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DBD a sinking ship in shallow water. All the major problems the game has
Dead by Daylight; back then it was once enjoyable in 2018 to the 4th anniversary with a handful of problems but could be improved. Fast forward to now in 2022 the game hasn’t improved one bit. And it really hasn’t grown or an increase of player base since the 5th anniversary. It has been on a constant decline for a while now since Binding of Kin, failing to gain and keep players. Also every chapter after it being a failure either not gaining enough players or technical failures like lag and bugs; comes out with un interesting or underpowered killers and perks, or is just meh.
So is Dbd dying? Some might say yes others might say no. I’d say both, it’s in a state of purgatory. It’s in a state where it’s not getting any better or growing as a game. It’s losing new and old players but the game has a skeleton player base that will stick around no matter what basically keeping the game alive for another adrenaline rush. But of course even with them it’s only a matter of time, it may not be tomorrow or 4 years from now but it will eventually be dust. So I want to highlight all the major problems the game has that’s effectively killing it.
Monetization
Monetization has been a big reason for me and new players coming into the game. The game is 20/30$ up front on top of a cosmetics store, on top of a 10$ rift pass, on top of 8$ dlc every three months, on top of an extremely grindy system. They have almost all the usual monetization methods all in one basket with the only exception being loot boxes. This is pretty much overkill. Getting all the dlc chapters is extremely expensive just to get all the content. The cosmetics are obviously overpriced; like seriously why does a 11$ and 15$ skin cost more than a 5$ killer? And why are there some skins we can earn with shards and some we can’t? Like we can earn green bunny feng with shards but not Pink?! They’re the same skin why does the pink have to be bought with real money? Rift pass is filled with recolors and charms and recolors of the same charm with only a handful of good skins. And the grind (which I’ll address it in detail later) to get a single character takes so long that it feels like a slap in the face when paired with the other monetization methods. The game at this point needs to go F2P because of the aggressive monetization or cut down on it.
Balance
Balance has always been a hot topic in Dbd and it shows. It’s an asymmetrical power vs pest role game. You know there’s a problem when the pest role becomes the power role. The game is horribly balanced; killers get shafted like wraith or anyone that isn’t Nurse or blight and horribly designed maps for a side, boring/unfun meta, and the horrible solo survivor experience with the only real winner being Swfs. Maps are a issue; you have maps like The game, Farm maps, Badham, Eyrie, and mother’s dwelling that favor survivor hard and make playing killer an unfun experience. You also have maps like shelter woods, midwich,and lerys which make survivor unfun. And then you got maps that nobody likes like RPD and Swamp that suck to play on both sides. Survivors have an edge over killer; most maps help with many ridiculous setups and loops. And their meta is mostly unchanged; DH and and DS are still strong if used in the right situations compared before where there strong in every situation. Also new editions like OTR and the already ridiculous Prove Thyself. And things like items make a massive difference like tool boxes with BnP and just medkits in general. Also gens are at a point where they either fly and the match ends in 5 minutes or never get done at all leading to extremely boring match’s. Solo survivor is a horrible experience like why now are the devs finally thinking about giving more information to solo survivors. The balance is still bad but it was nowhere as bad as it use to be. I think the problem is the devs play it too safe and have their priorities in the wrong place. And that the main issue is the core mechanics of the trial itself; Beginning, middle, and end. Tunneling and camping is a problem since they nerfed the old meta that encouraged killers going for hooks. Gens need different conditions to be repaired and give killers a positive incentive to go for hooks not just negatives. End game needs to be looked at to be more fun exciting and tense. But I have a feeling it’s too late because it would mean restructuring the trial and that would mean changing most killers and perks; the hole is dug to deep.
QOL and Polish
Every release we are met with disappointment either filled with bugs or unfinished or still nothing in sight for the most basic features. Like why is there still no Fov slider, or change the fps cap? Why does Dbd still don’t have the most basic features of asymmetrical Power vs Pest role games? Like tools and mechanics to communicate with our solo queue teammates and single player support. Evolve and Evil Dead came with those day 1 and it took a year for F13 to get single player. Dbd we’re about 7 years in and still none of those two in sight. But hey we are getting more bare minimum features coming like doing survivor and killer archive challenges at the same time…like why was this not in from the start? And of course optimization if your on console or low end PCs you’ll notice really bad fps drops and lag often from the simplest of actions. You think 6 years later this game would run flawlessly but nope it still turns a console into a jet engine. Like if RDR2 can run flawlessly on last gen consoles Dbd should be a cake walk but no its a spaghetti code lagging carnival.
