Why cant we get more "Mid"chapters (or Balance Chapters) and less Chapters?
Simple Question.
Because BHVR squeezes out 4 new killers / 5-6 new survivors / 2 new maps every year, while every new killer feels kinda like a mixture of already existing ones, I wonder why they dont reduce the amount of Chapters to 3 to have more time for Bug-fixes and especially more Balance-Patches with Killer-Overhauls, Perk-Changes etc.
To be honest I do not care about chapters at all. Xenomorph looks nice, but in the end he is a mixture of Nemesis and Demogorgon, while a lot of killers who desperately needs changes or at least addon-passes have to wait for years to get adjusted. Or are they all fine in BHVRs opinion?
I know you make money out of chapters, but I assume there are more options to generate money out of the game than chapters and cosmetics. I assume you could do some sort of Perk-/Addon-Shop, some sort of a shop for different hooks or generators etc.
What is your opinion on this?
Comments
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Aside from the obvious money-making thing, it's because they have to keep churning out content to keep players interested. That's particularly true now that TCM has gone into full release and is 'competition', at least in theory.
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I agree that we could use more QoL and Bug-fix patches rather than content ones, but this is a live service game. With one gamemode, the game has to keep pumping out content to make sure they have a consistent playerbase.
Personally, I would still like to see a lessened amount of new chapters and shift the focus to making something new. I'm not sure how many more chapters they can manage before the game get's bloated.
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Yes please. We need more chances to nerf the pig
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2 chapters a year would result in long spans of content drought, so 3 chapters a year would be ideal, imo.
It would also bring back some of the hype of new releases. Quite a lot of chapters were teased in what felt like two weeks after the mid-chapter dropped.
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Cause they want to bring in new players, and money of course. It's standard business practice.
I know for s fact people would not be happy with s reduced chapter count a year
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That's easy to answer. (clears throat)............... Money. They want money and they want it now. Health chapters don't bring money. Licenses do. Licenses = money. Give them money. They need money. Spare some money. Lend them some money. What you doing honey? Give them your money.
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They're never gonna please everyone, and if they only had 3 new Chapters a year there will still be people complaining they aren't good enough. I think most of what they come out with is fine. There are limitations in the game to what they can do with killers power-wise, so there will always be an overlap with other killers. And I'm pretty sure things like bug fixes and perk changes are controlled by different people to the ones working on new chapters.
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Hell...they do 4 chapters a year now and this year specifically, 3 out of the 4 weren't good anyway, so obviously something needs to change. They must be having crunch time in there judging by the 'quality' of the Knight, Skull Lady, and Singularity chapters... We can't really say they feel rushed as we don't know what the characters should feel like or play like due to them being original. Skull Merchant though, I think most people agree on her, that chapter felt like a 'quantity' over quality. When the majority of your audience is saying they'd rather have NOTHING than what you just came out with, something is definitely wrong.
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They've said they spend 12 months developing a single chapter. If we only had 3 releases this year it could have been Knight, SM, and Singularity, and people would have been disappointed. It could have been Knight, SM, and Alien, and people would have been disappointed in 2/3. And Singularity would have shown up next year. You're assuming if they released one less chapter a year that somehow the ideas and concepts they've come up with already wouldn't have graced our games. Chances are they still would have.
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No I'm not saying what I hear most people say, which is if they do less Chapters per year then the few Chapters they do will be better.. My stance is I honestly think the team that works on these is simply hit or miss. Period. They do a few good ones here and there, but the rest...nope. They simply can't keep the good streaks going. They're amazing at bad Chapter streaks however. It actually impresses me. This past year isn't the first time they've had a bunch of bombs in a row either btw.
I remember back when people said Blight was bad in the PTB and that lasted awhile, then we got one of, if not THE buggiest Chapter of all time with The Twins, and right after that a very controversial/confusing addition in The Trickster. Trickster was also extremely underwhelming because it wasn't a myth that he sucked. He really did suck and was one of the worst Killers they've put out in a PTB to date. That was not a fun time. Felt like a 'good content' drought..similar to the recent Knight, SM, then Singularity... Interesting isn't it.. It almost feels like if they kept doing these OG Chapters ONLY with no licenses, the DBD servers would see fewer and fewer people coming back each time.. What a mystery?
I've been saying this for years btw. I don't think the DBD team is creative enough to keep people playing the game, having fun, and staying interested in the content with their OG Chapters. My honest belief is that the licenses they nab are what pull most people in and keep them whether they want to admit it or not, because there are plenty of OG Chapters they've pumped out, especially recently, that just suck ass...
