http://dbd.game/killswitch
My Dream Patch to Try And Fix Dead By Daylight (Part 1)
I'm going to style this as a developer update for funsies,so humor me acting as an alternate reality BHVR.
We're back with an unscheduled developer update,focusing on many upcoming changes coming to Dead By Daylight soon in the 6.9.0 PTB. In this edition,we'll cover many radical balance changes,Killer Reworks and updates to core game mechanics. Buckle up,this is going to be a long one.
Sole Survivor Experience
Let's be honest. You've probably been left on hook or gotten frustrated at your teammates quite a few times. Playing in solo queue (Queuing up without any friends) can be a difficult challenge to overcome. You cant tell that one Dwight to not go for the rescue,since you have finally gotten that Deliverance or stop Mikaela from booning that one totem you need to break for you challenge.
This has been a complicated issue and a topic for many hot debates in the community and we've thought long and hard on how to bridge the experience of SWF and solo players together - these two groups being so far apart has been a big thorn in the side of any balance changes as they had to be weighed against both solo and grouped players.
We have developed multiple changes that helps bridge the gap between those demographics and we will have all of them available in the next Public Test Build for you to try out and give feedback on.
First: A version of the perk Kindred is now introduced as baseline feature. After a survivor has been hooked for 3 seconds,all survivors see each other's auras at any distance. The Killer Aura reading is not activated,unless the Killer remains near the hook for longer than 20 seconds,after which it activates for 40 seconds. The aura reading range is not affected by the survivor perk Open Handed. Bringing the perk Kindred now speeds up this process,revealing the auras faster and for longer. When the Survivor is unhooked,the auras linger on for 2 seconds before fading.
Second: During the pre-game Lobby screen,you can hover over other survivors' names to see what loadout they're bringing - perks,offerings,items,addons. We hope this alleviates a lot of frustration with your teammates not knowing you have a specific perk you're trying to utilize. This information will also be accessible whenever you go into your settings menu mid-match.
Third: From now on,you'll be able to see action indicators near the survivors' portraits. They'll be able to tell you whether or not someone is doing totems,gens or running from the Killer. We're also experimenting with adding more specific contextual icons for specific perk interactions and other scenarios.
Fourth: This is not a change you'll see either in the 6.9.0 PTB or on the Live servers,however we'd like to note that we are now looking into re-designing many of our archive challenges to hopefully streamline the survivor experience,with less matches being lost due to rare challenges. In the coming weeks,we're going to disable the Archives system for a certain duration to assess how much it affects the escape rates,especially for sole survivors.
While some of these changes may seem like too much to certain Killer players,please understand that by bringing most of the survivor pool to a relatively close level of power,this allows for much easier balancing of the Killers.
Dev Note: We've seen a lot of very well worded feedback on the state of Solo Queue since the 6.1.0 mid-chapter and we hope this improves it. We have some changes that might improve it further lined up in the future,but one thing that we want to shut down is Voice Chat. That is a feature that will never be added in Dead By Daylight.
Unfortunately online games by their nature are toxic and a lot of people would experience a lot of harassment should such a system be implemented. We're going to leave voice chat reserved to off-game services.
pallets,tiles & rng:
It's safe to say that the random nature of the Fog is one of the most core parts to the experience of Dead By Daylight. The Trial is ever-changing and The Entity is keeping you on your toes. However sometimes,it can lead to frustrations. We're making a few changes to the way we generate maps,adding new features and changing older ones.
It's widely known that not every pallet is created equal. Sometimes you can drop the shack at the start of the match to the sorrow of your teammates or sometimes you'll get a very unsafe one. While we don't seek to remove safe and unsafe pallets,watering it down to something in-between,there is a change coming to make it less frustrating for both sides.
Introducing - Light & Heavy pallets!
The new pallet types work pretty intuitively - lighter pallets stun for less time and take less time to kick,with heavier pallets being the opposite. While we're not going to replace every pallet with either Lights or Heavies,we will use them to spice up the trial.
