Why is the dev team so slow?
I honestly think a lot of the frustration the community feels, on a variety of matters, stems with just how painstakingly slow the devs are. We get one major update once every three months. With it comes the balance passes, or what little there are of them. Then about two weeks of bug fixes and minor balance tweaks. After that, shop is closed up, and we wait for the next update.
From my understanding, at least from what was told awhile back, the devs construct the game in 'builds.' Beyond a certain point, they can't make changes of any type. Doing so would mean starting over. Was told this back with the sprint burst exploit, and why it lasted for two months ingame.
If this is the case or not, it still leaves two and a half months where the game is at a 'stand still.' Some talk with devs in various forum posts, but that's about it. My question, though, is why? Why build an online game with a competitive style, and not be able to do weekly or biweekly balance passes?
When the devs mention 'we'll be monitoring this or that,' we know that's at the very least, three months. If, whatever they are monitoring, doesn't make it to the update, that's another three months. So on and so forth. Major issues are allowed to sit on the back burner for months, if not years. Imbalanced maps, items, weak perks, low tier killers, bugs of all shapes and sizes, boring objectives, you name it. They all just sit there in the pot for a very long time and just stagnate.
Every update that comes out just adds more to the game, which in itself is not bad, but it usually ignores much of the older issues. Any issues that are adjusted, are just a small portion of the whole stew. And that's what it boils down to. Bits and pieces are picked out of the whole, adjusted, implemented, and that's it. Three months till the next piece is taken and changed. Three months is a really long time, especially for a game such as this.
So, am I wrong to think this way? Is the rate in which things are accomplished acceptable, and I'm just an impatient sod? It just feels like, personally, that the rate of change is simply too slow for a game such as this.
Comments
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I have some thoughts, so do a few game developer friends who work for some well known studios; but at the end of the day there is no way a discussion like this will actually help or improve the situation.
It will more than likely just result in an argument, a defensive dev post, some escalated comments and then a locked or deleted thread when some people take things way too far in one direction or another.
I would just enjoy the game for what it is, as it is now, and not hope or expect any major changes or improvements. I wouldn't want to hold out for something and waste my time if I was waiting on something that would never come, so look at the game in it's current state and decide if you want to play it as is or not.
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They tip toe around survivor changes, and the games current condition requires big nerfs to survivors. So as painful as it is they are going to take a long time with updates because they don't want hurt their baby survivors.
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@Echorion So, we can't question a teams choice in letting a game, well, stagnate, for a period of time? Enjoy it or not, you can't deny that they take far longer then a lot of other games out there to balance, in either direction. Even when they do update, it's pretty small in comparison to how large the game has gotten, be it characters to perks.
I just want to know why it's so slow, and is there any way, or effort, to change that?
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I’ve worked for a Gaming Studio before as a Designer and a Tester, balancing a game requires a lot of time to get any changes and it goes through a lot of procedures. Everyone is doing a task and they’re doing their best, I assume their team is small, a team can be as a little as three people for each department.
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Never said that. You certainly can, you can complain or question all you want but it doesn't matter it won't change anything. You will get the same response that everyone else has ever gotten "These things take time" but maybe with a bit more words, and then the only comments that will get responses are the irate or incorrect ones that a dev can correct and then it will be mostly silence until someone loses their temper and makes a scene and the thread gets locked/deleted lol.
I've seen this whole thing over and over, you're not the first person complaining about the devs process and you won't be the last, but there is nothing you can say or do that is going to change it.
"but I just want to know why" well it's just like MrPeterPFL said above, and that is about as detailed response as a dev is going to give you, and then that will be about it.
Edit: Also Coronavirus now so everything is gonna get slower for the foreseeable future.
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My guess, its an assymetrical game, you need to keep in mind the opinion of the whole community when making a change and that is really hard, you cant mess to much with the meta or else many people will get mad, we already saw what happened with the exhaustion and ruin nerfs.
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Again, community. What a strange way to spell survivors.
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Are we gonna start the "killers are oppressed" argument again? seriously?
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No, I don't say things like that.
But from a monetary, company, profitable suggestions, you have to admit, 4 survivors are better to cater than 1 killer.
The "community" is revolved solely on the backs of survivors, it's where the cosmetics, catering, hand holding takes place the most.
Whereas for killer, you're on your feet, at the edge of your seat since the first minute you start playing the game.
