DBD is getting...dumber. (NOT worse, per say...)
tldr; BHVR, IF YOU REWORK SOMETHING AND IT DOESN'T FIX THE PROBLEM, STOP GIVING UP ON THE SOLUTION AND INSTEAD SHIFTING TO A DIFFERENT PROBLEM. TAKE AS LONG AS IT TAKES TO FIX THE ISSUE!
Before you start reading…
I want to make this as succinct as possible, so I'll start with formalities (skip if you could care less who I am and my basic assumptions about dbd):
-3.2k hr player, 90% killer, started playing around Spirit's release
-I love DBD, I don't think BHVR intentionally tries to make the game worse, but I also don't think they listen to the qualified members of the community enough (and perhaps cater a bit too much towards the loudest voices in the room. looking at you, DBDtwt).
-I am assuming the average strength killer and average survivor; please don't do the thing where you look at edge cases. It's a bad faith argument almost always and doesn't accomplish anything, nor should the existence of an OP killer or survivor perk discourage general balance changes (Nurse will still be too strong no matter what BHVR does short of fundamentally reworking her, and since they refuse to do so, we all have to suck it up).
What do you mean by "dumber"?
With that out of the way, I want to clarify what I mean by "dumber." I don't mean the game is bad, or there is something fundamentally wrong, but rather the recent balance and design choices both reflect a desire to oversimplify DBD. Not only this, but they also reflect an unwillingness to keep trying to solve issues in a thoughtful, intelligent way, instead opting for the path of least resistance and the solution that requires the least amount of steps. To me, when DBD becomes a series of predictable interactions, and/or I feel forced to play in a certain way to reliably win (within limits, there will always be a meta of course) it becomes stale and my enjoyment cracks. There is right now a rigid meta where you either pick a certain killer or bring a certain item, or you lose, with very little agency in the hands of any one player (IN MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE). Player agency and being able to try new ways of play is what made me fall in love with DBD, and to this day my favorite thing to do is run unique builds (and I've got the NightLight stats to prove it!) While the depth of DBD can be off-putting to new players, the depth of DBD is also what keeps veteran players around and keeps the game different every match; this is the central antagonism between DBD's playerbase, imho. With that in mind, let me list a few examples of what I mean by oversimplifying the game, and why I think this balance/design philosphy needs to be adjusted ASAP.
I. The pallet density change.
This is gonna be controversial, but I gotta say it: pallet density was never the problem. The existence of god pallets and useless pallets has always, and will always, be the problem. Every pallet should be mind-gameable, excluding shack (and even then, you can still mindgame it sometimes!). Why would we design a core gameplay mechanic in such a way that there are scenarios where one side has zero power and the other has all of it? This goes for BOTH roles, mind you: a god pallet should be just as nonexistent as a useless one. Mindgames are a fun core mechanic that should be encouraged, and too many pallets discourages mindgames. By doing the pallet density change as well as recent new tiles getting incredibly strong pallets (everyone please welcome god rock to the new maps), the gameplay loop has become so incredibly boring and monotonous, with very little killer agency and no real reason for survivors to conserve pallets. At least before, the risk of pre-dropping was that you would MAYBE run out of resources too early; now, you are guaranteed enough pallets to reach endgame even while predropping eveything. Managing your pallet economy isn't riveting gameplay, but it does require you to use your brain a little; why are we discouraging that? This change has encouraged people to play stronger killers that ignore pallets, which leads to less killer diversity, and that is really lame, I think. I would go so far as to say it ruins the fun of the game. Oh, and since no one wants to admit it, I'll say it: the double pallets are stupid as hell. It's just a god rock you need to activate by dropping a pallet. Sorry, personal gripe of mine.
II. BHVR keeps giving up on attempted balance changes.
Do you remember when medkits got "nerfed" because 2 heals per medkit were too strong, then that EXACT SAME PROBLEM came back with skill check medkits, and might even be considered even worse because of the time it saves to hit those skill checks + resurgence? (Old CoH was preferable, and that's saying a lot.) Do you remember when Blight spent like 3 patches getting side-graded and reworked and buffed but never truly nerfed? Do you remember when syringes + BNP were reworked because they were overperforming, and then they ended up still by far being the strongest addons in DBD? Do you remember when they killed (and feel free to remind me if I'm missing one) Skull Merchant and Chucky and then just…stopped trying to balance them? Do you remember when they tried to address slugging, camping, and tunneling in 3 seperate patches and only sent one change to live (only reducing the worst edge cases and not solving the fundamental problem)? Do you recall how there are iri addons that are so ridiculously strong with no penalty that make a killer impossible to tier list due to varying strength (Ghoul, Clown, Legion, Spirit, Cenobite, Krasue all come to mind)? I'm a killer main, so I forget a lot about survivor changes, but I'm sure someone will be kind enough to remind me.
