I'm done with DBD for now.

It's not exactly a new and revolutionary statement when I say that DBD is not in a amazing state atm. I've been feeling a increasing sense of apathy towards the game since the Walking Dead chapter, that patch was easily the worst launch of a chapter since Binding of Kin and it unfortunately led to a increasing list of problems the game has piled on, and on, and on.

Here's some of my problems with the game atm.

1.Bugfixes, and how long it takes to actually fix anything.

I understand DBD is now over 9 years old and was originally made as a small project intended to never live longer then like 2 years at most, but that doesn't change the fact that DBD is now almost a decade old, the majority of live-service games nowadays barely live longer then 3 years let alone 9, and the number of bugs this game has is flat-out unacceptable. Remember when Flashbang was completely silent and able to blind people through walls? That took over 6 months and 3 separate patches to fix, Last Stand gave you invincibility on vaults for about a month, Streetwise was bugged and took mass community outrage to even be Killswitched, and currently, off the top of my head, Mindbreaker is currently killswitched and has been unusable for over a month now, and Oni causes a memory leak issue while waiting in the lobby, and during gameplay I have been seeing random patches of bright neon light in the sky for months now. The game's stability in general has been getting progressively worse since UE5, up until that update I have never once had the game crash on me, since that update I have had the occasional crash, and now? I can reliably make the game crash by sitting in a lobby as Oni.
Again, I get that the game is 9 years old now and built on bad foundations, the health patches were supposed to address that. Instead the health patches ended up needing their own health patches because they broke so many things. Steady Pulse and The Walking Dead broke so many things that took ages to fix. I don't mind the occasional visual glitch or minor gameplay bug, I do mind when the bugs can actively lose you the match or otherwise render the game unplayable, especially when they either take months to fix or continually pop up over and over again.

2.Dead By Daylight does not respect your time.

A large part of playing most Multiplayer games, to me, is learning. You learn how your weapons work, what you can do with the game's movement options, where optimal places to go are on various maps, etc. and then using that knowledge to win games, at which point you progress towards something, whether it be a rank, a level, maybe even a cosmetic option. For me at least, I've played both Darkest Dungeon games, both Hollow Knight games, Skul the Hero Slayer, Have a Nice Death, Binding of Isaac, TerraTech, Monster Hunter World, Rise, and Wilds, part of what I want out of a game is a reason to learn its mechanics and intricacies and actually see myself improve, I like it when my time is rewarded and I'm encouraged to "git gud" as it were. DBD, in contrast, not only makes learning any of this a unnecessarily painful slog thanks to the tutorial that doesn't actually teach you anything actually useful beyond the bare minimum, it doesn't and quite frankly never has ever actually encouraged learning and getting good at the game. In fact, it's actively been encouraging people to play with their brains completely shut off. On the survivor side you have 40 pallets on basically every map now, so managing your resources is functionally meaningless because you have a abundance of them, and, if the anti-tunnel and anti-slug changes go to live, there isn't even a punishment for being up in the killer's face or messing with their stuff, you can just bodyblock, still keep all of your buffs, and get away with it scot-free. As for Killer? Why would I ever bother learning how to play a killer like Knight, Hag, SM, Houndmaster, etc, when I can just pick Ghoul, Blight, Krasue, or Nurse, slap on any combination of slowdown and chase perks I want, and win 90% of my games. You're not rewarded for going out of your way to win, you're not rewarded for trying, you're not punished for losing, and you are given zero reason to ever bother learning anything more then the bare minimum and engaging in the lowest common denominator of gameplay, and what makes that even more annoying is the continuous encouragement by BHVR to play like this, Survivors as I mentioned got 20 additional pallets on almost every map, completely negating any need for that one guy on your team who just pre-drops every pallet he sees to actually learn basic resource management, and Killer gets Kaneki, who is both very strong and very easy, and Krasue, who was overbuffed from PTB and is STILL strong and very easy, and something tells me that this trend of making the game easier and less reliant on actual skill isn't going to stop anytime soon, and that bothers me a lot.

3.Blight

I hate Blight, I hate how he plays, I hate the people that play him who think they're good at the game because they can slap on 4 slowdown perks, tunnel a baby Meg out at 5 gens, and win a match in 5 minutes, and I especially hate the effect he has had on DBD's balance. Why does every map have a ridiculous number of pallets thus making every M1 killer utterly miserable to play? Because Blight can shred pallets at a ridiculous rate and requires having a pallet or window every 5 feet to feel even remotely manageable for the average Survivor. Why don't we get any new good long-range aura reading perks? Because Blight (and also Billy but I like him so he gets a pass) can easily abuse them to completely remove any need for macro decision making. Why was Ultimate Weapon nerfed? Because Blight was able to easily abuse it to make it completely impossible to hide anywhere. Why are Survivors getting Anti-Tunnel and Anti-Slug basekit? Because Blight is able to effortlessly and brainlessly tunnel someone out before the match has really started because his power is fundamentally a problem. Give him the Ghoul treatment of pausing his power recharge on a pallet break and maybe also give him something like Blood Fury that requires him to manage a resource, his power is ridiculous and it has been warping the game around him ever since he got added.

4. Finally, the Rift Pass.

I'm going to be honest, I am a sucker for Battlepasses, I like doing various challenges and getting rewarded with cosmetics because I am a lizard and my brain gives me dopamine when I fill out a checklist, and the most recent Rift…is just not it. 4 pages of actual content, a lacklustre Dredge Outfit that is not nearly as cool as the original source material and was taking up over half the ######### screen when it first got added, and a Claudette outfit that wasn't even finished and isn't getting finished until early 2026. I didn't feel good finishing this rift, I felt a sense of relief that I could finally call it quits for a few months.

I could go on about other problems like the overall lack of polish and quality control the entire game has had for a while now and the aforementioned continuous appeal to people who have no idea how to play DBD and instead whine on Twitter, but…lets be real, everyone else has already done that, I like DBD, I wouldn't have played it for 3000 hours if I didn't, and I do think that the constant complaining is honestly a good thing, if nobody cared about the game we as a community wouldn't be constantly on BHVR's heels to fix things, but as it stands right now, I'm not playing the game for a few months, hopefully 9.3.0 and the firestorm around that leads to a change in priorities and things actually get fixed.

G'night