Overly safe pallets,commonly reffered by the community as "god pallets" such as the one located in the Killer Shack,will now become Light Pallets. They're not very difficult to play and as such provide slightly less value. This change should hopefully make facing a survivor who tries to play it very safe around strong pallets less frustrating.
However the more unsafe pallets have now become more of a threat to the Killer. The added weight results in a longer stun time and requires extra effort to kick - while the loop might not be very safe,it will now come with extra risk for both sides.
We hope the additions to the pallet variety will both alleviate frustration and add satisfaction to making just the right call in an unsafe area.
Encouraging Variety:
The following changes are not definitively slated to make it to the Live version of the game and we're curious to see your feedback.
In hopes to encourage more fun map layouts,we'll be moving some of infamous Z-Wall and similar tiles closer to the middle of the map with your regular tiles getting pushed back a bit further to the corners. In our testing,this resulted in more chaotic,but fun layouts - however we really need your feedback on this one - sometimes our tests can miss problematic areas.
Dev Note: Over time a lot of veteran players and even some casual ones have brought up the fog getting just a little bit stale. This is the first in our line of changes to make the game feel more fresh and exciting and we hope everyone has a lot of fun doing 50-50s on the new heavy pallets!
Maps & Map Offerings:
We've seen a lot of passionate feedback in regards to the Maps in Dead By Daylight and looked into the top 5 biggest complaints we received:
- Overabundance of safe structures (Springwood,Fractured Cowshed & Garden Of Joy, among others)
- Maps being too small or too big. (Mother's Dwelling,Shelter Woods,Dead Dawg Saloon, among others)
- Indoor map layouts making it hard to navigate and find generators or hooks. (Racoon City Police Department, Midwich Elementary School & Lery's Memorial institute, among others)
- Totem spawns being too obvious or too difficult. (Lampkin Lane,Dead Dawg Saloon & Racoon City Police Department, among others.)
- Overly inconsistent safety or lack there of for Survivors in some maps. (Shelter Woods being one of the biggest sources of feedback)
While we dont want the Trials to feel too consistent,with occasional swings to either side's favor,our map design team has made some adjustments.
- Stronger structures like Long-Wall Gyms,Shacks,among others now are signifcantly less likely to "line up" or "chain" together. While these changes do not affect the average survivor,now it will be easier on Killers going up against veteran players who can utilize those structures being close by with frightening efficiency.
- We've slightly reduced the size of the biggest maps currently in the game,like Mother's Dwelling and Shelter woods. The reason why we've only slightly reduced them slightly is because we have some changes coming that will make map size less frustrating and allow us to have bigger Trials.
- Most of the totem spots the community has reported to us have been re-adjusted,with less totems appearing very out of the way for Killers to account for Boon Totems and less totems being in the open to save Hex: Devour Hope from being cleansed too quickly.
- Many main buildings have been signficantly changed, Garden Of Joy & Springwood being the most notorious.
Dev Note: Unfortunately we couldnt address all the issues that were brought up by the community in this patch. However,we'll be focusing more on updating the Maps in our next mid-chapter,along with individual killers,now that we've worked through a lot of new baseline mechanics.
Baseline Killer Updates:
With sole survivor brought up to speed,it only seemed fitting to revisit The Killers' baseline too,as it would required re-adjusments to the new state of things.
First: The basic attack cooldown changes have been reverted. In our effort to cut down on the "hold forward" playstyle,we've gone a tad too far and some unwanted side-effects have emerged. With the basic attack cooldown back up to 3 seconds,we hope to alleviate some frustrating scenarios and strategies that have emerged without bringing the "hold forward" playstyle too much.
