What does DbD do right that underperforming asym PVP games do wrong?
For underperforming asymmetric PVP games, I'm thinking of games like Evil Dead: The Game, and Predator: Hunting Grounds.
For me, DbD wins on variety:
- Replayability
- Licensed killers
- More maps
- Perks and addons allow an almost infinite number of builds
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Very easy to answer:
Licenses, you can play lot of horror icon, and the only game where you can do it, DBD.
Evil dead, will always be restricted to evil dead franchise only.
Same thing with Texas chainsaw or Killer Clowns game, neither of them will last long.
As for other games in the genre:
VHS doesnt even has any license, average playerbase in a given day, 80 players...
Propnight more successful but mainly the game mechanic was popular before (prophunt in old very popular game mode from the past)
I would say based on player numbers the current tierlist in the genre:
1, DbD (about 100k playerbase)
2, Evil dead the Game ( 1k-2k playerbase at most)
3, Propnight (1200 players at peak hours)
4, Dragon Ball the Breakers (468 players at peak hours)
5,Friday the 13th game (370 players at peak hours) notice even though no more updates still played to this day ,and more popular than VHS
6, VHS (116 players at peak hours, aka the "DBD killer")
Dead games(less than 100 player and no updates anymore) :
Predator Hunting Grounds(88 players)
Evolve 2 (46 players)
Recently shutdown:
Spirit detective
HSHS---> will be rebranded and the game turned into 2vs6 game, because 1 vs 4, was too stressful for the killer
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It had the benefit of being one of the first to market and being the best supported.
There are other games that meet the same level of success, but they generally aren't on the same platforms as DBD. Identity V is quite successful in the mobile space before DBD mobile came along.
Just to put all the Licensed games into one block answer: Games based on a single license have the best chance to succeed, but will often fail hard due to lack of long term support as the life of your game is tied directly to the lifespan of your license agreement. Anything that interferes with the lifespan heavily damages the game. BHVR is also a large company with pockets deep enough to not need to depend on a license holder paying in to keep the project afloat if the sells aren't strong out of the gate.
For the non licensed games: Non license games have more freedom and growth potential, but usual lack the visual and mechanical polish people are expecting these days. This is where you see the Asym format being experimented and pushed further than it is in DBD. These games suffers from not having enough time or budget to really hone the games they are making. Players looking for something new would be greatly served by supporting these games, but sadly most just don't ship at all. The ones that do make it out of early access into full release don't meet the arbitrary "dbd killer" status and often get ignored. Then there is the story of Last Year the Nightmare where they had a really good chance to do well, but made the terrible business decision of launching on Discord's marketplace. On top of gameplay balance issues that ended up being a death sentence they couldn't escape from even after relaunching on steam.
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licenses is the only answer. you cant name another game where michael myers can kill jill valentine and ash williams on silent hill
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Because even tho they are not the most played they are the ones who attract new players, if licenses had no effect then the massive influx of players during licensed chapters wouldn't exist, and aside from the flop that was sadako's chapter, most licenses introduce a lot of players to the game, players that might end up playing original characters, but they starte playing due to licenses.
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my friends played the game and it was cheap
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The only reason DBD is on top is because Friday the 13th the game got pulled into that law suit.
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It was one of, i not THE first BIG asymmetrical game?
Friday cam later (iirc) and got ruined by licensing
Evolve came but also died way before DBD came out due to a ridiculous price politic and some other reason i can't remember.
Also the playable slasher movie theme was intriguing and fresh, at the beginning when people still were afraid of the killer.
And all the ones that came after we're unbalanced, unrefined and lacked something.
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Evolve was unbalanced, SOLOQ had no chance vs the monster, while monster had no chance vs SWF. But the SoloQ experience was one of the worst in the genre.
Evolve 2 even though it was free to play died very fast. Hell, few months ago, 2500 players returned to play again, and after 2 months the game completely died again, thats shows, that the pricing wasnt the issue after all. The balance is.
Friday was already declining before the licensing, had very big playerbase drops, and wouldnt last either way. Sure living as a very niche game in the genre, but never had potential to overtake dbd, simply because it was based on 1 license
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I guess, but if everyone wanted to be Jason you weren't going to be pick every match to be Jason plus there were tons of different ways to kill the survivors. More to do as survivor too.
Texas chainsaw massacre I'm just waiting to see what it's like I'm not getting my hopes up just yet.
I did with evil dead and that became resident evil resistance version 2.0. They were both fun at first and then everyone stopped playing and all that was left were competitive players. Can't play for fun have to play like you're in a tournament.
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I dont have much hope for Texas, the main thing its 3 vs 4. So there is no Solo potential (as killer), because either way you will be forced to play in a team, and in a team game you need a very good team to be competitive.
Also I dont think the power role will be truly power role, obviously the killers must be much weaker than dbd's or evil dead's etc, so in effect the gameplay will feel like a team game.
