Real Talk: This Game Has Serious Issues

I mostly frequent the Steam discussion boards but figured I'd pop over to the official DBD boards since from what I've gathered BHVR never really checks Steam so it's kind of it's own little island of in-fighting and complaining. There are a few things I've learned though from the discussions as well as the relatively short time playing the game (nearing the 100 hour mark) and it's that there are some serious issues that probably need to be addressed in regards to the game's health. Thanks to the Sunk Cost Fallacy I'm not going anywhere, not threatening to quit or throwing a fit like some people might to try to get more attention. This is more just a PSA of things I've noticed as a running theme from my own exeprience as well as the experiences of others on the Steam boards. I'll list what I've noticed in what I feel is the order of importance.

1: The New Player Experience is Non-Existent

While the new matchmaking rollout hurts the new player experience even more, the game had an awful new player experience even before then. When you need to refer to a 3rd party wiki just to get the basics of essential aspects of gameplay, you have problem. The tutorial is fine for teaching the bare basics of controls, but there are core aspects of the game that I STILL have to look up elsewhere because I'm not quite sure what it means or what it does. Examples of this include:

-What status effect icons in the HUD mean (skull for exposed, etc)

-What perk effect icons on the HUD mean (Thanaphobia, Ace in the Hole, etc)

-How game changing perks and add-ons can be (someone DSing or having UB or Deliverance is going to throw off a new player since it goes against everything that was just taught to them in the tutorial).

-What certain status effects or conditions even mean. This is especially egregious in terms of killer specific effects like Pyramid Head's Torment. I don't know how many time's I've read through a killer's powers and said to myself "Yes... I KNOW it inflicts Torment/Deep Wound/Madness/Infected but WHAT DOES THAT MEAN!?" because it uses keywords without actually defining them in the ability descriptions. This can easily be fixed with a quick reference page to all the conditions and their associated icons located in the how to pay section. A separate page listing all the killer/survivor perks would also go a long way to giving newbies a way to familiarize themselves with what all the perks do without flipping between every single character's page and/or the store page for those they don't own.

2:Matchmaking

Yes, I know, new matchmaking just rolled out, it's still sorting itself out, etc etc. I'd say one of two things need to happen with matchmaking overall SPECIFICALLY for new player experience. Either account for total play time for anyone X hours or less into the game (say 50-100 hours since that seems to be on average how long it takes before you start really understanding HOW to play on a base level) or implement that rank rework ASAP.

Being completely outclassed in a match really sucks. Being completely shut out as a killer not finding anyone before exit gates pop, or as a survivor going down and getting hooked 10 seconds into a game is frustrating and just isn't fun. Then it comes as an added slap in the face when they see they've been matched against a rank 1 killer. YES, I know we've established that rank isn't an accurate indicator of skill, but realistically if you play enough to actually hit rank 1 you're probably going to have a minimum baseline of skill necessary to not consistently depip and drop rank, and we're talking specifically about new player experience here. On top of this, even if rank doesn't always equate to skill, it sure as hell IMPLIES it, so a new player is going to be turned off even more if they feel like they're not being matched against people of their own skill level and will never get the opportunity to learn and improve because of just how severely out of their league the matchmaking is putting them.

3:Cheap Hits and Other Issues

This one comes more down to a technical standpoint. Anyone who is vaguely familiar with servers knows that not everything can be verified server side or else it'll just totally bog things down and lag out the server from too many ping request essentially. From what I've gathered (correct me if I'm wrong here because this seems to be point that's somewhat unclear) hit registration for the killer smacking a survivor is verified client side. So, if the killer has bad connection and they hit you on their end, but you're already around a corner on your end, it'll rubber band and you'll take the hit. There have been so many instances where I'm over a palate or already behind a corner and get stabbed from the other side of a palate just because my pinky toe isn't all the way on the floor or the huntress axe is just magnetically drawn to my face because of this issue. Hit registration is something that should always be checked server side. It also stops exploits like lag switches from being as useful.

