DBD's Monetization is Terrible, BTW
Dead by Daylight's business model has always rubbed me the wrong way, regardless of how much I enjoy the game. Though, among the sea of terrible monetization models in modern day gaming DBD can seem pretty innocuous or inoffensive, I think it's pretty bad and unfair overall and should be changed.
Double-Triple-Quadruple Dipping
BHVR for some reason... felt it was necessary to monetize the game in multiple different fashions. For starters, the game has a $20 paywall. On its own, this would be alright. Though I personally think the paywall is holding the game back from growing infinitely more, a one-time pay for full access would be pretty good. However, DBD also has an indefinite character DLC cycle, which also accompanies a $7-12 additional price per DLC, and with about 4 per year, that's essentially buying 2 extra copies of DBD per year if you want to try all of the up-to-date content. For some reason, the game doesn't allow you to test these new perks or characters in a custom game mode so that you can even make informed decisions on what you would like to purchase.
Furthermore, Dead by Daylight also has purchasable skins of varying rarities and costs-- akin to many live service games of the current era, with the most desirable and expansive collection of skins being of the higher rarities, costing around $10-15 worth of equivalent in game currency to obtain. However, the majority of game services that use this monetization style are also free to play. Dead by Daylight is not free to play, as so each skin someone would actually want would be worth half the cost of the actual game. Additionally, DBD's skins are not entirely customizable or truly high effort to warrant such a steep cost, with many skins being needlessly locked to sets and an uncomfortable amount of skins being recolors, instead of allowing players to simply choose their own colors.
Lastly, Dead by Daylight jumped on the trend a few years back by adding a battle pass. The "Rift Pass" in this game is about on par with other games' $10 worth of in-game currency to obtain the majority of the rewards. However, even here DBD's version is still lacking. Much of the Rift Pass is filled with the largely panned and quite honestly low effort basically invisible charms that are cheaply tacked on to the back of survivors' waists, or stapled on hooks for killers. Until recently, the free route was basically mostly empty aside from a recolor of a mid-tier skin and the charms here and there. The battle pass also preys on FOMO, which is quite a cheap business tactic, as it essentially forces those who did purchase the battle pass to continue grinding away and the slow challenges to continue playing the game, and furthermore subtly manipulates some players into an additional purchase for a skin you may desire that not feature in the battle pass.
For the amount of ######### Overwatch (2) is getting for its monetization, even that game does better than DBD on more important fronts here. The game is:
- free to play
- free post-launch characters
- less battle pass bloat
- easier, less RNG/annoying battle pass progression
And for such steep costs for everything in DBD, the gameplay cycle is extremely repetitive and rigid in comparison, as DBD is just one standard game mode. I'd understand charging more if the amount of content reflected the price tags everywhere, but it simply doesn't. For example, Warframe has a lot more diverse content options for players, and the game is free to play, only charging for customization, with most skins costing around $10. Even looking at a more egregious pricing example, take a look at Final Fantasy XIV. Though the price of entry is much steeper at $50, the game offers a very long, technically indefinite trial period, allowing players to play for absolutely free up through the first expansion of the game, and with mostly unrestricted classes and job available for players during this time. That's hundreds of hours worth of free content. While the DLCs are also equivalent in price to the base game and a subscription is required to play for standard players, essentially everything else is earnable without paying extra and the game offers thousands of hours worth of extremely polish content in return for the steep price.
There's lots of room for improvement for DBD here...
The Pay-To-Win Discussion
What also doesn't help is that DBD is actually pretty pay-to-win.
There! I said it! I said it, and I'm tired of pretending that it's not.
While """""""technically""""""" DBD's strongest killer is available for free-- The Nurse-- and players can get by completely fine by increasing their skill and only using the base game's perks, many of Dead by Daylight's strongest perks are locked behind a paywall. Only 6/20 of the best survivor perks are available without purchasing the DLC, and merely 3/20 of the best killer perks are available without DLC. Even then, if players only used the one strong build they could put together without any DLC, the game would feel incredibly stale and unrewarding.
Also not everyone plays killer. This point was mentioned recently and I don't get why no one thought about that.
_
Okay that's my post.
In short, Dead by Daylight shouldn't be doubling down on paths to monetization for every aspect of content in the game, and locking strong and band-aid perks to big problems the game has behind a paywall is a terrible decision for the players.
I dunno how to end the post, bye bye! :)
Comments
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What do you mean by the $20 pay wall? Like the initial cost?
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Yes. The base game costs $20.
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I mean, I'd like to see DbD go free-to-play, but with cheaters still rampant from the time they went F2P for only a week or two...
It might be for the best if it's not going F2P just yet.
