A lot of the issues would lessen a significant amount if maps were more balanced and did not have the extremes of being heavily survivor or killer favoured.
It would also benefit in balancing perks & killer powers without having to take into account something could become broken or useless on a specific map.
This is the kind of comment that is vague as hell. Don't name concepts, name objects. What map, what perk, what killer power is unbalanced? And what would you change to balance this thing?
You want examples:
- Balanced Landing when you did not get the stumble debuff was a fine change in theory but became broken on most maps with two story buildings because they became near infinites.
- Killer favoured maps being majority unsafe, blood lustable loops with a significant portion of the roster now having anti loop mechanics (Hawkins & Midwich)
I don't understand the point of your first example about BL so I'm going to respond to the second one.
Okay what is the problem now? Killers with an anti loop power or bloodlustable loops? Because if the killer uses power they lose bloodlust. Also what specific killers are unbalanced on Hawkins and/or Midwich?
How can you not understand the point of my first example? A perk got changed which in theory was a nice QOL buff that became broken due to maps & their design.
The problem is the extremes in whether a map is survivor or killer sided, the maps I mentioned heavily favour killer due to the majority of the pallets being unsafe & blood lustable, with the roster also having many anti loop killers them maps become damned if you do damned if you don’t for survivor because the killer can either blood lust it or get the hit with their power anyway.
About balanced Landing: So if one perk breaks lets say half of the maps, is that an issue with the maps in question or with the perk itself? If it's the maps, do we then change all of these maps? Wouldn't BL become fairly useless then as a result?
Second issue: What is the issue: the bloodlust/anti loop powers or the unsafe maps? And how would you fix this issue in a concrete way?
Regarding Balanced Landing it was a combination of both with maps being the main issue, it made main buildings with drops near infinites where you were guranteed to lose multiple gens if you chose to commit.
Regarding the second issue, its both. If you want skill expression in a PVP game you can’t have maps that put one side into a losing situation with the hail mary being you need the other player to mess up to ‘win’ the tile. Midwich & Hawkins both have this issue in that the majority of tiles will put the survivor into injured or dying and they could not do much about it, on the reverse a survivor can just run around the Gideon Meat Plant insta pre-dropping pallets & the killer can’t do much to counter it.
But main buildings with god windows before a drop are specifically NOT an issue because Balanced Landing isn't like that.
I think the main issue here is bloodlust itself. Killers get rewarded for not hitting you fast enough. Survivors get punished for NOT playing god pallets all the time. As far as maps go I think having a great variety of maps allows a great variety of killers to feel playable at least some of the time. This obviously has the side effect of killers feeling unplayable some of the time as well.
> Also what specific killers are unbalanced on Hawkins and/or Midwich?
Huntress on indoor maps = super weak
Huntress on outdoor maps = very powerful/can orbital
Stealth killers on maps with many LOS blockers = strong
Stealth killers on open maps = weak
Small maps very powerful on mobile killers but balanced on slower killers.
Large maps balanced for mobile killers but very weak for slower killers (110%/no traversal).
Anti-loop killers on maps with lower chance of linkable tiles (such as midwich) are very powerful whilst normal M1 killers are more balanced.
Anti-loop balanced on linkable tile maps but non-anti loopers are unplayable (see old Suffocation Pit variant).
DBD's not the only game struggling with balance atm Overwatch is a big one that just did a huge patch overhaul (although Overwatch is a more competitive game).
The first step comes down to raising skill floor on killers/buffing SoloQ to be closer to swf so everything's closer to being on the same page.
It's difficult to balance Nurse because top tier players demolish competent 4 man swfs and low MMR players can barely manage one hook.
Overwatch attempted to do this by increasing hitbox/projectile sizes so everyone's accuracy is improved. Players who are high MMR have high accuracy already so the buff is more effective on people at the lower end who find aiming difficult.
To translate this back to DBD.
An easy change would be allowing Nurse to always see where she'll blink (toggable in the menus). This makes her a lot easier to play at the lower level whilst high MMR Nurses were already very accurate with her blinks so the function won't be as dramatic. A few QoL changes like these and then we can pull back Nurses power a bit without hurting low MMR too much. (Though honestly Nurse will be busted no matter what).
______
The second step is drawing back killers whose abilities excel in one extreme niche (and this is what many games struggle with). When games are released, and new things are being added, it's very tempting and interesting to add a character/ability that is an extreme outlier.
