Is Dbd a "pay to win" game? My answer is...

Accesing the best stuff earlier is still p2w. I could play nurse as a new player, but without some meta perks (which many happen to be licensed), I will be on a considerable disadvantage to another player who buys those characters for easier access to perk.

I can currently theoretically unlock hyperfocus (not ENTIRELY behind a paywall). But the question is: considering I'll probably have to wait 2 years to, won't I be at a disadvantage to someone who simply bought the dlc?

And to bring my point again: if nurse would be nerfed, what would happen then? Blight, spirit, aritst, plague, oni, ph, etc are all paid. Huntress, the next best free killer after nurse, comes behind many paywall ocs and even licensed characters. Isn't that p2w?

The funniest thing about this argument is it can be debunked with one game series... Mortal Kombat/Injustice. It is literally a game you pay to buy comes with a roster of fighters, and then they release DLC which costs extra not only bringing in additional characters licenced from outside their game, but you also have to pay for extra characters that they hold the licence to, like when they put MK characters in Injustice and vice versa, or when they add additional DC characters into Injustice.

There is a development cost involved in creating content, and you have been spoiled by the fact that there is an in game way to unlock content instead of having to buy it outright.

There is zero requirement to buy any licensed characters for perks or otherwise to allow you to have good chance at winning.

Theoretically, most of the content is free, so I'm not sure it's pay-to-win, but there's definitely a two-tiered system where the experience for "free" players (or, you know, players who only bought the base game) is deliberately a lot more tedious and draining than the experience for players who pay to accelerate the process of collecting characters, perks, and cosmetics.

There is such a thing as games where all of the abilities / character classes are unlocked by default, and you're just collecting emotes and cosmetics -- this is not like that. It's somewhere in between a system where everything's available and one where it's all behind a paywall.

I mean I just bought every killer in the sale on a new account for like £40 and the game cost £5 so I really can't see how you could class a game that costs less than a new premium title pay to win.

Maybe it's just the fact that I've been playing mmorpgs on and off for years and seen people literally spend thousands of £££s in real p2w games, but I really can't see why a game that costs so little would be p2w. You wouldn't even need to buy all the killers for meta perks you could probably get away with 5 purchased killers to unlock every perk you need to play the game at the highest level. So you're looking at like £20 (including the game cost) in the sale to do this. It's hardly a number that is outwith probably 95% of the playerbase.

The fact that you can use in game currency earned through playing to purchase said killers/survivors would also make it pay for convenience (unlock things faster) over p2w, but I wouldn't even put it in that category because it costs so little in both aspects (money or time played).

Any game with any elements that effect gameplay that can be brought is pay to win. It's more of an argument on how p2w it is, which dbd isn't that p2w at all in my opinion

This game is far from pay to win.Try a mobile game after $1000s of dollars it's my pleasure to pay DBD for anything really and most of the perks that are paid other then bbq & chilli aren't really that great.

P2W isn't about total dollars spent, its about locking balance behind a pay gate. Thats why this game toes the line so precariously, as it is not P2W by most standard definitions, but its nuances start to push it over the line very easily. As others have stated, by paying up front you are always putting yourself at an advantageous situation above others who don't (whether it be due to time to unlock, current meta, or synergy necessity) but "the best" option is free. It doesn't matter that nurse is arguibly the least accessible killer in the game, she's the most available so clearly everything is ok. It doesn't matter that the CoB/Overcharge synergy got "solved" by nerfing overcharge and leaving CoB untouched, Ruin and Corrupt getting bottomed out in favor of Eruption and Deadlock, these things still don't cross the most strict definition of p2w.

But boy are they trying to.

Blight, Spirit, Plague etc are all paid. The option of shards isn't favorable for your point, since that requires either grind or paying to skip the grind. And when the grind is required to win (as in, the best killers with a now nerfed nurse is a paid one), skipping it is p2w.

