What are the problems with DBD right now?

Map design is and always has been the biggest issue in this game regarding balance. The main reason trapper is so much worse than blight is due to maps being too big and too safe for the most part

Gens

Camping

Grind

1. Stale/toxic meta (toxic killer tactics in response to survivor sided mechanics)
2. Grind
3. Perk bloat
4. Newer killers are very unfun to verse (subjective of course)
5. Toxic community
6. Survivor sided mechanics such as COH
7. Very rough learning curve for new players

Probably the main challenges for DbD at the moment are

• Age. The game is almost six years old which is quite old for a video game. It’s still apparently one of the most played games that came out that year (it’s on par with Civilization VI from the same year) but simple attrition over time as fewer people check it out and more people migrate to newer games whittles away at the player base.
• New player learning curve. Along with fewer new players checking out an older game, the ones that do tend to go against veteran opponents from the outset and the game is not as simple to win as a new player as a lot of people seem to think. Basically new players get decimated on a regular basis simply because skill difference makes a huge impact on outcome in this game. And while it has a fun tutorial to explain the very basics it doesn’t have a good sophisticated way for new players to practice against bots, for example, aside from a single map with a single killer. There’s no way for new players for instance to try all the killers solo in a custom match against bots to just see how they work and to explore the maps and see what the layouts look like, etc. I’ve had a couple of friends try the game out over the last couple of years and they all gave up pretty quickly because of how brutal it is for new players.
• Hackers. On the other end of the spectrum there are a lot of hackers at the high end. Some are blatant in your face cheaters, others cheat in subtle ways that are harder to detect but still impactful. And unfortunately the game’s reporting system for cheaters is really byzantine, you have to already be recording your match using third party software and figure out how to attach your recording to your customer service ticket on the DbD website. On top of all of which their internal methods for spotting and banning hackers are functional but not nearly as good as they probably could be based on how some other games handle it. (All games have cheaters but not all games has as many cheaters relatively speaking as this one.)
• Bloodweb grind. The devs have already commented that they aren’t happy with the perceived grind in the bloodweb where if you want to be able to play with a certain loadout on a certain killer it can take literally millions of bloodpoints to grind through webs to get what you’re looking for. Fortunately they do apparently have a revamp coming so hopefully by maybe this summer we’ll get details? 🤷‍♂️
• Semi-cooperative vague victory conditions. The bottom line is semi-cooperative games where everybody is on a team “but not really” rarely work well and DbD is no exception. It just leads to sandbagging and people getting upset when survivors aren’t “team players” or who ragequit when they personally are doing badly. And to make it worse the devs have a confusing conflicting bunch of metrics indicating “victory” so nobody even quite agrees what it means to “win a match” let alone how to measure wins and losses for matchmaking. Unfortunately this is kind of hard baked into the game at this point so I don’t know much could be done about it.

I know I didn’t mention “balance” but that’s because honestly the game is mostly balanced already outside of some tweaks it could use here and there to buff or nerf certain perks and maybe slightly tune some killers. Yeah, Dead Hard is overpowered and overused for example, but honestly it’s not game breaking or something that drives people to not play the game like the other things I mentioned above.

Edit: never mind

We have a problem where we tell survivors that it’s ok if they want to avoid interacting with the killing (hiding), but we’re also telling killers it’s not ok if they don’t want to interact with all the survivors (tunneling and camping). Tunneling, camping, and hiding all need to be fixed. Generator speeds aren’t our main problem, it’s the fact that when a killer is patrolling generators, it’s so easy for survivors to hide until the killer patrols past them, then jump on the generator.

One of the biggest advantages of voice comms is they often allow survivors to warn each other of the killer’s location, which makes it more efficient for them to hide from the killer. If BHVR is going to give solo q a way to warn each other where the killer is, then killers absolutely need more game information of where the survivors are.

And one of the biggest motivators for tunneling and camping is the fact that going too far away from a hooked survivor is a big risk, because hiding is such an effective strategy. What if a killer patrols the map, doesn’t find anyone because they were hiding, and the hooked survivor gets saved while the killer is far away? The killer could have just thrown away the entire game by deciding not to proxy camp.

Im gonna throw the controvertial, very never seen before,

CoH,

actually before CoH was DeadHard, which still is to this day...

In my Opinion its the grade system that creates more of a grind as a whole. By this I mean the fact that it is a skill based system that every time you see a BHVR person talk about it on the forums says its time played. I don't mind playing the game and even grinding but when you get to iri in grade it becomes its own grind to get to 1. If they want the grade system to truly be a time played they need to change the way that you gain grades because time played with a skill system does not always equate the same thing. I am saying this as a Rank 1 survivor and a Grade 1 survivor. Killer I have never managed to get past red 4 nor do I really try. The fact that I go from Iri 1 to ash 4 makes it a huge grind to get to Iri 1 every month which is just adds to the over all grind of the game (looking at you bloodweb).

