in what point you are trying to make. I am ASKING for balance, not defending tunneling and slugging, which I dont even do, hell I play Sadako…
When im mediating and saying sure, prevent strategies that are unfun for survivors, just make sure you check why killers rely on such strategies and you just try to shut down the thought completly, well, it comes across as just lazy, biased or annoyed. Idk.
I’m kinda tired of forums. I’m taking a break from you all.
Asking to attend both sides equally? My only argument is that if you end up implementing perks that try to counter complaints, could be useful to ask yourselves why such strategies began.
I get the feeling that you're fishing to hear one particular answer, and unfortunately, it's not that simple.
'Because it's necessary' is not the whole of it. You stated earlier that killers don't do it to be mean, but I can guarantee you that some of them do.
And in general, people tend to take the path of least resistance. So, hypothetically, if tunnelling were to be blatantly overpowered, would people not gravitate to such a tactic?
The math was released by BH, not me
No, this is very much your math. BHVR has not released any winrate statistics, to my knowledge.
people believe that the actual win rate across the board for every killer is 60% which is not correct, each survivor has a 40% survival rate, variables, "human element" (as you mention) so I am a bit lost in what point you are trying to make.
Pretty sure no one has ever insinuated that the winrate for every killer is 60%, but it's certainly higher than 40%, or the projected 47-something that you conjured up with your dice-roller. Going by Nightlight statistics, for example, would indicate that most killers tip over the 50% in terms of winrates, far in excess of the winrates for the survivors they face.
I can tell you that this math tangent is a waste of time. DBD's killrate-winrate relationship is far too complex to be caught in a neat equation, especially since it shifts per killer. Some killers achieve higher winrates on lower killrates, for crying out loud.
The relevance of the 60% kill-rate is that someone in BHVR's employ once stated that that is a benchmark the developers have targeted because it works well for the horror atmosphere while being relatively balanced.
True balance would require the target kill rate to be lower, but that's not something BHVR is aiming at, and I'm pretty sure most everyone is well past asking for such a thing by now.
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@jesterkind said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3835405#Comment_3835405
Depends on context, I think.
Hypothetically you could use the time you would've spent healing on generator repair, which would be a legitimate benefit, since it's a passive heal. It's also got the benefit of (I assume) not being affected by stuff like Mangled, Leverage, Coulrophobia, etc so you can pseudo-counter those while doing gens or other actions.
I haven't gotten onto the PTB yet but if it works the way I assume it does, it'll be super niche but perfectly usable.
There's also a bit of niche synergy with perks that rely on injury, like Resilience and particularly Desperate Measures.
Ever had Desperate Measures while you're injured, come across another injured survivor, and no matter what, you can't convince them to let you heal them first to max out the DM value? This perk fixes that.
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Nah, it's more like:
Once you have healed another survivor, the perk activates. While the perk is active, you can activate it while getting healed by another survivor to become broken for 60 seconds. If you do not go down in those 60 seconds, you are healed automatically.
So it's basically like an anti-haemorrhagic syringe, except it takes 60 seconds to function. It -can- save as much time as a single heal, but it's risky.
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It's stupid.
The perk by itself is already a tough sell, since it doesn't really give much value to the survivor team, but they had to one-up it by making a mediocre effect get snowed in with extra drawbacks.
'You scream and become exposed'? Really, BHVR?
So if the tunneller does as tunnellers do, and makes their way back to the hook, they now get a free down on what was possibly a healthy survivor and slap them on the hook immediately. So a survivor just ran in, traded places with another survivor, and just became the new tunnel target, effectively changing nothing.
Kudos.
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@Potato_Survivor said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3834082#Comment_3834082
Ironic how you call out skill issue with the zillion second chance perks you have
'Second chance perks'?
What year is this? Did we go back in time?
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@drsoontm said:
It shouldn't be so difficult to grasp, but apparently it is.
Here are the measured escape rates offered by BHVR:
https://us.v-cdn.net/6030815/uploads/GQZCFWUBEUV2/image.png
These are averages.
In essence, the mean escape rates varies between 40% and 48%
These past few days, many posts have questioned the rates, completely ignoring the past of the game.
Maybe this will help them think a bit.
A killer wins when he sacrifices more than two survivors. The draw and loss are implicitly 2 kills and less than two kills.
What does these rates mean in practice for the killer?
A 40% mean escape rate means the killer will win about 47% of the time.
A 48% mean escape rate means the killer will win about 34% of the time. Yes, in high MMR, against an SWF killers lose about two third of their matches.
You don't believe me? Simulate it!
The following python* code plays many matches and escapes survivors with the given mean escape rate.
It counts the escapes per matches and then computes the killer wins, losses and draws.
