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The Rift and the Grind
I completed all Rifts until now, and i consider myself some kind of completionist, but because real life i'm really struggling to keep up to date (1 level per day on average); i thought this was meant for casual players but i dont think it is and feels more like a chore at this point.
Isnt supposed to be fun? a tiny bit at least? I mean, if they want to encourage us to spend our auric cells and play the game, why make it so grindy, specially considering there is only one game mode, or two if you count killer and survivor separated i guess. Not to mention some challenges are just obnoxious and anti fun...
Any plans on changing the grind needed?
Few fragments each day (3-5?) for first match completed sounds good to me... I dont know but this rift i didnt even spend any auric cells because im not sure i want to do it or even if im going to be able to complete it.
Am i the only one that feels this way?
Comments
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Welcome to the club.
The rift grind has been complained about forever at this point.
Personally, I find the rift quite annoying since I never really get to finish them without spending money.
But on the other hand, I don't mind spending 5 dollars here and there.
You can't have the cake and eat it too at BHVR.
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I play at least 3 rounds a day, and much, MUCH more when there are some challenges left. But I always seem to be stuck on tier 55. And can't reach further, it's just tedious.
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The grind is pretty intense. The one thing I really appreciate about the DBD battle pass is that you can fully get your money back if you complete it and, in light of that, I understand why they don't want to make the rift easier or faster. But it does feel slow and difficult a lot of the time.
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It isn't designed for casuals, it is designed for the average player, that plays 2 hours per day. It is just that there are a bunch of x-thousand hours players, that push the average, resulting in only 30% (random guess) of all players being able to finish the rift. There are more people below average than above
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According to the stats of first year of rift only 16% finished the rifts. Tome 4 challenges you received less fragments than Tome 3, Tome 5 challenges gives you less than Tome 4 so I guess 16% completing during the first year was too much. I completed the first 4 rifts but the amount of grinding needed for tome 4 turned me away, I'm not even bothering on tome 5 and playing more of other games instead.
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It is not an average player btw. If you play every day at least 2 hours - you are a very devoted player.
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I find myself falling more behind every tomb. :(
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I've seen streamers who put ungodly numbers of hours into this game say they've failed to complete Rifts. That's ridiculous.
The Rift isn't designed for the average player. The Rift is designed to keep people playing the game beyond the point when they would normally have stopped. It's to get people to pay extra money to buy the remaining tiers of the Rift when they're unable to complete the grind.
DbD uses the grind to keep players coming back. Unfortunately, the grind isn't fun, and the rewards are becoming less and less rewarding (the current Rift is very low quality), so it's really just going to cause a lot of burnout amongst the playerbase.
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The answer to why its a grind is simple. They want you to pay for cells to complete it.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
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The average is the sum of all players playtime divided by the number of players.
That's what the devs said at least, so either it is the average player, or BHVR lied. I don't see a reason why they should lie about it
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Okay, I am not saying the devs lied. I want to put that out there, I am not accusing anyone of anything. But, saying there's no reason to lie is a mistake. Psychologically, telling people that it's designed so that the "average player" can complete it gives players a false sense of security that they'll be able to complete it. It makes them more likely to purchase the Rift in anticipation of completing it, because hey, if the average player can do it, then they'll certainly be able to. It increases the likelihood that players who don't put in enough hours to complete the Rift will still buy it, and that increases the likelihood they'll put in more money to buy the tiers they didn't earn.
It would be crazy to come out and say "Only the hardest of hardcore players will be able to complete the Rift." No one would buy it, then.
(Also, the term "average" is very misleading. A few outliers can completely skew the numbers. Laypeople usually think of a number closer to the median than the mean when they hear the word "average." Just throwing that out there. Not to mention, does "two hours a day" take into account all the time waiting for a lobby? The player isn't earning XP in the lobby.)
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I completed the last tome IV in pretty exactly 140 hours and even had 60 fragments open with unfinished challenges of level 4. It is totally finishable with 2 hours a day.
