http://dbd.game/killswitch
Dbd player base is in a sharp decline.
Do you think solo q hud will help this?
Is the game dying?
Are killers just p2w now?
What are your thoughts?
Comments
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What evidence do you submit in order to bolster your claim that the player base is in a sharp decline?
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1 hud will absolutely help solo and increase online
2 online dbd has always had waves from content to content (the exception was last year when the killers were so weak that no one wanted to play for them and therefore the survivors had queues of 30 minutes)
3 they never were, the strongest killers are blight and nurs, and they are available for in-game currency
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Steam charts.
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This only accounts for steam players… you forget all of the console / switch / epic / windows store players.
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The Steam playerbase always dips between chapters. And it's especially understandable when their most recent chapter was an epic flop. I feel bad for saying it, but the Knight is arguably the worst killer they've put out in 4 years. I won't be alarmed until the daily peak dips lower than 20k for multiple consecutive days.
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"Sharp decline" while hovering consistently between 39 and 33k average players, that's just poor wording. It's a little lower than last year and about the same as 2 years ago.
Not sure how they can help it grow into an even bigger stable playerbase than we have now though.
Making the game run better on older hardware would be smart when considering GPU prices and console players.
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Everything that helps SoloQ will help against SoloQ players stopping to play the game since they want to look into these mechanics and test if it improves their experience.
Is the game dying? Yes and no. Big licences will always draw in new players but many of them will leave because they get bored and move on or their favorite licence released a product themselves. There are a lot of experienced players getting burnt out as well but that will always be the case. Yes the player count will sink over time but just wait for their next big licence and you will see the number of players rise again.
Are killers P2W? It goes both ways. Regarding licenced killers? I would say yes because you can't aquire them without real money and the shrine of secrets is not an excuse to lock licenced perks behind a paywall. But original chapters can be unlocked through playtime as well (there is also a double exp event rn so getting shards is way easier this week) and so are their perks. THe grind is kinda heavy though so I do believe they should reduce the grind even further.
IMO the decline in player rates is due to the current meta s well as the maps being unbalanced. The gameplay loop gets stale and boring and killers resort more and more to boring playstyles. IMO there needs to be another big meta shakeup as well as a lot of map reworks in order to make them more balanced. They need to stop pumping out new content and focus more on game health
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Whether they know it or not, there is a lot of confidence riding on if the HUD is a success.
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I'd argue this is good information as steam you have to purchase the game while xbox beta gives it for free.
Epic gives better discounts but I hardly see an epic user in my lobbies.
2 years ago there was a peak of 100k players now we are around 30k..
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A dip in players between chapters is expected. Chances are it’ll go up again on the new chapter release
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I don't think the game is dying at all. I think people were disappointed with Forged in Fog chapter but that's it.
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- Not much, but it will help a little.
- Yes, the game is dying. All games are always dying. Hell, we're all dying. Nothing lasts forever, and DbD is already about 65 in 'game' years. But it's still fairly healthy, and while it's inevitably going to slowly decline over time, with spikes and troughs here and there, it's still got a good few years left in it.
- No...not really. Meta is always changing. And hell, a killer/survivor combo costs less than a burger/fries combo so it's not a huge deal with the amount of entertainment this game has given me over the years.
My thoughts are that the game is in a better state than it ever has been, but it's hardly a new title - probably peaked numbers wise around the Nemesis chapter/anni two years ago. However, DbD will remain viable for at least another 3 years.
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And how does the analysis of Steam's CONCURRENT players demonstrate a SHARP decline?
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DBD community understand that games always have a cyclic playerbase (impossible)
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This your "sharp decline"?
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How does it not?
The chart goes up and down based on chapters, influencer exposure and discounts. The same should be expected for other platforms.
Steam being the most expensive to purchase from and being the most expensive to buy via third party I'd say steam charts would be the best platform to see the overall desirability of the game at that stage.
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😂 Yes, its a very sharp decline AND RISE, every day. 🤣
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Screencrap the year view too
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much appreciated
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So then what's happening towards the end of that chart?
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A slight decrease that's not uncharacteristic for a 1-2 week period after the holidays? Give it a couple weeks and it'll be back up, particularly as the next mid-chapter hits then.
Also that 'dip' is in part an artefact of vectorising the curve. If you want to analyse what's actually going on, the month view I posted before clears that up. If you want to claim that the less accurate year view 'dip' means something but the more accurate month view doesn't, that my friend is called cherry picking and manipulating the data.
The biggest and most significant decline happened after the last patch, as The Knight and some of the changes were unpopular, plus there were technical issues for players. You could have claimed a 'sharp decline' then, but it's levelled out now. Hell there's even been a net increase in players over the past month.
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- probably
- dying since 2016
- pay to what?
- game is more or less healthy. Occasional breaks are something usual and nothing to worry about.
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I hope so, as I can't play ED when the lobbies take 10 mins to find. And then survivors quit because they want to be their prestige player or want someone else to be support.
All I'm doing is looking at the peak and the current average.
That's not cherry picking if I didn't present an argument.
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Its cherrypicking even if you dont present an argument, lmao
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So then you choosing the monthly charts isn't either?
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People say this every single time the game loses some players on steamcharts. Yet somehow the game is still around. The fact is DBD is a relatively niche game and managing to still have 30K+ players after 6 years is impressive.
We're in the lull period. The dbd events have finished, the rift is over (or almost over), and there's an upcoming mid chapter. If people have other games they want to play, now is the best time to do that.
