zarr
zarr
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@Bodark said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3911215#Comment_3911215
I can show you 2 right now. Equip the perk yourself and use the dead dawg or Crotus offering. If the killer isn’t Nurse or Blight you should be able to infinitely avoid the killer.
I looped a kaneki for 4 minutes with it today for a video. He killed everyone else and I let him kill me because I’m not a scumbag.
Balanced Landing is fine. It doesn’t need any buffs. Its stagger reduction must stay tied to the exhaustion. 75% stagger reduction could literally be its own perk it’s so good.
Kaneki is definitely not one of the killers you can do this to if they're not messing up big time. But regardless, again, I know bugged BL makes these and some other setups unreasonably strong, but actual infinites? I would have to see evidence thereof. And without the killer behaving intentionally obtuse.
75% stagger reduction one time per chase (at most) would not be a perk anybody in their right mind would use. The on-sprint stagger reduction is a prerequisite for it to function as an Exhaustion perk at all.
BL is a more than fine perk in its own right, there's tons worse that would sooner need buffs, it just has to compete with the other Exhaustion perks for slots and this leads to it being categorically subpar. It's awfully rare to be seen. And the remaining 25% of stagger have no reason to be there. Getting hit through BL because of it is infuriatingly common.
@crogers271 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3911215#Comment_3911215
Anyway, I will use this opportunity and post to talk about Balanced Landing in general, and its need for a buff:When I saw your post I was wondering how even Zarr was going to talk for 13+ paragraphs on a bug.
A few thoughts:
This means that if some of them are (more or less) objectively worse than others, they are objectively not worth using because you'd obviously want to just use those others instead.So in a game where there is a lot of moments that I go 'why BHVR?', I think the way exhaustion perks work is a solid design. Each exhaustion perk has pros and cons compared to the others. Some of them could use a few more pros, but the idea of 'pick 1 and no more than 1' is a good limiter on creating a category of perks.
For starters, it is more conditional than all of the others, because the ability to activate the perk at all depends on the map, and the opportunities to fall off an appropriately steep height are limited on most maps, with some maps barely having any opportunities at all. Compare this to Lithe or Smash Hit, the next-most conditional Exhaustion perks, yet still infinitely more accessible than BL.I'm not going to be a huge defender of balanced landing, but there is one counter point to this.
Lithe especially can activate when its not the best time for it. If you're at a strong loop you might want to hit the window a few times before you get exhaustion and run away, Lithe will trigger before you can get all the value out of the loop. Balanced has less places to use, which is a huge drawback, but can be controlled a bit more when it occurs.
At the very very least, its stagger reduction should be back to 100%.The noise suppression should not be on a cooldown.Its sprint duration could be increased to 4 seconds.Perhaps reduce its Exhaustion timer to 20 seconds.Two or three of those would probably be helpful. I think it would be a good idea for BHVR to look at the exhaustion timer on the various exhaustion perks as a subtle way of boosting the weaker perks.
I think the way exhaustion perks work is a solid design
I'd tend to agree. It's one of the most elegant means by which they have made game-defining perks not stack in an unhealthy way. The game if anything could stand to benefit from more of these distinct, defining "categories" of perks.
But yes, my issue is that due to their (more or less) strict mutual exclusiveness, all of the subpar Exhaustion perks effectively end up being sort of non-perks, at least whenever you are actually going for an optimized build. If I'm free to put together builds for a team without limitations and the goal is to win as decisively and consistently as possible, everyone's on Sprint Burst every time. A perk that released with the game launch and has been the #1 since…
And BHVR has already shown they are willing to rebalance Exhaustion perks even by ways of adjusting fundamental Exhaustion mechanics, deviating from the 3-second 150% sprint and 40-second Exhaustion timer paradigm. SB could do with a 50 or 60-second timer, most of the other Exhaustion perks deserve a buff or another.
Balanced has less places to use, which is a huge drawback, but can be controlled a bit more when it occurs.
Absolutely true, the more conditional nature of its proc also has that upside of the control element. Although I don't think it comes close to outweighing the drawback. For one thing simply because it will much more often happen that you would want to use your Exhaustion perk but can't in the case of BL than you not wanting to use your Exhaustion perk but being forced to, and for another because the latter scenario understandably is also much less detrimental (in fact it's more so a comparison between something that is actively detrimental (not being able to use despite wanting to) versus something that is still beneficial but merely of lesser benefit (having to use when ideally you'd not necessarily want to yet)). And for Lithe there is still at least some measure of control by ways of using slow vaults (which have also been made just as fast as medium vaults with a recent patch for some reason, not that I'm not welcoming of this change).
Beyond that I would note that BL's activation trigger is also more inconsistent than any of the others, since nobody really knows what exact height will suffice to proc it (even if they know from the wiki it's supposedly technically 4 metres). This requires players to be much more familiar with possible spots to proc BL and it can also randomly screw them over when they fall just under that threshold. Oft have I seen people try to BL off a hill but catch a stray rock that softens their landing and kills them. There's also the fact that your framerate can affect whether BL procs or not, such as in the case of Autohaven's trucks.
I think it would be a good idea for BHVR to look at the exhaustion timer on the various exhaustion perks as a subtle way of boosting the weaker perks.
Agreed.
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I would like for people to showcase exactly where Balanced Landing creates actual infinites, with a killer trying to catch them. Even a pure M1 killer, no chase ability. You take a friend, go into a custom match, and it should be easy to demonstrate, doesn't take more than 5-10 minutes out of your day.
I'm not saying there doesn't exist at least one such setup, nor am I saying bugged BL is fine if it doesn't create literal infinites, but I just don't enjoy how posters on these forums always claim things without backing them up one bit. The general spirit is one of a lot of yappening and not a lot of happening.
These days, with most elevated vaults having openings close by, as well as today's Bloodlust and Entity Blocker specifics, I struggle to see what could possibly make for an actual infinite. And again, that's not even talking about all the killer abilities that would completely negate that anyway. Maybe Saloon main building, and perhaps some path around Disturbed Ward's main that uses the holes in the upper floor? But then you also need to account for the ability to keep out of chase state.
But to stress this again: BL doesn't need to create a situation where a killer (and even if it's only one without a potent chase ability) literally cannot catch a survivor to be problematic. It suffices if it makes a bunch of setups stronger than is reasonable, which I do think is the case. I don't think the perk in its current bugged state is nearly as gamebreaking as it is being made out to, I in fact do not believe it is gamebreaking at all. But something doesn't have to literally break a game to be problematic.
The fix for this should be incredibly easy for BHVR to implement, but if they really cannot do so within the week, sure, killswitch it. Although they for some strange reason are awfully reluctant to engage their killswitch, despite it being designed for precisely such cases. It's as if using it takes more effort than they're willing to exert too, which would make it a flawed implementation.
Anyway, I will use this opportunity and post to talk about Balanced Landing in general, and its need for a buff:
Exhaustion perks are always competing for slots with other Exhaustion perks because they cannot be used alongside one another effectively or at all. This means that if some of them are (more or less) objectively worse than others, they are objectively not worth using because you'd obviously want to just use those others instead.
BL suffers from this issue, and arguably more so than any of the other Exhaustion perks. For starters, it is more conditional than all of the others, because the ability to activate the perk at all depends on the map, and the opportunities to fall off an appropriately steep height are limited on most maps, with some maps barely having any opportunities at all. Compare this to Lithe or Smash Hit, the next-most conditional Exhaustion perks, yet still infinitely more accessible than BL. This not only makes it much less reliable in chases, it also further limits the ability to get value from the perk in other game situations, be it just to traverse distances a bit faster or to set up for rescue plays and such.
Then there's the fact that BL is more telegraphed than any of the other Exhaustion perks, because you regularly have to run to places a survivor would have no business running to in a chase if they weren't using BL. This opens up counterplay opportunities for the killer where they can try and zone or intercept the BL, undermining its impact.
Next, there's the fact that BL doesn't even reduce the stagger by 100% - there's still a bit of stagger left (25%) and this eats into its 3-second, 150% sprint, reducing the distance you make with it in a way no other Exhaustion perk suffers from. It also allows killers to often hit the survivor during the stagger still.
In the case of Smash Hit BHVR made the concession to increase its sprint duration to account for the time you spend locked into the pallet drop animation. And then they also reduced its Exhaustion timer as a concession to its conditional trigger. BL on the other hand got none of these concessions, it's a dated design that should have long been reconsidered on.
I would go further and say Exhaustion perks in general show signs of age and given their almost incomparable impact potential on the game of DbD as well as their unique trait of being in contention with one another, a more holistic overhaul would be appropriate, or at least an overall rebalancing.
Another thing of pertinence here is that BHVR around a year and a half ago (again) removed the ability to vault windows and pallets during fall stagger. While that was a fairly reasonable adjustment (albeit there could have been other, perhaps better solutions), what wasn't reasonable was them - in what I assume was a ham-handed bandaid fix - alongside this adjustment also removing the ability to do much of anything else during fall stagger, including healing, unhooking, jumping into hatch, and on. This was an undocumented and wholly uncalled-for shadow nerf that is relevant more often than you'd think. And again, I don't think this was even intended or deemed beneficial, I think it was simply that BHVR couldn't figure out (or didn't want to spend the time and effort figuring out) how to only stop survivors from vaulting during stagger, and so they went ahead and simply made most of all actions impossible. This is another reason to look into "stagger" rebalancing, both in relation to BL and in general.
But without going into all that, I will propose a few adjustments for BL that I think are completely reasonable (I'm not suggesting all of these should be implemented):
At the very very least, its stagger reduction should be back to 100%.
The noise suppression should not be on a cooldown.
Its sprint duration could be increased to 4 seconds.
Perhaps reduce its Exhaustion timer to 20 seconds.
The stagger reduction could be on a separate, independent cooldown, of say 30 seconds (although then perhaps keeping the 75% reduction amount).
Alternatively, make BL a non-Exhaustion perk and simply have it suppress falling noises and reduce the stagger by 100%, on a 20-or-so-second cooldown.
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The quest system and archive changes aren't interesting to me as they don't really affect my enjoyment of the game much at all. And the actual gameplay things you have to do in trials to complete challenges seemingly aren't changing much at all, or at best shifting more to a "you will complete most of them inadvertently without even really trying to" paradigm that while arguably nice obviously makes them even less interesting. While I will say that the "all challenges can be done at any time" change is a bit concerning because one could reasonably see it lead to players instead of playing in earnest just trying to cram as many challenge completions into a single trial as possible, I suppose that would also lead to those players completing their challenges in fewer rounds and thus going back to playing normally more quickly.
The lobby perk preview and pre-equipped loadouts thing is quite the non-feature for anyone but the newest of new players and it's funny that it among a bunch of other such changes is being highlighted so much in this "quality of life initiative". Or that it was being "A/B tested" for 2+ years. Yeah sure improving the new player experience is great and all, but those players are not reading these notes or excited about this entire ordeal altogether. I mean, they aren't even playing the game yet… For long-time players that have been looking for a plethora of tangible QOL improvements for ages and were excited when this "operation health" thing was finally announced on the other hand, these changes and the importance that is being ascribed to them is more of an insult.
The unhook spam prevention is a bit of an awkward bandaid for which there would have been a decidedly more elegant solution that would have also improved the game beyond preventing abuse: instead of making it so survivors cannot attempt to unhook someone more than 3 times (which I guarantee there are instances of in which the player is not griefing), they could have simply given the hooked survivor the ability to deny unhook attempts, just like they can deny heals. This would not only prevent cases of abuse, it would also bestow upon the player on hook a degree of agency in cases where they deem it more beneficial to remain hooked (e. g. when the killer is around, when they have just transitioned into struggle stage, when they have perks like Deliverance or Wicked, if AFC is active, hell, if the other players are trolling or working with the killer and they just want to leave the match).
The extended skill check safety net is neat, but for this too I think there exists a more elegant solution: the skill check should simply continue to play out if the survivor lets go of the respective interaction during the check, allowing/requiring them to still complete it. Just like with Overcharge. This would ensure survivors would never randomly miss a skill check, but without the possibility of "abusing" this where instead of having to complete skill checks they would simply let go.
The slightly decreased vault speed on Houndmaster is a moderate but appropriate adjustment. Just what that entails will have to be seen in action though of course. I think a more interesting change could be to more substantially decrease the vault speed on the first pounce, but increase it on the second pounce. This would lead to players having to work with the redirect much more proactively, both prior to and after vaulting.
The Haste and Hindered stacking change seems like one of those uncalled-for adjustments made with "consistency" in mind that is however removed from the gameplay reality. Future perks and powers notwithstanding, there is nothing whatsoever in the game now in terms of stacked Haste and Hindered effects that is truly problematic. In fact, most of the Haste or Hindered effects are only remotely interesting or potent enough to consider precisely if you do stack them, and even then most of them still end up being more so "for-fun" than something people abuse to get a competitive edge. Blood Pact, Power Of Two, Dark Theory? Game Afoot, Unbound, Batteries Included, Furtive Chase? These are all objectively pretty terrible perks that nobody in their right mind is seriously using to begin with, and if they did it was mostly only ever to stack with other such effects for a wholly unreliable and impractical but at times funny result. I sure hope they will at least tangibly buff all of the affected perks to make up for this. (Play With Your Food on the other hand could do with a nerf, or rather a rework. It's the only actually problematic Haste perk, and the problem is not that it stacks with others.) Rapid Brutality doesn't need the Bloodlust removal, Unbound doesn't need the timer, Game Afoot doesn't need the Obsession condition, Knock Out should also proc if the pallet is destroyed before the survivors leaves its range, Power Of Two could have a much-increased linger timer, Dark Theory could be 5%, and so on and so forth.
The Pentimento nerf is unfortunate. It is a really good perk but not too good, and it is also one of the major drivers behind making builds with multiple Hex perks viable. And it lives and dies with the impact that having 1 rekindled totem up has, which I suspect will be much-decreased with this change. Rekindling 2 or let alone more totems and much less keeping them standing is not realistic or practical, and so if what I assume turns out true and the first totem will only make for a marginal debuff of 10% or so, that's lights-out for the perk. At the very very least, they should make it so that this debuff increases with every further rekindled totem regardless of whether the previous one(s) have been cleansed. Oh, and make Dominance protect them.
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That's a cool idea to turn what is indeed more of a comedic perk into an actually beneficial one. Blast Mine isn't without use cases where it gets value (apart from the ones you lined out there's also the fact that you can make a lot more distance during the stun time than you would otherwise be able to during the gen kick, which is beneficial at least against mobility and ranged killers where more distance is always good, as well as against Nowhere To Hide (particularly alongside Residual Manifest)), but it's definitely not reliable or reliably impactful enough.
If we make the perk a manual detonation, it would obviously need an effective range within which it afflicts its effects on the killer. The stun time then could scale with this range, with the full stun time applying if right next to the gen (or indeed kicking it), and every meter reducing it by a second. Perhaps then with the base stun time being increased to 5 seconds, thus obviously making for an effective 5-meter range around the gen within which it will cause the stun, but only for 1 second at the outermost reach. Although perhaps the current 4 seconds (with a then 4-meter effect radius) would be adequate already.
I think looking at the gen/its aura to proc the perk would be an appropriate activation condition, which are necessary because otherwise multiple "active ability" perks can be in conflict. But other than that I don't think it needs any limiting conditions. Maybe a certain range though that the survivor has to be within to be able to proc the perk, like 24m? Just so that SWFs can't easily chain stuns on the killer by having multiple gens across the map trapped and being able to detonate them from anywhere.
I think it could also keep the automatic detonation upon kicking with this. It makes sense and there's no real reason not to have it - between the activation requirement, the effectively limited times of use and the limited areas of use where the chase then also has to be taken (and taking chases to gens generally not being beneficial), I don't think it would become problematic anyway. And then there's counterplay opportunities for the killer of pathing around gens.
The charges required and active duration could also remain the same.
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I really liked old Knock Out and didn't think it was a problem, quite the contrary (although I do admit that it disproportionally affecting solo groups was an issue). I would take a revert in an instant.
New Knock Out is boring. It doesn't encourage a unique strategy, doesn't provide a unique effect, appeal or impact like it originally did. And it has nothing to do with its name, icon or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Just another lazy movement speed-based adjustment.
