This girl explains exactly why I've lost interest into DbD
In the comment for the player survey, I've ended up ranting sarcastically about the removal of skill expression in the game.
This is probably the main reason I play about once a month, if that much.
I'm kind of pleased to hear I'm not the only one feeling that way. I agree with almost everything Slushie says in her video, as well as the comments from CoconutRTS.
The original video:
And the video that pointed me to it.
Comments
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It's a concerning trend, and it's a mistake many other modern developers are making as well. This isn't a phenomenon exclusive to BHVR. There's this notion among modern game devs that your worst players in a skill bracket need to be able to stand a chance against the best players in that skill bracket. So many games are implementing these skill floors that are also viable, and all that does is alienate your most passionate players.
The floor should not be viable. The floor should not allow for a 50% win rate against a skilled player. The floor should represent the floor. Modern Controls in SF6 shouldn't be viable against pros. Every job was completely homogenized and dumbed down in FF14 and now the devs are trying to walk that back after Endwalker semi-flopped. Support is completely broken in OW2. I could keep going.
In DbD, you see with this dumbing down of killers relative to their strength output. A killer as easy Chucky or Skull Merchant should not be anywhere near A tier in strength. Not when killers like Huntress or Singularity exist in that same tier of strength. How satisfying do you think it is for a top tier survivor to see a 500 hour Chucky scamper under a pallet for a free M1?
It doesn't matter where you put the skill floor. A certain portion of your playerbase will always find it. The floor can't be viable against players who are striving for the ceiling. You eventually end up with an apathetic playerbase after you've run off everyone who cares. I hate where modern gaming is going. Developers are completely lost.
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They definitely are dumbing the game down, kinda fits with the overall dumbing down of western society as a whole that toxic influences like TokTic and other brain rot is creating.
I get wanting to make the game more accessible to a new player and the casuals but I definitely do not enjoy the dumbing down either.
It's a big can of worms I don't have the energy to discuss too much but I am sure many of us have wondered how in the hell a flashlight blind got us, or from the survivor side how our blind actually worked etc. Just the tip of a very big iceberg though and I don't have the energy to care tbh…
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Removing unhook cancel shows how bad things are rn.
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I actually had this thought the other day. On killrates and how something like a low skill requirement Wraith can achieve the same results as someone who requires more like Singularity
There's also no incentive to get better because things just get balanced out anyway.
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I like slushie, I follow her on twitch and YouTube. Sucks that she’s taking a break but I hope she finds other games that make her happy
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Skill Ceiling beeing removed more and more from the game is INDEED a HOT topic and I can agree with that 100%.
This game moves more and more to linear gameplay.
1.) Survivor: Do gens, unhook people, if not needed, dont heal, just stick on gens, escape. Thats it.
2.) Killer: complicated killers are becoming more and more stale… the most interesting killer is probably Singularity now… but he is also very weak. Skill Ceiling is getting removed a lot.
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Yeah especially the healer role on 14 its a living disaster and most fighting games lately is press 1 button= do easy combos with 0 thinking, all these games lately is being more of no expression of lately.
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They just care about the Meg player in her Deathgarden Mask having a good time.
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Well I will just add that this mid chapter is so bad I wish we skip it or maybe ship only the tome with Haddofield changes and forgot this ever happend and moved on to next chapter with anniversary.
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After SBMM was added to the game nothing was the same anymore sadly
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Lobby dodging is better than Balancing? 😐️
Yes, playing the same game over and over can lead into taking a break from it.
I like CoconutRTS he is one of the most creative dbd streamer but dbd is far from being a flat heartbeat.
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Yeah I feel like they are removing a lot of uniqueness in killers and trying to homogenize them too much. Too many killers are played against exactly the same.
A lot of killers have too low of skill ceilings as well for how much return you get.
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I hate these types of posts. It's always BS excuses. The reason you've lost interest in the game is because you have played it too much and now you are bored of it. Players need to learn there is no perfect version of any video game. Whatever problem you perceive to be in this game is exactly why another person loves it. Hypothetically speaking, if BHVR were to go to great lengths to make whatever changes you personally think need to be made, you would still get bored of the game eventually and now BHVR has spent tons of resources to try and make your ideal version of the game only to alienate other players. It is natural to get bored of anything you've done too much. Take a break or quit but don't make lame excuses as to why you are doing those things.
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This.
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Good videos.
They are indeed removing stuff that isn´t necessary to remove and changing stuff that nobody wanted to be changed.
But i also think the main reason is that they play too much.
If you have to play the game every day because it is your job i can understand that you get burned out.
