Why Player Feedback Is Ignored and Development is Slow (Comparing Warframe and DBD)
Well, after observing these most recent changes to The Trickster, as well as how the devs keep repeating the same mistakes for the disaster that was A Binding of Kin's release, the new UI's release, and how colorblindness was addressed, I think I can say now that I've figured out why DBD player feedback is mostly ignored. Let's compare how feedback is handled in DBD to Digital Extremes' Warframe.
I'll preface this by saying that I am not making an argument as to which game is better or that Warframe isn't flawed. This is a comparison as to how the community team interacts with their players, how content is released, and feedback is received and implemented.
3 Month Release Cycle
Even after people constantly urged BHVR to stop releasing new chapters and focus on game balance, they are committed to releasing a killer and survivor, sometimes a new map/map rework, 6 new perks, and 1-5 balance changes... oh and some bug fixes.
Meanwhile, in 1.5 months, Warframe will:
- release 2 new Warframes
- release a Primed Warframe
- release a new event
- add 3 additional mission types
- completely revamp and rebalance an expansive gameplay system: Railjack
- add a new area
- add new bosses and expand on Kingpin Lich system
- rework a Warframe
- actually improve the UI
- and more...
Free to play game BTW.
How does Warframe do so much more in only half the time? The devs know what to focus on, because:
Transparency and Feedback Exchange
The team working on Warframe are transparent with their players, with monthly streams reviewing what's coming and what's ready for release. They also have many multiple threads on the forums in which the community team has direct interaction with the playerbase for feedback.
Meanwhile, DBD's team does the occasional Q&A, and makes a forums megathread on feedback for what'll be changed before springing the changes onto the player without any interaction between the dev and player, and with minimal feedback incorporated, if any on release.
So clearly, the problem must be that the community team at BHVR is not working with their community-- not doing their job, because it doesn't make sense to me that so little can be improved or added in 3 months of time in a game as small as DBD compared to what Warframe does. The devs and the community actually interact with each other, and BHVR needs to follow suit, interact with their community, and focus on improving the game instead of adding more and more broken and redundant content.
Alright, that's it. Thought a little comparison in releases would be fun.
Can't wait for the hellfire I'll probably wake up to tomorrow.
Comments
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i agree that dbd should be more vocal and transparent with it's community but you can't really compare warframe to dbd when it comes to balance changes. they are two completely different game types.
warframe can probably take the feedback they get from their players more into consideration vs a game like dbd where the playerbase is EXTREMELY divided and the balancing is tricky.
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I never played Warframe that much since it isnt really something for me, but i always loved how they do everything.
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BHVR also has a game where everything is essentially 'spaghetti code'- meaning one change can affect a slew of different functions, and like spaghetti its not neat and it can create a mess real quick. This is a big reason- and failure- why the devs take their time on updates, because their changes like this can quickly and easily break the game with hundreds of bugs.
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I never played warframe. I don't know what warframe is.
I don't know what adding a warframe implies on workload.
I don't know what is a primed warframe.
I don't know what adding different mission types mean.
so honestly... I have no idea what I should take from your post besides "these guys have more stuff on a list, therefore the work better and/or more".
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Another fact:
Warframe's team is SMALLER while it's community is BIGGER, and that's not just on the genre.
I think BHVR just doesn't have a plan on what to do or doesn't dare to try something new for whatever reason. And I think in part the vocal toxicity of this community is to blame:
Whenever someone suggests new modes, brings in ideas for new gameplay elements, etc, watch them crawl out of their holes and curbstomp things to preserve their precious 'genrush and loop the killer ad nauseam'/'slug for the 4k' tactics.
Until the devs don't start telling that part of the community to bugger off, I doubt dbd will get better.
(watch some of the aforementioned toxics crawl into here now and bring up how not that many people actually stopped playing dbd... ignoring that there's a constant influx of curious newcomers that often leave fairly quickly because the game is like it is)
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It's because BHVR is lazy. They have no competition as of now which is why their working speed and quality is so lackluster.
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In the time it took you to write this you could've found out with a simple google search, but okay.
A Warframe is a character with special abilties that the player controls, and Primed is an upgraded version.
It's really not that difficult of a concept to understand.
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so uhh, why arent they fixing it?
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I literally just got on the forums when you wrote this lol.
