No. Also it would be a huge risk for BHVR so never gonna happen.

It's not a bad idea at this point. I don't know how comprehensive other games have been in their code restructuring, if they've ever had to do that, but you would think it would be possible for DBD. They could do an Overwatch 2 type thing where you can either buy the "new game," or if you have 'DBD 1' you can just upgrade for free to the new game. Or if they'd do a Sm4sh to Sm5sh transition where the game is just distinctly different physics, mechanics, graphics, etc while maintaining all or mostly the same character roster. People wait years between entries like those games, even without big updates in-between, so I think this game could do the same. I'd be willing to wait, idk, 2 years or something.

The new game would have to have the bare necessities. Better anti-cheat, better physics, better hitboxes, way better graphics that don't look like mud/Doom 2 textures, probably some motion blur, better lighting and shadows, better fps and servers. They just need to leave the code open to being able to do lots of stuff. Apparently a replay mode isn't possible in this game, nor a difference between pressing the DC button and losing connection, nor both players seeing the same thing on their screens consistently. And if they're gonna do MMR again, it must be perfect. No more saying that it's skill-based, and then putting people of random skill levels with each other.

Yes, but also no. There is a standard process that must be followed.

The company draws revenue from new content and cosmetic sales. The post from the developer helped us identify a significant risk to the company from obtaining more money “Technical debt stifles creativity and prevents idea execution.” It is up to the BHVR employees to address this risk, assign criticality to this risk, and report it to the risk register. (It’s probably been reported already.)

When the risk register is reviewed by senior management, a business decision must be made to mitigate, avoid, accept, or transfer the risk. Over time, conversations are had where the risk status is reviewed, updated, and documented on the risk register.

In this case, we probably would not transfer the risk to a 3rd party as they are quite literally a game studio and have in-house talent. If the risk was avoided, gameplay would become boring and stale over time when ideas begin to run dry. At a certain point, things will become “This is Huntress, but with the Wraith’s cloaking, that can teleport across the map like Singularity, but not with any downsides like Demogorgon” and the language in the community already reflects that. That leaves mitigation or acceptance. Risk can bear pain, but it can also bear opportunity. Risk acceptance would ride and let the game have a profitable end—but these people have jobs and probably want to keep them. Risk mitigation is the most likely choice and this can be reflected in Operation Health.

To mitigate technical debt by producing a completely new product … does not sound very realistic to me. When I write it out, doesn’t it seem rather … drastic to you? I do not work at BHVR and I can’t see beyond the curtain. But I would think what factors existed that have caused other game companies to completely nuke their product and start over, and how big those companies are, and how the company remained profitable during the development period. I am not a software engineer, and I am not going to pretend to be one, but I do wonder if there are ways to “upgrade” parts of the code, or make progress in batches over time and find success through consistency. The objective is clear — reduce technical debt. Improve the coding. But people more informed than me need to continue the conversation from there on how that can be implemented reasonably.

At the end of the day, no matter how much we all talk about this, it really all comes down to senior leadership’s thoughts and feelings when they review the risk register. All we can really do is increase the criticality of risks with our feedback.

I think a DBD 2 would need to be radically different to justify its existence. I think they would need to retire a lot of core DBD staples, like hooks, camping, slugging and tunnelling completely to come up with a new yet somewhat familiar game play loop. Easier said than done.

I also think one of the strengths of DBD (and the reason why so many other competitors have failed) is because it's established on a wide variety of older platforms and hardware configurations. A new, shinier, modern DBD2 wouldn't necessarily be able to count on its current user base being day 1 supports of a new game, especially not if a majority of them are happy with the current version of DBD. I don't play Overwatch, but I do know a lot of Overwatch fans viewed the second game as a cynical and unnecessary "upgrade".

Besides, I don't think there needs to be a new game so long as the player base is still active. After all, there are much older (and jankier) games out there that still have fairly active player bases (Star Trek Online, for example).

Sounds good on paper but I fear that they would mess up core elements of the gameplay if they did. Intentionally or not.

Nonsensical comparison. OW2 IS OW1. It's the same game. The people who played OW1 still play OW2. The "2" of this game was a pretext to reduce the number of players per team and implement an aggressive monetization system, that's about it.

Creating DBD 2 would be a huge risk. It's likely that unless DBD 1 goes offline upon the launch of DBD 2, the playerbase would be split. Possibly more importantly, BHVR likely would have to renegotiate their licensed content into DBD 2, leading to a possible loss of some revenue from licensed content. And this is all in the hope that DBD 2 succeeds.

I think an updated code-base would make much more sense. It wouldn't be impossible to designate a team to lay the framework for new code that accommodates vertical movement, and then transition more into that effort as it gains steam, assuming it works well enough. The question is whether that's worthwhile for BHVR. I think they have other priorities at the moment, but it's not impossible.

And sometimes I've enjoyed going into a lobby and saying "okay, ctrl to crouch, but how do you jump?"

The core of the game is old and outdated, but sequences to multiplayer online games haven't been doing well. Overwatch 2 and Smite 2 ended up not in a good state.