New dev update, + question to community
For those that wanna read it:
@Peanits said:
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It’s everyone’s favourite time of the month, reading time. We’re back with another developer update, a series of posts where we go into detail on changes coming to Dead by Daylight. This time around, we’ve got a mix of balance changes and quality of life improvements. Without further ado, let’s get this show on the road.
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Patching Optimization: Part 2
At the start of the year, we announced our plan to improve patch times. Coming in two parts, the first (smaller) change launched on Steam in January, compressing the game files and improving the patch times.
We’re about to launch the second part of these changes, which will have a much larger impact than the first and affect all platforms. How does it all work?
To put it simply, the game is broken into small chunks. When something in one of these chunks changes, the whole chunk must be updated. As the game has grown over the years, so have these chunks, causing downloads to get bigger and patch times to get longer.
Starting in this Mid-Chapter, we’ve completely restructured and rebalanced these chunks. This way, you won’t have to download or patch nearly as much unnecessary data when the game updates, making patch speeds up to 200% faster.
Please note that since we’re changing the file structure of the game, you will need to completely redownload the game with the 5.7.0 update. Afterwards, all future updates will be significantly faster than before. Opting in or out of the 5.7.0 Public Test Build (PTB) will also cause a large download.
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Ghost Face Update
Starting things off, we have a few changes in store for Ghost Face. First, we are increasing the duration of Ghost Face’s mark to 60 seconds (up from 45). This change gives him a longer window to follow up and get a hit after successfully stalking a Survivor and makes outlasting the Exposed effect harder for Survivors.
Second, marked Survivors are no longer able to reveal Ghost Face. While other Survivors will still be able to reveal him, running off on your own now becomes riskier, as you’ll have no choice but to evade him while he’s Undetectable (unless you manage to get a lucky stun!)
Lastly, we noticed that many of Ghost Face’s add-on have gone largely unused with a few exceptions standing out well above the rest. We always want to see a wider variety of add-ons being used, so we’ve done a pass on the majority of Ghost Face’s add-ons to bring them up to a similar power level. Here’s a few examples of what you can expect:
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Legion Update
All these years later, The Legion remain one of the more frequently used Killers, and it’s easy to see why: Sometimes, you just wanna’ go fast with a knife. That’s why these changes focus on making The Legion faster and knifier than ever before.
In all seriousness, the first of our changes is centered around chaining together hits. Being able to string together multiple hits on different Survivors is something that is core to The Legion’s design, so to help them do that, we’re giving them a stacking 0.2m/s speed boost for each Survivor they hit during Feral Frenzy. This will make it easier to close the gap as you switch targets. Additionally, a fifth hit will end your frenzy and put any Survivor into the dying state, adding a satisfying payoff for chaining together hits.
Next, we’ve lowered the post-Feral Frenzy fatigue duration to 3 seconds (down from 4 seconds). The fatigue is a crucial part of The Legion’s power, preventing them from cancelling their frenzy and immediately following up with a basic attack, circumventing the non-lethal aspect of their power. We found that lowering the duration to 3 seconds felt much better to play with, but also kept it feeling fair from a Survivor’s POV. To ensure that the fatigue doesn’t get out of hand, we’ve reworked any fatigue altering add-ons, since the two strongest ones were added to the base kit. We’ve also changed Feral Frenzy’s recharge to start as soon as it ends rather than after the fatigue, effectively reducing the power’s cooldown.
And last, add-ons: We’ve reviewed each of The Legion’s add-ons. Some will receive number tweaks while others will get entirely new effects. We want to shine a spotlight on the various Mixtape add-ons in particular. True to their name, these add-ons will also augment The Legion’s new music, and can even be mixed and matched to produce interesting results.
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Hemorrhage Rework
Hemorrhage has long been one of the lesser desired Status Effects- for Killers, at least. Currently, Hemorrhage increases the frequency of blood pools, making it easier to track Survivors. This effect ends up not being very useful in most cases, as the Survivor will either be leaving scratch marks while sprinting or the blood pools will already be close together if they’re walking.
With that in mind, we’ve come up with a new version of Hemorrhage. Whenever you are not healing, Hemorrhage will cause your healing progress to regress at the rate of 7% per second. This new version rewards the Killer for interrupting a Survivor healing and has the potential to waste med-kit charges.