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This game would die going through content droughts and honestly if the game got major overhauls at that rate then people would quickly become frustrated because you would never feel like the game has settled into a steady groove where you can just play without having constantly relearn things.
Then there is the timetable they have to work with in terms of making a chapter from start to finish which they said is about a year. There is no guarantee that additional time will result in a better or more unique killer that's actually playable by the majority of players. Sometimes a idea can be in the over too long and come out worse than if you had just shipped it and moved on to next project. Cycling through projects gives you time let your previous creations breath while you recharge your batteries so speak. They might have a killer power they think everyone will love, but then it doesn't hit the mark. You can't really just rush back into it because you probably have no idea what people find problematic about it and you're probably close to burnt out thinking about how to make said power. Moving to the next project gives you a chance to reset and focus on something new that might end up helping you fix your older work.
I'm more in favor of taking maybe one or two operation health chapters every couple of years to like iron out long standing balance and bug issues or experimental chapters where rather than adding characters they add new ways to play the game and see what pops off and what doesn't.
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It'd be great if they only did 3 chapters a year and rest of time was focused on bugs and QOL BUT every time there's been a midchapter patch that's mainly bug fixes people complain there isn't anything/enough that's new. Within days of a chapter coming out people start asking what the next chapter will be. There's no way they'd do less DLC because too many would complain.
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While I agree with the sentiment, BHVR has other goals and want to feed players with a steady stream of new content. You'd think after all the $$$ they've made just on DBD that management would've brought in some Grade-A code monkeys to tidy up some of the mess, but here we are.
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agreed.
devs should really at least TRY to skip a chapter and make up with different kind of content.
like, I wouldn't mind if they actually took some time to implement working 1v1 gamemode that is just as playable as regular 1v4 and introduced it instead of another filler chapter to fill the schedule.
or made some REALLY generous collection (and probably event alongside it) or skins that really change the characters a lot.
or dished out a full fleshed visual/gameplay rework of skull merchant and made an event to give that a lore justification.
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Exactly. I think with 4 chapters per year its just too much work and too much energy running into these themes and for that BHVR sacrifices a bit of finetuning the game.
Since the devs thankfully announced that Twins will receive changes in January 2022 with the little banner and Patrick telling us "not anytime soon" (I still have it in mind) the changes come at the beginning of 2024, which are 2 years. Sorry, but this takes too long.
I hope they get ressources free to do this much asked things more frequently if the dev team does not need to squeeze out so many new characters, lores etc.
How long do we complain about Blight?
How long did the community complain about Nurse?
How long did the community complain about Deadhard/CoH/Eruption/NOED erc.
How long do we have to say that Freddy needs changes?
All that could be much faster if the devs just had enough time to do something besides chapter, chapter, chapter, chapter. Its nothing "special", its just one after another and this worries me. I would love to have joy touching a new killer, not saying just like now.... yeah, Alien, cool, another new char. Well, whatever.
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We get people who complain when the health updates aren't what they specifically want.
Accessibility updates get people attacking those with disabilities.
Reworks get people complain about how the update is broken or ruined the killer.
Meta shake ups have people complain that their favorite perk was nerfed.
Not to mention every patch has a list of bug fixes,so it's not like they aren't fixing bugs. Just some stuff is a lot harder to fix than others and the more you mess with code the more likely you introduce new bugs.
Reducing the number of chapters to work on health chapters simply wouldn't make the community happy.
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And what, in your opinion, would make the community happy?
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Less new chapters mean less purchasable content which in turns means less money for BHVR.
Money>game health.
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I really want that and I think the game needs it.
Too much content, not enough testing like : skull marchand and on hour game is a proof there is a problem, especially after knight's release. And it's in the game for months now !
When something is broken on one side, it stays for a very long time (infinites, oppression and circle of healing meta...) but we are spammed with cosmetics (I know it's not the same team but they can hire for balance instead even if it's not money on a short term. It is money on long term I think. Same with bugs : the wesker bug that affect survivors who plays on controller is still there.
I think they should focus on fixing problematics things (skull merchant for example...) instead of spending ressources on things nobody asks for (the ugly amateurish new portraits)
I get that content make player stay but not fixing things makes people go too.
Post edited by Necrobot on2 -
Merchant's issue is also a just a wider game design issue. It requires two major changes neither of which can be made very fast.
