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Feedback from new players who didn't want to stick around.
This post is primarily directed to BHVR. During the past couple of months, I have tried to introduce DBD to my gaming friends. On paper they should love the game; they fit the target audience perfectly. While everyone loved the premise of the game, many (to my dismay) decided to quit the game permanently after a couple of gaming sessions. Out of 15 friends who either bought the game or played during a free weekend, only 3 remains. In a feeble attempt to persuade them into joining our little band of survivors again, I asked them to explain why they decided to drop the game so early. As the feedback was more or less consistent among the different players, I wanted to relay it to you guys. Without further ado, here's a brief summary of the most common feedback from my deserting friends:
(i) Excessive camping/tunneling kills the mood. Many of the deserters mentioned camping and/or tunneling as a huge turnoff. Or to be specific: being camped/tunneled in consecutive games killed the mood of the survivor(s) being subjected to it. The general notion of all the deserters is that the game can turn sour really quickly. It doesn't help that the weakest of the team often becomes the target.
(ii) Not reliable. Many mentioned reliability as a big issue. The examples of this ranged from the game not loading to stacks that doesn't proc and so on. A majority felt that the game was too unpolished to play seriously and that they'd rather play a more tried-and-tested game.
(iii) Hard to pick up and play without your friends. No desire to play alone as it felt too stressful and isolated. Quite a few reported that they felt they lost repeatedly due to unfair circumstances (such as being left hanging on the hook or being farmed by teammates).
(iv) Steep learning curve and grind. Many of the deserters felt that they didn't understand the core mechanics even after playing for 30+ hours. Knowledge on maps, perks, killer specific abilities, sound mechanics, items, looping etc. was not covered in the tutorial. They also felt the grind/cost to unlock perks (borrowed time and decisive strike for instance) was too much.
(v) Not balanced in terms of add-ons and offerings. A lot of the deserters felt put off by the fact that the add-on mechanic altered the strength of the killers, rather than their playstyle. They did not perceive items as an equal "tilt" of the game. Additionally, mori's, mist and map-offerings could alter the survival rates tremendously. All in all, the fact that you can heavily affect the outcome of the game creates too much of a gamble.
The feedback above is solely from a survivor's POV and a rookie one at best. While I don't agree with all of it (don't shoot the messenger please), I think some critique is justified. Anyways, I hope this sheds some light on the experience of new players!
Comments
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Since this post directed to Behavior specifically, I am gonna ping you @Peanits.
- Camping and tunneling are generally a low rank issue as killers cannot afford to do either of them if they wanna rank up in the higher ranks. It sucks, of course, but that's why there are band-aid perks to help combat it (like DS or Borrowed Time).
- Not sure what you mean about reliability.
- Yep. Doesn't help that 90% of all survivors and 95% of all killers (On Steam) never reached rank 10, so new players get mixed into groups against/with players who have a much larger amount of playtime. One of the worst new player experiences in the gaming world, Dead by Daylight has.
- Kinda goes hand in hand with point Nr. 3. Hard to learn when you keep getting rolled over all the time as a new player. And the grind is insane, yeah. There are many people out there who've come with ideas to help lower the grind but nothings happening soooo..
- Add-ons and offerings spice the game up a lot and that's healthy.
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The only problem i see in this game are q times, everything else is fine to me.
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@My_Farewell As I said, this is feedback from new players who couldn't get into the game.
In general, the persons who browse the forums make up part of the player base who stuck around. We also provide interesting feedback, but maybe a different kind. :-)
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So you want people to stop playing killer?
You create the same problem.
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Had three friends that got me into the game, played about 20-30 hours and quit. They said:
1) being tunneled repeatedly in multiple back to back games was dumb.
2) rankings seem broken, getting games with P3 rank 15 killers at survivor rank 19 seems like a huge gap.
3) grinding for perks to have optimal build was tedious.
my beef is surv queue is measured in seconds, as killer i’ll wait 5 minutes on average.
