Constructive Criticism to the Devs.

Xernoton

I want to start this by saying, that I do not mean to insult or belittle anyone and I hope my words will be understood in the way I mean them. The devs don't have an easy job and most of us probably have very little experience when it comes to coding and managing a game with as many mechanics as Dead By Daylight. They also managed to somehow keep this game alive for nearly 8 years, which deserves respect and should be considered when we offer feedback. It is obvious, that the devs try to do what they think is best for their game even, if it does end up being suboptimal at times.

However, after the recent PTB and discussions about MMR I feel like it is justified to critique some of the devs' decisions and work. Back when MMR was first introduced, there were many people unhappy with it. The old ranked based matchmaking wasn't perfect but it is fair to say that the players at the time preferred it to the new SBMM. Since then there have been many tweaks to matchmaking and while I personally have learned to deal with it (for the most part), I know that not everyone is happy about it and I agree that it could be improved.

Competitiveness, meta and mindsets:

This is because many players do not want this game to be and feel competitive, which I can understand. Have you watched competitive DBD? It's not all that fun in my opinion. Both sides use highly optimised builds and strategies to keep the match as short as possible and progress faster than their opponent. Especially that last part is what has changed for survivors over the past couple years. We have come from a second chance meta with DH at the peak to a meta where survivors now cannot win long games anymore and a as a result try to outpace the killer by keeping up an efficiency they cannot match.

It is undeniable that 5 minutes games aren't ideal. The fun part of Dead By Daylight, especially for more experienced players, doesn't come from sitting on a gen for 90 seconds or walking across the map and looking for survivors for 60 seconds. It comes from the interaction between killer and survivor (for most players). In 5 minutes however, there is not much interaction to be had. Think about how much time a killer spends just walking around in between chases (about 8-10 seconds, if they're quick) and hooking survivors (another 15 seconds, easily). That is for every chase. So for every 45 seconds chase, there is another 23-25 seconds of pretty much no interaction.

This means, that the general gameplay loop, which has shifted towards shorter chases also shifted towards a less engaging experience. This is partially our own fault because this is a direct result of some of the changes we, as a community, requested. It is also one of the reasons why slowdown perks can never be deleted from the meta. The overall survivor efficiency can reach a level that is way beyond anything a killer can even attempt to achieve. This is not an inherently bad thing because it means, that one category of perks even has a right to exist, which can lead to more variety in loadouts.

However, we also see the other extreme in which killers stack so much slowdown, that their matches become a lot easier than necessary. Presumable their MMR will adjust and put them against better players eventually but until then we have the issue, that many survivor groups are just not prepared to face the most consistent things a killer can bring into the match (there is an equivalent on the survivor side). I mostly try to defend the individual killer meta perks (except Deadlock) because even though they are strong they all are healthy in the sense that they heavily encourage the killer to go for chases and reward them for playing well. Otherwise they will not be able to activate their slowdown perks frequently enough to win the game. On the other hand there is the possibility to stack slowdown upon slowdown with extra slowdown on top of slowdown.

This can buy a killer so much time after each hook, that the survivors have almost no chance to win on some maps, since they will burn through all their resources in a feeble attempt to delay the killer. I mentioned earlier that survivors do have an equivalent to this and though they are rare, highly optimised survivor groups do exist and can achieve results more casual players can only dream of. Against such a group of players, there is not much a killer can do other than to bring something equally strong into the match.

All of this is to say, that the loadout in Dead By Daylight often has a bigger impact on how the match goes than the actual skill of each individual player. We like to call different things a "skill issue" and sometimes that is justified, however most of us would agree that a solo queue team never stood a chance against the famous Starstruck Nurse on Midwich. The same can be said for a Freddy with fun / niche perks on Garden of Joy against a fully optimised 4 people SWF. They can be the best players in the world but sometimes it doesn't matter because you never actually have a play in which your skill matters.

Combined with the discrepancy of players that want the game to be more competitive and those, who do not, we have a divided player base, that will never be satisfied, if the devs continue the course. Some things are mutually exclusive and competitive and casual mindsets are such a thing. How do we fix this? Honestly, I don't know. There is no perfect solution but to start, I believe the devs will need to make a decision. Either:

1. We keep the game casual.
2. We go the competitive route.
3. We try both at once with 2 game modes.

The last option is something that had been requested for a long time and I always bring up, that there is no way to keep the sweats in the competitive queue instead of going into the casual mode and destroying / bullying whatever they find. This is my main concern with this idea because nobody likes feeling bullied in a video game.

