Is the grind still too much?
Off the bat, I already have about 75% of perks unlocked for both sides. So this isn't a post complaining about the grind. I'm thinking about new players. More survivors and killers get added at 3 new perks a piece, sometimes 2 new characters, and on rarer occasions 3. So 3-9 new perks for each new chapter.
They just reduced the grind not too long ago but I personally think it was a nice start, but a bit too behind the curve. Don't get me wrong, unlocking perks at tiers 1-3 and making them unlocked for all killers/survivors as you prestige them for levels 1-3 is HUGE and helps lessen the grind as the roster grows. And sure, new players can come in and can choose to just shoot for the perks they want. But most players probably want more than just a handful, if not all. I have some suggestions, let me know what you all think.
Make at least 4 more survivors and 2 more killers free with the game so new players have access to more perks when they buy the game the game. Makes the game seem like less of a financial investment just to get perks. As for those who paid for those DLCs already? IDK, free shards I guess. They'll get over it if shards aren't enough. But the game is borderline pay-to-win with how many perks are paywalled, and the shrine doesn't really make this untrue. 2 perks each side, each week, and there doesn't seem to be any real rotation. Some perks get added way more often than others. So include more characters with the base game. Since the shrine has been brought up...
Make the shrine way more robust. 8 perks? 12? Maybe just do away with the shrine for a "Perk store" instead where any and all perks can be bought with shards? IDK, something more than what's there because the shrine as is, isn't really an answer to the argument the game is a bit pay-to-win since perks are paywalled. Ok, maybe not all perks are available at one time but more than 4 at a time at least.
[EDIT: I was trying to keep my thoughts in order for this post and I totally forgot about the fact we can buy non-licensed characters with shards, so unlocking perks is super grindable. So this negates any real downside of the shrine I mentioned. The amount of shards we earn is fair and the cost per character is also reasonable. So there's that. I do wish the rotation of perks in the shrine was a bit more even as some perks seem to appear way more than others but someone pointed out they've already talked about a shrine rework so there's that LOL]
Perk tiers. Do we really have to have 3 perk tiers? I'd argue we don't need 2. Just each perk as they would be at tier 3. But at least making perks only 2 tiers and those tiers being what they would have been at tiers 2 and 3, for what would now be tiers 1 and 2 respectfully.
Lastly, there really is no downside to making things in the bloodweb either much cheaper, or give more BP, or a bit of both. Even allowing us to "cash in" items we will never use for a fraction of what they cost in the bloodweb for BP. Even if its only 10% of what we paid, still huge.
That's it. I get the game has to make money, but I don't think making 8 more total characters from older non-licensed DLCs free, considering how many there are now and how many more we'll get is too much. The base game should grow with the game overall. I also get the game has to make players invest time for the system they have in place to make certain things grindable instead of paying cash (fair trade, you either pay money or with your time) but at what point are players going to really calculate the grind and just think "this isn't worth it." Yeah you want to have players invest time but you also don't want them to leave after they've barely gotten started. There can be a balance to make players work to unlock perks and prestige characters but also not feel like they have this uphill battle that they may just decide isn't worth their time.
Agree? Disagree? Somewhere in between? Have any ideas of your own? And remember, I'm not b****ing, I've already gotten a huge amount of the grind done, this really won't benefit me THAT much, unless they did it tomorrow or something.
Comments
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For old / veteran players no. Grind is fine.
For new players? Yes. Grind is still insane.
I think solution will be: Add some older original chapters to game for free. There is countless chapters already.
And make tier 1 perks from base game characters already unlocked on all characters. So this will help to new players try base game perks.
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3 years old original chapters should have 25% off, 4 years old with 50%, and from year 5 with 75%. In both Auric cells & Shards
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I'm thinking about new players.
This is also why I feel the grind still looks overwhelming.
Make at least 4 more survivors and 2 more killers free with the game so new players have access to more perks when they buy the game the game.
For the most part I feel unlocking characters with Shards is fine but I'm not against the suggestion personally I just don't see it happening.
Make the shrine way more robust
I was under the impression BHVR was planning to rework the shrine a while ago but we haven't heard anything so nothing to add here.
Perk tiers
I agree but I think BHVR touched up on why this isn't happening and instead prestiging gives everyone a single tier of a perk if they didn't have it already. I feel removing perk tiers wouldn't affect the grind but instead make balancing stuff easier because you wouldn't have arbitrary scaling components of a perk to pad it out.
