"If it ain't broke, break it!"
I've noticed a pattern with DbD's updates over the years. While the game has had glaring issues that actively hamper the experience of players, (Performance problems, bloodpoint grind, bad map design), the devs decided to change things that absolutely no one asked for. Here's a list of the things that I can remember being unnecessarily changed just off the top of my head, in no particular order.
- Adding the overheat mechanic to Hillbilly instead of just nerfing his charge speed add-ons.
- Redoing survivor animations.
- Redoing Doctor's face (His cosmetic images still haven't been updated yet).
- Redoing Trapper's mask (But not changing the loading splash screen with the OG mask being used).
- Making PWYF tokens consumed when killers perform non-lethal actions (Such as Clown's bottles).
- Removing all survivor face cosmetics from Leatherface.
- Moving two lockers in the house in Garden of Joy making it safer when playing against Dredge.
- Adding a cost to resetting your bloodweb level after you reach level 50.
- Changing Blight's "Soul Chemical" add-on to a skillcheck gimmick.
- Making it so running Blastmine and Repressed Alliance forces you to activate both of them at the same time when repairing a gen.
- Nerfing Selfcare.
- Reducing totem blessing and cleansing speed whilst using Calm Spirit.
- Nerfing Mettle of Man (How is this even real?).
- Removing the exhausted effect from one of Clown's add-ons.
- Removing the exhausted effect from one of Doctor's add-ons.
And these are just the things I can remember. Behaviour really needs to take a look internally and reprioritise what exactly their goals are when developing this game. Because sometimes it seems like they have no idea what they're doing and are just making changes for the sake of it.
EDIT: Some more things I remembered
16. Massively reducing the noise made by running survivors.
17. Changing the in-game UI.
18. Changing the main menu UI.
19. Making survivors in a cage of torment teleport away if Pyramid Head gets too close (And not updating his power description after the fact).
20. Adding in loud chase music for certain killers that makes tracking survivors much harder.
21. Giving certain killers "meme add-ons" that do nothing but make playing them harder.
22. Adding in a perk to counter boon totems instead of making the ability base-kit for killers.
23. Nerfing Ruin's regression speed to 100%.
24. Making the area behind the main building in Eyrie of Crows much safer
25. Making Huntress Lullaby not interact with Pig's jigsaw boxes because somebody couldn't hit skillchecks
Comments
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I don't really understand this criticism that changes are "unnecessary" or that "nobody asked for them". Why does that matter? Nobody complains about unexpected changes if they're positive, it clearly isn't actually a problem.
Also, some of these absolutely, categorically were asked for, or were part of a larger suite of changes that people asked for.
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100% agree.
Though I can't remember Doc having an exhaustion addon.
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Most of these changes are knee jerk reactions to complaints by survivors who don't want to deal with certain mechanics. self care didn't need a nerf. i can't remember the last time i've seen that perk used while playing survivor or killer. idk what data the devs reviewed to make this decision. if they are seeing it at high level like they said, i suggest that's b/c those are players who are hacking to add hidden perks onto their build.
long story short, the explanations for a lot of sudden changes don't match what is actually seen in the matches.
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This was before he was reworked he had a addon where at madness 3 you suffer exhaustion until you snap out of it.
it was removed cause they didn’t want to make exhaustion addons anymore.
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Ahh, thank you.
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The one I really dislike, is the removal of the BP bonus with BBQ and WGLF. That's such an unneeded change, since the grind for new players is still as bad as it is.
Yes, sure you get the perks on everyone when you P3 them. But to get P3 the grind is still abysmal.
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Just FYI there were a lot of complaints about Leatherface’s cosmetics.
Also despite the common myth on the forum, Self Care was overly used at all levels of play, including really high MMR. It just had a bad reputation on the forums because people misused it also, but that’s like saying Nurse is a bad killer because a lot of people play her badly. When used properly Self Care was a lot better than some people think.
That said I do agree that sometimes they make changes which seem overly complicated for what they’re trying to actually achieve. The Hillbilly overheat thing for instance feels unnecessary, they wanted to tone him down but in the process I guess they thought “hey, this is a chance to add something interesting too!” But really all it did was make the power a bit more cumbersome, there’s something to be said for keeping things streamlined.
Another example of overcomplication in my opinion is Coup De Grace. This is a perk that would be totally fine if it were just a simple line that says “Increases your lunge range by +X%”. Easy peasy, great! Instead they went with this convoluted system where it gains tokens when generators are completed and then spent when you try and do a lunge for … no reason? Like why is it even something that’s tied to generators in the first place? It’s extra mechanisms in the functionality that don’t need to be there.
