The Skill conundrum - maintaining a playerbase
There has been a massive playerbase dropoff in recent months since sbmm was introduced. And instead of asking: "Why are people leaving?" I want to discuss another, far more interesting question:
"What incentivises people to stay?"
Instead of looking at circumstantial stuff, lets look at other games with a similar profit model, like CSGO, LoL and R6.
What keeps players going is the will to reach the next rank with stronger opponents, with whom you compete again. The need to improve manifests itself by players commiting time to discuss what the best strategy is, to explore different ways of executing a certain play, to practice. Due to this competitive nature, the highest ranks also gain a lot of prestige, and form a goal.
Apply that to DBD, and in particular the modern sbmm system, and what you immediatly notice, is that there is no incentive to compete, no next rank to reach. All you get by winning is a lessening, short dopamine hit and maybe stronger opponents in your next match. The reason sbmm fails is because no one has a goal to work towards, nobody can in the end say, i have reached X after all my trials and tribulations, i am proud.
What this leads to is for the desire to succeed to be almost entirely suppressed the more you play. People can only satisfy that competitive itch by doing challenges outside of the game, like doing 50 wins in a row with a certain killer, or trying to get 500 survivor escapes. Not something your average player is going to care about.
So what reasons are there to continue playing?
There is only one, and its the conglomeration of all elements i call the atmosphere of the game.
The amount of horror icons and the way theyre handled, the killer and survivor designs, the music, the lore, the quirks and details, the ambiance of the maps, etc. are masterfully executed.
My only gripe with this is that games that rely on this type of stimulation instead of competitiveness sadly do not tend to last long. They reel in a lot of new players, but lose a lot of their hardcores.
Will a COH nerf help a lot? Yes, a lot. Will a camping/tunneling change help? Yes, a lot. But in the end, truly reinvigorating will be a goal. Even if its as simple as hitting rank 1 pre SBMM.
Comments
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The Band-Aid perks dont help, just buff what needs to be buffed and plan accordingly instead of forcing killers/survivors to sacrifice their build to hold against unhealthy gameplay.
Then on top, quite a few of those Band-Aid perks are DLC, so if you already feel pressed against your opposition, you're not going to want to pay just for a chance you feel like you can face them.
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On top of not splitting up Comp and casual play... that is needed
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I think its kind of sad to be addicted to number goes up, like no offense here.
Then again, I play the game cause its entertaining.
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This post is comprised of 100% facts. The Rank system was by no means perfect, but it actually gave casual players a reason to grind the game and was a great gateway into the general community.
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I suspect there is high churn at both "ends", because playing as either role means a lot of grind and inevitable burnout. If you are achievement driven you cannot fail to notice MM failings. Grind is a huge barrier for casuals. I think some games retain core players by changing skill/class balance regularly to keep it interesting, and maybe this is something DbD hasn't considered. So you see a lot of complaints about a stale meta.
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I don't think the goal is to make the game THAT competitive, we can certainly take mechanics from other competitive games to improve Dead by Daylight, but apart of it's renown is that it is - by the end of the day - just a party game. That is fun to play, and fun to watch.
If they make the game feel more rewarding to play on both sides, encourage better behavior and sportsmanlike conduct. I am sure the game will start to grow just as it did before.
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Comp players don't play together in pubs, they scrim, so they are already split.
I'd argue this system we have now, specifically, ranks now being grades and not used to matchmake, gives casual players more of a reason to grind to get the bp rewards at the end on the 13th. Climbing the ranks before literally gave nothing to casual players and didn't give a purpose to grind the game, besides an achievement.
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@KingFieldShipper They do that for the most part.... but there isn't a mode for causal players
This game wasn't meant for Competitive play... so Srims don't count... nice try though
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Any online game will be competitive when it a human against another human. If you don't want competition then go play offline single player games. By trying to remove the competitive element they are actually killing this game and giving no reason to improve or even play once you see everything it has to offer... like a single player offline game.
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Good work OP, i never thought about it like this. Why strive to win when you get nothing for it but a harder game?
