DbD is NOT new player friendly, let's change that.
Dead By Daylight is unique in so many ways. It implements a style of PvP gaming that has never been replicated. The idea of a killer chasing their prey is fresh and innovative and because of the 4v1 gameplay it promotes the importance of teamwork like never before. There is a reason so many players love it. There are also a few reasons why many have tried to join the community but quickly backed away after realizing a few key elements about it. After all, Dead By Daylight has sold more than 5 million copies worldwide yet the average daily player base is only roughly 40,000 players.
The game has an extremely steep learning curve and game play is extremely competitive, ruthless, and unforgiving. New players' only place to learn is in custom matches which don't reward any progress towards character progression. The game mode is great for exploring and learning things such as map knowledge or practicing techniques with friends but those techs should initially be discovered through live game play. There is a lot to learn before someone can compete along side par level players. A casual public game mode would give everyone some breathing room to see, process, understand, and apply game mechanics viably in order to later compete in ranked matches. Also, a casual game mode would give part time players a place to play where they can get a few matches in here and there just to have fun and unwind.
When the game was born there were only 3 killers and 4 survivors. The game has evolved quite a bit since then, now with 40 characters and 120 unlockable perks. Because of that the quest for character progression has become slow and extensive. New survivors and killers alike average far fewer points per match than experienced players. I’m sure everyone has witnessed new survivors escape through the hatch with fewer than 10K points or die with fewer than 5K points because they are still unsure of proper game play or lack the experience to escape on even a semi-regular basis. I have, and it happens ALL the time which makes early character progression excessively slow during a phase when players are trying to get comfortable and decide what characters they want to main. Now assuming they have decided for either role comes the task of unlocking the teachable perks they want on their main. Having to level multiple other characters to at least level 30 in order to get some of them is yet another roadblock in the progression system.
Players want to be able to be comfortable while having fun. They also want to feel like they are being rewarded for their efforts. I think many new players have a degree of frustration sometimes with the rate they earn character progression causing them to lose morale and move on. These issues may seem trivial or unimportant but they are the reasons that many people I have personally come across have given up on Dead By Daylight and moved on the other games. I urge the development team to take a look at this and see if there is anything that can be done in terms of improvement.
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Peanits actually mentioned in my thread about how he feels about a Casual Mode in DBD.
And I have the same opinion, I feel like having a Casual Mode will just fracture the playerbase even more.
I feel like a better approach is to give new players an incentive to keep playing until they have reached a high enough rank/level for them to be able to grind more comfortably with perks that are more suited for them to play and experiment with.
Maybe like a Bloodpoint bonus that decreases incrementally the closer to the level threshold you are. Though that may be a horrible idea that would disincentivize people from playing because they aren't getting as much rewards.
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I understand yet many players, particularly new ones have trouble with these things. Do you think it comes from something else such as matchmaking? I know the devs have spoke on stream about optimizing or reworking matchmaking and/or the rank or emblem system. Also, what about character progression. It's slow for veteran players but for new players it's borderline unreasonable, don't you think?
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Needs to start at matchmaking. PERIOD.
Rank 20 Killers matching against red ranks is unacceptable and leads to new players literally being bullied by toxic survivors.
I’d have no idea how you’d even begin tbh.
Matchmakings been broken since i can remember.
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I agree it is an unreasonable grind for new players, BHVR really needs to add more to entice new players to stay in the game and endure the grind by lessening it when they start playing.
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No, that is intended. White Ranks (Rank 20-16) don't have any matchmaking whatsoever because getting a match there can take upwards to an hour. So they changed it so they get matched with everyone, so they at least can get into a game rather than wait up to an hour to just get into one game.
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The more you know.
I had no idea as that truly sounds so unreasonable.
Surely you’d take a slow wait time to be matched with someone around your supposed “skill” level than someone blatantly above it.
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I think that one thing that could help a lot with new player friendliness would be the inclusion of new Ranks, 21 through 25.
New accounts would start at Rank 25 for both roles, and rank resets will never take you below Rank 20. The first five ranks would essentially guarentee matching with other players roughly as new as you are.
