An Open Letter to the Dead by Daylight Developers (Long Post)

the sad thing is, BHVR doesnt have any sort of competition with DBD- so they dont have to go above and beyond for bug fixes and quality of life.

If someone wants to play an asymmetrical horror game, dbd is legit the only one you can really play, so i doubt any gigantic optimization patch would ever come out until BHVR starts losing money to a game similar to dbd

I think the devs do alright in the communication department, usually. I didn't like how they handled the Ghastly Gateau because the initial announcement its bugged was a foot note on Twitter. Otherwise, you can find them talking there, here on the forums, Discord, & Twitch. Compared to a lot of devs, that's a load of communication. Most I've seen just stick to their respective forums, and any other sort of social media is used for announcements.

Developers have to be careful about taking community feedback. There have been games in the past where they listened to the small majority on their forums, and it caused the majority playing the game to quit. Reaching out through the game directly as they've done with the surveys is the best way to hear the true majority.

I agree about the bugs and priorities though. There's just so many bugs you can find in a single play session it's ridiculous. The Ghastly Gateau should have been announced to be bugged in game, or disabled so people would stop wasting them. I know programming can be difficult but it's hard for me to believe this isn't something they could've patched easily. I keep hearing people say "Why didn't they copy paste last years offering and change it from 103% to 104%?"

On toxic players, well... This game kind of breeds it. If you only focus on one side, you have a very difficult time seeing why another side would play the way they do. That's what I think of when I hear toxic anyway. DCing is just abusing the system. Report functions need an overhaul as it's extremely convoluted right now. The only time I ever opened a ticket, I discovered because I hadn't jotted down this person's Steam ID (which is bugged atm btw! So you can't right now) they probably wouldn't do anything. With cases of hacking you need video evidence, so that's forcing you to record every game, and hacking has increased recently. You also need to report them end game. Then you need your own pretty long DBD number. And for all that, you never know if anything gets done.

I don't agree with 4 and I don't find 5 to be an issue, but 1,2 and 3 are on point.

BHVR's problems can be summed up as:

Ineffective bug fixing processes

Complete lack of communication and disregard for the community

Prioritizing new content over stable / properly running / fixed content

Coding is really difficult the developers would love to fix every bug and change every map so that it feels and plays unique but is a fair experience for both sides. However they are a smaller team and only can do so much with the time allotted and can't please anyone with their limited time and resources. If they take 4 months to fix things people will complain they didn't add anything new, If they take 4 months to balance things and change up killers and perks people will complain that there are bugs. If they take 4 months to add new content and features to the game people will complain that they aren't fixing and balancing things. It's a difficult balancing act they do with the time they have usually patching things that are blaring issues and trying to fix major portions of the game or add something new every month and a half to 2 months. They would love to snap their fingers and have it done but not only can they physically not do it all at once but it wouldn't be healthy for the lifespan of the game if everything you disliked dissipated from it.

How would they have definite answers to things they hadn't definitely considered? Moreover, who's to say they even can answer the questions, given that things like NDAs are standard practice?

For the record, my question was answered, as were many others. If yours wasn't, then say that instead of claiming they didn't answer anything.

Dunno what I was expecting when I saw the title. I agree on everything but casual mode because splitting the community is a bad idea, que times can be painful depending on time of day already. In the mornings sometimes I'm simply forced to give up and end up wasting all my time before work waiting for a match that never happens.

Imo toxicity is another impossible task, probably not worth developer time. Honestly it's not too bad anyway as you can't chat with teammates or your opponents so it doesn't impact game outcomes. Post match you just leave for another que and bam no toxicity. Sufficient tools to curb toxicity already available.

I more or less agree with most of what you are saying. Although point 5. is where I have most of my disagreements. Although I have a lot to say in regards to point 4.