Everything else is balance and feeling like you should always win.

well... :

1 huge amount of toxicity NOT PUNISHED (and please for whoever say that devs take those kind of things seriously, i still have at least 10 tickects open from at least 2 months still unresolved so...)

2 increase waves of cheaters and subdle speedhackers (i've them at least one of those every 3 matches done)

3 EXTREME UNBALANCE (for having the slightest hope for winning or to get enough points as killer you have to play the meta, while solo survivor sucks but not for the killer for being strong, but for your teammates for being giant flaming hoes most of the times)

4 no variety (i don't remember the last time that i saw a killer picking perks like dark devotion or forced penance and survivor picking off the record or calm spirit)

5 HUGE grind

6 too many crutch perks

1. Subtle cheaters.
2. Blatant cheaters.
3. Boil Over RPD Bully Squads.
4. Flashlight Blendette Bully Squads that keep sending me to Saloon.
5. Losing Adept achievement cause someone Dcs. Repeats next game.
6. The Grind.
7. The 1 mil bloodpoints cap.
8. Map sizes and the amount of pallets that spawn on certain maps.
9. MMR.
10. Chat filter. Trying to tell someone they did good only for the game to **** half of it, so I look like an awful person.
11. Not being able to mix match outfits in store without buying the pieces first.
12. Missing out on some codes since I don't use or see DBD's twitter.

1) hacks/cheats

2) to many useless perks ( I want to run different builds, but as you face better teams/players you have to use just a handful and the rest become trash)

3) needs more maps and better map balance ( I know the Devs are working on this) and not 5 or more of the “same” map

4) bloodweb ( at least bring the cost down by half )

to do some examples: "#########" "hope that you die of cancer" "your mother copulate with primates" "die of cancer" etc etc... those kind of stuff... looping is literally a game mechanic, didn't see anything toxic about it and tbags (despite i consider this really annoying) aren't object of reports in any way cause is a game mechanic that too... if you don't believe me i've also screenshots of my average match on dbd

the killers are the real problem, their hitbox, sync, tunneling, camping, MMR stuff as well, SOLOQ is literally pain in the ass you can't do much as solo survivor, you need at least 2 people to play the game properly, but still no one guarantees that the killer won't play like an a$$hole

The biggest problem by far is the maps. Many maps are just incredibly unfair to killer. The biggest offenders are Springwood (it just has the best loop from every other map strung together with safe pallets in between, then its own unique main building which is even stronger than any of them) and The Game (on which you can just hold W and button mash space bar for the win because of the number of pallets). This combined with the survivors getting 4 offerings to the killer's 1, and map offerings being the same rarity for both sides, meaning that past a certain MMR you can expect the survivors to be chosing the map pretty much every game. Today I'm over 75% survivor Springwood offerings - I'm currently just leaving the game at the start of every springwood match because the games are pointless, and even if I camp and tunnel my way into some kills, they aren't fun.

For comparsion, I don't think a single map is unfair to survivors in the same way. The exit gates on Midwich are pretty harsh but I still have a lot of fun on it as survivor. I don't think a map can load and make me want to just instantly quit on survivor like it can on killer - maybe Lery's, but that's more from personal taste than it just being unfair.

Community - I’m not just talking about the forums, but in general, there is a segment of this community that is not good for the game.

Game is too RNG reliant. The game should feel like it is more about skill and less about how many cheese mechanics can you overcome during the match.

Latency - something which will never be fixed because of its nature. But it’s the reason a lot of players lose matches because they either get hit where they shouldn’t have or don’t hit where they should.

Gen times

Maps

Poorly designed killers

Meta

Why do you suggest that devs should remove all those perks besides dead hard.

Game is 6 years old and hasn't aged well. Parts of the game are in need of an overhaul. Still only one objective.

Too many types and ranks for offerings and can still only burn 1 at a time. It leads to a lot of offerings never being used. I have so many yellow and green BP bonus offerings and cakes that I never have to use brown ones.

Killers still get no bonus or advantage to help against SWF.

Game is missing a lot of QoL changes and additions, for example being able to save perk loadouts

The BP grind has become unreal. If you get a new killer or survivor you may have to spent several millions of BP to get rank 3 of the perks you want. With how many perks there are now there's no need for them to have 3 ranks anymore.

Over 100 perks on each side, but many are useless compared to the few that are considered META.

1. Lack of maps. Been a problem for a couple of years now. Genuinely needs addressing.

2. Survivor meta + 16 perks v 4

3. Graphics and game engine feel outdated. Just look how basic Sadakos portrait looks like, wouldn't look out of place on a PS2

People who want everything nerfed instead of spending even a few minutes learning how to counter it. New legion is a great example. People just stand there in clumps and let you stab everyone and then cry that he is OP.