I Decided to Continue Watching the Dev Streams So You Don't Have To

As some of you may know, I was tossing up whether to keep doing this summary thing, but I received quite a few requests for it and a good friend of mine talked me into this one. So you can thank him for this (or blame him, as the case may be).

As always, while I have tried to remain as true to the spirit of what was said on stream as possible without conjecture or elaboration, do bear in mind that the following is official information, unofficially worded, so please don't read too far into the particular phrasing of things. The exception is if something is enclosed in quotation marks " ", in which case it is quoted directly from what was said on stream, so read into that what you will.

If you would like to watch the stream for yourself, it is available only on Twitch this time.

You can find it at this link: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/654553802

The following members of the development team were featured on this stream:

Marilou (aka @Ribanne) - Community Manager

Ethan (aka @Almo) - Live Balance Designer

Mat Walker - Level Designer

The stream opened with a screening of the Silent Hill Spotlight Trailer, followed by some announcements.

Announcements

• The Silent Hill DLC is out now on PC and console. Players can purchase the characters for Auric Cells in-game, or the full DLC on the Store of their respective platforms.
• Today’s stream is a Q&A, but tomorrow the developers will be hosting another “Around the Campfire” stream, where different members of the development team play Dead by Daylight together and chat with the viewers on Twitch. This will be happening live on the official Dead by Daylight Twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/deadbydaylight).
• The in-game anniversary events will be commencing on June 23rd. More information will be available “when the time comes”. Starting today, anniversary raffles will be held in the official Dead by Daylight Discord server.

Q&A

These questions were selected from a thread that the developers created on the forums prior to the stream, as well as from the Dead by Daylight subreddit.

Questions About the New Chapter

Why does Trail of Torment reveal the generator’s aura? (from @Orion)

If this aura weren’t present, the survivors wouldn’t know that anything was happening. They want to give survivors an indicator that the perk is active. The aura reveal can also be used to the killer’s advantage, as survivors may become needlessly cautious, or put themselves in positions they otherwise wouldn’t and be caught off guard while focusing on the generator.

Will Pyramid Head’s perks be buffed? (Asked during the PTB by @Respectfulnancymain)

Some tweaks were made to the perks following the PTB, which mostly took the form of value adjustments. Forced Penance, for example, had its duration increased to 40/50/60 seconds, and it now grants additional bloodpoints for protection hits. Trail of Torment’s duration was increased to 16 seconds, and the cooldown reduced to 80/70/60 seconds, so that it may be activated more frequently. The duration of the Oblivious status effect on Deathbound has been increased to 60 seconds, and some improvements have been made to the way the perk’s activation status is displayed.

Are there any plans to add the cage skill checks to hooks? (from @Lycidas)

The developers aren’t sure yet, but they are considering it. They will be monitoring the mechanic’s performance – how many people fail the skill checks, how much time they lose, etc., as well as player feedback on the topic. They clarified again that they are not “dead set” on the current button-mashing mechanic, they simply want players to be interacting with the game in some way rather than doing nothing during the struggle phase.

Why did you go with Cheryl rather than Heather? (from @LordRegal)

(From Dave Richard, Creative Director): Cheryl was taken by the Entity following the events of Silent Hill 3, during which she changed her name from Heather to Cheryl.

Are there any plans to buff The Executioner? (from @geranium)

The developers were satisfied with the way the new killer operated on the PTB, and didn’t observe any major bugs or issues with his power which necessitated “dramatic” changes. However, they are closely monitoring his performance in the live game, particularly with regards to the Punishment of the Damned mechanic. From this, they will be able to determine whether his power needs adjustments and respond accordingly.

As always when a new killer is released, they received a huge amount of feedback and reactions immediately post-release, and they want to allow some time for players to get used to the new killer, learn how to play against him and level him sufficiently to be able to compare him fairly to the other killers, before they make any significant changes. Again, though, they will continue to read and process the feedback they receive.

What was the reason for picking things from multiple games in the Silent Hill franchise? (from @linoid)

(From Dave Richard, Creative Director): Those on the team involved with acquiring the license are big fans of the franchise, and as fans they wanted to be able to explore Silent Hill and its stories as much as possible. They took aspects from each Silent Hill game which they felt were most “iconic and interesting” and would fit best in Dead by Daylight.

The Creative Team felt that these selections were a good way to bring the two games together in a way that made sense.

What’s your favourite small detail on the new map? (from @Spengler)

Marilou: The corpse in the locker that pops out when you walk past.

Mat: The twitching bodies in the cages. This was a feature on which the animation, art, audio and level design teams all came together to collaborate. It’s very scary – in a freaky way, not in a jump-scare sort of way. It’s the kind of thing that you see a lot in Silent Hill, and has been “transformed” for Dead by Daylight.

Ethan: The bathroom with the girl crying inside a closed stall. It’s very creepy, and it’s in a relatively secluded part of the map, but something you encounter fairly often if you do venture in that direction.