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100% agree with this as the reason this game should never be free to play. BHVR simply can’t keep up in the fight against cheaters, so making it more expensive for cheaters to get new accounts after they are banned is really the only effective deterrent to keep the problem from getting worse than it already is
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No way you can say anything positive about overwatch 2, even less say they do ANYTHING better than DBD lol im a player of both, blizzard has completely ruined the system of their game, they are not getting a single cent out of me with how greedy and anti-consumer they are. Their battle pass is a joke, you get NO currency return (which you do in DBD), theres only a few skins that look their rarity, their monetization is absolutely ridiculous, 20+ dollars for a legendary? i mean really? in a game where us OG players were able to get everything for free just by playing and doing challenges? not a single compensation or reward for us og gamers after shutting down the game we payed for and forcing 2 on us after they said both games would co-exist, scamming players with their misleading bundles (which is actually illegal), charging for cosmetics that have always been free, even using old skins as "rewards" for the paid version of the game, instead of you know, putting effort in new items as an incentive + an amount of currency that isnt enough to buy most bundles, their complete radio silence in the months coming up to the release cause they knew us og players would be against all the system changes so they left us in the dark and didnt clarify doubts, no pve which was the main interest point of the "sequel", 2 only exists cause they wanted to change the monetization system that 1 had but they couldnt do it and keep the game as the og cause that would have driven a huge portion of the player base away. The free to play was just their way to try and get new players cause they left the game for dead for years, only three new characters (and one of them is locked in the battle pass....meaning new players had to grind for her) in a "sequel" that plays exactly the same is laughable.
DBD isnt perfect but out of the games i play, its one of the best with their monetization system, a company has to make their money, of course, but theres always ways to make it consumer friendly and BHVR only keeps improving, recent examples are the rift and shard changes. BHVR actually makes me want to spend money on their game, unlike blizzard. I love both games, but DBD is in a faaaaaaar better position regarding monetization than overwatch, and many others. Im heavily critical of BHVR on lots of things but i think their monetization isnt one that deserves it.
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Few things i disagree with.
Firstly $20 pay wall isnt entirely correct as you can obtain the game a lot cheaper. Even if you do pay the full price on steam its not exactly the most expensive game out there.
Next you talk about the seemingly never ending DLC released. And yeah to a degree i agree with you. it does get a bit much and personally I would like to see them tone this down to maybe 3 releases of paid DLC per year with 1 release of a free DLC each year for players who can't afford to pump more money into the game. Having said that the DLC isn't overly expensive considering other games out there with a lot of DLC.
On the topic of cosmetics whats wrong with paid for cosmetics. It gives you no advantage in game (actually a disadvantage due to the brightness of most cosmetics) and is just something fun you can do if you want to support BHVR. All games have in game cosmetics you can buy with real money its just the way the world works, man even Minecraft bedrock edition you have to pay for skins lol. I think in game cosmetics are absolutly fine to be charged for as the this is a company that wants to make money and they won't make enough of the game and DLC alone to continue to create the game.
Finally the Rift. Now this is again where I slightly agree with you. Most of the cosmetics on the rift are charms and charms are inherantly usless. No one looks at them on survivors and barely anyone looks at them on hooks. Now there are some amazing cosmetics on the paid for rift such as the ghostface masks this rift. Again this is an optional thing that people can buy and in no way is it forced or required so overall its fine to have.
Now i don't say this next bit with any hate but the bottom line is if you don't like that something is paid for then don't pay for it. its everyones choice if they want to pay for cosmetics or DLC or even the rift.
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Im going to disagree with the "DBD is Pay to Win because all of the best perks are licensed" because the Shrine of Secrets means that you can *technically* get them all for free. I just wish the Shrine of Secrets had a cheaper and better system for getting those perks, even after the perk rework the Shrine is super outdated.
Also the Rift being FOMO is also something I disagree with, since most Rift cosmetics do make a return to the shop, but I feel like BHVR needs to state that on the Rift that way new players do not feel pressured to buy into it by thinking it's like other games. There are also some single piece cosmetics from when the Rift was brand new that should make a return to the shop IMO but I think BHVR has literally forgot about them to begin with.
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I'm ok with cosmetics unless they give a stealth advantage but you can get Claudette dark outfit and head for a small price already
Also I feel like the battle passes are done right. Yes the $10 sucks but the fact you can spend those auric cells and get them all back in the battle pass pretty much means it's a one time purchase. (Unless they change it then you know it's about money lol)
I guess you could argue the survivor perks or killers perks but you can get the strongest ones for free (like tinkerer) so it's honesty that bad the only problem would be licensed killers but I understand why they charge real money for that. The biggest problem is when the strongest perks change so I can see why someone would say that
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i mean you wanna have more than 6 years of work be given away for free or for 20 bucks? the company behind overwatch is somewhat bigger than Behaviour, they gotta pay their fees, their employes, gotta pay LOADS for technical equipment and the servers themselves cost something to.
BHVRs model is to give dlcs/characters with their aditional perks, and you can unlock ANYONE except the licensed ones for free with shards. I bought an ultimate edition and going to buy the dlc if the characters keep being that interesting to me, just because i dont want to grind. But your not forced to pay characters just because the additional perks, because in this game there is way more than just "killer x with perk y is stronger so you need it". There is strong players that will loop you for 3 gens and there is the ones that cant mindgame the simplest things. As there is strong players on killer side who hits every single hatchet or throwing knife while there is that newbie trapper walking into his own traps. The game has no winning condition too. Its not like if you dont escape/4k you cant progress. It just means you get less amount of bloodpoints.
what do we actually get for free in dbd?
-maps
-bugfixes&QoL changes
-event gameplay
-balancing changes
The employes at BHVR work every day, all of the things they add/change needs new programming, some things that seem minor are not done in 10 minutes. Now i have no clue about programming but i happen to know what costs you have as a company. Ours is small and not in gaming, i cant imagine how expensive running an ongoing game is.
Would you rather get the quality lowered or the amount of content becomes less? Because if they are going to reduce the amount of money they get with their buisness model then we wont see as much work in this game as now. Just backtrack to the few last major updates. 40 perks reworked, QoL changes left and right and you can be sure theyve been working on the bots for quite a long time. Also the changes about the cheater problem. All of that is work that needs to be payed.
