http://dbd.game/killswitch
New Player Reflections
Hello there,
I am acutely aware that this is not the first (or the last) post about the amount of grind in Dead By Daylight. I wanted to share my experiences as a relatively "new" player (roughly 60 hours at time of this post).
First Week:
A lot of confusion about how to properly play the numerous Killers & Survivors. I was able to overcome my initial frustration and confusion with a combination of help from the tutorial, videos from Otzdarva/Tofu, and a general appreciation for how much fun the game is. Probably the best asymmetrical PvP experience I've ever had.
Second Week and Beyond:
Research into the Bloodweb gave me some idea of the amount of grind that was going to be expected to run a functional build. As I prefer playing Killer, I became aware of the importance of BBQ & Chili to reduce what was going to be a long grind. I grinded out BBQ & Chili, then switched to Plague to get a generator slowing perk, as I wanted my games to last longer. I became excited realizing another Killer or two and I would have access to enough functional perks to really start experimenting and trying lots of Killers.
61 Hour Mark:
Unfortunately, the wheels fell of the wagon for me. The reality of the perks system set in, and utterly killed my enthusiasm for the game. Even if I grinded every Killer to level 40/41 to get all teachable perks, I would still be re-rolling Bloodwebs to try and get the perks I wanted on numerous Killers. That was the deal breaker for me as a new player. I don't mind grinding, particularly with a reasonable expectation of being rewarded. But the recognition of the sheer number of hours that would be required to really experiment with builds is positively staggering.
Abandon All Hope, Entity Take Me:
After browsing the forums on Reddit/Steam/here, it appears as though the concern about ridiculous grind is not a new one. I don't think I have anything new to add to the conversation but for what it's worth:
As a new player in 2021, I was entirely prepared to dump loads of cash on this game. Was willing to buy Killers/Survivors and cosmetics. Total whale mode.
The grind utterly deflated any willingness I had to purchase additional content, or even play. Hard work/achievement is one thing; but the current system is asinine for a new player. If the grind is fixed, I will come back and put lots of money into the title.
Thanks for reading!
Comments
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Yeah, even as a player with thousands of hours who has most of the content unlocked I still despise the grind, and feel discouraged to play every time new characters are added. I cant even imagine how awful it would be starting fresh again.
Post edited by Gibberish on5 -
Eh it looks bad but then you realize 95% of the perks are useless, survivors are just skins, and you can have the meta builds with like 3 characters to 40 on each side.
After that you can level the niche stuff people use for 1 game and then never again.
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I was the same as you, totally up for the grind when I first started. Just like you, and countless others, the tedium of the grind possibly started to show within the first 100 hours for many others, probably not all though. It did however take me longer to get sick of it, maybe 200-300 hours, and a lot of new players are going to be initially drawn in then get bored of it when they come to the same realisation.
Bhvr think it's the grind that keeps players coming back to the game, in some respects a small part of that is correct, but as it is now people will some of those new players will leave.
Yes, bhvr would have gotten their money from what the bought however will also lose future revenue from them too.
They should make it easier to get perks and for those that want the grind, make more prestige options available with proper incentive to entice others to maybe at least want to try prestiging too.
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That's an interesting perspective, but that does little to tackle the real issue for me. I want to have access to all the wonky off-meta stuff, and I am willing to put a substantial amount of time into unlocking those skills from each Killer (getting all of them to 40 will take a good while).
If I just wanted to power out meta builds, my understanding is that I would be better served not unlocking the weird teachable perks for the Killers I would presumably spend money to own.
Is the optimal solution to the grind to simply not plan on experiencing a good chunk of the game without dedicating hundreds if not thousands of hours?
I recognize that is a kind of solution, but it would seem to encourage only playing super meta builds, and meta Killers. Why not reduce the grind? Is it really necessary to gate content behind potentially hundreds if not thousands of hours?
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If you play the game that long, you will end up in the ranks where you are basically forced to use the meta perks anyways.
It will only take a few games against a meta survivor team when using a meme killer build for you to get spanked hard enough to go meta too.
I routinely have 3~ gens almost complete in the first 2.5 minutes as a rank 1 killer. If you don’t have meta perks you just instantly lose those games.
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Yeah, the grind in this game is absolutely insane. It literally took me over a week of playing just to P3 Ash and get every survivor perk on him. (Even then, I'm still missing Leon and Jill's.)
Despite all the complaints, and easy solutions, are the devs gonna do anything about the grind? Nope.
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I appreciate your perspective, and I think I would have stuck with it longer, but I saw where this train was going.
