Dead By Daylight is NOT a competitive game
I see too many people making the case that it is, but it simply is not. It is a party game. For those disagreeing:
- post-game doesnt reward you for whatever you decide a win is, nor does it punish you for whatever you decide a loss is.
- skill rarely dictates who wins, RNG has a bigger impact on the end result of a game.
- There is a way to play around the RNG by playing as if you were about to lose the entire game, sure, but you can do that in party games too.
- Both sides can "win" if their personal win condition is met. You can double pip as a survivor and consider that a win even though the killer gets a 4k and decides that to be their win. Not a single competitive game has both sides winning, if both sides perform equally good, it tends to be a tie.
- You could have a 50 game "losing" streak, while still gaining ranks. While also having a 50 "win" streak while losing ranks.
- You cannot choose to play casual games or competitive games, therefor the default goes to casual.
- Any tournament won is essentially meaningless.
For people saying you're competing with the opponent. No, you're really not. You dont share the same objectives. You are in opposition of someone. Opposition doesnt mean competition. In war, you dont compete with the enemy who kills the most soldiers, but enemy soldiers are your opposition. Just because you think you're competing, doesnt mean you're actually competing.
The competitive scene of dead by daylight is more comparable to the competitive scene in speedrunning. You are competing with other players in the competitive scene.
But all the facts point to Dead By Daylight being a casual party asymmetric horror game.
It could be a competitive game at one point, sure, but the only competitive scene is third party organized tournaments. But what does winning a title in those tournaments mean outside the third party competitive scene? Nothing, because the game is not competitive.
Comments
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I would give my left pinky toe if it meant BHVR stopped chasing comp sweaty players and focused on making the game fun. If there were more modes, experimental play styles, and big shake-ups to the formula, this game would shoot up in renown much more than if it was some sweaty e-sports starring Sally and Rin.
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When this game gets really competitive it will probably die tbh
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Well BHVR sure treats it as one with the attempts at trying to give it a successful mmr or SBM system.
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The one big problem is the ranking system. If the game stuck only to a level that only the player saw; kind of like Friday the 13th did with it's leveling system then a lot of the sweaty competition could go away. Sure you're still going to get people who want to play hard to win but that's the same for every game. though most games that use that system give you rewards for leveling up, DBD gives you shards and that's about it.
the ranks effect matchmaking and I'm glad they're working on a system that will make them meaningless (if they ever get it to work right)
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I dont think it will, I think adding a ranked gamemode would increase the overall fun as competitive players have a place to play extremely sweaty builds. They have a working MMR system that could easily work in a ranked setting. Once they have competitive players seperated from casual players, that is when you can truly see the difference between perks and killers being balanced or not, because competitive players will only want to use the best builds and killers against each other, making it also easier to balance certain perks, items and addons.
Right now, statistics are a bit scewed, because extremely overpowered builds get hidden by the masses. Which is why they say Pig isnt a weak killer, even though she objectively is a weak killer. She is effective at getting kills, purely because her power allows her to extend the game much longer. But that extension is even more RNG than actual RNG because keys are guaranteed to be in a specific box, rather than a chance of the key being in any box.
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It's how every other asymmetrical game died so yeah when DbD gets too overrun with sweats it's gonna drive more people away. Still hasn't happened yet though.
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Dude, its PVP; PVP is inherently competitive. Imbalanced and not ready for tourney play sure, but definitely a competitive game by definition. No amount of RNG, imbalance or differing objectives negates the competitive nature of the game, they just dictate how fair the competition is.
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Trust me I know I was an avid evolve player
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Didn't Evolve die because of the bad DLC-policy?
Btw Emet was the best healer.
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Those are attempts to make matchmaking more fun in general tho. I've had games as a rank 1 survivor facing a rank 13 killer. Or a rank 1 killer facing rank 20 survivors. Matchmaking needs some skill related search engine to prevent unfun games from happening too often. But matchmaking shouldnt be dictated by mmr.
