An Open Letter to the Dead by Daylight Developers (Long Post)
Hello, my name is 157C/Krispe, and I have been an active member of the Dead by Daylight community since the game's release. Like many of you here amongst this forum, as well as many of my friends and individuals I see within the official Dead by Daylight Discord, I am frustrated with the way the developers (BHVR) treat its community and handle the game they've created. I thought it appropriate at this time to write an open letter that can be seen and commented upon by the community to the developers, in hopes that they respond and address many of these community concerns as well as keep us updated on what they're working on. Within this letter, I am going to address many points and as a community, please feel free to comment on all of them, on a specific one you're passionate about or specifically agree with, or just saying you agree or disagree. If you do disagree on any of these points, please state why as I'd love to open up some dialogue to see if there's a flaw in either one of our perspectives. For some context I am not a survivor/killer main, I play both very regularly and enjoy both, so I like to think I understand what each side needs, but it also allows me to not be biassed towards one side specifically. Anyways, let's get into the points.
1) One of the main problems plaguing the community is bugs. Lots of them. But not only that, it's the fact that some have been in the game for a long time and have still not been fixed. We as a community have become accustomed to them, and that's a problem. Now, I've dabbled in game development, more specifically UE4 and Unity (gross), and I absolutely understand that patching bugs is a very difficult task. However, some bugs not being fixed, especially when they are rather simple fixes, is something I find to be ridiculous. Let's take Ghastly Gateau for example. This is a bug affecting us all right now, it's value is wrong (Supposed to be 104%, not 140%), and is supposed to stack (It's personal). Both of these from an outside perspective looks to be two relatively easy things to change and fix. Again I don't know the coding of the game, maybe I'm wrong. But even so, some COMMUNICATION about when a fix will be deployed and why it's taking so long would be nice. (This will come up at a later point). Bugs are plaguing this game, and one thing I've advocated for a long time and will continue to advocate for is an "Operation Health" for Dead by Daylight. If you are unfamiliar with Operation Health, it was a Season within Rainbow Six: Siege, where instead of getting two new characters to play, the developers took the Season to focus on fixing bugs. While many players hated Operation Health because it denied them new content, the goal of fixing a lot of major bugs plaguing the game was completed, and absolutely increased the quality of life and longevity of the game. (It was then followed by Operation Chimera which sucked ass but we don't talk about that). My point being, I would absolutely much rather have an Operation Health within Dead by Daylight then another Chapter with a mediocre killer and survivor with crap perks. (Another point later on). Please fix the game.
2) Communication is something I feel all developers should have regularly with their community. Not just via stream, although that is somewhat acceptable, but through social media such as Reddit and Twitter. I want to take a look at Battlefront 2 by EA. That game launched an absolute mess, and to make things worse the Community Manager (CM) at the time, never talked to its community about ANYTHING. Then a new CM was appointed, and things changed. This CM was on Reddit and Twitter very often and communicated with players about things they were thinking about implementing, bug fixes, new content, EVERYTHING. BF 2 is now one of the best Star Wars games created thanks to its developers and active communication! I'm not asking for all of that from BHVR, but I'm asking for SOME of it. These streams and Q&As aren't doing it for a lot of people, especially when you gloss over/ignore really important questions from the community. It's even worse when you answer the same question multiple times and those answers give some vague/backhanded response. Let's take the latest Q&A for example. One of the main questions was that everyone feels that PH's perks are terrible and need to either be reworked/majorly buffed, and you guys basically responded with "Well we buffed it after the Test Server so it should be fine now". Why would the question be asked again if the community felt it was fine? These kind of lazy answers are not putting faith in you to make the game a better place. Please participate more in communicating with your player base about bug fixes, reworks, etc... People will be more accepting of flaws within the game if you just communicate about it.
3) The priorities of BHVR is something I feel needs to be addressed. This goes back to bugs of course, but just in general it's something I want to discuss. Things like the Gateau bug should have been hot fixed by now, and because of the lack of communication, we don't know if that's something they're even focusing on. I think major issues impacting the community should be the highest priority for the developers and should be communicated. As simple as that.
