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What is happening with DBD and the players who are leaving the game after the last 6 months?
I have put the last 6 months since June 2021 (5th anniversary) where many players arrived for Nemesis, the point is that the players have gotten worse, I mean, a massive loss that dead by daylight never had, with this I mean that, BHVR should listen more to their community and make MASSIVE changes to their game already.
I have an idea why they have scheduled patches, so, we have patches with very little content to patches like the one we had a couple of months ago (THE MID CHAPTER with a lot of changes to killers) as a player from 2016 I loved it , but I want to see more.
The loss of players that we are having in these 6 months was never had by dead by daylight and I am going to say factors:
1.- BHVR does not pay much attention to its community
2.- They don't focus on the real imbalance problem (Core of the game, objectives (totems, repair gens...), kill survivors (tunneling and camping), maps (RNG of the maps)
3.- MMR (this is not a competitive game)
4.- The game could be very repetitive for 2016 players, so they leave.
Within 1 month we will have the 6th anniversary stream, where BHVR will communicate their plans for the 6th year of DBD where we will be able to know their ROADMAP and I am looking forward to it as a player of 2016, since they have promised a lot, but done very little (Reworks Moris, keys, grind etc etc...)
For me, they should currently focus on the MMR, on the problems that the game has like: Camp and Tunnel and on the part of the survis, the only objective to "win" the generators and.. MAPS ofc.
This is super important, but I know that DEAD BY DAYLIGHT will never be 50/50 balanced, because it's hard, but it can be done with effort and listening to the community, that's all I have to say, thank you!
Comments
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The developers would be able to answer this question better than us, since all we can do is speculate the cause. You would have to have the statistics for retention, how the game holds new players or if the majority of the game is based around a flow of players. You'd look at if it's leaning towards killers, survivors, or both.
I think it's a bit silly to say they don't pay attention because this company wants to make money and they will look at statistics and the best way to do it, even if that means a specific group of the playerbase is alienated. Either way I've not seen the game have such negative growth, even with the release of a recent killer, in a very, very long time.
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Tunneling is the only way to get a chance to win as a killer
Camping is the extension of tunneling (exept for toxic players but cant really do anything about this, bt ds exists for that and they are already uber powerful on nob camping killers aswell)
These are the symptoms, not the disease
Try nerfing second chances perk and make killers playable instead of them being punchbag for survivors
The game shouldnt feel more stressful as a killer than it is as a survivor. You play as a killer, not a kid with a stick
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My biggest gripe with the game has to be decline in technical performance; back in 2018 when I started playing I had no issues with framedrops, freezing or any similiar stuff like that. Fast forward to 2022 after several visual updates and these issues have become the new norm. Whatever the system requirements on their Steam page say, they're definitely outdated.
I wish they'd try to make the game more accessable instead of crippling their potential playerpool by making the game more and more demanding in these areas. League of Legends for instance still can be played on a potato, DbD meanwhile requires a fullblown gaming pc just to properly run.
If anything's going to make me stop playing Dead By Daylight it's definitely this aspect.
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You know how much they care when their dev themselves don't even play the game. They relys on players themselves on PTR. We paid for the game to test the game for them.
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Where are these numbers coming from?
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I've uninstalled recently, with over 1500 hours played over the past 3-4 years. The main reason for me is due to technical issues with the game itself, and me having lost faith in the development team. They dont seem to understand their own game, thus rely on the feedback and complaints from the community to know what's wrong.
The devs also seem to love coddling killer mains. For example, there's been previous issues with hex totems in certain locations that couldn't be cleansed. That was around for quite a bit with the maps still active. But then when it was about killers being unable to kick boons, those maps were immediately disabled while a hotfix was worked on. Newly released killers also keep getting buffs before people get a chance to learn them. People play them once or twice, complain that the killer sucks, then devs buff them to the point where they're just not fun to play against.
Trickster for example, people complained immediately, he got buffed. People still complained, he got buffed again. Now he throws knives like a machine gun, so all you need is a decent aim and it's GG EZ. My friend who was new to the game at the time had no problem getting a 4K with trickster in a KYF against 4 dbd vetarans, and that was BEFORE Trickster's 2nd buff. Simply because he plays a lot of shooters and have good aim, so Trickster was easy for him.
Don't get me wrong, things can be unbalanced for both sides at times, but from my experience playing both sides, devs seem to hand hold killer mains a lot more, and care more about making it fun to play as killer and don't give a flying duck about whether or not the game is fun for survivors. And i get it... If killers stop playing, the game will die. Survivors are more likely to deal with in-game BS because at least they have friends to play with which can make it just enough fun to keep playing anyways.
