Thoughts at 500 Hours: Loathing the End Game, but otherwise kind of positive.
I've done reviews at 30, 100, 200, and 350 hours, now hitting 500. This is nothing more than my personal thoughts about the game.
Unchanged Thoughts
A lot of my thinking about the game has remained the same. There are certain design elements that I strongly dislike: add-ons feel like a difficulty slider, what the goal of the game is being left up to the players feels like a bad design, face camping should have easier ways to prevent it. On the other hand, the positives still remain - a good survivor game leaves me feeling rushed in a way no other video game can manage.
Changes in Playstyle
Something happened with either the player base or my MMR that caused the BP rewards to flip around for me. (this was before the latest patch). Instead of it being survivor all the time it became killer most of the time. I tend to take whatever role has the BP bonus (more for faster que), so I've played more killer recently.
Negative Thoughts
I've become more and more dissatisfied with how the game ends and wish things progressed much more quickly (not even taking into account the possibility of toxic player behavior). I wish the game had a concede option or something similar. As a survivor, I don't mind when the killer tunnels as a strategy. I get it, its effective, and there are ways to work around it as survivors even in soloQ. But if the killer gets someone out and there's still 4 gens to go, my desire is just be like 'gg, gl next'. As killer I dislike those situations even more, all tension has left the game and I feel like I'm completing a rote homework assignment just because it has to be done.
As killer don't worry about the survivors fun: this gets thrown around a lot with discussions on face camping/tunneling. And I agree, conceptually, these issues should fall on BHVR, not the player base. The problem, the most effective killer strategies I find incredibly unfun. Who wants to be in the position just staring at someone on a hook? Like survivors and gens get complained about for being boring hold M1, but camping far exceeds that boredom.
I'll give a recent, but extreme, example. I was playing Trapper on Lery's (survivor offering). My feeling a few minutes into the game was that I was going to lose, maybe get a 1k out of it. There were 2 gens left to go, I got a survivor down and put them in the basement.
Right as I get the hook, a survivor gets caught in a very nearby trap. I grab them and see another survivor setting up for a head on play, so I drop the 1 survivor, win the bait out game, then throw two more survivors on the hooks in the basement.
Then we just kind of stood around for two minutes not doing anything while we waited for those survivors to die.
It highlights two of the things I tend to dislike about DbD, though find especially dissatisfying on playing killer:
1: Winning strategies can be pretty boring. While the above example is extreme, it's not unusual to have 2 survivors on nearby hooks, or one survivor hooked in the middle of a good 3 gen. The best strategy is to play defense, but that comes off as really boring unless I believe the other team is organized so that they can actually mount a viable attack. I've never played SWF, but I imagine 4 survivors running BNPs against anything other than a Nurse/Blight would feel equally tiresome.
2: Anti-climatic endings. The end of the game should be its highpoint, which it is for survivors. As killer though you win and then have a lot of drudgery. The last two survivors are just kind of a mop up game where you have to find them, do a chase that feels pointless, down them, and then carry them to the hook - all with extremely little chance that things are going to turn against you. I know there were lots of problems with the idea of BK unbreakable/game end when all survivors are down, but I really wish the game sped up towards the end even if it decreased the chance of a total victory (I also think this for when survivors are winning, I hate the three person rushes to rescue the person on the hook while having the gate 99ed, I'd prefer EGC to start when the 5th gen is done, because hook rush, rescue, 1 down, reset, is so boring).
-this stands in stark contrast to a lot of multiplayer games. Whether it is team kill or something like cart push, the final moments of a game like that can feel amazing, clearly the highlight of the match for the players. DbD it's extremely rare to get that as killer.
Positive Thoughts
I feel like BHVR really cares about the game, more so than a lot of companies. They also do seem to try and listen to the community. I disagree with quite a few conceptual things they have in the game, but they seem committed to wanting it to be the best game it can be.
I still really love survivor and when a soloQ team works together it feels great.
I do admire how altruistic survivors tend to be. While I said above I dislike how the 3 survivors rushing the hook plays out, I'm actually impressed how much strangers seem to band together as a team even though there's not many rewards for it. While sometimes it turns a 3e into a 3 or 4k, the way survivors who don't know each other tend to band together 'all for one' style is admirable.
The new bloodweb. It's sad this wasn't long ago, but it's such a nice improvement.
Lore: I know I could just go read it on wikis, but I've been slowly unlocking and reading the lore as I work my way through the compendiums. It's better than I would have expected.