zarr
zarr
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I am convinced that there simply is no general hit validation, maybe they even lied about it and use the "threshold" as an excuse. There shouldn't be a latency threshold anyway, the server should just be the neutral authority on hit reg all the time.
I have never seen a hit be overruled by the server, yet as soon as they had implemented stun-specific hit validation, players with bad connections did actually get overruled hits when they swung through pallets ambitiously. So it's clear that general hit validation just isn't a thing in this game.
The killer latency advantage has plagued the game since launch, and unfortunately it is not going anywhere. Maybe BHVR's issue is dealing with the fact that the killer will enter the post-hit cooldown client-side, which would obviously be unfair if the hit is then overruled... but the cooldown lasts 3 seconds, the server's validation message arrives at most 300ms after the hit even in extreme cases, they can simply cancel the cooldown at that point.
The least they could do is implement more event-specific validation, for things such as Dead Hard and window and pallet vaults.
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@Zozzy said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2580362#Comment_2580362
Addons can't be compared to items since you can find items for free and they can be used for multiple games. Addons are one and done for killer and without cheating they can't sustain them if they require iri and purple to be decent.
Killers get considerably more BP though, and survivors also have an a lot harder time getting specific items from the webs (let alone from chests) because they have every item and add-on appear on there whereas the killer obviously only has their respective add-ons. It is just as possible for a killer to regularly use their best add-ons as it is for a survivor, at least if the killer player does not switch characters too frequently. Plus survivor add-ons - which are necessary to actually make items impactful in most cases - do get consumed after every trial, and cannot be found in chests either (not without using Ace In The Hole anyway). And the strongest add-ons (Styptic, Syringe) even consume the item on use.
It's not really about how comparable to each other these things are in every aspect though. It's about the concept that you cannot look at the most stacked survivor side loadout and not consider that the balance equivalent to that is the most stacked killer loadout, even if there is a notable difference in appearance percentages between those things in global matches (however, like I said, it is vanishingly rare to actually have 4 survivors all stacked with the best items, it is much more common to see killers with the best add-ons, since they are just one person having to make that decision). I do think it is too much if you actually have all 4 survivors each using the best items and add-ons, which is part of why I suggest SWF should not be able to stack items, since they as opposed to random groups are otherwise actually able to consistently make that happen.
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I think he makes a few mistakes in his conclusion based on these statistics.
He shows that using items resulted in a ~30% survival rate increase for his group, but he does not give a reason as to why items should not be that impactful. After all, as he knows and has in fact himself shown in the past, killer add-ons can also easily increase a player's kill rate by considerable amounts, there are add-ons that basically categorically change how powerful a killer is. The idea obviously being that they balance each other out to extents.
Further, he merely showed that every single survivor using an item (and the best items, at that) increased the survival rate. However, it is almost never the case that every single survivor is using an item, let alone the best items. And in solo (as well as duo) queue, it is vanishingly rare. I'm fairly confident that I have not had 4 styptics in my last... 1000 killer rounds. I can't actually remember the last time I saw it, I think it's happened a total of 2-3 times in my years of playing this game. Singular items have to retain a certain impact potential, they cannot be balanced with the idea in mind that there's 4 of them in a match, because that contradicts the gameplay reality of the vast majority of matches people are actually playing in this game - it would not be good for the so-called live balance.
And then he used the actual survival rate to argue items would be too strong, but he was playing in an SWF with 4 veterans totalling more than 20000 hours. And using voice communications. In public matchmaking, such a group actually playing to win will of course win most of the time, just like a veteran killer wins most of the time. Not only that, but skill and experience as well as voice comms will absolutely affect how effectively items are put to use. Using a toolboxes charges at the right time and right location for instance can be the difference between it enabling the survivors to finish a gen they would have otherwise had to fight hard for, or it not mattering at all because the killer can defend and regress the gen again.
The best thing BHVR could do for top-end balance has been obvious for years. It is not feasible to bring solo up to the level of SWF: not only is there the coordination of loadouts, tactics and strategies that random players will never have, but no amount of information the game could feed solo survivors would compare to voice communications. And even regardless of that, it's been years since BHVR said they want to bring solo up to an SWF-like level, but in those years basically nothing has happened in that regard, apart from them again sometimes saying they want to do that.
The solution is to nerf SWF. One of a variety of ideas for a sensible nerf would be this: Every perk can only be present in an SWF once each; every item can only be present in an SWF once each. Show survivor loadouts in the lobby to other survivors. Easy, fast, reasonable and effective way to bring SWF to a more balanced level that also addresses the specific concern of the power levels of the best items, as well as concerns with the abusability of certain perks in coordinated loadouts (e. g. stacking 4 Streetwise with 4 toolboxes, or 4 Vigil with 4 Sprint Burst). It would also lead to more loadout diversity and encourage the use of different perks and items people usually have little reason to consider.
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I would prefer if all killers would be A tier (with add-ons), which is around the power level of Blight without add-ons (or perhaps with Blighted Rat). That would make global balancing a lot easier because you don't have to account for wildly varying killer character performance potentials. 20% of the lineup should also be S tier in my opinion - so with the current 25 killers, 5 should be S, meaning 2 more to join Nurse, Spirit and Blight.
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I don't know which killer streamers you watch, but the ones I do still dominate the vast majority of their pub matches. Pretty sure Scott also still wins most of his. Public matchmaking is still killer-sided.
In fact, let me look at Scott's recent games to make it obvious for you:
Wraith - 4k
Plague - 3k (preventable hatch)
Plague - 4k
Blight - 2k
Demo - 0k
Demo - 4k
Pig - 2k
Pig - 4k
Leatherface - 3k (preventable hatch)
Myers - 3k (preventable hatch)
Ghostface - 1k
Billy -4k
Billy - 0k
Billy - 4k
Nemesis - 4k
Trickster -2k
Leatherface - 4k
Demo - 4k
Demo - 0k
Demo - 0k
Demo - 1k
Demo - 2k
Demo - 4k
Myers - 2k
Myers - 2k
Myers - 3k
Oni - 1k
Blight - 3k
Blight - 4k
Blight - 0k
Wraith - 4k
Demo - 4k
Demo - 4k
This comes out to an average of 2.6 kills, or a 65% killrate. So he's overperforming, even without playing the strongest killers or using the strongest add-ons. What can also be noted is that this does not even account for the amount of hooks he got in the games - he doesn't usually camp or tunnel hard, so he has games like the Oni 1k where he had 9 stages, meaning everyone that escaped was one hook away from death. The same is true for most of the non-3/4k rounds. So yeah, if his MMR experience would actually lead him to believe the game is "absolutely survivor-sided", he must not be very objective. Of course, he knows that the core balance leans toward survivor from the one-in-a-thousand-matches occurrences where he actually plays against a group of 4 survivors each as experienced and competent at the game as he is, but that's still vanishingly rare an occurrence in MMR. Besides, tournaments have shown time and again that even against 4 highly-skilled and highly-coordinated survivors on voice comms, highly-skilled killers can absolutely get 2-4 kills, even with killers other than Nurse, Spirit and Blight (with which they can do so consistently). The game is just not nearly as survivor-sided as people make it out to be.
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I would love if they did that with SWF. Every perk can only be present in the party 1 time. Not only do I believe limiting the capabilities of SWF to be the best way to bridge the solo/SWF gap and restricting perks would be a good way to do so particularly because pretty much no perks in this game are actually problematic unless they come in multiples or certain combinations that only SWFs can truly coordinate, but it would promote build variety and get some of the lesser-used-but-still-solid perks into the meta more.
Sure, there would be some effort needed to make this feasible from the menus, but that should be easy enough, and certainly it would be infinitely easier than trying to bring solo up to the level of SWF (which is actually just impossible because even with literal in-game voice chat they would still be random groups of survivors with varying levels of skill and experience and uncoordinated loadouts that often won't even be choosing to use the voice chat, as opposed to SWF who can be on the same page about all of that).
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@Pulsar said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2559015#Comment_2559015
As has been demonstrated repeatedly, it is very difficult to lose MMR. It's totally unreasonable to ask people to lose 30 games in a row on every Killer in order to have tolerable matches. Losing is fine, but people in this game have a nasty habit of rubbing salt in the wound.
You have a very uninformed view of skill. MMR is one of the worst things ever implemented in DBD, and I sincerely hope it gets removed. Most players seem to dislike it. It highlights every flaw of DBD and pushes players into exploiting and abusing them.
Where has that been demonstrated, out of interest? I don't have specifics myself on how many 0/1ks or deaths it takes to significantly drop in rating, it's certainly possible that those numbers might have to be adjusted, but honestly 30 games is not that unreasonable in my mind.
As for my view of skill being uninformed and MMR being one of the worst things ever, those are unsubstantiated claims. Same for most players seeming to dislike it, for that matter. There's hundreds of thousands of players monthly, the amount of online complaints is a drop in a bucket in comparison. BHVR's survey might be a more meaningful measure of people's initial impressions of it, but that's probably also merely in the tens of thousands, if that.
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I have a hard time making sense of most of the complaints I see about MMR. Many display a fundamental misunderstanding of what purpose MMR serves, some just don't really make sense.
"High MMR is unfun" - If you do not have fun trying to kill as many survivors as possible by any means possible or trying everything in your might to escape, then you should simply... not do those things. Nothing is preventing you from using off-meta loadouts, refraining from camping, tunnelling, slugging, genrushing, or doing anything else you consider unfun as either role. The only thing that I can see people bring up is preventing them from this is... their desire to win. And you can't have that without trying hard to kill or escape - if it would be possible to consistently win (i. e. climb to and remain at high MMR) without using the strongest loadouts and tactics to do so, the system would make no sense whatsoever and everyone would sooner or later end up at the highest rating, regardless of their skill, performance and "sweat" levels. That would be the most unfun thing, as you would have players with 100 hours who consider a victory being cleansing all totems in a round, match against players with 10000 hours who usually kill everyone before 2 gens are done. As was regularly the case in the ranking system.
I think this issue is mostly due to people wanting to eat their kill or escape cake and have it too. They want to win, which to most players in this game actually absolutely does mean to kill survivors or escape as survivor. They want to do so without having to stress or needing to practice and improve too much. And they also want to do so against non-bad players so that they can feel even better about winning. But that is simply impossible in a PVP game, because if one player is having a comfortable and fun time and is winning, the other(s) cannot possibly simultaneously also be. The reality is that if you want to kill or escape by any means, you should be matched against likeminded players, and all players in those matches should be expected to have to try their very hardest and yet still come out having people escape or dying around half of the time. If you do not consider that gameplay fun, then simply stop trying to kill or escape by any means possible. You think playing in other ways is more fun? Then do so, and if that means you aren't averaging at least 2 kills or 50% escapes over your matches, you will fall to a rating where that is eventually feasible. But please don't expect it to be possible to consistently kill and survive at the highest rating while also playing for any type of fun that is not performing in ways to kill or survive as consistently as possible, otherwise you are asking for the game experience to be ruined for everyone and are misunderstanding what MMR is. It is precisely about sorting players into matches in which players are more on the same page about how to play the game. It is not a reward, it is not about making the highest rating level the best or most fun one that everyone should want to be at. Only those that care about winning and also enjoy what sort of gameplay that entails.
"High MMR is unbalanced" - That is by definition impossible. You can only climb MMR if you consistently kill or escape, and only maintain high MMR if you consistently at least kill half of the survivors/escape half of the time. If you are high MMR, that necessarily means that you perform at least well enough to average 2 kills per match or a 50% survival rate. That the rating is capped is a problem in terms of actually matching people as closely as it could be, but it is not a problem in terms of creating an overall balanced playing experience where players consistently perform well enough. If you don't like how the game is played when both roles use and try everything to kill and escape, then again, you are free to simply not use those things and not play in those ways, and if that means you now cannot compete at the high MMR levels anymore and will sink to levels where you can, so what? There is no reward for your rating.
Some aspects of this game are definitely still problematic from a balance perspective, but that is not something a matchmaking system could ever iron out. Would every 4-player SWF be paired against Nurses exclusively, and vice versa? Obviously a ridiculous thought. These are things that have to be addressed by game design.
"MMR does not reflect skill" - There is nothing that will correlate closer with a player's prowess in this game than their kill and survival rates, certainly over large enough sample sizes. If you are good at chasing/being chased, pressuring objectives/controlling them, snowballing/recovering, quick decision-making, the mechanics of that all, etc., you are absolutely more likely to kill or survive more consistently as a result. All of those things ultimately and inadvertently contribute to one's ability to kill or survive, the connection is obvious. And while it could be argued that metrics such as hooks might more accurately reflect skill, ultimately MMR does not even have to be about skill, or more precisely, the "skillfulness" with which wins are achieved. The vast majority of people care about killing as killer and surviving as survivor in this game, and for very obvious reasons. Those are just the clearest win conditions. The MMR system is meant to measure performance in that respect and make matches that on average allow players an equal shot at both. And to that end, of course there are easier, less demanding (less "skillful") ways to achieve kills and escapes. But they are still the most effective ways to get to that end result, not having to exert a lot of effort to use them then only means being efficient. If a chess master won all of their games with simple yet effective play, nobody would argue they aren't justified to be gaining rating just because they aren't using very complex strategy. Winning is the prime objective, not winning in the most impressive ways.
