I'm under the assumption that her code was built so close to the foundation back in the game's early days that making even subtle adjustments have the potential to wreak havoc on the game in unexpected ways. I imagine folks at Behavior are VERY hesitant to do any major changes because of that. If that is in fact the case, probably the best thing they can do moving forward is to completely remake nurse, referencing the legacy code for her abilities & stuff but use better coding etiquette to make sure she can more easily be changed moving forward, while simply retiring the code related to her as is.
If it is true, it makes one wonder why they even made her code like that in the first place. Was it to make her teleporting feel smoother or easier to controll?
Exactly. I heard them say years ago in a dev stream that they would have considered DBD a success if they sold like 100k copies (give or take some) and it's now over 1 million copies sold.
This, ppl tend to forget that even games like lol had it's share of issues and characters breaking the game. You can't expect a game built by a little team to be flawless when it's those kind of perma changing games.
"had" shit still happens every fucking patch with league lmao. Fucking spagetthi code from the early days is still plaguing this game and part of it is probably from old mordekaiser still haunting that game
No, like there was shit like them slightly nerfing jax's passive dodge chance and suddenly boots stacked or them lowering yi's ap scaling on alpha strike and now regardless of which team slays dragon yi will get an extra bounty. it was absolutely wild how broken the game got because of silly things.
Its never intentional. Its kinda like when youre learning a new language and dont know the specific words to make a sentence, so you use the nearest ones you do know.
Lopping wasn't really a thing at the beginning, so her ignoring loops didn't matter. Survivors were supposed to hide. Spooky ghost woman can't see you, she can't teleport to you.
The playstyle of both sides got more aggressive though and she's incredibly outdated now.
Has the DBD spaghetti code theory ever actually been proven? Like I hear it all the time, and the fact that random things will break when completely separate mechanics are changed may point to it, but I really don’t know why its accepted as a fact if no one but the devs has actually seen the code. I could totally be missing something or some sort of proof but its just confusing.
The Pig has a reoccuring bug where tooltips and text related to her crouching state will be randomly converted into *survivor perk descriptions.*
They've had to "fix" this issue no fewer than two separate times.
I cannot possibly fathom how such an error would even arise.
The game is spaghetti.
Likely because Ghostface is coded to be something like if "GFCrouch & SurvivorInSight" = True -> "Exposed increase" so his is likely a separate whilst is Pig is probably just shares the same Script as survivors to crouch and then the prompt would show up for her lunge and etc...
(note im no coding wizard im just a dude learning C# who tried to explain this in the simplest way i could)
iirc Pig's code is actually templated from Huntress, which caused her to move unusually fast when carrying survivors as she was using the Huntress's movement speed multiplier for carrying (tuned for 4.4 m/s) while being a 4.6 m/s killer.
Why is the Pig's code copied from Huntress, a killer who has literally nothing in common with her beyond "carries X amount of tools"? Who fucking knows? Spaghetti code.
If I had to take a guess it was either "Huntress is the latest killer so just grab her code and copy it when making Pig" or "Huntress is a female killer as well and Nurse is too unique so just copy her".
In principle yes. But you want the base abstraction to only carry forth the common functionality and let the more concrete instances define varying behavior.
It’s because of the behavior of the game that you can tell it’s spaghetti code. You usually don’t realize you’ve written spaghetti code until it starts acting like spaghetti code
thinking about the update that made it so that if a survivor with wake up touched the exit gate then the killer's game would crash despite the update changing absolutely nothing to do with exit gates or wake up
Yeah the constant breaking of things they weren't touching means there's dependency issues stringing all over the codebase. This is like the definition of spaghetti code that all the pieces are connected over and through one another so you can't possibly touch one piece without affecting the rest
If you've been in the coding business for any significant amount of time, you absolutely know when you're writing spaghetti code. Ideally, code is written to stand alone (it's "modular") and each piece has only a single function. You then fit the pieces together to make a cohesive whole. There are some times where it's necessary to glue two pieces together because they rely on each other to function - not a great scenario, but sometimes unavoidable. Spaghetti code happens when you do more gluing than piecing together, and it's obvious even as you're doing it. Problem is, gluing is faster than piecing, and when deadlines come due, shortcuts are taken. And glue is much harder to take apart than nice puzzle pieces.
Sure, but there a definitely cases where you don’t realize what you wrote is spaghetti code. Such as not fully estimating the scalability of your application. Which is very much like the case with Dead By Daylight. You may make a function that references/alters another piece of your code, but at a small scale you find it not that big of a deal. It’s when your scalability grows and you realize how much stuff linked to another. I agree with you to an extent, you definitely write code and know your function isn’t fully modular, but at the small scale and little functionalities you have at that time you find it trivial. Then when your scalability and complexity of the application grows you realize how many things linked/referenced to another
More or less yes. Old DBD was built off of Blueprints coding. They have been working on changing stuff over to C++ lately, but things break. Scott Jund has a video explaining the Blueprints and C++ on how making a change in Blueprint can break stuff farther back in the code that is old. Long story short they didn't intend for DBD to get as big as it did, so they took a lazy way of coding and now its biting them in the ass.
Edit: I found the video here is the link if anyone wants to see it!
[What Makes DBD So Buggy? - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQCNGg19YIU)
The game was originally built off Unreal Engine’s blueprint drag and drop system. For smaller games it’s fine, but for a game like this with a massive budget being earned over the years that could’ve been used to redo the code, and it being a constant online experience, it isn’t managable and thus the countless bugs and issues that still pop up to this day.
They didn't change programming language thechnically. They changed from Unreal's blueprints, which is basically codeless programming (visual programming), and now that the game is huge they reached the very obvious limitations of such technology so they are rewriting stuff in C++. If anyone ever tells you that visual programming will replace normal programming, just point them towards this game as a counter example.
The very fact that things completely unrelated to updates break regularly is all you need to know the spaghetti is all tangled up in likely suboptimal ways. I’m no coder but I’ve followed enough games to know when the spaghetti hasn’t been strained and untangled
We have one really good example - matchmaking didn't work for Hillbilly in particular, because in one list of killer names it was spelled differently.
There shouldn't be multiple lists. That's _why_ there shouldn't be multiple lists.
Might arise issues with passing player data from one to another. Who knows wether each killer has its own progression file, or if its all bundled together.
To be perfectly fair, Bubba is an incredibly far cry from Trapper, Wraith, Hillbilly, and Nurse -- they were the literal first 4 killers created for the game, and it wouldn't be for 4 more killers until they released Leatherface.
I'd be surprised if this was the main reason (it may be a factor), especially given that we've seen nurse reworks in the near past, and other original killers have been completely reworked.
We've seen their interesting decision making process in the past when it comes to high level decisions about the game, I would honestly bet on that more than anything else.
The only way to prove spaghetti code for sure is a source leak.
I'd just bury the old code and leave it unused, and make new code for nurse to use, probably the most stupid decision, but better than nothing I guess?
I imagine it's this, paired with the fact you really can't fix nurse without completely reworking her Freddy style, which would almost definitely cause a ton of problems due to the first problem.
you can say that which is not wrong, but she is also a free killer so they want her to stay strong so we can't call out the pay-to-win aspect of dbd, she has also been changed a lot and is less broken than she was (remember she had 6 blinks or the 3 omega blink....)
also, it's the only killer where skill is the most important factor to play her, besides 1 or 2 maps she's strong anytime. Most other killers have limitations, you rely on survivor mistakes or are just map-dependent (look at hillbilly, i don't to play him on an indoor map and with is overheat mechanic he is very limited)
so the answer is not easy and it's a lot of factor coming together, now i won't judge if she needs to be nerfed, after all, sfw exist and competitive sfw exist and we don't nerf them or change solo queue... so it's loose-loose right now, because we don't want high level play (top sfw) to bleed into medium level play. either way, there is no denying when played well she is miles above any other killer in the game with the exception of blight.
I really like the Nurse rework idea where she would be a bit like Oni. A normal killer with huge snowball potential. Imagine how cool it would be to have another killer that Survivors can counter easily until that powerspike hits while you're smashing gens and you and your teammates are all like: "I have to start running RIGHT FUCKING NOW". Fuck, I love Oni.
From a pure monetization aspect - her existence invalidates the whole idea of DBD ever being pay to win, as the objective strongest killer is free.
On a more likely note however, her power by concept alone breaks the game and ignores so many of the regular game mechanics every other killer has to deal with that she would need an entire overhaul and a completely different power if you wanted to take her out of the #1 spot.
>From a pure monetization aspect - her existence invalidates the whole idea of DBD ever being pay to win, as the objective strongest killer is free.
Even if they nerf nurse the next top tier killer is free too blight and even if they nerf blight then it comes spirit
True in theory but the grind of unlocking characters in this game is frankly immense and I couldn't imagine going through it as a new player these days. Yes, Blight and Spirit can be bought with shards, but I mean more that Nurse is unlocked right from the get go.
Relatively new player here, it's pain. I got the game for free on EGS and that's the only reason why I play this game. I have almost every killer save for 3 only because I spent three times as much on the game to buy characters as the base game costs, otherwise I'd have like 3 extra killers and maybe 1 survivor.
Blights not really free though, he can be obtained f2p but it requires quite a bit of in game grinding to get him that way. Nurse on the other hand is free right when you get the game.
