Pubs vs Pugs - which are better?

[Dragon]

I've been thinking about shedding more light on this question because even though the answer is rather obvious to most of us, this group has 700+ members and its first tournament has just come to pass at the time of writing this. The probability of seeing more successful and perhaps larger-scale tournaments in the future, is sort of contingent on the group's growth not just in population, but in its pug activity too. But as things currently stand, the only two options players have are either to play pubs or play pugs, the latter of which is only available to DCG members.

Let's start with what every DBD player there ever was knows: pubs. It's about as raw vanilla as you can get: no limitations whatsoever on perks, items, addons or offerings. Maps are randomly selected, and your bloodpoints accumulate so that they can be spent on the bloodweb (which is only relevant for pub games seeing as pugs happen in KYF lobbies where everything is automatically unlocked and infinitely abundant), you can prestige for the sake of obtaining blood-covered outfits that make no actual difference to the gameplay whatsoever except for perhaps a survivor concealing themselves better in a dark hiding spot, but it's more or less just cosmetic bragging rights which hardly any sane person is going to care about. I know a few people who say they care about earning points for the bloodweb too much to not play pubs, however, it's dedicating yourself to a rather arduous (and dare I say tedious) RPG-style grind for a game that's clearly not an RPG.

There is also ranking, which is really only indicative of how much time players pour into the game with each season reset (because let's face it, getting pips isn't hard and even mediocre players can climb their way to rank 1 with the current system). Unless the devs implement a much improved system, ranking up in the current meta is a rather fruitless endeavour whether survivor or killer. In regards to SWFs, I see the simple fact that if it's a multiplayer game, people should be able to play with their friends if they want to. However, I will not deny that SWFs can do, say and/or use things to create a tremendous imbalance in the vanilla game where there are no limitations in place.

And the last part about pubs is of course, the full spectrum of the DBD community. Don't get me wrong, there are some good guys and girls out there, but there are parts of the community that seem so desperate to showcase all the salt and toxicity they can muster. While others might find this amusing, the truth is that elements such as these do NOT serve any game or community justice at all. When pub games have a reputation for survivors teaming up in SWF and being completely toxic towards even killers with good intentions (with SWFs talking ♥♥♥♥ as if under the assumption that they're amazing at the game simply because they opted to play it via the most unbalanced angle possible in their favour), or when 90% of Trappers constantly trap people's feet, with a significant proportion of those Trapper players soft-patrolling their hook-trapped victims out of paranoia for missing out on cheap kills (or even just any killer that is prone to facecamp), you can begin to see just why this game suffers and is losing players (on top of the ridiculously long loading times for matchmaking and the general playerbase's frustrations with the devs taking their time for bugfixes).

At least in this current stage of the game, it's quite clear that playing only pub games is not a reliable method for experiencing the best of what Dead by Daylight has to offer.

[Dragon]

Now for pugs. Ok, you can't quite get points for your bloodweb, prestige outfits or even a higher rank. But none of that stuff matters seeing as pugs happen in KYF lobbies anyway, so you're not really missing out on anything major. As a rule in this group, offerings are disabled because if they were not, every single game would be swamped in thick mist and dark moonlight (and quite possibly all killers would run ebony moris in retaliation!). We've also been experimenting with disabling items/addons lately due to the fact that with them enabled, they tend to make games end shorter than desired.

Another reason why pugs seem to work very well is because even though the survivor team is coordinated like an SWF team, the ultimate objective is for them to best each other in the final score, irrespective of where the killer fits in on the scoreboard post-game. And because playing killer is a completely different ballpark, they are simply competing with other killers when they take their turns in the following pugs. Therefore, number of escapes or kills don't matter as such, doubly so as (expendable) bloodpoints and ranking is not even in the equation.

So in the end, points in pugs matters only in the sense of your performance; a great factor when you consider that survivors have to get engaged with the killer and make riskier plays to have the best odds of being on top, and killers would be shooting themselves in their feet if they persisted with any camping strategy that wastes time and doesn't reap them much in the way of points. Seeing as the average pub player's mindset is rife with the idea that the game is all about how many escapes or kills you can get, it tends to be the case that games are more fun when players are playing in ways where they generate vast amounts of points.

Pugs are hosted within this group, which means that any case of toxicity (should it arrise) would be dealt with and stamped out. Pub games are lawless which is why the game's future prospects continue to dwindle in part due to people being so quick to be moronic, which is why we wouldn't tolerate any of it here in the DCG. And lastly, have you been in a position where you end up waiting almost an hour in a queue to try and land a game? Did you eventually get a lobby only to get dodged, or to find that the killer deals in the typical BS that makes the game unfun? With enough willing players, you could've made FAR more constructive use of that hour by playing 3 or 4 pugs instead!

For those of you who haven't tried playing pugs with us yet, don't be shy! Just hop onto the Discord channel, post announcements in the steam group if you want to get a pug started and see for yourself. If you're one of those naysayers who think "no way DBD is competitive", well don't take the "competitive" connotation too literally because in pugs (and tournaments), survivors are not competing against killers as you might assume; both sides are competing with their own (survivors vs survivors, killers vs killers). Hell, I also had my slight doubts before this all started, as did a few other prominent members of the group, but it works AND it's a lot of fun!

[the owl]

Fantastic article Dragon.

[red]

Thanks for the read! You definitely make some valid points. Hope more read this and ACTUALLY absorb the message.

[Basic White Bitch]

I agree! We will not tolerate any level of toxicity here in the GDC!