Just like Matchmaking used to be dictated by rank and rank alone, it wasnt fun. Matchmaking in dbd needs to be a mix of playtime, skill and fun rating(yes, the fun rating post-match actually has impact on your future games, especially since the devs love to use those rating systems to see whether the game is fun or not, so anyone disliking current hag or spirit, make sure to rate it 1/5 every game).
If they simply add a gamemode that is purely about MMR, then all competitive players would have a place they can be, while also removing quite a hefty chunk of sweaty players from normal matchmaking. Making the average game more fun to play.
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Both tbh. It’s dlc policy was garbage but they also pushed esports too much and the meta quickly formed
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Mario Party is also PVP. Yet not a competitive game. Opposition is not competition.
You can personally infer opposition to be competition, but that is a personal opinion. Competition requires something to compete for. There is nothing you're competing for.
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DbD has no competitive playlist. But i dont understand your point. What changes that?
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I mean, a meta is going to form regardless because there will inevitably be people who try to optimize their gameplay.
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Competition requires something to compete for. The only thing you're competing for is an arbitrary definition you have set for yourself. This is why basement bubba protecting his chest being a "win" is a valid playstyle. I could win 10000 games in a row with basement bubba, and it wouldnt matter a bit.
As it stands right now, Tetris is more competitive than DBD.
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Mario 64 is competitive.
Anything can be made competitive. Even if that wasn't the design.
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Yeah but it felt like you had to run the meta to win most the time
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Neither was smash bros. but that didn't stop the community from making it so.
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Incorrect. The game doesn't define how it is played. DbD is as competitive as the individual Players taking part in a match, or tracking their progress, and so on want to make it. Competitive is defined by individuals, not the game, hobby, process, or whatever. I've seen people get competitive over Xmas cards before.
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There is a big discussion about a win in dbd, but if we are honest in other games you would say a rank up is a win and nobody would disagree. Just because many are not satisfied with that and make their own win condition (myself included) doesnt mean that their is no official condition. Now you could say every player could pip in the same match etc. But even a bad designed win condition is still a win condition.
But when we discuss about this we waste too much time.
So i will ask two questions.
What is the conclusion when dbd is not a party game?
And what are other party games? (Fall guys or mario party have a win condition)
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It's speedrunning site is competitive. Which is a dedicated third party group. The game itself is not competitive, which is my point.
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The community is what makes a game competitive.
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100% agree. An rng based game can t be competitive just make the damn game fun and give up the stupid dbd esports dream
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"What is the conclusion when dbd is not a party game?"
I mean, the evidence already points to it being a party game. That's like saying "what is the conclusion when the sky is not blue". All the evidence points to the sky being blue.
"And what are other party games? (Fall guys or mario party have a win condition)"
This falls back to your previously mentioned "if we are honest in other games you would say a rank up is a win and nobody would disagree.".
This is the true win condition set by the game. You gain pips. There is nothing you gain by gaining pips other than bragging rights, you can face people who spend 500 hours playing the game having the same amount of pips as someone who played 5000 hours and they both would have equal chances of "winning". But what overal action makes you gain pips? That is what I mean with there being no real win-condition. You can farm all game as a killer and still earn a pip, you can rush kills and earn a pip, you can stand afk for 10 minutes for a NOED+Bloodwarden game and still earn a pip(it would depend mostly on how quick survivors finish gens, sure, but its still a pip). Not all party games have a single winner, not all party games have multiple winners. But only in party games can everyone win. If you were to have equal stars and coins at the end of mario party, everyone would be declared the winner.
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It can have an e-sport side to it, but they really need to add a seperate gamemode for that. This game can be set in a tournament setting. In fact, I am certain that if there was a competitive gamemode to DBD, there would be more pressure into fixing certain exploits that have been in the game for over a year, because there would be a dedicated group that's going to seek all the exploits they possibly can to get the upperhand.
Having a competitive scene isnt bad, but the only menu button that supports true competitive play is "kill your friends". The MMR system would be fine as it is right now if there was a button called "ranked play".
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The real competition is DbD vs other asymmetric 1v4s.
Without genre competition, I doubt DbD would be any sort of experimental outside of this formula.