And I would even go further and say fun levels also correlate more closely with balanced kill and survival rates than anything players might think would more accurately determine "skill". Again, ultimately most players enjoy killing and surviving respectively, and so they will have better playing experiences with a matchmaker that selects for precisely those things. I suspect not few of the people complaining about MMR are if anything even more dependent on their win rates for enjoyment of this game than the average player, and the reason they say it should not select for kill/survival rates is not that they think those do not actually reflect success in this game, but because they want to keep winning most of their games like they could in the old matchmaking system that did not try to give players fair matches in terms of kill and survival chances.
If you on the other hand personally actually do not care about surviving or killing and dislike the ways the game is played by people who do, you should be grateful for MMR. MMR selecting for things you do not care about means MMR will benefit you, if you truly do not care. You won't kill or survive consistently, your MMR won't increase, you won't have to play with and against players that do care a lot about killing or surviving and play in those ways. All is well. Obviously it's not quite that easy because in reality the matchmaker still has to make matches happen from actual available players and there's a lot of messiness with that, but in concept all those people that for some reason seem to take huge issue with the matchmaker selecting for kill and survival rates at least can rest assured that it will tend to give them matches with likeminded individuals that also do not think killing and surviving is all that important, certainly more consistently so than the ranking system ever did.
I'm not saying MMR is perfect, and certainly there are problems with BHVR's implementation of it (for one thing, it seems to try to achieve a "balanced" kill/survival rate by sometimes flip-flopping between matchups that are grossly stacked toward one side and the other, and I also dislike the MMR cap as well as the fact that personal survival rates are used rather than team-based ones), but much of the criticism I see fails to see the point of MMR.
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Yes.
Surviving and killing are the best metrics by which to measure success in this game, and will also more closely than anything else indicate performance and skill levels over large enough sample sizes. And even fun levels.
The only thing I'd prefer is if survivors were treated as a team toward the survival end, rather than individually. Imbalanced aspects of the game such as over and underpowered killers, add-ons, items, perks and tactics on the other hand are things that have to be addressed on a case-by-case basis, a matchmaking system can never solve those issues.
That said, I do think hooks could make for a better metric than kills, but that would have to go along with a comprehensive reworking of the game to actually be about hooks rather than kills.
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Issue still exists.
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Nemesis is a letdown for me from a balance perspective (and in other regards). I had hoped for him to be at the top of A tier, or even S tier, given what kind of character he is. But he isn't really problematic balance-wise either, he's comfortably B tier, so good players can consistently be successful with him in the public matchmaking environment, he isn't "weak".
Still, I think he should be notably more powerful than he is. Zombie AI definitely needs more work, most of his add-ons are painfully underwhelming and should be buffed and reworked, his active ability should at the very least get more range and ideally he would even get a secondary active ability, and he should also have more notable power-ups with the mutation tiers (for example an increase in movement speed). Being contaminated could also come with actual downsides of its own (such as a slight, constant Hindered effect).
None of the perks for the chapter had any real impact on the meta, so they are all negligible from a balance perspective, like most perks. Only Lethal Pursuer is somewhat notable, but it's not like it had a huge impact either. All of them should be buffed, but then again, tons of perks should be and that's been the case for years and years - BHVR likes their perks to be negligible, saves them balancing work I guess.
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You really should not worry too much about infecting generators. You can do it at the start of the match while you're searching for survivors, or in a drive-by fashion whenever traversing the map and coming across a generator, but you will usually manage to infect most survivors anyway just by chasing them and should not go out of your way spending precious time infecting gens.
Your build is pretty gimmicky. Trail of Torment announces itself with the aura, and any somewhat smart survivor will catch onto it at latest after the first time and be extra cautious due to it. Dark Devotion is just way too situational, both in its condition to trigger and then in the possibilities of making use of it if it does trigger. You really are much better off going with more slowdown perks, such as Ruin, Corrupt, Thanatophobia, with your Pop. That said, Tinkerer is cool on Plague as it can potentially give you quick downs. Ruin, Undying, Tinkerer is great. So try that, it combines slowdown with surprise one-shot hits.
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Tunnelling is an effective and efficient strategy, and while I usually try not to tunnel as killer because I have no problem being successful without it, I have no issue with it as survivor in and of itself. As has been pointed out in this thread, the tunnelled survivor still gets the same amount of chases that they otherwise would have gotten, in which they can use their skills to try and outplay the killer and possibly survive, or at least help their team survive. Chases are the most fun and engaging part of the game, being engaged constantly by the killer in chase play is great.
There are some undesirable things that correlate with tunnelling, and while some of them should be remedied by BHVR, others can be remedied by players themselves:
- The survivors that are not being tunnelled don't get engaged in chase play until that survivor is out of the round. - While generally true, other survivors can and in fact often should try to bodyblock for the tunnelled survivor, even risk their own lives to protect them. Players should consider their health and hook states as resources to be used in a round; giving a hook life or two in order to keep another survivor in the round that is on death hook is a tactical play. So if someone is being tunnelled, try whether you can't intervene, taking hits to help the tunnelled survivor in their chases or potentially even making the killer chase and/or hook you instead. And there's of course other stuff you can do to try and help too, such as attempt flashlight, pallet, bodyblock and sabo saves, For The People, Styptic, Syringe, Head On plays, and more.
- The survivor that is being tunnelled does not get a lot of Bloodpoints. - True and definitely something undesirable. I think BHVR should uncap point categories such that players can reach the 32k BP cap even by mostly only scoring in one category, such as the Boldness category.
- The survivor that is being tunnelled has less health states. - Technically true. Since a survivor is still injured after being unhooked, they only get 4 health states total (2 in the first chase, 1 in the two consecutive chases respectively), rather than the potential 6 health states a survivor can have if they get healed after being unhooked. I think it would be a healthy change for the game if survivors were healthy after being unhooked, not least because that way tunnelling automatically becomes less of an obviously optimal thing to do. That said, the game in its current state is not really balanced for most killer characters to chase every survivor for 6 health states. So this change would have to go along with other killer buffs.
- The survivor that is being tunnelled does not actually get into a fair chase. - This is my only real issue with tunnelling, personally. It is possible for the killer to down a survivor after the unhook before that survivor even has the chance to physically make it anywhere. That is an anti-gameplay element of tunnelling that I think should be remedied. There are perks that address the issue (Borrowed Time, Decisive Strike), but I think there should rather be base-game remedies. Such as increasing the duration of the invincibility window that already exists upon being unhooked. However, this goes more into the direction of remedies against camping, and in that regard I actually do think BHVR should do a lot more to combat camping and instead buff killers in other areas.
Another issue with tunnelling that can't however be balanced for or remedied in a real way is the fact that bad survivor players can get tunnelled out very quickly, and that bad survivors even help the killer do so by going for bad unhooks, running into the killer, not using good perks or not making good use of the perks, not taking hits for other survivors, etc. But you cannot balance for people's lack of skills and smarts, and so while it is definitely unfortunate that killer players can abuse weak links and bad plays by tunnelling someone out within a minute or two, this is part of the game and can only be addressed by a better matchmaking system that does not put blatant weak links into matches with killers that have no qualms abusing them.
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Moris in their current form are pretty benign, and that's honestly a good spot for them. To begin with, offerings should never have too big an impact on the game because they don't require any special commitment and otherwise add a complete balance-shifting layer upon the game of its own that makes achieving a reasonable state of balance only more difficult. It also leads to a scenario where the less impactful offerings only see even less use, as well as make it more conflicting for players to use BP offerings if they are forgoing big advantages they could get by burning other offerings instead. And being on the receiving end of a powerful offering makes players become dissatisfied with a match before it has even begun, when they see it appear on the offering screen.
Moris now that they only work once a survivor is on death hook merely have the potential to save the killer some time and circumvent rescue mechanics such as DS, and blind, stun, wiggle and sabo saves. That is regularly not all that impactful at all, in fact it can even be detrimental for the killer since hook-based perks such as Weasel and BBQ obviously do not trigger on Mori kills. Primarily Moris are used now for the (more or less) cool kill animation, which is what they should have always been anyway.
Keys are not in a good spot, but contrary to popular complaints they are actually also not in a good spot for survivors.
People usually think of a scenario where you have an SWF group on voice comms coordinating their hatch escape. But the reality of keys is not often that, much more frequently it's this:
Survivors that bring in keys often do not do gens, because they are already shooting for the hatch escape.
Survivors that bring in keys are more likely not to save other survivors, sometimes even intentionally sandbagging them, in order for the hatch to spawn.
Survivors that bring in keys regularly do not contribute to the round at all, not doing gens, not saving people, searching for the hatch for ages, hiding out avoiding killer confrontation to make sure they get their escape.
Survivors that bring in keys much of the time escape alone, leaving other survivors behind with tremendously decreased chances to escape themselves.
If a killer sees a key in a lobby, they are more likely to bring the strongest perks and add-ons as well as play a more gloves-off game than they otherwise might.
This all means that keys can actually be more bullshit for the other survivors in a match than for the killer.
And even in the SWF scenario where survivors actually can reliably coordinate to get multiple players out with a key, they have to finish either all gens, at which point they could regularly have just as well escaped through exit gates, or they have to finish all but 1 or 2 gens, have 1 or 2 survivors die, and then instead of finishing the last gen they can get 2 or 3 out with the hatch. The last scenario is bullshit, but only really bullshit if the killer actually still stood a chance to defend those remaining generators in the first place.
I do think keys should be reworked, but it's not as simple as making it so the hatch closes behind the key-having survivor for instance, as in that case keys would only become even more of a detriment for any other survivors in the trial. Removing them from the game entirely on the other hand is an overreaction - why remove an entire item when survivors if anything should have more items? But I would be fine with the idea of simply scrapping the keys' ability to open the hatch, if it goes alongside with buffs for their add-ons.
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@Slay___ said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2360207#Comment_2360207
That's the thing, I don't have any details on this. I am asking for other player experience here.
I am not trying to submit a bug report due to missing key information. Only had to fix my files around 3-5 times since I started playing in November of 2016 but I am pretty active on helping other players on the forums and this is the most common issue that I have faced with questions asking for help or support with something.
I am fairly certain this has been reported as a bug multiple times over the years, I even have suggested the affected players to do so.
Again to repeat, this is a feedback more than anything else at this point.😊
Still something more belonging in the technical issues section then, but fair enough. :p
Shame if it is has been reported multiple times throughout the years without any response from the devs whatsoever. That said, if there's no concrete information from the people suffering this issue, it would be difficult to respond to it for much of anyone (though of course the devs should know more about these things and at least be able to give a written response).
Next time you do notice that your game is behaving weirdly, rather than immediately go to verify files you could try to experiment with it. For instance, if you make a Steam backup of the game in that state and then rebuild the install from that backup, is the issue still present? If so, it could (should) be possible for BHVR to compare that backup against one of the game working normally (i. e. made after you have verified its files and confirmed the weird behaviour is gone), and so they could then perhaps at least find out which files are getting lost or otherwise corrupted. That just as one possible way to experiment.
Again, I'm not trying to undermine the issue at all, totally believe it's a thing that happens to people. As I've said, I've seen my share of weird issues with file consistency in DbD builds, and in the more distant past it was actually scarily common for people's save files to become randomly corrupted or reset (a phenomenon that has apparently started to rear its head again more recently).
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@Slay___ said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2360152#Comment_2360152
I know all of the solutions, this is not an ask for help with an issue but a feedback about issues that players, including me, are having.
I have personally tested multiple PCs and hard drives. No issues there.
Fair. You did not clarify as much in the original post so I thought to mention it just because it might help you.
I think this issue is better posted in the bug reports or technical issues section, however, and along with anything you can provide as evidence and ways to reproduce the issue. Might have more success with getting it looked at there (or might not, not sure how much of an eye BHVR has on the forums altogether, and how much of the things they do look at they actually then look into or otherwise take to heart).
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I would welcome the addition of more varied chase mechanics like these, but obviously only if they are balanced in a given map's "chase budget" with existing such mechanics (i. e. pallets and windows). Hell, there could even be some of them that provide killers with new basic chase actions, such as throwing wheels, barrels, chemicals or whatnot into a survivor's path, and other ways for both survivors and killers to change the layout of a tile through such means.
That said, BHVR will never do this. It took them years and years to bring 1 new base mechanic - breakable walls - and that mechanic is basically "dropped pallets but survivors cannot interact with them". So yeah, leave your hopes in the basement chest.
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I like this sort of mechanic and have been wanting something along its lines for a long time. Although I'm not sure it should be a base mechanic, I've always thought of it as something that would be tied to a killer power, or at least a perk.
I first had that idea when Overcharge was released, and with it the possibility of having to complete a skill check while running. Having this as an actual mechanic that results in a stumble if missed would be cool. Though perhaps it should be tied to certain chase interactions (mostly vaults and pulls) so that the skill check trigger is not actually just random. But I would like it either way.