Lastly, there really is no downside to making things in the bloodweb either much cheaper
Personally I feel the bloodweb cost is actually fine - especially with the amount of bonus BP weekends and other promotions there is now. Although some require you to pay attention to social media to get codes or relying on people who do pay attention to share codes with you. There is Twitter, Amazon Prime Gaming and in game events that give rewards.
Here's my honest take
I feel the grind is fine for older players who have a decent amount unlocked but I've come to the opinion that if you buy a DLC you should get the tier 1 perks unlocked for everyone. Veteran players only take a couple of days to prestige and newer players have nothing. Yes the fun in this game can be progression but we now have enough of that with the archives, prestiging and soon to be banners and icons in lobby. Plus unlocking cosmetics by playing.
So yes I feel there should be a step new and old players alike should skip considering there are 30+ characters on each side. For those who grind iridescent shards to get characters sorry but for us who pay money yes we should get more benefits to doing so. Especially now that DLC seems to be being priced higher overall.
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To be honest I didn't consider permanent price cuts for older DLC IE Clown, Doctor, etc. Not against this either but I don't see it happening as the DLC goes on sale quite a bit as it is. BHVR also seems to prefer consistency with their pricing so I doubt they'd shake up the prices and then people out of the loop ask why.
Personally I'm all for this because I'd love to see newer players have easier access to older content as well.
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I like that. Keeping 3 perk tiers but just unlocking tier 1 for everyone. Would help big time.
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I will say, something I forgot to include, while mentioning stuff about the shrine is you absolutely can buy characters and their perks with shards. And the amount of shards they cost is just fine. I was focused my opinion of how I think the shrine needs some tweaks to remember to keep that in mind.
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Yeah, that's cool too I think. Older DLCs sell at a discount. They got new chapters coming all the time so they have plenty they can sell at full price.
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Fair enough - I'm all for improvements regardless.
It wouldn't necessarily help new players but I do wish the Shrine acted as a weekly vendor for not only perks but also just outright buying addons you want. The Shrine should act as a hub for weekly events where you turn in dailies, buy weekly offers and even make offerings of your current inventory to get other rewards.
That being said that doesn't help the grind for new players. I feel just making stuff easier to access for new players is the way to go which by proxy helps vet players. I still feel perks for the most part should be more accessible in some way globally but I know that's a hard sell for a lot of people. To me with 30+ characters on each side progression on the bloodweb specifically for perks feels like a lot of busy work just to become competitive at what ever MMR you're at. I don't necessarily view DBD as a competitive game but more of a party game but with how the meta is in this game not having some perks immediately can cause frustrating games.
Personally I have all perks in the game so it doesn't affect me at all but I have plenty of friends who play far less because they don't have perks they want and they cannot be bothered to spend hours grinding just to prestige to get that characters perks.
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Agreed. But I would like to add, that even the old system was manageable for veteran players, if they spent all their BP efficiently. So that isn't a very high bar. By now the BP grind is acceptable in my opinion. It takes forever but that also means that players will always have something to work toward.
The grind for shards is pretty insane. I mean, new players buy the game for 20$ on Steam and then have less than have roughly 10% of the content. The least they can do is to reduce the shard prices for some older characters like Clown and Doctor. But this is not the worst about the grind. The worst is unlocking perks. For years, we've been saying, that the shrine of secrets is outdated (there are simply too many perks for it to work properly) and yet here we are. Still with the same system.
I will not spend any shards on perks that I already have (not even to swap them for BP). And with less than a 2% chance to get the perk I want, it's entirely possible I'll play for years and never get it from the shrine. Both sides have quite a number of bad perks that nobody will ever use, so the options of good perks are rather limited. Which decreases the chances to get a perk you'd actually want from the shrine.
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Shrine and daily rituals should be looked next for sure.
Shrine 100% should get rework. We have countless perks in game for both sides but shrine is offering 2 perks from both sides. The perk you are looking for it can take months to show in shrine. This is crazy. I really hope good rework for this system.
Same goes for daily rituals. There should be 2 dailies every day. One for survivor and one for killer. Because i am almost never getting survivor daily. And another problem, daily rewards are so bad. Even when they make it double for weekly event. So even when they double them, it still not makes me to do them. Daily rituals should give us some shards as well. So this system would also help new players to get some content.