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Objectively false:
Competition - noun - the activity or condition of STRIVING TO GAIN OR WIN SOMETHING by defeating or establishing superiority over others.
You do not gain something from the game by killing all survivors or rushing gens. You do not win something from the game by establishing superiority. This makes the game not competitive.
A third party competitive scene does not make the game competitive, it just makes that third party create a competitive scene where there is none. I never denounced tournaments nor did I say there is no competition anywhere in DBD.
But Dead By Daylight itself is not a competitive game. You do not prepare every single game as if you were to lose ELO. You do not prepare every single game as if you were to face someone who potentially has greater or equal skill. That fact alone proves DBD is not a competitive game.
Regardless of what the competitive players in DBD love to think, Dead By Daylight is not a competitive game. All evidence points away from competitions. There are no exclusive cosmetics you gain from being competitive. There is no increase in BP if you play competitive. There is no cash rewards if you play competitive. There is no ELO to gain or lose by playing competitive.
The only competition competitive players have, is amongst themselves, which they can explore in third-party tournaments, but not in the game itself.
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There are some good competitions growing now tho, Monstrum 2 and Home Sweet Home: Survive are quite solid games. Monstrum 2 just needs to advertise itself better, but HSH:S has practically the same concept as DBD except different map mechanics.
DBD having a silver tongue and gaining access to licenses other horror genres would only dare to dream implement in their game is what keeps DBD ahead of competition.
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Sorry the game doesn't fit your narrow definition of winning and competition.
I guess the game was designed for killers and survivors to get along to escape. We've been playing wrong this whole time. Entity Displeased was the goal all along.
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Mario Party, outside of the mini-games, is almost completely RNG-based. When the victor is determined solely by RNG, that's when you can make the argument that a game is not truly competitive. The reality is that RNG does not determine the victor in DBD, skill does. If RNG lines up for Survivors, but they can't take advantage of it(I.E. skill), they lose.
And there is something that is competed over in DBD. The Killer is competing to kill, the Survivors are competing to survive. Their objectives arent the same, but they literally revolve around each other and are in direct opposition to one another. In order for the Killer to succeed at his objective, he has to directly interact with the Survivors and vice-versa(or rather, avoid interaction, which still involves playing against).
In baseball, one team is batting and running bases, the other is catching and trying to stop them. Is baseball not competitive because each team is responsible for a different objective? No, their objectives are intertwined and in direct opposition to each other.
You can try to spin it however you want to, but this is a competitive game.
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There are 2 sides pitted against one another. That is the definition of competitive. It may not be "as" competitive as other games but it is.
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It's not narrow at all. It's literally THE definition of competition. You're simply pushing oppostion into competition.
Survivors and killers oppose each other, but they are not competing against each other. You do not get a higher killer rank for rushing your objective, in fact, you get punished for rushing your objective. As a survivor, you do not get a higher rank for rushing your objectives, you get punished for rushing. If the game were truly competitive, wouldnt you get rewarded for finishing your objective regardless of how you got to that state? Seriously, if the game were competitive, why is there no evidence of the game rewarding competition and even punishing people who get too competitive?
So no, just because YOU are competitive in a party game, doesnt make the party game competitive. Its an opposition, but the goal is to have fun.
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This is how I feel in general about the game. I just want to have fun. This game is the only game I have encountered where the more you play the worse it gets. I just want to have casual fun. Not sweat constantly. Just by me playing casually and decent I’m up near red ranks and now it’s just a constant sweat fest. It’s gotten to the point where if I’m downed a few seconds into the match and hooked I just kill myself, hoping to depip or have fun next match. I miss when I first started playing the game. Felt like an actual horror game and didn’t feel like I was in an esports match every round.
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That's only a problem IMO if the meta sucks.
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"The reality is that RNG does not determine the victor in DBD, skill does. If RNG lines up for Survivors, but they can't take advantage of it(I.E. skill), they lose."