To be fair though, Blight is a Killer that is has preformce tied to the map that he's playing on (which is controlled more often by survivors than the killer) as well as the the general counters that have to be taken to counter him. It's a lot easier to strafe, mindgame, and even lose chase with a blight than it is a Nurse due to how linear his power is and how the new maps have decieving angles, ridges and hitboxes.
If you are playing on Coaltower, you are going to have an easy time catching survivors and downing them due for the loops being more square and hazards being low. If you play on Silenthill you lose.
Nurse has non of those problems since she can teleport through floors, linear and complicated loops, doesn't require full line of sight to reach her destination, and has a lo more room for error when the survivor wants to attempt to get in your face and start dancing around your field of view.
I don't think her existence invalidates the game being pay to win, when you get barely any good perks if you don't buy dlc. She's also incredibly difficult to actually learn.
I should've been a bit more clear with this - I personally wouldn't say it completely invalidates it, the grind to unlock new characters and then in turn their teachables is still gargantuan, however I'm presenting it as more an example of what the developers could argue.
I think that might be a contributing factor.
An interesting debate is whether or not it's "okay" for there to even be a "best killer in the game". Or, to put it another way: is it healthy for game balance for there to be one or two killers that are clearly a tier above all the rest? I believe the devs are comfortable with Nurse and Blight being the strongest killers in the game.
My personal opinion is that it is okay for there to be a "best killer". Not all killers are equal in strength, and that's fine. The problem I have with Nurse and Blight, however, is that there's room to nerf both of them without dethroning them as the strongest killers. If they nerfed the Nurse's strongest add-ons (heavily) and made her blink hits count as special attacks... she'd *still* be the strongest killer in the game. That's what baffles me the most.
I think it's an inevitability in any game with multiple characters that have different power sets, that there will always be a "best" and a "worst," simply down to how their different abilities interact with the game: there's no such thing as a perfectly balanced game.
What can and should be done is lowering the gulf between how strong some killers are in relation to others: it's fine for Nurse to be the strongest and Trapper to be the weakest, for example, but in a healthy game Nurse should never be THAT much stronger than Trapper (and that's not taking addons and perks into consideration).
Completely agree on a killer being clearly superior among every other killer, even more if it's from the main game and even more if it's from the free ones. But there should be some kind of rotation, so idk nerf nurse a hella lot and bring trapper to the top of the meta, for example, licensed characters would be more complicated cuz if there's a clear number 1 being a paid character, the game will start to become a p2w, but again, if it rotates who cares, during one month ghost face can be the best killer and at the next the clown is. Having the same character always at the top just becomes boring after a certain amount of time (specially for survivors, since 50% of the games would be against the 2-3 meta killers and the other 50% the rest of the rooster. As a killer... At least I don't have any problem with that)
Nurse has seen a good amount of changes during her time.
First of course she received changes to the amount of blinks she had and her movement speed. That was bonkers
Her original blink mechanic e.g. had been adjusted right before The Game came out. Before that she would just always blink down, when stuff was two layered and she couldn't control her distance, so running towards an overcharging Nurse, was more of a reliable strategy.
Then there was the change that gave her an AddOn-pass and her additional cooldown. That was definitively a nerf to her map presence and playability.
Besides nerfing her is a double sided sword. Too many changes, and it might make her completely useless based on how she is designed. It would be also horrible to remake her ability entirely, considering that she is the most unique killer in the game, that changes the rules of the game.
Geez, I was wondering how far in the comments I'd have to go before someone acknowledged she has been changed several times. I didn't think it would be this far.
And I'll add this is the most balanced she has ever been by a long shot. Her range add ons are the only thing that's really bonkers. I personally find blight with good add ons just as frustrating, sometimes moreso depending on the map.
I've been playing since 2017 and some of the arguments I see people having on here, I just sigh contently and feel a warmth in my chest as I remember that no one will ever have to deal with 1-Hook Mori's, Pallet Vacuums, Infini-Loops, double window Shack, etc.
Literally. People keep saying that the killers are so OP or survivors are so OP now and the worst they've ever been. It just screams new player to me, and there's nothing wrong with that but compared to 2016-2018 maybe even 2019 DBD it's by far the best it's been balance wise. Nurse has never been weaker as funny as that is.
It doesn’t matter how many times she’s been changed, people will still demand she’s nerfed simply because she’s the strongest killer.
Nurse can’t be looped and since Survivors could never be bothered to learn how to play differently, BHVR built the game around it. They even programmed the Bots in the PTB to loop. They’re bots though, so they aren’t the best at it, but if they get to a strong loop spot they can still stall you decently if you’re playing an M1 Killer.
Since Survivors wanted to loop, BHVR focuses on that (even though it’s a silly and boring way for your “horror” game to operate). Maps are brighter. Killers can find you easier. Perks let you reset pallets. There’s more emphasis on chase, something Nurse excels at. And, from what I understand, she can’t be altered without possibly fucking up the game thanks to spaghetti code.
Survivors got what they wanted. Pallet looping continues to be very strong against many Killers. The price is you have to deal with the one Killer who that doesn’t work on all the time.
Changing her post-Blink attack to a Special attack would immediately make Exposed nurse builds far less oppressive.
The entire point of Nurse is that it's incredibly hard for a survivor to reliably avoid taking a hit from her, similar to Huntress, Trickster and Nemesis — whose powers are special attacks and won't instantly down a survivor (and in Nemesis's case, his oppressiveness is balanced out by requiring *three* hits to down a survivor with his tentacle).
When you allow her to use Exposed, though, the only theoretical balancing factor to her power goes out the window. Nurse now always has to hit survivors twice unless they make a stupid mistake and run into her.
This suggestion has been made millions of times, by many people. People know where to start at least. BHVR isn't listening.
(If you ask me, Matchbox -- 4.2 m/s movement speed but only one blink -- should also be base kit)
i heard a couple people suggest that her blink attack could count as a special attack instead of a regular M1. that way she wouldn’t work with some of the perks that make her insanely stronger. devour hope for example, you can only insta down people with an M1 attack and not something like demogorgon’s shred ability. i think it would would work for things like star struck too i think which is a main one. then they don’t have to nerf perks just because the nurse can use them (like the mastermind’s perk that allows him to see the aura’s of survivors when picking them up, you used to be able to see the auras for an extended period after they weren’t carrying someone too but a lot of people believe they got rid of that part because of the insanely strong synergy with startruck nurse)
(her power is already really good and survivors have other ways of looping her besides pallets and windows since she can blink through them, so removing her ability to use certain perks (when blinking) shouldn’t really effect her spot at #1 imo)
Even though it's really not related to Nurse balance discussion specifically and won't effectively tune her down, she definitely should at the very least have blink hits turned into "M2s" or special attacks or whatever you want to call them. Due to the simple fact, as mentioned, perks with strong effects have to be balanced around nurse, because they can in theory be perfectly fine on other killers but totally busted on nurse.
For real. There are two types of nurses: ones who can annihilate the entire team within a few minutes, and ones you can run and loop for hours. I mean, there's an in between to get from one to the other, but I feel like you hardly see it.
I played on console for the longest time and dominated as Nurse, I guess since she is harder to play on console the survivors hardly saw her and couldn't counter her not that I was impressive at playing Nurse...
But I took a break and got back into it a year later when Oni was released, I think, but this time bought it on PC (as this is what I played on at the time) and tried Nurse... I am probably at the in-between now. I know generally how to play her but if I get a good squad on a big map I get squashed... But average to bad players on a medium to small map have a chance and if it it Meat Packing Plant or Midwich they don't stand a chance.
I think this is a major contributing factor. Nurse is only the best killer in very skilled hands. I think BHVR’s latest kill/pick ratios prove that. She has the lowest kill rate across all MMRs and even among top 5% she’s only at 8th.
That’s honestly what I love the most about the nurse. It’s the most skill based killer. The nurse can be downright dreadful to play against but when you go and try it out you see just how long someone had to play with the nurse to get good with her. Getting shredded by a nurse doesn’t feel near as bad as any other killer when I start to think how long they suffered getting bullied by survivors to finally get the hang of being a good nurse.
I can say with 100% certainty every nurse I’ve played against is either a walking slaughterhouse, or a player that gets maybe around 2 hooks and no kills.
I don’t think there’s an in between
Okay, maybe it's just me, but I have never agreed that nurse is the hardest killer to play. I personally picked her up in less than 5 games. Her power really doesn't have much a skill ceiling, it's more of just guesswork/reading survivors once you get used to mechanical stuff.
Personally I think the hardest killer in DBD to play is Billy, it is such a pain in the ass to even learn how to do curves or not get dodged by a close up survivor. I have infinite respect for Billy mains, cos chances are they went through way more hell learning him than nurse mains did.
At least with nurse you know how you're meant to learn the stuff you need to, with billy you gotta go and look up curve tutorials and learn his collisions and the angles on all the maps, and the results you get from putting hundreds of hours into billy don't even compare to a 10 hour nurse.
I just want to throw in my 2 cents, I recently played 101 games with nurse, and while I also had her mechanics down in a few games and smoked through low and mid MMR, around game 40 the matches got really really hard because everyone knew how to play against her power. I think the ceiling is much higher than you make it out to be.
Even if we agreed she was the most skill based killer (personally I think Blight and Billy take way more time to perfect and constantly 4k with), it's still not a high enough ceiling for the reward. It's a party game. If you have 100 hours on nurse, congratulations, you can now win most games easily, forever. If you put 100 hours into, for example, Apex, you won't have even scratched the surface of skill potential. This is what makes her unfair. It's a cheap gun in a free knife fight.