Its effect is also lackluster. 5% Hindered for 5 seconds just doesn't do enough, you'd be objectively better off using Brutal Strength in the majority of cases. For reference, Freddy's snares afflict a Hindered effect more than twice the strength of KO, for just under 5 seconds, and it's far from the case that any snare results in a hit. And they can be used whenever and wherever, whereas KO is very limited in its use cases.
Yes there are a few killers it can be uniquely beneficial on, because they don't have to break pallets (mostly Kaneki and Wesker, but also ranged killers that can play around dropped pallets like Slinger and Huntress), but then the pallet tile has to be big enough to proc KO, and those tiles are usually safe if left unbroken.
I don't know what kind of experiences you have been having, and as with most posters on these forums you are not providing any footage and evidence, but in my (admittedly limited) experience with the perk so far, it is rather negligible in most cases and not at all worth the slot. Even on Kaneki, the one killer where KO is pretty potent, Brutal just seems a lot better because it's a lot more reliable.
What really ruins the perk however is the fact that it doesn't activate if the pallet is destroyed before the survivor leaves its range. This immediately disqualifies the perk as useful on a whole range of killers, including Bubba himself, but also killers such as Knight, Demo, Nemesis, …, and it also opens up general counterplay for survivors who could stay within the range of the pallet until the killer has broken it, and only then run away. Mind you, I imagine they'd usually lose more distance doing so than KO would make for (since again 5% for 5 seconds isn't much at all), but situationally it could be beneficial, such as in the regularly-occurring case that the survivor has to wait around the pallet anyway to make sure the killer is actually committing to breaking the pallet.
To provide something in the way of evidence, here's a Clown main arguing the perk is not worth it and showcasing some gameplay (and Clown is one of the killers it would seem best on, since survivors regularly have to pre-drop pallets against him and he can then play around them stacking KO with his innate Hindered/Haste effects):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip80VxJebPwWhat is more telling than anything else to me here is how rarely Knock Out even procs in the first place, let alone whether it actually is impactful enough in the cases where it does.
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I assume this is a bit of a concession to the wish people have brought up often throughout the years that there be stuff around the map survivors have to find in order to be able to repair generators.
But personally I fail to see how this is an improvement over normal gens. On normal gens I at least get skill checks, which are the least bit engaging of a minigame, trying to get as many greats as possible. With the blood gens, I'm just walking back and forth between periods of pressing M1. Very exciting! It's another "non-event". Well, people that still need BP or are still excited about getting them will naturally find a BP-focused event thrilling, but for long-time players like me, it if anything makes things even less exciting, as spending BP is mostly just a chore. The bulk-spending feature can't come soon enough (and should have been here years ago already).
I will say that forcing survivors to move about more in order to do gens does encourage interaction, since they will more often encounter or be intercepted by the killer, then also losing part or all of the fuel. This could make for a workable replacement for gens if they increase the time it takes to complete these gens (and if all perks, mechanics, add-ons, powers also applied properly, of course). Although there should be more mechanics tied to it still - skill checks for starters, but also more interactive ways to collect fuel and lose it, such as stuns and hits for two obvious ones.
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A reduction in Frenzy fatigue time is what I always wanted them to do for Legion ever since they removed the add-ons that did as much, and between that and the slight increase in movement speed during fatigue, I'm really rather happy with the changes. The thing is that a shorter fatigue time makes Frenzy a more potent chase tool (or a chase tool at all), since using it to catch up to survivors, vaulting after them or blocking their paths actually can work out with some consistency in that case.
Legion is still a lower-tier killer, but this has lifted them up a tier.
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I knew they'd screw up in the process of implementing their own flick mechanics. Oni feels clunky now. The "intended" flicks are indeed slower, seemingly not allowing for as tight of a turn, making Oni feel more like a bus. Survivors tucking into corners are regularly impossible to hit. I hope we'll figure out some tech to get back fast and threatening flicks, because this is pretty lame.
Also there appears to be a bug where starting to charge the demon dash incurs a slowdown/cooldown which hasn't been there before. I hope that is not here to stay, as it only adds to how much more clunky Oni feels now.
I've been playing Oni for years and apart from some minor stuff to do with the passive power charge and some possible add-on adjustments, he was perfect and perfectly balanced. Alas.
KBM support is supposedly coming for consoles, so even the (non-)argument of old flicks only having been accessible to PC players is naught.
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One thing is region. A lot of the content creators you are talking about will be from NA and UK I reckon. You can VPN there and see for yourself whether there's a difference.
Much more importantly though, the MMR cap is so low that anyone remotely okay at the game will reach it sooner rather than later, and never drop below it anymore. That means the "high MMR bracket" is really a cesspool capturing anyone from okayish to godlike. This is part of the reason why some of the best killer players in the game can go on winstreaks of hundreds and thousands of matches in a row and yet still face mediocre (at best) groups the majority of the time.
As for how this reflects on your games: Might be a rude awakening, but people that legitimately think content creators like these (and especially the ones that aren't even tournament players but just casual pub grinders like Otz or Scott) lose tons of matches on purpose to tank their MMR are delusional. Not only about the practicality and logistics of doing that (it's evidently impossible), but also about what really makes the average players they are going against seem like bots, when one's own opponents may seem like gods: there is a big skill and experience difference between you and them, and the players they make look like that would still feel like really tough opposition to you. This also extends to obvious mistakes like running into walls: the better the killer is and the more pressure they put on their opponents, the more prone they are to make mistakes because they cannot keep up, get overwhelmed, bamboozled, nervous, discombobulated.
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Survivor: Sprint Burst. Has been the best survivor perk in the game since 2016. Exhaustion perks are categorically some of the very best because of their high and consistent impact potential and the fact that you get an unlimited amount of uses out of them. And among them, SB is by far and away the best.
It can be used offensively and defensively, it allows one to contest gens in what would otherwise be death zones, contest hooks that would otherwise be difficult to even get a trade from, to hide in places without being caught out of position if found, helps with rescue plays of all kinds (pallet, flashlight, sabo, slugs, etc.), saves time on map traversal, can be 99%'d and then triggered at-will, makes pre-running more efficient and effective, improves positional playmaking of all kinds, gets one out of trouble after unhooks… There's innumerable use cases for the perk, and it has a high impact in both the macro and micro aspect of the game.
They've introduced the idea of Exhaustion perks with less than 40 seconds of cooldown - SB could probably do with 50 or 60 seconds. Some of the other Exhaustion perks could do with buffs instead.
Killer: Dead Man's Switch. Slowdown perks are categorically the best killer perks because as matchtime increases, as do the chances of succeeding as killer - if matchtime were to approach infinity, as would the killer's success chances, even if they would not have any perks or powers or wahtnot. There's various perks in this category like Corrupt, Grim, Pain Res that could all be mentioned, and especially for Corrupt there's a good argument since early-game slowdown is of particular significance, but DMS is just more ridiculous than any of them.
After hooking it remains active indefinitely until it triggers, upon which it will block a gen for a crazy 50 seconds. This makes it very reliable and consistent, and the slowdown it affects throughout a round and especially in the later stages where fewer and fewer gens are being contested is immense. It can be triggered from afar by pretending to go to a gen or otherwise threatening it (or by using a perk or killer power) and also without even needing to pressure gens altogether, just because survivors obviously also let go of gens for other reasons. And once the gen is blocked you can use that time however you want since the survivors won't be able to work it no matter what, so it's "passive" slowdown in a sense, allowing you for example to camp and tunnel while still benefiting. On top of that, it provides a bit of info, since you see whenever it blocks a gen, telling you that's where someone is and let go of a gen or got forced off.
DMS can win games on its own, and I would likely be on it were I to be forced to only use 1 perk as killer. And then there's its synergies that make it even crazier, most notably with Grim, Pain Res, Friends 'Til The End, Jagged Compass, as well as various killer powers.
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I take it you did a fresh install of DbD on your new PC? Otherwise, clearing your DirectX shader cache may be of help.
DbD these days does attempt to build much of the shader cache on first launch, but in the first few sessions there can still be some freezes here and there when new shaders are loaded and cached mid-trial. So the issue could simply rectify itself as you play more and the shader cache has all the pertinent files.
Other than that, using VSync is generally not advisable, as it considerably increases input latency. If you cannot bear having screen tearing, consider some of the following: use FreeSync instead; use your graphics card's VSync implementation instead of DbD's; play the game in windowed mode where Windows will do low-latency syncing instead (windowed fullscreen unfortunately still has tearing on Windows 11 since it is treated as a fullscreen app); limit your framerate just below your monitor's refresh rate to decrease the VSync-induced input lag - since DbD only offers a few framerate presets, you'll likely have to use your GPU settings for this.
I will say that tearing is really not very noticeable at high framerates. The objectively best way to set up DbD for both performance and latency is using fullscreen mode, 120fps, and VSync off. Give this a try if you haven't already.
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BHVR added London servers not too long ago. Prior to that, the UK region servers were located in Ireland. The latter are still active too, but BHVR for some reason thought the UK region needed more servers.
Whatever the reason, as far as I am aware it is specifically players registered to those London servers that regularly get sent to far-away regions. My assumption is that BHVR has only enabled a very limited amount of server slots in London (they use Amazon's GameLift service for their server architecture, so they have to pay for those), and so what happens is that the game wants to send people to those servers, none are available, and instead of sending them to the next-best region ping-wise, the system just doesn't know what to do and sends them across the world?
Whatever the case, this is really something BHVR should rectify. And in general this is one of the many areas in which BHVR is not at all transparent. They never tell us what their reasoning is behind the regions they have servers in and the regions they don't, why they sometimes add and remove some regions, why they refuse to do anything about the many regions with huge player pools that don't have any servers nearby (e. g. Russia, Africa, the Middle East). Hell, they never even officially said they are using Amazon GameLift servers, what their tickrate and updaterate is, what features of these services they are using or are looking to use, and so on.
For the time being, you can DM me if you want help. I'm not sure I'm free to disclose this kind of information on the forums publically.
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@Anti051 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3898599#Comment_3898599
Seems fine if you consider how fast all gens can be completed, not to mention how badly you're screwed if you get gen-split on a killer that has no mobility. As a killer, you'd better be doing something real to combat the reality of the situation if you expect to beat the survivors. People bellyaching about how the killer deals with them and slapping labels on certain actions like "camping, tunneling and slugging" is the epitome of entitlement.
It's a 4 v 1 scenario, yet people completely disrespect that, adopt a devil-may-care attitude, and act like their "fun" as survivors matters more than what's fair to the killer. The most awkward thing about all this is the company is actually making game developments based on this viral spoiled teenager attitude echoing out of the social media platforms, and to no surprise, the killer role becomes less attractive with every chapter release.
I struggle to see how this is an at all pertinent or relevant response to my post. You seem embittered and to be looking for an outlet, but I don't think this is the right place for that.
Whatever entitlements, disrespects and attitudes you believe exist around these topics, I assure you I personally don't hold any of them. I don't "bellyache" about tunnelling, camping or slugging or use those labels in any way but a descriptive one. I don't blame players for tunnelling etc., if anything I blame players for not doing so but then saying killers are underpowered and such. They are the best killing strategies in the game generally speaking, and yes, for a good chunk of the killer cast they are regularly integrally important to be able to compete with a good and coordinated group of survivors.
But I guess I can use this post to expand (for the nth time) a bit on my standing on this:
Tunnelling, camping and slugging all have their place in the game, they are things I would not want to miss and that I'm sure even the players that do complain would come to miss were they to actually be removed. There's a reason the 2V8 mode is not as popular with survivor players, and experienced survivor players grow bored with it relatively quickly. The lack of "strategy" which always also revolves around camping, tunnelling and slugging I am confident is major part of that reason. The game just isn't as tense, exciting, intense, it's more repetitive, people aren't as invested, the stakes are lower, there aren't as precarious and dangerous situations to navigate that can decide matches in a matter of seconds. And while there are frustrating things about them as well, that too plays into how emotionally invested people get. That just as a hint to people that think the game would be paradisical if they were to make it such that, say, survivors once downed automatically get teleported and respawned across the map until a total of eight downs have happened, only then actually being taken out of the trial once downed - it would rid us completely of camping, tunnelling and slugging, but it would in all likeliness also rid us of DbD as a popular game.
That said, I do think rebalancing is in order, particularly because these strategies impact uncoordinated (i. e. non-SWF) groups disproportionally, and because the current balancing is based upon perks in a way that yields an undesirable live gameplay experience (lots of players do not use these specific perks, and whenever those players meet someone employing those strategies effectively, the semblance of a balanced match often falls apart). Just like I don't like that the balancing is based on slowdown perks where if the killer player doesn't use any and the survivors actually efficiently play for their objective and aren't otherwise outmatched, it won't be a balanced playing field for most killers.
Rebalancing means somewhat lowering the effectiveness of these strategies, but compensatingly increasing the effectiveness of other game elements in turn. It's the idea of keeping the same sort of general base balance level, but shifting the importance of the different aspects bringing about that state. Such compensatory buffs should definitely also have to do with slowing the game down more at a base level. You talk about gen-splitting, one beneficial change is to spawn survivors grouped up such that they can't immediately pressure multiple objectives. And this is something that's announced to be coming soon. Corrupt Intervention or some variation thereof basekit. Increased base passive gen regression rate to 1/3rd or even half a charge per second. Substantial buffs to slowdown and regression perks (with the caveat that they get significantly weaker or are disabled entirely once a survivor is sacrificed). And on.
On a separate note, I will disagree that killer has become less attractive to play on a basis of the devs pandering to survivors or some such nonsense. Objectively speaking, the game has overall only gotten more killer-favouring with the years, and we have had a bunch of strong, fun and interesting killer releases. And while the MMR system has increased the competitiveness of matches somewhat, for experienced killer players that is more than welcome. In fact, if there's anything that can make the killer role unattractive for experienced and skilled players, it's how easy it still is to win most matches this game will give you. Winrates of 90+% and winstreaks of dozens and hundreds of matches are concerningly commonplace with good killer players.
I don't "blame" good players for wanting and playing to win, although I will never understand how good players can enjoy tunnelling, camping etc. against the bad-to-mediocre-at-best groups they meet most of the time, let alone on high-tier killers with strong builds. I've grown bored years ago already of playing killer in that way and watching others do so. It's mindnumbing. If there's anything I would expect from these players and am alienated by the lack of, it's complaining about the matchmaking and demanding a more strict one that much more regularly gives them much tougher opposition, makes for more challenging and competitive matches. And this isn't some disingenuous survivor talking point from me, I started out as a killer main and I still really enjoy the concept of playing killer, messing around with builds and strategies and tactics, and yet I cannot get myself to consistently play killer anymore these days because the game bores me after like 10 matches. Even when I play perkless Legion too many of my matches aren't challenging enough. I'll maybe lose once in 10 matches, when I should really be losing or having to fight hard to tie in every single one.
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With survivors almost never having anti-tunnel perks, what this mode shows more than anything is that tunnelling is overpowered (from a live balance perspective).
If you are struggling as killer in this mode, I suggest you try tunnelling. Whatever you are doing when the first survivor you hooked gets unhooked, drop it and go back there to chase after that survivor. You will win most of your matches that way as long as you are not completely outmatched skill-wise or mess up big-time.
Tunnelling is already optimal strategy even in the regular mode, and once someone actively employs it it's usually a wake-up call as to how potent killers really are. It completely changes the dynamic of the game, especially of course once in that 3v1.
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Really boggles the noggin. Iterating on and continually improving these modifiers through those iterations is something the devs outright stated they would want to do, and yet Chaos Shuffle remains wholly unchanged the fourth time around. When randomizing items, add-ons and offerings seems like a completely obvious no-brainer improvement.
People being able to choose their items and add-ons as well as offerings (usually meaning: the map) completely goes against the very concept of what makes this modifier fun and interesting: the chaos, the completely non-standard loadouts and the non-standard gameplay that yields. Even getting bad or the rare detrimental stuff (of which there is so little that it really is not a concern) is part of the appeal. It's fun to load in with No Mither or Object + Scene Partner and try to make it work. The same would be true when loading in with Speed Limiter or the like. It's funny, in a fun mode.
Plus, with map offerings set to be getting nerfed, what better time to test-run how people like the game when the map is random every match? That not even at least disabling map offerings in this mode is a change they've thought appropriate is wild to me.
Personally I would even go further and randomize cosmetics as well, even including ones that players don't own. Not knowing what your character will look like until load-in would add more chaotic excitement and hilarity to the mode, and it might well end up leading tons of people to buy a cosmetic or another because they liked it in the trial. Hell, they could even randomize the procedural generation of maps with this as well. Or maybe simply use mirrored versions of the maps that can randomly appear.
