Dissonant Design Discussion

Good day everyone.

I'm new to these forums, so apologies if I commit any faux pas or irritate anyone- I don't know your culture. I've owned DBD since 2016 (just checked my steam profile) and have played maybe 200 hours in that time. Initially, the game didn't really seem like it was for me. The grinding, starting out with nothing, bizarro matchmaking putting me up against red-ranks when I was a rank 20 back in the day, that kinda thing- totally drove me away. I loved the idea of DBD, but felt it had a very flawed execution. So instead it was primarily used as a fun party game with a few friends around Halloween.

I've recently in this past year returned to it more significantly. When I first bought the game, I got all of the starting survivors via the "Deluxe Edition". I have only this year bothered to grab all their shareables, bought the DLC that I loved the original content for (Silent Hill was a big draw), and actually dived into the mechanics of the game. I wanted to discuss in the feedback section, where I'm expecting the devs actually use as a tool to reflect upon their work (I hope anyways). This is going to be a longer one, so bear with me.

Put simply: There's a significant amount of dissonant design in this game.

Intro: What is Fun?

So my first point reflects upon the game as a whole, reflecting on the core loop of DBD and how it feels to play. What parts do YOU have fun with? Why do YOU play DBD? I'll tell you why I play DBD. This will of course be separated into two parts for both Killer and Survivor.

For Survivor: I personally 1) enjoy the chase, 2) enjoy the thrill of stealthing around a killer searching for me, 3) enjoy the "battle" when a killer picks someone up and you try to free them, and 4) designing custom builds to create alternative playstyles or tactics that modify those three gameplay loops. Those things feel rewarding, amazing when you properly pull them off. They make me feel empowered and give me the dopamine rush of outwitting an opponent or feeling like my "build" is doing what I planned for it to do.

For Killer: I enjoy 1) outwitting the survivors during chase using mind games and the killer's unique power, and 2) sneaking up on a survivor and grabbing them (circumventing the chase), because I find it to be more difficult and it makes sense that it's more rewarding. This is pretty much why I play Killer, and I don't feel like the killer's core loop grants any additional opportunities to have fun, unlike the survivors.

For Both: I love creating an interesting perk loadout that completely changes how I play the game. There are many perks that just slightly augment the way the game plays and when combined together they form a "style" of play. For example, one Survivor build I like playing is Urban Evasion, Self-Awareness, and Sprint Burst to stealth, confuse, and evade killers. As a Killer, it's super dependent on the killer and their individual power.

So why is this a discussion? It just seems like this guy is talking about what he likes and dislikes, but not offering any commentary on how it could be changed, or why this is a major point. Well, here's the issues. Afterwards, I will suggest fixes. My purpose here isn't to air grievances but to offer solutions. These solutions may be wild or game-changing, it may cause knee-jerk fear reactions. That's okay.

Onto the Discussion: What is Not Fun?

Dead By Daylight is dissonant in that its base mechanics actively remove fun from both Survivor and Killer.

Killer; Fundamental flaws

Time and tools - Killers are time-gated from the very moment the match starts. Each moment of their existence is one of anxiety, as they have no control over the flow of the game from the beginning. Killers have a melee attack and a power; the majority of their perks are designed defensively around stopping Survivors from doing objectives or using their tools. Prevent generators from being worked on, make pallets less effective, make windows less effective, make healing less effective, etc, entirely centered around fighting the agency of the Survivors. This strikes me as odd- why aren't there more perks that change their movement types, the sounds they make, their terror radius, etc? Instead, they're reliant on add-ons, which are REALLY hit or miss.

Killers are prevented from taking offensive perks that allow them to change their Killer's capabilities. Instead, they're reliant on specialized add-ons that are erratic and bizarrely balanced. Here are a few potential solutions to this:

Auras - Give each Killer a unique method in which they can aura read survivors or augment the field as a part of their base kit. BBQ+Chili and other aura-reading abilities wouldn't have to be relied upon as much if the basekit were to cover these "meta" perks. For example, perhaps Nurse sees any injured survivors within X range when a Generator is completed. Or Pyramid Head sees any survivors who currently have his debuff when he uses his power to hook a Survivor. These are just throwing things at the wall, but they do multiple things: give the Killer and objective, reward them for using their powers and reduce time spent searching across the map.

