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Dead By Daylight's playtime retention is admirable, as well as other things about it
hi i have the tendency to ramble on these forums a lot, so im not expecting anybody to read, but i just wanted to kinda dump my thoughts on dead by daylight's playtime retention and replay-ability before i head off to a dentist appointment. x)
it's very interesting to see how such a simple game can manage to be played time and time again without becoming stale. you kill people, or you do generators and escape. the core aspect of the game has never changed, yet players like me keep coming back to it every time to enjoy more matches. in a way, i respect the way the game is designed.
it's to the point. you have two goals, and it's mainly up to RNG and you to decide the outcome. nothing in between. nothing more or less. and considering that the game has been alive for as long as it has without straying from its core aspects says something!
it's also funny to think that human beings have natural primal urges stimulated through the game too, through fight or flight. the psychological and physiological triggers this game creates, when taking a deeper dive into it, is such an interesting thing to think about.
i don't think that there's really anything that needs to be changed about it at its core. it's not the most perfect game in the world, as all projects have their flaws, but i'd say that despite all the flaws you may see in perk designs, killers, survivor balance, what have you, dead by daylight is extremely solid, and i think that's one of the reasons why its hard for competition to be a thing for this sort of game.
i aspire to make a project like dead by daylight one day. not in the aspect of copying the game, no, but to achieve the same replay-ability as it. dead by daylight is unique, and i have a lot of respect for the developers for the game.
should i also mention the creatives and art team? i looked at a bunch of the member's portfolios lately, and as an artist myself (albeit trying to practice different things), and i absolutely enjoy the amount of effort and creative perspectives that i come across in each of their works. whether they're self taught or have attended a school, i'm not sure, but all i know is that i wish they would instill some sort of wisdom or something in me when it comes to creating an idea. art is a difficult practice to maintain if your heart is not in the right place, and i want to be like them and have more freedom with my ideas.
anyway, done rambling! see u guys later :)
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Its not even that big of an ramble honestly ;) Imho!
I think i provide a good example how many diffrent people get attracted to this game. Im not a horror "hater" i just dont like jumpscares. I like action movies, i like gore and splatter. (which kinda does satisfy that primal instinct of "fight" i guess? Like for some reason ancient civilizations had arenas with payed or well... enslaved fighters. Or for some reason any form of Boxing is a thing.) But jumpscares? Bro, i hate them, like reaaaally not my thing. My whole body got heated up when i was leveling up Sadako to P3 because of her menu screen jumpscare, its just not for me.
But i have seen Dead by daylight content by various youtubers before playing, most of it from a german comedian who did start the whole streaming thing during the corona epidemic when comedians couldnt tour anymore. Ofc the "horror" aspect was overshadowed by the comedic nature of him and his colleague who also played the game. Only thing that kept me away was the though of "well there will be so many stronger people by now, i probably will have a rough start, this game is alredy so many years out.) The final blow was a friend of mine, cause i saw him playing DBD trhough steam notifications and i asked him a little about it. He ensured me the horror aspect wouldnt last long and he also told me about how there is actually a softcap and that i would probably have a huge advantage alredy knowing what to do.
So i started, and totally became HOOKED!
Like my comments here might it seem as if im very sour over things but thats just according to the issiue with the playerbase/community itself. The game as it be though? The ongoing live service it is under, devs actually working very hard? I started 6 week after sadako was released and since then i have seen the big perk rework, QoL improvements, 3 new killers, 2 very fun ingame events. I think this is one big reason for people keep playing it, like there is ongoing content, so it never gets stale. But by the amount of content you have alredy, like every match is a surprise factor at first.
I couldnt even name what it actually is that i enjoy so much about DBD, i do like to play killer a bit more but also playing survivor is satisfying to me. Sure i can get salty sometimes when it doesnt go as to what i expected, or when i feel like i cant do single things in one trial, you just have those. However i choose to never be toxic in chat, maybe i need to have a break. But then i always come back after i had some food or so, or maybe i call it for said thay and try it the next evening. The bots joining in the future are also something im looking very forward to.
And there is no harsh winning conditions, which is also a big + to me. Like if it goes bad you made not many bloodpoints. Like that is litteraly the worst that can happen to you. (aside from cheaters but those exist in other games aswell). So when "i gained not many bloodpoints in this match" is worst thing possible, you know the game is chill. The community somehow isnt, but personally i dont engage too much with them aside from trying to counter argue some things i believe shouldnt be.
Then the art and creativity as you alredy said, DBD killers are unique, doing challenges and listening to the tome lore audio files is actually very nice too. I just wish it wasnt master challenges, like the lore shouldnt be only accsessable behind some very hard stuff. But improvements can always be made, BHVR does do their work, they try and they care. There is game developer companies out there that dont, where you could litteraly wait half a year just for some major bugfixes. (and we are talking about game breaking bugs at that.) but without content. And this particular scenario is from one of the biggest out there.
So my conclusion is, Dead by daylight is under good guidance from BHVR, after all its their main project, their core product. You really can see that. It suffers from a bad community but as i said your not forced to engage that much. And once or twice there are actually cool people, like if found a few i actually do play with them sometimes, even though i usually like to stick to myself.
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The game has a golden equation. That's it. I'd also like to say that there's a lot of people who play this game, myself included, who have thousands of hours in it. Not sure if that's common in other games, but it speaks to the dedication a lot of us have for the game, despite the constant talk of doom and gloom. I was thinking that's what you meant by playtime retention.
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By sheer chance, everything went right with DbD, such that no one can really replicate it. Not even BHVR.
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i think it's more than just a golden equation. i think, to some degree, passion has something to do with it. despite all that's done with it, at the end of the day we are sampling someone's passion in a game, which is what DBD was built off of. i think it's pretty neat :)!
is it really by sheer chance, though? i understand what you're saying but i just cant help but wonder! given they worked hard at the game for a long time, with some exceptions, i think it's something that's been crafted and tuned very nicely. i think if BHVR was given the time and motivation, they could do it again. anybody can if they really wanted to, for that matter. it all just takes time and heart.
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They tried to, with Deathgarden. And that one fell off pretty hard.
They took a swing into a relatively unknown genre and accidentally hit the golden ratio. And I sometimes wonder how we even got to this point, considering how horrifying gameplay used to be back when the game was initially released.
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i see your point!
i guess this is just the nature of waking up one morning and going "i have an idea!" and somehow it works out. what an anomaly. 😊
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