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I don't fear the Killer--and that's a good thing
When I first started playing DBD a few years ago, it was genuinely scary. When I heard the terror radius, I "Claudette Powers Activated!" my butt into a bush and hid (oh, the days of super dark maps . . .). But as the story goes, that fear lessened over time. And that's a good thing. Because doing that every game would make the game go stale, and luckily, because this game is asymmetrical, something better happened. DBD turned into a battle of wits.
Today, occasionally meeting a Killer who really makes my heart race and send me back to those earlier days, has given me some truly exciting and nail biting games. But if every game was like that, DBD would've died because that thrill cannot last (human brains are wired to adapt). You can't be scared/highly stressed every game. Something more sustainable has to be experienced instead.
Do you remember being a kid and playing hide and go seek? You tried figuring out where the best hiding spot would be (no matter if you were the hider or the seeker), and if you thought you were gonna get caught (or catch someone), that's when the burst of adrenaline kicked in. There'd be squealing, screaming, and an attempt to run as fast as you could. That's kinda what DBD is now. It's sometimes focused, like a game of chess; it's sometimes exciting, like hide and go seek. But no where in those situations am I perpetually afraid.
You Killers are faster. You have weapons. You have abilities. You have only yourself to rely upon. You are the power role, but that doesn't mean my role is to be submissive, weak or afraid. My role is to challenge you, to see if your weapons and speed are enough to beat my mind. It is a battle of wits. It's a battle of who can think faster in the moment. You are Goliath, and I am hopefully David. Goliath beat most, but David still won.
That is DBD, at its best, for me.
What is DBD, at its best, for you?
Comments
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For me dbd at its best isn't necessarily about fear but really close games where it feels it could go either way for most of the match, which is still pretty tense
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matches that feel fair from the moment they begin
map offerings usually hamper this tbh
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I still (mildly) have arachnophobia. It used to be a lot worse lol But if I see a giant spider (like those ones in Australia)--that's a huge nope! I can kinda handle a tarantula. I'll keep my distance, but THIS.....? NO!
I'd probably hate a giant spider-like creature in DBD, but I can at least handle that lol
(By the way, for some reason, this is the only way I can attach the link. At least on my end, you have to right click and open the link in a new tab to open it. Maybe it's because I don't have a tiktok account, but it fails to link properly if I try to "share" it.)
Post edited by AshInTheTallGrass on1 -
I blame my mother for my arachnophobia, lol
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lol why? what did she do?
(I blame the movie Arachnophobia for mine. I was wayyyyy too little when I first saw that movie).
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Oh it's just whenever she freaked out at a spider, she would scream and stuff, and my small child brain was like "oh no" lol
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oh hahaha I thought there was some really traumatic story behind it lol But nope, good ole classic conditioning!
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I will be sure to dump giant spiders on my kid when they are young so that they will have a more interesting story to tell than TotemSeeker91. Mods, this goes without saying, but I am joking, or am I? You never know!
Anyways, I always wanted a pet tarantula. Just thought I would mention it because this topic will probably never be relevant again. Oh, and a spider killer, a sexy one. Get on it, DBD devs.
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Sea of Thieves. Or maybe DayZ.
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Sexy and . . . uh . . . spider Killer . . . don't uh . . . don't really mesh
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Widowmaker from Overwatch is, well, sorta modelled after a black widow.
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lol I had to google that to see what you meant. It's only her helmet 😂😂
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Map design in general hamper this.
Offerings just make it worse.
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Due to the fact that it's a "Horror" Game, it lacks a foundational aspect of Horror since all of the reworks. I remember back in version 1.0.X when the maps were dark and you felt like an actual survivor. Now it feels more like a playground
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This is literally the worst version of Dead By Daylight to me.
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You're welcome to your own opinion.
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Yeah it's definitely different (even from when I started playing), but I still play because I enjoy the competitiveness. Is it playground-esque? Yeah. I'm fine with that though. And it's also okay if you're not fine with it.