Another possibility could be a new Tome that all new accounts start on by default, that rewards far higher BP than usual for completing its tasks but has only one chapter, essentially as a tutorial Tome. Pretty much give players hundreds of thousands of BP out of the gate for doing tasks starting with "Kill a Survivor", "Complete your first Generator" then graduating to other tasks such as getting your first 4K, surviving your first game, levelling up two different Killers to Level 10, stunning a Killer with a pallet, getting two different Survivors downed at the same time, and so on. Give players tasks specifically designed to get them to try new things and new strategies that'll help them naturally get a feel for what the game's about while giving them an early BP boost along the way.
That, and changes to how BP is earned in general would be nice. Made a thread about this ages back but the TL:DR is that all Killers should have a BP addon, all killer BP addons should increase BP earnings post-match by 50%, and Survivors should get changes to their base BP earnings so they're more consistent, particularly in categories like Survival, and so Survivors that play a specific role, like the team's looper or the team's stealthy genpopper, are not punished for not being jacks of all trades. (as Killers don't need to worry about that kind of stuff, I fail to see why Survivors should be punished for choosing a playstyle)
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The grind is the most serious problem in my opinion. It's not necessarily a bad thing for a game to have a steep learning curve (although having said that, I wouldn't be opposed to having some kind of training mode, basically the equivalent of single-player KYF). The good news is the devs have confirmed that reducing the grind is on "The List" - that is, it is something that they want to change and they are looking into ways to improve it.
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I agree that the game is not friendly to new players. There is too much going on at first, a lot of characters, both killers and survivors, a lot of perks, a lot of maps, items, add-ons. Learning everything takes a lot of time. That said, I don't know if casual games would solve the problem. I mean, what is the exact difference, just ranks? Because I see a lot of people just moving from the ranked games for casual ones, but still playing the same. For example, I don't care about ranks, never did, I want points, that is all.
Now, if they brought a casual option, that would be good and I would probably prefer it to the ranked ones, but that would mean I would also be paired with people who just started playing. Worse, high rank killers, who hate going against red rank survivors, would probably move over to casual ranks too, if the only difference is the ranks, meaning a rank 1 killer on the ranked mode could be paired with any survivor, new or not. Now, if the casual mode had only half BP as rewards, that would change things, but while new players could learn, they would get only half the BP, so their grind would be even worse, so that's not a solution either...
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Everytime any friend of mine wants to try the game I take them with me to a KYF lobby after they do both tutorials. Then I teach them survivors mechanics from killer perspective and survivor perspective.
After some chases and lectures, we qeue together. Pretty effective. Is not like they become gods at the game but at least they know what they are doing, what are the goals and how to reach them.
I love to share a good game experience with my friends but it's true that this game is not newbie friendly. It's uncommon to read advice in lobby or postmatch even at higher ranks (even when asking).
One of my friends ask me the other day "why I can't see what that red thing means?" I couldn't answer more than "it's red so it's something bad". It was a freddy addon. This happens a lot with other addons/perks, my friends tend to ask about tanatophobia too because it's common to see them in killer builds. I think is not that hard to have an option to unlock the mouse, hover over and show a description. Take Smite as example, you can hold [alt] key while playing to unlock your mouse and hover over the UI to show some extra info.
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I can agree with this. I have 6 different friends whom I convinced to get DBD and try it out. They all can agree that the game is pretty fun up until about 100 hours in. I always hear the same thing from them, and I can honestly agree with what they're saying:
- BloodPoint grind is way too hard and incredibly time consuming. Especially considering the number of both killer and survivors.
- Player toxicity in post-game chat really makes the game as a whole, look bad.
- Bad servers/latency - Despite having a good PC/Internet. Speed/Ping tests are 100% fine.
- Solo queue survivor sucks horribly.
- Going up against any decent Deathslinger, in it's entirety. Feels incredibly oppressive to survivors.
- Same case as above, but to add on: Guns do NOT belong in DBD.
- Almost every Hillbilly player is an infectious fright/insta-saw tryhard.
- Most Spirit players aren't any better (than the previous mentioned).
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