If the streamers did not finish it, they did not complete the challenges because they don't want to build their content around the challenges. And the challenges make half of the progress. But anyway I don't know what you mean with ungodly amount. If you don't finish challenges at all, you would need 4 hours per day. And most fulltime streamers I know play the game like 7 hours per day and would have no problems to finish it
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They've had a full year to do something about it, they just refuse to lessen the grind of the rift. I guess people buy keep buying it. I already have a full time job. I don't need a part time job grinding the rift
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Yeah, and that works exactly once. Then you know what you face. And from tome 1 ongoing they said, you can purchase the pass AFTER you finished and will be rewarded everything, so no need to hurry. In my opinion, they gave you everything you need to not make it a money driven feature. If you fall for any trap with this season reward system, then you set it up by yourself.
And yes, there were huge calculation threads on the first tome, 2 hours contains waiting and spending BP. Actually this is designed to spend 6 games of exactly 10 minutes per day, as 10 minutes gives you the maximum XP of 600 per game. 2 hours per day is assuming 3-4 games of around 550 XP per game
EDIT: I also did not say "there is no reason to lie", I said "I don't see a reason" which is my opinion, based on the fact that they made the pass purchaseable on day 70"
Another edit: They also said what the average amount of hours per day is, so you got a pretty clear idea of if your playing behavior will be in range of completing the rift
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I've always thought it was too grindy. I stopped playing the game for months because the Rifts destroyed the game for me as a solo survivor. Game after game after game, teammates never tried, they just went for challenges. People sandbagged me to try to get a flashlight save. I'd get games with three Blendettes with keys who literally hid in lockers from start to finish. I could play for hours and be unable to get a single save because no one would play normally.
I've been playing DBD the past couple of days and I am still shocked by how little progress you make just by playing normally. I personally like to get my money out of any battle pass I buy, and if it's a full time job to get it done, I'm going to pass. Oh and I'd say about 1 out of every 3 games is a killer who is AFK or farming. It's probably survivor mains who just want to get some challenges done. I don't blame them, it just makes the game less fun when you want to actually play.
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I've completed rifts 2, 3 and 4. And for 5 I've just lost the will. I'm rank 21 and my heart sinks at the prospect of getting to 70 lol. life is just too busy now.
The only cosmetic I like from this rift is the Nea outfit but I don't think I can justify buying the rift pass just for that because no way I'm completing it this time lol.
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I'm already on tier 25 and I didn't collect half of the first level. I still think the rift is fine.
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Um, my definition of "ungodly hours" was 5+ hours a day for more than half the days in a week. The guy streams as his only source of income. I know he's not the only streamer who didn't complete it, just the only one whose number of hours I remember.
The way challenges are set up is really bad. The player has to select the challenge before playing a match; if they accidentally have a killer challenge selected when they play survivor (or vice versa) then too bad. The Battlepasses I usually see let players work on multiple challenges at the same time. But even with it limited to one at a time, DbD could at least let players choose what challenge their progress goes towards at the end of the match. It's quite annoying/disheartening to complete the requirements for one challenge but have a different challenge selected for which you gained zero progress towards. The Tome challenges are set up in an extremely player-unfriendly way that does nothing except increase the grind and frustration.
In my opinion, DbD's battlepass is more grindy and less rewarding than other games' battlepasses. Discussing whether or not it's a predatory system would be a lot of talk of marketing strategies and psychology (plus with none of the behind-the-scene documentation from the developers it'd be a lot of conjecture and assumptions, which is why I specifically said I wasn't accusing anyone of anything, just putting forth a bit of observable psychology) and would be off-topic. I also don't really have a position to argue for; my feelings here are rather ambivalent other than that I think the Rift is too grindy, which is an opinion and not something that can be proven one way or the other.
The Rift is what it is. DbD started to decrease the amount of grind required for a while by increasing the number of challenges in the Tomes, but then they quickly back-stepped and the grind required has gone back up, which to me seems really uncool because in my opinion this is the most lackluster Rift yet. I have always thought that this game does not properly reward the amount of effort put in, both for the Bloodweb and now for the RIft.