I cannot stress this enough, and this is the one thing I want to send home:
BHVR, IF YOU REWORK SOMETHING AND IT DOESN'T FIX THE PROBLEM, STOP GIVING UP ON THE SOLUTION!
This has got to be the most frustrating thing about BHVR's balance philosphy. If there is a problem, and the change does not fix the problem, you have substantively done nothing to improve the health of the game, and all that hard work is wasted. I am so beyond grateful for all the hard work BHVR does and I do believe they try their best but I also think there is pressure from somewhere to always keep moving to the next thing. I'm beating a dead horse here, but the game development needs to slowwwww downnnn. What is downright infuriating is that BHVR KNOWS these things are problems; they know tunneling is a problem, they know broken addons are a problem, they know S-tier killers are a problem. They HAVE to know, because they've tried fixing these issues! But instead of seeing it through, they are forced to focus on a new content cycle or managing all 30+ killers in the game every patch (something I think a lot of people don't understand how difficult it must be). This is, of course, for the simple reason that BHVR is a business, and businesses need to generate revenue. I'm not going to explain the mode of production for capitalism in a forum post, lol, nor advocate for or against it. What I am saying is that I find it really hard to believe BHVR would lose out on significant amounts of revenue by taking a break on the game's content cycle. Recurring players generate revenue in the form of cosmetic sales, and while I don't have internal figures on hand, I'd bet my bottom dollar that cosmetic sales rival those of chapter relases. I could very well be wrong there, though, in which case we are all at the mercy of the almighty dollar.
This is getting rambly, so I'll wrap up now. I LOVE Dead by Daylight, I love all things Dead by Daylight. I love the game, I love the lore (where my tome heads at), I love the community, I love the incredible art produced by the game. This game brings me so much joy and has let me meet so many wonderful people, and all I want is to see this game become more popular. But man, it is really hard to keep faith when the game is becoming so oversimplified it no longer feels unique and makes me not angry, not confused, but just downright sad. I don't think whining and complaining is the way to go (hi dbdtwt) nor do I want this post to generate any sort of hate, but I do really hope people join me in offering thoughtful criticisms of the game that extend beyond a simple good/bad analysis (you do have to offer a full, falsifiable argument, even in a forum post!). BHVR is, I believe, a team of lovely people, held back by what I can only assume is poor management (firing a ton of your staff in the middle of a very unhealthy meta and game environment is not slick, I didn't forget about that, BHVR execs) and a lack of desire to see things through. Thanks for reading all this mess, and now I can finally rest easy that I at least said my peice and contributed to this game in my own way ^_^
See you in the fog, friends!
Comments
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I probably don't have much in the way of thoughtful analysis to add (while I am an academic specialising in horror in fiction, I'm not in any way knowledgable about game design), I did want to just comment and say that I appreciate your very thoughtful, well articulated analysis of the game's current state and some of it's problems.
I do think that ultimately, one of the biggest problems with DBD at the moment is the content cycle, specifically the speed of the content cycle. It feels like a lot of long term issues are being pushed to the wayside for the short term boost of players and income that comes with releasing a new Licensed DLC every few months, which to a degree I understand. But it means that the same problem keeps happening over and over: with the addition of every new killer, every new perk, every new add on, it then requires adjustments being made to a significant portion of the killer roster or the perk roster to account for new mechanics and to try and negate power creep.
Which, due to the sheer scale of killers and perks, almost always leads to the introduction of bugs or a failure to account for every single potential conflict or issue (which is fair, its a huge job!), leading to problems with other killers or perks breaking etc. Which isn't inherently caused by the content cycle, but the speed of the content cycle is definitely not allowing a whole heap of time for fixing things.
Like a failed rework or solution to a problem not working, and as such just being ignored and left in whatever state it's in.
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Even the things they DO add in are often half-baked.
Case in point: anti-afk and anti-go-next.
One was reduced to nothing and other was and still is wildly hated because BHVR added a system that thinks getting killed in 6 seconds because of a cheater = going next.
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It's so frustrating when the entire community recognizes what the problem is, and yet nothing can really be done without some drastic shift in how the game generates revenue and how it keeps the game interesting. In my opinion, mass reworks of perks made the game just as fun as new chapters (I'm thinking the patch where they reworked DH) and these could easily be justified as a "chapter", but of course, there is no profit incentive. sad stuff.
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How do you make your words get so big?
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The making gameplay of survivor evolve around perks… was a bad first made decision
You can’t create over 200 perks without providing too boosted combinations or not making around half of them borderline useless. Killers have the same problem, but they at least have additional micro gameplay opportunity
And since because it’s so many perks, you as solo survivor would never be able to play accordingly team, because you simply lack of info…
Just only one this thing making half of this game pretty miserable.
I’m afraid we can’t balance it. It’s just… unaffordable anymoreI’m agree they making this game oversimplified and mindless over the time. Recent Killer don’t need to worry to aim, while currently survivors have endless resources they don’t need to manage that thoughtful anymore (beside their hook stage).