Except that this game is no longer fun for survivors, which is one reason I think so many people have simply stopped playing. Hit recognition is complete BS and seems to be validated on the killer's side. (Which BTW is another proof that devs coddle killers. The moment they implemented hit validation server-side, killers complained and hit validation was removed almost immediately).
TL:DR;
- Devs don't understand how to fix their game.
- Hit validation sucks, you get hit when you shouldn't.
- Other technical issues, such as pallets sometimes not dropping even when spamming to drop them.
- Devs trying too hard to just make the game fun for killers, without caring how boring the abilities are for survivors to play against.
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we're coming up to 6 years and the perk meta has never changed from second chances and slowdown stacking. I've played since 2017 and i'm at the point where neither role is a relaxing or fun experience, so why really bother at all?
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Looks like the website STEAMPLAYERCOUNT
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Official Steam. You must log into Steam on that page so that it will show you the players who have left and more information.
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I seriously think developers learned years ago that they could just skip buying play testers and just release the game broken. I see more and more games that release broken or patches that break an existing game. At times I miss the days of gaming before the internet. At least back then they had to make damn sure the game worked before it released because there was no way to patch it.
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6? Try 9.
If you look at the steam charts, it has been dropping since August 2021, with a noise of .5% the next month : virtually a stall.
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golden years miss play games in Arcades.
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Five words:
- Dead
- Hard
- Circle
- of
- Healing
(Six, if you count "Boon" in Boon: Circle of Healing)
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Thereās no doubt that introduction SBMM and boons (a secondary objective for killers) lines up with the start of this consistent decline in players. SBMM made the game way more consistently sweaty and stressful for higher skilled players, and boons (particularly CoH) made it even more difficult for killers to apply any kind of pressure to coordinated survivor teams, leading to tunneling and camping before more necessary for killers to secure kills. The game feels way more stressful and sweaty for a lot of players than it did before these two things were introduced to the game. Thereās also the constant frustration of game updates causing issues for a lot of players (most recent update seems to be causing performance issues for a lot of players).
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I left around November but I'm back again for now. If the anniversary update doesn't do something about bp gain or mmr balance/removal, I may be gone again.
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Go watch Otz videos. High MMR survivors can even bully him and he plays for a living.
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The problem is that they have two very different groups that they cannot balance the game around. You have the people who just install the game and know nothing about it and you have your 1000+ hour veterans who have a lot of experience. It's hard to balance the game to cater towards keeping new downloaders, while keeping your current audience who have been playing for awhile happy. They kind of have to choose on whether to try and keep a new crowd or keep their current fanbase. Hard decision, right now they're just upsetting both.
Another problem, (without getting into the argument of the game being killer/survivor sided), I personally feel like the game will be more killer sided for people who just downloaded the game and the game will be more survivor sided for veterans (or swfs). There are some weak killers who are noob stompers, so this brings the problem of beginners calling for nerfs while veterans know the killers are weak af. It's also very difficult for people who start as killer and expect to stomp noobs every game, but then eventually they struggle to even get a down as they climb the mmr ladder.
The last point I have is the match making. A lot of people are just done with the match making. It's hard to call this a party game when most of the games in higher ranks are sweat fests. The side who "wins" is just the side who brought the sweatiest builds. People aren't able to have fun anymore because there's no guarantee the other side will be playing for "fun." Nobody likes getting stomped on either side.
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There have been āIām leavingā threads for years. At the very least, since I was active on the forums.
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Killer-sided dbd isn't fun and people are leaving it was proven a lot of times in the past and bhvr still insists on that kind of balancing
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if he was really interested in the game facing a fair balance for everyone, Otz could give many ideas to be able to reach that balance, but right now as you say, play to live and NOT to try to make a game more balanced facing both roles.
But at this point, DBD would have to include something very innovative to encourage people who have left the game to play the game again.
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They need to be unafraid to change up the meta and Introduce new mechanics on maps, and maybe diff game modes! New Interactions like elevators and stuff on maps would be cool! It Is kinda stale :/
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The main issue is a poorly balanced game, that's the umbrella answer.
More specifically:
- Maps are too large
- Tiles are too strong, loops too safe. Most aren't actually mindgameable when the majority of them should be.
- Overpowered perks, all the seconds chances and CoH
- A lot of the killer roster is way, way too weak and needs significant buffs. Most these killer buffs like the Legion and Ghostface one are way too insignificant and they need substantially more. Even after their buffs they're still bad.