Second: A version of the perk Corrupt Intervention is introduced as baseline feature. Upon loading into the trial the two furthest generators away from you will be blocked for 45 seconds. They immediately unblock upon downing a survivor. The perk Corrupt Intervention does not stack with this baseline addition and instead replaces it with the perk you all know and love. This bridges the gap between larger and more average sized maps,while not limiting our creative possibilities.
Third: Upon further examining the feedback and data from matches post the 6.1.0 update,we've decided it's fairly safe to further increase generator kick speeds to 2 seconds flat,regressing 5% of a generator instantly.
Fourth: A version of the perk BBQ and Chili is now a baseline feature as well. Upon hooking a survivor for the first time,gain a bonus score event and see the survivor furthest away from the hook. Subsequent hooks do not provide the score event,but do still provide you with the aura-reading. However if there's only 2 survivors left in the trial,you wont receive the aura-reading. The original perk remains unchanged.
Fifth: With the many changes to the maps,we now feel pretty safe in removing Bloodlust tiers 2 & 3. Bloodlust Tier 1 remains,although it will take 5 seconds longer to kick in. This has remained as sort of band-aid fix to occasional map generation issues,but now with those cases hopefully kept to a minimum,we feel comfortable with removing the higher tiers.
Dev Note: While it may feel like the Bloodlust and Attack Cooldown changes are too much,we are confident that with our improved map logic,those are no longer required for a more streamlined Killer experience. We'll continue monitoring individual Killers and buff them accordingly,instead of doing more baseline changes.
Individual Killer Updates
The Trapper
- The Trapper's bear traps are now substantially skewed in their spawns to the middle of maps,caringly placed in spots that might already catch survivors off-guard,should you reset them.
- Additionally,there's now a random amount of your bear traps (from 35% to 45%) that will already be pre-armed,ready to tear apart their victims. This is The Trapper's grounds and survivors are coming into hostile territory.
- Finally,once a trap snaps it's jaws,catching an unfortunate survivor,The Trapper will receive the option to press the active ability button,put his weapon away and hastily move with added speed towards the trapped survivor in a manic frenzy. (No,not the Feral Frenzy)
Dev Note: We made many small tweaks to Evan over the year and he's been performing rather decently,but a lot of players felt frustrated with how long it took to setup and how far the traps were spread out. While many suggested he should just carry all traps on hand immediately,we felt that would be too strong. Instead we've reached a compromise and discovered a way to lean into his themes even more,while making him much stronger.
The Hilllbilly
Max Thompson was at one point one of the strongest killers in the Fog and we seek to bring back some of his glory with a few changes to hopefully make him feel nicer to play.
- Increased Chainsaw Sprint Speed by 5%
- Decreased Chainsaw Charge Time by 3%
- The Overheat mechanic has been reworked. Instead of disabling your chainsaw,the overheat builds during the revving,quickly dissipating during sprints or while not using your chainsaw. Should you overheat,you will be forced into a Chainsaw Sprint for 2 seconds at a slightly reduced initial turn rate.
- Dev Note: The Hillbilly's overheat mechanic has been a topic of many hot debates in the community and frankly,in our developer team as well. We've been hard at work trying to rebalance The Hillbilly to hopefully bring him back into the light.
The Nurse
The Nurse has been temporarily removed from the game while we work on revoking her medical license and providing a full fledged rework.
Dev Note: Frankly speaking, The Nurse has become a problem that's very hard to solve. We don't want to alienate the people who put thousands of hours into learning her power,but at the same time,she creates an infinite amount of issues when trying to balance the experience of Dead By Daylight. After a long period of consideration we decided that we have to prioritize the game's overall health and slowly cook up a Nurse rework in the meantime.
It's likely the Nurse will end up having to earn her current power and only will have it for a limited time,akin to The Oni and going back to somehwat of a regular Killer otherwise to hopefully make her nicer for newer players.
The Wraith
- Increased uncloak speedboost duration.
- Increased action speeds while cloaked.
Dev Note: While originally when we first buffed Wraith he started overperforming,with the changes that happened to the game in the past 6 months,we feel comfortable returning him to his good old days and adding an extra buff on top.
