Why do you think DBD is so unusually frustrating?
DBD is a very unique game in a lot of aspects, however one oddity of it has always stuck out to me. I tend to be pretty chill about games, i don't get bothered by them even when some straight up bull happens, and i've seen the same type of people play this game with me or stream it. Without fail, this game has managed to make every one of these people angry as hell no matter what. This game has an almost unnatural ability to piss people off, why do you guys think that is? I've never really been able to pinpoint it, theres a lot of reasons this could be the case but i've never been truly enlightened on why this game can enrage even the chillest.
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Other players.
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The personality of abusive players is the most frustrating. A single T-Bag, while friendly from a survivor's perspective, is frustrating for the killer. Especially in the exit doors, the flashlight flickers is also annoying for the killer, from the survivor's perspective it is to make them follow you or want to chase you. Which is annoying for the killer!
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The Ddos'ing I have happen to me on the daily from playing console DBD made me lose all enjoyment from this game, I went from playing nice and really chill to considering all gamers are evil.
Thankfully the horrible and inhuman things survivors do to me in this game I upload online and get stuff out of it like quality "Killers are all mistreated" content.
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Yeah, DDoS'ing is a huge issue on Console.
I've already lost one router :/
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The devs.
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So many reasons.
Like Pulsar said, other players is a large factor. The two sides are not nice to each other. Rather than a friendly rivalry, this game has cultivated a hateful us vs them mentality that just doesn't abate.
Why do the two sides hate each other? Because the most efficient way to win is to deny the other side a chance to play. The more efficient you are, the more miserable the opposing side is. One side feels rushed to complete their objective, the opposing side responds in kind, and it's an endless cycle. One of the most effective ways for killers to slow down gen repair is to get the match down to a 1v3 as fast as possible. The survivor who gets tunneled out feels singled out, they feel cheated out of getting to participate in the match, and they feel like they waited in a queue for nothing. But if a killer doesn't do that they risk getting gen rushed and then they're the one who's miserable. It's rare that both sides walk away feeling good about a match.
The game doesn't reward much in terms of points. The grind is crazy, and when a player ends with very few Bloodpoints because the other side played efficiently, it's upsetting. If the game were more rewarding, that could help a lot. Instead, at the end of a bad match, it feels like you got nothing out of it.
Survivors get frustrated because they feel their teammates are potatoes or their teammates are sandbagging or farming them. Killers feel frustrated because it's a 1v4 situation and they can't be in 4 places at once; one mistake can cost them multiple gens.
Because of how frustrated players get, they have a habit of being both bad losers and bad winners. This increases the frustration of those around them, and it's all just an endless cycle.
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This feels pretty accurate to the thought process i've been having around why the game is the way it is. This is a good way to put it.
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Also, because having fun as Survivor often includes humiliating the Killer and vice versa.
This is an excerpt from the post I constantly link to:
Dead by Daylight is a unique game. It stands in the company of other asymmetric games, but it has unique aspects that other games don't that affect our psychology as we play. I wanted to explain these concepts and have some advice for how to counter them.
Concept 1: Humiliation DBD's gameplay is centered on humiliating your adversary. I would argue that every aspect of the gameplay is an act of humiliation, not competition, like you see in other games. The reward-based outcomes combined with asymmetric gameplay makes DBD uniquely painful to emotionally process both your losses AND wins. Let's look at the various aspects of gameplay:
Killer Humiliates
- Frustrates a survivor's ability to contribute to their team (social humiliation)
- Frustrates a survivor's ability to level up and earn points (reward-denial humiliation)
- Frustrates a survivor's ability to appear competent in front of their survivor peers (mild self-esteem humiliation)
Survivor Humiliates
- Frustrates a killer's ability to appear competitive and threatening in the game environment (social)
- Frustrates a killer's ability to level up and earn points (reward-denial humiliation)
- Humiliates the killer in post-game chat, something that while survivors aren't immune to, but have group social support resources to easily heal from (severe self-esteem humiliation)
Concept 2: Rollercoaster of Emotional Injury If a killer wins, but doesn't win "right" (camping, some glitch, lag, etc) they are deprived of their celebration by the survivors (survivor decides whether killers can celebrate, another humiliation). If a survivor wins, but everyone doesn't survive, the sacrificed survivor is deprived of joining in the celebration (the killer can take this opportunity to humiliate them). Through all of this, both player sides undergo extreme stress.
Killer Stress
Killers experience states of stress throughout the game: trying to find survivors, being evaded by survivors, losing track of survivors, and protecting hooks from survivor saves. Killers, at no point, have any moment of emotional peace or sense of "safety" from these states. The emotional injury ALWAYS ramps up in post-game end chat, and at the gate, where killers are ritualistically humiliated by twerking/circling/various taunts.
