It's been a wild ride

Myself and about a dozen gamer friends in my network are quitting Dead By Daylight after the slew of awful changes made by BHVR to the game.

The last change to The Blight's Adrenaline Vial was the nail in the coffin for me.

I can see that BHVR has it all wrong when it comes to their approach to the game and why hoards of people are now leaving the community and finding other things to do with their downtime.

Let me give you some context before I go into more detail on why I will no longer spend any time in the DBD community.

This provides not just a gamer's perspective but also one of an entrepreneur.

I would say I fall outside of the typical DBD demographic. I work as a CEO to my own business with an 8-person team -- a digital marketing agency based in the UK. Subsequently, the free time I have is limited. Yet I still chose to spend much of this free time playing Dead By Daylight.

Why?

Because the game was so much fun. Pure and simple. A unique concept that has been fine-tuned over many years with interesting killers, survivors, cool perks, and exclusive licenses.

But if you go through this post you'll learn how BHVR has completely messed up the formula for this game, largely through their obsession with "balance" changes. But more importantly, their ethos behind the changes they make in the first place.

I'm a console player and have been since I first got a Playstation 1 over 20 years ago before moving to Xbox when the 360 came out. I've been playing Dead By Daylight on and off for a few years but started playing it more seriously in the last 9/10 months. In the last 6 months, I've had so much fun playing as the Blight, learning his power, and improving my skills.

The Blight is such a rewarding killer, with a super high skill ceiling, incredible design. And just a terrifying prospect with his crazy rush power.

Most importantly, he is fun as hell. Particularly once you get good at him (like anything).

Over the last months, I have watched as BHVR has butchered various killers and perks all in the name of "balance".

Let's start with the Blight.

Everyone knows he's one of the strongest killers in the game. And people (survivor mains) will never stop moaning about how he is too powerful. Let's be honest, survivors don't want to go up against strong killers with a high skill ceiling. Because it feels unfair when you go up against someone that's just that -- highly skilled.

Does that make the killer unbalanced or unfair? Of course not.

I also play FiFa and I'm in Division 1. I use Barcelona, not one of the strongest teams by a long shot. I play some of the best players in the world and I often go 30 online matches without losing a single game. Does it feel unfair to my opponents? Yes of course it does. Many of them think I'm cheating -- or they convince themselves that the game is "scripted" and I won because "the game allowed me".

if you play Fifa all day long and you get your ass kicked by someone who doesn't your brain is going to rationalize some type of excuse.

Why do I win? Because I learned the playstyle and techniques that beat 99% of people through YouTube. I love learning and improving in all aspects and take this into my gaming too.

Am I going to wake up one day to a different Fifa because the devs didn't like my playstyle or because I'm winning too much?

Never.

But this is exactly what the developers for Dead by Daylight do time and time again.

They look at the numbers and fail to take into account the full context of the data before they make a decision. They also contradict the entire ethos of the game through many of the changes they make.

What do I mean by that?

If you ask the team behind DBD -- it is a game that's supposed to revolve around fun. It's geared more for casual gamers than for hardcore professionals.

This is the reason they have done next to nothing for competitive play.

This is the reason why DBD has no stats.

This is the reason why various QOL changes have been implemented to stop undesirable playstyles like camping (which is totally fair).

But the obsession with changes to killers, add-ons, and perks makes it a game no longer worth the time investment.

Let's focus on BHVR's seemingly unending fetish with balance for a minute. Most real imbalances come from two main places:

1. BHVR overpower perks for new killers or survivors to get you to buy them before they nerf them 6-12 months later.
2. A genuine oversight from the developers on how a perk or power would play out in the game.

The idea of balance itself comes from a desire to even out the playstyles in the game. They want to see a more or less even usage of perks, killers, add-ons...etc.

But this will never happen because it goes against the law of nature itself.

Ever heard of the Pareto Principle?

It is the observation that most things in life are not distributed evenly. It can mean all of the following things:

• 20% of the input creates 80% of the result
• 20% of the workers produce 80% of the result
• 20% of the customers create 80% of the revenue
• 20% of the bugs cause 80% of the crashes
• 20% of the features cause 80% of the usage
• And on and on…

If we apply this in a gaming context, specifically relating to DBD:

80% of players will use 20% of perks in the game. There will always be meta perks.