That said, I think Bloodlust is still a better mechanic for long chases, because it has more engaging counterplay (namely, chase state micromanagement).
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I have never experienced any such issues personally. I do verify the integrity of the game files after every major update (and after switching from PTB back to live), but it always just says that all files validated successfully.
I'm not saying the file integrity is not questionable in DbD, I've seen my share of weird things like PTB mechanics (and even characters) transitioning into people's live builds, but still, just as a suggestion that might end up making this an even less frequent issue for you: have you checked whether the storage device you have DbD installed on is healthy?
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Your suggestions are definitely nice QoL adjustments, and they are if anything the least BHVR could do for the perk. Because the thing is that even with these changes, the perk - like many others - would still not nearly be good enough to compete with the limited few actually good perks in this game.
The vast majority of the time, any pallet that would even be worth spending time resetting is also a pallet the killer breaks immediately. And if they don't they most likely aren't a killer that even cares about pallets to begin with. The perk is not without reason sometimes called "Any Memes Necessary".
A notable improvement to the perk's impact potential and consistency would be to reduce the time it takes to hoist a pallet up, such that it can feasibly be used mid-chase. Only if it can be used mid-chase does it have any reliable impact, because in that case you have the opportunity to do so before the killer breaks the pallet. With the current 4 seconds that is however almost never possible - reduce it to 2 seconds and the perk instantly becomes much more interesting (and fun). At 2 seconds it can still not be used to double-stun a killer (not without a considerable risk anyway), but it can much more often allow its user to reset a pallet while the killer is attempting to mindgame it or otherwise forgoing to break it in a chase. And it would still be far from an S-tier perk even then.
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There are some good ideas for adjustments in here... and there have been good ideas for adjustments ever since Hex perks were first introduced. I think it is unrealistic to expect BHVR to actually drastically rework the (Hex) totem system, so I'd say we should rather hope that they take how they function currently and improve on that.
In their current form, Hex perks are meant to be "high risk; high reward" elements, so the RNG nature of potentially losing them early on is part of their design. That said, BHVR has worked continually to hide them better, and on a fair few of the newer and reworked maps, totems are actually more than well-hidden enough. It could be possible to think about other means of making their impact more consistent, that is, to prevent survivors from cleansing them very early on: make Hex totems not light up until the first generator has been repaired, or at least only make a survivor see them as lit-up once that respective survivor is actually "cursed" by them; introduce more Haunted Ground-esque after-cleanse effects for existing or new Hex perks (and buff Haunted Grounds itself), to make it less of a no-brainer for survivors to cleanse any Hex on sight; enable killers to re-activate their Hex perks manually; ... but ultimately all of that would necessitate making Hex perks weaker in their impact potential, as otherwise they become "low risk; high reward" elements some of which would prove downright oppressive, as could be seen with the original Undying Ruin meta a few months ago.
So given that Hex totems are hidden better and better with new maps and map reworks, I think the current approach is fine. There are obviously still some totem spawns on some maps that should be changed, but overall I don't think they are problematic in their design as a game element. However, there are absolutely problems with individual Hex perks. A fair few of them are not nearly "high reward" enough to even justify the risk of them being tied to totems to begin with. Remedying that issue is easy though, of course: just buff those individual perks.
Huntress Lullaby, Retribution and Blood Favour are downright awful.
Lullaby - Hitting skill checks even without the sound notification altogether is completely possible for any even only somewhat experienced player, as long as they pay attention. What is actually difficult without the notification however is hitting great skill checks. So make Huntress Lullaby distinguish between good and great skill checks, on top of the notification sound effect. One possible suggestion could be this: Hitting a good skill check under the effect of Lullaby regresses the generator by 1-5%, depending on the amount of tokens on the perk; hitting a great skill check under the effect of Lullaby progresses the generator by 1-5%, likewise scaling with the tokens. This is sort of a version of old Ruin, but it is worse than old Ruin because the killer needs 1 hook before it even does anything, and the regression is only at Ruin's original 5% once the perk has 5 tokens. Additionally, great skill checks actually grant a larger progression bonus for survivors than the base bonus once the perk is at 3 tokens or more, whereas original Ruin cancelled out the progression bonus entirely. And then original Ruin had an additional effect where a generator would not be able to receive progress for 3 seconds after a good skill check - that would not be the case with this Lullaby. On the flipside, this effect of Lullaby would also apply to healing actions.
Retribution - You never even know when, where and if a survivor cleansed a dull totem, and the Oblivious effect is lackluster to begin with. Both of these issues can be solved with a simple change: make it so that a survivor has their aura revealed to the killer whenever they cleanse a totem, with a Hex cleanse still revealing all auras (and making every survivor suffer from the Oblivious status effect as well), but a dull cleanse now revealing the aura of the survivor that cleansed. That way the killer knows a survivor is Oblivious, and they can also actually capitalize on them being Oblivious. Additionally, I think it would be interesting if the aura reveal and Oblivious status lasted equally as long, maybe 20-30 seconds for both, though that would admittedly be kinda ridiculous on some killers, particularly of course Nurse (to be fair, Nurse is still in need of adjustments anyway).
Blood Favour - Remove the basic attack stipulation as well as the cooldown. These things are crippling to a lot of perks that aren't nearly good enough to even need them to begin with. Also, Blood Favour should block standing and dropped pallets, such that survivors can neither pull nor vault them. Increase the effect radius to the killer's terror radius, creating interesting synergies with Monitor & Abuse and other (underused) perks, abilities and add-ons. The time for which pallets are held could also be further increased, though the exact number is something to be experimented with. I don't think even 30 seconds would be too ridiculous. Again, these are Hex perks, they are meant to be high reward due to their high risk. But to balance that out a little, Blood Favour should not be able to proc while already active, putting a less punishing pseudo-cooldown on it. And hell, if BHVR is concerned about how difficult this would be to deal with for newer players, make it so that Blood Favour shows the auras of vault locations within that same range for the affected survivor, and/or of pallet locations outside of that range, such that the survivor knows where to go.
Crowd Control and Third Seal have niche usage and some potential but are still in need of buffs too.
Crowd Control in my opinion should block vault locations indefinitely for the respective survivor, for as long as the Hex is standing. To balance this out a little, only true fast vaults would block windows, not "medium" vaults.
Third Seal needs to have the basic attack stipulation removed again, at the very least. I also feel like this could be one perk where an after-cleanse effect would actually be appropriate - namely, the Blindness status effect lasting another 60 seconds upon the Hex being cleansed (for all survivors, even those that had not been affected by it). I feel like that's important for the perk because it would allow the killer to have time to switch playstyles in that "transition" window without losing too much of the progress they had made playing in the Third Seal style (basically, they have time to pick up any slugged survivors and hook them before other survivors can see and heal them up).
Thrill Of The Hunt is a special case: it's not a particularly strong perk but any buffs to it - similarly to Undying (and especially of course given the possiblity of using both) - have to be made with keeping in mind the strength of the Hex perks it is supporting. If nothing else it at least could have better secondary effects that don't make it harder to get rid of totems, but perhaps grant other benefits based on how many totems are standing, such as a 5% increase in pallet breaking and vault speeds for every totem.
The other Hex perks are mostly in a good place, with some finishing touches left perhaps that I would like to see. I think Haunted Ground's second Hex totem should not be deactivated upon the first being cleansed, it should remain lit and have the same effect if cleansed, or at least another 30 seconds of Exposed. Devour Hope could perhaps actually be a Hex that only lights up once it is active, which makes it stronger as a perk itself but weakens the Undying synergy because if the dull totem tied to Devour would be cleansed before it becomes active, Undying will not keep it alive. I think Ruin could at least have a mini-after-cleanse effect, namely gens that are regressing due to Ruin should keep regressing even after Ruin is cleansed, until their regression is manually stopped of course. Whether this "residual" regressing would happen at Ruin's rate of half a charge per second or the base rate of a quarter of a charge per second is another question though. I think Undying should also reveal survivor auras around Hex perks, which would be a nice buff but also a slight nerf in the sense that survivors will more often know that Undying is in play. For NOED I would actually be interested in making this a base game mechanic for all killers. Remove the movement speed boost and reveal the Exposed status effect as soon as the last generator is repaired, if a dull totem is left standing for NOED to tie to. NOED has a healthy effect on the game in my opinion, it makes the endgame much more tense and dynamic where otherwise killers often have no real opportunity to still turn any tides but are basically forced to hardcamp any hook they can get to try and secure a kill. Plus it gives survivors more of an incentive to look out for dull totems, cleansing them throughout the game or at least making note of their positions more. Totems would just instantly become a more important base mechanic in general. That said, obviously this would be quite ridiculous for some of the killers that are already super strong and already have ample chances to even turn endgame scenarios around, namely Nurse and Spirit. There is a simple solution for that: make Lethal Blink hits and Haunting hits not count as basic hits, just like Blight's Lethal Rush hits for instance aren't. Nurse and Spirit are already more than strong enough without benefitting from the Exposed status effect on their abilities, if anything this is a welcome general nerf for these killers, while the other killers (and especially M1 killers) would benefit greatly from the base-kit NOED.
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On a separate note, there is one issue that I first assumed you were maybe alluding to in your original post as well: For as long as an interaction lasts, a survivor can get grabbed off of said interaction by the killer. So if BHVR were to extend the unhooking progress bar to last for the entire unhooking animation such that it can be sped up in its entirety as well, that would mean that survivors can then be interrupted and grabbed off of the unhooking animation later into the process than they can now. That said, there are multiple solutions for this issue: First of all, it should be possible to make actions be affected by the action speed modifier without actually giving them a progress bar. Vault actions for instance are affected by certain action speed modifiers, and they of course do not have progress bars. So they could simply make action speed apply to the portion of the unhooking animation that is currently not affected, albeit without changing the progress bar. Then it could also be possible to simply make grabs not work for the part of the unhooking progress where they currently don't work either, despite the progress bar then including that part. And finally, I for one would actually welcome a change where hook grabs are removed from the game entirely. They encourage hard-camping and lead to awkward, stupid dancing around the hook with the killer refusing to hit a survivor trying to grab them instead, and the survivor refusing to commit to the unhook fearing to get grabbed. It's all the less desirable a mechanic due to how vulnerable it is to latency and therefore randomness and abuse. So the third solution is to simply remove the killer's ability to grab survivors during unhooking interactions, obviously compensating for that with other buffs.
But that's a discussion for an entirely different topic, this post is just meant to address this issue that may arise from my suggestion to make the entire unhooking process be affected by action speed modifiers.
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@BenihimeWrath said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2351502#Comment_2351502
All perks that affect anything are pretty lackluster in this game. You could make an argument for Ruin, but that could bust in 14 seconds and do nothing so, pretty terrible on average. I would honestly prefer that they buffed other perks up into the meta rather than trying to nerf the meta down into trash.
This is an idealistic thought, but the devs have said that they balance a killer's power with the addons as apart of the power budget. So you can't say "oh well it won't have much effect because X addons are better/more useful" because they keep all the addons in scope. And again, what I said was more about hag than trapper, I think trapper is in a garbage place compared to other killers with how ancient, outdated, and archaically contrived his power is now.
I don't really understand the first part here. Desperate Measures, Leader and No One Left Behind are perks so lackluster they are in the lowest of tiers (well, Leader and NOLB anyway). There are certainly very many lackluster perks in this game, but there are also some very strong perks, so clearly there is room for improvement. Maybe you misunderstood me, what I'm suggesting here would buff those aforementioned perks (and it would still not make them very strong either, far from, though Desperate Measures would become interesting).
And for the add-on power budget thing, well, killers only have 2 add-on slots, so the setting speed add-ons would on their own have to do enough to be worthwhile when used alongside another type of add-on, yet in their current state, even when you stack the best setting speed add-ons it only makes a negligible difference. When stacked, they increase setting speed by 90% (Trapper) and 65% (Hag), which amounts to a setting time decrease of 700 milliseconds in Trapper's case, and 400ms in Hag's. Even if you were to speed them up by a percentage approaching infinity, you would still only shave 1-1.5 seconds off of the total animation durations, due to it only affecting a portion of them. I think Trapper would totally be fine with a setting time of 1.3 seconds with 2 setting speed add-ons equipped, and Hag likewise with one of 1.2s with her setting speed add-ons stacked. That's what they would be if those add-ons affected the entire animation instead, and it would create a new chase dynamic where survivors are not certain to comfortably make distance while the killer sets a trap.
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@BenihimeWrath said:
The unhooking speed 'issue' is to enforce a window of time that the killer can punish greedy unhooks by grabbing the unhooker. This is why things that affect unhooking only affect this window of time, to reduce the 'risk' of unhooking safely for the unhooker. Thereby more effectively forcing a hook trade instead of a killer getting the grab/down for nothing gained.
The trap setting speed is built into those killers time budget for their power, similarly to how deathslinger has to reload, or huntress' wind down animation after a thrown hatchet. If you start to tinker with the time efficiency of a killer's power it'll make them more oppressive. That second sentence is moreso for Hag than Trapper though, to be frank.
