Visit the Kill Switch Master List for more information on this and other current known issues: https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/kb/articles/299-kill-switch-master-list
Video: Discussing Merchant PTB Dev Notes
Hey everyone, welcome to the video, we’re going to have a close look at Skull Merchant’s changes in the PTB and discuss it a little bit.
Except…We’re not doing that.
The thumbnail is a lie. The video’s title is a lie. This video is a lie. Along with Merchant’s PTB being a lie.
This comment on screen now is from a Person who works at Dead By Daylight. The context here is the streamer was reacting to the PTB announcement notes from last week. When they were talking about how weak the changes make merchant, this Person commented, confirming that the changes are not a new Merchant gameplay direction, but what's going to happen to Merchant between now and her real rework which I believe to have been scheduled to be later in DBD’s development timetable.
There is likely a lag between deciding on the course of action for a killer’s new direction, and allotting the Programming time to them in the whole game’s pipeline. The game is big and complex now, and it has release schedules.
This is a soft-killswitch for Merchant. But instead of breaking the game with bugs, or some impossible-to-beat strategy like moonwalking Legion, it’s because they’re so badly designed, or so irritating to the community.
But that’s not what the Dev Notes on this PTB say. The devs notes say this is to increase fairness and counterplay, but this comment revealed that's not the whole story.
I know this comment seems to be lacking in context and specifics to you the viewer. The context is not for a normal person, it's for Behaviour. The forum rules here strictly specify that anything that can reflect badly on someone should censor the name. Trust me, I have the receipts, and I see others do too.
So what's the problem with this anyway?
I’m a middle aged gamer, I own a house and take care of it, I work full time, I have a romantic relationship with my partner. I play a lot of dead by daylight, as video games are my main hobby, and I also make videos for DBD. Better videos, take a looong time to plan and construct.
The point is, that gamers are going to read these dev notes, take it in good faith like I did, and start queueing up to play this miserable patch, and waste their time and energy writing feedback for them. Some are going to believe that this IS Merchant’s new direction, and start defending her, and its a waste of their time.
To be clear, I love Merchant This much. Not this much. This much. See this blue one? I had to grind into the deep rift, back when large Archive challenges were 5 rift shards instead of the 8 they are now. I was away during this archive, so I was unable to play for a month, and I had to grind this out every waking free moment the get to the end of the deep rift.
Behaviour, I am a player that paid to be here, and then paid extra to fly my colours on Merchant. But also this is a fully multiplayer game with no single-player or offline sections. I’m a player, and that means I’m your content. This game doesn’t work without people like me, your queues will be unbearable without enough of us.
I’m also an adult. Imagine this, we’re going to Disneyland. I pay to fly there, booked a hotel, bought my tickets, turned up on the day, and Space Mountain is closed due to safety maintenance for 1 week. Now this would suck, but I’d understand. If something important was needed, and it was a decision that couldn’t be made lightly, I’m going to have to live with that.
You’re the people who get paid to work there, you’re the people who have to ensure the DBD community is going to keep making money so the lights stay on, you have all the data. Yes I play a lot of merchant, but you see ALL the DC’s, the post game chats, you’re game developers, you’re better at this than me. I’m not going to call you out on doing things you think are needed for dead by daylight to function and flourish.
But the problem is you’re lying to your player-stakeholders. I saw this dev note, I took it in good faith, I like making the videos, lets be honest. But I would’ve blocked out my free time, worked around my full time work and normal responsibilities, turned away beautiful romantic quality time with my partner, playing your Merchant PTB, and putting my thoughts into video form for the benefit of others to watch and think about, when this PTB isn’t actually a test, it’s a soft kill-switch, and I don’t think we’re going to stop how merchant is going to play for the next 6-12months based on this comment.
Communicate to us properly, even if its ugly or undignified, I’d appreciate it more than stuff like this. Your organisation seem deathly allergic to being frank with us, and it’s weird because we’re just DBD people, other organisations are quite happy to understand that we’re patrons, and making mistakes, and sometimes rolling them back to our chagrin sucks, but is necessary. You need to own these things. I shouldn’t have to psychoanalyse your patch notes for their veracity.