Dead By Daylight's Monetization...
I love Dead by Daylight, I started playing in 2018, I have thousands of hours across PC and Console, so I feel as if I have enough experience and time dumped into the game to where I can actually talk about the issues with the monetization.
In all regard, I will do my best to be as respectful. I love the game and I only want it to succeed, but this criticism is necessary.
IRIDESCENT SHARDS...
Since a lot of stuff has been changed, I had to recalculated how much Iridescent Shards all the DLC costs.
Anything from the Macabre Tales pack, the Old Wounds pack, and the Maddening Darkness pack can be bought with 4,500 IS, but I fear that this wont be enough since the 12 Survivors and 11 Killers will still cost 103,500 IS to purchase them.
Furthermore, since this only applies to older DLC, new DLC is still being sold at 9,000 IS, which means that the other 7 Survivors and 6 Killers will still cost 117,000 IS to purchase them.
This sets us up for a grand total of 220,500 Iridescent Shards. Keep in mind that a SINGLE Devotion Level takes 647,000 XP and only gives 46,335 IS. Meaning in modern DBD it will take you 4.7~ Devotion Levels to purchase all non-licensed characters.
HOW DOES THIS EQUATE TO TIME SPENT...
As previously mentioned, 647,000 XP is required to for a single Devotion Level and you need 4.7~ Devotion Levels; this means 3,040,900 XP is required in total.
Let's try to measure time by creating a hypothetical "perfect" scenario for gaining XP.
Within a match of DBD, you gain 1 XP for every active second within a match, up to a maximum of 10 minutes or 600 XP. This is further increased by Emblem Status which can grant a further 18 XP per Emblem Status, up to a maximum of 72 XP. The most you can consistently earn within a match is 672 XP.
It will take you 4,538 matches, OR 45,380 minutes, OR 756 hours.
BUT Keep in mind this does not include queue times. Also Keep in mind this is under the absolute perfect match conditions.
When considering an average 10 minutes queue/lobby/load time. This further extends the time to 90,760 minutes, OR 1,512 hours.
Suggesting someone has 4 hours a day to play (which considering the average gamer, this is very generous), it will take them 378 days to unlock all of characters.
BUT IM NOT DONE YET...
Licensed characters exist, and while you cannot purchase them for Iridescent Shards, you can obtain their perks via the Shrine of Secrets.
There are 15 Licensed Survivors and 12 Licensed Killers, all of which have 3 Shareable perks, which totals to 81 perks, which each will take 12,000 IS to unlock the Tier 3 variant per perk, totaling to 972,000 IS...
Taking our examples from earlier, it will take 20,197 matches.
In the best possible conditions, it will take your average gamer (again, playing 4 hours a day) 16,831 days or 46 YEARS to unlock everything.
This does not even include time spent waiting for the perks to show up in the Shrine of Secrets to begin with.
WHY LICENSED DLC IS MORE UNHEALTHY THAN PEOPLE THINK...
If the option for the player is to fork over hundreds of dollars or spend 46 years unlocking licensed content, literally all players are either going to budget their Iridescent Shards or just outright spend money.
I firmly believe that this is a serious issue that must be addressed. Players should not feel shoehorned into spending money or falling behind, especially if the "meta" relies on a perk that must be paid for, which we have seen many times before (e.g. BBQ, Eruption, Decisive Strike, etc.).
WORRIED ABOUT THINGS GETTING WORSE AND POTENTIAL SOLUTION...
None of this is to say that BHVR isnt trying, BHVR reducing the prices of older DLC was a massive step in the right direction.
This being said, as more DLC is coming out, these numbers will only continue to get worse. We need a more long term solution to deal with this issue as opposed to what we have now.
My suggestion is moving character and perk purchases to a secondary currency this way we can balance it independently of cosmetic prices, this will allow BHVR to regulate the prices a lot easier.
Comments
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On a positive note, shoutout to BHVR for consistently cheap DLC. New chapters are super cheap to purchase, whereas they could easily jack it up to 10-15+ bucks… I have always appreciated that.
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You dont NEED every character so quickly though. If you wish to play them, then buy them when you can, either with Iridescent Shards or with real money options. But to make it easy to be able to just buy everything with a pool of Iri shards that are given out like candy... why would anyone ever buy a chapter with real money again? At that point, BHVR would stop making money and they wouldn't be able to pay the developers nor server upkeep and that would end the game.
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This response makes me think you did not read anything I put, not trying to be rude, of course, but I will address these points:
- BHVR has a Battlepass, Cosmetic Shop, Limited Time/Collaborative Cosmetics, and Licensed Content that they pull revenue from outside of Non-Licensed Characters, BHVR isnt going to magically evaporate if Non-Licensed Characters were made easier to obtain.
- Buying Chapters with money already grants exclusive cosmetics for doing it. For people who want to collect cosmetics or enjoy the cosmetics from the Chapter will buy it with money. BHVR can capitalize on this by making Chapter cosmetics focused more on quality instead of basic reskins.
- I never said Iridescent Shards should be "given out like candy," in fact, I specifically stated that character unlocks should be tied to a different currency since it will become easier for BHVR to moderate character prices without messing up their revenue from cosmetics.