Alas, it seems we have to settle for what may more aptly be described as "moderate disorder", rather than chaos.
What I find almost equally disappointing is that BHVR never shares stats on this modifier. Killrates would obviously be neat since this would tell us a little bit more about base balance (everyone using random perks means the stats should more closely resemble the balance of a "perkless" environment), and seeing the top 10-20 perks with the highest kill and survival rates in this mode would be even more interesting, since with the completely random perk selection these stats would tell us a fair bit about how valuable perks really are on average (ideally these would be distinguished further on a per-killer basis, and given with both personal and group survival rates, like I had suggested in this thread: https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/437560/chaos-shuffle-stats).
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I think that would be alright. Self-Care is still a really good perk if used alongside Botany (or Hyperfocus), but giving it back the med-kit efficiency could make it an attractive perk in its own right again. Although its original 20% charge efficiency is a little lackluster with today's med-kits, where even if you use the two best charge add-ons it only comes out to 10 extra charges total, which don't even get you halfway through one self-heal. I think 40% increased efficiency could be good, as that way a max.-charge med-kit will give you 3 full self-heals.
Another thing I've been thinking would be reasonable is if Circle Of Healing were to apply to non-med-kit self-heals again. This would open up the viability of bringing Self-Care alongside Circle instead of Botany or the like, putting Circle back on the map a bit more again.
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@AmpersandUnderscore said:
I always thought they reverted the wrong part of the perk a couple years ago.
They should've put it back at 200%, but left in the part where it deactivates completely if a survivor is killed.
Keep the anti tunnel part in, but revert the regression.
This precisely. They could notably buff a bunch of the most popular killer perks but tie some sort of "this perks is disabled once a survivor is sacrificed" stipulation to it, and it would already do a lot to lessen the prevalence and efficacy of tunnelling (and camping). That they went back on this with Ruin when it was one of the best ideas they've had for perk design in a long time is rather disappointing.
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@100PercentBPMain said:
I thought we just got a new NA East server by BHVR HQ in Montreal? I never could have joined otz even if my life depended on it back when I tried during his "the thing" challenge
They did activate some central Canada servers in Montreal. And more NA servers too (Ohio and North California to be exact). As well as London servers on top of the Ireland (Dublin I believe) servers for some reason.
I haven't seen or heard of anyone experiencing what Scott is experiencing here. Very rarely people will end up on far-away servers, although in my experience then usually all players in that match including the killer are not from that server region, and let alone having this happen consistently for an hour. What I have seen more consistently is players in the London region being sent elsewhere, possibly because the amount of available servers in that region might be notably limited.
I know Scott is or had in the past been active on these forums, so on the chance that he sees this: I could help you in DMs.
As for cross-region matchmaking… Well, BHVR years ago had actually played with that idea and said they would be looking to better the MMR matchmaking by having it look at wider, cross-region player pools. But again, I haven't seen this happen for anyone including myself, I don't even get sent to nearby servers where my ping is still low. I'm always on my regional servers unless I'm joining other people's lobbies or such.
Encountering Hens and Otz in NA could also simply be due to them VPNing to play over there at times, or joining their NA friends in survivor lobbies. Contrary to what Scott states again in this video, there is a notable difference between the player pools. Ask any experienced EU streamer that has played in NA and they will tell you the same thing. And vice versa. The NA regions are decidedly more casual on average, from builds to levels of "sweating" and "tryharding", there's just lots more people that don't seem to care as much, as well as a lot more console players proportionally. 90% of the competitive tournament scene is composed of EU players. Even the difference between the UK and EU region is already blatant, and I think major reason why Scott is convinced EU is basically the same as NA is that he connects to UK whenever he does these experiments. UK is not EU. UK is London and Dublin, a much smaller pool that mostly features British players as well as a lot more console players. "EU" is Frankfurt servers. Doesn't mean there aren't also lots of casuals in EU, and it's not like a good killer player gets challenged all too much all too often there either, but the average level of play and sweat is definitely higher, and encountering high-level players more common than in UK/NA.
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@ralecgos said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3897519#Comment_3897519
I'm not an engineer. I can't sit here and give you exact solutions. All I can do is identify a problem and give my opinion on it.
Low ping players should never be punished. NEVER NEVER NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. High Ping players should have a slightly more difficult experience, and have to play in a way that requires them to work around their high ping. They should NOT BE OUTRIGHT REWARDED FOR BAD CONNECTION.
That is all I have to say to you. You are going in circles because you are just a stalwart killer defender. I literally play both sides. I have good ping on survivor AND KILLER. I WOULD NOT BENEFIT FROM THIS ANYWAY. From my perspective IT WOULD JUST MAKE THE GAME MORE FAIR. The game should cater to good/low ping as the BASELINE not HIGH PING.
Coincidentally enough you already outlined the exact solution: Laggy killers having to account for their latency, by getting a bit closer before lunging, aiming a bit in front of the survivor with ranged attacks, accepting overruled hits more often. Right now, only survivors have to account for latency (both their own and the killer's), by committing to pallet pulls and vaults earlier, pre-dodging ranged attacks, and accepting often getting hit in ways that are impossible from their perspective.
This would be achieved by moving the hit authority to the server instead of having it still be on the killer client. And as opposed to what people falsely claim, this would not be shifting the issue from "one side to the other" - currently, latency on hits essentially only negatively affects survivors, no matter whether that latency stems from their own or the killer's connection. In a server-authority environment, latency would affect both sides equally, and one's own latency would be to one's own detriment, not the opponent's. You would only really have to account for your own latency. Currently it's a 100-0 killer-survivor affair (well, maybe like 90-10, because there is validation for pallet stuns and Dead Hard), moving the hit reg authority to the server would make it a 50-50 affair, not a 0-100 one.
The killer latency advantage has plagued the game since its inception, but unfortunately despite saying they would want to more fundamentally reconsider on the hit reg system with dedicated servers in mind, nothing much apart from the stun and DH-specific validation has been done. I think there have been some extrapolation improvements to at least make things seem more sensible, and there is some semblance of a general hit validation system in place, but that is literally disabled unless the killer player has ludicrous latencies of 300-400+ms, and even then it works suboptimally at best.
I think one reason why BHVR refuses to move the hit authority to the server - be it by moving the entire hit reg system to it or at least having it validate all hits - is that it would put more load on the servers due to having to run hit calculations, as well as on the network budget due to requiring them to communicate hit info back and forth much more. This might pose different challenges to their programmers, that they simply aren't willing to tackle because they don't think it would actually result in more revenue, and it might also come with an increased cost for the servers, or simply having to run more servers since they can't have as many matches hosted per.
Server-authority hit systems are an industry standard, and completely commonplace in games that are much faster and more accuracy-reliant than DbD. I can't imagine doing this for DbD would be a particular challenge. The killer client-based hit system apart from generally favouring killers on latency also creates exploit space for people intentionally inducing latency on killer via VPNs and the like, lagswitching, and even injecting hit events into the connection whereby they can kill survivors without even moving.
It really should be a no-brainer to move hit authority to the servers (and should have already been back when they made the switch to dedicated servers). Maybe part of the reason why they don't is also a "let sleeping dogs lie" mentality, that they simply think people have gotten used to the unfair hit reg system as it is and the game has been as successful as it has with it, so they don't see merit in revamping this system to be more fair (or "equally unfair"), without a guarantee that it will actually increase player numbers and sales etc., and at the risk of startling tons of "Wow I didn't get that hit?! Garbage survivor-sided game!"-type complaints when killers would also get screwed by latency.
I do hope they will at the very least consider some of these things:
More server regions to decrease latencies across player pools. Currently African, Middle-Eastern and Russian players for instance all connect to German servers, regularly having latencies of 80-150+ms. And those are huge player pools.
Selectively employ peer-to-peer connections again in regions where no servers are close, whenever enough people in those regions are queueing. You could even implement an opt-in peer-to-peer model just like crossplay, where players can decide to join a P2P pool and try whether they can't find a better match there. (This could also future-proof DbD such that people can still play even if the game servers are taken down.)
Bring back killer ping indicators in the lobbies - green icon for killer pings <60ms, yellow icon for 60-90ms, red for 90+ms.
Have the existing lax general hit validation system already activate at killer pings of 90+ms.
Disable disconnect penalties for survivors if the killer has a ping of 200+ms. To account for lagspikes and lagswitching and stuff, it could be done on a "if the killer has had 200+ms for X seconds cumulatively in a trial, DC penalties for survivors are disabled" basis.
Revert pallet stun and DH validation back to their original "first-come-first-serve" behaviour where it strictly favours the player with better ping. Given how much more inconsistent these have gotten on good survivor ping, I have reason to believe that rather than the server simply looking at what arrived first (survivor stun or killer hit), it now actually does some sort of lag compensation on this, which isn't really fair when the entire hit reg system otherwise favours killers outright.
Time people out from a session if their connection isn't responsive for more than 2 seconds. Currently you can go like 10 seconds without being booted off a server, which enables lagswitching and other exploits (on survivor too).
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Praise be.
Consoles are set to be getting keyboard and mouse support, so that argument isn't all that compelling (never was to begin with, as you are not playing Oni against other Onis), and in general I think Oni's 180° flicks are a desireable aspect of his kit. Without them he becomes much more boring as cancelling the dash close to a survivor and then just following and demon-striking them from up close would much more often be optimal. And on shorter loops you would basically be forced to just walk after the survivor. At the very least Topknot (or a substantial % of it) should become basekit if 180° flicks were to be removed.
I would also note that Oni being a pure M1 killer for long stretches of matches (and particularly in the early game of course) calls for a very powerful ability to make up for it. Flicks also open up counterplay for survivors, who can anticipate and dodge them, punishing overeager killers.
While there are things I could see changing about Oni (such as stuff to do with passive charge rate), as somewhat of an Oni main I'm perfectly content with the state he is in now. Pick and kill rates and tournament performances are also all testament to how balanced and well-designed he is. So yeah, 180° flicks are something BHVR will hopefully leave in the game, like they have for many years now despite announcing they would be removed as far back as when Oni was released.
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@Iron_Cutlass said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3896403#Comment_3896403
Negative modifiers are not applied prior to positive ones, and even if they would be it wouldn't change the outcome
Negative modifiers DO apply before positive ones, and can provide diminishing effect depending on where what and how a modifier is modifying the number. There are many sources that confirm this and even the developers back in 2017-2018 have confirmed this, the issue is that some listed values are not properly represented based on the description of the effect, which again, requires research and testing.
The best example of this is how multiplicative effects can apply to one another, currently there are not many perks that actually apply a multiplicative effect but Call of Brine and Overcharge currently do.
Some effects use a % is a % based on a modified base (not the original base), meaning it will have a diminished effect if it is taking a percent of a small number compared to a percent of a bigger number.
Some perks do use flat additive and subtractive amounts, and those perks wont be affected by something like this, since it relies on taking a % of an unmodified base (the original base). This is more common to see with Movement Speed modifiers.
One thing that I dislike about math in DBD is the fact that flat additive and subtract amounts versus variable percents are not really properly explained, which is why I recommended doing personal research or using external sources, since sometimes things can be listed as percents but be flat amounts, or be listed as flat amounts but be percents.
No, if we are talking about action speed, all modifiers are applied at-once, and even if they weren't the order wouldn't matter. Mathematically it doesn't matter whether you first decrease a value multiplicatively and then increase it, or vice versa.
If you are talking about charges instead, you would have to give me actual game examples, because as far as I know BHVR either made them apply a flat +/- value, or with charge efficiency and inefficiency instead of having effects apply to actual charges, made them apply to the charge depletion rate, in which case you use the formula "charges divided by ((1 / negative modifier) * (1 / positive modifier))" to calculate the effective charges, where order again doesn't matter. For example: Botany Knowledge applies a 20% charge inefficiency to med-kits, meaning for every 1 charge of a med-kit used, only 0.8 charges of healing progress happen, so you need 1 / 0.8 = 1.25 med-kit charges per every 1 charge of healing progress, or 16 / 0.8 = 20 med-kit charges to fully heal for one health state; Streetwise applies a 25% charge efficiency, meaning for every 1 charge of med-kit used, 1.25 charges of healing progress happen, so you only need 1 / 1.25 = 0.8 charges of med-kit for every 1 charge of healing progress, or 16 / 1.25 = 12.8 for a full heal. To determine the med-kit's effective total charges when both are equipped, it doesn't matter whether you first apply the rate reduction or increase, both cancel each other out either way: 1 / 0.8 = 1.25 → 1.25 / 1.25 = 1 charge of med-kit for 1 charge of healing progress; 1 / 1.25 = 0.8 → 0.8 / 0.8 = 1. Or just 1.25 * 0.8 = 1.
How do Call Of Brine and Overcharge interact mathematically, and do you have evidence for this? Because again, if we just take them to apply multiplicatively to the base regression rate of 0.25 charges a second, it doesn't matter whether you apply Overcharge's * 0.85 decrease or COB's * 1.25 increase first, the result is the same (0.265 charges a second, or 106.25% regression rate, obviously growing to 1.3 * 1.25 = 1.625 → 0.25 * 1.625 = 0.4 charges a second, or 162.5% regression rate).
The mistake in your logic with "positive percentual modifier of a smaller number is less" is that you neglect that if you apply the positive modifier first, the negative percentual modifier applying to that then bigger number will also be more. It cancels each other out, so the order doesn't matter and you can instead just apply them together (so for Overcharge and COB, 0.85 * 1.25 = 1.0625; 0.25 * 1.0625 = 0.265).
I do agree that these things aren't sufficiently (or really at all) explained or even just stated properly in the game. How effects stack is not readily available knowledge, and that should be remedied.
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Negative modifiers are not applied prior to positive ones, and even if they would be it wouldn't change the outcome: One effect halves action speed, the other doubles it - no matter what you apply first the result is the action speed is unchanged.
For an actual in-game example, if you heal someone with Botany Knowledge equipped while they are under the effect of Mangled, it doesn't matter whether you do the -20% or +50% first or second, the result is the same either way: 16 / 0.8 = 20 → 20 / 1.5 = 13.3 seconds; 16 / 1.5 = 10.6… → 10.6… / 0.8 = 13.3 seconds.
In fact, you can simply apply all modifiers at once, by multiplying negative with positive ones: 0.8 * 1.5 = 1.2 → 16 / 1.2 = 13.3.
The multiplicative and additive distinction is between negative and positive modifiers. The game multiplies negative ones among one another and adds up positive ones. It does this because adding up negative ones would cause -100% (and more) action speed, leading to actions taking forever or actually regressing (fun fact: some things in DbD actually worked like that in its distant past, leading to debuff stacking causing infinite healing times and such).
Adding up positive modifiers on the other hand does not carry the same issue, as all increasing action speed by 100% does is halve action time. It does however have the issue that it diminishes returns on stacked positive effects, and this is what actually "dampens" their impact: If you increase, say, an altruistic heal's action speed by 30% and 50%, the game simply applies this as an added-up 80% modifier (16 / 1.8 = 8.8 seconds), decreasing healing time by 44.44%, whereas applying them successively (16 / 1.5 = 10.6… → 10.6… / 1.3 = 8.2 seconds)/multiplicatively (1.5 * 1.3 = 1.95 → 16 / 1.95 = 8.2 seconds) would decrease it by 48.72%. I think there is an argument to be made that positive modifiers should also be totalled multiplicatively, such that their stacked effects aren't diminished. It wouldn't change too much at all, but it would make some perks just a slight bit more effective in conjunction with others.
Example: We'll Make it and We're Gonna Live Forever both increase one's healing speed by 100%, each respectively doubling it to 200%, but rather than halving the time it takes to heal times two when used together, this is applied as a combined 200% (added onto the base 100% for a total of 300%), so 16 / 3 = 5.3 seconds. But intuitively you would think it gives you a (16 / 2 = 8 → 8 / 2 =) 4-second healing time, or 400% healing speed because it got doubled twice. Which multiplying them instead would achieve (2 * 2 = 4 → 16 / 4 = 4 seconds). Changing this would only reduce the healing time by 1.3 seconds in this very niche, very situational instance, and this is with huge action speed increases at play. So yeah, consider this my petition to make BHVR tally up positive modifiers multiplicatively too.
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Great news and something that's been needed. The devs have already gradually but surely removed most of the big grievances from the game, but there are still a bunch left many of which are being addressed here.
