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Welcome friends and foes, Survivors and Killers. Today we’ll be talking about something not lore related at all: the relationship between “fun” and fairness in Dead by Daylight power and perk design. We’ll be
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Couple things i want to add to this from time with being around several game devs from multiple companies. Another major downside to balancing around fun is what will eventually happen is everything gets nerfed (or buffed) into a very narrow nth percent. In DBDs case it will eventually lead that Nurse will be no different in terms of balance as *insert your weakest killer here*. In turn, what this inevitably does is kill fun for the sake of fun, to the point of where your game is so meticulously balanced where each game you play is nothing more than a skin, map, and music swap.
Now in terms of Blight, and this is just a quick observation. The more J flick replacements found or beaten into the game, the more likely he will see a large mechanic nerf to where ALL techs he has (legit or not) to be patched out, thus the Blight fun to be removed.
To quickly end off. The DBD community has a tendency to value fun so much that they're inevitably taking the fun from the game as a whole (survivor/killer rulebook to name a start) to the point to where they're killing their own fun…for fun
I don't get the complaints about flicks because like, Survivors can 360 killers in a similar way and that's 100% a bug and also basically the same thing.
Is the plague music in the background of every video some kind of hypnotic suggestion added to make me want to play plague?
Actually ur arguments are fundamentally wrong. BHVR's intention are making money just like they deal with NFTS. Thus if major audiences saying things that are not fun, they will change it for the sake of their financial health.
2:20 Probably because unlike other zoner he don't shoot any projectile except himself.
4:17 Here's your biggest mistake, a well designed element should contribute to the game's fun, if your game is balanced but not fun then it's poorly designed, if your game is fun but unbalanced it's still poorly designed (even though less because people will play it). Your game can be the best balanced game of the universe but if it's not fun for anyone then no one will play it and it will be a game design failure. However I admit that you're right when you say that something fun is not necessarily balanced nor the opposite.
5:59 BBQ is not really a "fun" perk, it's more like a necessity if you don't want to grind for BP, I still get your point though.
15:56 Just like Nurse's map control actually.
Also, the map control isn't a problem as long as survivors have time to react which they have plenty to. Blight has a terror radius, makes noise, and has a big flashy orange trail behind him making him easy to spot and see coming.
16:25 This problem isn't unique to Blight but rather to all fast killer.
18:19 I can't get the point your trying to make but with Blight you gotta understand that you shouldn't try to do what you would normally do : you shouldn't try to make distance because it doesn't work, you should rather try to waste Blight's time around one loop.
Thanks for Letting me be a part of this video and I think it's a great discussion to have regarding the community and this game.
Ima be honest, this genuinely enlightened me to see the game in a different angle….I still think nemesis needs a nerf though, I mean come on, he’s fast (you’d think he’s slow because of size but he catches up quickly) and there is no way to counter a chase since if you vault or pallet he can hit you across it with his tentacle strike, either nerf his speed or length of strike or someone tell me how to counter that because I can’t find a way to (plus he’s ultra op in a closed map like Silent Hill school or Doctors map)
I just wanna say how this man manages to make a school style PowerPoint presentation and still manages to be interesting and compelling. He makes good points with counterpoints that makes sure he covers all bases. And the second guess the killer being oni I first thought would be praising twins due to bias, but it actually made sense, and pointed out some dissonance within the DBD community. I honestly love your videos, they make actual sense and make sure to be unbiased without being spiritless, and still maintain being, in my opinion, fun to watch. Thanks mate, keep up the good work.
Honestly, I agree greatly with this video. I’ll be playing SWF with some buddies, right? We’ll go against a Plague for example, and they’ll whine… “Plague isn’t fun, she’s so annoying to go against” and that’s fine. But then they go out of the way to say “She needs to be changed, or she should be removed” etc which is not fine. Plague is actually quite balanced and I hate people giving their personal opinions and entitlement on what they think is fun and should be changed/removed. I actually quite enjoy Plague, even if I don’t play her much or go against her often.
Another example is we were going against Trapper and I told them, “No, I like Trapper’s character but I don’t like playing against him due to anxiety issues.” And they said “His bear traps should be removed and he should be changed because they’re useless/not fun.” Even me going as far as to defend the killer I dislike playing against the most, “No, he shouldn’t be changed and he’s fine. Sure, he may not be good, but people like playing him.”