#!/usr/bin/python # by yours truly, drsoontm import random import sys DEFAULT_RATE = 40 SIMULATION_COUNT = 100000 SURVIVOR_COUNT = 4 DRAW = SURVIVOR_COUNT / 2 def dbdsimulate(rate, simulation_count, as_csv): killer_wins = 0 killer_losses = 0 for j in range(0, simulation_count): escape_count = 0 for i in range(0, SURVIVOR_COUNT): escaped = random.uniform(0, 100) <= rate if escaped: escape_count += 1 if escape_count > DRAW: killer_losses += 1 elif escape_count < DRAW: killer_wins += 1 wr = (100.0 * killer_wins) / simulation_count lr = (100.0 * killer_losses) / simulation_count dr = 100.0 - (wr + lr) if as_csv: print(f"{rate};{wr:.2f};{lr:.2f};{dr:.2f}") else: print(f"r: {rate}% w: {wr:.2f}% l: {lr:.2f}% d: {dr:.2f}%") def main(): rate = DEFAULT_RATE as_csv = False for arg in sys.argv[1:]: if arg == '--csv': as_csv = True else: try: rate = int(arg) if not 0 <= rate <= 100: print(f"{arg} isn't in [0; 100] and isn't --csv") sys.exit(1) except ValueError: print(f"{arg} isn't an integer and isn't --csv") sys.exit(2) dbdsimulate(rate, SIMULATION_COUNT, as_csv) if __name__ == '__main__': main()The program can accept an escape rate in [0;100] and —csv (dash dash c s v).
By default the escape rate is set to 40
Given the csv option, one can also look at the measured distribution:
edit: red: killer win rate, blue: survivor escape rate
https://us.v-cdn.net/6030815/uploads/JSYWDLTWCAH9/image.png
All in all, the "power role" (in the theme) only wins about half the time, which mean, as a team, survivors win about half the time too, on average, overall.
I'm also surprised to note that killers really tend to lose way more than survivors as a team at high MMR (against SWF4).
This should make very clear the balancing of the game is way better, overall, that what even the most reasonable among us think.
*python is the new basic. Even non-programmers can try it online (e.g. https://www.online-python.com/)
Not this again…
A 40% mean escape rate means the killer will win about 47% of the time.
You are not calculating this. You are not simulating this.
You are treating every game like a pure roll of the dice, and the thing is: DBD is not like that at all. The dice aren't even, they're weighted. Badly. And they're even weighted differently from killer to killer.
This argumentation has been tried before, multiple times, and it keeps missing pretty much every factor in the game. DBD is incredibly complicated, which means there IS no simple 'kill rate = win rate' conversion. Hell, sometimes killers with higher kill rates have lower winrates, for example with killers that are better at securing at least one kill in the endgame such as Bubba.
And to quickly demonstrate that they're not directly linked: Imagine if the devs decided to axe the hatch. What would that do for the kill rate, and what would that do for the win rate?
One of them would be changed, the other would not.
These micro-simulations where you just roll dice is not a representation of DBD.
60% is decidedly killer-sided. That one dev remark (Though I think it was Peanits that said it, and aren't they a community manager?) about the 60% target marking even lampshades this by saying that, with 60%, the game is still relatively balanced. That figure is picked because it works for the game's horror aesthetic, without breaking the balance -too much-. It is NOT the target for a balanced game.
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@A_T_E said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/431606/distortion-useless-now
Another thread whining about Distortion? Amazing.
This game is unplayable as a solo Victim
What do you think people did before Distortion was even in the game?
You rarely have a chance to save anyone
This is just nonsense.
Cashless cow. Moooooo
More whining nonsense.
Equip some chase perks, learn to actually play the game without attempting to hide the entire game, and you'll see how the game improves for you. If you can't play the game without Distortion, perhaps DBD isn't the game for you.
Equip some chase perks, learn to actually play the game without attempting to hide the entire game, and you'll see how the game improves for you. If you can't play the game without Distortion, perhaps DBD isn't the game for you.Here's another argument for aura reading having power-crept out of control.
Having your aura read is now a new baseline expectation, and Distortion, which literally does nothing except reset to baseline, is considered some violation of the game's rules or concept.
Aura reading has become the rule, rather than the exception.
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I don't know if these graphs show what you want them to show, because these suggest the nerfs were undeserved.
Absolute most stacked survivor set-up is still sub-50%. Nerfing that further would be the opposite of balance.
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@A_T_E said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3834089#Comment_3834089
The game isn't built around Victims "escaping" chases
Correct, Mr. Strawmanner, it's built around Victims staying alive. Not being cause (i.e. escaping chases) is what the game is built around. Not being caught is one way to not die, not being found is another, but you cannot do just one or the other.
You're expected to give up your position to the Killer
Simply incorrect.
How're you gonna call me a strawmanner when what I'm replying to is right there in your post?
Simply incorrect.
That was the exact and entire point of the Distortion nerf.
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@A_T_E said:
Distortion has one single charge
Distortion starts with 1 token*, fixed for you.
You can get up to 2 tokens, but you must get into chases. Learn to escape chases, like you're supposed to as a Victim.
The game is not built around survivors 'escaping' chases. You're expected to give up your position to the killer, then lead them on a long chase before you're eventually hooked.
With regards to the main topic: Boil Over is an atrocity that should never have had its original buff. It's incredibly bad for gameplay and should stay in a relatively unusable state, unless it gets a completely different function. The other two did not deserve nerfs though.