That said, I honestly feel like these changes aren't going far enough considering that BHVR is adjusting their entire release schedule that they've kept to for years and years now. Given that, I would have hoped for more.
Surrender Option
While the option to surrender in hopeless scenarios is welcome to end a match that could otherwise be needlessly (or maliciously) prolonged, I don't think this goes far enough. It will finally stop players from being able to slug survivors to bleedout just to annoy them, but it doesn't address the much more common scenario where 2 survivors are left alive and the killer slugs or otherwise refuses to kill the second-to-last survivor in order to try and guarantee the kill on the last survivor as well. I think the surrender option should also be available in the dying state if only 2 survivors remain in the trial.
Although ideally they would go much further with this and address the bigger issue that is the existence of these "hopeless scenarios" altogether. The 2v1 and 1v1 endgames are a big point of pain in this game's design. Why is it that the last two survivors find themselves in a scenario where escape by actually playing to the game objective is essentially impossible, and the only real hope is hiding? That's undesireable for everyone involved. A lot could be done to make the 2v1 a more compelling and thrilling gameplay proposition, that promotes action and interaction. The 1v1 endgame could also do with a complete overhaul to make it a more exciting culmination to a match, but at the very least removing its egregious pain points seems easy enough: make it so that the hatch closes itself automatically after some time, preventing the killer (or survivor) from camping it; make sure gate spawns are never too too close and move the first red light indicator to 50% of the opening process.
“Go-Next" Prevention
It really remains to be seen just how accurate and helpful this system will be, but for now I'll use this opportunity to suggest also doing something about the much more common "go-next" issue: lobby dodging. Dodging lobbies completely disrupts the matchmaking, and also allows players to "shop" for lobbies they think offer a better chance of success. I think the game should keep track of how often players dodge lobbies and give them a matchmaking cooldown if they do so excessively, in a similar escalating manner as is done with the disconnect cooldowns.
Extreme Hiding & Body Blocking Prevention
While good in and of itself, I think here again the more pertinent issue is the "unwinnable match". Extreme hiding the vast majority of the time occurs when there's only two survivors left in the trial and their only hope of survival is by hiding until one of them is found and killed, such that they may escape by hatch. I think it would be better to address the issue that the idea of objective-oriented gameplay collapses in these scenarios than it is to essentially make these scenarios even more hopeless. They may think this will push survivors to actually try and do gens, but all it will really lead to is people giving up and the game ending without any further gameplay (and if the "go-next prevention" system forces them to go through hoops to get killed without getting penalized for it, that's a recipe for disaster).
The 2v1 endgame could offer a lot of worthwhile gameplay still if it were to be adjusted in sensible ways, there's no reason to essentially force the game to end at this stage and rob everyone of gameplay.
Map Offerings
I don't mind map offerings being nerfed but I also never really minded them existing, this was never a real pain point for me personally, killer or survivor. Although now that it is finally happening I bet it will be a bit of a "be careful what you wish for" situation for a lot of players that cannot any longer send their opponents to Haddonfield or an indoor map as a stealth killer or the like. And I too will miss being able to play Scratched Mirror Myers.
I think making it so that map offerings do stack might be a better way to go about it, with a 25% chance per survivor offering and killer offerings still being 100%. That way if survivors really want to play a certain map, they will have to forgo using any other offering, as well as all spend the specific map offering (which they will absolutely run out of sooner or later this way). And killers could still play all the map-dependent strategies that exist. Maybe with the caveat that if both sides bring map offerings, the chances are mediated (so 1 survivor offering vs. killer offering = 25/75 chance to get the killer's map; 2 survivor offerings vs. killer = 50/50 chance to get either (or 25/25/50 chance if the survivor offerings are for different maps); 3 survivor offerings vs. killer = 75/25 chance to get the survivors' map (or 25/25/25/25 if they are for different maps, or 50/25/25 if two of them are for the same map, and so on…); 4 survivor offerings vs. killer = 20% chance for any of the maps to appear, 80/20 if all survivor offerings are for the same map etc.).
I will also say that there are some maps in the pool that are so problematic that this prospect of playing a much more random variety of maps is a bit concerning. Badham, Garden, Eyrie, Haddonfield, Sanctum, Ruins, and Temple being the most notable. Either introduce map offerings that reduce the likeliness of getting a specific realm, or better yet, address the blatant issues with these maps.
Spawn Rules
Nice.
Bulk Bloodpoint Spending
Nice.
Quest System
Lots of things they could do to make these things more fun rather than repetitive, although I doubt they will change much with regards to what it is you actually have to do in the trials to complete dailies and challenges.
Perk Loadouts & Preview
I'm pretty sure this as opposed to what people are hoping for refers to the little perk loadout graphic on the upper right-hand side of the screen that a bunch of players have been having for many years already. Calling that "a successful round" of A/B testing is as odd as the idea that this is some sort of "feature" that will tangibly improve the quality of the game experience or needed to be tested for years. You can literally just open your loadout screen to see your perks if you really don't already know what they are. What gives? Sure the little info is nice to have I guess, but including this on an ambitious QOL roadmap that they are revamping their entire schedule for is… well, silly.
Now, showing all survivors' perks to each other (in the lobby and the in-trial info overlay) would actually be an immense QOL improvement truly worthy of being mentioned here.
Quickly touching on the things planned for the second round of QOL improvements in the latter half of the year, I'll say that while all of them sound really promising, I think one would do well to rein in their expectations, especially given how… moderate their QOL adjustments for the first round of issues are.
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While there are the counterplay opportunities of trying to stun Legion out of Frenzy and taking Frenzy hits for others and while the average player is definitely not even trying to employ these tactics or bad at it, those are far from easy or reliable counterplays, nor is the Legion player without means of playing around them.
First of all, there simply isn't always a pallet around. In fact, with how fast Legion is in Frenzy, survivors regularly will not make it to pallets. The Legion player can also decide to only activate Frenzy when they know they can for sure get one or two hits before they have to worry about dealing with pallets, which is commonly possible. It can additionally be noted that due to the terror radii being the same and not having an overlapping effect (and Undetectable being a thing), it's often not even possible to pre-run from Legion to a pallet, all the less so of course without communications, i. e. when you regularly have no idea where they are coming from. And the more hits they get, the faster and less feasible to at all avoid they become.
And then even if you do make it to a pallet, stunning Legion out of Frenzy is not actually that simple. For starters, you have to react to their lunge with the drop, if you do it too early or too late you just wasted a pallet for nothing and do not get the stun. And they have 12 seconds to play this game with you, baiting the lunge, going around the pallet, breaking line of sight, and so on. Plus the faster they are (i. e. the more hits they had gotten prior to this interaction), the more difficult it is to try and get the pallet stun, as they can bait and mindgame around the pallet more effectively as well as brute-force swing through it so fast that the average player won't be able to react in time. Plus with how many players there are around in this mode, it's also possible that if you camp a pallet Legion may just leave and go for someone else first.
Taking hits for others is even more difficult in this mode than stunning Legion out of Frenzy. The first issue is that there's so many players around that even if you can position to take a hit for one, there's usually multiple others Legion can easily go for. The increased speed (with stacking hits) and duration of Frenzy here obviously make things more difficult as well. And without communications, it's rather difficult to even tell whether someone is trying to take a hit, or wherefrom it is that they are. In order for someone to be able to take Frenzy hit, you have to run around a structure such that the player even has a chance of getting inbetween you and the Legion, but if you don't immediately know where Legion is coming from nor whether someone is there to try and take a hit, running around the first structure you have often prevents you from making distance or making it to a pallet, and even then you may be running around in a wrong direction where the bodyblocker cannot manage to get inbetween fast enough. So it's an unreliable gamble. And the Legion player also has means of playing around bodyblocks, such as trying to get around the bodyblocker, quickly changing the direction around the structure, or manually cancelling Frenzy if they really don't think they can get around the bodyblocker or go for someone else, in which case Frenzy will be back much faster (depending on how far ticked down it was to begin with of course).
On top of all of this, even if someone actually manages to pull Legion out of Frenzy, it's not like a 20-second downtime before they are able to try again (and during which they are still an M1 killer that can also guarantee downs simply by sticking around their teammate) is all that detrimental.
Players should absolutely try to constantly stun Legion out of power and to take hits for others. And they should never fully mend until they have to (you can stay in Deep Wound until Legion is out of power/until it is clear you won't be getting chased anyway, and then you can still 99% your mending and only fully mend once the Deep Wound timer is ticked down to the last seconds). Spreading out should also be done as much as possible, even if that's also much easier said than done in this mode. But to say Legion poses no issue in 2v8 is patently false. Even if every single player in a group is aware of the counterplay tactics and trying to employ them to the best of their ability, they are far from reliable or guaranteed. Even if they are on comms. And that spells disaster for the vast majority of groups where players are not aware of these things or good at employing them, nor communicating with others. Which then also goes into the "ease of playing as vs. against" argument, that even a bad Legion player stomps many groups simply because they are so easy to do what's necessary with for the other killer to mop up fast or easy downs left and right.
Mending constantly also doesn't make for the most fun of gameplay experiences.
One quick adjustment that I think could make Legion more engaging in this mode is if they were to have Never-Sleep Pills basekit, so 4.6m/s starting speed in Frenzy and 20s Frenzy duration. This would make it much more feasible for survivors to try and take hits for others, stun Legion out of Frenzy, or make distance away from them early enough. As an additional trade-off, reduce Frenzy fatigue to 2 seconds, such that Legion is more threatening as a chaser and not mostly a "support" for the other killer. The "BFFs" add-on (with a higher token requirement) could also be basekit in this mode.
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Personally I don't think aggressively/proactively slugging constitutes a problem that needs addressing. But I won't go into that since the thread posed its question regardless of that.
I still thought to mention it because the only two scenarios where I do think a solution is necessary are scenarios in which the killer has already (all but) won, and so the issue of the solution potentially encouraging slugging falls away. Specifically, it is when all remaining survivors in a trial are in the dying state or when only two survivors remain in the trial that I think there needs to be a remedy for continued slugging. Giving survivors in these scenarios the option to "surrender to the entity" and have it sacrifice them EGC-style seems a perfectly fine solution to me, ending the match in which a killer thought to bleed everyone out just to spite them, and forcing the 1v1 endgame in the match where a killer thought to slug and otherwise refuse to kill the second-to-last survivor in order to secure the kill on the last survivor as well.
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@jesterkind said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3879170#Comment_3879170
There aren't that many comparisons because not many killers really have extraneous stuff like Wesker does. I didn't want to be too forward with my position because I wanted to get a sense for other people's opinions on Wesker's overall design and how the individual parts of his kit fit into the whole, but I can definitely elaborate a little on that here.
To me, it's a question of asking what the parts of a kit do for the whole. In some cases for Wesker, it's obvious- for instance, his pseudo-instadown at max infection is meant to make the Virulent Bound more threatening than it already is, and as a direct consequence of that, push survivors towards engaging with the First Aid Spray mechanic.
But then you look at the other elements of the infection and the answer gets less clear. Take the Hindered- it does basically function the same way the pseudo-instadown does, but it can't really be allowed to be too strong or it breaks the balance of his power, leaving it in this sort of halfway state where it exists, and it's potent enough to be noticeable… but only barely, and his power's designed around it not being in play much. Why's it even there? I could absolutely see it being appropriate to replace this instead of remove it, but I'm not convinced it's core to Wesker's power level or identity and I'm pretty sure just outright removing it wouldn't actually harm him very much- which isn't ideal for a killer's power.
After that, the Killer Instinct, which I think is the most obviously "extra and arbitrary" part of his power. If we want survivors to engage with First Aid Sprays, why does Wesker gets notified when they do? The clearest comparison here is Nemesis, who has literally the exact same mechanic… except for him it makes sense, because he needs to keep the infection up for his power to be capable of doing damage, leaving him a little more like Plague where you're taking something away from him but giving him something else. For Wesker, you're hit by the brunt of Virulent Bound either way, so ridding yourself infection is just inviting him to hit you with Virulent Bound again. It's nice for him to have, sure, but how does it actually tie into a coherent gameplay loop?
My opinion is mostly that the core of Wesker's power is well designed, but he has more unnecessary flab surrounding it than other killers do. I don't think it's a huge problem, to be clear, but I do think it's there and it was obvious others didn't feel the same way from how I'd seen conversations about him go in the past.
While I don't think Wesker lives and dies by these "extra" things, be it balance or design-wise, here's a few things you may not have considered:
The Hindered is probably there because otherwise injured survivors would suffer no real drawback from being fully infected. And sure, then one may argue they should (or would) have only applied this effect if a survivor actually is injured, but the next argument is that BHVR likely wanted Wesker to be particularly powerful and in fact have what may be argued to be a "bloated" kit.
And that argument extends into the "identity" bit: Wesker is not only the big bad in a hugely popular franchise that BHVR had already made tons of money on collaborating with, but he is notoriously versatile, using different engineered viruses, weapons, gear, technologies, techniques of attack, forms, tactics, strategies, … - I think they simply wanted him to have a thing or two more going on that make things feel more loaded as killer and more stressful as survivor. Mind you, in that regard he still came out a pretty sorry excuse for his RE self, similar to Nemesis, but that was always going to be the case to some extent within the limited scope of DbD's gameplay. I mean, "Mastermind"? He's just hurling people around in one of the sillier animations and interactions we have in the (already plenty silly) game. Granted, I'm sure BHVR also kept both Nemesis and Wesker as simple as they possibly could from a baseline, killer player perspective because they knew it would attract a lot of new players to try them out, and they're both still some of the coolest killer designs in the game I find, but yeah, they are blatantly, almost comically neutered.
Either way, the identity thing also goes for the killer instinct: Wesker is an espionage and intel gathering professional, the notion that he would have a bit of an idea about what's going on around the map with regards to people "destroying" the virus he's interested in spreading makes sense from that perspective. And as I've laid out in my first post, I would argue that it makes sense from a gameplay loop/cohesion perspective too: if the killer instinct did not exist, you would simply feel too safe after spraying, because that by design would most of the time have you in about as safe a spot as you possibly could be. This way however, spraying is something you do not necessarily want to do instantly or carelessly, you have to think more about when and where you do, whether to heal first or afterwards, weigh the risks, and the sense of danger that he will and then does know about your whereabouts adds to how oppressive he - I believe - is supposed to feel.
That all said, I think this topic is a bit too "game design" for me. There's probably an interesting conversation to be had about these things, I'm sure BHVR had the one or other more or less good idea when they tacked these effects onto his kit, but personally I do care more so about the outright gameplay balance experience it yields, and in that respect I think Wesker is in a great spot (certainly comfortably one of the least urgent killers to need addressing, that time would be better spent on various other killers). With the only thing I would readily consider changing being the Hindered effect as I've mentioned, replacing it with something less superfluously, gratuitously tacked-on (not the first time that they resort to movement speed changes as a means of pushing a design over the top) and tunnel-friendly. Well, that and the lack of hit validation for bound attacks… but the entire hit registration issue is far larger than Wesker, it's a fundamental, architectural game flaw, even if Wesker's ability is one of the most egregious offenders in that regard.