And that's it for the first part of our imaginary developer update. Share your feedback in the comments and stay tuned for Part 2 where you will see more Killer & Perk & Items updates and more technical changes.
Comments
-
Wow. Overall good balancing update. I like it.
Just one possible small hiccup - third note of killer baseline update. I think it would still kinda work for most killers. But Wesker is sometimes already able to win war of attrition if he only focuses his 3gen + he stacks gen regression perks. I am a bit worried how many killers would be viable to start the game in a way, that they no longer patrol generators, but just camp 3gen from 1st second until the last survivor
1 -
Gen regression stacking is being addressed in the second part! I'm just working out some details and also would like a nap, this was written in one sitting.
Thanks for the positive notes!
0 -
Nurse will always be OP because she ignores most core mechanics of the game. She can teleport through pallets, wall, windows and entire floors. The only way you make her not OP is by taking away her teleport ability.
0 -
Yeah. Originally I would have wrote in a 110% speed Nurse that has to earn her power akin to Oni but then I went...nahhh.
0 -
Every single change seems fine. Only one that should not be put in is the basic attack cooldown, I think the hold W changes with the speed boost and attack cooldown were just fine to cut that strategy down a chunk.
0 -
Well you put a lot of effort into this. Sounds pretty good I’ll say that much. I’m sure someone will find something to complain about now or as issues emerge from it never being implemented.
0 -
Do note that that's there to address the overly high camping strength + chaining into M2s - holding W has been nerfed by reducing map sizes and making chaining tiles much harder.
0 -
if only BHVR listened to me and to me only 🤧 Thanks for the kind comment,I prieche it.
0 -
edit: fixed some typos and added dev notes.
0 -
These are vast survivor buffs. You've reverted most of the killer buffs from last chapter and given survivors catte blanche to bang out gens at all times, constantly knowing what both the killer and your fellow survivors are always doing. I don't understand why anyone would want hold W back.
1 -
DId you notice the major killer rework buffs and major maps nerf or did you skim the entire thing blindly without thought?
Also corrupt basekit,a mini BBQ basekit,god pallets nerf... all that? Yeah sure buddy survivor sided change. Stop trying to do an us vs them here.
Also I'm sorry most of the killer buffs? I nerfed bloodlust and added 0.3s of cooldown to basic attacks without giving back the injury speedbost.
1 -
good lord
1 -
Kindred - As long as the 40s ends once unhooked that seems good.
Rest of Surv stuff is good
Light/Heavy Pallets an interesting way to deal with the various pallets, but I'm afraid some Heavy pallets will simply be too bad to kick and Bloodlust would be a better alternative.
Map tile adjustment - Does that mean Azarov's and Suffo Pit would be hard deleted? I don't think those middles could ever not chain lol.
Remove Basekit STBFL - Honestly I would rather the Surv speedboost be set back to 2.0s from 1.8s instead. This helps against the more oppresive power use Killers without nerfing M1 Killers in the same breadth.
BBQ - I don't think the furthest aura should be basekit. I would rather it be furthest gen recently worked. Plus what if the most hooked Surv is trying to stay away? Now they will incidentally be tunneled for trying to stay safe.
Trapper - I would like it if they were fixed spawns near loops, either along the loop or on the pallet/window. That way you can arm the trap and move on rather than pick it up to move it 4 feet. The disarm feature seems cool and would be neat if it worked kind of like Wesker/Wraith in terms of re-arm speed.
Billy - I haven't played him enough recently to really know, but I think a forced chainsaw might be worse in a lot of cases than just normal overheating instead.
Wraith - Numbers determinant, but if the speed is swapped back to the post-buff nerf I wouldn't complain. I think people just needed time to adjust, and weren't given that time. Action speeds however I don't know about, especially with 5% basekit kick regression only taking 2s.