4) Game balance is at a point right now where if you are not running certain perks as a survivor/killer, you have a much higher chance of getting killed/losing. Just like my idea for an Operation Health, I believe there needs to be an Operation Rework, where BHVR takes time to rebalance/rework a lot of perks/add-ons for survivors/killers. There are some perks that are not only unfun to play against but are just so BORING. Here's the list of meta perks for reference (for both survivors/killers): Sprint Burst, Adrenaline, Borrowed Time, Decisive Strike, Iron Will, Unbreakable, Dead Hard, Pop Goes the Weasel, Save the Best for Last, and Corrupt Intervention (Bolded because those are the most annoying imo). There are a few more that could be argued such as BBQ and Chili but those are the main ones I wanted to throw in there. Also, notice how there are way more meta perks for Survivor than there are for Killer. During Operation Rework, my hope would be the developers change/balance a lot of the meta perks, but more importantly, MAKE WORSE/TERRIBLE PERKS BETTER! For 4 Chapters we've gotten nothing but mediocre/crap perks. Last good killer perk being from Ghostface and last good survivor perk being from Nancy. Stop printing crappy perks and take time to make them better and make the best perks less meta. Also, take this time to rebalance a lot of really garbage addons for killers and make some killers more viable (Clown). I watched an amazing video by one of the best content creators of this game going through every killer up to Oni and talked about rebalancing them. I agreed with literally everything he had to say, and some of his suggestions were actually implemented (Trapper reset of traps). I suggest all of you, especially BHVR, take time to watch the video and CONSIDER adding some of his suggestions. Find the video here.
5) This game is toxic. Entitled survivors and toxic killers is another major problem within this game and is arguably one of the main turn-offs for new players. The purple and red ranks are especially guilty of this. My first suggestion is to add a notification when a player you reported gets punished, you don't have to tell us their name, but let us know that reporting people is doing something. R6: Siege recently did this and it made me feel a lot more valued for reporting cheaters. Secondly, punish players for DCing. Don't let them play another match for 15 minutes, and have that time increase with each DC. Also, give the killer chase points and full sacrifice points for the DCed person. People DC because it hurts the killer's score, so making it not do that as much will make them less inclined to do it. Some of you may disagree with the abandonment penalty, but I say to you, this is a Ranked game mode, people are trying to get higher ranks, letting your players punish the killer simply by leaving makes that person's time less valuable, and makes the rank less valuable. My additional suggestion is to add a casual mode alongside the abandonment penalty, so losing score doesn't matter as much, but it also allows players to try more wacky/gimmicky builds. The penalty would only apply to Ranked. I would also like a setting to disable post-game chat. I want to be able to read my score and stats without seeing someone call me demeaning and offensive terms because they didn't like that they died or that we escaped. Toxicity needs to be stomped out, this is a fun-addicting game with a very toxic community and WILL turn people away from it.
This is pretty much everything I wanted to talk about, this took me around one and a half hours to think of and write out, so a comment about something you agreed/disagreed with would be much appreciated. If you have any of your own suggestions I would love to hear them so we can start a discussion about it. The goal of this post is to be seen and read by the developers in the hopes of a brighter and better future for this amazing game. Right now I think BHVR doesn't listen to its community and doesn't truly care for the fan-base and the amazing title they've created. I want them to prove me wrong more than anything. I love this game, my friends love this game, and I know many of you love this game too. Let's try to make the game a better place for everyone. Thank you for reading.
Comments
Eternal
I'd like to start by saying that I completely agree with what you've stated. I feel like Dev communication is something that needs to be adressed, and that they need operations rework and bug fix. One thing I think keeps them from doing this is that they have this idea that there will be a point that everyrhing will just be balanced, and that with each patch things will get closer and closer and closer until it is balanced. Personally, I think this is impossible. Six new perks are introduced with each chapter, and a new killer power as well. They need to realize that balancing every killer and perk so that it is just so is absolutely useless. They need to embrace a more active role in balancing things. I honestly don't care too much if they break perks as long as they're within reason. What I want to see is the meta shaken up.
"More gore and actually having the state of character models be affected and altered by a memento mori instead of killer weapons just clipping through the bodies"
This to me is one of the most disappointing, immersion breaking things in this game. I hope it gets addressed in the graphical update otherwise it will never get addressed. All the sharp objects and ripping just going through the characters looks terrible and honestly extremely outdated. But to be fair, I remember thinking that graphically this game looked outdated even 4 years ago. It doesn't even look like it was developed in Unreal Engine 4
You did an amazing job here, I agree so much with your points, I hope the developers really sit down and consider your thoughts, thanks for representing the community in this letter.
I completely agree with you, but you understand what the point is - this will not help. People wrote a million posts, a million messages over the years, and that doesn't help. I am sure that none of the BHVR will answer this letter, and will not even read, the maximum is a moderator. And if he does, he will simply ignore it, because the community is not in the first place for them, and this has been proven many times. And this is sad.
Agree
I sent it to him on his profile but I doubt he'll read it.... Thank you all for your kind words, I'm glad I was able to represent the community somewhat and list our grievances :)
Love how devs don't respond to a well thought-out post but they respond to various useless bs posts. feelsbad
Unsure if anyone said this, But i also would love to add them changing the requirements of the tomes with grabbing. Its too buggy to be effective. and how to acquire adept killers. I feel a 4k should be enough, not a drawn out game with mediocre perks against red rank gen jockies or runners who can run you for like 3 gens.