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Here's some stats I collected from a few sessions of KnightLight's solo Chaos Shuffle escape streak. Keep in mind that this is really a tiny sample size (ranging from 5 to 11 appearances per perk, over a few dozen matches - a lot of perks showed up even fewer than 5 times, which I decided to exclude entirely), so all the things that skew these stats will weigh even heavier. This is really not very representative at all, but I still wanted to share it just because the one or other thing might still be interesting, and I think in general this way of looking at both personal and group survival by perks has merit:
Perks by personal escape rate (so the escape rate of the users of the respective perk themselves):
deliverance - 100%
boil over - 87.5%
overcome - 85.7%
parental guidance - 85.7%
saboteur - 85.7%
unbreakable - 83.3%
plunderer's instinct - 83.3%
streetwise - 83.3% adrenaline - 80%
leader - 80%
we'll make it - 80%
residual manifest - 80%
resurgence - 80%
scene partner - 80%
sole survivor - 80%
moment of glory - 72.7%
resilience - 71.4%
self-care - 66.6%
self-preservation - 66.6%
hyperfocus - 62.5%
rookie spirit - 62.5%
eyes of belmont - 62.5%
lightweight - 62.5%
boon: shadow step - 60%
bardic inspiration - 60%
calm spirit - 60%
bite the bullet - 60%
bond - 60%
alert - 60%
open-handed - 60%
power struggle - 60%
teamwork: collective stealth - 60%
invocation: treacherous crows - 60%
head on - 60%
empathic connection - 60%
wicked - 60%
mettle of man - 57.1%
boon: exponential - 57.1%
reactive healing - 57.1%
invocation: weaving spiders - 57.1%
made for this - 57.1%
dance with me - 57.1%
breakout - 50%
lucky break - 50%
deception - 50%
desperate measures - 50%
hardened - 50%
sprint burst - 50%
slippery meat - 42.8%
no one left behind - 42.8%
aftercare - 40%
dead hard - 40%
dark sense - 40%
diversion - 40%
counterforce - 40%
prove thyself - 40%
hope - 40%
urban evasion - 40%
mirrored illusion - 40%
blood pact - 40%
this is not happening - 37.5%
camaraderie - 37.5%
friendly competition - 33.3%
specialist - 33.3%
chemical trap - 33.3%
wiretap - 30%
strength in shadows - 28.5%
lithe - 20% fogwise - 16.6% reassurance - 16.6%
troubleshooter - 14.2%
windows of opportunity - 14.2%And the same perks sorted by their group escape rate (how many survivors in a group escaped on average when these perks were in play):
leader - 80%
unbreakable - 79.1%
overcome - 78.5%
deliverance - 75%
we'll make it - 75%
residual manifest - 75%
boon: shadow step - 75%
parental guidance - 71.4%
resurgence - 70%
aftercare - 70%
mettle of man - 67.8%
plunderer's instinct - 66.6%
hyperfocus - 65.6%
scene partner - 65%
bardic inspiration - 65%
calm spirit - 65%
boil over - 62.5%
rookie spirit - 62.5%
eyes of belmont - 62.5%
friendly competition - 62.5%
streetwise - 62.5%
moment of glory - 61.3%
resilience - 60.7%
slippery meat - 60.7%
sole survivor - 60%
bite the bullet - 60%
bond - 60%
alert - 60%
dead hard - 60%
dark sense - 60%
diversion - 60%
counterforce - 60%
lithe - 60%
wiretap - 60%
self-care - 58.3%
specialist - 58.3%
adrenaline - 57.5%
wicked - 57.5%
saboteur - 57.1%
open-handed - 55%
power struggle - 55%
prove thyself - 55%
self-preservation - 54.1%
breakout - 54.1%
boon: exponential - 53.5%
troubleshooter - 53.5%
lightweight - 53.1%
fogwise - 50%
lucky break - 50%
deception - 50%
reactive healing - 50%
hope - 50%
urban evasion - 50%
this is not happening - 50%
desperate - 45.8%
mirrored illusion - 45%
teamwork: collective stealth - 45%
invocation: treacherous crows - 45%
head on - 45%
no one left behind - 42.8%
strength in shadows - 42.8%
hardened - 41.6%
sprint burst - 41.6%
reassurance - 41.6%
invocation: weaving spiders - 39.2%
made for this - 39.2%
dance with me - 35.7%
empathic connection - 35%
blood pact - 35%
camaraderie - 34.3%
chemical trap - 33.3%
windows of opportunity - 25%There is always a certain correlation between personal and group survival rates (the likelier it is to escape oneself, the more likely it is for others in the group to also survive, and vice versa - this holds true as a general concept both mathematically and game-logically), but some interesting discrepancies can still be observed, such as Strength In Shadows for example having a considerably lower personal than group survival rate, which may be explained by the circumstance that its user would end up caught and camped in the basement, from where the rest of the group would be reluctant to rescue them, instead just doing gens and escaping. Or more obvious ones like Sole Survivor having a noticeably higher personal than group survival rate.
Although it bears mentioning again that a ton of things will skew these stats, and that's all the more so true with this limited a sample size. First of all, this is taken from the escape streak of a top player, so the escape rate (both personal and group) will skew higher than would be the case on a global average (to note though: "personal" escape rate does not refer to KnightLight only - I looked at all the random players too, so it's their combined "personal" average). Then also just think of something like Treacherous Crows being regarded as so bad that its users regularly may not even think about ever using it, whereas Weaving Spiders may seem more attractive to more people - this could lead to people then wanting to actually activate it, which in turn could backfire in a multitude of ways and explain the lower escape rates for Spiders than Crows: it would simply be because activating Crows (or trying to…) is more detrimental than only having 3 perks and never even thinking about invocating. Or consider that some perks may be "boosted" in their success rates simply because they happened to show up alongside actually good perks that carried them as it were. Or perk synergies. Or that they appeared more often against particular killers (and killer perks) that they are particularly good/bad against than other perks did. And so on.
While many of these things that skew the stats would matter less and less with an increasing sample size, others would always play some role (such as killer played against, which is why I think these should additionally be separated by killers), and the small sample size of my stats basically render them useless. Consider them more so a fun way of "bumping" my thread than anything else. Although if anyone does find anything interesting or worth pointing out or asking about in them, they should of course feel right free to.
I'll also say that if BHVR lets us down again and does not provide any stats on Chaos Shuffle, I might either contact NightLight.gg to inquire about whether they would be open to collecting Modifier data as well, or I'll start a "community stat call" thread next time around where I'll ask people to play any number of Chaos Shuffle solo matches and post match result screenshots for me to collect and run stats on.
Just for fun, here's the top 3 and bottom 3 killer perks as per KnightLight's sessions (obviously an even tinier sample size since there's only one killer player per match, and I also limited the perks to those that had at least 3 instances, so again, doesn't mean much of anything):
Top: Dark Arrogance, Floods Of Rage, Darkness Revealed
Bottom: Shadowborn, Plaything, Agitation
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I'm not sure you are coming at this from a design or balance perspective, but I do think he's perfectly unproblematic after his last round of nerfs (infection fully resets on hook, Hindered effect halved to 4%).
The only thing I've always felt is gratuitous or redundant in a "bloat" sense about his kit design is the Hindered effect. He has a very potent chase ability that hardly allows survivors to abuse distance, not even medium distance plays such as looping shack or gym windows are at all safe against a competent Wesker. In that respect the Hindered feels a bit like Blight being 4.6m/s - just needlessly over the top.
And although now that it is halved to 4% the Hindered isn't as much of a sore thumb, I still think it would make more sense for it to be replaced with an effect that is not directly beneficial in chase, which would also discourage tunnelling. Such as a notable repair speed penalty (something around -30%). Hell, they could even get rid of the instagrab aspect of full infections with that, but in turn then reduce the available sprays (e. g. by reducing the available charges per can to 1) to the point that it will regularly happen that survivors have to stay infected, slowing down the game. Something like his bound movement and recharge speeds being increased in dependence on the amount of infected survivors in the match could also be feasible, as it encourages spreading out the pressure (although this might just be me wanting there to be something that can make him bound faster because it's cool).
Alternatively, a change I've always thought would be sensible is if spraying someone else were to be twice as fast as spraying oneself. Not only is this perfectly logical in terms of the time investment being doubled if it's two survivors, but it would also enable survivors to help someone being tunnelled and potentially disinfect them mid-chase/directly after the unhook.
Something I think Wesker could need as a sort of "quality of life" improvement on the other hand is just a tiny bit more "slideiness" for bounds. I don't mean full-on hug techs (which do exist but are decently difficult to pull off and only work on specific geometry), but a mechanic that prevents the tiniest of textures from stopping him dead in his tracks. The view angle for collision detection should remain the same, but these collisions should only stop the bound if they are big enough to actually constitute a "wall", i. e. if a collision is being detected for a certain extended amount of time, thus allowing Wesker to continue his bound if it's merely a thing or two sticking out into his collision angle.
But yeah, apart from the Hindered effect, nothing has ever actually felt bloated to me about Wesker, be it playing as or against him. Even the killer instinct on successful sprays seems sensible to me, as it creates a welcome sense of danger for a survivor that would otherwise be perfectly safe (they have gotten rid of their infection so that threat is gone, and they've obviously had the time to spray in the first place, meaning they must be in a safe spot far enough away from Wesker, regularly also healed up because people tend to heal prior to spraying if they can be reasonably sure that Wesker won't find them).
I'll agree with @Pulsar here and say that his kit factually being pretty loaded if you break it down like this but not actually feeling bloated is if anything testament to how well-designed Wesker is. I also still hold that he is in a pretty perfect spot as far as balance both in terms of strength and the "difficulty to play as vs. against" ratio is concerned.
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@SoGo said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3875642#Comment_3875642
So, I decided to thouroughly read your original post, and here is the feedback:
• Letting Snug catch you and stunning both him and the killer is not the best idea, but dropping the pallet after she sends him out makes him just stand there, which counters her.
• The dog's vault speed is a bit overtuned, sure. Making it 0.6 seconds would be fair. Her cooldown is also very short, but keep in mind she has a bug/problem which doesn't start the cooldown even though Snug is behind her. So unless that gets fixed (which it should), the cooldown should stay as is. The Exit Gate situation is also tied to this, so I won't mention it further. Her ability to deny unhooks is there for sure. I won't argue with that.
• Snug's curving capabilities are pathetic to say the least, and the Redirect Window being 3-4 seconds does nothing as long as there is a solid bush between Snug and the survivor. The 8 second holding time is fair, imo. I mean, if you messed up and got caught, you should get punished + you are being held by a Cane Corso, not a Chihuahua. Her speed while on the Search Path is that much of a problem imo, as it was really bad on the PTB.
• I don't think you should be able to vault while getting bitten, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
• Houndsense needs significant buffs for sure. It's only good with add-ons.
dropping the pallet after she sends him out makes him just stand there, which counters her.
Is that so? If so, it must be a really specific timing, since I've seen plenty of instances of survivors pulling pallets while the dog was already chasing after them, and him then vaulting it. I have seen instances of the dog just standing still at pallets, but I had assumed it was just due to reaching maximum chase path range (or that vaulting would exceed this range). Or maybe it's because the dog had already entered "pounce" mode and the pallet somehow interrupted the action, although that really would have to be very specific timing, susceptible to latency, and far from reliable.
But even if there would be a consistent timing to do this, the first issue is the instant redirect which makes him vault and grab the survivor anyway, and the other is that you obviously cannot drop the pallet after the dog got sent out if she is standing right in front of the pallet.
The dog's vault speed is a bit overtuned, sure. Making it 0.6 seconds would be fair.
Remains to be seen in action. I think even the original 0.9s could be appropriate on the first chase path, and then 0.6s (or even less) on the redirect chase. Because I think what's really neat about these interactions would be that Houndmaster has to use the redirect much more often and proactively on pallet and window play, since she will have to either use it to pounce over the pallet quickly enough to instantly grab the survivor, or to get the pounce after the dog has vaulted less quickly and the survivor therefore managed to avoid the instant grab.
Her cooldown is also very short, but keep in mind she has a bug/problem which doesn't start the cooldown even though Snug is behind her. So unless that gets fixed (which it should), the cooldown should stay as is. The Exit Gate situation is also tied to this, so I won't mention it further. Her ability to deny unhooks is there for sure. I won't argue with that.
I've seen and experienced this bug, but it's very rare. Certainly too rare for the effectively instant recharge to be an adequate band-aid. I think the original 5-second cooldown was appropriate. Around 3 seconds already pass during hit cooldown, so this gives survivors 2 seconds of breathing room before the dog is after them again, comparable to a lot of other killers that either have longer recharge times or at least charge times that give survivors a few seconds before having to play around their ability again.
But there could also be more intricate adjustments to the recharge. They could distinguish between successful pounces and misses, with misses having a shorter cooldown. Using redirect could incur longer cooldowns too, again differentiating between successful and missed redirects as well. A survivor freeing themselves (by pallet, teammate or struggling) could incur an increased cooldown as well.
Snug's curving capabilities are pathetic to say the least, and the Redirect Window being 3-4 seconds does nothing as long as there is a solid bush between Snug and the survivor. The 8 second holding time is fair, imo. I mean, if you messed up and got caught, you should get punished + you are being held by a Cane Corso, not a Chihuahua. Her speed while on the Search Path is that much of a problem imo, as it was really bad on the PTB.
I mean, he won't run circles around tiles, but his curving is far from pathetic if you consider that he moves at the same speed as hatchets/slinger shots, for which the idea of them curving around corners would be pretty insane. She also has a faster "wind-up" speed than Huntress. And the dog has a fairly large hitbox and pounce detection range that additionally help with getting grabs around tiles and corners. Plus the redirect means you can make use of his curving capabilities two times, so even if he only rounds half a tile in one go, you can go around the entire thing between the two attempts. And she herself being there still to threaten the survivor at full movement speed of course adds to the complication of these chase interactions at loops.
I don't think the redirect window is necessarily too long mechanically speaking, but it just makes her much easier to play and harder to play around. If she only had, say, 1.5 seconds like Nurse does for her blink window, it would take more skill from the killer to quickly aim the redirection and would make it more transparent for survivors to play around, since they can relatively quickly be sure whether they have to still be afraid of the redirect or whether the window has passed. Or simply that they have more of a chance to dodge the redirect since the killer cannot watch and wait out their movement for as long.
The 8-second hold is a guaranteed hit pretty much every time. Slinger is 4.4m/s, cannot curve or redirect his shot, and it has a much smaller hitbox and no "pounce" range. He also gets slowed down upon shooting and has to reload. And he does not have two points of possible attack that the survivor has to play around, he can only attack from the direction he's chasing in. And yet it happens frequently that successful shots do not result in a hit, as survivors break free. And Slinger is a good killer, usually regarded as sitting between B and A tier. (Granted, I personally do think he deserves buffs, such as being 4.6m/s, but a lot of people would disagree.) Houndmaster's dog grabs are much easier to get and you can get them in ways Slinger never could. And yet they will pretty much always result in a hit. You can literally grab someone over shack pallet and walk all the way around it to hit them. I have almost never seen a survivor break out from the dog manually if the killer actually wanted to hit them.
The search path speed is perfectly adequate for map mobility, but you can use it in chase in ways that I find to be a bit silly. Simple solutions could be the increased basic hit cooldown if the hit happened while (or within 1 second) of having been Slipstreamed that I mentioned, or yet Slipstream speed being slowed down to 5m/s if a survivor is in chase state.
I don't think you should be able to vault while getting bitten, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
In what way does it not make sense? It would obviously free you of the dog, you wouldn't drag it across the vault with you, ha.
It would still only rarely open up real counterplay, just like slow vaults while chained against Pinhead still regularly result in a hit. But it would be a little more one could do.
Like I said, not all of these things need to be towned down or changed, and some such mechanical changes would or could be applied instead of toning down some of these aspects, I'm not suggesting they need to nerf her across the board and revert all the buffs that came after the PTB. I enjoy this killer's basic idea with the redirectable projectile and I want most of all killers to be what we consider A-tier. Just some tuning and targeted changes that make her more reasonable, not even primarily in terms of some of her overtuned mechanics or overall "strength", more so in terms of how challenging or demanding she is to play.
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@XtremeDBD said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3876192#Comment_3876192
Again, im not reading all of that. Again, since the pallet isn't a 50/50 when not dropped on edge map side, the survivor easily can just waut out the dig grab, WHICH does not pull u towards the killer when u resist, its just a slowing effect. So whipe u stay on the pallet completely in control, u wait for your slowness to go away or you stun the killer and begin to loop the filler
When i said the power is essential dracula's hellfire, i was referring to how easy ut is to grab a survivor who drops a pallet while the killer holds chase command. That is essentially like half of anti loop powers, u pre drop, you get hit over. Either way its completely the survivor's fault.
For the last time, pls, know ur facts and have the decency to at least try the killer or play against her enough to formulate excuses. And stop replying in massive walls of text that u should know well no one who cares abt actually playing the game is gonna read
Again, im not reading all of that.
My reply to you consists of 222 words. This reply of yours is 182 words. What gives?
the survivor easily can just waut out the dig grab, WHICH does not pull u towards the killer when u resist, its just a slowing effect. So whipe u stay on the pallet completely in control, u wait for your slowness to go away or you stun the killer and begin to loop the filler
I'm not sure what you are not understanding about me pointing out the fact that survivors cannot simply camp pallets until the killer swings and reactively stun them. Nobody has that reaction time, pallets take some time to apply the stun, the killer has the latency advantage, and they can also fake the swing to bait the pallet drop. Feel free to show me clips of someone consistently camping pallets for 6-11 seconds and getting successful reactive stuns on the killer. V1rtual is a competitive DbD player with good reaction times and a ping of 12-18ms, as low as it gets for 99.999% of the player population, and even he cannot consistently just camp pallets and react to a swing or not get baited.