Survivor Stress
Survivors experience states of stress, too, with waves of calm: hiding, peacefully working on gens with their peers, being in the terror radius, evading, and being on the hook. Successful evasion and successful hides are followed by positive feelings of calm, while being chased is stressful, and being caught, hooked, and killed is a very substantial, large loss. A hooked survivor has disappointed their team, lost a huge amount of point potential, and been humiliated by the killer. Watch streamer facial expressions change when they realize they cannot be rescued and are dead, after a long match. There is pain in their face.
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Because it's a broken unbalanced game.
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Yeah, that's a good one. It was written by a psychologist, right? I always thought it was interesting he took the time to analyze the game. His analysis also made me a little sad, thinking about the kind of game I'm playing and how unhealthy it is. I can't help but feel regretful that I got sucked in.
It seems like the game is designed to punish players, and then players go the extra mile to make it worse with in-game taunts and post-game chat. Original DS was the biggest "[BAD WORD] you, killer!" in the game, punishing killers for winning a chase. I don't know how that abomination ever got greenlit. Original Dying Light was no better, requiring a survivor be tunneled out as fast as possible. With perks like that, you have to wonder if the devs actually wanted the two sides to legitimately hate each other.
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I think I have seen the same coment long time ago... I was going to congratulate you for the psychological research, since it is ignored by many, but I think the post went clossed due some users making "out of line" comments so let me congratulate you now.
Of course there are more psychological aspects to it... like the frustration of a survivor being able to bypass all the killer's effort, and the humillation they add with the click-click or their t-bags at the exit gate... from the survivor's side, mostly in solo queue, your teammates being extremely selfish (even thought everyone in the game is looking after themselves), not going for an unhook or such things even thought the killer is not camping them... now, you start seeig how the survivors are going down while on-hook because they could've worked together and instead decided to be selfish so that's an overall lose, for you as a survivor for the low BP and for the loss of your team.
Strategies like camping and tunneling are stressing as well, since a survivor who is not using the meta perks, can be overpowered for those killers and making unfun games for them.Sidenote: I get that fun is a relative concept but we do agree that fun is something we enjoy and those tactics are not enjoyable... in most cases they're not enjoyable for the killer either which uses it as a frustration method.
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Because BHVR profits from the toxic environment their game creates. And thus foster the toxicity best as they can.
In other multi-player games you get banned for purposeful griefing. In DbD you get a pat on the head for it (in terms of BP).
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Yes, it was written by a psychologist.
Regardless of their original intentions, we are where we are.
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To me the game is more frustrating due to two things:
- The pacing at which your objectives or strategies are often countered or denied.
- The importance that every mistake can have, on the outcome of a match, when facing competent players and some RNG unluckness.
His analysis also made me a little sad, thinking about the kind of game I'm playing and how unhealthy it is. I can't help but feel regretful that I got sucked in.
This is the problem of the excessive negative connotation of the psychologist. He's perpetuating the negativity.
Things are not Black and White...
- You are not always "humiliated", you are "humiliated" some times.
- You are not always denied of completing objectives, you are denied some times.
- And the most important part, players are choosing to be exposed to that possible "humiliation".
I never feel humiliated by anything that happens on the game, i know how it feels to be humiliated, i just don't take anything from a stranger on game to a personal level.
To me it's two people wanting to display greater competence. So sometimes it brings me disatisfaction, frustration or overwhelmedness at most.
Sidenote: I get that fun is a relative concept but we do agree that fun is something we enjoy and those tactics are not enjoyable... in most cases they're not enjoyable for the killer either which uses it as a frustration method.
Aren't you contradicting yourself? If it's relative how are we going to get to a consensus.
Why don't see those situations as an opportunity to achieve greater satisfaction?
There was this Leon and i was the last hooked. He had no reason to come and risk it as the doors where at 99%, but he did.
He approached slowly, got seen by killer, got under hook and dropped a grenade. Somehow we both managed to escape that camping situation.
Not only Survivors but Killer acknowledge the "skillfull" play and we all congratulated Leon. How do you think we all felt that match?
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The game is build around tension. A lot of it is build around hairsplitting moments.
The moments where you physically move foreward when you lunge to get a survivor right before he drops the pallet. Or when you are able to vault in the nick of time before getting hit and your whole body tenses up. Or when you face ghostface and have to look around frastically to avoid getting grabbed.
It's what makes the game so good and addicting. Sadly tension can lead to frustration when there is to much of it.
People who get frustrated are usually the ones with tons of hours and who play long 2-3 hour sessions. Especially if those people don't learn to quit and take a break after a bad match but jump straight into another.
DbD isn't actually that rage inducing on it's own. People just let tension and adrenelline build up to much untill they become stressed and frustrated
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That's a great post.
Its also born of the fact that the game by very design taps into some really primal emotional motivations. Mainly hunting and survival. When you fail at these it almost always jabs your ego and that jab is squarely centered in the emotinal stress parts of your brain.
