A Summation and Solution to *Most* Problems in DBD

Revision 6 Additions:

• Grammar/consistency/formatting fixes
• A good ranking system
• A table of contents
• TL;DR at the bottom

This is probably what will be my final addition to my long running series of posts, My "How to Fix Dead by Daylight" Plan.

Table of contents

1 - Introduction

2 - Overview

3 - Generator Rework

4 - Ranking System Changes

5 - Death Efficiency Problem

6 - Perk Changes

7 - Survivor Bloodpoints

8 - Miscellaneous

Introduction -

Hello everyone! I have been playing Dead by Daylight for almost two years now, (Since August 2017) and I have thought very long and hard about what makes Dead by Daylight so appealing, but also what makes people so emotionally charged over the problems in Dead by Daylight, and the problems themselves.

Now, I don’t admit to be a professional video game dev, but as a veteran player, these are my personal, long-thought out opinions on what changes need to come to DbD to keep its gameplay refreshing, and to keep people playing for years to come.

Again, these are my personal opinions, and I would love for every player, developer, or streamer to take a look over what I have written here, and think. If none of these changes make it in, I at least want people to start thinking about better, bigger balance, instead of little number changes and band-aids.

In any regard, I am open to and welcome constructive criticism. Here are my ideas and thoughts. For the fifth time!

Overview

Major Base Game Changes

Generators must be a meaningful interaction. It should require a balance of attention on the action and attention on the killer, constantly.

Generators should be a fun, strategic attack/defense game:

Survivors must work as a team to distract killer, save from hooks, and complete the generators & exit gates to escape.

Killer should have to strategize on who to chase and who not to chase, while stopping work on gens, and hooking (and eventually killing) the survivors.

Survivors should get small buffs when another survivor dies, so one survivor's death doesn't almost guarantee a win for the killer.

Due to generator changes, many perks on killer and survivor sides should be changed to reflect these changes.

Minor Base Game Changes

Hooks should no longer be a place of defense/interest for killers; make generators a main focus, hooks should also be more punishing for survivor (This is to make it so being on the hook feels less bad, but also punishes survivors for being caught)

Hiding should be a bigger play in DbD, survivors should not want to be in a chase just to get points, they should fear the killer, and must have a plan if they begin a chase.

Moris should be changed in a way that introduces them into the main game, removing them as an offering. They should also be made so that they do not ruin the survivors' personal experience, and do not ruin the team's chances of escape.

The bloodpoint gain is a little low for survivors, and a little low compared to the amount of perks there are in the game now. I intend to fix both of these.

Rework the gens -

Generators -

Generators should not be a one and done deal, but instead a constant “sustain them all” type game, so killers should be able to apply more map pressure, and survivors should have to work harder to keep generators going. 

To start, the basic concept of how a generator stays, you still have to stand in one spot, working on the generator, but current skill checks are wiped.

The way you interact with a generator would be changed, where instead of holding a key to stay on the generator, it’s a toggle where you press it once to stay on, then press it again to get off.

The amount of available gens and gens required would also decrease by 1. Four generators to power exit gates, and six generators on the map. Then, there should be three parts to the progression of a generator:

First Phase -

The first 10 seconds/charges of a generator will be a start-up phase, where nothing special happens, you just work on the generator with no mini-games happening.

Generators that reach the second phase cannot be regressed past the first phase, so generators will always have a little progress.

Any generator below the first 10 seconds of progress cannot be kicked. Only one survivor can work on a generator in the first phase.

Second phase - 

The following 60 seconds/charges after the first phase will be the minigame part.

The new skill checks would be two keys that pop up every 3 seconds, at fixed points over time. While you are “locked” onto a gen, the WASD/XYAB/square, triangle, x, and o buttons/keys are disabled for movement, and will instead be used for these “checks”.

During the 3 second check, you must press 2 randomly generated buttons of the 4 in order from left to right, within the 3 second timeframe. If you hit the wrong buttons, or fail to complete the check in time, it is considered a “failed” check, the generator blows up, and loses 8 seconds/charges of progress.

A generator kicked by the killer in phase 2 acts like it does now, just starting normal regression. Multiple survivors can work on the generator in phase two, each one contributing diminishing charges. 

Survivor Charge Contribution for generators in phase 2 -

(c = charges)

1 survivor - 1c/s. Phase 2 takes 60 seconds.

2 survivors - 0.6c/s individual contribution, 1.2c/s total. Phase 2 takes 50 seconds.