And for the record, perks can win you games. It's not that they are required for winning, but they provide an advantage. P2W isn't solely about being impossible to win without paying, it's also about paying providing an advantage.

The DLC for this game is so cheap and goes on sale pretty often. I know everyone isn't in a position to drop money on this game everytime a new chapter comes out, but when (the nearly monthly) sale for this game happens, you can get the older chapters, like the Halloween Licensed Chapter for $3.50 which comes with a Killer and a Survivor, it's even cheaper for the chapters that come with one. That's less than a quesadilla at Taco Bell. It's just hard for me to see how most people over the age of 18 would struggle to get together 4 dollars every few months.

I think that's a bit of a grimy way to think about it. Many of the strongest perks are paywalled off and not everyone plays killer or is going to play the same killer in every game, in which the rest of the strongest killers are also paywalled.

This game is definitely pay to win to an extent and I don't really get why we pretend it isn't TBH.

This is not a pay to win game due to the shrine of secrets alone. You get rewarded in dbd the more you play and the more you want to learn on how to actually play the game on both sides.

Yea, I swear it's like everyone wants to scream pay to win the second a game has any kind of additional DLC or something. Hell, people call another game I play Pay to Win even though it's mostly a PvE game and even then, the PvP aspects of the game levels are boosted to match up. The only thing you pay extra for beyond the ongoing PvE content is cosmetics... So basically it would be like if DBD just gave every killer free including licensed killers, their only money from cosmetics, and people would still say its pay to win.. cause uh.... I need this certain outfit to hide from the killer.

P2W isn't exclusively locking wins behind a paywall. It is also granting advantages in gameplay to people who paid. If they were to make trapper the only killer unpaid, by your definition, it wouldn't be p2w, because you can still 4k as trapper.

Also, when characters granting you a power that makes you more likely to win are locked behind either a tedious grind or a paywall, that is also p2w. You can't possibly say that in the hypothetical scenario of Nurse being paid, a new player who pays for her will not have bigger chances to win than another new player who doesn't pay for her and instead grinds for hours.

Its kinda sad that the concept has been so abused in other games that people have been continuously shifting the goalposts to what is and isn't p2w. There is no concrete definition of the term in any major dictionary, its usage is colloquial by nature. The majority of people's specific definitions of it are all equally valid, as the only established constant behind them is to have a paywall be an aspect in game balance. Whether it be temporary/mandatory, subtle/egregious, unlockable/purchasable, as a concept it has had applications in all of these fields. The underlying factor is that the end user is encouraged to spend money to create/keep/maintain an advantage over not spending money.

Most people are right when they say that DBD is/isn't P2W, since the term has no strict established definition, yet most arguments both for and against it are consistent with how the term has (and continues to be) applied to many other games. The real concern is that since it does have some valid arguments based on the usage of the term, it is thus toeing the line in the eyes of how its practices are received by the userbase. Even when things aren't as bad as they are in many other games (and again, there are only a handful of problematic concerns imo) it will inevitibly cause the end user to make the comparisons and start conflating business practices. "it might not be as bad as dungeon keeper, but its still worse than league of legends" and so on.

Also the financial shaming is pretty gross if I'm honest. A few bucks might not mean much to a lot of people, but to others they might have already cut out a lot of their excess spending and are playing games like DBD specifically because they don't have additional funds to purchase other games or additional content. The reason why paid cosmetics paired with free content updates is such a well received metric is because it allows the end user to support games financially on their own terms, not forced ones. Someone who may have spent plenty on DLCs and skins in the past when having more stable income may not have the spare funds to keep up with the current viable meta now.

Nobody should be hiding behind a non-existant definition saying it either is or isn't p2w. The important thing is for both sides of the argument to step back and consider the business practices involved as to why people would think one way or the other, and consider their grievences and reassurances on equal terms.

But the data shows she is not. Unless you agree that the data might be flawed there.

If that is the case, when are fixing SWF and Top tier 0.01% survivors?