It is the same thing if you make your hobby to your job. You might start to hate it if you have to do it and not want to do it.
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What does skill expression mean, exactly?
Back in my day, youngins had to cleanse all 5 totems going to AND from school....and they liked it! Harumph! Where is the skill in having a totem aura?
Some things I just couldn't care less about if it means a good time for all
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I'll still milk new chapters and events(Temporarily)3 -
I agree with quite a few things she mentioned.
Especially the part about skill expression being removed is sad. It makes the game so much more predictable. I could understand that they looked at the light burn mechanic again and even removing it from Wraith would have been fine in my opinion, since he didn't really need it to begin with. But against Nurse, Artist and Hag it was an interesting counter and it felt pretty fair. Not to mention, they removed flashlight interactions from these killers for consistency reasons but then kept it on Nemesis? Real consistent, devs.
Somewhere along the way, the devs have missed the mark when it comes to removing problematic things but keeping fun things. Locker safes could be considered part of the former, light burns part of the latter.
It also seems the devs can't really decide, if they want the game to be competitive or accessible to everyone. It can't be both. Not when you have such a huge amount of different mechanics, maps and perks. On one hand, they remove a bunch of stuff that could give one side an advantage, if done correctly to decrease the impact of skill difference and on the other they try to balance the game around a 60% kill rate.
Which is also something she mentioned as being an issue and I agree. The results don't matter as much as the actual game. I'd rather have a lower kill rate, if it meant the game would go back to 2021's play styles. I saw a lot less pre dropping and Shift + W or hardcore tunneling at 5 gens back then. I have seen people throw entire games just to stick to these play styles and yeah, you can beat them (given the right loadout). But it's not enjoyable. And that's the problem. You can have the most balanced game of all time but if it's not enjoyable to play, then it's dead anyway.
The PTB doesn't help. Twins are horribly overpowered, Haddonfield is basically a complete dead zone and what have they done with DS?! They said, they would put some more tiles on the streets of Haddonfield but it seems they forgot to actually allow the pallets to spawn. This is not what any of us asked for. We wanted the houses to be more fair for killers and the streets to be more interactive for survivors. Meaning more loops on the streets (maybe a few windows too because otherwise we'll see people run from pallet to pallet and pre drop everything which will only combine different issues and amplify them).
The DS buff was promising but what in the world have they done with this animation? Now it's even worse than before. I thought it would only have like a short animation and then stun the killer for 5 seconds but here we are. I feel like we're back in 5.5.0 when they nerfed the Twins' Toy Sword for no reason. The year started promising but now I'm really not looking forward to the next patches anymore.
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Aww Slushie💞 She’s such a Shweetums🫶🏽
She totally puts herself out there all vulnerable, and she’s 💯percent real n speaks the truth, telling it like it is.
Absolutely respect her☺️
Happy she doesn’t mince her words n feelings like other streamers.
Everyone deserves a break from DBD; it’s about having the strength to admit it’s necessarily valid for you personally, and the willpower n boldness to actually take that cozy break n chill from the game for awhile.
Such a comforting, mentally rewarding and mind opening experience once you finally do stop gaming Dead by Daylight for a few months😌
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In DbD, you see with this dumbing down of killers relative to their strength output. A killer as easy Chucky or Skull Merchant should not be anywhere near A tier in strength. Not when killers like Huntress or Singularity exist in that same tier of strength.
pretty sure you create horrible imbalance the game with that logic and form radical elitism for x characters and y characters. I believe there is a term for this in video games. Was it Scrub strategies? It is like picture fighting game. a player is doing x action that makes y player lose, so Y player blames the scrub mechanic for losing rather then learning to play against said scrub strategy to defeat it. Then Y player creates conclusion that certain set character styles should not be allowed to be viable. e.g Spamming zoning moves or SPD Command grabs character shouldn't be strong. Only combo characters should be relevant in said genre because they take more skill to play then pressing 1 zoning button or 1 command grab.
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Do you really want to go back to the days when there were only a few viable killers even against solo queue players?
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I think what she and other streamers see as removing "skill expression", I tend to view more as BHVR's attempt to equalise certain aspects of the game. Whether that's to remove arguably unfair game mechanics affecting only a handful of Killers, or to bring the capabilities of PC Killers more in line with those of console players, I think what they're trying to do is make a more polished and consistent experience for everyone. When you consider that most of the player base is on console and plays DBD fairly casually, how can you justify 1000+ hour PC gamers having additional competitive advantages because they learned how to
exploit unintended bugs"express their skill", when they almost certainly already have enough skill to beat nearly everyone else that plays the game?I can understand why highly experienced players would be more upset about these things being removed from the game than maybe I would be (I never experienced them as a recent player). They need new things to learn and experience after so many thousands of hours of game play. Slushie admitted as much in the video, there's not much left for her to learn.