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I maintain that DBD was never intended to be a competitive game, so trying to force SBMM into it is a disaster in the making.
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There is only one mode and it's already the casual mode because this is a casual game.
I also never said that the game was made for comp, which I agree with you, all I said was that comp players scrim and they don't play pubs together, which is true. I think comp dbd is stupid (and boring to watch).
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Different types of players are motivated by different things. I'm more about collecting stuff than mastery, so I don't really care if I rank higher than someone else -- I just want to work toward unlocking in-game rewards. In every PvP I play, the only reason I try to fight my way up the leader board is if it means I get more stuff.
I can totally see how players focused on mastery would be frustrated that they don't have any way to gauge whether they're making progress, and I wish the game at least gave people statistics so they could see themselves improve. But that's not what motivates everyone to play.
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I think you don't need to worry about it as it's not working.
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Ok cool... but then how does one qualify to be "competitive"
That is what needs to be changed (an actual Competitive mode and a Causal mode) not both at the same time
Doing that will lessen the MMR talks (cause they'd mean more in the Comp mode then casual)
Hopefully less Camping and Tunneling in casual... but more in Comp (which then would be complained about so.... yea)
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I agree. There are very few reasons to not tunnel, when you take away bt and ds there is only the concept of pressure that makes macro gp a bit more varied.
Its frustrating as well that several bandaid perks on killer side are locked behind dlcs.
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Im not sure if dbd has enough players to do smth like that.
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It is odd, i agree. But we see it working in every hobby, every sport. The number of kilos you can bench in a gym, the difficulty of a climbing path you can manage, the amount of followers or subs you get on social media, the placing your sportsteam has achieved in the tournament standings. People get addicted to numbers very easily and i think thats just human nature. It has kept me playing cs for 1.4k hrs.
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@Ripley thats the way r6 retains its players, but csgo for example has seen no significant change in meta, and they have the most hardcore playerbase ive ever seen outside of tf2 maybe. Currently dbd is changing everything outside of the meta like r6, but retaining the metaperks and killers like csgo. I find that mixture uncomfortable bc of the barrier created between casual and competitive.
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@Kurri youre right to an extent, dbd is at its core a partygame and a pretty good one at that,but i feel like it can be much more, and several elements already strive to be more. The existence of billy and nurse for example reward players taking more time to improve and to practice, while being worse for casual play than a killer like clown with his meme addon.
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Well all they need to do is:
Split competitive and casual- If that means them doing both versions of (MMR) that they have (Emblems and whatever you want to call what we have now)
Then lessen the grind- If that means that they need to make (Bad Word) cheaper or adding in a market to exchange things or even upping the BP limit (per match and overall)
They can get players back... it's more of if they want to at this point
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Problem if you split competitive and casual, you still get sweaty players who like to "use" casual as it has loose MMR compared to ranked. I'm seeing this in another game I play.
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I think SBMM is a case of the devs falling victim to their own expertise a bit. It's kind of a rookie move. I work in the auto industry and engineers are often guilty of this when they introduce new features.
They say to themselves "Well, this is how I intend it to work, and when it's used in the way I intend it to be used, it will work just fine." That is never, ever going to happen. People are going to use features the way *they* want to use them.
Auto makers introduced charging ports for mobile devices, but people were plugging hair dryers into the sockets with adapters. Instead of slamming their heads against a wall, engineers added actual power outlets to the cars too.
We understand that MMR in this instance isn't intended to be a ranked ladder or a competitive thing. Awesome. Guess what? Many players are going to treat it that way anyway. It's completely naive to think otherwise. What you as the developer want or intend is inconsequential when it comes to how the system will be utilized by the playerbase.
So there needs to be a framework in place to make sure everyone can have fun. Give competitive players something to grind for in terms of MMR in a separate queue. Give casual players the Rift challenges and grades.
