If this game's so easy then why does it take hundreds of hours for everyone to get competent ?

kyogul

There's a common thing I've heard, some from veterans and some from non-veterans, saying the game is too easy and doesn't involve skill. Tru3 is one of the streams who often says something along the lines of "this game doesn't take talent/skill, it takes game knowledge". Others will often say something like people overrate how much it takes to get good at this game and it doesn't take a lot, Well,

First of all, that doesn't even make sense. Your ability to have skill and talent comes from developing that knowledge. And if said knowledge is so easy to obtain then why is it taking everyone at least hundreds of hours to get in the beginning stages of being competent, and thousands to potentially become good?

There's no excuse for not being able to get better. There are tonnes of resources online for how to get better at the game for both sides. Yet for some reason even with all of these resources, it's still taking people so much time to get better, but yet you still have people who call the game easy to play.

If it was that easy then why is someone who has 400 hours not almost identical to someone with 2000+ hours, let alone 1000? If this game was as easy to learn as some people make it out to be, then why is it that the skill tiers are so distinct from one another, particularly by the amount of hours someone plays? And this is very evidenced by the complaints of "rainbow" matchmaking, or matchmaking not within particularly rank tiers.

Why is it that these said people who say the game takes "no skill" and is "easy" are the ones who themselves have thousands of hours in the game? If it was that easy what took you so long to get to the level you're at now?

kyogul

@Terro said:

https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2024496#Comment_2024496

And that's where you're wrong. Colloquially, we're clearly not talking about the same thing. You're saying by definition, technically everything is a skill, therefore dbd takes skill. In the same vein that counting to ten is a skill therefore counting technically takes skill. Meanwhile, people are saying that in terms of skills, whatever unclear metrics that they're judging, dbd is not skillful.

Your only merit so far is that your right that it is a subjective opinion as to what counts as skill. A 1 year old counting to 10 is skillful to me but a 30 year old isn't but that's based on my own selected criteria. In my eyes, dbd when compared to everything I've played and experienced is not a skillful game. However, saying that your criteria for skillful play is objective is also incorrect. It's not objective either, since you've subjectively chosen your own criteria on what counts as skill.

@ClownIsUnderrated said:

Honestly Dead By Daylight does have some skill to it, but the skill ceiling to the game is very low not gonna lie. There are certain killers who take a lot of skill of learning like Nurse and Blight, but killers such as Trapper or Myers more so require game knowledge. Compare DBD to a fighting game, and obviously fighting games require so much time, effort, and lots of skill put into it if you're gonna be good at all the characters. DBD can only come close to doing that with Nurse, but other than that DBD doesn't possess a high skill ceiling compared to a fighting game.

@Adeloo said:

Tru is right in sense that game knowledge will make you learn the base of the game and help you learn to play it correctly much faster than if you don't have any idea about how things work.

But it's easier for a player that was here for at least 2-3 years because we didn't have that much perks and power to learn and to verse. The game will get harder and harder for new players because there are so many Realms, Killer's powers and perks know, that it will take a long time to be familiar with it. And that's without taking in count the playing knowledge, how does the redlight work, how does vaulting work, etc the base mechanics of the game.

Yes it's a pretty basic game : 1v4, 1 hunt and 4 work together or against each other to escape, which both requires few mouse or keyboard actions. BUT with the amount of informations you have to process in a single game, and the fact that every single game is different, (because killer is never the same, can be played differently by every player, don't bring the same perks or addons etc), the game has a a slow learning curve. That's why it takes hundred of hours to get competent, and that number will never stop growing.

I'm responding to you lot at once since the points are similar to varying degrees. Some parts are more so for others so please keep that in mind

The issue with using subjective criteria is that it's more so based on perception and emotion rather than any sort of analysis. No one here has yet to really explain how DBD is not skillful other than compare it to other games which are also similarly not skillful in the grand scheme of things. Simply saying "this game requires mostly game knowledge and not skill" is not a valid argument and is in fact simply not using the word correctly. Skill comes from making good decisions based on knowledge. By this very logic, chess is not skillful because it relies on game knowledge almost entirely rather than some sort of external "skill" people are ambiguously alluding to that for some reason other games like FPS games and fighting games coincidentally don't seem to have either, but real sports do like physical prowess and etc. And I have a feeling you lot are going to be really scared to publicly go around saying a game like chess is not a skillful game, which strikes me as double standards based on your own personal perception

I never said my criteria is objective, but there is a difference between saying DBD does not require skill versus something along the lines of "compared to other games I've played DBD wasn't hard to me". One is acknowledging that their opinion and experience is subjective, the other is being dogmatic and incorrect and that's what I'm calling folly.

My argument was never to try and superimpose my experience. DBD is not the hardest game I've personally played. But I'm not going to sit here and imply it's piss easy like others have in this thread and others regularly do, particularly when it's evidenced by the amount of time people of particular skill calibres take to get to certain skill tiers. Easy games don't require that much time to get good at in casual play. Yet here you all are taking hundreds of hours to get even competent at the game.

As I've seen in this thread, what people deem as skillful definitely appears to be influenced by social perception and/or just based on their emotions since the logic tends to be simply incorrect and contradictory when applied to other games that they would find "skillful" but actually wouldn't be according to their logic as to why DBD isn't skillful, à la chess.

ManWithALemon

Because the game is easy. Hundreds of hours to become a genuinely good player is nothing compared to other games or pretty much any craft other than video games.