3 survivors - 0.5c/s individual contribution, 1.5c/s total. Phase 2 takes 40 seconds.

4 survivors - 0.425c/s individual contribution, 1.7c/s total. Phase 2 takes 35 seconds.

Third phase - 

After the 60 seconds of phase two, the last 10 seconds/charges of the generator will be a “fueling” phase.

There will be randomly placed “gas” spots around the map that spawn a gas can for survivors to grab. Once a generator is at phase three, a survivor must spend 10 seconds fueling the generator.

If a generator reaches phase 3, and a survivor does not have a gas can, they cannot finish the generator until they get one.

Once a generator is at 100%, it does the “finished generator” notification, and lights up completely. Even if a generator is at 100%, a killer can come by and kick it, instantly removing the 10 seconds of the fueling phase, and then continuing regular regression.

Generators that are 100% complete, and then kicked by the killer, make a special “unfinished generator” notification. The Killer can only kick a generator in phase 3 three times before the gen cannot be kicked any longer.

Only one survivor can work on the generator in phase 3, and phase 3 is not affected by any slowing/speeding progression effects like Thanatophobia or Leader.

Gas Cans - 

The gas can fills a separate slot from the item slot, but does disable the use of any item a survivor has. The fuel can has 20 charges, and once the charges are used, the gas can is destroyed.

There will be 6 gas can spawn points across the map, with gas cans respawning every 40 seconds. Gas can spawn point rules would be 1 spawn point within 24 meters of each gen.

Gas Cans are affected by Streetwise, Franklin’s Demise, and Overwhelming Presence.

The Ranking System -

The ranking system! The bane of dead by daylight since day one! Oh how we despise it! But why? And what can be done about it?

Right now, the ranking system is unanimously regarded as "way too hard". The previous ranking was "way too easy" though. Is there a balance to be struck in the middle of the two, or do we need a different way of scoring matches?

Well, the way emblems are right now...don't make sense in the normal way you'd expect them. The survivors and the killer can really, work together to get the best outcome out of a match. It is only due to the fact that it isn't fun to play that way, that we play as survivors vs. killer.

The aim of the game with the emblem system isn't to win, but instead to make the other side lose.

This is what fosters the toxicity within the game, as well as serves as a faulty ranking system.

The honest solution to all of this? First of all, separate the modes. There needs to be a casual mode, in addition to a ranked mode. Casual mode would have no ranked consequences, just bloodpoint rewards.

Second of all, change the pipping requirements in ranked to be solely based on escapes as survivor, and kills as killer. There doesn't need to be a deeper ranking system, if you didn't escape as survivor you and your team failed. If you didn't get all kills as killer, you failed (for the most part with some exceptions).

The only thing that breaks the rules is the hatch. The hatch is a terrible, awful mechanic that RUINS ranking, ruins the game, and rewards failure. So how do we solve this part of the problem?

Remove the hatch.

When there is one survivor left, and not all of the gens are completed, the Killer and the last Survivor have both their auras revealed to each other permanently, as long as they're outside 32 meters of each other. The gates are put on a timer until they're opened, depending on how many generators are left. 30 seconds are added to the timer per uncompleted generator. The timer is part of the UI in the top right corner.

On top of this, to truly separate the modes, ranking would have to have ranked rewards.

The Death Efficiency Problem - 

Thanks to Mr. @AlwaysInAGoodShape, I've been inspired to add this section to my list of problems. You can read about it more in-depth here: https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/33553/the-introduction-to-the-dbd-death-efficiency-problem#latest

Anyways, on to the basic problem.

Basically, games will usually only ever go one of two ways. Either the survivors super gen rush and demolish the killer, or the killer gets the survivors dead extremely fast and demolishes them. This is all in relation to the way generators and pallets are in the current live version of the game. 

If one survivor is in a chase, 3 survivors work on gens, which we'll call 100% efficiency.

If one is hooked and one has to save, only two work on gens. This is now 66% efficiency.

If one of those two left is being chased, only one can work on a gen. Gen efficiency has gone down to 33%. If someone dies, there are 3 left.

Now what if someone is chased? We have 66% gen efficiency by default now.

If they get hooked? Someone has to save, so now it's 33%. And if the killer chases that one guy? 

There is now 0% gen efficiency. No one is working on gens. All because one person died.

Now that we know what the problem is, we can work to solve it.

My Death Efficiency Solution

As each survivor dies, it becomes harder to do generators. Over time, as each survivor dies, it should have a negative impact on survivors, but not as big of an impact as it is now. My idea?