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Thank you, Captain Obvious.
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Does your sarcasm make you feel good? I politely and respectfully ackowledged that you have a right to a different opinion, and that I don't feel that "I'm clearly right and I must debate you." I did nothing to you. And I don't deserve your attitude.
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I think the only thing that still scares me is scratched Myers or a playful insidious Bubba. You can't really retain the fear when you have played against killers numerous times. I wasn't around for dredges release so when I came back, that fear returned the first few times i faced him because I had no idea what to do or what the heck just jumped out of the locker!!
Killers that I recognize to be playing pretty damn good, do put me a little more on edge, but most of my anxiety these days stems from avoiding three gens and wondering whether my generator is going to randomly blow up in my face lol. This doesn't diminish the game for me in any way since I'm still playing 4 years later.
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Occasionally, I do still get a good jumpscare from a scratched mirror Myers lol Those are always great 😂
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You never forget your first scratched mirror gen grab...i may have peed a little :D
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I don't need a post to tell me I can have an opinion. It's a forum. It's implied.
As for the "idea", there is nothing worse about Dead By Daylight than reductively turning the game into nothing but looping. It is not a game objective, and the way it is presently designed far too many survivors want to get into chases "because that is the only fun part of the game", and refuse to do gens. So more survivors die, and then blame killers for being oppressive.
The game was at its best during the high Fog years, where tension was built. Instead we now just run around the same pickup truck as many times as we can milk it for before dropping a pallet and then going to the next tile.
And we call this "a battle of wits".
Okay, pal.
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hahaha you win, you've got me beat on that one 😂
I think at worst, I've scared my cat from shouting and flinching when I got grabbed lol
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From a psychological point of view, in the new environment (people start to play a new game) people first and foremost paying attention to the atmosphere, which is on certain maps are pretty dark, gloomy, scary. Behaviour really nailed it.
Add to that atmosphere a TR (Terror Radius), and this is pretty much the combination to make the player be afraid and alarmed. Not to mention the genuine ubnormal look of some killer characters.
But people get used to any environment if they spend a lot of time in this environment, and fear is practically go away itself.
Aside from as you said "Tension".=) Tense of being chased is something that people not getting used to, it's more like an emotion they experience on a regular basis. Plus survivors just wants to outplay a killer in simple words. This is exactly why this game is not getting boring even for the most experienced and old players. Some players are actually addicted to this game, don't forget. =)
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I agree 👍
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For me I would love a Mix of Witts and Fear. Like I get the Witts right? But this is a "Horror Game" or lets say a "Horror Museum" like the devs call it.
The lighting update was horrid, like the texture updates are good and all but every map seems like its too bright even with the reworked textures.
And getting slammed with 60 Pallets per map (due to poor Map Design/Spawns) doesnt really make the "killer" feel like a "Killer".
I feel like the Fear Factor and Power Factor for killers need to return in a way where if survivors do use their witts that they'd survive way more instead of running to 10 god pallets that spawned in the same area making the Killer powerless.
Like Teir 3 Myers was SCARY until 60 Pallets ruined that.
So Idk.. I feel like a mix of the 2 would make the game feel perfect.
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Here is the thing I have, at a top level, in a David v Goliath situation, what happens if David keeps winning over and over? The game becomes unfun for the Goliath.
What I believe is happening, which is entirely speculation (so take it with a grain of salt), that DBD was having a lot of killer players leave the game way back when, mostly high MMR players, because the game was unfun and heavily unbalanced. Certain playstyles were also completely destroyed and everyone on both sides were forced to use meta so things became stale super quick. A lot of the players were originally leaving because of this. With MMR, this feed into the "MMR Meat Grinder", where there weren't enough high MMR killer players, so high MMR survivors were facing mid MMR killers, thus causing them to leave from frustrating, so on and so forth.
