DbD Consultant program
so, apparently BHVR started another program alongside the Fog Whisperer program which focuses on actual gameplay feedback and decisions. Without actually announcing something officially (as far as I have seen?! - was it mentioned in the anniversary stream?)
they have tied the pixel glasses crow charm behind this program as well (sadge)
imo, this is not the right direction to go.
Nothing against this Hens dude at all - but I really think Content Creators are heavily biased (not necessarily a killer vs survivor thing) and are not the best source for consultation in this regard.
also, do you know who else is part of this program, requirements? Is there a list (I think there is for Fog Whisperers?)
Edit: seems like it’s not at all including only (big) streamers/content creators, and the program has been active for some time. Also there won’t be a list of people inside the program as the people can decide themselves to make it public or not. For me, it was very relieving to get this info.
Comments
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‘another‘? What are you referring to here?
Also.. how would you determine if this turns out a flop or not?
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Tippy will do it! I can be trusted with power!
For my first demand, more shirtless killers!
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This program gonna save them a lot of money and time. Hopefully they stay away from any egregiously bias players who only looking to better their role.
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my vote for president of the USA goes to this Tippy fella! Seems like he has his priorities in check!
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I hate that this crow charm is exclusive to this program.
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Could be a good thing. I think it's encouraging that someone like Hens who actually plays and understands the game at a high level is part of the program. Would love to see Dir3wolf (head of DbDLeague) get an invite. If it prevents DOA perks and powers from being released, then it will ultimately be a positive. I think it's BHVR acknowledging that they have an experience gap that they needed to get some eyes on. Certain things get released that are obviously broken to an experienced player right from the jump, like Skull Merchant, original CoH, FTP+Buckle Up, the Twins rework (PTB, but still), etc. This could help prevent those instances.
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I'd do it. Throw my hat in the ring, why not? I've got experience with every level of the game and I listen enough to understand each area's chief complaints
think if you can get enough people from either side, you'll work it out.
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I agree about content creators.
Naturally, they would want things to be balanced in a way where they can make clickbait videos. I hope the developers realise that.5 -
actually plays and understands the game at a high level
but that’s exactly what I meant, it’s only really gonna be content creators playing this game as a full time job and being a little bit far off of the actual bigger part of the playerbase.
Casual players/players in the lower skill bracket/new players (especially those!) already have it the hardest and this will not contribute for a better experience for them.5 -
I don’t think this program is for us mortals. Only big content creators.
At least that’s what I am assuming, would be cool to get actual information about this program when it does influence the balance and development
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@dvveet on X/Twitter has gathered information about the program.
https://x.com/dvveet/status/1794584353697042754
Basically, it seems a to be a paid QA job.0 -
This program is not new, it is apparently in use for years. It features people hand-picked by BHVR and not all of them are Content Creators, even tho I would say that being content creator will probably be a plus, simply because it makes BHVR aware of your existence. (You can have the best ideas for DBD, but if you are not a Content Creator or not very active on Social Media/The Forums, BHVR will simply not notice you)
I think the program is VERY good. Some people in there are people I would have wished on this form of program long ago (e.g. Scorpionz and OhTofu). However, making it public is not the right thing IMO. Because it will lead to things like "Why is person X part of it, but not person Y?" or "Why is my favorite Content Creator not part of it?". I have already seen some negative content from some communities of pretty biased players. So yeah…
But in general it is a good thing that this exists.
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Perhaps not.
Time to start my content creator journey!
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I DO hope this is just this dvveets description and not official statement as this kinda sounds insulting for actual QA consultants??!
And it is reassuring that it’s not only big content creators!2 -
Apparently the program is online for quite some time. One person from it said they are part of it for years. So there are things in the game which were created even if such a program exists. And IMO this just shows that not everything will be developed with the help of the Consultants. Because I cannot imagine that things like Skull Merchant or the Twins Rework made it to live/the PTB without basically every Consultant saying "yeah, this is wrong".
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I kinda misread the tweet then. Yeah it seems like Hens said he has been part for quite some time.
Though.. where is the official publication message? Apparently that was two days ago?