Tiers of Hope

I think that Hope should be re-purposed into its own tiered effect. Hope is only applied from the perk, Hope, and is also applied from each time a survivor dies in a trial.

Tier One -

Tier one is activated after one survivor dies in the trial. Every remaining survivor receives this effect indefinitely.

While a survivor is in tier one of Hope, they are affected by the following:

- 0.10 charges/second increase in generator phase 2 progression speed

- Movement speed in the Dying State is increased from 0.7 m/s to 1.0 m/s

- Recovery speed in the Dying State is increased from 50% to 65% 

Tier Two -

Tier two is activated after a second survivor dies in the trial. Every remaining survivor keeps the effects of tier one, along with the additional effects of tier two. The perk, Hope, also activates tier two for two minutes.

While a survivor is in tier two of Hope, they are affected by the following:

- All of the effects of tier one

- A haste effect that increases running movement speed from 4 m/s to 4.2 m/s

Tier Three -

Tier three is activated after a third survivor dies in the trial. The last remaining survivor keeps the effects of tier one and two, along with the additional effects of tier three.

While a survivor is in tier three of Hope, they are affected by the following:

- All of the effects of tier one and two

- The survivor's breathing and pain sounds are reduced by 100%

- Additional 0.40 charges/second progression speed to generators in phase 2, for a total of 1.50 charges/second

Perk Changes - 

Due to all of the changes to generators I want to make, I have revised every perk regarding them. I have also buffed a few that need some love.

Survivor Perks -

Dark Sense

Unlocks potential in one's Aura-reading abilities.

Any time a generator is completed, see the killer’s aura for 5 seconds.

Once all generators are complete, see the killer’s aura for 8/10/12 seconds.

Detective’s Hunch

Unlocks potential in one's Aura-reading abilities.

Any time you complete a generator, see all auras of totems, chests, and generators for 5/10/15 seconds.

Hope

The growing odds of a successful escape fill you with hope and give you wings.

As soon as the exit gates are powered, you gain a tier two hope status effect for 90/120/150 seconds.

Leader

Any survivor within 8 meters of you, and for 5/10/15 seconds after leaving your range, have a 10% increased progression speed on healing, sabotaging, opening chests, and opening exit gates.

This Perk has been updated to an acceptable state in the 2.5.0 patch.

Left Behind

You'll get the job done... No matter the cost.

If you are the last remaining survivor in the trail, when working on a generator:

-/-/instantly complete phase 1.

-/phase 3 does not require a gas can/phase 3 does not require a gas can.

You are not faced with any skill checks during phase 2.

Prove Thyself

If at least one survivor is within 12 meters of you, gain a 5/10/15% increased speed in healing, sabotaging, opening chests, and opening exit gates.

This Perk has been updated to an acceptable state in the 2.5.0 patch.

Resilience

You are motivated in dire situations.

While injured and not in a chase, gain a tier two hope status effect, and gain a 8/9/10% increase to progression speed on repairing, healing, sabotaging, opening chests, and opening exit gates.

Spine Chill

An unnatural tingle warns you of impending doom.

Get notified when the Killer is looking directly in your direction and standing within 36 meters of range.

While Spine Chill is active, the time available to complete a skill check is reduced by 20% and repair, healing, sabotaging, cleansing, chest opening, and gate opening progression speed is increased by 6/8/10%.

Stake Out

Getting close to the Killer fills you with determination.

For each 10 seconds you are standing within the Killer's Terror Radius and are not in a Chase, you gain a Token up to a maximum of 2/3/4 Tokens.

While Stake Out has at least one token, skill checks are automatically completed for you.

This Is Not Happening

You perform at your best when you are under extreme stress.

While injured, skill checks only require one input to be completed, instead of two.

The next time you are unhooked, and within the killer's terror radius, you are affected by endurance effect for 10/15/20 seconds. This may only be activated one time.

Technician

You are apt at handling machinery with the greatest care and precision.

The noises that you, and other survivors within 8 meters of you make while working on a generator are reduced by 100%. On a failed skill check, there is a 40/50/60% chance that the explosion will be prevented.

Killer Perks - 

Hex: Huntress Lullaby

A Hex rooting its power in despair. Your hunt is an irresistible song of dread which muddles your prey's attention.

Missed skill check penalty is increased by 2/4/6%

Each time you hook a survivor, gain a token, up to 5. Each token reduces the time available to succeed a skill check by 20%.

The totem the hex is applied to does not appear "lit" until the first stack is gained.

Skill checks still occur every 3 seconds.