1. I basically agree 100% here. Please take time, hire help anything to get the bugs under control or get an overview of the underlying problem to some of the bugs. I would take some game health over a new addition although I know they are different departments I still fear for new additions that will break the game in new ways before the old things got fixed. If you need cash to keep the servers running then keep the rift going. But I would like to say (although this hasn't been communicated) I would wager, that the reason they havent hotfixed the cake isn't because they cant fix it. But rather because they have a other bugs they would like to fix alongside it. And one of the unfortunate things about having a pc + console game, is that consoles have to confirm each update/patch that they receive through microsoft/sony/nintendo/etc. Again this is not confirmed at all, which is a big mistake if this is the case. But its not the first time that console is the reason for a needed patch to be delayed in other multi-platform games.
2. Again basically 100% agree. While some will still ######### about what you are talking about/not doing enough, these people can never be satisfied. And in regards to some of the questions, that you cant answer. I personally would prefer you just say something along the lines "Ah this is a thing we have talked a lot about but we cant find a way to get it to work" or "This is a neat idea and if possible we would like to implement it but as it stands now there are no plans for this" or just saying something along the lines of "Personally I would like to see this, and so would a lot of people. But we cant make any promises or guarantees that it will ever be done". Sure its technically saying a lot while promising nothing but some sort of "false hope". But to me its better than saying litterally nothing but "cant go into any details". You dont have to go into details but an idea or something with a miniscule of substance would be much appreciated and go a long way with a lot of the community.
3. Just seemed to be a weird mix of 1 and 2 to me. But again not nescesarily something I disagree with.
4. I agree with reworking a lot of perks and addons. I would add some of the top tier killers and bot tier killers. When I say top and bot I just mean those who are generally assumed to be the best and worst. I go over the best below, Nurse, spirit, freddy, maybe billy and oni, and worst would be, clown, legion, bubba maybe trapper and pig. Although I think some addon reworks could fix most of their problems. As for some of my minor disagreements. I just didnt understand the perks you selected (just to show my bias, killer main here). I more or less understand Pop although I would say that gen speed still feels insane in a lot of cases, but maybe some of the survivor perk nerfs would help with shorter chases and therefor making gen speed, more or less fine. Dont understand STBFL, Corrupt, or for survivors sprint burst and iron will. Maybe iron will should be removed since it keeps ######### with their sound tho, but that seems like a bandai fix and a bad idea. As for the crappy perks, the content creator you linked to (Otz) has a theory that its because of the insane power of some of the best killers, Nurse, spirit, billy, freddy and oni (probably the 5 best atm, but especially freddy nurse and spirit). If Behaviour made good perks or even great perks they would make the game unplayable for survivors if they went against these guys. Whats needed most if that is the case is actually that these killers are brought down closer to a level near some "mediocre" killers like I dunno hag or plague?. Not sure how low, but brought down a notch to make room for better perks so our trash can isn't filled up with 90% of all perks. Sure you can make fun builds or high risk builds (mostly playable on survivors btw) but outside of like impossible skill check doc or using iri addons on some mediocre killers. They are hardly viable builds. So depending on the reason behind making these mediocre/uninteresting perks we wont see any changes there. Maybe behaviour is just scared of making a perk that they consider to be ok, or fun and it turns out to be the new game breakingly op perk if mixed and matched with other perks or certain addons on some killers. Who knows. I just wish their addon creation wasnt so boring. I am fine with brown, yellow and green basically just being buffs to the killers power. But purple and iri should be almost exclusively gameplay changing. There is a bit of that in the iridescent of the rescent killers. But most purple addons are also just boring buffs. Such a shame. I miss meyers, hag and even pig has some of this in their kit. Some purples should be buffs but others should be game play changing. Doesnt matter if they are slightly underwhelming or just not damaging to the kit. But as long as they are interesting then im all for it.
5. Here we go, actually on review my disagreements arent that big. I agree with the general toxicity statement. Although I dont think the game needs a bigger punishment for dc since it already stacks fairly effectively. I tried it myself a few times and got to 15 minute wait times real quick. I believe it was second dc. If third then make it go faster but otherwise I am fine with it since the time between my dcs there were a couple of games which means they dont have to be consecutive. I dont disagree with giving the killer a full sacrifice/hooking score for players that dc, but if its early in the match I believe survivors should get some compensation for it. Whether thats in bp, action speed or a short burst of gen repair speed I dont know, but when I play survivor and someone dcs I ######### hate every second of the match I am now stuck in. Only if its early tho, otherwise swf could easily abuse it. Sure they could still abuse it with this but since the killer still got a full kill for it I think its ok. As for my biggest disagreement its in regards to rank and to game modes. Ranked doesnt matter. If you play red ranks long enough you see people that are actually terrible at the game on both sides, to surprising degrees sometimes. Sure some are just ######### around but a lot of times people are actually just bad and just played the game long enough to get into red ranks. Since you can only depip 1 placement but its possible to double pip, and depipping is fairly hard to do unless you ######### around a lot, in most cases you will safety pip or single pip. So thats why most people say and imo are right to say that rank basically dont matter already. This game doesnt have a ranked mode. It has a glorified matchmaking system that, tries, to match you with people in similar skill level. This might change with the upcoming mmr changes so I will hold off a bit here. But in general splitting the player base up over 2 game modes would actually just kill the game. Dbd doesnt have millions of players playing at all hours. And queue times are already iffy. As for the mute end game chat. You do know there is a button for that right? Sure you might have to press it each time but that will become a habbit real soon if you really dont want to watch what people say.

So to summarize: In general I agree although I feel like some of your points arent feasible.

Ah fair enough, and yes I understand not wanting to rewrite a long response since I almost deleted a ticket earlier today about 2 people teaming up to kill the other survivors(finishing my survivor challenges so I can play mostly killer again). And alright on point 4 there. I sort of understood your point like that but just wanted to make sure. And yeah I once again agreen entirely on your point with crossplay I did know it was coming I was mostly speaking with the current game in mind. There is a lot of console players as far as I know so the queue times should be mitigated a lot.

But mostly I want to see whether or not this new mmr system, they have been talking about, does anything for the game. My personal hope (its a foolish one) is that while it shouldnt constantly but you against tryhards on purpose, I hope that it at least pushes you to play vs people that are more around your actual level, or if they manage to implement any sort of "killer based" mmr system. Such as "Ahh you mainly play spirit and do really well with her, well you get to face (mostly) 4 man swf that try to win, for as long as you win. But at the same time, "Ah first time Clown, well based on your general 'skill level' you should be placed against these people but not against complete beginners since you still have basic experience". This is vain hope and I doubt we will get anything close to that. But you cant stop me from dreaming. Since this would still put some sort of a casual experience back. It wouldnt be a casual mode but you could play casually on some of your less used killers.

If this crashes and burns but crossplay is implemented then yeah I whole heartedly support a sort of casual mode to relax peoples mindset although I personally prefer a sort of ranking. Its a stupid competitive mindset but I cant help it :P. But I also know not everyone feels like that.

And fair enough again, I actually only learned about it recently myself watching some streamers watching them just without a second hesistation muting chat. But yeah a "chat yes/no" setting wouldnt harm the game.

If you dont think Tru3 or Otz critize the devs then I dont know what to tell you, beyond watch them some more. I personally dont like watching tru3 too much but I think you can barely watch 1 days uploads without him critizing some parts of the game that the devs should have done different or some parts that doesnt make sense to him in most if not all of his videos these days.

As for Otz. Otz prefers to have a primarily positive community, so he usually tries to avoid heavily critizing anyone. But just because he doesnt go hard, doesnt mean he never critics them. He usually critizises a lot in the game and argues that some of the devs explanations are either straight up lies or wrong.