http://dbd.game/killswitch
New to DBD? Prepare to Suffer
I want to talk about something that’s been bothering me for a while now: how brutally unfriendly DBD is toward new players—especially new survivors.
As someone who isn’t new to DBD, I’ve introduced the game to several friends recently, and time after time, the result is the same: they quit. Not because they don’t like the core concept or horror theme, but because their first ~10 matches feel awful. I’m talking complete massacres—games where 0 to 1 gens get done, teammates get downed in the first 30 seconds, and no one even gets to learn how to loop, let alone enjoy the match.
What’s worse is that being a new survivor feels harsher than being a new killer. At least as a baby killer, you have the time to explore your power, understand basic mechanics, and adapt. New survivors, on the other hand, get eliminated so quickly that they barely get any time to understand how to run tiles or what perks even do. It’s not just a steep learning curve—it’s a brick wall.
And to be clear: I didn’t join their lobbies. I made sure they were getting matched at their appropriate MMR. These were games against other low-level killers, and still, it was a slaughterhouse. If this is the “onboarding” experience, it’s no wonder people are bouncing off the game.
It honestly feels like new players are being bullied out of DBD, and that’s deeply concerning for the long-term health of the community. If the early game experience is so punishing that it drives away potential players before they even get to the “fun” part, that’s a huge problem.
And here’s another issue: the forums aren’t a good reflection of the broader player base. I’d guess that 90% of people who post here are experienced players. So when balance changes are discussed, they’re often based on what feels strong or annoying at high MMR, completely ignoring how those same mechanics affect new or average players. Sometimes nerfs aimed at competitive-level gameplay completely cripple newer players, and no one’s really advocating for them.
We can’t keep designing and balancing this game only for the top 5% while leaving the rest of the player base to fend for themselves.
Something’s got to give. If DBD wants to keep growing, it needs to do a better job of supporting and retaining new players—not chewing them up and spitting them out before they even have a chance to improve.
Comments
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The game certainly isn't just balanced around the top 5%. It would look quite a bit different if that was the case.
However, you do have a point to an extent. This game can be newcomer unfriendly. I think one of the biggest issues is matchmaking however. Sometimes people get matched with other people that have way more experience than them. But this can happen to both killer and survivor.
I think another big problem for newer player experience on the survivor side is camping and tunneling. Strategies that are insanely unfun to go against, but are not that hard to pull off. Hence why I believe in the lower ranks killer is stronger.
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To be fair DbD isnt more new-player-unfriendly than any other pvp game. If youre survivor, just play the tutorial games against a bot killer and try something, though a proper killer bot game would be good to have.
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I honestly miss the old way of ranking. It was obvious that when we all started at 20, we started out in a group, mixed up, but as we played, we were gradually aligned with groups that were a similar level to us. At certain levels, it was very difficult to advance, but that's what posed a challenge. And if you couldn't move down and wanted to continue playing casually, at least you stayed at your level and had regular matches.
Nowadays, every match feels like a personal tournament from the beginning because each participant in the match has a different level. And you can see and tell this is real. There are no more casual matches.
Nowadays, it's a matter of uncertainty about who you'll be playing with, whether they'll be above your level, below you, or at your level. New players might realize how difficult it is, get bored or frustrated, and leave.
Unfortunately, there are no custom matches where you, as a survivor, can face different killers. The trapper as a first experience is fine, but honestly, how many times do you get a trapper in public matches?3 -
I'm sorry but I think you're just wrong here. Many other pvp games just have you respawn in some way if you die, but that's not the case in DBD. Sure you get 3 hooks, but how valuable is that for survivors that are lasting less than 20sec in chase? Granted, battle royal games also typically give the player one life, but those games are usually oriented around a familiar mechanic (shooting games) where some skills might be shared with other games using the same mechanic. However, DBD has very little in common with other games; the movement and camera positioning alone is challenging for most new players.
I think for me the biggest issues I've noticed for my new Survivor friends are:
1. Poor match making; sometime they just get matched against prestige killers with full builds and that's nobodies fault but the game's; might as well be a match between the LA Lakers and your local YMCA.
2. Un-fun strategies. Somebody on this discussion already mentioned this, but tunneling and camping are very easy to get value out of at a low level: killers that are bad at chase or inexperienced with their power can usually fall back on those strats especially at lower MMR.2 -
The 3 problems begginers have is MMR being weird, a hopelessly outdated tutorial, and the overall grind.
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In their struggle to make the game friendlier to new players, it's easier for BHVR to break things that work (the rarity colors, Rituals/Tomes becoming "Quests") than fix the things that are broken. And the things BHVR's changed don't even make the game friendlier to new players. The change to rarity colors hurts color blind players and it makes a lot of old guides confusing at best and useless at worst (guides which new players need because the in-game tutorial is next to useless). BHVR has also admitted they're going to remove the Compendium, which is a ton of content that is a huge help to new players dealing with the grind, so that's another change that's actually hurtful in the long run.
Anyway, I'm going to copy and paste a comment I made on a similar thread:
The game needs better matchmaking that puts new players against new players rather than sticking them in a meat grinder. I go against new killers who get absolutely miserably stomped. I get new survivor teammates who don't have a clue. It's awful for me and it's awful for them.