My point is assuming both sides to be capable. AKA both sides have a similar or equal skill level. In fact, in the majority of Mario Party games, they allows you to win based on skill if the others are lacking because winning all the minigames essentially allows you to win the game. My point is more that assuming both killer and survivors are equally skilled, RNG dictates the win. The difference is that often you dont realize it did because you were having fun along the way. But ever since I made this post, I have been playing purely looking at what the games have offered me and how players were playing, and you'd be surprised how often a 3k is made purely due to a lack of pallets/structures spawning in, and how often 3 people escape due to too many pallets/structures spawning in. Regardless of the skill on either side, people lose despite objectively being the better player, and people win despite being objectively worse.
"And there is something that is competed over in DBD. The Killer is competing to kill, the Survivors are competing to survive. "
And you are confusing opposition with competition. "The Killer is competing to kill" against other killers? "the Survivors are competing to survive" against other survivors? or against their teammates?
"Is baseball not competitive because each team is responsible for a different objective? No, their objectives are intertwined and in direct opposition to each other."
Except, that in baseball, YOU SWITCH SIDES, THEN COMPARE SCORES. So yes, their objectives are EXACTLY THE SAME.
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No, that is opposition. Competition exists when 2 sides either have the same objectives to complete, or gain something from completing their objectives post-game. Dead By Daylight has neither, it is an oppositionary game.
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"Competitive games are those in which players play against one another and where one player winning means another player loses."
First thing that pops up when you google "Define competitive game". I don't know your definition of competitive but I think we have different ideas of what that is.
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And you cannot even read the sentence you posted: "where one player winning means another player loses."
In DBD, there is no defined win condition. If you go off on post-game results, every single player can gain a pip, meaning EVERY SINGLE PLAYER WINS. In fact, there are cases where everyone can lose a pip, meaning every single player loses.
In DBD, one player winning does not cause their opponent to lose. Your own definition literally proves you wrong.
And yes, I am going by the pip system, because there is no other set wincondition. 4k being a win? Sure, but you can derank from rank 1 all the way to rank 9 even if you have a 100% killrate on the killers you play. 0k being a loss? Sure, but you can rank up all the way to rank 1 having 0 kills on your name. Since you actively derank, we can all agree that a 4k is not a defined win. That is just your personal win condition.
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I think the real issue is the devs haven't set a clear "what is a win and what is a loss". The pip system is an absolute joke if your killer. I've had matches where I hooked someone in the basement as trapper. People kept coming to me and stepping in my traps. I hooked everyone 3 times but my chaser was non existent because they didn't lead me on a chase. We're arguing over what's a win/loss in a broken system when we should be trying to fix it. Instead of trying to make a faulty machine work.
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Even further proving my point that DBD is not a competitive game. You can act if it is, which is fine. But in the end, if your "win" condition causes you to derank, then it's not a defined wincondition.
All these problems disappear tho, when we simply follow the evidence and come to the conclusion of DBD being a party game, where winning doesnt really matter as long as people had fun. Which the pip system backs up aswell. Seems like all the frustrations about losing rank disappear once you realize the game was never a competitive one in the first place.
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You made my point, "both sides have similar or equal skill." RNG has to do with balance and fairness, not competition, when skill is factored in.
And dude, you don't need the same objective to compete:
com·pete
/kəmˈpēt/
verb
- strive to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others who are trying to do the same.
That applies to DBD, regardless of subjective objectives. You have 2 opposing sides, acting directly against each-other using skill, wit and tactics to secure a victory over the other side. Its a competion.
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First and foremost, the opposite of competitive games isn't "party" or "casual" games - it's cooperative games. You are either playing against other players, or playing with other players against the game itself.
Most games have an element of luck to them. Abstract games tend to have the least amount of luck, and party games usually have the most element of luck. And because of that, in most party games, the skill ceiling is so low that newcomers can pick up the rules and mechanics so quickly that they are able to compete relatively well against players with much more experience.
So is DBD a "party" game? The fact that the luck factor usually can't make up for the difference in skill level should easily give you an answer.
