Barrier to Entry; or The Grind Wall

flippantJoe

This seems like a very neat game, and could be a lot of fun but honestly the barrier to getting any build worth using is so high that I can't recommend it to any of my friends. Because when they hear there's a progression system I have 2 options, lie about how much of a brick wall it is, or tell them. if I lie to them I really don't accomplish anything my friends don't fall for skinner boxes easily and recognize them basically immediately. So lying to them is really just telling them, but they like me less at the end.

The progression is a brick wall, there's really no way around it. given an average of 1,000,000 bp to take 1 toon from 1 to 40 to unlock their perks, if you want to unlock JUST the survivors you get for free on PC, then get 1 survivor to have all the perks as a stable to build from (without prestiging, which actually increases the cost of leveling in many cases), if you only count the free survivors (less than 1/3 of them at this point there are 6 free out of soon to be 19), there are 96 levels worth of perks to unlock. So Presuming you get 1 perk per level of leveling up whichever survivor you like best that means that after you've unlocked all they have to offer you need to level them up an additional 56 times. This is Easily more than 2000000 blood points at level 50 webs (in my experience, I will admit I do not have a large sample size, and I haven't prestiged any characters because I know a trap when I see one). which is the cost of leveling 2 entire other survivors to level 40. So for the meager investment of approximately 8 million bloodpoints you can get all the free content on 1 survivor. Thank god survivors are just skins.

So. 8,000,000 blood points, how long does that take to accumulate playing survivor? Especially as a new player? Well. I suspect you'll find that a survivor doesn't make as many bloodpoints as a killer, this isn't a really controversial opinion I don't think. so I'll lean back on myself. I hover between ranks 20 and 12, I'm not good. I don't play much survivor. I make 12000 on an average match, swinging between tunneled to death 6k and Escaped after being useful at about 19k. Each match takes (again an average) of ten to twelve minutes, either we're out or everyone is dead at that point. some more, some less, but for argument we'll call it 11 minutes.

Math: given 12k bp per match, 11 minutes per match, how many hours will it take to get 1 survivor to have all the free content in the game? 12k / 11m = 1.1~k a minute (discounting queue times I should say which aren't too bad for survivors but some people dawdle in lobby). 8000000bp / 1,100 bp/m = 7,272~ minutes of game time, for management let's set that to hours instead of minutes. 121. 121 hours of gametime to get ONLY the free survivors to 1 complete kit perk-wise.

(I know I'm ignoring dailies and point boosting items, they're inconsistent at best but would help lower the wall Somewhat, maybe if I'm extremely generous I'll say you could knock 1/4th of the time off)

There is no reason bar elitism to make the wall to entering the game this high. And making the wall MUCH shorter is Very simple. Remove rank 1 and 2 perks, all perks spawn in the bloodweb at three you cut that 121 hours down significantly because you cut the number of total perk levels for any given survivor from 213 to 71. Reducing the grind by a factor of three. with this you can even make a perk every other level if you feel like punishing new players just a little more than that.

For the inevitable "it's just part of the game" elitism, just because you had to suffer is literally no reason anyone else should. I literally don't care about in-universe explanations for this malarkey, that's a Thermian argument and is not valid, there are dozens of treatises on this subject go look to them for why that is a logical fallacy.

The Devs have acknowledged this issue before, a few times. They increased the bloodpoint gain, that was nice. they almost doubled them ~25 added perks back. That was 75 additional levels ago minimum. and considering the "max" level is supposed to be 50 (for prestige, but why bother stopping the number from incrementing unless to stop people realizing how much they've sunk into a character or prevent people from talking about it). It is pure silliness.

There is another simpler approach to lowering the wall that keeps a veneer of the current system of grind, When you hit 50 unlock all available perks at their highest level.

BTW, I did do the math for someone who unlocks everything for every killer and survivor using the math figured above. I'm actually disgusted. (and counting that killer powers mean that unless you like 1 to the exclusion of all others you're in for a MUCH steeper wall in general...) Let me say this, there are cumulatively 213 survivor perk levels, so the MINIMUM number of levels to gain on a single character to get every perk is 213. For Killer it's 189. That's Per Killer, and Per Survivor. and remember prestige increases the level of the nodes on Every Level, so the price to level will rise, I can't say how much.

Lowering this wall means more people playing with more of the game, it means that more casual players get to experience what was previously only the realm of the obsessives (or play exclusively in KYF, I know some people who do just that). You have a fun and engaging game, even if you've played it for 859 hours like I have at time of posting. The biggest black mark on this game for me when trying to sell it to people is this nearly unscalable Hundreds of hours tall wall.

Mr. Richards, Tear Down This Wall!

DemonDaddy

It adds to the play time, gives you a goal (atleast until the real rewards are implemented), and helps new players focus on basic skills before relying on the meta to bail them out of bad situations.

PeepingPeacock

The grind is annoying and getting lowered in the next patch, I 100% agree that perk gain should be increased.

"the barrier to getting any build worth using is so high that I can't recommend it to any of my friends"

People that are new to the game don't need the best perks, especially as a survivor.

The vast majority of the best perks come with the base game, the only perks that are must buy are DS, BBQ, and Ruin (OoO too, if you run swf).

You don't need Adrenalin, Dead Hard, Decisive Strike and Borrowed Time to have fun playing Dead by Daylight