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Dbd fanbase is very fickle with competition

A big statement I always see is that BHVR and dbd would get better and lock in more if there was competition in the genre

Yet when we actually get the competition you guys instantly say the game will die within a year. Yet you guys asked for this and you won’t go fund and support the competition to get BHVR to care again?

Then when that game inevitably dies off you guys complain again that we need competition it’s like a endless cycle

Even if there was a exact copy of dbd beat for beat gameplay no one would play it and say “it will die within a year”

I’m not saying to not have suspicions cause of how gun handled leatherface. But it’s kinda fickle how you guys ask for competition yet won’t go support it?

Comments

  • squbax
    squbax Member Posts: 1,750
    edited December 17

    Because as much as people like to hate on bhvr, compared to all other competition bhvr are doing things good, great even, look at this while people are complaining that bhvr are ruining dbd for the 170th time, they are still working on future updates, bug fixes (they should work more on this btw), licenses, and listening to the community for better or for worse. You know what the competition is doing? Charging 10 dollars for each new character, picking fights on social media with their players, and throwing shade at bhvr for some reason. Like how on earth do you want me to play the competition when every time a major balance issue is happening they just tell you "chill its a party game" like bhvr has it issues, they normally go nuclear with nerfs but at least they listen, they undo questionable updates.

  • ReverseVelocity
    ReverseVelocity Member Posts: 5,502

    I heavily disagree with this post.

    Personally, I love playing all sorts of games in the asymmetrical horror genre. I've played Last Year, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Identity V, Home Sweet Home: Survive, Friday the 13th, VHS, Propnight, RE: Resistance, Evil Dead: The Game, Deceit; to name a few.

    The issue in this case is the developer in question. I was super hyped for and really enjoyed The Texas Chainsaw Massacre game, and it's in my top 10 played games on Steam, actually. The developers, however, arbitrarily abandoned it to go and make this new project. They still have all the licensing required to develop new content, they just won't.

    It's a concerning pattern from these specific devs, I have lost confidence in GUN Media and I do not want to spend any more of my money on them.

    Often with asymms, it'll be a frustrating case of the games themselves being good, but the developers in question making some kind of horrible decision that causes them to die. Basically all of these games I would've loved to stick around for much longer, but that seems to be the way these things often go.

    It's honestly some credit to BHVR for not fumbling the bag this hard, as questionable as some of their decisions can be sometimes, since that seems to be a relatively easy thing to do in this market. I think these types of games genuinely are really hard to make well, and keep going on top of that.

    Even if there was a exact copy of dbd beat for beat gameplay no one would play it and say “it will die within a year”

    Not really true. I play Identity V a bunch from time to time, and it's been going strong since 2018. The core gameplay loop is so similar to DBD that the developers of the game collaborated with them while they were building it.

    Granted it's a lot more popular in China specifically compared to Western markets, but I think it still has its gameplay merits, I like how it focuses on each individual Survivor/Hunter having an ability instead of perks (not that I'd want DBD to be that way, I like both of them for what they are).

  • terumisan
    terumisan Member Posts: 2,182

    i played vhs and tcm and with those the problem was survivors would dunk and stunlock the killer to the point where you don't want to play anymore dbd is like that in the upper ranks but you have s tiers and camp tunnel and slug to at least mitigate it but in general asyms swing super heavily in favor of survivors, killers quit and games die

  • Reinami
    Reinami Member Posts: 6,605

    In general these other games tend to fail because they focus on a single IP. And the company has a history of just abandoning their games early on while leaving them in a horrible state.

    What we need is a game LIKE VHS or that carnival one to come out, change the formula, and succeed based on the game being good by developers who show that they care, and listen to feedback and are in it for the long haul.

  • Firellius
    Firellius Member Posts: 5,458

    I did play TCM, actually, and I thought it was a ton of fun! I liked it a lot better than DBD, but it's been axed, sadly.

  • Skillfulstone
    Skillfulstone Member Posts: 1,128

    After what Gun and Illfonic did to F13th, TCM and Predator Hunting Grounds, no one has any faith in any game those companies touch.

    The Halloween game will last about a year before it flops, then the license holders will come crawling back to BHVR.

    Best case scenario is the Halloween game is miraculously a great game and doesn't get abandoned nor becomes a cashgrab, which pulls some players away from DBD. In response, BHVR first switches up their roadmap and starts prioritizing licensed content, if that doesn't work, they pull a Blizzard and "suddenly" a bunch of stuff and QOL that have been requested for years get released rapid-fire to bring back the players initially lost to the Halloween game. Returning the status quo when player numbers return to BHVR's liking.