Damn, nice aggressivity, didn't know a different pov can hurt you so much.

You also missed my point entirely, I literally didn't speak about difficulty at all.

Unless I can't read, that's pretty much what YOU said.

And pay to skip grind is another breed of p2w. For dbd, it's not as bad of one, but look at a game like clash royale as I said in an older comment. You could 100% win without op characters and you could 100% unlock all the characters by playing. But because of the grind being so tedious and based on luck, people who just spent thousands got everything right off the bat and dominated f2p players.

Since by your logic, p2 skip grind isn't p2w, a game like CR isn't p2w either.

It's not that dbd has as strong of a p2w mechanic as other games, but it is there mostly in the form of perks. Many, but MANY VERY usefull or outright op perks are locked behind a paywall. The shrine is also not even close to a "fix". The 4 perks rotation worked when there were 33 perks as when it was released. With the current hundreds of perks it's extremely stupid. It's been over 2 years since SH and we've had no Soul Guard in shrine (a good perk). Over an year and no lethal pursuer and I'm not sure about eruption (very good perks). Before the nerf, BBQ had appeared like 3 times (meta perk)

Those were just some mere examples. They absolutely should rework the shrine. Currently it's a disastrous counter to p2w and buying anything from it is a scam.

Lazy? Maybe think about how I don't have TIME to play to earn those things? Most people out there have jobs, school, family etc.

Also, for the record

For my country, that is more than half what a better than average salary worker is paid a month. And a better than average salary is barely enough to live with current prices.

I honestly do not think it is pay to win.

Play to win is a concept that is very much a given in any game. I played free only for the most time and only bought perks from the shrine and I was doing fine.

The best survivor perks are on the free survivors: Dead Hard, Sprint Burst, Adrenaline, Borrow Time and UnbreakaBill. Also there are now many "free" perks that are pretty good too: Kindred, Spine Chill and We`ll make it.

Sure it takes some grind, but especially after the latest changes this was reduced by a ton. Shards are coming with every level up and through events too. As such you are able to fill your purse quit quickly by playing and waiting for a good shrine or to buy a new survivor.

The "best" survivor perks are also on free survivors right now: Off the Record comes with Zarina, Deliverance comes with Adam, Lithe comes with Ming and Boon: Cycle of Healing comes with Michaela. Looking back I would probably buy Michaela first to add Cycle to my arsenal for a perfectly fine build: Sprint Burst, Cycle of Healing, Kindred and Borrow Time.

For Killers it hits a bit different. There are some strong perks locked on licensed Killers (Call of Brine, Deadlock and more). However the strongest Killer is for free (Nurse), the best beginner Killer also (Wraith) and another dope Killer with Huntress is also included.

On perks you can get some descent from the free perks: Hex: No one escapes Death, Jolt, Sloppy Butcher and Whispers. If you level the base Killers there are also the three Hillbilly perks for you (Tinkerer, Enduring, Lightborn), you can get A Nurse's Call for free and Brutal Strengh is very good at the beginning too.

You would not be able to build that strong of a Killer build early thou. However for Wraith Jolt, A Nurses, Sloppy Butcher and Whispers is quit okay.

Also there are many events when the Shrine rotates more and offers good perks on regular bases. You can save for those events and then spend you shards when they count.

For me DbD hits a good balance of free content and pay content.

Dead by Daylight isn't even close to being pay-to-win in my opinion. There isn't even a universal description of "win" in this game. The more you play, the more you unlock and get rewarded.

But perks are in game advantages. And those 258€ will cut thousands of hours of grind. That is a species of p2w.

Even when buying DLCs you need to work to level them up to prestige 3 to unlock their perks on other characters, nobody has denied that. Thats not the same thing as needing to watch the shrine of secrets every single week, potentially for years, just to have a chance at getting perks that are tied to paid DLCs. Thats the bigger concern, especially whenever they are hard meta.