The dog does pull survivors in different and at times random directions, it can absolutely pull you out of the pallet or at least so far to one side that you can only drop it from that side anymore.
When i said the power is essential dracula's hellfire, i was referring to how easy ut is to grab a survivor who drops a pallet while the killer holds chase command. That is essentially like half of anti loop powers, u pre drop, you get hit over. Either way its completely the survivor's fault.
? That is not what we were talking about. We were talking about camping pallets, taking the dog, and then stunning it. Because that's an insanely good counterplay tactic according to you. You then said "just run away", instead of camping the pallet, contradicting yourself.
If you try to run away or loop the pallet, the dog can absolutely and easily get you. Part of the reason for that being that he as opposed to Hellfire can path around tiles and pounce from range, locking on targets automatically. And the whole redirection thing. Also Houndmaster doesn't lose movement speed when using her ability like Dracula does. But again, none of this is pertinent to the actual argument we were having.
For the last time, pls, know ur facts and have the decency to at least try the killer or play against her enough to formulate excuses. And stop replying in massive walls of text that u should know well no one who cares abt actually playing the game is gonna read
I have played as and against the killer. Watched some of the best and most experienced players do so. Hens, KnightLight and Xeno (some of the most experienced players period, the latter two also being two of the very best) are all of the opinion she's a notably strong killer, with Hens even saying she is "massively overtuned". I had the "decency" to go through multiple hours-long videos of actual Houndmaster gameplay to try and provide evidence and examples for my points. You can't even show me the decency of not getting offensive making me out to not have any experience or knowledge, apparently even taking your gripe with me to other threads where @Pulsar jumped in to defend me.
I'll do whatever I want, and if I want to discuss this game at length or in detail on the discussion forums, I'll do so. The people that don't want to read or engage with my lengthy posts or discuss with me can feel free to refrain from doing so. I often point out that I know almost none of what it is I and the people I discuss with talk about will affect the devs' decisions. I just like talking about the game, and always have at least a vague hope that some of it reaches someone on the team and steers them into some direction somewhat. Which I know for a fact some of my discussions have in the past 7 years.
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@XtremeDBD said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3875975#Comment_3875975
If Wacek doesn't walk into the pallet, the adam frees himself from the dog and camps a few more seconds on the pallet to lose hinder. Then when wacek is close to one side baiting/performing a lunge, adam can drop it and loop like normal. Simple as that.
Abt her "overtuned kit" u do realize her holding the dog until the survivor drops a pallet is essentially just dracula's hellfire right? Its your fault for camping it and baiting their power, just run away 💀. No ones gonna react fast enough to redirect their dog and grab u
Again, know the facts and have the experience before trying to complain abt a kit thats perfectly balanced, WITH the gamechanging bugs the killer has
I'll try to keep this brief since you are self-proclaimedly averse to reading, on a discussion forum no less.
If Wacek doesn't walk into the pallet, the adam frees himself from the dog
Fact: The dog holds survivors for 8 seconds. At the time Wacek arrived at the pallet, barely 2 seconds had passed since the dog pounced. Adam would have had to hold him for another 6. I invite you again to camp a pallet for prolonged periods against any killer and not get hit, let alone while there's a dog on you pulling you away from it.
camps a few more seconds on the pallet to lose hinder
Fact: Hindered lingers for 5 seconds. So now you want to camp a pallet for 11 total seconds.
Abt her "overtuned kit" u do realize her holding the dog until the survivor drops a pallet is essentially just dracula's hellfire right? Its your fault for camping it and baiting their power, just run away 💀. No ones gonna react fast enough to redirect their dog and grab u
I didn't know Hellfire curved around corners, pounced on nearby survivors at range and was able to be redirected mid-attack. Interesting fact!
And I thought this camping pallet thing and stunning the dog is an insanely good tactic? Suddenly you should "just run away". Huh. Interestingly enough, whenever survivors in these scenarios "just ran away" (even after successfully stunning the dog or even Houndmaster), he still got the hit seconds later, even at completely safe tiles. Curious.
the gamechanging bugs the killer has
What are those? Genuinely curious, I have only played a handful or two of Houndmaster matches myself. But from watching others play her, like KnightLight or Wacek, I didn't really see "game-changing" bugs. Sure at odd times the dog pathing is weird, but there's no consistent bugs that I saw, certainly none that have enough impact to reliably change the game.
@Reinami said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3875955#Comment_3875955
- The adam played that tile so bad she probably didn't need the dog the second time
- Yeah, the point of the dog is you have to dodge it, once you dodge it you get big distance, this person did not dodge it, and after stunning the killer just stood around and did nothing instead of running away. Also she went the wrong way around that loop, you want to loop that one clockwise.
- Survivor stuns the dog and then just starts panic vaulting, of course they are going to get hit.
- The 4th one is just a bad pallet in general, any killer power that works similarly would have also landed a hit here, again, the first aspect of the power is dodging it, this person failed to dodge it.
- You have a very big misunderstanding of what safe pallet is, because that pallet is 100% mindgameable if it isn't dropped. But again, this survivor went the wrong way around. If anything here the reason it happened was because of her bug, she aimed one direction, making the survivor think the dog was going that way, but the dog got stuck because it was bugged landing her a hit. One of the rare cases where one of these bugs actually helped the killer.
The adam played that tile so bad she probably didn't need the dog the second time
Adam did not play the tile badly. He had two options: Try to make it around the safe side of the tile, or play the short side. Due to Hindered and the dog being back in 3 seconds, it turned out he could not make it around, but that was his only real shot of having a chance of surviving because playing the short side of this when the pallet is dropped is certain death even against a killer without an ability, let alone Houndmaster.
Yeah, the point of the dog is you have to dodge it, once you dodge it you get big distance, this person did not dodge it, and after stunning the killer just stood around and did nothing instead of running away. Also she went the wrong way around that loop, you want to loop that one clockwise.
The argument was about whether camping pallets to stun the dog is an "insanely good" tactic that constitutes reliable counterplay. These clips were meant to provide examples as to why I think that isn't quite true. Dodging the dog is a different matter. We could discuss how possible dodging the dog is in various instances, be it on tile play or in the open, and I could link countless situations even just from these few VODs from Wacek to showcase that "just dodge" is not quite that easy against a 40m/s (50 once pouncing) projectile that goes around corners and can be redirected, or whether you get big distance from this even if you do dodge (the redirect often forces you to dodge back into the Houndmaster). Or whether big distance is even all that impactful for that matter, when she has the dog back in seconds to Slipstream after the survivor and have him pounce on them from big distances, with a successful pounce guaranteeing a hit even from max. distance.
One of those situations would by the way include this same Sable at the same tile with the pallet still dropped actually dodging the dog but still taking a hit. Wacek himself said she actually was good at "countering" Houndmaster, later when she came to his chat and asked for things she can do against Houndmaster also saying she basically did the correct things. And yet she still died at 4 gens, with her chases not lasting more than 20 seconds. Curious.
I'm not saying the dog is undodgable, but it does not constitute reliable counterplay whatsoever either. Especially since it is often nigh-impossible to predict his pathing around corners and tiles, or impossible to react to quickly enough (at best you preemptively dodge in a random direction and hope he's not crossing your path or close enough to pounce regardless).
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make with the proper rotation of that tile. After the pallet is dropped going clockwise opens you up to being mindgamed on the short wall of the pallet, instead you can just play the pallet on the long wall side. That she got caught by the dog trying to do so just shows that the ability makes even the safest of tiles (including shack) unsafe. And by the way, even if the pallet is not dropped, clockwise is not the "correct" way to run this tile against Houndmaster: the reason why the clockwise rotation is correct at a basic level is that it enables you to play for the window vault - against Houndmaster all you're doing if you try to play for the window is open yourself up to a more or less guaranteed dog pounce.
Survivor stuns the dog and then just starts panic vaulting, of course they are going to get hit.
Without having to stun the dog, she would not be in a position to even have to drop or vault that pallet. The point is that a reasonably safe pallet like this is not only instantly forced down here, but it creates a 50/50 since the Hindered would not have allowed Ada to make it around the backside of the tile (and going there would have opened her up to being mindgamed as well). She also did not panic vault, she demonstrated patience by not instantly vaulting and delaying the vault instead. Could she have played it better? I think so. But this simple, easy play by the killer instantly made this safe tile interaction rather difficult for her to navigate. That's the imbalance between ease of use vs. difficulty of versing I alluded to.
And mind you, even if she had won the play on the pallet, Houndmaster would have just had her dog back a second later, with Ada still forced to play the tile, and I bet at latest then she would have taken a pretty much guaranteed hit. Which was my point to begin with: Yeah if you can put yourself into a position of stunning the dog you at least create an opening not to instantly take a hit, but it doesn't do too much because now you are Hindered, forced to play the tile, and she has the dog back in seconds to pounce on you on that tile, over the pallet if need be. The fact that Wacek usually gets the hit without even having to use the dog again in these scenarios only makes her even more ridiculous.
The 4th one is just a bad pallet in general, any killer power that works similarly would have also landed a hit here, again, the first aspect of the power is dodging it, this person failed to dodge it.
Apart from saying again that dodging the dog is far from easy and at times downright impossible (again, he's insanely fast, regularly hard to predict or unpredictable, goes around corners, you have to keep playing around the potential redirect, he pounces from a distance on survivors at range, automatically seeks and pounces on targets after vaults), I can only reiterate that dodging the dog was not the point being contested, it was precisely about instances where the survivor (deliberately or not) takes the dog and tries to use the pallet against it.
And believe it or not, you can actually do something on rock fillers like this one (ridiculously enough, this is one of the "better" rock fillers on Yamaoka…). Yeah it's not really safe, but it isn't strictly unsafe either. The plays you make on it are associated with risk, but you can absolutely get decent time out of it and even successfully play for stuns and vaults. Only very few killers (most of them S-tier) would have been able to instantly play around this pallet from a distance and more or less guarantee the hit like she did.
You have a very big misunderstanding of what safe pallet is, because that pallet is 100% mindgameable if it isn't dropped. But again, this survivor went the wrong way around. If anything here the reason it happened was because of her bug, she aimed one direction, making the survivor think the dog was going that way, but the dog got stuck because it was bugged landing her a hit. One of the rare cases where one of these bugs actually helped the killer.
I'll gladly take you up on the challenge of measuring our game understanding. If you think this Coldwind haybale filler is unsafe and mindgamable, I'm sorry, you don't understand the first thing. You can see the killer over these haybales while the killer cannot see you. They are very safe if the pallet is not dropped. It becomes somewhat mindgamable when it is dropped, but even then is a pallet you would usually want to kick (if you don't have a chase ability to play around it) because trying to mindgame vaults on it can cost you a lot of time, especially since chase state can be broken on it due to not being visible to the killer, denying Bloodlust.
Also, there was no bug here. If you stand in front of an object, the dog will path to one of its two sides and around the object depending on where you are looking. He flicks his view in the last moment to send the dog to the pallet side of the tile. He showcases and explains this (and another trick) just a brief time later in the same match.
Whether the survivor "went the wrong way" is again highly debatable and there doesn't seem an objectively right answer to me. Had she not run to the pallet he could have sent the dog around the other side of the tile like he initially aimed for, and then gotten her at latest with a swift redirect, without her then even having the option to use the pallet. But regardless, the point here again is that she uses a pallet against the dog but still gets hit. The dog pulled her to Houndmaster's side by the way, so she could not drop the pallet from the other side. I guess she could have delayed the drop hoping to get back to the pallet again, but that opens up the risk of being pulled away even further, or Houndmaster hitting her from her side or then even having the time to go around the other.
To note again, my point isn't that there isn't anything you can ever do, that you can't ever dodge, that using pallets cannot ever do anything for you, that everything is a guaranteed hit. That's not even true for Nurse. My point is she creates a lot of incredibly difficult interactions to navigate, often with little to no reliable or consistent counterplay, and she does so without having to exert much mental or mechanical effort herself. She isn't the deadliest killer in the game, but she is too deadly for how easy she is to play.
I think she needs some fine-tuning and toning-down of some of her numbers, or alternatively mechanical changes that make her more difficult/less forgiving to play, such as a shorter redirect timing, movement speed reduction on using the dog, ways for survivors to free themselves earlier, getting rid of the automatic target seeking after vaults such that redirecting is more often necessary to get pounces after vaults, …
I also hold that some aspects of her are blatantly problematic and something the devs simply did not consider, such as the situations the doubled vault speed creates, the gate blocking vs. reduced cooldown duration, the tactic of waiting for the survivor to free themselves and only then hit them such that the Hindered effect cuts their hit sprint distance in half, the ability to prevent survivors from being able to unhook for prolonged periods.
But overall I don't think Houndmaster is an incredibly problematic killer and that addressing her holds huge urgency. BHVR will likely retune a couple of egregious things about her in the coming months but I don't expect they will actually tangibly nerf her or make her tangibly more difficult to play. I just don't like her current gameplay design that allows lesser players to punch way above their weight.
Oh, and as a by the way: Anyone here please feel very free to do what I did and provide actual evidence and examples supporting your arguments. I would like to see clips of survivors successfully and consistently counterplaying Houndmaster with the methods described. Keep in mind that the Houndmaster walking into a pallet to let themselves get stunned when the survivor is being held by the dog is not counterplay, it's the Houndmaster player outplaying themselves.
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@XtremeDBD said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3875955#Comment_3875955
Again, I'm not reading all that. But if your struggling to loop this killer, thats a skill issue, shes balanced, get over ur one negative experience against her and move on.
Edit: i looked at all of those clips and can confirm none of those survivors know how to counter the killer or they just didn't win 50/50's which most powers don't even affect. For example, the Adam in the first clip insta stunned the dog and tanked the hinder instead of wasting time on the pallet to try and doible stun which he likely could get since when that pallets up, its not a 50/50
Pls actually develop experience before trying to make insane claims about an already hard to play character who is perfectly balanced with her dozen bugs.
He would not get a double stun because Wacek has "developed experience" and would simply… not walk into the pallet. Adam would have been hit there essentially no matter what he did. At most he would have been hit through the pallet trying to stall the drop. If you think survivors can react to a killer's swing with a pallet drop (let alone if a dog is also pulling them to and fro) you are the one that needs to actually play the game. In the vast majority of cases they get hit trying to do so or baited into dropping it by the killer faking the swing, not least due to the killer latency advantage. Not to mention that not instantly stunning the dog carries the risk of the dog pulling one out of the pallet, or to an unfavourable side of it. And apart from the obvious plays such as "going around the pallet" or "waiting to see which side the survivor will drop the pallet from" and "hitting the survivor through the pallet", there's also the option of equipping Enduring and brute-forcing pallets, then instantly sending the dog over them.
We'll see how "insane" my claims are once the next bigger update rolls around. I think claiming she is hard to play and perfectly balanced is much closer to anything resembling "insanity" than my take that she is overtuned in some respects and has an imbalanced ease of playing as vs. against ratio. The dog does most of the work for the killer, next to no aim or timing required because he'll just path around stuff and pounce from a generous distance and hold them long enough to guarantee a hit no matter what.
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@XtremeDBD said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3875642#Comment_3875642
I am NOT reading all of that. But after seeing your first paragraph i see the problem, you don't know how houndmaster actually works.
Her kit can be strong in some situations, but her bugs and counterplay actually make her pretty balanced. Camping a pallet while grabbed is an insanely good and common sense strategy that almost everyone does against her, the hinder is nothing on structure loops and some very short fillers become unlikely winnable as they already are without a power or perks in play.
Know the facts before complaining
What facts, exactly? You haven't actually contradicted me in any way or brought up something I didn't understand about Houndmaster. The only thing you presented is your opinion that camping a pallet to stun the dog is "insanely good". I have already explained why I don't think it's nearly as effective as people make it out to be. It only is at all beneficial if the killer actually sends the dog on you and then lets you stun both it and themselves. If the Houndmaster player has played more than 1-2 matches on the killer, they should be smart enough to simply not walk into the pallet in these instances. If you don't stun Houndmaster, the Hindered effect absolutely prevents you from leaving the tile, forcing you to play it. And she has the dog back in 3 seconds. You make 1 loop before you are pretty much inevitably taking a hit.