Again, the perks that non-negligibly affect unhooking speeds are painfully lackluster, buffing them in this way (to reduce the risk of getting grabbed by facecampers and for some other plays) is really not concerning.
Likewise, Hag and Trapper have infinitely better add-ons than the setting speed ones, making the setting interaction take a second or so less is not oppressive from a time budget perspective. Yet it would allow them to actually effectively go for mid-chase trap sets without losing a lot of distance. It would actually make the setting speed add-ons worthwhile, whereas currently there's just no reason to ever use them over the actually good add-ons of these killers.
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Playing killer, I usually try to play "fair", even going out of my way to do so at times. By that I mostly mean that I don't camp, tunnel, slug or 3-gen with a vengeance, but follow a hook-it-and-book-it playstyle where I try to chase and hook everyone equally and alternatingly. Going out of my way to do so then obviously meaning that I even let survivors get hook saves for free despite knowing they're there, finding a recently-unhooked survivor and intentionally ignoring them to go for another survivor, picking up a survivor even if I know that slugging them would put me into a better or even a winning position immediately, and such.
That doesn't mean I always do that, sometimes I just chase whoever I find even if they've been unhooked 5 seconds ago, sometimes I try to play hard and abuse all those aforementioned tactics as much as possible. For a long time (and occasionally still) I even played a build revolving around Infectious Fright and Knock Out and never picking up any survivor, playing chases and whack-a-mole until everyone either bled out or they actually managed to get gens done and escape. But overall I play fairly, care about my survivor opponents having an engaging and dynamic, fun and "fair" round (in fact, the full slugging play style for me was precisely about this too, to give myself and survivors a round that is packed full of chases rather than having the usual hook-based gameplay loop), and I even let people escape at times, and regularly give survivors hatch if they're the last one alive.
On the survivor side, I do have to admit that it is much less common an occurence for me to play "nice". I prolong my chases as much as possible, even abusing some of the strongest structures there are in the game, I dilligently work gens, I intercept killer plays at every opportune moment with tactical or aggressive hook saves, pallet, flashlight, bodyblock and sabo saves, I try make the most effective and efficient macro decisions constantly, etc. etc. However, I think this mostly comes down to the fact as opposed to playing as the killer, as a survivor I have no real control over the overall quality of the match; I am just one of four survivors making up my "side", and much of the time if I play solo queue I if anything have to play as hard as possible for the "team" to even have a shot to succeed, because by the Entity, random survivors often simply do not do their "75%" share of work, far from, and so I have to play in a way that allows me to have much more than "25%" impact on the game (and of course, the better and "sweatier" the killer, the more they can and will abuse the weak links in the "team", undermining much of the impact I as a singular survivor can even have).
That said, if I notice that a round is already going really well and/or that the killer is either having a tough time or playing really respectably and fairly, I will actually leave gens and decide that if gens are to be done, other survivors will have to do it. I also do in fact then leave structures I deem to be too oppressive in my chases, not only to make it more "fair" for the killer player, but also because the chases get more engaging for me that way as well if I know the killer won't be playing "dirty". I do more subtle things in those scenarios too, such as changing into a decision-making mindset that is less efficient and effective, to artificially prolong the game without however literally throwing it, e. g. by going for heals at times where I know it is not necessary, searching for Ruin when only one generator remains, and the like.
I even give killers the kill on me at times if they played particularly well or particularly fairly or had a particularly tough time, either by letting them hook me or intiating a chase in the endgame where I'm likely to die despite having had the chance to escape. And more generally, I don't always bring the perks and items/add-ons/offerings I know to be the most effective in terms of winning, despite having enough resources stocked up to do so much of every game. On the killer side I'm actually somewhat less likely to be using "fun" builds and more likely to be using at least mid-range add-ons rather than weak ones than I am on the survivor side. And hell, I regularly play solo-queue survivor to begin with, despite that obviously being much less favourable an environment for me than a SWF setting with people I know to be competent.
But yeah, overall I would say as killer taking it easier on survivors is more ingrained in my general playstyle, whereas as survivor it is not the norm for me to take it easy on the killer, it is more so dependant on situations. Apart from the things I mentioned before, what also plays into that is that I mostly care about chase play in this game, and going for a chase-heavy playstyle as a killer can be detrimental to one's "success" in terms of consistently killing all survivors, whereas having long chases as a survivor obviously benefits the overall round. Additionally I care slightly more about surviving as survivor than I do about killing as killer. Besides, given the matchmaking in its current state, I usually don't really have a hard time killing survivors as killer anyway, so that makes me care even less to play really hard.
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The problem with endgame perks for survivors is that they are much better off using perks that help get to that point to begin with. Giving up slots for perks that do not help at all until and unless you get to the endgame, which you often might just not, is an obvious risk and liability. So the fact that most endgame perks are terribly lackluster on top of that is just doubly unfortunate.
No One Left Behind is pretty much a joke. If they really want to constrict its use to the EGC phase, its effect should be much, much more impactful, such that its user can actually single-handedly make clutch rescue plays happen. Give it the old Borrowed Time effect that protected both the rescued and rescuer, make the unhooking and healing speed 100% faster, have the healing speed also apply to self-heals, ... I am of the opinion that both Borrowed Time and Decisive Strike should not work in the EGC, so having rescue perks specific to that phase instead would be interesting.
Wake Up! is comparably as awful as NOLB. The gate auras are a Quality-of-Life thing at best, and the 15% increased opening speed translates to not even 3 seconds. Some ideas: make it so you can see other survivors' auras when they are on a gate switch as well, have the opening progress of a gate indicated by its aura's colour intensity, reveal the killer's aura to the user when they are opening a gate, make it so the exit gate switch lights turn on later into the process, ... Still not a great perk since it's still very situationally limited in being able to have much of any impact on a round, but this way it is at least much more reliable in helping in situations where one needs it.
Left Behind and Sole Survivor are two more albeit more special cases of "endgame" perks. Both actually even more awful than the first two. I think they should be reworked entirely to not rely on teammates being dead, and there's a variety of possiblities for this that I've talked about elsewhere before. But I won't go into that since it won't have to do with the endgame. But I'll bring up a cool Sole Survivor concept I've seen recently at a later point.
Adrenaline and Hope are already pretty worthwhile endgame perks, but they too could be improved. The problem with Adrenaline is that it is almost overpowered in SWF settings where survivors can coordinate its activation while being underwhelming in solo queue scenarios where it will often be of little to no real use even if it does activate, and worse, can sometimes even be to its user's detriment by causing the Exhaustion status effect (and by healing them, potentially robbing them of the possibility to use Dead Hard even after the Exhaustion status has worn off, which can be important against NOED and other instadown perks/abilities/add-ons). I don't necessarily think Adrenaline needs changes, but I would consider it an improvement if it were to be balanced more in its potential between solo and SWF settings. That could be achieved in a variety of ways, but one possible idea is to make it so it grants the 150% sprint effect on every generator completion, with 1 second for the first, 2 seconds for the second, and so on, then ultimately of course the 5 seconds on the last gen. As a trade-off, it would not heal a health state any longer, but also not cause Exhaustion. Of course, in that form it would not strictly be an endgame perk any longer, it's just a general idea. Hope on the other hand should just last indefinitely after the last generator has been repaired, the EGC already puts a timer on the endgame. The 7% Haste are actually really nice and can more consistently and reliably assist a solo survivor in their fight for endgame survival.
The problem with endgame perks for killers is that the player would of course prefer for a round not to ever even reach that state, and so they are usually better off using perks that help to try and win the game before it gets there. That said, as opposed to survivors killers are guaranteed to get value out of endgame perks if needed: either they win the round before it comes to an endgame scenario in which case it doesn't matter that they do not get to use their endgame perks, or they do not win before then, in which case it does obviously come to the endgame and any endgame perks they have can then provide value. But another problem is that the endgame is in the survivors' favour in any situation where you would even need perks to help you (i. e. where it's not only 1 survivor left), as they can quickly open gates which are difficult and not seldomly impossible to defend for the killer, and are then mostly safe. Particularly M1 killers struggle at that point because a healthy survivor can usually make it to an exit gate from much of anywhere on the map, with the hit sprint. So for a killer's endgame perks to really be worth using, they have to have notable and/or reliable enough an impact that actually allows them to still potentially turn the game into their favour. Currently, only NOED is notable enough in its impact to see frequent play as an endgame perk, and I actually find it to be a relatively healthy perk (on M1 killers, certainly), due to making the endgame much more interesting and dynamic, where otherwise a killer would often be incentivized to just camp a hook since they have no option but to try and secure that one kill.
Blood Warden is in a reasonably neat spot ever since its recent shadow buff where survivors cannot tell whether the perk is (still) active from afar anymore. That said, it is still an unreliable gimmick, so much so that it is more of a meme perk. I think the first 60 seconds of the perk should activate if the killer has hooked a survivor at any point after the last generator has been finished, rather than having to hook them when the EGC starts. The 60s would only start counting down once a survivor does open a gate, however. And then any consecutive hook the killer gets once the EGC has started should add another 10-30 seconds.
Remember Me should at the very least be returned to its original state of being able to add another 30 seconds to the gate timer. And then beyond that it could further increase the gate timer depending on how many survivors are still alive, with 10 additional seconds (so 40 if 2, 50 if 3, 60 if 4).
No Way Out is receiving a buff, which might already be enough to make it interesting.
A rework of endgame mechanics themselves could also help increase these perks' value, on both sides. One idea is to make it so that the gate switch progress regresses over time, preventing survivors from leaving them at 99%. That way survivors would much more often be forced to actually open a gate and trigger the EGC, putting them on a timer that the killer can capitalize on. Of course, if only one survivor remains, this would only add to make an already regularly almost unwinnable scenario even worse, so for those situations there is a cool idea I recently read in the context of a Sole Survivor rework concept: if the EGC is triggered and only one survivor remains in the trial, reveal the survivor and killer's auras to one another (outside of a certain range), and make it so that the survivor gets to escape the trial if they are still alive (in the healthy or injured state) once the EGC timer has run out (they instantly get sacrificed if they enter the dying state before then). This would encourage an interactive and tense endgame scenario where the killer has to try and catch the last survivor before the timer expires, and it would remedy the issues of how unfairly tilted that scenario can otherwise be due to gate spawns.
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@WexlerWendigo said:
Inner strength can never be OP, since multiple people using it has diminishing returns.
This. If Inner Strength actually became powerful enough a perk on its own to be the meta go-to for healing, it would automatically either stop being powerful or stop being used as much. There are only 5 Inner Strength heals total to go around in a match, that is an impractically low amount for 4 survivors. Plus it suffers in another way too from popularity: now you have multiple people searching for totems most if not all of which have already been cleansed, so unless they also equip something like Small Game, they will be wasting a lot of time.
Inner Strength is in a fairly fine spot, it does not need buffs nearly as direly as a ton of other perks in this game, but it could also totally do with buffs and it would not be problematic. Buffering heals, highlighting locker auras, a shorter time to heal when in locker, suppressing injured noises while in a locker, increasing the time to exit and enter lockers, removing the Blindness effect when in a locker, ... just some ideas.
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Agreed. But as a trade-off, DS should not be able to activate in the endgame. Once EGC has started, DS would not activate upon being unhooked, and any already-active DS would be disabled.
I think now that it is strictly an anti-tunneling perk, there is no reason why it shouldn't be able to activate up to two times. In both cases you are still getting tunnelled. On the other hand, in the endgame the killer regularly has no choice but to tunnel in order to catch anyone anymore at all. DS is BS in that scenario.
For a more extensive rework on top of this, I think the DS timer should be reduced to 30 seconds - but if the survivor gets downed during those 30 seconds, DS remains activate until the survivor is either picked or healed up off the ground. 60 seconds is too much time for it to still be "tunnelling", but on the flipside slugging people out of their DS timer is BS, encouraging slugging on top of tunnelling is not really desirable. Also, healing onself should not disable DS. Only once fully healed should DS be disabled, not already when the survivor is merely attempting to heal.
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@Reinami said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2331849#Comment_2331849
Not exactly true, you do change sides but not necessarily at the "halfway point" of the match.
For example, a CS:GO game is played for 30 rounds, if a team wins 16 rounds, they win. you switch sides in the "halfway point" at 15 rounds played. But, the score isn't necessarily the same, and it carries over. If my team won 15 rounds, we only need to win the pistol round, so you just played the entire game without "really" switching sides that much. You don't equally get to play both sides in a single match of CS:GO.
In this case, let's say the game was balanced such that CTs won 90% of the time. You'd have matches where you go 13-2 in the first half, but then the second team has massive pressure, where a single round lost is far more punishing to them and they have a huge hill to climb. Psychologicallyit would be a problem.
Personally i'm not experienced enough in R6 to know if the same is true there as i haven't played it before, but i have watched it a bit, but definitely not qualified to really comment on it much other than the one liner i said.
But i do understand your point, but my entire argument is that EVERY game has levels of asymmetry and can be balanced, and just because there is asymmetry does not mean it can't be balanced.
