Mid Chapter Developer Update Discussion
We’re back with another Developer Update, a series of posts outlining some of the upcoming changes to Dead by Daylight. You read that title correctly, this is part one; there’s so much to cover this time around that we couldn’t fit it all in one post. (And the writer passed out halfway through typing this.)
KILLER UPDATES
THE TRAPPER
Starting things off with a bang (or rather, a snap), we’ve made a series of small changes to The Trapper.
Did you know that the number of bear traps that spawn on the map is random? That’s right, each trial will spawn between 4-6 bear traps at random. Now you can take this interesting little fact and completely forget about it because that’s no longer how it works: now, 6 traps will always spawn (not including the traps you load in carrying). This takes away some of the random element in playing The Trapper and makes each match feel more consistent.
Having more traps is great and all, but wouldn’t it be nice to carry more than one without add-ons? We sure think so. The Trapper will now be able to carry—and start with—two bear traps by default. This will help you get up and running quicker without relying on add-ons. The Trapper’s bag add-ons have been adjusted or repurposed accordingly.
Finally, on the subject of add-ons, we’ve done a pass on some of his least used add-ons and either increased their effects, removed their downsides, or gave them new effects entirely.
THE SPIRIT
The Spirit has been a strong Killer since her release, and with that in mind, we’ve made some changes that aim to increase her skill ceiling whilst also giving Survivors some counterplay.
When close to The Spirit’s husk, Survivors will not receive any indication that The Spirit is phase walking. Originally this was intended to be a fun mind game (“Is she using her power, or is she faking it?”), though in practice, it often doesn’t feel that way. This lack of feedback forces you to make a guess and hope it pays off, which can be great when it works out in your favour, but can also feel awful when it doesn’t.
To add more skill into The Spirit’s counterplay, we’re making two changes:
- Any Survivor within 24m of The Spirit will now hear a directional phase sound. This lets you know whether or not she is phasing and also gives you a rough idea of which direction she’s coming from.
- The Spirit’s footsteps will now kick up dust while she is phasing. Keen Survivors may be able to pinpoint where she is, but tall grass and other obstacles may make it difficult.
These two changes aim to add more skill into playing as and against The Spirit and reduce the reliance on ‘coin flips’ (where you make a guess and hope it pays off).
Additionally, we’ve done a pass on some of The Spirit’s add-ons to bring them more in line and make the lesser used add-ons more appealing. Like The Trapper, some of these changes are small tweaks while others are completely new effects.
KILLER ADD-ONS UPDATE
What does moderately mean? How much more is tremendously compared to considerably? If you ever found yourself in this situation, you’re not alone. We used descriptive words like these to keep descriptions simple, but they end up causing just as much confusion since it’s not immediately clear how much they’re doing. With that in mind, we have done a pass on all Killer add-ons to list their exact effects. We plan to extend this to the rest of the game—Items, perks, etc.—in the future.
On top of that, Killer add-ons that apply a status effect will now have a brief description of what that status effect does.
While our designers were going through hundreds of Killer add-ons one by one to update their descriptions, they also noted down a few for changes as well. There’s far too many to list here, but we’ve changed some add-ons for the following Killers:
- The Hillbilly
- The Nurse
- The Shape
- The Hag
- The Oni
- The Blight
- The Wraith
- The Pig
- The Ghost Face
These changes focus mostly on unused add-ons, or add-ons that are too weak/powerful.
PERKS UPDATES
Variety is the spice of life, and incidentally, Dead by Daylight matches too. In an ongoing effort to give you more options to choose from, we’re updating a huge list of perks. Without further ado, let’s run through some of them quickly:
Vigil
Nice and simple: We’re increasing the recovery rate from 10/15/20% to 20/25/30%. Additionally, Vigil will now increase the recovery rate of the Broken, Exposed, and Oblivious status effects as well (where applicable). In short, more situations where it’s useful, and even faster recovery too.
Babysitter/Guardian
Another small tweak: The rescued Survivor will now receive a speed boost for 4/6/8 seconds in addition to not leaving Scratch Marks or Pools of Blood. The aura reading duration has also been doubled.
For the People
For the People can create some amazing moments, but the trade-off of being Broken can make it very risky to justify using. We’re decreasing the duration of the Broken status effect from 110/100/90 seconds to 80/70/60 seconds.
Hex: Retribution
Previously, Hex: Retribution would only make a Survivor Oblivious if they cleansed a dull totem. Now, interacting with any kind of totem will make them Oblivious. Additionally, we’ve increased the aura reading duration once a hex totem is cleansed to 15 seconds.
Hex: Blood Favor
This perk shipped with very safe conditions so it didn’t get out of control. Upon reflection, we feel comfortable with removing some of these restrictions. Hex: Blood Favor will no longer have a cooldown, and will also activate upon successful Special Attacks as well.
