what do you advise DBD?, because every month he loses more players
According to these statistics, his best moment in history was bringing resident evil But the great disappointment that Nemesis was at being an average and even weak killer, caused many to be disappointed. My first advice rework to nemesis . The arrival of the boom totems and nerfs to the killers must stop. The appeal of the game is the killers but not the survivors
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Its no about buffs or nerfs but fun little by little the changes have lowered the fun value that dbd used to have. Killers no longer feel like a threat aside from 2 when played well. Nemesis is really strong when using a end game build with a depleted ink sure he has other builds but that one seems to be the one most survivors hate going against as it can basically hand you the match if played right
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Killers just need something. Between MMR really showcasing how strong survivors are at a higher level, CoH completely destroying playstyles while boons in generally have no real counterplay on the killer side, and a lot of recent unnecessary killer nerfs. Killer is really at an all time low in terms of fun.
Unfornately it doesn't seem like BHVR is going to do anything about the legit complaints killers have and their only tactic to improving the playerbase is license content (hence The Ringu Chapter revealed last year) which only provide a temporary influx.
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Buff and nerf matter you can see when DS got nerf the player base welcome 3k new player
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For me its simple they need to do something about the balance and after they need to tackle the grind. The new reward are a good start but it does not matter if you are a new player because the chance you get grade 1 are slim if you dont know the game well enough.
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These are just Steam PC numbers, first. Second, overall the game is up over last year and way up over 2020. Yes, there was a huge bump for the RE chapter and they didn't retain many players from that by the looks of it. The new player experience/grind is pretty terrible. That's not new news.
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remove perk tiers, i don't see any reason they are still a thing. They create a massive grind wall, they are frustrating to deal with and just add more imbalance.
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My advice would be to try and keep the game fresh, add a few events with interesting rewards for the rifts, and help new players with the grind (which they are already doing with the new rank rewards).
The chart is interesting. I mean, there's no denying the game had a decline in the numbers but I honestly think it's not really that alarming. At least that's the way I read it.
I'm taking the last average of players for December 2021 that was 44,639.5, that number surpasses 21 previous months and is only behind the numbers for the last six months (June-November). Even more, there's an unusual increase in the numbers by July followed by a similar decline the next month, and then it stays somewhat balanced from there on.
I feel like they are failing to retain new players. New chapters attract more players but most don't really enjoy their experience and just leave (unlike some of us that are already trapped here lol). I don't think it's that alarming, I don't feel like the game is in risk or anything but some QoL improvements are needed to help our baby surv and baby killers feel comfortable enough to keep playing.
That's how I read it at least. Maybe I'm completely wrong, honestly, I don't know.
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Honestly a lot of the loss from August onward is probably just regression to the mean. There was a very popular release in June/July along with sales that brought in a ton of new players, and many of those new players (as you might expect) played the game for a month or two and then moved on to other games. That combined with the game being pretty old in video game terms (6 years almost) means there's already a natural inclination for long term decline. The fact that the game is still at 40k average users in 2022 is testament to how successful it actually is. If you compare this game's Steamcharts to almost any other game that released in 2017 DbD has maybe the most players. (I checked a bunch of big releases from 2017 in the charts and the closest I could find to DbD's 40k is Total War Warhammer II which has about 20k. Almost all the other games I checked had player counts closer to 1,000 or less.)
So the game is still kicking, and it's actually pretty likely they'll get another influx of new players trying it out with the Ringu release since that's a popular license. (I'm at least way more interested in The Ring/Ringu than I was Silent Hill and Resident Evil!) Nothing lasts forever, eventually the game will slowly die down, but for now DbD is mostly just regressing to the mean of where it usually would be.
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Isn't that just the normal behaviour of the game? It seems to always lose players starting from October and then regaining then in April until a peak around June. If you look at December 2020 and compare it to 2021 you'll see they still basically gained 10k daily players.
We had the Artist chapter in November which was cool but not good enough to maintain players, and now we're not seeing new content until March, so it's understandable people don't want to play now, because there's not really much to do. I'd say Ringu and the anniversary chapter will probably bring more players.
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More licensed killers.
Whether you like it or not more content is what kept the game alive.
