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Is the game getting worse QA wise?
The Houndmaster was released as one of the most bugged killers in existence, second only to The Twins. While BHVR managed to fix most of the issues within a few weeks, it highlights a bigger problem: their chapter release timeline is hurting them. Had they taken a few extra weeks for polishing before launch, the backlash might have been avoided, and the killer wouldn’t have a “Mostly Negative” rating on Steam.
Beyond the disappointing killer release, several survivor perks still don’t work as intended. Shoulder the Burden, arguably one of the strongest perks in the game when used correctly, sometimes will not apply the Exposed status effect (Imagine if NOED spawned without a totem to cleanse). Similarly, Flashbangs have been bugged for months, not making noise when dropped. Meanwhile, Party Starters have an unintended flashing range, capable of blinding a killer from absurd distances, like across the shack.
If that wasn’t enough, this event has been riddled with problems. Thrill at 14% should’ve been flagged as problematic after a single playtest match. The Mistletoe offering is personal and actually deducts points from players. And to top it all off, the latest event has the newest killer disabled because it's bugged.
All these issues listed above could have been prevented with proper testing. Yet, here we are, nearly eight years after the game’s release, still facing these kinds of problems. It’s hard to have faith in DBD’s future when the devs seem more focused on securing new licenses and cutting corners everywhere else.
Comments
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It's always been this bad.
I remember around the Third Year Anniversary they pushed a horrible VFX change that gave people headaches whenever they got stunned or blinded.
Twins entire release.
SM's entire release.
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Unfortunately it’s always been horrendous.
The lack of QA was excusable when it was a small game made with low prospects but now they’re literally the biggest game in the genre. Buggy releases only happen because they allow it.
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They’ve always had a pretty bad QA process.
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To be fair.. As upset as I am about all of this.. I have to say ONE thing in favor of BHVR..
If this community wouldn't CONSTANTLY scream "Change this - Change that - Do it immediately!" .. Wouldn't cry about just everything and create problems that don't exist (latest version of Skull Merchant before the butchering)..
They might actually have time to do something right..
Still - they chose to follow this and their time-schedule seems to be way behind.
That was the nice thing I had to say in their defense. There's nothing more left at the moment.
Now I'm back at saying my prayers that the Freddy rework will HOPEFULLY be worth the years of waiting
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The nightmare of when Resident Evil was first added to the game instantly springs to mind whenever these discussions happen. Altogether that chapter was probably the messiest mess DBD went through. As for buggiest killer, then yeah Twins wins that one.
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I don't think so. Q4 is just usually a rough period for dead by daylight for whatever reason. The rest of the year was great.
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If the Freddy Boogers rework doesn't impress people I fear for the future of this game.
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This is what happens with a 3-month cycle to crank out new content. Come hell or high water (or bugs galore), that new content is going to get released and we'll worry about fixing things later.
The best thing for the long term health of the game would be to slow down, take at least one quarter off, and just focus on bug fixes, matchmaking, game balance. No new content, no new skins, nothing except fixing things that are broken. That kind of stuff might not make money immediately but it will certainly help prevent/delay long—time players who do spend $ from leaving the game.
Taking a few months to focus on improving new player experience would be fantastic as well. This would help to bring in more revenue not with new content to sell to existing players but with attracting and retaining players.
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Some people are assinged to cosmetics, different people take care of game balance. That's how this probably work.
So cosmetics people still can do their job :)
But I feel like not enough people work on a game balance team.I agree on the money part - more people would be buying skins or even characters if game was more enjoyable, less buggy.
For example I stopped buying skins because of the route that BHVR goes - I bought tiffany skin for chucky and now I will never play it again because I don't enjoy his changes. Feels like I lost money on that.
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They should slow down the influx of new chapters.
4 full chapters + multiple paragraphs is just too much.
They should reduce it to 3 chapters per year and focus more on quality, not quantity.
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The main reason they don't have time is because they are pumping out new chapters and content constantly. And because they have to release them so soon they come out buggy, broken, or horribly unbalanced. Then they have to waste resources on fixing the new stuff that the old stuff can't be addressed. Once they've made some changes the next chapter is out and they have to deal with that.
And in between that they are giving random changes no one wanted like constant UI changes or making Thrill overpowered for no reason that they need to go back and fix again just to repeat it all again next patch.
I don't think the community complaining really has much to do with them not having time, especially when it still takes ages, years even, to actually address those complaints.
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I've been playing for approx 4 years now (following the game for a bit longer) and there's always been issues here and there with releases. I think as time goes by they're probably pushing the limits of what the game can handle a bit more in order to remain interesting and meet the demands of players. They could dial it back a bit but that would also draw the ire of players.
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Every release gives them more code to maintain, and the foundation has always been shaky. In my experience, management loves QA until a release might get delayed, then stuff is just going to get pushed through.
They're kind of between a rock and a hard place. I feel for the newer devs who have to work with legacy code that probably isn't documented all that well. I've been in that spot before where I've had to spend weeks reverse engineering what the previous admin did because there's zero documentation.
You're very rarely going to get buy-in from the bean counters on a refactor of 8 year old code. They're going to ride this out for another few years until DbD 2 comes along or they release another sustainable live service game.
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What they tried to do with Houndmaster was quite ambitious tbh. Have a permanently active second character follow around the killer, with a power that is built around the behaviour of this second entity.
It's certainly far improved in scope, should have probably taken a little more time to QA test it, but of course the road map is pretty set in stone, and those deadlines ain't gonna budge for no one or nothing.
If it did you can guarantee we would get some cockamamy thread sayings something like "BHVR unable to keep up with Roadmap, should hire more staff" or some other nonsense.
So not really worried about it myself. These kinda things are to be expected in a live service game with this much new content at such regular intervals.
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This is the most realistic way of looking at it.
The game's code indeed always has been iffy, and the optimization rough. They're likely the only ones who can understand it all, hence why they handle that optimization in-house themselves.
Bhvr is renounced for how they treat their employees and resist crunch, but deadlines are deadlines.
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Not that I disagree that having fewer chapters a year would probably be healthy, but I do think some people are maybe overlooking that the technical performance/QA of chapters and events had been pretty decent for a good few releases prior to Houndmaster and the current Bone Chill event.
In recent terms this period is an outlier. Doesn't excuse it from criticism, of course, but it's not part of an unchanging pattern or anything.
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Considering Blight and Twins chapter around the pandemic were littered with bugs and Twins practically made the game unplayable. I would say BHVR has improved.
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I highly agree here. Change one chapter release patch to a "substantial bugfix and QoL-patch" once per year, that aims to fix most, if not all the bugs still present.
This gives devs more time to work on chapters, and it also gives the QA teams more time to iron out bugs. A win for both devs and players alike.
Let's say if the 4th major patch per year (like 8.4.0) was an extensive bugfix and QoL patch, with some balances thrown in as well, I think players would love to see something like that0