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@LordGlint said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3833880#Comment_3833880
Well... you just listed off the effect of like 10 different perks. If your asking if someone hacked the game to allow them to have all those perks equipped, if THAT would be stronger than BBQ and Nurses... of course. Some of those are questionable though. What perk shows auras based with no other activation requirement than survivors being injured?
If you start comparing 1 to 1, you'll notice aura reading perks haven't seen an uptick in strength. How many closed chests are there in the match that you wanna compare THAT to something reliable like BBQ? T
I'd say Weave Attunement, Floods of Rage, and particularly NTH are all way more powerful aura reading than BBQ.
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@LordGlint said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3833625#Comment_3833625
How exactly have aura perks been power creeped? Things like BBQ bitter murmer and nurses have been around FOREVER. We've gotten more aura reading that trigger from different causes, but I wouldn't say they are necessarily stronger. Stuff like Friends til the end or Alien instinct I wouldn't say is STRONGER than BBQ. Many of these perks also announce that you've been seen. The last time we've gotten an aura perk that DIDNT announce itself was 2 years ago.
Bitter Murmur and Nurse's Calling are both contingent on a survivor's action, and BBQ was designed to only direct the killer, not point out exact locations, which is why it only works on survivors that are too far away.
But since then, we've had NTH (Killer action, shows exact location of nearby survivors), Weave Attunement (Passive, shows exact location), Floods of Rage (Shows exact location, irrespective of distance), and more.
This is a very far cry from BBQ being the only big aura perk, with the specific stipulation that it physically -cannot- autopilot a killer into a survivor. The survivor was still allowed to hide, but that's no longer the case. The newer aura perks do both BBQ's job of giving the killer directions, and they directly highlight nearby survivors that are trying to hide.
You can hide against Nurse's Calling. You can hide against BBQ.
You can't hide against NTH, Weave Attunement or Floods of Rage.
Also, really ######### move from BHVR to buff chase-breaker perks like Dance With Me, and then in the first next patch, buff Predator to completely undo those perks.
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@emetSdidnothingwrong said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3832707#Comment_3832707
Rat alert! Call the exterminator!!! :3
I've never used Distortion. But if one side gets to shut down perks and gameplay elements, so should the other.
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@jmwjmw27 said:
No idea, invocations, "teamwork" perks, and boons are also left in the dust with few new additions to their roster, feels like these mechanics could be explored more.
Sadly, with BHVR's design style, both Invocations and Boons are unusable, they can't create anything for either.
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@emetSdidnothingwrong said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3832459#Comment_3832459
Then make it a perk. :)
Only if Distortion gets its nerf reverted.
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@sanees said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3832506#Comment_3832506
you can kick generator only 8 times and 200% is still 2 times worse than the base progression of 1 survivor and 8 times worse than the progression of 4 survivors
Progression and regression aren't supposed to be 1 to 1.
+100% regression is +100% regression, just like +50% heal speed is +50% heal speed. The game's perfectly fine with regression speed as it is, so getting double the normal is still huge.
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@emetSdidnothingwrong said:
I believe they should give killers and offering that prevents the permanent removal of gen charges. Though I'm sure everyone here saying how BNPs are fine will argue how such an add on would be super busted and can never be allowed to exist.
Offerings aren't supposed to just block out entire mechanisms.
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We are not having unironic complaints about Weaving Spiders in the year of our lord 2024…
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@CleanseThis said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3830982#Comment_3830982
You do understand that if for example I kick a gen with Nowhere to hide and a survivor behind a jungle gym has distortion that I cant see them right?
You mean a perk that's one-time use unless paired with another aura reading perk which in turn only gives you an additional 2 seconds?
Im assuming your of the opinion that at the end of the match where the last 2 survivors are playing hide and seek holding the game hostage is cool because you know I can just look for them forever?
Im assuming your of the opinion that at the end of the match where the last 2 survivors are playing hide and seek holding the game hostage is cool because you know I can just look for them forever?
A potential hostage hiding situation at the end of some matches doesn't mean killers are entitled to having unrestricted aura reading in every match. This 'problem' didn't become an issue until killers needed an excuse to get Distortion nerfed.
Killers are supposed to look for survivors. There's perks that help with that. And then survivors get perks that level the playing field again. Perfectly balanced.
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@jesterkind said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3831097#Comment_3831097
Couple things:
1: Why would pickrate go up based on this? The average player is not unbiased, they're heavily biased, and that's okay. It's not that pickrates have diminished relevance, it's that they have none, at all.
What I want to see in general, and what I think we're a lot closer to with Distortion, is for the perks to be considered all viable if someone whose biases don't conflict with them is evaluating. There's absolutely no reason to assume that necessarily should be a high enough percentage of players to change pickrates, especially considering the observable bias against anything that's been nerfed recently nine times out of ten. There were people claiming Adrenaline was useless after it was nerfed, people are not neutral, rational actors only approaching perks based on how good they actually are. The "unbiased player" I invoked is a hypothetical, a way of conceptualising perks and their balance without falling into the traps of downplaying, common misconceptions, whatever. It's subjective but it obviously has to be, all game balance is necessarily partially subjective otherwise you're balancing just based on stats.