Hex: Ruin

A Hex that affects the Survivors' skills at repairing Generators.

2/3/4 survivors are affected by ruin, which applies the following:

Skill checks now require survivors to hit 3 different keys in the right order, instead of 2.

Failing a skillcheck will pause progress for an additional 3 seconds. 

Overcharge

You are fuelled by your hate for progress.

Overcharge a Generator by performing the Damage Generator action.

The first survivor to start repairing an overcharged generator is faced with a skill check that they have 2/1.5/1 seconds to complete. If the skill check is missed, an additional 6% regression is applied.

Pop Goes The Weasel

A deep bond with The Entity unlocks great strength.

When kicking a generator within 40 seconds after hooking someone, 5/10/15% of phase 2 is regressed. This takes effect even when kicking a generator in phase 3. Normal regression applies after the damage is done.

Surveillance

The last 1/2/3 regressing generator’s auras are shown to you in white. Once a survivor tries to repair one of these generators, you are given a loud noise notification, and survivors can make no progress on that generator for 5 seconds.

This perk has been updated to an acceptable state in the 2.5.0 patch.

Tinkerer

When a generator reaches phase 3, you are given a loud noise notification, and your terror radius is reduced to 0 meters for 8/10/12 seconds.

Thanatophobia

Their courage fades in the face of their undeniable mortality.

Gain a token for each survivor that is either injured, dying, hooked, sacrificed, or dead. If a survivor becomes healthy, lose their token.

2 tokens: -/-/10% decreased progression speed to repairing, healing, sabotaging, cleansing, chest opening, and gate opening.

3 tokens: -/all survivors suffer from exhaustion/all survivors suffer from exhaustion

4 tokens: all survivors suffer from a 5% hindered effect

Unnerving Presence

Your presence alone instills great fear.

Survivors within your terror radius have 30/40/50% less available time to succeed a skill check. 

Survivor's Lack of Bloodpoints - 

For a long time standing, survivors have gotten just about 50% to 75% amount of bloodpoints that killers get per match. I believe they should be equal, promoting people to play equal amounts of killer and survivor. Most games as survivor, you'll usually get a lot of bloodpoints in 2 categories, then tank in the other two. These are my ideas to bring up bloodpoints for survivors.

Objective -

Objective is one that's all or nothing. You get chased or do altruism all game, or you do generators all game. My ideas for this are just to increase the amount of bloodpoints across the board, making it easier for altruistic people to gain.

For generators, the amount of bloodpoints gained should just be increased. If someone works solo on a gen, they gain significantly less bloodpoints, but is actually working more efficiently, so there should be a trade off, but not as huge of a gap as it is now.

Generators now grant a total of 2000 bloodpoints, making for 25 bloodpoints per charge contributed.

Working on a generator with multiple people will grant a co-op "multiplier". Survivors gain 25% more bloodpoints for every other survivor working on the same generator.

2 people working on a generator: 31.25 bps/charge, total of 2500 bps

3 people working on a generator: 37.5 bps/charge, total of 3000 bps

4 people working on a generator: 43.75 bps/charge, total of 3500 bps

Chest searches now grant 750 total bloodpoints, so survivors can get a significant amount of bloodpoints on the fly if they really tanked in bps. (75 bps/charge)

Exit Gate opening now grants a total of 1500 bloodpoints, just to make survivors want to open them a little bit more. (93.75 bps/charge)

The Hatch should no longer grant 2000 extra objective bloodpoints. This causes a lot of fights between survivors, and removing it would alleviate hatch fights and standoffs, to a degree.

Survival -

So, for SOME reason, it is almost impossible to ever max out this category. The ONLY bloodpoints you can get in this category besides escaping, is killer grasp escape (500), Freddy wake up (150), Trapper trap escape (500), Pig RBT escape (400), and Doctor snap out of it (200). This makes it so that, the only time you might be able to max out survival is when you're facing FOUR OUT OF FOURTEEN killers! There might be one or two flashlights/pallet saves, but that would only get you 500 per save.

My goal for this category is that survivors can actually get points for this category, to put it frankly. Another problem is people who don't escape get basically nothing in this category.

Wiggle should grant bloodpoints. Don't know why it never has, but it should. You are working towards your survival by doing it. 

The Wiggle timer by default is 16 seconds, and if you get off the shoulder you'll get points, so I propose a small bloodpoint distribution change.

Over the 16 seconds you'll earn up to 600 bloodpoints. (37.50 bloodpoints/charge)

If you do escape, it would then grant you 400 bloodpoints.