BHVR, unlike other, way bigger, companys is very generous. I know a certain big name where you could litteraly wait half a year until they would fix a few very gamebreaking bugs, while they do less, much less work than bhvr does but get way more money because they blatantly sell ingame curtesy. The amount of money they make alone from microtransactions is more than bhvr probably makes a year with all those things they work on. Would love to rant about that certain big name but i dont want to name&shame.
Also ive seen way worse models in other games. Gacha and lootboxes where you really have game concepts which are pay2win but on top of that its rng based IF you get what you need for your money.
And the countless MMO games that only let you explore and see so much but once you reached a certain level or a region you cannot progress further unless you pay like 50 bucks to gain 10 more levels which is if you play alot done in 40 hours. Not exxeggarating.
And lastly, about the skins. Yes. ok they are expensive, your right about that. But thats not something that is forced upon you, personally i bought alot but thats my decision. The skins i have i do use and like seeing them, even on the killers while the weapon is the only thing you see while in a trial, it just gives a bit individality and on the menu it doesnt look all the same. Also i hardly had to pay for much legendary ones, i dont think i got many of those. Even the green rarity stuff and even some of the cheapest looks good, i also like to combine from various sets.
So i dont think the game in general is too expensive, its just right. I rather have it be like it is than having to deal with gacha system or less content.
(edit): i forgot the rift pass. You can buy it once youve reached all levels on the non premium path. As long as the rift is open you can always buy the premium later on and it immediatly gives you all rewards that you wouldve gained. You even gain more auratic cells than you invested in it. it also does not only feature charms (which i agree wouldnt be worth it) but skins too and this one even has bloodpoints.
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Nah, I think the monetization deserves criticism. It seems as though you have more of a problem with the fact that Overwatch's monetization is worse than it used to be... which I agree with. However, it certainly requires a whole lot less paying for more stuff than DBD does, though $20 skins are not okay.
DBD made an improvement to The Rift after like 3 years which is cool. I still think it's okay to ask for better though. I cannot agree in good faith that their model is consumer friendly with the amount of paywalled content, which can be an awful deterrent for newer players.
Dunno what you mean by saying you can attain the game for cheaper. If anything I was being generous. While it's listed as $20 for Steam and Epic games, it's $30 for console players. And they're getting a worse product. The point isn't that it's a terribly high bar of entry, but that they're so much monetization that in comparison the price tag seems a bit steep.
The DLC also isn't terribly expensive individually, but combined with the additional monetization it gets a bit much, also new players are probably gonna wanna experiment with different perks/characters, and they'll be faced with a much larger upfront cost.
Once again, you're missing the point here. The cosmetics are pretty expensive here and game do sell cosmetics tend to be free to play, which DBD isn't. Also the cosmetics are pretty restrictive and a bit low effort for how much they cost IMO. They could let you mix and match more of them, change colors of certain parts, etc.
Just because something is being normalized doesn't mean that it's okay.
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If you think overwatch has better monetization you're delusional.
If nothing else, I've spent money on the rift one time. Ever. Over two years playing. I always finish the rift track and recover the entire cost. It's actually a net gain, since you can earn 1050 cells in the rift by the end. BHVR doesn't even incentivise buying it up front with 'increased xp' or 'bonus rift shards', so I can always wait until I hit the break even level in the rift before buying, and I've lost nothing for waiting. My $10 is still gaining value every rift.
Older (rift) cosmetics are brought into the shop and you can earn them with shards just by playing the game. Most cosmetics are purchasable in parts, so you only have to buy the pieces you want for many items. This is the exact opposite of 'bundle only' pricing that tacks on useless crap to drive up the price. Overwatch doesn't even offer an earnable, free currency anymore... you pay real money or you miss out. Even if the item you want came out 4 years ago in an event, sorry, that'll be full price.
BHVR may not be perfect, but the monetization here is extremely fair. Yes, some perks are locked behind real money transactions until they hit the shrine, but I don't even consider that to be too egregious since these are licensed characters. And the stranger things perks were made free to everyone when that license ran out.
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That's not a pay wall. That's just the base game cost and you get a lot from it.
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I'm still gonna subscribe to the idea that it is PTW, since the Shrine is completely random and very inconsistent. Some perks also just haven't appeared in the Shrine to date.
You're right though with the cosmetics returning, forgot about that. :)
I'm gonna take this one line by line.
i mean you wanna have more than 6 years of work be given away for free or for 20 bucks? the company behind overwatch is somewhat bigger than Behaviour, they gotta pay their fees, their employes, gotta pay LOADS for technical equipment and the servers themselves cost something to.
I'm just looking for a higher quality of content. I didn't say that everything either needed to be $20 or completely free, and if that's the point you took away I suggest you try reading my post again.
BHVRs model is to give dlcs/characters with their aditional perks, and you can unlock ANYONE except the licensed ones for free with shards. I bought an ultimate edition and going to buy the dlc if the characters keep being that interesting to me, just because i dont want to grind. But your not forced to pay characters just because the additional perks, because in this game there is way more than just "killer x with perk y is stronger so you need it". There is strong players that will loop you for 3 gens and there is the ones that cant mindgame the simplest things. As there is strong players on killer side who hits every single hatchet or throwing knife while there is that newbie trapper walking into his own traps. The game has no winning condition too. Its not like if you dont escape/4k you cant progress. It just means you get less amount of bloodpoints.