The Grind
The most recent address to the grind is laughable. Sure it helps long time players but let’s be honest most people don’t play this game long everyday. New players and players that don’t play often will still get the short end of the stick. It’s still a chore to get one character to 50 just to get 3 unique perks for one character for all characters just to repeat the process two more times. Why the hell is there still a bloodpoint paywall to prestige? The increase in Bp cap in trials is still very little and the removal of the bp bonus for WGLF and BBQ is just dumb just make it base kit. Prestige is mandatory so you can’t stay at level 50 for two perks and higher rarity stuff. Literally the best thing to do is just remove perk tiers, up the bp cap in trials to 80k, and WGLF and BBQ bp bonus base kit.
The Community
Lastly of course is the community honestly the most toxic gaming community I’ve ever seen. Part of this is from my experience and most is what I’ve observed. This community is so divided, entitled, and just straight up act like children. Hate and toxicity practically every match, sometimes even Death Threats every now and then just because the other side won a video game or play the way they didn’t like. Like this is just pathetic. You can’t appease any side, play nice get BMed, play to win get BMed, play like a jerk get BMed. Like honestly that stuff never gets through my skin but when it happens practically every match you play and even seen this stuff for years you’ll just get sick of it and just don’t even care anymore. Both sides constantly tell people how they should play; survivor portion of the community is particularly egregious in that department with situations like calling killers campers and tunnelers when they haven’t done any of those. Like let people play how they want to play, don’t expect them to value your fun if you don’t value theirs. Literally this community is full of sore winners and sore losers. New players wouldn’t stick around with the problems listed and them getting BMed by a unwelcomeing community. I don’t know if the community will ever change so the hole is dug too deep.
Well that’s all the problems if you read this far. Honestly I don’t see the game ever improving, with the devs poor decision making and the community. The game is running on borrowed time every 3 months. Solo survivor sucks, killer sucks, the game itself is getting stale; idk how much longer the game can go on for. I’m pretty much done with Dbd and will only come back to check out chapter releases for like a day or two then leave; it’s pretty much on its last legs. So that’s the end of that; that’s how I see it anyway, some or many see it differently or think the game is fine and that’s fine. For me I’m pretty much done, I’ll still lurk and watch but I’m done playing the game.
Comments
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Thank you so much for taking the time to write this all out. I am going to specifically respond to the community portion.
I am a survivor main, so forgive my inherent bias, as I stopped playing killer about two years ago (and before then it was only to do rituals and tomes. Now I don't even bother lol). I actually turned off my entire messaging on my platform because of this Dead by Daylight specifically lmao. Simply couldn't take that wince-like feeling of getting a message notification after a bad match ughhhh (mostly from survivor teammates who probably got mad at me for WHATEVER reason). I went through years worth of messages and the vast majority of them were randoms who messaged me very hateful things for various reasons. I used to also be a top ranking Injustice 2 (remained at #2 on the NA leaderboards for many months back in 17/18, shoutout to my Dr. Fate woopwoop!) and Mortal Kombat (#1 for a couple days on MK11). People in those games were just as abusive if not far worse, actually, but I "retired" from those games about two years ago. Awful people will be prevalent everywhere, sadly, and despite DBD's community having a sour reputation, I have personally experienced more venomous hate from Neatherrealm gamers.
What I DO appreciate about this community is once you are able to dismiss and ignore (like I have tried to do) the gross people, Dead By Daylight genuinely has some of the most wholesome, kind, creative, and friendly people. Even some of my friends in real life and I have been able to bond and geek over how much we absolutely love this game despite its blatant issues. The lore, characters, etc... When we want to share in our joy of playing, the good people way outshine the nasty. I'm not immune to feeling awful after interacting with nasty people, which is why I had to adapt by turning messages off. I recognize that's a bandaid fix and shouldn't have to happen in the first place, but it has worked for me! MY biggest issue with the community has been when (mostly in the past) some of the developers (not even close to all!!! I enjoy hearing from many of them!) at BHVR have publicly said very rude/snooty things with a pompous heir to the community, which stirs up an already on-edge group over a game that is not very polished, as you said. THAT's my problem. Fortunately, it hasn't been as bad as it was in the 2020-2021 period, but I'm hoping they get coached better when directly addressing their PAYING player base :) I couldn't begin to imagine the pressure and frustration in their position, because I haven't lived it, but... maybe put a smile on and speak to us like you want to, and not like you HAVE to because your boss said, or like you are bothered to have to explain misleading data. Again, it's been awhile since I've felt that way, but it still happened and it still had/has an impact. Many of the employees at BHVR are a pleasure to see, and when they are actively indicating they are listening with a friendly, open mind, that's all I could ask for, personally! :)
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Great post.