This change will affect all perks & add-ons that currently apply it.
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Updated Difficulty Ratings
In the info tab for each Killer & Survivor, you’ll find a difficulty rating that tells you how easy or hard they are to play. These ratings are intended to help newer players decide which Killer to play first, and which they should consider holding for when they’re more comfortable with the game.
To make these ratings more useful, we’ve created new guidelines for how we rank them. We’ve reviewed each Killer and given them a 1-5 score (1 being the easiest) in the following categories:
- Mechanical Skill: How much precise control is required to use the Killer effectively? (Aiming, reaction time, and control)
- Strategic Skill: How much planning and strategy is required to use the Killer effective? (Timing, resource management, decision making)
- Uniqueness: How similar is this Killer to other Killers?
The scores are totaled up to determine the overall difficulty of the Killer. The Nurse, for example, requires a lot of mechanical skill, a good bit of strategy, and plays completely differently than other Killers, landing her safely in the new “Very Hard” difficulty.
To avoid confusion, we’ve removed difficulty ratings from Survivors. This is because all Survivors are functionally identical with only perks setting them apart. Since perks can be shared across Survivors and aren’t factored into difficulty for Killers, we made the decision to remove them entirely.
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Haddonfield Update
It’s become a tradition for each dev update to be followed by “Haddonfield rework when?” Well this tradition is coming to an end, because we saved the best for last (yes, that was a perk pun).
The iconic Lampkin Lane appeared in The Entity’s realm over five years ago. But with all the visual improvements around the rest of the game, that familiar street is starting to show its age. Not for long, though, Haddonfield is next in line to get a visual update.
For those wondering, don’t worry, the map is getting some layout and gameplay changes too. Take a look:
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With that, we’ve reached the end of this month’s developer update. All of the changes mentioned here will be available in the 5.7.0 update. Which change are you most looking forward to? We look forward to hearing what you think!
The Dead by Daylight team
I joked about dev stream summaries before so, basically:
-Legion change
-Ghostface change
-Haddonfield rework
-Haemorrhage rework
-No COH nerf
If people (particularly those on consoles) want it I'll also make the ptb summary tomorrow (since I'll be home in time and will be on the PTB anyway; expect this within 1-2 working days)
So yeah do people want that summary again? Lmk if they're helpful or not bc omw are they a pain to get done so quickly lmao
Comments
These changes are good. Just wish we saw a COH nerf. I love your summaries though i understand if their a pain!
I'm actually quite happy to see a variation of a change I suggested for Legion being used 😁
Gosh, these devs sure do hate their killer mains!
I think overall this isn't the worst dev update, but talking about Hemorrhage and being totally silent about Circle of Healing is really odd.
It took them years to add 15 seconds to ghostface mark + 2 addons rework. years...Imagine having to rework core designs.
Until we see the full addons for Ghostface it's hard to say how good his changes are.
On one hand, the marked survivor not being able to reveal ghostface and the marked duration becoming 60 seconds are nice to-have, but I don't think will be that game changing.
The two addon we got revealed both do look good, so I have hope that Ghostface will have some actual good addons now.
Haddonfield rework is the best part of the update. Visually it looks terrific and they said they've also reworked the gameplay design of it which hopefully means its more balanced now.
Haemmorage change is a small nerf to healing in general
those shown are examples - not the full changes.
Only if you interrupt the healing.
Thank you. I was going for "Those survivor-sided Devs again!", but this works as well.
@Topic:
Changes to Legion look good, not really a fan of increasing Ghostfaces Movement Speed... And had a good laugh when reading that marked Survivors cannot break him out of Stealth, as if they were able to do so, lel.
THE LEGION CHANGES YAAAAS
MIXTAPES CHANGING MUSIC
Although people will be upset about the lethality. Calling it now. Not me though. I will be playing Legion. and being happy about it.
Looks like there’s some pretty cool stuff in 5.7 🙂
Does anyone know when this goes Live?
We've not released the PTB date as of yet.
Still no Iron Will nerf. It’s safe to assume the devs will do nothing about it.
Since the notes got posted today, I would say tommorow.