Nurse - A bit boring but welcome. I've given plenty of suggestions in the past and those could work as well imo.
I also came up with a bit of a shake-up and posted it previously. If you or anyone else would want to check that out and maybe take some ideas from it feel free.
0 -
Oh yeah I should mention that it stops. It's there to show camping andies.
STBFL - You see I dont like camping so I think I'm gonna stick with reverting the basic attack instead of the speed boost. For more opressive Killers,Nurse is reworked,Blight will get addon changes and Spirit is.. Spirit.. I dunno. I prefer the attack cooldown.
Pallets - Yeah but heavy pallets are going to be on the really bad loops you dont even need bloodlust for or a power for really. They're there to punish mistakes by the killer and create an expression of skill for survs.
Maps - It would be more that windows dont line up neatly and are a bit further apart. I'm sure further adjustments can be made. If there's one map where the change is #########,we can fix that one map.
BBQ - I want to incentivize the Killer going as faaar as possible,that was the idea personally. As for the most hooked surv - just run Distortion Kappa. I dont think it would be much of an issue.
Trapper - Yeah,the idea is that,y'know,you're going into his turf and half the tiles could already be with a trap in there that's either armed or unarmed. Then the trapper either just arms them or picks em up for their fav spots. That removes that awkward time where someone could call out all of your traps and gives you more breathing room.
Billy - This is supposed to be in tandem with my addon rework (coming soon.jpeg) for him. You can cancel the overheat sprint like a normal saw after a moment. I'd say that's better than having no saw for 10 seconds.
Wraith - 5% while cloaked is really not that much,we already have the shadow dance addons (those could be nerfed to compensate for baseline). I just want him to be able to do a tad more while cloaked. I thnk he's gonna be just fine.
Nurse - Yeah.. I just want her to be out of the way and stop destroying the balance.
1 -
So what about sluggin? Or whats really important to me sluggin and forced to wait for timer?
0 -
STBFL - Understandable on that front.
Basekit BBQ - fair enough, that is why I recommended the gen instead of the person.
Wraith - Ok your original post didn't list numbers for Wraith, and I didn't know if that was a copy-paste/formatting error or what.
The rest agreed or understood with nothing else to add.
1 -
I feel like in the grand list of problems in this game ATM slugging is not up there,I'll be honest.
0 -
Well that is a shame, cause being forced to do nothing is a bit of a problem. I mean for me at least, the solo survivor with limited time to play
0 -
I mean hey,with the changes outlined above,sole survivor will be waaay better.
0 -
Don't get me wrong, base kit kindred is really good for solo. I missed the range on close to hook?.
Just wish I wouldn't get my time wasted by killers who are having a bad night.
0 -
Tell me how I'm still survivor sided. I dare you.
0 -
Anyhoo everyone! Part 2 of this imaginary trip is out. This has been a fun thing to put together and I hope it spawns more discussion in the community about all the cool stuff we could change in DBD:
0 -
I did indeed read it. I think corrupt is vastly overrated and a crappy version of it is even more worthless. The farthest two gens? Who cares? Pointless.
You're giving SWF the tools they need to coordinate flawlessly and increasing solo coordination exponentially. Knowing whether or not someone is being chased at all times gives any given survivor leeway to sit on gens constantly. What if there was a perk that showed the killer's aura whenever they were chasing anyone? It'd be incredibly powerful. That's tacitly what this is, all the time. At the same time as giving survivors incredibly powerful information tools you're reversing the most significant buffs killers clawed their way into.
The stuff you're giving killers are token, inconsequential buffs. Seeing a single farthest survivor? Utterly pointless for any killer without the mobility to capitalize on it and they don't need any help.
Easy way to buff trapper? Have him start with traps. I like the speed boost idea.
Easy way to buff billy? Just remove overheat. He doesn't need to be better at what he's already good at.
Wraith? Give him his lunge back. Shadow dance is already very strong and doesn't need any increased synergy.