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I love the game,i like how in this game the devs actually read and respond very frequently on forums.I do not like the constant error messages,the occasional infinite loading and stuff like that.They need to fix these issues not yesterday,last year.Imagine joining a lobby say fortnite or LoL and game got cancelled like this.
Now think of how much dbd costs just to buy the base game plus all the dlc.The game has a very healthy population,yes they need to be faster with updates and fixes.
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Yeah, thats exactly the "killers are opressed" argument
"survivors get all the fun because they are cash cows, while us, oh poor killer mains, must endure the pain of playing this game"
I dont know about you, but, was the doctor buff a way to cater to survivors? was the balanced landing nerf also made with the purpose of milking those survivors into buying more cosmetics? What about adding counterplay to DS? Surely another way of making those filthy survivor mains spend more in your game.
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Although I detested the Balanced Landing nerf, many survivors also agreed and they were on board with this.
The DS change was also something many survivors agreed to, and NOW apparently, DS is worse than before and it has killer mains begging for the old DS. There IS counterplay to the new DS, it's don't tunnel, know who you hooked, be an aware killer, and slug. Easy.
Doctor got buffed, but the Queen for Nerfed to the Ground. He's still an M1 killer, barely loopable, but still loopable. Why play with a buffed doctor IF Nurse was still around. They had to give something to the killer playerbase. Same with Freddy, still a loopable killer, and still has to chase.
My theory for the buffing of killers was because the Queen got Dethroned, she got over nerfed and they probably didn't want constant Billy and Spirit matches.
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Well then, tehy do listen to the killers of the community, they buffed freddy and nerfed DS, why insist survivors are the only ones being listened to?
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Freddy was buffed because he was F Tier.
Not because they "wanted to listen to the killer community." The survivor community thought he was a joke too, the lowest stats, lowest kill rate, lowest looping capability. Freddy's old power was to allow him to play the game. He was a dead meme.
DS wasn't a nerf, it was a complete rework. I Love it now, and I'm a survivor (ex killer main).
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Well, Balanced nerf actually had some thought behind it as it was inconsistent with other perks and no sound while dropping makes for some good escapes.
I haven't seen anyone actually ask for doc buffs so I have no idea where did that come from.
Also, disregarding specific sides it seems that BHVR just don't care and are milking the playerbase without any plans of ever expanding it.
They build a fun game, never increased the dev team size and now they keep decreasing amount of stuff players are getting while instead giving us skins to buy every week and no events as a tradeoff.
Agree with it or not but it still is a competitive game and these love to mix up the meta game to change staleness of matches of the top from both sides. We don't get anything of sorts. Even simple number changes would have worked. Removing cooldowns on perks that don't do much which causes them to be utterly useless. I'm not asking for complete rework but stuff like switching the range of the perk from 24 meters to 32 meters is a 5 second change. Why aren't they experimenting with stuff like that?
What if the result of seeing a lot of people use lithe decrease the boost lenght of it to 2.5 seconds or increase cooldown to 70 seconds. Sure, it does sound like a minor thing but it would make a difference in time.
Meanwhile I'm playing rimworld and I get 5 patches a week, each of them being simple number changes that massively change the game.
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You need to understand that the devs have no intention of fixing the core issues with the game.
If they did, they would have done so by now.
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They used to use the excuse that Starbreeze their original publisher limited them from doing what they and the community wanted, but fast foward to them acquiring their game and having full control in 2020 and things are just as problematic, we just happen to to be slightly less buggy now and have a ton more paid cosmetics and a battle pass.
Simply put they don't really care what the community wants, unless it aligns with what they already want and them getting thicker pockets from it. Just watch how condescending and nonchalant they've been in streams and interviews to people's gameplay core concerns. They're stuck in their own bubble and echo chamber, the people you see interacting with us have to hold on to the agenda, meanwhile the ones who can't, you can see that some people on the team aren't too happy about it but its not their decision to make when it comes to the game's direction, so they've distance themselves more. Because they're sick of the community telling them they're trash even though it wasn't their choice.
If you think updates were slow now, man things will only get worse with the coronavirus pandemic going forward.
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Freddy was at the absolute bottom of the barrel. He had to be reworked. And that alone proves my point. How long did Freddy need to sit in the toilet before something was done about him? How long did Trapper go before they did minimal QoL changes? Doctor? Bubba? It takes years before they're looked at, more before something is done about it.
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