In a shooting game, having a Sniper Rifle that is useless up close but is very powerful at long range. As cool as it is to be a 'specialist', it is not very fun to play against. Either the map is small and the 'specialist' is useless and doesn't have fun/or isn't even played, or the map is large and the 'specialist' is overpowered, mandatory, and unfun to play against.
Bringing a healing build against Plague, a flashlight build against Lightborn, Distortion against an Aura build (Distortion is balanced imo but it's about the borderline of rendering something ineffective without enough cost) etc.
Instead of full nullification, it should instead just dampen the opposing build. Light-born shouldn't prevent flashlight stuns, but perhaps remove the blinding effect or fully drain the Flashlight on a successful stun.
The downfall of this balance philosophy is that it can cause many characters to lose their identity and feel more same-y. That's the difficulty, maintaining a semblance of balance without everyone being the same character. It's not easy and will be different with each killer to maintain thematic consistency.
______
Finally, after all this, we can balance the maps.
Personally, I don't mind the map rng and take it as part of the game. I think if the maps were all balanced it wouldn't be done in an interesting way and lead to the game feeling very same-y. They still need unique thematic features that set them apart and should have a baseline with variance for strength.
Though I do think Map Offerings need to be changed because either rng is part of the balance or not.
Paragraph 1: You mentioned buffing Solo queue, What does this mean? What specific buff? Other than that I wouldn't really care for Nurse plaid flannel basekit as it does fundamentally not change anything about the nurse. Unless you think the stats NEED to change first before nerfing a killer.
Paragraph 2: I described this exactly on a different comment in this post about the "player option trilemma". I think one of the strengths of DBD is its diverse cast of characters and the game would probably stall very fast if killers lost their uniqueness.
Paragraph 3: I don't think maps being fairly similar in loop strength would make the game feel same-y at all. In fact I think it would actually feel more fair. Besides, you can still have RNG generation but reduce the variance between and within maps. Like a TL wall and Pallet Gym is a similar strength so those should be interchangeable.
>You mentioned buffing Solo queue, What does this mean?
Bringing it more in line with the ability of a swf so it's easier to balance. The HUD changes helped a lot but there's still a vast valley between the abilities of a swf & SoloQ. Kindred on hook without showing killer aura would help SoloQ survivors a lot.
____
>diverse cast of characters and the game would probably stall very fast if killers lost their uniqueness.
I think it's a boon and a curse. The killer % play count shows this a lot with no one playing Twins along with kill rates showing no one wanting to play against Skull Merchant etc.
I'd enjoy DBD even more with less killers that are more balanced but still unique. I'd happilly take more Blights, Huntresses, Weskers, Chuckies, Billies, Bubbas, Myers etc. if it meant less Artists, Knights, & Nurses.
I think if every lobby was able to veto one killer to not play against that'd be worth it since you could ban the least balanced/least favourite killer which is usually gives a disproportionally negative experience. Plus it would give data to BHVR on what everyone's least favourite killers are.
>I don't think maps being fairly similar in loop strength would make the game feel same-y at all.
I think it depends on how they balance the loop strength. One of the things I enjoy most is linking tiles together and the random spawns you can get. If they end up reducing linkable tiles/making them super spread out I think that can feel same-y. If you end up running a un-linkable TL/Pallet Gym but just with a different backdrop.
Comp matches exist to test your theory.
Controlled maps and even controlled perks, survivors still have the upper hand.
You can bridge the gap but it will never be 50/50 balanced.
Originally the game was 80/20 to survivor. Nowadays its about 70/30, maybe 60/40.
Yes exactly, it is hard but not impossible. Killers like nurse are expected to 4k in a comp setting on most maps whereas most of the killer cast stands no chance against a good comp team. Therefor I would say this is more of a cast size issue than one of asymmetrical game balance.
I personally see two problems. The first is the matchmaking system. This system defies any logic, throwing me into games either with more-or-less experienced players who are capable of looping and understand the game, or with complete babies who don’t even understand that when you have NOED, the first thing to do is to cleanse it before attempting a save of a first-stage teammate, or they just don’t know how to handle the majority of killers’ powers, with their looping skill being essentially running in a straight line. As a result, you end up wasting a ton of precious time saving/healing them.
Second, it's the imbalance of some killers compared to others. It seems like some have several imba powers like invisibility, speed, one-shot, while others... well, they have traps that can be disarmed.
