Core Issues of DBD

Traslogan

So since the Steam Suggestions / DBD Steam Forums in general are ignored (There isn't even moderator input unless it's an update announcement), I feel things I've brought up there should be brought up here.

I've played DBD since it's early days when The Shape was just launching as DLC. It's been 3 years roughly since then and I've come back to the game. I feel that it hasn't changed at all; the overall premise is good, the licensed DLC concept is nice, but execution is still deeply flawed.

The strongest excuse I've seen against my following criticisms are "Well it's not as bad as F13 so it's fine", which is a pretty bad reason to not have critique of this game.

I feel a few things are critically flawed within and around DBD atm:

1: Loading bugs. THough recent updates now stop incomplete games from launching, games still often bug out on the loading screen irrespectively. This is clearly an issue not everyone gets, whilst many players report it frequently, especially on the steam forums / discussions. These have been around since Vanilla, and it only serves as testament to the state of the game when they are still not fixed.

2: The Steam discussions are setup elaborately, but they are ignored (They have more than 5-6 times the threads that the feedback section on these forums have) There are entire areas on the DBD discussions for suggestions, and they are extremely active, but not even moderators appear in it, let alone developers. They should be removed or taken more seriously, since it seems more that they are there just to draw flak from people who might otherwise come to the forums to give feedback. I've tried voicing my criticisms here on the steam suggestions for DBD, but a few visits makes it absurdly clear it's an ignored forum, despite its high activity from the playerbase.

3: Quitters mid-game. This is a problem for both killers and survivors. Killers are compensated in points at the end of a game if people ragequit, but it's a tiny amount. Survivors are not compensated at all. 2 people can quit and effectively doom the other 2 to a derank. Killers get weak games, Survivors get borderline-rigged games. Honestly the biggest change that could be made here is a two-pronged fix:

a: Disable deranking for existing players if someone has quit. If they choose to stay they can still try to rank up if they want but that's on them.

b: If the person who ragequit was with an SWF team, they should openly all take deranks. This is primarily due to the abuse seen from SWF teams who will have a team-mate who gets hooked just a little too soon and so he quits just to deny you some points, but they know they're going to play more SWF games and win it back so they don't care.

Having mentioned SWF teams, that brings me to my final point:

4: Survive With Friends has critically compromised the game's balance. Now a lot can be said about the balance of DBD, many people will say how the latest DLC is broken or a perk nerf has crippled a meta, etc etc, but ultimately the only serious meaningful imbalance is Survive With Friends. SWF is pitting unassuming killers against survivors using out-of-game communication to rig games. You just hooked someone? They'll tell their friends what generator you're going to so the right person hides and the others come help them. You stop someone at a 95% generator? They'll tell their friends to come get it whilst they lead you away. You start chasing someone but haven't hit them yet? They'll tell everyone else so they can react so much earlier.

I'd like to point out that most SWF groups are fully aware they are rigging the game. It's not an unexpected side-effect. They set their profiles to private or set themselves offline on steam, and if you're lucky you find one friend who has them all on his friend list and it shows them all as offline, because they are trying to hide the fact they're about to get a free win. You can't just "get good" against an SWF team. Mind-game tactics and efficient gameplay just doesn't trump the sheer advantage of out-of-games communication. Something would need to be done at a game-mechanics level.

I can't say what I'd suggest to compensate for the SWF imbalance, but it's a critical flaw with the game at the moment. It overrides all intended balance of the base game, and leaves Killers in situations where they are lucky to get 1 survivor. You end up in purgatory where you always get just enough points to deny derank, and never enough to move on, with weak bloodpoint gains due to how little you can do against a team with such an advantage the game was never intended to allow. It has stopped being fun to be killer, and if you play in any way shape or form that works against SWF, e.g. proxy-camping so you at least get into a chase quickly again, they'll just trash-talk endlessly at the end as if you were the one ruining the game in the first place. It's clear that SWF has become the primary playmode for survivors, but this has only exacerbated its problems. Solo-survivors have a hard time getting a game even at peak times, and killers are just the pinatas for 4 people to farm bloodpoints from.

Again I'm primarily venting all this here because the Steam Suggestions board is obviously ignored. Much of what I've said here gets mentioned there constantly time and time again, but every thread ends in the same "well the devs never check this so what does this accomplish". I hope these things can be fixed and bring DBD into a more stable and fun state.

Traslogan

I can't emphasise enough the issue of SWF. I'm trying to play DBD and I'm stuck in rank-12 purgatory. Unable to ever rank up, just getting enough points to never rank down. Every single game is SWF, they get toxic if you don't just bend over and let them get free bloodpoints, and then they trash-talk you anyway.

The game's reputation at this point is "A DLC factory that never fixes the broken conveyor belts". You've hyper-monetized the game with DLC and premium currency, and then we get things like the end-game collapse, which fixes an issue that I've never even seen exist. You banned most ways of gaining score once exit gates were powered up, so survivors never lingered at all. The biggest problem is the game's 3-year-wait for fixes for critical issues, and the fact that SWF rigged-games has run rampant now. No one wants to play against rigged teams. Only the absolute best players in the game have even a moderate chance against rigged teams.

The game is now in a situation where it's better to derank as killer because then you get less rigged games. You get anything better than rank 15 and the game becomes 100% rigged, and it just becomes toxic trash of SWF teams having a go at you for not being able to beat rigged teams.