Stop putting your personal beliefs of what you think is not fun and needs to be changed. “I don’t like this it’s not fun so it should be removed/changed” is just silly.
Console blight main here
I completely agree with everything you say. His map pressure is extremely power and his true skill is mainly shown in indoor map pressure and 1v1 chases.
His alchemist ring is very powerful and should be nerfed. I think it should give back 3 rushes when landing a lethal rush for 2 reasons
1. Hitting a lethal rush is extremely difficult at times so it doesn’t always give value
2. Using bump logic may require you to use all 5 of your rushes to land a hit. Which basically double rewards you for your patience and skill.
By this it doesn’t allow you to instantly get back into the game after taking your time.
This killer has the highest skill ceiling by far but its primarily shown through chases and indoor maps since it’s harder to bump around in for pressure.
Because how simple his power is for normal map pressure I tend to only use blight rat or/with blighted crow, with only 1-2 perks. Typically shadow born which gives no genuine advantage or bring both that and BBQ.
The saddest part about that is the fact I can consistently get a 2-3k without sweating too much. Making everything you say completely true
I don’t even get how people thought wraith was unfun tbh, imo he just felt like playing against a more fun spirit while playing survivor
I love how they called j-flicking a bug but survivors 360ing isn’t
With the whole Blight thing, I think Scott Junds video on him answers your whole issue with Blight, “you have a problem with ruin, undying, tinkerer on mobility killers, not blight himself”. Like yes that type of blight is insufferable, but so is any other killer that has a broken add on + perk combo.
I think the dbd community has this mindset that if most people agree something is unfun, it's "objectively" true and it's so unhealthy for the game because anyone can call anything unfun because they said so. People have their biases and that's that. I don't know why people can't accept that fairness might be more important than fun. That's just what i feel though.
The thing about dbd is you cannot be a balanced killer to have a chance against good survivors as we see mmr push higher skill survivors to the fore front We can see these fair killers do not stand a chance.
Nice opinion you got there. I would never try to change it, but I refute it strongly- your pinnacle of great design killers, plague and Oni, are some of my least favorite to go against because I have Fuckall in terms of agency when I get murdolated because the morons I spawned in with give them their respective powers repeatedly and for almost free, plague more than oni but still both. I’d say that that isn’t fun. It’s kick your toddler frustrating is what it is.
Words can’t express how happy I am that you got rid of the “entertainment” part of your name. Just “Pixel Bush” is so much catchier!
I do think fun can be objectively "assumed" as a goal in a game's design. No matter how fair or well designed a game is it'll be unfun to some, so why not make it very fun for the enjoyers and kind of a niche? I do think your points are valid and pretty good, but I wouldn't go as far as saying: fun can't be used to design games or that it is worse than designing them with fairness in mind.
If DbD suddenly became a stealth game and the mechanics of a chase were completely gutted or if it became a singleplayer, chill and do gens game, it would lose the majority of it's current playerbase, so it's safe to assume most of the players play it to interact in chases. Any killer design, for example, that deviates too much from that (Pinhead, Plague; Oni or Blight even) would be a bad one in that context (even though they aren't in the current world where fairness and fun are considered for balancing).
Boon totems have completely killed certain killers to the point where playing them at all feels impossible the twins , Oni and Wraith are the biggest three
Jesus, you really hate Blight
Edit: Holy Fuck you really hate Blight
I've had people complain and call trapper "op". Survivors are often whiney idiots sadly.
This is a fucking amazing video and it's very brave of you to go against the groupthink of the most toxic elements of the DBD community. Proud of you.
Survivor mains whine about wraith being "unfun for survivors" and nerf his numbers without really making him more "fun", but literally everyone is fed up with MMR's bullshit and… nothing.
I'm scared we are living in a world where NOED takes skill to run.
My evidence being:
You spend most of the game with one less perk slot,
You have to actively defend your totems with the current boon meta, making sure you have at least one free totem for NOED to latch on to,
Once active you have to end the game before the survivors either cleanse your hex or leave the match.
counter argument: NOED rewards poor skill in killers allowing them to wipe survivors at the endgame even if the killer has played poorly. Therefore, NOED does not require skill.
This is true, however keep in mind the current boon meta that also rewards survivors for finding and keeping track of totems to maximize the boon perks' value. More experienced players will…begrudgingly…be able to defend at least one totem to some extent, long enough to get some value out of NOED. Please note that I my argument is that NOED takes some skill to run, I am NOT arguing that NOED is a perk that rewards that skill, at least not all the time, it is a hex after all.
