The challenge that the DBD team is facing
I would like to talk about what I think is going to be major challenges this game is facing.
Most games eventually die. I' ve being playing League of Legends for the 10th year in a row now, and I have seen it thrive over the years. I' m not gonna make up anything, most of the things I say come from the LoL Dev team itself, which I've been listening to since the very start.
What separates a successful game from a short living game?
Most very successful PvP games that are still alive share 2/3 major aspects.
1- A competitive scene.
Why is this important? The competitve scene keeps players enaged to the game even when they are not playing it. Pretty simple concept, not always you have the chance to play the game, maybe you are on holiday away from ur PC, maybe you are sick of playing it so you take time off. It is in that time that you need something that keeps you engaged, like streamers and tourneys.
A competitive scene also pushes the best players to play even better, to get into tourneys and championships. The high level of play sets the meta and shows limits and problems with the current meta much faster, helping the Devs to quickly fix problems within the game shown by pros. Also it helps growing the player base both by engaging new players and by making those who aspire to play for prizes to stick to the game.
The challenge DBD is facing right now links to the second point. We can' t have any sort of competitive play right now because the game is not balanced for SWF or a "survivor team". We could make an argument for it being even too survivor sided even with high level solos.
2- With this comes the second major point. Balance. The League team for instance patches once every 2 weeks, and every patch comes with major balance improvements and fixes. Patches also often target matchmaking issues . The gameplay itself changes relatively quickly.
Another important aspect of balancing the game is TO BALANCE THE GAME FOR ALL LEVELS OF PLAY. There is an important issue in DBD right now. The gap between SWF and solos is too big (and even between high rank solo and low rank solos maybe). The Dev team must make a major effort to close this gap. Unbalanced games are not fun. Maybe a group of SWF can have fun trolling the killer around for 10 or 50 or 100 games but eventually it' s gonna get boring. Sooner or later (we are already seeing this) killers are going to quit playing killer degrading the whole ecosystem.
3- An MMR based matchmaking. Assuming the Dev team comes up with an algorithm that determines the skill lv of a player, are you rearlly gonna match the best survs against the best killers in the current game state? What kind of games would those be?
What is a balanced game for you? Ideally you would like the game distribution to be a Gaussian curve where the peak is 2 kills 2 surv escaped? Do you think you would get this kind of distribution right now? How does the distribution would look right now?
Comments
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Sadly I can't relate to this, but the devs should take inspiration from this, and possibly every now and then ask good players who play both sides alot, or are very knowledgeable on their own side, what needs balancing.
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This brings up closing the SWF gap and solo players, so I'm going to talk about an interesting idea I has last night.
Kindred should become basekit and I'll explain why:
As a solo player, it is difficult to communicate among your teammates during matches, especially when one person is on the hook. You're not sure if someone is going for the save, you should go for the save and if anyone is going to save them at all. With kindred becoming basekit, solo players can identify if SWF teams are actually going for the rescue or just continue working on generators, this way they can safely decide on making the save. I think this would be a good idea for closing the gap between SWF and solo players.
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The Devs kinda dug this hole and now that they gotta sleep in it, now we're gonna feel bad?
The Devs get a lot of unneeded hate from people who don't know how games work. Like blaming dedicated servers for literally anything, or bitching to the Devs about bugs. Or thinking that new chase music equals the devs not working on bugs and patches.
I think, whether people are ignorant or not, the Devs do have an issue here; they keep altering everything except what needs to be altered. Most of the toxic issues that arise from the gameplay loop that remains untouched to this day (Tunneling, Camping, Gen Rushing) and are 'fixed' with niche perks that require the Killer or Survivor to play a very particular and unfun way in order to avoid these toxic things.
- Getting Tunneled? Slap on Decisive Strike.
- Don't like getting slugged? Unbreakable.
- Don't like camping? Put on Kindered.
- Hate Gen Rushing? Use 50% of your perk slots to slow down gens a little bit.
- Power Creep? Don't gotta worry about it if every perk that comes out is more niche and situational than the last.
Toxicity is what's killing this game, and it hasn't died because people lack alternatives. Predator: Hunting Grounds is grabbing some gazes, but whether it outdoes DbD is still in the air. I know its grabbing mine, as I now have an alternative in the Asymmetrical games that doesn't look like it will make me want to gouge my eyes out.
Toxicity would have been fixed in this game's early stages. If they had focused on some reworks to the sacrifice mechanics and generator repairs, we wouldn't have any issues now. But they leave these main objectives, which directly rewards toxic plays (Tunneling early, for example, gets an early kill, which is the Killer's only means of permanent pressure on the survivors) and add on bandaid fixes. For tunneling, it really seems all they did was re-implement Decisive Strike as an anti-tunnel perk (Which is better than the absurd place it was in before, believe me) and dust their hands off calling it a day.
I know they (at least, the average Devs) aren't responsible for all these decisions, and they're doing what they can. But their leadership? What are they doing? Where are they driving this ship? Because it feels like there's no vision beyond the next chapter of the game. It doesn't feel like the leadership has a clue where they want this game to be in a year, two years, or five years from now, beyond what the next chapter will be.
With this newest chapter, it feels like they're stepping in the right direction. They made fundamental changes to the Sabotaging mechanic to make it actually viable. Not meta-changing, but its an option I can make a build for now and expect it to work sometimes. Trapper can finally use 10% of his brain, and the Plague's power can be used a bit more strategically now.
But at this point, it feels like these changes are too little too late. Now, for any changes that still push me away from the game, I have to wait for 4 months or the next killer chapter for anything significant. And that isn't fun. And that's why I continue to uninstall after updates; the fundamentals feel like there's no changing it.
I wouldn't even care if this game had a competitive scene or not, I just want to actually reliably enjoy the game for once, whether I win or lose, rather than feel like I'm being told to hold off until the next patch. Because at this point, DbD feels like a ship that's sinking slowly into a pit of slime, and the leadership in charge of these changes are just pumping life into it every few months to keep it going as long as they can before it sinks.
As you said, games die, but not every game is as inherently frustrating as DbD it seems.
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DbD cant have a competitive scene, cause this game has a complete asymmetrical gameplay. Its just impossible.
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The challenge this game is facing is the devs' refusal to properly balance the game.
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