DBD PLAYERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!
I'm a new player, and the fact that the DBD community is largely held together by mutual distaste for the game we share is fascinating to me.
There are many ways in which DBD is a very unique platform. But this experience, i.e. being habitually involved with a platform you dislike, isn't one of them. It's one of the defining characteristics of social media. Facebook, Twitter, etc. What these platforms have taught creators is that they can efficiently fuel engagement by creating largely negative-feeling experiences punctuated by dopamine kicks. The cycle of chasing the dopamine kick via the platform that caused its deficit keeps players coming back. The only difference is Facebook gets paid by advertisers, and DBD gets paid through the store.
Cote basically confirmed my perspective when he told The King that DBD is supposed to be frustrating because that's what keeps players coming back.
The important point here is this: the anger you have as a survivor main or a killer main isn't because your opponent is abusing exploits.
Your anger is a design feature.
I don't know where this leaves us. But I'd like to see less unconstructive criticism directed at the community by the community, and less sloppy unconstructive criticism directed at the developers for particular exploits, and much more well-organized criticism directed at the developers for a high-level design strategy that exploits the neurochemistry of its player base for profit.
Comments
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Anger and frustration in DBD largely stem from two main places (in my opinion). One is from the game not functioning as expected. This takes many forms, but is mainly through bugs or latency. Very few multiplayer games I have played have generated the number of bugs/latency issues than I have seen in DBD. I'm not sure how the community could (or even should) rally around this. I understand that bugs are not intended, and that we got dedicated servers, but from the feedback i've seen, dedicated servers have not solved a lot of the latency issues that plague the game.
Second reason for frustration comes from the feeling of helplessness from situations you are put into during a match. Things like being hard camped, while technically is a losing strategy for killers, does not compensate the camped survivor. They do not get "distraction" BP or emblems for being on the hook with the killer near by, and it is certainly not engaging gameplay to watch everyone else do things while you are stuck on a hook. On the flip side, killers are expected to generate pressure on 4 different survivors simultaneously, often in 4 different places at the beginning of the match, often losing a gen or two within their first or second chase. These are just examples, but this frustration comes from a core game design element that, as you say, is basically a feature within the game. I don't agree that frustration should be the reason we unite. We should unite around mutual enjoyment of the game.
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That makes sense. I think if a bunch of people wrote a letter to the developers and articulated their love for what the game could be, about the want to have more mutual enjoyment that'd be really smart and good.
But does mutual enjoyment motivate change? It might be the opposite, right? If something is good, why change it?
Conversely, when a survivor main gets hard camped, they want it to stop: they retaliate in game, send a nasty message in the chat, write a post about balance, write a post about a perk, take a break from the game.
My only point is that anger should be redirected in a considerate way toward the devs, who have designed a game with the intent of making that player frustrated.
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You speak the truth man
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What if I enjoy the game and dont tend to get mad?
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i'm in. where do we start?
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Every game let's be honest almost every multiplayer game has it's leads to anger.I do you see you're point because, I find myself more induced with anger during a match,but it doesn't matter what game you get on there's toxic people. Me and my brother decided to play Fallout 76 for the free weekend and some guy followed us around a bit and went so far as to dressing in the outfit my brother had on. Even on xxxxx multiplayer games theirs some hacker or a guy who is obviously boosted developers kid got a special code whatever. You'll get you're kick on whatever game you're interested in or find fun.I mean look how long the last of us has been around and those guy's ######### cheat or they using exploits, but do you hear anyone complaining about those games leave DBD alone. Just talk about the ######### that needs to be fixed.
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That's awesome for you.
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You're right. All of the games could be different.
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We should write a letter to Behavior.
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We should write an open letter to Behavior. Get as many signatures as we can.
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Wanna sign our open letter?
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A game shouldn't be frustrating I agree, and I don't get why so many people defend it? A game is meant to have fun, it shouldn't make you want to tear your hairs out.
Dbd is a fun game, but it lacks depth, long term players are not treated well and short term players don' t like the game enough to stay.
So the game is caught in a limbo of frustrated players trying to have fun with the product they bought. Not a very good game if you ask me.
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Props for critiquing my logic and not falling back on calling me an outsider without making any point at all.
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Would you wanna sign an open letter?
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Agreed. I'd actually left this post alone, but it seems like Behavior's pretty actively censoring the community? I think an open letter to a third party like gamasutra or something similar could get more lasting results.
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