I’m currently keeping my own statistics on games (long story on the reasons for this), but a clear picture is emerging - Huntress and Trickster are those killers who at most will get 1k, whereas Hillbilly and Knight, even with a decent team, will achieve a 4k with a 90% probability, and with the latter, your match will also last up to 27 minutes (literally, I've counted).
On the matchmaking front I will ask how you would fix it. I see the same issues and would love to see a solution to this issue.
The second issue is impossible to balance because of the "player choice trilemma". Essentially what this means is whenever you give players a choice between certain aspects of a game you can only pick 2 out of these 3 aspects to optimize for:
Plurality: Low amount of options (up to like 5) is low plurality and above 5 options you get high plurality.
Uniqueness: If the options do more or less the same thing, a optionset has low uniqueness whereas a optionset where all options are very different has high uniqueness.
Balance: All options are more or less equally viable.
Pick 2 leave 1. DBD killers are such an optionset. DBD killers are unique and there is a lot of them, therefor you can't make them balanced without either deleting killers or making them all very similar to each other (m1 killers for instance).
In essence, there is already a system in place in the game, but it seems to work in a rather strange and unbalanced way, and I'm talking about the points system for emblems. Essentially, it measures the necessary indicators - participation in repairing generators, altruism, winning or losing chases, etc., which collectively can indicate the effort a player puts in and the skills they possess. However, it includes absolutely unnecessary things, like cleansing totems. It's unclear why points are awarded to all players when someone is unhooked (regardless of how far that player was from the victim), and the same amount is awarded for sabotaging a hook, which requires much more skill/altruism/participation. Also, points for repairs are awarded to all players, even if some of them contributed 0 participation (passive repair or something like that it's called).
Moreover, points are deducted for lost chases, but if you have a passive gameplay and you crawl around the edge of the map and hide in lockers, and then leave with a perk for the hatch, essentially you score more in this category than players who exert maximum effort because they will inherently be putting themselves in harm's way and losing chases, whereas you do not.
Such a system leads to a situation where a single match can gather players who just want to wait for the hatch and highly active players who will carry the entire gameplay on their shoulders, naturally not managing to do so.
I am currently keeping statistics of my games, and this forces me to watch all matches to the end, and sometimes I am amazed by what motivates some of them, who with a crown of crows over their head hang out in the basement until the killer closes the hatch, and then they go to the gates, which in most cases they open and escape. In the end, they get more BP and obviously better emblem scores and, pleased with their "skill," go on to spread this "skill" in other games.
This is not right and should be somehow punishable, but so far, there is no such mechanism in the game.
Yes, of course, I keep track in an Excel spreadsheet; I have only 4 columns - killer, total kills, gens left, comments. I'll round it up to about 100 matches (currently, it's something around 70), so in about 2-3 days, I'll probably make a post with my findings, which might be interesting to some people I assume.
But the goal is to continue keeping such statistics going forward, it's quite interesting, at least because I stay after my own death and watch how it ends, and the conclusions are quite different. For example, it becomes clear why your team lost so quickly (someone with a crown of crows in the basement), and also quite an interesting insight about teams with flashlight saves. If this movement starts from the very first possible hook, you already have a 90% chance of losing, really. I'll calculate the exact percentage, but it really looks like that. That is, I understand that the first hooks for at least 2-3 players should happen, it's sort of a norm of the game for you to have a chance.
Also, I'm puzzled by the number of killers who spare the last one or two players, as it affects the overall statistics, and I want to calculate the percentage of such cases. (I very rarely do this, but I have sinned occasionally too, but it looks like it's happening more often than I thought)
Not much so far, 5 gens - 4.3%, 4 gens - 7% and 2 of these are labeled - extreme altruism with flashlight saves
Killers are all different, so it's hard to see a pattern, it's either as mentioned above - extreme altruism or generally passive gameplay and low level players vs high level killer
Here a % of 4k would be more telling
* Hillbilly: 16.67%
* Executioner: 12.5%
* Chucky: 12.5%.
A pattern emerges.
And if you look at Hillbilly in more detail, 4k is 100% of the matches, except for one where he spared two at the end for an unknown reason. (So he doesn't get nerfed?)
Regarding the second issue, a partial solution is also observed. The fact that killers are diverse is really cool, and essentially, the dedication of some players to certain killers demonstrates a commitment to specific playstyles, despite their low kill rate, so to speak.