Can anyone really say they're surprised that after 1000's of hours, some players are growing a bit tired of the game play loop? I honestly can't think of any game that I've put more time into than DBD (unless I've being playing that game for 30+ years).
I'm also taking a break too. Because I feel like I do need a break to keep the experience fresh (and for other reasons as well, mainly my frustration at sinking so much time into the game, but not being a much better player than when I first started).
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Remember the day developer said this is a party game
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They're making a lot of Killers too easy on PC. That's a fact. Huntress doesn't need 7 hatchets for PC when they have 120 fps. How hard is it to backrev a Survivor with Hillbilly on PC considering he has a non-existent cooldown? These Killers are busted on PC.
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Hillbilly has fairly long charge up, which is honestly worse than cooldown
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He's a spam Killer.
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Doesn't really matter when none of spamming realistically hit survivors tbh
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Has anyone ever told you that it's not what you say but how you say it?
But back to the point you make. Yes and no. There's a difference between dropping a game because you are burned out/have enough of it and dropping a game because it only only gets more and more annoying and frustrating.
And do devs of long running running games inevitably end up making changes that a part of the playerbase doesn't like? Absolutely. But there, too, is a difference between "interesting changes but not my cup of tea" and "in what universe is that a good idea?"
Personally, I've had a few of those happen. Have 5k+ hours in warframe and now only play the big quests that get released about once a year. The new game modes, yet another standing and another tool were interesting but not "my" warframe. Played the hell out of 7 days to die but after 2k-ish hours it was just mostly more of the same and I got tired of it. In dbd, however, I find myself in OPs camp. It's not interesting-but-not-my-cup-of-tea-different. It's in-what-universe-is-that-a-good-idea-different.
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I am an absolutely terrible Huntress, on PC and console. I used to run leather loop or infantry belt every game, but that's been replaced with Oak Haft now that she has an extra hatchet. Believe me, it does not make a huge difference and I still get regularly 4 outed.
BHVR buffed Huntress for players like me not for players like Coconuts. That's not to say I think she needed buffing (because I don't), I can at least understand why BHVR buffed her. Billy is the 3rd best Killer in the game right now imho. Should he be? I don't know, but playing as him doesn't = free wins, even with all of his buffs.
I do think certain Killers have been over-buffed (Trickster, for example) and I question some of BHVR's choices, but I feel like they have a better understanding of the current state of DBD than some people give them credit. Especially for the player base as a whole rather than the hardcore veterans. Highly dedicated top level players are important too, but they make up such a small proportion of the community and I think their takes on the game don't always match up with reality for most players.
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The attitude of content creators in general has changed dramatically. Being a survivor main myself, I like to watch survivor main streamers but most of the ones I follow have either switched to mostly killer or gone 50/50. Some are starting to split their streams between DBD and other games. The latter have repeatedly said they worry about losing viewers and money by doing this, which makes me wonder how many others stick around because they feel they have to for financial reasons.There's a very popular killer main content creator I used to subscribe to a couple years back but stopped when he clearly started to hate the game. His negativity seeped into his chat and I couldn't stand being in there anymore. I imagine if not for the money he makes he'd have been long gone too.
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Nobody said to go back in time. Removing "techs" isn't the way, that's all.
Reminder: 360 are a tech too. Imagine if they were removed? (And I think they've tried that and got buried for it.)
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Yes, actually. When you play as Hag (given that was the example) you know you are in a bad place if you go against four flashlights so you dodge if you don't want the challenge.
That's way better than destroying her by making everybody able to destroy traps easily.
Have you noticed we never get Michi videos anymore? It feels like even the best Hag out there has given up.
And about taking a break playing the same game over and over. If DbD wasn't getting neutered I could play thousands more hours without getting bored.
I only stop playing games that are changing for the worst.
I'm pretty sure I'm not unique in that.
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It may come as a shock but not everybody is like you. A lot of people don't get bored easily and have a never-ending attention span.
I'm the textbook clinical case of not getting bored. I have a condition. The only reason I stop doing something, anything, is if that something changes to the point it's not interesting or a challenge anymore. That's what DbD is becoming : uninteresting, dull, unchallenging.
I'll eat the same meals, wear the same clothes, do the same job (never boring), play the same game. I don't see the need for change, ever. I've got almost half a century of data saying so.
I've stopped playing DbD after thousands of hours because of the changes they did to neuter the fun in the game, that's all there is to it.