    Unfortunately, being limited to a single license, the Halloween game cannot offer the same variety long-term that DBD offers with its constantly growing number of licenses. Even if the people behind the game didn't have a horrible track record, it would take a lot for DBD to be truly threatened.

  • tjt85
    tjt85 Member Posts: 1,657
    edited December 17

    I was going to make the same point. DBD is a success because it's had the time to build up 10 years worth of original and licensed content and managed to (for the most part) seamlessly bring it all together.

    The only other asym that I play is Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed (another Illfonic project that's been put on life support). It's a fantastic game and everything that a Ghostbusters fan could want from an online Ghostbusters experience. But at this point they've pretty much added most of the content that they could. Sure they could create more maps and skins to unlock, perhaps add some more story campaigns but there's not really much else they could do with the game to give it extra longevity. It's risky to put time and effort into those things because if it doesn't bring in new or returning players, it'll be a very poor business decision for them.

    Unless your single IP video game has a very deep well of established lore to draw from (like Star Wars, Star Trek or Marvel), you're very quickly going to run out of new content to add to keep players interested.

  • runningguy
    runningguy Member Posts: 824

    to be fair, dbd with all its licences and wide variety of killers and survivor and perks…. really there is no variety. its the same killers time and time again using the same perks time and time again. every survivor is exactly the same, its just perks that make them different and survivors seem to use the same perks time and time again. there is no variety. even the map rotation is limited, repeatedly getting The Game map multiple times a night and rarely seeing maps like coldwind farm.

  • cogsturning
    cogsturning Member Posts: 2,154

    I agree with all of this. I don't care much about IPs but DbD being chocked full is what keeps me around. There are 41 killers and tons of perks to change things up. If I'm bored with a playstyle, build, character, or role I can change.

    I played a bit of TCM but, even with that being one of my favorite films, it felt too samey too quickly. The two roles both being third person and both having set abilities per character wasn't interesting to me either. It's the variety that keep me with DbD, and it been built up over so many years that I don't know how anyone catches up.

  • ArkInk
    ArkInk Member Posts: 1,036

    Same here. Lots of fun to be had until you ask them to make literally any changes, then it's all excuses and insults from Gun.

  • jmwjmw27
    jmwjmw27 Member Posts: 813

    As everyone else has said, anyone who has played the TCM game and interacted with the community knows Gun is awful at managing games. They will likely do just as poor a job with the halloween asym as they did TCM.

    Competition is a good thing when the competition is good. If Gun is making it, it won’t outlast or outpace DBD.

  • SoGo
    SoGo Member Posts: 4,255
    IMG_20251218_103315.jpg

    My opinion in a nutshell.

  • Chilli_man2400
    Chilli_man2400 Member Posts: 3,155

    but gun isn’t working on the game Illfonic and another company have been working on the game way before gun abandoned TCM

    The only saving grace the Halloween game has is the story mode/single player mode

  • Malkhrim
    Malkhrim Member Posts: 1,193
    edited December 18

    With all due respect, this is quite a terrible take.

    Just because someone wants competition to incentive DbD to improve, they aren't obligated to spend their time and money in any bad game that shows up wanting to compete with DbD.

    Because most of the atempted competition against DbD over the years has been just that, very bad, buggy, poorly balanced games that were handled terribly by the devs. So of course they didn't get support for long, couldn't hold a playerbase and died, they just weren't worth the time DbD is.

    The thing is: asymmetrical online games are very hard to balance, specially with the conflicting feedback coming from different sides. They are often original games that are trying styles of gameplay that weren't tried before, and done by small developers with limited budgets. So things often don't go as planned and they fail. DbD is so far the only asymmetrical game that found the right formula and made it work, and yet it still deals with issues related to its base design. Some other games not only failed to find the right formula, they were also very poorly handled by their devs, who didn't even do the bare minimum. That was what happened with Last Year, Friday the 13th the Game (which was awfully buggy and very poorly balanced, but had that lawsuit as a escapegoat to blame for its failure) and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The lattest two are from Gun, and I think that says everything that needs to be said about them. To make things worse, their upcoming Halloween game looks like a copy-pasted F13th reflavored in Halloween's scenario. I'm not interested in playing a game with a teleporting Michael Myers who can be stun-locked by survivors exactly like Jason was in F13th.

  • SoGo
    SoGo Member Posts: 4,255

    Gun is involved apparently.

    Therefore a bad omen has been brought upon it.

  • Chilli_man2400
    Chilli_man2400 Member Posts: 3,155

    but they came on last minute? The game was announced back in 2023 and it’s been in development since 2023 it finally was revealed in 2025

    Gun didn’t do any of the work on gameplay or publishing before 2025

    I won’t buy the game but it’s not strictly there game and Illfonic while not perfect atleast still updates there games no matter how dead they are