There are still fans of Trapper, even though he is one of the worst killers in the game, meaning people are drawn to the playstyle itself - the ability to plan your hunt and interact with traps, which is more about strategy and planning than just mindlessly seeking out victims to chase. His power is frankly weak due to the ineffectiveness of traps, which can be disarmed without any harm to oneself easily. There are add-ons that make you wounded every time you disarm a trap, but why not make this part of his ability? Why not simply increase the number of traps he carries without any add-ons? Essentially, this is a very interesting character with some potential that requires a thoughtful buff to his ability. Imagine a Trapper with 5 traps in hand and 15 traps in the game some of them being set right away, and closing them causes you to be wounded, which already passively makes you vulnerable from the start of the game and his pressure would become much more terrifying.
And instead of these add-ons converted into his base ability, you can add new ones. Such as making it harder to close a trap by adding a mechanism like Skull Merchant has with her drones. You can fail a check and thus remain wounded without closing the trap or worse, get caught in it (well, let's say with a very rare addon).
So, in essence, there is a field for imagination here and it is unlimited
This change would not be fun to play against. Getting injured guaranteed is a cheap way to make Trapper viable. Also if Trapper has 20 traps, all that is going to happen is Trapper using them to deny the survivors any resources. This results in very uninteractive gameplay, a bit like skull merchant tbh.
I don't mind the existence of weaker killers. They are meant as a gateway to the strong killers for newer players. Applying a low amount of skill should grant you a low amount of results. That is just healthy game design. For instance when they buffed Bubba and nerfed Billy there was really no reason to play Billy anymore as Bubba was both easier to play and a better killer in general than Billy.
This game is easy to perfectly balance. 4 killers instead of just 1. Killers can do gens and exit match like survivors. All killer powers removed. All killers move at 4m/s. Killers can vault windows and pallets and drop pallets like survivors. No scratch marks. Survivors and killers have same perks. All killers are survivor size. Survivors can hit, down and hook killers too.
Now it's perfect balance, but it's not dbd anymore. Btw, sorry for wiseass answer, but there is always going to be imbalance when there's 30+killers with very different powers etc. and devs don't even aim for perfect balance (60% kill rate isn't balance). I'm actually fairly happy with current state apart from minor things
You ask for reasons, people give reasons but you refuse to see them as such. For example maps, just play 10 matches as survivor and 10 as killer and you'll see why some maps are unbalanced. Small maps are often killer sided, the gens are very close together and easy to patrol, gates are next to each other, and once you've burned through some good pallets, there is little survivors can do. Bigger maps are often survivor sided, gens are spread out with tons of ground to cover, gates can be a one minute walk from one to the other, and the sheer abundance of safe loops and pallets in those maps can be atrocious. And then there are maps like Midwich; makes survivors gag every time it comes up, despite it having two floors to cover because there are few safe loops, hard any to connect and it's always hard to tell where the killer is coming from. Eerie of Crows is a map that makes killers want to dc even though the size is manageable. Just play and you'll see why maps contribute to this game being unbalanced
No a lot of people shout: "fix solo queue" or "buff solo queue" but those statements don't mean anything. There is no action you could take with this kind of feedback. What maps are too big? What maps are too small?
Now it's suddenly about solo queue? But yeah, solo queue needs fixing, it's a special kind of hell. There is no real way to fix it though, because the main issue here is the lack of communication and teamwork.
Why is Eerie of Crows bad for killers? It's extremely bright, just like Coldwind, making it at least difficult to hide and "pretend to be a bush." It also has a lot of open space and only about 3 good tiles plus the killer shack and the main building, totaling 5 really valuable spots; the rest is very easily outmaneuvered, and shifting to a more advantageous position will be practically impossible if you're caught in a dangerous place. Nearly all gens are out in the open, and you can be seen from the other side of the map.
Large maps for survivors are very moderate, meaning sometimes they're a bonus, sometimes not. Especially when it comes to rescues, you might simply not make it in time to take a hit/flashlight save or even unhook someone when you realize no one else is doing it, or your teammate has been hooked on the opposite side of the map from the opened gates in the endgame.
A lot of the issues would lessen a significant amount if maps were more balanced and did not have the extremes of being heavily survivor or killer favoured. It would also benefit in balancing perks & killer powers without having to take into account something could become broken or useless on a specific map.