Now that the mid-chapter patch was released, a lot of the strong survivor perks got hit hard as well as there being slight basekit changes to put things into the killer's favor. Im not going to sit here and act like it wasn't a killer-sided patch, but it was definitely needed for game balance. However, I feel as if people dont really understand how much of an effect it had upon the game. High MMR players adapted quick easily, mainly the SWFs at high MMR, and a lot of high MMR killers came back to the game. But low MMR players and SoloQ took the hugest hit with the update, not to say winning is impossible for them, but it really made things a lot more difficult.
Frankly I do not think there is a way to balance the game that will make people happy. If you go for 50% kill-rate/escape-rate across all skill levels, killers struggle at high MMR. If you go for a 50% kill-rate/escape-rate only for the highest possible skill levels, then low MMR and SoloQ struggle. It's a tough decision for BHVR to make and will only result in people getting upset now matter what they do.
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Absolutely. My thrill comes from being David. If David is Goliath, then the thrill is not the same.
Now, why is David beating Goliath? Well, that's more complicated. Sometimes it simply is that David was the better player. And there are many people who cannot accept that. I've played with them, I've played against them. I've had to stop playing with those people or stop watching them (Survivor and Killer).
Some people's temperaments are very unsteady. They cannot handle loss. They cannot handle being outplayed. They cannot handle making a mistake or take any accountability for mistakes. If things don't go their way, they blame everyone but themselves, even if there is no one else to blame. For those types of people, it's not even a David or Goliath situation. It's like a kid playing with army men and just smacking them all with his hand and instantly "winning" the war. I'm not interested in that, or in balancing a game around people like that.
So yeah, you're right, there is no one universal way to make the game fun. But that's not something BHVR needs to worry about. Not everything is for everyone, and that's okay. (I'm not saying you think BHVR has to worry about that or do that, I'm just making that point to anyone reading this comment). To me, all BHVR needs to do is keep the game fun for the majority of the playerbase. And when I play, my fun comes from feeling like David. That's what makes me want to keep playing. For David to be David, it has to be a battle of wits. He can't be as strong as Goliath, but he does need tools to give him a chance to truly challenge Goliath. How that specifically plays out, well, therein lies the dilemma.
(All of this is moot when I'm memeing though. Then I don't care at all lol It's just goofing off).
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I hear ya.
Regarding map lighting, one thing that I find bizarre is the extreme difference between how the maps can appear on different platforms. I understand some differences are fine because that's the nature of the machines themselves. But take a look at this. This is far too extreme. Take a look especially at the last photo, the side by side comparison.
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/341101/edit-why-does-goj-look-so-different#latest
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In my first days I would tend to scream in panic in the chase and I couldn't think of where to go exactly.
I've gotten used to almost everything now, but sometimes I'm under pressure in situations where I'm injured and the heartbeat is getting louder. There's always adrenaline once in a few games and I'm looking for more of that.
I just wish to have fun games again and if we can ask, scarier maps.
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I hope your games are more like that, going forward ❤️
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Thank you, same for you 💙💜
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Just a reminder to keep things on topic and leave personal attacks out of the discussion. There are few comments on the first page that get unnecessarily personal. Let's please have the discussion center on the game, not the players.
Thanks!
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For me, there will always some form of fear, even if it's only something as weak as apprehension, or the nerves of where Myers is lurking. Humans will naturally adapt to the regular patterns - like with P.T., when that first came out it was the epitome of fear for me, and now those videos have little effect. And honestly, I miss that.
There's always a need for some fear, but constant, unending fear is (as you rightly say) not capable in humans (certainly in terms of video games) as people just adapt.
The best horror or survival conveys mixes of emotion. The best trials I've had have had elements of fear, suspense, humour and action, but also tension of facing a tough opponent.
I like your take on it, and whilst for me I'd like to always have some fear involved (just a personal choice) it is absolutely right to say this is a battle of wits. The game has more compexities and random than it's given credit for.
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Well said. Some of the best matches in DBD have a mix of all the elements you described. Thanks for commenting.
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