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Because I cannot imagine that things like Skull Merchant or the Twins Rework made it to live/the PTB without basically every Consultant saying "yeah, this is wrong".
well. It certainly doesn’t need to be approved by every consultant and there will be some that were okay with it - we don’t know how much information they actually work with and which forms these take
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I think it is a step in the right direction. I guess all those consultant have thousands of hours in the game and basically play it for a living, so they should have quite a good idea when something is a completely terrible idea for example Original Legion, or skull merchant and all that stuff, so that BHVR can get early feedback and just come up with something completely different, the same for certain addon changes like nerfing billys engravings. This will be a good way to not bring out stuff like that again, and maybe also somewhat of a way for the community to bring forth new ideas, depending on how those consultants interact with their community and present their ideas. Considering Otz tends to discuss a lot with his viewers about stuff like that I would assume others do the same.
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I think it is just dvveets description
I think they must have testers who give balance feedback. Because it's not been said anywhere that these people actually get to playtest things early. So i would think that the people who playtest betas are listened to in regard to balance as well.
And then i think this program is for mainly players of the game.0 -
bHVR is not going to just take what the consultants say uncritically, bHVR has a design process and all ideas must go through it.
This is absolutely fine approach for bHVR to take. I just hope they wont stop reading the forums, cause thats what we are here for.
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Oof. Really disheartening if that's the case.
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On one hand, I'd actually be okay with this. If there's a variety of people sharing their opinions and balance philosophy then a possible decent outcome can come from it.
On the other hand, this is DBD. I reckon they won't listen to half of the suggestions and the other half will be a lot of survivor/killer main arguments.
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On one hand, I'd actually be okay with this. If there's a variety of people sharing their opinions and balance philosophy then a possible decent outcome can come from it.
agree with this and at least it was already stated in this thread this is not a program only for big streamers so, I am a bit relieved 😅
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It is the weekend, after all. In the end, I guess they received the charm and were allowed to make it public at this point (since people would ask how you can obtain the charm anyway).
In the end, nobody knows what they actually get to test. Might be possible that they were not involved in some of the more unhealthy stuff for the game.
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Us Forum posters need a Union!
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It's not new.
https://x.com/dvveet/status/1794584353697042754
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that was not officially made public though (and may count as a leak?)
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One of the consultants made a statement:
https://x.com/Deafgirl_gaming/status/1794279443311341788
"Actual official title, over a year. Years unofficial. I also advocate for accessibility through this title."
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Ok, that's a change I can get behind… I vote for Tippy!
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I really hope this is actually new and not year old as some say. Otherwise how the hell Twins rework got to PTB?
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this consultant thing has always been a thing for a long time. It's just now coming out. Besides fog Whisperer are more for the branding of dbd. To get the news across the community. Consultants is it's own separate thing
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it’s not a new program, Hens states in the tweet in my OP that he has been part of it for a while already. It’s just now made public(?) and/or they added the charm for people in the program.
Also, it’s not like they actually make the final call on this, so don’t blame them for any changes/additions made. It’s a big team working on this game.
pthis hasn’t happened before, it’s still going on from before?
And people have already stated that this is not solely content creators as I assumed at first.
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Also, it’s not like they actually make the final call on this, so don’t blame them for any changes/additions made.
Oh, don't worry about that, I still blame devs.
I wonder if they didn't ask on the concept, ignored feedback, or players just failed to realize from concept how bad idea it is…0 -
I think making all this public was a really bad move on the devs part. I watched spookyloopz VOD about him leaving the FW program and I agree with him. Making this public only makes the Fog Whisper program look like the lesser of the two and as someone else said on this thread, you know have ppl asking the question "Why is X in this? Why isn't Y in this program? Where is my favorite content creator?" etc. Im glad they have ppl who actually play the game to test things but making this public was a dumb move imo. No one really needs to know who is or isnt on this team. Like I didnt need to know Hens was on a playtesting team, that doesn't change anything imo.
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Lame that the crow charm is exclusive to this system, but I trust the DBD content creator space infinitely more than BHVR, so this is a net positive in my book.
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I don't know how others feel but I do think it's dumb that they get an exclusive charm esp since they getting paid as well. Personally I dont care that much about the crow charm but I think its silly to give things like this to a small number of players who just happens work for you as well. It just creates more FOMO and stuff for ppl to complain about. Just my two cents on that matter tho.
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It's surprising that they got the Pixel-glassed Crow as charm since this charm mentioned the category "April Fools 2024".