Don't worry the devs will most likely never respond, and if they do it will be some smartass comment.
As I've said previously, I like to remain optimistic. I'm being realistic, but I'd like to hope the developers have some shred of decency in them to respond or acknowledge some of these points.
Agree
An "Operation Health" equivalent would be really great for this game. It needs a top-to-bottom onboarding and UX/UI pass, lots of bug fixes, and a rethink of how currency is distributed and spent (in other words: fix the perk grind).
Meta perks exist because of how RNG based the game is in many aspects like map/playstyles/built-in mechanics/lottery survivors.
Here are some scenarios for perspective:
..........From the survivor side...........
Survivor : Doesn't bring DS, but gets tunneled because the killer knew there was no obsession.
(next 3 matches the survivor gets tunneled again)
Tunneling Killer 1: 😈
Tunneling Killer 2: 😈
Tunneling Killer 3: 😈
Survivor: "Next Time I am bringing DS."
Non-Tunneling Killer: Get's DS'd and didn't play 'scummy' nor did he deserve it as much as that other tunneling killer did.
...........From the killer side...........
Killer: Doesn't bring Pop or Ruin while playing Trapper.
Survivor A: Brings DS/Unbreakable combo into a match along with a map offering to Haddonfield.
Killer: Gets bad map set up, and efficient survivors who get all gens done not giving him enough time to get all his hooks. Gets one kill.
(Next 3 matches, killer gets the same type of teams)
Killer: "Next time I am bringing Oni with an ebony mori and a slugging build."
Non-DS Survivors: Get camped, Sluggged excessively. All they had was perks like Quick n Quiet and Dance with Me. They all die and never once try to play reckless.
So you see, this is how the game works. It happens more than often because players start to get competitive. Does this mean there aren't things that aren't balanced? Sure there are. I just don't see how they would ever be able to balance something like perks without making something else weaker/stronger, and especially when you built-in mechanics and when you have no clue who/how players are going to play in your next trial.
I would like to clarify what I meant by toxicity since many individuals here keep commenting about it. While I do think Flashlight spam and teabagging is toxic, I don't think there should be any punishment for it. It just makes you look like a crappy person but if BHVR starts punishing for that they could effectively punish you for anything, so I don't think it's necessary.
Toxicity as defined by me is players who suicide, get their teammates killed, don't try, and of course, are toxic in the post game chat. For post game chat, I define toxic as just being a rude hateful person. "You're a terrible killer. You're trash at the game. You're a [Insert offensive slur here]." Stuff like that. Don't treat people like crap is my point really. Hopefully that clarifies it, if you want any additional details about how I define toxicity be sure to ask specifics and I'll do my best to clarify. Thanks for all the comments guys!
Bumping til devs respond
When you said "There are bugs for a long time not fixed" I was surprised when you put as examble the anniversary event cake. This offering is pretty new. And you went on saying they don't communicate with us, not sayin if they are doing sth to fix that while they already stated by the ingame news that there is gonna be a hotfix at the end of this week (wed/thurs) with a fix for the event offering.
Then you listed a bunch of perks that needs to changed while also talking about bad game balance. Borrowed Time, Decisive Strike and BBQ are doing very much passively and actively so that the quality of games is way better. For survivors killer tend to tunnel less, unhooked survivor get a real chance to escape instead of dying instandly and killer gettting hints where they have to go instead of camping the hook.
And now the plot: I agree in some aspects with you. But not all with the problems you have. Yea I don't like it at all that BHVR doesn't talk about new stuff. If you ask anything interesting you only get "Maybe; We're are looking into, We are discussion thing, Yea we have an idea but wont talk about it" <- They don't talk about anything because they are so scared that the community takes for real and blame them if nothing happened or sth different from what they were talking about at first. I hate it. I also donÄt like the lack of status update regarding changes, balance changes, perk ideas, killer adjustment ideas and so on.
I also agree with you that sometimes there are bugs which needs years to get fixed. Every 3 months we get a big patch with tons of bugfixes and maybe 3/50 are sth I noticed. Most bug fixes are like: Ok, and you couldnt fix that und that instead?
Vaults had for over a year a hickup. It took over a year to fix sth that frustrating for everyone... But hey at least they fixed a texture from a cosmetic.
So yea I agree in some aspects you brought in here but not at all with the details.
about a casual mode:
"Splitting" the community is fine as long as the proportions of killer:survivor is the same, which if casual play doesn't favor one side or the other, will be constant (eg. 20,000 killers and 80,000 could split to 10,000 killers x2 and 40,000 survivors x2). And anyway, this is only the case if the ratios are correct rn, which they are not necessarily, so I doubt a casual and ranked split would make much of a impact on queue times. It could even be beneficial for queue times if some players don't care which gamemode they play (this is all in theory, ofc).
Well written.