aren't survivors supposed to feel weak? gamefeel has stagnated; same thing, 7years
i feel like the playerbase is heavily split between players that want to capture the horror essence and make the game feel scary; as in, survivors are supposed to feel weak, at risk, 'afraid', killers are supposed to feel like a veritable threat. the game should feel like every time you escape from a chase, it's almost by chance, by luck mixed with improvisation. chases are supposed to feel wild and engaging, killers are supposed to feel like they're always an inch away from catching their prey. but that's not what the game is right now, because DBD isn't a horror game, and everybody's gotten used to it
as it stands, the gameplay hasn't evolved at all in SEVEN YEARS. we are still doing generators just in different environments. there's no next-gen updates, no other objectives, maps are still barely interactable beyond what, gates opening on The Game? the gameplay is as engaging and exciting as a mediocre board game. for seven years in a row we have had generators, we have had lockers, and we have had palettes. there are some killers that can make the game feel slightly different (ghostface for example) but there has been no genuine actual novel concepts or goals or plans beyond five generators, for seven years.
beyond battle passes and killer DLCs the game has, entirely, stagnated to the degree that I think it's kind of insane DBD is as popular as it is. every killer will end up feeling the same to play because there's always a lunge and hitstun, and survivors will feel the same every match because we're all already well-antiquated with the perks and items and no map is actually that different from each other beyond size.
the game has just stagnated. it stays alive because it's content bait, it dupes people into getting hyped for crossovers and 'original content' that doesn't actually change the game at all, and can still pretend to be a horror game, even though it isn't. the community as a whole feels like it's primarily consisting of people who want to feel powerful regardless of what role they play spending the entire game trying to hit palet clips for subquality tiktok content or overplaying their reactions on twitch to get viewers, but the game gets stale past what, the 10 hour mark? it doesn't take much for what I consider the 'average gamer' to realize that every single match they play of DBD is going to work pretty much the same.
i feel like much of the original community preferring an actual horror experience is gone, 'I want to be able to shoot the killer/I want to play Killer just to have a power fantasy and nothing else' players dominate the modern community, and in seven years, we've finally made a single step towards helping alleviate some of the game's completely unnecessary grind, and we're still doing generators.
you couldn't even reskin the 'interact long enough to win' item for the map set in the medieval ages? how hard could this stuff possibly be? what if you had to throw multiple switches to open the castle gates instead of sit on one really long switch like every other gate? what if there were things to hide behind and bumping into things could knock something off a shelf, or if you could pick up things and throw them to make noise? what if lockers forced you into a first-person perspective, only being able to see outside the grates of the locker? what if we had different gamemodes, a wacky mode with 2 killers and 8 survivors, or a 'tag' game where it was just a chase around the map where both players get a turn playing each role and whoever has the longest chase or concedes first wins? i don't even care about the tone as much as I care about the utter and complete stagnation and the seven years the oldest players of this community have spent doing the exact same things. i mean, what if everything wasn't a pallette? why can't we reskin the occasional small bookshelf to have something to toss over? we have breakable walls and absolutely nothing else either role could possibly do to effect the map without perks?
so it begs the question of why we haven't even tried anything else. are we relying entirely on killer choice to maybe give us a psuedo-second objective and break from generators like the pig's boxes, or plague pools? is every map just going to be another variation of running around and doing generators?
the stagnation of a game like this is avoidable, and I feel like the devs are capable of trying to make the game more interactive if they wanted to, but it's just not happening. we're putting time on DLC blocks and battle passes instead, and the occasional store update. but new killers and cosmetic outfits don't actually change the flow of a match, and every single map is still a reskin of eachother with slightly stretched dimensions. it's just all really tiring to the degree that I can't bring myself to play this game anymore- I play one match occasionally because I miss it, realize that I'm doing the same thing I've been doing for ???? hours, and stop
I just expected something else to do other than generators for 7 years there's got to be more we could do here