So is DBD balanced for a tournament-type of play? Not by a long shot. But it should continue to strive to be more balanced. Because in the end, any and all competitive games should be well-balanced, regardless of their learning curve and ease of play, luck or no luck, so that it is fun for all players involved.
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"strive to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others who are trying to do the same."
Tell me, what do you gain? What do you win? Nothing.
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You win by succeeding at your objective. For Killer, thats killing and for Survivor, thats surviving. In terms of "what," you get for winning, Survivors get extra BP for an escape and Killers get extra BP for sacrifices/kills, so thats something. What do you get in most PVP games for winning, besides maybe a currency bonus or extra xp?
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Oppositionary games arent always competitive. Party games arent always cooperative.
"Most games have an element of luck to them."
I clearly stated that RNG was dictating the endresult of the game more than skill would. There are many games you can play utterly perfect, making 0 mistakes and still lose. There are no competitive games where luck truly made the difference, it's always the player/team making the most mistakes that loses the game. That is not the case with DBD.
" the skill ceiling is so low that newcomers can pick up the rules and mechanics so quickly that they are able to compete relatively well against players with much more experience."
You mean like Spirit players with 50 hours being able to compete against survivors with 1000 hours and still winning? Or Freddy players with 100 hours being able to compete with survivors that have 1000 hours and still winning? Yes, this game fits that definition very well. Heck, it goes the other way also. Survivors with 100 hours each can hold their own against killers with 1000+ hours in the game.
"The fact that the luck factor usually can't make up for the difference in skill level should easily give you an answer."
Except that in a lot of cases, this is exactly the case. There are games where the skill difference is TOO large, but there are quite a lot of times where there is a lack of pallets in an area that normally has plenty, there are quite a lot of times that an area know to have few pallets suddenly has plenty. You dont recognise this easily due to not having a bird's eye view of the map. But I bet that at least a quarter of the "wins" you gained is due to RNG being significantly in your favor. Not realizing this is simply ignorance of luck.
"But it should continue to strive to be more balanced."
A game being more balanced doesnt make it competitive tho. Yes, the game should be more balanced, regardless of what type of game it is.
"so that it is fun for all players involved."
For DBD to ensure fun for all players, it would need to block killers from hooking survivors more than twice untill all survivors are hooked twice or untill more than 2 generators are finished. Yet that would not be fun for a lot of killers who sometimes need to get rid of a player quickly due to the amount of problems they cause. This alone proves that dead by daylight can never truly be balanced to be fun for all players. UNLESS it's a party game that adds a seperate section for people who DO want to play super sweaty.
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Except you can get max BP as a killer with only 1 kill. You can get max BP as a survivor even if you die.
And in competitive games? You get ELO. You get rank rewards at the end of the season. You gain more xp than if you lose. You gain much more currency than if you were to lose. And if you lose, you actually lose ELO.
Besides succeeding at your objective, that can be done by getting 1 kill as a killer. That can be done by 1 survivor escaping. Both, again, very arbitrary. You wont consider 1 survivor escaping a loss. But survivors succeeded at their objectives if at least 1 survivor escapes.
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Imagine a baseball game where any round is randomly generated, just like dbd. Its Rng, not competition.
Competition is fighting against each others, on the same level. Baseball yes, football yes, League of Legend yes, Street fighter yes. Dbd no.
Rank is an illusion of progression. "Skill" is just knowledge of maps. Its not competitive.
Sorry stretched res users.
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I mean, DBD can be competitive, if you had a team consisting of killer+survivors facing another team of killer+survivors. Because that is essentially what baseball is. One team plays the bat side first and then the other team plays the bat side.
This still forces each team to play against the same killer at least best of 2 or best of 3 to reduce RNG being a factor as much as possible. But that is the closest you can get to a competitive scene in DBD.
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"Well, folks, we've got ourselves a hot one today! The Sacramento Sluggers going up against the Texas Teabaggers!"
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The game potentially might be heading towards the esports alley, which honestly I think would kill the game. I heard there was a rumor that a tournament mode would be added to the game, even though we could definitely focus more on things than doing meaningless tournaments. I'd like an actual practice mode, instead of a tournament mode.
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