Why is DbD so hostile to new players
For the half year or so I have been getting a friend into this game and it has been reopening my eyes to how bad this game is monetized. Seeing them have to go through this has literally just made me feel like a bad friend for suggesting them this game. Like them picked this game up because they wanted to try out the Xenomorph yet after buying the game I get the grand joy of telling my friend to spend more money to buy the Xenomorph. Then they start asking questions about perks and I now get to tell my friend that "oh yeah you're prolly just gonna wanna buy the characters for the perks you need" As if spending more money on this PAID game was just what they wanted to hear after buying a game and some of its dlc. They of course decide to just use the shrine and now I get the joy of a discord screenshot of the shrine every Wednesday and a "bruh…" right under it.
Then survivor is worse because if we are playing serious then they would usually die first due to a combination of being new but also not having self preservation perks like decisive strike or deliverance. Then we can never really meme around because its hard to convince your friend to level up Ace for a luck build or grind iri shards for Elodie and level her up for a chest build when they are busy leveling up like David for dead hard or Feng for lithe.
Like the new player experience is frankly awful. Like we already have cosmetics why in the hell are killers and new survivors not just free updates. Sure licensed killers might need to be paid but then why cant like perks just be free for all. Why do paid only chapters have exclusive perks that more often then not have a meta perk shipped alongside them that wont be nerfed until it enters the shrine 8 months later. Why is the shrine only 4 perks once a week, which is frankly pathetic and scummy as it clearly only exists so the devs can say its not pay to win and all perks licensed or not can be bought with iri shards which is just disingenuous.
Like this is a PAID game and we have literally THE worst monetization in everything. All new chapters must be paid for with either the premium or grindy currency with the licensed chapters requiring premium currency, overpriced cosmetics: $15 cosmetics for a $20 game, and making the grind for free to play players as long as possible maybe even infinite if you never let a licensed perk they want enter the shrine. It feels like behavior wants new players to suffer and just either get on the buy every new chapter ride or uninstall
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Shrine of secret deserves to be "perk market" where you can buy a perk from anyone at any DLC, there is absolutely no reason it has to stay like current way when there is ridiculous amount of perks and perk balance is rather abysmal
Not to mention playing the game while not having any kind of bonus BP being effectively pointless, since there is so ridiculous amount of difference in BP gains
New killers/survivors have no reason to be free, though
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Why couldn't new original killers/survivors be free. Games like overwatch 2 are able to release new hero's for free while then making their money from a battle pass and cosmetic shop which DbD also has on top of having licensed killers/survivors AND the game having a $20 price tag. Atleast as time goes older original killer and survivors become free to all players which would help the new players to DbD
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They are extremely cheap in sale anyway so I just don't see much problem, and even though you need a grind it's still "free" for original killers
Personally I think it's a progression and feels like a accomplishment to purchase a killer with iri shards, and feels quite cheap for buying licensed killer with 500 auric cells, but then not like those things are what makes game fun so I really don't have "problem" in making them free
I just don't think it's as necessary as shrine overhaul
Was about to say "BHVR can't make any money without those DLC" but I think that'd be a lie considering the amount of licensed killers and cosmetics, heh
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feels like a accomplishment to [grind countless hours to be allowed to play the game properly]
Fat coping going on here. This game is pay2play but also has f2p monetization on top of it. If anything all unlicensed characters should be free and all (or most if they are feeling generous) skins should be bought with $$. The p1-everyone-for-perks-grind should be removed as well. This is the most hostile game I have seen so far. I will never recommend this game for the grind alone, nevermind the steep learning curve the game puts up no effort to help you with.
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Can't tell as survivor very much because I got a few survivors while playing killer, but at least as killer I remember my starting-phase to be pretty chill.
Of course you don't have absolutely perfekt perks, but you can play okayish with free-perks at the start, yeah I got bullied pretty heavely because of old ds and dh but the perks wouldn't even have been a help or just straight up carried me xD
That being said, yes you have to grind pretty hard or pay but it really isn't that bad, most characters in this game don't even have any perks worth buying and you won't play every survivor/kill ether.
As killer you need realisticly only bubba, artist, demo, clown (so you have bbq, grim embrace, pain res/surge, and baboozle for a generic build you can use pretty much always on any killer. Alternative to baboozle you could also level up trapper and use brutal or maybe switch grim embrace with brutal and you have a chase-based build with bbq, pain res/surge, brutal, bamboozle). So you'd have to buy auric cells for 20€ and you're good.
As survivor it heavely depents on what you're trying to do, but the most important ones are laurie and zarina for ds and otr. You could buy laurie, kate, feng for windows, ds, lithe and deja vu for a generic build for yourself or you switch deja vu with we'll make it and you have a little bit of advantage for your team. So yet again 20€ and you have it.
Of course the price goes up heavely if you want perk variety and use different builds, but just for generic playing with a good build it isn't that bad.
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I'm the kind of person who plays 10 hours a day if needed, so obviously this isn't from the "normal" play style
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I am no stranger to putting 10h/day into a single game. Though I really don't see how your playtime justifies accepting or even defending this monetization choice or the grind behind it. Then again there is a reason all this achievement-battlepass-megagrind is everywhere. Some greyed-out image suddenly has color which makes the player happy. Gameplay is secondary and actual game experience cannot be distinguished from the dopamine rush of pretty bars filling and numbers going up.
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I'm not defending anything, I'm just the kind of person who can have fun in grinding
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They are extremely cheap in sale anyway so I just don't see much problem, and even though you need a grind it's still "free" for original killers
Well, I guess we are done here.
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I'm talking about the size of problem and technicality, none of that said it is good
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For the cosmetics, just buy the rift one time, when you complete it the Auric Cells you invested will be refunded, now leave the Auric Cells on your account for the next rift and repeat. You will now get unlimited cosmetics for that investmant.
But the game is P2W when we look at perks. If you pick one killer and want to be competitive, you often need perks from four different killers. And if you switch to another killer, guess what? You need a whole new set of four perks.
Some people might say, "Hey, there's the Shrine!" But really, would you wait over a year to get your perk from there? That's how long the rotation can take. And, not all perks even make it to the Shrine. So, that argument doesn’t hold up.
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I joined earlier this year post dredge release and when the horror aspect of the game ended and i actually began learning what perks to use- I WAS MORTIFIED. Literally half of the good perks were behind a paid wall, and the others still costed4.5k-9k iri shards to buy the characters themselves, which i tell you now to gets piece by piece is horrifying, i still dont have all the characters and i have 1k hours.Never used shrine unless it was paid for max efficiency.
So i feel SO bad for your friend. Seeing as theres literally so many more surviviors and perks, its gonna take a year at minimum to get with the meta without paying
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