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Grind issues
Comments
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I now have quit the game because of it. The grind is stupid.
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This is the kind of new player feedback that I think the developers should seriously acknowledge and respond to (@Peanits @not_Queen et al.), because for every one of this guy, there are a lot more potential players who aren't bothering. Those 47% month-over-month peak player drops don't happen for no reason.
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The problem is, they basically don't see it as an issue, or merely point to the post Level 40 bloodweb offering an additional perk as the solution. Which it isn't. There's still the massive grind for new players on top of the RNG on top of the multiple tiers for every perk. I have never seen a game constructed quite like this, where character build diversity is a core design, and yet being able to play with and experiment with builds is barricaded behind a massive grind that is further barricaded by stupid RNG.
I remember back in Paladins Beta when the cards for your character builds were similarly locked behind a grind + RNG. Know what the end result was? Even Hi-Rez of all studios admitted and recognized the asinine nature of that system and removed it (albeit, not before it bled a bunch of players that never returned). Instead, all cards are unlocked on every Champion, and you are given 15 points. You have five card slots to build with, and each card can be increased from Level 1 to Level 5 for 1 point. So, you could max one out to Level 5, and have 10 points left for the remaining four cards, or have all five cards at Level 3, and so forth.
But the point is, even new players can immediately begin experimenting with builds and seeing what works for their play style right out of the gate.
The DbD system? This system is so asinine, it's really beyond words. Back in 2016 with so few characters, it probably seemed like a good design choice. Unfortunately, it clearly shows that little planning was made with that design choice in regards to character roster growth or, hell, just game growth over the subsequent years.
Did they not expect the game to succeed or grow?
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The game DID succeed and grow, but I think that's down to the fact that a) it was the first game of this type with a really appropriate thematic hook (horror/slashers), and b) they were forward-thinking enough to secure a bunch of really high-profile licenses. They've been resting on those laurels for so long that they've lost sight of how much better off the game could be if it were more accessible by more people.
Behaviour is the "this is fine" dog in the burning house, except it's actually a nice house once you get used to it, and it would be pretty great if they just cleaned it up some.
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To be honest, I gave-up on the grind a year ago. I only play the game as a side game anymore since the grind quickly excluded DbD from ever being a main game for me. Overwatch is my main. When I play DbD, I just play casually. Give me some bloodpoints and we'll call it a match. Unlike in Overwatch where seeing DEFEAT too many times in a row makes me second think my video game choices (and I play with a full six-stack friends/family team), DbD doesn't have that except for maybe "Entity Displeased." But since I don't give a damn about what the Entity likes or dislikes, that doesn't bother me. 🤣
I know many folks in DbD have 2k, 3k, or more hours. I recall that you have 1,700 hours or so. You guys have the stamina of a sex-god, because I seriously doubt I will ever hit 1k hours in DbD. And especially not with this grind. I mean Christ, I'm only at about 820 hours or so in Overwatch, and I've been there since launch day. But I also don't video game every night, and sometimes not for a few months at a time. I also tend to read a hell of a lot, and there are months straight where that is my late evening/night entertainment.
But anyway, at this point, I'm just killing time waiting for Overwatch-2 and the PvE stuff.
(On an unrelated note, playing Solo Survivor sucks balls, and after about three or four matches of that, I'm done with DbD for the night.)
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I personally dont really have any major issues with grinding, I am able to get character to level 40 in 2 or 5 days depending on how busy I am, which is not really terrible
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You're an outlier (but hey, so am I). I'm talking about average gamers who play for maybe a couple of hours a day, and this isn't the only game they play.
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And that's the thing about the friends & family that I mentioned who said: "Nope, nope, hell no" when learning about the DbD grind.
For one, none of them play a video game every night. They play a few nights a week. Some nights they just want to watch some TV or a movie after work. Or spend time with their kids. Et cetera.
They also don't play just one game. Five of them play Overwatch. Another plays Roblox with their kids. Or they might hop on WoW Classic.
Even I play some Roblox with my 10-year-old (my other three kids are all adults now and off doing their own things, except for the eldest who is part of the OW team). I've been trying Crucible from Amazon games (don't bother). Or I might fire-up a Borderlands or Left 4 Dead game with the wife.
There was a time in my life where I would play one game title almost exclusively. That was back in my MMO days. Those days are long, long gone.