Ah yes, after the 42 hours (give or take a few) worth of grind it takes to get 1 single character it is totally reasonable to expect that everyone just earn it for free!
Like that is just absurd. 42 hours of play for one unlock is just not okay.
If I see another "you're not forced to pay." You are essentially strong-armed into either devoting your life to DBD to unlock new characters or paying for them. There is no choice if want to play the character within a reasonable amount of time.
what do we actually get for free in dbd?
-maps
-bugfixes&QoL changes
-event gameplay
-balancing changes
These are just... normal live service additions. Stop trying to market these as special important virtuous deeds BHVR goes out of their way for.
The employes at BHVR work every day, all of the things they add/change needs new programming, some things that seem minor are not done in 10 minutes. Now i have no clue about programming but i happen to know what costs you have as a company. Ours is small and not in gaming, i cant imagine how expensive running an ongoing game is.
I do indeed know how programming works, thank you for explaining I guess?
Would you rather get the quality lowered or the amount of content becomes less? Because if they are going to reduce the amount of money they get with their buisness model then we wont see as much work in this game as now. Just backtrack to the few last major updates. 40 perks reworked, QoL changes left and right and you can be sure theyve been working on the bots for quite a long time. Also the changes about the cheater problem. All of that is work that needs to be payed.
What a weird ultimatum. DBD is such a small scale game that you'd have to be willfully ignorant to believe that they're just barely scraping by with the amount of monetary intake that they'd be receiving. I would like a more consistent and quality product tho. They were the ones that make the weird decision to not just test out perk changes in each hotfix like they should do. Yes, they are working on improving the game, but to suggest that them making their business model more friendly would make the amount of content take a nosedive would suggest that they're a plethora of content to begin with. As I made an example of prior, Warframe is absolutely free and much larger in scale. Hell, even premium cosmetics can be earned for free through trading.
I think you're just choosing not to see something here.
BHVR, unlike other, way bigger, companys is very generous. I know a certain big name where you could litteraly wait half a year until they would fix a few very gamebreaking bugs, while they do less, much less work than bhvr does but get way more money because they blatantly sell ingame curtesy. The amount of money they make alone from microtransactions is more than bhvr probably makes a year with all those things they work on. Would love to rant about that certain big name but i dont want to name&shame.
Yes, that company is named BHVR. Are we just gonna ignore that broken state of multiple updates in a row back in 2020-2021? How console is still terribly optimized? Acting as though BHVR is a shining virtue among the gaming industry just feels gross and ignorant, and to suggest that BHVR is generous is actually hilarious. Though, I guess among the wave of cynical, downright predatory marketing in the modern industry they are at least doing better than many others.
And lastly, about the skins. Yes. ok they are expensive, your right about that. But thats not something that is forced upon you, personally i bought alot but thats my decision. The skins i have i do use and like seeing them, even on the killers while the weapon is the only thing you see while in a trial, it just gives a bit individality and on the menu it doesnt look all the same. Also i hardly had to pay for much legendary ones, i dont think i got many of those. Even the green rarity stuff and even some of the cheapest looks good, i also like to combine from various sets.
The problem, once again, is that these expensive skins which could be way better are instead coupled along with the various other monetization methods of the game. Good for you for buying the skins. They are still too expensive.
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Reading comprehension is our friend.
For the amount of ######### Overwatch (2) is getting for its monetization, even that game does better than DBD on more important fronts here.
If you think DBD is better overall, sure. I may be inclined to agree with you.
Good for you for buying the Rift once... I guess?
42 hours per skin with shards.
That is... literally a pay wall. It is quite literally a wall you need to clear in order to pay the game.
Stop with the semantics.
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OW2 is literally being thrown down into a pit by its community/content creators over its monetization practices as we speak.
OW2 Battle Pass is mostly charms/stickers/voice lines - very few emotes/skins/char intros.
It also takes 55 tiers on the free battle pass to get a new character on release for 'free.'
Average player takes 6 games (3 for dailies to get 9k xp + 2-3 more to get an extra 1000 xp) without the XP boost from the pass to get a level/day.
To get 2+ levels/day would take many more games.
Lootboxes are gone - Skins you could previously get/earn for free during events are now $10-$20.
Current events als.....
Yeah, I'm not gonna bother with the rest - zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
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Definitely doesn't take 6 games to get a level, I'm a free player on Overwatch. I assume they changed something, cause I can confidently say it only takes two per level.
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I mean they need to pay 600+ people to do nothing somehow....
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i dont know how to set quotes like you did but ima just copy paste and set my answers below.
I'm just looking for a higher quality of content. I didn't say that everything either needed to be $20 or completely free, and if that's the point you took away I suggest you try reading my post again.I mean in my opinion the content is good, but agree to disagree i guess on that one. Nothing wrong asking for improvements though, but just not at the cost of less or worse content just to make it cheaper.
Ah yes, after the 42 hours (give or take a few) worth of grind it takes to get 1 single character it is totally reasonable to expect that everyone just earn it for free!Like that is just absurd. 42 hours of play for one unlock is just not okay.If I see another "you're not forced to pay." You are essentially strong-armed into either devoting your life to DBD to unlock new characters or paying for them. There is no choice if want to play the character within a reasonable amount of time.Oh i didnt say i do not pay for dlcs and stuff. I pay for much in this game because again i think the content is worth it. 42 hours isnt even that much, are you bored that fast of a game? idk, maybe i dont know how it is having only the base stuff because i bought this game with the ultimate edition on steam, but i dont think 42 hours is that much.
