http://dbd.game/killswitch
The beginner's problem
- I saw a very interesting and objective video about the HUGE problems of beginner players. Over the years, I've tried to introduce new friends to DBD, but I've almost never succeeded, and now I don't recommend DBD to anyone (as the boy in the video also says)
- I'll summarize the video for those who don't want to/don't have time to watch it
- Too much information to acquire, no explanation
- Completely insufficient/misleading tutorial
- Some meta perk locked behind paywall (especially for killers)
- The "strange" positioning of DBD. A casual game with competitive logic (both the DEVS' and the players' fault)
- Some gameplay changes are completely acceptable for veteran players, but make the game even more difficult for beginners.
- I hope that especially the MODS of this forum will take a look at this video: maybe not all the things said in this video are "correct", but certainly some things are 100% true.
Comments
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The "strange" positioning of DBD. A casual game with competitive logic (both the DEVS' and the players' fault)
There's a massive dissonance with how the game expects you to "treat" / "play" either role and with how the role is actually played.
The survivor is being forced to be the competitive tryhard git gut role even though for that to work they need to play in SWF or lose miserably, while killer is forced to be a casual role with less and less reward for skill expression even though it's played in a competitive and stressful way due to increased player agency.
It's not really fun for either side.
The point where survivor role gets fun becomes further and further every year because there's more things to be good at and the bar is higher while killer role ceases to be rewarding for your time faster and faster as you lose more control with survivors getting better.
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Honestly I would disagree. Recently I invited another My friend. He started playing 3 weeks ago and plays around 90% of his time as killer. He picked Anna as she can throw axes and down annoying survivors ©. Especially with flashlights. But we tried both sides and here's my summary:
Game is completely balanced around loops. Looping as survivor is harder than killer. That's why looping as survivor is bit more difficult than killer and everything else is so boring my friend refuses to hold W or glue to gen.
All information he needed to 4k in most of his games was I taught him about triangle strat, so he knew which gens to ignore, how to slug and how to fake moonwalk. It literally took us like hour or something. So it doesn't fit "game has a lot of information to learn". Not to mention he doesn't know what 60% perks do. To be honest, I myself don't know and don't need it, most of information in this game is meaningless. You don't need to know so much to win. Vast majority of survivors and killers play "copy paste" builds. In around 300+ perks you barely see 30+ people use.
Just because there are so many options to try, doesn't mean you need to do it. Basic rule OF LITERALLY EVERY GAME - Pick what your eyes like to see and adjust it during your own experience. Don't overcomplicate it. Life doesn't work for people who wants everything here yet now
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I watched this same video and discussed it in our local discord.
I think one of the big things about DBD, and one of the points I disagree with in the video is "DBD is a casual horror game". I started playing this game a little over 2 years ago, 15th May 2023... which means I began playing in this modern era of killer, perk and mechanic overload... and there was absolutely nothing that made me think this game was casual in any shape or form. Maybe it was because I was a solo survivor with no one telling me what to do, but right from day one, I could see how much depth and scope this game had...
This game attracts a certain type of player... it is a absolutely not a casual game for everyone, and a lot of these new player experience break downs I think don't really acknowledge the fact that DBD is a very unique game, with a big time commitment for a much more dedicated and serious audience than something like Fortnite as used in this example. The no build mode proposed for Fortnite works because its similar to existing games that casual players are already familiar with... but DBD is not a typical game... it is a very unique game with not much out there (that has survived) like it.
So with this in mind, one thing I think people miss a lot in these analyses is the new player mindset. New Solo Survivors are scared (DBD is quite scary for a new player), confused and not expecting to do well. New killers are also scared (funnily enough), confused and not expecting to do well. However if you are solo (and follow the bloodpoint bonus), matchmaking actually does a good job of pairing you with players in your range and your games are scary, kinda manic and usually a lot of fun...
The big problem becomes... a lot of survivor only players want to play with their friends... and this brings a new player into an arena with much better killers that pound on them over and over again. I noticed it loads when I was new and playing (after I made a few friends), that if I paired with them, my games got MUCH harder. This is where I believe the bulk of this "DBD is horrible for new players" idea comes from. You get players who have new accounts, few perks, and no experience being dragged into games where their teammates and opposing killers are running meta perks and playing pretty darned serious. They are effectively trying to run before they can walk, and every video talking about this stuff doesn't really acknowledge this.
Even in this video there is a severe lack of teaching a player and walking them through basics. You hear him syaing "what happened, just throw the pallet?", and alike. I myself got asked by my 14 y/o nephew about DBD, and I spent about 30 mins - 1 hr in a custom games, just taking him through the very basics of looping, gen repair and other ideas. I gave him a simple build, with basic rules to follow around hook states and when/where to heal, all to help him survive... and he is actually already better in 20 hrs of gameplay than 90% of soloQ I play with, and still having fun.
So what is the real experience of a new player not being railroaded to failure by their hard meta friends? One thing I will say, and a great strength of DBD, is DBD is a fundamentally simple game... the actual rules of the game are very easy to understand. Repair generator, power gate and escape vs. Patrol generator, chase and hit survivors, 3 hooks to kill, kill as many as possible. Survivors it is fun to be scared and killers make a lot of mistakes... and killers it's fun to chase and survivors are making a lot of mistakes... if you put in even a little effort to research the game, watch some streams and guides... you can start doing well fast.
