Feeling a Lack of Innovation
I have felt for years that DBD has refused to innovate, but I've held out hope that they'd snap out of it and surprise me. However, due to the most recent Q&A, I feel that they have zero interest in innovating and are content in mediocrity.
This genuinely upsets me because I know where it leads. It feels like the only innovation or ambition comes from the skins, ie, things that make money.
I don't usually like to plug content creators, but Otz' new video does sum up what I (and I'm sure many others) feel as well.
There's just no drive anymore. No push to improve things. Content in mediocrity.
I feel like this stems from three separate issues.
One is BHVR's glacial change schedule. There's over THIRTY Killers in the game and half of them are outdated. Taking two and a half years for a single Killer update isn't going to cut it anymore. BHVR has always taken forever to change things and, a lot of the time, it's not been good changes. These Trickster changes, for example, have been a long time coming and they still aren't good. If the changes are going to be so minor and so awful, they need to come faster.
Two is BHVR's apparent lack of understanding of their own game. Sometimes, we get lucky with things like Wesker. Other times, we get Boil Over and Dull Merchant. The answers about not doing anything for Solo Q or for new players are extremely telling.
Three is money. I now feel that DBD's death will be a direct result of it's success. There is no longer any need to innovate due to the success of DBD. This breeds stagnation and mediocrity, which leads to a slow death. It can be changed, but somehow I doubt that'll happen.
I suppose I'm just...disappointed. I've spent so long on DBD and it's painful to see these things happen. The game isn't dead, not by a long shot and nor do I think it'll go anytime soon. It's clear to me, however, that the ambition and innovation that lead to this little game becoming a movie is no longer present and that the team at BHVR has become complacent. That's not a shot at BHVR, just an opinion.
What do you all think?
Comments
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I think BHVR has something great here, and potential to be even better with the right direction but if they refuse to innovate it's going to be a slow death. Heck, I can see some people probably leave the game considering they're not focused on game health and improvements over new skins and killer/perk tweaks we possibly don't want.
I don't know if it's a staffing issue or what but BHVR needs more hands on deck for SoloQ QoL and overall game health. I won't say they should skip a DLC or anything like that, they need to make money, but it's a worrying trend that these things aren't a focus.
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I think the word "refuse" is a bit strong here.
If only new content was not released in every quarter but instead a season could be just spent focusing on improvements and balancing (and most importantly: reworking some killers the community long wanted).
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I try to give the devs the benefit of the doubt since they are always having to crank out new chapters but idk anymore. This Q&A really just makes it seem like they don’t understand the game. Hearing that it is going to take years to get basic lobby features (especially features that are standard in every other game) is kinda ridiculous.
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I honestly believe BHVR does not deserve these big licenses. Their game is one giant mess of bugs and with old bugs returning sporadically like that locker flashlight exploit.
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This AMA was the definition of dissapointment. It's just the same "it's not our priority but it's noted" bs. What is their priority? It's just bug fixes after bug fixes due to the tragic spaghetti code. I mean how was there invisible Wesker at one point? How do developers truly believe they provide counters to tunneling when it is flourishing at an increased rate? How are new game modes not a priority? Why does implementing features that numerous games have appear so challenging? How was the female vaulting bug in the game for so long? Why is it so normalised to push back a killer rework so much that people forget they exist? Why are perk reworks so far away, it's literally just a perk? Why are all the killer reworks rushed and so lackluster when they had more than enough time to figure something out? These are the questions that should be asked and answered. Developers avoid them like the plague.
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I agree completely.
While I just mostly lurk on the forums I try to interject the occasional odd comments here and there about the abysmal state of affairs in the game, to seemingly deaf ears.
Solo queue did not used to be the one sided slaughter it is now and that is a direct result of their bad decisions making for years, not just the last few updates.
At this point I have zero interest in loading the game up and playing it anymore. Whats the point? To get hard tunneled and slugged just to feed sweaty killer mains easy 4ks?
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I definitely agree that BHVR is way too slow with changes, and just don't take any risks really. The newly anti-facecamp mechanic is a perfect example. We get a mechanic that could have addressed the frustration of camping for survivors, but all it does is counter the most egregious form of camping, facecamping, and that's it. Barely any actual improvement in that regard.
The same goes for tunneling and gen rush. For 7 years people still have the same complaints as it seems, and it doesn't seem like that will ever stop.