80% of killers will use the same 20% of the add-ons available.

BHVR is constantly fighting against nature with an obsession to balance things out. Anytime something is meta, it finds itself on the radar for a nerf at some point down the line.

This is an unhealthy cycle that disrupts gameplay, pisses people off and ultimately drives people en masse away from the game.

Now let's look at some more specifics relating to recent updates from BHVR. Let's take 7.5.0 and 7.5.1 as an example.

People moaned for a very long time about Blight's add-ons and the Blight in general. If survivors had their way, he'd be 0.9ms with 1 rush and a 60-second cooldown.

But the points around his add-ons were valid.

Some of them were problematic.

Alchemist Ring, Blight tag, Compound 33.

We must remember that these are purple and iridescent add-ons. These should be powerful.

When you have powerful killers paired with powerful add-ons it's always going to cause a stir. But as long as add-ons aren't problematic, they should not be changed.

I don't take issue with making changes for problematic add-ons.

What I do have an issue with is poor reworks that render them useless. Then to take things further and nerf the only add-on that was worth running for a killer (Adrenaline Vial).

Alchemist Ring (after) -- Rushes are 20% longer than standard.

Compound 33 -- Rushes capped at 2. Rushes are 33% longer and have 33% improved turn rate.

Blight tag -- Unlimited rushes but a 20-second cooldown if your rush chain ends, you hit a pallet or you hit someone.

These new add-ons are so unoriginal and don't reflect the strength of the colours they represent. 2 out of 3 are focused on rush length. For a Blight, rush length is pretty much useless when using bump logic to catch a survivor. He always has great mobility to traverse the map with his basekit. This does nothing to add to his power in a meaningful way. Not to mention the 7.5.1 change for Compound 33 which has now rendered the add-on completely useless. 2 rushes is worse than basekit and nobody will use this.

And who needs infinite rushes? You want to hit a survivor, not travel from New York to California in a crazed fit of rage.

The problem in this case is bad add-on design. It's a lazy rework to one of the most fun killers in the game.

Then we have Adrenaline Vial -- an add-on that has gone through more changes than Joan Rivers face. Before 7.5.1 we had the following:

• Reduces the Recharge time per Power Token by -1 second.
• Increases the number of available Power Tokens by +2.
• Increases your Movement speed during a Rush by +10 %.
• Increases your maximum Look angle during a Rush by +50 °.
• Reduces your Turn rate during a Rush by -0.5 °/s.

Then it changed to this:

• Increases the number of available Power Tokens by +2.
• Increases your Movement speed during a Rush by +5 %.
• Increases your maximum Look angle during a Rush by +20 °.

And now in 7.5.1 BHVR had re-added the downside of -55% turn rate without the recharge time bonus.

In 7.5.0 this add-on was perfect. The Blight felt incredible with his 20-degree look angle increase along with the other benefits of the add-on.

At the sametime, this add-on doesn't make any sense.

BHVR, instead of creating an add-on that does everything and giving it a huge downside, split up the benefits.

Remove the turnrate reduction and keep the look angle and speed. You can forgo the additional power tokens. Or split up the effects. I'd love an add-on that just gives look angle increase of 20 degrees. That could replace one of the many worthless browns. Or one that increases power tokens by 2 and decreases the recharge rate (idea for a green).

Instead, we now have 1 add-on that's worth running in the game and the downside only widens the gap between console and PC players.

If we're talking about balance, look angle and turn rate make the biggest difference to console players. Since we struggle to change direction in the same way a PC player can due to DPI sensitivity. Many console players run both turn rate add-ons to compensate for this.

Considering your approach to balance, I'm pretty shocked this hasn't been factored into your rework.

It's one thing reworking problematic add-ons and doing it well so there's actually benefits to running them. What we have here is not a rework. It's an utter demolition of any form of useful add-ons for this killer.

And this approach to reworks and game balance is why myself and many others have decided to move away from the game for good.