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I don't understand why people think the games losing players..
the reason why it looks like its on a decline is because of how heavy these last few months have been in terms of content
May 2021 Resident Evil PTB
June 2021 - Resident Evil Release
July 2021 - 5th Year Anniversary Event
August 2021 - Hellraiser PTB
September 2021 - Hellraiser Release
We just had 2 really big licenses back to back as well as the anniversary of the game, which I'm pretty sure the game was on sale at the time. Obviously thats gonna attract a lot of new players and not every one is going to stick with a game. If you look at any other game that has a major event or collaboration their player count will increase and then decrease.
Its currently on a decline to its regular player count which is around 70k, "oh but look at the last 30 days!" We're currently in a dry area where every one is waiting for the new patch to come out and I can almost guarantee the peak player count will reach approximately 70k by the end of the month. The game has only grown since its release and I don't see it stopping any time soon
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Normal game player fluctuation, it goes from 50k to 70k with peaks that go from 90 to even 100k, nothing out of the ordinary, previous months for previous years show the same fluctuation and here we are today.
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In my opinion people play the game for their Killer. They do not play the strongest Killer to win or the best Killer to get 4ks with, they play because they see a character and like them. This is of course a very personal thing, which makes it difficult.
When I look what Killers I play this fits very well. Sure I tried to play Nurse and get good with her, because I wanted to see just how broken she can be. But even as my kills got more and I got better with her and could feel that aura of OP she hes I did not get the feeling.
I quickly returned to playing Ghostface even thou he is tons weaker than her.
Later Cenobite came out and I got him as a gift. He quickly rose next to Ghostface far quicker than Nurse. And a while later I found Hillbilly and then Oni with Oni probably being the strongest Killer I play right now.
If DbD wants to keep their players invested they have to appeal to them on a personal level and bring them joy with their Killer. This is mostly done by giving them a clear strong point to which they can play as well as a smooth kit and personality. The Killer does not have to be super strong but it has to be unique and feel good.
I think the same appeals to survivors. The majority of survivors do not want to run "meta-perks", they want fun perks to use and outplay the Killer. Prove Thyself? Bad perk for this. Deliverance? Hell yeah!
This is why exhaustion perks are so good: They give the player a good feeling when they can make a play with them.
Now looking at this I think I would advice BHVR to focus more on the "fun" aspect and the smoothness of the game. I will play a wonky, unbalanced but fun game. I will however quit a balanced and unfun game in a matter of days or hours.
For survivors this means buffs to the less used perks and more mechanics where they can get a reward beyond a numerical value (Boons are good for this...as much as people hate them), for Killers this means more focus on their power and less on perks, more fun add-ons that alter their power (gives a fresh feeling) and for both some more numerical changes. No need to stay stale on values...
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you guys won't let it go LMAOO
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Ringu will solve all of the problems with the game for at least a month. Mark my words.
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It wasn't that big issue before, but it was kinda ruined by SBMM. It's harder to enjoy playing weaker killers and there is just a threshold where you will get destroyed quite often.
So to enjoy weaker killer, you basically have to lose on purpose, so you don't get there. I was doing it with Pig and Legion and it helped for few months.
And let's be honest, with their speed of changes -> not many per 3 months, this will just not get fixed. Last mid-chapter gave us quite a lot of hope and it was destroyed this mid-chapter, for me at least. Nurse mains are probably happy tho.
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I grinded my Ghostface and my Hillbilly into the ground. Back with Ranks I was aiming to become a Rank 1 Ghostface after SBMM I let survivors go on purpose, hooked them all 2 times for BP and then played just bad enough for them to escape as 4, I also did not give hatch but let the last survivor escape through the gate ever since...
My Cenobite never saw the glory of "playing to win" ever and as such he stayed on the "fun level". Still works good for me.
I do not know about this. They made some good changes like the latest Spirit change that was very well received. Also they buffed Trapper in a good way and made him more fun to play. Sure Trapper still does not compete very well (why can his traps be disarmed with bare hands while you need a Flashy for Hag?!) but he is still much more enjoyable and has some sweet add-ons now. The "escape and you are in dying state"-add-on is very mean...in a good way.