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Can’t disagree with anything here. The last major change to the basic gameplay was the EGC in 2019. 2019
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Ragequitters and lone wolf survivors are way more damaging to solo q, than the lack of voice comm information.
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And I remember we were all so excited!
We couldn't wait to see where the game would go next, what they would do next.
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What I believe is worse than the lack of innovation is how the content is being handled.
Look, I understand some of my opinions aren't popular and that many people do not share the love I have for the Old DBD, but surely everyone can see how some things weren't handled properly.
Take Billy, for example. No one asked for an overheat or for Billy to get nerfed, and he was.
No one asked for the style and overall atmosphere of the game to change completely, and it did.
Killer design is getting less and less creative, usually a repetition of anti-loop killers that you can only counter by holding W and pre-dropping pallets, while the older killers suffer with unnecessary changes.
Mix the lack of innovation with bad changes made to innovative content and you get DBD's current state.
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Agree with all of this, with the exception of Trickster where I mildly disagree (felt they were substantial changes, unnecessary for most but worthwhile all). Surprisingly agree with Otz’ take, as well.
BHVR cares (mostly about what it is we’ve come to realize they care about), nevertheless, their priorities have skewed so far that the direction they’re heading is benefiting themselves, solely and financially.
ie. They’ll just sit happily and grin, the money will continually roll right in, as the playerbase credits them for attempting change (that you so perfectly described as glacial) and continues to contently voice their concerns on the forums in confidence that they’re being heard and accounted for (which, from the responses on the Reddit Q&A we now know just how far out of touch BHVR seems).
The Developers of DBD have been far too lackadaisical to be taken completely seriously and their self serving interests supersede the quality of product we’ve been funding them to misproduce.
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This all stems from the fact that they refuse to address core gameplay problems. Their priority is spam releasing new characters and cosmetics.
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I've said this before, but I've played league for over a decade now and continue to do so.
Having to watch league get massive seasonal changes every year and get two week large balance patches hurts my view especially on bhvr. Both OW and DBD are just so incredibly slow it's sad to watch and they both take so much time for the wrong changes.
If you sit two people in a room who's sole job it is to balance dbd and come up with changes they should be spitting out large patches AT LEAST every month and a half. I can only think they don't have a team dedicated to it at all.
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That wouldn't be the year of Road Map goals left to wither away and die, would it? 🤪
I feel your frustration fam.
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Even making random perks a toggleable thing was “we might do that sometime the future.“. Really? Something that’s already in the game, that people can already do, and just want a way to enable it without having to select a certain tome challenge? That’s still a “maybe sometime later” thing?
Baffling.
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Billy was their most balanced best designed killer back then. Everyone loved him. Fun to play, very fun to verse. All he needed was add-on tweaks and that was it. Now......
I certainly share your love of the old maps, the old game really. Miss it terribly. 💝
May or may not be currently watching Puppers potatoing as Ash with Noob3 against a Billy on the old blue Sheltered Woods.
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Exactly! Billy was ruined for no particular reason, because even the devs acknowledged that they were happy with the way he was performing by the time his nerf dropped.
And it makes me happy to find someone who likes the Old DBD. I loved it <3
I understand that some people don't and I respect it, but I don't think anyone is truly satisfied with the way things are going.
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Id like to see dbd come back some day with exciting amounts of changes and innovation like we have had in the past like the big updates and midchapters we've had. While not every change is perfect the first time around it seems like the amount of effort has decreased over time because they are happy with how they think the game should be for the moment. But thats not how game design is supposed to go with a live service game its supposed to be a constant strive to give people stuff they didn't even know they wanted, innovate and tweak things that didn't hit the mark and create something living. But it feels like is more focused on cosmetics and giving people just enough to come back every few weeks to buy something new.
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That's not a shot at BHVR, just an opinion.
this however, will be.
that isn't youtuber C on that video. it isn't BigFanOfFranchiseX, it isn't just anyone... it's otz.
if any person outside of bhvr could be said to be the face of dbd, it's him.
he has, for years, put out an insane amount of content for dbd. be it simply playing the game to organizing, participating and casting events for it.
he puts what? an hour long video around once a week for dbd? sometimes way longer than that plus all the other ones? Many videos on, what's the best order to unlock the characters, what to focus on early, what killer should I play, tier lists, etc etc etc... I don't know how he manages it.