Addons - This one's a bit easier. Give generic add-ons that will minorly increase things like lunge range, bloodlust generation speed, healing time of survivors after being hit, etc. Potentially allow those to stack if they wish. They can be minor, but they will allow Killers a secondary option if the players just cannot stand the add-ons the Killer gets innately. It reflects the Survivor's tool addons and will in general make each Killer encounter unique. Who knows what addons they could be using that would make the encounter uncanny to Survivors with trained muscle memory.

General Abilities - Give all Killers other things they can do within the map. All killers could summon tripwire traps in loops by using the Interact button, for example. These traps would set off noise and give them a temporary aura read for the Survivor who hits them. Further add-on suggestions- allow all Killers ways to activate Dull Totems to create small and temporary battlefield disadvantages. These tools need to be minor and quick- the Killer should be able to summon them in without having to get right up on them, maybe from a short range. The Killer's time is valuable, and any action they take should reflect the utility of the action! They need more things they can do in a pinch that don't give them significant advantage but allow them to change the momentum or pressure of a chase.

Onto the next killer issue:

Movement, chases, and loops - There's a general rule that the game follows: Killers are faster that the Survivors running but are significantly slowed by windows and pallets, meaning that they have to train with their powers and mind games. Survivors may use these windows and pallets, but they are temporary resources before the Survivor is either caught or must leave. However, much of a Survivor's perks are built around these chases.

Killers have very few and are reliant primarily on their kit. They have a couple of buttons they can hit that do different things in their kit. M1 attack, M2 power. The powers differ wildly in terms of capabilities, and others barely have a power.

Some killers (Hag, Trapper) take so long to set up their power that they can lose a game before the first chase begins. Their power doesn't work without significant sacrifice, and certain perks or equipment can completely destabilize the power (looking at you, flashlight). A Killer's power shouldn't be completely removed just because someone switched flashlight last second.

Some Killers have to "fight" the mechanics of the Killer itself; gaining rewards if they are successful. Hillbilly, Bubba, Oni, Blight- the fact that you have to "tech" your movements with odd curves or strange accelerations, subverting the movement mechanics of the game to be efficient with their powers, is not well designed. It feels good when you learn the Killer enough to subvert the mechanic successfully, but design-wise these powers aren't build around the walled tilesets where the majority of chases occur, there's no attempt to teach the player how to subvert said mechanics so the learning curve is differentiated by those who play casually and those who watch Youtube videos. Meanwhile, when you're punished for misplaying with these movement-based abilities, you are SIGNIFICANTLY punished. Sometimes these killers just resort to M1'ing because it's not worth accidentally bumping into an odd hitbox and going into a tantrum.

Ranged individuals, such as Trickster and Huntress, want to skip chasing entirely and focus on sightlines and reading where an opponent will move around cover. Some maps don't support "cover" while others have too much cover, cover is not distributed evenly across maps, and cover hitboxes aren't easily readable- both sides are hurt by this. Sometimes Survivors are hit behind complete cover, other times they're not hit despite no cover. This is definitely a problem.

This is not "fun". That shouldn't be the case for the part of the game that Killers will spend the majority of their time in. The powers and movement mechanics should be entertaining rather than frustrating, right? While I think that these mechanics absolutely need to be fine-tuned and fixed, the crux of this is the idea of failing to win a chase. Which comes from a fundamental issue at the game's core: Downtime.

The actual problem: Downtime for a Killer is moving across the map. It is the time between chases, the time traveling between objectives, the time recovering after leaving a failed chase around an unexpected infinite loop. It is holding W as the Killer searches for signs of Survivors. And it is a significant flaw within the game.

There are a few potential solutions to this from the Killer's side, although some of them may infringe upon capabilities of other Killers. You may disagree with all of these because they're drastic but my goal is not to preserve and heal the current state of the game. Rather, to take the core ideas and improve upon them, as I feel the implementation is flawed fundamentally. The idea of these solutions: less downtime, more chasing time, more time to succeed, more time to make mistakes and learn from them.

