No mid-game eliminations if they ever do a "Dead by Daylight 2.0" sequel?
So a lot of the most frequent complaints that get posted about Dead by Daylight have one main root cause - players being eliminated mid-match. In general mid-game elimination can be problematic because, understandably, people don't like being kicked out to the sidelines while everybody else keeps playing without them.
Consider what would happen, for example, if the game had been designed originally such that, instead of the survivors being killed during the match, the killer gained a Ritual token every time they hooked a survivor and also gained a token for every 60 seconds a survivor spent in the dying or hooked state, and then the killer immediately wins the match if they collect 8-12 tokens (whatever number was reasonable). (For reference this is how the upcoming official Dead by Daylight boardgame works since the designers wanted to avoid player elimination.) This would alleviate those big player gripes:
- "Face Camping" hooks has essentially no incentive in that system. Defending a hook for 60 seconds would get you only one more token, you'd be MUCH better off going out and proactively chasing and downing and hooking another survivor within, say, 40 seconds and getting another token that way.
- "Tunneling" a survivor and hooking them two or three times in a row doesn't help you any more in this system than hooking three different survivors one time each. There's no particular incentive in this system to focus one survivor down multiple times versus spreading the damage out.
- All five players get to stay in the match the entire game. Nobody is left on the sidelines, other than the downtime you experience while you're on a hook or slugged waiting for a rescue. This also means there's less reason for survivors to disconnect since a downed survivor always have the chance to get revived and get back in the fight. Plus there's no "rage quits on hook" in this system either since survivors don't literally get killed on hook mid-game.
Of course this isn't something that could happen in the current iteration of Dead by Daylight, it is something fundamental to the design that has to be built into the game from the beginning. So this sort of concept would be for a "Dead By Daylight 2.0" sequel, for instance.
There are some interesting other aspects that would change from this:
- Mori animations would only be in play for downs which result in the final token the killer needs to win the game. (In other words, if a killer needs only one more token to win, and they are standing over a downed survivor, then they could have access to a Mori animation to kill them and immediately end the game in a victory.)
- With all four survivors living the whole game there's less opportunity for killers to snowball a victory, so gen speeds would have to function with that in mind.
- Note that you could still win by downing all four survivors simultaneously and bleeding them out. Basically at that point every 60 seconds the killer would gain 4 additional Ritual tokens, so after 1 or 2 minutes at most they'd have enough to win the game. And of course hooking also speeds up that process too. But it would make sense to immediately end the game regardless of tokens if all survivors are hooked and unable to escape.
- Off the top of my head I can't think of specific perk changes that would be needed, other than adjusting overall gen speeds and/or hook and bleedout timers. But if I'm overlooking something feel free to let me know!
- Thematically some people might argue that you're missing out on the "shock" of a mid-match elimination, but honestly I think the upsides outweigh that downside here. And, as noted above, you even still can have things like Mori animations and the Entity killing survivors on hook, it just would only happen once per match at the very, very end as the killer wins.
So if a hypothetical Dead by Daylight 2.0 sequel went this direction do you think it would be a good idea, a bad idea, or something in between?
Comments
I like it
Personally, I feel like it would be boring. An asym horror with absolutely zero stakes.
There's plenty of stakes, either the killer wins or the survivors win depending on if the survivors escape before the killer gathers enough Ritual tokens. The gameplay loop would be mostly the same in the process in terms of chases, avoiding downs, and so on.
Games are still winnable for survivors even in a 3v1. Completely removing the risk of death sounds so boring. Its like playing deathmatch in a shooter. Nobody dies permanently and each side strives to gather enough points before the other. I could see a deathmatch game mode for dbd but the whole game focusing around it is a bad idea
None of this is about whether or not games are winnable at 3v1.
I mainly say that because the game state would feel frozen for the killer. While survivors still have game progress feedback in terms of generators getting completed and escaping, killers don't. You are playing a game, as a killer, that can't actually kill. You chase survivors around, chew through pallets, perks, and gens getting cranked out. You throw them on the hook and what do you get? A token... it's just not very impactful, it doesn't feel good.
This would be good because it would lessen survivors sandbagging eachother to avoid getting eliminated early.
While the survivor count stays at four, the number of generators remaining does impact the killer's gameplay loop. Just like how in the actual game the killer has the hardest time stopping generators in the beginning of the match when all generators are available for repair, as generators are completed it narrows what the killer needs to patrol and makes it easier for them to slow progress.
That said I could see maybe having some secondary effect maybe being added to further spice things up as generators are finished.
I've been saying most of this game's issues stem from it being an elimination game for a while
It would certainly make the outcome more binary.
That's true, and it's not actually a bad thing. Having an ambiguous win condition has led to its own sorts of problems for DbD, like debates over whether or not the survivors are actually a team or ultimately playing for themselves. Making it clear that the survivors are playing as a group against the killer would actually be a plus for the game I think.
This is how you steal someone's heart because DAMN, I love this idea.
Sounds like a great idea for an asymmetrical game that isn't horror based.
Have you ever seen a horror movie? Most of the cast die.
Evil Dead The Game is horror based but for the most part players aren't eliminated early. The game is structured so they basically all die at once. Likewise for the Dead by Daylight Board Game. It's one of those things where you can trade a bit of theme to improve the overall gameplay loop.
Problem is playing Killer would still be dreadful. Too many loops, too many pallets and impossible chase... hooking gives you little reward in this version, imagine one like that.
Anyway, I haven´t read your post fully, but I can tell you there will be no DbD 2.
They tried with Deathgarden and that was rather a failure of a game.
Games would finish too fast before the killer even had enough tokens in this system.
That's why survivors must die.
I must say I really love your idea!
@BHVR are you listening? Do THIS as the second game mode that you never wanted to do, but that a lot of people are asking for. Just give it a try :>
No the problem is that they made weak Killers and very strong Survivors, and then the cherry on the top was doing SWF to allow for voice communication. See how no one plays Kill Your Friends.
It all depends on how long it takes to finish the gens and open the exits. Obviously those settings would have to be different.
For the record I think Deathgarden had player elimination.
At some point, the reward system needs to up the ante on survivor mains to actually play killer side, a lot more, to realize we as "killers" are a generic term. Which in fact are not killers, but sacrificers. We sacrifice to a high power to recieve Bloodpoints. And if we kill for our own satisfaction, are punished for it. Survivors dont realize that.