This is the type of dedication you cannot buy.
people get into, and continue playing this game... because of him.
people learn about things in and outside of the game... because of him.
All that while being one of the chillest guys I have ever watched, both on video and stream.
And bhvr managed to get that guy to lose his passion for the game? even partially?
not from his interests changing, not from the game changing in a way he dislikes, not from a new game release... no. simply because he can't feel the passion from the devs, just complacency. because he got tired of not feeling listened to. because he sees no point in continuing to give so much of himself to this game.
and can anyone tell him he's wrong? because I can't.
why is it so hard to like this game? it should be so easy... but I see stuff like this time and time again and I stop wanting to.
billy gets his rework, freddy stops existing and something else replaces him, killers ignored for years on end, sadako players losing what made her enjoyable for them, people STILL feeling motion sickness from clown but nothing is done, blight still making impossible turns and having his addons, where is the lgbtq+ representation that would come after david again? why is an fov slider taking so long? how is seeing perks on lobby gonna take years?... I could go on but I rather stop...
we literally see them going "we are looking into huntress" or twins, and half the people think they will screw it up and the other half think they MIGHT not. when did the most charitable position became "they got some stuff right so we can't say"? why is expecting them to get it right most of the time just not realistic? how is this the normal?
the development cycle for this game is both too fast and too slow. too much new content, too little fixes, reworks and updates. this is unsustainable, at some point, it will simply pass the breaking point. if it hasn't already.
ok, rant over.
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billy gets his rework, freddy stops existing and something else replaces him, killers ignored for years on end, sadako players losing what made her enjoyable for them
Nailed it, friend.
What makes it worse is that those changes weren't needed. No asked for Billy to get nerfed, Freddy could be easily fixed without a full rework, and Sadako was just the next victim.
I have disagreed with almost every single change implemented into this game since July of 2019, so expecting the absolute worst is perfectly normal for me. And as you've said, it shouldn't be.
There is one hell of a gap between what the community wants and what is actually being done.
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People actually did complain about Billy right before his nerf and an Overheat mechanic was a very common suggestion. So they did technically listen to people, they just listened to the people who complain about everything. All he needed was his instasaw add ons nerfed and he was good.
But much like they did to Freddy a week after his release, they over nerfed almost every aspect as a knee jerk reaction to a vocal minority which just gave them more issues to solve and pushes every other priority back and makes it even longer for other changes to go through. All they need to do is revert all the Hillbilly changes except instasaw and he’s fine for the most part, but instead they keep wasting time doing little things that make no impact (or keep trying to nerf him further) and it just delays everything further.
The amount of time it takes them to make changes is insane. Take MFT for example. They said during the Singularity PTB that they already had a backup plan in case MFT became an issue and yet it still took months for that plan to come to effect despite it being an issue almost immediately. It took them months to buff Trapper after they announced them and all they did was add a Haste and a few more traps. How does that take months yet Knight and Skull Merchant gained Haste a week after release?
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New killer powers show it
for every unique concept you get the most uninspired power in the game (xenomorph)
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I just don't understand how a company with hundreds of developers can spend years doing the simplest things. I know games where ONE or TWO developers do more work in their game in a month than hundreds of people in this game have done in years. Lethal Company as a last example.
Add perks of teammates on load screen or on esc button menu is a day of one programmer work. But they respond with all seriousness "in the next year's". It's nothing but theatre of absurd.
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I think that behavior is doing amazing and that they should continue to release more skins because that’s what the community prioritizes, collectively, we are literally the ones that decide what is the order of importance within this game, through our wallets.
I remember that some rando dev said once upon a time, something along the lines of, a rancorous community is a healthy community, because it shows that its members are passionate and truly care about the game, those were words of wisdom.
Now, no offense, but I think that it’s a little pompous to say that behavior lacks a proper understanding of their own game, I can’t imagine saying that with a straight face and actually believing in those words.
I mean, who’s understanding of the game would you use to substitute theirs? Your own? Some popular streamer? Some opinionated friend? Or your hypothetical dad that works for Nintendo?
I think that the members of the community which share your disappointment should tamper their expectations.
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They clearly understand that they can milk it.
If their priorities lie in pure financial gain, they're doing great for themselves.
Hopefully people stop buying skins so we actually get a better game because the game is not good. At least other people see that.