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if my post gets deleted because of a bad word, i hope you understand. in the game development industry, i had a teacher at digipen explain to me this issue as "the penis problem." if it can be made into one, it will be. despite your best efforts to make the very best thing in a game, if it can be turned into a penis, it will be. no matter the cost. 100% of the time. it was the simplest way they explained this issue in a funny way to retain the class' attention. i absolutely agree that in spirit, when used as intended it can work as intended, but it isn't accurate with the current landscape. bungie falls prey to this too a lot. all the time in fact. there are other developers, not just behavior that do this. DBD could become one of the biggest games of all time if the developers would see this and react to it in kind.
i am super curious what they think about this kind of stuff internally. i wonder how much of the development team is split over issues like this, which is why we constantly see compromised band-aids instead of long term fixes.
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It is and it isn't working. The psychological effect of it sure works alright, while the actual technical aspect does nothing. People assume they have some imaginary ladder to climb, they're going to play in a certain way. If the SBMM system actually worked, you would thing that it would group those players together, instead it doesn't. Since people assume there's now a working competitive element in the game, they try and optimize the way they play the game to yield more kills at any cost. Developers went on record and confirmed that only kills and escapes matter, which further compounded the problem.
I don't think there's one competitive asymmetrical game out there. Even just regular competitions in this game are next to impossible to conduct fairly, because two teams facing each other will likely not be playing on the exact same iteration of the map, despite selecting the same. Until some obvious flaws like this get addressed, I'll maintain that DBD is not a competitive game, and isn't suited to be one either. The "custom game" function is so bare-bones, the mobile version of DBD puts it to shame. "Perks: Any, None", "Offerings: Any, None", "Items: Any, None", like those are the options people have to work with to set up custom games.
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I suspect those band aids are exactly the symptom of what you describe. It's the result of the middleman trying to come up with a solution to appease two pretty stubborn parties at the same time.
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I don't think so... Campers/Tunnelers would get tired pf getting destroyed at renked games and would move to casual to keep camping and tunneling.
Giving us two different game modes wouldn't change anything
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To be a comp player you join a comp team? Compete in tourneys? I don't know how you go about that, I'm not a comp player, and I only watch the tourneys tofu puts on.
I feel like I don't know what you are trying to ask me though, and it feels like we are talking about two completely different things when we say comp.
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Just balance for hooks, games where a killer goes for multiple chases tends to be more fun for everyone involved.
The killer gets to feel strong enough to get multiple hooks per game, even if they dont always get lots of kills the game can be like (well done you still done well)
And what survivor doesn't enjoy getting chases multiple times and having the ability to do multiple things in a trial.
Games are meant to be fun, while fun is subjective the majority would rather balance off hooks just due to the fact of what I briefly stated before.
People like to win, chases, lead on chases, save people, down and hooks people, search chest, do totems etc. Etc. Which can all be done in a game for hooks and not kills.
If I verse a face camping bubba, sure me and someone else can escape. Doesnt mean it would be a fun match and if I had it every game I'd get pretty damn bored. Same goes for killer, while I usually go for hooks it can still put you down being told you're bad or struggling so much because you was trying to play in a fun way for everyone.
I can escape, I can 4k. But those dont mean I had fun, and games should always be FUN.
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Don't you have to be a certain rank in order to get onto a team.... I know you don't know but still
Trust me I don't want to be a "pro" player of DBD but to each there own (And I don't mean you)
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There's no barrier of entry per se. Teams do tryouts in a KYF/scrim environment when they have open spots. Players typically gain experience on a newly formed team and then move onto more experienced teams as they gain experience and playing time. There's usually a huge adjustment from playing survivor in a public match vs a comp/tournament setting. Comms and positioning tend to be a huge learning curve
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Another dismissive statement.
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It's impossible for an asymmetrical game to be competitive like League, or CSGO, because by design it lacks symmetry. The game will never be fair enough to be a competitive game.
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That clears a lot of that up... Thanks
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DBD isn't a competitive game in the same sense of a CSGO or League.
