Wraith leveling up experiment - balance of DBD is absolutely broken

[Troman]

I usually play solo survivor, I haven't played killer for 2 years, I suck as killer. The game currently isn't really playable as a solo survivor, I was wondering how bad it is for killers, so I decided to level up a killer for a certain number of ranks. Still I don't want this game to be unbalanced for any sides, so I tried to stay as objective as possible. I played enough games to get statistically relevant data.

I leveled up Wraith, because i used to enjoy him long time ago. As I said I suck as killer. I reached rank 2 or 3 two years ago and stopped leveling up killer.

My PC isn't good enough to play DBD and record games, so I made screenshots. 2-3 screenshots for every game (in-game, to show how many gens were done after last person was hooked and after the game), but I uploaded only 1 for each game.

I played the lowest tier killer and still I owned survivors during the games I played. Even though during the first 5-7 games I would sometimes swing 3-4 times before I could hit someone, I didn't even know what key I use for mori. I'm bad at mindgaming because I lack experience as killer and to have clear experiment results I didn't try to mindgame, I just followed survivors like a braindead killer and broke all pallets they would drop.

As you can see from the results, it's just absolutely horrible. You can easily have 5-8 4k games in a row with almost no gens done. I wonder what results experienced killer players have or killers maining high-tier killers like Spirit or Nurse? I don't even want to think about it. The state of the game is just horrible.

After game 28 the DEVs changed the SWF matchmaking, so I started getting many more SWF teams, which would otherwise stay in lower ranks.

That said, everyone understands, that the games for killer get harder and harder as you rank up and you get more and more SWF teams, so I don't imply that you 4k as easy in red ranks as in rank 10-20. And some SWF teams just destroyed me without giving me a chance. This is another side of DBD and it shows how unbalanced the game can be for both sides. You either 4k or you 0k.

Still, the main conclusion is that the game is absolutely BROKEN FOR SOLO survivors at the moment. As a killer you can still win at least 50% of your games or much more even if you play the weakest killer, even though you gen crashed by SWF in some games. As a solo survivor you lose 80-90% of the games, no matter how hard you try. I play in red ranks as solo survivor, so I know that well enough.

The sad thing is that DEVs look at the average stats. And if I kept playing until rank 1, I'd have more 0k games, and on average the final result wouldn't look as bad anymore. But what matters is not the average results, but individual games. Each individual game is horribly out of balance. It's the same if you make an average escape rate between solo and SWF. On average it would look ok, but, SWF players would escape 90% and solo players only 10%. It's the same if you take the average kill rate between low-tier and high-tier killers. On average the balance looks ok, but it reality the game is js broken beyond repair.

[Adrian-the-Wallachian]

Entity's Bish の投稿を引用：

Adrian-the-Wallachian の投稿を引用：

The most successful competitive games are balanced around the top players, because those guys actually know what they are doing. That doesn't stop anyone from playing and enjoying said games. E.g. Dota, Killer Instinct, Tekken, *insert competitive game name here*, etc.

These games have a totally different player count. Dbd has 24k avg the lowest of the ones you said has 400k.
This game already hates newcomers no need to make it worse.

Killer Instinct has a few HUNDRED players, and Tekken like 3 THOUSAND at most. I'm pretty sure you didn't actually check anything past the first game I mentioned.(that's mostly because they are fighting games, which are pretty hard to play, but whatever).Guess what, though, Killer Instinct and Tekken are still way better balanced than Dead by daylight. Another example from the fighting game genre would be Guilty gear, where EVERY damn character is viable competitively, and that game isn't balanced around a guy who wants to win left and right after 10 minutes of play.

