Read more Dead by Daylight ➜ https://deadbydaylight.mgn.gg
Tournament held by https://www.twitch.tv/wwispy1
Zarr’s analysis: https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/297338/statistical-evaluation-of-an-interesting-tournament/p1
source
Read more Dead by Daylight ➜ https://deadbydaylight.mgn.gg
Tournament held by https://www.twitch.tv/wwispy1
Zarr’s analysis: https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/297338/statistical-evaluation-of-an-interesting-tournament/p1
source
Some people were saying that I'm cherry picking data this data even though the unrestricted nature of it actually makes it even more survivor sided than a normal tournament with restrictions, so I spent an hour making my own spreadsheet of the most recent DBDLeague tournament, All Hallows Eve, and the numbers were almost identical.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1X3rdzkKtTY-CPw9OjieWdTWrHCIFkSYhMdiKTZOyTlM/edit?usp=sharing
Funnily enough, Most killers were Pyramid Head, Freddy, Nemesis, Demogorgon, and Myers. The rules only allowed for Nurse in one set. There was no Spirit or Blight. The average kills were even higher for killer at 2.3, and the average hook states was about the same at ~8.5.
Fuck this “high level” mindset. The high level principle of balancing is like testing something in the perfect conditions, in a controlled environment (like this tournament where we have people which most likely spend not hours but days only studying and practicing this game).
In this scenario, a big variety of killers can perform well, since they’re in good hands.
But this isn’t real life (as the author even relates in their post on the forums). When in a public match, you doesn’t go against the absolute best survivors or the absolute best killer. You play against real people. And to these people, the game feel unbalanced as fuck.
High level will perform like high level anyway, so anything that goes into this god forbidden game will work too.
Casual players, on the other hand, will just lose interest because they can’t handle Ruin+Undying+Tinkerer or DS+Unbreakable+DH anymore.
I personally don’t know ONE person which would like if DBD turns out to be a competitive game like R6: Siege, For Honor, or anything. And anyone that likes this competitive mindset, should change the game they’re playing.
Anyway, pretty impressive data and awesome video Scott. It’s always a pleasure to hear your thoughts.
Looking at the tournament most killers got 2-3 hooks before all generators were done, and any kills were had in the end game from survivors trading hook states and doing otherwise ballsy plays. Somewhat misleading to purely base it on the kill ratio and ignore the fact that most killers only got to play the game in the endgame, and a lot of kills only were had due to survivor altruism. Also extremely low sample size with only 6 matches played.
I’m absolutely for nerfing the strong stuff and buffing the weak stuff.
It’s fine to compare the strongest vs the strongest and say the game is balanced because of those results. But to say that it is fine because survivors have 1 build and killers have 1 choice and therefore the game is balanced because those choices as a matchup are balanced is false.
The game is asymmetic in more than just killer vs survivor.z it is asymmetric in builds and powers, and far more of those builds and powers should be useable, and far less of those top tier builds should end the game because the other players simply didn’t.
It’s such an overstatement to say that people who would want the game to be balanced around top tier play would not want to reduce the effectiveness of broken powers and abilities. If they stay broken, weaker options will never have the opportunity to get used because they will always be weaker.
With no meaningful Choice in builds, the game is imbalanced. It is not fair to simply blame randomness when the tools the players are given to mitigate or respond to it simply arent working
Nurse, Spirit, Blight, Artist…so that’s 22 killers/85% of the entire roster that’s not viable for top level play.
Also the right comparison is items+addons+perks+having 3 other teammates with similar strength vs power +addons+perks. It compounds on the survivor side, and diminishes as survivors keep getting sacrificed/killed. That’s a crucial point to make as it’s not a 1v1 game. Survivors start out much stronger because of numbers, even if what the killer brings is equally as strong per person.
