http://dbd.game/killswitch
Reversing the decline in players
Based on Steam charts, the player count is at its lowest point in over three years (with the exception of April 2022 when it dropped slightly below 30K). Yes I know Steam charts only shows PC on Steam, but there is no reason to believe the trend is different for other platforms.
Scott Jund had an interesting video recently where he talked about how opening up the game for modding would be a good way to increase interest in the game. I agree, but I also see a few big problems with that: 1) it’s a PvP game and with modding it opens up the door for easy cheating; and 2) BHVR might lose a lot of revenue from new chapters and cosmetics; 3) license issues for non-original characters
I think that opening up the game to modding would be incredibly fun, but I also don’t think it’s going to happen until BHVR basically “abandons” the game and stops making new chapters (or maybe ever if they are not willing to open up the game for modding).
A few questions for the forum: 1) when do you think BHVR will “abandon” the game; 2) could BHVR open up the game for modding now while avoiding the potential major issues?; and 3) if not, are there any other good ways to bring in a large number of new (or former) players without opening up the game to modding?
Comments
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If Alien or Fnaf get revealed as the next chapter, numbers will jump straight up again. Next chapter is a biggie in regards to players hopes, expectations and satisfaction.
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We’ve come off the back of 2 pretty poorly received chapters so it’s no wonder player counts are dropping
If the anniversary has something good we’ll jump back up again
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Making killer less stressful and more approachable for newcomers would go a long way.
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It's pretty nutty.
Never have i seen a community so vocal about wanting change and then so angry about it when the change happens
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This is even more true for survivors. Killers have a low skill floor, survivors have a high skill ceiling.
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I feel the opposite tbh. Survivor you mostly have to learn looping, which is tough for sure but the rest of the game is pretty simple as far as survivor goes. I will say survivor solo queue can be super frustrating
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Modding is not going to happen because of the licensing issue. Unless dbd release a big license chapter or a completely new game mode the playerbase is just going to get smaller and smaller, it's a 7 years old game after all.
Edit: Now that I think of it the licensing issue can also apply to the new game mode. They would probably have to update the contract for every licensed chapter.
Post edited by Phin on0 -
I agree that a great new chapter would bring in a large increase in players. But even so, I think a a lot of people are just getting burned out with the game as the mechanics have been stale for a long time. If modding isn’t going to happen, then new game modes of even some new game mechanics would help make it feel less stale.
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I wonder if there would be a way to open up the game for modding but only for non-licensed characters
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Does not even matter. Too much trouble.
Then I would mod a Killer to look like Mario. And then you have Mario killing Survivors. Nintendo will probably not be happy. So even if you limit it to original Characters (which would need to be done 100%), there can still be issues with other companies.
@Topic:
Modding will probably not be a thing. You would need to remove licensed Characters (as said) and Killer Powers, because it would not really be good that you would be able to highlight Trapper or Hag Traps for example.
But then you have cosmetics - yes, there have been really cool cosmetics which were added in the past when modding was possible. However, there is always the chance (and it will 100% happen) that people will use it as an advantage. Like making Deathslingers gun 500m long so that you know all the time where he is aiming. Or making every Survivor-cosmetic in bright pink so that you can see people from across the Map. Or make every headpiece into a big pole which does the same.
We are talking about the community who made their game look like ######### with stretched res and are still doing that with filters to get a competitive advantage. This will surely happen with modding as well.
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The others have brought up very good points as to why this isn't likely to happen, with the licensing issue being the biggest obstacle.
To all that I would add such a mode wouldn't be available to the consoles without massive continuous support from the devs, if it is at all possible, which I highly doubt. I just don't see them spending resources like that for a mode which the vast majority of the playerbase cannot use anyways.
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It's kind of both. Killers have a higher mechanical ceiling, but survivors have a high knowledge and game sense ceiling. Knowing where to be, when to be there, and what to do as survivor takes a long time to learn. There are infinitely more killer guides that go over that stuff too than there are survivor macro guides. And it obviously takes a while to learn all that stuff on killer as well as the mechanical things.
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It hasn't declined that much if you look at the numbers.
The average player count is pretty stable and still higher than pre-pandemic years which have unnaturally inflated the figures of most games over a 3 year period.
So yeah while there is a slight downward trend the player averages are still pretty consistent and the trend lines match the general spike in Apr/May after chapter release followed by slow decline till next chapter release.
Its hardly indicative of a declining player base... yet.