[Troman]

Iridescent_Potato の投稿を引用：

Look, Troman. You wouldn't want to create the rules of football, tennis, cricket or whatever else around the skills of your 6 year old who's just starting to play it, or the particiants of paralympics, however inspiring they can be. They don't play named games to their fullest, therefore, they should not matter WHEN FORMING THE RULES AND CREATING BALANCE.
This is not to say they don't matter. This means they all have a chance to learn the game properly (well, paralympicons not so much, maybe not the best example), and once they have, and stopped just stumbling around, they can have intense, exciting games.
I'd only add that the ranking criteria, created by bleeding heart overly sensitive Canadians, are also broken, so it should be fixed too. But that's another topic.

But you are substituting notions here. Where did I say that the game should be balanced around newbies mostly? Balancing the game around certain skill level wasn't even the topic of my post.

I showed that in low ranks even the lowest tier killer (I can repeat it with any other low tier killer) totally dominates survivors and most of them are solo survivors on those ranks. While at the same time whenever you get a highly skilled SWF group, they can easily dominate the killer. That's one issue with the balance. The next issue is that the balance shifts rapidly as you rank up, as a killer you get more and more teams that destroy you. You probably still win the majority of the games, but we all know that such games are totally frustrating.

Third issue is the broken balance among the killers. There are killers that are just unplayable in high ranks, while top tier killers dominate survivors. These extreme points that are far away from each other balance-wise is what is making this game totally out of balance. Then, there are smaller issues, like the rate items and offerings. That's what I'm talking about.

What ranks and skill level the game must be balanced around shouldn't even be such an important issue. Look, if we take two unskilled teams in any game and let them play against each other many times, even if the outcomes are somewhat random, let them play enough for the law of large numbers to start kicking in, then their win/lose ratio will be around 50%. But in DBD that's not the case. And even if it was in DBD, playing 200 games as killer and winning 100 games against solo teams with 0 gens done while losing 100 games against SWF teams with no survivors killed and having win/lose rate of 50% doesn't make the game balanced, does it?

[☩FREDDY96☩]

Adrian-the-Wallachian の投稿を引用：

Entity's Bish の投稿を引用：

These games have a totally different player count. Dbd has 24k avg the lowest of the ones you said has 400k.
This game already hates newcomers no need to make it worse.

Killer Instinct has a few HUNDRED players, and Tekken like 3 THOUSAND at most. I'm pretty sure you didn't actually check anything past the first game I mentioned.(that's mostly because they are fighting games, which are pretty hard to play, but whatever).Guess what, though, Killer Instinct and Tekken are still way better balanced than Dead by daylight. Another example from the fighting game genre would be Guilty gear, where EVERY damn character is viable competitively, and that game isn't balanced around a guy who wants to win left and right after 10 minutes of play.

Dota has 400k avg still cant compare it to dbd balance

[Aeven]

Adrian-the-Wallachian の投稿を引用：

Aeven の投稿を引用：

Balancing only around high ranks only works for symmetric games. Asymmetrical games suffer heavily if one side is overpowered in high/low ranks.

You need to give examples and shid to prove your claim.

Dead by Daylight is my example. You can see how unfun the game becomes for either side on high/low ranks because the game favors survivors or killers heavily. Balance around high ranks = Making the game unplayable for anyone at rank 20-10. Balance around low ranks = Making the game unplayable for anyone at rank 10-1. Both are bad choices and will kill the game eventually.

[Chewy102]

troman の投稿を引用：

As I can see sometimes accepting the truth is very hard, but there's no way around that, folks.

You might want to speak the truth before calling someone out on accepting it. You claim to be rank 10 with Killer but you achievements do not show this at all.

Your progress in Legendary Killer, the achievement for hitting rank 1 as Killer, is currently sitting at 22 out of 85. Meaning you have never hit rank 1 and have a total of 22 pips earned as of me typing this. Rank 10 requires 40 pips as seen in the Master Killer achievement.

So unless you lost 18 pips within the last hour, you are talking out of your ass and are no where near hitting rank 10 for Killer.

This isn't some bug with Steam and this isn't some bug with DbD. The moment you exit the game your profile is updated with the current achievement progress and your progress is telling me you lied. Lied about hitting rank 10, lied about those 40+ games played, you likely lied about EVERYTHING in this thread.