Teleporting - Allow Killers to teleport to the edges of the map and key points within the map (such as Main Building and Killer Hut). The fact that Killers have to waste time just walking around while their Terror Radius alerts Survivors to their positions is not fun- this time is also immediately threatening to them as generators are being completed for each moment they're searching. Their clock is ticking, and a wrong direction without specific "meta" tracking perks means a dead game from the first second. Stealth killers are just as bad because stealth falls off in power significantly as the skill of Survivors rises, and typically the stealth killers have nothing but Mouse1 to rely on.

or

Ghost-stepping - Give all Killers an invisible spectral form in which they can travel vast distances but can't interact with the game world. Wraith, Billy, Demigorgon, and Dredge already have different versions of this that do different things, which is think is decently healthy, even if some are far less engaging than others. It's another direction that could reduce downtime and reinforce the chasing core loop. With this, the general idea is that survivors are unaware of them, but the Killers can't decloak until they're a certain distance from the Survivor. They can take time to survey the area and determine the most efficient "entry point" to apply pressure, or jump in right away to try and contest a generator or other objective.

These mechanics would be thrilling for both Survivor AND Killer. That's the goal of a developer- to create tension and fun for BOTH parties. It removes "wandering" from Killers so Killers can contest generators more. These solutions allow for certain perks that hold the game hostage (example: Corrupt Intervention) to be removed. It allows Killers to run builds without meta tracking perks like Barbecue and Chili. They are simply no longer necessary when the Killer has more agency about where they begin their hunting and how they travel around the map. It also significantly reduces the need to camp hooks or tunnel Survivors. The Killer has considerably more pressure and capability to move about the map without being directly punished for it.

Survivors; Advantage and Agency

Survivors can be potatoes who crouch behind a rock all game, or amazing who beat the hell out of the Killer seven different ways. The general understanding of the Survivor is this: Survivors have tools at their disposal to escape the Killer; some limited, some recharging. But in general, they are never infinite. And a single lost chase can lose an individual Survivor the entire game.

Agency - I played a bit earlier today and yesterday with a friend- seven games total. We are in Silver right now as I don't play super often. Each and every game, when the Killer dropped a Survivor, they face-camped the hook until the Survivor was dead. If they were taken off the hook, the Killer would go out of their way to subvert anti-tunneling perks to grab them and hook them again.

Did the Survivors "win" the game? Even regarding the odd win-state of this game? Most of the time they will overall succeed, if the other players weren't brutally altruistic or total potatoes. But that one Survivor did not- they barely got to even play the game and they most definitely lost, regardless of the rest of the team. While the Killer has very little agency over the match, they can enact significant agency over another player. This is not fun. In fact, this hurts both the Killer and the Survivor. Standing at a hook watching for other Survivors trying to sneak up is not a part of the core loop. But Killers feel they must do it or risk losing the game.

This is the case for every single "######### move" in the game. Slugging, camping, tunneling- it's because their disadvantages pressure them to steal every second they can get in whatever way possible. They are at a disadvantage with mind games due to their camera system, they are at a disadvantage against SWF survivors, they are at a disadvantage in most tilesets- the list goes on. But these in itself wouldn't be bad if the perks introduced in the game didn't reinforce these disadvantages and encouraged Killers to continue with the core loop of the game.

The game is designed to support this, unfortunately. Killers could leave the hook and potentially get no kills, or stay at the hook and at least get one kill. They fear playing the game for risk of losing the game. The fact that there are perks to fight against these behaviors is a band-aid fix from dissonant design. They could just be removed from the game entirely, perks and behaviors, with a few simple changes.

And this is a huge point: Unbreakable, Decisive Strike, Borrowed Time, Deliverance, etc. are a sign that the game is not healthy. The fact that you can take these perks and have them never used, or have all of them used, is showing that they shouldn't be perks at all. A perk should be a tool you can use in every game you play to make new and interesting tactics or to reinforce certain skills. They should not be tools used to combat behavior. That is the developers putting their responsibilities of balancing fun and reinforcing the core loop on the players, which is quite plainly, ridiculous. The players want to spend their perk slots on interesting things, combining them to create unique and interesting combinations against the different types of killers!

So here are my potential solutions. Their goal is: Be good to both Killers AND Survivors by removing the necessity and capability to camp, tunnel, and slug. These will also remove the need for protective perks such as Unbreakable, Decisive Strike, Borrowed Time, etc.