I am actually totally receptive to grinding, but there has to be something more reasonable/less RNG than the current system. I still find it really troubling that a small percentage of players seem to want to gate content behind tons of hours of gameplay. Seems counterintuitive to inviting new players in.
I admit, I'm probably too new to really propose specific improvements. But I am confident there has to be a better way.
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That seems like an entirely different issue, and is beyond the scope of my experience. I wanted access to perks to experience that for myself (I still do).
Because the gameplay gets very competitive, seems like poor reasoning to gate of content behind a huge grind wall.
I will leave the larger balance discussion to minds greater than mine.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts as a vet player though.
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Maybe they need to hear it from a new player since this is what they are basing the balancing of the game on. The older players have been trying to communicate the problems about the grind and in a lot of cases just being ignored.
They did add 3 perks passed lvl40 and 4 passed lvl50 however they are still very rng based and you can guarantee that 9 times out of 10 the second perk you want the entity will grab, possibly leaving you with 2 perks you will never use as options.
As more dlc gets released the grind gets worse.
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Congratulations on getting Ash to P3.
I genuinely think Bhvr wants to make the most successful game they can. I also think there is value in reporting that the grind is a differentiating factor in opening my wallet as a new player.
Yes I am just one data point in a sea of players, but what is the point of these forums if not to share our experiences?
Gotta keep hope alive! Hope costs nothing.
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You need to stop defending BHVR, it literally takes 1.5k hours to get every perk on every killer and every perk on 1 survivor. That's not even with Prestige. It is ridiculous.
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That's another concern I had as a new player. Every Killer I buy will represent another oppressive RNG grinding experience, if I can ever catch up.
I hope my perspective offers something to the development team. I'm ready to ante up cash as a new player (and drag in plenty of my friends...) if the grind is reduced.
It seems like player feedback has made a difference over time. Maybe with the influx of new players, this is an opportunity to really send the message home.
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Yikes! Those totals are much worse than I guestimated in my mind.
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I'm not defending them at all. I said they are ignoring the older players and need to hear the problems from the players they balance around, the newer ones.
I don't like the grind how it is and said they will end up losing a lot of the newer players they gain.
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I would honestly love to be retained as a new player. This game is great!
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They really do need to do something about the grind. I had nearly 1.3 BP when the new DLC dropped. (I suspect I'm not alone) but that isn't nearly enough to unlock and advance the new Killers and new Survs. Tiers for perks need to go away and the useless perks need a pass to make them not horrible to have. Offerings either just need to be deleted from the game except for maybe BP offerings (with appropriate windows for people to spend what they spent) and the lvling process streamlined. I'm tired of playing hide n seek with the Entity.
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Thanks <3
Anyway, yeah, all we can really is hope they do something about the grind.
It isn't too bad for me, cause I got this game back in March of 2019 when things were a bit more manageable, but I can only imagine how intimidating the grind is to players who just got the game.
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There is no catching up to do. All you need is two perks on killer, corrupt intervention and pop goes the weasel, and that’s good enough for every killer to be competitive at any rank.
Survivors don’t even need perks if you are good at playing because most of their power is just their base kits. I haven’t changed my survivor build in like 2 years because the meta has never changed. I don’t buy the new survivors. You can basically fine full meta with 3 survivors to 40. Bill for unbreakable, Laurie for DS, and David for dead hard (and he has the BP grinding perk to boot).
You can be rank 1 competitive in like a week or two of playing. Like 90% of people at purple / red ranks are running meta build and I’ve seen survivors make it to red with less than 100 hours played.
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Just to make sure I fully understand your perspective:
There is no need to address the grind, because only a small fraction of the perks are ultimately useful?
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I’m just saying they are never going to change it, and it’s probably not useful discussing it. So you might as well adapt. This is like going onto the WoW forums and complaining you need to grind to level 60 or something.
But the difference here is you can get everything you need to play the game pretty quickly. Like the survivors are just cosmetics, and nobody really uses more than a few perks on them most of the time beyond the super vets with like 5,000+ hours who could go into games perkless anyways.
Only the killers actually really need good perks, and there’s only like 6-8 perks worth using for them as well. Everything else is just garbage there’s no reason to use. So who cares if you need to grind for stuff you don’t need?
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The problem is you could be in your 65th bloodweb before the perks you want start showing up. I must be over my 70th now to get discordence on nemesis on ps5. Got them all fairly quickly on xbox but that's because I have less shared perks on that system.