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I agree with everything. Seems like the devs don't love their game. They need to improve de game faster.
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The reply implying it might take years to show perk loadouts in Survivor lobbies really sets a depressing tone. If such a QOL might take years to implement, it doesn’t bode well for game experience implementations like secondary objectives for survivors, 2 v 8, different gamemodes etc.
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Those are symptoms of a larger problem. There have always been rage quitters and lone wolf players in team games, but if players are to be believed that these are becoming more and more frequent then it suggests a driving force somewhere. IMO it stems from matchmaking issues. They can slap bandaids all they like but eventually something is gonna give.
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I said it in the other thread but it's mainly due to a lack of competition. There's no need to make big, innovative, risky changes to the game when they can just leave it as it is. Every other asym game that comes out dies or remains very small, so there's nowhere else for their playerbase to go.
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There is always things that can be done to mitigate it and they need to work on the underlying issues that cause some people to not want to play the game.
But with the dbd community especially but any playbase for that matter you can't just let people leave in a random moment of frustration. That just causes a cascading affect through the player base.
Dc timers being where they are at can be argued but allowing survivors to exclusively leave the game the second they get hooked is not arguable. People will give up on hook for any little thing, not because they are being tunneled and camped. My experience with people giving up on either side is always random, never because of the classic reasons survivors have to be mad.
You could delete tunneling, camping, slugging and every killer A tier or above and people would still give up on first hook with the 1 gen left. You don't just let them do that for free. If you have something you need to attend to quick irl or you just can't play against knight for a third time in a row then you can eat the first couple miniscule penalty's the game gives you for leaving.
In league people will go super tilted and want out so badly but will still be active in the game always. The sentiment that deleting the ability to self unhook without deli will just cause people to troll their team is unfounded.
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The larger problem is that ragequitting penalties are super weak, and the survivor win condition isn't team based.
The only way this could be matchmaking issues, is if we expect that matchmaking should throw the frequent ragequitters and lone wolf survivors together, so they aren't ruining games for the survivors that actually want to work together as a team.
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I used to scratch my head at the decisions BHVR have been making for DBD, but then I landed a senior creative role at an office in which the CEO has final say on every facet of every part of the job.
My boss is not a designer, nor are they an artist of any sort, yet they are routinely making executive decisions regarding the art direction of every creative project.
It would be an overstatement to say that my boss has a distinct preference for amateur art & design. The end result is a highly talented creative team who intentionally create low quality work, because it is easier to give our boss the ######### they like, than to hand them professional work and being asked to redo it.
I can only imagine that the higher ups at BHVR are ignoring the counsel of those around them, because they wrongfully believe they know what is best. Things will not change unless the leadership changes.
Anyway... time for me to return to my job search 😭
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While good points, from BHVRs perspective (as a business) having harsher penalties is probably less about trolling concerns and more about players just outright leaving the game. Leaving people free to vent their frustrations means they don't really feel pressured to make any fundamental changes to the game.
Your post seemed to suggest that most instances of ragequitting or playing less like a team player has to do with killer actions. While some absolutely do, and always have, I believe most survivor issues revolve around team mates. I'm sure most solo players find themselves repeatedly asking exactly why they're being matched with these people. The longer they get these terrible team mates, the less likely they are to play as a team player. They're most likely to just play for themselves.
BHVR are correct when they say people not playing as a team are the crux of solo queue issues, but i think they're incorrect when they say more info won't help. I don't know what the answer is btw, or even if there is one. I honestly give myself a headache any time I try to figure it out.
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There's a few things I'd say in BHVR's defense about their game design.
1: Everyone else who has tried asymmetrical horror has done pretty poorly. The idea of an asymmetrical game is very tough to make into a playable mechanic. DbD, for all of its complaints, has had an amazing run. It's understandable that they want to be cautious with a formula that, in terms of player counts, is working.
2: Everyone, including me, has their list of 'obviously the game would be better with this change'. Except while those changes are obvious to the person posting them, the forum is in constant disagreement about the direction the game should go. Close to any change that BHVR makes is going to be met with dislike.
3: People's experience with the game is very different. Again going off the forum, it would be easy to think people were talking about multiple different games. And not just the killer v survivor experience, but the ways games normally play out seem to be radically different.