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Modding: not viable. BHVR makes quite a bit of their money off cosmetics, they aren't going to touch that. It would also really split up the player base/make it harder to introduce new killers/survivors.
How long will they keep the game going: They could lose a pretty big chunk of players and still be profitable. Though if they lost a large portion of the player base they'd probably slow down the rate they release new chapters/etc, but not abandon it.
What could they do to increase player count?: Bring back the Covid lockdowns?
Serious answer: This is inevitably going to decrease. All games die off over time. DbD has already had an amazing run and likely has a number of years left. Big licenses will bring back players from time to time. Other than that, they could try a complete overhaul, like a fundamental game redesign to make the game feel substantially different. I highly doubt they will try that though because it would be incredibly costly and risky, and if they were going to do something like that they'd probably start designing DbD2.
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You think survivor isn't even more stressful for newcomers? You are ruthlessly tunneled out nearly every game when you're brand new. You literally get denied the opportunity to play the game and the worst part is you don't even have any perks to stop it. OTR, DS, etc are all locked behind DLC. I've tried to introduce people to this game and they all gave up because they kept getting tunneled out while they were trying to learn the game. Just look at which side currently DCs more if you want to see which role is more stressful.
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Pretty sure if there was modding, it wouldn't be modding in a true sense. It would be more like the "modding" that Overwatch has where you get a set amount of parameters to tweak. Not graphical changes, strictly number changes.
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People just love saying the game is dying every time steam chart numbers show any kind of decline.
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I don't think modding is the answer per se. Personally, I think they would be better served taking the TF2 Steam Workshop route, where the community can create and contribute (and then BHVR would profit share and/or buy outright) all sorts of things for BHVR to decide to add; cosmetics, maps, original characters and killer powers, perks, items, add-ons, offerings, and more.
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Personally I found getting consistently blinded, bodyblocked, etc as a new killer was much more soul crushing that getting camped and what not. Getting camped is annoying but I don't chalk thqt up to I'm terrible terrible the game. When you start as killer and can't get kills hardly at all (granted this was also peak DS, BT, and DH time) you feel pretty beat down as a new killer. It seems better than it was nowadays but before you didn't have much to feel positive about imo
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The Steam chart is a poor indicator of player numbers. Use this stat chart instead, because it takes into account every platform:
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Not quite. Killer has a higher mechanical skill requirement for each killer you want to master. But you can take on one killer at a time; what the mechanical quirks are, what add-ons change mechanics and tactics in which way. - As survivor you have to learn how to counter all that. Just that you have to do it all at once cause you get matched with whatever. The first step in learning survivor is to even know what the killer you go against can do. And I doubt anyone's sitting down with flashcards on 30 killers and their powers. Heck, 2k hours in and there are still plenty situations where a killer that I don't face too often (guess which ^^) has add-ons equipped that have me as clueless as a 200 hours surv.
On topic: I was actually shocked to see just how big the drop was when I checked steam charts a few days. Well, I say shocked - and I was - but I can't say I'm really surprised. It's really very easy to see why between the last two chapters and the changes that have been made recently. Though, I don't think modding will ever be an option for DbD. - Outside maybe kyfs / bot games ---- if, and that's a big if, they manage to make it so separate from live servers that it's impossible to exploit modding options in kyf/bot matches on live servers.
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Yeah two big reasons really
- People love to feel validated that something they are angry at is dying and a lot of people are here because they are angry at what just happened in game.
- Joe public's understanding of stats and data is often woeful at best and watching people flail numbers around without any real understanding or insight can be painful.
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Did I say the game is dying? I said player counts on Steam charts are declining and the lowest in 3 years (with exception of April 2022), which is an objective fact.
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Does anyone know if this source is trustworthy? If so, then that’s great - I would love to see reliable counts on all platforms. This one is a bit sus, though
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Player counts are always on the lower end this time of year
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I didn’t see that. Could you provide a link or screen shot? Thanks
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Scroll up
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Theyll never abandon dbd, its the only successful thing thing theyve ever done
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I have hopped on my free account that still gets the noob killer screen. I have never gotten a single kill on it, and I go against full meta teams.