Hex: The Third Seal
Just like the above, we’ve added Special Attacks to Hex: Third Seal as well. This should make the perk more practical on Killers that focus more on dealing damage with their power.
Hex: Thrill of the Hunt
With Boon perks making their way to the game (more on this soon!), we decided to give Thrill of the Hunt some love by extending the speed penalty from Cleansing to Blessing as well.
ITEM & CHARACTER KILL SWITCH
Last but not least, let’s talk about a game health feature: The Item & Character Kill Switch. With over 50 playable characters and their cosmetics, nearly 200 perks and hundreds more add-ons and offerings in the game, sometimes things do break. Rarely, things will break in a way that makes them exploitable, and that can make the next week or two before a fix really rough.
Enter the Kill Switch. (It’s actually a lot nicer than it sounds!)
The Kill Switch allows us to disable anything that’s causing an issue without needing an update. When something breaks and becomes exploitable, we switch it off until it is fixed. This is something we’ve been able to do with maps for a while now to great effect. Disabled items & characters will be clearly marked and cannot be selected.
What this means to you: When that one thing breaks and people start to abuse it, you won’t have to play against it for a week or two until there’s a fix.
With that, we’ll give you a break from reading for today. But we’re just getting started. There’s a lot more to cover, so come back Monday for part 2.
The Dead by Daylight team
Comments
Trapper changes sound good.
Spirit im not so sure though. From what i understand so far it seems laughable easy to outplay her now. But well see.
Looks like solid changes all around ^^
I am happy Blood Favor and Vigil got the love they needed.
... and finally... poor trapper starts with at least 2 traps ;3; he deserves it.
Given the language used in this update, I thought this was an incredibly well-written shitpost.
Seems to be the way ######### floats these days. They claim that a killer should not be forced to run certain add-ons....You know how they achieve this goal? by making them so garbage that bringing them don't help anyhow so therefore not needed.
What are you happy about? We have zero information about add-on changes and the ones they teased aren't all that great. That one that blocks pallets after spirit ends her phasewalk? Pathetic range and duration, not worth using. And I can't believe they created that one after literally just buffing Blight's add-on that does that for these reasons.
Stop nerfing Rin, she's already unplayable!
Really, do BHVR aware that not only survs play this game?
Dude I have a build that For The People is a big part of and that line did put a smile on my face...
But so did literally everything else in this Dev update, I REALLY hope this dev update is the first of many major balance patches
Deserved :P
Don’t know why people getting butthurt over keys, no one is entitled to a 4K no matter how well the killer does or how badly survivors play
Dont get me wrong, she needed a change to make it more fair but what they have done now, kinda completly kills the purpose of the Spirit.
I dont think the tradeoff of seeing nothing is worth the really small speed buff.
Especially now, where survivors can practically pinpoint spirits location..
I just dont really see a reason to phase anymore.
If i phased, i did it so the survivors wont know where i am, from where i am coming etc.
Thats just gone now.
Please just rework her completly.
I used this perk in other janky builds and stopped because it became useless. It was nerfed because of Spirit, there's no dpubt about it. Now that spirit is no longer strong, please revert it so it can see some fringe play.
I agree the Spirit nerf was too much.
You do realize this is a "Part One" right?
I still think short phasing is going to remain really strong on her.
When it comes to legion, all I really want are my old never sleep pills. The ones that makes them even faster.
You can still get ez hits with 200% MS and good prediction lol
Im happy about them actually being brave enough to go through such a big balance change
1/3 of the roster received changes, and a good chunk of perks got buffed, some that were considered garbage tier like Blood Favor, Babysitter or Vigil might actually be useful now
Is that one purple trapper addon litteraly meaning, that if you ######### up à placement or survivors knows about your trap youre #########? And you habe to play basic M1 killer?
Received changes yes, but are they good changes? We don't know yet. I don't think praise is warranted until we actually see what addons were changed and how they were changed. Addon reworks have rarely been good.
Yes.
Exactly! It seems like both sides get a good end of a stick at this update which is nice to see
I expect to know what add ons specifically are getting changed in part 2. Hopefully keys will finally be in the log.
I’m liking the spirit nerf, less guessing on loops and more skill. The perk changes are pretty good too I might start using vigil and hex blood favor now.
Look at the killers that are receiving add on changes, the majority of them have add ons that are completely garbage. I highly doubt these could be any worst than they already are
It will only really be useful with Iridescent Stone when you cut off Loops for the entire game.
Lets hope that get changed before live. So many wan't add-on changes (Myself included) but now I fear them. What they did to Fred and now this.....UHHH. Did like the Huntress changes though previously but that's about it. I have attached myself to the survivor role lately and it seems I will remain that way.