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It's genuinely amazing how I got into this game, playing with a group of friends. I found survivor boring and killer to be fun, then in a few weeks i found both roles fun when i started getting perks to actually make builds, now I've started loathing playing both roles without friends because solo queue is a joke and killer often leads me to wildly unbalanced matches with toxic survivors teabagging and clicking there flashlight during every chase. I have only 335 hours in this game, been playing for about 2 months now, clearly I've dedicated some time to it. Just the other day I get into a lobby with a 9k hour player. THIS SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING. Needless to say i dodged that ######### so fast because why on gods green earth would i subject myself to even the potential of just a massive skill imbalance. Ever since the patch I've seen camping climb substantially and multiple hooks being achieved before survivors even pop a gen. It's tiring to even play now and I think I'm really only going to play with a 3 or 4 man because even duos is too much a slog, if even that is painful I may just uninstall it all together because it's clear BHVR doesn't want to address any way of making the game more fun, because they either don't play their game at all or they think it's only fun if you're winning so hard the other side just wants to give up.
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Spoke well. Definitely one thing I will give this community is that it’s passionate; both killer and survivor. Unfortunately for me the negatives outweigh the positives. It’s pretty difficult to ignore the negatives of the community on a daily basis
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I absolutely hear you, and I'm sorry that is your experience! I wholeheartedly admit having to turn off messaging altogether is problematic and points toward EXACTLY what you say. I do not deny that at all lmao, I just found my own, personal way around it. In-game toxicity is much harder to keep at bay, and when jerks sabotage games in the name of toxicity, it makes me want to step away (really bad since 6.1).
Sadly we can't fix it directly, but cross your fingers that BHVR can continue to listen to the right people and get the game's balance relatively under control. Hopefully if that improves, the community's overall mood will get better?? Wishful thinking :P In the meantime, I hope you can find a way around those negative feelings, because I know they're not fun.
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Im only not playing DBD right now cause Evolve is making a temporary short term comeback albeit slightly. If it fails again I'm back to dbd.
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To your balance portion of your comment:
The maps having “ridiculous set ups” with strong loops is pretty fair imo. Some maps of course are ridiculous and need to be patched but considering more than half of the killer roster is anti loop it’s not that hard to win matches especially with the new 90 second gens. I also don’t get where the “you can’t win as killer” mentality came from. The devs stated that beige the patch the kill rate was 2K. Killer being the “power role” doesn’t really mean anything since as you said SWF are stronger. The devs are full of contradictory statements. If we’re speaking purely balanced killers we’re balanced since it’s literally even killrate. Killers were never the power role. A piece of wood literally stops them on their tracks for a couple seconds and a flashlight can stop a pick up and restart a chase. Now after the patch they’re actually the power one since the killrate is pretty much guaranteed to be 3K.
DH is horrendously bad. The only reason it’s not dead is because from what I’ve seen, killers don’t want to bait it out anymore. It’s super niche and only useful if you weren’t going to make it to the pallet or window then you use E. Compared to SB and Lithe the perk just sucks. It can be good but too many conditions and pretty specific scenario which you could’ve probably avoided with almost any other exhaustion perk.
DS is, and I cannot state this enough, completely and utterly useless. The 3 second timer (actually 2 since it takes 1 second to get off the shoulder) gives you little to no distance. Now take into the fact that ANY mobility or ranged killer is downing instantly before getting to a loop. OTR is not that good. If the killer just decides to hit you off hook then it’s pretty useless. Again mobility and ranged killers are destroying you before you could even make it to loop a lot of the time. OTR only “works” against M1 killers. Bonus points if they run STBFL so that it is impossible to get to a loop.
Prove Thyself is a trap perk. Splitting up and doing gens is always better and faster than doing it together with PT. The perk only gets value in a 3 gen situation which survivors can easily avoid by not being dumb or if the killer has no map pressure. Which in that case you were prolly already going to win. If a killer comes to your gen now he has double the pressure and 2 people aren’t doing gens. If you split up and the killer comes now (theoretically) only 1 person is getting contested and everybody else should be doing a gen. People who run PS are helping the killer. Idk why people can’t see that.