Decoupling the game and the outcome from the emotional and keeping it in the logical higher cortex will help with this but its very hard to do even when the cost/reward is completely artificial and the gains imaginary.
Computer games are very interesting studies in human psychology especially when they have a social element. You are definitely more likely to take it personally when your opponent is human than if you lose to a bot.
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Indeed, I wrote my senior paper on the "Effects of Computers on the Human Brain." It was mostly focused on the physiological aspect, but I briefly touched on some psychological aspects
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Where you looking at chemical response (i.e. dopamine spikes, stress hormones) or was it more neural brain mapping and activity?
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Both actually.
I touched on how our brains can be trained to seek out dopamine from alternative sources (social media) and how that can negatively impact our lives.
I also spoke about how some games are used to improve memory and reaction times and can be used to re-train the brain in a more positive way.
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There’s more to horror than scares. Another core concept of horror is unpredictability. Scary things can lose their fear factor over time, but unpredictability is something that can endure to make sure something no longer scary still maintains (or builds) tension.
DBD does this very well. Things can quite wildly swing in favour of the killer or the survivors at a moments notice. Although this can keep the adrenaline high, and keep things fresh, it inevitably is going to lead to bouts of deep frustration. It’s just human nature to feel aggravated when circumstances looking favourable quite suddenly become seemingly hopeless.
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The attitudes and behaviours of some players has always been the most frustrating aspect. Fortunately, it's exceptionally rare I've had the misfortune of some upstart be toxic post-trial, but those are by far the worst. The dc'ing issue was also immensely irritating. But player problems have out-weighed all else.
The times where the game suffered greatly from volatile server crashes or game-breaking glitches also can be frustrating. I'd also add that beyond those 2 occurances, the other frustration is usually at any mistakes I make that causes me to fail needlessly, when I know I could've done better.
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The game feels alot more personal compared to other pvp games. In other games if one person is trying to ruin everyone else's game it'll most-likely cost them the match but in dbd sacrificing your teammates to live or playing as scummy as possible on killer can still get you kills. Worst of all these are very viable unreportable tactics & if it happens to you there's really nothing you can do about it.
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Map rng
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Honestly, I don't know.
I never experienced a lot of frustration with this game, certainly not as much as most people say.
My frustration and disappointment mostly comes from recent changes, but that is a personal thing instead of an anctual answer to the question.
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Both sides have the power to make the other side miserable. And sometimes? It's the only way to win.
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I've thought about this a lot. I'm usually an incredibly mild-mannered person. I have woodland creatures in my backyard who visit daily and will eat from my feeders while I tend the lawn because I give out that vibe. I even work in the medical field.
This game can put me in a bad mood and turn me into a hissing dragon.
I started wondering if that's on purpose. If the game is actually designed to inspire venom in people. Spite; the desire to try again and smite the enemy rather than have some chill fun.
I feel like Unsportsmanlike conduct is REWARDED in DBD. It's the whole idea where we've seen Devs, Mods, and the like proclaim: "Face Camping and hard tunneling are LeGiT StRateGies!!11". And yet, you can see hundreds if not thousands of threads/posts/videos/complaints dating back years about it. A Killer can easily make a ridiculous amount of BPS, and be rewarded for using really unsportsmanlike tactics. There really is no downside most of the time, and it's obvious this is incredibly frustrating to the Solo survivor playerbase, and yet persists. Further insult to injury is added when we're told "yeah but it's your fault!". It's almost like DARVO or something lmao. Yesterday I encountered THREE Insidious camping Bubbas. All red ranks. This means their wilful, conscious griefing of games has been rewarded so much that they've been able to advance while simultaneously ensuring most of their opponents de-pip. And again, we're told "it's part of the game! It's your fault for falling for it!". Same with Myers Tombstone piece. By design (so not the Killer's fault), it is an immediate waste of time for four paying customers. You commit maybe 20 mins of your life to a match (the queue, the waiting etc), and in one foul swoop it's ended, you lose out of rank, points, and it was all beyond your control(at least for the first person who encounters it).
On the flipside, the introduction of SWF's took the skill level needed to feel competent as a Killer to an unbelievable level. SWF's have a ridiculous advantage. I basically stopped playing Killer because I grew tired of trying to learn, being a Rank 13 facing Lobbies of 4 man SWF's that had 2 red rank survivors, one purple and their new friend: The Rank 16 that apparently balanced it out? And again, the unsportsmenlike conduct. The ego, the flashlights, the bullying etc, and they act as if they don't have their advantage. That the Killer is just not good at the game. There's a distinct immaturity to the playerbase. Maybe it's loaded with 15 year old rich kids who have never played a real sport so never had to learn how to conduct oneself properly in victory or defeat. Who knows? But in most sports/athletics/games- hell, even board games people used to be taught to win or lose with grace.