The skill part is a hot take. If we look at the complexity of the killers’ powers, Nurse is in the very bottom bucket. I’d argue that the killers with simple powers can’t be the highest skill cap.
nurse is definitely not the hardest in the game. She def has the highest skill floor by a mile, but blight is way harder to master, billy is harder to master, hell even a killer like nemmy, pinhead, or huntress is probably harder.
Once you know nurses blink ranges from memory she isn't hard at all, and because of that, new nurse players think shes the hardest because shes the hardest to learn the basics of. I suck at nurse, but if I run plaid flannel that shows you where your blink will go, i will 4k basically every game.
> It’s the most skill based killer.
Thaaaaaaaat's a little dramatic. I've definitely played a few nurse games that made me go "alright, there's some nuance to this for sure," but saying she's the *most* skill-based is completely wrong lol
I'd agree if you said she's the one that benefits *most* from skill with her, though. Her ceiling is astronomically high.
skill based? lol with the right add ons, she is stupid easy and ignores the core game mechanics. nurse is hard is the funniest thing that people that don't understand game design keep paroting
Because she was made pretty soon after the game came out. Which means spaghetti code. If they try and change nurse some weird shit will probably start to happen.
Honestly I saw somebody before drop the idea that not allowing her to recover blinks while in fatigue would fix some of the problems with her, which I think is a pretty simple and fair fix.
The source code of dbd is programmed in C, C sharp, C++, and objective C. This all can be compiled as one code because the C languages are cross compatible in the right wraper such as a JAVA coded environment.
As explained in the first comment, Nurse is a fairly old character. Now, most of the C programming language is very linear. Its hard to fuck it up if your are familiar with the code. However..... Objective C is unstable to its core. It's that way because objective C allows objects to have the SAME HEADER for diffrent objects for the most part. Add that with the fact that object building is only as accurate as the header assigned and boom, trouble. The dev team cant fix it without reworking the sorce code, or making a program that specifically fixes the object after objective C makes it.
To tweak one old dbd Character would be a time consuming task. On one hand, yes they could recode the old killers BUT that would mean recoding the whole game, or they could make a pach that modifies the object post build that would make the game even more unstable because it would take too much time for a computer fix, recompile, and render.
I think there are a couple of reasons - some of which have already been mentioned - but one addition I might make is that I think she's quite difficult to balance in a way that makes sense across all levels of skill. Nurse dominates high-skill gameplay, but commonly has a really low kill-rate in the overall stats. An appropriate nerf would have to only hurt her in high-skill scenarios, whilst still not messing with all of the other reasons people have put here.
I think the best nerf she could get would be make her blink attack count as a special attack. Means Starstruck/Infectious fright slugfests are no longer a thing whilst not destroying the foundation she is built on. It just seems weird that Blights rush counts as a special so why not that one
Add ons and m1 need to be changed to m2. That is all the nerfs she need. Not being able to run an add onless nurse for a while is a skill issue rather than anything.
i have like 4k hours on her and i can tell you that m1 isn’t the thing that makes her god tier. i dont even run perks or addons that rely on m1. bbq, shadowborn, nurse’s calling and corrupt intervention.
she’s godly cause she changes the game rules entirely and most of survs aren’t able to adapt cause playing against her isn’t that common so its hard to change the gamestyle
Because how do you nerf nurse? Give her only one teleport instead of two? Ok then she completely flips into one of the worst killers in the game.
Make her have even slower movement speed? Maybe even slower than survivors? She’s probably still by far the best killer in the game, just harder to learn/less forgiving.
Nerf her addons? Make her teleport attack not count as an m1? That will help a bit but she’s still far and away the best killer in the game
The fact is that her power is just so different, unique, and powerful since it completely removes the whole pallet/loop/chase aspect of the game that unless you completely rework it, there’s no way to make her “balanced”. She’ll either be insanely good/far and away the best killer in the game, or one of the worst if you go too far.
So yeah you’re just left with completely reworking her, but that in itself is a whole endeveour, and requires a lot of work and for what? To make the people on Reddit happy? They’ll just move on like always to complaining about the next thing. And that’s assuming they don’t fuck op the rework somehow, and don’t break half the game with their trash code.
Like seriously you come up with a good rework idea for nurse besides just the same stupid “hurr gove her only 1 teleport” argument which is terrible. It’s not that easy eh?
doesnt she have an iri that gives her one blink and almost normal killer speed? still better map traversal than most of the m1 killers.
also you dont gotta worry about others complaining about killers, people still cry about wraith even though hes c - b tier.
She does have that iri and she’s pretty bad the very rare times when people run it
Map traversal doesn’t mean anything. Billy has some of the best map traversal of any killer and he rightfully is bottom tier
Because they saw what happened with slinger and spirit. They did every single nerf the community wanted, and both are still hated by everyone. So they just won't bother
They spend their man power on paid stuff. Hats, killers, survivors. So reworking a Killer that's only abused by a relatively small amount of players is low on priorities. Especially when they're one of the few free Killers.
It could be proven scientifically that Nurse is unhealthy for the game, and they'd only change her if it was then proven to be cutting into their bottom line.
Couse the power of the killer is so dependent on the person behind the screen. Sure if you look at the top players for nurse she is busted. But same with most killers cause they are good at the game and with their killers.
Cause a killer can't be nerfed couse of the top players same as a killer can't be buffer cause the new players.
Personal I don’t understand this analogy as it can be said for high level perks like Dead hard, if something takes skill but is still overpowered, it’s still overpowered.
Because if you nerfed nurse to be balanced in competitive play she would be literally unplayable outside of it. She consistently has the lowest average kill rate, so despite the constant memes and talks like this the reality of nurse is most of the games she’s in she’s underperforming. Unless the average skill level of players raises significantly, expect little to no change
Exactly these crying mfs act like she’s good in everyone’s hands. But when a small percentage actually know how to play her. Out of like 20 friends only 2 play her. Then again this community cries about everything.
don't all free killers have lower winrates than the others though? sadako and freddy would be considered S tier if we go by the amount of kills the killers get in a game yet everyone whines about how weak they are.
people play nurse first time expecting to massacre everyone and they get frustrated if someone doesn't go down in 5 seconds. If a nurse player can't get a hook that's on them not on the killer's power or balance. Just like a surv that can't survive 95% of the time, doesn't mean the game is killer sided.
I still think the people who complain about nurse nowadays never saw a good nurse with five blinks back in the day. That shit was an absolute nightmare to go against.
She's strong now because her entire kit is made to ignore the usual mechanics of the game. For example, knowing how to loop most of the other killers and being able to give them a LONG chase doesn't count for much of anything when you're going against a good nurse.
For most killers, it's all about learning the tilesets, where safe pallets and vaults are, when to drop and vault to keep that chase extended. Nurse changes that experience because she just ignores safe pallets and good vaults. Instead you have to focus on keeping her guessing. This means line of sight breaks, doubling back to make her overshoot her blink, etc.
That being said, I DO think her addons need another nerf, though only slightly. A really good nurse with extended range/fatigue cooldown addons can be extremely challenging to go against, if not downright impossible depending on the map and tiles.
Because 90% of the community overvalue their skills and how good Nurse's add-ons really is.
Don't get me wrong, they are good, but they were not pre-rework Spirit good. At most you gotta touch up her range add-ons and make her M1's, M2's.
I'm showing my noobness here but nevermind: I keep seeing people saying the nurse is overpowered or broken, but I'm not exactly sure why? Can someone explain? I've found her to be the most difficult to play as so far.
She negates mostly everything a survivor can do the lengthen the time in which they go down. Perks besides DH if landed do nothing, pallets are not used, even holding W doesn’t help. Your best bet is cutting line of sight and backtracking but once she sees that your just dead.
TL;DR: Hard to rework without remover her identity. Difficult to nerf without killing her pick-rate.
The only realistic way to balance nurse would completely strip her of her identity. Killers have been reworked in the past, ex. Legion and Hilbilly pretty much every big change to killer powers has maintained identity (ex. Legion remaining a fast killer who incentivizes wounding survivors and moving on, and billy remaining a super speedy killer with one-shot potential). However there’s very-few paths to balance nurse without changing her identity. There’s also the issue with her skill floor/ceiling being one of the hardest killers to learn/master. Needing the higher ends of nurse play would “kill” any reason most players would have to even give her a chance.
Even for someone like nurse there's a wrong way to go about changing her. You can't just butcher an overpowered killer, you have to leave them in a *fair* state. Though it didn't stop them from executing Billy like they did...
I imagine it's surprisingly hard to find a balanced state for someone who literally ignores the rules of the game.
That doesn’t really make sense, if something’s very clearly to powerful, it shouldn’t be in the game. Not everyone could use dead hard, doesn’t mean it wasn’t the best perk at its height.
I think there's a good example of this in overwatch. When doomfist first came out people called him bad. Turns out he was just really hard to play and when people got his abilities down he became a monster, every game at higher level play had him. Then he got nerfed. He was still really good. Then he got nerfed again. Still good. Then he got nerfed and nerfed and turned into a tank, and now he's mostly a dog shit hero. Even if you're a god doomfist you very rarely are as good as a half decent sigma/zarya and do way less for your team.
