The lists of reasons of why DBD doesn't have more players than it should:
…
What?
Where is the list? - I want you to write it. :D
I think DBD should have even more players, but why do you guys think it doesn't?
The only "rules" are: Be open and honest, you are free to write as many reasons as you want, humor is very welcome.
Comments
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the grind is still horrible and not new player friendly at all
the game in general is not new player friendly
let’s be real here behaviour does have a reputation of not being the greatest devs among casual players that have never tried dbd
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• Outdated tutorial
• The community (part of it)
• Our glorious, totally functional MMR
• The long annoying grind
• Random changes to things which are beyond human comprehention
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Definitely agree. If the game had a permanent gamemode that didn't rely on people already having everything unlocked, it would be alot more welcoming. This is one reason chaos shuffle is so popular in my opinion. No one really has an advantage over anyone else by how much they've bought or grinded.
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I actually wrote this in the player survey for the question ‘would you recommend to friends etc’ I said I can’t in this current state of the game recommend the game to newer players because the learning curve would be far, far too steep.
When I first joined the game, the many perks and killer powers and add ons , strategies (don’t cleanse against plague, don’t heal against legion etc) and countless do’s and dont’s in terms of ‘etiquette’, etc was super difficult to grasp. The actual difficult in things like looping for example are things I still find difficult but have learnt to somewhat counteract it in other ways (with varying degrees of success).
I can explain to them the concept that look, there are these things called generators and you have to fix them. If you’re a killer, you’ll want to stop them being progressed. There are perks and items and powers that can increase or decrease and can be frustrating but that is the strategy element.
But the overwhelming number of auras and the fact that things like slugging exist (I’m not commenting here as to if it should or shouldn’t or that I don’t understand why some feel it is ‘needed’, but the fact is it does) means I wouldn’t want my friends not in the game to experience these without having to drop thousands of hours (and more difficult hours than my time in the game).
The paradox here being that my favourite game no question is the one that I can’t recommend (in its current guise anyway) to others even though I’m always talking about it to them.
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because it's an 8 year old game, and it looks like it and plays like it
also janky controls, badly optimized with new bugs every update along with bugs that have been around for years, and horrible fov on killer still compared to actual fps games
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I think the main reason is already said.
A new player will probably have a lot of bad matches at the start.
Only the few with real strong interest and resilience will continue to play the game and i guess this aren´t that many.
But with the high numbers at the start of 2v8 you saw that there are a lot of old players which might come back. But the base game in its current state don´t get these to play.
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Mhm… You think it's because of mmr putting much experienced players against new players? Or initial perks are just bad for beginners?
Or… Perhaps… Paywall characters? (P2W)
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It's kind of hard to get into DBD. The game has become so complex over the years, that it must be quite a pain to learn all these different mechanics. On both sides. Although I think survivors have it worse when they are just starting.
That and the fact that the game is very repetitive. Many people played the game for a while but eventually didn't feel like playing anymore. For a live service game that means, when you get back you could very well start from the very beginning again because almost everything that you knew was changed in some way. So returning to DBD after a year or so can be really rough.
It might also have to do with DBD no longer having any hype. The game is 8 years old and so many people played it over the years (they hit 50+ million sales after all), so there probably aren't that many people out there anymore that would be interested in playing it, which means, that the game doesn't generate hype to interest people that normally wouldn't play it in giving it a chance.
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I don't think asymmetrical games appeal to the average gamer. Most asymmetrical games fail.
Skills learned in other games don't transfer to DbD. In the same way, skills learned in DbD don't transfer to other games.
There are also the bugs; the grind; the cost of buying all the DLC chapters; the unfriendly, unforgiving, painful new-player experience (and someone counts as a new player for how long? 1k hours?); the amount of things to learn which grows with each chapter release (perks, killer powers, add-ons, maps) on top of learning the gameplay, like looping; and console performance. Just one of those things will turn away new players, and DbD has all of them.
This game is not new player friendly, and you'd be hard pressed to convince me it's long-time-player friendly, either. I think most players would never recommend this game to their friends, as like the Entity itself this game devours its players' souls.
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I think it is mostly due to MMR, the grind and the unnecessary changes.