The only solutions for this problem I have come up with is to apply 2 different rule sets with limitations to these queues, so that a more casual mode for example doesn't allow 4 slowdown perks, or full SWFs for example or a real incentive to play the competitive mode like more BP, special options for the player card, unlocked in the competitive queue etc. This isn't perfect however, so I would be more than happy hearing what else could be done.

The recent PTB:

It is no secret that the recent PTB wasn't a big hit with players. We got a rework for Twins, that was poorly received, a map rework for Haddonfield, that fixed some of its issues but created a new one and made another worse, an animation for DS, that looked silly on some killers and effectively destroyed the perk, a nerf for UW that will probably make it disappear into the void (which is sad because we have enough perks in there already), an update to the shop, which is nice but in my opinion way less important than actual gameplay and myriad of bugs.

Most of this was reverted, which is a good decision but it's not a good sign that it even happened.

The Twins' rework was announced 2 years ago and ever since, I have been waiting for it because I was honestly curious what they would with arguably the second most dysfunctional killer in DBD (I believe Knight takes the crown). I am trying to give the devs the benefit of the doubt here. This was not the only change they were working on and it sure isn't easy to find a rework for a killer, that can be broken so easily. But this should not have happened. I sincerely ask the devs to put more thought into what implications such changes can have. We have seen multiple times, that you are capable of handling these difficult changes by adding something that fixes the problem without affecting most normal games too much like with the anti 3gen mechanic and the anti-face-camping mechanic, so I do think you are capable of doing better than you did with Twins.

I also find it concerning that there was no regarding any additional changes to Haddonfield after the PTB, when our feedback was pretty unanimous (from what I've seen). It's much appreciated that they had a look at the houses but now we have the problem that the only safe spots the map had are gone. To counter this, they added a few pallet more pallet spawns around the map. However, it seems that they did not increase the actual pallet count. I saw one version of Haddonfield on the PTB with no more than 8 pallets and 4 of them were really, really bad. BHVR, on a small map, that doesn't offer a lot of constant safety from windows, there need to be signficicantly more pallets. We can discuss how strong each of these pallets should be but it is a fact that large dead zones on small maps, give survivors next to nothing to work with and make them all the more vulnerable to everything a killer does. Which is why I request, that the pallet count of Haddonfield is raised significantly. The smaller a map, the more easy a killer will be able to get into a chase and get a pallet out of the way, so the amount of pallets could be a lot higher than 8.

Bugs, bugs, bugs:

As mentioned before the PTB brought with it a myriad of bugs. On top of all the bugs that are already in the game. When the Twins were reenabled shortly before the PTB, I played them for only 2 games in a row and already found a new bug. Whenever I tried to move as Charlotte, my movements became stuttery, as long as I did not carry a survivor on my shoulder. Victor also didn't have this issue. We all know that Knight has a lot of issues. Bubba still has the random tantrum bug. Currently there is also a glitch that allows survivors to get inside the killer's character model during their pick up animation and drop a flashbang right inside them. Now, whether or not you think this is fair, it's definitely not intended. There is also an issue with Endurance not ending upon being deep wounded. So you can use OTR to take a hit, mend and take another hit. It may not be the biggest issue but it is unintended. On the PTB, vaults were also once again messed up, more so than they already are on live.

The problem isn't that these bugs exist but that they occur so frequently. Sometimes we'll have the same bug reoccur again and again. This is concerning and it implies that DBD's code has issues, which make it more prone to such things. From my limited understanding of coding, I gather that this is at least partially caused by a code that is not properly structured.

I like the ambition the devs have shown us this year but I worry, that all this is not going to be appreciated, if the game becomes a buggy mess in the process.

What I wish for:

In short I ask the devs to:

1. Make a decision about the future of this game. The way they are currently handling both competitive and casual players isn't ideal and it leads to frustrations for both parties.
2. Limit what both sides can bring into a match. Some combinations just aren't fair even though all the parts on their own are fine.
3. Put more thought into the implications of the changes they make. Perks, maps, items, addons, offerings and killers do not exist in a bubble. They are all part of the big pond is DBD. This means, that it is important to thoroughly consider how each of these changes will affect the overall game as much as specific scenarios.
4. Focus more resources on fixing DBD's bugs. I know that it's not as easy as: "Just go into the code and make it work." because it can be incredibly hard to determine what even caused a bug but the frequency with which new bugs occur is not a good sign. I'm sure we all would understand, if some changes were postponed to free resources for bug fixes.