Most players in this game don't want to play against stronger opponents as the game becomes less engaging the closer you get to high level competitive play. Competitive DBD is absolute the worst way to play this game as it is just the most hyper efficient and boring way to play the game for vast majority of players who don't already compete in DBD tournaments. The game isn't even balanced around proper competitive play considering how much stuff gets banned in comp play events. All the things that people would consider expressions of skill in DBD inversely aren't as effective in competitive play.
The game was always meant to Horror game with friends first, competitive a distant, very very distant second. This is a game people play to get away from the hyper competitive nature of CSGO and League. The problem is it's going to be difficult to keep older players who've been here for a six years now with the gameplay generally being quite stale. It's going to be hard to keep new players because the first time player experience is just awful. This game is quite punishing on new players as they're sort of just thrown into the deep end after a tiny tutorial and have to learn everything on the fly which is hampered by the fact they have no perks, items, or add-ons on top of potentially not even having the survivor or killer that made them interested in picking up the game in the first place.
People come in and a lot of them play a few games, get fed up with the beginner experience and never come back. Combine that older players wanting something new and yeah you're gonna shed a lot of players. Putting a special Rank reward won't do anything for that since most people leaving probably weren't going to play to that point in the first place.
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Ssbm was also a party game at first. Compwas never considered, quite noticable when you see the raw amount of unbalance, comparing characters like Marth or Fox to Bowser or Pichu.
Brawl attempted to be more of a casual experience and it was such a terribly designed game for comp in particular, that it was likely the most hated out of the entire series. Even though i personally loved it when i played with my brother. They took note, and today, ssbu can be enjoyed as a competitive game just as much as a party experience,and it is succesful and long lasting bc of that.
Just because a game is at heart a casual experience, doesnt mean its not good for competitive play. You know which game always stayed casual and was never changed to consider competitiveness? Fall guys. Among us. Games like these were even more casual than dbd. They dont incentivise people to stay at all and we see the fallout of that.
Now, i disagree with the notion that most things considered skill dont come into play a lot in tournaments. Looping, using your killer power to get snipes with ph, curving as billy, sniping as huntress, being precise with nurse, going for flicks with blight, all of these things become a lot harder in comp, but are still very possible. There may be some that arent possible, but if it doesnt work against good players id call that cheese not skill.
I agree with the new player exp, and i think it supports the fact that dbd is already striving to be more competitive. You know which game also has a bad new player experience?
R6, and its one of the most successful online games. What r6 has and dbd doesnt is a measure of skill and working mm so that new players at the very least get paired up with other new players.
If the devs vision is to invest less, then they can go ahead with the casual notion. But fact is, that casual play alone doesnt keep veterans. If we want to see this game live long, then we should incentivise competitive play, not annihilate it drom existence.
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A game doesnt need to be perfectly symmetrical and balanced in order to be viable for competitive play, aside from 5v5 csgo is pretty quite asymmetric in its own right, to the point that NaVi can win ct side on nuke with an avereage of 11 rounds to 4. Other games are even less fair. Defenders in r6 win about 60% of ALL rounds in competitive.
Now, some things need to be fixed, obviously. But since the devs care about numbers, the amount of prove thyself usage will undeniably lead to a nerf. The amount of coh usage will lead to a nerf. The amount of tunneling/camping will be addressed.
Killers also dont need to be perfectly balanced, in melee we have a captain falcons winning all the time, eventhough he is certainly inferior to marth or fox.
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ok, competitive
ok csgo
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Party game? When did they add couch co-op?
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Have you ever sat down and watched DBD tournament play? The aren't spending time on Billy curves and Blight flicks. While those are what anyone would consider expressions of skill they aren't as consistent and efficient as just camping folks out of the game.
Competitive DBD is very strange in that way as while it takes a high amount of game sense the actual things being done aren't the more complex things to do aside from managing whatever your killer's power is, but you're not going for the high skill long distance hatchet snipes as it isn't something that remotely approaches the consistency level of sniping someone out in Siege. It's also less important to take the killer on a grand chase than it is to just maximize whatever produces the most points for your team. Precision with a killer is a given, you can't even play killer effectively in casual play without building precision, but it isn't exactly big brain plays to just park Charlotte in a door frame to keep people from entering a building while you run around as Vic.
