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
Disable: Disarm it so that it cannot hurt anyone.
Sabotage: Destroy it so it becomes unuseable for a certain amount of time (this got removed).
Beautiful, BEAUTIFUL dev update. Trapper buff, Spirit nerf, add-on pass teases, a way to combat people abusing bugs, a bunch of perk buffs...
I can't wait for part 2, it's gonna be AWESOME. I hope.
And what if you...just like... disarm the trap?
One add on that should be pink for trapper is the one that get survivors in the dying state after escaping à trap, i have won games just because i saw the last one step into it
And myers home is one of the veeeeery fiew exemples where à combo of 2 add ons could destroy à loop, but the add on alone? Nah
nice I wonder if new vigil can be used to counter ghostface marking you
BAG BASEKIT. IT ONLY TOOK 5 YEARS. POG
I love it. Don't think Trapper's add-on should disable him from picking up traps, but that's all I can complain about.
I want to be optimistic, but as usual there is not nearly enough transparency here. I get that community feedback means nothing to BHVR at this point but it's really ######### irritating having a large amount of changes kept a secret for no good reason.
Been here since mid 2017, and honestly for the first time in a while
I have hope
Please please look at "Steak Out"
im worried about this change. i get that tombstones can be too strong sometimes but i hope they don't remove the ability to kill healthy/injured survivors with those add ons. It's unique and scary.
I hope they buff some of his add ons though. I think the following add ons are in need of passes : Tacky Earrings, Blond Hair, Jewellery, Glass Fragment, Judith's Journal (ever since they added the "one obsession per match" effect it's not that good), Vanity Mirror.
Omg, Ghostface addon pass. Finally, after 2 ######### years. I'm almost crying right now.
Well, I don't, because we don't know what the changes will be yet.
Don't touch my Stake Out, I love that perk the way it currently is.
pray tell, how?
i doubt it. Evil Within 3 and Marked both don't have a timer ring on the status effect icon.
Overall, seems like it's going to be a great update. I'm really hoping Tinkerer receives a nerf this patch though. Just something simple like it can only activate once per generator per 120 seconds or so in order to prevent brainless and unfun synergy with regression perk stacking.
I agree Tombstone is certainly frightening and unique. But I can see the other side of the argument where its no fun to be the survivor who gets bypassed their three hooks and instantly killed. Tombstone itself is obviously not going away since its required for the Evil Incarnate achievement in the game. I'm guessing its just the tombstone piece that will be nerfed.
Yeah Mikey has a lot of meh and useless add ons that badly need changes. Vanity mirror is utter rubbish. I hope they do something more interesting and fun with it.
This is a great looking update! A lot of common sense changes to perks and addons. And it's nice that exploits won't be so prevalent with the new kill switch.
I really hope Babysitter/Guardian gets more love with the incoming change. It would be nice to show the rescued survivor the killer's aura as well. So many times in solo q where a teammate sits there waiting for a heal without realizing the killer is incoming, or worse follows me for a heal.
Oh boy, that's a lot of addon passes. I can't wait for those killers to have the useless *insert disadvantage for double bloodpoints* addons.
Spirit nerf is interesting...they say within 24 meters but isn't that the entire range of her terror radius? Why wouldn't they just say "in her terror radius" then? I'm fine with Survivors hearing when she's phasing but there should be no directional sound, that kinda ruins the whole mind game aspect of her.
Also, can't wait for Pig to get nerfed!
Thank for the post devs, now I know I have to stop farming trapper sacks in the bloodweb and I'll spend the ones I already have before this changes hit the live, the trapper buff is nice but you destroyed one of my most used addons. Honestly, without the absurd drawback of traps cannot being picked up it would be just fine, it's a purple addon in a bad killer after all.
And for the spirit, well deserved nerfs.
The perks buffs are fine, specially those Hex buffs, but they will remain underused I think.
They probably don't want it to be affected by things that change a killer's terror radius.
I'm assuming so you cant modify it with insidious or any other TR perk
As per usual, survivor perks "buffs" that won't change anything because they are still scared of making anything even remotely useful and the killer perks buff are nice and actually make the perks viable.
Oh right, I didn't think about that. But still, it was bad using perks that decrease her terror radius since Survivors would be able to hear her phasing even closer.
Glad they're finally giving Trapper ability to carry more than 1 trap. Still needs bit more love like making the trap spawns not be terrible in dead zones. Would be nice to also make traps darker and have survivors hit with deep wound if they step in traps instead of just being injured.
Happy they're removing moderately, slightly, etc. but they only said for killer - are they going to do same for survivor?
Will need to see how Spirit changes work out. Wonder if the dust kick up will hurt performance on console. That green add-on I feel like is going to cause freezes every time she explodes.
Hoping there are some performance fixes in the mid-chapter patch that they just didn't list in the dev update.
This is going to be a massive killer nerf update. Every good add on will be neutered.
Funny you mention Deep wound as I would like survivors that escape the trap to be effected with Deep wound so that the trapper still gets something for catching you but not being close enough to capitalize.
To elaborate right now you get an injure if they escape but nothing if they are already injured....That is when Deep wound should apply realized I didn't explain that correctly the first time.
I don't think it's about kills. It's more like survivors can end game when they want and leave killer alone with nothing. And by nothing i mean no additional points and possible pip.
The Trapper and perk changes sound nice. Finally he can carry two traps at base.
It’s looking like Spirit just got gutted as bad as Hillbilly.
I hope those add-on changes aren’t going to involve unnecessary changes to overrated add-ons because the devs never tested them to see if they were actually that good.
The kill switch and add-on description update are LONG overdue. They should have been a part of the game on day 1, not almost halfway through year 5.
Honestly, reading this I have a good feeling about this new update and it's only part one. Trapper needed more love and a buff and the change was absolutely needed. I feel like he'll be a bit stronger which I have no problem with.
Not gonna lie, I love playing mind games as Spirit but in all honesty, there does need to be some counterplay with her. This change to Spirit was neccesary. Plus the changes to her perks are really interesting and would make new strategies honestly. Imagine using new Senko Hanabi at a strong loop even if it is 5 seconds but still or tricking survivors with wakizashi saya. New gameplay for spirit that would be super interesting.
New perk updates? Love'em. They're great and can absolutely be used to synergize a bit better.
As for the item & character kill switch, I feel this would work really well and I just hope that it can be executed right.
I'm still hesistant on boon totems but we'll just have to wait and see when that time comes. Otherwise, I am very pleased with this update!
Free fake terror radius identifier against killers that have that, free warning that the killer is approaching, and I can't hit great skill checks consistently enough.
Survivor party game ,not surprisingly.
I will waiting for VHS,and leave forever.
Looks like lots of updates but still no love for legion.
So... still think the devs should get praise before we have the full picture?
Yes, all these changes are great
I don't know if it's been said already, but Small Game feels really bad right now because it works on active boon totems
I think it would just feel more consistent and provide more useful information if it didn't do that, since you have wall hacks on them already
Killer-sided update - a lot of decent buffs for killer add-ons, boon totems will be nerfed to the ground like lucky break earlier
I started using tinkerer and yeah one gen should be the only way. When it activates for multiple gens I get thrown off and confused like which gen should I go to?