Do you think behavior is doing a lot better than back then?

Sadly that’s what the majority of the community wants. You can’t really blame behavior for this development.

Edit: My main problem is that survivor became mostly frustrating to play. Most loops are less than a 50/50 for survivors and free hits for the killer with no real way to play them unless you live in dbd. The perks for both sides are extremely dumbed down and aren’t really impactful. I still don’t understand how behavior hasn’t buffed all the weaker perks and still releases perks that no one will ever play. It’s so easy to make all the weaker perks better without making them meta if that is what behavior fears. I already uploaded a discussion with ideas on how to buff like a 100 perks. For some reason they don’t want variety. At least that’s how it feels to me.

I would start balancing the game around "no perks", and in the process remove virtually all of them. What I hate the most about this game is perks used as band-aids or mandatory perks.

Because perks should not be so relevant. This is not a gachapon or a game where you farm for min-maxing.

The anti-tunnel perks are mandatory unless you expect mercy from killers, who shouldn't have to have any for immersive reasons. On the other hand, some kind of slowdown is practically mandatory or expect the same kind of compasion from your rivals. The objectives are based on time management and there are way too many perks that can drastically break this in a single play.

In some ways they are doing better and in some ways they're doing worse. At least compared to when I started playing, very early 2020.

BETTER

• These days we get many more updates for the game. Not only changes in general, but the devs also are much more communicative regarding what they're planning for the future. Back then we used to be in the dark pretty much always as to where this game was going or what was to be changed soon.
• We get many more events than we used to back then. I will address these events' problems in the WORSE section lol.
• We get a lot more content. Back then we got 4 chapters a year and stop counting. These days, the 4 chapter a year model is still running, but we get a bunch of extra stuff in the middle (not only skins, but entire collabs and maybe an extra survivor or killer here and there).
• The devs seem to be listening to players a lot more than back then. This is a double-edged sword for reasons I will explain in the next section. But at least they're listening. Back then they used to change whatever THEY felt needed changing, and it was even worse prior to 2020. And boy were the changes bad back then, especially those made to perks lol. They would tweak some numbers of the worst perks seen to man, tweak them just a little, and call it a day.

WORSE

• The biggest and most obvious issue to me, as someone who started playing in 2020, is the clear MESS that most new chapters represent these days. Of course this has some precedents in the past, like Legion OG release being absolutely frustrating, the Twins releasing with a huge number of bugs (some of which remain in the game til today lol) or the fact that all the structures in the game had to be revised for Blight's collision to work properly. However, these bugs and frustrations were nowhere nearly as terrible (nor as usual) as they tend to be today. Every chapter that is released feels unfinished in a way or another, with the last two (Houndmaster and Kaneki) being the biggest offenders so far imo. Back then, they used to release full products. These days everything feels unfinished, a tendency that does not surprise me much since it seems to be happening in most modern games. It feels as if they were rushing through new content, without giving anything the proper time to be tested.
• On a similar note, we get more events but they, too, feel unfinished and unpolished. Most times there's very little interaction with the event either for killers or for survivors, the rewards (like bloodpoints in the current event) feel underwhelming, and there's always some balance issues regarding the event mechanics. I don't think events should be as balanced as the normal game mode, since events exist merely for the funsies and the sillies, but they should be somewhat balanced at least. Especially because the regular queue times go up a bunch since both modes coexist and most people will be playing the event.
• Like I said, listening to the players is a double-edged sword because it ends up with some characters or perks getting undeservingly gutted due to the number of complaints made by the community. Now, I'm a strong believer that if everyone is complaining about something, changes are due. But there's a difference between "changes" and "nerfing into oblivion", as happened with, say, Skull Merchant. And it's undeniable that, if people see that their uproar does, in fact, have an effect and gets them what they want, they will inevitably start making the same uproar over things that do not necessarily deserve to be gutted. Player feedback should absolutely be taken into account and it should 100% be the main drive for changes, but those changes should be handled with care as, since it's an asymmetrical game, there will always be a certain bias to absolutely all complaints and some things are fine the way they are or need only minor changes.

I've been playing since late 2017. Originally on ps4, and I swapped over from Friday the 13th bc the crew i used to play with on thst game all wanted to try dead by daylight.

I immediately fell in love with dbd over Friday. Although I miss Friday alot too. But dbd was way more involved and fun.

In the beginning it was way more survivor sided and there were tons of broken bugs and infinite loops etc... it was frustrating as all get out, and the old Haddonfield maps were all nightmare maps to play. But it had its charms.

The game is improved massively since 2017. It was a mess in the early days. The main thing I miss about old dbd was the darkness of the maps, felt more horror and the the fog was thicker and made a difference visually on most maps.

Also way less killers, survivors, and perks and powers to learn which made things easier. I honestly am overwhelmed these days looking through my loadout screen especially as survivor.

