http://dbd.game/killswitch
Why has the negativity increased even if the game is improving?
I need as many opinions as possible, because I haven't been on the forums at all neither followed the discussions of Otz and OhTofu and other streamers during time.
My question is: as Otzdarva and OhTofu said( because they collect opinions of a lot of people) and I can see from other streamers, the negativity towards the game has been progressively increasing: the frustration or in general negative feelings
Objectively Dead by Daylight has improved a lot during time: keys, instaheals, brand new parts, infinites, and a lot of busted things have been nerfed and reworked, and the only major buff to survivors that's been introduced is Circle of healing, that luckily with some killers it's not that big of a problem, but with killers like Wraith and Hag it's a game changer that denies completely any sort of hit and run playstyle and saves survivors so much time that you don't have time to do anything. If we compare dbd to what it was in 2018, or 2019, it's not even comparable.
So is SBMM / MMR the reason there's so much negativity around in general, with a lot of people saying they don't enjoy playing Dbd anymore?
Or is it all the negativity that cheaters, toxic people at high SBMM clicking with massive egos, hackers that ddosed the game and toxic people on Twitter brought with them?
Comments
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Negativity bias. People who are enjoying a thing don't tend to go out of their way to leave youtube comments, twitter replies, and forum posts talking about it- and if they do, they often get discouraged by the wave of negativity that can sometimes come in response.
That's basically all it is, combined with a degree of starting to take good aspects for granted the longer you've sat with a work- this doesn't just apply to DBD, or even video games, I've seen it a lot elsewhere.
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Are you sure? Dbd hasn't been always like this, and the game was way more busted back in time
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Because the devs aren't making aspects of the game more enjoyable in the process.
Boons are annoying to deal with because as a killer there's no real counterplay to them besides killing the survivor who has the perk (and good luck if 2+ survivors have one).
Survivor gameplay hasn't changed so instead of having a fun objective they can do while avoiding the killer they rely on the killer for fun.
This has also led to the objective getting so optimized that killers don't have any time to waste and have to resort to tactics survivors find unfun if they want a chance to kill a single survivor.
The game may be getting more balanced but it's simply also getting less fun because the devs are simply not improving the game in a way for fun. Their end result is to see the numbers in the right spot.
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This could possibly be an answer, but I think there's something more going on under the negativity
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Because it has improved in some areas but has become worse in others.
Boons, Dead Hard validation, MMR, etc are really hard in Killers atm.
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Forums tend to be relatively negative either way, it’s just human nature that people who aren’t upset don’t post as often as people who are mad about something. That’s not to say all suggestions or complaints are invalid, but just that even when the game is doing well you’ll have a lot of naysayers.
In terms of players DbD is currently holding on in the Steam charts around where it was the whole first half of the year. It got boosts in the summer with the Resident Evil and Hellraiser releases, and always gets a boost around late October with Halloween, and then it regresses to its mean which is where we’re at now, The year over year numbers are all increases though so the game is still doing fine in terms of player count.
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I saw the player count is normal, the problem is why are OhTofu, Otz, and others reporting there's so much negativity around?
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This game was at its best right before MMR came in. Since then we've had MMR, boons, and dead hard validation. Every single lobby is 4 DHs, at least one CoH, 3+ Iron Wills, and then all 2nd chance perks. Couple in the broken map design and It's obnoxious. No excitement towards playing killer at all IMO with all that
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Yes, I'm sure. The playercount has been going up, and that means there are more players who are hit by negativity bias on top of the extant players who have negativity bias and the fact that anything bad in the game feels much worse after the charm has worn off.
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The totals players are stable right now. It is going down a little bit actually, but it's just normal fluctuations. If we count the total number of players on average since SBMM has been introduced, the number has decreased actually
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I'm really not sure what else it could be, though. It's clearly present, and as you said, the game's not been getting any worse; in fact, it's been getting a lot better.
Occam's Razor is just that it's negativity bias and a particularly hostile community, what else would you suggest as the cause?