Your map suggestions are so vague that I can't even comment on them. "Make map better". Uhhhh. Okay? In a subsequent post you elaborate that you don't want windows in a line, but changing their adjacency doesn't really affect how you loop them. You can still get a fast vault on them if they're askew so it doesn't really matter.
Finally, "us vs them". Just because I think your ideas heavily favor survivors doesn't mean that I'm engaging in tribalism. It merely means that your ideas..... heavily favor survivors. That's the shape of the thing. Unlike you who's original post contains combative language toward killers: "...While some of these changes may seem like too much to certain Killer players..." Definitely feels like you're trying to throw shade at one side.
0 -
I don't think you're survivor sided, chief. I think this particular set of ideas is. It's not impugning your character or accusing you in any way.
0 -
Here we go again. If something is fair, then it's not good for killers.
Corrupt showing up in 50% of my games is weak overrated thing that nobody needs. Right...
Knowing if somebody is in chase. Imagine, that in SWF there could be less then 1s message to comms "Killer is on me". Is that thing so unprobable? How can giving this information to all survivors be anything but balancing things? And how could it especially be buff to SWF coordination (and not just gap close between SWF and solo)? In what universe is that true?
Also baseline BBQ. You have no idea how strong that baseline buff is. The way it is worded by OP is not anyone further than 40m is revealed. It's the survivor that is farthest away. This can potentially give huge macro information. If you see single survivor that is not that far, then you know whole team is here. That is borderline OP for skilled killers. This in itself could make the patch imbalanced toward killers.
@kizuati doesn't even solve all the stuff and I still think the game should address last 2 survivors situation (where they already know that they lost). In this case it's rather easy to be stuck in hostage-taking situation, as it's rather easy that one of 2 things happen - a, both survivors decide to hide and do it well - waiting for the other one to be found and killed first to have a chance at hatch. In this case killer is being kept hostage. b, one is found and the other is being slugged to deny hatch. This can be even worse than 4min slug (like this can go for hour), because all the killer needs is keeping the other player alive and let him wiggle out and catch again for as long as he wants or until the survivor decides to tell where the other one is hiding. Personally speaking, I think hatch should be able to spawn for last 2 players under some condition (e.g. nobody touched gen for 30 seconds) and be open for single survivor. If killer finds it or the other survivor escapes, then short (90s) EGC would start (so that killer has some edge - he originally won the game, so this is only fair). It would prevent end game hiding. But @YOURFRIEND already screams survivor sided patch and this technically is helping survivors a little (even if from MMR's point of view it should not change that much)
From what I see this patch would lessen difference between SWF and solo + buff killers. As a selfish SWF player - I would tell this patch is just pure horror, the OP is mad to even propose this and anyone agreeing to this patch must want to kill the game. But I don't see us vs them the way you do. I want fair games. These things go in that direction.
1 -
If you made all the big maps smaller ig that could also do it, another might be to cut the speed boost you get more instead of the attack cooldown so the camping situation is not any easier but holding w is still as it is now. Also I forgot to mention I actually really like the speed boost thing for trapper, in fact something like it could be given to all killers as a way to traverse big maps where they put away their weapon to go into a sprint. This could be used to counter holding w as well and it could have a cooldown so you cant just use it to traverse a loop to get a hit etc.
0 -
Oh I like getting called a mad woman for making a DBD patch, that's based.
As for this skewing it too far for Killers? I dunno. In my second part I've returned DS to being a useful anti tunnel too and nothing else and changed lots of Survivor and Killer perks.
It would definitely be skewed in one way or the other but I honestly don't know whether or not this patch would be survivor or killer sided lol.
0 -
Gotta say I really like the Light & Heavy pallets. Reminds me of a crumbling window idea I saw here in the forums. Both would make really interesting additions.
0 -
Yeah I think those should lessen the boring gameplay and incentivize more risky and fun plays,hopefully.
1