There's just so many perks I often find myself spending 10min or so trying to chose a build to try out or resorting to the classic builds so I can jump in fast. You learn as you play the majority of the perks are borderline useless/situational or takes a swf to pull off that you tend to always resort to the basics.

That being said, I sometimes wonder why even bother to try new gimmick/meme builds for laughs whwn they usually flop or fail tremendously due to soloq teammates all dropping like flies, and I almost always find myself playing defensively more than I used to back then.

To me the game is better in all aspectsexcept the actual gameplay. And I tend to blame how watered down it's become over the years in content.

Back then we had way less killers to learn to counter, way less perks to learn to use, and things were clunky but felt simple and easy.

Now? Unless you dump a ton of time into the games playing both as and against killers you won't learn how to counter them. Or understand perks.

I still have megs following me around trying to heal me when I'm broken lol... still... after all these years I see new players struggling all the time which is why solo is such a mess.

TThe game has always been unforgiving for new players but I feel bad for new players today as opposed to new players in 2017 2018 bc there's just so much more content to learn and let's face it... new players jump it get creamed constantly, get frustrated, and either stop or take a break from the game instead of just putting in the hours needed to actually learn it.

GGames To big now. That's probably an unpopular opinion but I feel at times it's just to much. Maybe I'm in the minority when I say this but I'm not a fan of new chapters every 3 months bc I know that's at least 6 new perks to learn, and a new killer to try to learn to play as and against. It's exhausting.

I also find it interesting in spite of all the new killers and survivors, you rarely play against more than half the roster consistently which aids to having a hard time learning how to play against them. Lol. I do miss the simplicity of only having 10 to 15 killers sometimes.

I think you're very interesting Pulsar. A watcher, a knower, and a legend of the forums. It's good to see you commenting on this and I totally agree. I wish that BHVR could catch up to where they could be smh my head

He's saying he wants to take you out on a date and finds you very interesting. You better offer up a smooch if he pays for the meal. Especially considering how much food prices have gone up over the past 5 years. 🤣

(Kidding of course lol)

unless.... 🤔

"What does Pulsar think of Ja Rule?"

No

Honestly? Not really. DBD has been on a steady decline since the 6.1.0 Update way back in July of 2022, and from there, they've only made their game progressively more miserable and miserable to play. Especially for Solo Q. Anyone who plays the game, like the majority of us have a love-hate relationship with the game in the hopes that it'll get better but are CONSTANTLY and REPEATEDLY disappointed by the decisions that BHVR continue to make without any base for feedback or input.

(Or, in the face of entitled killer mains who love having free, easy, brainde@d 4K games and being as toxic as possible; but can't handle facing the same treatment. It's been in a pretty good spot for them since the Devs have actively proven that killers are all that matter.)

The 6.1.0 Update was the framework for all the nonsense and BS both Survivors and Killers are now putting up with and have been putting up with for years. Everything else that followed after that, including THIS Update was the result of the Community not being able to unite as a force and get it through the devs' thick skulls that they should be listening to feedback instead of doing whatever fits their MO.

(And more so to those who defend the update because "They just need more time for data" When they can clearly see that their update was horrid and that the decision-making was even worse.)

Because, as you can see, the lack of pushback was why we have Kaneki as he is now and why things are they way they are now. Couple this with the idea that the DBD devs DONT play their own game, which shows in their decision matching…

And you get this. Dead by Misery, Suffering, Agony, Unfairness, and Complaints.

Hopefully, this paints a clear enough picture.

You free Friday? I gots a gift card to outback steak house. I'm thinking bloomin onion, 9oz filets, and that ######### "Fosters" beer they always advertise bc it's cheap on tap.

And after about 3 of them you stop caring it tastes like blue collar depression 😃🤣🤣🤣

When you factor in heads changing, I think they're doing pretty good. We can point to recent specifics like Ghoul's balancing being what it is (I wonder how different things would be if the slide wasn't made basekit, or if they had more time to finalize the balancing around the slide) or the event being underwhelming, but overall the game is in a really healthy state compared to years prior, and they seem on track with their priorities. The sheer amount of BS that was in the game before in terms of both bugs & busted items/perks is something you had to be there to witness.

My only real long term complaint with DbD right now (besides harping on controller settings, speaking of which Oni finally being good on controller is fantastic, though I feel bad for those who miss the flicks) is map design disparity, and the fact that maps have been coming out far less frequently than before. I think some maps just flat out suck for one role or the other (some more obvious than others, like Haddonfield for survivor, it seems Haddonfield is just cursed to be miserable either way) and I wish they'd put just a little bit more focus on that.

Losing map variants is a little disappointing too. I don't miss the Badham variants but some of the other variants were good, if not better than the originals. All I really wanted from them was the variant number to displayed when you load in.

I'd say yes… but they can do better IMO

Giving a few limitations they have it could've been worse