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I mean you seem pretty adamant and in total belief that the game is getting better, but that's highly, highly debatable. I mean it's getting better if you play in a 4 man SWF and love to stomp killers. For killer players the game is getting worse and worse and the devs clearly do not give a f about the killer's gameplay experience
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A-men.
Killers have so few 'second chance' perks, while Survivors get enough to fill 2 loadouts before repeating. And the one good second chance perk (NoED); Survivors are hellbent on convincing the devs that it needs massive nerfs.
I can't even enjoy playing Killer anymore:
I do good; I get flamed.
I do bad; I get flamed.
Even with endgame chat closed; Survivors will spam trying to add me to friends so they PM-flame me. And I've had to set my profile as private because I got sick of scrubbing all the 'Durr! -rep! CAMPS!' vomit off the wall.
I get Killers can be toxic, too. But I feel like I see way more toxicity from Survivors, win or lose, as a Killer or a Survivor.
They blame the killer for 'cheap tactics' and rationalize this is an excuse to treat them like garbage. They blame teammates for not reading their minds, or not sacrificing themselves for them, and flame them.
But it's almost never a Survivor's personal fault; always someone else.
And yes; Killers can do the same 'They did not win! <perk> is OP and GAVE them the win! RAGE!'. But it seems less common.
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I love when survivors write me -rep/camper/tunneler, etc, because good players will know "oh ou, this players is gonna kick my ass "
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I haven't been here since day one, so I this is all anecdotal to me, but there are a few reasons I'd imagine the attitude is "shifting."
First and foremost, "Dead by Daylight is improving" is highly subjective.
While there may be improvements made to the game that we can objectively point to, a person's opinion on whether or not their experience has actually improved is subjective. For example, the graphic updates to the maps may be regarded by many as improvements, but I know a handful of people who prefered the old aesthetic and would quickly revert their game to that state if given the option.
From a marketing standpoint, I think the graphics overhaul is a massive improvement with regards to attracting a wider audience, but there have been overwhelming reports of performance issues following the string of graphic updates. Optimization plays a key role in a player's impressions of a game, so any degredation in performance is going to be looked at as a set-back rather than an improvement--especially when the graphic updates still come up short compared to the detail AAA studios are producing these days.
Personally, I couldn't be bothered to give DBD a chance 4 years ago, because I thought their graphics looked amateurish. It took the persuasion of a friend and a free weekend around the release of Deathgarden to give DBD any of my time.
I imagine the graphic updates have attracted some players who had previously discarded DBD for its jagged appearance. And with them probably came a wave of new expectations for the game.
Second, Dead by Daylight is constantly taking 2 steps forward then 1 step back.
Improvements are coming at a snail's pace.
Additionally, improvements to the game play surprisingly lack any correlation to feedback provided by the community. So whenever we receive a mid-chapter patch or a health patch thats aimed at improving the state of play, we see a massive disconnect between the community and the developer's decision making.
BHVR occassionally hits the nail on the head and releases content the community can get excited about. But like clockwork, they immediately follow up in the next update with something that breaks the game or significantly hinders the player experience.
Its tough to not be hyper critical over a game whose developers appear to be making an effort, but are struggling so hard whilst the community is handing them solutions daily.
Third, Dead by Daylight is growing.
As the game becomes more popular, the expectations bestowed upon it grow exponentially.
The gaming world is a titan of competition with a surplus of talent looking for work or even offering their services for little to no cost. The recipe for success today is fairly formulaic, meanwhile a ton of big studios are continuing to push the limits and setting precedents for what works and what doesnt.
Information is so public today, that the consumer has a better understanding of why they enjoy their games, and whether or not the features they enjoy are easy to implement. When you hold DBD up to giants like Fortnite, League of Legends, Counter-Strike, and several others... you can't help but notice where BHVR is falling short.
The more people care about DBD, the more likely they are to want the game to improve and hold BHVR accountable for building a better game.
Finally, Dead by Daylight is still plagued with bugs and balance issues that it was released with 5 years ago.
New content is great and all, but not being able to address known issues in 5 years is concerning. If I had been here since day 1, I'd be pissed that DBD still carries the same fundamental flaws it had 2,000 days ago.