But I can’t tell this game is oversimplified on its own. Something completely opposite. So many layers created a real mess here…To solve this, they would have to abandon half of everything they've already done, delete and rework. And that's... impossible. I'm afraid this is already some kind of point of no return, but I hope devs at least will start to try better
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There is a little symbol on the side used to create headings, not sure what it's called but it's used to indicate a new paragraph normally.
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Two things:
- I generally agree with the sentiment there is perk bloat. So many perks do nothing and could recieve sizeable buffs and still see zero use. Potentially deleting perks is something I'm totally open to…BUT the problem is people paid for those perks and they ethically can't/shouldn't rework any perks except the general perks (which they've been doing).
- I generally disagree with the sentiment the game is a perks game, at least not in every sense. Do you need to run pain res on literally every killer? Yes. Do you need to run DS every match? yes. But I think those are problems they are clearly at least trying to address with changes to the overall perk without necessarily touching the perks themselves (even though they nerfed a ######### ton of killer perks and OTR, all of which were bad changes).
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yeah to maintain the speed of the content cycle they needed a solid base. We are currently seeing the effects of too much content being piled on a pretty far from solid base.
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I agree with you sadly, even if its a pessimistic outlook. This is really why I think 2v8 is the proper future for dbd because of the classes mostly. The 4 perk system was decent for a while but the fact that there are now this many makes it virtually unmanageable. I studied game design and I was taught to not overcomplicate, not necessarily make things simple but not to create too many variables that you cannot properly test and manage all of them conveniently. And sadly the perk system has become so intertwined with 1v4 that I think that mode may be beyond proper balancing without ripping it to shreds (and I don't want that).
With the 2v8 mode they have a chance to create a much more manageable mode. Maybe on top of classes players could equip 1 perk each from a list of approved ones and slowly more and more of the perks get reintroduced? Or they could go the same path as sonic racing crossworlds with the 'perks' (that's not what they're called in src) where any 'class' (also not src name) can use any perk but perks often affect certain classes more. Like in that game the handling kit is better on a handling vehicle than a speed vehicle.
I really like the perks but I think its just far too bloated to be managed anymore, and choosing to forgo that in 2v8 hopefully means they're prepping it to be the next flagship mode to cure this problem. But again this is just my opinion.
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The 4perk system clearly was created before they realized this game can be a golden goose with potential of endless DLCs. They didn't count for that much content, everything tells about this
It's not bad making complicated stuff, but it should be considerate in advance. Or it’s gonna be pretty miserable later
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Yeah, the only way to make the 4 perk system work smoothly would be to test every perk with every other perk in the game and make adjustments to synergies that are too strong (or just plain bugged). Given the fact that there's already over 200 it really isn't realistic for a AA game studio, especially one which spends that much money on licenses alone to keep on top of it. the 4 perk system is gonna have to be changed to a new one eventually.
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Thank you! I'll try it later
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They truly just support poor survivor players. Handholding bad plays. If I do mistake as killer or do wrong decision, it's over. If they do wrong decision, there are tones of second chances to help them. The current game should be rebalanced simply by:
- Decreasing pallet count per map
- Decreasing size of maps (Haddonfield size feels very fair for both sided)
- Increase the time it takes to complete generator by min. 20s
- Reducing exhaustion perks to 1.5s and the exhasution recovery to min 60s
- Decreasing base BT to 5s
- Decrease hook stage time to 50s
- Increase penalty for missing skillchecks
- Baskit killer perks: Pain res, corrupt, bbq, deadlock…
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Idk that there's a point in just addressing issues with survivor, if killers where to get these buffs they should be balanced with survivor also getting quality of life buffs.
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I win a massive number of games because of survivor mistakes, and I also lose many killer games because of one silly mistake. I don't feel it is accurate or fair to suggest mistakes disproportionately affect one side, but it's rather a question of whether or not something should be considered a "mistake." Right now, it is a "mistake" to not aggressively tunnel out the first survivor you see. Optimal gameplay requires an unfun strategy, and that is the fundamental problem of killer balancing atp imo. As for your suggested changes, I only really agree with a longer cooldown for exhaustion perks (60s is a little crazy, but 30~ feels like a fair number, potentially 40 IF vigil stays in its current state) as well as a decreased hook timer (it should always have been 60s). Pallet counts were fine prior to this change save for a few already well-documented exceptions, and like I wrote in the OP, pallet density is not the central antagonism at the heart of pallet balancing. Map size is also a big issue, but I would also point out maps like Dead Sands, Rotten Fields, and Haddonfield are WAY too small as well; it's not just a one-sided issue. Ideally I think the best way to balance the game is with give-and-take; even if its not proportionate, it still gives a general sense that the game balance is trying to keep both sides in mind.
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