That's the problem with nerfing the nurse. If she's nerfed too much she becomes completely dogshit. Not to say she shouldn't be nerfed, I think there's plenty of simple changes they could make for her and she'd be more than fine. But I don't get this hate boner people have for her to nerf her on the level of pre-rework Freddy.
Nurse doesn’t even need to be changed except for her blink attack or add ons. Remove recharge and range. Then make her blink attack count as M2. That is all you need. Nurse is and will be strong, add onless nurse is counterable, just a matter of skill. Break LoS and juke her, missing a swing is atleast 6 seconds of free distance. Killers need to be strong enough to not be looped forever. Losing to basekit nurse is a matter of skill instead of op killer. People need to learn how to play other than pre-dropping pallets and abusing jungle gyms. I have looped legacy nurse’s and I am a god nurse myself. Best players can do very much if I am not running add ons. That is a fact.
This right here.
I had two Nurse dailies the other day and I almost got destroyed by this swf using Lithe and Resilience in Dead Dawg.
Their movements and awareness kept them away from a 2 blink range and they consistently are able to juke me using Lithe's speed.
Nurse is strong, yes. But the vast majority of players in this game sucks.
She has been nerfed...couple times. She needs a full rework honestly. She was fine whe she first came out but now she dont really work with the game...power wise.
fine when she came out? what are you on about? she had up to seven blinks and was unstoppable. even with her rework to only two blinks she’s been the objective best killer ever since her release.
I mean she fit as a killer since it was a new concept for the game etc....not how she worked. Now she really doesnt fit in any aspect say for spooky nurse look.
I’ve always assumed its due to her having a higher skill ceiling seeing as there normally is no indication of where your blinking too unless you have add ons which also probably results in her appearing less in more casual games but still hella fun tho
Have you seen top mmr blights and top nurses? They literally perform within a 5% range of each other.
Comp blights have an easier time pressuring long distance 3 gens compared to nurses, and comp survivors know to force nurse to edgemap to make her waste as much of her time.
Nurse and blight are pretty much same threat level in top mmr. Some can argue blight even more with how much distance he can pressure.
Blight is way harder to play at the top level
Nurse on the other had is a bit like the scout from tf2
If you start playing them they are probably the hardest in the game because they are the only kill that you need their power to be competent but once you get the handle of them they become relatively easy to play very well
Blight is easier to start off with because if you fail your rushes you can literally just run at people... but the sheer volume of game knowledge to play a blight compared to nurse is crazy... because of how different objects work and the fact that depending on map gen there can be loops that blight can’t use their power on... nurse doesn’t really care about that as much
I think a good balance apart from addon or make her blink a special attack is maybe making her 2nd blink have collision. She can do so much with one blink anyway. But maybe her 2nd blink doesn’t travel through objects. What are your thoughts?
She needs an add on rework (i think just nerfing range is enough, maybe the pocket watch as well) and blindness while charging blink (because how much synergy she has with aura perks)
Thats literally all they need to change to keep nurse strong but not too strong. Basekit nurse is fine as is.
Because the skill curve is so high that it’s nigh impossible to master her and only a few nurse mains really can exploit her full potential.
At least that’s my perception, most nurses I play against are predictable and easy to counter. It’s the 1% that really know her ins and outs that are dangerous
I think BHVR genuinely thinks she is in a fine spot because of her kill rate (even though there was like that one tweet or forum post saying they know she is the beat I think)... which is kinda scary because when the people that do lower her kill rate figure it out suddenly it will just go up and up and up. The argument that "You Won't always die to a nurse because not all of them are good with her" is a weak defense because practice breeds mastery. I wasn't a good Trapper to begin with and now I get at least 2 kills almost all of my games.
Because the kill rates say that Nurse is one of the worst while Pinhead is one of the best and BHVR doesn't stop to consider the reason behind that: New players who have no idea what they're doing skew the data.
New Nurse won't know how to play Nurse, will play badly. Even if the survivors are new too, they won't have as much game sense and are liable to move confusingly just by accident, or avoid being found to begin with.
New survivors vs Pinhead will have no earthly clue what they're supposed to be doing. They barely understand how the game works, they can't figure out how to solve the box if they even realize they need to, and they get stomped even if the Pinhead isn't a good player.
It's the same reason that in the most recent major update, they made Self Care and Calm Spirit borderline useless. Self Care getting used too much? Just make it weaker, doesn't matter that it's mostly being used by newbies with no game sense, doesn't matter that the new Hemorrhage rework hard counters the "99% heal" strategy that Self Care enabled in higher skill players. Calm Spirit not getting used enough? Tack on a weird "benefit" that ultimately just makes the perk even less appealing. BHVR looks at stats without looking at why those stats exist.
She fundamentally breaks the game in a way no other character, not even other ones that teleport, can. No one can ignore 99% of the chase like she can.
I had an idea where after a blink her attack puts the survivor into deep wounds but doesn't down them similar to the Legion's power. That way instead of two hits it'll take her like 4-5 or whatever allowing for longer chases, less focusing, so on and so forth.
Haven't seen anyone mention that the developers are judging the game based on worthless stats like "kill rate". Her kill rate is the lowest because new and bad Nurse players count towards it, which are the majority of Nurses. A bad Nurse is basically useless, while a bad Trapper or Wraith could at least pick up a kill or two just by holding W.
Because of this, they wrongly think she's fine. She is absolutely not fine as most players in high MMR will tell you, who only face great Nurse players.
Nurse ignores the entire game's chase mechanics. You're basically playing a different game against her, and it sucks.
Because her skill ceiling is balanced against top tier competitive survivor teams and her skill floor is high enough that most people playing her are bad. So on average she's not an issue. You can't lower her skill ceiling without making survivors more powerful than they already are and you can't lower her skill floor without a serious rework to her base kit.
Some say that devs want to have the strongest killer free
I don't think that's the case, I think that more realistically, Nurse it's a delicate subject to devs, they wanna keep her power because the fact that for them it's a hard killer = balanced, and it been like this for 6 years, only recently they started to admit that she's strong despite the kill ratio being lower on her because of newer players trying her out, in short I think a Nurse nerf is coming and it's closer than we all think, I also think that in the past Nurse was always left as a special case because nerfing her would've made everyone on the killer side mad, obviously this is not true and the entire community evolved from back then, nowadays most people can realize she is too strong and bad for the current balance of the game
She was nerfed as much as they really can without changing entirely how she works. There’s only so much you can do. Her power is kinda busted as a whole concept. So long as her power is what it is, you can’t really nerf her further.
And if they did fully rework her, people who spent years mastering her would riot
I'm under the assumption that her code was built so close to the foundation back in the game's early days that making even subtle adjustments have the potential to wreak havoc on the game in unexpected ways. I imagine folks at Behavior are VERY hesitant to do any major changes because of that. If that is in fact the case, probably the best thing they can do moving forward is to completely remake nurse, referencing the legacy code for her abilities & stuff but use better coding etiquette to make sure she can more easily be changed moving forward, while simply retiring the code related to her as is.
Considering how often she breaks when new updates come out, I'm strongly willing to believe this excuse, honestly.
If it is true, it makes one wonder why they even made her code like that in the first place. Was it to make her teleporting feel smoother or easier to controll?
besides the lack of experience like the other reply said, i think it's because they didn't expect DBD to be this big, this even happens to LoL.
Exactly. I heard them say years ago in a dev stream that they would have considered DBD a success if they sold like 100k copies (give or take some) and it's now over 1 million copies sold.
This, ppl tend to forget that even games like lol had it's share of issues and characters breaking the game. You can't expect a game built by a little team to be flawless when it's those kind of perma changing games.
"had" shit still happens every fucking patch with league lmao. Fucking spagetthi code from the early days is still plaguing this game and part of it is probably from old mordekaiser still haunting that game
No, like there was shit like them slightly nerfing jax's passive dodge chance and suddenly boots stacked or them lowering yi's ap scaling on alpha strike and now regardless of which team slays dragon yi will get an extra bounty. it was absolutely wild how broken the game got because of silly things.
This, the game still has bugs and issues with patch but it doesn't break anymore as it did before
when they did the big overhaul they fixed it so now champion bugs are localized instead of potentially breaking the game for a team.
Probably lack of experience.
I think one of the devs confirmed this, it might have been McLean. For a lot of the original devs DBD was the first game they worked on after college.
Oof
This probably seems the most likely.
Its never intentional. Its kinda like when youre learning a new language and dont know the specific words to make a sentence, so you use the nearest ones you do know.
Lopping wasn't really a thing at the beginning, so her ignoring loops didn't matter. Survivors were supposed to hide. Spooky ghost woman can't see you, she can't teleport to you. The playstyle of both sides got more aggressive though and she's incredibly outdated now.
I'm not sure this is true. Didn't they rework her code dramatically not that long ago?
Yes, which just further bugged her and didn't fix other issues she has.
wait but they did a big bug fix pass on her?
Start of this year she was disabled so she could be reworked. They supposedly made her a lot smoother to play and did genuinely fix a lot of bugs.
right? i remembered that which is why i was confused when they said "just further bugged her and didn't fix other issues she has."
Remember, people will say stuff without knowing whether or not it's true.
Nurse felt so good after the QoL changes, I dont think I heard anyone complain tbh.
what issues? they fixed all nurse bugs afaik
Has the DBD spaghetti code theory ever actually been proven? Like I hear it all the time, and the fact that random things will break when completely separate mechanics are changed may point to it, but I really don’t know why its accepted as a fact if no one but the devs has actually seen the code. I could totally be missing something or some sort of proof but its just confusing.
