In Defence of Bloodlust

A relatively popular opinion on the forums and elsewhere is that Bloodlust is a mechanic that either should be removed right now, or only exists as a bandaid to bad map design and should therefore be removed as soon as maps are fixed. I disagree with both of those takes, and I thought I'd spend the time to write up a probably-too-long post explaining how I personally view Bloodlust and the value that I believe it brings to the game

Before I begin, however, I'd like to convey a caveat. I am not making any claims about developer intent here- I genuinely don't know whether anything I say here is something the dev team would agree with or support, and as far as I know the mechanic was initially introduced solely to combat infinites. The takes I'm about to present are more about the kind of value Bloodlust brings as a welcome side benefit, and what could be its main value going forward.

So, with that out of the way, there's one main point I'd like to hit here, though I'll acknowledge something I personally find less compelling first: Insurance against map RNG. It's no secret that a lot of maps aren't particularly well balanced, but I'd personally argue that a game like DBD is always going to be at risk of specific bad combinations happening either via oversights on map generation or the RNG just breaking. Bloodlust is a safety net against that, above and beyond just combating specific infinite loops, and that is a legitimate purpose for a mechanic.

Still, I am sympathetic to arguments that there are other ways of addressing that particular problem, so I'd prefer to focus on what I think Bloodlust does much better: Insuring against stale gameplay.

There are a handful of mechanics in this game that already do this, in their own way. There's the fact that (most) killers move faster than survivor running speed by default, there's the fact that windows are blocked by the entity if they're vaulted three times in one chase, there's the fact that half of the survivor's tools are temporary and can be broken by the killer... I am not going to make statements about dev intent, as I promised, but I feel confident in asserting that it's probably the case that survivors are meant to go down eventually, and that idea does make a lot of sense.

There's an argument that goes around saying that bad killers are gifted free value by Bloodlust, and that a survivor should be able to loop the killer indefinitely if they're better at chasing. I am sympathetic to the idea behind this argument, but in my opinion it misses something important. Rewarding player skill is important in any video game, no doubt about it, but equally important for multiplayer/PvP titles is that the match is not just balanced but healthy.

Let's look at a hypothetical here. Let's assume a match where Bloodlust doesn't exist, the killer struggles to catch the survivor they're chasing, and they also aren't aware enough to break chase and try for someone else. The result is that one survivor is chased for five generators, the exit gates are opened, and they sail through to a crushing loss for the killer. It'd be tempting to call that match balanced- after all, the better player was able to earn a victory not just for themselves, but for their whole team!

But, was that match healthy? I'd say no, of course not. Nobody was hooked, nobody was unhooked, nobody was healed... three players got to do nothing other than sit on generators, no macro decision making happened, half of the game's entire mechanics were completely ignored. From this perspective, something that nudges the trial towards moving forward so something else gets to happen would be much healthier, even if a player performing poorly has to be given a bit of a leg-up to get it done. It's important for the game's health that a survivor not last in chase indefinitely because that gameplay is stale for everyone but the survivor being chased- and even for them it'd get old eventually.

Not only that, but the entire theme of DBD is survivors doing their best to slip away from the clutches of a vastly superior foe. The thematic element may not be the most important element to consider, but it's hardly unimportant; the theming and aesthetics are what draw so many players in to begin with, after all. Thematically, as well, a survivor shouldn't last in chase indefinitely.

So then, we have thematic and health reasons why a survivor should eventually get hit by the killer even if they're exceedingly skilled at loops. It would stand to reason then that survivor skill expression should not be considered whether they can run the killer for five generators, but rather how long they can last before the inevitable while they're in chase, as well as all the non-chase related skill expressions that aren't relevant to this discussion.

If the survivor should eventually be hit by the killer, which I believe I've made a good case for, then Bloodlust is one of the mechanics that works towards ensuring that without being too potent, and I believe it does that well. It isn't guaranteed, and it takes long enough to build up that it isn't really giving the killer free value (as it's a mistake to assume that Bloodlust 1 kicking in means a hit happens immediately, and if the killer gets to Bloodlust 3 they've invested way too much time for that to be actual value), so it really only serves to be insurance against infinite loops, and insurance against maps stalling into only one chase happening at the expense of everything else. It provides texture and back-and-forth to trials that might otherwise lack them, while doing very little to impact trials that don't need it.

That last part is important, too. All the hypotheticals I've listed out are edge cases that this mechanic is insurance against, it won't be happening every trial even for unskilled players. It's simply a nudge to keep things on the rails, and players who are in any way close to skilled in this game already don't activate Bloodlust all that frequently because of the various actions that cancel it. It's a safety net, not a crutch; if you rely on Bloodlust, even just Bloodlust 1, to win every chase... you're gonna lose, but you'll lose in a trial where more happens than one survivor being chased, so it's a healthier match for everyone.

In short, Bloodlust is a mechanic that, intentionally or not, contributes to the suite of mechanics ensuring trials don't get stale or stall out. For that reason, I don't think it should be removed outright, not even if and when maps are brought up to a healthier state overall; it's only a positive for the game.