That's why I'm not claiming anything surrounding pickrate. I don't care about it, we can't meaningfully sway it with this kind of change unless they're very heavy handed changes. Shadow Step isn't picked for a million different reasons and only one of them will, sometimes, occasionally, be the fact that Distortion outclassed it. Balance necessarily must be considered as a separate thing to common perception.
2: While Distortion may have a chance to not activate, it's still obviously possible for something to be overtuned even with the restriction that it won't automatically activate.
If, say, Unbreakable healed you to full multiple times a match and also gave you a permanent +100% repair speed boost for every time you pick yourself up, it would obviously be way overtuned even considering that there's a very real chance the killer will never slug you and therefore you may never get to use it.
The fact that it isn't guaranteed is why Distortion is allowed to still be good and effective, but it being perfect is still overtuned. As long as it still blocks auras in at least reliable niches, which it does right now, the extra restrictions are not only okay, they're appropriate.
Also worth mentioning that Botany has become completely irrelevant to this conversation all of a sudden.
3: We're circling around the same fundamental disagreement here, but those are strong picks in their respective niches.
Part of the issue here is a general unwillingness, from everyone and not just you, to consider what auras you want to block. None of them are 100% effective against all forms of aura reading and that's completely okay, it's appropriate even. When you think about wanting to play stealthy, you now actually have to think about which perks you think are most damaging to your gameplan and then pick your counterpick respective to that. You don't even need to be going for active stealth to be thinking about that, frankly.
I don't expect that to change, obviously. Most players don't want to think about things at all, and that's okay. It just also doesn't translate to the changes actually being bad because the old thing doesn't work exactly the same anymore.
1: Why would pickrate go up based on this? The average player is not unbiased, they're heavily biased, and that's okay. It's not that pickrates have diminished relevance, it's that they have none, at all.
It's one thing to claim they have diminished relevance, it's another entirely to dismiss them outright. The rest of your point basically confirms that… You don't really have a point. It's just wild conjecture apropos of nothing.
That's why I'm not claiming anything surrounding pickrate. I don't care about it
Having to argue that the entire community is one big sheep collective is a rough position to have to take, but you still have to contend with the fact that Shadow Step, again, was judged poorly before any of the comparison you're worried about came in. Even when Distortion was considered bottom-of-the-barrel, Shadow Step wasn't considered to be worth a perk slot. Its current state IS the product of unbiased observation. It was judged fresh, on its own merits, upon its release, and hasn't moved the needle since.
Shadow Step isn't picked for a million different reasons and only one of them will, sometimes, occasionally, be the fact that Distortion outclassed it.
And at this point, it sounds like the nerf to Distortion did nothing to create this 'design space' you were talking about.
If your theory requires you to presuppose that the entire community is incapable of independent thought, and then you have to backtrack and diminish the impact you're describing to 'well, the thought might cross a player's mind once in a million times', I think it's time to let go of the theory.
Balance necessarily must be considered as a separate thing to common perception.
But this isn't so much 'separate to common perception' as it is 'divorced from reality', at this point. And 'it's one of a million reasons that -may- have influenced someone to pick Distortion instead of Shadow Step' certainly isn't a worthwhile 'balance' consideration.
2: While Distortion may have a chance to not activate, it's still obviously possible for something to be overtuned even with the restriction that it won't automatically activate.
Yes, and if it actually was showing any of the issues you have complained about, you'd have a point, but it didn't. It wasn't oppressively overpicked, it wasn't oppressively overperforming, it wasn't oppressing the design space, it was a perfectly okay perk.
It has to have -something- in which it was overperforming to warrant a nerf, but it didn't. The closest you came is saying that it was pushing down Shadow Step and you've already had to walk that back to 'maybe someone, somewhere, sometime'.
Part of the issue here is a general unwillingness, from everyone and not just you, to consider
whatauras you want to block. When you think about wanting to play stealthy, you now actually have to think about which perks you think are most damaging to your gameplan and then pick your counterpick respective to that. You don't even need to be going for active stealth to be thinking about that, frankly.This is just gassing up a point of no substance. Outside of Lethal, all aura blocking perks block the same perks, they just have different restrictions in how they do so. One is restricted by space, the other by tokens, the third by time. No one is going to realistically, meticulously flowchart out how likely each perk is to block each aura because there's not sufficiently significant distinction to warrant it. Especially since the biggest offenders in the aura reading category realistically do not care which aura blocker you are picking up.
And honestly, if you're going to bank your dismissal of pickrates on the idea that the community is roughly incapable of independent thought, you can't then turn around and uphold this as a virtue of the Distortion kneecapping. Either the community is carefully researching such minute distinctions, or they don't care about the actual objective value of perks. It's one or the other.
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@jesterkind said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3830993#Comment_3830993
Okay, so, couple things I want to clarify. These aren't necessarily tied one to one with the order of your points, but I'll still number them for ease of reading.