♥♥♥♥ off. If you are going to do something, at least make it look right. Tell half truths, not full face lies.

[Troman]

amras の投稿を引用：

troman の投稿を引用：

[

Is it so difficult to read the post before replying? You accuse people for not reading. Practice what you preach.

Funny that you say that.

If it's funny to you when you accuse people of something they don't do, while you do it, you can laugh, but it makes you look silly.

[Premium Cooking Oil]

troman の投稿を引用：

I showed that in low ranks even the lowest tier killer (I can repeat it with any other low tier killer) totally dominates survivors and most of them are solo survivors on those ranks. While at the same time whenever you get a highly skilled SWF group, they can easily dominate the killer. That's one issue with the balance. The next issue is that the balance shifts rapidly as you rank up, as a killer you get more and more teams that destroy you. You probably still win the majority of the games, but we all know that such games are totally frustrating.

I have my doubts about "total domination", even on low ranks, but I'll play along. Let's say even lower tier killers can demolish survivors on low ranks. Why would it be a problem? Also, why would it be a problem if it were survivors dominating on low ranks? If a player is dedicated, and can take a bit of frustration without going crazy, he'll inevitably rank up. Therefore, once higher ranks are actually balanced, he'll be in a good spot. As of those players (in our case, survivors), who just can't take a massive amount of defeats, well... we don't need them. If someone expects to be the master of a game, any game, as soon as he starts playing, well, this kind of person will never be a player to be taken seriously.
More or less agree with some of your other points though. The mere existence of both SWF/solo survivor in the game makes any kind of balancing extremely hard on itself. Then there are HUGE differences between maps: some favour killers in general or certain killers, others are heavily in favour of survivors. And of course there are all the different killers with significantly different powers and gamestyle. Some perfectly healthy, absolutely fair balance is a nice ideal, and devs should aim for it, but expecting to reach such an utopia is not realistic.
Not that there aren't a lot more that could be improved. But unfortunately, 95% of devs are very mediocre players (can't blame them: it's their job, they probably don't really want to spend to much time with actually playing the game). Plus, their balance (and other) decisions about game changes are business decisions first and foremost. Again, not something you can blame them for, but it often hurts the game.

[Aeven]

Chewy102 の投稿を引用：

troman の投稿を引用：

As I can see sometimes accepting the truth is very hard, but there's no way around that, folks.

You might want to speak the truth before calling someone out on accepting it. You claim to be rank 10 with Killer but you achievements do not show this at all.

Your progress in Legendary Killer, the achievement for hitting rank 1 as Killer, is currently sitting at 22 out of 85. Meaning you have never hit rank 1 and have a total of 22 pips earned as of me typing this. Rank 10 requires 40 pips as seen in the Master Killer achievement.

So unless you lost 18 pips within the last hour, you are talking out of your ass and are no where near hitting rank 10 for Killer.

This isn't some bug with Steam and this isn't some bug with DbD. The moment you exit the game your profile is updated with the current achievement progress and your progress is telling me you lied. Lied about hitting rank 10, lied about those 40+ games played, you likely lied about EVERYTHING in this thread.


♥♥♥♥ off. If you are going to do something, at least make it look right. Tell half truths, not full face lies.

Maybe he did his experiment before rank reset and posted it now?

[Amras]

troman の投稿を引用：

amras の投稿を引用：

Funny that you say that.

If it's funny to you when you accuse people of something they don't do, while you do it, you can laugh, but it makes you look silly.

What accusations? It was you who started to tell people "to go re-read my post" and to take a "reading comprehension test".

People have read your post and given their few cents but it seems that this is your ultimative reply whenever they are not your opinion.

[Chewy102]

Aeven の投稿を引用：

Chewy102 の投稿を引用：

You might want to speak the truth before calling someone out on accepting it. You claim to be rank 10 with Killer but you achievements do not show this at all.

