Dead by Daylight beat every other game in the genre

In all fairness, you cannot compare the devs there.

BHVR atleast tries to deliver quality while Pokemon.. wel.

Game Freak used to put in effort, at least.

I think DBD would be a better game if it had actual competition.

As for the others, Propnight is still kicking it with a consistent 500ish playerbase, which is honestly not bad. It's a bit stale though, and they're just adding new maps every now and then, but I'm happy it exists. Fills a small niche.

What happened to VHS is a travesty, it had glaring flaws since beta and they never improved the core gameplay past lame bandaid fixes. It was quite fun, but it both lacked depth, while also being unfriendly to new players, so it couldn't retain an actual playerbase.

They had almost 5000 players at Steam launch, ALL gone in the span of a single year. It's such a shame because all they had to do was experiment with some huge gameplay changes, dare to shake their game around a bit. The presentation was already there.

But they didn't even try. Healthbars instead of health states? New monster abilities that take skill to master? A more "shooter" like gameplay loop? Any major changes at all? Nope, why even try. Just shut it down, I guess. What an absolute waste.

At least the Texas Chainsaw Massacre game looks fun. Made by the F13 devs too. I think it'll stick around.

But these games aren't an attempt to "overtake" DBD. They're all vastly different gameplay wise and aesthetically, but all of them are assym slasher type games. These games died by their own hand. They just didn't have the staying power needed to thrive.

Look at Identity V, that's a game you can more directly compare to DBD.

DBD will always be top in the genre. It's got the licences, diversity and it works well. It's a great game which - admittedly - has had some huge missteps at times. However, on the whole it's clearly a good game.

Why does it always have to be competition?

I mean it would be nice to have other games in the same genre to play then just one.

F13 only fell because it got pulled into the lawsuit otherwise it would be neck and neck with DBD.

Evil Dead , Resident Evil Resistance fell because the competitiveness took over pushing out the new, average, casual and players that wanted to play for fun.

The only way TCM will survivor is if the DEVs think of all their players and not just the try-hards pushing it to be the next sweat-fest in gaming but, only time will tell.

I would compare it to World of Warcraft.

The game is nearing 20 years of age and it is estimated that roughly 1 million people log in daily (!).

Other games tried to dethrone it but never managed to do so. Those successful in the world of MMORPGs can mainly attribute their success to the lore they have (e.g. Knights of The Old Republic).

As for OP: This is very said. I think healthy competition could only make DbD better. VHS I wanted to try (checked a couple of gameplay vids by Otz and it looked interesting) and Evil Dead I have on Epic but it is said to be very toxic...

I think all of the named games would have had way better chances if there was a console port with crossplay. Would have made it way more accesible and would also have increased the playercount by ALOT.

Isn't Identity V only as it is because it has been authorized by BHVR, tho? I tried it out years ago, and imitated DbD in almost every aspect.

I disagree with the statement that Friday the 13th would be neck and neck with DBD if it wasn't for the lawsuit. I played the game. It was fun and different but it had real issues in terms of balance, replayability and fun. The thing I thought that was particularly cool about it was the environmental kills. I wish DBD would take a page out of their book and introduce environmental kills to DBD.

Picture the following: map is Lery's Memorial Institute. Killer has a survivor on death hook and the survivor is in the dying state. If that survivor is hooked then they are dead. Why not have a location like the center of the map where the killer can carry the survivor and instead of hooking them the killer gets to do some special kill where they hook the survivor up to a chair and the survivor is simultaneously electrocuted and injected with chemicals. Map specific kills would be so cool.

I feel like one major reason these games fail and Dead By Daylight didn’t is the that, as fair as I can tell, all those games allow the survivor role to fight back. And usually this led to the killer role being miserable to play while the survivors felt more powerful than the killer which lead to the killer being having to hide more than the survivors to avoid being stun locked for ages. The player base dies because queue times are skewed in an already small player base.

Then they either completely ignore this and let the game die or go overboard on killer buffs and make them overpowered, making the survivor role miserable and then the game dies.

F13 might have lived had it not been for the lawsuit, but even they followed this formula.

DBD was very survivor sided when it released, but the lack of ability to fight back and stun locks didn’t make you feel so completely powerless and all the overpowered stuff did eventually get nerfed without them making killers broken. Sure it’s not a balanced game, but they didn’t flip-flop between balancing and are actually making some effort to balance it and keep it fun.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre has potential to be really good, but people have already figured out a way to stun lock the killer for like 30 seconds.

I think people are vastly underestimating how DbD pulls off replayability and… playabity in itself. Or to be more precise, how others didn’t. Whether it be by luck or design genius, DbD simply has the best gameplay loop.

DbD has randomised maps. No single map is the exact same every match. Pallets and windows in different locations, entire buildings are turned to a different angle, totems being random, etc.. Only RPD is largely static, and even then there’s two variations.

VHS in particular had completely static maps. Stations in the same place, windows in the same place, etc. Once you learn it, there’s nothing to surprise you. The chases play out the same way every time. That gets dull.

I haven’t really paid attention to how F13 does it, but I believe its maps are fairly static as well. Loot is randomised, which helps, but the layout is the same.

VHS had immense accessibility issues. Both in the physical accessibility sense, as well as just getting into it. Thanks to the excessively long closed beta, people got too good at the game, which put off new players who just didn’t stand the slightest chance. Granted, DbD has this too, but VHS became inaccessible before it even hit EA, whereas DbD allowed itself to establish a healthy playerbase post-release before it became harder to get into.

F13 also had the issue of counselors just being eliminated on the spot, out of nowhere. Thematically cool, but it does get dull rather quickly, imo. Kill animations can only go so far in making it less annoying that you don’t even get to play 3/4th of the match. I’m concerned TCM is going to suffer from this too.

Evil Dead also has static maps, and massive ones at that. But the objectives are randomised. Being an Epic Games exclusive and having very little in the way of word-of-mouth marketing greatly stunted its early growth, though.

As did the fact that, ultimately, it’s limited to a niche license. F13 had this issue as well, and I reckon TCM will too. TCM is creating their own characters, at least.

Me and a couple of friends did that for a while. I'd say we racked up kills into the triple digits. That said a competent Jason could easily defeat most kill squads.

I doubt F13 would have been neck to neck with DBD considering that even without the lawsuit, it's player count never really came close to be near or even match dbd's own regular numbers throughout the game's entire lifetime.

We don't really know the console numbers, so those don't really matter since they're unavailable to us, however if they're anything similar to the numbers seen for pc, then it wouldn't make any difference.

Also i'm fairly certain that even without the lawsuit, dbd's numbers would have risen regardless judging by the numbers some of the past chapters pulled in.

I don't know that survivors fighting back is necessarily the issue.

VHS's glaring issue was that Monster was spectacularly boring and pigeon-holed into an overly passive and defensive playstyle. It caused matches to drag on forever. DbD has the same issue with 3 gen killers. The genre should never cater to defensive playstyles IMO. Monster abilities were almost entirely passive and cut and paste with each other. The gameplay revolved around waiting at cover and cycling cooldowns for a single M1. Almost no mechanical skill expression on the Monster side. I thought it was cool that survivors had weapons. I just wished Monster amounted to more than kiting someone around a pillar until I could press E to activate armor.