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Not everyone has your issue. My issue is the oposite, there are not enough killers on ps4. So yeah some people dont like playing killer also because they feel survs are op.
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@Shaped Why do you keep commenting on a thread if you're not gonna bother to read it?
Again: This is NOT a post about the player base, not a post about common issues and not thread about suggestions for improvement.
This is exclusively an informative post about new survivors' experience. Nothing more, nothing less.
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I did read it but your agenda can be seen miles away. Stop pretending you aren't surv biased.
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New players should be grouped ONLY with other new players.
In that newbie-only bracket, there should be an ingame hour limit, let's say 50, 75 or 100 hours as each role. Once you're past those hours, you're never again going to play against newcomers. Not even by deranking or after rank resets (which certainly need a rework, too).
I think if it's guaranteed both survivors and killers are newcomers, there's less a chance of any side steamrolling the other one, and thus there will be a better experience for both.
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@Shaped chill, man... you don't need to hijack every post with "surv biased nana nana nana" bs lol... believe it or not, posts like this are more useful than your ranting. Companies rely on feedback to change things, and feedback from people that are not really immersed into the game is more valuable to detect flaws or things that others that have been here for a longer time already take for granted. A "fresh" opinion is not biased, it's more objective.
@Zender I never understood how they allow Prestiged characters to automatically derank below their obvious expertise. I mean, if you already prestiged a character, let alone P3, that means you already have a certain amount of experience in the game and you shouldn't and couldn't go below rank 10, for example. My godson started playing a few weeks ago and he's rank 18 or 17 now, he keeps running into p3 Claudettes or Dwights.
@Condorloco_26 agreed. After you've gone thru your newbie schedule you're not to go back to facing newcomers ever again.
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It's not even just brand new players. I got introduced through my husband and 4 friends. They were still fairly new to the game and played together frequently. One year later, only one friend of mine remains to play the game, and she isn't that interested anymore either. Matchmaking problems, along with long waiting times, bugs, inconsistent mechanics, sweaty games and way too much grind are the main reasons they all quit.
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Thanks for the feedback. These are, more or less, what we've noticed as well. Most of these are being worked on in some capacity, or at the very least the game is now designed with them in mind. When we make new mechanics, perks, and powers, for example, we try to make them as intuitive as possible so they're easy to pick up and learn from both sides.
The trickiest one on the list is camping and tunneling. The issue is that there is a right time for it (camping in particular), so you can't have a blanket punishment for doing so. This is why even the emblem score for camping only takes effect under the condition that no other survivor is nearby.
We'll see what we can do to make it a little more 'friendly' for new players. With how much the game has grown over the years, it can be a little overwhelming at first.
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@Shaped It is survivor biased because the OP is referring to playing with their friends, who were playing survivor.
The whole post is about how unfriendly this game is for new players, to the point they don't want to play it.
Maybe relax a bit.
@Condorloco_26 I think the best measure is the devotion. You can't earn that unless you've played matches. You can get 50 hours just from menu sitting.
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I get what your saying 100%. A lot of people that put 100's of hours into this game get bored, get new games and quit playing for a couple months, then come back and still have all the best perks and add-ons, and are put in matches with noobs because of the de-rank BS. I gave up trying to get my friends into this. They ALL said it's way to hard on both sides (PS4) and the grind just isn't worth their time. They would rather have fun playing something else, then waste their time getting crushed almost every match, just to earn a small amount of BP's. Sad thing is my one friend just bought this for GF bought all the additional content too and really wanted to get into it, but gave up because he said it's just to depressing loosing all the time.
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I get put in rank 20 killer lobbies as a survivor even when I am over rank 10, not sure why but the match making in this game is silly sometimes. Dont even need to take a break to do that
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Losing isn't the problem. The problem is when there are no mechanics for newcomers to even scratch a win. I lose 2 games, win 3, I get used to it. But when you're new and you see everything is plotting against you, the problem is not losing, the problem is not having a chance at winning.