Your progress in Legendary Killer, the achievement for hitting rank 1 as Killer, is currently sitting at 22 out of 85. Meaning you have never hit rank 1 and have a total of 22 pips earned as of me typing this. Rank 10 requires 40 pips as seen in the Master Killer achievement.

So unless you lost 18 pips within the last hour, you are talking out of your ass and are no where near hitting rank 10 for Killer.

This isn't some bug with Steam and this isn't some bug with DbD. The moment you exit the game your profile is updated with the current achievement progress and your progress is telling me you lied. Lied about hitting rank 10, lied about those 40+ games played, you likely lied about EVERYTHING in this thread.


♥♥♥♥ off. If you are going to do something, at least make it look right. Tell half truths, not full face lies.

Maybe he did his experiment before rank reset and posted it now?

Why would he wait 4 days? Also, why would he post directly to imgur instead of using Steam?

The pics look legit. I can't see anything wrong with them or the timeline they make. It looks like he really did go from rank 20 to rank 10 over those 40 games. But why doesn't Steam reflect this when I have NEVER known Steam to not do so?


Blood points seem to line up. He uses some once in a while after games so it isn't a perfect addition, but it shows he saved till hitting 1 million before using them all.

Devotion also looks right. I thought it showed progress, but I could be wrong with that. If I am wrong in that, his devotion level grew at about the right rate.

Survivor ranks look to be good old DbD matchmaking. Good and bad parts of it.

Most of this pics look legit. Outside of the lack of post game chat I can't find fault at all in them. Post game chat could be a UK thing but Id expect a fair amount more of it. In any case, I can't find fault with the photos, but they do NOT match up with Steam and OPs profile. I just checked again, OP is still at 22 out of 85 pips.

His other achievements looks proper for someone not playing after a long while. All but Devoted Gatekeeping (kill everyone before all 5 gens are finished 15 times). OP earned that one on September 26th. Likely nothing, but it doesn't match with his "not played Killer for 2 years". Does support your idea though of him doing this test weeks ago. Still! Why would he wait till NOW to post it? Possible weeks after the fact, and days after rank reset.


It just doesn't feel right to me. Don't know how the hell it could be wrong. But I trust Steam more than some random person and if a Steam profile says something is wrong then something is wrong.

[bong water]

Wilson the Gentleman Scientist. の投稿を引用：

Why is going solo survivor even an option?

You have no chance getting out by yourself.

I get you only have to do two gens but odds are you’ll be found by the time the first one is done tops.
Even if you elude him and somehow do a second one before he finds you you still have to get out which it is very predictable where your going to be at that point.

That’s 3 tasks the survivor needs to get done while dodging the killer.

And all the killer has to do Is catch him once.

This game wasn’t meant for survivors to go alone.

So not true lol

[Troman]

Iridescent_Potato の投稿を引用：

troman の投稿を引用：

I showed that in low ranks even the lowest tier killer (I can repeat it with any other low tier killer) totally dominates survivors and most of them are solo survivors on those ranks. While at the same time whenever you get a highly skilled SWF group, they can easily dominate the killer. That's one issue with the balance. The next issue is that the balance shifts rapidly as you rank up, as a killer you get more and more teams that destroy you. You probably still win the majority of the games, but we all know that such games are totally frustrating.

I have my doubts about "total domination", even on low ranks, but I'll play along. Let's say even lower tier killers can demolish survivors on low ranks. Why would it be a problem?

The answer is very simple: because a balanced game is better than an unbalanced game. I think no one will deny that.

I think we are talking about slightly different things. You say that you don't change rules for players in tennis, the difference between tennis and DBD is that tennis is a totally symmetric game and it's totally balanced on all "ranks" by definition, so there's no need to change the rules. Newbs play against newbs and the game doesn't favor player X despite him being worse than player Y as long as their ranks somewhat represent their skill level.