1: First, the pickrate issue. So, there are a hundred things that go into a perk's pickrate which aren't necessarily the perk's strength or design space, and plenty of good perks don't get picked for a variety of reasons. These aren't always even the perk's restrictions- sometimes perks are less played because they're part of less popular chapters and fewer people actually own them, or because they started out bad and never lost the reputation.
What I want here, what I'm saying is good in this specific scenario, is for a player who isn't being swayed by any external influences to look at the available perks and have good reason to potentially pick any of them, depending on what exactly they want. That doesn't mean an equal number of players will pick different perks, one is probably going to end up picked more often because players love to optimise and follow trends (and separately most players aren't actually interested in crafting builds + evaluating perks neutrally, they just slap on whatever seems strongest), but that each perk could be used.
There are two things that might stand in the way of a perk fitting this criteria, and it's lucky we're talking about aura blocking because both of them have applied in the past. The first is the perk just flat out not being good enough to warrant picking over its competition. For aura blocking, that's Sole Survivor. That perk does see some use, there are people in this thread arguing in favour of it, but it's just fundamentally less accessible and impactful than the competition.
The second reason is if the perk itself is fine, but it's heavily outclassed by something that does too much. That's where Shadow Step was, and why Off The Record was never picked for its aura blocking effects. Now that Distortion is no longer flawless, they all - except for Sole Survivor - have viable niches. Before, you'd only be evaluating them on their secondary effects because Distortion made their aura blocking obsolete, and that's why a lot of people think Shadow Step is bad when it really isn't.
One of those niches is probably going to be the most popular one. Right now, it's probably going to be OTR, assuming the drama doesn't pass and everyone just quietly puts Distortion back into their builds. That's fine. As long as an unbiased player can look at all the perks and think "yeah, I could use any of these depending on my build", that's a perfectly acceptable spot. Pickrate has absolutely nothing to do with this because pickrate does not inherently reflect the situation I'm talking about.
2: Next I want to talk about Botany Knowledge, because it's a reasonably good example of what I'm talking about in this regard!
So, what does Botany do? Fundamentally, it exists to increase your healing speed. That's pretty broad, so are there any restrictions and conditions that go on this effect?
Yes! There's objectively one, and I'd argue there's sort of a second.
The first, objective restriction is that it decreases your efficiency on medkits. This is a meaningful downside that exists to stop the perk from getting out of hand, which is especially true when we remember that it was given this restriction while medkits themselves were massively overtuned, and Botany itself increased your efficiency on medkits. That's a restriction and condition that goes on the broad effect.
The second one, the more arguable one, is the percentage of healing speed. 50% is high, but it's not the highest in the game- and the highest healing speeds in the game right now go on perks with more restrictions and conditions, like We'll Make It and Circle of Healing. We can see from this that limiting the effectiveness of the perk is a form of condition and restriction that can be used to balance something broad. This is easier to see in something percentage based like Botany, but Distortion's stacks actually being meaningful now is another example of that.
Don't get me wrong, Botany Knowledge is not restricted by very much and that's why it's one of the best survivor perks in the game, but your example of an unrestricted, unconditional effect actually does have restrictions and conditions.
3: I suppose the last thing I should mention is to repeat that the supposed power creep of aura reading is not axing stealth as a tactic, because there are tools that counter it.
It's also worth mentioning that aura reading isn't thaaaaaaat popular? The last official stats we got from February only have two aura reading perks in the top ten, both of which Distortion comfortably counter and one of which you don't even need to use tokens on once you know it's in place - that being Lethal Pursuer and BBQ and Chili. While we shouldn't be citing Nightlight with the same weight as the official stats, looking over there just adds Nowhere To Hide into the top ten, which once again is a perk that Distortion can counter + you can start countering without using tokens once you know about it. That perk is a little overtuned, though, nerfing that would be entirely appropriate.
There's always a risk you'll run into other perks, of course, you might get caught out by any number of things you decided not to build against - I always seem to run into hex builds only when I take off my totem perks, personally - but it's hardly an overbearing and oppressive presence in every single match.
1: First, the pickrate issue.
Just gonna snip the quote for brevity and because I can't be bothered with whatever the forums are doing with formatting these days. Quote-pasting has been a mess lately.
Anyway, I understand that you don't want to cling too heavily to pickrates and that's fine, you are right in saying that these are far more complex than a simple figure. But when you want to come in and argue that an unbiased player needs to be able to compare these options and reasonably consider either one, the pickrate does come into play here. Because the issue you are presenting here should logically resolve into extremely lopsided pick rates.
If we do not have such data, then the problem you run into is that… It's just wild conjecture.
So when you posit the theory that Shadow Step is not getting picked because Distortion is that high, and others posit that it's not getting picked because it's just plain bad, well…
Considering its pickrate was dumpstered at a time where Distortion was worse than it is now, after the nerf, my money's on theory B.
2: Next I want to talk about Botany Knowledge
But then you get into the issue of what you consider to be a restriction. Because to my mind, there's something that both Shadow Step and OTR have over Distortion that makes the both of them less restrictive than Distortion, and that's that both of them are always going to be functional.