The devs are very unpredictable here...
Nurse bug fixes where also asked for like...forever and nobody talked about them. And suddenly here they are...
Its so random...the next patch could be a god patch that makes everything better for like 5 or more killers while also buffing soloQ and fixing maps or it could be another nerf to Twins and Clown with a buggy weak new Killer...
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i honestly wanted to play today for the 1.5x bp bonus and i realized that you put the bonus after rank reset so new/bad players can not get anything anyway. i get 15k bp in 2 games as survivor with prove thyself, we're gonna live forever and bp offering while being skullcrushed, while normally i got 15k a game with a normal build not dedicated to bp . i simply don't want to log in again. new players are spit in the face with this. i am not logging in until half of the monthly season gets past so i can actually play the game. i'm encouraged by the way the game works to not play it or to play afk killer for bp first half and this is the time you get a weak of bonus bp.
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There are some good changes for sure, Trapper, Plague, Nurse fixed, Artist is good new killer, Trickster got buffed.
But then you have Twins, Deathslinger, Freddy, Wraith, some weird addon changes in this mid-chapter.
Some are good, some are bad, but truth for both is that it's just small number with long waiting. Trapper/Plague mid-chapter was just an exception.
I may get back to dbd with their Legion and Ghostface changes, but if they screw that, then I am probably done for good.
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Grade reset has nothing to do with matchmaking. MMR which is what is used for matchmaking doesn't reset on the 13th at all, unlike Grades. The Grades purely show playtime, and are an incentive.
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I advise them to reduce the grind. And no, 2million BP a month because you reach grade 1 isn't enough, and I hope they don't think it is.
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This discussion does highlight a particular point: people have many reasons as to what they believe is the problem, and because of all of these possibilities it's difficult to agree on the key starting point.
There's certainly nothing wrong that we all have valid concerns, but if the devs focus on one particular issue there will always be others upset; believing the focus should have been directed somewhere else.
It's an issue with multiple concerns. The game is absolutely not in danger at this stage, but if a solid direction isn't set to deal with the worst of concerns it'll become much more muddled.
My hope is they make a visible year plan for people to see, stating when key issues are to be addressed. That way, people may feel more a that at least a plan of action is in place. It'll show they're actively working on the most problematic scenarios and in turn the player base may start to grow, knowing that things are being directed.
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They need to balance the game but its impossible, not because the asymmetry but because the comunity.
A chunk of the comunity considers balanced getting 4K/4E always, a lot of pink and purple addons and items skew the balance inmensely to a side or the other (imo almost all should be removed and the few bad pink addons turned into browns or yellows) but people will go INSANE, maps should be standarized so you are not doomed if you play Jigsaw and get Mother's Dwelling or you play Hilbilly and get Lery's, certain strategies should be toned down etc.
A lot of the necessary changes will have a huge backlash from the current players, its a vicious circle where its already impossible to get out, they attracted a certain breed of players and now they cant change the game because said players wont let them.
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It's tough. Between the Hacker/DDoS issue and the wonky matchmaking, combined with the fact Devs do not seem to care about the community past appearing friendly on Social Media, I've found myself barely playing these days as well. I used to ignore the flaws because I was attached to the game and the community, but that's become much harder over time.
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Every hype isn't an indicator on player numbers. We only see Steam chart, we don't see windows store, Epic games (which probably brought many people to the game) we don't see XBox, PS, Switch and what ever i forgot.
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Ringu is great license. I never thought i will have Samara in DbD. I can not wait for her PTB.
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Actually, it's Sadako from the OG Japanese version that we're getting.
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Okay, while I do agree that boons (especially CoH) need a gigantic, flaming shot from the nerf-cannon...as the wise old man once said 'there are lies, damned lies - and statistics'.
Look at the stats in a more holistic manner. There was a massive spike over the anniversary and things are still evening out.
I do think that some people have quit in frustration due to the Dead Hard fix (see: buff), bizarro killer nerfs (the 5.5 nerfs to Nemesis and Twins were the first time I've seen Otz legitimately furious at the devs, and that's...something), the incredibly nasty ingame community and the like - but I don't think you can look at Steamcharts and make a definitive conclusion from there. It only shows PC players, on Steam.