Trapper:
Spirit:
Addon update: I expect the worst. Since Myers and Hag are both on the list. When they actually should be the standard on how addons should look like. Since they offerer a great variety of playstyles that are completely different.
Perk Updates:
Kill Switch: nice, finally a quick and easy way to stop exploits.
I prefer to go by precedent. Hillbilly got nothing but garbage addons, Nurse practically too.
Yeah but once the survs knows about the 6 loops it becomes useless
Even tho the primary effect is cool
seeing Trapper actually getting some love (and desperately needed buffs) actually managed to spark some joy in my, currently pretty darn burnt out, DbD heart.
Trapper now having access to 8 traps every game without having to bring an add on for it is great, being able to start out with two traps at once is amazing (i hope he will be able to pick up more than that as well, so he wont ever be "full" on Traps again) and the Add On pass, while mostly unknown, also looks pretty decent from the two revealed ones.
only thing i dislike is the downside of Trapper Sack. Starting with all 8 traps is neat, but being entirely incapable of moving your setup around is actually a very bad downside to have.
the spirit nerf was to be expected tbh.
sucks if you're a "competetive high level DbD player" (yuck), but i 100% understand where they are comming from with this.
i'm fully expecting Nurse to get hit in a similar fashion as well at some point.
so yeah, lets hope they got some plans on making the high level DbD experience more enjoyable for Killer, cause right now thats pretty darn miserable. and they did just nerf 50% of the viable killers up there.
the add on description updates are really cool, the perk buffs manage to make a lot of those perks more viable than they are now. those are pretty much always a good thing to see.
and finally the kill switch, its a pretty good behind the scenes QoL update i think. that way we dont have to stick around with broken (as in not functioning properly) stuff as long as we do now, which is always a good thing.
Looks good to me.
Otz is going to "open the box" on stream again...
gj so far
I hope we get an optimisation update in part 2.
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/281832
Same. "BTW we changed some other stuff, but let's move on for now :) :) :)" is the strategy they use when they've made unpopular changes and they don't want to showcase them because they know people will get mad.
The PTB is literally next Tuesday, it's not like you'll have to wait long to see it.
I am legit super scared for pig...
The timer/box combo is strong, but mostly because its one of the only combo you can use that is good, most of her addons are reammy bad for now
Yeah and guess what, they're getting yet another add on pass
I believe they've learned their lesson when it comes to doing complete add on passes, Huntress' add ons I would say were even better than what she had before
Those two spirit addons sound hilarious tbh. I might actually start playing her now I can without feeling bad about it.
You an me both friend. Time to pray on it 🙏
Regarding the new Tension Springs for trapper.. survivors can't currently sabotage traps, so when the trapper puts traps in front of the exit door levers - what is the counter play? Get trapped, escape, 2 seconds later get trapped again, over and over until the killer gets you?
Mikey getting an add on pass. I'd say that's an end to tombstone piece. I sincerely hope they don't mess up his good add ons like J Myers memorial, hair bow, dead rabbit, and scratched mirror.
Yeah, so things like all seeing wraith, tampered timer and create of gears for pig etc. Will probably be heavily reduced sadly
Poor Spirit. That's literally an overkill.
Iron Will players will have more information from the Spirit than the contrary. LOL
Most everything given to Trapper here are no brainers honestly, but that Trapper Sack addon looks really, really bad. Like, throwing the game even worse then the addons which give you extra BP to throw the game bad. Having all your options at the start means nothing if you cut the potential of those options that severely. If they manage to get gens done you've decided to trap around you could very easily become a powerless M1 killer for the rest of the game; The only way it could ever work is to camp a 3 gen setup from the very first second of the game.
It's for stepped in traps only, not disabled traps.
Maybe I've been around for too long (since release), but the devs haven't shown that they learn from past mistakes very often, they keep making them.
You would have to manually disarm the trap as it only resets if you get caught in it then escape.
My understanding is that traps can't be disabled? I thought that was a change a while ago - have they reverted the change so that survivors can now sabo traps? Apologies if I've missed it, I've never bothered saboing traps
Not really useless. If you trap the Myers-House for example, this would not be useable for the whole game. And at this point, it would not matter if you cannot pick up the Traps.
However, if a strong Loop got destroyed or no Gens are in an area, the Trap is just dead. So I am also not really a big fan of this Add-On, I think letting him carry all Traps would be enough without a Downside. Maybe they can buff it to pink and make the Bloody Coil purple instead and remove the Downside of the Bag.
At this point I don’t know why y’all are trying to change blight every single patch. What is it gonna be now ? Last patch his collisions got f’d up, so what’s next ? Speed addons getting nerfed ? Adrenaline vial becoming base kit ? Ring getting deleted ? Come on now we need to know what’s going to happen, stop hiding everything from us until last second
Ah! I understand now, sorry!