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Killer Klowns will also force you to play a random role, but the problem is that game 3 vs 5.
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If evolve was still a thing, itd be on top
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Other than the obvious (licenses, cheap price for base game)...
Simplicity.
There is only one game mode, two if you count private game with friends, there is only one base kit to survivor : no different stats, every survivor is the same, your objective is straightforward and clearly laid out, so it's not too much information bombarding you. Same with killers, they all have one, maybe 2 specific things only they can do, but not that hard to understand and to use decently.
There is few interactibles in the map, and those are clearly defined because maps are not cluttered visually. You don't rummage through props to find a dozen different items you need to consult the effects for.
The wide cast makes it so that when you play survivor, you experience a lot of variety in terms of opponents, and if you play killer, you'll find a character that fits your fancy for a richer gameplay.
The UI is fairly straightforward, there's no ingame chat, or noisy mess of voice lines like Evil Dead game, so you can either enjoy the atmosphere or talk to friends without being overwhelmed with sounds.
Not saying the game is beginner friendly, it's far from it, but it's simple enough that playing it won't drain you from unnecessary clutter in terms of objectives, sounds, interactibles, etc.
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It had a rebirth in August 2022(peak player number over 2k, and average players 800+), however it died after 3 month completely yet again. The game balance problem is just too much
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Like I said I'm waiting to see.
It might
I feel they need to do more on the gameplay. Give more to do in the match as survivor so the killer doesn't feel the need to camp or tunnel.
I heard about it, but haven't paid attention to it.
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DBD is being held up by the licenses it's that simple, drop a game tomorrow that have acquired even a small portion of the licenses DBD has and it would die within no time, as soon as a well funded game is made with licenses mark my words this game is finished , it's already in a stage of dying and it's gonna take a lot of improvements I don't see them making for this to turn around and get back on the right path, it's more likely a game better than this eventually drops than it is for them to fix the game and add new objectives/game modes to keep people around.
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Imo, Dbd's strong points lies in 3 aspects.
- It's got a core gameplay that's very simple so pretty much anyone can just jump in and play or stream it, but it also have it's learning curves for people to master so it creates plenty of replayability.
- It's not stuck to only 1 IP and therefore can do it's own thing, while simutaniously isn't relying only on it's own creations and therefore is able to appeal to a bigger crowd of people by having their favorite well established characters appear as a guest characters. (Also alot of people have been wanting for a long time now an all-star horror game that includes all of the most popular horror characters within the same game, dbd's inclusion of licensed characters appeals to that and is the closest we've come to a true smash bros of horror.)
- All the lore this game has provided through it's entire lifespan and is continuing to create has captured the imagination of alot of people, granted it's not for everyone, but i still think it's kept enough people invested in it's many different stories and tellings of the playable characters themselves, the non-playable characters, the stories that takes place outside the fog in different realms and timelines and about the fog itself and the people wandering the fog outside the trials.
The problems i see in other asym games is that.
- They're too similar to an existing game and don't really fill a niche that hasn't been filled already.
- They got some form of massive unappealing aspect to it that causes people to leave it. (Being exclusive to 1 platform for a certain period of time for example.)
There's probably other points i've forgotten, but overall asymmetrical pvp games are very tricky to get right and one cannot balance or treat an asymmetrical game like they would a symmetrical game just because the games are both pvp.
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vhs has so few players because of queue times.nobody likes playing killer, so survivor queues are so long that nobody wants to play
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Yeah, truth.
VHS has the weakest and most unfun killer role ever in the genre history
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I've never understood the DBD is propped up by licenses argument when the most popular killers in the game are Huntress, Nurse, Blight and Wraith. I don't think there are any super widely played licensed characters besides Wesker and Myers. Freddy was only popular when he was A tier and people only use Bubba to camp for the most part.
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This is why these games tend not to do well. Despite the fact that DBD is a complete unbalanced mess at the highest level and the fact that in order to "win" both sides have to play in the most boring way possible, the other aspects of the game are still fun.
But balance in these other games tends to be such a joke. The main problem is that they often fear that the "power role" will be "Too powerful" and nobody will want to play the other role which requires multiple people, so they tend to make the power role weaker, but this creates tons of balance problems.
If a game came around and set it up similar to how battle royales work, i think it would be much better. And i don't mean necessarily an asymmetrical battle royale, but more this.
What makes a BR game fun even if you are probably going to lose? Because going into it, you are EXPECTING to lose. You a joining a game that is a 1v1v1v1v1 (all the way up to 100+ players). Nobody has any expectations that they are going to win, because out of 100+ players, only 1 can win. But, when you play those games where you get really close, top 10, top 5, top 3, and then BAM, you win. Out of 100 players you WON. You get a massive high. But they deal with the "lows" by the game being fundamentally designed in a way where you expect to lose, so the lows don't feel as bad, but the highs feel great.