4: People's expectations about what they want the game to be are different. Being we have Otz in the video, I'll compare it to his posts about Coup. He talked about how survivors would hate it because they could think they played something perfectly, but, surprise, the killer has Coup. While I understand why some people might like a game with perfect predictability, I love the randomness and variability. BHVR has designed the game to appeal to a large audience of different expectations, we all want them to pull in our direction but they are looking at the whole group.
5: Objectively, some regions are different. Asian servers looking at self-care as an S tier perk while America and Europe view it as weak to the point of harming the team make the idea of how to move the game forward very difficult.
6: The game really wasn't designed for the lifespan it has. While ultimately that blame can be put on BHVR, they are stuck with spaghetti code and design elements that changing now would either be prohibitively costly or risk losing a portion of the player base.
7: The amount of changes they do has to take into consideration all of the different platforms they are on. The capabilities of a PC and a Nintendo Switch are very different.
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I will agree that they don't seem interested in innovation. I suspect they are overall happy with the place the game is right now, they think they've already tapped the market of people who are interested in the game, and any radical overhaul on a 7 year old game would be unlikely to attract the increased attention/funds such a design would need. They have a large following playing the game and keeping the course with new killers/survivors every few months for the next several years that the game will continue to be successful.
As well, the last time they tried a radical game change was the universal self pickup mechanic. That was clearly an idea meant to move the game forward and deal with lots of the downsides that currently exist. Given how poorly the results went its not surprising they haven't tried any other major change like that and have been working on things like anti-face camp.
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I am surprised they ever do events like this. So many of the problems BHVR has gotten into is someone talking off the cuff instead of prepared statements.
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Billy used to be my main.
I don't like that the maps aren't dark anymore either.
I wonder who decides these changes.
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That's a bit harsh. They are slow to move but we still have got some improvement over the years. (And some pretty bad changes too.)
If you take a step back, you have to keep in mind that the goal of a company is to make money.
It seems that the player base is growing (several millions now?) so from their point of view, there is little incentive to change anything.
I'm guessing their biggest revenue stream is from cosmetics. (Something I'll never understand.) So naturally they have strong incentive to develop that side of the game.
In the end, the opinions on the forums, reddit, twitter, ... don't really matter. It's a good thing too given how many posts "takes" are so obviously selfish and the result of a pretty narrow view of the game.
About Otz's reaction : I think he should endeavor to keep his "positive" persona. Being so negative doesn't suit the image he has tried to build over the years. It's not like his opinions about changes are that good to begin with. He always fails to take into account that he has an insane amount of experience in the game : he is an outlier, a singularity. What happens to him or with him isn't what happens in the great majority of matches precisely because of that vast experience.
I don't feel strongly about the Q&A answers. It's a bit disappointing (sharing builds) but that's it. I don't think my solo experience will be improved because what ruins it is the suicide-on-hooks, the run-to-the-killers-to-die, the idlers, ... I've seen little change with the additional information given to the players. The game is only fun in a group because the average solo player is just bad, plain and simple. (The games I've played with a member of the forum a few weeks ago were the most fun I had as survivor for months.)
The one thing I want to see changed in the game is how they handle cheating. Their servers need to be able to detect basic inconsistencies and who is present in the match when it happens. That way cheaters can be detected and banned. Anything else is pretty secondary to my eyes. (I've stopped reporting cheaters given that the last obvious reported, recorded, teleporters have never been banned.)
I would also love if they could not break killers or features every single time they do an update. (Nurse is still broken btw.)
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Its not even about playing something else. Its about the company themselves just refusing to have good communication or flat out making the wrong statements. Its not really something that screams "we're gonna fix this so you can come back later"
Edit: The comment this was quoting got deleted which was just the video of Cote saying "go play something else"
Post edited by Brimp on0 -
Yeah I'm getting the same vibes of launch day dbd to before myers released. They never expected it to be very big so they just kinda give less than half the effort to address things (which is kinda wrong cause shack double window existed for only around a week). The fact that their response to holding off on giving more communication for soloq is "soloq doesn't like to work together" is straight up embarrassing.
Like billy and blight addons (billy in all aspects like collision and addons) have been in the state of they need changes for YEARS and yet they're finally getting addressed now.
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That you are allowed to have and share, naturally.
I respect it, friend. I just don't agree with it.
The fact that they were approved... no, the fact that they were even considered is already concerning.