These are just... normal live service additions. Stop trying to market these as special important virtuous deeds BHVR goes out of their way for.Exactly, thats why i said they are free. They put those out in monthly, heel, even weekly basis while with some other bigger companys you could wait for half a year with stuff like that, because they dont get actually to sell those changes so they are the lowest priority. BHVR is diffrent in that.
I do indeed know how programming works, thank you for explaining I guess?i mean your thread suggests otherwise, it made it seem like you think those things are somewhat easy to get done.
What a weird ultimatum. DBD is such a small scale game that you'd have to be willfully ignorant to believe that they're just barely scraping by with the amount of monetary intake that they'd be receiving. I would like a more consistent and quality product tho. They were the ones that make the weird decision to not just test out perk changes in each hotfix like they should do. Yes, they are working on improving the game, but to suggest that them making their business model more friendly would make the amount of content take a nosedive would suggest that they're a plethora of content to begin with. As I made an example of prior, Warframe is absolutely free and much larger in scale. Hell, even premium cosmetics can be earned for free through trading.I think you're just choosing not to see something here.idk why you try to keep putting words in my mouth. I didnt say they were scrapping the bottom if they would have their incomes reduced, neither you or i know how it looks on that page for BHVR. But as alredy said i know the interest of a company. I personally would want to earn something for my work and if i had as much employes as bhvr does it better be MUCH i earn. Its not like your doing ALL of that just to be payed with the same amount you would have if you would go to a normal every day office job. You start a business to earn more and a game is a whole more complex thing to handle than what i do. Its so basic, they sell something, they want to get money for it.
Yes, that company is named BHVR. Are we just gonna ignore that broken state of multiple updates in a row back in 2020-2021? How console is still terribly optimized? Acting as though BHVR is a shining virtue among the gaming industry just feels gross and ignorant, and to suggest that BHVR is generous is actually hilarious. Though, I guess among the wave of cynical, downright predatory marketing in the modern industry they are at least doing better than many others.I wasnt around the fog 2020-2021 and i do play on pc. Im speaking from personal experience with this game and not "acting" something up. Just because you dont agree with my opinion you dont need to belittle my words with provocative phrases like that. "doing better than many others" is what i was all about. There is always improvements to be done, but being a little bit thankful for what you get isnt wrong. As i said i have played many games, even in my scool times. Back then i couldnt afford what i do today with paying for skins let alone dlc stuff, so i searched long enough for games that are worth every cent i could bear. My search was LONG and hard, so many sharky business modells over the years and it just got worse nowdays. BHVR is GENEROUS by not following these modells and keep to their own in 2022 to where gaming is not from gamers to gamers but rather from greedy CEO's from third party companys dictating what the developers should do and what not. All the big names have this exact issiue. So yes, bhvr is not the only one but one of the shining virtues among the gaming industry.
And everyone is allowed to make mistakes aslong as they dont charge you for them to be fixed all though its their fault and not the players, wich also some companys do.
The problem, once again, is that these expensive skins which could be way better are instead coupled along with the various other monetization methods of the game. Good for you for buying the skins. They are still too expensive.the problem is that you are maybe too cheap. If you cant afford it then there is the way to have it earned with ingame shards, i get that it takes longer but nothing in this world is for free and you can compare companys all you want, what works for either doesnt neccessarly work for the other one. A company is going to get their income no matter what, only diffrence is if they actually try to be costumer friendly or if they just want your money.
i feel like bhvr falls into the first category, at least with dbd. Looking forward to project s but its going to need some time until that gets out.
It also doesnt help your case when you start to try to twist words and provoke me just because we dont agree on the topic. You made it seem you want honest opinions but i guess everyone just wants their own point proof. I alredy got banned ones, i end the discussion with you here so i dont snap at you for keep arguing to me in a way like this. Search your "yes" sayers if that makes you happy.
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I think the cosmetics are a bit pricey given how many of them we have in the game. It also seems like BHVR really wants you to spend money on the dlcs given how long it takes to rack of shards for each individual character or perk in the shrine of secrets. Overall though, the system isn't that bad. Based on the prices, they seem to be assuming that not everyone will want every character or cosmetic so I can understand the price model and they do seem to be cheaper than other games I have played. If they simply allowed for more shards to be awarded per level up in the devotion level and maybe reduced the shard prices, I think that would significantly reduce the grind and feeling of having to spend money for the casual players. I cannot compare this game to Overwatch 2 however as I have not yet played it.
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So, you're saying you get one Battle Pass level per two games and that it only takes 160 games to max the pass?
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I mean yeah sure. And college bills are also a pay wall for getting a degree and hospital bills are a pay wall for health.
Just because something isn't free does not mean that it's a pay wall.
The term was coined to describe digital products (like games, TV series and books) that are advertised as free (or cheap) to access, but then bar you from progress unless you pay, with no way around.
A good example of an actual paid game with a pay wall system would be the later iterations of tell tale games, where you would buy the game, then discover you had to pay for episodes and otherwise you could not continue.
DBD is not such an example. In this case the actual "must pay" content falls under the line of expansion.
