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Let's Discuss the New Player Experience
I think that for most of us here, we want the Dead by Daylight community to grow.
The casuals want more potential friends to make.
The toxic players want more victims.
Twitch Streamers want larger audiences.
YouTube Channels want larger audiences.
Current Killers want shorter queue times.
Current Survivors want even shorter queue times.
(In general the veterans want shorter queue times)
BHVR wants more players as more people buying the game and DLC is more money.
So, we all want more people to play Dead by Daylight. So if we all want there to be more players, why hasn't the player number increased that dramatically or consistently? If you look at the Steam Charts (https://steamcharts.com/app/381210#1y) you'll see that player numbers tend to only spike around DLC releases and events. So, what can we do to increase player growth and more importantly player retention year-round?
I'm curious to hear everyone's ideas in this regard as I'm struggling with realistic answers myself.
Comments
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Bug fixes, and sectioning off the gray ranks for newbies. No one but grays in grays.
(Grays? Greys? Idk😅)
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If a 2nd objective was added, i'm sure we'd get more people.
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Well for one thing they can start by fixing the match making bug. Nothing discourages a new player more than getting slaughtered and bullied by red rank veterans.
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i feel like having rank reset two days before a very important DLC and also an awful unfixed matchmaking issue while new players were coming in didnt help. either way new players that came for the DLC got screwed over. either they experienced the matchmaking bug and got put with high rank players, or didnt experience the bug but still got screwed over from rank reset.
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It just means that there's a lot of players who move on to other things after a while. It's actually pretty amazing that the population has stayed reasonably the same for the last couple of years.
For every influx of new players, we get players that leave, and it's in good balance. That's really difficult to pull off to be honest.
But it does point out a flaw of the game: it doesn't have the ability to retain a lot of people for the long haul.
Why? The game is just not friendly enough for a lot of casual players, in my opinion. It's too difficult, punishing and stressful once you start really getting into it. It's not the kind of game that will really go into mass mainstream appeal unless some serious changes are made to the design, as well as improve the experience (mainly get rid of a lot of game-wrecking bugs like the matchmaking, and for that matter improve the ranking system).
Order #1 should be BHVR coming up with a decent way to create ranks, so that new players stay in low ranks with other newbs and players of similar skill. It's crazy how BHVR isn't giving their utmost attention to this. It's without a doubt the most important thing they should be doing, but they aren't.
I find that kind of behavior foolish, even self-destructive.
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I think if the game has to grow bhvr should address the most common complaints once and for all :
- punish camping, to the point of hook progression to stop ( this combined with everything else not like ladt time they tried)
- punish tunnelling with bt being kit
- reduce looping especially by adding stamina to surv
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They sort of do need to isolate the new people a bit more in the game. However there is an issue with that....
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One of the biggest problems new players face, survivor mostly, is the camping and tunneling. That generally ruins the game for allot of them. Allot of new killers don't understand the game enough not to camp and tunnel. They learn that as they play more.
So it doesn't matter if a new killer or veteran killer camps or tunnels, the effect is the same.
The more skilled the killer they face, the less likely that will be, but the skilled killer is still gonna hose them, giving them the feeling like they had no chance anyways. Which could even be more demoralizing.
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What could be an interesting idea to try is... If a veteran player is facing a new player, there should be some sort of identifier so all the players in the match know, these people are "new".
Then perhaps give players bonus BP wise for treating them as fairly as possible. I.e... Hooking them 3 times... Allowing the match go a long time... Allowing a certain number of gens to be completed.... Allowing chases to be won... Etc etc. Basically bonus points for not smashing them into oblivion right in the first few minutes and giving them a chance to play.
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I think there should also be a minimum rank number a player can reach when the rank reset happens. For example... If I got a devotion of 3, I probably should never be put into the new rank area again. Maybe rank 15 should be my lowest rank I can ever get now.
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It's funny, I prefer to play killer and yet I can only agree with the first two points you made.
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I want to give you a example of a new players experience that I had happen to me this weekend.
Tbh I hardly play dbd as much anymore but jump on once I get 3 dailys to blood points then I'll wait untill I get three more so I casually play. Neither the less I know how to play and am a decent killer. Well due to rank reset I was put back along way to really a rank I really shouldn't of been mainly due to lack of repeat playing.
Anyway I kept running into this Nancy and bless her heart she had no idea what was happening or what to do. Anyway I slugged her twice and dropped chases with her at least 3 times as I truly felt for these people i wanted them to have fun.
After the match she asked me why I tunneled her... I was truly lost for words 🐷... I went out of my way all match to make sure each of them had a fun experience even stopping myself to give them a chance.
We had a really nice conversation tho I think after I explained about bbq and how to hide from it also about rank reset and there being a bug with matchmaking.. she was very nice and friendly and understanding once I explained things.
I do feel for these new players rank reset was so badly timed with the dlc and I think that Nancy was lucky I try to be a nice person that trys to promote respectful play and positivity.
That conversation could of been alot different depending on the person answering also.
I'm honestly hoping that people at are getting matched up with new players are being friendly and supportive as much as possible. 🐷💖
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Now your idea seems like it's actually possible, the more Devotion you have, the higher your rank should be after the reset sounds infinitely better than what we have now.
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I appreciate you taking the time to help teach that Nancy. As a killer I have no clue who I'm facing but I generally try to give clueless folks one or two extra chances.
As a survivor I just equip a Secret Service build (BT, WMI, B, etc)and try to protect new players like they're the president.
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Bug fixes, matchmaking fixes and improvement, improvement to the ranking system, better map design with loops that can be mindgamed by both killers and survivors, maybe better Bloodpoint balance for survivors, closing the gap between solo and swf survivors by buffing solo survivors, and perhaps most importantly, some camping and tunneling nerf, though I have almost given hopes up for any kind of nerf to happen. Those are my quick guesses.
Oh and maybe a much better and more detailed tutorial for killer and survivor, the two we have right now are pretty bad in my opinion.
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20-16s should only be matched with other 20-16. Only when the queue is dried up should 15-13 be queued with them.
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Its pretty easy to go from level 20-15. Maybe by then, you should be ready to face the wrath of the de-rankers, but I think thats a huge a problem.
This is equally troubling for survivor and killers. Being a low level killer and just getting looped and dodged and flashlit constantly a few matches will turn off anyone from practicing killer, which is a set of players we really need more of.
IMO - the only time you should derank is at season reset (which should be less frequent IMO). Progression can be slower (which it seems to be since I took a few month break), but you can NOT progress down.
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These are good suggestions in my opinion.
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