community maps/custom content and map variants!
hi im back on the forums again
lately ive been thinking really hard about ways that i feel the community could be refreshed and i settled upon the idea of custom maps or community maps! i realized that dead by daylight doesn't exactly give as many options for the community to fully interact with the game creatively outside of actual in-game play and the occasional community skin contest.
from my understanding, the attractiveness of a product can be boosted by how much you let a player "play" and innovate within your game, and ultimately allows longevity of your product by actively promoting interaction with the content, even if they are not actually playing the game
on top of this, this will allow map designers to gauge preferred or disliked traits of maps and use that information to create better and more interesting maps for players to engage with
it would be really cool to see how people would design their own loops, tiles, maps, etc., and i feel like if we're able to give the community the power to create maps for fun, it'll give a lot more life to custom games or even giving people the opportunity to vote them into the map cycle!
map engineers would be able to select and refine the map that is voted in, or have that map enabled in the cycle for a dedicated period of time before swapping out with the next community map, and if a map becomes loved enough, they may even be able to be considered part of the variant pool!
i know that all maps have different tiles that are randomly generated or picked from a tile table, but sometimes the RNG can generate either super positive, super boring, or super negative outcomes for either players, so i feel like that by putting RNG to the side and allowing a more organic design to take place can provide a new experience to different maps
i understand there may have to be a built-in map editor/creator in the game, as giving access players to in-game files through unreal engine could possibly pose some problems, but i personally feel this sort of feature would be really useful long-term and may even help generate profit to dedicate towards promoting better game health, as well as encouraging a positive relationship between the playerbase and the developers
you will also stoke the fire of possibly creating new gamemodes, roleplaying scenarios, or realms that could support the current in-game killers and survivors
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also! i wanted to bring up the topic of community-created assets (objects, textures, sounds, etc.) for maps as well
if this is considered an option, this may take dead by daylight to a whole new level in terms of creation. individuals who are interested in 3d environment building may take this as a learning opportunity, normal players can better convey their ideas, and very interesting themes can overall be generated through a process such as this. 100% there will have to be some limitations and significant changes in code to support resources or newly submitted content, but it would not be impossible and the benefits will certainly outweigh the cost to put it into production
one of the primary limitations is that the community cannot create new killers or survivors (as you may have guessed) due to needing integration with lore, balance, copyright and licensing, etc. [dont let this stop you from creating concepts, concepts are always fun to see!]
there will also need to be a limit on times for content to be submitted. bhvr is not a small team of developers, but theyre not the largest company either. in order to properly allocate resources within the business, they will need to be able to put a cap on times content can be sent in to be reviewed and either added or discarded. this will especially put emphasis on making sure that higher-effort and quality user content makes it in. having objects with broken collisions, for example, would not be healthy for the rest of the map design and can create unfair scenarios
all-in-all, creating an environment in which the community themselves can get involved and feel as if theyre included in the process of growing dead by daylight through showcasing their creativity with in-game resources can bring a whole new light to the game and can promote the best of both worlds as a player, or as a developer. i feel like my suggestion can provide new ways for players to contribute to the health of the game without putting a whole lot of strain on the current content!