What are the reasons players are leaving the game?

Most of my friends that play have at least 3k hours and have recently quit altogether or play significantly less than they did before. The reasons are a bit varied, but most of them boil down to being forced to run meta to compete since SBMM dropped, coupled with an unfun meta.

I think most of them would be fine with SBMM if DbD in an optimized setting were more fun. But the current killer meta especially is super unfun to play against from what I've gathered. And I honestly echo those sentiments to a degree.

And from a killer perspective, I don't think anyone is thrilled about someone pre-dropping a god pallet and holding W all the way to the other end of the map to pre-drop another god pallet.

The current meta is all about minimizing interaction with the other side. On killer, you stack regression/delay and proxy around a 4 gen. On survivor, you hold W to the ends of the earth and minimize all risk in chase because maps are tuned around super low level play, meaning you're never pressed for resources if your team is focused on objectives.

Edit: to clarify, everyone I know understands you can still play this as a party game. But SBMM has largely eliminated that aspect. Almost everyone plays like a warlord, and there are games that simply do the "party game" aspect better. I think the queues need to be split to bring players back.

Honestly, I just got bored. There are like a million perks in this game but you only see maybe 12? That's both Killer and Survivor.

There are 26 killers but I only see 4-5 of the entire roster with maybe 1 game out of 50 any of the lower tier killers.

I somehow get the same 3 maps on a seemingly endless rotation (RNG I know but still boring)

In its current state, there are better games to play and this advanced game of Tag has gotten stale.

It’s just lost it’s fun factor for a lot of people myself included. The game relied on constant newcomers but the grind is putting them off

SBMM, taking forever to work on Map/Killer/Perk reworks, performance issues, underwhelming chapters.

People have been continually losing faith in BHVR, some issues being longstanding. The biggest offender on BHVR's list is their anti-friendliness towards players, by constantly up-ing the demand on what you need to run the game smoothly, despite this game being less demanding than something like Overwatch or GTA. Two years back, the biggest thread topic was about optimisation, with 1k+ responses if I'm not mistaken. But they don't listen, they continue to 'graphic' update the game, adding un-needed details whilst thinking nothing of the players that are already struggling to even run the game for 30 minutes without their platforms turning into a private jet.

The reworks also take far too long, we've known about a GF and Legion rework since what? December? November? we had two chapters release in that time. Maps get disabled for these reworks for far too long. More than likely, players will be disappointed from these reworks too after they so heavily pushed for the metas that we have now.

SBMM was also highly dreaded among the community. There's always been complaints about splitting the playerbase between a competitive cycle and a casual cycle. But BHVR fears what they've caused themselves anyway, which is the splitting of playerbases. The only real escape you have is a joke of a mode, KYF, which is so limiting, I don't understand why it's still on the menu tbh. This SBMM is probably the worst that I've ever seen in any game, never have I experienced a game where you can have 300+ hours and still be paired with new players that have less than 20. NEVER.

Then the chapters. Lack of variety. In just the last year, prior to Sadako, we had 4 back to back anti-loop killers. With literally very little loop concentrated compensation for the survivors. The biggest chapter for survivors out of the 6 that involve all of these anti-loop killers didn't even come from any of those chapters, it came from the singular chapter that had Mikaela in it. Players are bored, playing anything than meta is far too risky, and players don't want to be participating in an active workout just to get results for ONE match.

It all comes down to BHVR's lack of care? attentiveness? These issues have been vocalised time and time again. By even the biggest content creators. Look no further than Dowsey, who publicly went against them and criticised them - what happened? He's been punished for speaking his mind on the state of the game, and the Devs' response to the worries and concerns of their customers. Some may sit here and be critical of Dowsey, but it all started as a joke - jest towards the Devs' obliviousness of just how big hypocrites they are.

You want your problems fixed? No, have a rift, 3 new cosmetics, another P2W DLC, and a free weekend! Because hackers are welcome to join in on the fun:)

Please.

As a console player I can't speak to anything as it pertains to Steam or PC, but I can tell you the reason I left the game a few months ago. I can also tell you that after today it will likely be months before I even attempt to play again.

I play on PS4 and loaded DBD for the first time in months today. There is a huge lag when hitting buttons for skill checks. I reassigned the button twice just to make sure and the lag is still there. It was. This is the biggest reason I quit playing the game in the first place. There was always some sort of issue. Controller lag, video lag, or some various other issue that makes the game unplayable. I loaded 3 games other than DBD just to see if there was any lag in those. There wasn't. Every button on every other game worked without any lag at all. I would say this was likely the last time I will ever attempt to play DBD. If BHVR doesn't care about making the game playable for those of us on console why bother?

SBMM - Encourages unfun gameplay of camping by killers and hiding for hatch by survivors. Emblem system before would punish these playstyles but now they're found all through out the different levels of mmr. Players with a few hours are being matched with/against players with thousands. Matches just feel broken. Ultimately this drives away veteran players unhappy with how bad the matches feel now and new players that are just getting thrown against players they can't compete with.

The grind - it's a deterrent more than anything, especially for new players. New player picks up game and DLC for whatever license attracted them. Then they realize other perks are teachables from multiple other DLCs so they maybe buy those. But then they start to see that the grind makes it difficult to unlock those perks on character they want to main. BHVR gets their money but they drop the game because they realize the grind is ridiculous.

Optimization/bugs - performance issues are just terrible. It ruins what could be a good match. It's like they take 1 step forward and 10 steps back with patches/hot fixes. Gets to a point you just get tired of dealing with them and don't see any signs of it ever getting better.

Meta perks and killers - there's so many perks and killers but only the same handful are played match after match. Maybe will see random loadout/killer but it's unlikely. It's just repetitive and boring after awhile. Survivors running second chance because camping/tunneling killers, killers running gen slowdown and NOED because gen rushing survivors. Boring repetitive gameplay.

Bad communication - BHVR has terrible communication. Players are frustrated with issues in the game and BHVR goes radio silent until it gets ridiculously bad. Sometimes when they do say something they have people that just are not the ones to be the face of the company speaking - these people aren't bad, they are just coming across condescending and not personable enough to make the angry customers feel better. So angry players are getting more angry looking for some sort of communication to address an issue, BHVR finally decides to address it but chooses someone that shouldn't do PR because they say things that just get players more angry and as a result some just leave. Honestly I think this one is the biggest - BHVR needs to work on their communication/customer relationship to build back trust they've lost over the years. If you have a good relationship with your customers they'll not get so angry/frustrated at the minor mess ups.

This! OMG all of this! Preach!!!

And once again only a part of the chart is shown.

Sigh.

The toxicity on both sides. I have been much happier since I’ve been only playing once a week at most.

It doesn't reward skill. The things that make either side win are 1-dimentional.

When I play against boons and dead hard it's just not fun. I hear the thunderous sound and now I know I have to overcommit to every chase. I chase at an unsafe area and feel no thrill because the survivor at anytime can punish me by pressing a button. I don't mind waiting 10 mins in survivor queues rather than wasting my time as killer to get bullied by a bunch of survivors because of how anti killer the game has become.

I always liked the stealth aspect of the game, to me it was a hide and seek game, that turned into tag if the killer found you. But since a lot of players dont like being stealthy, they nerfed that aspect heavily.

I could juke a killer in a chase a lot of times, but now, on a lot of reworked maps, even if you can break line of sight, there is simply nothing where you could have gone except that one pile of trash, so you cant lose a good killer anymore. They compensated that by adding more strong pallets, but that forces the game in one direction, so people only play killers that avoid that mechanic at all.