- Dead by Daylight is not a free game, it costs 20 USD, yet it relies on a lot of the monetization practices that free games use. If the game was free, I wouldnt care about these practices, but it isnt.
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DBDs FOMO content and the large grind you have to go through to purchase things both really suck.
We can only hope they will continue with things like the expansion packs and halving the prices of non-licensed content.
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My personal viewpoint is that 756 hours seems quite reasonable for all the OCs from the Dead by Daylight universe, expecially considering the average player isn't considered to be no longer a newbie until about 1200 hours. When you're talking about unlocking content for free, the exchange is instead of monetary value you are bringing footfall into the game, which has the benefit of promoting the game to other players and perhaps having them buying the content instead. If you are a FTP player, then you are known as a minnow, and the value you bring to the game is your presense, and you need to keep actively playing the game in order to bring this value.
When it comes to premium content, the fact you are even able to get it at all is a big feather in DBDs cap, because most premium content works on the idea of, you buy it or you get sod all. This content has to be premium as the licensing demands it, otherwise it cannot even exist in the game. In terms of buying said premium content, I operate on a principle of if you consider a days worth of entertainment worth 25p, this equates to approximately the cost per month of say a pretty standard MMORPG subscription. That is probably closer to 50p nowadays at £14.99 a month, but you get the idea, and we'll say 25p for the giving the argument the worst case to go against.
The average character in DBD costs £3.99. That means using my model, if you get 16 days of entertainment from a character, then you've got your moneys worth, and the fact you unlock perks to use on other charatcers, means it continues to provide value, even if you no longer use that charatcer. If you're the type of person putting 500 hours and more into DBD, you should consider that the content investment is actually worth your money, and you have the benefit of continuing to support the game and developers in the process.
Considering the average cup of coffeee on the high street is about the same as a DBD character, and there are frequently sales you can take advantage of, I personally think the monetization of DBD is one of the better examples I've seen in the gaming industry for it's customers over the past 10 years.
Edit: Using your own maths, it takes about 92 games to farm for a new character (assuming I haven't made a mistake).
- 3'040'900 exp / 220500 shards = 13.79 exp per shard.
- 13.79 e/s * 4500 shards = 62'059.18 exp
- 62'059 exp / 672 exp per game = 92.35 games
At an average of say 4 games per night, thats about 23 days per character, or a little over 3 weeks. Certainly as far as killers are concerned, I feel like 3 weeks to explore a charatcers power, really get to understand and give them a good go is plenty. Usually it took me a week to complete the killer or survivors unique achievements, and having a good go at each character would fall in line with this time frame.
The newer characters are of course double that at 185 games, or 46 days perh character, which is starting to push into the more tedious territory, but it's not completely ridiculous, and if you've gone through the rest of the cast and are still playing at this point it's worth starting to weigh up if you're actually interested in buying the content instead, since you're clearly getting a lot of time out of the game.
So to me this all seems pretty good... barring premium content, which again... it's premium content, that if it weren't premium, we wouldn't even have it at all.
Post edited by UndeddJester on1 -
Why do you need every killer or survivor in the game? I have literally only ever played Kate and not felt like I was missing out on anything. I play about a dozen killers and haven't ever felt the need to play deathslinger or hag, for example. It seems like you want stuff just to say you have it. Endless acquisition of this or that is a poor mindset in my opinion.
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I think BHVR should just add a NASCAR based survivor and killer. They can be covered with sponsorship and you can earn Auric Cells from playing as them. The more time you spend in line of sight of other players, the more you earn.
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Also just a quick note about the unlocking of premium perks, you don't need to unlock the t3 variants do you?
You only need to unlock t1 of each perk, and then they will appear in the bloodweb to be levelled up normally if I understand correctly? (geuinely asking, cause I've never unlocked any perks via the shrine). Assuming thats the case, the number is still bad, but if you strip out bad perks and only take the perks you actually want at t1, this number comes down quite considerably.
Not that that is a defence for the Shrine mind you... the Shrine does need to be massively overhauled, and there isn't really a good reason to have perks be as expensive or rare in the Shrine as they currently are... the appeal of the premium content is primarily the characters themselves, the perks shouldn't be gated anywhere near as heavily as they currently are.
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They could just give us shards for dailies that would help a lot. Currently I treat them like they are not existing.
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Yes, I did read what you said, that doesn't mean I agree with you.
They do the things the way they do because it is a live service game that does not have a subscription cost to play. They have already reduced the costs of many of the chapters, and they have now started making ALL non-licensed cosmetics go free (with Iridescent Shards) after about a month.
As for the Battle Pass, they are the only game I know of that gives you your entire purchase back if you finish the pass. Many give you part of the purchase back, but you still need to buy more premium currency when the next pass releases to top yourself off. There are people who have bought the DBD Rift one time, and never purchased it ever again because they have never needed to. If any other game with a Battle Pass is this generous, I've not played it or heard of it.
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I agree, especially since that's what for honor does. It costs 15,000 in game currency to buy a character and you can get 3000 from just doing the all the orders every 2 days
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