You compare this to something like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, where you've got 4 different escape routes, all with unique paths and rules to learn, maps that are large and convoluted that must all be learnt, all while the game is probe to rush strategies on both sides, made worse with no real matchmaking and perks/builds giving HUGE advantages over players with incomplete builds... yeah the initial learning curve is stupidly hard in TCM... but in DBD you can get up and running fairly quickly, and you don't need to know much more than a few basic principles.
My point is DBD doesn't come across as a casual romp... you understand early this game is gonna take some investment to get good at... but the game at its base is fundamentally simple... and anyone who puts in a little effort with the huge number of guides out there online will do fine... As long as they aren't playing with their 3000 hour survivor meta sweat mates.
All that said, a better tutorial would be a good idea.
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DbD simply is not a game for “casual” players. You either have to have been playing for a very long time or, if you’re new now, you have to dedicate your life to learning how to play for it to be enjoyable (and that applies to both sides). I would consider myself a “casual” player (less than 10 hours per week), but I have been playing for a very long time and I also spend time watching videos to learn more about how to improve my gameplay when I’m not actually playing. And even after playing since 2018 I still am not very good.
I think most people who pick up this game with the expectation that they are going to be good at it and have fun by playing a few hours a week are going to be sorely disappointed and most will quit. Only those who are dedicated to playing full-time will stick with it.0 -
You are wrong. Casual players are core and majority in every game. And I mean literally. People in majority don't tend to improve or play for competitive level. They play for emotions.
Also you can check steamchart . Biggest player income is during events. The moment event ends, they go away.
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Had some fun with my friends playing DBD on PC. They are complete newbies, but managed to get the basics pretty quickly. Unfortunately they were not hooked to keep playing solo.
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I agree with you that the majority in terms of pure numbers are “causal” players, but that doesn’t mean that this is a game that those casual players are going to enjoy. That was my point. Just look at the constant complaining on this forum about how one side or the other is too difficult and no fun to play.
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yeah and thats why it gets extra funny that they balance this game for tryhards but design it for casuals
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Okay. Name me please perfect game where players don't complain about balance. Even Dota and LoL both having above 20 millions players have complaints all over every ELO. You literally can't satisfy everyone. Problem is Master tier would learn game and tell you - git gud. While silver boy will put his EGO over game
Edit: I don't want to tell Dbd is perfect, but people complaining literally about everything.
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I've only been playing for about a year. I seem to recall the game recommending playing survivor first and that went terribly for me. Not only was it unlike any game I'd ever played and I didn't understand anything, I couldn't even manage skill checks cauae I was too nervous, so I couldn't go on gens with teammates cause I'd miss the checks and endanger eveyone. There were too many killers to learn and too many perks to figure out, not to mention lingo and unspoken rules. People would send me messages that might as well have been in Latin. I don't really watch videos or engage with social media so I didn't have any outside guidance.
I switched exclusively to killer for a long while and that was way, way easier. You really don't have to learn much to be killer to just play and do okay. Survivor is much more nuanced. It wasn't until I made a couple friends that I went from scared of the killer and hiding half the match to running Scene Partner and becoming a complete clown. Playing with other people is the best help I got.
I've tried to get my partner into it cause he watches me play and hears me talk about it all the time and, at least, with babysitting and guidance, I can help him through a match. He also had trouble with skill checks but Technician is a good training wheel perk. But I didn't know that when I was starting, and you shouldnt have to have a chaperone. The game really needs a solid tutorial and a few mandatory matches with bot killers. Ironically, killers can play against bots but need the help the least.
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I think one of the biggest (and least discussed) pain points that disproportionately affects new/casual players but also has started to affect the overall game feel for everyone is that they keep designing new & balancing old killers to be "bigger".
What I mean by that is they have started to lean so heavily into killers being the power role in a directly lethal kind of way instead of keeping their stats in a sensible spot & keeping their powers simple, but interesting/skillful in the way that you use them. Instead of trying to bridge the gap between the lower tier killers (that generally all share the problem of being slow to setup and/or slow to get around the map) and the higher tier killers (that generally don't have setup time and/or can zoom around the map/exert implied pressure on multiple survivors due to their mechanics) by introducing killer specific basekit mechanics that give more time to allow those slower, less directly lethal killers to keep up with the math of the game, they consistently decide to just buff up the numbers on the lethal parts of their power. Typically to the degree that makes it so that interacting with the killer in chase at all is a bad idea for every survivor player except the most skilled, and it encourages people to hard focus holding M1 on gens and healing up ASAP instead of encouraging interacting with what should be the most fun part of the game, which is getting in chases.
