Thread by @PlagueOfGripes

A small thread about Dead by Daylight / asymmetric games and its weird psychology of balance:

DbD is a 4v1 game. Four survivors, one killer. Repair 5 generators to power escape doors or wait till everyone is dead to use an escape hatch. Killers... kill. Simple. [1/?]

When a killer finds a survivor, they have to hit them twice (usually). This downs them and gives them a death timer. Or the killer can put them on a hook. Three hooks and you die. Or one, if no one rescues you. The hook system isn't great...

Since the killer places you on the hook, they're already there. Waiting. And since they're incentivized to keep you hooked, this resulted in "tunneling" survivors by staking out the dying player. Attempts to discourage this have not been very successful.

Survivors can't attack the killer/defend themselves in any way. Flashlights can blind them, but years of complaints reduced them to laser pointers only usable during pickup animations. Survivors can run, but they're much slower than killers. The only defense: the "pallet loop."

Pallet looping is finding a bunch of crap that has a pallet nearby, and running around all of it in a circle. Survivors can slide over objects like pallets/windows faster than killers. The goal is to waste time. Killers can destroy the pallets or just try to catch the survivor.

Even if survivors get out of view, they leave a trail visible to the killer if they run. So either run VERY fast or leave a trail into an area with many potential hiding spots. The killer can inevitably find you, if they want, but again, the goal is to waste time for your team.

So, DbD is asymmetric in that killers have wildly more power than survivors. Survivors have many jobs, but they earn the most points by being in chases with the killer. Despite repairing gens being the focus, it rewards few points. Running around pallets is kind of the focus.

When shown, official stats show killers have kill rates ~50-75%. Meaning 3/4 of survivors typically die. This rate climbs until rank 5, then tapers off. At rank 1, it drops a lot because of prevalence of organized groups and the likelihood of dropping to rank 2 on loss.

On forums, it's common to see killers band together and lament that the game is heavily survivor-biased and unfair to killers, even while citing the incredibly high kill rates. A perfectly organized survivor group CAN trounce a rank 1 killer. Technically.

Playing AS a killer is harrowing in a very psychological way. All the burden of the game's rhythm falls on you, and failing to kill enough people can be very embarrassing. Failing to guess where someone is going in a chase can also be humiliating.

In this way, the only real way to attack the killer is to attack the player behind the character's morale, by trying to humiliate or discourage them, early. Killers tend to see games as Assholes vs Me. Survivors usually as Me (+3 Idiots) vs Asshole.

The killer role does tend to attract narcissists and human garbage, since it's a power fantasy role in which they can't be attacked and everyone is forced to run away from them, while they exert absolute control over you, if they want to sacrifice the time to.

Survivors can be just as bad. Low rank killers are often harassed out of the game by smurfing survivors who run figurative circles around them, teabag and taunt them with mechanics they don't know exist. Even rank 1 killers can have severe trouble with organized, toxic teams.

The flip side of this are polite killers and survivors who will go out of their way to sometimes literally die for killers they believe are having unwarranted trouble, or bringing survivors to escape hatches as an apology for disconnecting teammates, etc.

DbD's design is held together by etiquette. It's rude to tunnel, so killers intentionally leave. But you can. It's rude to swarm a killer with flashlights. But you can. You can make every match miserable; the foundational design encourages it, minor income penalties or not.

There's not really a "win" in DbD outside of all 4 survivors living or dying. Some killers are proud to have 80 game "win" streaks where everyone dies. The game doesn't really care, although it does reward efficiency with more money. It's mostly psychological.

Some killers see a mere three survivors dead as a draw or loss. Sometimes not even 4 kills is a "win" if it wasn't earned the "right way." The morale factor for killer also drives this, along with the aforementioned draw for narcissistic and/or powergaming personality types.

Although the game is Team vs 1, the team is more just four individuals with personal motivations. And since kills tend to happen quickly - sometimes within seconds of the match beginning - individual survivor players may not have any fun at all, in the name of asymmetry.

The game has a problem with killer population, perhaps mainly because it's so harrowing. Daily systems exist for both roles, but survivors' tend to encourage stupid, reckless behavior for rewards. Login dailies also are almost always for killers only, to try to encourage play.

DbD's success is a little surprising, as it is, in my opinion, not well designed. Wait times are long, survivor playtime is sometimes measured in seconds, with too much pressure placed on killers with personal etiquette being the only thing holding it all together.

DbD has an odd dichotomy of psychology and agency: invincible killers feel the world is out to get them; survivors seek to bully due to almost total powerlessness. Maybe it's "balanced" by players being angry 50% of the time? Fascinating psychology in it. An okay game. [21/?]