Sometimes I think they forget that “less is more” works. Even with Clown, for example, they added this whole Yellow bottle thing instead of just, say, making him move 5% faster at base speed. I honestly can’t say Clown is actually more fun to play with that extra game mechanic included versus hypothetically just buffing his base speed a bit and just having the pink bottles. And I say that as someone who actually does use the Yellow bottles because they do help him. It’s not that they’re ineffective, it’s that there was probably a simpler way to get to the same goal.
Anyway I’m not trying to bash the devs here, on the whole I think the big midchapter patch is great for instance. 🙂 I’m mainly nit picking at small things I look at and think “why did they add this extra complication?” Personally, for instance, I’m perfectly ok with a killer who is just a simple, basic chaser with an easy to use and understand ability. I don’t need extra things added to them to make them “more interesting”, I just need them to be good enough in chases and such to be able to win games if I play well.
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Pinhead, Artist, and Dredge have exhaustion addons. Ghostface's addon rework gave him an exhaustion addons.
I wouldn't say the devs didn't want to make exhaustion addons. It's just the older exhaustion addon design inflicted long lasting exhaustion and the devs didn't want that anymore since exhaustion had seen nerfs since it's release.
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Ah, there is something you are forgetting:
Nerfing Freddy one week, ONE WEEK, after his release.
That was so freaking dumb, that to this day I struggle to believe it actually happened. And I am more dedicated to Old DBD than anyone else.
All BHVR do is take, take, TAKE, and they never give anything. And who knows, maybe it is your favorite thing they are going to butcher next!
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We got free iri shards from the LF faces removal so it wasn't really a bad thing, plus some people were genuinely being targeted.
Also:
- Torn bookmark buff
- Reworking coldwind just to make farm maps somehow even worse to play on (more of a "its broken, lets break it even more" kinda thing)
- Adding breakable walls to incredibly unnecessary places (looking at you groaning and ironworks)
- Nerfing freddys base kit
While 6.1.0 was good, 6.1.2 just feels like a big leap backwards. Especially since the solution to thana was just nerfing it by 1 or 1.5%
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When you P1 them, then it's just a matter of leveling up that perk ON THAT SURVIVOR
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True they are butchering this game, imagine if they just nerfed dead hard then observe kill rates for a while instead of destroying solo q
and 6.2 is an actual joke buffing the most boring combo PR/DMS back to relevancy ? then give us self-care, botany, iron will and DS back, what are you even doing ?
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clown's bottles never consumed pwyf tokens?
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For every good change, they make three to five bad changes. Just par for the course with this game.
What truly baffles me is they nerfed Billy, and then made a killer (Blight) who is better than Billy ever was in every conceivable way. It's just mind-boggling. Truly.
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I love how launch freddy wasn’t even OP and he got nerfed too, I miss that guy
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Exactly!
That situation was so dumb, that for a very long time it was the one Old DBD mystery I could not solve.
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we thought that breakable walls would be an new addition to reduce safer loops in cost of time (like opening a space between shack or T and L walls.
What we got is that breakable walls are map based and in some places that you NEED to break them no choices made, to be able to play, or go through (macmillian has 2 doors on the upper floor of main one to enter the room and the other to get out without jumping the window
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Old Doctor who needed to switch between M1 and M2 mode had a purple Add-on called "Obedience - Carter's Notes"
It made you exhausted while in Madness Tier 3 and made the "Snap out of it" Action take 2 seconds longer.
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Yep that’s exactly why. Huntress still has her exhaustion but it’s only 5 seconds. Clown got his removed
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About #5: a while ago I saw someone win a comp game with pwyf on iri fang pinhead, because iri fang could guarantee an injury without consuming pwyf stacks. I think that's the kind of synergy that the devs don't want for the perk, and that's why they changed it
I agree with everything else tho lol
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They balance through Chaos. One game's bad rng is offset by another game's good rng. They will always have objectively bad things they refuse to fix, while having objectively good thing that will be destroyed, "just to mix it up." They don't see metas as a symptom of poor game design, they just see them as another opportunity to shake the ant colony.
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I feel like they rely way too much on stats and numbers and most of the devs are not even playing their own game.
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The problem is when that "objectively good thing that will be destroyed" happens to be your favorite thing in the game.
No one likes that.
No one should have to go through that.
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oh I know, and I've tried to be a voice in that as well. The bottom line is that they just don't care about constructive feedback, and there will never be rhyme and reason to their design choices.
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Unfortunately so, yes.