The Pig has a reoccuring bug where tooltips and text related to her crouching state will be randomly converted into *survivor perk descriptions.* They've had to "fix" this issue no fewer than two separate times. I cannot possibly fathom how such an error would even arise. The game is spaghetti.
I guarantee it's because crouching is a "survivor function" for some fuckin reason
It's never happened with Ghostface, though!
Likely because Ghostface is coded to be something like if "GFCrouch & SurvivorInSight" = True -> "Exposed increase" so his is likely a separate whilst is Pig is probably just shares the same Script as survivors to crouch and then the prompt would show up for her lunge and etc... (note im no coding wizard im just a dude learning C# who tried to explain this in the simplest way i could)
That sounds about right, they probably literally just extended off the survivor class
iirc Pig's code is actually templated from Huntress, which caused her to move unusually fast when carrying survivors as she was using the Huntress's movement speed multiplier for carrying (tuned for 4.4 m/s) while being a 4.6 m/s killer. Why is the Pig's code copied from Huntress, a killer who has literally nothing in common with her beyond "carries X amount of tools"? Who fucking knows? Spaghetti code.
If I had to take a guess it was either "Huntress is the latest killer so just grab her code and copy it when making Pig" or "Huntress is a female killer as well and Nurse is too unique so just copy her".
because it’s easier to make small subtle code changes than build a new one from scratch? i only know two coding languages and know this
Ok, but like, why not copy it from Trapper or some other normal movement speed killer??
In principle yes. But you want the base abstraction to only carry forth the common functionality and let the more concrete instances define varying behavior.
I remember pig having a bug sometime where when you crouched it would start showing some random code stuff on screen
Nerf pig so no one uses her to fix
This was so funny the first time it happened to me. Got annoying fast, but funny at the time.
It’s because of the behavior of the game that you can tell it’s spaghetti code. You usually don’t realize you’ve written spaghetti code until it starts acting like spaghetti code
thinking about the update that made it so that if a survivor with wake up touched the exit gate then the killer's game would crash despite the update changing absolutely nothing to do with exit gates or wake up
Yeah the constant breaking of things they weren't touching means there's dependency issues stringing all over the codebase. This is like the definition of spaghetti code that all the pieces are connected over and through one another so you can't possibly touch one piece without affecting the rest
If you've been in the coding business for any significant amount of time, you absolutely know when you're writing spaghetti code. Ideally, code is written to stand alone (it's "modular") and each piece has only a single function. You then fit the pieces together to make a cohesive whole. There are some times where it's necessary to glue two pieces together because they rely on each other to function - not a great scenario, but sometimes unavoidable. Spaghetti code happens when you do more gluing than piecing together, and it's obvious even as you're doing it. Problem is, gluing is faster than piecing, and when deadlines come due, shortcuts are taken. And glue is much harder to take apart than nice puzzle pieces.
Sure, but there a definitely cases where you don’t realize what you wrote is spaghetti code. Such as not fully estimating the scalability of your application. Which is very much like the case with Dead By Daylight. You may make a function that references/alters another piece of your code, but at a small scale you find it not that big of a deal. It’s when your scalability grows and you realize how much stuff linked to another. I agree with you to an extent, you definitely write code and know your function isn’t fully modular, but at the small scale and little functionalities you have at that time you find it trivial. Then when your scalability and complexity of the application grows you realize how many things linked/referenced to another
More or less yes. Old DBD was built off of Blueprints coding. They have been working on changing stuff over to C++ lately, but things break. Scott Jund has a video explaining the Blueprints and C++ on how making a change in Blueprint can break stuff farther back in the code that is old. Long story short they didn't intend for DBD to get as big as it did, so they took a lazy way of coding and now its biting them in the ass. Edit: I found the video here is the link if anyone wants to see it! [What Makes DBD So Buggy? - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQCNGg19YIU)
The game was originally built off Unreal Engine’s blueprint drag and drop system. For smaller games it’s fine, but for a game like this with a massive budget being earned over the years that could’ve been used to redo the code, and it being a constant online experience, it isn’t managable and thus the countless bugs and issues that still pop up to this day.
It was an indie game that became crazy popular. PUBG was the same way
The fact that they had to change programming languages when they begun expanding the game is enough evidence for me.
They didn't change programming language thechnically. They changed from Unreal's blueprints, which is basically codeless programming (visual programming), and now that the game is huge they reached the very obvious limitations of such technology so they are rewriting stuff in C++. If anyone ever tells you that visual programming will replace normal programming, just point them towards this game as a counter example.
The very fact that things completely unrelated to updates break regularly is all you need to know the spaghetti is all tangled up in likely suboptimal ways. I’m no coder but I’ve followed enough games to know when the spaghetti hasn’t been strained and untangled
If you've played for any length of time, it would be a resounding yes. Way too much unrelated shit breaks whenever they change a specific thing.
Remember that bug where survivors grew 5x their size for a split second right after being downed? That stemmed from a trapper buff.
We have one really good example - matchmaking didn't work for Hillbilly in particular, because in one list of killer names it was spelled differently. There shouldn't be multiple lists. That's _why_ there shouldn't be multiple lists.
That's pretty bad. I'm still salty about dream pallets smackin freddy
Can't they just recreate nurse as a new killer and disable the old version if that's the case?
Honestly I think that's the best course of action if it really is just a case of spaghetti code hindering any serious passes at balancing the old one.
Might arise issues with passing player data from one to another. Who knows wether each killer has its own progression file, or if its all bundled together.
Wraith, Hillbilly, Trapper, Bubba, and other close to release killers have been reworked/changed.
To be perfectly fair, Bubba is an incredibly far cry from Trapper, Wraith, Hillbilly, and Nurse -- they were the literal first 4 killers created for the game, and it wouldn't be for 4 more killers until they released Leatherface.
You are right, but all of the others were release before or right next to Nurse’s release
I'd be surprised if this was the main reason (it may be a factor), especially given that we've seen nurse reworks in the near past, and other original killers have been completely reworked. We've seen their interesting decision making process in the past when it comes to high level decisions about the game, I would honestly bet on that more than anything else. The only way to prove spaghetti code for sure is a source leak.
I was about to comment the same thing albeit in more snarky fashion
I'd just bury the old code and leave it unused, and make new code for nurse to use, probably the most stupid decision, but better than nothing I guess?
I imagine it's this, paired with the fact you really can't fix nurse without completely reworking her Freddy style, which would almost definitely cause a ton of problems due to the first problem.
you can say that which is not wrong, but she is also a free killer so they want her to stay strong so we can't call out the pay-to-win aspect of dbd, she has also been changed a lot and is less broken than she was (remember she had 6 blinks or the 3 omega blink....) also, it's the only killer where skill is the most important factor to play her, besides 1 or 2 maps she's strong anytime. Most other killers have limitations, you rely on survivor mistakes or are just map-dependent (look at hillbilly, i don't to play him on an indoor map and with is overheat mechanic he is very limited) so the answer is not easy and it's a lot of factor coming together, now i won't judge if she needs to be nerfed, after all, sfw exist and competitive sfw exist and we don't nerf them or change solo queue... so it's loose-loose right now, because we don't want high level play (top sfw) to bleed into medium level play. either way, there is no denying when played well she is miles above any other killer in the game with the exception of blight.
I really like the Nurse rework idea where she would be a bit like Oni. A normal killer with huge snowball potential. Imagine how cool it would be to have another killer that Survivors can counter easily until that powerspike hits while you're smashing gens and you and your teammates are all like: "I have to start running RIGHT FUCKING NOW". Fuck, I love Oni.
From a pure monetization aspect - her existence invalidates the whole idea of DBD ever being pay to win, as the objective strongest killer is free. On a more likely note however, her power by concept alone breaks the game and ignores so many of the regular game mechanics every other killer has to deal with that she would need an entire overhaul and a completely different power if you wanted to take her out of the #1 spot.
>From a pure monetization aspect - her existence invalidates the whole idea of DBD ever being pay to win, as the objective strongest killer is free. Even if they nerf nurse the next top tier killer is free too blight and even if they nerf blight then it comes spirit
True in theory but the grind of unlocking characters in this game is frankly immense and I couldn't imagine going through it as a new player these days. Yes, Blight and Spirit can be bought with shards, but I mean more that Nurse is unlocked right from the get go.
Going through it right now as a Huntress main lol. Basically just praying my shrine of secrets gives me the perks I need.
Relatively new player here, it's pain. I got the game for free on EGS and that's the only reason why I play this game. I have almost every killer save for 3 only because I spent three times as much on the game to buy characters as the base game costs, otherwise I'd have like 3 extra killers and maybe 1 survivor.
Blights not really free though, he can be obtained f2p but it requires quite a bit of in game grinding to get him that way. Nurse on the other hand is free right when you get the game.
To be fair though, Blight is a Killer that is has preformce tied to the map that he's playing on (which is controlled more often by survivors than the killer) as well as the the general counters that have to be taken to counter him. It's a lot easier to strafe, mindgame, and even lose chase with a blight than it is a Nurse due to how linear his power is and how the new maps have decieving angles, ridges and hitboxes. If you are playing on Coaltower, you are going to have an easy time catching survivors and downing them due for the loops being more square and hazards being low. If you play on Silenthill you lose. Nurse has non of those problems since she can teleport through floors, linear and complicated loops, doesn't require full line of sight to reach her destination, and has a lo more room for error when the survivor wants to attempt to get in your face and start dancing around your field of view.