Struggling on the hook (In the second phase) should also grant more bloodpoints. It would promote people to not kill themselves on hook, as I see this happen quite a bit. It should grant 2000 bloodpoints over the 60 seconds (~33.33 bps/charge)

Altruism -

Altruism is pretty easy to get. The increase in bloodpoint gain in every category would likely make it so people wouldn't just go for altruism though, so the only change I would do is an extra 500 bloodpoints for being saved from a hook.

I do think certain parameters for the assist and distractions score events, but otherwise Altruism is fine.

Boldness -

Stealth is, for some reason, not rewarded in the bloodpoints side of things. I think it should be, and this is how: while a survivor is within the killer’s terror radius and not in a chase, they gain constant bloodpoints every second based on how close they are to the killer. This would help the people who don't get chased still achieve bloodpoints for avoiding the killer well.

When within 40 to 32 meters to the killer: Gain 25 bloodpoints per second.

When within 32 to 16 meters to the killer: Gain 50 bloodpoints per second.

When within 16 meters of the killer: Gain 75 bloodpoints per second.

The bloodpoints are finally granted after being outside of 40 meters of the killer for 5 seconds.

If the survivor is caught, the bloodpoints gained during the time are halved. 

For example:

A survivor is within 40-32 meters of the terror radius for 5 seconds, 24-16 meters for 5 seconds, 16-1 meters for 5 seconds, and then gets caught and initiates a chase. They would earn 125, then 250, then 375, making 750, then it gets halved to 375 points for being caught.

Miscellaneous -

Moris -

Remove Moris as an offering. As of right now, they feel very unfun when you get hit with one right after being unhooked the first time. Instead, after a survivor is unhooked the second time, or dead on their next hook, killers may take them to the basement and mori them for 1500 bloodpoints . Once in the basement, would drop the survivor off of your shoulder and have the ability to mori them. If the basement is too far away, killers may still just sacrifice them. This would also loosen up the ultra rare pool so you can get more ultra rare add-ons for your killers.

Hooks - 

If a killer has been within 16 meters of a hooked survivor for 30 seconds and they haven’t injured anyone within those 30 seconds, all survivors gain a 20% progression speed to repairs, until the killer has left the 16 meter range for more than 10 seconds. I think this would help a lot against camping killers. Specifically the ones who camp before all of the generators are done. This would hopefully make it so killers would get less bloodpoints and less emblems when they do camp, so they rank down instead of up.

Too Many Perks!

There are 59 Survivor perks and 54 Killer perks (As of 2.5.0). Each one has three tiers. You have to go through one bloodweb per perk tier. That means there's 177 levels for Survivor and 162 levels for Killer to go through, to max out every perk. Okay, each character starts with tier 1 of their teachable. That's still 174 levels for Survivor and 159 levels for Killer.

 It costs about 1,200,000 bloodpoints to go from level 1 to 50. Every level 50 bloodweb afterwards costs around 50,000 bps. This means for survivor, it costs about 7,400,00 bps and for killer it costs about 6,650,000 bps to max out every perk.

That is way too much. Maybe for survivor it's okay since you only have to max out one survivor, but every killer has their unique power that interacts with perks differently. 

At this point in time, it's really got to the point where perks really shouldn't be tiered. There should only be the level 3 variant.

That would drastically decrease the grind, but still keep it worth it to stay on the grind, AND it opens up the place for the devs to add even more perks.

Too Little Add-Ons! (for killer)

As everyone knows, Survivors keep their items and add-ons if they survive, or if they have a white ward during the trial. All of them get saved, and then they can start a huge collection. If you include Plunderer's and Ace in the Hole, you can get an even better, bigger collection. Killers? What do they have? Nothing. You use it, you lose it. I propose a simple idea to give Killer's just a little push in the right direction, in terms of add-ons:

If the Killer single pips on the endscreen, they gain one Random Add-on of Very Rare quality or lower.

If the Killer double pips on the endscreen, they gain two Random Add-ons of Very Rare quality or lower.

The Killer will still lose the Add-ons that they used, but in return they get refunded based on their performance in the match. They aren't guaranteed the same Add-ons, though. It'd be completely random as to what they get. They also cannot obtain Ultra Rares from post match Add-ons, either. This would keep Ultra Rare add-ons from getting out of hand, akin to the way chests work for Survivors. Although now you can get Ultra Rares from chests now, I'm not sure what to think of it. There are some crazy OP Add-ons for some Killers, so it'd be safe to stick with just Very Rare rewards.