Nevertheless, since you did state that you don't want to discuss semantics, it dawns to me that you might not be receptive to my answer and perhaps I should have just let it go.
But since I already wrote it, might as well just go ahead and post it. Sorry if I bothered you with it.
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*goes and watches twitch stream where someone is ragehacking and has a ban counter of over 150+ accounts*
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1000 % agree.
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I mean... I guess? Without any booster it would take like 30 mins a day to max out, and purchasing the pass would speed it up greatly.
Not entirely sure what your point is.
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This kind of criticism of monetization is just strange to me. First, you pay a 1 time fee and can play the game for the rest of your life or until it doesn't exist anymore. I think that is a pretty good deal. You can unlock a lot more content for free just by playing the game. I'm actually surprised not more stuff in the shop is auric cells only because profit from selling the game alone only goes so far. Battle passes are good because it allows you to pay a 1 time fee for multiple rewards that could've otherwise been thrown into the shop and sold separately. Everything extra offered for each character is just that, extra. I think its great that developers can create new things for the games they work on and sell them. I wouldn't like to be an artist and paint one masterpiece to sell then offer everything else I do in my career for free. I feel like this is just people having different values and feeling like more should be offered for less. No it shouldn't. Players should be thankful that anything at all is able to be obtained for free just by playing the game. When you bought the game you didn't buy special access to everything that will be made available to any character you decide to play for the duration of your play time of the game. You bought the base game. Thats it. Nothing more. You want that cool shiny legendary outfit for your favorite survivor? Then buy it and support the people who spent their time to make it for your entertainment.
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What a strange rebuttal. Artists don't receive direct funds based on each skin they sell. Furthermore it's not like free to play games just deny access to players for random reasons. My point was that the game could be doing much better. In direct comparison to games like Warframe that essentially have one avenue of monetization, DBD is basically a rip off IMO. I also think it's fair to sell additional content but $15 skins with limited customization options is absurd in conjuction with the base game price and the inflating price of owning every DLC.
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1: The majority of characters in DBD are obtainable for free—only licensed characters cannot be bought with shards. Other games don't really compare on that front, because DBD is unique in adding a lot of characters from other franchises. The closest comparison would be Super Smash Bros., and it not only has a purchase price of $60, but also all DLC characters after the fact—including Nintendo's own IP—cost real money.
2: BHVR has already announced that all non-licensed cosmetics are progressively being made available with shards, so you will not be required to pay for them if you're willing to grind.
3: The Rift does not have an issue with FOMO, because after a grace period all rift items are made available in the in-game store.
4: Tome challenges really aren't that difficult, and you don't even have to do all of them.
5: The Rift's premium track allows you to completely recoup the money spent if you finish it. Many other games with battle passes like R6 only allow you to partially recoup your money. OW2 doesn't let you recoup any at all, so you're paying $10 every season.
6: OW2's battle pass is far worse than any other game I've played, because your free access to the new hero requires you to grind during the battle pass, and you can't just stock up free currency ahead of time to get them on launch like you can with DBD. I currently have easily over 40 hours in OW2 (mostly ranked) and I still haven't hit Tier 55, where all future characters will be locked behind. In DBD I buy nearly every new original killer with shards on their chapter release.
In summary, just about every point you made is at least to some extent, incorrect or misguided.
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I do think the linked skins should be customizable. I also wouldn't be against them coming with more options such as a color palette to customize them further. Could DBD be doing better with how they monetize the game? Yea, but I think the same can be said for all games. I think what has happened in the gaming community is that we have seen such a diverse approach to monetization that people lean more towards their preference and then try to argue it as "the way." I personally don't care all that much how any gaming company decides to monetize their work. Video games are non essential. We don't need them. They exist for our entertainment. I keep seeing this trend of wanting more for less which all comes at the expense of real people having to use their time to meet the demands of the consumer. I do think artists should receive residuals for the content they create and then is sold within the games they work on. Either way, selling cosmetics in a game helps keep companies in profit, which keeps the lights on at the office and developers employed.
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Honestly i agree with you @thefallenloser. I've been tempted to make a post about it but these responses are why i have chosen not to.
I think the reason why the monetisation in DBD does not get trashed is because dbd started out as a passion project from an indie company, so when these forms of monetisation were established they weren't yet seen as a business trying to make money.
Also i agree with you about the game being pay to win. DS was the best perk in the game for 6 years, and it was only on Laurie. Yes you could get it through shrine but shrine is a very very unreliable way to get perks, it frustrates you into paying up to get what you want.
I think compared to overwatch 2 the monetisation in DBD is extremely excessive. You can get the premium battle pass in ow2 which is a free to play to game for free by collecting coins for 18 weeks, but in DBD the rift pass is completely unobtainable without paying in a 20$ game where half of the perks and characters are also only obtainable by paying.
