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Give Blight Hatchets. Give Trapper an add-on that lets him bring a second Trapper as a co-op murder buddy. Make Tombstone basekit for Myers, and give him a machine gun while you’re at it. At this point, what even is balance in Dead by Daylight? The Nurse can blink through walls to land hits no matter what, while the Shape has to waste the precious early-game staring at you before he even gets a power. Behaviour cares about balance, but the balance it’s after isn’t what you or I would shoot for. Here’s why the game’s buffs and nerfs make so little sense.
The 60% Rule and Balance in Dead by Daylight
Behaviour has stated it wants a 60% kill-rate. We know from public stats that Dead by Daylight is hitting that target balance. Whether you’re playing solo or with a 4-person SWF, your odds of escaping are a little over 40%. Killers with higher averages get nerfed. Those with subpar ones get buffed. At least, that’s the theory. There are a couple of problems with this method of balancing. The first is that these statistics don’t take into account disconnect issues, and even casual DbD players know how common rage quitting is. You might enjoy the Unknown more than Skull Merchant, but Adriana fans should at least get to play without people punching Alt-F4.
These statistics also don’t say anything about what’s fun. The Twins kill roughly as many survivors as Sadako according to recent NightLight stats, yet the former is a burning trash heap of bugs and unbearable cooldowns, while the latter is mostly polished. What keeps Nurse from getting her Blink nerfed is the fact that her stiff learning curve suppresses her kill-rate at low and average MMR. Pig, meanwhile, is a weaker killer by every metric except the one that Behaviour cares about. Her Reverse Bear Traps grant free kills against new and average players, resulting in above-average kill-rates and (you guessed it) nerfs.
The Casual vs. Comp Conversation
Competitive DbD is a meme to many, and if we’re talking about public matches and the RNG that entails, there’s good reason to laugh. Actual tournament organizers and players, however, take balance in Dead by Daylight seriously. The result? A huge list of individualized perk, item, and add-on bans, resulting in more-or-less balanced gameplay. There are two worlds. Comp DbD is a strict and (mostly) professional setting ruled by skill. Casual DbD is a manic SpongeBob episode in which RNG, the whims of the Entity, and how much you’re willing to sweat determines how much you’re going to suffer.
Most players play casually, so Behaviour will always cater to them. There’s simply too much money to lose by ignoring the average gamer. I get that, and I’m not rooting for the dev behind my favorite game to go bankrupt. Still, I’m developing a facial twitch from watching Huntress get a hatchet buff while the Nurse enters yet another year with multiple blinks. You don’t have to burn the spreadsheets, but we shouldn’t let killers die of neglect in their name, either.
Dead by Daylight is available for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.