Basically it was a mess when they made it but 5 years and dozens of fixes, updates, and versions later it compounded to an even larger mess. The longer thy go w/o fixing it the worse it gets.
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That would take an immense amount of time and would halt content completely
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Typical devs, rather make short term profits than fix their game
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I'd rather content be halted in order for the game to have basic decent functionality rather than have more half-assed content like All-Kill and A Binding of Kin be added.
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they have the manpower and resources to pull it off, or would you rather the game continue to be awful? I'm guessing you are they guy that buys every skin and chapter and rift pass because if you think the argument of "OmG mUh cOnTeNt" is good enough to warrant the state that dbd is in, then you are apart of the problem.
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Well if they did listen they would of heard the almost 2 months of saying we should have a health chapter what's the point in a new chapter when nobody's going to play it because they did the exact opposite of what people said
Hey trickster is sorta weak 90% of the people
Got it let's basically nerf one of his 2 good addons
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What if... BHVR sold DBD to Digital Extremes...?
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I don't think the two are comparable. Warframe is made of a big number of small "bubbles" of content, which interact very little (or at all) with other bubbles. That means that they can do anything they want with such bubbles without affecting the rest of the game.
DbD on the other hand is all intertwined, and just a little thing can shake the game. Just think of the impact of something small like a single perk can have (Hex: Undying just to make a recent example).
Also Digital Extremes tends to create "bubbles" and then forget about them for years, which is something I really don't like about them.
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Asymmetrical Games are much harder to change than Symmetrical games. People keep saying "Oh, BHVR has no competition so they don't need to fix the game!" Yet, in the past year we've received MAJOR graphical updates to maps at absolutely no cost to us. The Devs have a plan. Maybe they don't share it with us as much as we'd like. But they do have one. They make small changes here and there, which gives us time to adapt to smaller changes rather than a bunch of changes all at once. I know I'm excited for what they'll have for us for the 5th anniversary. Last year they started Map Changes. Now those are almost finished. Who knows what's coming next?
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The devs behind warframe are dons
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A friend speculated that they are coding with something like blueprint. which theoretically makes coding easier, but produces an utter gallimaufry of code that's hard to fix without fully 'recoding' a section
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I don’t buy skins regularly and use my auric cells from the rift to buy the next one. The game is in an okay state at the moment but trickster chapter will probably bring in more bugs
New content is great for player retention
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The problem is that we don't know what they are planning. Almost ever.
How will the new MMR work? What is the goal for game balance? What is being done to address balance issues? Why are perks that are useless or nearly useless not being improved, and perks that are considered problematic being targeted or not targeted? What killers are on the docket for a re-work/add-on pass? What do they consider when re-working a map? Are new mechanics in the pipeline? What QoL fixes are on the horizon?
Apparently the answer is you'll find out when we put them in the game, or you don't need to know. That's not how you interact with your community. We know they're doing work, we can see changes coming out - but they need to tell the community what the goals are, what is upcoming, and why they are making changes. The vague answers or just saying yes and no to things on Q&A streams don't help.
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That's fair- can't be as critical when we're not the ones programming the game, but you can't deny that they could have done a smoother transition, or at least put in a health chapter or two to fix major issues in the game.
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They don't share things with us because as soon as they decide something different, everyone will inevitably complain. Take the planned OoO change. If it's ANYTHING different than that, you can bet the community will be like "The devs said..." and leave out that they explicitly said "This may not be the final version."
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Watch out guys, don’t go into a restaurant and tell your waiter that your entree was undercooked because you’re not working in the kitchen helping them. Don’t give valid criticism to the sports team you bought season tickets to watch, you’re not on the field with them. Better yet don’t have any opinion or feedback on politics ever, you’re not in office with them.
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It's not fair to assume that when this is literally the FIRST time they've shown us what they plan to do in advance. It's why people have issues with what gets changed, because feedback isn't listened to and plans aren't transparent, so they don't know how to do things the right way.
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BHVR knows that they will get a chunk of money from the K Pop stans ( not that there is anything wrong with that group) + Cosmetic sales....why fix the game? Ask yourself how much money can they make from a "fixing the game" patch?.....it's all about the cash grab.
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Yeah, most games do way better with releasing content than DBD.