Just because you can change something doesn't mean you should. I think they forget that sometimes.
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I heavily disagree with this, BHVR innovates a lot on their killer releases, people might not see it/or actively ignore it for the sake of their argument, but killers like xenomorph, singularity and to an extend knight are innovations on the blueprint of dbd. Singularity quite literally added verticality to the game, knights power is pure AI, which was completely new for dbd at the time and xenomorph codes a whole web of randomly generated tunnels on each map. Whether you like it or not bhvr ups themselves on their code with this releases showing they can make outstanding work with frankly, a bad blueprint.
Now, people want innovation as in new gamemodes and mechanics, and that bhvr has been deficient in, but saying they do not innovate is either willfully ignorant or just being ignorant how hard coding some of those killers is.
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I was one of the people that asked for a cool down ability to be implemented for Billy, and I thought that it was necessary to do so as he had too much going for him. He was able to travel long distances quickly and down survivors with one shot, all while having the minuscule penalty of missing his target.
Now that he has the cool down implemented, the killer must be more thoughtful about when, how and where the ability should be used, e.g. to travel long distances quickly, or save the ability in the event that you encounter a survivor that is nearby.
I think that it is unreasonable to characterize the people that asked for this change as people that complain about everything. We pointed out a valid problem that was happening too often in matches that involved Billy, the developers noticed and agreed that the complaints were valid.
I don’t understand your rationale, if the community stops supporting the game financially then the game is more than likely to die as a result, unless you are expecting for this extreme, cave to my demands or suffer financial consequences/ruin approach will somehow lead the developers to some awakening which will get them to listen to the portion of the community that shares the perspective that you hold.
If the portion of the community which shares your opinion is dominated with such an extreme, dictatorial mentality, then it is no wonder why the developers are less responsive to that portion of the community, it’s unapproachable.
My advice would be to take a less aggressive approach so that the developers can become more receptive to what you, and anyone else which shares this perspective, has to say.
Also, I think that the community could benefit in recognizing that the developers clearly know what they are doing when it comes to prolonging the lifespan of the game, it has been around for nearly a decade and it is still doing quite well for such an old game, especially in a time period where games/ technology in general becomes old and outdated in a short period of time.
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Seeing as that aggressive approach you yourself used to get Billy changed worked and my suggestions over the years about simple optimization changes didn't, I think we can tell who BHVR will listen to.
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EDIT: My original response seemed a bit harsh, so I'm editing it.
Why didn't you focus on learning Hillbilly's counters? It was perfectly possible to escape against him.
There was nothing wrong with Billy, save for one specific add-on combo and even that can be debatable.
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Yeah that may have been a bit extreme of me to say. Sorry. I don't think he needed any changes outside of insta-saw though and his traversal was fine. His Overheat has been changed to point now where it doesn't really have much impact anymore and he's still pretty bad so I don't think Billy was ever an issue outside of insta-saw.
I still think it was unnecessary and that they only nerfed him because he was a hot topic for a few months.
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When you have 1300 employees, you cant spent 6months releasing no new content and just doing health updates.
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Overheat was a necessary nerf because maps used to be filled with loops that were curve-able.
The actual reason why overheat was partially un-nerfed was because the anti-Blight map updates removed most of the curve-able loops.
Does everyone remember that most loops used to literally be smooth vertical objects with perfect 90 degree angles?
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I'll have to strongly disagree on overheat being necessary.
Hillbilly was the golden child of DBD Killer balance, the one character everyone liked to go against. They took that character, and ruined him.
There is a reason why his rework is widely hated. I guarantee only a minority of players felt like Billy needed a nerf. A very small minority, in fact.
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Hot Take, but i never found Billy fun to go against in anyway and the curve-able loops was one of those reasons.
I'm genuinely happy he got reworked, as it means i only get to face Billy once in a blue moon.
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He really wasn't the one character everyone liked to go against. Curving was mostly just "can you control a killer's movement for the short period of time where the game gives you something like 9,000 DPI". It was mostly just muscle memory.
And now that we have the map reworks with the awful collision, he needs to worry about that... but so does Blight, and Blight has a much higher skill ceiling because Blight sometimes needs to plan bump paths, which is much more involved than "I want to curve around an object".
TD;LR Billy's skill ceiling was always massively overrated, and didn't justify how powerful curving used to be.
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