Quick review from a developer-player.
I've been playing this game for around 600 hours and managed to get to a fairly medium-high level thanks also to watching different good streamers playing the game.
I've been developing games and optimising them for few years and I'd like to share my opinions on this game that made some rumour even in my industry.
Pros:
First I'd like to share the good aspects that I found in this game, starting with the considerable amount of killers and their popularity in the horror cinema/games. Since the first hours of playing either the survivor or killer side, the player gets addicted to the style of playing and is immediately interested in finish the objectives (killing survivors or finishing repairing the generators).
Something that also needs a word is the incredible art side of the game, designers and producers did an amazing job recreating some maps of famous games and taking particular attenction in polishing all the imperfection that a game like this could have.
The sound department did also a great job, giving particular attention to all the very important sounds that are very important in a horror game.
Cons:
I'm very fond though, of expressing my opinion of the flaws that this game clearly have after the player gets good.
On a higher level, the killer side totally collapses because of some mechanics that the developers can't seem to fix.
Being probably only developers of the game and not actual good players at it, the developers can't seem to understand what's actually wrong in the game itself. They listen to the higher part of the players (survivors in a ratio of 4:1) as that's the side that brings the biggest monetary profit in the game.
A killer at a high level against a good premade of survivors has zero chances to winning, zero. That's because of the unbalance of the time to complete your task as a killer and the time to complete the task as a survivor.
Even in these 600 hours of playing the game, I've seen different killers lose their potential because of complaints probably expressed by frustrated survivors who can't seem to win.
Despite all these changes applied to the killers, killing their powers, in this little time, the developers can't seem to have the ability to solve some basic problems. The time is invested in skins and adding new killers to a precarious system.
The biggest problem is probably the toxicity of the community on the survivor side. After a game, a killer will always collect a very interesting range of insults, nothing is done to solve this, not even an toggle to close the chat in the main menu (you can close it after the game,but you'll still see the shitstorm coming).
A killer becomes then a prey and therefore, the principle of the game is totally broken.
Technical aspects:
The menu, after all these years, doesn't have a sorting algorithm that sorts the huge number of perks, not even a basic one like boyer-moore or rabin-karp, that's probably because of a very poor structure of the c++ transcription from the unreal blueprints.
All the killers have very basic mechanics with poor gravity implementations.
The Plague's vomit has an extremely precarious collision detection and even worse fluid attributes.
Blight slides off of meshes.
Huntress hatchets have a huge collision.
These are just few problems that I'm mentioning.
Suggestions:
All the money gained from the unnecessary amount of killers and skins released should be invested in finding good programmers who can actually fix the clearly broken parts of the game, especially considering the popularity that this game is gaining.
Easy to be said, I understand that the programmers didn't expect the game to become this big, hence why the poor base of the game. This will have to be improved as sooner or later the game will be unplayable, building a house on already broken bricks will make it fall sooner or later.
it'd be nice to see a fix of the survivors mechanics, extremely broken and game-destroying. Decisive strike, dead hard and all the other broken perks should be limited per team for example. Many things could be done to improve the situation of the game, yet this is impossible due to the developers caring only for the survivor- side.
As for me, I had the time to test this popular game, and I'll be more than happy to leave it and uninstall it as unfair and unbalanced if someone likes the actually skillful side of the game.
This game can't be competitive at the moment, and will probably never be if the developers don't actually start solving the problems instead of adding new ones.
Comments
-
Probably a minor point, but it's really confused me- could you elaborate on what you mean by a "sorting algorithm" for perks? Under what circumstance, where would an algorithm be needed...?
0 -
Perks should be searchable in the perk section (loadout), the user should be able to find the right perk he is searching for instead of having to go through to sometimes 7-8 pages full of perks.
1 -
Ohhh, a search bar. Got it, yes, that does make sense.
1 -
Search bar or loadouts were asked a lot. What we got is that we can click directly on page we want. I mean, better than nothing, but not much really...
1 -
As good of a post this is....Wont make a lick of difference. They balance for new players which means more and more broke mechanics for survivors with brains.
2 -
Exactly, this is a good point. Unfortunately this is the truth and I can't say actively why their choices are these ones, yet the reason is pretty obvious. Thank you for reading the article.
I left this review as I usually do with games I try, to give some tips and help, although I know in this case, it will be totally ignored as not convenient.
1 -
Couldn't have said it better.
Glad to finally have a developer point out all the things we've been saying for years.
2 -
1 C too short
0 -
The way you pin point every single issue and flaw but also good sides is pretty accurate. Really well written and absolutely true!
4 -
Thank you for reading my article, I know some players have played this game for more than 6k hours. I probably missed some things that probably only players with that amount of hours see but I definitely gave my genuine opinion.
I paid more attention to this game expecially because I've always been in horror films and especially some of the ones contained in this game. 😀
1 -
I'd look past all the annoying aspects of this game once they take a page from mobile and have bots in custom. Though I'm afraid their foundation is too awful for that at this point.
2 -
Well I actually have exactly 6,4k hours and I wouldnt know what to add besides some more examples of broken mechanics.
I share the same opinion with the sound, art and overall gameplay design is top quality but the balancing, especially on higher gameplay is very poor.
0 -
I think even with 600 hours you can allow yourself a professional judgment about DBD! And on most points I can absolutely agree with you (with over 6k hours already). More love for balancing would be great, but I also don't know if releasing new killers/ survivors / perks on a regular basis is necessary for DBD's longevity tbh ...
0 -
We have been asking for perk search bars and other little things such as loadouts, but BHVR literally said that they have more important things to do.
0