Lastly, I would like to add, that all of this comes from someone who deeply cares about this game. DBD is a great game despite its issues and the devs have created something truly amazing. But I would like to see some issues be handled better, which is why I made this post.

Skitten56

I agree with you on point #2. I feel like regressions perks / builds or the game in general would be a lot easier to balance if they game limited players to only bringing 2 perks in the slowdown class. So many regression perks have to be somewhat weak because they are way too strong when stacked with 3 other slowdown perks. By limiting the amount, we can have these perks be more powerful on their own while not allowing them to have horribly oppressive combinations.

As for #1, it might not be ideal but its an acceptable compromise since the playerbase is a mix of casual and competitive. Ideally future fun gamemodes that rotate can make up a sort of casual queue I'd imagine but I'm satisfied with what we have for now.

#3, they 100% should think more critically about the implications of the changes they play to me. If the playerbase can read patch notes and already realize something is horribly broken or problematic, that is a problem. BHVR shouldn't let such glaring issues reach so far into their development process. It just shows a lack of understanding of their game and how players approach and play it. For example, the recent forced locking unhook animation change in order to stop a rare occurrence of toxicity; this change removed a lot of counterplay to range killers and endgame unhooks. With a little critical thinking they should have been able to realize this was a bad idea to implement for these reasons and instead coded something like forcing the unhooking only after 3 canceled attempts on a hook stage.

#4 is is rather alarming how often things break

UndeddJester

Very well written, a fantastic read, thanks for taking the effort to post all this.

I'd love to respond to everything with the same level of detail and care, but holy moly, I consume enough time writing out my own crappy posts xD

So respond to your quick points: -

1. I believe a casual queue and a competitive queue is very worth serious consideration. In the past splitting the queues was a big concern due yo a relative low (if loyal) player base. Now the game consistently hits 30'000 players averages each month (and that's just Steam), which should be more than enough for multiple queues. The My Little Oni and Lights Out queues proved DBD is not lacking players. If it were me, I'd go the community cup route, and make ranked matches a 5 vs 5 queue with the same maps and killers to choose from.
2. I would however be very wary of enforced build structures. Lots of games do this eventually, and it always causes more problems than it solves. It's basically making the devs define the meta and limit player options, instead of the meta being organic, and trying to enforce metas has been disastrous for a number of games (Overwatch being a classic example). Not to say it can't be done, but you do have to be quite careful.
3. This is absolutely fair, ofc the sheer scale of the game now makes it more and more Herculean a task to keep everything accounted for, but things like map reworks and character reworks should largely be a nearly right first time thing. Longer and more iterative PTBs would help... though thisbfeds in my next point.
4. As someone who is familiar with the gaming industry and software test engineering, the real issue with this is the growth in sheer scope of games over the past 25 years has made testing in the industry an absolute nightmare. There is so much money involved in games and game development now that the need to keep turning a profit on a hit game is truly ridiculous, and I dare say mind blowing... and this means content is constantly in demand, with insane and unbudging deadlines... Though I do work in the gaming industry... it is not as a test engineer for a game developer... because Thank Christ... I rather like having my hair, and preferably not monochromatic in colour. As a test engineer myself I would always say more testing is good, you should always hire more test engineers 😏... but in the same breath, I can't say I'm surprised at the number of issues that pop out given the sheer content scope of this game, and its a common issue across the whole industry. 😱

vol4r

Spliting queues is not gonna work as you think - veterans and "pro players" will be queueing on non ranked mode still.

Making this game casual would be the best way in my opinion.

Xernoton

https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3705700#Comment_3705700

Did you not read the full section? I mentioned that this would be a risk and because of it both queues would need their own rule sets (or an incentive to queue up for ranked) to mitigate this.

CasualCosta

The solution could just be limiting perks in the competitive mode. Dota 2 does that in Captain's Mode (the one used in professional matches).

Emeal

About your first point, I don't think the developers view the game as in casual or competitive, nor should they. They are interested in what we all want, what will make the game better and how to improve the formula from there on. bHVR should NEVER make a decision to cater to specifically a casual or competitive player base. Your third solution to split the player base in two is also reckless and dangerous for queue time like you mentioned.

I don't think bHVR should do any of those 3 options, You would be bullied by other players anyway even if you had separate modes.
It sounds rather like you rather ask to implement a separate mode, than accept sometimes a match is just BS in this game.
And its not like if you had that mode the game would be much less BS, our entire community have millions of pet peeves so they could argue forever about what perks should and should not be allowed in different modes, splitting the player base even more.

I see no use for it.

kaz543453