I went to twitch.tv, searched for "Houndmaster", found Wacek134 doing a winstreak with her (70+ matches), and looked for instances of survivors using pallets against the dog. I had to go through multiple videos to even find a handful of relevant instances, because if you actually go and watch some of his matches, you'll see that survivors regularly cannot even make it to pallets, or that he will simply curve the dog around the tile so it doesn't matter.
Anyway, here's some clips:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2348514155?t=2h16m44s - The snowplow is a really safe tile, Adam drops the pallet to stun the dog, dies to the dog before he can make it around. And that was with Houndmaster even sending the dog from a distance as opposed to standing in front of the pallet, so she had a lot more ground to cover to catch up.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2348514155?t=2h19m9s - Here's a survivor camping a pallet to play around the dog. Wacek forces the pallet down by walking into it, instantly sends the dog over the pallet and gets a hit. At an incredibly safe standard tile, a long wall jungle gym.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2358707846?t=1h29m47s - Here the survivor is at another gym, the dog forces her to drop the pallet early, putting her in an unfavourable position to play it, taking the hit seconds later.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2348514155?t=1h38m55s - Instead of standing in front of the pallet, here Wacek holds the corner of the tile and simply waits to see which side the survivor will drop the pallet from.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2358707846?t=1h19m33s - This situation at another safe pallet shows that even when you are at the pallet you can send the dog around the tile and force the pallet drop from a side disadvantageous for the survivor.
And again, these are some of the few instances I could find of survivors even being able to use a pallet against the dog between 5 multiple-hour sessions I skipped through. Usually he just gets his hits in other ways. You'll also notice that he barely ever kicks pallets or has to, tons of them are left up over the course of the match because dropped pallets are basically guaranteed hits for Houndmaster. And even in the "worst case" scenario where you do break the pallet when the survivor stuns the dog, they won't have made much distance due to Hindered (let alone if you use Brutal Strength) and you'll have the dog back to send after them immediately.
To note: I'm not saying Houndmaster is the strongest killer in the game, she doesn't have great map pressure or remarkable snowball potential. But she is another offender of a killer that is much too easy to play when compared to how difficult she is to play against, and some of her mechanics or numbers are overtuned in that they create situations without real counterplay, and situations that I guarantee the devs did not test or deliberate much on. Especially the things they hastily buffed prior to the holiday break, most of all the vault speed and cooldown duration. But also things like the fact that Houndmaster can simply stand next to a survivor and wait for them to free themselves, and only then hit them, since they will suffer from Hindered in that case and barely make any distance, often leading to a swift "two-tap". The 5-second gate block vs. 3-second dog cooldown also makes it blatantly obvious that these things were not thought through.
I'm sure BHVR will rectify some of these issues, I just hope it won't take 6+ months like it did with Merchant.
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This has definitely worked in the past, breaking pallets with Demo's shred triggered the perk and Haste. Shame if it isn't working currently, but not like it really matters with the state the perk is in.
It should simply proc regardless of whether it is the Obsession you have chase state on. That's way too restrictive, and 5% for 10 seconds isn't that much to begin with, let alone after having broken a pallet. Alternatively, at least make it so that a survivor becomes the Obsession when they drop a pallet while having chase state.
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Absolutely. The devs hastily overbuffed her prior to going on holiday break and they haven't addressed her since. She is essentially a 4.6m/s Deathslinger that can curve his shot and redirect it, as well as walk around the entirety of shack while the survivor is being held. Doesn't have to reload either.
And no, the tactic of standing at a pallet, letting the dog catch you and then stunning both is not reliable counterplay, because the killer can simply… not walk into the pallet. That leaves you Hindered and having to play the pallet, and she has the dog back ready to pounce in seconds. Alternatively she can also cancel the chase command and force you to drop the pallet that way or hit you through it.
There are multiple overtuned aspects to her that will need some retuning: The dog's vault speed is comically overtuned, he essentially teleports across windows and pallets, so either you take the instant hit while vaulting or you inevitably get held and hit after it; the cooldown of a mere 3 seconds essentially means there is none because you are ready to send out the dog again right after the hit cooldown ends; the dog's movement speed as well as its ability to round corners/objects and pounce detection range, making it more of a curved and redirectable hatchet (and then some) than Slinger shot; the fact that she doesn't get any movement speed penalty for sending out the dog, so you're stuck having to play around both the dog pounce (and potential redirect) while she is also chasing you at full movement speed; the redirect window is 3-4 seconds and you can't always tell whether she is redirecting or not, so you have to be wary of the redirect long after the dog got sent out, again all the while playing around Houndmaster herself; the dog holding survivors for 8 seconds, allowing her to pretty much always get the hit, even if she for some reason wants to break a pallet, vault a window, and hit someone else beforehand; the fact that she can have the dog grab someone to prevent them from unhooking, while herself being free to intercept yet another survivor; that survivors cannot leave through the exit gates for 5 seconds after having been pounced by the dog, no matter whether they got hit, were freed or freed themselves, which coupled with the 3-second dog cooldown means Houndmaster can guarantee kills in the gates in a way no other killer can; her movement speed when following the dog in tracking mode is pretty comical as well - for map mobility this would be fine, but it's silly in chase. At the very least the hit cooldown could be increased when hitting a survivor under the effect of Slipstream.
Not all of these things have to be toned down, and there could be some mechanical changes to rebalance her as well (things such as a much shorter redirect window (i. e. having to opt to redirect immediately and only having a second to do so while controlling the dog), the ability to slow-vault windows and pallets when grabbed by the dog like you can when chained by Pinhead, perhaps Overcharge-sized skill checks when grabbed by the dog that decrease the time he holds you for), but some looking-at is definitely in order. In turn, I would probably want to buff Houndsense, it should be more threatening than it is currently.
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DH is fine as it is, the only thing I would want for BHVR to look into is whether the DH animation changes a survivor's hitbox/movement speed, because killers often miss hits on players using DH in ways they would have not missed had the player not DH'd. Which is unlucky for the DH player because it often leads to them dying seconds later when otherwise their DH would have saved them.
Well, that and to look into server validation again, although that's much less of a DH-specific issue than it is a general hit authority issue they should be looking to revamp altogether.
MFT could however go up to 4 or even 5% Haste. Now that it is tied to Deep Wound it is not abusable - not only is it highly situational, but even if you do manage to get put into Deep Wound, the killer can opt not to chase you leaving you to have to mend and lose the perk's benefit again. It could even be argued that with 4/5% being less surreptitious of a speed difference and therefore allowing the killer to more easily notice and abort the chase until you have inevitably mended the change would balance itself.
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I think slugging in general enriches the game, be it slugging opportunistically/tactically in a match that otherwise follows a more regular gameplay loop or strategically slugging where you try to slug as much as possible and win through it.
People say being on the floor is boring, but it is objectively less boring than being on a hook. On a hook you essentially cannot do anything. You have more agency on the floor as you can recover, crawl to pallets, teammates, gates, hatch or areas the killer is less likely to find you in, position yourself to enable someone to pick you up mid-chase, and there are vastly more perks that benefit survivors in the dying state than there are that benefit survivors on hook. You also cannot nearly as effectively be "camped" or "tunnelled" out of the game from the floor.
Full-on slugging matches yield low-downtime, high-intensity gameplay loops where a lot more chases and chances happen, camping and tunnelling effectively don't exist, and foregone conclusions are much rarer, as the match can flip at practically any time even if 3 (or even 4) survivors had been slugged, even after 10 or more minutes of playing whack-a-mole, since it is possible for everyone to get back up and reset, without having accumulated hook stages. It makes for really dynamic, back-and-forth matchflows and I for one much welcome this on both sides. Alas, it's vanishingly rare to encounter a killer that actually slugs as an overarching strategy.
Of course, there are killers that it can be overpowered on, most of all Nurse, Blight, Billy, Singularity and Twins. But that is more to do with those killers being overpowered than slugging itself being an issue (Singularity and Twins aren't generally as overpowered, but they have problematic aspects and they are overly problematic against uncoordinated groups). Slugging in general on most killers however is a perfectly fine and engaging strategy, even - or rather: especially - when including things like Knock Out and Third Seal. I would encourage anyone to try it as killer, and any survivor player to earnestly reflect on the fun levels they've had in such matches. People usually complain about "slugging" when it was one of those aforementioned OP killers that likely would have beaten them decisively anyway and where they merely opportunistically slugged 1-2 survivors, or when someone slugged them to bleedout even after the match was already won, or when they slugged the second-to-last survivor to guarantee the kill on the last one. And those are actual problems worth complaining about and that should have long been addressed. But slugging tactically and strategically benefits the game greatly.
Play any killer as you normally would, but simply never pick survivors up (unless of course you actually manage to slug everyone). See how much fun you can be having with the low downtime and frequent chases this yields. Mind you, you will regularly lose when playing like this (unless you are playing one of the stronger killers and are a strong player), but it gives you an impression of how engaging and refreshing a change of pace this can be. And as you find the right build and get more familiar with the strategy and make some adjustments to it (e. g. actually hooking people if you don't get an Infectious Fright proc), you will also start winning more often.
I really hope BHVR won't get rid of Knock Out or implement general basekit counters to slugging. The only changes we need in this regard are nerfs to specific overpowered killers and remedies to the ability to bleed people out and "slug for the 4k". Those can be things like giving survivors the option to "surrender to the Entity" when everyone is in the dying state, being sacrificed then and there just like in EGC, and both this option to surrender and the ability to recover from the dying state when only two people remain in the trial, forcing the killer to pick up in a reasonable time or forcing the hatch endgame.
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It really is awfully curious that they haven't yet randomized items, add-ons and offerings. It would make things a lot more chaotic and fun, and less "sweaty" with everyone optimizing the loadout slots they have at their disposal (i. e. tons of people using the strongest items and add-ons available, as well as offerings for imbalanced maps). Disabling these entirely would also be an option, although I think randomizing them is much more fun and interesting. I reckon one concern for BHVR is simply that a fair few players would be overwhelmed with having to figure out their items/add-ons on top of their perks, especially since they are not shown in the overlay. But not only can these be included in the overlay info (which they should be anyway), but part of the appeal of the modifier is precisely that chaos of only finding out what your stuff does and how to use it on the fly.
Hell, they could even randomize cosmetics and characters (or at least giving a "random character" option), even including ones the players don't own. Would also make for a sort of "try-out" aspect that would lead a fair few people to buy some of those characters and cosmetics.
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75% escape rate, 8.5 hooks per game. 9.4 minutes average match duration. Felix and Wraith. Although for the characters I think people's suspicions that these represent the overall most-played ones rather than being limited to 2024 are correct.
I had really hoped for more detailed stats. At the very least things like killers most faced, maps most played. Ideally even encounter/kill/escape percentages per killer and map. Perks most used/faced. Or at least a top 5 for things like these.
Instead we don't even get total kills and hook stages, so while we can see our survival rate we can't see our kill rate. Still neat to have, but quite disappointing.
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@Choaron said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3867116#Comment_3867116
The original sin of Blight's power is the 5 tokens. It's just way too much. It removes all semblance of commitment and risk from his kit.
And to think Vial still exists…
That said, there are really many facets of Blight that are blatantly overtuned. After all, even with 3 rushes when using Blight Tag he's still incredibly strong, with a ridiculous recharge time and movement speed, particularly of course when combined with another recharge or speed add-on.
Various things could be tuned about Blight, some mix of which would make for a much more balanced killer, without losing the fun factor or even S-tier viability. 4.4m/s base movement speed, not being able to break pallets with rush hits, getting stunned draining his power tokens and only recharging them once the stun animation has played out, increasing the recharge time of tokens, increasing the fatigue time after rushing (especially when missing a rush hit/breaking a pallet with it), reducing base tokens to 4, reducing his ability to still flick almost 180° between the pre-turning rate and in-attack turning rate, slightly increasing base rush speed but removing the rush speed add-ons, … - there's plenty you can do, just take the right two or three things and he'll be fine while still being more or less the same incredibly potent killer.
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R.I.P.
I'm glad for Demo, and Billy has had some slight nerf adjustments and is mechanically challenging enough to play that this is probably fine. But this is one more reason to consider retuning Blight a bit more.
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Nurse might not take a lot of skill to play from the perspective of a generally experienced and skilled video gamer putting a hundred and more hours into that killer, but for the average player, yeah, she is difficult to play. She isn't prohibitively hard to play for the idea of nerfs (far from), but it is easy to understand why BHVR does not regard addressing her as as much of a pressing issue as addressing killers that are much easier to play for the average player.
The average Nurse player even in the high MMR bracket doesn't wreck house, last time we got stats on this she sat at around 61% killrates in high MMR. Of course, "high MMR" captures a huge range of players and these stats also include countless controller players on which she is notably less potent and we all know that top Nurse players have killrates of 90-100% with winstreaks in the thousands existing and top Nurses being expected to win pretty much every time even in tournaments against top survivor teams. But these are outlier issues. Issues that I think BHVR should concern themselves with much more, but that I understand do not factor into their balance decision-making too much simply because it's only a very limited amount of their player audience that will be at either end of that imbalance. I have advocated for more substantial Nurse nerfs for years, but I'll readily admit that I only vanishingly rarely actually face Nurse players that can really leverage just how incredibly imbalanced she is. I have a lot of matches against mediocre Nurses where we succeed pretty handedly, and a good share of matches against competent Nurses where it can be challenging, engaging and fun. Facing a good Nurse that makes for a miserable experience is rare. (Although of course, for players that are not in a solid SWF, even just "competent" Nurses can already make for quite the problem.)
Killers on the other hand that are easy to play even for average players and potent at the same time pose much more pressing issues to overall player satisfaction. Chucky was definitely a prime example of this. Another was Skull Merchant. I do not agree with the direction BHVR has gone for either of their nerfs, but I do agree that both needed some type of nerf to make them less oppressive in the average (which also means: very frequent) game experience. And while none of these killers have the same potential as Nurse, they are still strong enough to cause issues for players at many levels of experience and skill, such that it leads to frequent imbalanced matches where the killer player is comfortably punching above their weight. Houndmaster is another really bad offender of this and I'm sure (and hopeful…) that there will be some notable adjustments in the next updates. There is little to no actual counterplay to her ability and yet it doesn't really require much effort on the killer side. They hastily overbuffed her prior to the winter break, particularly the dog's vault speed is just comically overtuned.
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Two of the most killer-sided maps in the game (also supported by NightLight stats).
Shattered Square used to be decent before the adjustments but just does not have enough pallet/window tiles anymore now, and of the limited amount it has some are really bad, including the fact that it spawns weird gyms instead of proper gyms. Some of the map's structures enable survivors to play the bad pallets and windows in unique ways which is interesting, but there simply aren't enough resources for the map to support a balanced gameflow over the course of an entire match. I don't think it needs a lot more, but increasing the amount of pallets by some 20% and adjusting the gyms to at least offer some clear outplay potential for survivors seems more than appropriate. Main could also need a little something, currently all it has is a strong pallet and two essentially dead windows.
Forgotten Ruins might be the most killer-sided map in the game. Sure the dungeon and portals promise some potential for survivors to outplay killers, but the glaring design flaw of the map is that killers simply do not have to engage with those things: the upper level of the map features 4 gens and about as many pallets (or maybe like 5-6, all of which unsafe apart from shack), so if the killer simply plays to protect those gens, winning is essentially impossible for survivors. The only line of play they have is to keep running to the dungeon if they are being chased, but since there is only one portal entrance to it at the back of the tower, reaching that is regularly not realistic, even against a pure M1 killer but much less still of course against various killer abilities, add-ons and perks. Trying to take the staircase entrance on the other hand is pretty much certain death. Ruins needs at least one more portal on the upper level that leads into the dungeon. It also needs more or safer pallet/window tiles on the upper level.
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@Firellius said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3866272#Comment_3866272
If we're defining our win condition based solely on the MMR system (which I would argue is completely backwards, for the record), then we'd still be looking at MMR gain at the
endof the match, because that's the point at which you'd logically suggest someone has won or lost. It wouldn't make any sense otherwise.Ah, but this is where you make the mistake of assuming that the MMR system is, in any way, logical.
Lest we forget the 'If you ran the killer for five gens but then got caught and died in the end, was it really a good play?'-debacle.
I fully agree that it doesn't make practical sense, but that IS how the MMR system works. So when someone points to the MMR system to define a killer win, the MMR system considers every single kill a killer win, and every single escape a killer loss. The match outcome is simply a compression of those stats.