4:DC Penalty Issues

Again, more technical on this one, but the way hackers are consistently able to affect the DC bans and force DC streamers even after the fix just makes me a bit wary of what other holes this game's security has. From what I've read about the situation I'm assuming it's due to the actual DC penalties being validated and processed client side rather than securely on the server's end before being sent client side? Again mostly just picking up what I can on this one through tidbits of other posts but the jist of it seems to be 'If hackers can affect my DC bans client side what other more sensitive things can they mess with and are there any other glaring loop holes that might allow them to access things like core system files through the game's connection.

5:Balancing

While most of it is just complaining and not REALLY an issue, there are a few perks that are consistently coming up in discussion as being overpowered or needing some kind of rework or tweak to make them less abusable. The primary offenders are DS, NOED, BBQ, UB, and OoO. The first four honestly I can't say one way or the other since I really don't have enough experience personally with the game, but with the exception of DS, UB and a few others being used aggressively to body block as well as essentially creating a scenario where you can't touch a survivor for 60 seconds after downing them in case they are running UB and DS together these aren't TOO bad on their own (pick them up and get DS'd because any survivor worth their salt can land the skill check no problem. Can't leave them slugged because they'll just pick themelves back up. Can't just babysit them and set an egg timer for 60 seconds because gens. Either way you're losing precious time, and it leaves little to no counterplay aside from just eat the DS and deal with it). The real issue in terms of perks comes from OoO. In solo play, OoO is fine. It's a useful perk that gives you loads of information, at the cost of giving the killer just as much information. God help you if he's running obsession perks too, it creates a real sense of risk/reward. The problem is when SWF comes into play (and before anyone starts jumping down my throat going 'well they're cheating so just report them', until official words from BHVR comes down saying it's against the EULA to play on voice comms it's not cheating just to want to play with your friends on voice, it's just not something the game was balanced around in the beginning). OoO becomes an issue with comms, the biggest offender actually since it becomes a global perk to everyone on the call. While I love the flavor of what it does, a slight rework to make it less abusable with comms would fix a lot of problems. Maybe a large passive buff to all interactions (gens, bones, healing, etc) at the cost of your aura being revealed after 3 seconds of performing an action or something? Either way, as it stands OoO is probably one of the more unhealthy perks for the game state as a whole.

6:Audio/Visual bugs and glitches

They're kind of all over the place. Rough textures, audio cues not sounding properly, stuttering and frame drops during skill checks, floating in mid air instead of physically being on the hook, etc. Most of them aren't awful or have a consistently negative impact on gameplay, but they're noticeable and certainly don't help with the new player experience. It just leads to thinking like 'well if they can't bother to models to rig properly on the hook after 4 years what else haven't they bothered to fix?' which is definitely not the kind of thinking you want, especially from a new player base that's just joining in.

7: The Shrine and Powerful Perks Being Locked Behind Paywall

I get it, you guys like your DLC, and specifically with licensed stuff you have to charge actual cash. That's fine, I don't have a problem with DLC characters, and it keeps the game fresh as you add new killers to the mix with new powers and abilities. The issue is how easily accessible the perks that come with these licensed DLC characters is to the rest of the player base. There are 66 survivor and 68 killer perks (roundabout, might be off by 1 or 2). The shrine rotates every week offering 2 perks from each side. There are 52 weeks in a year. I'm not sure how the algorithm is set up and if certain perks are set up to be more common than others, but it could over half a year for a perk you want to show up in the shrine, and that's IF it doesn't repeat any in a full cycle. Since some of the DLC perks are VERY powerful, and most of the meta perks right now are DLC perks, that puts new players at a severe disadvantage if they don't want to or can't afford to sink money into the game. The concept of the shrine isn't the issue, but just how long you have to wait for things to cycle through. Either add more perks to the rotation (4 from each) or make it rotate something like every 2-3 days instead of a full week.