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Remove SBMM and they need to look at map design, especially pallet placements. Like Game and Ormond, those pallet placement is so godddamn messed up, they're so close each other.
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So when it comes to the player numbers of this game you can't go month by month. Every year the players drop from October to around April. That's because a ton of new people play around Halloween because it's a horror game after all, and then they drop it. However, every year the game gets bigger. Compare October 2020 to October 2021.
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I know and it does not matter. Sadako = Samara. Names are different.
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I feel the same way. Killer is a lot less enjoyable since I started playing the game a few years ago. I don’t think it’s at an “all-time low” as I think it was worse when the game first came out and there were lots of real infinite loops, instant generator repair with BNP, etc. But it’s still definitely at a low point in recent history.
The fact that BHVR made this change makes me believe they are worried about the overall decline in players, not just killer players. Killer queue during the day is faster than it’s been in a while and survivor queues at night have been increasing for me, so I think there has probably been a disproportionate departure of killer players as well. Not surprising given all the issues you noted. Apparently it hasn’t gotten bad enough yet for the devs to address with QoL improvements for the killer side.
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Killers need to FEEL GOOD TO PLAY.
That's the whole she-bang.
Using your power should not put you in a lose-lose situation. You shouldn't feel like you're moving underwater, trying to control your character. And while powers need not automatically assure you of getting downs, they need to punish you WAY WAAAAAAY less for using them.
A perfect example is Freddy. He was a fun, easy-to-play killer with a higher-than-desired success rate. Okay, they want to nerf him. How did they do it?
- They removed his most powerful addons, which made survivors take significantly longer to complete their tasks
- They buffed Alarm Clocks to make you immune to his sleep states, even his melee-sleep, which gives survivors a significant edge in chases
- They reduced the number of snares/pallets he has available by 40%
- They reduced his movement speed while setting snares/traps
The first two changes: sure. That's fine. You want to nerf him, so remove the passive slow down and reward player actions more with alarms. Those are fine nerfs. But they they also stripped out his snares and slowed you down. That objectively makes him less fun to play. It feels BAD to slow yourself down while setting snares and sucks to have so few snares you can't place them intelligently to help your map awareness. Those were unnecessary additional nerfs and they made him FEEL LESS FUN TO PLAY.
They wanted to buff Clown, so they gave him an alternate tool to use. But did they just give an alternate tool? No! Your antidote bottles use the same pool as your intoxicating ones FOR NO REASON. It's a super minor buff that gets the legs cut out from under it because of an unnecessary (and, frankly, nonsense) limitation.
Would Clown be OP if he had a pool for purple and a different pool for yellow? Not in a million years. But there's such a dogma of "Make killer powers unintuitive, hard to control, and extremely punishing if not used perfectly" that some of the folks over there can't remember what a "fun killer" is supposed to feel like anymore.
Pinhead's controlled chains control as badly as Hillbilly's dash, but provide so little actual impact that they are ONLY useful up close as they're nearly impossible to hit with from afar against anybody but brand new players. But they've been explicitly designed to control badly because the Devs have lost sight of what makes killer powers fun.
I mean, if you need any more evidence: Deathslinger. They took away his stealth playstyle completely at the same time as massively nerfing his power, making it a million times less fun to play, with zero compensation (like removing his 'can't turn or aim' restriction). What is the point of a first person perspective if you can't move, turn, or aim? It's just a badly designed system that feels awful to use.
You want players back? You want to stop the bleeding?
For the love of horror movies: take some time to play as every singe killer and figure out what would make their powers FEEL GOOD TO USE.
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fix the core issues with this game instead of relying on band aid fixes and new content hype to get new people in.
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Not entirely, they're the same in terms of power along with a similar look to one another, but that's about it. Everything else about them both is completely different from one another.
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They are same. They are coming from same license. Samara is American version and Sadako is Japan version.
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They're owned by the same license holder yes, however i was mainly talking about how they differentiate from one another in terms of lore and also how Sadako is an adult male in the novel while Samara is a little girl in the movie remake.
Post edited by Smoe on0 -
In these graphs I don't see a remarkable lose of players.