Literally. Whats even the point of mmr
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I would say that the lack of interest in the game at this moment in time is due to the lackluster chapter that was recently released and the new update. With the chapter release the killer was a bit disappointing in gameplay and design (not saying she's bad she just doesn't give off the same killer vibe as the others) while the update was just meta changing which makes many players drop off due to frustration. Modding sounds like a good idea in theory but as mentioned before cheating would most likely become the mods that people would seek out. Another reason, and this is just me stating my opinion, is just that the game is mechanically unbalanced. No matter what it changed or added there is always gonna be some type of power struggle due to the way that the game plays and the only real way to fix it is to make a whole different game
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The source is an estimation based on data. By "estimation" it doesn't mean there are numbers picked out randomly; the playerbase is around about this figure.
However, it does include all platforms, so mobile is included, which another forum member reliably informed me is effectively a different game. There's also the free Prime accounts.
Yet, whilst it does take into account those figures, it still shows a huge amount of players who play this game. Another source states between 500,000-700,000 players play on average a day, which is in line with the monthly average the site shows, so there is correlation.
In summary, don't take this as the perfect figure, but at the same time it's a more accurate representation of DBD as a whole, rather than the Steam Chart which only shows a small portion of the base. In the end, people ought to not base their "DBD is dying" beliefs based on what figures are out there, because a true, 100% perfect figure is simply not possible. It's just better to have more than one source, as this does offer a decent estimate.
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The game peaked with the first resident evil chapter and ever since then the numbers are slowly fading back down to what they were a few years ago only jumping when a chapter drops, when this month is finished the count will probably drop below April of last year it's still averaging part of March right now with it , this time period is always the toughest for player numbers but if there isn't a big chapter release that people are excited for the game is going to continue downhill and really fast it's going to take alot to get some people back on here
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And they are so vocal that they’re complaining isn’t surprising anymore to me.
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Definitely not true. Both roles have a pretty low skill floor. The main issue is most low level survivors have no idea what they should be doing. The number of games I've seen where zero survivors are doing gens for most of the game is absurd. If they could somehow get all survivors to figure out that at least one survivor should be doing a gen at all times, the game would improve immensely.
The skill required to be a half-decent survivor really amounts to not missing skill checks, being on a gen as much as possible, and holding w when you hear the terror radius.
It's also a seven-year-old game. The numbers they still have are actually incredible. The Steam Charts line has stayed mostly steady for pretty much the entire time.
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Nerf Blight
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Maybe find a way to retain new players. The survivor experience pushes a LOT of new players away. I've tried to get many friends into dbd, either they refuse to even try it because it has a reputation for being a nightmare for new players, or they play a while and get frustrated because they die constantly as survivor.
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I disagree with that statement as well. As @edgarpoop pointed out there are different categories of skills involved in playing both Killer and Survivor. While there is significant overlap it's not an apples to apples comparison. On the macro level, both sides require an extensive amount of skill to know where to be, where not to be, when to drop an activity and when to hit another target (gen or survivor). RNG also affects both sides and Killer has mechanical limitations also affecting its side (ie the 1000 Blight win streak, given the same time on Trapper instead, could not have been acheived with Trapper).
In my opinion, it's not possible to say one side requires more skill than the other since a clear comparison can't be made. Myself, I just stick to both sides have high skill ceilings in their respective areas and leave it at that.
Unless, of course, I lose. Then the other side is obviously op, favored by the devs, and needs a crushing nerf. (That last paragraph is a joke; please don't take it seriously anyone who reads it).
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Then make survivor more enjoyable. This game has some of the worst new player experience I've ever seen in terms of balance for survivors. Imagine you're a new player, you try survivor to see how it goes. You are 90% going to die for your next 100 games unless you have friends. You're not used to gens, you're not used to looping, so all killer really has to do is walk up to you, smack one button, repeat, and you're on hook. I imagine most new players simply uninstall because solo-que makes them feel like the worst player ever. A new no perk survivor cannot track gens, pallets, and is not used to looping. No tools to help them survive the new player experience, only death and praying they get a few experienced players on their team.
First experience as killer is sure, you may not get a 4k your first game, but you will very likely get at least 1-2 kills even if you don't know what you're doing. Gens and hooks are highlighted for you on the map. If you're matched with unexperienced survivors (likely are if you're new) all you have to do is pretty much walk right up to them and smack them, then smack them again, they're not going to be good at running away and finding pallets (they don't have windows of opportunity perk if they're new) so they're pretty much a free kill. These new survivors die super early in the game (likely still 5 gens) and from there, even experienced survivors are pretty screwed if they're not in a party. Takes no time to casually walk between gens in that time.
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