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I find these posts interesting because of how self involved they are. I don’t mean that as a negative but I see these types of vids in many other live server games and many seem to have a grass is greener elsewhere look.. when truth be told… they are burnt out because they put in many hours a week streaming.
I’m currently burnt out doing a fraction of the playtime they regularly do during the event. For instance a certain streamer dropped this game over a year ago to do variety… that didn’t work out, so they then latched onto another live server game.. and with a fraction of his DBD hours, he’s already talking like he did before dropping this game.
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I stopped watching 2 streamers when they flat out admit they only play because of the money and CONSTANTLY whine for entire streams. Like if it makes you that miserable, imma remove the incentive to keep you playing
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Maybe buff killers that need it and stop trying to water down the game D&D style. There's a reason 3.5 was better than what came afterwards. It isn't even a debate anymore at this point.
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I don't disagree the game's skill ceiling is being lowered especially because a lot of newer killers just play like you are just following a flowchart- At this loop do this If you get hit end of chart. If not it and connects to another loop do this to force hit and so on until you get a hit.
That said most of what Slushy says about skill expression has very little to do with skill when the WHOLE learning curve is just knowing that an interaction exists.
Lightburning a wraith was not something you needed to practice or perfect, Removing hag traps had nothing to do with skill it was just knowing the interaction exists and then zapping them away and anything like locker saves where its just about learning a timing is just an advanced skill check imo. Most of what i consider to be skill expression in dbd is things a player can do better than another player a spirit can have better hearing and be more decisive than the last one you faced, A huntress may be able to hit crossmaps when the previous one could not ect. Dont get me wrong there is less opportunity for skill expression in dbd now eg every map has trees with branches all over the place so huntress crossmaps cannot be done as much but it's just not the things the video talks about.
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You can't destroy Hag traps with flashlights anymore. Just letting you know in case you're dodging teams with flashlights.
Edit: just realized you're OP, so you'd know that. You confused me by talking in present tense.
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But that's exactly what you'd expect.
If a killer is harder to play, more people will be bad at playing them, so they'd have a lower kill rate. This is why Nurse has a low kill rate.
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I don't agree with the overall conclusion of the video that all of these things being removed makes the game less fun. From my perspective BHVR look to be trying to resolve things that are exploitable and unfair. There are some things that perhaps should have stayed, and some things that should be changed/removed.
The flashlights at lockers is something duos can bait for, and can constantly put the killer in a lose lose situation. That had to go.
Flashlight burns on Wraith and Artist crows allowed survivors to double team them ith flashlights and hard counter them, messing with them at loops while they are trying to mind game a teammate and forcing them to be a m1 killer most of the match. That had to go.
Flashlight burn on Hag traps is a little more interesting and fair, have it as a faster trap clear at the expense of your item, but the wipe away mechanic being added as a weaker version of this is fine in the grand scheme. This is feature that can be argued coming back.
Flashlight burn on Nurse I still don't quite grasp... I know how it was hard to do, and in the case of Nurse, it's almost impossible bully her with flashlights, so again that is a feature that could be argued shpuld come back.
The removal of mechanics always has 2 sides. That has to be remembered when looking at any game feature in an asym. There is no blanket 1 size fits all for every mechanic in the game. You can't make your mind up on anything until you've heard the issue, and every single one needs to be carefully weighed up individually.
Some things Slushie complains about being removed are reasonable complaints, and should be considered for reintroduction to the game... there are other things that aren't, where the cons outweigh the pros, and should absolutely not return.
Post edited by UndeddJester on2 -
I'm a Pig and Sadako main for a reason. You can see it with them very well. Pig got dumped down with the most recent update. The trend to put her more in line with other killers in terms of chase at the cost of her uniqueness.
Sadako was even worse with her 2.0 version. It's comical how simple she was to play. Thankfully she got changed more towards her more skillful iteration. An exception as of late.
Variety is good. Uniqueness is good. Skill cielings are what keeps players engaged in the game for longer periods of time. I don't get why this is so hard to understand.
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I can understand being burnt out by this, especially when it’s pretty much her entire life. Taking a break is probably the best choice in those scenarios.
I agree with her that there should be more skill expression, however most of her examples should have been removed or weren’t exactly skilful in the first place
- Light burning Wraith and Hag’s traps wasn’t skill, that’s simply bringing an item and suddenly gaining an easy counter play. They weren’t fun to deal with (especially Wraith) and even her example of there not being many flashlights in games doesn’t make it skill, it’s just luck that yo happened to have a flashlight against Hag. Nurse is the only one where skill actually was involved and I agree that should have stayed.