DBD is asymetric. But the broken balance between killer/survivor in DBD is not even the biggest issue (SWF-Solo balance is). Still, it can be fixed. We know that on low levels killers are much stronger than on higher levels. What prevents us from introducing an asymmetric game mechanic to account for that? Again, no perfect balance is needed, DEVs just need to close this huge gap.
Same goes for SWF-Solo balance. I suggested it many times: buff solo to the level of SWF by giving solo same information that SWF have (this way it won't buff SWF as much, it will level them out) and then buff killers. Yes, you can't give exactly the same info, but you can make the balance gap not as wide.

There are many other issues with your question. Like, the rank in DBD doesn't actually represent your skill very often. Because of rank reset, because not everyone has enough time to play DBD to rank up to red ranks. It shouldn't be a requirement to play the game 24/356 to have balanced games.

The outcome of a game (which is equivalent to skill for a certain game) also depends on whether you play solo survivor or SWF. You can play SWF and be rank one, despite being very bad at the game and vice versa. It also depends on whether you play Wraith or Nurse. You might be good with Nurse, but start playing Wraith after a rank reset and you will struggle much more, does it make you a worse player instantly? Of course not. These are just some reasons why we shouldn't stick to ranks too much in DBD when balancing it.

[Premium Cooking Oil]

troman の投稿を引用：

Iridescent_Potato の投稿を引用：

I have my doubts about "total domination", even on low ranks, but I'll play along. Let's say even lower tier killers can demolish survivors on low ranks. Why would it be a problem?

The answer is very simple: because a balanced game is better than an unbalanced game. I think no one will deny that.

I think we are talking about slightly different things. You say that you don't change rules for players in tennis, the difference between tennis and DBD is that tennis is a totally symmetric game and it's totally balanced on all "ranks" by definition, so there's no need to change the rules. Newbs play against newbs and the game doesn't favor player X despite him being worse than player Y as long as their ranks somewhat represent their skill level.

DBD is asymetric. But the broken balance between killer/survivor in DBD is not even the biggest issue (SWF-Solo balance is). Still, it can be fixed. We know that on low levels killers are much stronger than on higher levels. What prevents us from introducing an asymmetric game mechanic to account for that? Again, no perfect balance is needed, DEVs just need to close this huge gap.
Same goes for SWF-Solo balance. I suggested it many times: buff solo to the level of SWF by giving solo same information that SWF have (this way it won't buff SWF as much, it will level them out) and then buff killers. Yes, you can't give exactly the same info, but you can make the balance gap not as wide.

There are many other issues with your question. Like, the rank in DBD doesn't actually represent your skill very often. Because of rank reset, because not everyone has enough time to play DBD to rank up to red ranks. It shouldn't be a requirement to play the game 24/356 to have balanced games.

The outcome of a game (which is equivalent to skill for a certain game) also depends on whether you play solo survivor or SWF. You can play SWF and be rank one, despite being very bad at the game and vice versa. It also depends on whether you play Wraith or Nurse. You might be good with Nurse, but start playing Wraith after a rank reset and you will struggle much more, does it make you a worse player instantly? Of course not. These are just some reasons why we shouldn't stick to ranks too much in DBD when balancing it.

As I said, I fully agree with SWF/solo being one of the main issues, and this has little to do with ranks. Similar case with differences between killers. I don't think giving free information to solo survivors is the correct way about it; I'd prefer BP or other bonuses to a killer who is facing SWF, but I'm open about this.
As for your notion about DBD being not comparable to tennis or other symmetric sports: it may look like to be the case, but I don't think it actually is. I know I'm repeating myself, but rules should be arranged while keeping the most skilled portion of players in mind. The less skilled someone is, the more random their performance will be. May sound cynical, but in a sense, low ranks shouldn't matter.
I gotta say I don't like how you say "rank doesn't represent your skill"... since it's exactly what I said a few posts earlier. Yeah. That's a big issue too, no argument there. Especially for killer: it should be purely linked to how many kills you have, so you wouldn't have to jump through arbitrary hoops that are built in the emblem system.
And another note: you may be playing on lower ranks as killer, you may play killer much less than survivor, but you still have 1500< hours in DBD. You know very well that playing survivor helps you immensely to GIT GUD :) as killer too. You're probably nothing compared to someone with 50-100 hours, killer main or not. The bulk of rank 20-15-10 players are definitely not 1000< hours people. As I see it, this pretty much undermines the value of your statistics as proof for low rank imbalance.

