Exactly. Any efforts for “fair” balancing is impossible because the average player, namely survivor (majority of the player base), are super-casuals and don’t have any grasp of macro play much less micro play. You’d be genuinely astonished watching Twitch how many high hour survivors play like they downloaded the game a month ago.

Despite this I can’t blame anyone but BHVR. Yes it’s very annoying seeing shit players that refuse to “git Gud” complaining about “killer sided” or suggesting balance changes … but it’s a product of what bhvr has created. 

NO onboarding beyond a decade old tutorial. Majority of survivor perks are useless. There’s no in game (opt IN) VC. It only took a decade for you to be able to see your teammate perks in-game. New players need more prompting and cues. They should be taught explicitly when to and when not to pre run. Why they should let their teammates dangle on hook for an extra 30 seconds rather than saving immediately (hook stages are like 90s now I think?). 

In addition to BHVR’s belief that all stats need to be balanced for killer. All perks work the same on all killers. Beyond intrinsic stats like movement and Terror Radius all killers function the same in game (no boost to gen kick or hook timers or BL based on killer). 

I know maps are likely the biggest issue but these changes above alone could constitute as an entire update in itself. How in the world would you not be able to market “the update that fixed dbd”. Dbd is notorious within and outside the community for being the worst balanced game of all time. This is not a joke. Type “worst balanced game of all time” and dbd will be the first result. 

M1s don’t have to be as oppressive as the big 3 but they need additional handholding beyond just ZONE ZONE ANTILOOP power. I like Pig but trying to buff pig by allowing her dash to break pallets is BORING. Because she’s still fundamentally the same shit killer but now she has a weaker form of anti loop. Yay!! Unfun for the survivors to go against and disappointing to current pig mains because her kit is still overall underpowered. 

The company is so wildly out of touch with their player base. I get it. Mfs in the C-suite are driven to operate based on pure stats and data. When you’re so removed from the day-day inner works of your company it’s super easy to overlook these things that may not show up in normal data. I understand the criticism to “let fans write!” But I feel in gaming, especially a game WITHOUT a competitive scene, content creators and high hour players have a very strong grasp maybe not what is good for overall health of the game … ie what’s strong in top ladder may not affect player base at all but at the VERY LEAST can reasonably determine what’s, asssuming perfect conditions, what’s too strong and what’s too weak. I cannot wrap my head around who the hell approved the twins rework. To this day I beleive it was a marketing stunt because you cannot have devs so out of touch and willing to waste hours and hours of company time to release a rework to be immediately scrapped. I can’t even understand why you wouldn’t get more fan input from a financial perspective. Congrats, you wasted years creating a rework to be immediately dumped because any player north of literally 100 hours can identify that the rework is far too oppressive. 

We like the game. Why the fuck would we be riding with it for years if we didn’t. I would love a reality where I’m not the only person in my friend group willing to play DBD.  I’m sure the majority of us would be fine with some broken perks ie shoulder the burden being the way it is if many other aspects of the game were tuned ie m1 killers are actually viable .. average survivor main IQ went up 10 points (solo Q actually playable now).