That is what a lot of DBD's competitive play is like even people considered to be knowledgeable or highly skilled in this game admit that Tournament play levels of competitiveness are an outlier for this game not some craving going unsatisfied. Heck, personally speaking I've been playing this game since 2016 and adding in some sort of comp play aspect is the last thing I want to see for this game. Smash's issue was it already had a thriving and dominant competitive scene for the guts of almost 20 years that ultimately was a driving force for engagement. Even when Sakurai actively fought against them and Nintendo straight up went out of its way to try and quash the tournament scene.
DBD doesn't have that issue to contend with, not even remotely. With a lot of players being either very unfamiliar with or outright not really into comp play they don't have a losing battle to fight. They from the outset just made their Brawl and have maintained their Brawl while cultivating a community that seemingly appreciates not have a hard comp aspect. Factor in the multiple times they have said they are against implementing anything that would functionally divide the playerbase into separate matchmaking queues, this is what we have.
I got into DBD knowing full well it wasn't going to be a comp game as I come from other scenes where I can play comp in a much better more built for purpose setup. I've got R6 on console and pc, been playing fighting games since I was kid, and I do pretty well in League. The one thing that I can't do in those games though is relax, for the most part. DBD needs a refresh imo, but I can at least say I can relax in this game because it isn't competitive, just aggravating sometimes.
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'the amount of prove thyself usage will undeniably lead to a nerf. The amount of coh usage will lead to a nerf.'
Ah, so you're new to this then? Well I guess in no time you'll be preaching like everyone else when you see the kind of changes that come to this game, because they never change Survivor perks based on their usage. If something becomes painstakingly broken, they fix that - like BL was, but just for a perk being used a lot they never make changes for. Heck they may even buff the perks, like they did Borrowed Time. This is for Survivor, as far as the Killer side goes. If something gets used too much it gets nerfed.
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well if they cant fix perks either way then it doesnt matter. the numbers would likely become more clear, if thats not what they care about then they dont care either way. What about the rest of my argument?
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Right as long as mmr is filtered though a busted matchmaking system that doesn't give you accurate or balanced matches your mmr means nothing because it's a number bases off a bunch of imbalanced games.
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Most games that have a strong and re-visiting population also have an active reward system for performance.
In CSGO or LoL, if you perform well, you are awarded in the fact that you get currency to get better equipment, or to buy upgrades in the match. You are directly compensated for your plays. If you misplay, you are put to a disadvantage because you get equipment and upgrades significantly slower to the successful counterparts.
after a match ends, you get assessment of your performance, your KDA, eliminations, and etc. you are actively competing to be no.1 in that lobby.
whereas DBD has nothing of the sort. Your performance in a match can be completely meaningless. YOU don’t get anything for looping and running the killer for 2+ gens, YOU don’t get anything for completing 3 generators, YOU don’t get anything for unhooking and healing every survivor.
you are never directly compensated for your actions in the trial or feel as if your actions have an active effect on the trial unless your team is working their socks off to escape too.
most of the team games you see, you are rewarded or punished as a collective - which can also be its own problem if you are mismatched within a team, but there is more of an emphasis on your actions, and the impact you have.
Whilst DBD decided to make the MMR system work in the style of a 1v1v1v1v1 whilst also never actively rewarding you for your individual performance - where in a trial, you need a collective effort to escape.
you cannot just do gens, or just run the killer because each match has RNG of who the killer spawned to the closest and who they will find first, it’s RNG of who the killer is, and every map has an aspect of RNG in it too.
there is no pattern or flow in DBD that incentivises people to perform well, or to care whatsoever about performance.
all your other examples have consistency and a direct correlation between performance = reward. DBD hasn’t got that whatsoever.
not to mention that the only legitimate reason to want to “win” games is for BP to unlock perks - but that is literally meaningless grinding, with no real effort being put into unlocking them.
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