Could the cages be changed so they are affected by Blindness? (from @zavch)

Objects related to killer powers are never affected by Blindness, because the ability to read their auras (or not) is a core part of the killer’s balance. For example, Pig has an add-on which inflicts Blindness and prevents survivors from seeing jigsaw boxes, which is part of the balance of her kit. This is why objects like these are shown in a white, rather than a red, aura, similarly to the Plague’s fountains or the Pig’s jigsaw boxes.

With the introduction of scripted events, like bodies falling out of lockers, are we going to get more of that in older maps or new maps? (from the live chat)

It’s not currently planned, but it’s a very popular feature – players like seeing it, and the developers like doing it – so they are thinking about working it into their schedule. Players can probably expect to see more of this sort of thing in the future.

Questions about the graphics update

Will characters also get their visuals updated when the graphical update arrives? (from @Jota)

Some of the visuals will be gone over, but unfortunately they can’t go into details on this.

Are there plans to update facial animations? (from @Raidirar)

Again, it’s a lot of work with the amount of characters in the game, so they can’t give details now, but there will be more information available further down the track.

What kinds of animations are being changed in the graphics update? (from @PassarinoT)

All kinds, from survivor movements to interactions with objects. More details to come.

Will the graphics update change some tiles? (from @RomeroJane)

The Art Team has been working very hard at updating the visuals and bringing the game to the “next level”. The Level Design Team are working closely with them at the same time to improve the game in terms of both fun and balance.

Will the graphics update bring breakable walls to older maps? (from u/spiritjonie)

Yes – as mentioned, the Level Design and Art Teams are working together to improve the visual quality of the maps, and as part of this, they are looking into integrating breakable walls into older maps as planned.

Will the graphics update release all at once, or over time? (from u/mewysocks)

They have received a lot of questions like this about the update. They will be communicating “properly” about it and giving all the details on what’s coming at some later point in the future.

Are there plans for more gore? (from @Flatskull)

There are no current plans along those lines, but it is still being discussed internally. So, again, more details will be coming in the future.

Miscellaneous Questions

Is The Clown getting any other changes? (from @DingDongs)

The developers have been monitoring Clown’s performance for a long time, and while they believe he is underrated in terms of strength, they acknowledge that the fact that it is not immediately obvious how to use his power most effectively is a problem. Due to time and resource constraints, they discovered that it wouldn’t be possible to make any major updates to Clown in the near future, so they found a change they could make that was simple but impactful to go into the most recent patch. They are currently looking into the possibility of improving his “viability” further, but they don’t have any concrete plans that they can announce at the moment.

Will we be able to mix and match legendary cosmetics? (from @Esskay)

This issue has been the subject of a lot of questions from players recently. For those who don’t know, legendary cosmetics are outfits in which all three pieces are linked, such that one cannot be equipped without the others. They can be identified by a unique symbol in-game.

The idea of legendary cosmetics is to represent “the fantasy of a character”, so it wouldn’t make sense to be able to mix them with pieces of what are essentially another character. They are also made differently to ordinary cosmetics, so things like clipping are not an issue as they would be if the outfits were made of separate components.

Will legendary outfits have their own voice? (from @Mooks)

This is a feature that the developers would love to implement. They haven’t been able to at this point, but if they are able to make it happen in the future, they definitely will.

Will there be a 104% Bloodpoint offering in the event? (from @TheNormalizer)

All of the event details will be revealed next Tuesday (June 23).

Will we ever see more contests like the cosmetic contest (for maps, music, charms, etc.)? (from @Inferno427)

In the case of things like maps or music, this is unlikely. There is a lot more that goes into creating these things than just the concept, which makes them difficult to construct a contest around.

Does Silent Hill mean that we could see other game characters? (from @Eris27100)

This has always been on the table – Bill, who originated from the Left 4 Dead franchise, being the other notable example. If the developers find another video game character that they feel would fit well in Dead by Daylight, licensing that character is definitely a possibility that they would consider.

Will there be legendary outfits that aren’t licensed? (from @colelema9)

This is something that’s being looked into. The team have a lot of amazing ideas along these lines, and these ideas will be brought to the game as their schedule allows.

Any update on the new matchmaking? (from @MiniPisa)

Tests with the new algorithm have already begun on certain live servers, and they are now beginning tests of the MMR system itself. If all goes well, the system will be released across all servers. There won’t be a patch required when this happens, but it will be announced on the forums.

For the past month or two, the MMR system has been running in the background calculating players’ MMRs (but not yet using these for matchmaking), so that the developers can gather data on how well the algorithm works at predicting the likely outcome of a match based on the players’ skill levels. Based on this data, they have been able to make improvements to the algorithm, and now they are doing limited practical tests using this algorithm to facilitate matchmaking. Once they are confident that the matchmaking is working as intended with the new system, they will roll it out across all servers and platforms.

Final Comments from the Developers

Ethan invites players to share their feedback on the new perks in particular, especially on how they work in combination with existing perks. The best place to do this would be here on the official forums (https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/categories/suggestions).