And again I think this isn't just a problem with balance, but also design theory, because when every new killer has a teleport and a zoning ability and can arbitrarily go undetectable and has hyper mobility or whatever combination you can think of, I think it ends up a lot less interesting to play than something like Huntress/Plague/Oni/Deathslinger who have clearly defined strengths & weaknesses and require actual skill on the part of the killer player to master properly. The problem is they then have to go back to those older killers & tune up their numbers to be competitively viable, not just from a "why would the killer pick this over a new killer that can achieve results with less time put into mastering them" but also a "survivors learned how to play against the BS designs so now the older designs feel even harder to play" perspective.
Which goes back into why I think this is the most understated new player problem. Huntress must feel like she has infinite hatchets to a new player now, and how is any new player supposed to learn & deal with Springtrap/Dracula/Vecna and all their arbitrary bullshit (especially when BHVR changes stuff so much)? Is just buffing every killer's stats directly and throwing all kinds of BS into new killer kits instead of just slowing down the game for the traditionally slower killers and making sensible, focused designs actually better for new players? Is it really better for anyone?
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Like I'm going to make a prediction on exactly how they're going to change Trapper based on what their recent design philosophy looks like: They're going to give him the Junkrat trap treatment, where he can place traps down on the fly without having to sacrifice his mobility.
I don't know if it's going to be an extra cooldown he gets, I don't know if they're going to keep the speed boost when setting down a trap, but I do expect it's going to be something that fundamentally changes his identity and what he can do in chase, thus making him directly more lethal. You know, instead of exploring literally any other option targeted at him specifically that would give him more time to setup without losing 3 gens (at a minimum) just for doing so. At least they've stated they want to keep him "simple", so I don't expect it to go much further than that.
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To directly address one of the things in the video: I don't think having an ingame tutorial on how to run generic tiles is necessary or even reasonable. In fact I think it could be detrimental if it was thrust upon new players or placed in the menus in a way that suggests it's mandatory information to learn. I think DbD already has enough of an information overload problem as-is (to be fair, that mentioned in the video) and more importantly, I don't think you should have to know how to run generic tiles in order to have a good time as a new player. If you do, then the game is failing elsewhere, be it the MMR system or the killer role being overtuned or both. And as an aside, I don't trust the developers to know how to run generic tiles optimally nor to know how best to convert said knowledge into a learnable, digestible state.
I do think being able to play in bot only matches as a survivor in custom games would be nice, because we are lacking a way to simply look at maps & perks on the survivor side without playing killer. I also think killer power descriptions have dropped off a cliff in terms of quality recently and we could use some actual numbers beyond movement speed/terror radius being placed in the bio (also killer height? in that generic of a description? really? not to mention how the bio is all but hidden these days…what are we doing aaaaaaaaaaaaa).
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Everyone saw combos in fighting games as an alien or nerd thing until it was standardized that every game has to include combo challenges. Now anyone can understand and learn them by practice. Moreover, games like Street Fighter 6, contain dedicated tutorials for each characters, telling you what makes each one unique, how to perform anti-airs or the situations for each one of their commands...
DBD could have the same thing, introduce the most used structures as the killer shack, TL, 3-line or jungle gym and make you loop through them in the optimal direction with a killer bot chasing you. Being able to repeat instantly, until you get to loop it perfectly. I don't think it's a crazy thing to implement. Currently, the only way to practice these things is a private game with a friend.
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I think in order to make that work and retain a cohesive, quality tutorial design that allows players to learn at their own pace, they'd need to have like 4ish categories of tutorials (generators, altruism, chases, side objectives as an example lineup) and have the tile practice thing be in the 2nd/3rd sub-category in the chase category (sub category examples being beginner, intermediate, advanced, etc). Just deciding how to implement the tutorials in the menus by itself is a lot of work, and then there's a whole mountain range worth of work deciding what to include (and when), how to best communicate ideas to the player, how to include/program it all mechanically (this alone is its own mini mountain range if they want to go really in depth with it), and futureproofing it all so that they stay relevant to the game experience in the long term.
Like "just put the looping tutorial in the videogame" is a fine idea on paper. The problem is work that has to be done to get to that point (from concept to execution) with a level of quality befitting the game (or more importantly, to the level where it's an effective teaching tool to new players and not an overwhelming burden on them) would take an insane amount of time and resources.
Who knows, maybe they're actively working on it right now.
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Improving the tutorial, updating Shrine of Secrets, making the DbD wiki accesible through the game, reducing the amount of bloodweb clutter and updating base perks, all of this would help newbies a lot.
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Obviously it takes work, but my point is that other games have shown that good tutorials have a lot to contribute, they are able to keep an audience that would otherwise be overwhelmed by the game.
I consider that DBD has reached a point where there is a very big learning gap, it's not something that can be solved by watching tutorials online like some other games. You need to put things into practice and at your own pace, so a normal match is not the right place to do it.
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The video wasn't wrong about most of the issues new players face, but the thing I have issue with is the casual dichotomy people seem to have about the game. Not every competitive game is Starcraft 2, and not even casual game is Fall Guys. There are many degrees of separation in between, and DBD falls in the middle. This tends to confuse people, because its pretty far away from both extremes. It creates a form of cognitive dissonance where we often try to force it to fit one or the other, when in reality, it would be more accurate to call it a third option in between.
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The game on survivors is simply unbearable for newbies. I tried many times to bring friends in DBD, at most they lasted a few days
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