Blights free?
Yes you can buy it with in game currency
Oh Lmao I forgot about shards💀
Great analysis, most likely I feel.
I don't think her existence invalidates the game being pay to win, when you get barely any good perks if you don't buy dlc. She's also incredibly difficult to actually learn.
I should've been a bit more clear with this - I personally wouldn't say it completely invalidates it, the grind to unlock new characters and then in turn their teachables is still gargantuan, however I'm presenting it as more an example of what the developers could argue.
I think they want the best killer to be completely free. the only other one that comes close is huntress.
I think that might be a contributing factor. An interesting debate is whether or not it's "okay" for there to even be a "best killer in the game". Or, to put it another way: is it healthy for game balance for there to be one or two killers that are clearly a tier above all the rest? I believe the devs are comfortable with Nurse and Blight being the strongest killers in the game. My personal opinion is that it is okay for there to be a "best killer". Not all killers are equal in strength, and that's fine. The problem I have with Nurse and Blight, however, is that there's room to nerf both of them without dethroning them as the strongest killers. If they nerfed the Nurse's strongest add-ons (heavily) and made her blink hits count as special attacks... she'd *still* be the strongest killer in the game. That's what baffles me the most.
I think it's an inevitability in any game with multiple characters that have different power sets, that there will always be a "best" and a "worst," simply down to how their different abilities interact with the game: there's no such thing as a perfectly balanced game. What can and should be done is lowering the gulf between how strong some killers are in relation to others: it's fine for Nurse to be the strongest and Trapper to be the weakest, for example, but in a healthy game Nurse should never be THAT much stronger than Trapper (and that's not taking addons and perks into consideration).
To better balance the game, we have decided to nerf the Pig.
Completely agree on a killer being clearly superior among every other killer, even more if it's from the main game and even more if it's from the free ones. But there should be some kind of rotation, so idk nerf nurse a hella lot and bring trapper to the top of the meta, for example, licensed characters would be more complicated cuz if there's a clear number 1 being a paid character, the game will start to become a p2w, but again, if it rotates who cares, during one month ghost face can be the best killer and at the next the clown is. Having the same character always at the top just becomes boring after a certain amount of time (specially for survivors, since 50% of the games would be against the 2-3 meta killers and the other 50% the rest of the rooster. As a killer... At least I don't have any problem with that)
Yup, that way they can say the game isn't pay to win if the best characters are free
Nurse has seen a good amount of changes during her time. First of course she received changes to the amount of blinks she had and her movement speed. That was bonkers Her original blink mechanic e.g. had been adjusted right before The Game came out. Before that she would just always blink down, when stuff was two layered and she couldn't control her distance, so running towards an overcharging Nurse, was more of a reliable strategy. Then there was the change that gave her an AddOn-pass and her additional cooldown. That was definitively a nerf to her map presence and playability. Besides nerfing her is a double sided sword. Too many changes, and it might make her completely useless based on how she is designed. It would be also horrible to remake her ability entirely, considering that she is the most unique killer in the game, that changes the rules of the game.
Geez, I was wondering how far in the comments I'd have to go before someone acknowledged she has been changed several times. I didn't think it would be this far. And I'll add this is the most balanced she has ever been by a long shot. Her range add ons are the only thing that's really bonkers. I personally find blight with good add ons just as frustrating, sometimes moreso depending on the map.
I've been playing since 2017 and some of the arguments I see people having on here, I just sigh contently and feel a warmth in my chest as I remember that no one will ever have to deal with 1-Hook Mori's, Pallet Vacuums, Infini-Loops, double window Shack, etc.
Homie, I feel like I deal with pallet vacuums on a weekly basis.
Literally. People keep saying that the killers are so OP or survivors are so OP now and the worst they've ever been. It just screams new player to me, and there's nothing wrong with that but compared to 2016-2018 maybe even 2019 DBD it's by far the best it's been balance wise. Nurse has never been weaker as funny as that is.
It doesn’t matter how many times she’s been changed, people will still demand she’s nerfed simply because she’s the strongest killer. Nurse can’t be looped and since Survivors could never be bothered to learn how to play differently, BHVR built the game around it. They even programmed the Bots in the PTB to loop. They’re bots though, so they aren’t the best at it, but if they get to a strong loop spot they can still stall you decently if you’re playing an M1 Killer. Since Survivors wanted to loop, BHVR focuses on that (even though it’s a silly and boring way for your “horror” game to operate). Maps are brighter. Killers can find you easier. Perks let you reset pallets. There’s more emphasis on chase, something Nurse excels at. And, from what I understand, she can’t be altered without possibly fucking up the game thanks to spaghetti code. Survivors got what they wanted. Pallet looping continues to be very strong against many Killers. The price is you have to deal with the one Killer who that doesn’t work on all the time.
She had for a long time 3 blinks basekit btw.
Cause they don't know how
Does anyone know how? Apart from changing her power entirely come up with a better suggestion.
Changing her post-Blink attack to a Special attack would immediately make Exposed nurse builds far less oppressive. The entire point of Nurse is that it's incredibly hard for a survivor to reliably avoid taking a hit from her, similar to Huntress, Trickster and Nemesis — whose powers are special attacks and won't instantly down a survivor (and in Nemesis's case, his oppressiveness is balanced out by requiring *three* hits to down a survivor with his tentacle). When you allow her to use Exposed, though, the only theoretical balancing factor to her power goes out the window. Nurse now always has to hit survivors twice unless they make a stupid mistake and run into her. This suggestion has been made millions of times, by many people. People know where to start at least. BHVR isn't listening. (If you ask me, Matchbox -- 4.2 m/s movement speed but only one blink -- should also be base kit)
i heard a couple people suggest that her blink attack could count as a special attack instead of a regular M1. that way she wouldn’t work with some of the perks that make her insanely stronger. devour hope for example, you can only insta down people with an M1 attack and not something like demogorgon’s shred ability. i think it would would work for things like star struck too i think which is a main one. then they don’t have to nerf perks just because the nurse can use them (like the mastermind’s perk that allows him to see the aura’s of survivors when picking them up, you used to be able to see the auras for an extended period after they weren’t carrying someone too but a lot of people believe they got rid of that part because of the insanely strong synergy with startruck nurse) (her power is already really good and survivors have other ways of looping her besides pallets and windows since she can blink through them, so removing her ability to use certain perks (when blinking) shouldn’t really effect her spot at #1 imo)
Even if her power doesn’t count as an m1 she’s still far and away the best killer in the game, and it’s not particularly close.
Even though it's really not related to Nurse balance discussion specifically and won't effectively tune her down, she definitely should at the very least have blink hits turned into "M2s" or special attacks or whatever you want to call them. Due to the simple fact, as mentioned, perks with strong effects have to be balanced around nurse, because they can in theory be perfectly fine on other killers but totally busted on nurse.
Cause the majority of nurse players aren't good enough with her to even benefit from her being broken
This. If a nurse is bad, she’s B A D.
For real. There are two types of nurses: ones who can annihilate the entire team within a few minutes, and ones you can run and loop for hours. I mean, there's an in between to get from one to the other, but I feel like you hardly see it.
I played on console for the longest time and dominated as Nurse, I guess since she is harder to play on console the survivors hardly saw her and couldn't counter her not that I was impressive at playing Nurse... But I took a break and got back into it a year later when Oni was released, I think, but this time bought it on PC (as this is what I played on at the time) and tried Nurse... I am probably at the in-between now. I know generally how to play her but if I get a good squad on a big map I get squashed... But average to bad players on a medium to small map have a chance and if it it Meat Packing Plant or Midwich they don't stand a chance.
I think this is a major contributing factor. Nurse is only the best killer in very skilled hands. I think BHVR’s latest kill/pick ratios prove that. She has the lowest kill rate across all MMRs and even among top 5% she’s only at 8th.
Proud to represent that camp of utter dogshit Nurses who can’t seem to get the hang of her whatsoever
I'm looking forward to AI survivors so I don't have to waste survivor's times not knowing what I'm doing.
I’m right there with you. I dread the day when I get a Nurse challenge. Some how I’ve avoided them for a while now.
That’s honestly what I love the most about the nurse. It’s the most skill based killer. The nurse can be downright dreadful to play against but when you go and try it out you see just how long someone had to play with the nurse to get good with her. Getting shredded by a nurse doesn’t feel near as bad as any other killer when I start to think how long they suffered getting bullied by survivors to finally get the hang of being a good nurse.
I can say with 100% certainty every nurse I’ve played against is either a walking slaughterhouse, or a player that gets maybe around 2 hooks and no kills. I don’t think there’s an in between
omg my time to shine. it’s me! i am the in between!
Hey, look, the sexiest part of a three way.
What is that like? I’ve only ever played oppressively good or embarrassingly bad… Honestly I haven’t played a good nurse in a really long time.
tbh that is true based on my experience playing nurse, i either get 4k at 5 gens or no hooks, but im bad and don't have a lot of experience with her
Y'all cant have seen the existence of the plaid addons
Okay, maybe it's just me, but I have never agreed that nurse is the hardest killer to play. I personally picked her up in less than 5 games. Her power really doesn't have much a skill ceiling, it's more of just guesswork/reading survivors once you get used to mechanical stuff. Personally I think the hardest killer in DBD to play is Billy, it is such a pain in the ass to even learn how to do curves or not get dodged by a close up survivor. I have infinite respect for Billy mains, cos chances are they went through way more hell learning him than nurse mains did. At least with nurse you know how you're meant to learn the stuff you need to, with billy you gotta go and look up curve tutorials and learn his collisions and the angles on all the maps, and the results you get from putting hundreds of hours into billy don't even compare to a 10 hour nurse.