OW2's monetisation is only trashed because it was a change and people are very adverse to change (just look at how many people refuse to call the cowboy by his new name lol)
Life is a joke 👍
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I'm going to have to disagree here
Skins are 100% optional and a lot of them can be gained by shards
Rift refunds itself and is completely optional
Original chapters can be gained with shards. If you play enough you can get the mayority out of you initial 20 bucks and with some luck you can even gain the licenced perks from the shrine
I would honestly praise them that the biggest bulk of the monetizations is in optional stuff and if you don't want to spend more money you won't miss out on the mayority of the game and the things you do miss out on are licenced which you can't blame them for
I would go for the opposite of what you say, outside of a couple of bad blunders the monetization of dbd is one of the better ones
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Improvements can be made to the amount of shards you get per level, so its faster to get characters, cause in the end it is true perks (which affect gameplay) are locked behind their characters, until they appear in the shrine, which takes months since the DLC release. The thing is there needs to be a balance between being consumer friendly and also incentives for the players to open their wallets, games are still part of a capitalist world and companies want to make as much money as possible out of them. I think BHVR does it pretty ok, a lot better than many popular games, and they seem to be doing better lately, though the time limited halloween cosmetics did make me rise my eyebrow a bit. I wouldnt say its a P2W game cause there are ways to get perks for free but making that process faster would help, you can grind ahead of time of DLCs to get the original characters on release day, and you can wait for the licensed characters perks to appear on shrine eventually, theres plenty of free cosmetics as well, and the rift is pretty easy to grind with pretty nice cosmetics and currency return, unlike blizzard which only gives you enough coins for ONE legendary after like a half a year of grind and thats if you dont miss a single weekly challenge in all that time and with a joke of a battle pass with 0 currency return, garbage rewards in 99% of the track and three decent skins at most lol mind you the battle pass is the only thing giving players a sense of progression now that loot boxes and levels were removed.
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Only 6/20 of the best survivor perks are available without purchasing the DLC, and merely 3/20 of the best killer perks are available without DLC.
I'm not sure what perk lists you're going by for those stats but out of curiosity I'll use Nightlight's top 10 pick rates and assume the most picked perks there mostly line up with the ones you think are the "best".
Survivor Perks
- Dead Hard - David King (not licensed)
- Windows - Kate (not licensed)
- Circle of Healing - Mikaela (not licensed)
- Adrenaline - Meg (not licensed)
- Prove Thyself - Dwight (not licensed)
- Lithe - Feng (not licensed)
- Off the Record - Zarina (not licensed)
- Kindred - generic
- Sprint Burst - Meg (not licensed)
- Resilience - generic
So literally all the top 10 survivor perks are either generic or can be gotten on characters which are unlockable with free shards.
Killer Perks
- BBQ and Chili - Leatherface (licensed)
- Scourge Hook Pain Resonance - Artist (not licensed)
- Jolt - generic
- Call of Brine - Sadako (licensed)
- Save the Best for Last - Meyers (licensed)
- Lethal Pursuer - Nemesis (licensed)
- Corrupt Intervention - Plague (not licensed)
- Eruption - Nemesis (licensed)
- No Way Out - Trickster (not licensed)
- Hex: NOED - generic
So five of the top 10 killer perks are in licensed killers that require money to buy (Nemesis has two of them). The rest are either generic or on characters that can be unlocked with shards.
Setting aside the fact that you don't actually need ANY of the above perks to win, and even assuming for the sake of argument you get a significant advantage using these over other perks, the fact is you can literally get all of them totally for free by unlocking the corresponding character with shards. It costs 9000 shards to unlock a character and if you play a few matches a night you'll get 9000 shards in about a month give or take (That's about how much I play and I have no problem saving up shards for all the killers that can be bought with them.) And that's also ignoring that you can spend shards at the shrine to unlock perks as they become available there (which I've also done occasionally for my survivors.) So personally I don't think any of that falls under the category "pay to win" since you can get almost all this stuff for free over time and it's debatable whether you even need any of it at all to "win". It's more like "pay for more variety" than "pay to win".
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I personally dont have an issue with it at all. I got this game for 50% off in the Switch store 2 years ago, and the fact that it has provided me with 2 years of entertainment (including constant events and updates and fixes) is money well spent. I don't buy every DLC (last one I bought was Sadako) and skin purchases happen once in a blue moon, they're completely voluntary and I'll buy what I like. Rarity etc doesn't phase me. I suppose it all comes down to completionist attitudes. If you feel you *have* to have it all, well it can add up to a lot of money. But I haven't spent enough in two years to consistently pay any of the devs power bills so I imagine someone has to?
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lmfaooo don't even bring in overwatch in terms of monetization lmao they will be locking future heroes behind paywalls and (if you miss out on their shitass battlepas) there won't be any way to unlock them for free. Not to mention they went from everything being earnable to nothing being earnable, unless you count spending an entire year grinding weekly challenges for one skin "earnable".
Don't even get me started on the battle pass. Ironically, DBD DOESN'T have FOMO on their battle pass. AFAIK, everything that has been in a pass has released for everyone else after some time. Not to mention you can still go back any time and do the challenges for BP. In overwatch, the pass is DEFINTELY bloated to hell with charms, souvenirs now??, sprays, and completely random skins; not to mention not giving any currency back meaning you have to pay 10 dollars every time. DBD gives you the currency all back and a little more, meaning it is essentially a one time purchase as long as you complete the pass. This isn't hard either, playing VERY casually can complete the pass even if you never do challenges lol.
Oh man, woe is me that it costs 5 dollars for an entire new characters, perks, etc. That is far better than most games can say. Seeing as DBD has also been given away for free multiple times if this game was F2P it would easily have a monetization system that would be a bar.
Honestly, the game being $20 is probably the reason the monetization is so good, because it means they can make skins 10 dollars, instead of 20 dollars like most games now, and it means entire new characters with entirely new functions to the game, are only 5 dollars each (LICENSE ONLY, ALL ORIGINAL CAN BE EARNED FOR FREE.)