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The concept of "Oppressive" and "Counterplay" are the big problems, to me. The game feels like it is being balanced on a case-by-case basis, rather than a holistic view or how things actually play out in a full game. Where every killer has to be hard countered by perks, map designs, or simplistic survivor 'tactics.' As if the heartbeat, the big red light, survivors seeing in 3rd person, killers seeing in an hilariously narrow 1st person, and the cacophony of sound cues aren't enough, everything has to have these extra layers of nerfs to make playing survivor idiot-proof. Any time a power can't be instantly subverted, there's endless complaints about how This or That is 'Oppressive' and has be be made useless for the 'health of the game,' rather than survivors just taking a moment to understand how you're supposed to deal with it.
The idea that every single killer has to be made weak enough (or control badly enough) that one single survivor can completely dominate the killer is the whole problem. Gen speeds, camping, tunneling... these wouldn't be so much of problems if games were more give-and-take. Survivors going down mean that others have to break off to save and heal. But, because a given chase can easily take 90+ seconds between perks, map design, loops, pre-dropping pallets, nerfed powers not actually doing anything, and so forth that you don't get downs unless survivors make huge mistakes all the time.
Killers should be FUN. TO. PLAY.
Making powers that control terribly, have too much start-up, punishing cool down, extremely niche use cases, or are just straight-up negated by the flavor of the month meta survivor perk... these are all problems that, for some reason, are used as 'balancing factors'. And every killer that comes out (or gets freshly nerfed) just proves even further than "not fun to use your power" is seen as a positive by the devs.
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Yup for me it's the absolute state of the game with hackers going rampant and sbmm.
I go through my moods but right now I'm alright, I've accepted that it's a thing I'ma have to live with if I play dbd. Just make myself pull up yt or something if there are any hackers. And now I quite frequently let 1 to 2 survs go just so that I can get a good amount of bloodpoints and stay away from the absolute hardest matches. Never liked sbmm/MMR in any casual game without a ranked and casual option and Dbd is no different.
So I guess I'm just sad how miserable everyone seems that play it on yt and twitch, and I'm sad that all these hackers run around and destroy people's experiences. Alot of my streamer friends have quit or openly talk about how they can't wait for another game to take their mind off dbd for awhile, in hopes that it gets better.
Rather than playing killer, alot of us just go play survivor instead to relax, meme, and mess around, even then you get a huuuge weird mix of players like decent to a literal 20 hour newbie lol...
Cause once you try to get in a match 5 times in a row with 2 being with hackers and 3 being survs who DC at the loading screen or at first down, at that point the surv queue being long is much more worth! Just me and my take tho! I love playing surv or killer. Just saying how myself and others feel.
Tldr; Yeah hackers and sbmm are it for alot of people. But for others, it may be that with a mix of alot of different stuff all coming together to be one big thing.
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To be fair, the game getting 'less fun' isn't entirely down to the devs.
'Given enough time, players will optimise the fun out of a game'
I think that sums up the big frustrations with DbD at the moment. Survivors clear objectives too fast at high MMR, killers tunnel, slug and camp or just outright stomp at low mmr. Matches are just too sweaty to last any amount of time, or be fun.
The game needs lowered stakes. Buffs on both sides, aimed at making longer matches.
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I was actually praising them since every step was towards improvements. But the addition of boons was a major step back and then there's pallet and dead validation. Also arguably survivor have become really efficient in doing generators in comparison to two years ago. Also don't boon was a Nerf to the entire roster not just hag and Wraith specifically. As I always said there's no way for a killer to apply pressure on 4 survivors across the map. Injuring them was one of the only delay to the game but now you're punished for both committing and dropping chases.
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It’s debatable as to whether or the not game is improving. I could just as easily say, why are you so happy with the game despite it getting worse with every update, and it would be just as valid.
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Couldn’t have said it better myself. Game was in a pretty good place before MMR and other things that made playing killer miserable (boons, hit validation, etc), so I think that’s why a lot of people are frustrated with the game now (especially in the killer side). Devs have an opportunity now to show that they’re actually listening to the community, so we’ll see what happens with the next patch.
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