Feeling a Lack of Innovation

That wouldn't be the year of Road Map goals left to wither away and die, would it? 🤪

I feel your frustration fam.

Billy was their most balanced best designed killer back then. Everyone loved him. Fun to play, very fun to verse. All he needed was add-on tweaks and that was it. Now......

I certainly share your love of the old maps, the old game really. Miss it terribly. 💝

May or may not be currently watching Puppers potatoing as Ash with Noob3 against a Billy on the old blue Sheltered Woods.

Id like to see dbd come back some day with exciting amounts of changes and innovation like we have had in the past like the big updates and midchapters we've had. While not every change is perfect the first time around it seems like the amount of effort has decreased over time because they are happy with how they think the game should be for the moment. But thats not how game design is supposed to go with a live service game its supposed to be a constant strive to give people stuff they didn't even know they wanted, innovate and tweak things that didn't hit the mark and create something living. But it feels like is more focused on cosmetics and giving people just enough to come back every few weeks to buy something new.

Nailed it, friend.

What makes it worse is that those changes weren't needed. No asked for Billy to get nerfed, Freddy could be easily fixed without a full rework, and Sadako was just the next victim.

I have disagreed with almost every single change implemented into this game since July of 2019, so expecting the absolute worst is perfectly normal for me. And as you've said, it shouldn't be.

There is one hell of a gap between what the community wants and what is actually being done.

New killer powers show it

for every unique concept you get the most uninspired power in the game (xenomorph)

I think that behavior is doing amazing and that they should continue to release more skins because that’s what the community prioritizes, collectively, we are literally the ones that decide what is the order of importance within this game, through our wallets.

I remember that some rando dev said once upon a time, something along the lines of, a rancorous community is a healthy community, because it shows that its members are passionate and truly care about the game, those were words of wisdom.

Now, no offense, but I think that it’s a little pompous to say that behavior lacks a proper understanding of their own game, I can’t imagine saying that with a straight face and actually believing in those words.

I mean, who’s understanding of the game would you use to substitute theirs? Your own? Some popular streamer? Some opinionated friend? Or your hypothetical dad that works for Nintendo?

I think that the members of the community which share your disappointment should tamper their expectations.

I agree with everything. Seems like the devs don't love their game. They need to improve de game faster.

Those are symptoms of a larger problem. There have always been rage quitters and lone wolf players in team games, but if players are to be believed that these are becoming more and more frequent then it suggests a driving force somewhere. IMO it stems from matchmaking issues. They can slap bandaids all they like but eventually something is gonna give.

There is always things that can be done to mitigate it and they need to work on the underlying issues that cause some people to not want to play the game.

But with the dbd community especially but any playbase for that matter you can't just let people leave in a random moment of frustration. That just causes a cascading affect through the player base.

Dc timers being where they are at can be argued but allowing survivors to exclusively leave the game the second they get hooked is not arguable. People will give up on hook for any little thing, not because they are being tunneled and camped. My experience with people giving up on either side is always random, never because of the classic reasons survivors have to be mad.

You could delete tunneling, camping, slugging and every killer A tier or above and people would still give up on first hook with the 1 gen left. You don't just let them do that for free. If you have something you need to attend to quick irl or you just can't play against knight for a third time in a row then you can eat the first couple miniscule penalty's the game gives you for leaving.

In league people will go super tilted and want out so badly but will still be active in the game always. The sentiment that deleting the ability to self unhook without deli will just cause people to troll their team is unfounded.

I used to scratch my head at the decisions BHVR have been making for DBD, but then I landed a senior creative role at an office in which the CEO has final say on every facet of every part of the job.

My boss is not a designer, nor are they an artist of any sort, yet they are routinely making executive decisions regarding the art direction of every creative project.

It would be an overstatement to say that my boss has a distinct preference for amateur art & design. The end result is a highly talented creative team who intentionally create low quality work, because it is easier to give our boss the ######### they like, than to hand them professional work and being asked to redo it.

I can only imagine that the higher ups at BHVR are ignoring the counsel of those around them, because they wrongfully believe they know what is best. Things will not change unless the leadership changes.

Anyway... time for me to return to my job search 😭

There's a few things I'd say in BHVR's defense about their game design.

1: Everyone else who has tried asymmetrical horror has done pretty poorly. The idea of an asymmetrical game is very tough to make into a playable mechanic. DbD, for all of its complaints, has had an amazing run. It's understandable that they want to be cautious with a formula that, in terms of player counts, is working.

2: Everyone, including me, has their list of 'obviously the game would be better with this change'. Except while those changes are obvious to the person posting them, the forum is in constant disagreement about the direction the game should go. Close to any change that BHVR makes is going to be met with dislike.