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Sure it would be cherry picking if the month showed not a sharp decline but the year showed it.
But its didnt, its not a sharp decline.
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Maybe you didn't understand me about vectorising the curve or the difference between more accurate and less accurate data, but that 'dip' doesn't exist.
This is a vectorised curve that an algorithm has attempted to simplify the data into something that looks neater.
This is the same graph expanded at a higher resolution:
Oh no, is that a huge dip after Jan 9? It looks like a decrease from 40k to 35k in the space of... two days...
Actually, this is still vectorised, this is still inaccurate, because the highest definition graph looks like this:
Everything in the red circle represents the data that has been vectorised into 'a sharp decline'. Additionally, even the lowest dip, which would have been the middle of last night, was still higher than the night of December 15th.
Give it 12 hours, and that 'dip' will turn into a sharp increase, as the vector favours the daytime rise over the night time fall.
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Even back when DBD "only" had ~10k concurrent, and matchmaking was based on Steam download region, DBD never felt close to dead. I think it'll be fine.
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True altogether the consoles are by far the largest playerbase, and the devs of course know all these numbers, but they cannot release them by platform.
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Aaah yes. The good ol' "Steam Charts says so!" fallacy. You do realize that it doesn't take into account all the players that play on other platforms? Such as consoles (Xbox Series X/S and One, PS4, PS5, Switch), Microsoft Game Pass on PC's, Epic Store, Stadia...
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for me Killers in general (well their perk builds) are ruining the game.
Hud will only do so much
survivor perk changes always get drawbacks which ruins the perks and no one runs anymore.
Survivor has to many negatives other than to have fun playing with friends for like 1-3 games.
West coast survivor queues are once again mainly 100% bp all the time now even thru peak times.
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I don't think the incentives are only determined by location. I have no idea how they work but I'm NA West as well and +100% Killer shows up for me for a couple hours during the day and as soon as it passes 7 PM MST it's nearly always +100% Killer.
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And you would assume trends on those platforms are different for what reason?
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For me, the trends on Steam don't indicate a decline but rather the exact same pattern that happens every year so it's probably the same on the other platforms as well.
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Even if Steam Charts matched 1:1 on other platforms, there's still not a problem. The game is in a lull point where people are going to play other games until the next rift starts and the mid chapter drops. Being 30K+ players on steam is still stable playerbase. We just came off of a holiday event that people jumped on to play.
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Do you think solo q hud will help this?
Yes, I believe it will at least help with player retention as Solo is probably the worst experience this game has to offer and new players are usually Solo.
Is the game dying?
No, I think its going back to pre COVID19 levels, most gaming and online platforms saw a huge increase in bussiness with the lockdowns and the slowdown of outside activites, lot of people couldnt go to the gym, play tennis, clubbing, concerts, etc so they started playing videogames, the pandemic isnt over yet but all those venues are open again and people are going back to their old hobbies.
Are killers just p2w now?
I dont think Killers per se are p2w, Nurse and Blight are either base or unlocked with shards, altough is very suspicious the strongest perks (and most buffed ones) are on licensed Killers.
What are your thoughts?
I dont think the game will die from going down to normal level of players, it all comes down to management, sometimes a slow in bussiness triggers very poor management decissions which end up killing the product. I do believe poor management can kill DBD.
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My only point was there's no reason to think trends on other platforms are vastly different from steam. I could understand if the game just released on another platform or got some major performance patch that benefited players on last gen hardware but that's not the case.
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This game dips in players during the winter all the time I don't understand why people act like it's a new thing to happen. Also when accounting for all platforms, there's far more than 30k people playing this game daily.
As for the rest of your comment, I do think the HUD icons will have a bit of impact on solo q. As far as killer being p2w at the moment, I would say it's a bad look that the current strong meta for killer is made up of paywalled perks but there are still some good free meta perks as well. You don't need to run cobruption. Pain res, jolt, overcharge are all good free perks.
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Why do they always think a dip in the steam charts means a concurrent drop across all platforms?
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That would explain it because I think I am over the softcap on most Killers but very likely below the softcap on survivor. That would explain why my experience is so different from the person I originally responded to.
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Peak 100k players due to anniversary, yeah. This anniversary had 96k players. Come on now.
But I do hope the upcoming chapters are interesting and good. Also I hope they make more changes to outdated killers, perks and addons.
But DBD is getting a little stale right now imo. And if balance changes really are like 3 months from now, that really sucks.
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DBD goes up and down and I don't think it is dying but the current meta is miserable, particularly if you are playing solo survivor and having to deal with Eruption based builds every game.
I pretty much only logged in to spend my BP since rank just reset but I will play again, just been overdue for a break and the current meta is a perfect time to take a break.
Though a double BP event would motivate me to instantly return lol
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I think DBD has a concurrent install base of consistent users; updates, events, sales and new chapters probably give a small boost which then tapers back off and looks like a loss.
I've been seeing comments of a declining install base which will kill the game for about two years now; we are still here.
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Seems like OP bailed when the backbone of their claim fell apart?
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Pay to win?
You want to win, you play nurse
Nurse is free
So not pay to win
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Covid 19 and lockdown at home lead to people have alot of free time to playgame compare to actual outdoor actvities.
There are many researches about gaming sale spike and gaming company raking millions from that period, now their sale are struggle to look good as before.
I saw this as a normal drop as the spike was from covid 19 is understandable
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Pig was released in the past 4 years (Up to knight's release) so...2nd worst
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