But the thing is, none of us are bashful about spending on a game, either. Don't ask me how many Robux have been purchased. I have all the DLCs through Ghostface. I didn't buy Stranger Things, Oni, or Deathslinger because I just decided to stop giving BHVR money at this point. Otherwise, I would have spent. You don't want to know how many Lootboxes some of my friends/family have purchased in OW over the past four years (none for me, I don't play the Lootbox gambling game). I saw some cosmetics in Crucible that I liked, but sadly have no faith that the game will be around with a playerbase in a month. It already dropped from 29k to a little under 3k peak in a week.
To customers like us, the DbD grind is completely off-putting. And to the players I could have brought in, who would have kept it in rotation and spent money on it, the grind was the deal breaker.
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I did not tag a dev but they saw one I posted. I only have started 2 so it is easy to find. I don't recall the dev responding.
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I feel like dbd is f2p format despite not being a f2p game.
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To further elaborate, I believe the system was constructed in the beginning with f2p format as plan B if things didn't go well. It's just that plan A worked and the system was not appropriately adjusted to exclude plan B. They still may have f2p plan B as an option should things go bad. I think it is what they are counting on in the future.
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I think you are right. I have around 100 hours in dbd and new charcters come faster than I can keep up. People say the difderent characters feel like different skins in the end, but that also the case on the front end, and despite it being fairly easy to get the first few perks for a single charcter somewhat quickly, it just feels completely off and way overbearing, asking way too much of me to get to the point where I can just game the game instead of getting miniscule upgrade after miniscule upgrade.
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I find a lot of the discussion about "the grind" interesting for a few reasons. I'll give you an example: before I got the game, all I heard about it was that it was very grindy. That was the big-picture conversation dominating the issue. "The grind." So naturally I avoided it until my friends got into it, and then I started to play it and loved it. But the big thing I realized as a new player was that the grind wasn't that bad, at least at first. Here's why:
As a new player buying the base game, you start with a handful of characters and a handful of free perks. You start levelling them up with the meagre amount of blood points you get, but you're more or less getting the perks you want. If you pick Meg, you're getting higher tiers of Sprint Burst, Adrenaline, Spine Chill, etc. Yeah, you're not making very many blood points, but there's not that much to earn on your first characters either. Despite the conversation always being targeted at the hypothetical "new player," the grind only gets bad when you're an experienced player. When you have 8-10 characters fully levelled up and are levelling up your 11th, that's when you start to have to complete blood web after blood web after blood web trying to find the perks that you actually want. New players don't have that issue. I got all the perks I wanted very quickly with Meg, not so much with Kate, and with every teachable I earn that gets harder, requiring more blood points, not easier.
More to the point, a LOT of the meta perks are free. Iron Will, Spine Chill, Unbreakable, Borrowed Time, etc. Yeah they're spread over multiple characters, but you'll unlock them very quickly. The only reason to worry about the grind after the fact is to try and get every single perk on every single survivor, but why should anyone care about that? Do you really care if you have Ash's perks? They're garbage. More to the point, you don't need every teachable on every survivor. You can make different characters have different builds and swap between them. If you're a hardcore completionist that wants to P3 every character with every teachable, yeah the grind is ridiculous, but we shouldn't pretend that that's the goal OR the barrier for a brand-new player.
Are there things that can be done to improve the new player experience? Absolutely. You shouldn't have to get to level 15 to have four perks, and you can probably even get away with giving you enough free blood points to max out a single character right from the get go, but the grind really becomes a problem for veterans, not new players.
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On PS4
Not trophy on PS4 - Getting the hang of it
35.8% It wakes
21.8% Not Half Bad
21.7% Apt Survivor
11.2% Apt Killer
Also add
20.7% Bloody Millionaire - Accumulate a total of 1 million Bloodpoints.
This last one I think says alot about how players on PS4 feel about the grind if only 20.7% play to atleast 1 million BP. Pretty much they stop shortly after reaching level 25 on a character.
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Some of the trophies involve ludicrous grind. Take One For The Team and Skilled Huntress being prime examples.
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Man I played on PC for about a year ish,not long after launch. Then a few parts on my PC went and I just never replaced them. I jumped on PS4,and was just getting frustrated for numerous reasons and quit for over a year. I just got back January and February and decided to like dedicate myself to the game as much as possible.
I had no DLC characters besides the free ones up until a few months ago. I just bought about 6 chapters this month. Only need two more. The grind is almost unbearable in this case, especially with other issues. I mean,at least I know what perks are good to go for first. BBQ and Chili and other meta making the most sense. But that doesn't change the fact it makes it daunting. Challenges help a bit,but not by much lol.
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