Distortion already had a heavy drawback/restriction in that it could not fire without aura reading being present. If the killer didn't bring any, the perk is dead. That's another reason I think that Distortion did not warrant any nerf, it's a gamble the survivors take, and its competition, even if two of those three options are terrible, do not share this drawback.
That also leaves plenty of design space to make other perks that grant additional benefits -on top of- blocking aura reading, which could easily have become competitive with Distortion. But now any perk that tries to do such a thing must ensure its aura blocking is considerably worse than Distortion, which is now much harder to achieve considering Distortion's lowered limits.
3: I suppose the last thing I should mention is to repeat that the supposed power creep of aura reading is
notaxing stealth as a tactic,becausethere are tools that counter it.However, the tools we have are OTR (Blocks for a total of 160 seconds max), Distortion (Likely only blocks 5 instances), and Shadow Step (Heavy investment, inert, internally incompetent since hiding your aura indirectly also tells the killer where you are). These aren't strong picks, but without them, there's huge risk involved with attempting to play on stealth. You can't take safe paths, because those are predictable, so you're more likely to end up in dangerous spots. This is a gamble, and one that has a bad cost if it doesn't pan out.
Which would be fine, if an NTH or FoR pop wouldn't effectively give the killer a free hit.
The balance of this tactic is off when the killer can turn it to his advantage as a piggyback effect of normal gameplay. (And that's not mentioning the horrid design decision to buff Dance With Me and similar chase-breaker stealth perks and then making Predator eliminate those exact perks the very next patch)
It's also worth mentioning that aura reading isn't thaaaaaaat popular?
Which would exacerbate Distortion's flaw. It just gives more reason to pick something that is more consistently useful overall.
I just don't agree with this assertion that people would look at Distortion and Shadow Step, side by side, and consider Shadow Step a wasted slot because of Distortion. I think a far more likely scenario is that they use both, come to the conclusion that Distortion often doesn't pull any weight because there's no aura reading, but then they come to the conclusion that Shadow Step also isn't pulling any weight anyway.
I legitimately tried to use that thing, and I had to give it up because it was just not doing enough. It's basically in the same class as my Dumpster Diver David build ("My kingdom for a shirt!"): It's funny, but it ain't winning you any matches. Granted, I didn't pick up Distortion either, but the reason I dropped Shadow Step had nothing to do with Distortion. So I don't agree with the assertion that Distortion was an obstruction in design space.
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@jesterkind said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3830824#Comment_3830824
Alright, let's tackle those in order.
So, we'll tackle those first two at once, which is Shadow Step and OTR having second effects. The crucial distinction here is that Shadow Step is primarily an aura block and scratch marks perk, and OTR is primarily an anti-tunnel perk. Shadow Step still had a niche for hiding scratch marks, but that alone doesn't make a complete perk- it's designed around the aura blocking being a main draw as well, and that was outclassed by Distortion having no downsides or restrictions. Shadow Step already has more downsides and restrictions than Distortion, it also being invalidated for a full half of its effects was a bad position for it to be in when it's otherwise a perfectly good perk.
Not that I'm necessarily claiming that is The Reason To Nerf Distortion, to be clear, it's just a positive benefit from the nerf happening. The nerf almost certainly happened purely because Distortion was too effective at its job, the fact that we're in a position where all three perks have a good and viable niche now is a side effect, and a positive one.
Next you talk about pickrate, which I'll glide past because it isn't relevant here. I don't care if people DO pick each perk equally, I care if they COULD. Design space, not popularity.
Your next point is the "nerf-bombing" comment, but that seems to rely heavily on the assertion that Distortion is currently a bad perk, which it isn't. It has several very useful and viable niches, in which it functions pretty damn well. What we actually need from aura blocking perks, new or existing, is the same thing we need from all perks - they need some kind of restriction, downside, or narrow scope in what they effect. Something that just does the job universally with no downsides is only acceptable if the job is particularly narrow in scope, which aura blocking is not.
Next is another pick rate comment, which I've covered. I don't care about that, it isn't part of my argument and never has been. Design space, not popularity. People already only pick a handful of perks and ignore perfectly viable ones, as a whole, and there generally isn't any fixing that, it's inevitable for games with choices to make at all.
For Distortion being questionably balanced, no, I don't have data. I have reasons and explanations, though, which are just as important from BHVR's perspective and the only important things from our perspective as players having a debate.
We're on a more salient point that probably should've been raised earlier with the assertion that aura reading is too oppressive, but I'm not sure I agree with that statement. Certainly if there were no tools for defending against it, the number of aura perks in the game would probably be too high even if most of the individual perks are well balanced, but there are tools to defend against it - both in the sense that you can stop your aura being read entirely, and in the sense that you can react afterwards. In the latter case, there's hiding after being revealed if you know it happened (not universally applicable, but a good few perks have tells), or just being in an undesirable position to chase. Players have options, they just still actually have to deal with their opponent's tools, which is pretty reasonable.
Finally, for the second to last point - as I covered the final point a bit more in detail above - you're falling into the trap of assuming that stats trump all when it comes to balance changes. They don't. Something can absolutely warrant changing without hitting an excess of pickrate or escape rate, and that's happened multiple times in the past. There's so much more that goes into balancing a live service game than a linear scale of too strong or too weak.