Tunneling isn't really an issue, it's just a symptom of all the above mentioned problems. If you fixed those tunneling would go down a lot. Killers just feel forced to tunnel since the devs wont fix those problems and they're left with no choice. That said if you actually fixed those above issues to where tunneling wasn't necessary at high mmr then we could actually implement anti-camp/tunnel into the base game.
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I hope they have some seriously awesome tricks up their sleeve to bring players back.
The changes to Legion were a good start - but we need a lot more to breathe new life into the community after 2nd half 2021 and 1st half 2022 is looking like a major bust for the game at large.
By the way, what website are you using for those numbers ?
Just curious, I love doing some research of my own as well!
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I see this a lot, and I don't understand. Just last night, I got multiple 4K's, I don't tunnel or camp. In fact, most often, I actively won't second hook anyone until everyone is first hooked.
I play survivor almost as much as I play killer, and so I use my knowledge of the survivor role to get inside their heads, and mind game them. But I also use that knowledge to give them a good game and ensure they get more than 10,000 bloodpoints for their game.
Yes there are some games where you get absolutely stomped, but there are other games where I have 8 hooks at 5 gens, and I'm just going to stab and run for the rest of the game.
I main Legion and Twins for what it's worth, and yesterday I was vibing with Legion's changes.
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I just deleted the game yesterday and I will probably never come back. I don't need a game that will stress me 80%of the time. I was a killer main because playing survivors is boring, at least for me. Every game I was against Swfs, I know I am not that good to be paired against swf all the time.
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Their biggest mistake is not owning up to their identity, DbD is a party game, wether it's a 2 people or a 5 people party (4 survs + 1 killer). It's meant to be played with friends. The second biggest mistake was to think this could be taken seriously as a competitive game. It can't cause the Balance of an asymetrical game is very very delicate and BHVR with all respect isn't Delicate enough to do it, they never really wanted to make it competitive to begin with, it was a half baked thing inserted somewhere down the line. The in between is just a consequence of a poorly conceived and managed project.
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The problem with Trickster is that a vast majority of DBD players probably aren't used to playing games where your aim means everything. On top of it we have console players who play him with a controller. So the popular opinion will be "Trickster sucks so badly!", while people who are skilled in competitive shooters will dominate with him.
So I don't blame you for saying Trickster sucks, because he does suck in the hands of most DBD players.
I'm not saying devs "favor" killer mains, just that there's a trend where killer complaints keep being listened to. Like, tell me the last time when survivors whined about something that got changed in the game for their benefit? Meanwhile, i've heard complaints of maps being too dark, hatch is unfair, Killer abilities need buffs, boons are too strong, etc. ... and what's happened? Maps were reworked to be so bright that it looks like daytime. Hatch was made completely useless. Killers getting buffs and reworks left and right. Boons getting nerfed.
I play both sides, and I can't deny that killers get through with their complaints a lot more than survivors do. Both sides complain, sure, but killers get to see their complaints change the game a lot more often.
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in march its not +1.186... its -1.812
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it's in the 4v1 nature, if you make the game less stressful as killer than as survivor, 80% of the playerbase will play killer. Killer will always be more stressful and i think that's alright, it's not for everyone but once you're getting good it's fun. Making it chillout is not possible without making the game completely unbalanced
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I don't go against "good" SWFs, because they are above my MMR.
After like 4 or 5 4k's, I tend to start letting everyone go so I can keep my MMR low, and continue enjoying the game.
If you're seriously playing this competitively, that's your problem, not mine.
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You'll find that if you leave toxicity out of your messages, people will take you more seriosuly.
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DBD player count has historically increased over the summer and then gone back down.
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Im currently red 1 (I know that doesn't necessarily correlate with skill) and i think im somewhat high on the MMR scale and i rarely have to tunnel or face camp to win
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what a stressfull situation also if you playing at night as killer, however lower MMR you have you will always facing a sweat and coordination SWF and smart solo survivor. Please consider and make a incentive with more BP when we play killer. Its really unfun when you chasing survivor and suddenly 3 generator blow up together.
you know your community department should consider hire a good person to educate your player and encourage them to play more killer. Use your social media to bring back your player back , educate them with fun content how to be a decent killer. Using tiktok to educate player in a short content . you have twitter, instagram, think creative . Make a good content of social media and tell them that killer is fun also to be playing. if more people considerate to play killer i think your game will be balance and toward to better trend.
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Games die. It happens. People lose interest and move on. But it's a 6 year old game and they've been way too slow to address the grind and new player experience. That's a recipe for losing players faster than you can replace them.