The game needs better tutorials that help players learn perks and powers. The tutorials should reward a nice chunk of BP to help new players on their way to unlocking more toys to play with. As is, new players have horrible early matches where they don't understand what's going on and they don't earn much BP, so they don't get to unlock new stuff that would help them or at least make matches more fun. The new player experience is negative on top of negative.
It needs these things before a new licensed chapter releases, not after. After is too late.
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Matchmaking is... Interesting sometimes.
I was against a group last night where two of them were very clearly brand new to the game (hiding in a locker vs my Dredge)
I could technically have ended the game at 3 gens left but let all four escape. Tried to give them some more experience learning chases and the tiles.
Only way the game keeps going is if we make it at least somewhat welcoming to new players.
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On the plus side the new matchmaking and the QoL hopefully will ease some of these issues, and healing perks like botany recieving small updates should help survivability too
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Most fun I had with DBD was when I was brand new and knew nothing tbh.
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Agreed.
This is known for a long time now. DbD is extremely new player unfriendly.
All these surv fixes don´t help new players really much.
They need to give some basic free stuff if somebody starts now new. The grind is absolute horrible.
At least the original Survs should come full unlocked or at least at tier 1 so some perks are available at the start.
Also someone had an idea once that there is somekind of under 100 hours players are only matched with other under 100 hour players.
Maybe not the best solution but maybe a lot better than now.
There are test videos on YT where a completely new account gets matched with veteran killer after like 3 games. That should not happen ever.
And some killer bot training matches should be implemented as well.
Therefore i am curious how the FNAF player spike will turn out. How much will stay for longer?
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problem with dbd is that it has very high skill ceiling as a game and yea, survivor skill floor is higher than killer skill floor.
Now, what BHVR isn't even trying to do is actually explain the game to new players, tutorial system is terrible and absolutely no guides are being advertised to new players.
I think game needs to be improved drastically in this aspect if we actually want new players to have better experience.
On top of everything, matchmaking needs to be much better.
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Just wanted to say thanks for all the activity on this post. There's some great ideas floating around here so hopefully they are at least considered:
- Better tutorials for new players
- Incentivized tutorials for new players (give them rewards that make the tutorials worth doing). Perhaps some sort of progression system within the tutorials to give them a goal to work towards
- Exhaustive tutorials that go at least slightly in depth to some of the more complex killers, perks, and survivor strats; some of the DBD content creators have created some fantastic resources to help new players, but a lot people don't look at that stuff until their really into the game which is often too late.
- Better matchmaking for new players with low hours; I like the idea to only match people with under ~100 hours with one another but this sort of thing gets complicated (could lead to long queue times)
Good news is that lately Behavior has done a fantastic job at listening to its community so I hope this issue reaches them soon. It breaks my heart every time one of my friends gives up on this game because of the rough introduction.
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If BHVR doesn't revert most of their "Anti-AFK/Anti-hiding" system it'll be even worse for new Survivors.
Don't know the map and gen locations? Get crows and get found.
Devour Hope in play? No no you can't stop gens to search for the totem and if you don't know the spawns (or if the Hex RNG smiled to the Killer and it's well-hidden) then you'll get crows and get found.
Hear Oni's Rage start? No you can't stop gens and hide to wait it out because you'll get crows and get found since he can sweep most maps in seconds.
Injured and on 2nd Hook? No you can't play too safe and settle for unhooks otherwise you'll get crows. Even worse if in a 3-gen situation.
If BHVR doesn't scrap everything from the PTB Anti-AFK/Anti-hiding system except for the collision loss and making item dropping/picking up no longer stopping crows, then it's going to make the Survivor experience just awful, but it'll be so much worse for newcomers.
Hell, won't even be able to meme/farm with a friendly Killer in peace since you'll get crows that will never go away even if you run around.
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I'm honestly not on the PTB so I'm not familiar with the crow AFK changes they've made. Surely it can't be as bad as you're making it seem? If so, I think you should start another discussion aimed specifically at these issues.
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Others have already done it, and quite frankly at that point unless most of the playerbase rallies loudly against a change, then it'll probably go through anyway (just look at the useless rarity change, no one ever asked for this, it doesn't add anything of value to the game and is just annoying to veteran players and messes up tutorial videos using the original rarity colors, and almost everyone either hates it or doesn't care, even after people pointed out the blue & purple can be confusing for people with colorblindness they still did it) since FNAF essentially muffled any other complaints due to sheer hype of Springtrap.
All I can hope for is that BHVR actually paid attention and have enough insight to realize that it's a bad idea which effectively removes stealthy playstyles from the game entirely and forces people to be efficient on gens in order to not get crows (as even a single crow is enough to make hiding impossible due to the noise it makes in a pretty impressive range). Not only does it kill stealth and punishes people for doing anything else than gens, but it also simply punishes being new at the game.
I'm sad to say this, but if they don't remove most of the new system and the new players all go away since they can't learn anything, then all I'll say is "told you so". No game should ever actively punish people for not playing efficiently (beyond just losing the match of course) and a game with hundreds of perks shouldn't force it's players to only play a certain way.
Removing collision after 3 crows are gained is perfect, making items pick up/dropping not stopping crows is also great, literally everything else shouldn't go through, the current system is mostly fine.
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