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Rank 15 killers at rank 19 is bad?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
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But you absolutely can farm devotion/xp with an afk bot.
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any killer who is p3 at rank 15 is doing so to grief noobs.
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I just meant more like, weve had rank 4 killers queued up with rank 20s before due to matchmaking. 15s and 19s arent a stretch. They're all still newish.
Also, I had my LF p2 before I hit rank 16. I played more survivor at start. I was still trash. Prestige means nothing more than "X bloodpoints have been earned and spent".
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Prestige means = you have played a certain amount of hours to achieve this. While that doesn’t grant skill, it grants knowledge of the game mechanics. To be able to p3 you need to have a fair amount of good matches to gather almost 5 million bps. If you were to be really bad and get an average of 5k bps per game you would never be p3. So don’t come and say p3 means nothing in terms of understanding the game and getting good or better at it.
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I didnt say it meant nothing. I said it meant x BP spent. I started during an event and made a shitload of BP. Still thinking running didnt leave scratches, not realizing what alerts the killer or what half the perks even did.
So dont act like people cant play the game, enjoy it, and still not understand everything about it in your perfect amount of time.
You understand more. But it doesnt automatically mean you're a rank 1 god.
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@Carpemortum yeah... you won't see too many new players doing that just so they can play against harder players.
@DrDeepwound Or they don't play killer allot, play for dailies or don't invest a huge amount of effort into playing. Not everyone is in this game wants to reach high ranks and play all sweaty for no reward. It is called playing casual. It is far easier to play casual as survivor and get into the purple ranks than getting into purples as killer.
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I think it's bad enough.
Let's say Mr. Killer plays at R1 every month. Then, rank reset happens (I still don't know exactly why do we need that), and he's R10. He then decides to take a break from the game for a couple of months. R13. R15.
R15, after 2 months of not playing the game, but he has 2000 hours and was a Rank 1 killer all the time.
2000 hours going against the guy that just bought the game yesterday.
It definitely sucks major ass.
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If the rank 15 killer wasnt good it wouldnt be an issue, when a post is made complainig about a rank 15 killer who is p3 at rank 15 versing rank 20 survs, it wouldnt be because they werent good, it is because they are good that proves they know what they are doing and playing at a smurf account rank.
If you even play killer a little bit, you have to actually TRY to stay below rank 15 come on.
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Which proves my point even more.
If they are even decent they would climb rank out of rank 15 quickly, so if they arent good no one would complain about versing them, you have to try to stay at low rank in this game.
What you posted proves if you are p3 at rank 15 youre basically doing it to bully noobs.
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Your points (iii) (Being a solo player) and (iv) (Massive grind) is why the majority of my friends don't like this game when they tried it. Also a large complaint a lot of my friends had were things were either two loud or quiet. Specifically generators were deafening at 100% volume and that was an instant turn off from one of my friends.
Good post though this is pretty well summarizing the complaints a lot of my friends had too.
Also I actually agree with (v) (Addons and offerings affecting game too much for both sides) and I have quite a bit of time in DBD.
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Camping amd tunneling have been a complaint since the game came out and the devs refuse to do anything to help it. Also overpowered add ons and offerings that further destroys whatever passes for balance in this game will also never change. People complain about it all the time and its always on deaf ears. Your friends are smart.
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Read before you comment.
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My post was refering to person who said that finding a game with survivor is faster which is not the case in my experience. You should read before you assume things.
If you cater the survivors more this game will die surely but go on. Cater to crybabies more.
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I've said this before, but every DBD match is a full-bodied roulette, every time you hit the queue button.
There's no consistency about what you're going to face, and getting any satisfaction out of the game is incumbent on putting in enough hours to get familiar enough with all the weird edge cases that exist in such quantities, that at least a couple are active in any given match. I have a friend who just started, and he was immediately overwhelmed with us bombarding him with this kind of information ("It's Legion! To be safe, don't hide in lockers or team up on gens until we figure out what perks he's using!" "Looks like Wraith is using add-ons that hide all useful tells, and also gives him the ability to track you!").