No, sorry, you are wrong about this. If team A won 15 rounds on their CT side, including the pistol round, then team B also has to do so on their CT side after the switch if they want to match that performance. If they cannot, team A has simply performed better on their CT side than team B. You can also reverse it to see that it is a symmetrical affair: team B did not manage to win a single of their T rounds, including the pistol round; if team A manages to win even a single of their T rounds, including the pistol round, they have performed better on the T side than team B.
There is absolute symmetry in the competitive premise of CS. The only asymmetry there can be found is a purely psychological or emotional one, albeit for that it is very subjective whether things are actually a detriment or benefit. Some players break under the pressure of trying to fight back from a 15-0 half, some strive in that environment. Some players fly on the back of a 15-0 half to end the game 16-0 in dominating fashion, some people start to get complacent or otherwise sloppy and give away the entire lead. All of these things can and have happened, probably in equal amounts in competitive CS history.
But you are right that asymmetry is not fundamentally exclusive to balance. It's definitely a rather different balance approach however, I believe.
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@Reinami said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2331830#Comment_2331830
This argument is also flawed about "high level matches are rare in matchmaking" for several reasons.
1) MMR is coming, whether you like it or not. If someone is high MMR, every match they play will be high-level. Even Scott admits he hates this and will be a problem. If balance between the 2 sides is not addressed, MMR will end this game one way or another.
2) Just because something is rare doesn't mean it isn't important. Let's imagine for a second we had a killer offering that existed in the game. It had a 0.1% chance to appear in the bloodweb and does the following:
- All survivors are permanently exposed.
- the aura of all survivors is permanent revealed to the killer.
- The killer automatically gets maximum point bonuses for bloodpoints and pips in all categories.
- The killer's movement speed is increased by 100%. (double)
Now, would such an offering be balanced, fair and undeserving of change? It's power would mean that it likely would be banned in tournament play, so we don't have to worry about that. And in average level of play, it would only appear 1 out of every 1000 games, so it should be fine right?
My point isn't that it doesn't matter because it's rare, but an overall balancing approach affecting the entire game should not be based upon high-level matches because they are (vanishingly) rare. As I said, there are definitely specific issues with high-level DbD that can and should be addressed, but it's more complicated than saying that because high-level DbD is this or that survivor-sided, we need this or that amount of survivor nerfs. Which you aren't even necessarily doing, I don't know. But lots of people have pretty unreasonable suggestions for such "balance" changes based on their (much of the time very limited and otherwise skewed) understanding of high-level DbD.
For MMR, like I said, I expect the playing experience to change with it (if the system actually functions well), and as such also a different balance approach to go alongside with it, with time. But it's not as dramatic as you make it out to be either. Using Scott as an example, this last round of MMR tests he himself said he had mostly more pleasantly challenging experiences. And he still won most of his matches pretty decisively, as usual.
I would not defend that offering. It would be a specific example of an indeed problematic mechanic in the game - again, I'm not denying there are still such mechanics on the survivor side too (and on the killer side, for that matter). Specific problematic things, not sweeping, profound balance concerns.
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@Reinami said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2331799#Comment_2331799
But that's the point. Every single game has some level of asymmetry. It just has varying degrees of it.
As someone who grew up playing CS, i can tell you that there is MASSIVE difference between the 2 sides. Attack vs defense in a game of slow paced, holding angles calculated play makes both sides play VASTLY differently within the context of that game.
Fighting games have asymmetry between different characters, even in mirror matches, you play on different sides. Character classes, abilities, skills, talents, levels, gear, different weapon choices all contribute to asymmetry.
Even CHESS has some level of asymmetry.
Eternal Return, is releasing a character soon that literally wins the game (a battle royal) by doing something entirely different than every other character in the game. And i don't mean like, different abilities, i mean that they literally have a different win condition.
Just because there is asymmetry does not mean you can't have balance.
As someone who grew up playing CS, i can tell you that there is MASSIVE difference between the 2 sides. Attack vs defense in a game of slow paced, holding angles calculated play makes both sides play VASTLY differently within the context of that game.
Don't wanna intrude on your larger discussion with Scott Jund (though I do believe he has a point with DbD's asymmetrical nature posing unique problems for the balancing approach, as I've stated myself before), but this argument doesn't hold. In CS you change sides at the half-time point, both teams play both sides and have equal opportunities of performing on both sides. There is no asymmetry in the competitive premise (similar to how DbD tournaments do it, though obviously DbD has a bunch of RNG aspects CS has none of, so CS is definitely still more competitively viable).
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@Reinami said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2331675#Comment_2331675
But if the game is not balanced at high level play, why would i bother playing it and getting better? Why bother learning new things or improving? Why bother even playing.
If chess at a high level was played such that white won 95% of the time and black won 5% of the time, do you think anyone would actually play chess?
There are a few issues with the rhetoric of those questions as I see it. Again, high-level matches are almost non-existently rare in the current matchmaking environment, so much so that if you are looking for high-level play, you already have no real reason to be playing this game. Unless you are playing in tournaments, but then if you are playing in tournaments, the game is actually reasonably balanced: in tournaments, both teams play both sides, the asymmetrical format of the game is broken by a symmetrical tournament format, and therefore all balance concerns that stem from that asymmetrical game format are also irrelevant; if both teams have to play the same killer character, both sides suffer and benefit equally from how weak that killer is or isn't.
In general, the reason you would want to bother getting better at DbD is because it's fun and satisfying, and because being good at the game actually does reward you. Even at the very top level the game is not nearly a "95% to 5%" affair, 2-4ks happen in tournaments all the time (and this is ignoring the fact that again, in tournaments killer vs. survivor balance does not even matter as a competitive premise in and of itself), so becoming a better player allows you to perform more successfully even there. To take an example for this from a topic you brought up in a recent conversation with me: Dowsey played Spirit against Oracle and did not do too well, getting 1ks with 4-6 hook stages if I remember correctly. Yet Dowsey is a very experienced and solidly-skilled killer player, he is definitely a "1%" killer main. If you look at tournaments, there have been players that kinda demolished Oracle. At least, there have been instances of them getting 4k'd by Spirits, and getting 2-3k'd is not even all that rare. So you can see that even from a multiple-thousand hour veteran player that streams the game more or less as a job there is still quite a steep curve up to the "0.1%" of players. The vast majority of players will never reach those heights, even Dowsey himself said it takes a ton of consistent practice against those high-level teams to perform at that level, and that he is not in the mindset and practice and experience to do so. I'm not saying you will never reach those levels, but if you aren't already competing in tournaments on the regular, chances are you still have a pretty huge, rewarding room for improvement.
...And then in public matchmaking (read: 99% of the gameplay experiences being had in this game), becoming better actually allows you to do very well on a consistent basis. In fact, getting better is much, much more rewarding on the killer side in that environment. As a survivor you will always be at the mercy to a large extent of your fellow survivors' levels of skills, experience, knowledge and even their levels of trying to win the game to begin with. Whereas as a killer, your performance is fundamentally in your hands, you constitute 100% of the performance potential of the killer side, you can decide which killer you play with which loadout and the way in which you play, all of your skills and experience translate completely into your "side's" performance. That this is true is easy to demonstrate: the best survivor players in this game die all the time in public matchmaking; the best killer players almost never lose. Take Dowsey, who as mentioned is not even at the very very top. He has 4k streaks of hundreds of matches in a row. So do other players, with a variety of killers very much including the weaker ones. There are Nurse players with 500+ game 4k streaks. The consistency with which you can dominate as killer in public matchmaking if you are good at the game is impressive. If you like winning, becoming better in DbD should be really attractive to you, all the more so as a killer player.
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@Reinami said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2331582#Comment_2331582
That's not actually true though, but admittedly i glanced over that due to time. Again, i can't possibly list of every level of skilled survivor, but let's look at that middle ground and break the game into 5 types of survivor players.
- Survivors who go down in 10 seconds because they don't know how to play the game (where we all started)
- Survivors who have an understanding of how the game works and go down in 20 seconds.
- Survivors who understand how basic tiles and pallets work and can win mindgames against the killer sometimes at certain tiles. These ones, when they win the mindgame, can last 60 seconds, but when they don't they go down in 30 seconds.
- Survivors who have a strong understanding of tiles and can win mindgames most of the time, so they go down in 60 seconds at a tile.
- Survivors who are tournament level players who can exploit tiles to, depending on RNG, be completely uncatchable, or waste several minutes of the killers time.
Again, if you fix the ones that can waste minutes of someone's time, it doesn't affect the others as harshly, but i do agree they aren't completely immune. But the difference between these isn't like, you fix high level survivors so now everyone else goes down in 10 seconds. That isn't how it will work out.
- The ones who go down in 10 seconds, still go down in 10 seconds
- The ones who go down in 20 seconds, still go down in 20 seconds.
- The ones who understand how tiles work and can mindgame the killers, initially will have to relearn the mindgames and would have a harder time if the tiles are changed significantly, but they have shown the capacity to learn these things and will continue to get better and learn.
- Survivors who heavily know the tiles will initially have to relearn tiles, but they have shown mastery over each individual tile and will easily get to that level again after only a few days really.
- Survivors at this level are the most affected.
It would indeed be impossible to go into all the different nuances of skill levels that go into chaseplay, that spectrum is pretty huge. Therefore I find it unreasonable to assume that it would be possible to make significant balancing changes that actually only really affect the highest level of that gameplay without having a big ripple through the other levels. In fact I even find the admittedly overly simplistic conception of that relationship more realistic still, i. e. that cutting the top performance ceiling in half would also halve the average performance expectation.
But like I said, there are definitely more targeted, specific, less global, more "surgical" balance changes that can be made that won't really be problematic for the average experience but solve problems at the upper end. Such as re-addressing the safety and spawn patterns of pallet-containing structures on Cowshed. The average survival rate on that map is not even all that different from a bunch of others, but it's definitely one of the most survivor-sided maps in the game. So it is reasonable to think that map can be tamed for the high level without affecting the average too much. And there are more specific examples like that. But the idea that "survivor gameplay at large" would have to be significantly limited so that the best players cannot reach the heights that they do now is just not realistic. But maybe you aren't even one of the people advocating for "survivor nerfs" without that caveat.
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@Reinami said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2331504#Comment_2331504
Everyone always says this type of thing. Let me ask you, if you balance for high level players what changes? You have a few sets of survivors
- Ones who go down in 10 seconds because they don't understand the game
- Ones who go down in several minutes due abusing mechanics and being able to abuse broken RNG loops.
And you have players to varying degrees in between those 2.
Let's say you nerf the loops, or mechanics that make it so those survivors who waste minutes of a killers time can no longer do that, now they go down in 60 seconds. What happens to the other survivors?
The ones who go down in 10 seconds, are still going to go down in 10 seconds. You didn't make the game worse for them, but you made it better for the high level players.
This seems relatively obvious to me. That entire realm of those "varying degrees" between the two extremes of survivor skill levels would suffer a lot from changes aimed to decrease the overall survivor performance ceiling. Using your example, say you have a performance potential spectrum ranging from really bad players that last 10 seconds in chases to really good ones that last 2 minutes. The average performance that would make for the majority playing experience in that environment is survivors roughly lasting a minute. Now if you decrease the ceiling to 1 minute for the best players, average players will only be expected to last around 30 seconds. By limiting the spectrum you are hampering the average performance significantly. And in the current environment the average survivor performance is already not enough for them to survive 50% of the time.
To note: I'm not saying there aren't busted setups that can spawn, or maps that are busted altogether. Absolutely there are, not like I think Cowshed is totally fine, the "peak performance potential" of a highly-killed survivor on that map against much of the killer line-up is just oppressively high. Like I said, there are still absolutely balance-relevant changes left to ideally be made to the game, for both roles. I hope MMR will be enabled for good sooner rather than later - I believe it will highlight for the devs very clearly some of the glaring balance issues in the game. I mean, just look at the fact that in the current willy-nilly matchmaking system, even the least-deadly killer on the most survivor-favoured map still averages more than 2 kills per match, even in red ranks. Likewise the fact that Nurse has one of the lowest kill rates, also even in red ranks. This would change significantly in the statistics of an MMR environment. And BHVR really does look at stats a lot. So I think the eventual activation of MMR will be the first step to larger balance adjustments. Hopefully.
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There are multiple issues with balancing approaches to DbD.
To start with, the game is asymmetrical, so balancing it for high-level play is difficult. "Balance" in symmetrical competitions actually scales with skill levels pretty linearly, but in an asymmetrical format what would be balanced in a high-skill setting might be completely skewed once you have varying levels of skills involved. Particularly, the killer side benefits much more from player skill because the skill of the player constitutes the entire killer side of the balance equation, whereas any single survivor player cannot possibly do everything alone, they constitute in theory only 25% of the survivors' side of that equation. Simply put, if a survivor player is more skilled than a killer player, that does not necessarily put the survivor side at an advantage in the match; on the contrary, if a killer player is more skilled than a survivor player, that should usually have a lot more of an impact on the outcome of the round. Again, the impact the killer player's skill can have on a match is four-fold that of any individual survivor player's, in theory. I think this is a major reason why the game in its current and past state (that is, with a matchmaking system that throws players together more or less willy-nilly) is notably killer-sided, in the public game mode.
