Hire a team EXCLUSIVELY to test game changes
- The PTB is simply not effective and doesn't improve the game at all. The only benefit is the showcase for the new killer and new survivors; it's actually nice to buy DLC knowing what to expect. The real testers are the players on the live server. So why not do something like Fortnite? In that game, there's no "PTB," only work groups that SPECIALIZE in testing new content/changes. Is it a foolproof solution? Absolutely not. Fortnite also has a lot of balancing, but almost never causes all the problems that DBD does. It will be a big investment at first, but over time you will have increasingly satisfied players who don't uninstall the game and will therefore be more willing to buy DLC and skins. I'm sure that if there was a REAL team of testers made up of professional players (and not random people who played PTB for fun or with a killer main/survivor main mentality), perhaps today the DBD player base wouldn't be 100K but maybe 200K (I say random numbers). Let's take the pallets as an example. BHVR changes the logic/number of pallets and uses a team of SPECIALIZED testers; if the change is successful, it goes live... otherwise, it goes back to the drawing board for further adjustments. It's a slower process, but it certainly makes the game better and the players (customers) happier.
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Isn't that what their consultancy program is meant to do?
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I feel like most of the good gameplay designers moved on and now we are stuck with what we have
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- One last clarification: and no, content creators cannot also work as testers... a tester must be 100% IMPARTIAL, if I have economic interests linked to the game, I cannot be a reliable tester
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About a year ago we heard about the Consultant Program, where experienced players gave feedback on balance changes and a few other things. If it's still running today, I can't help blaming it, because I'm pretty sure most of the consultants were comp players, and that's not the right direction for balancing a game.
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Yeah bring back Almo!!! /s
How good do the testers have to be?
Is a cracked Ghostface the samer tester for a first time Nurse?
I get your point… but this won´t solve a thing.
If you have a team playing and testing things like how many pallets do you need… how much hours should the survivors have?
A good team of 4 survivors won´t need that much pallets vs a Wraith as a bad team would need.
It sounds good but it won´t work or even tip the scale more into new players which makes the game to easy for veterans or into the favor of the veterans which makes the game unplayable for new Survivors.
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- I understand what you mean, but a good tester is also able to evaluate the game from both a beginner's and an expert player's perspective. To use the Fortnite example again: some weapons/items/heals/mechanics available in some game modes are not available in other modes or in competitive play. It's a process of evaluation by testers (and to a lesser extent, the community) that leads to the removal/addition of certain in-game items.
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"So why not do something like Fortnite?"
Never say that again-2 -
My point is… this game can never be balanced.
Following.
Imagine a normal survivor, not good not bad needs in a normal game of DBD 15 pallets till the exit gates are powered.
A bad survivor or a new one needs 10 pallets more. A pro survivor needs 5 less.
Now what do you do?
Keep it at 15? Hell this Game is kinda unfriendly to new players and not such skilled Survivors.
Push it to 25? Hell this Game is pallet breaking city and good survivors are doing 5 gen looping with an ease.
Nerf it to 10? Hell this Game is favoring Killers.
And this is only one example. Lets keep going because I got some time.
This example for 15 pallets is for M1 Killers. Now we got something like Blight or Nurse.
What do we do?
Give more pallets to counter them? This will most likely kill all M1 Killers
Give the same amount? Now these Killers go for a Rofl stomp on all not cracked survivors.
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- It's also true that DBD is a peculiar game from this point of view... somehow, players always expect to win. It's very rare for someone to admit their lack of skill, or simply that their opponent deserved to win. When I started playing DBD in 2020, I played exclusively survivor for the first 2-3 months. I was a complete disaster and my only hope of winning was the killer who granted me the hatch. Yet I started playing the survivor role when it was at the peak of its power (old syringes, old "self-care", old loops, etc.). I simply loved the game and "accepted" my lack of skill and wanted to learn. Today I see a completely different mentality, where both sides expect to always win, no matter what, and everything is "dbd's fault". No game will ever be 100% balanced. For the last time, the Fortnite example: I've seen exceptional competitive players in official tournaments die a few seconds after landing just because they had a worse weapon than their opponent... they didn't complain at all; in video games there will always be a randomness/balance factor that is literally impossible to predict. It's as if DBD (for some very strange reason) gets too emotionally involved in the player.🤣
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Sadly they won't do that. Dbd devs and upper management are too proud, stubborn, not open-minded. They won't allow an outsider to tell them what's good and what's bad for the game.
Now, the "Consultant program" and dbd creators are just a facade.
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Ive always said PTB should just be a secondary game mode
that way everyone and do mean everyone not just the 20%% of pc players that actually join PTB to test and give feedback on
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you mean pay people money to actually test the game? lol im sure that hasnt been done since the 90's. games these days get released and updated first then patched up later. the players are free testers for them. They just dont do games like they used to lol
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That's what normal companies usually do with their consultants but BHVR is no normal company.
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At this point, I'll do it for free.
This is just wildly frustrating.
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In my opinion the PTB needs to be a separate client that's utilized more for those who sign up for it and can be used for more than a week at a time for these changes, that was these changes are actually fully tested before applying it to the main game.
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I think many would. A volunteer program with parameters to filter out extreme biases would probably be very successful, especially if they gave them in-game trinkets like exclusive badges or cosmetics.
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I'd gladly volunteer for something like that.
I have been around since 2018, and I see glaring issues on both sides, and issues regarding the game in general that needs to be fixed, so spending some time to give proper unbiased feedback would definitely help the greater cause.0 -
- No guys, I know you have the best intentions and genuinely want to help, but these must be people who do this for the money, who use "aseptic" methods and have no emotional connection to DBD. People who don't care if Blight gets nerfed or if the number of pallets in "The Game" is halved (I'm just giving two random examples).
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Yea, exactly. Given the fact that many of the content creators who are likely consultants are always complaining about the changes that BHVR makes to the game, it’s very difficult for me to believe that BHVR is actually listening to consultant feedback before incorporating changes into the live game.
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Where would you find these people? They'd have to be brand new to have no attachments. And how much time would you need in such a high context, info-heavy game before you can give any useful feedback aside from how hard it is to be new? As it is, they're clearly taking feedback from not just loud, emotional players, but ones who make money from the game and thus have massive ulterior motives. There's no where to go but up.
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Except, people who have no ties to DBD also don't play DBD…. which means they certainly can't make informed choices on the balance of DBD.
Best way to do it is to pick people who do not have a financial stake in DBD.
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I do think they need to go out and find people who haven't played DbD, but would be interested in the genre, and be like 'would you actually play this game? Why not?'.
Experienced feedback should definitely happen, but one of the reasons of the Quality of Life Initiative should have been to identify what was preventing new players from staying in the game (I say should have been because at this point I have no idea what their goals where).
The exit survey seems to have been the purpose of that. But given what they've done they either no long believe in that data or they've just given up on attracting any substantial number of new players.
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Likewise. I've got enough time on my hands, if they want volunteers there's plenty of us here.
Yeah i saw one of their known consultants saying these changes are bad, so either they weren't asked for feedback or their feedback wasn't taken into consideration.
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Yeah honestly this just makes it a game mode so everyone can test the patch instead of just people who download the ptb
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Yeah its getting beyond a joke how awful the Test Beta is proving ineffective, fix your game please like #########
Hire actual players.0