They didn’t give a date but given the details in the update it sounds like it could be next Tuesday or the following week for the PTB
While some of these changes sound nice but it still feels like they glossed over the real issues. I dont expect more people to play killer after this ptb.
The PTB will not be this week...just want to manage expectations here not for people to get too excited.
The 15 seconds on marked duration really isn't that impactful. Ultimately if you are stalking as Ghostface, you should 99 stalks until you get the survivor out of position for the quick down. There's not much reason to chase a marked survivor since Ghostface has no way to quickly end chases.
The marked survivor not revealing is more useful for scoring since Ghostface has a score event for hitting survivors from Shroud which often you mark a survivor, they reveal you before the hit and you lost out on the extra points.
Really though, stalking ghostface is already the best way to play him since hit and run ghostface has been outclassed for a while even before boons came into existence.
I think I like the Idea for Hemmorage. Have to see it in practice, but it seems like it will actually be a good counter for healing now... Gonna have to look at all the perks and add ONS with it to determine it's worth, but the sheer amount of Hemmorage all over the place as if it were ever a decent effect from the start? I know there will be some nutty combos. Too bad I doubt it can stack..
Also legion rework sounds awesome, as someone who plays him all the time
Oh, that's a bit disappointing, but I guess I can wait a week longer.
hopefully they will fix hug tech and nerf blights addons, those are not full patch notes.
I know what you’re saying about the 99%, but keep in mind that with this change Ghost Face gets a significant movement speed burst after Exposing someone and once Exposed they can’t break him out stalk. Plus he now refreshes his stalk a lot more easily too, so between all those things and the 60 second time limit he might have an easier time actually resetting and catching a previously Marked survivor even if they get away on the first attempt.
That's only with an addon and granted it's a really nice addition to get.
Like the addon changes are looking really good, but the basekit stuff is just nice bonuses that don't really change much themselves. Sometimes you do happen to mark multiple survivors at once and these changes could actually help in those situations, but overall their impact is going to be on the lower side.
Which to an extent I am glad, because I like Ghostface how he is and I didn't want to see him get drastically changed.
So is this a yes to the summary when the ptb inevitably releases or..?
Obviously nerf addons but what's the issue with hug tech? It's a viable tech and quite counterplayable most of the time
Its the next week then?
The hemorrhage change is going to be really fun on Doc 😉
Alchemist ring should do something else entirely. Like speed up recharge of rush tokens after a hit instead of all of them at once.
Compound 33 shouldn't slow down survivors.
That's all I got in mind as a blight main.
I agree, I doubt Ghost Face needed a major buff, the minor ones they’re doing are probably fine.
because its a bug
So is looping, in its earliest stages at least, but stayed since it added depth and charm to the survivor experience, I’d argue the same for hug tech.
Looping is not a "bug" lol
It was unintended at first, but then became a core gameplay mechanic, similarly window techs also followed this idea as well.
Unintended and bugs are not necessarily the same thing tho
True, if your issue is with hug tech being a bug then that is fair, but hug tech is fair from a design perspective, there are ways to avoid it as a survivor and there is a severe punishment for the blight screwing up the hug tech. TLDR hug tech is a tool of the chase that is only as effective as the survivor allows it to be.
I'm surprised that the mixtapes will be switching it up. Now we need a ultra rare for them to change lobby animation and music.
Honestly the changes sound interesting I guess.
Unless there’s some sort of movement towards fixing the poor performance especially on last gen consoles then I really makes little difference for me; I still won’t be able to play a game that functions correctly :S
Looping is not a bug, hug tech is bug and unintended mechanic, confirmed by design team last month.
Ghostface changes seem rather lackluster. Looking forward to the legion ones though
Can you link to something? I can't imagine hug tech being in the game for 2 years and being by far the most popular Blight tech while being a unintended bug they want to fix
So, Legion got a whole new chase + terror radius? Dope, I wish I can play him for once with my bunny suit
I'm glad. I wanna get my spring cleaning rewards.
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2826960#Comment_2826960
Probably this next week…. Unfortunately they report the ptb release date, with my source
take it easy on the iron will nerf dude, just accept it Spirit is not A-tier anymore lol
Haemorrhage change is decent. Dead Hard and COH dodged again, they really hate us killer mains.
Yes, please. I would really appreciate that! Thank you for doing this.