Then there is the fact that every single match has different competitive starting conditions: map, killer, items, add-ons, perks, offerings - they all affect balance in different significant ways, and you cannot achieve a global balance for all of these things. Clown is a relatively weak killer, but use Redhead's Pinky Finger and you are a much greater threat. In order to account for these things, a balance approach would end up getting impractically complicated, such as... different generator repair times based on which killers, add-ons, items and such are in play. It's just not feasible.
And then there is the fact that the performance potential differences between solo, duo, trio and quad SWF survivor groups are tremendous. Balancing for the "highest level" would mean balancing for the idea of a team of 4 highly-skilled survivors that know each other, play together frequently, therefore have natural and tactical teamwork, coordinate their loadouts and strategies down to a T, and communicate constantly in practiced and efficient manners via voice chat. This is just factually a possibility of something that can happen in the game, it constitutes the highest level of performance a survivor side can reach. Yet in the actual game, we know that groups of 4 players queueing together only make up roughly 5% of the global player pool. Of those 5%, an even significantly smaller portion is comprised of 4 highly-skilled players. And of that tiny portion, even less are then also groups that play together all the time and have those coordinated loadouts, strategies and communication. It's simply vanishingly rare. You will basically never face a survivor team performing at the highest possible level in public matchmaking, even in years of gameplay.
This is not to say there isn't balancing possible in DbD. The game has of course become increasingly more balanced throughout the years, and there are still balance-relevant things left to be changed. For example, some killer characters are clearly weaker than others and there is no reason why they couldn't all be buffed to sit more toward the level of lethality that currently makes for the higher tier (with add-ons). But not Nurse or Spirit level. Basekit Blight level (or maybe Blight with Blighted Rat level, to be more precise). Other killers (such as Nurse and Spirit) and/or add-ons (such as Alchemist's Ring and Mother-Daughter Ring) could be adjusted downward to fit in with that level of lethality. Not only are there no issues associated with all killers being more equal in strength, but once they are, balancing base-game mechanics and specifics becomes much easier since you don't have to account for such a wide variety of killer performance potentials. For instance, I believe that basekit versions of Ruin and even NOED could be feasible for some killers... but that would obviously be insane to consider that for a killer like Nurse.
Other balancing that is possible is closing the performance potential gap between solo and SWF groups. The easiest way to get a good chunk of the way there would be to give survivors in-game voice communcation. Everything else is a much more complicated and convoluted undertaking, though I do believe that limiting SWF performance potential is much easier than improving that of solo groups, not least because killers would not have to be buffed to compensate. Things like limiting perks and items or decreasing generator repair speeds based on the number of players in an SWF group would be simple and effective ways to get more level playing fields.
And for something that BHVR is thankfully working on already (even though it took and still takes way too long to actually be implemented): The matchmaking system is one of the main leverage points to achieve a better live experience balancing. In the current rank-based matchmaking system, the skill disparity at any rank can be and regularly is huge. Players with 100 hours are treated no differently from players with 4000 hours. A "skill-based" matchmaking system that actually more consistently matches players with similar levels of skill, experience and success will make for a much more balanced global game experience, and also one that provides much better statistics for BHVR to then use in further balancing decisions.
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I'm not sure just how accurate that scaling is. It's fairly obvious that RE3 remake Nemesis is taller and bigger than DbD's version (the latter's legs are shorter, particularly), but whether this video is an entirely accurate comparison is another question.
That said, the creator of the video also used this model in a DbD context (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Emf7Lvpu9M), and so unless he changed the scaling for that, it goes to show that a larger Nemesis could fit into the game with custom animations. But that's obviously a lot more work than just making him smaller, so that's what we got. To be fair, Nemesis is still the tallest killer in the game (ignoring Demogorgon which does not stand upright), and so he's still "special" in that respect. I would definitely prefer if he were to be as massive as he appears in the remake, but eh, the extra work that would have to go into that should rather go into giving him more compelling abilities.
One simple thing they could do to make him feel noticably taller though is to raise the killer PoV level. It sits around the standard height for tall killers and it would be cool if instead it would be higher, not only in terms of the feel of playing the character but also because then at least he gets the slight advantage of being able to look over stuff easier, as a trade-off for being spotted easier due to his height. Hell, maybe it would even allow for the tentacle strike to hit more reliably over obstacles, a buff Nemesis definitely could do with.
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@Reinami said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2327752#Comment_2327752
Then they just loop the pallet.
I'm not some terrible player, i have 2k hours in this game. Watch Tru3 vs oracle, or Dowsey vs oracle.
If a survivor loops a pallet, there is usually a fair bit of outplay potential, especially given the different killer powers. If a pallet is too safe, break it and try again on a less safe pallet.
If you want me to analyze the various mistakes Tru3 made in his matches against Oracle and specifically those he did in chases, I can do that. Missing basic attacks is not conducive to performing well against one of the very best teams in the world, for one thing. Wraith is certainly not a strong enough killer to be able to consistently 4k against the best teams in the world, no matter the player, but better players than Tru3 that are more experienced in facing such teams certainly would (and do) do better than him. 2 kills are entirely possible and not uncommon for lower-tier killers in tournaments, and even 3-4 not impossible.
Footage showcasing the specific issue you are referring to would definitely help to have more of an actual discussion on it.
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Please record and share your gameplay if you can, and be it in private messages with me if you are not comfortable sharing it publically. I would genuinely like to help you play better in these instances, but for that I need to see what exactly it is you're struggling with. If survivors just drop pallets and keep running, going around the pallets should usually result in catching up rather swiftly, it does for me anyway.
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We get the crowns from last year in a slightly visually changed way and the items from last year with a slightly changed description. Bloodpoint offerings are always nice but as a veteran player I really do not care about BP anymore; I have all perks on all characters I care about and plenty add-ons and items, and even regardless, being able to get there somewhat faster is not all that exciting to begin with. I would be using WGLF and BBQ every game if that were the case, but I am not. Neither are most players for that matter (at least in WGLF's case). Apparently we'll be getting some extra Shards though, that's a little more exciting. Being able to earn Auric Cells would be better of course, maybe enough such that people can buy 1 Auric-only cosmetic.
I like the Wraith cosmetic fairly well, but do not care for the David one at all. Both are obviously nothing too special though, just like last year's Claudette and Slinger ones weren't. Just recolours. I hope the skull on Wraith's weapon will be reminiscent of the skulls they use on their anniversary banners though, that's a pretty cool look.
The crowns should honestly be a special type of charm that can be worn over any head cosmetic, not just the default ones. It's lame and you almost never see the crowns as a result. Hell, they could even have some type of gameplay effect. Both killers and survivors can wear them so it's "fair" in that sense, plus the crowns are actually a detriment to wear because they make you easier to spot (also goes for both roles). At least for the duration of the event it would be cool if wearing a crown would do something. The event items should also have unique effects that really mix up the gameplay, rather than merely special SFX and VFX. The Blight Serum and Refined Serum event add-ons actually did things, I would be more excited for stuff like that. And since only survivors get the event items of course, killers could have a special black-and-gold event totem that spawns as a sixth totem in every trial. It would have some Hex-like effect and survivors would be able to cleanse it just as usual. Simple enough. The crown system could be more exciting too. Make it so the crowns give power-ups when collected in the trial but can be stolen from survivors by the killer and vice versa. Or something of that sort.
So yeah, overall not very excited at all because the "event" for the most part is basically just plain old DbD with a pillar standing around here or a bit of confetti there.
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On one hand I have paid fairly little money for this product yet have gotten a lot of engaging entertainment out of it through the years, and so I think it would be... entitled for me as a "customer" to act as if that would be a bad relationship for me with the company from a "market" perspective. On another, the game is more like a service, and so that continual development as well as my experience of it is intrinsically part of that relationship. And I mean, they ship DLC every 3 months, which I buy, which basically makes it a paid service. That nature of the game does entitle me to be dissatisfied with what I'm getting. Plus, as a "member" of the community and player of the game I contribute to the game's longevity and succes to some extent, for free, so it's only fair that I also get to use that to point to those dissatisfactory things.
For me personally it's not even so much the optimization and programming issues in terms of performance and bugs and whatnot that cause me dissatisfaction (though they are totally still issues, and there are some of them that are very important to me too, most of all the fact that they still haven't implemented a fair hit reg system that does not reward killers for latency), it's the fact that they almost never deliver exciting and engaging new gameplay. The core gameplay concept and design is great, always has been. But throughout the years, actual "conceptual" improvements and compelling new additions to that gameplay have been painfully sparse. They are also painfully slow on top of being painfully conservative with their gameplay design, and sometimes make painfully questionable decisions.
That said, while I'm really rather curious why it is that these things are like they are, why they are so slow and change so little, why they make so many mistakes, why they decide the things they decide, why they often don't manage to do the things they say they want to do, and so on, it's mostly that, curiosity. I don't feel any real animosity towards any BHVR employee or even the company at large, it's just a game and they are just people. If anything I actually find it somewhat endearing how peculiar this company seems to function and how silly DbD in many respects is (and a fair few of their other games are). They are "amateurish" in some ways that can definitely affect the game negatively, but also in ways that make them more human and gives them (and the game) personality. It's not this polished great thing with huge, world-stage levels of exciting developments, it's more personal and quirky and familiar and has remained true to itself in many respects (for better and worse).
There is even a certain excitement to the very fact that they are not very competent at and familiar with high-level gameplay of their own game. That makes it so one never quite knows whether they will change some of the things that are relevant to higher-level DbD, whether they will add new things that can be come relevant for it. Most of the time this does not happen, which is lame, but still, there is a certain sense of excitement that basically anything could happen because they don't seem to actually know what they're doing all the time, with regards to that higher-level gameplay certainly. Though I do suspect that part of why they are so reluctant to make any more fundamental changes to the game is that they are simply scared to mess with its core formula that has been so much more successful than they ever anticipated, and than most of their other projects (beating out all other asymmetrical games of this kind, even their very own attempt at another one). That core formula is a bit magical in that sense, I can kind of understand not wanting to make any too significant changes to the gameplay for that reason, even if that's lame.
I wouldn't think less of them if they actually came out and admitted to any internal issues that may be causing these things. If they said something along the lines of "we have a problem managing internal structures and timelines and this can lead to bottleneck-like limitations on the quantity and quality of our development and content output", or "we have the same limited amount of programmers we have always had and they are struggling to deliver more things or things of higher quality on this schedule", or whatever, I would if anything think higher of them. Whether it is a sort of arrogance or pride that leads them to not talk about any of the internal issues that must be at fault for the issues with the product's development and content or whether it is ignorance in that they never internally criticize each other and don't want to even acknowledge the severity of such issues or whether it is simply all marketing because they figure staying silent on these things is still better for their public image with regards to securing corporate partnerships (for licensed IP content and otherwise) and such I don't know; there's probably a few reasons why they don't come out and say such things, and I don't even necessarily want them to do so or think that that would be a good or reasonable thing to do. I'm just saying if they did show that such problems like a lack of programming power and expertise exist in their team, I would not think less of them.
Around the time when they ambitiously said they want to tackle performance and one core goal of that undertaking would be to rewrite the base game code into C++, I saw McLean show off a C++ book on stream saying he's improving his skills in his off time. That was pretty cute, not acting like they know it all but literally showing "weakness" as a programmer, a lack of expertise in that coding language. Of course, that base code rewrite never happened from what we know, so that's not so cute, but the point is I don't dislike these people, I'm sure they have competent and smart individuals working there (such as McLean), and just because they make (a lot of) mistakes and don't develop the game in ways that are very exciting doesn't mean they are all stupid and lazy and bad at their jobs. And to any extent that they are stupid and lazy and bad at their jobs, well, we all are to an extent or another - I don't expect too much from DbD, it's a game and if they are fine with making the money that they do this way and the employees have a more relaxing working schedule and environment than may be typical for the industry that allows them to think and work less hard and long, I say good for them.
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I empathize with your sentiment completely OP. It has for years boggled my mind just how bad so many players in this game can be, so much so that they regularly can't even seem to fulfil the most basic requirements of playing it. It's not even a lack of game-specific knowledge or game-specific smarts and skills, so many players make completely non-sensical decisions even from a purely common sense perspective. For just one obvious of countless other such examples: It is completely common for random survivors to sit around a hook for prolonged periods of time and watch a survivor be camped, and not only that, but often they will then rush in for an unhook play mere seconds after the hooked survivor has transitioned into the struggle stage - so not only were they stupid enough to waste time doing nothing but standing around the hook in the first place, but while they were apparently scared of taking a hit for the unhook or of trading hooks for that entire time doing so, just after the hooked survivor enters struggle stage they suddenly rush in for an unhook attempt that comes with those very same risks attached for them while obviously being decidedly more detrimental overall. And this happens so often you can basically count on randoms to do this. And there's plenty more such failing-at-the-most-basic-stuff that is equally as common in this game. If I see a random survivor get injured at the beginning of a round, I sometimes start counting in my head, wondering whether they too will only last around 10 seconds in that chase, and it is laughable how often I'm right. And I don't even want to start on the many inexplicable things players apparently find to do in this game that prevent them from actually repairing generators.