You know things are bad when you can say that weird and unnecessary changes are a common thing.
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Some of these changes werent bad in the long run. The new animations look better although it took a lot of time to adjust. Doctor's/Trapper's new faces is just stretching it since Dbd wants to stay updated with it's graphics. The Leatherface awards probably shouldnt have been a thing in the first place to be honest.
Not saying this list is entirely wrong. It has a few good points. Want to point out that not literally every change was for the worst during the past year. Trapper has two traps now. Legion/GF got buffed. Dredge exists.
I understand where youre coming from but not all of it is negative like holy #########.
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W post
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The old survivor animations were really bad and I'm glad they're gone
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A game having a meta isn't a symptom of poor game design, it's just a natural facet of having things to balance at all. Players are always going to use the strongest or most convenient tools available more than anything else, that's not something that any game dev team could hope to stop, and nor should they want to.
A game's meta is a problem when there's something about it that's unhealthy or unfun, not when it exists.
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Proper balance shouldn't have a set meta, because everything feels viable. Take a look at well balanced fighting games, the "meta" is generally based on skill floors more than anything, its people gravitating to who is easiest to be the most successful with. Technical characters are never meta but they are often as strong as (or stronger than) their easier alternatives. I should have probably clarified I meant a meta like this game has, in that its so horribly out of balance the meta was an attempt at a stabilization response.
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Everything may feel viable, but it almost certainly won't all feel equally viable, and that's where the meta forms. If your take is that not running meta stuff shouldn't be a huge disadvantage, then I certainly agree with you, but there's a world of difference between that and saying that a meta is a symptom of poor game design.
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Though while the removal of exhaustion addons from Doctor and Clown and getting rid of LF's masks were asked for, most of these things were unnecessarily changed. While some of them were solely changed to be on-par with other aspects of the game, like Doctor and Trapper getting redesigned and Survivors getting their models updated, most of them were uncalled for.
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And not only many things were uncalled for, they were also forced upon us.
Think of Battlefront 2, for example. Not the absolute best game in the world, but when they changed the default appearance of two of their units they've kept the old visual there, giving you the option to choose.
This is not difficult to do, and DBD could have done that for several of its unnecessary changes.
But they didn't, which is extremely disappointing.
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Again, disagree, but only because i've played games that have managed to toe that line. Admittedly its few and far between, in which case yes, there will generally always be some type of meta. That level of balance is rarely considered or attempted in most games, and more often is relied upon instead, which is why i consider it bad game design.
You could even throw the question all the way back to games like Doom, "Why would I use the pistol when the chaingun does the exact same thing, but more efficiently?" The pistol therefore becomes bad design due to obsolesence, the meta of replacing it with the chaingun being a no brainer. Likewise you could go to the inclusion of the Super Shotgun in Doom 2 as being "good meta," as it was an improvement on previous balance in the player's favor, but even then you will find many who feel it invalidated half the weapons by that same obsolescence.
Metas are supposed to be approached by taking the reason they form, and correcting that. The ideal should always be that no meta should ever form because nobody should feel specific tools or options are required. It seems like an impossible consideration with DBD especially because the game is focused on balance by chaos, basically like a roguelike. Its also why its meta is always the worst kind, because its usually players trying to minimize the things they feel are beyond their control rather than what they want at the time.
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I really miss the DBD that I started playing in 2019, I would take it back in a heartbeat, old mori's/old hatch and all.
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I like how you think :)
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I just feel like the game is slowly losing its way, it has always been buggy, but at least back then it had style.
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I know how that is.
I am proud to call myself the most old fashioned player in the history of Dead by Daylight. I really, REALLY miss the old game.
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are you still mad about the masks holy
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love how the person writes a whole post about random changes and you zero in on one thing they must be "mad" about. You don't have a point and just wanna try and pass off their post as an "angry player"
In respect to the OP, there isn't a reason other than "this is what we have prepared" I'm sure. I believe, given the random changes that are either inconsequential or reactionary to recent changes, that BHVR internally acts much similar to Valve in the sense that Devs can just kinda do what they want with there work time they liberally apply it to whatever they want to, dropping things and picking up things sporadically, resulting in random things being completed that have no cohesion to the main bulk of the game's current state. If the mess hits the fan they have to pounce on it quick or employees may suffer a work burnout, and they simultaneously risk players leaving but that's considered less important to the bottom line of just keeping the stream of content flowing. There's always people who return when something new comes out or an event starts so they have to make sure these things exist at the very least and actually work as a secondary objective.
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the leatherface masks were removed for a good reason
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