Example: has anyone seen their favorite Dead by Daylight youtuber do a baby killer challenge? Has anyone seen them do this challenge without NOED, I am really interested in knowing.
For those who don't know what a baby killer challenge is, its a challenge where you pretend your are a new or inexperienced killer, and try to make bad mistakes on purpose until the last gen goes off. Then you unleash all your skill and maybe try and get a 4k if nothing else you create as much chaos as possible. Its not really called a challenge, its just a fun thing to do, convince survivors your not that good only to pull a 180 on them at the end.
Interested in hearing your thoughts.
I personally believe the issue is the game's core mechanics, specifically two things:
1. As has been complained about the game since the dawn of time, repairing Generators is a victory condition that could use work. The fact that Survivors ONLY work towards victory while they are holding M1 on gens is, unfortunately, a real issue with the game, and things like Hexes have really just been bandaids on the problem, not true fixes. This is probably why so many Killers feel games can be "unfair" because (as part of the game's core design) Survivor pressure isn't a concept that's easy to see, and pretty much the game's entire regular balance state currently relies on Survivors voluntarily imposing some pressure upon themselves.
2. BHVR themselves don't seem to understand how to make chases more interesting for both sides. IMO there's no clearer example of this than breakable walls; They're objectively less interactive versions of Pallets that completely remove the interesting mindgames that Pallets have always had. Instead of introducing a real new element to chases that makes either player make real decisions it's just "survivors get infinite loops until the killer presses spacebar". Survivors aren't supposed to win chases (without the killer making big mistakes) but they should be presented with multiple choices during chases which I feel is why some Killers are labelled as unfun. This is the secret to why people like Blight, because his charges do genuinely create that new decisionmaking, choice, and mindgames, even if it's very powerful.
i don't find killer games fun/fair BECAUSE i'm obligated to wait for survivors to make mistakes for me to get anything done. and if they don't make enough mistakes? well fuck me, i guess.
quick edit right after posting this: i'm not too sure where i'm going with this, i'm posting an opinion with some level of justification. i haven't touched DBD in like a month now and i'm having a blast without it.
There are very few things I'd consider needing a change in Dead By Daylight. Either it's perks that need a rework to be useful (I.E: Buckle up, Hangman's trick, ETC) or perks that have little to no counter play, and are considered extremely OP (I.E: Dead Hard, Devour hope, ETC)
I mostly play killer, because in spite of all the advantages survivors can get if they run all the OP perks (Dead hard, Borrowed Time, Spine chill and Circle of healing) I still have more fun playing as a killer, than I do playing as a survivor.
What can really frustrate me, and not have fun, is when I encounter "toxic" survivors, that outplayed me massively and make me feel shit. And when I see the excact same loadout on every single one of those "Toxic" asshats, i get really damn frustrated, and wish for changes. But that's only in the moment of frustration. (I'm still relatively new to Dead by Daylight. Only played since after Twins came out, and my current main at the moment is shared between Plague and Nemesis)
Now, I realise that the same can be said for the other side. That are tired of running into Ruin, undying, BBQ and NOED more times than honestly they can count. And they too, in moments of frustration, can result into demands for change. A mix with the meta.
But without emotions of frustration, there is honestly very little I would change. Like i said: Things that would be nice to change, and few things that need it.
As a former pinhead main who put well over 150 hours in this killer alone bc I was convinced I could make him top tier. He has a glaring problem. RNG. And no im not referring to his box. I'm referring to how the chains spawn, since u have no control over this they can spawn in ways that actually hurt u as the killer and maybe turn a hit into a miss. And ud be surprised how often this happens. The better u get at using ur power the more often this will happen to u. So I can't say I agree with him being the most fair killer. At least not from the killer perspective.
I disagree with your reasoning for Plague's low play rate. She's fun but requires a different way of thinking than other killers. The Plague feels like she's designed for a different game than current DBD kinda like original Freddy. She's fair but different from the other killers and costs money or currency. Most Plague players are experienced killers or exclusively Plague mains. Going from Doctor to Plague is like going from Outriders to Division 2. They're third-person sci-fi shooters with abilities, but that's kinda it.
Very well said for the whole video! Well done!
Nice video Pixel
Also here's the tip:as plague you can fully infect people in snowman
being chased by victor doesnt give boldness, or chase music, so thats what i dont like