Just found out the DBD community kinda killed another game
So I'm sure none of you or maybe some of you have heard of Soul At Stake? The game was labeled as a Chinese DBD rip off upon release and the reason for it was that it was a 4v1 asymmetrical horror game. That's it. No pallets or knock off pallets, no generators or anything close to it, no perks or really anything super close to them. A completely different game got labeled a rip off and got a horrid reputation solely because it had the same 4v1 style of gameplay. I kinda wanna know why any horror asymmetrical game is labeled a DBD rip off even if its no where close to Dbd?
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Is it possible that the game in question may have died for other reasons?
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It’s possible that’s not the reason it died even the bigger ones expected to be competition to dbd don’t last like Friday and resident evil resistance. 4v1 just seems to be a bad area to make a game in and survive. Surprisingly dbd is doing well though.
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What concerns me is the usage of the word "another"
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If it is a Chinese game it might be because the Chinese video game market is dominated by mobile genres atm. The Chinese also have no problem paying cash for pay to win mechanics in other games.
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When it first came out TydeTyme labeled it as a DBD knock off and everyone sort of blindly followed (me included) but it was on sale today so I bought it and it really isn't anything like dbd besides the 4v1 aspect. Upon release it had a somewhat active player count but now its just fully dead because of the early negative reputation it gathered. Hell im 100% certain DBD took outfit inspiration from one of the survivors in this game
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The only pay to win mechanics is the DLC but like same thing with DBD
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Its mostly a bad idea because you can't make one without it being labeled a rip off.
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I wouldn't say they took inspiration from one of the characters, moreso they took their Chinese character and gave her traditional Chinese (I think it is, I haven't studied Chinese culture so if I'm wrong please feel free to correct me) dress for a Chinese celebration.
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The game having been out for two years (at least according to The Google dot com) and this is the first I've ever heard of it might have something to do with it doing poorly...
You say it's nothing like DBD but the description on the Steam page makes it sound a LOT like DBD...specifically:
"In the strange and lifeless scene, four gamblers are trying to run away from the devil, but there is no exit. All they can do is to perform a mystery sealing ritual to expel the devil and redeem their souls."
You run away from a monster trying to take you out in an arena with no exits and you have to do certain tasks in order to unlock the power needed to escape...
Yeah, have no idea how anyone thought this was similar to DBD with a description like that :D
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False.
The game in question came out in 2018.
The dbd Spark Of Madness dlc (When Feng came into the game) dropped in 2017.
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I am Chinese and they did do that but there's many colors for a Qipao and many styles of hair to go with it. They kinda chose the same colors and hair as Angie from Soul at Stake which isn't bad but I think they took inspiration off her outfit imo.
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The Lunar event didn't release until 2019.
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Still, Feng keeps her facial appearance
and the picture you provided only shows a face
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I wouldn't even have known about the game's existence if the bigger Youtubers like Bryce games and Ohmwrecker didn't make videos on it and called it "Chinese Dead By Daylight" or something like that.
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Dbd -> hold M1 and do 5 gens and open an exit gate to escape
SaS -> do 8 cardholders playing blackjack with each one until the 21 spots are filled by the cards you pick.
Dbd and SaS both play completely different in Chase too. Dbd is more action centric and up front SaS is more abouts wits and judgement.
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I remember playing Soul At Stake, is it still around?
The most glaring issue with the game was that the killers all moved SLOWER than the survivor players, and had to rely on map knowledge and clever use of their teleport powers to win. As you can imagine, it was incredibly frustrating for new killer players and they dropped off pretty quickly.
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yeah just bought it last night on sale lol thats what sparked this discussion. And they balanced it a lot better from when it first came out. Its not as tilted as it was before esp with the killer power adjustments. I played like 2 games on asian servers and the killer did pretty well for noobs
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People tend to label anything 'X ripoff' despite facts to the countrary, because people aren't as clever as they make themselves out to be. AND you will often have people (including companies) outright COMPARE games (also books, movies etc) to something popular despite everything OR proclaim their game to be the 'X killer' (do you know how many games have been touted as WoW killer or anything?)
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Yeah like all the people labeling Paladins an overwatch rip off/clone but never actually having had played it lol.
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Hm whats spell break?
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Why do you think it's really struggling?
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People are tired of BRs so they aren't buying it
a shame since it's a really good game
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Another? What games are we supposed to have killed?
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As far as I know this game is broken since they launched their servers. You literally cannot open this game if you're not in Asia.
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Thank you!
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Identity V never died but it came close to it at launch thanks to the DBD community trashing it so hard.
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Yeah, I just watched a video of a little bit of gameplay, and my first thoughts were 100% DBD ripoff. Maybe the objectives are different or something, but it was a character that functioned like the nurse, teleports to a survivor, hits the survivor, who gets a speed burst and enters the injured state, and then the killer spends a few seconds wiping his weapon. Same aura system, dude teleports to another survivor who looks to be holding M1 or the equivalent on a shrine or something which the killer can see all of at all times, all on a video labeled "Soul at Stake Gameplay - The New Dead by Daylight?"