I see fluctuations, which are common in DBD. When a new chapter or midpatch, specially chapter, is realeased the amount of players raise and then decrease a bit until a new chapter or midpatch is released.
The correct way to interpret that graphs is comparing the same month of consecutive years. Let's take December for example:
December 2019 - 23,102 players / December 2020 - 35,632 / December 2021 - 44,639
I don't think DBD is losing a lot of players, however which is in fact happening is a lot of people switching from killer to survivor due the current killer state, in 2019-2020 trying to play killer at noon was almost unbearable (at least in my region), around 10 minutes of queues and until around 8:00pm the queues were quite long, now I can play killer in almost any hour, after 6:00pm the queues are shorter but I don't see long queues since 2020.
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Let's see ...
_ Hit "validation" that gives an advantage to players with high ping. (And why are pings above 100ms even allowed?)
_ Aim dressing that f-ups the direction and sends the killer to a wall whenever the survivor does some kind of sharp turn. (And ever noticed how the killer would do a 180° when trying to hit a lagging survivor with >400ms ping in front of him?) Oh yeah, "validation" and "aim dressing" ... sure.
_ Dead-hard (boosted by the broken hit-"validation")
_ Survivors able to do instant 90° turns (I've heard it was an old bug linked to the frame rate on the opponent player's computer)
_ Boons
_ Haddonfield, Mother's Dwelling, RPD, ...
_ Generators melting in most games whenever survivors decided to split, play QTE and hide. (Resulting in a low score, but it's garbage nonetheless)
_ Bugs
_ Cheaters swarm
The last PTB showed some ridiculously insane buffs to survivors. (A streamer has suggested the same team that destroyed Bloodgarden stubbornly buffing killers is now sabotaging DbD by doing the same for survivors)
There are now two very worthy competitors, one still in closed beta (I'm having a blast in it, I'm only here for some kind of schadenfreude and to remember why I've uninstalled DbD months ago) and the other was involuntarily promoted by some streamer as "the good and fun alternative" to DbD after having raged at the bugged mess this game is.
I don't see how BHVR can recover.
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After only escaping 3 times today in 4 hours of playing soloQ, I think I know the reason... this game is nothing more than torture for both sides.
Why play this when I can play a relaxing game of left 4 dead 2 where I can actually have some fun? Or any other game? I don’t get how streamers haven’t gone insane yet
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They get paid
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Variety is the spice of life. I play this game alongside others and it helps keep you from burning out in any of the games. I learned my lesson from playing only one game.
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To me, I find they already received all of the advise and changes that needed to be implemented a long time ago. The simple reason of it all is Survivors are too strong and easy, while Killers are too weak and difficult.
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That's just not true. I started the game last month and i played with a group of friends who were rank one and close to rank one. I got individually demolished every game so i stopped playing with them. The games became a more average experience after since the players were not as good. That's all normal. Then the rank reset happens, i play solo for specified reasons, and i get demolished by skilled players that are not so far from my rank. So i have to wait half a month to be "allowed" to play, and the bonus bp for playing are rewarded in the first week. Ok i got it, I'm not laughing but someone sure does. I simply don't want to spend more time finding a game then playing it, for basically no bloodpoints.i don't win, i don't get curency to advance my characters and it's nothing fun in being found first 15 seconds and get hooked, or playing killer and barely getting one or 2 lucky hits .i am sure you understand It kind of sucks. And it became like this after the rank reset.
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they got what they deserve, keep doing bad changes and dont listen the community.
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The problem is not the game. It is the community that boycotts itself and does not stop hating itself. It's a shame because the game is good.
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Sadako isn’t male in the books. She’s still a woman, she’s just… complicated.
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Fair point, i forgot that she was actually intersex.
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this is 1100 more than june of 2020 currently avg players, 1100 in 18 months is not a steady growth especially with all the events and such. the survivor queues are going up and even twitch streamers are leaving this game in droves. they have made killer super stressful and survivor too easy. there is a reason why the streamers that do play will say things like " im just going to relax and chill with chat and play survivor." honestly this game is a train headed to the end of the line and unless they change the path they are on it will go the way of death garden.
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It was already in a bad state before Boons but CoH might have been the final blow
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