Your favorite power, map, perk or add-on can be taken away at any given time. And while this is true for every live service game out there, in DBD it happens way too frequently with things that could have been left alone.
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I think the game does pretty well considering it's an eight year old live service that is niche in it's gameplay, is a dumpster fire for solo survivors, constantly breaks due to the Cthulhu style spaghetti coding, and it's communities are… let's just go with spicy.
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It has exactly as many players as it deserves.
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- Not new player friendly: there's a VARIETY of killers, perks, and maps that players need to learn and the only useful way (in our opinion) is custom matches with others.
- The grindstone: tying into the above, you need to grind a lot to get more than the "starting kit" (less you play cash for the short cut). While it's a lot less than before, it's daunting for new ones who have no idea about the game.
- Other players: needless to say that this game doesn't have the... nicest of player base. The verbal abuse from others, the way killers can and often do from the sounds of it, play like an arse, and the like is a damper on morale.
- Veteran burnout: long time players often burn out and stop playing for long periods (heck the 3 of us are effectively hibernating till October) leading to a lot less online for stretches at a time.
- "The sheeple": so this one might be a bit of a conspiracy but bear with us. We're under the impression that many people watch content creators and take what they say as absolute fact. They then try to replicate what these content creators say and do and predictably fail because those sheeple are not as good as said creators or said creator was wrong/lucky/whatever you want. They then quit in frustration.
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All of this.
The base game does not have that much perks in it.
You have to buy a lot of dlcs now. Even with discount it is expensive.
The MMR does not work very good as we know. Brand new players can get matched with veterans. Something that should never happen.
The grind only comes in play when a player tries to continue playing and it not completely demotivated after the first games already.
Imagine starting new right now… to unlock perks you need millions of BPs.
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- The game isn't F2P (not necessarily saying it should be given what free EGC copies & Steam weekends do to the game).
- Asymmetrical PvP is a niche genre. Asymmetrical horror (yeah laugh now, get it out of the way) PvP even more so.
- It's an old game, although this can actually be a positive for people with weaker rigs or those who don't have the money or willingness to spend $70+ on new games.
- The controls (especially for controller, which is lacking a lot of basic settings) aren't up to par with other games. In general DbD lacks a lot of QoL stuff that people expect from modern titles.
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Even though DBD is fairly simple in design it really does take a significant amount of time to actually learn how to play the game at a higher level of play on both sides. You get a grace period with low MMR and then you're thrown to the wolves playing against people with thousands of hours who know every perk and map layout. Theres no simple way to learn these things except through experience & time investment. That will probably put a lot of people off knowing they're probably going to have to play for a good few years before they have enough experience to feel comfortable playing against any Killer or SWF. I would imagine the grind would be quite off-putting to a lot of people as well and it's not cheap on a fresh account if you wanna have all DLC.
I think if you don't fall in love with DBD straight away you might not stick around for long. Baby killers get bullied by SWF & solo queue get bullied by toxic gameplay. These are things that if you're in the fence about investing into this game would probably sway your decision to not play unless of course you fall in love with the game from the get go and endure it until you get good enough to compete at higher levels.
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New player experiencie and grind are both abysmal, until those are fixed gl having a growing playerbase
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honestly this I started playing in 2019 like a month after plague came out and the game was definitely more simplistic to learn back then despite there being more super op stuff back then
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Yeah, when I started in 2018 the new player experience was awesome!
Well, except for Old Legion that is.
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Full honesty? The game does not respect the player's time. At least half of solo survivor games are complete throwaways, and that's being conservative. The game doesn't have more players because no matter how hard you try, half of your games are pointless with zero potential outcome variance or ability to affect the outcome as a solo survivor. You were put in that match to lose. Queue times and backfills are favored to an absurd degree at the expense of match quality.
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yes it’s a very difficult one to juggle for a mature game - powers, perks and balances are added almost on the assumption that there is a core player base that are totally comfortable with the status quo and the new stuff is a newer more complex level of challenge.
I think that may definitely be the case for some but it tends to be the more skilled players who at the heart of it, if you take away all perks and powers, they have an incredible level of fluency.
A survivor who can loop very well or stealth (not talking about perks but knows when to jump off a Gen before killer engages and/or work a map) will be able to utilise resources to prolong chase irrespective of their perks and items.
