This game needs more replayability
Right now the main mechanics to keep players playing are blood webs and the rift. However after prestige 3 there isn't much reason to continue racking points into the blood web as you get no prestige cosmetics or any new perks or offerings or addons. The rift is unnecessarily hard to grind, there are no fast ways of getting rift fragments apart from the missions you get in the tome and after that you have to get them from levelling your account, which is extremely time consuming and is super inconvenient. For the people who finished rifts and tomes to their full extent they don't have much to play for, as after that they are back to grinding for blood points for the blood web, which doesn't reward anything significant outside of items, perks & addons. There needs to be a reason for players to keep playing that won't rely on a rift having top open every few months, but rather a consistent mechanic for progression that will reward the most dedicated of the player base. The closest thing we have to this is the player level, which unfortunately doesn't reward anything outside of iridescent shards, which is just lazy and also takes an incredibly long amount of time to accumulate enough shards to unlock a crappy yellow/green outfit that is nothing special. Devotion is also super useless, only visible to you, doesn't really reward anything, it just resets your level so that your shard gain goes back to early levels.
There needs to be a mechanic that would keep players playing for the sake of progression, or just something new to freshen up the gameplay experience. I know we already get frequent killer & survivor releases, but the fresh feelings wear off after a few weeks of playing, and it will be likely that the most dedicated players have already unlocked everything there is to unlock for the new killer.
I have been playing this game since the start and I've been all the way there since the Beta, but I eventually found myself becoming bored of the game after I was playing for years. There is a very good reason why normal players don't spend as much time playing this game as streamers do, unlike normal players, streamers get paid real money to play this game so therefore they will always have a reason to play. Normal players like us have to rely on the content updates and progression to keep us intrigued, but there'll become a point when levelling the blood web for the 30th character just won't be fun anymore, as you get nothing out of it apart from bloody cosmetics. The archives is already a step in the right direction, however it just isn't frequent enough to be an experience I'm willing to indulge myself in daily, and after finishing all of it there isn't anything left to indulge yourself in for the next month or so, it just isn't frequent enough, which is probably the reason why they made the rift so hard to grind, as to keep players for longer, but if you ask me that is just a lazy excuse to not make more content.
I feel like a really good way to combat this would be as simple as refining gameplay elements, similar to what they did with the addition of breakable walls, which was a very welcome change. Over the past years of the game the trials didn't change up much dramatically, apart from the many balance changes that came, the relative goal for the stayed the same, and so did the core gameplay. The gameplay elements for survivors has always been the same. Unlike killers who get released every couple of months with new powers and gameplay mechanics who bring something new to the table, every new survivor only brings voice effects, apparel and new perks to the game. For survivors the game has always been the same, repair generators, get chased, die. Small additions like totems which then turned into huge game changers was the biggest step in the right direction since a long time, but apart from that there is not much else for survivors to do in the repetitive trials.
Another good and easy way to combat this would be to add more rewards for players who dedicate their time to levelling their account and characters. I have always thought that there should be more prestige levels awarding more unique and exciting rewards, I thought things like after prestige 3 we can get more cosmetics, charms, perhaps the addition of player cards in post game screens, anything to give us more reason to collect and pile and dump these blood points into characters that isn't just to get some addons and perks or offerings.
However, probably the biggest change to the game that could really drastically improve its replay value is the changing of the ranked system. Right now any idiot can get to rank 1 with limited effort, it is just simply too easy to rank up and you also get NO rewards for doing so, so what's the point? I feel like ranking up should be much harder, similar to how many games like overwatch, rocket league and lol do it, they should be made up of divisions like gold platinum diamond etc. Not only would it be more meaningful than 'rank 1' or 'rank 20' and things but it would also be more appealing. But that's just the visual aspect of ranked, I feel like there needs to be a reason for people to reach high ranks, which is where I think seasonal rewards should come in, that way people don't get the urge to derank when they reach a higher rank, as there is LITERALLY no point in trying to rank up into higher ranks, longer queues, more toxic games and teammates, zero reward for playing in high ranks etc.
All in all the game needs something more fresh to it other than new killers being released every couple of months, there should be more of a reason to grind games that isn't to finish up an unfair rift or to level up a character's blood web so you finally get BBQ 3 or some crap. I feel like the game would instantly become more fun and popular if I had more of a reason to play for that isn't getting blood points for people I have already prestiged, if there was a consistent reason to grind every time I start this game I would no doubt play it non stop, but that is the problem, it has nothing like that, eventually when you unlock everything the game just becomes bland and it is real sad it has to be that way until the new rift comes out, after which you'll be left in the dark again for months.
Comments
its one of those feast or famine kind of games for me. Sometimes I have a hankering to play and I have a heavy run of multiple games over several days.
I like the current state of the game but maybe some kind of varied game state of different objective would freshen it up a bit. Not sure what that would be though. I'd like them to ad AI for solo play, but that's off topic.
Till either something else grabs my interest or the general tantrum childishness of the community turn me off it again for a bit I'll keep hitting it up.
Came back on Saturday and this week has been great no real man babies till last night, will probably hit up a few more games but Pillars of Eternity 2 will likely consume my weekend.
I haven't been able to bring myself to play for the last 20 days since Jan 29th and I have no idea why.
Probably has something to do with the 2,743.8 hours of dbd game time lol.
People who had or still play this game rack up thousands of hours. I myself have 2500 hrs between Dec 2016 and Jan 2020.
Say what you will about the game but the Devs made something that appeals to the human mind to continue this unchanging grind.
It does for sure charm in players all around the world quite well, I myself played this game like it was my religion when I first started out, however the magic tends to disappear after a while when you realise that the devs focus less on replayability and more on how many ######### outfits they can cramp into the game store.
No, those mechanics are what keep you playing.
I don't give a crap about bloodwebs or rifts. I've unlocked everything I've wanted in this game. I am still playing it after literally thousands of hours of game time.
The game is plenty replayable. It is simply fun to play on its own merits.
If it isn't for you that's fine. But for the rest of us it is plenty replayable.