- Locker saves were completely uncounterable and again miserable to play against. The killer couldn’t do anything except leave. That’s not good game design.
- Hug tech is a good example of skill expression, but with how powerful Blight is something had to change and Hug tech just happened to be it. Maybe they should have nerfed him some other way but one of the strongest killers shouldn’t have a way to make them even stronger
- Flashlight saves I can understand. That was an example of skill expression and I agree that making it easier was an odd choice.
Honestly a lot of her examples of “skill expression” seemed to be less skill and more “things new players don’t know about”. I get that it’s fun to learn about new things and then use them in game, but things like the main counter play to killer (eg, Hag traps) being hidden from new players doesn’t sound like a good idea.
Relying on exploits and hidden game mechanics to show “skill” isn’t good game design. It sounds like she’s just learnt everything is to learn about this game and is disappointed, which happens.
Instead of hiding things and making new players have to scour the internet and find YouTube videos just to understand the game, why not just make killers that reward skill? Make killers like Singularity stronger, make counter play for killers that require you to actually do more than just abandon loops. Make looping and mind games stronger than pre-drop and hold W. Do something that shows you are good at the game but doesn’t hide it or make the other side miserable to play against it.
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The only reason I watched the video was because CoconutRTS mentioned it. Good that he has still fun in the game.
I was just wondering why no one criticizes the video? But this happened now, thx Blighted Dolphin. This is exactly what I thought but couldn't write.
You're posting a video and say: Ok, I can almost agree to every point in the video, BUT I'm not telling you which one.
And other posting things that has nothing to do with the video.
The only thing I can partly agree is the anon mode. But it's very nice against stream sniper, aswell. Removing the Anon mode makes no difference if there are still the mass of alt accounts.
Post edited by Hexonthebeach on0 -
and tbh her kill rate really isn’t so far off from the others. She’s still comfortably over 50%.
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That was not the point of the video.
Balancing is good as long as the game remains fun. We have some killers that are balanced but really not fun to play and also some that are balanced but really not fun to play against. The game has also shifted away from the interactive part between killer and survivor and more towards minimising interaction to the bare minimum. That means it's more effective for survivors to smash gens so the game is over before they get chased / hooked / killed instead of actually delaying the killer and for the killer it's more effective to eliminate one person early on and then steamroll the rest.
This is one of the reasons why we see even more slowdown than a few years back. Because survivors don't try to outlast the killer anymore but to outspeed them (which is a natural consequence of some of the balancing decisions the devs have made and we players pushed for).
Having strong killers in the game is not a bad thing and in that regard the devs have done a good job. Most killers are pretty good now. But the meta changes have brought with them a change in the gameplay loop, that I would prefer reverted. This however is probably not going to happen because for that, they'd need to make extensive changes to survivors and revert some map reworks that arguably made them more fair as well.
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Indeed, I should have used the past tense. Sometimes my native language gets in the way …
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The part I don't agree with are details and unimportant. The main reason I've shared this video is because I expect a lot of "veterans" might agree or at least be interested. As for the newer players, it may make them think.
The main part is the skill ceiling of course. And in a way it's a surprise because intuitively I'd say "fair" is the best thing to aim for. But in hindsight, I'm convinced "fair" is sterile. This game got hugely successful being unfair. And, as frustrated as I've been with DbD over the years, I've got way more fun.
One other the thing said that resonated with me was when one of them say "why should I try to learn such or such thing when I know it may be for naught". I've felt that several times these past few months.
As a Nurse main, on the killer side, I'm very annoyed I can't be light-burnt anymore. I loved to go against opponents able to stop me like this. It was exhilarating. It was also a humbling experience because I've always been bad at flashing killers. (Before they made is so my old mother could succeed.)
These are just examples. I could write a wall about all this.
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I'm a Baby Nurse and don't like to be blinded when I finally have a chance to reach the survivor in chase. I don't mind normal flashlight saves. But I like that they removed that blinding between a teleport even if I'm not playing Nurse at all.
I also like that they kept the blinding Zombie feature vs Nemesis.
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I agree with most things in this video. Space/sky Billy were just cool things and fun, which should never been removed. Invisible walls are just trash and ruin the potential fun/lower the skill of some killers and for survivor as well, when you want to get on certain things. I really dislike the balanceing in this game as a whole. Everything gets constantly nerfed and we only get useless new perks. I would prefer a chaotic game with strong stuff, which is fun much more rather than boring/stale gameplay. Then all killers have to play the same boring way. There is literally only tunneling left in this game. Constant removing of techs that weren‘t intended, instead behavior should just make them a feature. Light burn was a cool mechanic and it should have been extended. I want ranks back instead of mmr….
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