Seems like it was intended to be an April Fools Charm for everyone and was changed for this program.1 -
it’s not the first charm like that. There is a charm only for devs, one for fog whisperers and one for social media moderators I think. Also the Twitch charm and shirts. So this is really nothing new..
But it’s really random to have this crow be the charm for this program - I don’t see the connection??
Post edited by Mooks on2 -
Hens has put up a video with a bit of explanation:
Basically, their input can be pretty limited and it might not be early enough to make it to live. And the last decision is always made by the Devs, so even if a Person is Consultant, this does not mean that they are responsible for nerfing your favorite Killer or that they were the oenes who thought that the PTB-Twins are a great Concept.
Also, it is up to the Consultant to make it public or not. So while we see a lot of Content Creators in it, we can be sure that there are others who are in the program who might not even be Content Creators, but just choose to not make public that they are part of it.
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It kind of makes sense now, with some recent Fog Whisperers leaving and popular streamers quitting the game. I wonder if they found out about the program and felt left out?
I don't mind such a program existing, but I just hope the people involved are a mix of killer and survivor players, are unbiased, and are putting the playerbase ahead of their own monetary (ie content) desires.
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Interesting to learn about, makes sense why BHVR have been pretty strong with their changes and listening to community feedback a lot more lately.
Most players who play both sides seem to generally like the direction of game, and the respective mains who only play killer or survivor are salty AF over losing their broken crud. I csn only insgine this group helped with fixing a lot of the nonsense in this game.
The attempts to scapegoat this group with any of DBDs problem in this thread to undermine its influence, despite DBD being the healthiest its been in years is laughable to me. All this sounds like a win for the dev team and DBD to me.
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I like that they're doing this and it would explain the sudden shift in Behavior. They went from plugging their ears and saying lalala when it came to criticism of the game to suddenly dropping great changes and updates. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if the first thing this program did was help with Billy, the killer that was butchered because the devs would not listen to the community.
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I personally think they stopped truly reading years ago, the actual developers use to communicate a lot more on here, but you know this community just loves to ruin a good thing and people started responding to comments the devs made with insults and a little over the line criticism in my opinion, slowly but surely they've stopped all together and we only really see Mandy and Rizzo on here now to tame the crowd when they get too wild and not people who are actively designing and coding this game giving us what insight they were allowed like before.
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It was apparently a thing even before Trickster came into the game and only recently came out with it.
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100% agree on that. And I also think that this is the right call from the Devs. There was a time where they got ######### on in the Forums, even in topics which were not really about any changes, someone decided to quote that Dev (because they saw that one of them was posting there) and spam them with some unrelated Nonsense.
So obviously they stop communicating when the Community shows that a normal conversation is not possible.
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No, they do read it. I know some developers in private and they have acknowledged my existence here for better and worse.
There are also multiple changes which I have seen go through which I have made passionate posts about.
I am not the cause of those changes, but If I am able to make good convincing arguments that seem like a better solution for bHVR, then they are willing to go that direction. This is how we know they do read them or they read the reports that Mandy, Rizzo and Peanits make for them. Devs are busy people, cant sit here all day like we do D:1 -
I do wish the consultants had told them to dump the Finisher Mori though 🫣
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Hm.
Well.
I don't have any strong opinions about the program, so long as they have input from various kinds of players and not just CC's.
But the crow charm…
Now that one stings.
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I mean, the FInisher Mori is complete Nonsense and should have been scrapped and never been brought up ever again.
But in the end, the final decision is done by the Devs. It could be possible that the majority of Consultants was against it. Or that they might not even have been asked about their opinion. Nobody knows. But in the end, it is on the Devs to implement a feature basically nobody wants.
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We can only hope that some of the consultants have pushed back on the idea. This is the first change for the game since I started playing last year that I can't get behind at all. Unless BHVR have feedback from the wider player base that shows most players hate them or something, it seems like an unwelcome out of the blue change to me.
I think it's good that a program like this exists, though. I just hope they have a broad range of voices from all skill levels and they're not only gathering input from streamers and content creators. They tend to be very skilled players and quite often don't see the game in the same way that the rest of us do. They can have totally different play styles to a large portion of the player base (for example, totally abandoning stealth which is still a very viable strategy for a lot of players).
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