A killer whose macro play and pressure ability is so on point will wear down and throttle progression even without their perks or add-ons, such is their grasp and command over their character or through map knowledge, behavioural predictions and pathing.
Everything else is a facilitation or an enhancement of this. The different methods that exist with perks and powers enables someone who isn’t a natural looper or strong in chase as killer to try to progress through other means until they slowly get better at the core above.But when the layers of complexity (in my opinion the overload of auras) involves drastic deviations from this core, it makes it a very hard level of entry as you can’t easily improve the core that seasoned players have instilled in them. This is what makes it very difficult to get a beer player into it without asking them to suffer before deciding whether they’ll keep playing or get the hang of it.
Quite a bad example but it popped into my head, it’s like someone playing a fighting game like street fighter and you can understand the basic concepts of attack, block, use power. But before getting into a rhythm of doing a few punches and hadokens, you’re gonna get battered to death by optimised techs, toe pokes and light punches and then added invisible powers which aren’t the exception to the normal gameplay but defines the new gameplay.
Post edited by For_The_People on1 -
That's right guys, this game is completely broken for solo survivor play. I'm a solo survivor main player and have really cut down on my dbd playing hours over the last few months.
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Camping and tunneling even being a thing in this game. And being rewarded for it
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Ofc - it's all about full honesty. You probably know why I created this thread.
Developer team members periodically reading the forum - all your messages are pointing out at the the core issues. I think this is exactly what they need to see, even If they knew about these issues.
So keep it going, guys. :) Every single opinion and message is very welcome.
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There is actaully few reasons why I don't recommend this game to other people.
- Grind is too much - having everyone p3 is painful process right now, with the number of characters we got over the years.
- You need to pay a lot of money to unlock content - licensed characters etc. I live in Poland and it's expensive for us to pay in euros.
- Too many things to learn at this point - tactics, perks, addons. We have like 36 killers and every one of them has different power that people need to learn. It's complicated.
- Asymetrical nature of the game which involve everyone to do good is bad - one bad survivior is often enough to lose the game, which should never be a thing. After a tunnel on newbie player, playing 3v1 is too hard.
- New players gets targetted and tunneled out of the game most of the time and there is no way for them to fight it.
- Too many unpleasant tactics or behaviour - slugging, tunneling, bming, toxicity
Hopefully this might chance sometime in the future. Declutter our offerings and addons, make less addons for each item, we don't use them anyway. Less killer addons perhaps? Less grind, reduction in prices if possible?
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who in their right mind plays a game for 1k hours in order to actually be able to play the game? (between unlocking characters and perks - but also between learning how to even play; from countering specific killers and builds to learning the different maps etc. it takes way too long.)
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Obviously, the grind and the difficulty are factors, but I'm proof that those things don't matter too much if players really enjoy the game (I joined with the Tools of Torment Chapter).
I think the main limitation to DBD's popularity is that fact that it's a horror game. They have a niche appeal that doesn't extend much beyond, well, fans of other horror media. Of course, there are people who play DBD who don't care much for horror, but I'd be willing to bet they'd be in a tiny minority.
I showed my sister this game once. She said it was horrible and couldn't understand why I played it so much.
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Some of them making no sense, sometimes leading to alienation between developers and players.
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It’s possible that the game might be too scary for some players. I know that horror images have a strikingly strong reaction in some individuals. Almost like a sensitivity that never becomes desensitized.
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This.
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DBD is not newbie-friendly. The skill floor is too high for survivors, especially. There aren’t really good safeguards to preserve the new player experience for survivor. It’s different for killer (you can camp and tunnel, which are intuitive strategies that work, easily for free when you start the game).
The game has a poor reputation for several reasons: people are familiar with BhVR’s other titles (most of which have failed), people know the community is especially cruel (mostly affects survivors with the camping and tunneling), new players (survivors) can essentially be denied the ability to play the game at all by being turbotunneled out so your entire gaming experience is largely in the hands of other players with almost no recourse.
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Reasons why DbD doesn't have more players:
- Its current players.
That's it. That's the list.
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hey now I’ve put 3000+ in and I still don’t know how to counter absolutely everything in the game
Now a days taking a break for like half a year results in you basically playing a different game
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