The perk grind is also arranged in such a way where you have to deeply commit to a specific thing before you can even understand whether you will enjoy it at a basic and reasonable level (i.e. I dunno if I am gonna enjoy Spirit, but I have to put the time into unlocking a bunch of perks on her before I have a basic idea of her real capabilities and synergies).
And it doesn't help anyone's early impressions of the game when fully one-third (optimistically) of all matches begin with a long 3+ minute loading screen hang, followed by a disconnect error and absolutely no reward for the inconvenience. It's 2019, and this game doesn't even have dedicated servers.
And I don't care if there's a time and place for camping and/or tunneling, it's a miserable experience when it happens to you multiple games in a row, and it doesn't motivate a new player to come back, when all they see is a game that is doing its damnedest to keep them from coming to grips with it. The hoops that you have to jump through for a basic level of enjoyment are INSANE, and I say this as someone who has put hundreds of hours into this game.
Give us more than "this is being worked on," @Peanits -- give us specific solution plans and a timeline.
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I started playing the game with 2 friends during the free sale on PS4 (August/September 2018). We used to spend 10-15 minutes looking for a lobby just to be camped to death, and then repeat. After playing for less than 20 hrs, the camping pushed my friends away from the game and I switched to PC after 100-200 hrs. I am pretty sure that the playerbase would be at least twice as large if camping was not a thing.
After the recent rank reset, the matchmaking system decided that it is ok for me (as a rank 11 survivor and rank 3 before the reset) to play with rank 18/19 survivors/killers who just bought the game (some of them have less than 20 hrs of gameplay). It was very obvious that they were not having a great time; I felt really bad for them.
So yeah, the game is not friendly for new players and especially survivors.
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You're the only one that looks like a cry baby here.
In regards to OP - the game is not new player friendly. It takes a certain type of person to keep at it and not saying this type is better, maybe more damaged. I think we are all damaged.
There are too many weird mechanics at play, which appeal to some but turn off many others. The learning curve is very high.
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(i) BHVR doesn't have the time, personnel or money to monitor and referee every match. Which is what this is starting to boil down too. Programming for something that is situational and player driven is very difficult without changing the entire mechanics of the game.
(ii) Yes there are some bugs and while I love for a game to not have bugs, most online games that are ever evolving cannot escape them. In order not to have bugs this game would need to never introduce new game mechanics or killers and just focus on cosmetics. That would bore the crud out of me. Every multiplayer game has its bugs, the bigger the company the faster the fixes. BHVR is still pretty small, that's why I cut them so much slack.
(iii) I agree, which is why I play killer most of the time, easier to solo and and feed blood points to my survivors that way. Again you cant MAKE people "play the right way" this is the curse of online games, and humans as a whole are selfish. Playing even the crappiest of games is always more fun with you friends. (I don't think this game is crappy .. im just saying.)
(iv) I agree with you there. A tutorial mode would be very NICE to get newbies up to speed. I could have sworn there was one. If there isn't it needs to be added. Another nice thing that some Asian based games add are "preview movies" that demonstrate the perk in action, just a little pre recorded window, nothing intrusive, so people can see how the perk works in real-time. As for the grind. The grind doesnt bother me, but I like grindy games so thats just me.
(v) For the game to be truly balanced Killers need a fat HP bar (4 times as much as the Survivors) and all the survivors need guns. Remove all perks, remove gens, and turn it into a free for all kill fest. But that's not this game, Survivors are in fact victims, and its hard for people to get into that role. People play games to feel badass, not to feel helpless, but that what the Survivor is supposed to be, helpless in the face of the Entity. As a player you could show them "Toxic Survivor X" video's on you tube to lessen the impact and teach them its funny and fun to tease the guy "with all the power." Perks are an issue yes, but you cant play hard counters in this game when you are constantly trying to instill a sense of fear and dread. Being creative with what you are given is what makes survivor fun (for me.. when I decide to play it.)