It goes for both roles, but it is particularly glaring on the survivor side indeed. That they barely progress the singular main objective there is and consistently manage to go down in seconds even against pure M1 killers just blows my mind. If I can get frustrated with this game, that's actually one of the few things to do it. The cognitive dissonance caused by not understanding how it can be possible for people to play so badly and stupidly that it can barely even be described as "playing" altogether versus the experience of seeing it happen constantly, round after round, is just not a pleasant experience, even regardless of the fact that it often makes rounds unreasonably difficult or downright impossible, or on the flipside painfully boring as killer.
And I know for sure that these players aren't trying not to win or don't care about the game. It's not like they aren't the first to be very upset in post-game chat, and not like they aren't more than willing to hide for 10 minutes to get a hatch escape. They want to survive, they don't want to be killed by the killer, the competitive core concept of the game is not completely lost on these players. But they just can't seem to manage to make even just reasonably smart decisions or somewhat skillful plays to save their lives.
In other games I consistently meet players that give me a challenge and show me that there are swathes of players thinking about and practicing and improving at the game constantly, it is not even rare for players to impress me. In DbD meeting even just competent players is such a rare delight I feel like I'm playing with Einstein whenever a player does not seem to have #########-for-brains-and-hands, excuse my french.
Obviously this has to do with the fact that the matchmaking system randomly throws together players the skill and experience disparity between which can be and regularly is huge, such as 100 hour players that are dreaming of their first chase that lasts more than 30 seconds meeting 4000+ hour players that can't remember the last time they've had more than one person escape through the exit gates. But while that is a big problem, that's far from the only reason for this. Like you say, even players with hundreds and even thousands of hours are not unlikely to still be at best mediocre at the game, and not seldomly still more on the side of "pretty bad".
MMR when.
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If you can at all manage to, please record some of these games where you feel that you have trouble dealing with survivors "holding W". It's difficult to say what you could do better without that, and for me personally all the more so because I have a hard time seeing how that tactic would even work out in any consistent fashion like people are making it out to.
Mindbreaker is not an awful perk ever since it got buffed, and it can pretty much counter Sprint Burst on its own. To counter Spine Chill, try looking away from a gen when you are approaching it. It's silly to do the crab walk I know, but it works. Also, if you have someone on a hook and survivors do the run away early thing and have a lot of distance on you, just go back to the hook periodically ("proxi-camping"). If they want to "abuse" distance by running early, use that against them by pushing them off gens while simultaneously having the hook timer tick down.
And to your question of "do I just play blight forever?", I do have to say that a totally valid answer could be "yes". Some killers in this game are clearly stronger than others, and there is no reason not to always play them. Not only that, but most of the stronger killers have very rewarding and engaging gameplay and a high skill ceiling that allows you to keep practicing and improving even after months and years of playing them. Believe it or not, there are people that have been maining Nurse ever since she first released and still do. It's not like a killer like Myers or Clown has anything going for them that makes them particularly compelling or riveting to play, so one can totally just... forgo playing such killers in favour of killers like Blight. That's not to say it's impossible to succeed with lower-tier killers such as Myers or Clown - far from! -, but the performance potential of a killer like Blight is obviously much higher. I do think a fair few of those lower-tier killers should be buffed, but I never got the thing where people knowingly pick one of the weaker killers and then are upset if they don't manage to do well all the time. Just pick and practice one of the stronger killers and play them all the time, it's a win-win.
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Plague is one of the few killers where I think Thanatophobia actually has its merits. To add a less obvious suggestion to the list though: Tinkerer. Survivors will really have to think twice about not cleansing with Tinkerer in play since they might just randomly die to it if they choose to stay infected.
Bamboozle and Brutal Strength are the most solid chase perks, so if you are having trouble catching people without Corrupt Purge, try those. That said, Enduring plus Spirit Fury might be more what you're looking for in terms of chase perks - since any Spirit Fury proc is basically a guaranteed down against an injured survivor, survivors might be more willing to cleanse with those in play. Play With Your Food used to actually be pretty bonkers on Plague since Vile Purge did not consume tokens, but that has (un)fortunately changed now.
Blood Echo plus Mindbreaker pretty much nullify Exhaustion perks, certainly if survivors don't cleanse, but spending two slots on that is a little crazy.
Monitor & Abuse can be somewhat scary for infected survivors, you could give it a try anyway. Combine it with Infectious Fright for some good snowball potential if survivors decide to remain infected.
I think the best way to get survivors to cleanse is actually using the Apple add-ons that give you already-corrupted fountains from the get-go. Most random survivors will already cleanse once you activate your 1 free Corrupt Purge that you get every game, so if you activate a second or third one with the use of those add-ons, you will certainly get people to give you more corrupted fountains. Besides, 2-3 guaranteed activations are often enough to win a round with to begin with. And this also allows you to save perk slots in order to create fun builds such as Ruin, Undying, Tinkerer + Thanatophobia/Intervention/Weasel/Bamboozle.
On a related note: I think Black Incense should actually notify survivors that it is in play. Not only is it pretty BS that Plague gets wallhacks with this add-on without survivors being able to tell, but if survivors would be able to tell that it is in play it would be a sure-fire way to get them to cleanse.
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The idea that "just hold W" would be a viable strategy, let alone problematic or "meta", is absurd. First of all, I have played thousands of hours of this game and watched thousands more, and apart from newbies I almost never see people literally just run in a straight line. Making it out as if that would be an ubiquitous strat really is one of those far-from-reality things that is the basis for the "forum player" jokes. Mind showing me the countless videos there absolutely should be of killers chasing survivors in straight lines all game all day? Everyone plays structures, uses pallets and windows, pretty much all the time. The only times I see people actually just hold W is if they're in deadzones, and they start playing active tiles once they get to them.
Utilizing distance and trying to make more distance on a killer is completely natural a play survivors go for, that is the entire premise of running away. But it does not revolve around "just holding W" whatsoever, to actually be able to make notable distance and make use of that distance, survivors have to play tiles, break line of sight, use unexpected pathing, constantly keep track of the killer, be aware of what they can do and try to predict what they will do. It is almost never a simple straight-away play because the majority of maps just do not allow for that. The only "reliable" situation where running in a straight line would actually be feasible is if you are in the center of one of the handful of big maps in the game and one of the handful of pure M1 killers in the game approaches you and you notice well in advance that they do so. And even then you cannot just keep holding W, the edges of maps are always deadzones, you will have to play a structure sooner rather than later, or risk getting cut off by the killer if you try to "hold W" in a different direction. Whenever you are not in the middle of a big map on the other hand, you cannot run away from the killer in a straight line, that's just physically impossible; and whenever you face a killer that has an ability that allows them to injure or down you or to catch up to you faster (or stealthily), running away in a straight line is also not regularly feasible. And if you want to take a hit (which again is usually limited to M1 killers, and also requires you to be healthy to begin with) and then run off into the direction the killer approached from, you only get around 20 seconds of straight-lining before you inevitably go down. That's not at all a viable way to play.
Just holding W is not a real problem, because it is restricted to a limited amount of situations on a limited amount of maps and against a limited amount of killers, and even in those limited instances most players will still play tiles. In tournament play you will also see survivors use pallets and windows as much as possible, they don't merely run away to make as much distance as possible, which they would if that would really be the simple and obvious winning play. It is limited to situations where they want to take the killer away from certain gens at all costs, where they are in a deadzone and know they will go down anyway and just want to get a few more seconds out of it, or where they are in a spot that they know is too risky to play against the killer and going down in the corner of the map is a calculated move since their team is pumping out gens. In your average pub games, people are not playing very efficiently at all, to more or less give up your life by running into the corner of the map in the hopes that your "team" is actually doing gens is a foolish play most of the time. You are much better off actually trying to prolong the chase as much as possible by playing structures, that way you don't have a set timer until you go down and might actually be able to allow your fellow survivors to have the 2 minutes they need to finish 1 generator.
The only actually consistently worthwhile way to use distance is if you can break line of sight while playing structures in a chase and go for unexpected moves that allow you to leave the tiles without the killer noticing immediately, since then you get to take the chase to another tile, conserving resources and prolonging the chase "for free". Although it has to be noted that leaving tiles like this comes with obvious risks, even against M1 killers, and also requires positional and map awareness, knowledge of timings and fairly quick decision-making.
However, there are some things in the game that do actually make the catch-up time on a distance more of a problem:
There are a few select maps the layout of which can actually reliably allow survivors to just keep running until the killer has caught up. The main culprit in this regard is Midwich, where you can keep running through the circular main hallways, and due to the lack of any real cut-off opportunities, a killer will either have to follow until they catch up, or give up and try to get the jump on you or other survivors at another point. Haddonfield is another bad case of this design flaw, because the houses and fences that are all over that map can be run around until a killer has caught up, though there is a certain albeit small amount of counterplay to this. And then there are a few specific structures in the game that function similarly, such as MacMillan's watertower tile that is infamous in this regard because a survivor can spot the killer over the structure, or the piles of cars on Gas Heaven since they make for very long straight-aways where line of sight can be maintained.
Another issue in this regard can be the starting distance of a chase. If a survivor runs away early as a killer approaches, the time needed for the killer to catch up before the "chase" actually begins is regularly too much for it to be worth following that survivor. However, this is far from a cut-and-dry issue. First of all there is again the caveat that the position on the map often simply does not allow a survivor to make distance straight away from the killer, so they will need to try and make distance unnoticed in an off-direction, which is also not always possible and carries the risk of getting cut off. Then a survivor first has to even be sure that the killer is actually approaching their position and trying to pressure them. So the multitude of stealth aspects of killer gameplay make this less of an issue, for one thing. For another, if the survivor goes for early distance without even knowing for sure that the killer is approaching their position intending to pressure them (rather than chasing or having spotted someone else around there or whatnot), they will waste a lot of time running away from objectives every time they think the killer is going for them. And then there are a ton of situations where the killer does not even want nor need to follow after you. In for instance the common scenario where the killer has just hooked a survivor and is then approaching others on gens, if you run early the killer can just proxi-camp their hook and they will adore you for running away every time they as much as look at you. They stop you from progressing objectives while simultaneously progressing their own. And this is just one of the many completely common scenarios in which survivors have to aggressively pressure objectives and cannot afford to "just run far away early".
And the third issue is the endgame. In the endgame, the game actually becomes a distance race to the exit gates, and in this scenario the catch-up time often proves prohibitively long for M1 killers. If a survivor is healthy, they will make it to the gates from almost anywhere if the killer has nothing but their basic attack.
Things should done about these issues:
Haddonfield needs a bigger rework, always has. For Midwich the solution is to add dead-ends into the hallways, maybe 2 per level. These could be breakable walls, even. The dead-ends on the upper level should be by the drop-downs to the lower level, whereas on the lower level, the dead-ends should be close to the ramps that lead up (not the stairs). And the bathroom ramp should not be blocked by breakable walls - the map needs easier access to both levels anyway, for killers and survivors, plus that bathroom is a pretty stupid dead-end non-gameplay area without that alternate route. And the different specific tiles that are problematic in this regard should be changed. Watertower could be turned into an accessible structure such that it cannot simply be run around in circles anymore but offers new gameplay, the stacks of cars on Gas Heaven should have at least 1 gap in them where killers and survivors can go through.
The "chase starting distance" is a more complicated issue, it does not have a simple solution and like I said, it's not even always a real "issue" for killers. The biggest maps could be reduced in size a bit, certainly, to help with this. Spine Chill could and in my opinion should be reworked. Prior to when its rework finally came, Object Of Obsession was the perk to abuse early distance with, now that that's gone it leaves Spine Chill. I think Spine Chill is too good at what it does because not only does it combat stealth mechanics of all kinds, but it also often allows a survivor to know that a killer is actually coming for them, rather than merely approaching their position for other reasons. The good thing about this is that I think they could solve both issues with one change: make it so Spine Chill does not activate if the survivor is Oblivious or the killer is Undetectable. A lot of people would just stop running Spine Chill due to this change, which would "collaterally" solve the issue against non-stealth killers too. They could then buff Spine Chill in some other way to make it more attractive for players that actually stick to gens when a killer is approaching, such as increasing the repair speed depending on the proximity of the killer, or granting a lingering action speed buff or Haste effect also depending on how long the survivor kept repairing as the killer approached, which would benefit them in the ensuing chase. Note: I know that Spine Chill has basic counterplay in that the killer can simply not look at the gen while approaching it, but I just find that counterplay to be too stupid and inconvenient, I don't want to always preemptively have to crab-walk my way to places just because I suspect a survivor is using the perk. That's just not good game design.
