Are Devs really playing their game?

Testing and the such sure.

But it's fair to think they don't when changes that have needed to be done have not been done and many things have not been addressed.

You know they dont need to be playing the game and in fact most game designers dont play their games, right?

I think one issue with the DBD balancing is a problem of not understanding how game design works.

Fundamentally speaking, player feedback is very important- but the DBD community cannot come to a consensus due how polarized each side is from one another.

And that doesn’t mean it’s the playerbases fault for this, either— it’s a loss of a major source on both sides. Much of the feedback DEVS use is, invisible, only by testing which is much more private.

We also need to come to the understanding that a good game developer does not necessarily have to play there game to be good at balancing it. An objective perspective to these problems is mandatory, that way biased balancing problems can be avoided. A huge problem is, is that there’s not enough good feedback, either. A lot of it on this forum are people who feel they’re being persecuted for playing a certain role- going for both sides.

This leads to a large sum of feedback being isolated because of it’s weird attachment to the games social culture. We have norms, reactions, & stuff. It’s weird. But the point is, much of the players experience could greatly improve if players did not care what the other, their experience would vastly improve. A large sum of the feedback in this forum are usually related to camping, tunneling, while far fewer address true gameplay design problems. A great example of what a community feedback loop should look like is the Onryo. People have in-depth critiques for their kit.

PTW puts this pretty well:

“However, these decisions must be backed up by careful consideration of the data; they can never be based on emotions. Players have the leeway to make emotional pronouncements, but developers can’t trust that input. Decisions must be supported by what the data shows the players are doing in a game, versus what they say they want. It may surprise some to learn that it’s not the volume of what players say in forums that causes changes to games, but what the data shows is happening. This discrepancy stems from the fact that players may know that they’re not having fun with a game, but they may not always know why.”

When you provide surface level feedback, it leaves the deeper root of the problems to fester like weeds, which is also apart of the game designers responsibility. A lot of game design truly comes from statistical data that has been shown on stream a few times. This method is known as telemetrics.

“A good forum thread can do the same progress as dozens of phone calls.”

However, don’t get me wrong: The balance is on the devs. But the resources they use to draw judgement have their problems, which leads to problematic judgement or inaction.

Edit 1: Acknowledgement; I’m not specialized in game design. I do have some introductory research analysis classes under my belt, however. If by chance my understanding of this subject is uninformed or incorrect, please do feel free to correct me.

That’s a problem with the games initial feedback phase. Prior to being shipped out to the PTB, this is usually tested in a smaller group of individuals in dedicated centers for such- Lionbridge serves as a wonderful example.

And in these testing examples, Sadako may have performed well due to the inexperience of the players at the center. That is why the PTB exists, to cover the bases that initial phase fails to cover. The PTB is for community feedback.

Oh absolutely, I totally agree. I hate those maps. But, That’s also a point of my previous post: some of these are in fact, the developers fault.

But some cases, it’s not.

The fault here is failure to listen to feedback. The post I quoted makes a wonderful point. Thanks, Zozzy.

Everybody before Gideon rework: We don't really like breakable walls. They feel shoehorned in and out of place.

Killer mains before Gideon rework: There needs to be less safe pallets, and just less pallets in general.

Developers: What's that? You want MORE breakable walls and pallets? *Fills Gideon rework with unnecessary breakable walls and an absurd amount of pallets that are also really safe*

If that was really the case then we would have MUCH more bug fixes per patch.

The problem is that PTB not good for real testing. Even if you keep your BP for it, you will have ~1M BP at mirroring. And then you can spend it on the killer or the survivor - or you can split it up. And you will luck, or not to get good perks on it. But you do not need to get the best perks sure... But you cannot TEST it really. And who the hell will farm BP on PTB?

PTB should work like a custom game, where you have all the perks, you have any items/addons/offerings. So you can really TEST out the killer, and all the character's new perks with other perks so you can deicide which is usefull, which could be too strong.

So yes, as it is told one problem is that there is not good feedback, because both side will reeeeeeee about everything, and most of the time it is just cause they are unexperienced. But the other problem is that you cannot really test things out in time

I have similar criticism for the PTB. The problem with the PTB is for an experimental state, it lacks the standardization for an experiment.

This means that the performance of a perk is not truly able to be measured due to the content validity being too broad; based on the individual whom enters the PTB’s in game progress.

Granted this part of experimental design is built upon having a hypothesis & needs replicability, but my point is, is that the perks true value cannot be experienced until it interacts with other perks. Some perks are strong enough to hold their own. But I think that all perks should be given to all participants in the PTB in order to standardize the results a little better. That way we can get more authentic results, similar to how they would perform on the public build.

jfc, are killers still complaining about keys?

1. always assume saw
2. i dont know
3. it is a pity mechanic and they still needs the pity. people dislike change a lot of the time. there are achievements people would be upset about not being able to get. keys have other uses. hatch is also bandaid for gates too close.
4. don't want to fragment player base
5. don't want to fragment player base and too much work just for people to complain

I haven't seen a single person complain about keys, only that they're weak, which I agree with. They should be reworked to something better.