3: People's experience with the game is very different. Again going off the forum, it would be easy to think people were talking about multiple different games. And not just the killer v survivor experience, but the ways games normally play out seem to be radically different.

4: People's expectations about what they want the game to be are different. Being we have Otz in the video, I'll compare it to his posts about Coup. He talked about how survivors would hate it because they could think they played something perfectly, but, surprise, the killer has Coup. While I understand why some people might like a game with perfect predictability, I love the randomness and variability. BHVR has designed the game to appeal to a large audience of different expectations, we all want them to pull in our direction but they are looking at the whole group.

5: Objectively, some regions are different. Asian servers looking at self-care as an S tier perk while America and Europe view it as weak to the point of harming the team make the idea of how to move the game forward very difficult.

6: The game really wasn't designed for the lifespan it has. While ultimately that blame can be put on BHVR, they are stuck with spaghetti code and design elements that changing now would either be prohibitively costly or risk losing a portion of the player base.

7: The amount of changes they do has to take into consideration all of the different platforms they are on. The capabilities of a PC and a Nintendo Switch are very different.

-

I will agree that they don't seem interested in innovation. I suspect they are overall happy with the place the game is right now, they think they've already tapped the market of people who are interested in the game, and any radical overhaul on a 7 year old game would be unlikely to attract the increased attention/funds such a design would need. They have a large following playing the game and keeping the course with new killers/survivors every few months for the next several years that the game will continue to be successful.

As well, the last time they tried a radical game change was the universal self pickup mechanic. That was clearly an idea meant to move the game forward and deal with lots of the downsides that currently exist. Given how poorly the results went its not surprising they haven't tried any other major change like that and have been working on things like anti-face camp.

-

I am surprised they ever do events like this. So many of the problems BHVR has gotten into is someone talking off the cuff instead of prepared statements.

That's a bit harsh. They are slow to move but we still have got some improvement over the years. (And some pretty bad changes too.)

If you take a step back, you have to keep in mind that the goal of a company is to make money.

It seems that the player base is growing (several millions now?) so from their point of view, there is little incentive to change anything.

I'm guessing their biggest revenue stream is from cosmetics. (Something I'll never understand.) So naturally they have strong incentive to develop that side of the game.

In the end, the opinions on the forums, reddit, twitter, ... don't really matter. It's a good thing too given how many posts "takes" are so obviously selfish and the result of a pretty narrow view of the game.

About Otz's reaction : I think he should endeavor to keep his "positive" persona. Being so negative doesn't suit the image he has tried to build over the years. It's not like his opinions about changes are that good to begin with. He always fails to take into account that he has an insane amount of experience in the game : he is an outlier, a singularity. What happens to him or with him isn't what happens in the great majority of matches precisely because of that vast experience.

I don't feel strongly about the Q&A answers. It's a bit disappointing (sharing builds) but that's it. I don't think my solo experience will be improved because what ruins it is the suicide-on-hooks, the run-to-the-killers-to-die, the idlers, ... I've seen little change with the additional information given to the players. The game is only fun in a group because the average solo player is just bad, plain and simple. (The games I've played with a member of the forum a few weeks ago were the most fun I had as survivor for months.)

The one thing I want to see changed in the game is how they handle cheating. Their servers need to be able to detect basic inconsistencies and who is present in the match when it happens. That way cheaters can be detected and banned. Anything else is pretty secondary to my eyes. (I've stopped reporting cheaters given that the last obvious reported, recorded, teleporters have never been banned.)

I would also love if they could not break killers or features every single time they do an update. (Nurse is still broken btw.)

Yeah I'm getting the same vibes of launch day dbd to before myers released. They never expected it to be very big so they just kinda give less than half the effort to address things (which is kinda wrong cause shack double window existed for only around a week). The fact that their response to holding off on giving more communication for soloq is "soloq doesn't like to work together" is straight up embarrassing.

Like billy and blight addons (billy in all aspects like collision and addons) have been in the state of they need changes for YEARS and yet they're finally getting addressed now.

Yeah that may have been a bit extreme of me to say. Sorry. I don't think he needed any changes outside of insta-saw though and his traversal was fine. His Overheat has been changed to point now where it doesn't really have much impact anymore and he's still pretty bad so I don't think Billy was ever an issue outside of insta-saw.

I still think it was unnecessary and that they only nerfed him because he was a hot topic for a few months.

Overheat was a necessary nerf because maps used to be filled with loops that were curve-able.

The actual reason why overheat was partially un-nerfed was because the anti-Blight map updates removed most of the curve-able loops.

Does everyone remember that most loops used to literally be smooth vertical objects with perfect 90 degree angles?

Hot Take, but i never found Billy fun to go against in anyway and the curve-able loops was one of those reasons.

I'm genuinely happy he got reworked, as it means i only get to face Billy once in a blue moon.