Her power needs a rework to prevent her from specifically from 3 genning and make her power actually more useful in normal gameplay. Then they also just need to work out how to on a systemic level prevent 3 gen scenarios from happening in the first place because it she isn't the only one who can hold you in a game till timeout. She's just the best at it
Both of these the devs have said they are working on, but redesigning a power takes a lot of time and sorting out generator spawns is going to be a lengthy process as well.
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I agree on the fact that this problem is not easy to fix, but why putting that kind of thing in the game in the first place ? Why not testing things ?
I don't trust the dev with that "we are working on". See the topic about performance issues on console. They said few years ago they will do something about it, then... radio silence.
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There are 300 bHVRians working on this game for us, You cant afford to keep them running without a profit for too long.
I mean you could ask them to make Loot Boxes, microtransactions but I swear I will stand against you on that, bHVR promised us to not do the worst monetization policies and I think the better is way way way better for it now.
https://www.vgr.com/dead-by-daylight-developer-comments-on-the-lack-of-loot-boxes/
Mathieu Côté is a GamerDeveloper Saint for this, but nobody sings those praises too often. So let me; THIS IS GREAT.
He deserves kisses and hugs for not ending up sending this game down the route of Diablo 4.
I think we should be able to do something else, maybe bHVR could rewamp the bug report system so it works a whole lot better for us who report the bugs. Using Tags, a dedicated search engine for posts. That would be swell.
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They do test things, but understand what they are testing for isn't deviant or high optimization play patterns. They're testing for bugs, code breakages, and game feel. What we do as players is often extremely different and far outside of what internal testers doing because we have a different objective than they when they interact with the game.
People look at this situation and see it as bug in the system, but the reality is that Merchant isn't bugged. She's not performing out of spec or creating a strange interaction. It's just that players have settled on a highly optimized and deviant play style which due to how her power is designed works extremely well for to the detriment of any other strengths she may have.
You can't test for player behavior, that isn't to say I'm absolving the devs of fault, just it's impossible to think every possible way people could use a set of tools when you're talking the scale of massively online game. As for performance issues on console, they have been working on it, but if you're on a last gen console there just isn't a great deal to be done it seems. It's definitely their weakspot, but it isn't like they haven't been shipping optimizations, but the the game doesn't run great on any platform.
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I know you are right and clearly made your point but I think their testing is not enough, it's not like they are new. That's why i may sound harsh. It's not a small game now. The game has 7 years and many problematics chapter at release (for bugs, twins and nemi come to mind) and killer "exploits". I get that the legion exploits (forcing bleed out) was something they didn't think about as it's really specific... You made on your point on that one, but for the skull merchant, I assume they know about the 3 gen potential problem and were forced by their release schedule. After all the problem was the same with the knight to a lesser extent. That was discussed a lot back then. I know they fixed things but for a game this big, it's really slow. Don't you think so ? Compare to path of exile patch notes for example : they nailed it in that departement. Not sure this game makes more money than DBD (but maybe i'm wrong). And it's free to play.
For the performance on console, i switch on PS5 and it's really good performance wise but you still don't have some pc advantages (for exemple filters, nightfall is really annoying for example as you see nothing, and controls for many killers are still really bad, they should improve this for all controler players but I think there's many things to fix first). On new consoles, you don't suffer anymore from framerate on some killers like doc was like a 10 FPS slideshow on lery's, on ps4. It was really unplayable sometimes.
PS : sorry for my english by the way as i'm not a native english spoken person.
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I feel confident that Path of Exile probably makes a lot more money that DBD just due to how they've structured their monetization and the fact they are very strong alternative to Diablo which is an utterly massive franchise with overlap in former devs. I'm not super familiar with the way they handle content and patching in that game. I think they aren't a good comparison since their design is vastly different to that means their production pipelines are going to vastly different as well. What works in a diablo style dungeon crawler in terms of content pacing probably doesn't map well to DBD where you essentially have treat the game as if you're making two different games stitched together.
I don't doubt that the potential ran across someone's mind, but again it's matter of priority and overall objective. It's always going to be more important to ship content on time, on budget, and as bug free as possible. So, the hope was more than likely people wouldn't do it to the extent they have decided to do it and that the post ptb changes would incentivize folks to not use that style of play. I would refute the statement that the devs aren't as in a lot of ways they actually are. Like as far as public facing devs, there aren't very many left who were apart of the original dev team. You can also tell this extends into teams that aren't public facing as the general feel and approaches taken with content being made now vs in the past is substantially different.
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Noooooooo
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Yea, even just more variable changes would be really nice.
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