And like many people said, +3 years old characters should be cheaper with both (auric & shards). If this creates problems with licensed chapters, they can make this for only original content.
We seriously need some of these changes, hopefully devs have knowledge.
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The grind and price barrier is absolutely insane for a newer player coming into the game in 2023. I can't even recommend it to people. I don't get the long term strategy here. You have to drop ~100 dollars just to unlock everything and then grind for hundreds of hours just to use everything you already paid for. Korean MMO developers probably look at BHVR in awe of the grind they've implemented. If you pay for it, you should be able to use it immediately.
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They never actually did anything to make the grind better. They made things 33% cheaper in the bloodweb but they also killed the BP bonus on perks like BBQ, WGLF, Prove Thyself, etc. These perks were heavily used by people who wanted to make the grind less awful. Prove was a guaranteed 10K bps nearly every match. These days you get maybe half of that due to how few BPs you get for doing generators. WGLF and BBQ effectively doubled your BPs in nearly every match. I enjoyed the game more when I could double my points whenever I felt like it. The incentives exist but they are not always on the role you want to play. Maybe you only like playing survivor and can only play during primetime when there is no incentive. The grind is absolutely insane in this sort of situation. Then you have to consider that new players don't have thousands of cakes, streamers, etc to make the grind less terrible like many veteran players do. Think of how many games it would take a new player to get just one prestige level.
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New players need to learn to be patient. Most people only ever use one or two different killers anyway.
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Nah but I wish it was more friendly
By allowing auto buy before p1
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I think an expansion on the base game roster is warranted, myself, and I love the idea of the basec game characters starting at P1.
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It's far better than it used to be and they won't make it to the point of it being inconsequential. There will always be a grind because that's what keeps player playing.
The argument of vet vs new get less relevant with each chapter. Yes, vets have more than new players. But it will take less time and effort for those new players to catch up. If we had the old system it would take thousands of hours with every chapter pilling on. The new system to get all survivor perks is around 117 million. Less if you don't care about all survivors having all perks. The old system you need that just to P3 everyone and that gives you nearly no perks to play with.
Yes, it's quite the grind for someone just starting. But they are looking at a small mountain while others had to climb Everest.
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The Shard grind is disgusting, and it's shameful BHVR has done nothing to address it to make the game more accessible to new players.
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I don't notice the grind, but I've been playing for many years.
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I do think that the Perk Tiers are generally useless at this point.
I find it annoying that I cannot use the auto-blood web on non-prestige characters.
I think that unlocking Perks via blood web interaction is an unnecessary abstraction away from gameplay unlocking the Perk and favors those with banked bloodpoints than those starting from scratch.
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From my experience with it, and do keep in mind that it was a very limited experience, the changes made to address the grind only made it better for those who had actively prepared themselves for it once the update dropped.
Everyone else still has to grind endlessly.
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I think BHVR can and should be far more generous with IS. There's such a massive number of character to unlock at this point that it's kind of crazy you only earn enough shards for 1 or maybe 1.5 characters for every 2, or even 3 that drop every three months. I don't think more shards would hurt the cosmetic cash train either, when the 21K you need to save for a single outfit is nearly good enough for a whopping 5 characters if you buy them during an event.
The Shrine is also long overdue for a rework, although it's been suspiciously generous lately.
Beyond those issues, I think the grind is in an okay spot now. The fact that new unlicensed characters are now guaranteed to have their perks in the Shrine within about two months of release helps a lot with perk accessibility. Prestiging itself is really simple now. Doing it even three times on one character is a breeze. It's still a bit harder for killers when it comes to perks on characters you're not interested in, but I don't think the sheer number is a problem at all. Having 30+ killers just means hundreds of hours content if you're brand new. So many different playstyles to experience if you choose to, to ignore if you want, and you have as much time as you care to put into the game to get to it all. Not so bad.
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I think the grind is perfect. It's also fine for new players. New players will always have a build they're comfortable with when trying a new killer or switching survivors, and it's really not difficult to reach tier one if you see a perk you want.
I also just finished my grind this week and am kind of wondering what's the point of playing anymore.
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You pointed out that there is a system in place regarding new perks from new DLCs being guaranteed to be in the shrine within a certain window, that's good to note. I would love it if there was a better system in place for the rotation of perks, but knowing at least there's a window for the new perks is something people can plan around at least. I didn't know that was a thing.
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