Yeah, it's tooootally different, you guys. A lot of the exact gameplay mechanics unique to DBD just fell into it by accident, but there's like, not generators or perks so it's like DBD but less customizable? All with way worse animations and looking like a bad mobile game.
Fantastic.
Video in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xg4o6tv2LA
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All killers teleport actually. All killers also see auras at all times this is where the gameplay differs since Killers and Survivors both have to try and outsmart the other instead of taking a direct action course like DBD. The only truly similar mechanics is the injury system but thats about where it ends. (EDIT: just realized what mechanics are 'unique' to DBD?)
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Oh yeah also if you really wanna get technical there's 'perks' but they're not like perks in DBD they function differently
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So they made DBD but with a different focus on how the killer and survivor approach each other. That's not enough to wash away the stigma of the clearly "borrowed" concepts. Games always imitate each other, of course, but everything I see about this game just looks like DBD-but-worse. I'm not seeing any kind of hook that's making me go "Oh, that's what they changed! That seems way better than DBD!"
I think DBD is a hugely flawed game, and making a superior version would simply require a talented team to understand DBD's problems and have the design and technical chops to do better. This game does not appear to have accomplished that.
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If a game is good is doesn't matter about any community stating otherwise.
Look at Fortnite for example.
Games die due to the playerbase preferring another or the game just not being that good nothing else.
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Looking at that, the game probably would've done better if it had actually just been honest about what it is - a DbD clone.
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As well as a different objective, different card system, different style, different gameplay feel etc etc. A few borrowed concepts doesn't make something a rip off. I'm not even sure what to consider a true dbd rip off
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Identity V is more of a DBD clone than this game is and even then Identity V is hardly like DBD in most aspects.
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Fortnite was made by a huge company and already had a big fanbase prior due to the Save The World mode. Comparing that to a small game by a small company that needs to build its reputation is a bad comparison esp when the only 'professional' reviews it got was by DBD youtubers who compare any 4v1 game to DBD even though a comparison isn't there to make.
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I remember which you're talking about.... there was no way it was going to last... I do agree that its not a DBD knock off though...
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Identity V was designed to be a DbD clone. DbD devs were literally consulted on the project, if I'm not mistaken.
SaS wants to pretend it's not a DbD clone despite being an obvious DbD clone.
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Maybe Identity V at its very basic gameplay is a clone but thats just whatever it more than makes up for it in other aspects.
I'd like to know how SaS is an obvious clone though besides the injury system?
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It has a LOT of potential. I think it just needs more funding than anything.
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Because other than the perks, the store (which, BTW, I thought was kinda cool), and the killer's PoV, everything looks, feels, and plays the same as in DbD. There are minor differences, but not nearly enough to make me believe this isn't a DbD clone.
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That game had a cat lady that changes the survivors into cats too.
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Well to point out some feeling differences. The maps are dynamic, events happen while playing such as shelves knocking over or things like that. Chase wise its a very different experience. In the couple games I had there was one where the killer clearly was new and one where they knew what they were doing and both definitely felt different. When it comes to looks i do have to disagree as well since idk to me they're two very different aesthetics like DBD aims for a more outright horror feel SaS is more of an eerie anything lurks kind of feel. A good comparison would be that the size of the maps are very different since SaS maps tend to be much larger in all aspects making survivors feel more small and weak meanwhile DBD does give the survivors a certain level of defense when it comes to pallets and windows.
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The witch lol very amusing killer
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Though I dont think one is better than the other they're both good depending on what style you like better but to outright say its a clone is a bit far fetched.
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I remember gorillaphent and Bryce play this game. The only 2 game that really interest me was the last year The nightmare and Friday the 13th game. Last year had brutal kills like someone getting dragged into a vent. Jason had kills from the movies even to the point of smashing the car.
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It's not far fetched at all. You can deny it, but we all know what we're looking at here.
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I remember seeing that back in the day. I liked the game aesthetic but from what I recall the survivors were
-Faster than the killer
-Had dead hard without a cooldown base kit on top of the killer giving a sound notification for swinging
-Only needed 1 person to finish the objective to give the killer a defeat and all 4 survivors a win
No way I was gonna touch that with a 10 foot pole. If they never changed any of that then that's why the game died.
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Oh yeah the whole dodge function was altered I believe, at least when I played it it felt much more precise? Also it did have a cool down though it was short I will say.
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Being a big company doesn't matter. Many games released by these larger companies still fail.
Being a large company doesn't promise a good game.
Look at don't starve for example or Terraria, FTL etc. All indie companies.
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Not to get political about it, but overtly Chinese games aren't often that popular with (non-Chinese) Western audiences. If it's simply got a Chinese developer and a great English port, people typically won't notice or care, but if they can't read any of the text in the top video when they go to the store page on Steam, and the English in the description flows badly and isn't even grammatically correct, that's going to be a huge turn-off for a lot of people regardless of the gameplay quality. It's not exclusively a Chinese issue, of course, but there are a few reasons why Chinese games tend to stand out in this way, at least in my experience (Japanese games, for example, are more likely to be received favourably even if they suffer from exactly the same issues, because they have a reputation for quality thanks to huge companies like Nintento).
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