"But they're different games!!!11!1!111! You can't compare them?!?!?!12!??1//1/!"
Watch me
Smite: Battleground of the Gods
A free to play MOBA by Hi-Rez/Titan Forge
What do we get in that?
A new god with at least 4 abilities every other month, new items, old items being changed, gods getting buffed/nerfed and reworked.
That's honestly not a lot, tbh, around the same as dbd: new chapter every few months with buffs and nerfs here and there.
BUT, smite also has 113 gods, well over 500 abilities amongst them, dozens of items, the passive abilities of the gods, and the Ai in game. The devs need to understand how their items and gods interact with eachother and the environment, and their balance is somehow pretty decent. Even at the Highest level of play, the SPL, off meta gods were picked. Some gods are obviously better than others, but almost all of them are competitively viable.
And then we have DBD who releases the twins, without any thought of how they work with the game. Literally unplayable on maps like Haddonfield, gets stuck on random hitboxes, has no synergy with most perks, can be played in a really scummy way. DBD also only has 2 killers that are competitively viable. Need something a little more fresh? How about The Trickster? His bouncy blades are completely rng based since the hitboxes are woefully inaccurate, he also has poor synergy with most perks, and is really weak for the same reason other killers are or were weak.
Now the problem isn't that the devs are lazy, it's that they know they only need to do the bare minimum to get by. What else are you going to play to scratch that DBD itch? Nothing, because all the other games like it are dead.
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That's not the point. People are going to complain regardless of when they share information, but they need to get community feedback early and often. What they did with OoO is an example of what they should be doing, it should be the case for most changes. Tell people what you're doing and why you're doing it.
You are always going to have scummy people cherry-picking statements, you shouldn't just stop communicating because some people refuse to actually listen. If it's not what they originally proposed, they should tell us why. If they're making adjustments to perks/killers/addons/maps, tell us why. If they're targeting some portions of the game over others, tell us why.
They need to give us a sense that they know what they're doing with the changes being made, and not just "Does this change work?"
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...
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AFAIK, it's not 2 new Warframes, it's just Sevagoth coming in the next patch. I don't recall them teasing the one after Sevagoth, either.
A prime warframe is a skin, it's not that big a deal.
AFAIK, there is no new event planned in the next 1.5 months for Warframe.
I don't think there's 3 additional mission types either.
The Railjack revamp was a long time coming, that's been in the pipeline for, what, a year now? And it's not looking that good, either.
New area, that's true, but it's likely going to be a very wide, very open space with little in it aside from reused assets from a previous tileset, assuming you're referring to the Corpus Proxima.
New bosses and the lich system expansion: I'm not sure that's coming with this update, I'm fairly sure that's been postponed for the update after the next.
Zephyr rework looks good, though. I didn't know about that, but it seems they're hitting some good marks on her.
UI improvements seem all right.
I mean, DE deserves credit for their work ethic, they do put in quite a bit of work, but it's not as grandiose as you make it seem, and you have to remember that Warframe at some point was in the top 10 highest grossing games on Steam, so they have likely got waaaaay more manpower to work with than BHVR.
The other thing to keep in mind is that balance is hardly a concern in Warframe, while it is the most complicated thing in DBD. Previous poster mentions SMITE, which also has to deal with balance, but that's balance in a symmetrical game, which is way less complicated than the obscene amount of game elements that DBD is comprised of.
This game is one of the most complex designs, so introducing -any- new content or changes to existing content is going to take way more effort here than in games like SMITE or Warframe.
I get that BHVR is not perfect, but it IS fair to say that you can't really compare DBD to other games.
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Oh hiya Fire. :) Was using the time between Lavos' release and Call of the Tempastari's release, though it was wrong of me to put 1.5 months, as that was completely unintentional, that should actually say 3.
I suppose it would be fair to say that balance is much more important in DBD than Warframe, however, I can't get behind the idea of it taking 3 months to change 3 perks and update a killer power when these have been complaints for years.
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That might have something to do with certification. I think DE distributes its patches via its own launcher and their own servers, whereas BHVR does it via Steam. It's likely that if any patch gets distributed via Steam, they have to go through the certification process to check whether the code is safe, and I imagine that there's a pricetag on that. That might make them want to bundle changes up together as much as possible.
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I think management at behavior is bad.
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