Toolboxes are the 2nd worst item in the game lol. Maybe a map takes it but it’s only good with Built to Last and a sled tic build to preserve charge. Yea they help gens go faster but it is not a significant amount unless you have BNP. Which is not even THAT bad. It’s an iri add on. Compare that to Alchemist Ring, Rusty Shackles, Infinite tier 3 Myers, Mother Daughter ring, BNP is might as well be common. (Not trying to create an us vs them mentality) Medkits 100% should be patched and cap the healing speed on them. Completely busted. But if you’re really having trouble with medkits go Plauge or Legion and run a build. Hell half my matches are against Thana Sloppy Legions. A lot of slowdown with healing which you force them to mend. 2 birds with 1 stone.
SoloQ has no edge over killer lol. This game is SWF sided. Every killer main who plays SoloQ and every streamer will tell you SoloQ is the weakest role in the game. SoloQ is also the majority of the player base. Just saying.
Unfortunately the devs don’t care about hooks. Their MMR only calculates your “skill” based on kills. They’re extremely inept and don’t even know how to calculate a players skill. Escapes and kills nothing else in between matters according to them.
Endgame is pretty exciting if someone goes down. Odds are the killer has already killer someone by then so you and your other teammate have to formulate a plan on how ti save your other teammate. If they didn’t kill some one then it’s pretty much a guarantee loss unless it’s a ranged killer, high mobility killer, or Bubba who can Facecamp extremely easily. Can’t really make it more exciting as it’s either a total loss or win for the survivors. The only in between as what I mentioned above.
The Community:
I agree with all of it. But if you don’t want to see death threats. Don’t look at end game chat or open the messages. It’s not that hard. Just go on to your next game and don’t open or read the messages that come your way. If you look or stay in endgame chat it’s because you want to see it. A part of you likes seeing the toxicity happen to you. Not defending the actions of the entitled part in any way but it so easily mitigated by not feeding into their responses? Just ignore them. If you don’t that’s on you lol. It’s not hard to not open a message.
The problem is that a lot of tunneling and camping killers don’t like SWF and complain to end about them. Extremely hypocritical to facecamp as Bubba at 5 gens then complain about SWF while ignoring your own ######### playstyle.
And onto that point no lol. You bought the game yes but face camping at 5 gens is unfun for both parties. That should not be allowed as A) the person on the hook is dead and B) Nobody is playing the game in a fun way. Hold M1 the entire game and the killer gets a guaranteed 2K depending on how fast he gets the down. And beacuse of MMR the killer gets rewarded. By that logic people should be able to send death threats as they bought the PC/console and the wifi necessary thus they should be able to send whatever they want.
Survior BM is so bad lol. “Oh no he did a crouch animation GRRR” “Oh no he’s spamming Flashlight wasting charge and not getting more distance GRR”. The only bad BM is chat messages which you could just not look at or leave after the match. Now compare that to killer BM. “I’m getting facecamped at 5 gens. Well there goes this match” “I’m getting tunneled, well there goes this match can’t do anything.” “He’s body blocking me and I can’t get out of this spot. Will there goes this match.” Survivors are more toxic but most of the time it helps the killer. People just have massive ego’s. Especially killers, during OTZ’s 50 win streaks if he loses 1 match the chat suddenly think survivors is completely busted and want 1,000 nerfs to the lol. It’s crazy that people can complain about a person losing 1 match even thought they ultimately get 50 win streaks in a row. They also say things like, “I don’t know I could’ve done” while they constantly miss their power and make predictable mindgames. Survivors are very whiny since a lot of them ARE kids lol. If they don’t win they throw a hissy fit. You’re not allowed to hook someone in the same map as them!!! And then they loop in front of a hooked teammate and call you a camper. In general survivors are more entitled but the solution is to ignore them. You can’t ignore a face camping Bubba. Or a Spirit tunneling you. You’re just dead lol. When survivors BM you can win. When killers BM good luck. They also use tunneling and camping as a “valid strategy” yet when someone goes SWF with 4 BNP they suddenly don’t like valid strategy lol. “Only I can play sweaty and scummy” which goes for both sides of the spectrum.
Overall tho you’re dead on.
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