The point that I’m getting to is that no matter which addons and perks you bring with 85% of the entire killer roster, you can’t compete properly. HOWEVER, with survivor you can still afford to bring meh items and meh addons with meta perks and win easily. That’s the difference. No matter which perks and addons you bring with a killer who isn’t top 4, you have no chance to win if the survivors are as skilled as you are. That’s nonsensical. 4/26 killers is not enough. And I’m not saying they should make the Pig as strong as the Nurse, but what’s the point of having so many killers if they can’t even compete at the highest level? I feel like they should level out the playing field so perhaps one day we’ll see the rest of the roster competing at tourneys too. That would make it much more exciting to play and watch imo.
True talent feeling real crunchy right now…
Someone should make a tournament that goes on a buy system. So like you start with 500 points every match and each killer, add on and perk is worth a different amount. So you might end up using a great killer with ok perks or a bad killer with meta perks. To compensate survivors would have less point to start with to have same access to meta perks etc
My complaint with balancing right now is survivors have a half dozen builds but all the killer builds are small variations on ruin undying or pop
a killer shouldnt have to bring broken shit to compete
Wow, this is great. Thanks for making this, I love how you can break these things down and make all of your points across the argument.
You're actually not wrong, I'm a Killer main and I DO want easier games.
But considering I don't use any of that OP stuff (I barely use anything above brown addons) I have no problem nerfing everything OP. In the end it will still be a net gain for me.
The way I see it, the game is poorly-balanced because of how much your build matters more than your skill. Yes, in any game ever made, some stuff is going to be stronger than other stuff. But in DBD the disconnect between the best loadout you can bring and even the second-best loadout you can bring is just absolutely massive.
Compare an omegablink mori Nurse with 4 slowdowns to something just a few notches below that. Say, double speed Blight with a snowball build. There are very few things that are in between those two in terms of viability. And yet, despite the fact that one is the best and one is damn near the second best, the level of strength between that Blight and that Nurse is oceans wide. Now compare that Nurse to something upper mid-tier, like Scott’s anti-pallet Demo build. Now you’ve got oceans between the Demo and the Blight, and an entire solar system between the Demo and the Nurse.
It’s the same for Survivor. Take 4 second chance galore BNP Survivors and then compare that to a team bringing stuff like WGLF, We’ll Make It, CoH, Soul Guard—stuff that’s still REALLY strong, but not top-tier like the full meta build. You could stand on top of the meta squad’s worst match, jump off, and kill yourself with fall damage landing on the other squad’s best match.
Even so much as one singular perk can make all the difference in the world. Give a Blight Ruin, Undying, Corrupt, and Pop. Really strong, right? Now replace Pop with Tinkerer. That Tinkerer Blight blows the other Blight out of the water and then skeet shoots him in the head with Deathslinger’s gun. The difference in strength between those two builds is miles long.
The gap in strength between builds and characters in DBD is absolutely insane. I’ve seen games where the gap between the best and worst loadouts is narrower than the gap between the best and second-best loadouts in DBD. That, in my opinion, is why the game often feels unbalanced—and, frankly, why it IS unbalanced. The RNG of what your teammates or the other side will bring compared to you more often than not matters more than how good anyone in that match is at the video game. Most of the time when I lose as Killer, I feel outperked, not outplayed. Same as Survivor; I’m a solo queue player and the absolute strongest thing I bring into most of my matches these days is Aftercare. What do I do against a full sweat Spirit?
Hell, I even think the game is inherently Survivor-sided and Survivors are more innately overpowered, but the best Killer builds fare against the best Survivor builds because the best Killer builds are just that ridiculously broken, even though the game is balanced in the other side’s favor. That just shows how crazy the disconnect between the best and the not best is in this game. That’s horrible, HORRIBLE balancing if you ask me.
Perpetually self victimized killers are the new entitled survivors.