That becomes challenging if the victors (survivors) are gloating, posturing brats.
For Solo Survivor side, selfishness is ultimately rewarded as well. Whether it be a 3 man SWF treating the 4th random player as disposable and unimportant, or whether a survivor takes advantage of a team of randoms who have saved them all game and leave them flat through a Key escape. Who hasn't been that person in Solo queue who has done the MOST all match, saved everyone, and stayed on the last gen until it popped only to have the 3 team mates leave you to die on the first hook as they go out the door? They're rewarded. In that scenario, sure you might pip, but you feel you kind of deserved a shot to escape whether it would have been successful or not. Then there are the characters that work with the Killer to farm you, or DON'T work with the Killer but still farm you. And even when things are technically against the rules, it is difficult to report them. In fact, the Reporting system feels like an exercise in futility.
Maybe this is the aspect of the game people are drawn to though. Maybe the freedom to be a complete jackass with no consequences is attractive.
I'm not sure if trying to fix it would also ruin the baseline concept of the game, a concept that attracted us in the first place. But sometimes I wonder what if they added a button at the end of the match to give someone a point for Sportsmanlike conduct. Just to acknowledge that this Killer/survivor played the game true to form, wasn't a bunghole, and God bless it, if only more people were like this. If there were a small rewards system for people who accumulate that, (and no alternate way to mark people down), maybe it would encourage better behaviour.
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I feel like the reason is cause games go by way too quickly for both sides.
Played a lot of survivor (mostly double queue, other times solo) recently and 9 times out of 10:
We genrushed through 5 gens + exit gate in 3 minutes OR the killer sacrificed all survs in 3 minutes.
Both did not feel great to experience and were more frustrating even if I escaped.
Very rarely do I get a game now that takes longer than 3 minutes, does not feature a killer (or survivor) that is using 4 meta perks + 2 very rare addons + map offering as an A+ Tier killer, has teammates that are glued to gens or has teammates that are urbaning around the map 24/7.
No matter what, most of the time one side fully stomps the other and that is why I feel the game so frustrating to play right now.
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Other players.
Really, I just witnessed this situation:
I am dead (got camped and tunneled by a Pyramid Head)...
1 Gen left, Yui gets hooked. Jane, injured sits on a Gen and has Adrenaline...leaves the Gen with 95% progress to get Yui.
In the end, Yui and Jane died, last Survivor escaped via Hatch. If Jane would have stayed on the Gen (massive time to get Yui, she was just hooked), all 3 would have gotten out.
And then some people wonder why Survivors prefer SWF...
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DBD is a military black budget psychological ware fare operation designed to psychologically abuse its test subjects and to collect the data via the forums.
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For me its just the jankyness of half the things and the imbalance. Like if a team looped me well and I ######### up then Im happy with the game and not frustrated but if I try to use my power get stuck on some invisible bullshit then get stunned from 2 miles away then I get mad.
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I think it's the devs lack of support. We get a dozen updates a year, with a handful of tiny hotfixes. Many, many issues lay unresolved for months, if not years, because of this. Additionally, what fixes they give, don't necessarily agree with the community, as if they're tone deaf.
While players themselves are a cause of frustration, it's the devs slow progress in any form that I see as the biggest frustration.
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The matchmaking is what makes this game so incredibly difficult. Playing Killer is inherently one of the most sweatiest, most toxic experiences in a game that I have ever had, and playing solo survivor isn't much better.
There is no "casual" mode, and there never will be. Sadly there was supposed to be an offline bot mode with the mid chapter update, but it never happened and there's been no word as to why. At the very least that could gone a long way into helping cleanse the pallet after a sweaty, toxic match.
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It's a balance issue that makes the game frustrating. Both sides possess tools and maps to completely screw over the other side any time they want. The only thing that keeps this game playable is an honor system. Every survivor group can run 4x BNP+Commodius toolboxes with an Ormond offering every single game. I'm a very high level Nurse. There is nothing stopping me from running purple range+green recharge and Corrupt/Ruin/Haunted/Devour every single game and 4k'ing at 3-5 gens.
Point being: there's absolutely no way to tell what you're about to face or what map you're about to play on. 80% of perks/addons are niche or outright bad, and the other 20% are meta. If you bring the 80% and the other side has the 20%, you will lose no matter how well you play assuming equal skill. You lost from the loadout screen. That's unbelievably frustrating.
The game often leaves the player in a no win situation. You can run full meta every game and sweat your butt off. The vast majority of the games will be absolutely no contest and boring. And it's not even possible to ensure that on the survivor side due to the complete lack of communication across platforms in solo queue. Or, you can scale down your build, run some off-meta stuff, and take completely unnecessary losses from players who aren't as good as you are and hear about it in post game chat. That, to me, is what makes the game frustrating.
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