Anyway, I agree with you @Zboard that the Rift feels like a chore to complete. The amount of grinding needed for DbD has always crossed that line, going far past fun and rewarding and becoming an inevitable path to not just total burnout but in some cases animosity towards the whole thing. The Rift does not increase the fun in the game, just that feeling of being required to play past the point where you'd normally stop in order to get the game's full value.
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well... I can understand a lot of the critics, but I really get the feeling that people are just used to complain and do it about everything they can find. You complain about getting no progress due to challenge selection, everyone else complains about the easiest of all challenges like "repair gens" that you progress automatically in every game, being too standard. Everyone complains about the grind, but noone ever mentions the like 500k BP you can save up for the next chapter. I really don't get the addiction you all fall for because of the rift, like you miss anything when you don't complete it, while complaining that the tome 5 cosmetics are not worth it anyway. Who th forces you to complete the rift and grind grind grind when you think that the reward is not worth it anyway? Just take the extra BP, the extra lore and forget about the rift. Like honestly, I really REALLY don't get the thought process behind that. When someone plays less than necessary to complete the rift, you shouldn't be that addicted to the game anyway imo
With your streamer example, he then plays around 15 hours a week? As I said, then he completely ignored challenges, because with 15 hours a week he should get easily to tier 40 just by playtime. That is more than "average"
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Friendly reminder that this is my opinion on this subject, and might be more or less accurated.
Its nice that we have some debate here, was interesting reading, but i still stand with my main point: the grinding required to complete it is not rewarded enough, imo.
The ultimate objective of the Rift its make more money, but i find it hard to believe that its actually getting better, and instead losing a lot of possible 'customers', considering the hours needed to complete it: Even if the average its 2h, the majority of the players dont play 2h a day, pretty sure about this. Most are just casuals, since its a casual game that only has one mode and can get boring quickly. If you focus your Rift on Average players (which i agree, they are devoted players), i think they are missing a lot of money. Time will tell, they have their data and for sure they are not stupid.
So my main take on this: They are losing the oportunity to get more money and have a more stable playerbase, since their battlepass its not casual friendly, and the majority of the players in this game are casuals just wanting some few fun matches, myself included at this point
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I am someone who usually enjoys the grind in games. But even for me the rift is not appealing in the slightest.
The BP for challenges is great, but the rewards for the tiers are very unappealing.
There just isnt enough motivation to care about it.
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The Rift Grind is definitely tedious, so once I got Rift 4 completely done (which to me was already too grindy), I started a very long break (that's still in effect) and I deciced to not even try to finish Rift 5.
Kodus to anybody who still does it, and also thinks that the Grind is not really a Grind. If you enjoy it, go for it, nothing wrong with that. But I totally agree with the overall sentiment, that it's becoming too much of a Grind.
Also, closely related: I'd like to recommend to you to watch this GDC Virtual Talk. It features Isabelle Mocquard and Dave Richard talking about Monetization in Dead by Daylight.
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I did rift 4 and was feeling the burn towards the end. Rift 5 I can't be bothered with. Most of the tiers are just boring charms and subpar recolors of default outfits anyway so the individual levels feel unrewarding. Honestly, the tiers are so padded with garbage that even buying the tiers would feel really bad.
I like doing the challenges but there's just way too many fragments you have to make up with just raw playtime.
I'd be less burnt out by the grind if they would put the rift cosmetics in the store quicker or would give you tokens to get what you wanted from some of the tiers. Or if the tomes just gave more fragments than what we had in 4. Or even give some fragments for daily rituals if the goal is to keep people logging in and playing each day.
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even if you get every challenge done you still need around 10+ levels before you complete the rift and that's including the games you play to do the challenges. meaning a causal player would need to play 100+ games assuming they have done every challenge so far which imo isn't likely for a casual player.. I'm an active player who plays 5 +games every day and once im done with the tome i'm usually at level 58-61 so for a casual player they probably are at level 50 at this time which is usually 2 weeks before the rift closes.
this isn't for casual players and honestly if the devs just made dailys at least give us at least ONE shard more preferably 2 or 3 we could shave off 7-21 levels if you keep up with the dailys.
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Adding shards to dailies would be nice. Mobile has offerings for additional xp, they should've added those instead of the blueprints to console/pc to help with the rift.
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