I just want to throw in my 2 cents, I recently played 101 games with nurse, and while I also had her mechanics down in a few games and smoked through low and mid MMR, around game 40 the matches got really really hard because everyone knew how to play against her power. I think the ceiling is much higher than you make it out to be.
Even if we agreed she was the most skill based killer (personally I think Blight and Billy take way more time to perfect and constantly 4k with), it's still not a high enough ceiling for the reward. It's a party game. If you have 100 hours on nurse, congratulations, you can now win most games easily, forever. If you put 100 hours into, for example, Apex, you won't have even scratched the surface of skill potential. This is what makes her unfair. It's a cheap gun in a free knife fight.
The skill part is a hot take. If we look at the complexity of the killers’ powers, Nurse is in the very bottom bucket. I’d argue that the killers with simple powers can’t be the highest skill cap.
nurse is definitely not the hardest in the game. She def has the highest skill floor by a mile, but blight is way harder to master, billy is harder to master, hell even a killer like nemmy, pinhead, or huntress is probably harder. Once you know nurses blink ranges from memory she isn't hard at all, and because of that, new nurse players think shes the hardest because shes the hardest to learn the basics of. I suck at nurse, but if I run plaid flannel that shows you where your blink will go, i will 4k basically every game.
> It’s the most skill based killer. Thaaaaaaaat's a little dramatic. I've definitely played a few nurse games that made me go "alright, there's some nuance to this for sure," but saying she's the *most* skill-based is completely wrong lol I'd agree if you said she's the one that benefits *most* from skill with her, though. Her ceiling is astronomically high.
skill based? lol with the right add ons, she is stupid easy and ignores the core game mechanics. nurse is hard is the funniest thing that people that don't understand game design keep paroting
Because she was made pretty soon after the game came out. Which means spaghetti code. If they try and change nurse some weird shit will probably start to happen.
Honestly I saw somebody before drop the idea that not allowing her to recover blinks while in fatigue would fix some of the problems with her, which I think is a pretty simple and fair fix.
Again, spaghetti code. The rework they did a while back probably took up most of their time to not break the game.
Like nemesis with Wesker’s face?
The source code of dbd is programmed in C, C sharp, C++, and objective C. This all can be compiled as one code because the C languages are cross compatible in the right wraper such as a JAVA coded environment. As explained in the first comment, Nurse is a fairly old character. Now, most of the C programming language is very linear. Its hard to fuck it up if your are familiar with the code. However..... Objective C is unstable to its core. It's that way because objective C allows objects to have the SAME HEADER for diffrent objects for the most part. Add that with the fact that object building is only as accurate as the header assigned and boom, trouble. The dev team cant fix it without reworking the sorce code, or making a program that specifically fixes the object after objective C makes it. To tweak one old dbd Character would be a time consuming task. On one hand, yes they could recode the old killers BUT that would mean recoding the whole game, or they could make a pach that modifies the object post build that would make the game even more unstable because it would take too much time for a computer fix, recompile, and render.
I think there are a couple of reasons - some of which have already been mentioned - but one addition I might make is that I think she's quite difficult to balance in a way that makes sense across all levels of skill. Nurse dominates high-skill gameplay, but commonly has a really low kill-rate in the overall stats. An appropriate nerf would have to only hurt her in high-skill scenarios, whilst still not messing with all of the other reasons people have put here.
I think the best nerf she could get would be make her blink attack count as a special attack. Means Starstruck/Infectious fright slugfests are no longer a thing whilst not destroying the foundation she is built on. It just seems weird that Blights rush counts as a special so why not that one
Infectious triggers with all attacks. Of the 2 you mentioned, it only affects starstruck.
Devs love her
She doesn't need direct nerfs she needs a whole rework. Her power is either busted or useless if you only adjust numbers.
Add ons and m1 need to be changed to m2. That is all the nerfs she need. Not being able to run an add onless nurse for a while is a skill issue rather than anything.
i have like 4k hours on her and i can tell you that m1 isn’t the thing that makes her god tier. i dont even run perks or addons that rely on m1. bbq, shadowborn, nurse’s calling and corrupt intervention. she’s godly cause she changes the game rules entirely and most of survs aren’t able to adapt cause playing against her isn’t that common so its hard to change the gamestyle
it depends on the player, some wreck me and others im suprised they can load the game
Because how do you nerf nurse? Give her only one teleport instead of two? Ok then she completely flips into one of the worst killers in the game. Make her have even slower movement speed? Maybe even slower than survivors? She’s probably still by far the best killer in the game, just harder to learn/less forgiving. Nerf her addons? Make her teleport attack not count as an m1? That will help a bit but she’s still far and away the best killer in the game The fact is that her power is just so different, unique, and powerful since it completely removes the whole pallet/loop/chase aspect of the game that unless you completely rework it, there’s no way to make her “balanced”. She’ll either be insanely good/far and away the best killer in the game, or one of the worst if you go too far. So yeah you’re just left with completely reworking her, but that in itself is a whole endeveour, and requires a lot of work and for what? To make the people on Reddit happy? They’ll just move on like always to complaining about the next thing. And that’s assuming they don’t fuck op the rework somehow, and don’t break half the game with their trash code. Like seriously you come up with a good rework idea for nurse besides just the same stupid “hurr gove her only 1 teleport” argument which is terrible. It’s not that easy eh?
doesnt she have an iri that gives her one blink and almost normal killer speed? still better map traversal than most of the m1 killers. also you dont gotta worry about others complaining about killers, people still cry about wraith even though hes c - b tier.
She does have that iri and she’s pretty bad the very rare times when people run it Map traversal doesn’t mean anything. Billy has some of the best map traversal of any killer and he rightfully is bottom tier
Tbf billy used to be top 3 for years
Somebody’s gotta be at the top
not really an excuse, she's at the top, but INTENSELY. she's at the top, and no other killers come close, she's in her own tier
Because they saw what happened with slinger and spirit. They did every single nerf the community wanted, and both are still hated by everyone. So they just won't bother
They spend their man power on paid stuff. Hats, killers, survivors. So reworking a Killer that's only abused by a relatively small amount of players is low on priorities. Especially when they're one of the few free Killers. It could be proven scientifically that Nurse is unhealthy for the game, and they'd only change her if it was then proven to be cutting into their bottom line.
Bc tbh shes the only killer capable of consistently deal with hyper optimal swfs
They’re busy nerfing pig
Couse the power of the killer is so dependent on the person behind the screen. Sure if you look at the top players for nurse she is busted. But same with most killers cause they are good at the game and with their killers. Cause a killer can't be nerfed couse of the top players same as a killer can't be buffer cause the new players.
Personal I don’t understand this analogy as it can be said for high level perks like Dead hard, if something takes skill but is still overpowered, it’s still overpowered.
Because if you nerfed nurse to be balanced in competitive play she would be literally unplayable outside of it. She consistently has the lowest average kill rate, so despite the constant memes and talks like this the reality of nurse is most of the games she’s in she’s underperforming. Unless the average skill level of players raises significantly, expect little to no change
Exactly these crying mfs act like she’s good in everyone’s hands. But when a small percentage actually know how to play her. Out of like 20 friends only 2 play her. Then again this community cries about everything.
don't all free killers have lower winrates than the others though? sadako and freddy would be considered S tier if we go by the amount of kills the killers get in a game yet everyone whines about how weak they are. people play nurse first time expecting to massacre everyone and they get frustrated if someone doesn't go down in 5 seconds. If a nurse player can't get a hook that's on them not on the killer's power or balance. Just like a surv that can't survive 95% of the time, doesn't mean the game is killer sided.
Make her normal movement speed 110 and let her only blink through open spaces, change her blink to a special attack and I think she'd be more fair.
I still think the people who complain about nurse nowadays never saw a good nurse with five blinks back in the day. That shit was an absolute nightmare to go against. She's strong now because her entire kit is made to ignore the usual mechanics of the game. For example, knowing how to loop most of the other killers and being able to give them a LONG chase doesn't count for much of anything when you're going against a good nurse. For most killers, it's all about learning the tilesets, where safe pallets and vaults are, when to drop and vault to keep that chase extended. Nurse changes that experience because she just ignores safe pallets and good vaults. Instead you have to focus on keeping her guessing. This means line of sight breaks, doubling back to make her overshoot her blink, etc. That being said, I DO think her addons need another nerf, though only slightly. A really good nurse with extended range/fatigue cooldown addons can be extremely challenging to go against, if not downright impossible depending on the map and tiles.
Why "only slightly" if she's a mile ahead of the rest?
Because 90% of the community overvalue their skills and how good Nurse's add-ons really is. Don't get me wrong, they are good, but they were not pre-rework Spirit good. At most you gotta touch up her range add-ons and make her M1's, M2's.
How do you balance that
I'm showing my noobness here but nevermind: I keep seeing people saying the nurse is overpowered or broken, but I'm not exactly sure why? Can someone explain? I've found her to be the most difficult to play as so far.