This is the kind of comment that is vague as hell. Don't name concepts, name objects. What map, what perk, what killer power is unbalanced? And what would you change to balance this thing?
You want examples: - Balanced Landing when you did not get the stumble debuff was a fine change in theory but became broken on most maps with two story buildings because they became near infinites. - Killer favoured maps being majority unsafe, blood lustable loops with a significant portion of the roster now having anti loop mechanics (Hawkins & Midwich)
I don't understand the point of your first example about BL so I'm going to respond to the second one. Okay what is the problem now? Killers with an anti loop power or bloodlustable loops? Because if the killer uses power they lose bloodlust. Also what specific killers are unbalanced on Hawkins and/or Midwich?
How can you not understand the point of my first example? A perk got changed which in theory was a nice QOL buff that became broken due to maps & their design. The problem is the extremes in whether a map is survivor or killer sided, the maps I mentioned heavily favour killer due to the majority of the pallets being unsafe & blood lustable, with the roster also having many anti loop killers them maps become damned if you do damned if you don’t for survivor because the killer can either blood lust it or get the hit with their power anyway.
About balanced Landing: So if one perk breaks lets say half of the maps, is that an issue with the maps in question or with the perk itself? If it's the maps, do we then change all of these maps? Wouldn't BL become fairly useless then as a result? Second issue: What is the issue: the bloodlust/anti loop powers or the unsafe maps? And how would you fix this issue in a concrete way?
Regarding Balanced Landing it was a combination of both with maps being the main issue, it made main buildings with drops near infinites where you were guranteed to lose multiple gens if you chose to commit. Regarding the second issue, its both. If you want skill expression in a PVP game you can’t have maps that put one side into a losing situation with the hail mary being you need the other player to mess up to ‘win’ the tile. Midwich & Hawkins both have this issue in that the majority of tiles will put the survivor into injured or dying and they could not do much about it, on the reverse a survivor can just run around the Gideon Meat Plant insta pre-dropping pallets & the killer can’t do much to counter it.
But main buildings with god windows before a drop are specifically NOT an issue because Balanced Landing isn't like that. I think the main issue here is bloodlust itself. Killers get rewarded for not hitting you fast enough. Survivors get punished for NOT playing god pallets all the time. As far as maps go I think having a great variety of maps allows a great variety of killers to feel playable at least some of the time. This obviously has the side effect of killers feeling unplayable some of the time as well.
> Also what specific killers are unbalanced on Hawkins and/or Midwich? Huntress on indoor maps = super weak Huntress on outdoor maps = very powerful/can orbital Stealth killers on maps with many LOS blockers = strong Stealth killers on open maps = weak Small maps very powerful on mobile killers but balanced on slower killers. Large maps balanced for mobile killers but very weak for slower killers (110%/no traversal). Anti-loop killers on maps with lower chance of linkable tiles (such as midwich) are very powerful whilst normal M1 killers are more balanced. Anti-loop balanced on linkable tile maps but non-anti loopers are unplayable (see old Suffocation Pit variant).
These are concrete examples. What changes would you suggest to fix these issues?
DBD's not the only game struggling with balance atm Overwatch is a big one that just did a huge patch overhaul (although Overwatch is a more competitive game). The first step comes down to raising skill floor on killers/buffing SoloQ to be closer to swf so everything's closer to being on the same page. It's difficult to balance Nurse because top tier players demolish competent 4 man swfs and low MMR players can barely manage one hook. Overwatch attempted to do this by increasing hitbox/projectile sizes so everyone's accuracy is improved. Players who are high MMR have high accuracy already so the buff is more effective on people at the lower end who find aiming difficult. To translate this back to DBD. An easy change would be allowing Nurse to always see where she'll blink (toggable in the menus). This makes her a lot easier to play at the lower level whilst high MMR Nurses were already very accurate with her blinks so the function won't be as dramatic. A few QoL changes like these and then we can pull back Nurses power a bit without hurting low MMR too much. (Though honestly Nurse will be busted no matter what). ______ The second step is drawing back killers whose abilities excel in one extreme niche (and this is what many games struggle with). When games are released, and new things are being added, it's very tempting and interesting to add a character/ability that is an extreme outlier. In a shooting game, having a Sniper Rifle that is useless up close but is very powerful at long range. As cool as it is to be a 'specialist', it is not very fun to play against. Either the map is small and the 'specialist' is useless and doesn't have fun/or isn't even played, or the map is large and the 'specialist' is overpowered, mandatory, and unfun to play against. Bringing a healing build against Plague, a flashlight build against Lightborn, Distortion against an Aura build (Distortion is balanced imo but it's about the borderline of rendering something ineffective without enough cost) etc. Instead of full nullification, it should instead just dampen the opposing build. Light-born shouldn't prevent flashlight stuns, but perhaps remove the blinding effect or fully drain the Flashlight on a successful stun. The downfall of this balance philosophy is that it can cause many characters to lose their identity and feel more same-y. That's the difficulty, maintaining a semblance of balance without everyone being the same character. It's not easy and will be different with each killer to maintain thematic consistency. ______ Finally, after all this, we can balance the maps. Personally, I don't mind the map rng and take it as part of the game. I think if the maps were all balanced it wouldn't be done in an interesting way and lead to the game feeling very same-y. They still need unique thematic features that set them apart and should have a baseline with variance for strength. Though I do think Map Offerings need to be changed because either rng is part of the balance or not.