[Aeven]

Iridescent_Potato の投稿を引用：

troman の投稿を引用：

The answer is very simple: because a balanced game is better than an unbalanced game. I think no one will deny that.

I think we are talking about slightly different things. You say that you don't change rules for players in tennis, the difference between tennis and DBD is that tennis is a totally symmetric game and it's totally balanced on all "ranks" by definition, so there's no need to change the rules. Newbs play against newbs and the game doesn't favor player X despite him being worse than player Y as long as their ranks somewhat represent their skill level.

DBD is asymetric. But the broken balance between killer/survivor in DBD is not even the biggest issue (SWF-Solo balance is). Still, it can be fixed. We know that on low levels killers are much stronger than on higher levels. What prevents us from introducing an asymmetric game mechanic to account for that? Again, no perfect balance is needed, DEVs just need to close this huge gap.
Same goes for SWF-Solo balance. I suggested it many times: buff solo to the level of SWF by giving solo same information that SWF have (this way it won't buff SWF as much, it will level them out) and then buff killers. Yes, you can't give exactly the same info, but you can make the balance gap not as wide.

There are many other issues with your question. Like, the rank in DBD doesn't actually represent your skill very often. Because of rank reset, because not everyone has enough time to play DBD to rank up to red ranks. It shouldn't be a requirement to play the game 24/356 to have balanced games.

The outcome of a game (which is equivalent to skill for a certain game) also depends on whether you play solo survivor or SWF. You can play SWF and be rank one, despite being very bad at the game and vice versa. It also depends on whether you play Wraith or Nurse. You might be good with Nurse, but start playing Wraith after a rank reset and you will struggle much more, does it make you a worse player instantly? Of course not. These are just some reasons why we shouldn't stick to ranks too much in DBD when balancing it.

As I said, I fully agree with SWF/solo being one of the main issues, and this has little to do with ranks. Similar case with differences between killers. I don't think giving free information to solo survivors is the correct way about it; I'd prefer BP or other bonuses to a killer who is facing SWF, but I'm open about this.
As for your notion about DBD being not comparable to tennis or other symmetric sports: it may look like to be the case, but I don't think it actually is. I know I'm repeating myself, but rules should be arranged while keeping the most skilled portion of players in mind. The less skilled someone is, the more random their performance will be. May sound cynical, but in a sense, low ranks shouldn't matter.
I gotta say I don't like how you say "rank doesn't represent your skill"... since it's exactly what I said a few posts earlier. Yeah. That's a big issue too, no argument there. Especially for killer: it should be purely linked to how many kills you have, so you wouldn't have to jump through arbitrary hoops that are built in the emblem system.
And another note: you may be playing on lower ranks as killer, you may play killer much less than survivor, but you still have 1500< hours in DBD. You know very well that playing survivor helps you immensely to GIT GUD :) as killer too. You're probably nothing compared to someone with 50-100 hours, killer main or not. The bulk of rank 20-15-10 players are definitely not 1000< hours people. As I see it, this pretty much undermines the value of your statistics as proof for low rank imbalance.

So in your opinion only the highest skilled players should be able to have fun in a fair competition while everyone else suffers in the unbalanced and unfair state that the game is in their rank. I think you would be a great game dev

[☩FREDDY96☩]

If game was balanced around zubat marth and pokerface not even tru3 would be able to play the game.