I can't believe overwatch was used in this argument, especially when the entire overwatch community is shitting on blizzard harder than I've seen a game community ######### on someone BECAUSE of the monetization. There are PLENTY other games that have even better monetization, I see Deep Rock Galactic as a gaming standard that needs to be reached more.
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Warframe will always be a staple of the best possible free to play monetization system.
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Yes, original chapters can be gained with shards, but that still doesnt take away that the game diesnt really incentivize you to get it with shards at all by giving you droplets of shards, meaning that id you want to get a single character you have to spend well over a hundred hours just to get one. And then the game also doesnt let you try the character out so if you happen to buy a character you didnt like, you have to just suck it up and start grinding shards again. Games like warframe constantly tell you off from buying stuff with real money by having a more grounded effort to reward ratio, while also being one hell of a lot less punishing if you get a character you ended up not liking. Games like Dbd are predatory af.
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on Xbox when I bought the game it was 40 dollars because the only version was the special edition at the time
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I'd say it isn't that bad but...
Having most cosmetic options behind a paywall is a scam.
Having a battlepass is a scam.
Owning the dlc to get certain perks to grind for is a scam.
Honestly whether a game is paid or free to play is mostly redundant anyway.
The dlc is cheap though...so there is that.
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Yeah, I've always felt DBD was pay to enjoy.
You're experience is so bad and overwhelming as a new player.
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I always laugh when in p2w arguments people use original paid characters as free to play characters. THEY ARE NOT FREE TO PLAY.
Considering the current rate we are getting new characters, a new player would NEVER be able to unlock everyone without spending like 12 hours a day playing.
In your case, you used 7 perks locked behind either a paywall or a tedious grind. That means 63k shards for their respective characters.
That's a whopping 245 hours worth of gameplay. 245 hours of ACTUAL gameplay, not staying in menus or anything. And that is not counting the actual grind for bp that everyone has to face.
Meanwhile, someone who just pays the money will need 245 hours less to get the meta perks.
And let's not talk about how I didn't even count the fact that the meta will change, maybe causing those 63k shards you grinded for to mo even give you a good loadout anymore.
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I have literally every killer and got all the unlicensed ones with shards playing about 30 minutes a day or so. And my nephew got Legion after just a few weeks using shards. Your 12 hour a day estimate is way off.
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How do you think a 6 year old live service game is supposed to pay their employees and license holders, outside of cosmetics and new characters? Licenses aren't cheap, and bhvr piles more and more each year. I'm not surprised bhvr is testing out FOMO tactics now (even though it's still scummy). Surprised it took them this long really.
Your point about this game being behind a 20$ "paywall" is silly considering how often this game goes on sale for cheap or even free on consoles (I believe it's even free for Microsoft game pass users, and was available for free on epic games).
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My 12 hours a day estimate is what we call a hyperbole.
But in all honesty it's not a hyperbole too much. With an actual calculation, getting all current paid characters in the time between two chapters requires 1015 hours of gameplay, which translates to 11 hours a day.
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You could have compared it with basically anything else but you chose Overwatch 2, the worst F2P model I've ever seen.
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Here's a charm and a useless "souvenir" at the same price as a DBD purple rarity outfit ♥️
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I also think it should be free since the game heavily relies on dlcs and skins to be alive, but the hacker problem would be even bigger than it is now ):
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Again, why I stated that the Shrine of Secrets needs a complete rework. It is very outdated since it was designed when DbD did not have has many perks, but nowadays there are too many perks to rotate and BHVR often forgets about perks which makes getting perks consistently from it difficult since it entirely relies on luck more than anything.
But on a technically level, you can in theory get all perks, including licensed perks, from the Shrine, so technically it is not PTW, but regardless of such it is not practical at all to get all the perks from the Shrine from the inconsistency and time required.
But back when the Dredge first released, I made a Forum post showing how long it would take to get every perk just from the Iridescent Shard grind alone, it's really outdated since the amount of Iridescent Shards needed increased since then.
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I thought this would be a quality post but as soon as you said DBD monetization is inferior to OW2 monetization, it became obvious that having any kind of discussion would be pointless.
I played both games for +1k hours and had completed the OW2 battlepass 2 weeks ago. If you truly believe that OW2 monetization does even a single thing better than DBD, you have no clue what you are talking about and try to make up an argument out of thin air.
OW2 battlepass consists of 80 tiers of filler content with maybe 3 worthwhile skins, 1 of which appears at the last tier. New legendary skins cost 20 bucks. Many of those skins are super-low effort as well and resemble simple recolors (Junker Queen). I have yet to see a low-effort DBD skin at rare rarity or higher, OW2 skins are mostly recolors outside of Legendary (and sometimes even then). So aside from OW2 battlepass being essentially worthless, you also need to buy it anew each season as it does not pay for itself, like the DBD battlepass does.
Bottom line? DBD's monetization definitely is not great and there is lots and lots of room for improvement. But it honestly is not even a contender for being the worst system on the market. Comparing it to OW2 illustrates a gross misunderstanding that leaves me questioning, whether you are shitposting.
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The issue with shrine is the newer perks, ones that come into the meta don't go into the shrine for a long period after release.
Boon's are in shrine for the first time (Unless im wrong) and thats got to be 6? months since they came out.
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Just play two games per Battle Pass Tier, bro (read my previous posts).
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