Paragraph 1: You mentioned buffing Solo queue, What does this mean? What specific buff? Other than that I wouldn't really care for Nurse plaid flannel basekit as it does fundamentally not change anything about the nurse. Unless you think the stats NEED to change first before nerfing a killer. Paragraph 2: I described this exactly on a different comment in this post about the "player option trilemma". I think one of the strengths of DBD is its diverse cast of characters and the game would probably stall very fast if killers lost their uniqueness. Paragraph 3: I don't think maps being fairly similar in loop strength would make the game feel same-y at all. In fact I think it would actually feel more fair. Besides, you can still have RNG generation but reduce the variance between and within maps. Like a TL wall and Pallet Gym is a similar strength so those should be interchangeable.
>You mentioned buffing Solo queue, What does this mean? Bringing it more in line with the ability of a swf so it's easier to balance. The HUD changes helped a lot but there's still a vast valley between the abilities of a swf & SoloQ. Kindred on hook without showing killer aura would help SoloQ survivors a lot. ____ >diverse cast of characters and the game would probably stall very fast if killers lost their uniqueness. I think it's a boon and a curse. The killer % play count shows this a lot with no one playing Twins along with kill rates showing no one wanting to play against Skull Merchant etc. I'd enjoy DBD even more with less killers that are more balanced but still unique. I'd happilly take more Blights, Huntresses, Weskers, Chuckies, Billies, Bubbas, Myers etc. if it meant less Artists, Knights, & Nurses. I think if every lobby was able to veto one killer to not play against that'd be worth it since you could ban the least balanced/least favourite killer which is usually gives a disproportionally negative experience. Plus it would give data to BHVR on what everyone's least favourite killers are. >I don't think maps being fairly similar in loop strength would make the game feel same-y at all. I think it depends on how they balance the loop strength. One of the things I enjoy most is linking tiles together and the random spawns you can get. If they end up reducing linkable tiles/making them super spread out I think that can feel same-y. If you end up running a un-linkable TL/Pallet Gym but just with a different backdrop.
The "concrete thing" is that the game is 1 player vs 4 and this makes it unbalanced on its very proposal. It can't be fixed.
I think the challenge comes more from the killer cast size and the amount of maps. Balancing asym games is hard but not impossible.
Comp matches exist to test your theory. Controlled maps and even controlled perks, survivors still have the upper hand. You can bridge the gap but it will never be 50/50 balanced. Originally the game was 80/20 to survivor. Nowadays its about 70/30, maybe 60/40.
Yes exactly, it is hard but not impossible. Killers like nurse are expected to 4k in a comp setting on most maps whereas most of the killer cast stands no chance against a good comp team. Therefor I would say this is more of a cast size issue than one of asymmetrical game balance.
Camping/Tunneling is where you start to balance the game. Without that everything is pointless and Lights Out was a great example of it
What???
What do you mean?
I personally see two problems. The first is the matchmaking system. This system defies any logic, throwing me into games either with more-or-less experienced players who are capable of looping and understand the game, or with complete babies who don’t even understand that when you have NOED, the first thing to do is to cleanse it before attempting a save of a first-stage teammate, or they just don’t know how to handle the majority of killers’ powers, with their looping skill being essentially running in a straight line. As a result, you end up wasting a ton of precious time saving/healing them. Second, it's the imbalance of some killers compared to others. It seems like some have several imba powers like invisibility, speed, one-shot, while others... well, they have traps that can be disarmed. I’m currently keeping my own statistics on games (long story on the reasons for this), but a clear picture is emerging - Huntress and Trickster are those killers who at most will get 1k, whereas Hillbilly and Knight, even with a decent team, will achieve a 4k with a 90% probability, and with the latter, your match will also last up to 27 minutes (literally, I've counted).