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I disagree. I think there is some value in discussing it. I would like to know, if you believe the current grind is a good system? Also, you can get to level 60 in WoW much faster than the grind we are discussing here. "Just accept it and adapt" is not what I'm going with. I can tell that works for you, and that's totally fine. The developers are likely aware that many players aren't concerned. That's valid.
I care. I want access to the content I would theoretically pay for in a reasonable period of time.
We are definitely advocating different perspectives here.
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Yep, this is how we all feel. 600 hours in I feel like I've unlocked barely anything, and everytime I think "oh I might play this killer" I quickly remember that I don't yet have BBQ on them because ######### RNG, and a lot of perks are at tier 1 because BHVR still expects people to unlock 70 perks 3 TIMES OVER. ON EVERY KILLER. It's insane how they still believe the grind is necessary.
They're fully aware of how bad it is, but they're not doing anything about it because they fear that players would play less because there's less of a grind, when in fact the exact OPPOSITE is happening. I wouldn't dare recommend this game to anybody in its current state. The grind is absurd.
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I feel like the BP grind is not that bad if you know which survivor you want to main. Its been said before, they are all skins. When you decide to P3 and get every single perk I guess thats where it hits you hard? But being P3 is just a choice that doesnt make much of a difference anyway, it's just to show off.
Just choose a survivor you like and play as them. Unlock meta perks or whatever but keep your main fed with BP. Between the shards you can use to get BP and the tome challenges there's a lot of BP to be made. Compared to how it was before, getting perks is a bit easier, when you could only get one perk per BP level, Christ, that was a grind.
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I’m just trying to say I don’t really care about the grind because the survivor grind is done relatively quickly and the meta is extremely strict at high ranks. Killer is camping? You have to have BT. Killer is tunneling? You have to have DS. Want to loop optimally? You need dead hard (or sprint burst).
4th slot you can use whatever but if you are not running those 3 the killer can easily just roll over the team in a minute or two. I go on absolutely insane win streaks as killer because just 1 survivor won’t be running those perks and that’s all it takes to win as killer.
And conversely, all the generators can be finished in ~5 minutes so the killer is practically forced to run multiple generator perks unless they are playing the strongest killers available.
You can have a killer with a functional build in a few days casual play and that’s about how long it will take to get good with their power anyways.
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I had 4.5 million bp saved(dailies, tomes, iridescent shards, earned bp pool, gift bp pool) and I dumped it all into Jill. I wasn't even close on getting them all. As of right now there are 6 pages(plus 2 more perks) of perks and I wasn't even halfway done when I used them all.
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Here is the actual math behind it.
- There are currently 95 survivor perks and 84 killer perks.
- Each perk has 3 tiers
- It takes about 1.5 million BPs to level a character to level 40.
- After level 40 it takes ~50k per level of the bloodweb if you spend it wisely so the entity takes like half the web.
- There are 27 survivors and there are 24 killers.
This means, to get every perk on a single survivor, you would have to:
- Level 27 survivors to level 40 at 1.5 million bloodpoints each
- You'd get about 45 perk levels out of the required 282 on your preferred survivor (it would be 285 but i'm counting that you get 3 for free for your survivor)
- You get 2 perks per bloodweb after level 40 (most of the time)
This means:
27 * 1.5 million = 40.5 million
282 - 45 = 237 perk levels left
237 / 2 = 118.5 = 119 (round up due to entity taking) bloodwebs needed
119 * 50k = 5.95 million
This is a total of:
40.5 million + 5.95 million = 46,450,000 bloodpoints to get a single survivor with all the perks, no prestige
Now let's do the killers:
- There are 25 killers you need to level 40 at 1.5 million bloodpoints each.
- You get about 45 perk levels out of the required 249 for each killer (again already removed 3 for the already learned perks at level 1)
- You get 2 perks per bloodweb after level 40 (most of the time)
This means:
25 * 1.5 million = 37.5 million
249 - 45 = 204 perk levels left
204 / 2 = 102 bloodwebs needed per killer
102 * 50K = 5,100,000 bloodpoints per killer
For a total of:
37.5 million + (5.1 million * 25) = 165,000,000 Bloodpoints to get every perk on every killer no prestige.
TOTAL:
You need 46,450,000 + 165,000,000 bloodpoints to get every perk on every killer and every perk on 1 survivor. This is a total of 211,450,000 bloodpoints.
Let's say you earn an average of 25k bloodpoints perk game (survivors earn a lot less normally too), this means it would take you:
8,458 games of DBD.
If a game of DBD lasts about 12 minutes (factoring in queue times, loading screens, etc.) It takes 1,691.6 hours to do this.
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No God please no, don't show the numbers my will can't take it.
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