For the endgame, well, that really is a strictly M1 killer-specific issue. Like I said, the catch-up distance thing in general is already mostly only an issue for the M1 killers, but in the endgame this is doubly the case, so much so that NOED on M1 killers has to actually be considered a healthy perk. What can M1 killers do in the endgame? They are not seldomly pretty much forced to hardcamp any hook they can get since they cannot secure downs on other survivors. NOED in these cases actually makes the endgame more dynamic and interesting. But we obviously cannot give all killers base kit NOED, and only enabling it on some specific killers would be an odd design choice too, not least because then the big arguments would have to be had about which killers should get this base kit NOED and which shouldn't. An alternative could be a suggestion I've seen on various occasions before: make the basic attack cooldown a base killer "stat" that changes between them, with most still abiding by the default we are used to (and some perhaps even having increased cooldowns), but certain killers that have less potent abilities being granted a reduced cooldown. This would not only make them more threatening as "M1 killers" in general, but also increase their ability to hunt down healthy survivors in the endgame. Save The Best For Last would have to be reworked to account for this, of course. But there could be other solutions for this issue too. One thing that would already help is if gate progress would reset over time, so that gates cannot be left at 99%. With that change there could then also be killer power-ups that are exclusive to the endgame collapse phase, such as increased speeds, decreased hit cooldowns, or indeed Exposed survivors.
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They have apparently renewed their Halloween license, and we do know that a Laurie model update is coming, as well as that Haddonfield is one of the last old maps yet to be updated.
It would be great if we get a "Halloween special" for Halloween, with model updates (and perhaps even new cosmetics) for both Laurie and Myers, Sole Survivor/Dying Light buffs, Myers buffs, a Haddonfield overhaul...
All that said, my expectations are low. Chances are it will be underwhelming.
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And Bubba's silent chainsaw that was apparently "fixed", still isn't either.
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@Shaped said:
Can someone explain to me how is stretched res possible? If I have my tv set on original aspect ratio shouldn't I be already seeing everything on the screen?
Why is there a part of the screen that we only see when it is stretched like that? Is it bhvr's fault? Can they fix it?
Is this common in other video games?
This is actually fairly common. It's called Vert+/- or Hor+/-, and refers to the fact that if you change the aspect ratio of a picture, naturally the proportions of said picture change as well, which you have to account for. This can be achieved by either increasing/decreasing the vertical or the horizontal "content" (FoV in games) of the picture accordingly. DbD uses Vert+/- by default.
However, there are other solutions. You can increase/decrease both the vertical and horizontal FoV simultaneously to account for the proportional difference, which would mean that at least there is a trade-off for either (i. e. if you go with a narrower aspect ratio, you gain vertical FoV but lose the same amount of horizontal FoV, and vice versa if you have a wider aspect). You can also simply render black bars into the picture to account for the difference, rather than change the actual FoV. Or you can stretch the base FoV to match the new proportions, which will make the image look disproportionate but allegedly the people that play with non-native aspect ratios enjoy this "stretched" look anyway.
I don't think the increase in vFoV is a huge issue, but there are definitely benefits to it, for both killer and survivor gameplay. Also, ultrawide monitor users suffer from the game being Vert+/- since their vFoV just gets cut off. It should definitely be something BHVR addresses, but then again, it's been in the game for ages and the game does not even have proper in-game graphics settings such as true fullscreen, distinct resolution, VSync, etc., in 2021, so don't count on BHVR to do anything, the most they seem capable of doing is re-organize and slightly visually change the menu, that's all that has happened in these past years anyway.
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@Alionis said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2303821#Comment_2303821
Since I'm part of a discord server that has access to that stuff, I can list the code. The wiki may have simplified the curve a bit, since the information is irrelevant to your average dbd player, but it's still accurate.
The curve is defined like this:
Time 0, value: 1, cubic
Time 0.2, value: 2.5, cubic
Time: 0.31, value: 2, linear
Time: 0.88, value: 2, cubic
Time 1, value: 1, cubic
That's the entire speed curve. You're correct in saying that the interaction time is 0.5 seconds, but the wiki didn't say anything else either, like you claimed it did. The wiki's 1 second is a reference to the speed curve.
My guess is that the actual effect (dodging damage) lasts for 0.5 seconds, but the speed curve takes longer to smooth out the transition stages.
The calculation issues in this thread arise from the simple fact that you guys don't take the actual curves into account with the interpolation modes, but that is nearly impossible to do without more in-depth knowledge of the code, even for dataminers.
As a general suggestion: I wouldn't try to calculate distances with anything in dbd that uses a speed curve, results will often not match the reality due to inaccuracies, lack of information.
The log says "DeadHardDashSpeed Curve Duration 0.5", so that's what made me assume even the curve only lasts for half a second. I did clarify that we don't know the specifics of the curve, and of course, without the specifics of the curve it is impossible to actually say what the traversed distance would be, or its duration for that matter (since another 0.5 seconds of the "curve" could just be moving at like 101%, for example). I based my answer to OP's question primarily on observational evidence.
Cool to see the code for it. I follow a few modders and their Discords, but it's not easy to get useful information out of those channels usually, if you have a community that is more interested in learning about and sharing interesting game details like this, please let me know if they are welcoming of interested new members. There's stuff like the specifics of chase state and entity blocker that I'm still curious about, and there are many more such things the code would be great to see for.
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From what we've seen with licenses like Silent Hill and Stranger Things, the additional killer cosmetics are always pretty subtle or "surficial" changes for the most part. Given that, I could see (and would not dislike) if we got cosmetics of some of the different "stages" that Nemesis in RE3 remake goes through before he actually mutates, such as the one at the beginning with the mask, or later ones where he's on fire, or where his "clothes" are torn and reveal more of his mutated body:
Then there's also classic Nemesis of course.
Mod credit to xZombieAlix on twitter.
Apart from that, not really sure what they could do. None of the other Tyrants really fit Nemesis, that would seem rather lame and awkward if they would make the same sounds and let alone use the tentacle. I would hope they bring Mr. X as a "paragraph" DLC, but since that is very unlikely, I guess I would still kind of prefer getting him as an awkward cosmetic than not getting him at all. Who knows, maybe they'll just replace the tentacle with a belt or something of that sort for X, lol.
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I'm not referring to that one specifically, that is just one of various tournaments the stats of which show that even at the top level the game is not nearly as survivor-sided as people either casually or vehemently believe it to be. But again, I did give a variety of caveats to that. One such caveat is that about half of the killer characters are clearly subpar and totally should be buffed, should have been buffed ages ago already, and that it indeed is only a subset of around 1/3rd of all killers that are "viable" in a tournament setting from the perspective of being able to consistently 2k and having the potential to 3-4k.
The "qualitative" argument is however less of a balance argument. Camping and NOED are simply part of the gameplay and totally affect the global playing experience too, so unless the game changes in a way that lessens their impact, it's not like a 2k achieved by camping and using NOED is any less of a 2k. Sure the gameplay experience is different, and arguably an undesirable one, but balance does not care about the gameplay experience, cannot.
I agree that most players in this game are not very good at it, to say the least. I have been playing since early 2017 and have been red rank for both roles for most of the seasons since then, and I have also watched a lot of DbD streams from all over the world, also red rank gameplay. I can confidently say that even in red ranks, the average player is actually pretty bad. However, why would we assume that this is only true for survivor players? Survivor and killer players are not different types of humans, in fact, many of them are one and the same because they play both roles. So if survivors are on average so much worse than killers that it leads to the lopsided stats as we have seen them time and again, that would have to mean that survivor is actually harder to play than killer. And while I personally always have to roll my eyes when people ignorantly say "survivor is easy" because there is actually a pretty tremendous amount of depth to the mechanical and mental skill ceiling of survivor gameplay, I have no reason not to admit that killer is absolutely harder to play. I mean, you are completely alone and have to manage all of your objectives, the strategical, tactical and mechanical things that go into that, whereas as survivor you will often simply sit on a gen and can relatively comfortably think about the round as well as about the world at large, lol.
So, what I think contributes most of all to the fact that the game is so significantly killer-sided in public matchmaking is the fact that player skill is much more rewarding for the killer side. Precisely because they are only one player, all skills they bring to the game are 100% translated into their performance and constitute the entire killer side of the balance equation. Whereas on the survivor side, you get 4 more or less random players thrown together and their skill disparity can be and regularly is huge. A weaker survivor player can lead to entire rounds falling apart even very early into the game (just imagine the extreme of this, with one player disconnecting - even if the other 3 players are highly skilled, they are instantly at a huge disadvantage and likely to lose the game). A stronger player however cannot regularly convert all of their skills into their side's performance, in theory only at best 25%. And especially if the killer abuses weaker links in the survivor group, the stronger survivors' contribution to a round can even be almost negligible. This could in fact be one reason why the game at its core might even have to be survivor-sided in order for it to yield a more balanced "live" experience in the public matchmaking mode, because it inherently favours a killer's skill to have a lot more impact on the rounds than any single survivor's skill.
What I am saying is that for the above average killer base, the top tier MMR/Rank 1 experience is not fun because of the imbalance.
Now to begin with, I for one would disagree on a personal level, not necessarily on a principal level however. That is to say, personally I don't even care all that much to "win" as killer in terms of getting 3 or 4 kills. If I'm paired against actually good survivor players, I will enjoy my chases and any hooks I get, I really don't mind if 2+ people end up escaping or not. But of course, this is not true for everyone, some - or even most - people want to "win" above everything. For that I'd say two things: 1. Good and even just competent killers will most likely keep winning more often than they lose even in MMR. Take tru3talent, an above-average killer player that usually wins his games. Sure he loses sometimes, but his kill rate overall is comfortably above 2 (I actually took stats on this before too, from one stream session of his anyway). Even during the MMR tests, this did not change. Pretty much any of the killers that I usually watch and who usually win almost every single of their public matches still did so during MMR tests, only they tended to have more challenging matches, which I would however argue is in fact more fun for everyone involved (including the viewer). I can attest to that from my personal playing experience too. I also win decidedly more often than I lose, as killer, and my MMR experience was overall pleasant. And 2. Yes, if in the MMR system it turns out that the higher MMR levels are then actually favouring survivors much more so than (certain) killers as opposed to how it is in the current ranking system, I would also hope that BHVR uses those stats to make larger pro-killer balancing changes. Such as buffing a whole bunch of the weaker killers, or even implementing MMR-level-specific balancing measures, such as perk limitations for survivors or extra perk slots for killers, or any of a hundred different things that could be done to balance the game more at the different skill levels. (However, it is also completely possible that some select killers - primarily Nurse and Spirit - might if anything prove to be too strong in that MMR environment and will be nerfed based on that).
you don't acknowledge the power of a 2 man or 3 man playing together on voice
To be fair, I was specifically contrasting the performance potential of these tournament teams to that of public groups, and those tournament teams are obviously always 4-SWF. That said, yeah, I'm not trying to say only those 5% of players that are 4-SWF groups in public matches actually have the chance to perform really well, duo and trio SWF can totally already put a very strong survivor side on the board that is challenging to deal with for much of everyone, and so can a team of 4 solos for that matter. Just of course, they will never be quite as (or even close to) those tournament teams at their peak, and so that there are killer players that can still compete even with those tournament teams makes it more understandable why good killers can have a "laughably" easy time winning in public matchmaking.
For the "performance ceiling" point, I think you misunderstood. I'm not saying the skill ceiling for survivors is actually higher than for killers, my argument there is that the survivor side gains much more from the tournament setting than the killer does. The killer is still just that one player just like they would be in any match where they play killer, public or tournament. The survivor players however in tournaments get 3 other players at their side that are all individually highly skilled as well, that they can practice with all the time, coordinate and communicate with, develop natural harmonies with, and so on. This "tournament team" format makes the survivor side exponentially stronger as compared to the average public mode setting where most of the time players are not in teams, let alone practicing and communicating and coordinating. Whereas the tournament killer obviously does not benefit from the "team" aspect of tournaments much at all, they have about the same performance potential as the "killer side" as they would have in any match.
I don't have all the answers, but I do think the survivor-sided imbalance at higher levels of skills is an issue to address in some form.
I agree. For one thing that I have stated multiple times now, I think it should be completely apparent to anyone that is decently in the know about this game that there are a whole bunch of killers that are objectively weaker than others, and there is no reason why those weaker killers cannot and should not be buffed to at least be A tier. Legion, Billy (;_;), Trapper, Myers, Pig, Clown, Ghostface, Plague, Doctor, Trickster, Nemesis(!) - Please buff them.
That said, Wraith specifically is not even all that bad, given the right add-ons. I think what we see in these games does not only have to do with Wraith's strength, but also the skill and experience disparity between tru3 and Oracle. I mean, this is the first time ever that tru3 has faced a team of this caliber playing in this way, to an extent that he himself was even surprised and impressed by just how hopeless it felt. And is this not interesting and worth considering in its own right? Tru3, a veteran player with thousands of hours in this game that has been playing since what, 2016 even? - even he has not once faced a team like this in his entire playing career. That should about settle whether this is common enough an occurrence to be something that should be balanced for.
A tournament player could perform better with Wraith in this scenario. Hell, tru3 himself would certainly also perform better if he were to actually play against teams of this caliber frequently. However, I think there was actually one round where he got like 6 or 7 stages with a 1k? That's honestly a totally respectable result against Oracle as Wraith. Which goes to show that yeah, Wraith is a pretty solid killer, but also could still do with some buffs too.