Morever, it is theoretically possible to overall gain MMR from a match even without killing 3 or more survivors in that match, if the survivors in that match have a significantly higher rating than you. In that case you might gain a lot of MMR for killing the players rated more highly than you, and lose little for those that you don't kill, likewise because they are rated more highly than you.
In either case, yeah, the game does not have clearly or let alone strictly defined win conditions for either side, and if we wanted to invoke MMR algorithms for this (which are obscured from us, and from what limited we do know more things than simply "escape" or "kill" play into it, such as order of kills, duration of match, hatch escapes being excluded (but included in escape rates)), killrate would indeed equal winrate.
With regards to the actual topic… Well, it's a tired topic that really seems to serve no point but for people to want to argue that killers need more buffs even if they have 60% killrates. Mind you I don't agree with various of BHVR's balance decisions (or lack thereof), and these stats alone certainly shouldn't inform those decisions. But as an overall indicator they are telling a very clear story as to killers doing more than well enough across the board, including in the - oh-so-competitive - "high MMR" bracket, even against 4-player premades. Even while including hatch escapes and excluding matches with disconnects entirely. It is a significant, major indicator (among various others, such as streamers and tournaments) that DbD is infinitely less "survivor-sided" than some people like to make it out to be.
There are interesting conversations to be had about the asymmetrical nature of DbD and how an MMR system could relate to that, although I've found that the conversations are usually not very interesting since there's often basic biases at play. For instance, when it comes to something like escape rate, people are quick to argue that "survivors only or mostly care about their own escape", hence it would be fine that as a group they may only very rarely succeed - and yet when it comes to things like the late and endgame design, suddenly the remaining 2 survivors should just immediately and automatically be killed or hatch certainly not exist because "the game is lost anyway", the idea of those remaining players still being actual people that may play for their own survival suddenly doesn't factor in anymore (nor the concept of, you know, having actual gameplay in a video game rather than making it about some arbitrary, empty concept of "winning" to the detriment of the former).
Either way, while OP is correct that killrate does not translate 1:1 into winrate (if by winning we mean killing 3 or 4 survivors in a match), I think there is no real or pressing problem with conflating the two because it's a meaningless distinction as far as we as a community are concerned: we don't know the actual winrates, we don't all agree on what "winning" even means, we don't have to care about global average winrates because in the end only our own experience really matters to us, and ultimately from a balancing purpose perspective it doesn't matter whether the devs aim for a higher winrate or killrate for killers than survivors, both accomplish the goal of leading to a killer-favoured balancing (that is to say, certainly even the staunchest of "killrate does not mean winrate" arguers will have to admit that while killer winrates may not be 60%, they will still be higher than survivor winrates due to the 60/40 killrate/escape rate split - which we can see evidence of on NightLight, where killers around the 60% killrate mark showcase a 50-55% vs. 30-35% killer vs. survivor winrate split).
Personally more than the global average balancing, I'm much more interested in or concerned with egregious outliers. I think the game is well-enough balanced for the average experience of players at most levels, leaning killer (a major reason for that being that most survivor groups consist of solos and duos and often pretty mismatchedly so, although there's more reasons too). But it leaning killer is a good thing. What I don't think is a good thing are extreme imbalance cases of a select few overpowered killers/add-ons, SWF loadouts, maps, and the fact that for (killer and SWF) players beyond a certain skill and experience threshold, most matches become laughably easy, winrates of 90+% being the norm and winstreaks of hundreds (or even thousands) of matches not uncommon. These outliers are much more pressing issues in my mind than the question whether the game is killer-leaning enough at 60% killrates on a global average.
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I think RPD is a very interesting map because it has the least amount of RNG. There are no randomized tiles, not even windows. The only thing that changes is that a select few pallets can spawn in one of two places. This allows players on both roles to get really consistent and good at playing the map.
It is also a lot more balanced than it is regularly being made out to, having notable upsides and downsides for both killers and survivors (easy-to-control gen clusters, a lot of chokepoints with which to control hooks and gens, ambush opportunities all over the place; a fair few strong pallets most killers usually have to break, good opportunities to capitalize on distance, stealthing opportunities). As an indoor map it generally favours killers on average (gens being harder to find, the lack of info on the killer and other survivors making things even more chaotic than usual) and this shows statistically too, but a survivor group that knows how to play the map can definitely leverage some of its advantages to good success. I still want to see much more of this map in tournaments, as well as for BHVR to adopt this style of low-RNG layouts into some new maps.
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I think what could put Thana back on the map again as both an interesting and effective perk is to make it so that the action speed penalty also applies to vaulting actions. Apart from bugs, we've never had anything that slows down vaults, that would be a unique appeal.
Alternatively, just go back to 5% per stack.
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They have no direct synergy, them both requiring one to be healthy is just that, a requirement. But they do complement each other well enough: Finesse can help your survivability if Drama exposes you, and it can also help you stay healthy for longer so you can delay your Drama use for more precarious situations.
In general the popularity of this combo is absolutely something that trickled down from the 1v1 scene. Drama has grown immensely in popularity in 1v1 DbD over the last year or so (mostly because DbD League's 1v1 ladder allowed it at some point around that time, I believe), and Finesse is also just a really solid chase perk. They are also really fun, and it's especially fun to just about avoid a hit with some Drama into Finesse vault play.
From a 4v1 perspective however, these perks are more so B tier, maybe lower A. Macro perks in general are much more important than chase perks, as matches at a high level are decided much more on a macro level than with chases. You can think of it like clutches in a game such as Counter-Strike perhaps: yeah they are really flashy situations where impressive micro skills are on full display and that can be hugely impactful, but they are not the norm, not what can be expected to win matches, what people can rely on, and they usually require one side to have messed up in some way tactically. Regular gameplay revolves around strategical, positional play, trades, and so on, and in DbD it's much more important for the right person to die in the right place than to prolong chases at all costs, for a very basic macro concept.
Drama is an Exhaustion perk and therefore in direct competition for slots with other Exhaustion perks. And there are objectively better ones, that don't come with the risky Exposed downside and work regardless of whether you are healthy or not. And one particular strength of these Exhaustion perks is that they are not merely good to prolong chases with, but can have macro utility too, such as allowing their user to contest gens or hooks more safely, the value often being that you don't even get into a chase to begin with. Sprint Burst hands-down being the best among them (which by the way is banned in DbDL's 1v1 ladder, otherwise you'd see much more of it in there too). So with Drama being strictly worse from a 4v1 perspective than other Exhaustion perks that it also cannot be used alongside of, it is something people seriously trying to win would never use if they were free to use any other Exhaustion perk. Unless they want to gamble on getting some good item from it, I guess.
The downside of not being able to use these perks whenever injured is just categorically excluding them from top-level viability. They do nothing for you if you're getting tunnelled, and that's already a bit of a non-starter. And it also just drastically reduces the amount of value you can possibly get out of them. They are good perks, certainly good enough to be used when you aren't playing in some tournament or whatever, but personally if I were asked to put together the loadouts I believe give a team the best chances of success, I would not find slots for these perks among them. Maybe Finesse on a Deli player to increase their likeliness of surviving should they be caught first? But even then there's better things for that, including things that allow the Deli player to not be found to begin with. As well as things like Shoulder The Burden, or having multiple Delis.
I think at least for Drama it would actually be perfectly fine if it were also usable while injured. I think one if not the major reason why it isn't sillily enough is that it would clash with Dead Hard, using the same input. But that can naturally be remedied. The Exposed effect could be turned into an effect that immediately puts the survivor into the Dying State if they had been injured at the time of activating it, keeping with the meme theme of Cage's perks and cementing the perk as still too risky to be objectively better than other Exhaustion perks.
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@GonnaBlameTheMovies said:
I genuinely, passionately believe we should never, never have vaults positioned under a dropoff, it almost always makes loops way too strong. Eliminate setups like these from the game entirely. Never re-add them.
The issue of this window has nothing to do with there being a drop-off. BHVR has long made it impossible for survivors to vault during stagger after jumping from a height (and since they seemingly couldn't figure out how to do this they simply made most of all survivor actions impossible during stagger, including things like jumping into hatch, unhooking someone or using DH, a notable collateral nerf nobody ever talked about). But this particular window wasn't even problematic back when survivors still could vault immediately after dropping, because there's a hole in the ceiling killers can use to cut the survivor off.
The potential problem with this window is that against a killer without a chase ability or perk to help them, a survivor can theoretically keep out of chase state and keep vaulting it. Although this requires incredibly tight timings and shift/sprint micromanagement that even the most experienced of players regularly mess up. If you are a pure M1 killer without Bamboozle or anything to help you, what you want to do here is force the survivor to vault from the inside of the control room, vaulting after them into the portal area. It will be exceptionally rare that they can actually keep out of chase state or continually break it, let alone without losing so much distance that you'll hit them anyway. And then once the window blocks, you can go around the front side instead of vaulting after them and now they are trapped for a guaranteed hit/down.
In general it can be noted that Hawkins is a decidedly killer-sided map that consistently sits among the top deadliest maps on NightLight, having been the deadliest map at a 69.48% average killrate when BHVR shared stats on it. I do think a breakable glass wall as a unique map interactable would be cool here to break up that particular window loop, but other than that if the map could need anything it's pro-survivor changes. One obvious one being making the upper level area give survivors anything to play with rather than every room up there being certain death.
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@HerInfernalMajesty said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/435315/seasons-greetings-from-the-fog
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3859614#Comment_3859614
https://us.v-cdn.net/6030815/uploads/RBDXCHQGRNCM/tmp.gif
I am beyond myself with gratitude. 💐💐💐
Sincerely, I love horror. I love this game. And I love this community. I’ve always found a home in the horror genre- I’m sure many of us can relate. For one reason or another we are all here enjoying this game together.
@TheSingularity (pre and post 😊)
@CountOfTheFog 😊😄💐
@Shroompy 😊😄💐
+ Everyone else I didn’t list!!! 💐💐💐
I’m a huge fan of being the change you want to see. The above people have demonstrated a willingness to be that change while remaining their authentic selves. I see Dbd reflected in every single person listed and on this forum. These people will give you the best that they have to offer. Why not match that passion and be the change you want the dbd community to become? Why not? It can happen. They can help you get there.
I wanted to thank @For_The_People for being the first person from the forums that I’ve ever played Dbd with. He is a very sweet person who will give you his time of day in earnest if you need him to. He’s one of the prime examples of politeness in this community. Thank you for being a positive force in the community. 😊😊😊
Lastly I need to thank @solarjin1 . What can I say? When you meet a friend that gets you, you both just know it. Her courage to be funny and humorous are so infectious. She told me that the small pallet in rpd was the most op pallet. I was so naive of game knowledge that I believed her! LMAO! After that I realized that it was anything goes when it came to humor with her. I’m at my best when I can be silly. Solarjin1 is that friend who brings out the best in me. Thank you Solarjin1 for all the laughs and for the laughs to come 😂 I’m going to be collecting🤣🤣🤣
None of this would be possible if we didn’t have a phenomenal community team here to support us discussing this twisted hobby we all have. Thank you again to everyone at Bhvr for putting your hearts and souls (ha!) into everything that is Dbd.
They say you attract more flies with honey than with vinegar…
Let’s just use blood instead 🩸😈🩸
Happy Holidays everyone, I hope everyone stays safe and has a wonderful New Years 😊🎉
Cheers.
Ideally BHVR would have honoured and highlighted a larger group of regular forum contributors, and be it with a smaller little thank-you (some custom badge or charm or 500 cells or whatnot), but it's cool that you took it upon yourself to do so!
I'll say that given their approach of highlighting a select few members here, I'm really surprised @jesterkind is not among them. You probably couldn't wish for a more level-headed, constructive and debate-happy regular poster on your forums. That has been my impression anyway.
I'll also leave a word of appreciation for @Peanits, who is no longer a community manager as of this year and hopefully more directly involved with the game's development now. I hope whoever takes his spot of senior community manager will be at least comparably as competent as he was. Much as I can at times disagree or be disgruntled with BHVR's development direction and cycle for the game, it is after all a game and all in good fun, and as such any positives there are to it I appreciate, and the negatives don't weigh nearly as much (or I wouldn't be playing or let alone contributing here still). With someone like Peanits at the helm of community relations, I had always had the feeling that there was at least a decent amount of listening-to, understanding and critically and intellectually engaging with community discussions happening.
The best gift for us forum dwellers of course would be to see more inclusion of forum feedback and more dev interaction on the forums going forward. There has been a notable uptick in dev activity on the subreddit, whereas the forums can appear neglected by comparison. I suspect this also is in no small part due to Peanits' departure from his role. Hopefully more actual discussion (or any type of communication) between the team and us players can happen in the forum's future.
Happy holidays and a merry start into the new year to all. While the world is darkening, I hope people can find joy in things like this little horror game of ours.
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@Aven_Fallen said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3859577#Comment_3859577
I am of the opposite opinion - mainly unsafe Pallets, but lots of them (and no Bloodlust, since this makes fair unsafe Pallets unfair).
The problem is if you have effective pallets, but not many of those, one bad Survivor who throws them fast can basically kill the entire team. But if you have loads of unsafe Pallets, a good player can get more out of them and a bad player will not kill their team by throwing them early.
I think both approaches have merit, and some maps could follow one and others the other. Hell, they could even have more static procedural generation of pallets on some maps, where one half of the map spawns few but strong pallets, and the other plenty but weaker ones.
But I do definitely want to see more of the "lots of unsafe pallets" design approach. Greenville is one of the only maps where this is the case, and I think it plays really rather well for both sides. As you say, bad players don't ruin a survivor group's chances by throwing pallets willy-nilly nor do they ruin the killer's since even despite the amount of pallets they have available, they are unsafe and require good mechanics and thinking to actually prolong chases with.
In general I think a lot of BHVR's tile design would instantly become much more interesting and worthwhile were these tiles to spawn much more densely. Even very weak tiles like corn filler pallets or edge map Z-walls or edge map filler pallets could become really rather engaging and compelling to play if they spawned in clusters such that they can be combined. This is easy to understand if one just thinks of placing two Z-walls directly adjacent to one another: these are some of the rock-bottom weakest tiles in the game, to the point where they are a meme in the community, and yet, if you have two of them side-by-side, well, lots of cool things can happen. And then imagine a Z-wall next to a bracket pallet gym or 4-wall or the like. The double-pallets on Greenville (and Lake Mine) also demonstrate this: very weak pallets in their own right that are basically guaranteed hits, but if you use both in combination the tile becomes rather good and interactive.
Same goes for the many other unsafe tiles, be it weak filler pallets or those new weird maze tiles they keep plopping on maps, LT walls, … - spawn these in conjunction with one another (as well as next to standard maze tiles) and they instantly have much more merit, but without becoming OP because it takes a good player to actually make good use of them and they still offer more outplay potential for killers than strong tiles. Them still being weak in isolation is also relevant for good players, for one thing because Bamboozle/Crowd Control/Dissolution/etc. or depleted pallets can simply force the chase into the isolated tile without the ability to chain it, and for another because various killer abilities also make this chaining of multiple tiles much less feasible. So even if two weaker tiles combined could be just as strong or stronger even than one good tile for a good player against an M1 killer (in theory, anyway), this changes drastically if the killer has a potent chase power.
In general with regards to the original topic I'll say that while maps have shifted drastically from what they used to be years ago (most maps used to be very survivor-favoured, with a select few killer-favoured maps and a handful of well-balanced maps; these days, there are just as many (if not more) killer-favouring maps as there are survivor-favouring ones, fewer that skew horrendously toward either side, and many more maps are reasonably well-balanced), I don't think it's as bad as the original poster makes it out to be. Yes, there can be very unfortunate deathzones of seas of rocks and trees, and some maps are egregiously killer-sided (Haddonfield, Sanctum, Forgotten Ruins, Thompson House, Abattoir, Temple), but overall it has gotten much better than it was when they initially started messing with the pallet/tile budget. I think BHVR has a decently consistent handle now on basic layout and structuring and a fairly consistent safety rating. There are still notable problems even on the basic level (e. g. Coldwind), but apart from few exceptions I never load into a map anymore as either role and feel at a stark disadvantage just because of it.
It would be more productive to share screenshots and clips of these deathzones, as that can help BHVR idenitify possible issues in their spawn algorithms as well as perhaps let people share tips as to how to play certain tiles in certain areas.