Post edited by Onionthing on0 -
Camping is only viable if survivors make it viable. You want tunneling to stop? Buff weaker killers or redesign maps so that they have SOME ability to gain pressure.
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@Onionthing Behaviour employs more than 550 people. I know not everyone there is dedicated to this game specifically, but that is not a small company.
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Fair enough ... But I was comparing them to Blizzard and Epic who are in the thousands.
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Those companies are good examples of why size does not necessarily correlate 1:1 with healthy development practices.
Also, @darktrix made the point "It takes a certain type of person to keep at it and not saying this type is better, maybe more damaged. I think we are all damaged." This is a super-broken, dim view of our broad relationship with this game. It shouldn't have to be this unhealthy. "He still loves me, things will change" is usually not an attitude that works out in the victim's favor.
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And I mean, god, man, throwing your hands up and saying "Welp, it's just not friendly to new players" is neither a healthy attitude, or a design direction that makes sense to anyone who takes game design seriously. It's a serious problem that I suspect quantifiably harms DBD's stickiness, and results in more churn than we are publicly privy to.
It's going to be interesting to see what the reception is when the game launches on Switch. I would bet that we're going to start seeing threads like this pop up almost every single day.
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I agree the experience for a new player must be awful, but it takes a long time to learn and git gud. Its not for everyone, but making the game easier for rank 20 survivors is not the way to go.
The grind is awful though, and I can imagine someone starting from scratch its a hell of an uphill battle. (Especially if you suck and only get 2-3k bps before dying.)
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"Git gud" is a worthless shorthand that is largely just used to patronize people who are frustrated at a game for (usually) valid, legitimate reasons.
Even Dark Souls, the game that popularized that turn of phrase, makes SOME recognizable attempts to onboard new players and ensure that they don't feel totally, ARBITRARILY trampled before they can even begin to understand the big picture of what the game is all about and how to move forward.
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I have played DBd for over 2 years, with over 2k hours, I have done everything in the game from a killer side, been at Rank 1 for most of it. In the last 3 or 4 months I have played much less, I go on and play a game or two for dailies or to farm BP, im not playing enough to warrant it, but I still have 2k hours of experience. its a week after reset and I am still rank 13.
(It dosnt help that if you 4k in 3 minutes or people DC you saftey or even depip anyway.)
Its at a point where playing killer now is more just to mess around doing chainsaw only billy or meme builds than trying to win or pip anymore, I don't play enough to rank up because its not fun to wade through 10 ranks of potatoes to get to competitive games anymore. Id rather play survivor with my friends or other games.
(Although even at rank 13 I still see red rank survivors trying to boost thier buddies all the time, or 3 red ranks in with a rank 20)
And if being P3 is your defintion of skill theres somthing wrong, it takes about 2 days to p3 someone if you grind it out, thats no indicator of skill.
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Sorry, while it is a very colorful analogy, I think its a stretch to consider a video game domestic abuse...
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Rule of thumb anyone who calls someone else out for bias is usually biased as well.
As for the actual thread I agree with many of your points for me personally for new players what stands out the most is the excessive grind.
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Fair enough, sorry to be so extreme about it. The point I was trying to make is that we shouldn't normalize this kind of Stockholm Syndrome-esque view of the game.
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As a Camper/Tunneler myself, BHVR's recent changes to Killers just makes me want to Camp and Tunnel. Have you noticed people like me in your stats?
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I get what you are trying to say, so Ill keep any further (misc) retorts to a minimum. You are NOT wrong in the spirit of things. It is good to criticize the dev team, i just think some people take it a bit far. BHVR has said they recognize the problems that were posted and are looking at ways to fix them. I think that's a good sign at least.
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