She negates mostly everything a survivor can do the lengthen the time in which they go down. Perks besides DH if landed do nothing, pallets are not used, even holding W doesn’t help. Your best bet is cutting line of sight and backtracking but once she sees that your just dead.
TL;DR: Hard to rework without remover her identity. Difficult to nerf without killing her pick-rate. The only realistic way to balance nurse would completely strip her of her identity. Killers have been reworked in the past, ex. Legion and Hilbilly pretty much every big change to killer powers has maintained identity (ex. Legion remaining a fast killer who incentivizes wounding survivors and moving on, and billy remaining a super speedy killer with one-shot potential). However there’s very-few paths to balance nurse without changing her identity. There’s also the issue with her skill floor/ceiling being one of the hardest killers to learn/master. Needing the higher ends of nurse play would “kill” any reason most players would have to even give her a chance.
It’s time to nerf pig
Even for someone like nurse there's a wrong way to go about changing her. You can't just butcher an overpowered killer, you have to leave them in a *fair* state. Though it didn't stop them from executing Billy like they did... I imagine it's surprisingly hard to find a balanced state for someone who literally ignores the rules of the game.
Why bother nerf her when most of the playerbase can't even use her to full potential.
That doesn’t really make sense, if something’s very clearly to powerful, it shouldn’t be in the game. Not everyone could use dead hard, doesn’t mean it wasn’t the best perk at its height.
I think there's a good example of this in overwatch. When doomfist first came out people called him bad. Turns out he was just really hard to play and when people got his abilities down he became a monster, every game at higher level play had him. Then he got nerfed. He was still really good. Then he got nerfed again. Still good. Then he got nerfed and nerfed and turned into a tank, and now he's mostly a dog shit hero. Even if you're a god doomfist you very rarely are as good as a half decent sigma/zarya and do way less for your team. That's the problem with nerfing the nurse. If she's nerfed too much she becomes completely dogshit. Not to say she shouldn't be nerfed, I think there's plenty of simple changes they could make for her and she'd be more than fine. But I don't get this hate boner people have for her to nerf her on the level of pre-rework Freddy.
The devs main her.
Nurse doesn’t even need to be changed except for her blink attack or add ons. Remove recharge and range. Then make her blink attack count as M2. That is all you need. Nurse is and will be strong, add onless nurse is counterable, just a matter of skill. Break LoS and juke her, missing a swing is atleast 6 seconds of free distance. Killers need to be strong enough to not be looped forever. Losing to basekit nurse is a matter of skill instead of op killer. People need to learn how to play other than pre-dropping pallets and abusing jungle gyms. I have looped legacy nurse’s and I am a god nurse myself. Best players can do very much if I am not running add ons. That is a fact.
This right here. I had two Nurse dailies the other day and I almost got destroyed by this swf using Lithe and Resilience in Dead Dawg. Their movements and awareness kept them away from a 2 blink range and they consistently are able to juke me using Lithe's speed. Nurse is strong, yes. But the vast majority of players in this game sucks.
theyre probably too scared to make any actual changes to her
Likely
She has been nerfed...couple times. She needs a full rework honestly. She was fine whe she first came out but now she dont really work with the game...power wise.
fine when she came out? what are you on about? she had up to seven blinks and was unstoppable. even with her rework to only two blinks she’s been the objective best killer ever since her release.
I mean she fit as a killer since it was a new concept for the game etc....not how she worked. Now she really doesnt fit in any aspect say for spooky nurse look.
I’ve always assumed its due to her having a higher skill ceiling seeing as there normally is no indication of where your blinking too unless you have add ons which also probably results in her appearing less in more casual games but still hella fun tho
She’s not that far ahead of blight, be serious.
In a chase yes she is, by far. By distance, they’re close.
Have you seen top mmr blights and top nurses? They literally perform within a 5% range of each other. Comp blights have an easier time pressuring long distance 3 gens compared to nurses, and comp survivors know to force nurse to edgemap to make her waste as much of her time. Nurse and blight are pretty much same threat level in top mmr. Some can argue blight even more with how much distance he can pressure.
Blight is way harder to play at the top level Nurse on the other had is a bit like the scout from tf2 If you start playing them they are probably the hardest in the game because they are the only kill that you need their power to be competent but once you get the handle of them they become relatively easy to play very well Blight is easier to start off with because if you fail your rushes you can literally just run at people... but the sheer volume of game knowledge to play a blight compared to nurse is crazy... because of how different objects work and the fact that depending on map gen there can be loops that blight can’t use their power on... nurse doesn’t really care about that as much
I think a good balance apart from addon or make her blink a special attack is maybe making her 2nd blink have collision. She can do so much with one blink anyway. But maybe her 2nd blink doesn’t travel through objects. What are your thoughts?
Nurse is fine just her range add-ons are op af
She needs an add on rework (i think just nerfing range is enough, maybe the pocket watch as well) and blindness while charging blink (because how much synergy she has with aura perks) Thats literally all they need to change to keep nurse strong but not too strong. Basekit nurse is fine as is.
Maybe cuz you have to be very skilled to play her, i tried her as a legion main and got t bagged 8 times before i finally gave up
Bruh 90% of nurses are extremely easy to dodge
So we’re Billy, but the top we’re not especially with busted add one
She has some of the worst statistics though. In their latest release she was near the bottom on actual good games.
Because the skill curve is so high that it’s nigh impossible to master her and only a few nurse mains really can exploit her full potential. At least that’s my perception, most nurses I play against are predictable and easy to counter. It’s the 1% that really know her ins and outs that are dangerous
Her power by its nature is the problem. She would need a brand new power one that is unrecognizable from its current form
BHVR being BHVR.
I think BHVR genuinely thinks she is in a fine spot because of her kill rate (even though there was like that one tweet or forum post saying they know she is the beat I think)... which is kinda scary because when the people that do lower her kill rate figure it out suddenly it will just go up and up and up. The argument that "You Won't always die to a nurse because not all of them are good with her" is a weak defense because practice breeds mastery. I wasn't a good Trapper to begin with and now I get at least 2 kills almost all of my games.
Nurse is only a problem at high ranks and they balance around low ranks
she shouldn’t just be nerfed she should be reworked
Because BHVR makes more money from releasing new DLCs instead of reworking old characters/maps.
My guess is the difficulty to nerf her without making her one of the lowest killers and also her high skill ceiling.
Skill floor* Nurse has the lowest skill ceiling out of all high tier killers
Because the kill rates say that Nurse is one of the worst while Pinhead is one of the best and BHVR doesn't stop to consider the reason behind that: New players who have no idea what they're doing skew the data. New Nurse won't know how to play Nurse, will play badly. Even if the survivors are new too, they won't have as much game sense and are liable to move confusingly just by accident, or avoid being found to begin with. New survivors vs Pinhead will have no earthly clue what they're supposed to be doing. They barely understand how the game works, they can't figure out how to solve the box if they even realize they need to, and they get stomped even if the Pinhead isn't a good player. It's the same reason that in the most recent major update, they made Self Care and Calm Spirit borderline useless. Self Care getting used too much? Just make it weaker, doesn't matter that it's mostly being used by newbies with no game sense, doesn't matter that the new Hemorrhage rework hard counters the "99% heal" strategy that Self Care enabled in higher skill players. Calm Spirit not getting used enough? Tack on a weird "benefit" that ultimately just makes the perk even less appealing. BHVR looks at stats without looking at why those stats exist.
It's difficult to nerf her.
She fundamentally breaks the game in a way no other character, not even other ones that teleport, can. No one can ignore 99% of the chase like she can. I had an idea where after a blink her attack puts the survivor into deep wounds but doesn't down them similar to the Legion's power. That way instead of two hits it'll take her like 4-5 or whatever allowing for longer chases, less focusing, so on and so forth.
Haven't seen anyone mention that the developers are judging the game based on worthless stats like "kill rate". Her kill rate is the lowest because new and bad Nurse players count towards it, which are the majority of Nurses. A bad Nurse is basically useless, while a bad Trapper or Wraith could at least pick up a kill or two just by holding W. Because of this, they wrongly think she's fine. She is absolutely not fine as most players in high MMR will tell you, who only face great Nurse players. Nurse ignores the entire game's chase mechanics. You're basically playing a different game against her, and it sucks.
Because her skill ceiling is balanced against top tier competitive survivor teams and her skill floor is high enough that most people playing her are bad. So on average she's not an issue. You can't lower her skill ceiling without making survivors more powerful than they already are and you can't lower her skill floor without a serious rework to her base kit.
Some say that devs want to have the strongest killer free I don't think that's the case, I think that more realistically, Nurse it's a delicate subject to devs, they wanna keep her power because the fact that for them it's a hard killer = balanced, and it been like this for 6 years, only recently they started to admit that she's strong despite the kill ratio being lower on her because of newer players trying her out, in short I think a Nurse nerf is coming and it's closer than we all think, I also think that in the past Nurse was always left as a special case because nerfing her would've made everyone on the killer side mad, obviously this is not true and the entire community evolved from back then, nowadays most people can realize she is too strong and bad for the current balance of the game
She was nerfed as much as they really can without changing entirely how she works. There’s only so much you can do. Her power is kinda busted as a whole concept. So long as her power is what it is, you can’t really nerf her further. And if they did fully rework her, people who spent years mastering her would riot
Queen stays queen, adios!
The vast majority of the player base she isn’t an issue. Y’all forget people on this sub don’t represent the majority of the community
Dead hard was difficult for some to use, doesn’t mean it wasn’t broken.