The crucial distinction here is that Shadow Step is
primarilyan aura block and scratch marks perk, and OTR isprimarilyan anti-tunnel perk. Shadow Step still had a niche for hiding scratch marks, but that alone doesn't make a complete perkThere's multiple perks where the only benefit is hiding scratch marks, such as Dance With Me, Lucky Break and Parental Guidance. Scratch mark erasure is a full-fledged perk effect, and it is actually a good chunk of Shadow Step's value. So similar to how OTR has another benefit, and it does aura blocking on the side, Shadow Step hides scratch marks, and does aura blocking on the side. So this idea that Shadow Step is somehow much more of an aura blocking perk than OTR is not really true.
Next you talk about pickrate, which I'll glide past because it isn't relevant here. I don't care if people DO pick each perk equally, I care if they COULD. Design space, not popularity.
But how are you going to make any kind of argument about whether someone -could- pick another perk if you refuse to look at whether they did, or why they made the choices they made?
You skip past everything to immediately declare Distortion the problem when the pick rates suggest that
A) It is entirely possible to have other aura reading perks that are viable and able to compete with it, since OTR matched its pick rate
and
B) There is no correlation between the buff or pickrate of Distortion and the pickrate of Shadow Step.
Point A suggests that Distortion is not oppressive in that regard, and point B says there's no evidence to suggest that Distortion was the cause of Shadow Step's poor performance.
If your argument is about whether someone -could- pick a perk, then your argument is ultimately about pick-rate. Because barring emergency disables due to bugs, every perk -can- be picked. Even Weaving Spiders and No Mither -could- be picked!
What we
actuallyneed from aura blocking perks, new or existing, is the same thing we need from all perks - they need some kind of restriction, downside, or narrow scope in what they effect. Something that just does the job universally with no downsides is only acceptable if the job is particularly narrow in scope, which aura blocking is not.Who says it isn't?
Reminder that Botany Knowledge exists, which is an entirely unconditional perk that simply gives a fat boost to altruistic healing speed. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. There's zero chance you're going to get through a regular match without having a use for healing speed, but there's a very real chance you get through a game without ever having your aura read because the system isn't basekit and is dependent on the killer's loadout.
I think we can all agree that Botany Knowledge is not a problem perk, and we can also all agree that healing is much wider in scope than aura blocking. So why would this argument fly for Distortion?
People already only pick a handful of perks and ignore perfectly viable ones
A large chunk of survivor perks aren't viable, specifically because they are being buried under restrictions, downsides and narrow scope.
For Distortion being questionably balanced, no, I don't have data. I have reasons and explanations, though, which are just as important from BHVR's perspective and the
onlyimportant things from our perspective as players having a debate.I think the data is quite important too, so you don't end up nerfing underperforming options without cause. But also, these 'reasons and explanations' are really only accepted from one particular group, aren't they?
We're on a more salient point that probably should've been raised earlier with the assertion that aura reading is too oppressive, but I'm not sure I agree with that statement. Certainly if there were no tools for defending against it, the number of aura perks in the game would probably be too high even if most of the individual perks are well balanced, but there are tools to defend against it - both in the sense that you can stop your aura being read entirely, and in the sense that you can react afterwards. In the latter case, there's hiding after being revealed if you know it happened (not universally applicable, but a good few perks have tells), or just being in an undesirable position to chase. Players have options, they just still actually have to deal with their opponent's tools, which is pretty reasonable.
Similarly, killers could be expected to locate survivors by ordinary means, such as crows, sound, and game sense. So it's not like Distortion was somehow impossible to circumvent. In reality, all Distortion did was reset the playing field. Which was necessary, because aura reading crept up and began to eliminate the possibility of hiding from the game. NTH is probably one of the worst offenders, as it kind of spells out in the title.
Finally, for the second to last point - as I covered the final point a bit more in detail above - you're falling into the trap of assuming that stats trump all when it comes to balance changes. They don't. Something can absolutely warrant changing without hitting an excess of pickrate or escape rate, and that's happened multiple times in the past. There's so much more that goes into balancing a live service game than a linear scale of too strong or too weak.
But this is kind of where 'one particular group' comes into play. There's a power creep of aura reading, it's axing an entire aspect of gameplay, then a perk that is designed specifically to counter that and to re-enable that aspect of gameplay comes into full swing, it does not get an excessive pick or win rate, it just exists…
But the 'reasons and explanations' from one particular group are enough to kneecap the counterweight.
Distortion's nerf was unreasonable. There would have been many other ways to deal with it, this was one of the worst. The perk is not in a good state at the moment.
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@jesterkind said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3830787#Comment_3830787
I'm not actually ignoring context here, I'm even acknowledging that Off The Record isn't as susceptible to Distortion being perfect because it is not fundamentally an aura blocking perk. That's the one that still looked good in comparison to Distortion, I've acknowledged this multiple times. It still now has a niche that Distortion isn't quite as good in for aura blocking specifically, but that's less relevant because it occupies a separate design space too.