A new player's viability is locked behind 1000 hrs of grind and hundreds of dollars in dlc. I'm more shocked that it still has the playerbase it has.
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Used to love the game. Then they decided that "Balance" required making killer powers feel bad to use and unrewarding even if you do them correctly. Making the game control worse for one side is the worst possible way you can change the game for balance concerns.
Still hold out hope things will improve, but looking at Sadako, it's clear the prevailing game design philosophy is still "make killer powers either absurdly difficult to control but good OR make the killer powers easy to control but pathetic and mostly useless."
And then you look at Ghostface and just gotta laugh. One of the worst, least played killers in the game, so here's a minor buff and a whole laundry list of nerfs. No reason to come back and, increasingly, no reason to even look back. Nothing's getting better.
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In most multiplayer games, if you join a game and play for a bit, you will probably have fun, even if you lose.
Dead By Daylight has a massive flaw where you can play a game and lose and not have a single moment of fun, and these types of play are rewarded or encouraged.
If a new player picks up the game, and tries to play survivor, they're going to have a miserable time. They're going to get hard camped and tunneled out at 5 gens and leave the game with 4,000 bloodpoints, barely enough to buy a single item in the bloodweb. A bloodweb that at this point requires millions, and millions of points invested into just to get a handful of okay perks.
The same is true for someone hopping on to play killer, they'll inevitably end up matched against people who know the game well enough where they will make it feel like it is virtually impossible to hit a survivor let alone get a down. Leaving the match with 10k points and feeling very frustrated about not feeling like they experienced a fair game at all.
Both roles get absolutely steamrolled by bad maps and RNG as well.
You play a killer and load into The Game on the wrong killer against people that play pallets safely and you just don't get to do anything but break pallets.
You play survivor and load into Azarov's Resting Place and the killer decides to keep to one side of the map and teammates finish the gens on the other side you're then sentenced to a game of tapping gens and running away, turning a normal game into a 25 minute slog that you'll inevitably lose.
Add this all up and you get an experience which makes the game uniquely unfun regardless of the role you're playing, and even many seasons players are starting to rapidly lose interest. The only way this will likely change is with some pretty significant change to core gameplay design, instead of bandaid perks.
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Right. Your opinions are facts. And it's not toxic at all to spam crylaugh emojis and having overall bad manners. My bad, I forgot that there are people who think it's normal to throw in taunts and rudeness whenever they disagree with someone.
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One of the main issues they have is listening to a very loud minority in this forum. They should ignore them, and actually use their brain to balance the game. The game is, right now, the most killer sided it has ever been objectively speaking, with the only exception of the release of Boon totems. Solo queue is a complete nightmare. The only way to play this game and have a chance to have fun is SWF. Otherwise, it's a festival of constant camping and tunnelling somebody out with 5 gens left, and people will either stop playing after that, or wait for some friend to log in. If they can't have anybody to play with, they're very likely to just drop the game.
Playing with randoms, which is the worst experience you can have in this game, shouldn't be as awful as it is right now. That's one of the main factors the game has been consistently losing players for a while now, for longer than a year actually. What covered it was a constant release of high profile content (stilent hill, resident evil, scream, freddy...) and it made it seem the game was gaining players, but in truth, all that big stream of players was bound to leave sooner or later for the issues I already stated before.
Me personally, I have a ridiculous amount of hours in this game (way too many) and there's an obvious burn out associated with playing so much. But that's actually not the reason I stopped playing. I can sum it up:
- Solo queue is a nightmare and ridiculously unbalanced towards killer. Not necessarily because "killers are too strong", it would be safer to say, "killers are too strong compared to the average player you get matched with as survivor in your team of randoms".
- Hits. It has finally gotten under my skin, the constant ways you get hit and shouldn't happen, the "killer looked at you and you got hit from the other side of the map" issue that happens every game every day all the time.
- End game and exit gates placement related to it: Most of the times when you reach end game you find yourself in the situation of, "There's 2 gates next to each other, the killer sits in the middle of the map looking at them both, and there's no possible counterplay. What's the point then?"
- Deadzones: Autohaven maps, certain McMillan maps, full of empty spaces. The reworks have turned into, 2 safe maps and 1 decent window, and then 80% of the map is empty. It's trash, it's boring, it's bad map design.
- Multiple issues with ranks, match making, lag, bugs, technical issues... and just a variety of clown circus show stuff.
- Behaviour has cosistently shown a lack of interest in addressing core issues for a very long time, it has made me despise them as a team. They started off well (constant live stream, interesting Q and A...
I lost faith in this game and their team long ago, and I did try for a very, very long time.
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