If an asymmetrical game was setup this way, it would work out much better. Where 1 person is playing the power role, and they are expected to win, and the others, however many there are, are expected to lose.
The other important aspect is, when you lose, you should lose quick. In a BR game for example, when you die, you just instantly die, and can move on to the next game. The same should work in this asymmetrical game for the non-power role. and for the power role, their losses should feel longer and closer.
Imagine some crazy asymmetrical game where the power role is some crazy boss monster, and they are going against 100 "adventurers". If they win, they kill all the players, if they lose, the adventurers kill them (somehow). Now imagine the status of the game for a player on each side
When the adventurer loses early, the die, they can spectate if they want, or they can just move on to the next game. If they are the first ones to die, they end up dying in the first 30 seconds to a minute into the game, and they don't feel bad because they went into the game expecting to lose, they just try again next time.
When the adventurers loses later in the game, they made a ton of progress and helped their team out, and maybe they got close, they were one of the last surviving members, they get a ton of rewards for lasting as long as they did, and they feel good about lasting as long as they did, so they try again next time.
When the adventurer WINS the game, they feel GREAT. They just beat the odds against this crazy boss monster they had no business fighting, but they did it anyway. They won the game, beat the odds, and feel great. They probably screenshotted their victory to post on reddit somewhere.
When the monster loses early, well, in this game design, this actually shouldn't be possible really. It shouldn't be possible for them to lose early without killing a ton of adventurers because the game should be designed in a way where, unless the monster is AFK this shouldn't happen.
When the monster loses later in the game, they maybe feel a little bad, because they were the favorite to win, however, the game was still very close and it was fun. And, they still got to kill 80 dudes, so they still feel pretty good about it.
When the monster wins, they feel great, because they won, they killed 100 people. Even though they were the favorite to win, they still feel good about it because the gameplay is fun, and being the power role feels good.
This is the problem with these asymmetrical games (and even DBD to an extend, the problem is DBD is generally seen more as a "party game" so the competitive aspect doesn't get thrown around as much, as much as i disagree with it). They make the power role too weak, or too strong and balance is hard. But if they set the game up in a way where the non-power roles always just expected to lose, the game would be much better. The key also is making sure the gameplay for both sides is fun.
Evolve was really one of the first games to do this asymmetrical thing, and its main problem was that, early on the monster was weak, and later on the monster was strong. You ,as the monster had to go around eating stuff to level up and get new skills and such. The hunters, were "hunting" you. But basically due to this mechanic, as the power role, if the hunters caught you too early, you just died with no chance. The game was designed in a way where the monster wanted to make the game last as long as possible, and the hunters wanted to end it as soon as possible. This lead to it being miserable for both sides:
- If the hunters caught the monster early, they killed it, and there was no challenge and the game was boring, and the game ended too quick
- If the hunters took too long to catch the monster, it was too powerful, they died, and the game dragged this loss out.
- If the monster was caught, and died, the game ended too quickly, and it felt bad because they didn't really do anything.
- If the monster took a long time to get caught, they leveled up, and were too powerful to take down, and just destroyed the hunters, and the game took too long.
Notice the trend here and how it relates to DBD and generators and 3 genning? This meta we are currently in has put DBD in its weakest state ever and it needs to change, or it risks going the way of Evolve.
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I've only played VHS and Predator.
Predator is actually a pretty good game IMO. I think making it PvPvE was the wrong choice. Its best moments are when the fireteam and Predator are going at it directly. Its major issues are a *steep* learning curve on Predator and rough match pacing due to the PVE elements. You can go 5 minutes without ever seeing the enemy player. I'm of the opinion that AI PVE elements are never a good design choice in PVP games, but developers keep doing it (ask me how I feel about Nemesis and Knight). I'm not loading up a PVP game because I want to fight a mindless AI. Stop it. That being said, I put a few hundred hours into it. Not a bad game. Just has some really poor design choices that hold it back.
VHS. Hoo boy, where do I even begin? When you don't have a timed objective, you don't force engagement. When the only defensive options for Monsters are on long cooldowns, your only option is to not engage. When you can't escape a Monster with limited weapon charges or no weapon, your only choice is to not engage. All that's left is a passive playstyle by necessity on both sides with no timed objective to bring any sense of urgency to the match. It's a 20+ minute hit and run snooze fest. Beyond that, it's just really boring. Monster has zero skill expression, which worryingly, DbD is falling into design-wise.
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close to evil deadin how unfun and unbearable it is
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Licenses. Tons of them.
Also F13 was killed by legal order. They had lots of content that was almost ready for release. People rarely play games that legally cannot have updates anymore.
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DBD has it so the 1 can't be defeated by the team. Alot of the asymm horror game's for some reason loved the idea of the 1 being defeatable in some way. Not alot of people go playing a horror multiplayer game to play as the badguy and get the stuffing knocked out of them.
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