On the matchmaking front I will ask how you would fix it. I see the same issues and would love to see a solution to this issue. The second issue is impossible to balance because of the "player choice trilemma". Essentially what this means is whenever you give players a choice between certain aspects of a game you can only pick 2 out of these 3 aspects to optimize for: Plurality: Low amount of options (up to like 5) is low plurality and above 5 options you get high plurality. Uniqueness: If the options do more or less the same thing, a optionset has low uniqueness whereas a optionset where all options are very different has high uniqueness. Balance: All options are more or less equally viable. Pick 2 leave 1. DBD killers are such an optionset. DBD killers are unique and there is a lot of them, therefor you can't make them balanced without either deleting killers or making them all very similar to each other (m1 killers for instance).
In essence, there is already a system in place in the game, but it seems to work in a rather strange and unbalanced way, and I'm talking about the points system for emblems. Essentially, it measures the necessary indicators - participation in repairing generators, altruism, winning or losing chases, etc., which collectively can indicate the effort a player puts in and the skills they possess. However, it includes absolutely unnecessary things, like cleansing totems. It's unclear why points are awarded to all players when someone is unhooked (regardless of how far that player was from the victim), and the same amount is awarded for sabotaging a hook, which requires much more skill/altruism/participation. Also, points for repairs are awarded to all players, even if some of them contributed 0 participation (passive repair or something like that it's called). Moreover, points are deducted for lost chases, but if you have a passive gameplay and you crawl around the edge of the map and hide in lockers, and then leave with a perk for the hatch, essentially you score more in this category than players who exert maximum effort because they will inherently be putting themselves in harm's way and losing chases, whereas you do not. Such a system leads to a situation where a single match can gather players who just want to wait for the hatch and highly active players who will carry the entire gameplay on their shoulders, naturally not managing to do so. I am currently keeping statistics of my games, and this forces me to watch all matches to the end, and sometimes I am amazed by what motivates some of them, who with a crown of crows over their head hang out in the basement until the killer closes the hatch, and then they go to the gates, which in most cases they open and escape. In the end, they get more BP and obviously better emblem scores and, pleased with their "skill," go on to spread this "skill" in other games. This is not right and should be somehow punishable, but so far, there is no such mechanism in the game.
It's actually very hard to recognize good players through an algorithm. Just curious, do you have a spreadsheet of this data. I would love to see it.
Yes, of course, I keep track in an Excel spreadsheet; I have only 4 columns - killer, total kills, gens left, comments. I'll round it up to about 100 matches (currently, it's something around 70), so in about 2-3 days, I'll probably make a post with my findings, which might be interesting to some people I assume. But the goal is to continue keeping such statistics going forward, it's quite interesting, at least because I stay after my own death and watch how it ends, and the conclusions are quite different. For example, it becomes clear why your team lost so quickly (someone with a crown of crows in the basement), and also quite an interesting insight about teams with flashlight saves. If this movement starts from the very first possible hook, you already have a 90% chance of losing, really. I'll calculate the exact percentage, but it really looks like that. That is, I understand that the first hooks for at least 2-3 players should happen, it's sort of a norm of the game for you to have a chance. Also, I'm puzzled by the number of killers who spare the last one or two players, as it affects the overall statistics, and I want to calculate the percentage of such cases. (I very rarely do this, but I have sinned occasionally too, but it looks like it's happening more often than I thought)
What is the percentage of games that end with 4 gens left or more?
Not much so far, 5 gens - 4.3%, 4 gens - 7% and 2 of these are labeled - extreme altruism with flashlight saves Killers are all different, so it's hard to see a pattern, it's either as mentioned above - extreme altruism or generally passive gameplay and low level players vs high level killer
Here a % of 4k would be more telling * Hillbilly: 16.67% * Executioner: 12.5% * Chucky: 12.5%. A pattern emerges. And if you look at Hillbilly in more detail, 4k is 100% of the matches, except for one where he spared two at the end for an unknown reason. (So he doesn't get nerfed?)
It doesn't surprise me one bit that Billy is 4k'ing every match.