What I'm saying is that only applies to OTR because OTR is the only one that has a full other niche. Shadow Step and Sole Survivor are both fundamentally aura-blocking stealth perks and they were power crept by Distortion becoming functionally infinite back in 6.1.0.
It's also not just the current perks, the design space for aura blocking as a main component of a perk was completely filled. There could not ever be another aura blocking perk that isn't like OTR in primarily doing something else, because Distortion being the way it was meant no aura blocking effect could ever compare even in a lesser state because Distortion was the perfect aura blocking perk. That's not a good design space, it's not great for balance overall, and it warranted changing.
That's what I mean by "perfect", to be clear. It was perfect at blocking auras, obviously it didn't do anything without aura reading in play.
I also do not care about pick rate in either direction. I don't care how high or low the pick rate of any specific perk is, I care if they are capable of filling their role without undue obstacles— whether that's because they're actually too bad at their job to be reasonably appealing (Sole Survivor) or because they are heavily overshadowed by an overtuned perk in their same niche but with no meaningful downsides (Shadow Step). I am not saying that Distortion needed to be killed or gutted because of its high pick rate, and that's for two reasons: I am celebrating the fact that it WAS NOT killed or gutted but rather was changed in a very healthy way that preserved it being a strong and useful option, and because my complaints are based on design and not popularity. I don't care if people do swap to other perks, I care if they could or have reason to.
It's worth mentioning that Distortion was also a little bit too strong just from a basic balance perspective, too. It wasn't the huge balance issue that some other things end up being, but it's worthy of scrutiny if something is such a fundamentally hard counter that it completely shuts down multiple different options without any downside or requirement. Just to head off any whataboutism from whoever may be reading, yes, this applies to Lightborn too.
So, to sum up: I am judging perks by their own merits. That's how I came to the conclusion that it's good for Distortion to stop crowding out other perks' merits and operate in a healthier niche.
I'm not actually ignoring context here, I'm even acknowledging that Off The Record isn't as susceptible to Distortion being perfect
becauseit is not fundamentally an aura blocking perk.But this only flies for Sole Survivor, because Shadow Step DOES have a different niche on top of aura blocking.
Shadow Step and Sole Survivor are both fundamentally aura-blocking stealth perks
But here you're conflating stealth with aura-blocking.
Shadow Step is a stealth perk.
Distortion is an aura blocker.
If Distortion gave some kind of scratch mark erasure without being contingent on blocking auras, you might have a point, but Shadow Step has a use outside of Aura Blocking, just as OTR does. It's just that OTR is a good perk while Shadow Step is a bad perk.
and they were power crept by Distortion becoming functionally infinite back in 6.1.0.
Shadow Step needed no one's help to find its way to the garbage bin. It was already there before 6.1 hit.
6.1 landed in June 2022. According to Nightlight, at that point, Shadow Step had a pickrate of roughly 2.3%, and it still had that pickrate by March 2023. Distortion's change had no impact on it.
There could not ever be another aura blocking perk that
isn'tlike OTR in primarily doing something else, because Distortion being the way it was meant no aura blocking effect could ever compareeven in a lesser statebecause Distortion was the perfect aura blocking perk. That's not a good design space, it's notgreatfor balance overall, and it warranted changing.But just flat nerf-bombing it didn't fix anything, because now Distortion is headed for the garbage can and any new aura blocking perk has to abide by the same rule as Distortion: It can't block aura perks.
You still have the same constraint: Any new aura blocking perk HAS to be worse than Distortion, otherwise Distortion is gonna be buried. It's just a more tight constriction now because Distortion is that much worse.
If anything, OTR proved that there's plenty of room for other aura blocking perks, it's just that they have to be sideways comparable, like Empathic Connection now is to Botany Knowledge. It's why I said that current Distortion now needs a buff again by giving it some kind of non-aura blocking function to give it life in games without aura reading.
I also do not care about pick rate in either direction.
Bit late to say that at this point, because that is the basis for your entire argument. That is what you rode in on.
It's worth mentioning that Distortion was also a little bit too strong just from a basic balance perspective, too.
You have any data to back that up?
It wasn't the huge balance issue that some other things end up being, but it's worthy of scrutiny if something is such a fundamentally hard counter that it completely shuts down multiple different options without any downside or requirement.
It never did, unless there were four of them, and as a critical point: The things it blocks are all perks that, in and of themselves, are also extremely volatile and oppressive. The entire concept of stealth dies with aura reading. Distortion was effectively a band-aid, and in a way, that's really -good- from a design perspective.
Because with Distortion's value being entirely dependent on the prevalence of aura reading, it basically became an indicator perk for a balancing issue. The higher the pickrate of Distortion, the higher the likelihood that aura reading is too strong or prevalent.
So, to sum up: I
amjudging perks by their own merits.Except Distortion never hit any excess in pick or escape rate, so it didn't warrant any nerf.
That's how I came to the conclusion that it's good for Distortion to stop crowding out other perks' merits and operate in a healthier niche.
Except there's only one perk for which you've managed to argue that Distortion must have negatively impacted it in some way, and there's nothing to indicate that it actually did.