Hooking - Pyramid Head has a healthy hook mechanic that dissuades camping, tunneling, and slugging. It's quick, satisfying, and allows Pyramid Head to immediately move onto another target, keeping pressure up. That could potentially be used as a mechanic for all hooking in the game without the "instant hook" aspect that Pyramid Head uniquely holds. Instead of taking a Survivor to a hook, you take them to an altar on the map that offer the same function, but it teleports the Survivor onto a hook somewhere in the map. If the developers don't want players to suffer with the RNG spawn of the Pyramid Head-style hooks, they could use the Cenobyte's Lament Configuration spawn mechanic to strategically generate the hook spawns. The Survivor always appears in the spawn point with the least "pressure" from the Killers and Survivors both.

Camping - Make the Hooked state less vulnerable to While a Killer is within a certain range of a Hook, the hook countdown stops. When a Survivor is unhooked, that Survivor becomes a ghostly spectre (visible or invisible?) to the Killer and untouchable. So long as the Survivor has not touched an objective (basically any interactable in the game, including healing, totems, generators, chests, etc.) within a certain timeframe (maybe 30 seconds?), they cannot be interacted with by the Killer. They don't block hits, they don't block movement, they can't use flashlights, etc. They cannot interrupt the Killer in their goals, but the Killer cannot stop them from getting to a position where they can play the game once more. If the Killer does camp for a certain amount of time, the Survivor may free themselves form the hook and they disappear. With this system, these perks could be removed: Decisive Strike, Borrowed Time, Kindred, Deliverance, Slippery Meat, Guardian, Kinship, Off the Record.

Slugging - Slugging is typically done for two reasons: fear or greed. Either the Killer can get another kill because someone is close by waiting to contest a grab, or they fear survivors having the opportunity to do generators so they try to slow the game down to a crawl. One is because of a misplay by Survivors, and feels natural and correct for the Killer. The alternative is entirely to try and slow down the game, removes agency from the players, removes the core loop of the entire game, and is absolutely anti-fun. It can be fine to slug in many situations, but it can also be abused to hold a game hostage. My recommendation: After a certain amount of time has passed, give Survivors the capability of picking themselves up regardless of perks (perhaps 60 seconds?). Unbreakable could be removed from the game. Those survivors gain the ghostly status effect listed at Solution 2 so that they can reset and continue playing the game.

Cheap Perks - Some Survivor perks have not withstood the test of time and have become nigh-obsolete. Just remove perks like Slippery Meat and the luck stat affecting whether you can remove yourself from the Hook. It's distinctly anti-fun that you could waste entire perk slots on things like this. There are also certain other perks that could either be removed entirely or remade to be base-kit. Deja Vu, for instance, could be removed entirely or just made a 5-second buff at the beginning of each match. I'm also thinking that Self-care could either be removed or powered down into a weaker base-kit ability. Perhaps you can heal until you're at 95% and then another has to assist or something, for example.

Other perks are just downright lacking in value. Lucky Break, for example, might be worthwhile, but realistically it should be nerfed a bit and changed into an Exhaustion perk that recharges, or into a perk that happens anytime the user is injured.

Uniform Power Interactions - The hag is an interesting Killer, but I find it strange that you have to use a flashlight to destroy her runes. They're decently difficult to see most of the time- why not treat them like the Trapper's traps? When noticed, allow a survivor to crouch over to them and press the Interact key to smudge them and erase them. Just like the Trapper, have it tell the Hag the general area via a noise indicator.

Any Killer ability that is countered by a single item that a Survivor might randomly select or not select is not well-designed.

Summary

What does all of this mean?

It means that if Killers had more opportunity to be Killers and more ways to interact with the core loop, we would be able to clean the game up from its current duct-taped state and both Killer and Survivors would be rewarded for following that core loop. Some perks need to be completely removed from the game, as they are the duct tape. Some perks need to be made base-kit for both Survivor and Killer to create a more natural flow around the core loop. Finally, most of the of older Killers should get additional movement-based powers that enable to them to traverse the map easier to give them more baseline pressure, remove downtime, and encourage more chasing.

My solutions were written over the course of an evening. Some of this community might have been struggling with these thoughts for years. Tell me and the devs potential solutions you find for the fundamental issues in this game. Maybe with enough noise they'll consider taking steps to fixing them.