The real balancing issue isn't Survivor vs. Killer, it's high-tier vs. low-tier. Like you said, the gap between the meta Survivor perks and stuff like Technician is so massive that some Survivor mains feel like they HAVE to bring Dead Hard, DS, Unbreakable; and when that happens Killers will inevitably run into Survivors running the best stuff while they're just trying to do a daily on Wraith. Then that Wraith is going to be upset because they got rolled by the much higher tier stuff the Survivor is running. Unfortunately, bridging high-tier and low-tier is impossible because add-ons have rarities and higher rarities obviously have to be better than lower rarities, right? So the real question is… how do we make it so Trapper and Spirit are in the same tier, and Survivors can actually run Chest Perks?
Speed Add-ons for Blight on their own are fine,its when both are used, and all you can do is just restrict them kind of like Iri head, or Water Logged Shoe, Alche Ring/ 33 need to be nerfed
Killers are stronger they can kill you
band aid fix(perks for bad game design) perks need to be basekit for both sides…
Kindred DS unbreakable(unlimited)borrowed time and bond off the top of my head. probably buff a lot of perk. The ability to go prone, or stand against a call to hide, more stuff to hide in, items like a sprint drink. Then buff the poop outta killers
Corrupt intervention, Noed, bloodwarden, no way out, BBq(just aura reading), kicked gens regress at ruin tier 3 speed, jolt, deadlock, a mini pop on kicking a gen(5%, plus 2 seconds on work to stop regression), that new bird l;ady perk for hooking on a scourge hook, only for every hook.
I would also add a new mechanic called "corrosion" whereby, a gen can go under by 20%, so if you donw someone with the new changes, the nearest 3 gens lose 5%(less because it base kit, and always the nearest 3)a gen with 0 progress with go negative 5%, meaing the gen will take longer. Some killers may need nerfs with these changes though…we all knw the ones, but for the other 80% of the roster it's more fun
Lots of the killer changes reward getting different hooks and downing survivors, and slow the game down naturally, some of the numbers would have to be changed for the killer buffs, otherwisse only a 4man swf would have a chance at escape.
Like corrupt would only be 30 seconds, and jolt only 5%
Now, feel free to ignore me, I'm not pro, I ain't no dev or nothing… but like… if at the very tippy toppy of both killer and survivor are balanced… the very top 1% of killers and survivors are balanced, why are you nerfing anything? I mean, wouldn't logic be that you don't nerf either side if they are balanced at the very top?
Why not do a pass on the weaker killers that, in my opinion, wouldn't stand a chance at this top 1% level and bump them up a bit? I don't know two ways about map design and for all I know Scott is right that the maps need reworks, tweaks and what ever other synonym you wanna throw at it…
But I see footage of a nurse doing ok but I wanna see Wraith, Legion or Clown do that. What about Ghostface or Myers? How are they doing at top levels? Maybe one day I feel like pulling out my demo-puppy but I can't because I get wrecked so hard multiple times in a row that I don't even want to play this game anymore? Someone said this ain't about skill but whoever has the bigger advantage, so what does Demo-boi gotta get for advantage to do anything against a team like these guys? Hell, even just a well coordinated swf because I got 1k+ hours on M1 killer and by the time I get my 1st down half or more of the gens are done.
Thanks alot Scott now I don't have a reason to bitch. Take the video down.
Jk good insight though!
5:54 Pinky Finger Clown would actually be very strong even in a tournament setting but he's seriously underplayed and underrated in the West (which is a good thing tbh, don't want BHVR to ruin him).
I just want killers to be more balanced around each other and for scummy playstyles to be less rewarding. I do not like playing Nurse, Spirit, or Blight. I like playing stealth killers and catching survivors off guard. I main Myers, so I could just go for 4 slugs every game if I really wanted to win but playing that way isn't fun either.
Survivors basically play the same way even they bring high level items, so they don't have to drastically change how they play to be more or less optimal. But say you really liked playing Clown. You'd struggle more often than someone who mains Blight. Not necessarily because you're less skillful than that person, but because the way you want to play the game isn't rewarded as much as other playstyles.
TLDR: I'd find the game a lot more enjoyable if I didn't feel like I was nerfing myself by playing Myers and not trying to slug everyone at once.