Rounding out the Dead by Daylight Experience

ModernFable

Behavior Interactive

Dead by Daylight

22 July 2022

Once again, credit will be given where it is due. Despite the noticeable shortcomings of the 6.1.0, one can argue that this is the most impactful Behavior has ever made. From meta shifts to game-flow, 6.1.0 has made its entrance known. Personally, the changes have been quite pleasant overall. Killer feels much more fun to play mechanically, and Survivor feels much less frustrating when the base kit Borrowed Time and the Queue Blood Point Bonus come into play. However, irritation can quickly set in, especially from the Survivor side, when base kit changes fail to adequately tackle their intended issues (or are disabled in the case of the Queue BP Bonus.) As such, going forward, there remains much work to do in order to consistently better the Dead by Daylight experience, for both Survivors and Killers.

Top Priorities

1. Camping
2. Tunneling
3. Balance After the Fact

While the subject of camping may be the largest issue of fun for Survivors, perhaps the easiest to fix would be that of tunneling. Two simple but very effective changes to Dead by Daylight to squash out tunneling are to increase the base kit Endurance and Haste effects of an unhook from 5 seconds to 15 seconds; as well as introducing a base kit Decisive Strike to Survivors on every unhook. Both of these shall be disabled once the exit gates are powered, and are still disabled upon Conspicuous Action. These will virtually eliminate tunneling from Dead by Daylight, and open the door for a variety of interesting Killer buffs, which will be discussed last.

Moving on to camping, however, it remains a larger and more complicated issue. While the specifics for tunneling is a rather clear cut one, camping has at least two sub-classes. Face-camping (within a short distance of the hook) and patrolling (moving back and forth between an area around the hook.) Both are frustrating, yet must be tackled differently to be properly addressed. Addressing face-camping is a simple matter. Pausing hook progression (visible on the HUD) if the Killer is within a 16 meters of a hooked Survivor will fix that outright, this will also be disabled once the exit gates have been powered. Patrolling is more complicated to the degree that solving the issue completely can be challenging. That being said, a potential addition to deter Killers from patrolling can be this: after hooking a Survivor and exiting the 16 meter range of the hook, grant the Killer a 50% Haste effect for 5 seconds, disabled if the Killer re-enters the range, uses their power, or enters chase with a Survivor. Punishing the Killer for patrolling can be very difficult, so perhaps preferred method is encouraging them to apply pressure elsewhere.

The last subject note is balancing Dead by Daylight around the previous changes, as they will drastically shake up the power dynamic of typical game-play. The following adjustments are not intended to balance the entirety of Dead by Daylight after the introduction of these changes. They are intended to be a potential starting point of balance, for a new era of Dead by Daylight. With that being said, these changes at large will mostly favor Survivor game-play by a significant margin. As such, these adjustments will prioritize Killer game-play. First of which, introducing a base kit Bamboozle, i.e. vaulting 15% faster and blocking the vault location for 16 seconds. This will greatly help in closing the gap between the chase capacity of all Killers, making further balance adjustments easier. Second of which, the introduction of a base kit Corrupt Intervention. This would empower the Killers who require time to set up their power, lack movement abilities, or simply do not have the capacity to quickly down a Survivor group like the top tier Killers. This would of course keep the current caveat of becoming disabled once a Survivor has been downed.

With the introduction of many new base kit powers across Survivor and Killer, tunneling and camping will quickly lose their appeal. In addition, while these strategies previously empowered Killers, they shall not be missed by Survivor or Killer alike due to the accompanying changes. While these may not be the perfect way of addressing these issues, they can be quickly implemented and iterated upon in the future; and considering these problems have remained present in Dead by Daylight for years, even actions as drastic as these should be considered for the betterment of Dead by Daylight as a whole.