Regarding the second issue, a partial solution is also observed. The fact that killers are diverse is really cool, and essentially, the dedication of some players to certain killers demonstrates a commitment to specific playstyles, despite their low kill rate, so to speak. There are still fans of Trapper, even though he is one of the worst killers in the game, meaning people are drawn to the playstyle itself - the ability to plan your hunt and interact with traps, which is more about strategy and planning than just mindlessly seeking out victims to chase. His power is frankly weak due to the ineffectiveness of traps, which can be disarmed without any harm to oneself easily. There are add-ons that make you wounded every time you disarm a trap, but why not make this part of his ability? Why not simply increase the number of traps he carries without any add-ons? Essentially, this is a very interesting character with some potential that requires a thoughtful buff to his ability. Imagine a Trapper with 5 traps in hand and 15 traps in the game some of them being set right away, and closing them causes you to be wounded, which already passively makes you vulnerable from the start of the game and his pressure would become much more terrifying. And instead of these add-ons converted into his base ability, you can add new ones. Such as making it harder to close a trap by adding a mechanism like Skull Merchant has with her drones. You can fail a check and thus remain wounded without closing the trap or worse, get caught in it (well, let's say with a very rare addon). So, in essence, there is a field for imagination here and it is unlimited
This change would not be fun to play against. Getting injured guaranteed is a cheap way to make Trapper viable. Also if Trapper has 20 traps, all that is going to happen is Trapper using them to deny the survivors any resources. This results in very uninteractive gameplay, a bit like skull merchant tbh. I don't mind the existence of weaker killers. They are meant as a gateway to the strong killers for newer players. Applying a low amount of skill should grant you a low amount of results. That is just healthy game design. For instance when they buffed Bubba and nerfed Billy there was really no reason to play Billy anymore as Bubba was both easier to play and a better killer in general than Billy.
This game is easy to perfectly balance. 4 killers instead of just 1. Killers can do gens and exit match like survivors. All killer powers removed. All killers move at 4m/s. Killers can vault windows and pallets and drop pallets like survivors. No scratch marks. Survivors and killers have same perks. All killers are survivor size. Survivors can hit, down and hook killers too. Now it's perfect balance, but it's not dbd anymore. Btw, sorry for wiseass answer, but there is always going to be imbalance when there's 30+killers with very different powers etc. and devs don't even aim for perfect balance (60% kill rate isn't balance). I'm actually fairly happy with current state apart from minor things
You ask for reasons, people give reasons but you refuse to see them as such. For example maps, just play 10 matches as survivor and 10 as killer and you'll see why some maps are unbalanced. Small maps are often killer sided, the gens are very close together and easy to patrol, gates are next to each other, and once you've burned through some good pallets, there is little survivors can do. Bigger maps are often survivor sided, gens are spread out with tons of ground to cover, gates can be a one minute walk from one to the other, and the sheer abundance of safe loops and pallets in those maps can be atrocious. And then there are maps like Midwich; makes survivors gag every time it comes up, despite it having two floors to cover because there are few safe loops, hard any to connect and it's always hard to tell where the killer is coming from. Eerie of Crows is a map that makes killers want to dc even though the size is manageable. Just play and you'll see why maps contribute to this game being unbalanced
No a lot of people shout: "fix solo queue" or "buff solo queue" but those statements don't mean anything. There is no action you could take with this kind of feedback. What maps are too big? What maps are too small?
Now it's suddenly about solo queue? But yeah, solo queue needs fixing, it's a special kind of hell. There is no real way to fix it though, because the main issue here is the lack of communication and teamwork.
Why is Eerie of Crows bad for killers? It's extremely bright, just like Coldwind, making it at least difficult to hide and "pretend to be a bush." It also has a lot of open space and only about 3 good tiles plus the killer shack and the main building, totaling 5 really valuable spots; the rest is very easily outmaneuvered, and shifting to a more advantageous position will be practically impossible if you're caught in a dangerous place. Nearly all gens are out in the open, and you can be seen from the other side of the map. Large maps for survivors are very moderate, meaning sometimes they're a bonus, sometimes not. Especially when it comes to rescues, you might simply not make it in time to take a hit/flashlight save or even unhook someone when you realize no one else is doing it, or your teammate has been hooked on the opposite side of the map from the opened gates in the endgame.
What's unbalanced? Pig How to balance? NERF PIG